My Little Lyra

by Autum Breeze

Chapter 6 - Secrets, Truths and Mysteries

Chapter 6

Secrets, Truths and Mysteries

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“<She’s saying, “I… well… um…”>” Sai interprets.

We’re sitting in the living room, the three of us adults having just spent the last several minutes talking, with Sai and myself explaining things as best we can to Ha Yune.

Due to my not being completely fluent in Japanese and Ha-san being very bad at English, Sai’s been working as the in-between, translating each of our sentences to the other.

Ha-san and Sai are good friends. She knew Sai’s parents and had watched over Sai after she moved into the complex, offering to help whenever Sai was struggling.

Sai, in return, always offered to babysit her daughter whenever she could.

The two got along very well and were very good friends… which is probably the only reason Ha-san hasn’t accused her off going off the deep end for what she and I have been telling her.

The confusion Ha-san was experiencing is completely understandable. She didn’t know anything about My Little Pony FiM, so the info dump we’d given her, combine with the implications of Lyra being here meaning that world actually exists, was a lot to take in all at once.

We’d essentially shattered her whole concept of reality.

I glance away at the girls playing. Lyra got out her toys while we adults talked about “grown up stuff” and now the two are playing with her Duplo.

I can’t help smiling at the look of pure joy and happiness on her face as she and Ha-san’s daughter, Kimiko-san, play together, acting like they’ve been best friends forever, despite barely having known each other for over two hours.

“<This… is weird,>” Sai translates Ha-san’s next sentence.

I nod. “<I understand, Ha-san. It took a bit of getting used to myself, but Lyra is real and she’s here. Japan is the best place I could think of to raise her, as your country is so accepting of the weird.>”

“<She says she can see how well Kimiko and Lyra get along,>” Sai draws my attention back to the girls. “<She can see how quickly they’ve become friends and doesn’t want to break them up and—>”

She pauses, before looking with both hurt and annoyance at Ha-san and says something firmly in Japanese, way too fast for me to sift through my limited knowledge of the language.

Though I did hear the word “baka”, which I know is Japanese for fool or idiot, so, guessing it wasn’t the most pleasant of comments.

Ha-san looks a bit shocked, before seeming to think it over and looks apologetic.

She looks to me. “<I sorry. Not mean… to be rude… to child.>”

I blink, before it clicks and I try to keep my composure as I realize she’d said something insulting about Lyra. Now I do not mind that Sai called her an idiot in their native language.

After a moments, I sigh, open my eyes and nod. “Forgiven. I hope our daughters… can be good friends.”

Hey, speaking a full sentence all at once in a foreign language is tricky. If I have to take it slow, I will.

We all return to watching the girls play, Lyra talking excitedly to Kimiko in Japanese.

I really should not feel so jealous of my own daughter.

___________________________________________________________

I smile as Lyra plays tag with several of the children.

It’s been almost a month since we moved to Japan and I started my job at Shiseikan Elementary School.

Getting into sync with the job had been a lot easier than I’d anticipated.

There’s five other staff in the preschool to kindergarten area and they welcomed me, if a bit uncertainly, with open arms.

Handling the children has been pretty easy. I can attribute that to having grown up with five younger siblings and having been much older when the last four came around.

Lyra and Kimiko-san are the closest of friends, Kimiko-san introducing her to the other friends she’d made at the school, the group happily welcoming Lyra into their little group.

Thanks to Yune-san, I soon learned that I’d been a bit off on my little unicorn’s age.

Yune’s a vet and offered to give Lyra and once over and found her physical age is actually closer to between six and seven years old. So I guess Lyra’s more four year old like behavior was more due to her loss of memory than her actually age.

As such, we’d celebrate two birthdays so Lyra didn’t feel weird being treated as a six year old than a four year old.

To my surprise, the school’s preschool-elementary area doesn’t have a uniform policy, so Lyra’s wearing a plain white t-shirt and blue skirt.

She keeps alternating between running on all fours and two legs, trying to make things more challenging for the other kids whenever she’d been tagged.

“Lyra is a sweet child,” I pull my gaze from the kids to a man and woman, both with black hair, the former cut to his ears and the latter tied back in a ponytail.

The man is Yokomoto Kazu and the woman is Daichi Yue. They’re two of the other staff in this area of the school and the ones I’ve gotten on best with.

Granted, when there’s only six staff members looking after over twenty children between the ages of four to six years old, you have to all be able to work together or else it won’t work, so we’re all friendly towards each other, but they’re the two I’ve gotten on best with.

We’ve gotten on so well, the three of us are on first name basis and don’t even use honorifics with each other anymore.

The rest of the staff are currently having a break, so it’s just the three of us.

“Have to agree with you, Yue,” I look back as Lyra tumbles with a boy wearing a blue shirt and white shorts, the two laughing happily.

“I still honestly find it a bit weird that a unicorn exists in our world and is so happily playing with the other kids,” Kazu shakes his head.

I nod. “Yeah, I’m not surprised, Kazu. Unicorns aren’t exactly a norm around the world.”

“I just wish I knew why Bon Bon and Twilight made her seem so upset,” Yue sighs.

There’s a pause, the only sound being the kids having fun.

I slowly turn to Yue. “Can… can you repeat that?” I must have misheard. I must have.

Yue motions for me to follow her and we leave Kazu to watch the kids alone for a moment.

She takes me into a small room with bright and colour walls, with drawings hung all over the room on strings.

Yue brings me over to one group of pictures in particular, takes them down and hands them to me.

What I see makes my eyes go wide. It’s crude, drawings by four year olds usually are, but the colours are way too obvious for it not to be clear what I’m looking at.

On the page is a stick figure pony, mint-green, clearly Lyra.

However, it’s the other two that worry me.

On one page, stick pony Lyra is standing next to a purple stick pony with a pink stripe in her mane and tail and a crudely drawn six-point pink star on her flank.

The other page has stick pony Lyra hugging a cream coloured stick pony with a blue and pink curly mane and a trio of candies on her flank.

“Twilight and Bon Bon,” I murmur.

My emotions are a conflicted mess of confusion. I’m happy that Lyra may be starting to remember Equestria, but, at the same time, I have this sense of foreboding.

Is it because I fear her remembering Equestria might send her back? Is it because I don’t want to lose her after…?

And why is Twilight still just a unicorn in this picture? Why isn't she an Alicorn?

I blink, before looking to Yue, what she’d said earlier coming back to me. “What did you mean they make her upset?”

Yue looks sad and annoyed. “I can’t really explain it, because she can’t either.”

HALF AN HOUR AGO

Yue smiled as she watched the children drawing, chatting happily amongst themselves about what their pictures were off. Some drew home and their family, others fun places they’d been to or wanted to go.

As past little Kimiko and Lyra, she happened to glance over Lyra’s shoulder and noticed the stick pony figures much like Lyra had drawn herself.

“Lyra?” the little unicorn glanced up, her horn losing its golden glow, the crayon held in a similar light dropping onto the table. “Who are they?” Yue indicated to the figures.

Lyra pointed excitedly at the cream coloured one first. “Bon Bon. Bon Bon’s my best pony friend.” She then pointed to the other pony. “That's Twilight. She’s my friend. Good friend.” Her expression suddenly saddened. “Sad friend.”

Yue glanced from the pictures back to Lyra. “Why is she sad?’

Lyra just remained quiet for a moment and Yue became worried when she saw tears brimming in her eyes.

“Not know. Twilight just sad. Something bad happen. Not know why. Just know.”

Yue looked from the now slightly sniffling filly to the drawing, unsure how to respond.

NOW

“I guess… maybe she really wants some friends who look like her,” Yue says, shaking her head, looking sad. “I guess I can understand. She is the only unicorn in the school, after all. Of course she’d want some friends just like her.”

“Y-yeah,” I nod absentmindedly, my thoughts elsewhere.

This isn’t the first time Twilight has come up without Lyra knowing about the show.

Sai has been very careful not to let Lyra know about FiM, keeping all her pony stuff in her own room, even only watching the show in there, so Lyra doesn’t accidentally see it and start asking questions her young mind won’t be able to understand the answers for.

But that hasn’t stopped things related to the show seeming to infiltrate Lyra’s mind.

I’ve been able to ask around without giving away my objective and, without naming the show, I’ve been able to learn most people living nearby us who aren’t in Sai’s personal friendship circle know about the show, not even most of the children in the area.

This was why, when Lyra first mentioned the name Twilight, both Sai and I had been unnerved.

It happened about a week ago.

The day hadn’t been any different from other days, I’d taken Lyra to school, Sai had worked and studied, we’d done little shopping before heading home, nothing out of the ordinary for the routine we’d all gotten into.

A WEEK AGO

I jolt up in bed, my heart racing, as a horrifying scream fills the entire apartment, sending chills down my spine

I’m barely conscience, but that scream is clear as crystal…and it’s one I’ve heard before.

It was the scream I’d heard that first day with Lyra. The one that had terrified me and seemed to make Lyra uncomfortable in her sleep.

Before my brain can fully wake up, however, another scream fills the air, this one high pitched and scared, but from a voice I recognize.

“Twilight, don’t!”

The sound of Lyra’s scream makes me bolt out of bed, nearly colliding with a bleary-eyed Sai as we both rush out of our rooms to Lyra’s.

She’s sitting up in bed, her eyes wide, her breathing ragged. Tears a streaming down her face.

“Lyra?” I ask as I come in, Sai right on my heels.

Lyra turns at the sound of my voice and I reach her bed, kneeling down to her level.

She looks at me for several moments, the tears never stopping, before she wails and hugs me, repeating the same thing over and over. “Twilight, why? Why, Twilight?”

I instinctively hug her, before glancing to Sai, who seems as lost for words as I am.

Twilight? Could she…? Is she talking about Twilight Sparkle?

NOW

“Eventually, I’d gotten Lyra back to sleep, but the very next morning, she had no memory of any nightmare or saying anything as she cried into me. She didn’t even remember crying into me,” I finish telling Yue as we return to the main playroom.

“That’s… so strange,’ Yue says.

I say, nothing, watching Lyra as she dodges a boy who tries to tag her.

Sai and I had been worried, but we’d put it out of our minds and we just acted like things were normal so as not to worry Lyra… but they weren’t.

We’d noticed small things about Lyra’s behaviour we hadn’t before after that.

Sometimes she’ll just sit by her bedroom window, staring up the night sky, silently crying. When asked, she’d tell me she doesn’t know why, but she feels really sad sometimes when looking up at the night sky.

Whenever she played with her Duplo, she’d make sculptures that looked an awful lot like Twilight Sparkle or Bon Bon.

She has no knowledge of the show, so shouldn’t know what those two characters look like or their names… but clearly does and it makes her sad.

I don’t understand why and I hate that I can’t do anything.

Sai and I have been trying to find anything we can to make sense of it, even asked on forums for the fandom, wording it in a way that makes it sound like we’re talking about a story, not real life.

I want to help Lyra no longer feel sad whenever she thinks about her past, even if she doesn’t realize that’s what it is.

I don’t understand why Twilight is a fixture in this, though. Bon Bon, I get. It’s clear the fandom heavily ships the two of them together and, from what few times they do regularly appear in the show, the creators are listening and, while unable to actually confirm the ship, are making it heavily implied.

But Twilight? Sure, Twilight is the main character of the show and she and Lyra and both unicorns and seemed to both go to Canterlot, but that’s no clear indicator as to why Lyra would have even the faintest memories of Twilight so import that she held onto them as strongly in her subconscious as she did to Bon Bon.

There’s also the words she used about Twilight the night we heard that scream in the house.

She’d told Twilight not to do something and then asked why about it as she sobbed into me.

We don’t know what Twilight did or why, but Lyra didn’t seem to like it. It had made her sad, broke her heart… even if she can’t actually remember it.

We need answers… but we don’t know where to get them.

What did you do, Twilight Sparkle?

Is it the reason Lyra’s in our world? Can you fix it? Do I want you to fix it?

I sigh, watching Lyra play happily.

I don’t know what the future has in store now. I can only hope I can give Lyra the best childhood she can have… before we find out why she came here in the first place… and she goes away, forever.

Author's Note:

So, Lyra has friends and seems to have settled into her life in Japan with James... but something else is there.

What is the mystery behind Lyra being in the human world that makes her so sad? How does it connected to the Princess of Friendship before she became said princess?

What is that scream and why has James heard it twice now? and Why did Lyra wake up right after it screaming for Twilight?

More questions than answers and james is clearly going to need to be wary, for Lyra's sake.

Hope this turned out okay. i'm kinda half and half on it. i think it's good, but i feel it could be better, while also not seeing how i actually could've done it different.

Next chapter i think will be a timeskip.

i want to do this fic justice with fleshing things out, but i also feel i'm taking a bit too long too.

Don't worry. it won't be too big a time jump, but a needed one.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, look forward to more and, til next time, stay safe, stay clean and later everybody