To Dream of Motherland

by Midnight-Blue766

Far Beyond the Wave

After breakfast, High Tide decided to look over what remained of the upstairs library. He had amassed quite a large collection of books from around the world during his physical existence: encyclopaedias, atlases, travel guides, anthropological texts, or just books about magic and its workings. However, as he climbed up the staircase to the upstairs library, a feeling of anxiety filled him, causing him to tremble ever so slightly as his chest to tighten. The Pretender said something about “removing non-Equestrian elements” from this version of Equestria.

With apprehension, he imagined his collection stripped bare, with only a few scattered books about Equestria proper remaining. He could hear the beating of his heart and the strained breathing as he approached the library. He swallowed deeply as he saw the door.

Well, here goes nothing, he thought, as he turned the doorknob, and trotted in.

There was seemingly nothing out of the ordinary. The shelves were still on most of the walls, save for the left wall, which had the desk, the lectern, the map of the world and the window above them. On the bottom shelves lay the larger books such as his encyclopedia collection, and atlas, while smaller books like novels were on the top. It seemed that every book in the room was how he left when he was last in the library.

Eight years ago.

A wisp of nostalgia ran through him when he realised how long ago he last stood here was. Then the nostalgia turned into bitterness when he realised that he never went to the library again. He was standing in a video game version of a library from a cartoon kingdom, made up by a series of 1s and 0s that read his mind before turning it into glue. He then realised that, like the food in the pantry, she likely switched out any non-Equestrian books with Equestrian equivalents. Even if there was no Equestrian equivalent. Might as well test it.

He scanned the lower part of the western shelf. After a few seconds of searching, he pulled out a large, beige book out from it with his magic, and with some effort, he managed to get it onto the lectern by the other corner. It was, or he assumed it was, an old copy Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas from 1903, which he bought at an antique bookstore in the old, Imperial Munich from the last world. It wasn’t the oldest book in his collection, being published a mere 15 years before the Weltensprung happened to Germany, but it would do for now. He rubbed his temples with his hooves for a few minutes, unaccustomed to the heavy load and the amount of magic required to move it, before opening it to one of the front pages, about page 20 or so, hoping to see the map of the Atlantic and its trade routes at the time.

To his disappointment, there was instead a map of the Celestial Ocean from before the Weltensprung, with Equestria on the left page and the various Griffon states on the right. He checked the title page for the publisher. North Star’s Atlas of the World. Which went out of print thirty years ago.

Imagine the cigarettes I could get for this, he thought, no, scratch that, imagine how many Kronen people would pay for this! He returned to his situation a split second later, when he realised that Austria was rendered permanently inaccessible to him.

He examined the atlas for some time, when it came to his attention that the east coast of Equestria was the spitting image of the east coast of America- with every city that had an analogue of America was in the general location of its equivalent; Manehattan was in New York, Baltimare was in Baltimore, and so on. He remembered once hearing about a professor in Vienna who spent years analysing pre-Weltensprung Equestrian geography, and (much to Freud’s chagin) concluded that Equestria was somehow born of the American collective unconscious, and every major figure in Equestrian history corresponded to one of the major cultural archetypes that Jung had proposed.

Of course, they found him hanging from a ceiling fan after the second Weltensprung happened at it was proven to be true. Perhaps it was best not to dwell upon geography. He pulled out a smaller, purple textbook from his gymnasium, being quite thankful it wasn’t so heavy on the head. Introductory Equestrianer Thaumaturgy, it said on the title. At least the title is the same. Austrians (and the rest of Europe save for Skyrim) always seemed to have dodged around magic, calling it by those euphemisms.

He opened the book to a random page. It rambled on and on, perhaps in a way similar to the gymnasium textbook he knew, but he examined the page closer when he noticed that the textbook apparently depicted a grid, like something out of a maths textbook instead of a “thaumaturgy” book.

To his dismay, it didn’t talk about the magic he knew. Instead, the familiar magic terminology like kiloscintillas and Starswirl Rays was a thin veneer for a near-mathematical discourse about gridlines, geometry, and graph theory. He put the book away and trotted down into kitchen and poured out a glass of hard cider. So the Pretender basically made a complete copy of his library filled with almost completely recognisable books. He drank deeply, at least content that alcohol had an effect on him. After drinking, he decided that he could at least check on the copies of his friends in Canterlot to see how much they bear resemblance to their equivalents in lost Equestria.

They must be the same. He couldn’t allow it if it wasn’t.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

What does PISOT II stand for? What is this a crossover of?

[Midnight-Blue766]

This is based of a collaborative crossover timeline game called PISOT II over on AlternateHistory.com (ISOT stands for Island in the Sea of Time; it basically means a mass teleportation of a country through space and time in Alternate History Jingo. A member called Pieman is the founder of this timeline, so it's called PISOT).

[terrycloth]

So the basic idea is that Equestria was around for a while, replacing Germany, then poofed back out of existence and was replaced by Skyrim?

[Midnight-Blue766]

4591285 Equestria was around for a while, replacing Italy, then poofed back out of existence and replaced by something else. What country replaced Equestria will be seen in the next chapter. I hinted that there was a Germany in that world, a version of Imperial Germany.