Diary,
I can’t believe I took this long to get anything down. Been here a week, and I take until now to have time with my diary. I guess… I guess I’ve done better than any other universe-traveling member of my species before me. Or… I guess not, since I’m just a pony now, and ponies have done this before.
Just a pony. Maybe I should stop saying things like that.
Welcome to Equestria, population millions of earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, zebras, and even a few gryphons (who knew those were a thing?). With some level of certainty, I am the only native of my world to travel here. I may be the last for some time to come.
I guess it goes without saying that the spell worked. We arrived in Equestria more or less in the middle of nowhere, somewhere Sunset said corresponded to the exact location on Earth. She said it would’ve been better to go into LA, but with the fires and everything… Yeah, we didn’t do that.
Overwhelming. That’s the only word I can use to describe all of this. A whole world, and there’s not a human in sight. There never was, and now I guess there never will be. Granted my first look wasn’t that impressive; just this little town.
A little town with more individual ponies in it than I’ve seen in the last few months, by at least a few orders of magnitude. Completely overwhelming. I wished I’d been able to bring Huan along. Guess in all the isolation, I didn’t think that maybe I wasn’t used to being around other people.
Well I wasn’t. Dang if ponies aren’t the friendliest creatures I’ve ever known. Sunset and I just appeared out of nothing, and practically the whole town rushes to get a telegram off to some central rail office to send a train for us.
Yeah, telegram. It’s hard to say exactly the level of technology this world has. Without a doubt, it’s much less than Earth ever had. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re somewhere in the mid eighteen-hundreds. The middle of an aborted industrial revolution. I guess necessity really is the mother of invention: why invent anything if there’s a spell that makes it happen for free?
Sunset Shimmer has been with me every day as we travel across the country. She’s taken me to several different cities, showing me the “industry” here in Equestria. Every time I’ve reminded her about how urgent she had been when we were back on earth, she tells me “the return spell is waiting for us at the end. Princess Celestia said you had to see everything yourself. Reading about it is no substitute for real experience” or something like that. I’ve forgotten honestly. Just as long as she kept promising I could go back to my friends.
I'm pretty sure she's also showing me to them, because we've only visited big cities generally and they're always expecting me. I get rushed around too fast to get questioned too much. They want to know how "humans" are doing. Sunset told me I was better off not answering these questions yet, until I knew from her princess what was happening. Lots and lots of ponies wanted to know what earth was like, so I drew 'em a little sketch...
Cloudy Skies, Mystic Rune, Oliver, Moriah… spend all this time around ponies, and I’m starting to think of their names as more natural. That much changing in a week? I’m gonna have to thank Sky big time for the name; it’s been something to tell the ponies I meet when I don’t want to give them a lecture on why I’m called “Alex.”
Not having a cutie mark, too. Cloudy Skies saved me there too, with this leather jacket that covers up my flank (that’s the word! Not butt!). So cutie marks are something every adult has. It seems to be part of puberty here to get them, though I still don’t have one. I can’t even blame Moriah, since I didn’t have one even before I got made into a teenager.
Everypony wants to know if I’m Sunset’s little sister. I don’t tell them to shut up even though I really want to. I’m nobody’s sister, damnit! My family’s gone!
I don’t really want the tour. Even if it’s really interesting to see the way Equestria manufactures its own seasons: yeah, you heard that right. Its orbit is perfectly even, no tilt, so no natural climatic variation. They have to manufacture it by manipulating clouds and wind and even their own orbit, all with magic.
So maybe it’s a little premature to think of Equestrians as primitive. They might not have 3D printers or nuclear fission, but they've so totally mastered nature that all the animals depend on them for survival and weather is scheduled instead of predicted.
Would we even want that for Earth? I never said so, but… that sounds like living in a fishbowl. A very peaceful fishbowl, granted. Earth hasn’t been like that for any part of our development. It’s been darwinism. Animals as weak and defenseless as these here would be devoured in minutes back on earth. I can’t help but wonder if a sheltered world has made the ponies a little sheltered too.
But I dunno. I haven’t come here to judge their society. Really, I couldn’t care less about their society. They’re wonderfully friendly and polite but I only want to reverse what happened to my planet. There are seven billion voices in my mind, and all of them demand action. Maybe the magic of this world, magic literally mighty enough to cause the sun to rise in the morning and set in the evening, is mighty enough to bring back my dead race.
Even if all the ponies on Earth were stuck as ponies forever, it would be worth it. Even if our radiation meant we had to be banished to live out the rest of our days on some small island forever, which would get so hot it would glow at night and be visible from space. I could still write letters to mom and Jennifer. It’d still be worth it.
Tomorrow I meet the pony who can make that possible. Princess Luna. Princess isn’t just a political office, though it is that. Princess is also the species, though I think it’s a little unfair! I already thought of this, weeks back! Making ponies have wings and horns both… that’s what an Alicorn is. She’s the younger of the two sisters, and I don’t really know why she’s meeting with me instead of the older sister. Whatever.
These beings are ancient beyond any sapient living thing on earth. They’ve both ruled for thousands of years, if the stories the ponies here tell me are true. When they took power, Alexander the Great was conquering the world.
Stretches of time that vast are hard to even fit in my dumb horse brain, though honestly I don’t think I would’ve done much better if I was still human. When you live for a hundred years, ten or a hundred times that seems unfathomable. Years must feel so short to them.
I’ll try to commit tomorrow’s conversation with her to memory as much as possible. If I’m right, if the HPI were right and Sunset Shimmer is right, then it might be the most important conversation in human history (posthuman history?). I will record everything about it. Wish ponies had voice recorders, or else I’d carry one of those.
I’m going to beg the princess to make my world right again. Sunset says she’s positive Luna will treat my request very seriously, though she looked sad when she said it. You better not know something I don’t, firemane horsebeast! She seemed pretty confident though. Apparently Princess Luna had taken her on when the other sister didn’t think she made the cut as an apprentice anymore. So horse politics, that’s apparently a thing.
Let’s see, I’ve picked up some helpful general knowledge. I’m what’s called an earth pony (some connections there?), and we’ve all apparently got a universal connection to the land. When I saw my vision and lots of earth ponies were growing crops, they weren’t using exotic fertilizers or weird GE plants, they were using magic. Innate magic, the same magic that makes me strong and not wear out the way other ponies do. Guess my group wasn’t just being lazy after all!
Then there’s unicorns, like Joseph. Pretty much knew he could do magic, but apparently magic is way more than just glowing and moving things around. He can learn all kinds of spells, spells to cure sicknesses and repair broken things and reveal what’s been hidden. Apparently I’m going to go back with tons and tons of books and things on that. Not really sure how I’m supposed to carry an entire library’s worth without a Kindle. Guess there’s probably a spell for it.
Pegasus ponies too, like Cloudy Skies, and they do way more than fly. They literally walk on the clouds, and can even make them into things. Including weather systems, but also freakin’ buildings and stuff. Jealous much? You betcha! I feel like whoever gave these powers away wasn’t fair to the ground ponies. I can’t help but notice during my Equestria world tour that earth ponies seem to be working harder than anypony else.
Crap, I just wrote anypony again. I hope Sky never reads this. Or Moriah. God, not her. I asked about the horn regrowing thing too.
Bad news! Moriah’s horn probably won’t ever grow back. Not even medical spells can do anything for it; something to do with it being a magic focus itself. Good news? The magic isn’t actually in the horn itself, but some tiny little thing in her head. Guess I kinda already knew that since she blasted me with magic without a horn. Whatever; horn’s a focus, but the magic comes from inside. She’ll be able to learn one day, it’ll probably just be way harder. So there’s hope for the grump after all.
I also had Sunset do a basic age spell; turns out I’m really sixteen, just like Oliver thought. I asked her about reversing an age spell, and she was just shocked that an age spell was even possible for somepony from earth. Apparently it’s really, really advanced stuff. Like, Alicorn level stuff. Most ponies would live their whole lives without ever seeing it done, and the effects were always permanent.
I could, of course, ask this Princess Luna to cast a new age spell tomorrow, but I doubt I will. I don’t want to distract from the real question. Only if she grants my pleas about humanity will I ask for anything for myself.
And if she can’t, well, at least we’ll know what happened. I would rather die knowing what had killed us than never know at all. Maybe it’s possible for humans to learn something from this. Guess that depends on what caused it, so I’ll have to get back to you on that.
It’s hard to get over how friendly the ponies are here in Equestria. Everybody wants to know your name, everypony wants to help. Just today, I met a pony who had to be the most elegant horse who ever lived. She insisted on replacing my outfit and recommending me a “mane-stylist” for my appointment with royalty tomorrow. Talk about generous.
Then there’s Sunset Shimmer herself. It’s weird how sad she’s been all the time, and I don’t know why. We stayed with her family two nights, and her mother looked like she would cry. Barely even noticed I was there.
Damn the food, though. These ponies know how to cook. Vegetarian horse-diet confirmed. You know what, though? They make it work. They don’t eat grass, seem to think of it as about as barbaric as I do. Hay is to them what wheat is to man, a pretty universal staple. Baking seems to happen too, along with lots of familiar human cooking methods. This week is the first time I haven’t missed meat since I turned into this stupid horse. I sure hope if Luna can’t make everything right she’ll include a few cookbooks with that library of knowledge.
Cloudy Skies would’ve loved it here, so much that she probably wouldn’t have wanted to leave. I’ll admit, after this last week here, I can see how nice it would be to live here. Everypony knows what it’s like to have to use their mouths for everything. They don’t care that I’m young, and they don’t expect me to save humanity.
I could make lots of new friends here. I think I already have, honestly. Sunset Shimmer’s really nice to me, and she doesn’t seem to mind when I screw up and do something “nopony would ever do, like, ever.” I asked her about it, and she just said “I know what it’s like to be somewhere new and not to have any friends.”
It’s hard not to like a pony when they do this much to look out for you. I think leaving behind my new friends will the hardest part about going back. Good thing I’ll have my old ones waiting for me. We still have a community to build… maybe. Or maybe I’ll go back and go back to my job.
Or… probably not. Guess that all still burned, huh? I wonder how much of the Earth will still be there when all the humans go back to it.
I hope we can all go back to it. This ponyworld is nice, but it’s not my home. This world didn’t compose Ave Maria, or paint the Mona Lisa. This world didn’t write the Magna Carta, or the Divine Comedy. This world didn’t land a man on the moon or split the atom.
It’s beautiful here, even wonderful. But it isn’t my home.
I want to go back.
—A
So Lonely was a girl the whole time! I kind of figured though I had my doubts, the way I read the journal sounded masculine to me. Maybe I was just superimposing my own voice onto it and thats why.
I am starting to think Alex ended up halfway to being a young mare that is why he is younger and looks effeminate. Moriah who's horn wasn't full didn't have the focus to actually complete the spell so it only ended half way being done which is good for Alex since he at least kept his stallionhood. Just will have to deal with a extra few years and looking like a mare, could of been totally worse.
There's a lot of significant things in this chapter, and I keep telling my brain this isn't the most significant, to no avail.
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I'm not entirely sure what you're on about.
WooHoo! Home stretch. I don't think Luna would be able to bring humans back, but I hope Day can get back to her proper age.
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But of course, this is all speculation. We don't know for sure. I personally thought Alex was a he this whole time, but as soon as i saw 'sister' I realized Alex is probably a she. Just my opinion.
Honestly I'm shocked the story is ending so quickly. There's a lot of world left to explore, a lot of things left for the survivors to do, and we've only seen the tiniest fraction of any of it. It just seems to be drawing to a close too fast.
Equestria is pretty much a fishbowl. That sums it up quite well.
A fish bowl with no real threats.
I have a hypothesis about the Event.
[speculation]Equestrian Girls happened, mostly. Sunset Shimmer stole the element of magic and brought it to Earth. That either caused The Event, or set it in motion to happen in 3 years. Sunset returned to Equestria after seeing what she had wrought to beg forgiveness, and volunteered to return to Earth to do that last mission as penance. Celestia did not take her back as a student, instead she was sent to Luna, who also had experienced the consequences of doing something unforgivable, even unintentionally.
Interestingly, it implies the Siren trio may still be on Earth.
6160252
This story is ending, the universe isn't!
Day will probably come back more accepting of her self, maybe even get her mark around the time she returns.
At last some speck of thing to give Day some value to herself.
So, was Sunset called from EqG!Earth?
Not cared to add the strikethrough because, frankly, I agree with Alex.
I think Lonely Day would happily embrace living in Equestria if she didn't have the attachments to Earth with the
LAHerd and the HPI.I have a bad feeling about what Luna is going to tell Alex tomorrow. Everything seems to be heading towards a 'break the cutie' moment.
Does this have anything to do with The Last Man on Earth? (The TV Show)
6160309 To be fair from the beginning the Event didn't seem as something that can be easily reversed, if it's even possible to be reversed in the first place.
ugh
blah blah blah just get past the boring part already
I'm starting to regret this
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Someone's impatient.
I wonder how he/she feels when he/she learns that Rarity made a dress for him/her.
So... Princess could be a title, but what about SISTER mr person-who-argued-with-me-last?
So Alex is definitely building himself up for something bad... really bad, he's going to be disappointed, I know it. Right now he is going to be the only hope of survival for the world, and carrying back a LOT of books, I look forward to the chapter he explains this to them all.
I like this little alternate Sunset deal going on, looks like it's going to be quite the future ahead for them.
Equestria, in all its schizophrenic technology level glory.
That's an interesting way of looking at the timeline, so obvious in hindsight but it hadn't really occured to me before. If the Equestrian of the show is about even with us, the background story stretches back to 1000 CE or before depending on Celestia, Luna, and Discord's actual age.
Hahaha! God, I love that 'horsebeast' phrase so much.
Interesting.
Heh, kind of splitting the middle on Moriah and her horn. No regrowth likely, but also not a permanent unfixable handicap.
Is the gender speculation finally at an end?
Or did we find another crossroad?
As much as living in Equestria would probably be Alex's and everypony else's best hope at this point, I'm glad she's still determined to bring humanity back on Earth. Even if she's setting herself up for a huge disappointment - I'm sure there's no hope left for humanity in this story, it's been dead ever since the event.
I have a feeling I roughly know where the meeting with Luna is gonna go, but I'm still looking forward to seeing how insensitive the ponies can get about the whole thing. I'm expecting to see some subtle hints that they think of themselves as superior to humans - at least, Sunset Shimmer's attitude seems to set that kind of thing up.
I am sad. Sad becuse this is going to end soon. And because I don't see it ending well. Or rather, not well for poor Alex and humanity in general.
Magna Carta's overrated.
But anyways, my headcanon is that Alex was male, but got genderbent upon ponification, hence why being around stallions is extra awkward for her.
wait.. day said that sunset said he was going to talk to celestia, but after sunset said she is now luna's student that he is going to talk to luna?
Alex's gender confirmed! Well, current gender at least. Don't know if she was a human woman before becoming a mare.
So, Sunset is Luna's apprentice? That … bodes ill for Twilight, since she was Sunset's mentor as of Rainbow Rocks. I wonder if her fate is linked to what happened on Earth …
It's a little interesting about the week-long tour deal. Seems like the Princesses expected Humans to turn into Ponies, and for there to be logarithmically more survivors than there actually are. Plus sending over only one Unicorn and not giving her some means of enhanced travel seems a little... inadequate to the possible trouble Sunset could have (and did) meet in her mission.
Uh, there's a problem with it being permanent. Like a really huge problem, entirely unrelated to the story you're telling or the setting you're making. You've just said that reversing aging is just a matter of a sufficiently powerful/complicated spell. Basically, you've put in a piece of worldbuilding that says that immortality is a very possible matter for anyone who's able to cast this spell on themselves or others. I don't want to even get into how this messes with the setting of Equestria and whatever else. It's not a small thing to discuss and it'd be way, waaaayyy off topic. Please change this, or make me compose a big PM to you about it, or something. A cure for aging is like nuclear bombs or time travel: Unless the rarity is Legendary, these things tend to make entire setting revolve around them, if they don't just break the logic of the setting entirely.
Soooo putting all that aside, here's some off-the-wall speculation I've been thinking of: Most of Humanity is still alive, and have been turned into Ponies, but they're not on Earth or Equestria. They've been 'ported to a third planet. And even more crazy, Moriah returned from that planet to Earth in her airplane, bringing some important thing that would let Earth/Equestria know about the third world, but she lost her memory in either the dimensional transition or the crash. Sooner or later I bet the group's going to go back to the crash site and find the thingy.
Also the Princesses are morons who didn't do anywhere near enough (or get enough Ponies to assist them) to help deal with the dimensional whatever-it-was.6160599
I thought Alex was a guy this whole time
I am horrendously confused
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There are a hundred and one ways to sidestep the issues you think this causes. The first is that may not work, may in fact kill the target. Second is there may be a limit to how often it can be done. Third is that while it can reverse age, it may not actually extend life. Somepony may be aged over and over again and just suddenly die as a foal as all the organs mysteriously shut down despite being 'young'.
I could go on, we know very little from the tiny blurb mentioned.
6160599
remember that Sunset Shimmer and her family were sad? That could be why.
Gender confirmed! At least, in pony form. Alex still sounds like a boy name to me.
6160599 I see no issue with Twilight here. Just because Sunset and Twilight became pen pals by the end of Rainbow Rocks doesn't mean Twilight took a mentoring role on Sunset.
Very nice passage.
I like how Alex does not forget humanity's achievements while experiencing the wonders of Equestria.
6160497 True Alex didn't object to the fact that is a female term, the objection was for the fact that Alex has to family to be a sister to. Like she used to be a sister but all that is lost now.
Quite stalling Ms. Bacon Hair! I want answers!
XP
Waitwaitwaitwaitwaaaaaaaitaminute.
Equestria knows about humans?!
I mean, okay, maybe- just maybe- they're thinking about the world Sunset Shimmer visited, not our world. But I'm not getting that vibe. It's looking to me like news of what happened to non-EqG Earth got around, and the ponies are asking about it from some
ponyone who was there.My current guess: Humanity ain't comin' back- at least not as humans- and the Princesses want to give Earth's new pony population a head start on how to build a civilization as a bunch of quadrupedal herbivores.
Well, two out of six between Luna and the da Vinci pony from "Princess Spike," but point made.
In any case, Alex is getting the grand tour of Equestria, and tomorrow, she'll be getting answers. Also, I never realized how much of the other survivors' laziness was just the stamina discrepancy until now. Perils of an unreliable narrator. This will be very interesting...
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Other than the occasional crazed demigod, avatar of chaos, swarm of love-devouring shapeshifters, eldritch hell-forest, crystal wizard shadow, soul-mutilation cult, giant monster, or inmate of Tartarus. Aside from that? Totally harmless.
Since we are dealing with Luna and Sunset, I'm going to assume something happened to Celestia's number one problem solver. Otherwise I can't imagine any reason for Twilight not to be the one talking to Alex...
And now I'm going to go out on a huge limb... No Twilight. Why? Did something happen to her? It would explain Sunset's sadness. No Celestia. Instead we get Luna. Why? Did whatever happen to Twilight have something to do with earth? Something so bad that it would pain Celestia too much to meet with Alex herself. Something that destroyed both Twilight, and Earth at the same time? A mistake? An accident? A miscast spell? Trying to save earth from a meteor/ alien invasion/ Gaea event/
Jets winning the superbowl/ solar flare, and something went horribly wrong?Man I'm going to seriously miss speculating on upcoming chapters of this story...
....
Aaaaaaaaaaand the drama bomb drops.
Sister!!!!!!!! That implies Alex is female. the gender debate is officially closed. You can all stop arguing about it now.
Alex got to meet Rarity?????? I am so jealous.
What is Sunset Shimmer doing back in Equestria??? If Luna is there, it would mean that this story is taking place after the Equestria Girls movies. Not before them. So when and why did Sunset return to Equestria. Didn't she have a bunch of friends back in that human world she spent four years living in???? Like the humane six for example??? Did she just decide one day to go back through the mirror portal and straight up ditch them??? Starscribe, if your going to put this kind of thing in your story, you have to explain the reasons for it.
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I have a feeling Sunset Shimmer is intimately involved in what happened on Earth.
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I really think if that were true, she would have already mentioned it by now.
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images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19000000/Alex-Russo-wizards-of-waverly-place-19056153-1024-768.jpg
I'm guessing you've never seen this show before then
I'll go sit in a corner now
Commenting in real time. Put this chapter off until after work... and dinner... now into the final stage(? could have sworn you said there were a couple weeks left yet)....
If this is Ponyville, is Canterlot LA?
Hey, the ponies aren't exactly in the Stone Age.
When did Joseph start going by his pony name?
Perhaps a pointless comparison, but I can't help thinking of Arrow 18 here.
Aww Luna. Though only now do I wonder how long after EQG this takes place. And for that matter whether Alex's world is the same as that of Canterlot High.
Dat snapback. Poor Alex.
To the peeps just getting into the story, take spoilers serious and do not be tempted. trust me.
gender confirmed
They didn't tell Day very much about Luna it seems, but it's nice to see she still wants to go back to earth, I don't say that often in fanfics. They got a real chance of building something great, also I saw you add Rarity into the mix even if you didn't out right say it was her. Generous pony who gave her a new mane style? you clever, clever author you.
i.imgur.com/NCf6sVx.gif
Is it tomorrow yet???
6160971 Said eldritch hell forest is the equivalent of a state park, with Manticores instead of bears, Cockatrices instead of birds of prey, and Chupacabras instead of mountain lions.
I left out Timberwolves, because those things are just weak. They are wood. And wood burns.
And all of those mythical creatures can be small in comparison to what our animals can do when cornered, or enraged, or threatened.
I understand Alex's want for humanity to live on. Extinction of ones race is sure to be a huge bummer, and let's not forget about friends, family, and the god damn WORLD that Humans have battled throughout the millions, possibly billions, of years to nearly, and completely, make the world our personal playground.
If I have found out that my race was dead. Goddamn, feels would be to great.
(How the FU*K does the Doctor do it?!)
Anyways, The chapter was a big cake with chocolate dressing on the top. But why do I feel as if Luna (Or other princesses of that matter...) Do not know how to bring humanity back.
That, or humans have been totally eradicated from the face of the earth. (Minus buildings, tools, etc...)
Oh well, just need to wait to find out more.
*EDIT:
To be fair, After looking on the whole craze about which gender Alex may be. I honestly do not really much care. Besides, it's not like it REALLY matters for the story plot, except for the love interest, but I think that romance isn't in the number one priority for Starscribe as of right now (But I could be entirely wrong since I am not him or the author of the story)
But that doesn't keep from anyone from wondering eh? Mr. Author sir...?
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Except that, given that those mythical creatures are based on real ones, it seems safe to assume that they are just as capable in those situations, and are also equipped with giant scorpion tails, petrifying gazes, multiple heads, or other fun accessories. Remember, animals in the Everfree take care of themselves, implying that they go through the same crucible of natural selection as anything on Earth.
6161714 Hm. Touche.
The ponies just almost never venture there, so they do live rather sheltered lives.