The GATE

by scifipony

24 - Retrospectives

Author's Note:

Reminder: The GATE takes place before season 9, before all talk of a transfer of power. Also, this chapter reads like an epilogue, but it is not. It's a transition.

I woke up, my face smushed into a strange pillow of gooey (but dry) elasticity. It didn't smell of pony, but something I could only think of as a melange of pollen, farm-animal, and machine oil. My hooves made a zzzzt sounds as I glided my legs under the silky sheets. Woven of an almost magical type of linen, they stretched and breathed like no fabric I knew, keeping me cool despite what had been a warm desert night.

I heard repeating chirps and trills, but I could not identify the bird species despite Fluttershy's thorough instruction. The sound of my movement echoed back not from a large open crystalline space, but from a more compact volume, possibly wooden. I couldn't remember when I'd fallen exhausted into bed.

I remembered a dream, about how the world had changed but everything really was the same, populated with ponies and monsters, responsibilities and discoveries—but it was fading despite my clinging to it, trying to make it real.

Disoriented, I blinked and lifted my head in the near dawn light.

I looked toward a window, but saw naught but sky. A bright orange and yellow one, clearly the result of atmospheric dust and layers of disorderly cirrus reflecting light. On impulse, I popped out of bed and trotted to the window, hooking my hooves on the window frame.

As you well know, you normally must be vigilant to experience the dawn. Depending on Princess Celestia's prior evening schedule, and her need for sleep, the twilight could last for minutes or almost an hour, and could start suddenly early or late. Sometimes, Luna would put the moon away and there would be neither orb in the sky for long periods of time. But when the dawn began, the sky would transform from a sea of deep blues and stars, with dabs and smears of red on the eastern horizon, to a wash of spilt orange watercolors flooding the sky, to a burst of yellow before the luminous orb of fire inched upward to become a blinding light in a endless blue sky. The liminal time might last as much as a minute, or it could be over in seconds.

I often mused that sometimes Princess Celestia stretched on her balcony while she performed her morning duty, delaying the coming of day. Or maybe she just yawned a lot.

It had taken me less than fifteen seconds to raise the sun that one time. With the magic of four alicorns, it wasn't that it was hard. It wasn't that I didn't understand the feedback, or that it was more of an ask than a spell. I didn't understand that the sun actually wanted to rise but needed guidance. As of last night, I knew that she—yes, she!—needed magic channelled to her from the heart of the earth itself, and getting that right was Celestia's cutie mark talent. In my case, the sun had kept jumping the tracks in the crystal sphere and that had confused her directional sense. The way I'd done it, had I understood, it would have been instant like the way the Stormking had.

I had had many questions for my mentor. Last night I'd learned much to fill in what I hadn't known, as well as my misunderstandings the day I had raised the sun into the sky.

Our world is a complicated place and, despite books compiled over the length of a millennium by scientists and historians, there are still discoveries to be made.

And this—this alien world—was another.

I looked out across an immense valley. Between listening to the bipeds, watching images on a babble-machine called a "smarteeveee", and perusing all the books in the house, I was able to decipher a map in the office and locate our position at the base of the eastern Sea-air-a mountains. The Inn-yo range formed a blue and gray wavy-ribbon streak at the bottom of the western sky. We were in "Cauliflowernia" somewhere between a town of giant lakes and "Beeshop," part of a continent-spanning federation many times the size of the pony nation. Slowly, and I mean slowly, over minutes, the sky brightened. I detected a pattern in the clouds, but pegasi never arranged them this way. Cirrus were clouds of glassy ice; they were decorative and high in the sky, so pegasus ponies rarely bothered bringing them out. These acted like a frivolous gauzy veil, taunting me as if they were put up just for my benefit. I squinted as a bead of orange and yellow blossomed over a peak... before it methodically rose and brightened until I had to raise my hoof.

It was like Celestia had slammed her hooves down on the springs and wound the celestial clockwork below the horizon, letting the sun trudge upward on her own.

But the ballet I witnessed outside was not that. No magic was involved, just beautiful, neigh I say it, awesome science.

In this land, physics, gravity, and momentum reigned supreme. The sun wasn't a city-sized disk of magical fire. Nor was the moon a self-luminous rock, though it did at least orbit the earth at a tremendous speed, falling and always falling around the earth and never hitting it. It was huge. The earth was huge. The law of gravitation and simple geometry elucidated everything. The bipeds' sky wasn't a crystal sphere. Their sun was something gargantuan, and by my calculation, incredibly distant and mind-bogglingly large and energetic. Neither magic nor combustion lit the inferno; it just burned outrageously and wastefully, expending its entire output to no purpose but for an inconsequential but necessary fraction that beamed this world's way.

I would learn why, one day, but not today. The bipeds living in this house had scant love of science, at least as evidenced by their library.

None of the last day had been a dream.

There was a portal.

There was a group of bipeds.

Those bipeds had used the portal to invade Equestria.

From the gray hairs I'd found tangled in a brush, little scissors, and a tiny tube of mustache wax in an attached bathroom, I knew I had just slept in Graybeard's bed. That had been the scent of his perspiration in my nostrils.

I was comfortable with the deduction that he was the patriarch of the clan. It was his desk I'd found, and his cache of ammunition and weapons. It had been his safe I had sundered. I wondered how many gold bits it would require to replace it. While we'd discovered bipeds used coins, they were worthless base metals compared to paper bills and plastic they apparently traded with. Despite tiny rings of gold some bipeds wore, bits even of gold likely had no worth.

On the other hoof, an Equestrian safe with proper strengthening spells, wards, and cantrips might be acceptable. I hoped.

What had worth was the least of the problems that faced us.

I remembered how Applejack had trotted over with a bushel basket of her finest red apples, kicked from a tree. She had called the bipeds "varmints", but seemed pleased that the bipeds liked what was offered them.

They'd turned down hay.

Applejack is no linguist, don't get me wrong. But it became obvious that she and they (maybe not so much Graybeard) had a lot of "country" in common and that it would be her, her little sister, and her family that ultimately made friends with the group. She'd said she'd try, and keeping Sweetie Belle away might prove impossible. Which would be important, soon, as we worked to learn their language.

The princesses were taking great interest the situation, especially Luna. As if the royal sisters didn't already have enough on their plate with ruling Equestria! But Luna had less responsibility than pleased her, as she had repeatedly groused over the years. Both sisters had talked wistfully of hobbies last night in the middle of what felt like catastrophic events to me. It embarrassed me to even remember their praise for how I'd handled things after I'd complained about their discussing their perceived need for hobbies. They just didn't understand.

Nevertheless, it was individuals who made a difference. A cascade effect. I thought back about last afternoon...

About Luna...

And one biped...

Comments

[keroko]

Ah, romance I guess? Kinda sudden, I'd think.

[howard035]

Loving the differences in how the human solar system works compared to the Equestrian one.

[Black--Soul]

One chapter i will remember. Very impressive.

[Xanderfox]

10014644
Makes you wonder of beyond the Equestrian Dome is perhaps a more "normal" Universe. Or if Equestria is inside a crystal sphere in "regular" space?

[scifipony]

11117088
Don’t know. I'd like to know. I’d love some author to pick up the story and run with a sequel. I’d even provide them further details.