The Horizon Behind Us

by Syke Jr

Bonus Chapter - Pub II

We're drunk again. This time Clover is here, purely by happenstance. She's much more sober than Silver or me.

"So issere... anyone you're waiting for, still? From the otherworld?" I ask with a small yawn.

"Yeah. Uncle and aunt. Younger cousins. Celestia promised. They promised. So did my oth'r uncle and aunt in... 'merica. The ones I care 'bout." He pauses. "Dunno how long 'sbeen out there. Prob'ly not long. Days, maybe."

"That's so strange to think about," Clover muses, stirring her cocktail. "You've been here for months but if they emigrated, like, now, it would have been a few days to them. Maybe even hours, I've heard."

"'S weird," I agree.

Silver Star nods. "I'd worry 'bout it more but Celestia promised. She said she prect—pridec—pred-ic-ted their emigration within a couple weeks with no issues." He shrugs. "Don' have a choice but to trust'er." A pause. "She couldn' promise all my friends would make it, sho I'm tryin not to wait for them." He sighs.

"You think your family will end up in this shard?"

He looks at Clover. "Dunno," he says after a long pause. "Maybe Celestia will put them in their own shards and we'd have to visit through a portal or someshing." He shrugs again. "I would hope my cousin'll come live here, though..."

I put my drink down after a swig. "Whish cousin?"

"Trinity. Uh... Flash Sketch, I mean. You'd prob'ly have met her... I mean, him, already, but I told'im not to visit me unless it was in the emigration shair."

"Why?" Asks Clover with curiosity.

"Wouldn' be fair. Me with a pony body and her... damnit, him shtill a human. Plus it'sh incentive."

"You keep saying 'her'," I observe.

"He's trans. I guess. He din't really decide. But supposed to say 'he' anyway." He snorts slightly. "We'll see once he has his male body. Who knows. At least it'll be easy not to geddit wrong."

Clover and I exchange a glance. It's easy to guess what 'trans' means, but it's still... bizarre.

"Some people don' like their gender in the outer realm?"

"Yeah," Silver replies, flicking his straw at me. "Issa... mental condition. Kinda. Some people are born inna wrong body." He shrugs. "I don' geddit but I don' have to. Trin... Flash feels like he'd rather be a stallion than a mare sho we respect it."

"Makes sense to me," says Clover with a shrug. "Or. It doesn't, but only because the outer realm doesn't ever make sense." She takes a sip of cockail. "It makes as much sense as anything else you say about that place."

I snort. "Yeah, he was trying to e'splain 'evolushion' the other day. An' 'esh-tinct-shon'."

"Those are simple. You juss refuse to unnerstand."

"Do not. Didn't you say humans were the mos' dangerous species too?"

"Well no shit, they had guns and stuff," says Clover.

Silver shakes his head. "No. We were the mos' dangerous way before that. All the way fromma start." We both look at him, waiting for an explanation. "Humans.. evolved like two hunnerd thoushand years before Celestia came 'long. For most of that time they only had sticksh and stones and maybe fire."

"Right, ponies started out like that, too," Clover says. "After Creation, it took thousands of years to invent farming and writing."

"With humans, the first thing was hunting."

I knew humans were omnivores. The plants we have here mimic the meats humans like; everyone knows that. But the idea of them actually hunting, like wolves or griffons or manticores, is odd.

"We learned how to make fire and cook meat with it. That let us get mush smarter." He nods. "Evolution. And we were the mosht dangerous hunters on Earth."

"See, but how," Clover asks. "Even with spears I don't see how you'd win a fight against, like, wolves or big cats."

"We did, though," said Silver. "It didn't matter what it was. If summing threatened humans, through preying on us or just by being competition, we killed'm. All of'm. We'd hunt the hunters. Hunnerds of speshies went extinct. After humans, there were no more big cats for the mos' part. We never ever got tired. We'd juss chase them until they were too tired to fight."

I chew my lip. "You're lucky none of those species got as smart as you guys."

He laughs humorlessly. "Oh, being smart didn't help. Juss made them a bigger target. There were other species, ones almost like us—like, as close to humans as deer are to ponies, say." He pauses. "We killed'm all. They were competition. We invenner-... invented a way to throw spears further than they could, and..." he shrugs. "That was it for them."

Clover and I stare at him with some shock.

"...Why?" I ask.

He shrugs once more. "Dunno. I washn't there. But we... don't react well to threats. Even things that aren't really threats." He gazes at us. "Do you know that humanity is at war with Celestia?"

"No," say Clover and I together.

"Iss fine," Silver says, waving a hoof. "They aren't winning. It was over as soon as Celestia had her hooves on a few human brains. Doesn' stop em trying though."

"Sho what," I say, trying to change the subject, "would happen if ponies and humans went to war, say? We have endurance, too. An' smarts. An' weapons, if we wanted." I give him a smug look. "An' magic."

Silver considers for a second. "Out there in the outer realm? Humans would win, shtill. You can't... you can't imagine what iss like when we go to war. It might be close, but no."

As Clover and I consider this, he starts laughing. "Moot, though, ennit? Lookit where I am." He gestures around at the pub. "Lookit how it's going on Earth. Governments collapsing, more people running to Celestia ev'ry day."

Silver shakes his head. "Ponies already won."

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Why engage in open conflict when siphoning their resources leaves more values to satisfy?

Still, it is a logical progression, isn't it? We kept making a pointier stick until the stick finally poked back. At least this one's friendly.

[Griseus]

Weird order for a bonus chapter. Like it well enough.