Heart in Two Places
Mount Aris was easily the most beautiful place Sunny had seen so far - and from what she heard from Imara, the underwater palace of Seaquestria was even more beautiful than the elegant gray mountain above water. It was a little inaccessible for Ash and Sunny, but the changeling could transform into a seapony (which was basically an underwater hippogriff) and swim around to investigate.
The reports seemed mostly positive.
“They all seem pretty nice,” Imara was happy to tell Sunny. “And SOOO gullible. I told them I had been living on some coral reef out in the middle of the ocean for my entire life, and they totally bought it. Most of them live down in Seaquestria - they seem pretty paranoid, and from what I can tell, their ancestors had to hide down there from this guy who wanted to steal all their magic - but a few still live on the mountain, and oh my stars they are just the kind of small town community-helping creatures you would expect.”
“That seems like a good thing,” Ash carefully ventured. “I mean, they’ll talk to us without screaming and running away, right?”
Imara flipped onto her back in the water, still in her seapony form. “Yeah… I guess so,” she said, not meeting eyes with the dragon. Even though she hadn’t gotten into any arguments with Ash since the Dragon Lands, Sunny could tell that Imara didn’t like Ash - she thought she was weak.
“Do you think you could make a friend and bring them back here so we can chat?” Sunny said instead, studying Imara’s movements as she slipped around in the water. If only she could change into a seapony - but without a real one in front of her, she was finding it a lot harder to do than the time she turned into a changeling.
“Probably,” the seapony shrugged, turning back into a changeling and leaping onto the beach of their small island, shaking like a dog to rid herself of the salty water. Ash got doused.
“Hey!” she cried, wiping water out of her eyes and glaring at Imara.
“Oops. Sorry,” Imara said cheerfully.
The island that the three were camping on was just a small circle of sand with a grove of palm trees in the center that protected them from unwanted attention - and provided them with all the coconuts they could ever want. The water around the island was such a pure blue that Sunny almost couldn’t believe it existed - almost.
“So, where’re we going after this?” Imara continued, lying down in the sun and sighing as the warmth danced across her wings.
Sunny rolled her eyes - she had been asking that every day, eager to know what creatures they would meet next. Sunny pulled out the map and studied it, her lips pursed.
“I’m thinking the Peaks of Peril,” she suggested. “There’s these creatures called the kirin who live there, and they seem like they would listen to us, too. Don’t worry,” she said quickly, seeing Ash’s frightened expression. “It’s just a name - the Peaks are just hard to navigate, that’s all. But in here, the Guardians of Harmony wrote about a short-cut.”
“Short-cuts are good,” Ash agreed.
“There’s no short-cut in life,” Imara said, her eyes closed so that she didn’t see the dirty look that Sunny sent her.
“Anyway,” the earth pony continued, “we can’t leave until we find a hippogriff we can talk to.”
“You know, you could always just talk to me,” came a voice.
Sunny sighed. “Imara, you know that you’re not a real hippogriff-” she began, but when she turned to look at the changeling, she saw that Imara and Ash were both staring open-mouthed at something in the water. Sunny whipped her head around to see a seapony diving in and out of the waves, the sun reflecting off of her wet purple scales and curly aqua mane that hung over her shoulder in a ponytail. A necklace bounced on her chest - a small pink charm and two smaller blue beads on either side of it.
“Oh! Sorry,” Sunny said, scrambling to her hooves. “I - I didn’t see you there.”
The seapony sighed. “No, it’s okay. Most creatures don’t.” She leaped out of the water and was suddenly surrounded by a shimmering pink light that swirled around her, disappearing as she landed on the sand. She was no longer a seapony - now she had the hind legs of a pony, the front legs of an eagle, and a light purple coat that shifted into feathers at her hooves and claws.
“Woah.” Imara gaped at her. “H-how did you do that?”
The hippogriff’s bright purple eyes glinted mischievously. “Magic,” she said airly, pointing a claw at her necklace. “This is a piece of our magic pearl that turned us from hippogriffs to seaponies years ago to escape the Storm King. When he was defeated, we smashed the pearl to bits and gave each hippogriff a piece, allowing them to travel back and forth between worlds at will. I’m Kailani, by the way.” She smiled, satisfied, and sat down in the sand. “But! Enough about me. What brings you here?”
“I’m Sunny,” the earth pony explained, pointing to herself, and then each of her friends. “This is Ash, and Imara. We’re here because we think you’ve all been lied to.”
Kailani blinked. “Pardon?”
“What do you know about ponies?”
She shrugged. “Only what I’ve been told by my parents - which is that they’re a bunch of scheming masterminds who want to dominate the world and will stop at nothing to reach it - even eliminate us all.”
“And you believe that?”
It seemed to Sunny that this was a question that Kailani had been thinking about for a long time, and she still didn’t know the answer. “I… I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I mean, one one claw, my parents would never lie to me if they knew they were lies, but I find it all a little hard to believe.”
“Your parents were misinformed,” Sunny explained gently, “that’s all. This pony named Cozy Glow, a changeling named Chrysalis, and a centaur named Tirek have been going around spreading lies and rumors to get you to hate ponies and want to fight them. Then they’ll use that to weaken us and you, so that they can easily take over the world and divide it between the three of them.”
There was silence on the island as the hippogriff thought about this, fingering her necklace charm between her claws. “I… I know you’re telling the truth,” she finally said. “But I hope you can understand… It's a lot to take in.”
“Yup,” Imara agreed.
“But… what about every creature else? Are you going to tell them?”
Sunny winced. “I mean… perhaps you could? Our experiences with other creatures haven’t been exactly the best,” she told Kailani.
“Oh, no! I couldn’t!” she cried. “I never talk back to my parents - that would be wrong! I can’t tell them and every creature else that they’ve all been lying! Even if they didn’t know it, simply accusing them would be…” She shuddered. “I’m very sorry, but I… I can’t do it.”
“Wonderful,” Imara muttered, sinking back into the sand.
“But don’t you think that them believing the lies is worse than telling them that they are lies? Even if it does mean coming across as a little rude?” Sunny wheeleded. The hippogriff hesitated. “Look, Kailani, I know how hard it is to do something wrong in order to make something right - in fact, I had to go through the same thing.”
She looked up, her eyes sparkling with tears. “You did?”
Sunny grinned. “Yeah! To bring magic back, I thought I had to unite these two - and then I found out there were three - crystals that were spread across the three pony tribes. And to get the pegasus crystal… we had to steal it. Which then set off a chain of events that ended up with two of my friends under arrest and a queen stripped of her throne. But it all worked out… in the end.” Sunny thought for a moment. “And now, looking back, I don’t regret any moment of it.”
Kailani pushed her hair out of her face and took a deep breath. “I want to tell them the truth,” she whispered, obviously conflicted. “But that would mean breaking and sacrificing other things that I’m not sure I’m ready to do.”
“Look at me, Kailani.” Sunny gently set one of her hooves on the hippogriff’s claw. “Things will be a lot worse if the hippogriffs and seaponies continue to believe the lies instead of accepting the truth. Trust me when I say that the sacrifice will be worth it. And,” she added, “you could always come with us if you’d like.”
“Really?” Her entire face lit up, and Kailani beamed. “I suppose I have always wanted to see what the world is like outside of this place.” She took a deep breath and dived into the water, light swirling around her and turning her back into a seapony. She poked her head out of the water and spoke to Sunny. “I’ll be back at sunset… to let you know if it worked or not.” Then she dived into the waves and disappeared.
“Yeesh,” Imara said as soon as her tail slipped underwater, “what’s her problem? Doesn’t she see how important this is?”
“Of course she does,” Ash told her, sitting criss-cross in the sand, piling a mound over her claw as she spoke. The dragon sat back and shook the sand out of her wings. “Her heart’s torn - she doesn’t know what to uphold and what to sacrifice when there isn’t a clear answer - each side has its benefits.”
“But this is for the greater good,” Imara said in a slow voice, as if Ash was just a filly who didn’t speak Ponish very well. “Can’t she see that that is the choice you should always make?”
Ash pulled her claw free and shook the sand out from between her scales, saying, “Not always. Sometimes you need to put your family and your friends first. One of the hardest choices in life is knowing when or when not to do that.”
Imara huffed and fell silent, pushing sand into a mound in front of her nose as she glared at the pile.
The rest of the day passed excruciatingly slowly. Sunny tried to pass the time by writing in her father’s journal, but she found herself pacing the entire island as she waited for sunset. She wanted to ask Imara to revisit Seaquestria or Mount Aris to see if it had worked - heck, she wanted to dive into the waves and see if it had worked - but it was clear that the changeling was not in the mood.
Sunset came and went, and the land fell dark, the stars appearing in the sky next to the bright moon. Ash built a fire on the shore in case Kailani got lost, and Sunny lay down next to it, grateful for its warmth from the cold night.
“Are you okay, Sunny?” Ash asked, noticing her friend’s crestfallen face.
Sunny sighed. “I just… What if she’s not coming? What if she decided to… not do it?” She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath to try and calm her thoughts. “I promised to try and tell all the creatures that they were being fed lies - but either none of them believe us, or they won’t listen to us.”
“You can’t control other creatures,” Ash shrugged, using a stick to poke at the fire. She turned to look at the sea, her expression focused. “There!”
A hippogriff was dragging herself out of the water, looking dejected and sad. The firelight caught her blue eyes, making the tears in them glitter. Kailani made it to the fire and sat down, not saying a word.
“Wha… what’s wrong?” Sunny asked tentatively, not sure she wanted to know.
The hippogriff took a deep breath. “They… didn’t believe me,” she began. “I tried to tell them nicely, too - but they said that as long as I didn’t have any evidence that they were being told lies, they weren’t going to believe me.”
“And?” Ash gently pressed. Sunny stole a quick glance at Imara and saw that the changeling had lifted her head and was listening intently.
“And… I told them that a pony had told me herself, and they didn’t believe you because you were a pony. And then I… then I snapped. I told them that we weren’t really happy hiding from the rest of the world, and that we would never know anything until we left our kingdom and went to find other creatures. I told them that none of them wanted us gone, and that was the truth, and if they didn’t believe it, then… then maybe… maybe they should… maybe they should start lying to every creature else, too.” The tears in Kailani’s eyes spilled down her cheeks and made dark spots in the sand. “Then they would be just like them.” She was sobbing now. “A-and my p-parents t-told me th-that if I c-couldn’t learn to sp-speak respectfully to others, m-maybe I should just g-go away.”
“Oh, Kailani…” Sunny whispered. Ash put her wing around the shuddering hippogriff. “I never would have asked you to do that if I knew-”
“I know,” she cried. “I know you wouldn’t have.” She took a deep breath and dried her tears. “But I still want to come with you. Other creatures need to know the truth, too, and I want to help with that.” She lifted her head, as if daring Sunny to say no.
Sunny grinned and threw her arms around the hippogriff. “Thank you, so much,” she whispered. Then, her other friends, she said, “We leave at dawn.”
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Hmmm I wonder if she kind of distant related to pharynx despite that she has some positive but she can be a little bit hush
Wow that sounds like what my dad always say
On
Yeah of course that's going to happen 😔
Sigh of course that would happen so it looks like sunny and her friends finally made it to Mt aris and sea Equestria but since they can't go near to that town and since they can't go underwater Imara transform into a sea Pony to try to talk with them but unfortunately when she returned none of them will not listen and her attitude is really not helping at all and they need another plan but until a sea Pony showed up but she transformed into a hippogriff so she can actually talk with them and her name Kailani and Sunny told her about what is going on and what the legions of Doom been feeding them lies about ponies and other creatures out there and now she's in a conflict about believe in all the stories and everything so she wanted to go with them but she needs to convince her kind to see the reasoning but unfortunately she came unsuccessfully and basically they're back to square one again but at least they got another creature joining with them but still this is not good if other creatures can't listen Equestria is in trouble well I hope they find a way we'll find out next time
I knew that's going to happen. And good job on your new chapter, bookhorse125. Tbis is starting to get very good.
A changeling that is tired of things staying the same. A scared dragon that follows Sunny. And a Hippogriff that doesn't want to believe in the lies anymore. What a little group that Sunny is gathering.