Worlds Apart
The two continued their trek through the wilderness, across an expanse of grassy hills that extended far to the southwest, past the horizon. Xandra led the way, being far more familiar with the path, and as Sunset followed her mind was left swirling with questions.
“So, um…”
Xandra glanced back, though she didn’t stop walking. She seemed intent on getting away from the garden as quickly as possible. “What is it?”
“I was just thinking,” said Sunset, “is there anything you can tell me about Neopia? I don’t plan on staying here for long if I can help it, but it’d be helpful to know a thing or two.”
“I’ll answer your questions as soon as we’re at the edge of the Woods,” Xandra replied. She kept walking, the long strides in her step not once slowing down. “Right now we need to get as far away from Faerieland as possible.”
“Faerieland, huh? That’s where we were? And you said you’re a wanted criminal there?”
The question prompted Xandra to stop in her tracks. It was the first time since they’d departed for the Haunted Woods that she’d slowed down at all, the urgency in her movements giving way to a visibly pained look.
Sunset looked up, seeing the subtle yet familiar flash of sadness in Xandra’s eyes. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, I was just—”
“Good. Then I won’t. Come on.”
Before Sunset could speak an answer, Xandra’s pace quickened once again, leaving Sunset chasing after her at just short of a full trot.
It was difficult to say how long the two spent moving under the cover of starlight, but they had covered an impressive range of ground, as the hills quickly gave way to a grassy plains. When the moon proved insufficient to light their way, Xandra held a palm upward and summoned a brightly-glowing mote in the cup of her hand, illuminating their path with a simple Light spell.
Eventually, their journey brought them right before a thick forest edge. Though to call the forest ‘thick’ was an understatement – the branches of the crooked trees wove together into a nearly impenetrable boundary, with only a scant few pathways into the uncommonly dense underbrush. The interior of the forest was completely dark, enough so that Xandra’s meager cantrip couldn’t even slightly pierce the blanket of shadow obscuring the forest’s interior.
Despite the darkness beyond the forest’s edge, or perhaps because of it, Sunset’s mind could barely make out a few branches grasping at the breeze, as though the trees themselves were anticipating a chance to reach out and seize her.
“Alright,” said Xandra. “We’re here. It’s not safe to go any further for now, so let’s make camp.”
Sunset took in a deep breath, becoming acutely aware of just how much she’d exerted herself during the trip. If she were a less athletic pony, she might have had some difficulty keeping up with Xandra in the first place – and even still, the ache in her lungs was still far more pronounced than she would have expected.
Ugh… what I wouldn’t give to have human stamina right now.
As Sunset allowed herself some much-needed rest, Xandra approached the edge of the woods, carefully reaching out towards the low-hanging tree branches at the edge. The branches broke off easily, and soon she began gathering them together, arranging them into a small pile of tinder.
Sunset observed Xandra curiously. She was familiar with the process of building a campfire, but she couldn’t ignore the obvious question at the forefront of her mind. “Um… are you sure it’s a good idea to just… tear off those branches like that?”
“It’s just firewood,” said Xandra. “What, are you afraid I’ll offend the trees?”
“Hey, you said these are the Haunted Woods!” Sunset replied. “It’s very possible!”
Xandra stopped for a moment to glare. “Sunset, I’ve lived here half my life. I know what I’m doing.”
“Right. Right. Sorry, just… had to be sure.”
Eventually, the two managed to set up something of a rudimentary campground. It was far less than Sunset would have liked, without any sleeping bags to speak of, but the fire provided a source of much-needed warmth in the middle of the cold night.
As the two huddled around the fire, Xandra began to incant a spell under her breath. Just as Sunset was about to ask what she was doing, a thin and colorful hardback book materialized in her hands.
“Here,” said Xandra, passing the book over to Sunset. “You wanted to know about Neopia, right? Start with this.”
Under the light of the campfire, Sunset was able to make out the title – written in bold, sans-serif letters, it read All About the Neopets. Below the title was a colorful, cartoon illustration of a number of different creatures.
“Hold on,” said Sunset, “isn’t this a children’s book?”
“Correct,” said Xandra. “And I’d wager that you know less about Neopia than most children.”
Sunset tried to object, but any complaints she had were extinguished before she could speak them. “That’s… okay, yeah, that’s fair.”
So with a sigh, Sunset laid the book to rest on the ground, carefully flipped through the pages with her magic, reading through the text under the light of the campfire. As she did, Xandra stared at Sunset’s horn, observing the gentle glow of its magic aura with a curious gleam in her eye.
The book was about what Sunset expected from something meant for toddlers, with bright illustrations and simple sentences that were clearly meant to be read out loud by a parent. On each of its pages was a short description, as well as an illustration, of one of the various sapient species native to Neopia.
Yet as embarrassing as it was, she had to admit it was a much better way of learning about the dominant species than the last time she was stuck in an unfamiliar world. And there were so many of them, too — Acaras, Aishas, Blumaroos, Bruces… all of them named under a single umbrella term of ‘Neopet.’
Although, come to think of it…
“Hey, Xandra.”
Xandra blinked. “Huh? Yes?”
“Why is it that the native species of Neopia are called ‘Neopets?’ Doesn’t ‘pet’ imply that you’re someone else’s property?”
Xandra’s legs shifted restlessly as she sat on the ground. The question had visibly made her uncomfortable.
“It’s, um… a linguistic relic,” she said. “Two thousand years ago, an evil tyrant tried to enslave our kind. He referred to us as his ‘new pets.’ The name’s sort of stuck ever since.”
Sunset stared silently, her mouth hanging slightly open. “Oh. That’s… wow. That’s… really surprisingly dark.”
Xandra could only shrug. “What were you expecting? I doubt your world is all sunshine and rainbows either.”
“Worlds. Plural,” Sunset corrected. “…It’s a long story.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I’ll get to it in a bit. Just let me finish.”
It felt like a chore, especially with how patronizing it felt to be reading a book meant for two-year-olds, but eventually Sunset’s curiosity managed to overtake her own sense of embarrassment.
At least, until…
“GAH!”
Xandra curiously raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”
Sunset lifted up the book in demonstration, shoving its full-page spread illustration into Xandra’s face. “Yeah! What is this!?”
Xandra stared blankly at the page for a moment. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Unis are a very common—”
“This is the species you thought I was?”
“Yes,” Xandra deadpanned. “Oh, come on, don’t give me that look. You do look like a Uni, minus the wings. How was I supposed to know you were an alien from another dimension?”
“Well, first of all…”
Sunset, you’ve literally ridden a horse in the human world. This can’t be weirder than *that.*
Sunset Shimmer harshly scolded her brain for such an asinine thought. Yet at the same time…
“O-okay, fine. Maybe you couldn’t have known that, but still!”
“Still what?”
Uh… Shoot, is it bad to be weirded out by their long snouts? They’re so close to ponies otherwise, it’s uncanny… gah.
Sunset wisely chose to keep that thought to herself. “Well, um… this description, for one,” she said. “Seriously, ‘vain little Neopians?’ That’s, um… really uncomfortably close to an offensive stereotype about my kind. We fought actual wars over that stuff.”
For a moment, a spark of curiosity appeared beneath Xandra’s eye, an inquisitive gleam that was otherwise clouded by the melancholy that hovered over her face.
“Really now? That’s interesting. I take it your world isn’t any stranger to interspecies strife either, then?”
“Well, um… not quite interspecies, but yes,” said Sunset. She pulled the book back, and examined its back cover, noting that it looked very well-worn. “So this is definitely racist, then.”
“Probably. It is a very old book,” said Xandra with a shrug. “I don’t have any other children’s books memorized. Just keep in mind that it’s from a less enlightened time.”
“…Right. Of course. I’ll just… I’ll finish it, I guess.”
Sunset flipped through the rest of the book, though the discomfort had never quite managed to leave the back of her mind.
“Wait,” she said, staring at one of the pages under the campfire, “your species is called ‘Xweetok?’ With an ‘X?’”
“Yes. Why?”
“No reason, just, um… would it be insensitive to say that I find the name kind of strange?”
“You’re an extradimensional alien,” Xandra replied. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t find most of Neopia strange.”
“I guess,” said Sunset. It is kind of odd that we speak the same language, now that you mention it…
And so, with a shrug, Sunset flipped over the last page of the book. Almost as soon as she closed the book’s back cover, it vanished into thin air in a puff of purple smoke.
“Whoa! What!? What happened!? Where did it go!?”
“You’ve never read a magic book before?” said Xandra.
“Not the kind that vanishes when you finish them!” Sunset countered. “Why would it even do that? Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of a book?”
“Not at all,” said Xandra. “Magic books are the products of special conjuration spells. Making them permanent would require far more power than most magicians have access to.”
“Oh,” said Sunset. “I… guess that makes sense. I thought you summoned the book from somewhere else, not conjured it out of thin air. I don’t understand why you’d do that, though. What if I want to read it again?”
“You won’t need to,” Xandra explained. “Conjured books leave a permanent imprint on your memory. Unless other magic forces you to forget it, you’ll remember the contents of the book perfectly for the rest of your life.”
Sunset blinked. “Really? That’s… hold on a second.”
She turned her thoughts inward, and sure enough, Sunset could recall the children’s book Xandra had given her perfectly. She had a flawless photographic memory of every single page she had read, down to every last minute detail of the illustrations on each page. The memories were far more vivid, far more than any she would have obtained naturally.
“…Huh. Alright, then. That’s actually kinda cool,” Sunset admitted. “But what if I want to lend it to someone else? What if I want to reference it in a paper or something?”
“That’s what non-magic books are for.”
Sunset let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, good, you still have those,” she said. Dear Celestia, I can’t imagine the fit Twilight would throw if she had to see this.
The crackling of the fire pattered against the silence of the night. Sunset stared intently at Xandra, shifting her weight against the grass beneath her.
“So, uh… I take it you want to hear about me, right?”
“If you don’t mind,” said Xandra. “I was hoping to learn more about you, before we retire for the night. I’m curious about your kind, and your world.”
“Yeah, I figured. I originally came from a kingdom called Equestria, in the world of…” Sunset paused, letting her thoughts roll around in her head momentarily. “…okay, I guess it’s not technically the pony world, since there are a lot of other species too. And the world doesn’t really have a name of its own, so mostly we just call it ‘Equestria,’ after the kingdom.”
“Sounds rather provincialist,” Xandra remarked. “You never bothered naming your own world?”
“No, not really. There have been a few proposed names from scholars, but so far none of them have seen widespread use. I guess nopony leaves Equestria’s borders for the most part, so we just sorta say that.”
Xandra held a finger to her chin. There was a scholarly gleam in her eye, the very same kind that Twilight had whenever she was deep in research on a new topic. “Nopony?”
“Huh?” said Sunset. “Oh, shoot, sorry about that. I guess I slipped into my native dialect for a second. I still do that sometimes.”
“No need to apologize,” Xandra replied. “It’s kind of interesting, actually. The Cybunny Dialect does something similar. Anyway, you were saying about your world?”
“Um… right. Anyway, Equestria is populated mostly by ponies like me,” Sunset continued. “There’s three types of ponies, and we’re all technically the same species, but historically we’ve been considered mostly separate groups. Mine are called ‘unicorns,’ which means ‘one horn,’ since…” She circled her hoof over her own horn in demonstration. “…you know.”
“Uni-corn, huh?” The scholarly spark in Xandra’s eye intensified. She was fully engrossed in everything that Sunset had been explaining, and through the light of the fire Sunset could see a growing thirst for information. “That’s actually fascinating. Not only are you similar to a native Neopian species, your kind have a similar name too. I wonder, is it a coincidence, or is there some kind of linguistic connection?”
“Yeah, I was just thinking about how weird it is that we speak the same language. Hopefully it means are worlds aren’t entirely disconnected. I’d hate to be trapped here for the rest of my life…”
Sunset chose to put that thought out of her mind, for now. She wasn’t ready to consider that possibility just yet.
“…Anyway, unicorns like me are born with the ability to cast spells naturally. Our horns act as conduits which can channel magic from our own internal reserves. Most of us only know the basic telekinesis spell and a couple other cantrips, but it’s also fairly common to for us dedicate our entire lives to magical study.”
“And I take it that would also include you,” said Xandra. “The fact that you carry a potent artifact around your neck seems to suggest that you know a thing or two about magic.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” said Sunset. “If you can believe it, I was actually the personal student of Equestria’s ruler, Princess Celestia.”
For some reason, this provoked an immediate reaction from Xandra, her eyes going wide with surprise. “You’re what?”
“Oh no, I don’t study under her anymore. I left her a while ago. It’s… kind of a long story.” A suffocating sensation began to well up within Sunset’s chest. Even after they’d reconciled, thinking about what happened between her and Celestia brought unpleasant memories to the forefront of her mind. “I, um… I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Actually, hold on. In that memory I saw, didn’t Queen Fyora refer to you as her…?
“No, it’s fine,” said Xandra, after a moment’s hesitation. There was a hint of recognition in her features, a thin line of understanding that ran across her brow. “I didn’t mean to pry. What were you saying about the other kinds of ponies?”
“…Right. Anyway, another type of pony are the pegasi. They have wings on their backs, and also a sort of passive magic that lets them walk on clouds and manipulate the weather.”
“Weather control, huh?” said Xandra. “That’s a powerful ability in its own right. Usually only air faeries have that kind of magic here.”
“Well, I dunno about powerful, but… I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wanted pegasus wings of my own sometimes.”
Technically true, but let’s not elaborate on that right now.
“And what about earth ponies?” Xandra asked. “And what about sort of magic do they have?”
“Um…” Sunset felt an uncomfortable tension building within her chest. “Well, uh… that’s kinda hard to answer. Most scholars believe that earth ponies have magic, but no one really understands it. Only that whatever it is, it’s… subtle. Ordinary ponies don’t even really consider it magic at all.”
Suddenly, and much to Sunset’s surprise, a change began to make its way across Xandra’s features. First surprise, then a deep frown that brought a heavy wrinkle to her brow. Her eyes showed not a curiosity or melancholy, but something else. An emotion that Sunset couldn’t quite place, but whatever it was, it was powerful.
Xandra steepled her fingers, idly fidgeting with her thumbs. “…Explain.”
“Uh… well, the only thing we know for sure is that plants grow way better under the care of an earth pony than anyone else,” said Sunset. “Most attribute that to some special connection to the land, and while that’s likely, it’s also kind of impossible to prove. It could be that they just have more direct agricultural experience.”
“So they might not have magic at all,” said Xandra, bluntly. “Sounds like they get short end of the stick.”
“What!? No! They literally grow everyone’s food! They make up like eighty percent of Equestria’s population!”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Xandra countered. “Historically, farmers in Neopia have often been exploited by the ruling classes. And it’s more often than not that we’re ruled by a politically powerful minority.”
“Uh… Okay, fair point, but—”
“But you can cast spells,” Xandra continued. By now, her voice had taken on a startlingly fierce edge. The hesitation that had hung from every word she spoke was gone now, replaced with an unshakable confidence. “And even if we grant that other ponies have some passive magic, it sounds like your kind have an inherent monopoly on the study of spellcraft.”
“Well… okay, technically that’s true, but that’s not really a fair way of looking at it,” said Sunset. “Everyone’s good at different things, right?”
Slowly, the determination in Xandra’s eyes began to die out. The despondency that loomed over her at all times returned, and a heavy sigh escaped her lips.
“You know what, forget it. It doesn’t even matter what I think anyway.”
“Um… alright, then.” There was a tangible apprehension in the air, and Sunset could feel it pressing down against her lungs. “Xandra, are you good? Is everything okay with you?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not important,” Xandra said curtly.
Sunset wasn’t sure if she believed it. The fire crackled softly, as both of them stared curiously at each other.
Eventually, it was Xandra who spoke up again.
“So…”
“You want to know how I got here, right?”
“That would be helpful, yes.”
“I thought so,” said Sunset. She reached up and brush a strand of her mane out of her face, idly twirling with the bright red hair. “This is kind of where my story gets a little bit weird. You know how earlier, I said worlds, plural?”
Xandra’s eyes softly reflected the warm light of the campfire. “Go on…”
“Equestria is my native world, but I don’t really live there anymore. I’m actually a dimensional traveler, in a way,” Sunset explained. “There’s a magic mirror in Equestria which serves as a portal to another world called Earth, which is where I live right now. Though most of the time, I just call it the human world, ‘cause… well, that’s where humans are.”
“So that’s why you mentioned a magic mirror earlier,” said Xandra. “But before we go any further, I’d like to get the obvious question out of the way. What exactly is a human?”
“Um… well. That’d be kind of hard to explain without seeing one, but…” Suddenly, Sunset remembered the scene she had seen in Xandra’s childhood memory, and the image of the Faerie Queen burned into her mind. “Actually, hold on. You might already mostly know what humans look like. You know faeries, right?”
Xandra’s eyes narrowed, and a frown crossed her lips. “Of course I do. Why?”
“Humans look basically like that, but they don’t have wings or magic,” said Sunset. “…except when they do have magic. Or when they do have wings.”
“…Huh?”
“It’s, um… a very rare phenomenon. It’s… it’s complicated,” said Sunset. “The human world doesn’t actually have any native magic, but it seems to be directly parallel to my homeworld in a lot of ways. Under rare circumstances, it’s possible for humans to channel Equestrian magic. That’s how I got this geode crystal necklace.” She gestured to the crystal around her neck, which appeared nearly as bright as the campfire that was burning before her.
Xandra’s eyes went wide. “W-wait a second! You’re not saying this other world lacks any magic of its own, are you? Magic is one of the five fundamental forces of the universe! That shouldn’t be possible!”
“I thought so too,” Sunset said with a shrug. “But it is technically a different universe, with different rules. I’ve tried to limit my travel between the two worlds, since we don’t yet fully understand how their connection works. But from what I can tell so far, introducing magic into a non-magic world can cause really weird things to happen.”
Xandra couldn’t help but wince. “…I can imagine. But then how did you get here?”
“Um… that’s the part I’m not entirely sure on,” said Sunset. “I was visiting Princess Celestia in her castle in Equestria. But when I went to the magic mirror to return to Earth, I found that it had… changed.”
“Changed?”
“Yeah, it looked totally different,” said Sunset. “Normally it’s framed by a big purple horseshoe, but this time it looked like a pair of pink butterfly wings with a mirror in it. When I tried to take a closer look, I got sucked in, and um… I guess that’s the end of it. Next thing I knew, I was in that garden with your statue in it.”
Xandra frowned deeply. She placed a hand to her chin, and her brow creased deeply. “Pink wings… That… sounds like one of Queen Fyora’s personal artifacts. But then, how…?”
“You think she might know something?”
“She might,” said Xandra. “But I’d prefer to stay as far away from her as physically possible right now.”
“…Right. Wanted criminal. Almost forgot about that.”
Sunset let out a deep yawn. The campfire had already started to wane, and she could feel her eyelids suddenly getting heavy.
“It’s getting late. We should sleep for now,” said Xandra through a yawn of her own. Slowly, she began to lie down, curling up with her own tail.
“You sure you’re okay with just lying on the grass like that?” said Sunset. “I mean, I can, since I’m a quadrupedal steppe species, but—”
“I’ll be fine. It’s not the most uncomfortable position I’ve been in. Good night, Sunset.”
“If you say so. Good night, Xandra.”
----
Brynn was violently interrupted from her sleep by a knock at her door. Not an ordinary knock, as one would expect, but a frenzied banging against the wood punctuated with shouts.
Her peaceful snoring abruptly turned into a series of violent hacking coughs as she was thrust back into the world of consciousness. A sense of relief washed over her when the coughing finally stopped — the last thing she needed was to have to clean up an orange hairball in her own room.
With a heavy yawn, she dragged herself to her feet, and answered the door. Behind it was a young faerie Aisha, dressed in the standard uniform of the Faerieland Guard. His wings were twitching wildly at his back, and his eyes were wide open, which was a highly uncommon sight for his species.
“Captain Brynneth! Oh, thank Fyora you’re awake!”
Brynn gave the panicked Aisha a heavy glare, through sleep-encrusted eyes. “This had better be good, Papillon.”
“It’s not! It’s terrible! It’s—” Papillon blinked, his apparent distress entirely forgotten in an instant. He looked Brynn over, from her head to her feet. “…You sleep in Snowbunny jammies?”
“Corporal, get to the point!”
Papillon’s entire body went stiff as a board. “Y-yes sir! I-I mean, ma’am! I… I was doing a night patrol of the garden as usual, when… when…”
Brynn’s eyes narrowed. With how early her duties demanded she awake, she didn’t appreciate the luxury of sleep being taken from her. “When what?”
“It’s… it’s Xandra! She’s gone!”
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and the wait for this chapter was worth it, especially with the fact that obviously someone's gonna notice (as she expected) and then just how similar and different Uni's and the ponies we know of are yet so different. And then explaining magical books and I am certain that Twilight would go absolutely crazy over that fact of the book vanishing yet being able to remember every detail of it. Ahh, I can't wait to see the next chapter and to see where they go in the realm of Neopia.
And this one isn't even a planeswalker!
Certainly on the spellcraft the earth ponies want them to know about. Though I may be drifting into another continuity there as well.
But yeah, don't go racing off on a crusade for a subspecies you've never even met, Xandra. There's another unicorn who could tell you a thing or two about fighting for equality when you don't even understand what values you're looking at.
Yeah, it was only a matter of time before that particular prison break got noticed. Sunset's made this a lot more complicated for herself. Hopefully this can all be explained without too much unnecessary shouting and brouhaha. We'll see soon enough.
Really enjoying this story so far--it's certainly neat to see two of my favorite fandoms in a crossover, and Sunset and Xandra certainly do have some narrative parallels going on.
I quite like the worldbuilding you're doing around some aspects of the Neopets site, such as the the explanation for why (some) books disappear after reading.
It makes sense that Xandra would see parallels between Equestrian unicorns/pegasi and Neopian faeries; this certainly seems like it could be a complication in Xandra and Sunset's developing friendship. (Can't wait until Xandra hears about alicorns.)
Poor Brynn. I get the feeling that this is the start of a not-especially-pleasant day for her.
11609790
To be fair to Xandra here, the inequalities between Earth Ponies/Pegasi/Unicorns are much closer to social class differences than the individual differences between cutie marks that Starlight Glimmer was trying to equalize. The vast majority of Aristocratic or otherwise Upper/Ruling-class ponies we see in equestria are Unicorns, and iirc it's canon that before the first hearth's warming, the unicorns and pegasi used their control over the weather/sun&moon to force the earth ponies to grow food for them. So she's not wrong in seeing a power imbalance that could be ripe for abuse there.
Now, identifying a problem and coming up with an appropriate solution to it are two different things. And that's where Xandra goes off the deep end.
Having the body of a long-distance pursuit predator has its perks.
Earth ponies have always been in a weird position in canon, haven't they? They may have some skill to do with plants, but that's never been shown explicitly. There's more evidence that they may have increased physical strength, but that doesn't come up often. They do honestly seem to get the short end of the stick. Then again, I think there's potential in exploring how a society can try to be balanced and fair when some of its members really do have more innate advantages than others. If some people plainly can do things that others can't, how do you ensure that things are still fair for everyone?
Interesting, all in all; I know precisely jack shit about Neopets beyond the comic you linked at the start, but I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.
11610779
I dunno, one thing that bugs me about the usual interpretation of that dynamic is that it's very plainly shown in the episode that the earth ponies very clearly had their own government that could refuse the other two's demands, make demands of its own, and just pack up and leave when it didn't feel like dealing with them anymore. The entire bargaining table scene was about how each of the three groups wanted the other two to do things its way and was unable to make them do so. That's not really consistent with an oppressed underclass.