> Windcatcher
>  by Makitk
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

You breathe out through your nostrils as you thoughtfully bite down on the butt-end of your pencil. The force of your breath makes the paper in front of you move, but you've got it pinned down pretty good with your forehooves.
The wood and graphite taste in your mouth is better than the bad taste you keep getting when you think of writing your story down. What for anyway? Who would read it?
A voice to your side offers small solace; "You can do it. I have faith in you."
You close your eyes as another sigh escapes you and the thought crosses your mind that you should not be the one writing it.
"You know I can't manipulate our body."
She's right, and you both know it. Ok, eyes open and your pencil down on the paper. Let's get this story started.
As if you've done so all your life, your pencil starts trailing the curves and straight lines of the Equestrian alphabet. It's far from the alphabet you were used to before you came here, but you instinctively know how to put your too-human thought patterns into sentences that everypony else would be able to make sense of.

"My name is Windcatcher, and I'm one year old.", you start, as if addressing a self-help group.
"I could not have imagined the events that took place last year, nor would I have believed anyone if they told me.
I used to be human. A human girl, at that. My life before the events was quite simple, by human standards. Nothing had ever happened that would be considered abnormal.
I came from a nuclear family; mom, dad, a younger brother, and myself. Our family was relatively close-knit, but not stifling, and we had several uncles and aunts who came to visit from time to time.
I was enrolled in high-school and had a small group of friends with whom I frequently visited the mall or local arcade.
There really is nothing to tell about that life. Nopony would have taken an interest in me. I just wasn't that special."

"Oh, you're too modest," the voice cuts in, and you smirk lightly.
"Who'ff writhing thiff ftory anyway?", you mumble past the pencil and are rewarded by her giggling.
"Fine, fine, I'll back off."
You mull over how to continue for a moment as you stare at the letters on the paper.
"Well, go on?"
"Giff me a moment to think, will you?"
"But if you don't hurry up we'll miss our own birthday party," she whines, and you shake your head at the voice.
"Ok, fine."

"It was a rainy day as I went to the mall that day, and I didn't know that day that the day would have more surprises in store during the day than just the lightning of that day.", your pencil scribbles down, and you know you have overused the word 'day' in that sentence the moment you finish it.
You drop the pencil in favor of the eraser and wipe the letters out one by one before starting over.
"It was raining as I went to the mall one day. The lightning flashed overhead and the thunder was quick to follow. Unbeknownst to me, it would be the last thunderstorm I would see as a human." Yup, much better.
"Most of my friends had taken shelter in various stores already, most of the boys hanging out in the arcade or the comic book store, while the girls were hanging out in the sweets store, clothing store, and the hair salon.
There were exceptions to this division, but they could be counted on a single pony's hooves." Something about that last sentence bothers you, but you shrug it off for now.
"I decided to join Joan and Alex in the comic book store as I had to ask them about the upcoming party the next weekend.
Entering the comic book store, where I got most of my manga from, I spotted them talking about the latest My Little Pony comic book that had been released.
While I had enjoyed watching the series in the past, I had pretty much given up on it by the time I started high-school.

Their agitation was clear, even from a distance, and when I approached I could overhear their discussion:
Joan pointed at a page in the book and stated "They could have left her eyes alone!", to which Alex shrugged.
"Blame the soccermoms," he returned, giving me a wave as he saw me approach them.
I lifted my own hand in return and gave him a questioning gaze, to which he shrugged again. Alex did a lot of shrugging.
"They made Derpy Hooves appear in the comic book, but they straightened out her eyes."
"Dirty who?" I repeated, and Joan spun around to cast an angry glance at me.
"Derpy Hooves!" she all-but shouted, then pointed at the open book in her hand. "They even renamed her Ditzy Doo.."
"..as we already knew they would.." Alex muttered in the background.
"..instead of keeping the name the fanbase came up with!" Joan continued unabated.

I stared at the booklet in Joan's hands, and especially at the grey-coated pegasus standing amidst a total mess, her yellow eyes looking down a bit while a speech bubble stated "I just don't know what went wrong."
"Ok?", I shrugged at my friends, much to Joan's chagrin.
"It's NOT ok! They say Derpy makes fun of disabled people, but she's just an adorable ditz.."
"..hence the namechange.." Alex couldn't help but mutter at that.
"..who tries to help others but constantly fuddles things up. She can't help it!" Joan finished.
I decided to nod at that, not really knowing what else to do.
"You knew Hasbro was going to do this, Joan. Do you still want the book or not?", Alex wondered, looking behind him at the store clerk who was raising an eyebrow at the way Joan was flailing her arm around while she held on to only a few of the comic book's pages.
"Of course I want the book!" Joan decried, storming past Alex towards the register.

"So," I started, left behind with Alex, "Any news on the party coming Saturday?"
Alex shook his head at that. "We're still waiting for Christine to get back to us about whether she's managed to trick a DJ or not. She said she knew someone.."
"Christine says a lot of things."
"Yeah, which is why I'm downloading a tracklist myself just in case."
"Good call."
"Thanks."
Alex cringed visibly as Joan shouted at the employee behind the counter that she should get a discount for false representation of her precious pony, and he made a few inaudible excuses towards me before moving to join her.

I shook my head at Joan's anger issues and idly let my eyes wander over the comics in this section. A bunch of brightly colored children's comics were lined up on the lower shelves, with the colors darkening and the books' subjects getting more adult the higher up I looked.
Nothing really struck my fancy, and I wandered over to the manga section over in the back of the store, near the fire exit and the door into the storeroom.
They still didn't have a new issue of my favorite manga, so I leafed through some older ones but looked up abruptly as I heard the sound of something heavy falling over. It came from the storeroom.
The employee didn't seem to have noticed, but as a soft voice started to whine in pain, I waved my hand at him to try and get his attention.
"Hey! Hey, I think someone got hurt in there!", I called out, but Joan's voice was too loud and I doubt any of them heard me.
Now I know it's bad to go and enter a storeroom of a place you don't work at, but someone was clearly in pain and nopony else seemed to have noticed.
What was I to do? Walk away?
Of course not!

So I pushed the door open and walked into the storeroom behind the storefront. It wasn't that big a place, really, and the books were all stacked up in boxes as far as the eye could see.
A pathway had been made in-between all the irregularly shaped boxes, and I made my way through it until I rounded a corner and"
You have to stop a moment as the recollection of that shared memory, seen from two individual points of observation, hits you.
"It hurt," she says, and you nod in silence.
What you saw was.. well.. you really should write this down.
I made my way through it until I rounded a corner and "saw a small form trapped under a stack of boxes that had fallen over on top of it.
I drew nearer and could not believe my eyes as I saw more of her form.

A grey-coated pony, yellow mane, yellow tail, pegasus wings..
She looked like that Derpy Hooves pony from the comic Joan had shown me!
I backed away as the realization hit that what I was looking at could not exist on Earth, was something so fantastical that it would have camera crews come running if they ever found out, and was, horribly, hopelessly, trapped with one of her wings stuck underneath a heavy box.
She looked at me with those yellow eyes of hers, as bewildered as I was at seeing her, but then looked down and I thought I could spot a soft blush underneath the fur on her cheeks.
She didn't speak, but instead just tried to tug her wing out from under the box, failing miserably at it.
"Hey," I finally started, and we both winced at how loud my voice sounded in the small room. "Er.. do you need help with that?"

What else was I to say? She was clearly in pain and was pinned down by several pounds of books about some superhero who was annoyingly absent in this situation.
She nodded at my question and I moved to clear the books and other boxes from around her before turning to the main problem.
Rather than hurt my back trying to move the rather big thing, I opened it up and started pulling out stacks of books to make it lighter, until I noticed it started to slide a bit as the pony tried to pull her wing out from under it.
I helped lift it from the floor just enough for her to be able to pull her wing out, and then let it drop down on the ground again as the pony tended to her clearly broken extremity.
I'm no veterinarian. But even I could see it was broken simply by the way it hung limply down her left side.
She tugged at it a bit with her mouth, but it didn't do much good.

"Can I have a look at it?", I wondered, and her head snapped back to face me, fear and confusion fighting over which should show more prominently on her features.
After taking a deep breath, she sighed out with a soft voice and nodded at the same time. "Yeah, sure.. why not?"
She turned her left side towards me and I carefully leaned in to look, making sure to keep my hands to myself in the hopes that it would help her relax.
"It doesn't look like you're bleeding. But it does look broken," I offered, and the pony snorted as if to say she had figured that out herself as well.
I moved a hand up in clear view of her and looked at her face. "Mind if I lift it a bit? I'll be careful?"
At her nod, I carefully took hold of her broken wing, marvelling at the soft feel of her feathers, and gently lifted it so I could look underneath it.
She winced, and one of her forehooves lifted only to hit the ground a moment after as she tried to deal with the pain, but she did not appear to be bleeding there either.

"No blood there either," I offered, gently letting her wing droop down again. I fell back to rest my butt on the floor, leaning into one of the stacks of boxes that, thankfully, did not fall over as I rested my back against them.
"What," I started, trying to get my thoughts in order, "What are you exactly?"
The pony looked around like a lost lamb trying to figure out how to get home, turning to face me properly again. Her tail flicked nervously behind her, and she mostly looked down at the ground while she seemed to be thinking about my question.
Her eyes met mine when she finally spoke, and I saw in them how far away from home she must've felt. A look of total dejectedness, a hint of fear, and a slight glimmer of tears not yet ready to form.
"A pony," she said, and I was so lost in her eyes that I didn't catch my own incredulous chuckle at it. "Well, I am," she huffed, her face suddenly hardening as if I had offended her.

Her move broke the spell and I quickly blinked my eyes a few times, then shook my head at her. "No, I mean.. I can see you're a pony! That's not what I was.. er.. asking,"
..her wings..
"But you're a pegasus? And.. you're.. your colors.. you don't look like the ponies we have here.. and it's," my mind lost track of where it was going and I just shut my mouth as I felt my cheeks start to burn brightly.
She looked up at me as if I'd said something stupid, and nodded slowly. "Yes, I am a pegasus. And of course I don't look like the ponies you got here!" she decried, then quickly shut her mouth again as we heard a door open and close.
"Anyone in here?", the store clerk wondered to the twilight of the storeroom, but both me and the pony in front of me held our breaths until we heard the door creak again and footsteps moving away from us.

"That was close," the pony breathed, and I realized she had not meant for anyone, including me, to see her.
"You're not supposed to be here, are you?", I asked, and she smirked up at my question.
"Neither are you. Didn't anypony tell you this was an employee-only area?", she snapped back with a gleam of amusement in her eyes, and we both giggled a bit at her joke.
"What I meant, was," I started again, but she shook her head at me before I could continue.
"No, I'm not."
I nodded at her answer and looked around a bit, not knowing what else to say.
We sat/stood there in silence for a few breaths, until the pony finally spoke up again, "I'm Windcatcher. What's your name?""

You think it over in your head a little. What was your old name anyway?
Every time you could remember your friends, or family, having called you by name, it had been Windcatcher.
You wrote Windcatcher as your name on all your school books.
The wooden sign your grandfather had made for your bedroom door, said Windcatcher in faded pink letters caught in-between some half-disappeared figures that had once resembled some Disney princesses.
As far back as you could recall, you had been Windcatcher.
"Must be a side-effect of the spell?", the voice in your mind wonders, and you nod at it.
Neither of you understands much about that magic stuff.

"I spoke my name," you continue the story on a new sheet of paper, "and the pony smiled at me.
"That's a nice name," she said, and took a careful step closer to me as she did. "You wouldn't be able to help me, would you?"
I shrugged at her as she took another step closer, and tried to figure out what it was she was asking of me. "Help you? With what?"
Windcatcher shuffled a forehoof over the ground a bit as she stopped moving forwards, instead looking away with a soft blush again.
"Well, see.. there's these books.. You call them comet books?"
"Comic books."
"Right, those. And there's a new one out. And we saw that it had a picture of me in it!"

I blinked as my mind linked two and two together. "Wait, you're saying that you're Detzy.. dervy.. er.. that pony from the book?"
Windcatcher blinked and tilted her head at me. "Derpy Hooves? No, I'm not Derpy Hooves.. I'm Windcatcher. I just told you. But she looks a bit like me, I suppose. Just with her eyes going everywhere all at once."
I stared at her as her voice trailed off near the end of that last sentence, but she quickly snapped back again.
"But that book, yes! It's why I got here! Triple Lightning sent me over with a really really old spell she found in some dusty library, but I haven't been able to find it yet."
"Sent you over?"
"From Equestria! Now, look, you're familiar with this place, right? Can you help me find that book?"

I stared at her for a moment, then nodded and pushed up from the ground. "Sure. One moment."
If that was all that that pony wanted, why not?
I started to walk off in the direction of the store, then realized the clerk might catch me either as I moved back into the store, or back into the storeroom.
"Er.. they should have a bunch of them back here, shouldn't they?", I asked myself, looking around.
"I don't know. Should they?", Windcatcher asked, following behind me with the feathers of her broken wing dragging along over the floor.
"Should be in one of these boxes," I mused, looking over the different labels.
"As long as none of them fall on me again, I'm ok with boxes," the pony responded.

None of the boxes looked to be sorted by alphabetical order, and it took us some time to find the right section, a whole bunch of My Little Pony comic books all stacked around what looked like a makeshift reading corner.
A couple of cans of soda were strewn around the place, and an ashtray was filled with.. joint buds and a filled condom.
Both Windcatcher and I stared at it for far too long, then backed up away from it almost simultaneously.
"Ok, whatever sliver of respect I had for the guy that works here," I started, and the pony nodded.
"I don't know what I'm seeing, but it smells really really wrong," Windcatcher whimpered.
"Ok, let me find that book and let's get out of here," I decided, carefully lifting a comic from a nearby stack and holding it between thumb and indexfinger while I examined it.

It looked in pristine condition, so I moved it to a stack of boxes just away from the "reading area" and leafed through it. No grey pony. Well, there were.. but not like Windcatcher or Derpy Ditzy or whatever.
"That's not the one," I muttered, and Windcatcher's ears fell flat.
"Careful," she offered, as I moved to another stack of comics and pulled the cleanest from it, repeating the process of inspecting it for any sign of lewd actions having been performed on it, then leafing through it.
Again, no pony like Windcatcher. Plenty of colorful ponies, plenty of pegasi, but no Dorky thing.
"Ok, let's hope this one is it," I meeped, returning for the fourth time from the den of evil, carrying with me the spoils of war. The longer I stayed near that place, the dirtier I felt.
I leafed through the book until a familiar scene revealed itself. I quickly held the book up in front of Windcatcher's face and she lit up in excitement!
"That's it!", she shouted a little too loud, and we could hear the door open and close again.

"Whomever's in here, you're tresspassing! I got a right to defend myself, you know?", the voice of the store clerk sounded, and the pony and I looked around for a place to hide.
No such luck.
All the boxes in this area were stacked too close together for anyone, or anypony, to wurm themselves in-between, too low for anyone to hide behind, and we couldn't climb up on them to then climb up on the wobbly stacks closer to the clerk.
"Ok, this is it. I'm going to jail," I sighed, dropping down to the floor beside Windcatcher.
"There is one way out," Windcatcher revealed, shuffling her hooves a bit nervously.
"No, there's not," I sighed, pointing around us. "Look at it. No way out."

"You know, the spell that brought me here," Windcatcher continued, "I can return to Equestria at any point in time."
"Ok, so you're at least not going to be dissected by the government," I smiled weakly, holding out the comic book towards the pony so she could take it with her.
Windcatcher frowned at me and almost launched herself into my lap, headbutting me in the chest in the process.
"You're not that quick to catch on, are you? Hold onto me!" she exclaimed, while the storeclerk's footsteps drew ever nearer.
"I.. what?", I started, but moved my arms around her smaller form as instructed.
"Take me back to Equestria, my mission's done! Take me back to Equestria, where I belong!", Windcatcher cried out, just as the clerk rounded the last corner.

There was a bright flash and a sharp pain in my wing as the world changed in an instant from the dusty twilight of the storeroom to the dusty twilight of a library.
The comic book fell to the floor, as no hand or hoof was holding onto it, disturbing the otherwise dead silence in the room I found myself in.
"Er," I started, but my voice sounded different than what I was used to and I reached for my mouth.. only to fall down with my face hitting the wooden floor.
"Ouch," I said, and "Ouch," a voice in my head said.
We both blinked, although only one pair of eyes physically moved.
I carefully moved one of my hands in front of my eyes, and heard the voice of Windcatcher in my head going "Oh no.. oh no, this is wrong. Oh this is so very wrong!" as Windcatcher's forehoof came into view instead.

Still laying with my face smooshed against the woodgrain of the floorboards, I turned my head to follow the hoof in front of me up towards its shoulder joint. Oh yes, it was connected to my body.
"My body!", Windcatcher cried out in my head, and I tried to ignore her as I continued my exploration.
Past my/her/our shoulder, a perfectly fine feathery wing was folded up against my side. I stared at it and felt it twitch even before I realized it was really, physically, stuck to me and a part of me.
My tail flicked while I tried to come to terms with what I was seeing, what I was feeling, what I was hearing.. and I carefully put the hoof I had been staring at before on the floor beside my head.
I turned my head to look in the other direction and, well, there was a hoof just like it right there. Trying to ignore my thoughts about what it all meant, I decided to put that hoof on the floor as well.

Even without standing, I already felt better with those two hooves planted on the floor on either side of my head. So all I would need to do was to push up. Right? Like normal pushups back home.
As I pushed our body up in a standing position again, I felt my broken wing droop beside my body as gravity took hold of it, the sharp stings of pain shooting through it making us both wince.
"Windcatcher?", I started, turning my head to look back at my pony body and broken wing.
"Yeah?", Windcatcher said in my head, sounding as if she was standing just a little behind me and to the right.
"I think I'm going to faint," I decided, and lost consciousness not a moment after."

"We collapsed pretty heavily into the ground, you know?", Windcatcher mutters as you move the freshly written page onto the growing stack.
"I know. I felt the pain when I woke up again," you reply after having put your pencil down, "In a hospital, no less."
"Triple Lightning found us shortly after you collapsed," Windcatcher explains for the millionth time since you woke up after the event, "It was really scary to hear them move around and find I could not move my own body to respond to the questions they gave."
You sigh out and gently hug your forehooves to yourself. "I'm sorry I couldn't handle it. You know I'd give you your body back in a heartbeat if I could."
"Are you sure? A good body like this?"
"Well, I'd want to stay a pony, of course," you chuckle. "I don't want to give this up for anything else this world or the other has to offer."
You can't help but smile as you feel Windcatcher's flaky mental presence hug you in return.
> Chapter 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    "I woke up again laying on my back in a hospital bed, my broken left wing extended to my side with a splint keeping it open.
Light was shining in through a window on the left side of the bed, and I could see some bright colors through it. Fantastical bright colors.
"Oh, you're finally awake then?", I heard Windcatcher say, and turned my head to look at an empty bed beside my own.
I looked around the room, but beside the two beds, two bedside cabinets, some drapes hanging from the ceiling to allow privacy between the beds, and a currently unused heart monitor on a cart in a corner of the room, the room was empty.
"Yeah, you're not going to find me there," Windcatcher sighed, and I realized the voice was coming from behind me. Where there was the bed. And no room for anypony to be at.

"How," I started, and raised a hoof to my muzzle at hearing Windcatcher's voice coming from myself again.
"I don't know," Windcatcher sighed, and I felt my ear flick as I finally realized the sound was coming from inside my head.
I looked down at my/Windcatcher's hoof and tried to piece everything together. "I'm.. you?"
"Yeah."
"And you're in my head?"
"My head, but yes."
I swallowed and tried very hard to focus on the soft fur lining my hoof instead of on the panic that started to rise from somewhere deep inside.

"Keep calm," Windcatcher warned, and I nodded slowly while I felt myself starting to lose control.
"I know."
"Keep calm, now," Windcatcher continued, raising her voice slightly as the tingling of my panic building rippled through my pony body.
"I know!" I exclaimed, trying to fight back the tears that sprang into my eyes.
"Keep calm!!" Windcatcher shouted, half in a panic herself now, and I whined out loudly as I punched the bed beside me with my forehoof.
"I KNOW!"

"Know what, dear?", a white pony cut through our rising fear, taking me totally off guard.
I blinked incredulously at her, looking up at the small nurse's hat she wore on her pink mane, and down to her flank where a red cross was present with a syringe crossing behind it.
"I," I started, then closed my mouth and looked at the cart she was pushing ahead of her with her nose.
"How are we feeling today?", the nurse continued without a hitch. "It's good to see you regained consciousness. You've been asleep since they brought you in yesterday."
"At least one of us was," Windcatcher grumbled in the back of my head, and I flicked an ear at her voice.
"Yesterday?", I asked, and the nurse nodded.
"How is your wing feeling? You have multiple hairline fractures, you know? Your friends didn't tell us what happened."

"Er.. something heavy fell on it?", I replied, watching the nurse take a plate off of the cart with her mouth and move it over to drop it on my lap.
"Well, it's a good thing you were brought here," the nurse continued after releasing the plate. "Doctor Greenflank is the foremost authority when it comes to splinting wings outside of Cloudsdale."
"I.. er.. ok?", I stammered, looking down at the food on the plate. There was some red jelly off to the side, and some vegetables mixed in with.. some type of oats. And there was even a flower sticking out of the dish!
"What time is it?", I asked, and the nurse smiled up at me.
"Lunchtime, of course. It's just a few minutes past noon."
"You could have expected that answer," Windcatcher muttered at me, as the nurse moved to push her cart back out of the room.
"I'll let the doctor know you're awake," she spoke before the door closed behind her, leaving me and Windcatcher alone again.

"It could have been dinnertime," I sighed, staring at the flower. It looked like a daffodil. "Why would they put a daffodil in with the rest of this.. whatever this dish is supposed to be, anyway?"
"Because daffodils are part of a nutritional meal, of course," Windcatcher snorted.
"Ok, hang on.. I'm supposed to eat this flower?"
"Er, duh.."
I stared at the flower in sudden disgust at the idea. "I'm not sure I'm liking that idea.. I'm a human, you know? We don't usually eat flowers."
"No, you're not," Windcatcher decided, sounding very definite about it.
I looked sideways at my bandaged-up wing, then waved a hoof around in mid-air, and finally sighed. "Ok, so I'm not a human anymore."

"And I'm not in control of my own body anymore," Windcatcher returned, making me feel a bit awkward.
"I don't even know how this happened," I whined. "You said I should hold onto you, then there was a flash, and then.. er.."
"Then you fainted."
"I guess."
"All I did was say the return spell that Triple Lightning had taught me," Windcatcher muttered, "I never meant for this to happen. I just wanted to help you as you had helped me."
I smiled lightly at that remark. "I'm glad you appreciated my attempt to help you."
"I did, yes. If you hadn't, I would have had to take that entire box back with me to Equestria.."

I found myself imagining Windcatcher suddenly appearing in a library with a stack full of books from a different world, unable to move it off of her without help.
"You'd still be stuck then."
Windcatcher snorted at that and I caught myself moving my head to look behind me as she spoke.
"Triple Lightning could've freed me, of course! She's a unicorn, it's not that difficult for her to levitate things."
I felt myself blush lightly as I had already forgotten about the whole magic thing.
"Oh, right. So why didn't you just do that then? I mean, I saw how scared you was when you first saw me. You could've just disappeared and left me standing in an empty room."
I felt Windcatcher's blush, even if she was just a voice in my mind.
"Well?", I pressed, and she sighed out.

The following moment I found myself having a flashback to the day before.
It was quite literally a flashback, in that it started with a flash which put me in the dusty storeroom with its single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling above.
I had to secure my hoofing a bit, the teleportation into the other realm having made me feel dizzy, and I felt myself hesitate as I took in the strangeness of the place and the darkness of the colors.
My home, Equestria, had far brighter colors, and few dark and cramp places like this.
I started off through the corridor I had appeared in, flicking my tail idly behind me.
The moment after my tail hit one particular stack of boxes, I felt it shift and it slid sideways towards me!
I jumped aside, wings spreading out for me to fly up into the air in the limited room I had, but then the top box just crashed into my left wing, pinning me to the floor and sending a searing pain through me!

I let out a whimper, trying to recollect myself, but then heard a girl's voice shout "Hey! Hey, I think someone got hurt in there!".
Blind panic overcame me, and I tried to tug my wing out from under the box, until I heard the door open and close.
I just froze in place. I didn't know what to do! Triple Lightning had warned me that there would be humans in this realm, and that not all of them would be nice.
If I were really quiet, would they turn back out of the room again?
As the footsteps approached, I realized my luck had ran out and just braced for the inevitable.
The human didn't fully approach, backing away a moment as she saw me, and I looked down and away as I realized how weak I must have looked to her.

I tried tugging my wing out from under the heavy box, but it just didn't give even an inch. And then she spoke up again.
"Hey," she started, her voice ringing through the small room and hurting my ears, and we both winced. "Er.. do you need help with that?"
Even if I did return to Equestria at this point, using Triple Lightning's return spell, I would still need to get the box off of my wing, so I just nodded silently.
It was strange to see the human move around on her hind legs to clear the area around me, but I noticed the weight lifting from my wing as she started to dig books out of the big box and put them beside her on the floor.
I tried to pull my wing out as soon as I thought the box would give, but it was still stuck.
When the human girl finally lifted the box itself up from the floor, I quickly pulled away from it and felt my now useless wing drag over the floor as I did.

I quickly turned my head to inspect it, laying the feathers in place as much as I could while trying to move it. It was clearly broken. I would not be able to fly for weeks.
"Can I have a look at it?", the girl wondered, disrupting my thoughts, and I quickly looked back at her. My wing had distracted me enough that I had all but forgotten about her!
I didn't know if I had to use the return spell or anything, and I could not imagine that a place which filled Triple Lightning with so much fear could have such a nice person living in it.
She did look genuinely worried however, and I sighed out with a nod. "Yeah, sure.. why not?"
What else could go wrong? Not like I wasn't already crippled.
The human leaned in, but kept her hooves to herself. I appreciated that gesture. It made me feel that I made the right decision trusting her.    
"It doesn't look like you're bleeding. But it does look broken," she offered after a moment, and I snorted at her.
For a caring creature, she wasn't really that smart, was she? I had noticed that about the moment my wing wouldn't move anymore.

"Mind if I lift it a bit?", the girl continued, moving one of her hooves in front of my face. "I'll be careful?"
I decided to nod, but winced as she took hold of my wing and stretched it a bit in a direction it shouldn't have been able to go.
Out of frustration, I lifted my hoof and stomped it on the floor. I felt so helpless with the human inspecting my wing, almost like being in the hospital.
"No blood there either," the girl revealed, and dropped my wing down beside me before she sat back against another stack.
I half expected it to fall, but was glad when it didn't.
"What," she started, staring in her lap, but then looked up at me as she continued, "What are you exactly?"

Now this was a silly question to ask, really, but I was starting to wonder if I should even answer it.
Here I was, all on my own, with no backup from Triple Lightning except for the return spell.
My wing was broken, I hadn't even began to look around for the booklet I had come for in the first place, and I had already been seen by a human which we had discussed beforehoof would be a bad thing!
I just stared at the ground as I thought about this, my tail flicking idly behind me.
I only looked up when I decided to speak, since the girl had been nice enough to help me.
"A pony," I offered, but she immediately chuckled as if I had made a joke. "Well, I am!"
The gall of that girl, to ridicule me just as I thought she was being nice!

"No, I mean.. I can see you're a pony! That's not what I was.. er.. asking," the girl continued, and I raised an eyebrow at her.
"But you're a pegasus?", she said, as if that was an uncommon thing in this realm.
"And.. you're.. your colors," the girl stammered. What about my colors?
"You don't look like the ponies we have here.. and it's," she continued, and then suddenly fell quiet.
I found myself staring at her.
"Yes, I am a pegasus," I decided, "And of course I don't look like the ponies you got here!"

I realized I said the last bit of that sentence too loud as I heard the door to the room open and close, and found myself holding my breath while the human girl did the same.
"Anyone in here?", a male voice called out, and I stared at the human in front of me.
If she'd been an employee, she would have said something, but she was holding her breath and looked around shiftily.
I could perhaps use this girl to my advantage. After all, she could get to higher spots that I, with my lame wing, could not get to anymore.
The door creaked as it was opened and closed again, and I heard the male's footsteps create a distance between him and us.
"That was close," I found myself sighing out in relief."
> Chapter 3
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

You reach up to rub a hoof at the side of your head. "I didn't remember our story being this long?"
"It's been a year," Windcatcher returned, and you muse on that a moment.
"Do I really have to write out all of it?"
"Maybe just the highlights?"
"Just how many of those are you thinking?", you ask with some trepidation, and you hear Windcatcher hum a bit.
"Six, seven.. just the big events. They don't need to know about the rest."
You stare at the stack of blank sheets and do a quick count. "Only the really big events then. Or we'll have to get some more paper."
"There's two more packages in the bookcase. We got plenty."
"Let's hope so," you sigh, leaning your head down to pick your pencil up between your lips again and continue writing.

"The growling of my belly snapped us out of our flashback, and I found myself shaking my head at the new viewpoint on what had happened before.
"So you really thought I was stupid, did you?", I chuckled, and Windcatcher muttered a halfhearted apology.
"It's ok, though. I was pretty stupified with suddenly finding something in front of me which, as far as everyone on Earth is concerned, was highly improbable, if not downright impossible."
Windcatcher giggled softly at that, and I felt her presence lean into my side. "That's kind of what the general feeling is about humans over here."
"Well, there you go," I smiled, but my smile quickly faded as I looked at the plate still resting on my lap.
"There are no utensils?", I asked, and I could feel the question coming already.
"What are utensils?"
"Forks, knives.. stuff to lift the food up to your mouth with," I answered, and Windcatcher giggled again.
"Just lean in, silly. Only unicorns lift their food up with their magic."

I groaned at that, in perfect sync with my belly as it growled again.
The scent of the food had been silently working on making me more and more aware that I was feeling quite peckish.
Actually, the more I was thinking about it, the more I started craving a bite.
"I really don't see why you have this problem with eating flowers," Windcatcher sighed.
"Humans don't eat flowers," I retorted. "It's just not something that we think about."
"Well, then, don't think about it," she suggested.
The hunger was getting to me, and Windcatcher's voice in my inner ear was not helping either, so I closed my eyes and leaned in towards the plate.
I tentatively closed my teeth around one of the petals of the daffodil and with a little pressure felt them cut through the soft material.

The juices that leaked from the cut touched my tongue before the piece had itself settled on it and I found my eyes opening in surprise at the taste.
It was not an unfamiliar taste, slightly tangy, sharp, like a type of onion. But there was something else to it that I couldn't quite grasp.
I carefully moved the piece of flower around in my mouth and gave it another bite as it slipped between my molars.
The wash of flavors spreading through my mouth made me shiver in delight.
There was a certain sweetness to the flower which the sharpness of the initial bite had hidden from me, and I savored the taste for as long as I could, closing my eyes again in blissful response to it.
Windcatcher chuckled at my expense, but I waited until the taste had all but dissipated before snorting at her.

"What?", I mumbled before chewing on the remainder of the petal again and shivering happily as I was rewarded with another wave of the pleasurable sensations.
"I thought you said you didn't eat flowers?", Windcatcher jabbed, and I shrugged lightly.
"If they all taste like this," I started, "I may end up eating that statement as well."
We both giggled a little at it and I swallowed the chewed-up piece of the flower.
"This is normal for you, isn't it?", I asked of Windcatcher, nodding to the plate before us.
"Pretty much, yeah."
"Is that why it almost feels natural for me to use this body when I don't think about it?"
Windcatcher pondered that a moment before answering, "I don't know. We could ask Triple Lightning when we see her again."

I nodded to that and finished up our lunch while thinking about how that meeting would go;
"Hi, I'm Triple Lightning.
Hi, I'm Windcatcher.
No, you're not.
Yes, I am.
I'm going to use my magic to send you back to earth now, fake pony!
Oh, no I'm back on earth but still a pony!
We're going to dissect you now, because we're the government!
Noooooo!"

Windcatcher stared at me. I couldn't see her, but I felt her eyes on the back of my head.
"Your imagination," she started, "borders insanity."
"I'm a cartoon pony in a cartoon world," I retorted. "I don't think my imagination can top that."
"Who's to say you're not just imagining this, too, hm?" Windcatcher teased.
I looked around myself a moment, licking around my muzzle to get the remaining jello out of my fur as I did.
"If that gets me home before the party this weekend," I mused.
Windcatcher's mood dropped at that and I sighed out myself, feeling my ears flatten on my head.

"I really don't know how this happened," Windcatcher sighed, and I felt her hooves hug around my neck as her body settled against my back.
I shivered as I realized the impossibility of her actions once again, what with my back resting against the pillows on the hospital bed.
"I don't even know if Triple Lightning can reverse the spell," the pony-in-my-head muttered in my left ear, resting her chin on my shoulder.
"How are you even doing that?", I wondered, maybe a little more bewildered than I had thought I was about it.
I felt the weight of her head shift as she tilted it. "Doing what?"
"How are you leaning against my back?", I voiced my question properly, "I mean, I'm laying against the bed myself."

"Well, see," Windcatcher started, leaning her head in against mine as she did. "To me, you're sort of here. You look like me, sure. But you're just sort of floating here in this space?"
"Space?"
"Well, it's like a bubble? With a big window up in front of you?", she tried.
"A bubble?", I repeated again.
Windcatcher's right hoof lowered to poke me in the side. "Yes, a bubble. Are you going to repeat everything I say?"
"I just don't understand what you're saying," I returned with a frown, rubbing my right hoof to the side of my head. "There's a bubble in my head?"
Windcatcher sighed in an annoyed fashion. "My head, dear. But yes. It's like we're in a spherical room with the walls curving inward."

I tried to imagine what she was describing to me. "A spherical room with a window in it?"
"Uh-huh."
"Inside m.. our head?", I corrected myself.
"Uh-huh."
"And we're inside of it?"
Windcatcher sighed and poked her hoof at my right side again and I found myself automatically turning my head to face her.
"Yes, we are in it. I dunno how it works, ok? I'm just saying what I'm seeing. Can we stop with the fifth degree?"
I felt my cheeks blush and leaned back against the bed, my movement making the plate wobble a bit on my lap.
"I'm just confused about it. This is the first time I heard I had a room in my head," I giggled a bit. "I mean, my friends joked about me having a hole in my head before, but to have you come out and say it is really there is a different thing altogether."

Windcatcher fell silent at that, and I let my eyes drift down to look over my body again, tentatively trying to flex some muscle groups that were very different than what I had been used to as a human.
It's not that the muscles were located in different areas or anything; they were pretty much the same muscles, connected to largely the same things they would've been connected to if I had still been human.
It was more that these muscles were longer, shorter, stronger, weaker, or more or less inhibited by the different shape of my body.
My fingers? Forget about those. The few that were left were just clumped together to form my forehooves. While I could feel the muscles tighten when I focused on them, I could not move them individually.
I did notice that my hooves were more sensitive than I would have thought, initially. They were basically marshmallow-shaped blobs that seemed unforgiving when I had stood on them, but I could feel the stitching around the edge of the bedsheet as I ran my hoof over it.
As I pressed my forehooves together in front of my face, I could see them bend and stretch a little to accomodate the pressure upon them and I amused myself for a few minutes by just seeing how far they would bend out of shape before they would start to hurt.

"You're acting like a little filly," Windcatcher threw my way, as I was giggling excitedly at learning more about our body.
"It's new to me, ok?", I sighed, but dropped my hooves on the bed on either side of me anyway. "I'm not the one who's been a pony all her life. I was just trying to figure out how things work."
"I didn't mean to berate you," Windcatcher muttered in a low voice, and I looked away with a feeling of embarrassment at having misjudged her intention.
"It was kind of cute to see," she added, and I felt her lean into me again. "If you have any questions, you know.. about being a pony and all, I can probably answer them."
I thought that over for a little while, then looked back at my wings. "What's it like?"
"To fly?", Windcatcher wondered, noticing what I was looking at.
I nodded to her return question and carefully stretched my unbroken wing out to the side while studying how it moved.
"I remember asking my mom that when I was just a filly," Windcatcher revealed. "Not all pegasi get born with the knowledge of how to fly, you know? We have the ability to, but learning how to keep yourself from tipping over mid-air, or falling out of the sky altogether, is a process in and of itself."

I noticed how I could tilt my wing a little this way or that as it was extended to the side, and remembered seeing a documentary about how birds tilt their wings while in flight.
"But you did manage to fly, right?", I asked, trying to coax Windcatcher to reveal more about herself.
"Oh, yes. But it wasn't easy," she chuckled. "If it wasn't for the clouds drifting by, I would have crashed into the land below many times before I learned to navigate the thermal pockets."
"So you soar more than you fly?", I wondered, likening the Pegasi to big birds barely moving their wings as they simply used the updraft to stay in the air.
Windcatcher pondered that question, but then chuckled lightly. "Sometimes, yes. If there's a gust of wind I can catch, I feel it's better to do so than to tire myself out flapping all the time."
"Pacing yourself, like with running? I see how that works," I nodded. "That's smart. Can you teach me?"
"If we ever get out of here, sure," she offered, nuzzling her cheek to mine. "You'll have to learn how to fly anyway, since my home's up in Cloudsdale."
I turned my head to look out of the window at that, seeing the clouds in the sky drift by lazily, and idly wondered what that city would look like. With the feeling of Windcatcher's hooves holding me to her, I slowly found my eyes closing as I drifted off to sleep, my dreams filled with the promise of flight."
> Chapter 4
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

You look up out of the window beyond the desk you're sitting at. Outside, the city of Cloudsdale is slowly drifting across the firmament.
Somewhere underneath your hooves, a great many miles at that, the world of Equestria lies in the shadow of this city built on the clouds. A large number of Earthponies and Unicorns, some Pegasi who migrated down to the lands below, and even some Alicorns all subject to the weather patterns controlled from up here.
"Don't tell me you're still landsick?", Windcatcher pries, and you shake your head at her.
"That thunder storm on the day we met," you start, and Windcatcher humms thoughtfully.
"What about it?"
You look at your writing, then slide a new empty page to the center of the desk. "When's the last time we went down and just experienced something like that?"
Windcatcher ponders that for a moment. "What about when we were released from hospital?"

"We spent about a full week in hospital before we were released, but my left wing still felt very weak without the bandages holding it in place. I could barely keep it folded up to my side without it feeling like a chore. Windcatcher insisted I preened it as good as I could once it was out of the bandages, and we spent about an hour with me painstakingly tugging feathers into place until they lined up as they should.
Granted, it did feel better to have them like that, but I got bored about five minutes in, and her constant corrections of my movements quickly got on my nerves.
She backed off as she noticed my temper rising, and once I got a hang of it without her meddling I found it to be surprisingly easy: Most of it was just putting one half of a feather under the previous one, with the next underneath that feather.
Occasionally I would come across a feather that had broken in half or otherwise stuck out at an odd angle, and I was forced to pull it out so a new feather could grow in its place. It only hurt for a moment as I pulled them; after the initial sting the pain receded to just a little bit of an awkward feeling of knowing there should be a feather there.
The feeling would linger for only a brief moment while I rearranged the other feathers in a way that would cover the otherwise empty spot a little, but I barely noticed the missing feathers by the time I was done preening.

The weather ponies had been moving clouds into place all day, and it had started to rain by the time I left the hospital building. I stared up at the few Pegasi up there rearranging some clouds to better spread the rain around and felt a sting of jealousy at seeing them fly around like that.
"Give it a few weeks and you'll be ready to soar through the sky again as if nothing had happened," the doctor had said.
I sighed and walked down the path in front of the hospital leading toward the nearby town. It wasn't Ponyville. This place was called Breezy Vales, according to a sign near the main road.
"It's a few miles to the North of Seaddle," Windcatcher explained. "A lot of Pegasi come here to train in the valleys between the mountains to the west, see?"
I turned my head to the west and was faced with a row of imposing mountains, with snow-tipped peaks, and with lower hills leading off in front of them. There was a forest of pine trees leading down from the high slopes, disappearing behind some of the hills farther away, and behind the few buildings on the outskirts of town.
One of those buildings had a large sign beside it, with names and numbers on it. "What's that for?", I asked Windcatcher, and she chuckled.
"It's for competitive runs. Those are the fastest times for a particular lap through the vales, and the ponies who made those times."

I cantered over toward it while the rain changed from a drizzle to a proper downpour, but I couldn't be bothered by it. It felt kind of nice to have the raindrops impact with my furry body. It had been a hot day, and the rain had been just what I needed to cool down.
I blinked my eyes to get the water out of them as I neared the sign and looked at the board. I knew it was written in the Equestrian alphabet, if only because of the strange way in which the letters curved, but I had no difficulty reading it. Probably because of Windcatcher and myself sharing our mind.
First place, with a mere 41 minutes and 03 seconds; Rainbow Dash. Underneath it read Lightning Dust with 41 minutes and 06 seconds.	The board continued to show Sea Striker, Cloudchaser, and Deep Gust as the follow-ups, with times not even coming close to Dash's or Dust's.
"Have you ever..," I started, but Windcatcher interrupted me before I could finish my sentence.
"Those runs are dangerous!", she exclaimed with a tinge of panic in her voice. "I always thought about doing one, just to try it out, but they're so close to the cliffs and there are frequent rock slides and things.. I don't think I'm cut out for it. I get scared at the thought alone."
I looked back at our weak wing, then over at the mountains in the distance. "Don't be scared," I told the pony in my head, "It's not like it's going to matter for the next couple of weeks anyway. We need to get our strength back first, and find that.. feeble lightning friend of yours."
"Triple Lightning," Windcatcher corrected, "but you're right. I wonder why she hasn't come to visit."
I shrugged and turned away from the board, looking over toward the town. "Maybe she got busy. Back on Earth humans often get busy. Like we'd make plans, and then school dumps a bunch of homework on us, or we'd go someplace to hang out and lose track of time."
I set in motion toward the town and looked around me at the different style of buildings as opposed to those back on earth. "You know I was planning to go to a party the weekend after you took me here? I wonder if they missed me," I mused.

"If they were your friends, I'm sure they did," Windcatcher replied, and then nudged into my right side. "Turn left here."
I looked to my right with a frown, but only saw an old mare trotting along with a small wicker basket in her mouth as she hurried home through the beating rain. I quickly looked away from her again and turned into a side-road between buildings, muttering under my breath. "I wish you didn't do that."
"Do what?", Windcatcher wondered, and I looked around to make sure nopony else was around to see me talking to myself.
"Poke me in the sides. I keep expecting to see you standing beside me," I started, then frowned as I realized, "And it's not like I can poke you back."
A giggle was my only reply, and I reluctantly continued my trot down the road. The buildings on my left were sparse, and had plenty of room in-between them to see the forest and hills, while those on my right were closer together and other buildings could be seen beyond them. Every so often the pathway would branch off toward those buildings, while I had yet to see a single road leading into the trees on my left.
I just kept trotting along while Windcatcher calmed down from her giggling, looking at the various ways in which the ponies living here had decorated their homes. There were the normal things you'd expect to see even on Earth; Plants, blinds of various styles, and the occasional garden gnome (or garden diamond dog, as the case may be).
But then there were the things unique to Equestria; one of the houses, occupied by a Pegasus family I would imagine, had a cloud hanging around its first floor, obscuring it from sight. A young colt was resting atop it, playing with some figurines I couldn't quite make out.
Another house was glowing with magical energy, and I was just about to trot along before Windcatcher spoke up; "This is where Triple's family lives. We can ask them why she hasn't come to visit us."

I stared at the building as I turned toward it, raising my right eyebrow while feeling my left ear flop down. The energy coming from it was enough to make even my wet coat static and I felt my hairs rise up along my body. My feathers were largely remaining in place, but I could feel them tremble from the magic washing out from it.
Other than the magic coming from it, it was a normal style house for Equestrian standards. It was made of wood, with large windows and comfortable pastel coloring. Beige walls, purple beams, and the odd accent of brown here and there.
It had three floors with two windows per floor, with the top floor's space limited by a slanted roof. A lightning rod stuck out the top of it from the apex of said roof, with the cable from it leading into one of the half-open windows underneath.
As I was standing in front of the house pondering whether to go in or not, the door slammed open and a bulky unicorn stallion with a pair of copper-looking goggles on his head came galloping out. Only his right eye was fully covered by the goggles, the left lens raised up above his eye as the elastic band went up over his ear rather than underneath it. If it wasn't for his spiky mane and horn holding it in place, the goggles would have slipped off to the right side of his head long ago.
I watched with amazement, and a small sense of amusement, as the stallion slowed to a trot and turned back to face his house, his short tail flicking in excitement. "Three," he said expectantly, following with a, "two," and then a, "one!", at which point he ducked down flat on the wet grass.
"Get down!", Windcatcher screamed in my ears, and I flopped down as well as a surge of magic burst from the house in front! It exploded as a wave of bright yellow expanding outward much like a sonic rainboom, taking with it half the house's windows and some shards of pottery which rained down around us as the energy dissipated.
I blinked my eyes in confusion as the muscular stallion started to dance in his yard, exclaiming "It worked! It finally worked!" to himself as he did.

As I was picking myself up from the ground again, shaking off the debris from my coat, Windcatcher idly offered; "That's Bright Spark. He's Triple Lightning's dad. He invents things."
"Are you sure it's safe to be here?", I wondered of her. "I mean, he just exploded his house.."
"That's normal," Windcatcher shrugged, and I shivered in response.
Bright Spark, in the meantime, was idly plucking shards of glass from his white coat, his horn glowing with a similar yellow as the energy wave as well as his mane and tail. I took a moment to steel myself, but then I trotted up to him.
"Was that supposed to happen?", I asked, trying to go from the assumption Windcatcher had met the stallion before. Considering I looked like her, and effectively was her, I should act as she might in this situation. Right?
"Right," Windcatcher agreed. "Although you could just fake amnesia. I wouldn't have asked that."
I shrugged, but meeped immediately afterwards as the large stallion wrapped his left forehoof around my neck and pulled me closer. "Windcatcher! You should have seen it! For ten whole seconds I had a ball of energy trapped within a glass sphere! I'm FINALLY making progress!", he exclaimed to me, hugging me to himself as if I was a part of his family and only letting go when I emitted some soft whimpering as his hoof leaned into my hurt wing.
"Oh, sorry. You were in the hospital, right?", he apologized, backing away a little and looking me over. "How are you feeling? You look famished. Come on in and I'll make you some pancakes!"
I flicked my right ear in confusion as he made his way into the house, and felt another shudder run through me as I watched shards of glass fall out of the ceiling as he passed underneath them.
"Are you sure it's safe to follow him?", I asked of Windcatcher, and she took my twitching ear in her mouth and hummed approvingly.
With some trepidation still remaining, I slowly set myself in motion toward the house, half expecting it to fall apart as I put my hoof on the first step of the small staircase leading up to the door.
It didn't, but the creaking it emitted did nothing to help relax me.
> Chapter 5
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Bright Spark was already rummaging around in his kitchen, which resembled more of a warzone after the explosion, pushing aside the rubble with his magic while retrieving a pair of frying pans, eggs, milk, and assorted other ingredients to make pancakes with.
I also saw some items fly by which I would have never thought would be included in pancake batter, but here he was mixing it all together in a bowl on the sink, amidst broken flower pots and with assorted objects half-embedded in the walls, ceiling, and pretty much any other surface. They must've been laying around the house before the explosion, the shockwave having propelled them forwards as projectiles as dangerous as any bullet fired from a gun back on Earth.
The place was a mess and, in the center of it, there was a broken table laying on the floor. The four legs were holding up the remainder of it as if they were trying to form two pyramids, but the entire midsection of the table had been blown downwards through the floor, leaving an oddly shaped hole in its place.
I carefully walked up to it, trying to look down in it to see if anything of the table had remained, but the cellar was too dark to see anything.
"A success, huh?", I muttered, and the large stallion tilted his left ear towards me.
"Oh yes! A great success!", he exclaimed with a proud undertone to his words. "Just imagine what we could do if we could harness the combined energy of every unicorn in Equestria! We could donate our magic to an energy committee who would then distribute it across all of Equestria, bringing power and wealth to even the farthest reaches of the world!"
I blinked and tried to make sure I got that right. "You're trying to make a battery?"
"Battery," he tasted the word, then shook his head. "I'm already making pancake batter. No, I'm inventing a revolutionary new concept that will allow even non-magical ponies to use magic in their day-to-day lives. Just imagine a sphere that you can hold to move objects at will! To levitate objects around, like so!", he demonstrated by making the ingredients he was working with float around his head.
I reached up to rub a hoof at my head. "Never mind."
"If only I can make it more stable," Bright Spark mused to himself, slapping a blob of batter into one of the frying pans. "Right now it only stays stable for ten seconds at most, and you can see what happens after that."

I watched as his tail drooped lower at the realization that his 'product' still had flaws in it, and moved over to gently pat his back with my good wing. "You'll get it right some day soon, I'm sure of it," I offered to the larger pony.
He grinned my way and nodded quickly. "Yes! That's the inventor's spirit! I'll get it right one day. And then the princess will invite me to live in Canterlot! Just you wait!"
I just nodded at his eagerness, and shook some leftover glass from my wing before folding it back up. "You may first want to get yourself a new table.. and windows," I chuckled. "But that's not why we're here."
"We?", Bright Spark blinked, looking around us before reaching up to put his hooves on the kitchen sink and stare out of the broken window in front of him. "I don't see anypony else with you?"
I blushed and Windcatcher poked my side with a hoof. "Nice going."
"I mean.. er.. the royal we!", I quickly corrected myself. "You know, you, me, everypone. We're not here in this world to get new tables and windows. We're here to.. er.. innovate!"
The stallion turned back to me with a look of confusion on his face, but then nodded at my last sentence. "Yes, innovate. That's a good word for it. Innovate."
"Yeah. It's no use focusing on the broken tables," I continued eagerly, glad my ruse worked. "You can't make pancakes without breaking some eggs, can you?"
"Now you're talking!", the white pony grinned, hooking his forehoof around my neck again and pulling me close. "I always knew you had a brain, little Windcatcher. From the first day Triple brought you home from school, I said to my wife; Now there's a pegasus with a brain on her."
"He did?", Windcatcher wondered in confusion. "I've never heard him say that before."
"Er.. so," I started, trying to get out from the tight embrace, "talking about Triple Lightning.. You wouldn't know where I can find her, would you?"
Bright Spark let go of me at my squirming, and shrugged idly at my question. "I don't know, dear. She's been up and about before dawn and returns only after nightfall. Something's been bothering her, I can tell, but she's not talked to me about it. I don't know if she told her mom, but Blue Thunder hasn't told me if she did."

"Ok, so, maybe I could ask Blue Thunder?", I tried, but heard Windcatcher make a sound as if I had just made a big mistake.
Bright Spark's face darkened a little and he turned away from me with a shrug, turning his full attention on the pancakes he was making. "Sure you can. She's out back, as always."
I felt like I had been scolded by both Windcatcher and Triple Lightning's father both, even if the first hadn't said anything and the other had simply agreed with my statement. The feeling that something wasn't quite right fell over me, and I slowly turned for the back door and made my way towards it while evading the shards stuck in the floor.
"What did I do wrong?", I asked of Windcatcher, but she didn't answer. "No, seriously: What did I do wrong?"
She did not reply, and I made it to the door in silence. "You're acting like this is the worst mistake I could have made," I muttered, putting my hoof against the door and gently pushing it open. "I'm just going to ask her a question. Nothing more."
"Don't expect a reply," Windcatcher finally spoke, and as the door opened fully, I finally realized why.
The back yard was, apart from the few glass shards that littered it now, a very well-kempt place. Flowers were growing everywhere, and butterflies and other insects were buzzing about even as the rain was getting worse. The few corpses of butterflies and a single bird which had been hit by the glass or the wave of energy could not mar the beauty of the place.
The one thing that stood out as a dark thorn in amidst the fields of roses and other flowers was a large stone slab, with a headstone behind it, the rain pelleting down on the stones to make them shine in what little light passed through the cloud cover overhead.
I carefully, respectfully, approached it to read; "Here lies Blue Thunder. May Celestia forever watch your path."
"Oh," I breathed out with a lump in my throat, feeling my tears well up. "I didn't know."
"She died when Triple was just a young filly," Windcatcher explained, "Bright has been maintaining her grave until passing that task on to Triple a few years ago."
"No foal should have to go through this," I sniffled. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault mom left us," I heard say behind me, and the warm body of a unicorn still cooling down from having ran home moved up to my right side. "She died in a rockslide together with a pegasus who had been doing a timed lap in one of the valleys."
She paused a moment and I heard her swallow before she continued, her voice shaking a little, "There were too many boulders for her to keep away with her magic. The rescue team was only moments away when she got overwhelmed. They couldn't get to her in time to save her life."
"They wouldn't even have found the pegasus' body if it wasn't for my mom," she continued after another pause. "The second rockslide would have buried them. If mom hadn't been there to keep the boulders at bay there would be nothing but a large pile of rubble with no hope to locate anypony buried underneath."
I turned my head sideways to look up at a blue-coated unicorn with bright red eyes and a yellow spiked mane, steam rising from her back as the rain evaporated from her body heat.
"I think mom proved that you should always try to help somepony else. Even if it costs you your life," the unicorn spoke, turning her head to face me with a small smile. "I'm glad to see you two got out of the hospital in one piece."
"Did she just," Windcatcher started, and I took a shocked step back away from Triple Lightning.
"Did you just say two?", I asked, and the Unicorn's smile widened.
"Oh, come now," she chuckled, "You came here by my magic. I knew something was wrong when I felt the change in energy upon your return." Her horn started to glow and I felt my left wing getting pulled at. I winced as it opened up and I looked back to see some minor shards of glass getting pulled from it.
"Tsk. Only just healed and dad needs to go and ruin your wings already," Triple sighed, taking a step towards me. "Don't worry, Windcatcher. You're still my friend. I'm not going to abandon you just because there's two of you now."
"But," I started, but Triple put a hoof up against my lips.
"She didn't tell you how close we were, did she?", the unicorn spoke enigmatically, leaning her face closer to mine while her magic allowed my wing to fold back to my side. "She never told you we were lovers?"
"T... that's a lie!", Windcatcher erupted, and I could feel her blush as mine crept to my cheeks.
"S... she says that's a lie," I stammered, and the pony in front of me pulled back with a laugh.
"Aww.. you could have played along, Windcatcher," she giggled. "You know full well Unci would never let me look at another girl."

"Unci?", I asked, and got a reply from both in- and outside of my head.
"Cirrus Uncinus."
"Cirrus whatnow?", I blinked, feeling totally lost.
Triple sighed and motioned towards the house. "Let's get up to my room and I'll tell you all about her, and about this world."
I followed behind Triple as she led us back into the house, spotting her cutiemark as three lightning bolts side-by-side.
We passed by Bright Spark in the kitchen, who had left the pancakes for what they were and was instead pulling the oven apart with his magic.
"Everything ok, dad?", Triple Lightning wondered, and her dad responded by mumbling something about the fire not working and how he could not cook without it. We left him as we turned to the right onto the staircase leading to the first floor, and I found I had to catch my breath when we got to the landing.
"So.. many.. steps," I wheezed, to the chuckling of the unicorn beside me.
"Spending a few weeks in hospital will do that to you," she offered with a smile and a gentle pat of her left forehoof to my right shoulder. "We'll get you back to running and flying with the best of them soon enough." She nudged her head over to the next flight of stairs and trotted off towards it. "Just one more floor and we'll be safe from my dad's experiments."
I walked up behind her, looked up the stairs, and groaned. "Can't we just sit here and talk?", I suggested, but Triple wanted to hear nothing of it and walked up behind me to nudge me onward.
I clambered up to the next floor with some difficulty, and fell down panting heavily once I finally made it into Triple's room, the unicorn moving to close the trapdoor over the staircase behind us. She then cantered over to a panel in the wall, used her magic to open it up, and pulled a pair of bottles from behind it.
"Cider!", Windcatcher exclaimed at the sight, and I winced lightly at how loud her voice sounded.
"Cider?", I repeated, a lot less enthusiastic, and Triple turned to grin down at me.
"Cider," she nodded, opening both bottles and moving one to set it on the ground in front of me.
If I wasn't sure about it yet, the smell drifting from the open bottle clearly indicated it was filled with cider. Of the apple kind."

You put your pencil down and stand up on your four hooves, shaking your head a bit to loosen the muscles in your neck. It only takes a few steps to get to the cabinet, and you put your mouth around the door handle to pull it open.
A stack of papers rests on the top shelf, with a number of extra pencils beside it, but you lean down to the lowermost shelf, taking the wool scarf resting on it between your teeth and dragging it out onto the floor.
It is not the scarf itself that is important to you, but what it hid from sight. You reach a hoof down further into the cabinet and nudge the bottle of cider out of its hiding place.
You carefully take it between your teeth, walk back towards your writing desk without closing the cabinet behind you, and set it upright behind the paper you're writing on.
"What do you think? Shall we open it tonight?", you ask of Windcatcher, but her enthusiasm had already been rising from the moment she understood what you were doing and her excited reply only serves as icing on the cake.
"Yes! YES! Yes please!", she exclaims, and you nod at her.
"Let's find Triple after we finish this part," you decide. "It would be good to share a drink between us again."
> Chapter 6
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"I pushed myself up to sit on my butt, my tail swishing over the floor behind me as I looked around Triple's room. It was a simple room that took up all of the uppermost floor of the building. The ceiling moved diagonally down towards the sides of the building with support beams going from front to back every so often.
Sliding panels had been placed near the lowest points of the ceiling, creating small cabinets in the space between the ceiling and floor behind them. It had been from one of those cabinets that the unicorn had produced the bottles of cider.
There was a queen sized bed underneath the closed window near the front, and beside it was a workspace with the cable from the lightning rod on the roof leading straight toward it. Several technological contraptions were laid out on the wooden workbench, but I could not figure out what any of them would be for. It did appear as if Triple had inherited the inventor's gene from her dad. The rest of the room was sparsely decorated with some random objects laid out here or there, but nothing worth mentioning.
Triple Lightning sat down on her bed, folding her hooves under her and lifting the bottle of cider to her muzzle to take a sip. I took her example and put my lips around the bottle on the ground before me, made sure my teeth gave it some extra support, then lifted it from the floor until the sparkling sweet liquid poured into my mouth.
"So good," Windcatcher moaned at the taste, and I had to put the bottle down again and swallow to stop myself from choking on my giggling fit following.
"You ok there, Wind?" Triple asked from the bed, tilting her head a bit as I tried to stop from coughing, and I nodded quickly.
I could feel Windcatcher's blush at realizing she was the reason why we were suddenly out of breath, but couldn't really respond audibly until I'd calmed down.
"I just got some of it down my windpipe," I finally answered Triple's question, to which Windcatcher sighed in relief.

Triple accepted the answer with a big grin and nodded. "It's good, is it not? Cirrus' family gets it imported from Ponyville. They're related to Filthy Rich, you know?"
I shook my head in disbelief. "I didn't. But when you say imported... how far away is Ponyville from here?"
"I've heard it's half a day's flight or so? It takes longer by train," the unicorn shrugged.
I looked back at my wings, frowning at them a bit. "Half a day's flight?"
Triple Lightning coughed uneasily at that. "Don't get any funny ideas there. You need to get your strength back before you can go that far out, or you'll crash into the Everfree Forest."
I blushed as I turned back to face Triple's concerned look, feeling my ears flatten a bit from embarrassment. "I'll keep that in mind."
The unicorn flicked her right ear at me, then seemed to shrug it off. "Right, anyway, Unci will probably want to help you get your flying speed back," she muttered. "Maybe you can ask her to take you to Ponyville some time. You flyers are always going all over the place anyway."
"Us flyers?" I remarked, raising an eyebrow.
"Triple is a little jealous of us Pegasi," Windcatcher chuckled. "You should wave our wing at her."
I snorted at the suggestion. "Oh, you're mean."
Triple, not having heard Windcatcher, frowned at me. "Mean? I've had to patch up the roof twice now because a Pegasus crashed through it. And if it's not a Pegasus, it's the items they're carrying in their buttered hooves."
I stared at her for a moment, not immediately sure what to say to that. I eventually just sighed and pointed my right hoof at my head. "Windcatcher said I should wave a wing at you to tease you. That's why I said she was mean."
Triple blinked. "Oh. Forget what I said then."
"Done," I agreed, then tilted my head a bit. "You were going to tell us about this Unci anyway?"

Triple smiled up at the mention and nodded quickly. "Right! So, Unci is my special somepony. She's a Pegasus, and part of a rich snooty family up there in Cloudsdale. They claim they can trace their family's lineage back to before the three tribes settled in Equestria. Purebred Pegasi."
I nodded at that. "That sounds like some of the snobs on Earth," I commented. "They used to be called aristocrats, but I don't think any of them are considered royal anymore."
"Arts on cats?" Triple returned with a confused look on her face, and I giggled softly.
"Sorry, go on."
Triple frowned and took a thoughtful sip at her cider before continuing. "Right. So... Cirrus helped me get you to the hospital after I found you unconscious in the library. I saved the book, by the way. But I still haven't figured out how to translate those strange symbols on it."
"Can I see?" I asked, and the unicorn levitated the comic book into view, laying it down on the floor in front of me.
While I had been able to read the text just fine back on Earth, the words on the cover had turned into something unintelligible here in Equestria. Where I had expected Roman letters, instead I found mathematical figures and strange symbols. I blinked my eyes at the comic, rubbed at them in turn with my right forehoof, but the symbols were simply impossible to decipher. I could not place them in any alphabet from back on Earth, nor from Equestria.
"Any luck?" Triple Lightning wondered, but I shook my head at her.
"It's weird. Back on Earth I could read this alphabet without a problem. But here, in Equestria, I can't make heads or tails of it," I explained.
"It was the same for me," Windcatcher chimed in, and I held my right forehoof up to my ear to indicate to her friend that she was speaking. "I could read the words on the boxes just fine. And on the books. But that was on Earth. I don't know what it says now either."
"Windcatcher says she could read the Earth alphabet just fine while she was on Earth, but it makes no sense to her now either," I repeated for Triple Lightning, who nodded.
"It must be something to do with the spell then," she mused, and emptied her bottle of cider in one long swig.

A loud crash from below made both our heads turn toward the trapdoor, and Triple lifted it a little with her magic. A high-pitched female voice was all-but screaming, and we could easily make out her part of the conversation going on two floors below.
"AGAIN?? You blew up the house again?? Why don't you ever learn to do these things in a safe environment? Like on a rock farm or something? Some place where it doesn't matter if you destroy the place?"
I looked up as Triple chuckled, and she nodded her head to the trap door. "Unci," she said, and I perked my ears up at that.
"I'm not going to pay to get this fixed!" the voice of Cirrus Uncinus continued, "You're on your own this time! Light and me will move out of this place if you make another mess, isn't that what I said last time? And yet I come home and there's glass everywhere! You haven't even bothered to clean it up and you're already working on another contraption!"
"She lives here?" I asked of Triple, who shrugged.
"She keeps up appearances of living in Cloudsdale, to keep her family happy, but she comes down to spend the night here every so often," the unicorn explained.
"Ah," I replied with a nod.
"You're unbelievable, you know that?" Cirrus' rant continued, "Ok, fine. I'll pay for it this one last time. But if you do it again you're on your own!"
"She'll be up in a moment," Triple offered, pulling another bottle of cider from the cabinet and putting it down on a bedside table.
I stared at the trapdoor as I heard hoofsteps lead up to the first floor, then winced as Cirrus' tirade continued while she was standing on the landing, "And don't think I won't do it! If you destroy the house again, I WILL take Light and move out with her! There's plenty of property for sale over in Manehattan!"
Triple winced at the thought. "Erf... Manehattan is SO not my crowd."

I was still giggling at Triple's expense as Cirrus' moved up the stairs and joined us. Her purple coat was shining in the light. Her lighter mane was combed in a regal-looking curl which wouldn't have looked bad on Rarity. And her feathered wings looked to be freshly preened, with not a single feather out of place.
She walked straight by me to lock lips with Triple, who was still sitting on the bed, and I got a good look at the cloud she sported on her flank. After a moment, she turned to face me with a stern look in her dark blue eyes.
"And as for you," she started, in a similar tone as she had used to berate Bright Spark, but then her facial expression softened and I suddenly found her hugging her forelegs around my neck. "I was so worried about you! Why did you have to go do such a stupid thing? Didn't I warn you that unicorn magic was dangerous?"
Triple straightened up at that in surprise. "Hey now, I'm right here."
Cirrus turned her face back to frown in Triple Lightning's direction. "Yes, you are. How could you send her away to some unknown place like that? If I'd known you were planning to do that, I'd..."
"Tried to stop us. That's why I didn't tell you, hun," Triple finished her girlfriend's sentence, eliciting an annoyed snort from the pegasus still clinging to my neck.
"I'm doing ok, really," I tried, to which I received a snort from both Windcatcher and Cirrus Uncinus.
"No, we're not doing ok," Windcatcher started, and I drooped my ears at the angry tone in her voice, "I'm stuck inside my own body while somepony else is driving it. That's not 'doing ok'."
"You're not doing ok, hun," the purple pegasus added, not having heard Windcatcher. "Just look at your poor wing!" Having said that, Cirrus moved to my left side and pulled my wing open with her forehooves, making me wince a bit from the feeling.
"You poor dear, several feathers are missing. And what's this? Glass?" Cirrus muttered as she sat beside me holding my wing, and I felt her move in to pull the glass out from between my feathers and spit it toward the staircase. "Won't your father ever grow up, Light?"

"He's doing his best, you know?" Triple mumbled from the bed, having moved to lay down flat on it, her ears turned down on her head.
Windcatcher snorted again. "She sounds like her mom."
"Who does?" I asked, and Cirrus tilted her head at me.
"Cirrus does," Windcatcher replied to me, while the pony in question slowly leaned forward into my field of vision, studying me with one eyebrow raised.
"You do know Bright Spark, right? It's not like you're having amnesia or something?" the pegasus wondered, moving a hoof from my wing to my forehead, effectively allowing me to pull my wing closed to my side again.
I moved my head away from her hoof, then nodded at the question. "I've met Bright Spark, yes."
Cirrus frowned at me, and Triple sighed out deeply. "She's not our Windcatcher, Unci. Well, she is. But she's not. It's difficult to explain."
Cirrus' confused frown turned into one of anger, and she leaned in to get a closer look at me. "Try it anyway," she grumbled, and I flattened my ears.
"Windcatcher's here, with me, in my head, but I used to be a human?" I recited, and Cirrus pulled back with a snap, a look of disgust moving across her face.
I shuffled back a bit as Unci's facial expression changed between disgust, anger, and several other emotions, but the most scary of which was what she ended up with; a blank stare with her pupils looking very tiny.
"Run that by me again?" She asked with little to no emotion in her voice, and I looked up hopeful towards Triple on the bed.
The unicorn sighed out and rubbed her hooves at her temples. "Windcatcher went to Earth to retrieve a booklet. But something happened there and now there's two of them in one body. And we hadn't gotten to the point where she explained what happened yet."
Cirrus' face went dark and her pupils grew in size as she turned her eyes back towards me. "Now would be a good time to do so then, don't you think?"