When a pony meets a pony in a field of snow

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The light brown pony with the auburn mane stood on the large metal pad in a room that was packed full of scientific equipment attended by a variety of serious-faced people in white lab coats. The pony wore a set of canvas saddle bags, dyed a dark pine green, and around her left front foreleg was a watch, gold-faced and with a padded cuff that was fastened just above the fetlock.

Evenly spaced around the metal pad were four emitters, large black metal and plastic pylons with traditional sci-fi style blinking lights. The emitters hummed in a worrying fashion and pulsed with an eerie, somewhat disturbing blue light.

The pony, whose name was Erin, was staring at one of the emitters with her ears folded back and a decidedly worried look on her face.

“I’m not so sure about this, Maggie,” Erin said, shuffling a hoof. “Are you sure this will work?”

This was directed at an older woman, stout without being fat, and with greying hair cut short at collar level. She was busily examining a readout on her control console.

“Sure, why not?” Maggie said with a casual shrug.

Erin flicked an ear as she scowled at her friend. “Oddly enough, that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

Maggie chuckled. “Don’t worry, the theory is sound, and the Reality Cannon will launch you directly into Equestria, saving the need to use the larger emitters to punch open a hole between our two worlds. And at about ten percent of the power, too! It’s a huge savings!”

Erin visibly flinched at the word cannon. “So, it’s about money?” she asked dryly.

“No,” Maggie replied with a grin. “It’s about a lot of money. I’ll probably get a bonus!” The older woman’s grin faded slowly under Erin’s scowl until she cleared her throat and said, “Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood.”

“I’m strongly reconsidering this whole thing.” Erin frowned at the blue and pulsing emitter again. “Why did you need me to do this again?”

“Because you’re still a pony for the moment, and we’re sending you to Equestria, hopefully Ponyville. We don’t want to freak any ponies out by dropping a human right into the middle of their town.”

“Right.” Erin sighed and ran a hoof through her mane. If it weren't for the fact that the Ascent facility was pretty much out of commission at the moment, she would have already been undergoing the process to change herself back. “I suppose that makes sense. Though, don’t you think if I just appeared out of nowhere, I’d freak a few ponies out anyway?”

Maggie chuckled and waved off her concerns. “No worries. We’re aiming for about a mile away from town. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

Erin rolled her eyes. Her nerves were already pretty tight, and it didn’t help that Maggie seemed to be treating things so casually.

“You’ve tested it, right?” Erin asked pointedly. “I mean, I’m not going to appear a mile above ground? Or a mile under the ground? Or inside out, or something?”

“Of course we've tested it,” Maggie said with an affronted snort. “There are all sorts of safety protocols in place. We've tested it with both inanimate and animal test subjects. It’s definitely safe.”

“And the animals were alright when they got back?” Erin asked.

Maggie nodded absently while passing clipboards between another technician, still mostly engaged with speaking to Erin. “A couple of dogs, a rabbit or two, and a chimp that knows sign language. They all checked out fine when they got back.”

“Really?” Erin arched an eyebrow. “A chimp who knows sign language?”

“Yeah…” Maggie said slowly as she ran a hand through her graying hair. “I thought it would be a good way to get some idea of what to expect. You can never be too careful.”

“Right… And, er… What did the chimp… ‘say’?” Erin asked, interested in spite of herself.

“Well, I thought he was just rubbing at his head for a while. Then I realized he was saying ‘dizzy, dizzy’ over and over again. About fifteen minutes later, he asked for some food, ate it, then passed out.”

Erin stayed quiet for a moment as she studied her boss’ expression. When she finally spoke, her tone was slightly doubtful. “So, the auto-recall works, then.”

“Oh, definitely,” Maggie happily replied. “About ninety minutes after your ‘launch’, you’ll get pulled right back here.”

Erin sighed. “Well, I suppose if the chimp was fine, I will be too. Let’s get this over with.”

“Right, here we go!” Maggie flipped a few switches, issued some commands to the other white-coated techs in the room, turned a dial, then held her finger over a big, red button.

The humming and light pulses from the emitters surrounding Erin intensified in both frequency and strength, causing a disorienting strobe effect that had Erin working her way up to a truly magnificent headache.

When Maggie started doing a countdown from ten, Erin tried to block her out. Each number counted down only ratcheted her nerves up higher. Her enhanced hearing prevented that, though. She heard every word.

“Six… Five...” Maggie was saying.

“Oops,” one of the techs in the background said quietly to himself. Erin glanced up in alarm to see him frantically working on the screen in front of him.

“Did he just say ‘oops’?” Erin asked, her ears perking up. “Maggie?”

But Maggie lacked Erin’s cybernetic ears and, with the humming in the room getting louder, hadn't heard a thing.

“One… Launch” Maggie shouted joyfully.

“Wait!” Erin shouted just as Maggie’s finger stabbed down on the button.

The lights flared, the emitters squealed, and Erin managed to say “Oh, pooh” just before she felt a long moment of intense vertigo.

When Erin had been a little girl she’d read a certain book by a famous British author. In that book, one character was talking to another about how awful it was being teleported because it was like being drunk. When the other character asked what was so bad about being drunk, the first one had responded with “Try asking a glass of water.”

For the first time in her life, Erin knew exactly how that felt. It wasn’t nice.

Colors swirled around her at a dizzying speed as her mind reeled, trying to come to grips with what her senses were telling it. There was no up or down, just the feeling of spinning and falling, all while it felt like her body was painlessly being twisted and stretched into impossible angles.

It either went on for hours or for seconds that felt like hours. With a loud whumpf! sound that Erin felt in her bones, the crazily swirling colors finally stopped.

For a long moment Erin just lay there, dazed and completely disoriented. Ghost images of the swirling colors danced before her eyes on what seemed to be an even white background. Eventually she flailed her legs, trying to stand. It didn’t go well.

The world was spinning and and bobbing around her with an effect not unlike being drunk on the world’s most extreme roller coaster. She managed to get to her hooves and staggered sideways, falling back over into something that was, at least, fairly soft.

And cold. Very, very cold.

Too dizzy to try to make sense of it right then, Erin managed to haul herself back upright. The landscape was decidedly blurry as Erin shook her head in an attempt to see clearly, only to stop a moment later when the added motion made the dizziness somehow even worse.

Standing up, she found, was quite the challenge. Four legs were both too many and nowhere near enough as she staggered sideways, woozier than she'd ever felt before in her life. The landscape tilted crazily around her as she struggled to keep upright, nearly tripping over her own hooves more than once as they caught against each other. If she hadn’t been too nervous to eat that morning, she would have likely lost her lunch. As it was, she only dry-heaved a few times before her stomach finally decided to settle down, though it was under protest.

She fell over once again and decided to just stay there for a while, in spite of the coldness she felt. Eventually, the dizziness started to subside, and Erin raised her head in order to make out the details of her new environment. Trees and bushes here and there, but most of what she saw was flat, like a plains.

On top of that, however, was the snow. The whumpf sound she could recall had to have been her landing in the snow drift currently across from her, where a perfectly Erin-shaped hole was situated.

At least I had a soft landing… she thought gratefully.

Erin finally tried standing again, her hooves crunching loudly in snow that stood up past her fetlocks. Where in the name of the wide, wide, world of Equestria did I end up? she wondered.

With no answers evident, Erin sighed and looked out at a distant range of mountains. “Probably somewhere miles away from Ponyville,” she muttered to herself, and suppressing a shiver.

That’s when she heard a gasp from behind her, followed by a child’s voice.

“Mom, what are you doing outside?”

Erin turned to see, to her complete surprise, a human girl wearing a puffy parka, maybe ten years old and with brown hair. The girl was walking towards her, which alone would have been a weird thing to see in the middle of Equestria. However, she began to have serious doubts about actually being in Equestria at all when she spotted a decidedly human-looking home behind her, along with what was certainly an older-model of car parked right beside it.

Meanwhile, the girl kept on talking as she approached, getting louder and louder while also ramping up in speed.

“And why are you naked all of a sudden? And why is your mane a different color? And oh my gosh, are you a different pony? You are! You are, aren’t you! You’re a new pony! You even have a cutie mark!” The girl hopped up and down while clapping her hands together excitedly and making a loud squealing noise.

Erin, still disoriented from her trip, could only gape in astonishment at the cute little girl’s sparkling eyes and big grin.

“Oh, this is soooo awesome!” the girl squealed again. “Wait here, I’m gonna go get my mom!”

Then the child ran off, screaming “Mooom! Mooooom!” at the top of her lungs. Erin watched her go, mouth agape, and for the first time studied the house that was only about fifty feet away from her.

Erin sighed and shrugged. “Nice. Looks like that ‘oops’ I heard just ended me right back on Earth. Maggie will be so disappointed…” After a quick harrumph, she added. “Serves her right after cracking all those jokes right before sending me out.”

Erin brought up her left foreleg and checked the watch. Her “trip” through… whatever that was, and her subsequent recovery, had taken twelve minutes. That left a good amount of time left, even if it had taken longer than she’d expected just to get her hooves back under her. After that, the auto-recall would lock onto her and pull her back across the universal barriers, just as Maggie had said.

“Oh, God,” Erin said, her eyes widening in sudden realization. “I’m going to have to go through all of that again, aren't I?”

The last fragments of dizziness still lingered, but Erin decided that she might as well go visit whoever it was who lived in that house, hoping they would offer her help to get back to Harmonics. I should call, at the very least. Since something’s gone wrong, then who knows if the recall will even work. She hoped the family wouldn’t be too freaked out by the sudden appearance of a talking pony.

I mean, everyone knows about ponies now so it shouldn’t be so bad… Erin considered just how people that had never encountered a pony might react. After all, ponies still weren’t exactly commonplace outside of newspapers. I hope I’m not far from the Harmonics facility…

Erin was nearly to the house’s back porch when suddenly the door flung open and, much to her surprise, another pony came marching out. She gaped, eyes widening in shock immediately. What?

The newly present mare had a two-toned mane, blue with a stripe of creamy tan and was, oddly enough, wearing baggy sweatpants and an ill-fitting hoodie. She didn’t see any wings or a horn, so that made the newcomer an earth pony.

Erin stopped walking at the same time the other pony did. The strange mare was staring at her, her muzzle also hanging open in apparent amazement. Then, just like that, her green eyes narrowed and her mouth set into an angry, thin line as she started marching determinedly towards where Erin was standing.

“I don’t know who you are,” the mare said as she trudged through the snow, “and I don’t know how you got here, but you’d better be able to fix this!” One of her hooves rose up and pointed back at herself, her expression set in a deep scowl.

Behind the mare, the little girl was in the background, singing, “I told you, I told you!”

Erin stared blankly at the two while her brain attempted to play catch-up. She was trying to figure out why an Equestrian pony was in the middle of what appeared to be Earth, and somewhere in the rural countryside.

“Uh, sorry... What?” was the only thing that it occurred to her to say.

“This!” the other mare punctuated again angrily, then gestured up and down at herself with the same hoof.

Erin eyed her with some confusion, and figured for just a moment that the other pony was talking about the workout clothes she wore. “Well, I’m not a seamstress, so I think you’d be better off buying clothes that are actually meant for ponies, instead of trying to wear baggy human clothes.”

The mare stared at her blankly for a moment, her muzzle hanging open. Meanwhile, the girl standing slightly behind her started giggling.

“I’m not talking about the clothes! I’m talking about this!” the pony eventually managed to say again. She made another, vaguely all-encompassing gesture towards herself. The accusatory glare that she was making deepened, as well.

Erin’s brain shrugged and gave up at that point. “Yeah, sorry. I am really not following you at all,” she said apologetically. “By the way, I’m Erin, what’s your name? And if it’s not too much trouble, where am I?”

The other pony groaned loudly and slapped a hoof against their forehead, then groaned a second time as a result. Erin winced, imagining that had hurt.

“Mary, my name is Mary. And wait a second…” She looked up, scowling slightly. “Your name is Erin?” she asked, with a slight, incredulous twist to her question.

Erin held back a sigh and offered a smile, instead. She'd been on the news a lot, recently. Being recognized all the time was part of her life now, after all. “That’s right,” she said pleasantly, already preparing herself for the usual questions.

Instead of having her general fame on Earth brought up, the other pony, whose name was apparently Mary, trotted closer through the snow and asked, “Seriously? Why not Daisy Petal? Or Grass Grower. Or maybe Sunflower, like your butt symbol? You know, something equally silly and contrived. Ponies usually have weird names, don’t they?”

Now that was unexpected, Erin thought, blinking in surprise.

The little girl, still following close to Mary’s side, slapped a hand against the her neck, then cried out, “Moooom, stop acting weird and rude! This is another pony. You should worry less about her name and more how she got here… Ooh, ask her if she’s from Ponyville!” The little girl turned to Erin. “Are you from Ponyville?” she asked quietly, voice full of anticipation.

“I’m getting to that, Anna,” Mary broke back in, chiding the little girl. “Go inside, dear, and… and why don’t you start making some sandwiches, alright? I’m sure our guest will want some, too.”

Erin went stiff backed in disbelief at hearing the trade between girl and mare. “Mom?” she repeated quietly, shifting her eyes between the two strangers and feeling very much at a loss for words.

Mary was looking over at Erin, who was rapidly beginning to feel out of her depth. “Are sandwiches alright?”

“Um, thanks, but I’m not hungry at all—” A low rumble from Erin’s stomach interrupted her.

Mary smirked as Erin blushed, then finished shooing off the protesting little girl with two hooves and nudges from her head.

“Alright! Stop pushing.” The little girl, apparently named Anna, traipsed back through the snow, stealing glances back at Erin as she went until entering the house’s back door.

Mary smiled fondly after the girl for a moment, then turned to face Erin with a mild frown.

Mary tilted her head at a slight angle and narrowed her eyes, her ears laid back in a blatant look of skepticism. “Are you really there?” she asked, then looked at the ground a second later. “God, am I dreaming again?”

Erin scrunched up her face in confusion. “Pretty sure you’re not. At least, I know I’m not.” A return wave of dizziness gave her a short burst of vertigo, making her wince. “Uggh, one second.”

Erin sat down hard in a snowbank, shaking her head in an effort to stop some lingering spinning in her vision. “Ahem- sorry, I had a rough trip getting here and I’m still a little dizzy… Experimental travel between worlds will do that I guess, right?” She laughed a little at that before realizing what she'd said. Oh, maybe I shouldn’t blab about that… she thought, clamping her muzzle shut.

Erin was slightly relieved to notice that Mary didn’t seem to show any outward interest at the potentially classified statement. More carefully, Erin spoke again. “Um, never mind… By the way, would it be alright if I used your phone?”

Mary seemed to be caught up in her own thoughts as she stared back at Erin for a moment. Then she narrowed her eyes and leaned forward a little bit. “This might sound weird and sudden, but can I poke you to make sure you’re real?” She raised one hoof and made jabbing motions towards Erin, as if she already intended to go ahead and do so anyway.

Erin raised one eyebrow and let out an awkward laugh. “Ooo-kay… Look, I’m not t-too sure that I even understand what’s going on r-right now- gah!” Shivers began to run through her as she became unpleasantly aware of just how unwise it was to be sitting bare bottomed in snow. Teeth chattering, she got back up and glared back at her snow-covered rump as if it were somehow the one at fault.

“This is Earth, r-right?” Erin asked as she brushed the snow off of her tail with a hoof. She felt silly asking the question, like an actor in one of the bad films about Equestria’s discovery that had been cropping up in Hollywood recently. “Because, that little girl was calling you ‘Mom’ and—”

Mary interrupted curtly. “Yes, she’s my daughter, and of course this is Earth. Where else would it be…?” Her voice raised an octave as she continued. “Oh, I forgot, you’re actually from Equiltria, aren’t you?”

Erin was about shaking her head and stopped, not wanting another wave of dizziness. Instead she quirked an eyebrow. “You mean Equestria?”

“Right, that,” Mary went on, waving one hoof dismissively, while her eyes stayed glued to Erin.

“Well, no, I’m from actually from-” Erin cut off as her whole body shuddered as she finally started feeling the full effect of the surrounding snow, wind, and freezing temperatures. “Wow, it is cold out here! Where are we? Alaska?”

Mary tilted her head, then looked around. “Idaho,” she stated flatly. “And oh, this is nothing compared to my home town. But give it a week and it will start getting into the negatives here.” She laughed then, and shook her head. The long braid of hair she wore swapped its spot to her other shoulder before she resettled her eyes on Erin.

“I suppose we should get inside, too,” Mary added firmly. “We’ll catch our deaths out here. Especially since you seem to be wandering around... naked. In the freezing cold, no less.”

Erin blushed. The other mare had a point. Whether or not she was used to going without clothes, it really was pretty stupid to frolic around in the snow without so much as a single stitch between her and the cold.

Meanwhile, Mary continued to speak, now in a nervous tone. “But then again if you’re from there, that makes sense! Right?” She laughed. “Anyway at least inside we can get out of the cold. That is, I would greatly appreciate it if you came in and spoke with me about this whole… pony, thing.” She then asked, “Just, please don’t go?”

Erin, slightly distracted by the fact that she was in the process of freezing to death, wasn’t paying full attention. After she heard the word heard “inside”, she decided that she didn’t need to be asked twice. Her head jerked up and down in a quick nod. “S-Sure! Lead the way, M-Mary. It’s not like I’m going to say no at the moment.” She wondered for a split second why her impromptu host sounded so much nicer suddenly, but for the moment getting out of the frigid cold struck her as more important.

“Yes!” Mary cheered, rearing, then seemed to catch herself in the act. Coughing, she settled back into the snow. “Uhm, ahem, this way, then!”

Together, they started walking back towards the house, trotting quickly through the knee high snow that varied from fetlock to knee high, following the foot and hoof prints left by Mary and the one she called her daughter.

Mary occasionally checked back over her shoulder, as if she expected Erin to suddenly vanish. Erin tried giving her a comforting smile after the third time she did it, at the top of the porch, and spotted something curious in one of the house’s windows; lights flickered through the frosted glass panes.

“Oh, nice decorations,” Erin said appreciatively. The lights were up and blinking, and there was a large wreath on the back door as well. Erin wondered briefly if it was traditional for the family that lived here to have them up so early in November. Her own family always used to wait until December, though that usually ended with her Dad coming in from the cold and vowing to never wait so long to put up the lights ever again.

Mary looked at the decorations of mention, then shrugged with a smirk pointed back to Erin. “Thanks. My husband had to do most of them this year. Small wonder, right?” She waggled a hoof in the air.

First a daughter, now a husband. Erin frowned, wondering if this husband was going to be a human or pony. She hadn't heard of any inter-species marriages, but something really strange was going on here.

“So, where did you say we were, again?” Erin asked.

“Idaho,” Mary replied, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Huh,” Erin said, then chuckled. Maggie would be so upset when she found out that she’d invented an incredibly expensive device that, apparently, could only move someone a few hundred miles or so.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard of Idaho, though,” Mary said as they reached the back door to the home. “I mean, what with you being from Equistra, and all.”

“Equestria,” Erin corrected automatically. “And, actually, I’m from—”

“Remember to wipe your hooves on the mat before you come in,” Mary instructed as she did the same. “I just cleaned the floor, I don’t want snowy hoofprints all over it. You don’t happen to wear horseshoes, do you? I’ve wondered about that lately.”

Erin blinked, then chuckled. “No, no horseshoes.”

Moms were moms everywhere, it seemed. Erin dutifully stomped and scraped her hooves off on the mat, getting them as clean as she could. While doing so, she reveled in the feeling of her coat soaking up the toasty warmness that seemed to permeate the house.

Oh, wow, that feels good. Erin hugged one foreleg to her front and smiling happily.

“Oh, well, splendid,” Mary replied, and trotted onward across the floor, her hooves making little thunking noises on the tiles. “Okay, follow me please!”

Mary’s house was nice and cozy warm, and bigger than Erin was used to. Her parents only had a small three bedroom, with the third bedroom being used as a den now that her brothers had moved out. This house seemed to be at least twice as big, if you included the second floor.

More Christmas decorations were displayed throughout the house. They were set up artfully without being obnoxious, which was a rare gift as far as Erin was concerned. Along with the decorations were numerous pictures of a family on a walls they passed. Erin recognized a slightly younger-looking Anna in one of the pictures, and assumed the other three must be the girl’s biological mom and dad, and the sullen-looking teenager was probably her older brother.

Erin let the other mare lead the way to the dining room. There, she was offered a seat in one of the chairs, which was high enough to leave her back hooves swinging idly a few inches off the ground. Her moment of rest only lasted a second, though.

“If you don’t mind,” Mary spoke up, slightly hesitantly, “I’d like to go get you something to wear. Would that be alright?” Behind her, the tan and blue tail she sported swished erratically.

“Clothes? Oh, it’s alright, I’m not cold anymore. It’s very warm in here!” She gave Mary a grateful smile before she continued to look around.

Mary ahemed and chuckled uncomfortably. “A-Actually, it’s more the… lack of clothing and nudity thing. If it’s okay, I’d like to let you borrow some clothes.” Her embarrassed look flickered between the floor and Erin.

Erin made an oh of understanding, then giggled at the suggestion, unable to help it. She’d been in Ponyville too long to be worried about clothing. “I’ve never met a pony before who was worried about that kind of thing. Sure, I don’t mind at all.”

“Thanks,” Mary said, obviously relieved. “It’s just that… well, it makes me… Nevermind, I’ll just go get you something.” She trotted off, calling over her shoulder, “Would a dress be okay?”

“A dress is fine!” Erin called back, then started waiting.

Erin now found herself in the awkward position of being left alone in a complete stranger’s house. A little voice in her head began urging her to start poking around, which she could resist easily enough at first. However, as the minutes dragged on, and the fidgeting got worse, the temptation got to be too much for her.

By the time Mary came back, Erin was in the process of staring into the China hutch and reaching for the handle. At a sharply cleared throat, Erin jumped in surprise, turning with an embarrassed grin to see Mary. The other mare wore a frown on her face while she tapped a hoof on the floor.

Erin swallowed and trotted up, sheepishly accepting the dress from Mary. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, um… Heh, never mind.”

Mary tilted her head then, and smiled. “It’s fine, I don’t mind you looking at all.” She looked down at the dress she had brought, which was a light green with yellow hems. “Just... be careful when you touch. I’ve broken quite a few things in the house with these hooves while trying to… adjust…”

Erin nodded absently as she set about the act of getting dressed. Putting on the dress meant that she would have to remove her saddlebags, first. A quick couple of tugs on the belly band with her teeth loosened them, and then she lifted them off of her back and placed them on the floor.

“Oh, wow, this fits really well,” she marveled a moment later as she slipped the dress on. It reached to just past her tail and hung down nearly to the floor.

Mary responded in perhaps the first cheerful tone she’d used yet. “Oh, I’m glad! My husband’s mother made me a lot of clothing to… well, accommodate my change. That one actually doesn’t fit me too great at the moment, actually... It needs to be let out some, I think...”

Erin craned her neck around from one side to the other, appreciating the pony shaped clothing; it was something she hadn’t worn that often, even around the Harmonics facility.

“A-Anyway,” Mary began to say, drawing Erin’s attention once more. “If it’s alright, I actually really want to ask you a great many questions about, well, everything. Are you-”

Mary was interrupted as the back door came open and then slammed shut again with a bang the jingling of bells, followed shortly after by a loud voice. Erin jumped in surprise, whirling around on her hooves in a tight circle to face the commotion.

“Hohoho! Mary! Stan! I brought giiiifts!” the voice sang.

An older man walked in, carrying several large and ornamental gift bags, each filled near to bursting with colorfully wrapped boxes. On top of his graying head of hair was a Santa’s hat, ringed with at least a dozen bells. His upper lip held the bushiest mustache Erin had ever seen.

The man stopped in the doorway, and stared quietly for a few seconds at the two ponies. Eventually, his look of slack-jawed surprised changed into a sly grin.

"I always did ask my son if he lived in a barn whenever he didn't close the doors,” he said, placing the bags on the ground. “I didn't expect him to take it to heart as an adult! Looks like we have all sorts of ponies hanging around, now, huh Mary?"

Mary apparently wasn’t in the mood for the man’s shenanigans. Erin heard her mutter under her breath, “Of course you really wouldn’t be surprised by the sudden, unannounced presence of a real little pony, would you, Herbert?”

With obviously strained patience, Mary looked up, her face a believable sort of cheerful, and said, “Herbert, how nice of you to visit unannounced. What are you doing here?”

“Now, now, Mary, you wound me,” Herbert replied. He strode past Mary and Erin, acting very nonchalant, and patted a hand on Mary’s head mid stride. “Don’t you remember? I told you I’d be bringing the kids’ gifts by today!”

Mary sighed, fending him off with one hoof. “That’s true... Sorry, I forgot. It’s been eventful today,” she said, with a glance in Erin’s direction.

“Looks like it,” Herbert said with a grin. “So, are you going to introduce me to the newcomer?”

“Oh!” Mary blushed pink under her coat. “Of course!” Oddly enough, she stood up on her hind legs to do this. Her front hooves came together in front of herself, and she gestured between Herbert and Erin for introductions.

“Herbert, this is Erin. Erin, this is my father-in-law, Herbert.” Mary leaned forward and stage-whispered, “He thinks he’s funny. It’s best not to encourage him.”

Erin chuckled and smiled at the older man. “Nice to meet you, Herbert.” She held out a hoof and the man, after a brief moment of hesitation, reached out and shook it.

Herbert’s eyes seemed to grow wider, and a huge grin formed underneath his bushy mustache, which, Erin realized, look a great deal like one of those little sweeper brooms that come with a dustpan.

“Well, nice to meet a pony around here that’s polite!” Herbert chuckled and shot a wink at Mary. “This one here never did get the whole love and tolerate message down,” he went on, laughing harder.

Erin cracked a lopsided smile. The what and what message? she thought, confused.

Mary grinned back at him, but her eyes held a decidedly dangerous look. “Hah hah, oh Herbert, you’re so charming.” Her pleasant expression faded so quickly that Erin was no longer sure it had ever been there.

“Now that that’s out of the way, would you mind waiting in the other room for a while, Herbert?” Mary asked, giving the older man a narrowed look.

Herbert tilted his head in a curious fashion, apparently unphased by the look of death Mary was giving him. “What? Do you girls— Oh, heh, mares,” he corrected, “have secret pony stuff to discuss?”

“Well, more or less. And you’re being distracting,” Mary replied, her voice strained. “What I really wanted to talk to Erin about was—”

“Sandwiches! Order up!” Anna announced, bringing a tray loaded with them into the room with her. “I hope everypony likes PB&J, ‘cuz that’s all I know how to make!”

Erin stared at the massive heap of sandwiches being walked out of the kitchen. Next to her, Mary groaned and asked in an exasperated voice, “Sweetie, did you use the whole loaf of bread?”

“Yeah! You eat like a horse, after all.” Anna laughed out loud. “And it’s a good thing, too, because Grandpa is here now, too. Hi, Grandpa!” The little girl put the tray down on the dining room table and rushed over to give the older man a hug.

“Heeeey, squirt!” Herbert said, kneeling down to hug his granddaughter. “I’ll grab one of those sandwiches, if you don’t mind.”

Anna giggled as Herbert stood up and nabbed one, taking a huge bite and going, “mmmm!” After a few seconds of chewing, a slightly distressed look came over the old man’s face.

“Cah I geh some waha?” he asked, his mouth apparently full of peanut butter.

Anna, giggling again, took her grandpa by the hand and walked him out of the dining room and into the kitchen. After a moment, the sound of the tap turning on could be heard.

“Bring out a pitcher of water and some glasses, please!” Mary called out.

“‘Kay!” Anna replied from the kitchen.

Erin blinked at the scene, then shrugged and nabbed a sandwich from the table. She really was pretty hungry, after all. It was peanut butter and grape jelly, one of her favorites, though it was a little sloppily made. Crunchy peanut butter, which wasn’t her favorite, but she was a guest and wasn’t about to complain.

She chewed for a while, retaking her seat, then glanced up and saw Mary staring at her from across the table. She stopped her mastication for a moment, raising an eyebrow.

“How are you doing that so easily?” Mary asked.

Erin held up a hoof to indicate she needed more time. Just as she swallowed, Anna came back out with a pitcher of tap water and two plastic tumblers. The little girl put the two glasses side-by-side, poured them about two-thirds full, and passed one over to Erin.

“Thanks!” she said. Using an old trick she’d learned back when she first became a pony, she balanced the bottom of the glass on her hoof, braced it with the other hoof, and tilted it back while she drank.

She put the glass back down and turned to Mary and finally responded to the other mare’s question. “Doing what so easily?”

“Eating. And drinking,” Mary replied. “It took me a while to get the hang of it and I still make a mess…”

Erin shrugged. “Practice, I guess?”

Erin looked around, once again feeling awfully out of place. This whole situation just felt surreal. What she needed, she decided upon finishing up her sandwich, was to get a sense of reality back. And to do that…

“Can I borrow your phone?” she asked Mary again. The other mare looked startled at the suggestion.

“You know what a phone is?” Mary asked, eyes wide. Before Erin could answer, Mary held a hoof up to her chin and murmured, “Sure, I guess. Anna, could you go get the phone?”

The girl stopped goggling at Erin long enough to say, “Sure, Mom.” She hopped down from her own, then scampered back out into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a cordless phone. Erin took it in her hooves and stared at the tiny buttons, lost for a moment.

“Um. Could I have a pencil or something to dial with?” She asked eventually.

“I could dial for you,” Anna offered cheerfully.

“Oh, that works,” Erin replied, and then hoofed over the phone. She rattled off Maggie’s cellphone number, and Anna punched in the numbers, turned on the speakerphone, then set the phone down on the table.

The phone rang three times, then there was a click. “Hello, Papa Gio’s Pizza. How can I help you?”

“Uh…” Erin replied. Confusion set in for a moment, feeling quite sure she hadn’t gotten the number wrong.

“You’d rather have a pizza than my sandwiches?” Anna asked, pouting.

“No! I, er…” Erin stammered, and looked to Mary for help.

“Hello?” came the voice from the phone, sounding slightly annoyed, now. “Papa Gio’s Pizza, how can I help you?”

“Sorry!” Erin replied. “I think we dialed wrong!”

Anna grinned and picked up the phone, pressing the disconnect button. “Want to try again?” she asked. “Maybe I messed up.”

“Maybe, yeah, let’s try again,” Erin replied. She recited the numbers once again, slowly, watching as Anna plugged them in one after another. The phone rang again, this time being answered on the second ring.

“Papa Gio’s Pizza, how can I help you?”

Erin frowned. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought we just misdialed, but I must have the number wrong.”

“No problem. Have a good evening,” the person on the other end of the line said before hanging up.

Anna giggled and hung the phone up.

“Who are you trying to call, anyway?” Mary asked.

“My boss, Maggie. Hold on, I’m getting my tablet,” Erin said. She hopped of the chair smoothly and went over to her saddlebag to open it up. “I should have thought of this first, sorry.”

Anna made an “ooh” sound as Erin pulled the tablet out. “I didn’t know ponies had stuff like that!” the little girl said.

“For the most part, they don’t,” Erin said distractedly. She tapped the power button, then started stating voice commands. “Phone, please. Call Maggie.”

There was a pause of a few seconds before a pleasant female voice replied, “No cellular service available.”

“Huh,” Erin replied. “You guys don't have cell phone service out here?” She looked up and over at Mary, who was leaning on the table, one hoof under her chin as she stared at the tablet. Her expression looked strained again.

“Yes, of course we do,” Mary answered shortly.

Erin swallowed a little, surprised at the sharpness in the other mare’s tone. “Oh… well… that’s good.”

Mary winced, then sucked in a breath. “Sorry, it’s alright. I just had a few questions I was hoping you could answer, that’s all. I don’t suppose you could tell me—”

“Mary!” Herbert called out from the kitchen. “You’re out of that brandy-eggnog again!” After a second he added, “You’re also out of normal, separated brandy and eggnog!”

Mary whipped her head towards the old man, her braid soaring out behind her. “Herbert, it’s two in the afternoon!” she yelled back. “Please tell me you’re not planning on drinking right now!?”

Erin blinked in surprise and glanced down at her watch again. It was just after eleven, according to the display. She’d lost time somewhere.

“Uh, no,” Herbert said as he came back into the room, a rather shifty look on his face. “Well, not really. Just a screwdriver, now.” He put his hands up defensively when Mary growled like an angry lioness at him. “What? It’s got orange juice in it! It’s almost like a breakfast thing!”

“No drinking!” Mary said, clapping a hoof down on the tabletop. “Especially since last week! You were so drunk you swore to me that you saw a monkey stumbling around outside near the garage, rubbing its head!”

“But I did see a monkey!” Herbert whined back, then made a gruff, old man’s harrumph. “Well, fine, have it your way then.”

“We’re out of orange juice, too, Grandpa,” Anna supplied helpfully.

Herbert looked over to his granddaughter and shrugged. “Ah, well. The vodka’s more important, anyway.”

“No vodka!” Mary shouted again, and more sternly.

Herbert acknowledged her with a nod, or perhaps not, then strode past towards Erin. “Hey, this looks cool, though,” he said, pointing to the tablet, and blissfully not acknowledging Mary’s angry stare. “I’ve never seen one like this. Mind if I take a look?”

Erin chuckled, if only to keep from feeling nervous around such a… comfortable sort of family scene. “Sure, I guess?” she replied, passing the tablet over.

“This screen looks amazing!” Herbert said. He sat down in one of the dining room chairs. Anna stood behind him, looking over his shoulder at the screen. “It’s about time they made something that didn’t look like it was from ten years ago. Is this 3D?”

Erin shrugged. “It’s a couple of years old, now. I got it as a graduation present from my mom.”

Mary coughed again, speaking up. “If it’s okay with everyone else, could I ask Erin about—”

Mary’s question was cut off once again as Anna suddenly shrieked, "Oh my god, more ponies! Real ponies!"

Erin hopped down off of her chair and went over, standing up on her hind legs to get a better look. They were looking in her recent pictures folder, now. The picture in question was of Twilight and the rest of her Ponyville friends, all of them sitting around the table in the shared dining area they’d used while staying in Canterlot.

The ponies were all smiling with the exception of Fluttershy, who was hiding behind Applejack with only a little bit of her pink mane visible.

“Oh, yeah,” Erin replied. “Those are my friends. That’s Twilight Sparkle, and that’s Applejack, and over there is…” she trailed off, noticing that everyone was staring at her. “What?”

“You mean, it’s real?” Anna said, sounding breathless. “Really, really real? All of it? Oooh, I knew it!”

“Uh…” Erin glanced over at Mary, who was actually standing up in her chair with her front hooves on the table while trying to get a look at the tablet. “Yes, I suppose so?”

Was it possible that these people thought that Harmonics was all some sort of elaborate hoax? But, then, they had a pony right here, in their dining room. The little girl was calling her “Mom”, for goodness sake. She could only conclude something really weird was going on here.

“That… is… so… AWESOME!” Anna shrieked. Then she squealed, clapping her hands while hopping up and down.

“Anna, calm down!” Mary snapped. The little girl, while still obviously excited, at least stopped with the noises. The mare then frowned down at the tablet. “Hmm. They don’t look much like the cartoon,” she said.

Erin shrugged. Even as an animation geek, she’d never really gotten into the recent explosion of animation efforts that had started up after first contact. Especially the most popular one: "Pretty Pony Princess Power Hour".

“Heh, well, I haven’t seen any of the cartoon things myself, but that’s what they really look like,” she confirmed in a cheerful tone.

Mary looked up sharply at the confirmation. “Right. You see, that’s what I’ve been meaning to ask about.” Both of her hooves began prodding at one another in a gesture that made her look nervous. “You’re obviously from there, Equistra—”

“Equestria,” Erin interjected. "And, actually—"

“—Equestria, whatever, you’ve been there. And now you’re here, right?” Mary looked up, her gaze steely.

“Yes?” Erin asked, confused.

“Well,” Mary began slowly, steepling her hooves and raising a scrutinous eyebrow. “The only reason that I can think of why an Equestrian pony would be here would be to fix whatever did this to me. Unless you’re lost, I guess...”

Erin looked her over. “Did what?”

Mary scowled. “Are you really this dense?” she shouted, then shuddered. She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m just frustrated, that’s all. I shouldn’t be so rude.”

Erin raised her ears after they’d reflexively flattened down against her head. “It’s… okay,” she said cautiously.

“Look, I’m just hoping you know something about humans turning into ponies,” Mary said. “And optimistically, if there’s a way to fix me.”

“Humans into ponies? A little bit, yeah,” Erin replied with a confused grin while wondering what Mary was wanting to “fix”.

Mary’s eyes lit up. “And how to turn them back again?”

“Well, that was the plan,” Erin said, thoroughly lost, but still hoping that the conversation would steer towards an explanation.

There was an ominous moment of quiet.

“What… what plan?” Mary asked in a dangerously quiet voice. “There was a plan to turn humans into ponies?”

“Of course,” Erin said, running a hoof through her mane, one eyebrow raised. “I thought everyone knew about it. It was all over the news! You know, Project Harmonics and Ascent and all that?”

Erin glanced around, seeing only confusion on everyone else’s faces. She cleared her throat. “But they’ll be changing me back soon enough, so—”

“Wait, wait,” Mary said, holding up a hoof. “Changing you back? What do you…” Her eyes widened as she trailed off. “You used to be a human, too!?”

“Well, yeah, I… what do you mean, ‘too’?” Erin’s own eyes widened as the sudden realization hit her.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say!” Mary said, throwing her hooves up in frustration. “I was a normal human woman a while ago, and now I’m a pony!”

Erin gaped, completely at a loss. She glanced over at Herbert, then at Anna. Both of them had retreated to the kitchen doorway upon Mary’s outburst, but they nodded. She furrowed her brow and thought back to Anna calling Mary ‘mom’. Huh, I guess that makes more sense than… whatever the alternative would be.

Erin spoke up quickly. “Did you… um...” She trailed off just as quickly, and absently ran a hoof through her mane again, her headache starting to come back. “You went through Ascent, too, then? At the Harmonics facility?”

Mary’s mouth work for a full second, looking for all its worth to be struggling to find words. “I don’t know what ‘Ascent’ is!” she finally exclaimed. “Is that some kind of magic thing?”

“Nooo,” Erin began, shaking her head. “It’s more of a nanotechnology thing. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of—”

“Nanotechnology?” Mary interrupted, then took a quick breath and shook her head. “Erin, I don’t understand anything what you’re saying. What does that have to do with ponies?”

Erin frowned in confusion. “You’ve seriously never heard of Ascent?” At her blank look, she added, “You have to know. Project Harmonics, finding other worlds?” Still no sort of response from any of the family, and she started to get seriously worried. “How about the Black Tide? You know, the gigantic space pudding that smashed into India in 2035 and started eating our planet?”

Mary blinked dumbly for a moment, and Anna turned to ask Herbert something too quiet to hear.

“What the heck are you talking about?” Mary asked, sounding just as lost. “It’s only 2023.”

Erin felt a chill run down her spine. She pressed one hoof to her temple and held the other one up to the three family members, trying to indicate she needed some time.

“Wait…” she said, trying to think. “Just… wait, okay?”

Erin’s already tenuous grasp on reality started slipping away. There was no way that anyone wouldn’t know about the Black Tide, at least no one who hadn’t spent the last few years living under a rock. Then there was what Mary had said about the year…

“You said it’s 2023?” Erin asked cautiously.

“Yes! December 2023!” Mary replied, honesty and seriousness written all over her face. “What are those things you were talking about? Do they have to do with me being turned into a pony?”

Erin felt a little out of breath. “I don’t… Okay, there’s only one explanation.” She looked up from staring at the table; the other three in the room gave her their undivided attention. “I know it sounds crazy, but… If you guys aren’t just messing with me, then I must have come back in time somehow.”

There was a tense silence.

Rather than respond to Erin’s claims, Mary turned towards Herbert and pointed a stern hoof at him. “Do. not. start, Herbert,” Mary growled in warning as she glowered towards her father-in-law.

Herbert for his part, was already wearing a silly grin. He stood at a mock attention, arms at his sides, and shouted, “Marty! We gotta take the DeLorean back to the year nineteen-eighty-fi—” He was interrupted by an angry shout.

“Get out of the room!” Mary yelled. Angry lungfuls of air rushed in and out of her nostrils, until finally she sighed, pressing two hooves to her forehead. Just as quick, she looked back up to Erin again. “This doesn’t make sense, that’s crazy, it’s—” After a pause, she relented. “Honestly not even the weirdest thing I’ve encountered…”

Mary collapsed onto the table with a groan and dropped her head into her folded up hooves. Behind her, the elderly fellow approached looking slightly ashamed as he began to pat her back comfortingly.

Erin watched her for a moment, wearing a worried frown. “Well, I know it sounds crazy, but I honestly think that’s the most likely thing. Time travel, I mean. See, there was this experiment that was supposed to get me to Equestria, but I ended up here, twelve years before I left. Unless you’re kidding about the date?”

“Why would I kid about that?” Mary raised her voice again, and clunked a hoof on the table for emphasis. She took a quick breath, visibly trying to stay calm. “All I want is to go back to being myself. I’m not going to play stupid jokes at a time like this!”

“Heeey,” Herbert spoke up slowly, changing the subject. “If you’re from the future, you could tell me who won the last dozen Super Bowls, right?”

Erin gaped at him, then slowly looked down to see he was still holding her tablet. Alarm bells went off in her head as a lifetime’s worth of watching a variety of sci-fi shows suddenly came to mind.

“Herbert?” she asked carefully. “Could I please have my tablet back?”

“Hm…” the old man looked down at the tablet, then up at Erin. A sly look came into his eye. “Is that information in here? I’ll just… just a little peek, okay?” He began to back up from Mary.

Before he could get far, Erin hopped out of her chair and trotted towards the man quickly. “Please, give it back.” She held out a hoof.

“Just looking won’t hurt!” Herbert protested, his grin widening by the second.

“The future could depend on it!” Erin shouted desperately. Was this idiot trying to create a universe-ending paradox? “I’m not even into sports!”

“Well, there should be something juicy on here, right?” Herbert laughed, tapping frantically as he began to play keep-away with Erin, who was trying to snag the thing with either a hoof or her mouth, jaws snapping.

Meanwhile, Mary gaped in disbelief at what was happening before beginning to yell at her relative, while Anna laughed and cheered from the sideline.

Herbert danced away, looking far too spry for his age, all while holding the tablet over his head. Finally, Erin crouched down and leapt up, her enhanced musculature allowing her to get nearly as high as the ceiling.

“Good lord!” Herbert shouted, stumbling back as Erin’s teeth clacked shut right where the tablet had been a half second before. He ended up falling back-first into the wall and knocking down a picture, which cracked and shattered on impact. Anna shrieked in surprise.

“That’s enough!” Mary shouted. Everyone in the room, human and pony alike, stood and looked back at her guiltily. “Herbert, you give her that back! Erin, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do any more pony gymnastics in my house! Anna, you… Well, you didn’t actually do anything bad, sweetie, but could you go and get the vacuum? Your grandfather has some glass to clean up.”

Herbert straightened up, looking sheepish, and handed the tablet back over to Erin slowly. “Ah heh, sorry about that… Was just kidding, of course.”

Erin took it back, eying him doubtfully.

“Well, mostly kidding,” he added.

Erin, her mouth full of tablet, took in an exasperated breath and turned to put it back in her saddlebags. When she was done, she looked up to see that Herbert was already picking up the bigger pieces of broken glass and putting them carefully in his hand.

Erin spotted Mary, supervising, but also giving her a very serious look of consideration. She looked around, not sure what to say after what had been brought up before… then spotted the picture laying on the ground.

“That’s the family,” Mary said abruptly. She met Erin’s gaze for a moment, then begin gesturing to each face as she introduced them. “You’ve met Anna. Next to her is my oldest, Bobby. Then there’s my husband, and there…” Mary sighed wistfully. “That’s me. Or, it was me.”

Erin blinked, studying the three smiles and one scowl coming from the picture. “You… uh, have a nice family.”

“Thanks,” Mary said, flashing a brief smile.

“So, you really were a human, huh?” Erin asked.

“Yes, until a few months ago,” Mary replied with a grimace.

Erin gave her a conflicted frown, about to explain thing, then sighed. “I’m really sorry, but I shouldn’t say anything,” she apologized to the room at large. “If I really did travel back in time, then I can’t really say anything about the future. Who knows what could happen?”

Mary’s face fell into a look of despair, her eyes widening and her ears laying back. “Well, we don’t know anything will happen! Can’t you tell me anything?”

“I don’t… Well, I don’t know,” Erin said, suddenly unsure. “Maybe? How did you end up like this, anyway?”

After all, she reflected, it’s more than a decade before Ascent would be ready to ponify anyone.

“I don’t know,” Mary confessed. “It just happened. One day I was normal, the next, my hair had changed to these colors. After one more night, I woke up as a pony, just like that.”

Erin’s eyes widened. “Wow, really?” she asked. Mary’s desperate look shifted to an indignant one, so Erin quickly added, “I don’t doubt you, it’s just… kind of incredible, you know?”

“I suppose,” Mary said, then sighed. “Look, you’re my best lead so far as to what’s happened to me. Which is funny, because I just got a different one recently… Anyway, I know I’m based off of a pony from that old cartoon series, and I seem to have magical powers, but I have no idea how this happened to me. Can’t you help?”

“Er… Cartoon series?” Erin asked cautiously, vaguely remembering someone mentioning something about that earlier. “What cartoon series?”

“My Little Pony!” Anna shouted out of nowhere. She was lugging a vacuum cleaner into the dining room. “It’s all about Equestria and Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony!”

Just when I start thinking I knew what’s going on… Erin thought, her face scrunching up. The room swayed a little around her as she tried to absorb this new information.

“Okay, I just… Seriously, is this a joke?” Erin asked desperately. “I mean, you don’t know about the Tide, or Harmonics, but you know about Twilight and the Elements? Their world wasn’t discovered until, assuming I’m understanding all this right, fifteen years from now!”

Mary quirked an eyebrow. Next to Erin, Anna pouted her face up briefly, eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’ll just show you.” Her face brightened up again just as quick, then she ran off. The sound of heavy thuds gave Erin the impression that Anna had gone upstairs.

Mary sighed, eyes rolling. “We should probably move to the family room for now,” she suggested. “Herbert, when you’ve cleaned that up, please wrap the rest of the sandwiches in plastic and put them in the fridge? No point in letting them go to waste.”

“Sure, Mary,” Herbert said with a guilty expression as he looked for an outlet.

Erin, feeling more lost than ever, which she hadn’t thought possible, started trotting after Mary. She hesitated at the doorway, then turned back, giving Herbert a glare as she picked up her saddlebags in her mouth.

“I wasn’t going to look!” the old man protested, waving his hands in front of him. He grinned before he finished though, spoiling the act.

Unable to talk, Erin settled for rolling her eyes before walking away.

The room they ended up in was apparently a living room. There was a cozy fireplace, already lit, as well as a fairly impressive christmas tree, stretching all the way to the ceiling. It was literally littered with huge ornaments, the kind Erin would usually see in catalogues but never actually buy.

Mary had a seat, while Erin sat across from her, setting her saddlebags down on the floor by her back hooves. There was some fidgeting and throat-clearing as the two of them tried to bridge the incredibly awkward silence that rose between them while Herbert used the vacuum. To Erin, it seemed like the old man was taking enough time to clean the entire carpet.

Once the vacuum wound down, they could hear Herbert wrapping up the cord and lugging it away.

“So,” Mary said, breaking the silence. “To get back on track, ignoring the other inconsistencies we seem to be running into… You used to be a human, too?”

“I, uh…” Erin shook her head. That particular cat was already well out of the bag. “Well, I probably shouldn’t have told you that, since I seem to be a time traveler... but yes.”

“And you actually changed on purpose?” Mary prompted, not really seeming to mind the other details in the least.

Erin put on a doubtful look, but went on. “I don't think I should give you any more details. Who knows what ripples I could cause in time?”

“Erin, please.” Mary leaned forward with an earnest expression of desperation on her face. “I just want to change back. If your people could change you, do you think they could change me, too?”

Erin’s ears pressed firmly down against her head. “Um…”

She was rescued at that moment by the sound of a young child thumping her way down a staircase. A couple of seconds later, a beaming Anna came around the corner, bearing a laptop that seemed a little thick and old-fashioned to Erin’s eyes. And, much to Erin’s increasingly-strained sanity, what appeared to be a Rainbow Dash plushie tucked up under her arm.

“Look, look!” the little girl said, turning the laptop so Erin could see.

Some music started, and then came a voice that sounded eerily like Princess Celestia. ”Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…

Erin watched with something like awe as the story she’d once read about the rise of Nightmare Moon was played out on the screen. The story ended, switching to an animated version of Twilight Sparkle. Immediately, Erin’s brain threw up its figurative arms and refused to deal with anything it was seeing.

Then came the music and intro, which jarred Erin back into something resembling alertness, especially once Anna started singing along. Things weren’t helped any when Herbert, obviously listening in from the dining room, started singing along as well, loudly and off-key.

“This is called ‘My Little Pony’?” Erin asked, not exactly sure what to make of it. “You know that sounds a little… well, creepy, right? I mean, these ponies are real people.”

“It’s from a toy line,” Mary said with more than a hint of impatience from where she was sitting. “I remember it from when I was a little girl. They made the cartoon so they could sell more of them.”

Erin snorted, caught between amusement and disgust at the thought of her friends being used to hawk a toy line. The intro music continued, showing each of her Ponyville friends in turn. Each of them looked fairly close to their real-world counterparts, except for Princess Celestia. To be fair, though, there was probably no way to accurately capture that mane and tail in animation unless you’d seen it for yourself.

“Anna, honey, could you turn that off? Miss Erin and I have some things to talk about,” Mary said with a pointed look towards the other mare.

“Aww…” Anna replied, already pouting.

They were interrupted by an angry shout from the kitchen as Herbert shouted, “Dammit!”

“Herbert, language!” Mary shouted back in his direction.

“Sorry! But I just cut my finger on this God… blessed glass.”

“What, were you playing with it or something?” Mary asked, exasperated.

“No, there was a sliver of it stuck in the vacuum’s roller brush!” There was a pause, followed by Herbert calling, “Where do you keep the bandages, again? It’s kind of… bloody.”

Mary sighed and pressed a hoof to her temple. “All right. I’m going to help Herbert get his finger bandaged up. I guess you can watch the show until then.”

The mare hopped down out of her chair as Anna cheered and pressed the play button again. With the intro song over, the action returned to Twilight. It was surreal for Erin, to say the least, hearing her friend’s voice coming out of a cartoon. Still, something was definitely off.

“Wait, wait, wait. This is supposed to be Canterlot, right?” Erin said.

Anna nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

Erin pointed a hoof at the screen. “That’s Minuette and Lemony Gem. They both live in Ponyville! And, look! Lyra! She lives in Ponyville, too! Or, at least she used to. This is all wrong!”

“Well, it’s just a cartoon,” Anna said defensively. “They don’t have to get it right.” She cast a worried look at Erin, then asked, “Do they?”

“Well!” Erin said, then floundered, calming down a bit. “Well… Um, I suppose not?”

Now at a complete loss, Erin returned her attention to the laptop screen. It seemed so weird that some random cartoon would get so much right about her friends, while still making other glaring mistakes. Then Pinkie Pie’s first appearance came around. Erin watched as she suspended herself in the air while gasping.

“I suppose if anypony is going to be a cartoon, it’s going to be Pinkie,” Erin muttered as a sense of dreamlike unreality washed over her. “Can we shut it off?” she asked numbly as she got to her hooves.

Anna, a frown on her face, nodded and complied. “Are you alright?” The girl’s cheerful tone was gone, replaced by one of concern.

“Oh, fine! Just fine!” she said, then giggled with a tinge of near-hysteria. “It’s just not every day you go back in time and see your friends depicted as cartoon characters on a TV show intended to sell toys to little girls when they shouldn’t even be known about.” A manic grin pulled across her face. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine! I just… just need to… I just need some time to think, okay?”

Barely registering Anna’s wide-eyed nod, Erin trotted back out into the now-empty dining room. The lights were off, meaning that the only light that came in was streaming through the window. Erin reached out and closed the blinds, preferring to immerse the room in darkness rather than looking out at the snow outside. Somewhere, off in the distance, she could hear Mary and Herbert talking, along with some water running.

Erin climbed up into a chair, rearranging her borrowed dress slightly when it pinched her back leg. She then sighed and put her head down on the table, staring blankly at the table while she tried to come to grips with what the heck was going on around here.

~~*~~

Outside of the home, a red truck pulled into the driveway, the tires crunching loudly through the snow as it made its final approach, then stopped to park.

Stan Morris, Mary’s husband, stretched as he got out of his old, rusty pick-up truck, and flinched at the bright sun glaring up from the white snow surrounding his house. He blinked and turned away, wishing that he’d kept his sunglasses on instead of leaving them behind.

Herbert's car was in the driveway, he noted with a grimace. He’d meant to get home earlier in order to act as a buffer between Mary and his old man. Still, the lack of screaming and sounds of breakage coming from the house indicated that they might be actually getting along for the moment.

As Stan approached the back door, he noticed that there were an unusually large number of hoofprints in the snow. Apparently, Mary had decided to get outside for a while. It might have been cold out, but he heartily approved. Being cooped up inside all day wasn’t good for her. His wife getting some fresh air from time to time was worth the risk of her being spotted, which was admittedly small considering where they lived in the middle of nowhere.

Once inside, he hung up his coat and made his way through the kitchen, stopping when he saw jars of peanut butter and jelly still out on the kitchen counter. With a grumbling but good-natured sigh, he went over to put them away, only to see that the knives used to make the sandwiches were still out as well, laying on the counter. Bread crumbs littered the area, and there were smears of both peanut butter and grape jelly on the countertop.

Stan grimaced, then shook his head with a wry smile and started cleaning up the mess, putting the lids back on both jars and then putting them away, in the cupboard and fridge respectively. Then, with a wet paper towel, he cleaned the countertop. He’d have whichever kid made the sandwiches sweep the floor later to get the rest of the bread crumbs.

Once some semblance of order had been returned to the kitchen, he made his way into the dining room, wondering where Mary was. The room was completely dark with the blinds down, and he was about to turn on the light just as he made out a shape in the dim room. Mary, wearing one of her dresses, and was slumped over the table, her head down and resting on her forelimbs.

Stan’s eyes were still recovering from the brightness outside, so he couldn’t really see her clearly, but the general set of her posture indicated that something was weighing heavily on her mind. That, and the fact that her mane looked to be arranged into a messy pile on her head rather than her usual ponytail or braid, told him that something was wrong. Oddly, it seemed she had finally recolored it.

Guilt came at him as he realized it was probably at least partially his fault. He knew that Mary hadn’t felt like a real woman since her change. And he knew that his personality, while he’d tried to be supportive, may have been lacking. He’d been physically stand-offish sometimes, and, while he wouldn’t lie about whether or not he found her attractive as a pony, there was no reason he couldn’t at least let her know he cared.

He walked quietly over to his wife and knelt down. She must have heard him at the last moment, because her ears swiveled up and her head started turning. He didn’t wait for her, instead wrapping his arms around her chest and pulling her to him in a firm hug as she squeaked in surprise.

“Ah, g’day, lass. The new hair is quite fetching.” Stan chuckled, continuing past the sweet talk more seriously. “Mar… look, I know things seem rough,” he said, pulling her head into his shoulder and stroking her mane. “But trust me. Together, we can get through this. I will never leave you, and I will never—”

“Stanley Morris! What in the world do you think you’re doing?!” Mary’s voice shouted. From behind him.

Stan’s head jerked around to see his wife standing in the doorway, her eyes wide. Herbert, a wide, stupid grin plastered over his face, was also staring at him with twinkling eyes. There was a strange disconnect in Stan’s head, and then suddenly the math added up. Very, very slowly, he turned his head back to the figure he was hugging.

A strange and unfamiliar pony stared back at him with wide and shocked eyes.

“Uhh…” was pretty much all Stan could manage at that moment.

Somewhere in the background, his father was laughing, a hearty, dry cackle that managed to cover the entire room. While Stan’s brain was still trying to find traction, the pony in his arms blinked a few times, then slowly started grinning.

“Why, Mister Morris,” the pony said, fluttering her eyelashes. “I’m flattered, but I do believe you’re a married man.”

Stan jumped back with a yelp as Herbert erupted into a full-blown belly laugh. As he staggered to his feet, Stan looked at his wife and pointed a finger at the strange pony.

“Who the heck is that?!” he demanded.

Her scowl having melted a little, even Mary had a grin on her face at his discomfort, though hers looked begrudging. “That’s Erin. She’s a pony who claims she’s from the future and also used to be human.”

Stan grabbed the back of a nearby chair as he felt his knees go wobbly. He realized his jaw was hanging open and closed it with a snap. “What?” he asked, not grasping what was said.

“I don’t think I am, though,” Erin said. “From the future, I mean. I’ve thought about it.”

“What?” Stan managed again.

Mary had a hoof raised as if she was ready to go on talking. She paused, confusion on her face now, too. “What do you mean?”

Stan, still trying to catch up, edged around the room until he stood next to Herbert, who was still old-man giggling at him.

“What?” he whispered to his father. The old man held a finger up to his lips and snerked in response.

Erin went on. “I mean, that cartoon. I’ve never heard about it, and I’m an animation geek. I would have heard about it. Not to mention, Twilight and her friends are kind of famous on my world, now. Someone would have said, ‘hey, you know those ponies from another world? Well, guess what, there was this cartoon way back when’ or something.” Erin shrugged after she'd made her point. “So, yeah. I would have heard about it that way, too.”

“So, you didn’t travel in time,” Mary summed up. “What does that mean?”

“Alternate universe,” the strange mare said at the same time that Herbert did. The old man winked back at her, and Erin grinned, rolling her eyes before she continued.

“So, alternate worlds...” Erin brushed her unruly mane, made slightly messier by Stan, out of her eyes. “You know, like they had in Star Trek all the time? Or Stargate? Or... pretty much anything with ‘star’ in the name?”

While the mares were talking, Stan whispered a question to Herbert. “Dad, seriously. What’s going on?”

Herbert grinned, finally settling down. “Okay, quick recap. Apparently, Erin showed up in your backyard this afternoon. Mary thought she was here to fix her, Erin had no idea that she wasn’t in her own world, and hilarity ensued. Also, you’re out of brandy, orange juice, and egg nog. Plenty of vodka, though. For the moment. You may need more soon. So, you might want to get on top of that.”

Stan’s expression narrowed at him, then he grimaced. “Just when I thought this whole pony thing couldn’t get any weirder,” he muttered.

~~*~~

Mary was just returning from a trip to the restroom, her hooves clip-clopping loudly on the wooden floor that made up the majority of her home. The sound of cheerful Christmas music leaked from the family room where everyone, human and pony alike, were talking pleasantly now that things had mostly calmed down.

Mary was still on edge though, which had been why she had necessitated the break, more to gather her thoughts than anything. Entering the family room, she heard her daughter and the new stranger having a discussion, apparently about that cartoon show.

“No, Rarity isn’t like that at all,” Erin was saying to Anna as she frowned at the little girl. The otherworldly pony was sitting in one of the chairs, a fresh cup of coffee at her side thanks to Stan’s efforts in the kitchen.

“She sure seems to be.” For her part, Anna had her arms crossed and a doubtful look on her face. “She’s always being greedy and snobby and stuff.”

“Then that cartoon has it wrong!” Erin shot back, becoming a little heated before she reigned herself in and continued more calmly. “She’s one of the kindest, most patient and generous mares I’ve ever met.”

Anna huffed indignantly. “Nuh-uh. Fluttershy is Kindness, everyone knows that much.”

“She is,” Erin agreed. “That doesn’t mean that other ponies can’t be kind, too. All of them were really nice to me.”

“I still say Rainbow Dash is the coolest,” Anna asserted firmly.

Erin opened her mouth, hesitated, then grinned. “I can’t argue with that.”

“So, you’re gonna watch them all, then?” Anna asked eagerly, grinning.

Erin glanced over to a nearby end-table, where her tablet was hooked up to the Morris’s wi-fi and busily downloading all the seasons of the pony show.

“That’s going to be my top priority, I promise!” she said, adding in a nod for good measure.

“If we could get back on topic?” Mary spoke up abruptly. She was in the middle of settling in beside her husband on the loveseat in the room. “Now that you know telling us stuff isn’t going to break the universe or whatever, could you tell us how you turned into a pony? And, more importantly, how you’re going to go back to being human?”

“Sure, I have some time.” Erin glanced at her wristwatch yet again, then shrugged. “Well, to put it simply, we learned a lot about nanotechnology in my version of reality. It was to help fight the Black Tide.”

“That 'giant space pudding' you were talking about, right?” Mary asked, trying to envision it. She had a bunch of questions about that, too. Like, why didn’t they just nuke it. And, once she got through the more important answers about how to become human again, maybe she’d even ask about it.

Erin nodded. “Yeah. It was using nanotechnology to eat our planet, so we ramped up our own research to try and beat it at its own game.”

Erin took another sip of her coffee, and Mary felt a twinge of annoyance at how easily the other woman-turned-mare was able to manipulate things with her hooves.

“And that’s how you were changed?” Mary prompted eagerly.

“Yeah,” Erin said. “They stuck me on a respirator, induced a coma, and dropped me into a tub full of them. It took a couple weeks, but when I woke up I was a pony.”

The humans and Mary exchanged a look.

“That sounds pretty crazy,” Herbert said, blunt as ever.

Erin laughed and shrugged. “It was necessary, given what I was being tasked to do, and I never really regretted it.”

“Let’s get to how you’re changing back,” Mary said, not willing to be derailed any further.

“Same way, really,” Erin said, then took another sip from her cup. “Drop into a vat of nanomachines and wake up weeks later as the old me.”

Mary grunted in annoyance as she considered it. “Any chance I could get a crack at it?”

Erin looked surprised, but only for a short while before she offered a wry grin. “I suppose I should have figured out you’d ask.” She leaned back and closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I don’t know, honestly. It would be… tricky.”

Mary felt her heart sinking in her chest. But what Erin said next slammed it right back up into her throat.

“Still, it’s not impossible. After all, if I’m here now I should be able to get back… Even if the experiment did go wrong. Once back, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.” Erin gave her a lopsided smile and added, “Keep in mind, though, that I’m not promising anything.”

Mary nodded frantically. “It’s still the best lead we’ve had so far as to getting me back to normal,” she said. “I’ll take it, whatever the odds!”

Stan, seated next to her, leaned over and gave her a hug, which Mary gratefully leaned into.

“Of course, that means figuring out some way to get you back to my version of Earth,” Erin said thoughtfully. “That might be the trickiest part, assuming I can get back myself easily.”

Mary exchanged a worried look with her husband.

“You can’t just send the nano-stuff back here?” Stan asked. “No offense, but I don’t much like the thought of my wife getting shuffled into another world for weeks at a time.”

Erin grimaced and shook her head. “That’s a definite ‘no’, sorry. It takes a huge lab and mainframe to control the nanomachines, and a highly trained staff to monitor things twenty-four hours a day until it’s done.”

“Oh…” Stan murmured, taking Mary’s left forehoof in his hand and giving it a squeeze.

“It’s worth it,” Mary said firmly, vaguely wishing she could squeeze back. “Everyone around town already thinks I’ve become a hermit, and when I come back I’ll be my old self again.” She addressed Erin, who was checking her watch again. “When will you be able to get an answer for me?”

“Well, let’s see.” The other woman-turned-pony put on a thoughtful look, tapping her hoof to her muzzle. “First, of course, I’ll have to go home. And then they’ll have to figure out if they’ll be able to even bring you here. I’ll make the return trip with your answer as soon as I can.”

Mary smiled as a huge upwelling of hope and gratitude blossomed in her chest. “Thank you. You seriously have no idea how much this means to me.”

Herbert coughed abruptly, getting everyone’s eyes and attention on him. “You still haven’t answered the most important question,” he said, leaning in from his corner of the family room.

Erin tilted her head. “What’s that?” she asked.

Herbert leaned further in, eyes squinted. “Flying cars, yes or no?”

Everyone stared at the old man for a few seconds, until Erin burst out laughing. “Sorry, that’s a no.” She grinned at him, obviously relaxing a little thanks to the easy going turn the atmosphere had taken.

“Dang,” Herbert said, looking genuinely distraught, and snapped his fingers. “Hm, what about the state of popular music?”

“The same as always,” Erin replied. “What I grew up with is awesome, everything the younger generation likes sucks.” She put on a smug look, reclining slightly to one side in the armchair she was situated in.

“Same old, same old, then,” Herbert despaired, giving his mustache a tug. “How about jet packs?”

“They haven’t taken off. Er, no pun intended,” Erin said with a chuckle. “At least, not on Earth. They’re pretty popular in the colonies, though.”

Herbert sighed. “That’s too bad— wait, what?”

Erin nodded. “The Mars colonies. They work pretty well on Mars. Lower gravity and all that, you know?”

“Mars… what? A colony?” Herbert, for once, looked too stunned to form a coherent sentence.

Erin’s eyes twinkled as she grinned back at the man. “Gotcha,” she said with another chuckle.

“Aaaw,” Herbert groaned. “I was really looking forward to Mars colonies!”

Mary sighed as everyone else in the room shared a laugh at Herbert’s expense. Once it died down, she asked something that had just occurred to her. “Erin, how are you getting home yourself?”

Erin slowed her laughter. “The auto-recall,” the other equine replied, taking another sip of her coffee. “It’s still locked on to me, according to what Maggie told me, anyway… ah, that’s my boss.”

“So, you’ll just suddenly vanish?” Mary asked, a tinge of worry in her voice.

“Yup! Just like that chimp you saw in your garage,” Erin replied with a wink in Herbert’s direction.

“I knew it!” the old man crowed, punching a fist in the air. “Ha!”

Mary scowled a little, and shot him a look. I hate it when he’s right, she thought. “Fine, fine. You saw a monkey—”

“Chimp,” Anna corrected, earning herself a glare as well.

“—chimp,” Mary went on, “You saw the chimp in the garage, after all.” Everyone laughed again, even Mary, until she spoke up again. “So, out of curiosity here, just thinking outside the box… But it sounds like you’re getting back almost on your own. What all comes back with you?”

“Oh, ah…” Erin hummed, then set her coffee down. “Whatever I’m carrying, I think. My saddlebags for sure. Oh! I should go put those on.”

As Erin stood up, so did Mary, hopping from Stan’s side on the loveseat. She moved to block the other pony’s way to the bags.

“What I mean is, what if you’re carrying me?” Mary asked, trying to keep her excitement or hope from showing too much. “Could you carry me back with you?”

Erin drew back, looking startled. “Oh… I don’t think so. And it could be dangerous.” She furrowed her brow at the idea.

Mary began to shift slightly on her hooves. “I’m willing to risk it!” she pleaded, tail swishing. “If we can get going that much sooner, I’m willing to risk it!”

“Mary,” Stan spoke up, and walked over to put a hand on her shoulder. “I think it’s better to take our time.”

Mary was quiet for a second, then shot her pleading look up towards him. “Don’t give me that, Stanley! I’ve been stuck like this for four months. Four months!” She stomped a hoof on the carpet. “I need to change back!”

“But she said this could be dangerous,” Stan protested calmly.

“Yeah,” Herbert chimed in, tilting his own coffee cup. “What if she only takes back part of you?”

Everyone in the room, including Erin, made a slightly nauseous or worried sort of face.

Mary glanced down at the floor eventually, speaking next. “I guess I hadn’t considered… that. Hey,” she started, spotting movement from the corner of her eye. “And where do you think you’re going?”

That last was directed at Erin, who had managed to sneak back, pick up her saddlebags, and was currently backing stealthily out of the room. She managed an awkward grin around the strap clenched in her teeth. “Uhh… juff goin’ ‘or ah wahlk?”

It took Mary a moment to translate that. “A walk where, exactly?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Were you going to just leave me like this?”

Erin looked shiftily around the Morris’ living room, then suddenly pointed a hoof behind them. “Ook at aht!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed.

As Mary looked behind her, she realized two things. The first was that she’d just fallen for the oldest trick in the book. The second was that Erin, saddlebags still clenched in her teeth, was making a break for the kitchen door.

Mary growled and whirled around on her hooves. “Oh, no you don’t, Erin! Come back! You promise me right now that you’ll help!” she hollered, loud as she could, as she took off after the other pony.

There was one distinct advantage that Mary had over Erin. The back door had a doorknob on it. When the alien pony slowed down to open it, Mary would be able to catch her.

Unfortunately, a tired looking teenager with long, scraggly hair had just walked in the back door, opening the escape route wide open. Erin rushed past in a blur of speed and galloping hooves, right out into the backyard.

“What the hell?!” Bobby shouted as he dove to the side.

“Robert Morris, language!” Mary scolded as she bolted past her son, her voice coming and going in a rush of wind.

“Uuuuh,” she heard Bobby say as she ran past. “There’s two of them now?”

Mary broke out into the cold and began sprinting after Erin as fast as she could, legs pumping and lungs sucking in frigid air. She was surprised to see that Erin was a considerable distance away already. She’s faster than me! How is she so much faster than me in this snow?

Just then, Erin’s front hoof caught on the hem of her borrowed dress, sending the mare sprawling.

Mary grinned immediately. “I gotcha now!” she cried, cranking up her speed.

Erin cast a panicked look back, scrambling to her hooves. She got up successfully, then shot forward like an arrow from a bow. Quickly, she outdistanced the housewife-turned-pony just behind her.

“How are you so fast?!” Mary howled as she tried to catch up.

Mary was running faster than she’d ever managed as a human, the snow flying as her hooves thundered, and her braid and tail streaming horizontally out behind her. And Erin was still pulling away, heading further out into the fields. There was no way that Mary was going to catch her now.

Unless, of course, Erin tripped once again over the hem of the dress again. Which she did, landing face-first in a snowdrift that was half as tall as she was.

“Get back here!” Mary shouted. She felt her lungs and limbs working as hard as they could, and scornfully thought, Alright, Mary, no more dessert, and no more ho-hos! Diet time for sure after this!

Up ahead, Erin managed to pull herself free, shaking her head to clear the snow off of it and out of her eyes. She looked up in time to see Mary, still charging towards her. With a yelp, she ran away, but at an angle and back towards the house.

Mary adjusted her own trajectory to try and intercept, but the other pony was just too quick, shooting right past. “Stop! Cheating!” She yelled, then set her glare rigidly, only breathing through her snout. That’s it.

As she ran towards the back door of the house, still in hot pursuit of Erin, she noticed that her family was all out watching the action.

"Hmm, I know the odds on Mary,” she heard Herbert say as she chased Erin in a tight circle around their backyard, “but the new one looks like she can get around the track. 5:1 sound good?"

“You’re on,” Stan replied, and Mary felt an irrational surge of anger and ingratitude towards her husband.

“Me too!” Anna crowed. “Go, Mom!”

“You’re too young to bet on the ponies, kiddo,” Herbert said, ruffling the girl’s hair.

“You guys are nuts,” Bobby grumbled. “I’m going to my room.”

Meanwhile, Mary had had enough of chasing the other human-turned-pony in circles around her backyard. There was one thing she could do to even the odds, though she’d only done it once and by accident a couple of months before.

Summoning her will, Mary concentrated on the ground underneath the snow. Grow, grass! Grow! she thought desperately.

She felt something happen. With a quiet rustle, she saw the thin blades of brownish grass poke up through the snow… and then stop. Erin ran through them, completely unaffected.

“Oh, come on!” Mary hollered. Her frustration gave the magic or whatever it was a firm push, and suddenly the ground around Erin’s fleeing hooves erupted, thick vines coming out to trip her up.

Mary gasped in surprise, almost stopping her run as Erin tumbled in the snow. She hadn’t meant to hurt the other mare! Then Erin stood up, apparently none the worse for wear. Mary breathed a sigh of relief as Erin shook her head as if trying to clear it.

“Gotcha!” Mary crowed as she jumped over her vines in an attempt to tackle the other equine.

Erin shot her a startled glance, just before a sound like a loud firecracker popped, and then she was gone. The air swirled about in a rush where she had just been, tossing up a plume of snow.

“Ah!” Mary’s eyes widened in panic. Deprived of her target, she belly-flopped onto the empty ground, then slid head-first into a snow drift.

Back on the porch, the observers all groaned in sympathy.

Mary popped up out of the drift, shaking her head to clear the snow out of her mane. She whirled in a circle, trying to glimpse any trace of the runaway pony from another world. It was no good; Erin was gone.

“Hey, No! Nooo! Come back!” Mary shouted at the now-empty air where Erin had just been standing. Despairingly, in a tone like a slowly deflating balloon, she whined, “But you’ve still got my dress...” She sat her rump down hard in the thick snow beneath her, just staring at the empty spot and not noticing the cold.

A few seconds later, a hand laid itself down on Mary’s shoulder. She slowly panned her head up to find Herbert and Stan there. “I was so close. I was almost human again!”

“She said she might come back,” Stan offered, trying to sound hopeful.

Mary blinked, and turned back to stare desperately out at the crushed snow where Erin had been, now devoid of the pony that had just spoken so much hope for her, of a way to become normal again, of all the answers she had hoped to ever hear.

“Somehow, I doubt she will...” Mary managed to murmur.

Herbert whistled slowly, hands propped on his hips. “Well, you might not have made the naughty list this year. Did you remember to ask Santa for what you wanted in your letter this year?” He turned and grinned downwards.

Mary looked up at the older man, her face already twisted into a rictus glare. “Herbert…” she growled in warning.

Herbert continued. “Alright, I was just kidding. Well then,” he began, sounding chipper. “Guess I was wrong about Erin being the deus ex pony-machina solution to all this.”

Stan gave Herbert a doubtful look, while Mary turned to face the older man, dragging one hoof through the snow as if getting ready to charge.

Herbert continued, chuckling. “In fact, seems Erin was the opposite! A total thematic fake-out-”

Whatever defeated, heartbroken feelings Mary had been developing at the sudden disappearance of her ticket to normalcy, they were gone. She leaped, charging across the snow in the blind rage towards her father-in-law.

“Oh, shoot!” Herbert’s eyes widened and he ducked, just as a pony soared through the air over him. “Truce, truce!” he yelled, all while running back to the house to escape a pummeling. “This is the time of year for forgiveness, Mary! Forgiveneeeess!”

~~*~~

The fans had finally cleared away the smoke away, though the acrid smell of burnt electronics still permeated the room. White-coated techs were scrambling all over the equipment, trying to figure out what had just happened. Several of the control panels were open, and a variety of diagnostic devices were plugged in and beeping away.

“Alright, someone tell me what happened.” Maggie glanced around at her fellow techs with a scowl on her face.

“Looks like we had some feedback from the emitters,” a tech named Brian said. “Blew out at few system boards.” He shook his head and said, “I really hope we didn’t lose any data.”

Maggie felt a chill when he said that. “Do you think it’s likely?”

“Definitely possible,” Brian replied morosely.

“What about the auto-recall?” Maggie asked.

“Ah!” Brian’s face brightened considerably. “The security and safety protocols are all on their own redundant subsystem. That should be working just fine.”

“Glad to hear it,” Maggie said, sagging in relief. “When is she due back?”

Another tech checked the big clock on the wall. “About seventeen minutes,” he replied.

“All right,” Maggie said. “Let’s see how much of this we can get cleaned up before Erin gets back then, shall we?”

Sixteen minutes and thirty-five seconds later, the room was looking much better. The control panels were buttoned back up, the faulty equipment was powered down, and everyone was hanging around and staring at the metallic pad, waiting for their explorer to pop back into their world.

Sure enough, there was a snap of outrushing air as Erin appeared on the platform, dusted with snow and for some reason wearing a dress, all while staggering around as if she were drunk.

“Erin! Are you al—”

“Bleargh!” Erin replied as she regurgitated what looked like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all down the front of Maggie’s white lab coat. Then she fell over, all four legs twitching in the air.

“Erin?!” Maggie shouted, alarmed. “Are you alright?”

“So… dizzy… never doing that… again…” came the reply.

“Not even… for science?” Maggie asked, waggling her eyebrows.

Erin managed to focus her eyes briefly and scowled. “Stop… joking around. You suck, Maggie,” she said, before groaning again as her head flopped back to the floor.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Maggie said with a chuckle. Then she looked down at her formerly-white coat and sighed. “Ick.”

~~*~~

“Well, well, well,” Herbert chuckled, and leaned over to pick up a little black square, propped up still on the coffee table. “What have we here?” He grinned, turning what was undeniably Erin’s tablet over in his hands.

Herbert laughed louder, then winked. “Merry Christmas, everypony!”

Mary yelled from the next room over. “Herbert, shut up and go home, I’m not in the mood!”

A very Mary Christmas with Erin

by Hoopy McGee

When a pony meets a pony in a field of snow