The Canterlot Exchange, ten thousand humans and ponies pass through its doors every day, on their way to destinations all across Earth and throughout Equestria. These are just a few of their stories.
The Canterlot Exchange, ten thousand humans and ponies pass through its doors every day, on their way to destinations all across Earth and throughout Equestria. Some are wide eyed migrants, others are only passing through, or on their way to find the most exotic holiday of their lives. They are mavericks, heroes or just everyday travellers, but every one has a story to tell. These are just a few of the tales I've gathered from the Canterlot Exchange.
Thomas Lance sits in the human style on the second floor of the Canterlot Exchange. It’s a quiet start to a very busy day; a dozen ponies or so mill around, setting up tables and chairs for the food court and opening their little shops to the world. Snow is falling beyond the glass wall that makes up the front of the terminal and Thomas watches in silence, sipping from his Starbucks coffee cup. I can’t pronounce the dozen-syllable name, but he ordered it without missing a beat, so I presume it is his usual.
“Not sure why you want to talk to me,” he says, tearing his eyes from the snow. “I haven’t got the most interesting story for you.”
“All stories are interesting,” I tell him, smiling. “Some, I’ll admit, are more interesting than others. Still, I’d love to hear yours. I’m writing a book, you see.”
“Fine.” Thomas shrugs. He’s a dark coated earth pony, for now, wearing a wrinkled shirt with his collar popped. “So, Sandy, what do you want to know?”
I tap my pen against my notepad. “How about from the beginning, what made you first want to come to Equestria?”
Thomas grimaces, taking a swig of coffee. “Well, I’m sorry for your readers. The truth is I never wanted to come to Equestria. Don’t get me wrong, I watched the shows as much as anyone else did. Discovering another world, another species, magic itself? Well, it was the biggest event since the moon landings—you’d have to live under a rock, with your fingers in your ears, singing Ave Maria to miss that. Still... I guess I didn’t care.”
He pauses, staring out through the windows at Canterlot. The city is dotted with electric lights, but is grim and grey in the predawn light, a far cry from the glittering city of marble on all the postcards. A weak, wintery sun struggles to rise over the mountaintop, but it seems even Celestia is struggling to wake up on time.
“I work in the city,” he continues, turning back to me. “Buying and selling companies; or at least making it so people can buy and sell companies, I’m not quite that rich.” A chuckle escapes him. “It’s a great job, you’ll never hear me say a word against it. Sure, the hours are long and God is it a pressure cooker, but I love every minute of it. Of course, then there’s the travel.”
A laugh escapes Thomas and he shakes his head. “I traveled London to New York once, twice a week sometimes. Twelve hours from door to door, assuming everything goes to plan, and trust me things never go to plan on an international flight. When I heard they were allowing people to transfer between the London and New York portals I decided to give it a shot. Half an hour in an alien land beats twelve hours in a Boeing.”
“There’s plenty of people who still take the plane,” I point out. “Was it really all to save time?”
“Maybe not.” Thomas looks down at his hooves, drumming them on the tabletop in a practiced patter. “Maybe there is a little spacecadet in all of us. Still, at the time it was more a question of whether I could bear an hour or so walking on all fours. I could have put my hands on one of those amulets that prevents you from becoming a pony, but I never liked them. Equestria abhors humans and you can feel it, even when you’ve got a slug of magic keeping nature at bay. I could cope with hooves. It was just part of the commute.”
Thomas’ suitcase chirps and he sighs. “Sorry.” Ducking into the bag he pulls a tablet computer out between his lips and unlocks the device with practiced ease. “Looks like the office wants me.” He shakes his head and slips the tablet back into his bag. “So where were we?”
“You don’t need to go?” I inquire.
“No,” he says, a dark shadow passing across his face. “No. I don’t think I do. They know I don’t work weekends.”
“Huh.” I tap my pen against my lips. “From your story I pictured you as being an always online type.”
“True... perhaps I was.” Thomas frowns at his coffee. “I didn’t take weekends off back then. I looked down on the people who did, in fact. Hell, I decided that spending a few hours a week as a pony was a good way to save time. It was a strange way of thinking, though, I suppose everyone feels that way looking back.”
“What changed?”
“The portal failed. It was three years ago or so, some big evil thing tried to destroy Equestria.” He shrugged, with the blithe indifference of a true Equestrian native. “It didn’t get far before being blasted, but it did disrupt the leylines for a week. I got stranded in Canterlot and... well, I didn’t have anything to do. I didn’t take it well. I ranted and screamed at the stewards for a day or so, but there was no fixing things. After calming down, I found myself alone in Canterlot with no responsibilities and no job to worry about. Free.”
He stares wistfully off into the distance for a moment, lost in a memory, a faint smile on his lips. “I’d never stepped outside of the Exchange before. I was in a strange body, in a land I barely understood, for an indeterminate amount of time. It was the best week of my life.” Thomas shook his head. “I didn’t take holidays back then. The office discouraged them, and I spent my weekends travelling. Canterlot was my first break from work in years, and, once I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I loved every minute of it. For the first time in my life I had the chance to step back and actually think about what was important in my life and what I was throwing away in the meantime.”
Thomas pauses a moment, parsing the sentence back, and chuckles. “Wow, that really makes me sound old.”
“See what I mean about all stories being interesting?” I say, sharing a smile with the stallion. “So, Equestria has won your heart?”
“Well, I got this thing now, so it must have left some impression.” He pointed at the Arabian oil lamp on his flank. “Still, I prefer to think of myself as a weekend pony. I still work in two cities, but I keep an apartment in Canterlot for the weekends and I make it there more weekends than not. I like it in Equestria; there’s a sense of timelessness to it all. You can step away from the internet and the job and the people, and that’s so hard to do back on Earth.”
“So, is this you waiting for a portal, or just waiting out the snow?” I enquire.
Thomas’ tablet buzzes again. As he checks it his face lights up. “Neither it seems, my ride is here. It was great talking to you Sandy, best of luck with the book.”
He drains his coffee in one gulp and leaps to his hooves. He doesn’t gallop away, but moves at a sprightly trot, his automatic case whirring as it trundles after him. I make my way over to the edge of the balcony and look down on the concourse in time to watch Thomas trade a nuzzle with a unicorn mare. The pair make their way out of the building pressed flank to flank.
In the light of Celestia’s newly risen sun I find myself sitting at the same table, but with a very different interviewee. Terry is a gryphoness of middling years, tawny feathered and with a striking, flame red crest that would not look out of place on a phoenix. She is sitting—though perhaps the word should be sprawling—across two seats and even then seems to be struggling to keep herself upright. There is no doubt that she is very recently transformed, her motions are too jerky, too wild and random, to be natural.
“I hate this,” she growls in a thick New York drawl, struggling to sit upright. Given her spine does not bend that way any more she fails in short order and flops back down onto the chairs like a boned fish. “I feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame here.”
“Well, that’s quadrupedalism for you,” I point out, sliding a cup of coffee across the table towards her. “Here, have something to steady your nerves.”
“I’d prefer a couple aspirin and a back-brace.” With deliberate care she places both foreclaws on the table and leaves herself up into something resembling a sitting position, though I get the impression she is about to leap across the table at me. She scowls at the cup for a moment. “So, how’s this supposed to work?”
“I gather you’re supposed to use your hands.”
She scowls and raises a taloned foreclaw. “I wouldn’t call this a–argh!” The chair she’s perched on slips away suddenly, and Terry is pitched forwards. I snatch the coffee back, but Terry still smacks her beak shut on the table before collapsing to the ground in a heap.
“Son of a bitch!” she bellows, clutching her beak.
I wince, folding my ears flat as the roar echoes around the half empty food-court. With a sigh, I set aside my journalistic impartiality and, after much swearing, a few scratch marks and a stray feather or two, I manage to get Terry perched on the chair properly. She wobbles, sitting on her haunches and regarding her own posture with naked suspicion, as if at any moment her body intended to pitch her to the floor again.
It was a valid fear, to be fair. “So, want to try again?” I say, sliding the cooling cup of coffee back towards her.
Terry teeters on one foreleg as she struggles to grab the cup. It takes her three attempts, and on the second she manages to put a talon through the plastic lid. After a few false starts with the way her elbows bend, she manages to bring the cup up to her beak only to stall there. For a moment she scowls at the cup, opening and closing her beak and cocking her head as she tries to figure out her next step. With a very feline snarl of frustration she slams the cup back down on the table, shredding it and spreading coffee everywhere.
“Come on!” she snaps, throwing up her hand. The motion almost topples her and she throws out her wings as she struggles to keep her balance. “How does anyone in this stupid country get anything done?”
I shrug. “Well, at least you don’t have hooves.”
“I don’t have damn lips either,” she shoots right back. For a moment she’s silent as she tries to fold her wings back down, with little success. “Actually, you know what? I’d prefer hooves. I was ready for hooves. At least being a pony made some kind of sense, what’s a gryphon even supposed to be, anyway? Some drunken Arab’s idea of a monster?”
“Persian,” I correct.
“I don’t care!” Terry wobbles again and there’s a tearing sound as her claws dig into the chair. “Look at me. I’m a freaking cat-bird. I’ve got more limbs than I know what to do with. I have no idea how my elbows are supposed to work. I’ve got claws everywhere and I was given a pamphlet on preening on my way through immigration. Preening! I don’t even know what that is but I get the feeling I don’t want to know.”
“It’s to maintain your feathers by spreading oil on them.”
Terry blinks. “What oil?”
“You have a gland between your wings that–”
“I don’t what to know!” she exclaims, slamming her hands over her ears. A moment later her head hits the table again. “God-damn it!” She grips the table with both hands, her talons biting deep into the wood, but she doesn’t rise.
I pat her on the shoulder. “Try and think about the upsides. I hear a lot of people enjoy flying, once they get used to it.”
“I get vertigo,” Terry grumbles.
Somehow I doubt that has remained the case, but keep quiet. Leaning back, I retrieve my neglected notebook. “Okay, well in that case, let me ask you a question. Why did you want to come to Equestria?”
Terry raises her head and scowls down her break. “I didn’t want to anything.”
“Yet you came.”
She lets out a long whistling sigh and rests her beak on the table, just avoiding the coffee spill. “Yeah. I did... Because I’m an idiot. Because I couldn’t pay my rent anymore. Because sometimes life sucks balls and you have to make horrible choices.” Her eyes narrow. “You know, I was never very body proud. I was overweight, I drank, I had freaking weekly chiropractic sessions for my back pain. Yet–” she shrugs, and her left wing flops open. “–I already miss the piece of crap. This feels wrong. Everything about this body feels wrong. Fur, feathers, joints. I mean, look at my hands! Look at these claws.” She holds up her hand and splays out her talons. “I feel like I’m the monster in a slasher movie.”
I nod, scribbling down a few notes. “Yet, you’re still here. The portal is open whenever you want to go home.”
“Sure, kick me while I’m down why don’t you?” Terry growls. She fails to meet my eye for a long moment. “I... I lost my job six months ago. Well, I was ‘made redundant’, they said. The company got some welding robot in to replace me. Twice the speed, half the cost and the only problem was the asshole they pitched out on the street. I’ve been a welder all my life, literally, I was fresh outta school when I got the job. But they don’t want flesh and blood anymore.”
Another sigh escapes her. “Equestria still hires real people, though, so this is my only choice.” She chuckles and shakes her head. “Well, that or my brother’s couch and I can’t spend the rest of my life there. Pretty damn high price to pay for a job, though.” She looks down at her taloned fingers again and a shudder runs down the length of her spine.
There’s a sudden hush around us. Glancing around I see a familiar rainbow maned figure making her way across the concourse below, the crowd parting before her.
“But one you’re willing to pay?” I enquire, turning back to Terry.
“Maybe.” She drums her talons on the table. “Joe’s couch is looking tempting right now. But, it's not like I can afford a ticket home right now. If I had that kind of money to burn I would have stayed human. At least I kept my fingers, so that’s a start, and if there’s an honest job for me in Manehattan, then maybe, maybe, I’ll learn to live with it.”
She growls as she levers herself up onto her haunches. Perhaps it is just optimism, but she seems a little more stable, though her face twists into a disgusted sneer as she looks herself over.
“It’s a big maybe.”
I stand. “Well, that’s the first step. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s somepony I need to talk to. Good luck.”
Terry grumbles. “Sure. You too, Sandy.”
“And don’t worry,” I say, hurrying away. “I’m sure if you give it a chance you’ll find some upside to being a gryphoness.”
“Yeah...” Terry’s head shoots up. “Wait, gryphoness?”
Like all transit hubs, the Canterlot Exchange is cursed by waiting rooms; however, not all waiting rooms are created equal. Rainbow Dash sits in the diplomatic annex of the terminal, which has hosted notables from presidents to premieres to princesses, and it is as richly appointed as one might expect. The style is Canterlot minimalist: white stone, clean edges and sparse furniture. But, despite the lack of ornamentation, the seats are sinfully comfortable and the room has all the Earth luxuries, including a huge TV playing CNN on a five minute delay.
Rainbow Dash and I are the only ponies present besides the barmare.
“So, what is it you wanted to talk about again?” Rainbow says, setting down her drink. The alicorn is sprawled across a sofa, her back legs stretched out and her wings half extended. It is hardly a dignified position, but she seems not to care.
“Well, I’m collecting stories. I’m writing book.”
Rainbow’s head shoots up. “About me?” she asked, with foalish enthusiasm.
“Ah... Not specifically you.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s cool as well.” She picks up a can of soft-drink from a nearby table, it is emblazoned with her own face. “Well, I got tons of stories. Want to hear about the time I went hoof to claw with a dragon?”
“I heard you lost,” I point out.
She shrugs. “Eh, I gave as good as I got. How about the first time I did a Sonic Rainboom?”
“I’m afraid I saw that one myself. Though you didn’t have the horn then, if I recall correctly.”
“What, this thing?” She gives her horn a solid knock for emphasis. “Well, you know Twilight. Any other pony would take ascending to be a princess as a once in a lifetime event, but she just looks at it and says ‘I wonder if anypony else could do that’. Turns out the answer is yes, by the way. If, you know, they’re as awesome as I am.”
“And have access to incredibly powerful magical artifacts,” I add, struggling not to roll my eyes.
“Well, that too. I guess you don’t want to hear that story either.” Rainbow sighs, pulling herself into a sitting position. She is no taller than as a pegasus, but then she is very young for an alicorn. “So what do you want to hear?”
“Why don’t you tell me about Earth?” I suggest.
“Heh, Earth? Great place. That’s what all my press ponies would say.” She glances around the empty room. “Wherever they’ve got to. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two worlds for fifteen years or so now. In fact, I was one of the first ponies in living memory to travel there and whoa, let me tell you, it was freaking weird. Ignoring the whole nearly identical clones thing, which Twilight still gets all twitchy eared about when you ask her to explain it, Earth's a very strange place.”
“Oh, how so?”
“I didn’t have these babies,” she says, flexing her wings. The simple act stirs the air across the whole room and I have to grab onto my notepad to stop it flying away in the sudden breeze. “Whoops, sorry about that, don’t know my own strength sometimes. Anyway, going wingless was bad enough, you’re a pegasus, you know how weird it can be to suddenly have the sky taken away from you?”
I nod.
“Right, and then that’s made instantly worse because humans just don’t follow the rules. They still fly, just there’s no natural way for them to do it. They jump through all these technological hoops to get themselves into the sky and there’s no magic to it.” She shrugs shaking her head. “Not that humans are big on magic. I mean, I still think of myself as a pegasus first, but there’s just this void on Earth where that spark of wonder is. Look at this place.” She gestures around the empty waiting room. “Just look. There’s nothing here. It's the least freaking interesting place I’ve ever been, worse even than Applejack’s conference on growing trees, and this is still better than most human airports.”
She leaps into the air, hovering with broad, lazy flaps of her wings that stirs up enough wind I almost lose my notebook again. “See, that’s why it’s weird. Humans made flying boring. You get in a big metal tube with a bunch of other humans, sit there for a few hours and then it's done. There’s nothing exciting about it. There’s no wonder or excitement.”
“Eh, I guess I’m not being very diplomatic,” she continues, sinking down into a different chair. Once again, she glances around the empty room, furrowing her brow as if trying to remember some important fact. “I like people. Heck, humanity as a whole is awesome. With just fingers and toes they’ve managed to get to their moon and back. I just wish they weren’t so obsessed with making everything boring. It’s why Spitfire and I were so keen to do this show. Give the humans a taste of what a real flyer can do.” Her frown deepens. “Where has that girl got to, anyway?”
I clear my throat in an attempt to keep Rainbow Dash on topic. “I think there’s a lot of people who’d argue strongly that Earth isn’t boring.”
“Psh, yeah, I’d probably get yelled at by my PR ponies at the very least.” She gives a flippant wave. “And to be fair, there’s been, what, three humans that I actively disliked. It’s just altogether, I find them weird. It’s like... Cloudsdale looks nothing like Manehatten and nopony cares. Yet, everyhuman seems to want cities to look like New York.” Rainbow Dash lets out a deep sigh. “Maybe it's just the fact that there’s only one type of human, no matter what they say about skin colour. Equestria has pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies, donkeys, buffalo, gryphons and dragons all living side by side, but Earth has people and nothing else. As I said, it’s weird. Probably not something I should be saying to the press but, hey, you seem–” she pauses suddenly, frowning at me.
“Hey...” Her eyes glaze over for just a moment, but then snap back to me. “How did you get in here, Sandy?” she asks with sudden intensity.
“What?”
“There’s, like, a dozen guards specifically there to stop anypony just wandering in on me,” she continues, standing and fanning her wings. “But you just sat down and started talking, how–”
The door opens with a bang.
“Rainbow Dash, there you are!” Spitfire exclaims. A half dozen ponies in Wonderbolt blue bustle into the room, along with innumerable other support-ponies, diplomats and Exchange staff. Within moments Rainbow is caught in the centre of a herd of happy ponies. “We’ve been looking all over for you, how have you been?”
Canterlot Exchange’s twelve portals handle over ten thousand humans and ponies every day, but most will only see the titanic chambers from the other side. Beyond the sterile halls of the passenger concourses is the beating heart of the Exchange. The vast chambers that house the fusion of technology and magic which make crossing between worlds possible. I find myself at the edge of portal chamber A-3, watching ponies and humans surge around me. The portal that they tend to is huge, at least two stories tall, and in its charging state fills the room with a low pitched hum of high energy magic. Its surface is a quicksilver disk that looks at a glance to be reflective, but on closer inspection shows a kaleidoscopic whirl that tries to draw the eye off into infinity. Huge crystals hang in the air around it, plugged into thick rubbered cables that fizz and spark with raw magic. Ponies and humans hurry to and fro around the gate in a carefully choreographed dance, though there is much screaming and yelling as they struggle to bring the portal back into alignment.
Neutronium is a deep black unicorn, and watches the organised chaos with a contented smile. Standing fetlock deep in machinery, he occasionally barks out an order or makes imperceptible adjustments to the controls surrounding him. After a few minutes he steps back and the gate goes the colour of quicksilver.
“F**king awesome isn’t it?” he exclaims, as a level of tranquility begins to descend. The frantic pace slows for a moment, technicians hurrying out past us.
I strike through his swear in my notes. “It’s certainly a marvel,” I agree. “How many of these do you supervise a day?”
“Six openings. They happen every hour on the dot, or do if I have anything to f**king say about it. We haven’t missed one in three weeks, and that’s a crap ton better than the f**kers on third shift can claim. Not that they should have any problems on that front. The new inline charging means it should only take the f**kwits half an hour. Of course, the way the s**theads work you’d think they were still working with a portal that has a thirty f**king month charging cycle.”
It takes me a moment to catch up with his tirade in my notes. “Right... Well, Neutronium, I was wondering if you could tell me your story.”
“Heh, thought you might be asking that. Not many ponies come back here armed with a notepad. Thought you were the f**king safety inspector for a moment. Who’s pulling your strings anyway, Fox, CNN, some pissant blog?”
“None of the above,” I say, smiling. “I’m writing a book, you see.”
Neutronium regards me as if I were something unpleasant he’d just put his hoof in. “Urgh. That’s even worse than a blogger; at least they get shit done.” He sits back on his haunches and waves me on. “Well, come on then, ask your questions and let's get this shit over with.”
“I was interested in what brought you to Equestria,” I begin, glancing down at my notes. “You were the fifth American to be granted dual citizenship, I believe.”
“And the first f**king Mexican,” Neutronium cut in. “Hell, might be the only Mexican for all I know. Not that I care for that s**thole, I barely speak a word of Spanish these days. Dad got us all into America with a Green Card when I was five and I never looked back. Good call on the old man’s part there.”
“Quite... however, Mexico to America is a small jump compared to changing species full time. What prompted you?”
“Durh, magic.” Neutronium taps his horn. “You understand me, right? You’re a unicorn, were you born that way?”
I shrug. “Not as such.”
“See, even you Equestrians are getting in on the body swapping act. A few years late, but still, it’s progress.” He sits back on his haunches. “I was in my first year at MIT when the first reports of aliens among us came in. Of course, I was as sceptical of f**king magic as the next guy, but there’s only so many times you can see something impossible happen and start to question your definition of impossible.” Neutronium pauses, glaring off into the middle distance, before adding in a dark growl. “That is, if you haven’t let your brain fossilise.”
“So it was magic that drew you here?” I press.
“In a nutshell.” Neutronium lets out a bitter laugh. “Of course, that makes me sound like I want to dance under the rainbows with all the other pretty ponies. F**kwits. No one understood just what magic means.”
“And you did?”
“F**k yeah! Magic means that anything is possible.” He slams his forehooves against the ground in emphasis. “Any-f**king-thing. People look at the ponies and think ‘oh they’re so primitive, they don’t even have ipads’, big f**king deal. Ponies control the weather, they can shape the earth beneath their hooves with a thought, they can change their forms, summon fire with their minds and even move the sun. There is absolutely nothing magic can’t do.”
Neutronium shakes his head. “Yet somehow, just because of a cutesy look and a few bad puns, ponies are the laughing stock of Earth. Magic, proper magic, this kind of industrial magic–” he points his horn at the titanic portal “–this is the future. Ponies can do anything they set their minds to; humans are bound by the laws of nature. This decade the humans are on top, they’re the ones shipping tractors and phones and all sorts of high tech shit, and raking in the big bucks. In twenty years, though, the ponies are going to be shipping miracles on demand, and then Earth’s going to be dancing to Equestria’s tune.” He folds his ears flat, gazing wistfully at the gateway. “Not that anyone back home seems to realise it.”
“How long has it been since you went home?” I cut in.
“What?” Neutronium starts, as if only just remembering I’m here. “What do you mean?”
“It's just a short trot away,” I continue, pointing at the gate with my pen.
He shoots me a withering glare. “Don’t patronise me. There’s nothing worth saving on Earth, why would I ever want to go back?”
“Family, perhaps?”
A long moment passess, and Neutronium stands suddenly. “I need to get a coffee before my next shift,” he says. “You can see yourself out.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I point out.
“I know.” He scowls. “When they grow up, then we’ll talk. In a hundred years they’ll look back and admit I knew where we were going all along, and laugh at themselves. Then we’ll talk. Not before.”
He walks away. Neutronium’s cutie-mark is a black hole, surrounded by an accretion disk. I am struck by how cruelly on-point marks can be sometimes.
Hazy is a slim young woman in her late teens. She stands about twice the height of the ponies around her, wearing the gold trimmed white suit of the Canterlot Exchange stewards. With a brilliant smile and a breezy confidence to her step she could be a student from anywhere on Earth. The only sign that she is not all that she seems is her hair, which is an inhuman lilac-grey. Standing in front of the mirrored surface of portal B-1 she, with quiet encouragement and more than a little hands on education, guides a number of shaky hooved ponies away from the portal. The stream of ponies passing through, however, soon abates and she makes her way over to the wooden bench where I am sitting.
“So, that’s my job,” she said, sitting next to me. The benches are low and sized for ponies and she ends up with her legs folded up close to her chin. “Not the most glamorous role, but it pays the bills.”
“It’s fascinating,” I admit. “I’m amazed that teaching people to be ponies is a full time job.”
Hazy lets out a little bark of laughter. “Not so much teaching them, more getting them walking so they don’t block the portal . Of course, I end up carrying a few. The portal will only stay open for a few minutes and if we don’t get everypony through in time then it's the stewards who get in trouble.”
“This happens a lot?”
“About one in ten.” She shrugs, fiddling with the buttons on her jacket. “Of course, they tend to come in clumps. Early morning most ponies are commuters or seasoned travellers and they barely miss a stride coming through. Later in the day, though, you get the vacationers who think walking on all fours is just simplified crawling and those are the ones you have to watch.” Hazy rolls her eyes. “There was one time when a whole coach party, fifty or so schmucks, came through all at once and not one of them had a clue what to do with their legs. Thankfully, we had a few strong earth ponies waiting in line to go the other way, because we had to drag a dozen of the idiots out of the way of the gate like foals.”
A groan escapes her. “Oh yeah, and then there are foals. Little kids I love, they just bounce onto all fours and are away within moments. Babies... well, babies can’t figure out why they don’t have fingers any more and just start screaming and never stop. Why anyone would take their yearling to Equestria I have no idea, but I need an aspirin every time some moron decides it's a good idea.” Hazy shakes her head, smiling to herself. “Ah well, at least they’re the exception to the rule, and I have to remind myself of the perks.”
“Is being human one of those?” I ask, anticipating my answer.
“Yep!” A smug grin plasters itself on Hazy’s face as she wiggles her fingers in front of my nose. “And free trips to Earth, and a load of other little benefits, especially if you’re willing to go the extra mile and wear one of these.” She lifts a hefty pewter and brass amulet from underneath her jacket and shows it to me. Even at a distance it fizzes and sparks as my magic slides off the edges of the spell.
Hazy picks up on my confused expression. “Humanising spell,” she explains. “Well, anti-ponyizing spell really. Equestria is always trying to make non-magical things magical, so you need a big magical spell to keep a mundane creature like a human, human.” She frowns, chewing on her lip. “Hmm, that didn’t sound right, my briefing explained it a lot better. Anyway, this thing will keep me human for another day or two, more if I stick close to a portal.”
“Do you have to wear that often?”
“Well, have is a strong word.” Hazy shrugs. “I’ve been volunteering to be the designated human a lot lately. Company policy is for every steward to have at least some idea of how to walk as a human and a pony so the amulet gets passed around a lot, but whenever there’s call for hands on work I put up a hoof to volunteer.” She seems to catch my surprised look. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not trying to escape being a pony. Truth is, I’m practicing for next year.”
I cock my head. “Next year?”
“University,” she replies, grin growing even wider. “I got the news about a week ago. I’m going to be the first cross-dimensional student to attend university in London.”
“Oh, congratulations!” I say with false surprise, drumming my hooves on the bench. “What will you be studying?”
“Early twenty first century history, basically anything post Berlin Wall, which I guess you’ve never heard of.” She rolls her eyes. “Now, before you start, I’ve heard all the questions. What’s wrong with Equestrian universities? Why not something more useful? Won’t it be too strange? The answers are, they’re full of boring regressive morons, more happens in two years of human history than two thousand years of Equestrian, and strange is good!”
“I sense some burned bridges,” I say with a smirk.
Hazy lets out a bitter laugh. “Damn right. Not that I regret burning any of them. Equestria is just so... backward compared to Earth. You want to learn in Equestria? It’s either magic if you’re a unicorn or weather work if you’re a pegasus. There’s no philosophy, there’s no history, there’s no theoretical maths or engineering.”
I chew the tip of my pen. “Though we have all of those things,” I point out.
“As vocations,” Hazy exclaims. “As idle hobbies for the rich and bored. Humans are always learning, they thrive on it, their civilisation is built on it and ponies... ponies just sit here.” She points at the gate. “Look at that thing, the magic involved is on a scale never imagined, but the original mirror portal was over fifteen hundred years old. In fifteen hundred years, humans went from stone forts to metropolises. In fifteen hundred years ponies have gone from stone forts to larger stone forts and I never thought that was a problem until I realised just how badly we measure up. We could be so much better than we are and nopony cares!”
Hazy pauses, shakes her head and lets out a deep sigh. “Heh, and look at me. Already a rabble rousing student and I haven’t even been to my first lecture yet.” Splaying out her fingers she stares at them for a long moment. “I just wish I didn’t have to go. I love Equestria. I love being a pony. But I love learning too, and I can’t do that here.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, putting a hoof on her leg. “Things will change.”
“Will they?” she shoots back. “Equestria seems caught on a wheel sometimes. All that happens is the same ancient evils keep rising up and the same heroes keep knocking them back down. There’s no growth, no learning, just this stagnant little kingdom that gets a little less utopic every day.” She stands, suddenly her hands balling into fists. “I don’t want it to keep happening. I’m going to university to prove that there is more out there for us, and that everypony should be willing to learn everything they can from humanity. Then things will change then... things will have to change then.”
She shakes her head. “I need to get to the next portal,” she says, her eyes fixed in the middle distance. “Thanks for letting me talk.”
“Safe travels,” I reply as she strides away. I don’t think she hears me.
Sitting human style in the plastic Hayburger bench is one of the most infamous ponies in modern history. She is a russet red earth pony mare and before her sits the remains of a burger. Next to her, in a far more normal position, is a periwinkle pegasus, whose eyes never seem to stop scanning the room. Their names are Lyra Heartstrings and Bon Bon respectively.
“I still don’t know how you recognised us,” Lyra grumbles, crossing her forelegs across her chest.
“You can’t change your cutie-mark,” I point out, gesturing at their flanks with my pen. “Though I’ll admit that I have a bit of a talent for picking unusual people out from the crowd.”
“I think she’s calling us ugly,” Lyra says, elbowing Bon Bon in the ribs. Bon Bon rolls her eyes. “But seriously. We’re different tribes, colours, everything, what gave us away?”
“You sit like a pony pretending to be human, not a human pretending to be a pony.” I smile. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions, I’m writing a book, you see.”
Bon Bon frowns. “What kind of book?”
“About me?” Lyra adds, her face lighting up.
“Not just you.”
Her face falls.
“But I’d still love to hear your thoughts. You revealed Equestria to Earth after all.”
Lyra rolls her eyes. “Psh, that’s not how they phrased it at the trial. Or what the press called it. Or what my mother said I’d been up to. Then again, when have I ever listened to my mother?”
“She’s a lovely mare, Lyra,” Bon Bon says with a long suffering sigh. “You should give her the benefit of the doubt once in awhile.”
“She’s a bigoted old shrew,” Lyra shoots right back. “You should hear what she says about earth ponies when she thinks nopony is listening. Hence—” she pointed a hoof at herself.
Bon Bon’s glare was murderous. “You said that was about getting closer to the earth, not scoring points off your mother.”
“It can be two things!”
“Ah-hem,” I interject, struggling to keep up with their bickering. “Earth?”
“Oh, right.” Lyra turns back to me. “Well Sandy, where would you like me to begin?”
I shrug. “The beginning is my favourite place.”
She rubs a hoof on her chin. “Hmm. Well, in the beginning Equestria was without form and–ow!” Lyra shoots a nasty look at Bon Bon, rubbing the back of her head. Bon Bon, to her credit, has already folded her wings back against her barrel and is whistling innocently. “Everypony’s a critic. Anyway, skipping over how Equestria was made, it all began when Twilight Sparkle decided that she needed to make up for ignoring me for a couple years.”
“Lyra...”
“Yeah, yeah, Princess of Equestria and all that.” Lyra waves her off. “I don’t know how she of all ponies ended up in charge of friendship. I never had to be ordered to go make some friends.”
“But you did spend Nightmare Moon’s return hiding in my pantry.”
“Nevertheless!” Lyra exclaims, hastily changing the subject. “It all began when Twilight invited me to her castle and I discovered that she had an interdimensional portal in her closet.” She pauses for effect. Both Bon Bon and I raise an eyebrow at her. “No gasp?”
“We’re in the Canterlot Exchange sweetie,” Bon Bon points out. “Everypony here knows Princess Twilight had the first portal to Earth in her castle.”
“Urgh, you two have no sense of drama,” Lyra grouses, pushing a fry around the table with her hooftip. “Okay, so we’ll stick to the unromantic facts then. Now as I was saying, I was exploring Twilight’s castle–”
“Snooping you mean.”
Lyra doesn’t miss a beat. “–when I came across a magic mirror. Now, I may have only done Magic of Music at school, but I could tell at a glance it was incredibly powerful. I had no idea what it did, of course, but I’ve got a well earned reputation as a curious mare, so I decided to have a closer look. As it turned out, in a different world an equally curious Lyra Heartstrings was doing almost exactly the same thing. We both got far too close to the portal and there was, shall we say, an explosion.”
She shakes her head and shudders. “Anyway... long story short, I ended up on Earth and she ended up in Equestria. There was this long comedy of errors where I was trying to pretend I was a human and she was trying to pretend she was a unicorn, but after three days or so Twilight finally puts two and two together and everypony and everyone ends up in their own bodies on their own worlds.” Lyra frowns. “Then nothing happens. Literally nothing. Twilight has this other world locked away in her castle, a world with technology we could barely imagine, with music that has never been heard by pony ears, with philosophy and natural science that ponykind have barely scratched. And Twilight was going to let it sit there gathering dust, using it to hold a couple of mouldy old monsters that Equestria had forgotten about. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“This is the part where she commits treason,” Bon Bon says, covering her eyes with a wing.
“Hey! Aggravated trespass against a monarch,” Lyra shoots back, slamming a hoof on the table. “Technically it wasn’t treason because Twilight never explicitly told me to keep quiet.”
Bon Bon sighs. “That’s a very flimsy excuse.”
Lyra shrugs. “It held up in court. Anyway, so after a few weeks of waiting around and gathering supplies I set out to reveal Equestria to Earth. Equestria already ‘knew’ about Earth, or at least the princesses were aware and willing to just let it sit there. I wasn’t going to stand on a soapbox yelling about aliens in the Ponyville marketplace–”
“Again...”
“–so I decided to go to the human’s princess.” She glares at Bon Bon. “After slipping through the portal with a saddlebag full of enchanted objects I found myself in front of the White House. It turned out that getting to see the President is harder than getting yourself before Celestia. But on the other hoof, it is extremely easy to get arrested when you start firing magical flares over the fence. The rest is, as they say, history. It took a week for the US government to accept they had a genuine magic-wielding alien in custody, but things moved pretty fast from there. Once Twilight showed up and managed to get herself arrested too, then Equestria pretty much had to say, ‘yes we exist, sorry for not telling you earlier’.”
She shook her head in mock sadness, grinning to herself. “It’s fun to watch the Princesses squirm like that, though I did end up spending six months in prison for ‘Aggravated Trespass’ afterwards. Everypony knows that’s all they could make stick because revealing Equestria’s existence isn’t a crime, but hay, six months in a minimum security prison was a small price to pay.”
“So, you think revealing Equestria was a positive?” I ask.
“Always have,” Lyra replies, shrugging. “Sure, there’s ponies and people on both sides of the gate suffering because of what I did. I still maintain it was the right choice, though. Change is always good and Equestria wasn’t changing. All tradition does is ensure you make the same mistakes your parents did, and that’s something I’d never wish on my kids.” For a moment her gaze goes distant, and she lets out a long sigh. “I just wish other ponies could see that.”
She bites her lip, opens her mouth to speak, closes it and then rises to her hooves. “I’m going to get a round of sodas,” she declares, and walks away.
Bon Bon and I share a look. “Sorry about that,” she says, ducking her eyes. “Lyra is... a dreamer. Always has been, always will be. She truly believes that what she did she did for the best, but there’s a lot of ponies who think she should have ended up in the Canterlot gardens. Hence the disguises.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think...” She frowns. “I think I would have tried to stop her. It wasn’t her call to make. But you have to stand by your friends’ mistakes as well as their successes. What do you think, Miss Sandy?”
I’m a little surprised by the question. “Me?” I pause, chewing the tip of my pen. “I’m always on the side of the travellers. Ever since the first gate was made I argued that it should be left open, not closed.”
Bon Bon’s eyes narrow suddenly. “The first gate?”
Lyra arrives an instant later. “Bonnie!” She bounces up and down on her hooves like an impatient foal. “We missed the announcement, we’ve got to get to our portal now! Sorry, Sandy, but Hollywood awaits, and boy am I looking to get my horn back after all of this.”
“Going back to a unicorn then?” I enquire.
“Going to Hollywood as myself, even,” Lyra continues, beaming. “Stars it will be good to have my magic back. I love being able to get up at dawn, but I miss my spells. You’re a unicorn, you know where I’m coming from right?”
Bon Bon blinks. “What? Lyra, Sandy is an earth pony.”
They stare at each other for a moment, then turn back to my chair. I, however, have already slipped away.
The restaurant of the Marriott hotel is a little beyond the strict boundary of the Canterlot Exchange. Still, the franchise hotel caters to a mostly human clientele and the decor is imported from Earth, all neutral tones and crisp white linen. A low babble of conversation fills the space, along with the bland smell of international food and even frying bacon. There are a few humans dotted amongst the crowd, those with the money to avoid Equestria’s hippomorphic curse. The majority, however, are ponies and there is much clattering of cutlery as they struggle with their forms.
Roger Smith is a pegasus stallion of middling years and sits opposite me, picking at a bowl of melon balls. He keeps glancing over at his family, his wife and two pegasus fillies who have taken over a booth and are digging into a huge pile of pancakes with gusto. It seems, however, that the turquoise stallion does not share their enthusiasm.
“Sorry, Sandy, I can’t imagine anyone would be interested.”
I shrug, tapping my pen on my notepad. “Everyone’s got a story and I’m a bit of an aficionado. I’m writing a book, you see.”
“Still...” Roger says, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. His wings fan out, as if he is about to take flight.
“How about you tell me why you came to Equestria,” I interject, before I lose my subject.
His gaze drifts to his family. The two young fillies are about ten and twelve, the eldest blue maned and blond coated, the younger blue with a blond mop. Much to their mother’s dismay, they have a single pancake stretched between them and are worrying at it like a pair of overlarge puppies.
“Well, it all started about six months ago when we saw an ad for a flying vacation.” He pauses, frowning, and then lets out a long sigh. “Actually, that’s a lie. It all started when Katie was about six and she first learned of Equestria. All little girls go through a pony phase, it’s almost like Equestria is specifically designed to appeal to them or something, but ponies stole her heart then and never let go. For years now she’s wanted to visit Equestria, so we decided to go for it. We’ve got the money, and the girls deserve a proper vacation before they’re too old to go anywhere with their parents.”
Again, he looks across to the booth and his face falls. “I just don’t know what I’m going to say to them when it’s time to go home. They love it here. They love flying. I just... I just wish we’d gone to Disneyland.”
“As someone who’s been, I’d advise against it. It gets slightly more creepy every year.”
Roger laughs and shakes his head. “Yeah, but it's traditional.” He brings his wings forward, spreading his primaries. “Though, I have to say I prefer these over mouse ears.”
“You’re actually learning to fly then?” I ask.
“Yeah, we’re on course for it,” Roger replies, furling his wings against his sides. “We had a directed transformation into pegasi, courtesy of the organisers, and we’ve just finished three days in Canterlot covering the basics. Next we’re flying to Cloudsdale, by airship, for a week of the advanced stuff. Then we’re free to explore Equestria by air.” He frowns. “Though I suppose for someone with wings that all must sound really mundane.”
“Hey, we all went through flight-school at some point,” I point out, grinning. “Not sure I’d ever consider flying halfway across Equestria a holiday, though.”
“No, I think my back will agree with you there. I already feel like I’ve run five marathons.” Roger sighs, flexing his wings. “A part of me knows I’m going to miss these feathery lumps. The bit with more sense knows they will be so sore by the end of the month I’ll be glad to be rid of them.”
He looks over at the booth. By physically separating the girls their mother has managed to stop the food fight, but the elder has managed to get at least half a bottle of syrup stuck in her feathers and coat. The younger is using the distraction to hover over the remains of the pancake stack and wolf down as many as possible before anyone notices. Roger smiles, but makes no move to stop his errant daughter’s fun.
“I’m not so sure Katie will agree with me,” he says, at last. “She loves this. I knew she would, and yet I’m still worried.”
“You’re worried about her enjoying her holiday?”
He nods, chewing his lower lip. “Irrational, I know. But I keep thinking I’m not going to get her back. Her bedroom is already hip deep in plush ponies. What’s she going to do now that she’s had her own set of wings? What’s she going to do once she knows what a cloud bed feels like, or how much spring there is to a rainbow? Will she stay?”
I look over at the filly, who is struggling in vain to get away from her mother. While her wings may be strong for her age, for all her frantic flapping she can’t overcome a well placed hoof on her tail.
“She’s ten,” I point out.
“And in three months she’ll be eleven, then it’ll just be a few years before she’s sixteen and free to leave home.” Roger sighs. “I know, I know, it’s years away, but... Do you have kids, Sandy, or foals?”
I smile, but it's a hollow thing. “No, it's never worked out. I spend a lot of my time on the road and– well, you know how that can be.”
“Yeah, sometimes it seems like it’ll never happen. It’s worth it, though, for all the heartbreak.” He purses his lips. “You always worry about them. When they’re just born it’s worries about whether they’ve got a cold, or whether you’ve got them the right kind of toys. As they grow up you hope they’ll do well in school, you hope they’ll make friends and come home every day with a smile on their face. You can’t always promise that, but you try and you try and hope it works out more days than it doesn’t.”
At the table the fillies and their mother have called truce. Though it seems the sisters have quite a bit of cleaning up to do in the near future.
“I’m already worrying about what they’re going to do when they grow up,” Roger continues, shaking his head. “It’s only a few years until they’re old enough to think about leaving the nest.” He pauses, glances down at his wings, then rolls his eyes. “Pun unintended.”
“I’ll forgive you one. It’s a little early to be thinking about college, though.”
“Is it? It’s sixty three months until her sixteenth birthday and then she’s free to do anything she wants to do.” A laugh escapes him and he lays his head on the table. “I know. I know. I shouldn’t stress myself out over the future, but I do anyway. I can’t help but wonder what her life will be if she chooses Equestria. Will there still be good schools for her? Will she be able to find friends, or will she be treated like an alien freak? Will she spend the rest of her life pushing clouds around and hating choosing wings? Will she go where I can’t follow?”
A long silence stretches between us. “I can’t see the future,” I admit at last. “But, I do know that you can’t stop a pony growing up and you can’t carry them forever. You can do everything in your power to help, but if they want to walk the road, you can’t stand in their way.”
“Yeah...” He sighs and gazes across at his family, staring as if he’s trying to sear the moment into his memory. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Heh, and don’t stress so much,” I say, reaching over the table to pat him on the back. “It may never happen. Don’t start worrying until you see the grandfoals.”
Like all transit hubs, there’s a great deal that can go wrong, and crossing between worlds only adds to the drama. The Canterlot Exchange Complaints Department is buried in the labyrinth of offices below the exchange. Like most such departments it is a sterile set of rooms, divided by glass partitions and whitewashed wooden panels. I sit next to a young mare, with a painfully pink mane and lavender coat, cradling a cup of water between her fetlocks. Her name is Matt Mailer, which should explain why she is in the complaints department. There is a large argument ongoing in the next room, but Matt makes no move to join in. She keeps her ears pressed flat against her head and stares at her reflection in the water.
“So,” I begin. “Shall we talk?”
A deep sigh escapes the mare. “I don’t feel much like talking right now, Sandy.”
“Sometimes that’s when we need to talk the most. Or would you prefer to join in the shouting?”
Matt shudders. “Urgh, no. Why bother arguing? We all know whose fault it was. We all know he’s never going to admit it. We can all tell it’s not going to be fixed anytime soon, otherwise someone would be fixing it. Why rant and scream?”
“Well, I hear it’s the second step on the road to acceptance.”
“That's dealing with loss,” Matt points out. A moment later she rolls her eyes. “Which is, I guess, a pretty good way of describing crossing the gender barrier. Urgh...” She presses a hoof against her head. “This is nuts. I told them magic was going to come back and bite us in the ass. I told them we should have just gone to damn Miami. Sure the drinks would have been expensive as shit but at least I wouldn’t have to relearn how to piss.”
“I think you’re drifting back to anger,” I observe, with a slight smile. “I wouldn’t worry so much. Anything that is caused by magic can be fixed by magic, at least in my experience.”
“Yeah?” She fixes me with a piercing glare. “Well how do you fix act of Ted?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
Matt sighs, long and deep. “Ted broke the magic. I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him with the damn amulets. Sure, there’s always a disclaimer that going human to pony can result in random effects, but that’s what, a one in a hundred shot? And even then you’re just as likely to come out as a breezie as lose your manhood. Ellie convinced us that we should all get directing amulets. You know, pick out whether you wanted wings, or magic, or stamina. I went for stamina by the way. You know, in preparation for the hangovers.”
A weary chuckle escapes me. “Let me guess, Ted switched the amulets around?”
“Oh no. If he’d been dumb enough to do that we would have caught him straight away. No, the utter genius managed to change the fucking spells using a hot needle. So now the morons running this place have no idea how to fix us beyond just sending us home and hoping the change doesn’t stick.” She downs the cup of water in one gulp and crushes it between her hooves. It was a metal cup, but she seems not to care.
“God damn it!” She slams her hooves against the bench, which creaks in protest. “This was supposed to be a vacation. I was supposed to be on a train to the beach right now. I was supposed to be pre-drinking my brightly-coloured tail off!”
“And what’s stopping you?” I enquire.
Her glare is withering, but I match it and, after a few moments of silence, she slumps. “Nothing,” she admits with a sigh. “Nothing is stopping me. Sure, Facebook’s going to laugh its collective ass off when they find out, but who gives a shit really? In a year this’ll just be a funny story and I know that, in the abstract, it still sucks to actually be a mare.”
I arch my eyebrow.
“Ack!” Matt lets out a strangled squawk, as she catches up to what she just said. “I mean. It sucks that I’m a... I didn’t mean that... I...” Her eyes narrow. “You’re finding this hilarious, aren’t you?”
“Extremely,” I say with a wry grin. “But I’ll waive any offense on the part of my gender, for now. Why is it such a problem?”
“It isn’t,” Matt protests, then frowns. “Or rather, it is the problem, but not a problem...” She lets out a long sigh and slumps in her chair. “It just wasn’t the plan. I know that things are going to work out, even if they have to get Princess Twilight down here to sort them out, so I’m not worried about getting back to normal. And I keep wondering...” Her frown deepens. “Well... Why not just go with it?”
“How so?”
“Well, I’m here to have fun, aren’t I?” she says. “All we wanted to do was go to the beach, find a bunch of parties and get so drunk we can barely stand. Swapping which restroom I use isn’t going to change that. I’m still going to be able to drink and dance and make a load of stupid decisions with the rest of the guys– girls– whatever.” She shakes her head and lets out a bitter sigh. “Hell, I can probably still find a few cute mares to hang out with. A different type of mare than I’d originally thought, but hey, I’m hardly in a position to judge.”
Matt drums her hooves on the bench for a moment, pursing her lips. “I guess I worried about... well, not being worried. It’s a vacation. It’s supposed to be a chance to get away from yourself. It’s supposed to be a time when you do things that you don’t normally do. Okay, I’m a small female horse, which is pretty far out there, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still have fun. It won’t change who I am.” Her ears prick up. “Will it?”
I give her a comforting smile. “That’s up to you. But I hear travel is good for the soul, regardless of whether you enjoy the journey.”
“Urgh, that’s not an answer,” Matt says, pouting. I do not point out how cute her pout is.
“Like I’m going to tell a teenager on Spring-Break what to do.” I roll my eyes.
“Heh, fair point.” She gazes at the floor tiles for a moment. “I just feel that I shouldn’t be okay with all this. I mean, being a man is supposed to be this big important thing which you have to go along with. Absolutely have to. Now, though, the Equestrians sell all sorts of magic and those rules just aren’t so hard and fast any more. Does it make me less of a man for just saying ‘fine, it’s a pain in the dick but let’s roll with it’? I don’t know. But I know I don’t want to be stuck in the pity party.”
Matt groans and leavers herself onto her hooves. She is a little unsteady, but seems to be fast acclimatising to four legs. “I guess that answers my question.” She shakes her head. “Well, I’d better go check on Ted, see if the medical ponies are willing to let him go.”
I frown, glancing down at my notes. “Wait, when did Ted get hurt? I thought he only sabotaged everyone else’s amulets.”
“Oh, he did. But the genius thought none of us would notice him pointing and laughing as we stumbled through the portal, so now he’s got an acute case of bruised testicles.”
I wince in sympathy. “That’s gotta hurt.”
“I hope so,” Matt agrees. “And if he hasn’t learned his lesson I’m going to keep kicking until he does. Thanks for the talk, Sandy.” She gave a haughty flick of her tail as she turned and walked away.
I close my notebook. Somehow I figure she is going to be okay.
Twilight Sparkle sits in the same booth that Lyra and Bon Bon recently occupied, though she does not realise it. The alicorn is well disguised, visibly lacking both her horn and wings, with a different palette to her coat and even a few subtle shifts to her cutie-mark. As such she is enjoying a hayburger in relative peace and quiet, though, even with the subtle disguise weaved around her ponies can sense she is not all that she seems. Colours seem brighter around the alicorn of friendship and magic, laughter comes easier and the food tastes sweeter. I am somewhat impressed by how strong her aura has grown in such a short space of time.
“Thanks again for agreeing to talk to me, Twilight.”
She swallows a bite of her burger and smiles. “No problem, Sandy. It’s lucky you caught me. I was going to travel later today, but Rainbow Dash insisted I look around the Exchange for some ‘mysterious interviewer pony’.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything like that?”
I glance down at my notepad, then up at Twilight’s warm, guileless smile. “No, I can’t say I have. So you have plans on Earth?”
“Well, damage control to perform at least,” she says, with a long suffering sigh. “Lyra is going on TV again, and that means somepony needs to be on call for when she causes another international incident.”
“This happens often?”
“Often enough,” Twilight mutters, and takes another bite of her burger. “I shouldn’t really blame her. Lyra has always been... impulsive, if I’m being diplomatic about it. She’s a pony that leaps before she looks and has been as long as I’ve known her. When she was a filly it was just harmless fun, but she’s a full grown mare now and one that’s constantly in the public spotlight. She needs to act more responsibly.”
I arch my eyebrow. “Some might say you’re still sore she beat you to revealing Equestria.”
Twilight shakes her head. “No, I’m not jealous. What she did was dangerous. In the end everything worked out, but what if it hadn’t? Lyra wilfully and knowingly endangered Equestria due to her own impatience. We had time. Humanity wasn’t aware of Equestria or the portal; for once we didn’t have a crisis to solve or a world ending threat to face.”
“And ponies such as Lyra would argue that you were happy to let that situation continue,” I point out.
“Earth was going to find out about us,” Twilight says, after another bite. “We knew we were on a clock. There were too many magical showdowns in too short a space of time for the governments of Earth to ignore us forever. It wasn’t an immediate threat, however, and we could learn so much in the meantime. There was an opportunity to understand humanity’s culture, their beliefs and their technology, but Lyra took that away from us and we had to go in blind.”
“Some would say that’s the best way to explore,” I point out.
“Well, they aren’t Princesses,” Twilight shoots back. “I have a responsibility to provide ponies with the best I can hope to achieve and Lyra undermined my efforts to smoothly introduce us to a world that, and let's be fair to humanity, does not have a great reputation for making friends with cultures they perceive as being primitive.”
“But you can argue that delaying was dangerous in its own way.” I set down my notepad. “The addition of a mobile network alone has revolutionised Equestria and, you could argue, saved hundreds of lives from various disasters. Surely that exchange of technology and ideas is a better use of the portal than a place to dump prisoners and malcontents?”
“Which is why we built more portals,” she says, shrugging.
“Heh. Yeah, I was surprised by that. I thought there would be a good chance you’d just take a hammer to it.”
Twilight frowns. “It was tempting. I couldn’t though. Partly, because leaving humanity with no way to get to Equestria would have just encouraged them to find their own. Mostly, though, I couldn’t destroy a work of art like that.”
“Art?” The shocked reply escapes me before I can stop it.
“Oh yes,” Twilight says, brightening. “I’ve spent a long time studying the original mirror and it is really fascinating. To be honest, even though the portals we have now are built to a different scale, they’re really pale copies of the original work. The original used just the solar cycle to power a bridge across worlds, a passive disguise spell, a language adaptation spell along with half a dozen little charms that made it almost impossible to notice. Sure, thirty moons charging time was a large price to pay, but even that was easily circumvented if one wanted to. In fact, I’d even say it was designed to be held open if somepony wanted to.”
I smile, leaning back in my chair. “Well, sounds like old Star Swirl has another notch for his beard.”
“Oh, it wasn’t Star Swirl,” Twilight says, causing me to choke in surprise. “As much as I admire his legacy, there’s a historical tendency to attribute everything to him. Crossing dimensions, however, is not part of any spell Star Swirl ever wrote. Sure, he knew about the mirror and even wrote extensively about his experiments with it, but it’s not his work.”
“So whose work is it?” I ask, trying and failing to keep my voice neutral.
“I don’t know. It feels... It feels like when Celestia raises the sun, or when Luna walks into a dream. It feels like somepony took the world and twisted it, making the impossible possible through sheer force of will.” Twilight smiles fondly. “Sunset showed me a human TV program called Stargate, where humanity finds an ancient gate to other worlds. The mirror is like that: ancient, alien, a fragment of a lost alicorn’s soul.” She lets out a pent up breath and a spark runs down the length of her, suddenly visible, horn.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I wonder if that lost alicorn would appreciate all the people tramping through her portal.”
Twilight smiles. “I think she would. Nopony puts so much time and effort into something like that just to see it gather dust. She’d want to see how it works. She’d want to talk to the people using it and learn what they discovered on the other side of the mirror.”
She turns to look at me and for just a moment, our eyes meet through my veil of illusion magic. “Who are you, Sandy?” she asks, frowning.
I hold up my notebook. “Just somepony who collects stories, I’m writing a book, you see.”
“Yes, and I’m a librarian,” Twilight points out. Her horn begins to glow with magic and the pressure of her aura doubles in an instant. My veil wavers, but doesn’t fall. “That’s not exactly the whole story, is it?”
“You never get the whole story,” I point out, casting around for an exit. “You just get these little snippets of lives told through a haze of memory, nostalgia and lies. Fascinating in their own way, but never fully true.”
Her frown deepens, forming a furrow between her brows. The pressure of magic redoubles and ponies start to look our way. They can’t see the struggle of wills, but they can feel it, in the same way a pegasus can feel a wild storm building.
“Who are you?” she repeats, planting her hooves firmly on the table.
“Sandy Hooves.” I hold out my hoof to shake, she doesn’t take it. “It’s a pleasure–”
I slam my hoof down, catching the edge of the metal tray. Through more luck than judgement, it flips into the air smacking Twilight right in the face. The moment of distraction is just enough for me to vault out of the booth and break into a wild gallop towards the back of the restaurant.
“Wait!” Twilight cries, as I barge through a door and into a restroom. “I just want to... huh?”
She finds herself staring at an empty room. The restroom is deserted, save for a few unoccupied stalls and a broad mirror.
We sit in a Starbucks in the New York Exchange watching people hurry to and fro across the busy concourse. Beside me is Svetlana, a severe looking woman with a large, beak-like nose and a ropy scar that runs down her face and neck before disappearing beneath her fur-lined jacket. Despite the fact it is twenty degrees out and sunny, she shows no sign of overheating and, indeed, has a large cup of black coffee before her.
“So, it's a story you want?” Svet says, drumming her fingers on the table. It makes a very metallic rattle and I realise that her left arm is robotic. “How about I tell you how I lost my wing in a battle to the death with a forty foot long dragon?”
“Well, I’d prefer a true story.”
“Ha!” She slaps the table. “About time someone called me on that. Let me tell you, that dragon’s been getting bigger for years and people still eat it up.” She rolls her eyes. Well, eye. One sits dead in its socket, clearly a glass replica. “Honestly, people still believe gryphons are barbarians from beyond the frontiers of Equestria, or something. Morons.”
“Let's be fair, I would have believed a twenty foot dragon,” I reply, smiling. “But if you don’t want to say–”
“I don’t.”
“–then I won’t force you.” I tap my pen against my notebook. “So, why Earth?”
There’s a mechanical whine as Svetlana crosses her arms across her chest. “What’s it to you?” she demands, glowering at me.
“About the cost of a coffee,” I shoot straight back.
“Urgh, fine, that gets you at least half a story.” She purses her lips, glowering off into the middle distance. “Earth? Well, Earth isn’t Equestria. That’s what makes it great. You know where you stand with humanity, they’re a simple bunch who know what they want and then get it. There’s no namby-pamby waltzing around agonising over friendship and feelings. They see, they strike, they get. It’s all about being a predator, not prey. I never thought I’d find that outside of Gryphon Stone.”
“It sounds like you’re a convert.”
“Hell yeah,” Svetlana says, beaming. “This is New York, home of capitalism. Where Wall Street rules the world. Peace and love? Nah. Try, how much for an hour? That’s why this place is great. I came to New York with nothing but a gold bit smuggled in my crop. Five years on and I’ve got a swanky apartment, eat steak every night and have a dozen people running at my beck and call. Back in Equestria I was a charity case, a cripple. I literally had filly scouts knocking on my door to see if there was anything I needed done around the house. Here.” Her eye sparkles. “Here I have it all.”
I frown. “So, what is it that you do?”
“Imports and exports,” she says, with a blasé toss of the head. A moment later she fixes me with a piercing glare. “And don’t think that means smuggling, I’ve got a lawyer to stick on people who make that kind of insinuation. I’m a legitimate businesswoman.”
There is not a trace of irony in her voice, which I consider to be a remarkable achievement. “So, you ship across the portal?”
“Yep, all sorts of things. Of course the damn governments on both sides have a list of rules as long as my arm stopping all the good stuff getting through, like gold and gems, but we've snuck all sorts of stuff through the legal cracks. It was my boys that got the first lump of platinum through the portal, and half the book was written to keep us from making a killing in arbitrage.”
She grimaces. “They don't let us get away with that kind of fast talking these days, though, so we have to play within the rules. Takes all the fun out of it, but hell, we’re still making a killing. Humans can't get enough of enchanted gadgets, even if it's just a little fire starting spell. Likewise ponies go crazy for anything electronic. We sell so many iPads I’m looking into making our own knockoff. Turns out ‘PonyPad’ is trademarked by some games developer already, but I’m sure I can pay some soft-livered creative type to come up with something.”
“It sounds like you’ve found your niche.”
“Hell yeah.“ Svetlana beams. “I’ve got money. I’ve got my arm back.” She hefts the bionic limb. “And I’ve got respect.”
“And,” I begin, hesitantly. “You still travel to Equestria?”
Her face falls. “More than I’d like. I have to dump the arm of course, the disguise spell freaks out when I go through wearing it, which is a pain in the ass. I must yell at Sparkle next time she tries to dress me down actually, and get her to fix that.”
“Nothing you miss?” I ask, trying to affect an innocent air.
“Oh, don’t even start with that shit,” Svetlana snaps, glowering at me. “You’re asking me about my wings. Well, guess what, this–” She points at the scar. “–didn’t just cost me a foreleg. Now the ponies, they’re all about the sympathy. When I tell them about the forty foot dragon, they tell me how sorry they are for my loss and how terrible it must be. Bunch of fucking whiners. They’ve got all this magic, they’ve got immortals, but I’m not a pony so they don’t know how to fix a fucking thing. They did nothing!”
Svetlana’s hand hits the table with a bang and I leap in surprise. A leonine growl escapes her throat. “So no, Miss Sandy, I don’t miss anything about Equestria. There’s no dreams of open skies or silver lined clouds waiting for me. On Earth I may still be a cripple, but humans don’t let themselves be defined by their injuries. I’m happy.”
“Are you?” The woman’s voice is soft and melodious but it is her presence that draws the eye. She’s unnaturally tall, with waist length blond hair and is wearing a light grey business suit that seems to shine under the florescent lights. She is radiant, in a very literal sense. Just being in her presence seems to brighten the world and I can feel the heat and life pouring from her in soft waves.
Her name is Celestia.
“Oh shit,” Svetlana mutters. “Look, I didn’t mean–”
“I don’t care. Leave.” Celestia silences her with a word. Svetlana is gone before I can even blink, not even pausing to take her coffee. Celestia sits in the vacant chair.
“Hello, Sandy. It is good to see you again.” If she is indeed glad to see me, it does not show on her face which is fixed in a serene smile.
“Wish I could say the same,” I reply, closing my notebook and setting it on the table between us. “I seem to recall threats of fiery death if I ever showed my face again.”
Celestia blanches. “Yes, that was a little rash of me.”
“Eh, it was a long time ago,” I say, glancing around to see if there’s any cover I can duck into to avoid immolation. Alas, there is not. “I’m over it.”
“You don’t have to be afraid, Sandy,” Celestia says, spreading open her hands. “I bare you no ill will and this is neutral ground. You are safe.”
“Fine...” I say, at long last. “You found me quickly. I thought I’d have at least another hour before Twilight figured out what had happened.”
“She surprises even me sometimes.” Celestia’s smile is warm and the world shines along with her. “Of course, you did stop to interview someone, which helped.”
I shrug. “It’s a weakness of mine. I’m writing a book, you see.”
“Still?”
“It’s not the kind of book you ever finish writing. There’s always more stories out there, more than you ever imagined.”
Celestia winces. “Sandy, I know we last left off on a poor note.”
“You promised to consume me in fires so hot that even a phoenix would perish,” I cut in. “It left an impression.”
“In my defence, you threatened Equestria.”
I roll my eyes. “No. I said, ‘if you carry on as you are the sun will never again rise on your little nation’. Given Luna’s little incident occurred just twenty years later I can’t say I was wrong.”
“Ah.” She lets out a tiny sigh. “In that case you have my apologies, again. I was... overprotective of my little ponies in those days.”
“That implies that you aren’t now,” I say, shaking my head. “Then again, I guess the sun isn’t known for its changing ways. Perhaps if you’d listened to your sister now and again Equestria wouldn’t have grown so stagnant.”
“Peaceful,” Celestia corrects.
I shrug. “Same difference. I gave you every opportunity to see what was over the horizon. To explore beyond the little empire you called Equestria. You turned me down, and look what happened.”
A frown mars Celestia’s serene look. “We found Harmony.”
“Heh. Funny, I thought it was only when you started fighting the monsters rather than just sealing them away that Equestria began to bloom. Or maybe that was just because Twilight has a little more nerve than old Star Swirl. She actually thought to explore my mirror.”
“Your mirror almost killed Star Swirl,” Celestia shoots back.
“Almost. Roads are dangerous things, Celestia, but well worth travelling. Then again, Star Swirl never could appreciate something he didn’t have a hoof in building.”
She tuts and shakes her head, as if chiding a child. “You haven’t changed at all, have you, Sandy? Our little ponies are far more precious than you can imagine, to risk them so lightly is–”
“I think we’ve had this argument before,” I cut in, holding up a hand. “It's no more interesting this time around. If you’re going to do nothing but make veiled threats, then I have better ways to spend my time.”
For just an instant the gentle warmth of Celestia’s aura goes white hot, but she takes a deep breath and forced it down. “As you wish, Sandy. But–” She holds up a finger. “–If you are not going to work with Equestria, then you must promise not to work against us.”
“I just collect stories, Tia,” I say, scowling. “You don’t have anything to fear from me.”
“And if you decide to, yet again, reveal Equestria to another world?”
“Ha!” It takes me a moment, and a severe glare, to realise that Celestia is serious. “Oh, you really think I had anything to do with that? No, I just made the mirror. The path your little ponies took was entirely up to them. Perhaps they’re more adventurous than you like to think.”
She sighs. “Sandy. When I checked last your portal stood on a little island just off of Europe, not in an American school.”
“Eh, so I moved things around a little,” I say, shrugging. “I wasn’t the one who pushed their student through. I wasn’t the one who drew attention to Equestria. I wasn’t the one who built the Exchanges.”
“But you carved the road,” Celestia cut in, arching an eyebrow at me. “Paraphrasing, ‘I didn’t pull the trigger, but I still killed her’. You have no idea of the harm you could have wrought by your actions, Sandy.”
“Maybe not, but I knew full well what would have happened if I stood still. You have no idea of the good that has come, and will come, from all this.” I slide my notebook across the table and smile. “Perhaps you’d like to see.”
Celestia makes no move to take it. “You had no right.”
“Nor do you.” I stand. “So are we done here? I’ve got a flight to San Francisco booked in a couple of hours.”
“I... yes, I suppose we are.” Celestia sighs. “Before you go. I want you to know that you can come home if you wish.”
I roll my eyes. “I live on the road, Celestia. There’s too much to see to tie yourself down to one place.”
“The last time you said that you made the mirror portal,” she points out. “Please don’t make another, Equestria has barely survived meeting humanity.”
“Oh Celestia,” I say, chuckling. “Whatever makes you think I only made one mirror?”
Her eyes go wide and she leaps to her feet. But, too late. I was already long gone.
