Principal Celestia deals with Sunset Shimmer on her own terms.
Sunset Shimmer ran away. There's really no other way to say it. One can call it exile, tactical retreat, or even a permanent change in residence, but the facts are the same. She turned her back on the only reality she had ever known, and ran away. By the time she stopped to look back, the damage was done. It was too late. Celestia would never forgive her. She would never forgive herself.
Sunset Shimmer had always been a heavy sleeper. While her body was very rarely pushed to the kind of limits that made her tired, her mind had been constantly challenged ever since she was ten years old. Questions of reality, the universe and endless permutations of various magical spells taxed her brain from glorious sunrise to bittersweet sunset, and even while asleep there was some part of her that would stubbornly refuse to stop calculating. She had woken up to a room covered in half-legible scribbles about the Farmy-Drying Rack distribution function more times than she could count, and only the reassuring but firm nudges of Princess Celestia could ever be counted on to get her up at a reasonable hour.
"Come now, my dear. It's time to wake up."
Sunset whimpered and flailed weakly. "Five more minutes..." she mumbled. She shifted away from the nudge, expecting to feel the softness of her bed and the warmth of her covers. Instead, she felt a wall. Which she was resting against... vertically? That made no sense. Wait, what was up with her bone structure? What in the—
Yesterday came rushing back. The argument. The rebuttal. The... threat. She couldn't call it an attack, not when it had done so little. And then, when she saw those eyes fill with tears, she had...
Run. Run for all she was worth, abandoning scrolls and spells and all common sense as she threw herself through the one door that Celestia dared not follow her through.
The new form had been confusing at first, but she'd been too distraught to really process the existential crisis. She'd learned to walk just so that she could keep running. She'd tried to get into the building, but she had no magic, and the glass was too thick for her soft little paws, and all she could do was, slump against the door and cry and cry and cry. She'd fallen asleep there, weeping at the unfairness of it all.
But now she was awake. And there was Celestia, standing over her.
The transformation had done nothing to make the Princess of Equestria any less beautiful. The light from the rising sun still made her mane shimmer like the cascading waterfalls in the Rocinante Cliffs. Her violet eyes still had that warm intensity that told you that it didn't matter if you had just killed your way through her entire army to make this second of eye contact, she forgave you and would welcome you home. She still had that smile, the coy little teasing one that hinted at some delicious prank hidden under your seat. The legs, the claws, the suit, those couldn't hide the fact that this was Princess Celestia.
"You're here," Sunset whispered, her mind torn over whether to be horrified or relieved.
"Of course I am. I work here."
It was like someone had seen a switch labelled 'Aura of Godliness and Perfection' and flicked it off without a second thought. The birds stopped chirping, the roses stopped blooming and the sun got a little less bright as Sunset tried to process what she had just heard. "Pardon me?"
The creature she thought was Celestia looked at Sunset, then at the building she was leaning against, then back to Sunset. "I'm the principal at this school," she said, indicating the building with an extended claw. "Have you been here all night?"
Celestia or not, there was such genuine concern in those words that Sunset couldn't help but feel bad for worrying her. "Well, not all night..."
"What's your name, child?" The creature was extending its paw down towards her, in a gesture that was probably meant to signal that it wanted to help rather than tear her throat out. Sunset reached out with her own paw, and gave herself an imaginary hoofbump when the soft paw closed over her own and pulled, lifting her to her shaky feet.
"My name is Sunset Shimmer," she said, feeling a little bit of confidence come back into her system.
"Sunset Shimmer, are you a vagrant?"
Sunset ripped her paw away from the creature, baring her teeth and trying to cast a death-by-fire spell without any of the necessary glands. "I most certainly am not! What in Tartarus would make you think that?"
"The part where you're here, sleeping against the door of a government building in the middle of the night." To her credit, the Celestia-thing didn't seem too offended by Sunset's outburst. To her detriment, she was not currently on fire.
"A government building? I thought you said this was a school."
It was Celestia's turn to look confused and startled. "What else would a school be, if not a government building?"
Sunset Shimmer's mind was racing. How much was different in this world? "Isn't a school an institution privately established and financed by wealthy po— by the aristocracy as a cheaper means of tutoring their progeny in matters that they themselves were never able to comprehend?"
With almost every single word, the venom in Sunset's voice grew, until she was practically spitting liquid contempt with her weird new tongue. Celestia just stared, her bemused smile falling into a worried frown and the faintest suggestion of a tear in one corner of her eye.
"No. It isn't." That voice... it felt so wrong, to hear that voice coming out of a different creature. It was the only voice that could make a guilty verdict sound like an invitation to milk and cookies. "The education system is run by the government, financed by a combination of funds derived from taxpayer dollars and contributions from the families of those wishing to be educated, and mostly exists to create a baseline level of technical skill and basic memorization capabilities." Celesti— this thing gave Sunset a look, a look that combined disbelief and pity in such an effective package that Sunset had to look away.
"Oh." That was all she could think to say. That was all there was to say. It was finally sinking in. She was alone on an alien world, a world that was strange and new to her not just in its biology but in its politics and its social structure. She had no magic, no cutie mark, not even her hooves.
The night before, Sunset had thought that the worst thing that could happen would be Celestia following her through the portal and punishing her. Now, she was beginning to realize that it was much worse to know that nopony had come. To know that, if Celestia hadn't followed hot on her heels, she probably never would.
"Sunset... you're an awfully long way from home, aren't you?"
Whoever it was that said "he cried until there were no more tears to cry" clearly never had a sad thought in his life. Tears aren't something you can run out of, any more than sadness is something you can turn off with a thought. When people cry, they will cry until something makes them decide that there's something more important to do. For a former pony with a good sense of priorities, crying could last a very long time.
Being hugged by one world's cruel facsimile of her mentor wasn't more important to Sunset Shimmer than crying about how she had lost her real mentor. Whatever vague words of comfort the creature could offer weren't more important than all the lessons, all the lectures that flowed through her mind in that moment. And going somewhere different didn't hold a grain of significance when she had nothing left to run from.
So she was led, stumbling and sobbing, through the halls of a building that her half-listening ears vaguely caught as Canterlot High School. Of course it would be; this world had clearly been designed to make Sunset's exile as painful as possible without actually having the decency to use a knife. The creature was the principal of Canterlot High, because Shadowfax forbid that she find herself in a domain where Celestia was not the master. Everywhere she looked, there was some fragment of Equestrian architecture, some little trick of interior decorating that brought to mind the halls of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Every step ground strange bone against strange bone, and though her body wasn't hurt by it, her brain couldn't help but recoil in disgust at what would have been the pinnacle of discomfort as a pony.
And, on top of everything else, she'd been regressed to a teenager. Sunset was trapped in a world without the slightest detectable spark of the thing she was best at in life, and she was at her most stupid, her most impulsive, her most emotionally compromisable that she'd ever been in her life. On the off chance that the real Celestia did show up, she'd probably do something like blow her off, or worse, try to kill her again.
Sunset was very lucky that that realization hit her just as the principal was trying to get her to sit down in a chair, or she could have really hurt herself.
"I think your phone is ringing, Sunset Shimmer."
Sunset's brain latched onto the first utterly unknown word she had encountered in this dimension, and the tears finally stopped. She looked up at the principal, who was holding the minotaur-style travel pack that her saddlebags had turned into when she passed through the portal. "My what?"
"Your phone." Sunset just put on her best 'I am completely lost' face, in the hopes that it would get her faster answers. "Your cellular telephone?"
"Tele as in telekinesis?" Sunset asked, focusing on the syllable that made the most sense. The principal just gave her a look as though she had just asked where Commander Hurricane was living these days.
"Broadly, yes." The principal began to speak slowly and deliberately, like Sunset had been regressed to early childhood instead of her adolescent years. "Tele as in the ancient Greek word meaning 'afar', phone as in the Greek for 'voice' or 'sound', and cellular because the coverage maps of signal towers resemble diagrams of biological cells. Cells are the individual building blocks of living beings, by the way."
"I know what cells are," Sunset snapped weakly, reaching out and taking the bag. Held this close, she could feel the vibrations within it, and as she fiddled with the zipper she tried to recall what she could possibly have brought that made that kind of noise. Then she saw the journal, buzzing with a message from Celestia, and her heart skipped a beat.
"Forgive me, I'm sure, but you haven't exactly come off as the scientific type." The principal turned her back on Sunset and walked around her desk to her seat, giving Sunset just enough time to desperately flip through the pages of the journal until it was tricked into thinking she had read the message. Then the principal sat down, and Sunset's attention found a new focal point. "What are you, Sunset Shimmer?"
Sunset shivered at the question. "Don't po- people usually start by asking who, rather than what?"
"I did open with that." The principal's mouth seemed uncertain if it wanted to smirk or frown. "Who you are is Sunset Shimmer. What you are, that's another kettle of fish entirely."
Sunset gagged a little at the thought of boiled fish. Judging by the rise of the principal's eyebrow, a little was enough to be noticed.
"A vegetarian, then. And yet, you wear a leather jacket."
For the first time since arriving, Sunset really looked at what she was wearing. She had on a purple shirt that was emblazoned with some watered-down reproduction of her cutie mark, a tacky orange skirt with some random stripes of color around the hem, and she did indeed have a thick jet-black jacket that felt about as much like cow hide as certain trophies she had handled in her time. It also had a popped collar and some weird metal studs, which as far as Sunset could tell served basically no purpose.
"It was a gift," she said weakly. "Sentimental value. I didn't know the cow they made it out of," she added as an afterthought.
"I assumed you didn't," the principal said, steepling her paws and watching Sunset over the top of them. "Still, the question remains. What are you, and what could possibly lead a girl like you to wake up outside of my school?"
Sunset stared down at the floor and clutched her bag against her body. So far, the only two things she could say for certain about this world was that she didn't understand it, and it didn't have magic. She took a few seconds to try and imagine how an Equestria that had never known magic would react to a pony claiming to be from another dimension. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she whispered, just barely loud enough to hear.
The principal laughed, a warm motherly laugh with the slightest hint of a mind far more clever than the listener could ever imagine. It reminded Sunset far too much of Celestia. "In that case, do you mind if I hazard a guess?"
Sunset shrugged noncommittally. "Give it your best shot."
"I remind you of her."
The bag fell out of Sunset's arms, and her brain very nearly followed it. "How did you...?"
"You don't play your cards very close to your chest, Sunset. When I woke you up, you recognized me, or thought you did. You don't strike me as a very trusting person, yet you haven't shown the slightest hesitation to take my hand, or hold you, or guide you. Half the things I say, you react like we're sharing an old joke, or perhaps an old scar. I remind you of someone you used to care about very deeply."
Sunset stared, part of her impressed at the principal for being so observant and part of her angry that she was so easy to read. "What makes you so sure of the past tense in that last sentence?"
"Simple." The principal's eyes narrowed, the warmth of her gaze dimming until there was nothing left but intensity. "If you still cared about her as much you did, you would still be with her."
Sunset Shimmer didn't like crying. It wasn't dignified. It wasn't proper. It wasn't cool. More than all of that, it was weak. Yes, she had cried earlier, but that was different. She didn't cry this time.
Sometimes, hiding your tears makes it all the more obvious. Sunset could see it in the principal's eyes, the same glare that Celestia had fixed so many stuffy aristocrats with. It was a look that said, in no uncertain terms, "Do you honestly think I don't see the chink in your armor?"
And then, just like that, it was gone. The warmth was back, and Sunset's brief moment of base existential horror was wiped away. The threat had been understood; nothing else was needed for the moment.
"If I'm reading your mannerisms correctly, the two of you come from a secluded kingdom with a technology level that I'd generously describe as medieval, and a very strong caste system where the aristocracy holds all the power. You've never seen that jacket before yesterday, and probably the rest of your clothes as well. They were either provided as part of a disguise, or more likely snatched from a servant's wardrobe in a hurry as you fled the hotel."
"What makes you think we were at a hotel?"
The principal smiled, and began to toy with a thin metal rectangle on her desk. "If a kingdom like yours existed within walking distance of my domain, I would know of it. Since your existence comes as a surprise, you and the other woman were clearly travelling the outside world, most likely incognito. Perhaps I should devise a codeword for the members of my court, so that this other woman does not accidentally take over my kingdom while visiting."
"Your kingdom?" Sunset repeated in surprise. "I thought you were just the principal of a high school."
"I am that as well," the principal answered simply. "Some princesses plant flower gardens, or compose over-dramatic wordslaughter that they brand as poetry. I take time out of my theoretically opulent life to support education in the most direct way I can. And who can blame me?"
It would have been so much easier, Sunset thought, if the thing only looked like Celestia. But no. It had to sound like her, act like her, even quote her. She remembered hearing those same words from her Celestia, the real Celestia. She remembered the conversations that had flowed from them, the study sessions under the wing of Equestria's Princess, the tests that felt all the more important because they were from a school with Celestia's name on them.
"What are you?" she asked.
"I am Celestia dé Sol, Crown Princess of Equestria and Principal of Canterlot High School." The principal stood from her chair, and offered Sunset a smile that chilled her to the bone. "And upon both of my titles, you are welcome here, Sunset Shimmer."
Sunset did not fall to her knees and thank the principal for this. That would have been weakness. Instead, she stood from her chair, grabbed her bag and turned to walk out. "The hospitality is appreciated, but I won't be here long enough to take advantage of it."
The principal waited until Sunset had reached the door before speaking again. "You don't have to run away from me. I'm not her."
Sunset paused for a minute, her hand curled around the handle of the door. "No. You aren't." She turned the handle and opened the door. "And that's why I'm leaving."
Sunset Shimmer stood in front of the horse statue. It was a very nice statue. It captured the musculature of a Saddle Arabian prince to an almost hypnotizing degree, it was made of a very nice rock that probably wasn't nearly as expensive as the sculptor had made it look, and it really did tie the whole front yard together.
She would have liked to tell herself that she would miss it, but she knew that was unlikely. At best, she might remember it occasionally. Probably when she had run out of any Equestrian architecture to fondly remember, and the only things left were ugly monkey buildings. Still, that was more than could be said of Canterlot High itself, which she would be doing her best to put out of mind as soon as she was off its grounds. Now, there only remained one question.
"Which way to adventure?" she mused, more than a little sarcastically. Just beyond the statue was the road, a broad streak of sun-scorched rock that played host to an army of metal chariots that moved almost as fast as the average earth pony athlete. It seemed to stretch out forever in both directions, with smaller streets breaking off from it at such regular intervals that it looked more like a river than a proper road. From here, she could go anywhere, as long as she was okay with not knowing how to get there.
Of course... there was another path she could walk...
At the moment, the statue was abandoned. Nobody had congregated around it, nobody had recently covered it in distasteful paint, none of them were even giving it so much as a second glance. If there was ever a chance to go back, now was it. Sunset took a few steps closer to the statue, her eyes scanning the blank wall of stone for any sort of telltale flicker that would prove the portal was still active. When she was just a single small step from crossing back into Equestria, she gathered the nerve to reach out a hand and check.
A part of her had hoped it would actually be open. It was a small part of her, the part that didn't care if there was a small battalion waiting with charged horns on the other side so long as the real Celestia was there. Right now, it felt like a very small part of her.
The statue was a statue, nothing more. As Sunset spread her hand against the faintly warm stone and took her first real look at her fingers, she choked back tears at that. What had she been expecting, exactly? Had she thought Celestia would invite her back with a friendly smile and an open invitation to peruse the Star Swirl the Bearded wing? Celestia was many things, but an idiot wasn't one of them. The door had closed. There was nowhere to go but forward.
"You don't strike me as the sort of girl to go for the easy option."
"Leave me alone, Celestia," Sunset grumbled. "Don't you have a school to run?"
"Paperwork can wait a few hours. I don't have that luxury with crying children."
"I'm not a child!" Sunset shouted, slapping her hand against the stone as though that would make it open.
"Perhaps if you stop acting like one, I will believe you." It wasn't meant to cut deep. Sunset could tell from the sort of half-formed chuckle in Celestia's words that she meant it as a joke, or a bit of a funny dig at her. It wasn't the sort of thing that should make her cry. Not that she would have cried anyway.
"What do you want?" Sunset muttered as she stepped back from the statue. "I told you, I'm leaving."
"I want to know why." The principal leaned against the statue, her arms crossed and her head cocked to the side. "You already ran away once, why do it again? Have I done something wrong?"
Sunset froze. "Of course you haven't," she gasped, "what would even make you think that?"
The principal just stared at Sunset, her eyes half-closed like she was about to start crying. "Why else would you run away?"
"Because..." Sunset looked down at her hand. She looked at her fingers, and watched them close up into a fist. When they were like that, her hand almost looked like a hoof. "I don't belong here."
"Nobody belongs anywhere, Sunset." The principal reached into a pocket of her suit and pulled out a ring with a shimmering topaz set in it. She put it on her finger, and turned it this way and that as it caught the sunlight. "I belong on a throne, living off the fat of the land and the sweat of other people's brows, and yet here I am."
"That's different. You're a princess. If you make the wrong choice, you have somewhere to go back to. Me... I don't have that." The plain wall of stone seemed to glisten for a moment in the sunlight, as though mocking her.
"So you're just going to keep running? What is that going to accomplish?" The principal turned to look at the road, the road that probably went on forever. "You're so far away from home. You'll be just as lost in the next town over as you would be right here. Here, at least, you've got someone on your side."
"You aren't on my side," Sunset spat. "You don't know anything about me. You have no idea what I've done."
"In that case, what have you done?" Celestia was staring right at her, with that look that would have seemed like it was searching for something if it wasn't for the fact that she already knew everything. "What did you do?"
"That is not your destiny, Sunset. I'm sorry."
"I got into a very big argument with a very powerful person."
Celestia's eyes narrowed. "And did you kill anyone? If I were to go to her and ask her what happened, would she tell me that you had blood on your hands?"
"You didn't dodge," Sunset whispered at the cloud of smoke. "You should have dodged." And then the smoke cleared, and she realized that Celestia didn't have to.
"No," she whispered, her hands trembling.
"Then I have only one thing to say to you." Celestia held up two fingers and made a little gesture with them. "I pardon you."
Sunset Shimmer stared at the principal's hand as though it were one of Meadowbrook's eight enchanted items. "What?"
Celestia grinned. "You've been pardoned. Whatever you've done, whatever anyone says you've done, none of it matters anymore."
"What?" Sunset backed away from the principal, her mind racing to keep track of what this meant. "You can't... you don't have the authority to do that!"
"You really haven't been paying attention." Celestia held up her hand and indicated her ring. "This isn't some fancy piece of jewelry that Daddy bought me for my birthday. This is the signet ring of my family, worn by the dé Sols since they first came to power. This ring has sealed the fates of the men and women of this land for a thousand years. While I wear it, I do not wield power. I am power." She lowered her hand, and Sunset's eyes didn't know whether to follow the ring or Celestia's eyes. "And by that power, you are absolved of your crimes."
"You can't do that." Sunset had meant for it to sound like a strong declaration, a willingness to shoulder the weight of her sins. Instead, it just sounded like a weak child who didn't want to admit that someone else had won their favorite game. "She won't let you."
The principal smiled, then took a few steps forward and laid a hand on Sunset's shoulder. "Listen to me. You. Are. Forgiven. I will never ask you anything about where you come from. I will never ask another question about why you're here instead of there. And if she comes back and tries to get revenge, or justice, or whatever she wants, I will protect you."
"But why?" Sunset tried to hold back her tears, too confused to be grateful. "Why would you do all this for a complete stranger?"
"Well, that's easy." Celestia smiled, and pulled Sunset into a hug. "Because right now, you really need it."
When Sunset Shimmer heard the bell, her first instinct was to run. It was a siren bell, where a unicorn would take hold of a bell and ring it much faster than any pony could manage in an attempt to confuse and startle fleeing criminals. She had seen the bells used to terrifying efficiency in some of the darker streets of Canterlot, and had sworn she'd never live the sort of life that made them chase after her.
But now, she could hear the bells. Now, she deserved to hear them. They had come for her, and she was going to—
"Sunset? Are you alright?"
The voice cut through the fear, and Sunset remembered where she was. There was Principal Celestia. There was Canterlot High School. And there were the bells, the never-ending bells, getting closer and closer and—
They weren't getting closer. No, the sound of the bells was coming from the school, and it wasn't getting any louder. And the students were running... towards the school?
"Sunset? Is something wrong?"
Sunset focused on the principal. "What... what is that noise?"
Celestia's concerned expression softened, and she smiled. "That's just the bell to let students know that class is about to start. It's nothing to be worried about, Sunset."
"Right. Yeah. Okay." Everything is okay. Hand to the chest, take a deep breath, push it away. Calm. Control. "Sorry about that."
"You don't have to apologize, Sunset." Celestia started walking back to the school, and Sunset was following before she could even realize it. "There must be so much about this place that you don't understand. You don't need to feel ashamed that you're out of your depth."
"Um... thanks?" Sunset smiled a little at the back of that unnaturally shimmering head of hair. She remembered when the princess would say things like 'it's not your fault that I'm immortal'. She'd never known how to take it then, either. "So, what happens now?"
They had reached the doors, and the principal had stopped with her hand against the glass. She was looking down at the place where Sunset had been asleep only a few hours ago, her eyes already clouded with that all-too-familiar mournful remembrance that the princess always had when she thought nopony was watching. Sunset couldn't help but wonder how old this version was, or if she had just lived through something that nobody should ever know.
"Now?" It was like flipping a switch. Her eyes cleared, her smile returned, and the door swung open. "Now, it's time for you to meet the world."
Even though the bell had rung, there were still plenty of students milling around. All of the faces were strange and unknown, but a few of them had eyes that Sunset felt like she should recognize. They were all smiling, and a few of them even waved at her like she was an old friend. She only just stopped herself from waving back.
"I don't feel I can take credit for what Canterlot High School is," Celestia admitted, even as her voice brimmed with pride, "but I can still sing its praises. And Sunset, I think I can safely say that the students of my school are among both the most clever and the most kind in the entire district. You will never find a more genuine group of friends." The principal reached into a pocket, then handed Sunset a piece of paper. "If you can't find your classes, just ask for directions."
Sunset stared at the paper, her relief at being able to actually read the words drowned out by her total confusion. "Are you serious? I just got here! I'm going to look like a complete idiot in front of everyone!"
"Wrong." Celestia took off her signet ring. "You're going to look like a transfer student. And as far as your teachers will be concerned, that's what you are. I'm going to pull some strings, arrange for some remedial tutors. We'll have you caught up on the curriculum within a few weeks, and it shouldn't take more than a few months to get you up to speed on the outside world."
"So why do I have to go to classes today?" Sunset demanded, trying to keep her voice down in case she caused a scene. "Wouldn't it cause less of a disturbance if I just stayed in your office for the day?"
"No, for two reasons." Principal Celestia had started confidently striding through the throng of students, and Sunset did her best to keep up. "First of all, I'll have no idea what kind of tutors to get for you until I have a sense for how much help you need, and the best and fastest way to gauge that is to put you through actual classes. Second of all, I am not in the mood to give the tabloids any fodder by keeping a young mystery teenager locked up in my office all day."
Sunset blushed, and nodded in agreement. "Okay, fair enough." The bell rang again, and she only nearly jumped out of her skin this time.
"Well, good luck, Sunset." Celestia stopped and indicated a door through which several students were already flowing. "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life."
"It's so big," Sunset muttered helplessly. "I didn't think it would be this big."
Ten minutes ago, Sunset Shimmer had thought that Geography was going to be easy. Instead of having to re-learn advanced motor functions or forget everything she had internalized about a magic-run world, Geography seemed like it would just feel like she had been asked to do a project on a foreign nation. A very extensive project, true, but hardly anything as big as trying to work out what the hay a 'constitutional monarchy' was.
All of that had changed when they brought out the atlas. The book was filled with page after page of nations, each of them criss-crossed with so many roads and train lines that one could hardly see the route for the path. The domains of this world had more cities than pegasi had feathers, more borders than a forest had roots, and even an eye so utterly lost as Sunset's could tell that this was a landscape far more intimately acquainted with war than her own.
"Recognize any of it?"
Sunset looked up at the noise, and saw that she wasn't alone. She had been joined by a girl with a cow-wrangler's hat and a frankly voluminous amount of straw-blonde hair tied back in a tail that would have been registered as a lethal weapon on the other side of the mirror. This new girl had on the sort of smile that Sunset had only really seen on farmers: it was like if you took a sunbeam and filtered it through an iridescent canopy of autumn leaves.
"The name's Applejack. You're that Sunset gal, right?" Oh, Sleipnir save her, she even had the country twang in her words. How could any self-respecting mare say no to one of those?
"Sunset Shimmer, yes. Pleased to meet you." Without really thinking about it, Sunset made a fist and held it out, and her brain had just enough time to panic over the faux pas before Applejack bumped it with a fist of her own. Sunset decided not to question it. "And no, I don't really recognize it at all. It's like... I didn't think the world could be this big."
"Yeah, I hear you there." Applejack's gaze shifted to the atlas, and she traced the outline of a misshapen blob of land that the atlas called Prance. "I used to think the world only went as far as the horizon."
"You're not all that wrong," Sunset pointed out. "We can't ever reach the horizon, because it's always beyond where we thought it was. Did you ever try to reach it?"
"Once." That charming voice changed pitch, turned into something close to mournful. "I went further than I ever gone before or since, and just ended up coming back home."
Sunset smiled, turning a page and scrutinizing a landmass that almost resembled a rough map of the Griffon Kingdoms. "That last part's not much of an option for me these days."
"Why's that? If'n you don't mind my prying, of course," she added hurriedly.
"I do, a little." Sunset traced an imaginary line where the Abysmal Abyss could have been. "Suffice to say, I've chased the horizon too long, and I can't see the way back anymore."
She felt Applejack's hand on her shoulder, its grip massaging her in ways she hadn't known possible. "Sorry to hear that, Sunset. Any chance we might be able to find your old haunt in here?"
Sunset sighed, and flipped back to the pages they were supposed to be looking at.
"Not on these maps."
English class was easier, if disappointingly devoid of charmingly rustic farmers. They were studying poetry, and aside from not being familiar with the poets or pretty much all of the history informing their laments, Sunset was much closer to being in her element. Poetry, it seemed, was one of the great universal constants, remaining much the same wherever she went.
The only real difference was that there were a lot more sad poems here.
The teacher sorted the students into pairs, then asked each pair to read a different poem and discuss their thoughts on it. Sunset was paired up with a girl called Rarity with purple hair that she would have called a mess if it wasn't so obviously Ground Zero for the world's most committed and tireless stylist, and so much makeup that Sunset didn't initially realize that white was the girl's natural skin color. It was certainly beautiful, yes, but it was an engineered sort of beauty, as if someone had painted a beautiful woman using a measuring tape.
"You mean you've never read any of Snow-Hair's poems? Darling, how is that even possible? He's only the single most brilliant mind to ever put pen to paper!"
"Genius isn't universally recognized, Rarity." Sunset winced a little when she heard just how barbed those words sounded.
"Still! You're hardly repressed enough to come from somewhere where his works are banned! Or..." Rarity pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, an effect which combined with her massive eyelashes made it look like Sunset was being stared down by two carnivorous worms. "Are you one of those people who doesn't like poetry?"
Sunset sighed, and pulled the poetry book towards her. "For your information, I love poetry. Maybe I have read his work before, but it was misattributed." Rarity gave a small gasp of horror at that last word, and Sunset raised an eyebrow in confusion. "I don't see what's so surprising about that. That sort of thing happens all the time."
"If you're suggesting that makes it acceptable..." Sunset hadn't thought it was possible, but Rarity's knuckles actually got more white.
"Are you a writer, Rarity?"
"Seamstress, actually. I've... had a few bad experiences with someone stealing my designs. It's a bit of a sore spot for me."
"Hey." Sunset reached out and held Rarity's hand. "It's okay, Rarity. I'm sorry for bringing it up. Now, let's see if I recognize your Snow-Hair." She looked down at the book, and started reading.
There was a wall here. Now it is dust. A tower rose here. Now it is fallen. An army fought here. Now it is dead. A spirit was here. It is all that remains.
"I knew it," she whispered. Then, louder she said, "So, turns out I have read his work before. I was just... hearing his name wrong."
"What?" While no longer angry, Rarity was very clearly still confused. "How could you hear his name wrong? It's not exactly a common name!"
"English isn't my first language." Technically, that was true. "His name in my language is something like... Hmm..." Sunset took a moment to clear her throat, then tried to say the words 'Snow-Fur' in Equestrian.
Unsurprisingly, it sounded like a bad impression of a horse.
Biology was next. For a former pony, it was probably the worst class to have right before lunch, but aside from that it was pretty relaxed. From what she could tell, there were dissections, but those weren't until much later in the year.
There were plenty of empty seats in the class, but the closest one to the door was right next to a girl who introduced herself as Fluttershy. Despite the name, she seemed an utterly boundless bundle of enthusiasm, her blue eyes sparkling as the teacher explained the various details of animal digestive systems and the like. Sunset did her best to look interested, but she almost felt like a non-entity sat next to such an obvious enthusiast.
Once the teacher stopped talking and passed out worksheets, Sunset decided to talk. "So... what makes you so interested in biology?"
"I'm an animal lover," Fluttershy answered, filling out the worksheet at speeds that Sunset barely believed a human could achieve. "I do a lot of volunteer work at shelters and animal hospitals, and I really want to be able to provide the best care that I can."
"And cutting up dead frogs is going to help with that?"
Fluttershy gave the kind of smile that would probably start wars when she was older, and nodded. "It's just like surgery, only you don't have to worry about accidentally killing them."
Sunset smiled at that. "I knew a veterinarian once," she mused, looking over her own worksheet and trying to hide her confusion. "Well, more of a falconer, but he cared for his birds just as well as he trained them. This one time, he and I found a baby ph— a finch, and we spent a whole month nursing it back to health."
Fluttershy just sat there, smiling. While Sunset was no stranger to silence, she hadn't yet encountered quite this kind of quiet; A quiet that seemed to suck up every word you said, that genuinely wanted to hear everything you had to say. It was more than a little bit creepy, but it was also weirdly comforting.
"Did you ever see the finch again?" Her voice was quiet now, so quiet that Sunset had to strain her ears to hear it. There seemed to be a hint of wilderness in that voice, as though Fluttershy only spoke like that when she was surrounded by trees.
"Once or twice." Sunset remembered the Great Fire of Baltimare, and how she had danced to Tempo Rubato's violin solo.
"That's nice. It's always good to know that we've actually accomplished something after all of our hard work." Fluttershy looked down at her own worksheet, then at Sunset's. She smiled, and slid her paper over. "Need some help with that?"
Sunset tried to ignore the skip of her heartbeat. "Uh, sure."
As soon as lunch was over, her next class was Phys Ed, which apparently stood for Physical Education, which meant sports.
Sunset Shimmer had not been an athletic pony, being too focused on the cerebral aspects to ever put much practice into what her physical body could actually do. She had been aware of sports in the same way that a weatherpony was aware of a summons to appear before Celestia; It was something that happened to other ponies.
This was only made worse by her new form. Walking was easy enough, running was harder, and whatever in Tartarus this soccer business was might as well be outright impossible. She ran and ran, and tried to kick the ball when she could, but all she ended up doing was tripping over herself and the other students. It took about twenty attempted kicks before she realized that, if she ran behind everyone else, it would look like she was playing while she stayed far away from the ball. And for a few minutes, she enjoyed sports.
Then one of the girls, a cyan-skinned creature with an absolute rainbow of a mane, made eye contact with her and winked. Before Sunset could process what was happening, the rainbow-haired girl flicked her leg and sent the ball sailing straight for Sunset.
She didn't have time to panic. She didn't have time to get angry, or scream, or even think. She only had time to see the ball, and react. She kicked the ball, putting so much force into it that she sent herself falling backwards and thudding into the floor.
A cheer rose up from about half the people playing, and Sunset let out a groan as her part of the chorus. "What're we cheering?" she mumbled, then she felt a hand closing around hers and pulling her up. The world blurred, and then she was standing up and leaning against the rainbow-haired girl for support.
"Man, that was awesome! You just scored the winning goal!"
"I did?" As Sunset's vision cleared, she focused on the net that belonged to the enemy team. There was indeed a soccer ball nestled neatly in the net. "I did that?"
"Yeah you did! I mean, you did have my expert help, but it was your kick." The rainbow-haired girl was smiling, and enthusiastically patting Sunset on the back. "Couldn't have done it without you! The name's Rainbow Dash, by the way."
"I never would have guessed," Sunset joked as she held out her fist to get it bumped. "I'm Sunset Shimmer. I'm the new girl."
"The new awesome girl, more like." Rainbow let go of Sunset for a while, then stepped back and grinned. "You know, you could be really, really good at this game with some practice."
"Really? I thought I was kind of bad at it."
"Everyone's kind of bad at it when they start out. The point is, you've got potential. Wanna realize it?"
Sunset looked back at the net, and at the ball. If she squinted, she could almost pretend there was a fresh boot-mark in it. "I'll think about it."
The last class of the day was Algebra. In other words, the last class of the day lasted about five minutes.
It came as an intense comfort for Sunset to actually be in her element for once. The moment she saw the equations, she knew what was going on. It was not only a level of math that every educated pony passed through and surpassed at some point in their lives, but it was also one of the most basic forms of equation for expressing magic as a formula. The biggest problem on the entire worksheet was that Sunset had to keep herself from accidentally straying into twentieth-level sigilistics by force of habit. She blazed through the work put in front of her so fast that she was honestly surprised that the paper didn't catch fire beneath her fingers.
Once she put her pencil down, Sunset looked around, expecting everyone to be done. Instead, everyone was still furtively bent over their desks, pencils scribbling away and sweat dripping from their brows. There was only one other person who was done, and they were sitting right next to her.
"Hi," the only other smart person in the room whispered. "My name's Pinkie Pie. What's yours?"
"Sunset Shimmer." Sunset stared at this strange girl, with hair that looked more like a sentient glob of cotton candy than anything that could grow from a physical body. "So, how are you so good at this stuff?"
"Well, it's not exactly quantum dentistry, is it?" Pinkie grinned like a diamond-toothed alligator that's just spotted a crippled monkey, and leaned a little closer to Sunset. "What about you? Word on the grapevine is that you're from so far out in the sticks we can't even find it on a map, but you just aced this like it was nothing!"
It was Sunset's turn to grin. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me," Pinkie said, with such unbridled enthusiasm that Sunset couldn't keep a genuine smile off her face.
"I'm a magical horse from another dimension living in self-imposed exile in this world because I tried to kill a god."
Pinkie Pie's eyes went wide, but her smile went wider. "That's so cool! Tell me more!"
It shouldn't have been possible to whisper exclamation marks, but Pinkie managed it.
Sunset Shimmer sat on the steps outside Canterlot High School, watching people go home. The metal chariots, which she had managed to learn were called cars, had congregated on the edge of the road, and even from here she could hear the warm chatter as child greeted parent after a long, stimulating day at school or a tiring day of work respectively. Some parents simply walked to Canterlot High, receiving their children on the sidewalk with a warm embrace that seemed to be more a game of good-spirited embarrassment than a genuine gesture. Other children simply wandered off into the interminable maze that was this world, proud smiles on their faces and words of camaraderie bouncing between them like rabbits that just got into a shipment of sugarcane.
Meanwhile, Sunset sat on the steps. She waved as each of her new friends left to go back to their families, their homes, and their beds, her smile only enduring through sheer force of will. If I focus on how happy they are, her thought process ran, I won't remember how sad I am.
It wasn't until everyone had left that the smile finally disappeared. Sunset lay back on the steps, staring up at the sky as twilight painted it orange, and tried to choke back the tears. Her hands went to the journal almost on instinct, her old habit of thanking Celestia for her beautiful sunsets and critiquing her technique not yet gone from her head. She managed to stop herself before she unzipped the bag, though. She wasn't ready to open the journal yet.
"Déjà vu, ma petit étudiant." Principal Celestia appeared at the upper edge of Sunset's vision, upside-down and looking no less serene for it. "How long have you been sitting out here?"
"I don't know," Sunset admitted as she sat up. "How long ago did school end?"
"Two hours or so," the principal said, with more than a hint of concern in her voice. "Weren't you cold, out here by yourself?"
"I've been pretty cold all day, Cele— principal." Sunset only spared a glance at the statue this time. "I guess I didn't notice."
"You could at least have joined me in the office. I could have made us tea."
Of course it would be tea. It had to be. It couldn't be coffee, or orange juice, or the blood of virgins, no, it had to be the same thing that Princess Celestia always made time to share with her. What was the point of running away if the place you got to was the same as the one you left?
"I thought you were trying to avoid scandal." Sunset got to her feet slowly, taking care not to lose her balance.
"You didn't actually buy that, did you?" Celestia laughed as she walked down the steps. "I just wanted to get you out there making friends."
Sunset laughed, picking up her bag and following after the principal without really thinking. "I thought you said it was so you could get a sense of where I am academically."
"What, are aptitude tests also not a thing wherever you come from? If I only wanted to know how much you didn't know, we could have spent the entire day filling out forms. No, today was about getting you settled in. After all, you'll probably be here for a while." Celestia turned suddenly and gave Sunset a look. "Or were you still planning on leaving?"
She asked it so innocently, that was the problem. There wasn't the slightest hint of accusation to her words, as though she were only asking as a matter of curiosity. Sunset had to take a deep breath before she could say anything.
"I like it here. I think it's a good place for me to be."
"Glad to hear that." Celestia pulled out a keyring, and pressed a button on some kind of small device. The car in front of them beeped, and she opened the door before turning to Sunset. "Are you coming?"
"Where?" Sunset asked, watching the car and its driver with more than a hint of suspicion.
Celestia smiled. "You need a place to sleep, don't you? I was thinking I could put you up at my place."
Sunset looked at the car, and at the open door leading into a seat. With the way that all humans were basically the same shape, it looked custom-made for her. She looked back at the stairs, and weighed her options. Even in the increasingly unlikely event that it was a trap, being attacked in someone else's home was still preferable to being attacked in the streets. At least the first option had a higher chance of a warm meal beforehoof.
"Well, if it's not too much trouble." She got into the car and wasted no time in settling into her seat, drawing the weird strap of cloth across her chest and clicking the metal bit into the other metal bit like she had seen the other students do. Celestia nodded just a little as she did the same, and then the car was started.
Sunset Shimmer didn't know what she'd been expecting from the city house of a Crown Princess, but this wasn't it. There was no overwrought stonework, no tacky plastic battlements on the lawn, not even a color scheme that resembled Canterlot Castle. It looked just the same as every other house on the block, without even so much as the slightest decoration to tell it apart.
"It doesn't always pay to advertise," the principal said as the two of them stepped out of the car. "I honestly think less than half of the student body actually know I'm the princess."
"That must come in handy," Sunset said with just a little bit of satisfaction at correctly using a human phrase. "You know, for assassinations and such."
Celestia laughed as she walked across her lawn to the door. "Assassinations are rather old hat in this part of the world, Sunset. The politician's concealed weapon of choice is now the smear campaign. They fight with words and doctored images."
"That sounds dull." Sunset crossed the threshold, expecting to be blown away by the house's interior. Instead, it was just as perfectly normal as the outside. It had a floor, a selection of colorful but understated carpets, and she could see into a living room that contained a couch that could probably seat three people rather comfortably.
"Oh, it is. Incredibly dull. Say what you will about dueling to the death, but at least you can't fall asleep during one of those." Celestia smiled, and indicated the couch. "Please, have a seat. Make yourself at home."
"Thank you," Sunset gave a little bow, "princess." Her heart fluttered as that word passed her tongue, and she held the bow a second longer than she had meant to. When she looked up, there was that serene smile, the one reserved for the kind-hearted and the penitent who came before Celestia, the one in all of the portraits.
Sunset fought back her tears and marched over to the couch, sitting herself down as fast as she could. She let her bag fall to the floor, her ears half-expecting to hear the journal vibrating between her new math textbooks. She looked down at the bag, and imagined her fingers closing around the zipper, opening it up, taking the journal and seeing what the final message had been. No. Not yet.
"What do you want on your pizza?"
Sunset blinked, then looked up at Celestia. She was standing just inside the living room, toying with her cell phone. "Pizza?" Sunset repeated.
"Yes, pizza. Did you not have pizza as well in your little corner of the world?"
"No, I know what pizza is," Sunset shot back, "it's just... you don't strike me as the sort to have a pizza oven in your house."
Celestia smirked, and held up her phone. "I order it on my phone. It's like a catering service, except anyone can access it so long as they can pay. So, what do you want on your pizza?"
Sunset pondered that for a moment, running through the pizza toppings she remembered and comparing them to what she had seen in the cafeteria earlier. "Cheese," she decided, adding a quick 'please' to the end. Celestia nodded, and she toyed with her phone a little more before putting it away.
"And now, the question of sleeping arrangements."
Sunset nodded, and began looking around for a nice corner to sleep in. One of the corners of the room was positioned just right that, when the sun rose, it would fall right on her face and wake her up bright and early, and the carpet looked really soft. "I'll take that one," she said brightly.
"What?" Celestia looked at the corner, then back to Sunset with an expression of utter disbelief. "You think I'm going to make you sleep on the floor?"
Sunset ground her teeth together. "Actually, I was thinking I would decide to sleep on the floor."
"And whyever would you decide that? I know I don't exactly have the house ready for guests, but I can certainly lend you a blanket and the use of my couch until I can get a bed for the spare room!"
"I wouldn't want to trouble you," Sunset mumbled, sinking further into the couch and focusing very intently on the oak coffee table right in front of the couch.
"It's no trouble, Sunset." Celestia was drawing closer now, circling around the table to sit next to Sunset. "I'm only sorry I can't do better."
"You've done enough," Sunset growled, flinching away as the principal sat down. "More than I deserve."
"Sunset Shimmer." Only the slightest trace of an edge in that voice, as if she were aware of how many times Sunset had heard the full venom of Celestia's rage and wished to spare the rod. "There is no such thing as deserving anything. It is my choice, and my privilege, to show you kindness when you have suffered so much." Her hand went to Sunset's shoulder, but she batted it away.
"Stop." Sunset Shimmer turned on the fake, and bared her teeth. "Just. Stop. You know nothing about what I've been through, or what I've done. All you have is my own word that I didn't kill anyone. As far as you know, I'm a serial killer, or a drug dealer, or maybe I'm just a walking talking international incident whose very presence is bringing an army you can't even dream of bearing down on your doorstep!" Sunset got up from the couch, and growled down at the creature calling itself Celestia. "So why? Why in Tambelon's name would you help me? Why haven't you asked any of the hard questions that would tell you exactly what you're messing with? Why are you just assuming that none of what's happened to me was my fault? Because it was my fault, Celestia! ALL OF IT IS MY FAULT!"
It had been years since Sunset Shimmer had just let loose and sobbed her heart out. She collapsed on the ground, clutching her chest and screaming all of her anguish out in whatever way she could. She cried until the world was nothing but a blur, and screamed until her voice gave out. Then she just lay there on the floor, a quivering mass of guilt at the feet of a princess.
"Why is it always the way of mortals to take blame for the faults of the gods?"
Sunset looked up from the floor at the principal, who had turned away from Sunset and was looking at the coffee table. She tried to croak out the words "What are you talking about?", but they only came out as a low whining noise. The principal sighed, and slid open a drawer in the table. She pulled out a heavy, leather-bound book with two bands of gold set into the spine and a perfect replica of Celestia's cutie mark on the cover, and Sunset stared. It was a near-perfect twin of her own magic journal.
She wiped the worst of the tears from her eyes, and saw that the principal's journal was brimming with bookmarks, each emblazoned with a cutie mark. Some were obvious, like Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie, but others were a mystery. The only thing she could say for certain was that they were old, so old that she had seen them more commonly as motifs in ancient works of art rather than in mark registries. All except for hers, which stood out in the way that only the familiar amidst the mysterious can.
"She... told you about me?" Sunset coughed, but couldn't bring herself to look away as the principal opened the journal.
"She told me quite a lot. About everyone." The voice sounded old, as though a hundred thousand years had suddenly settled on her shoulders. "At first, it was just a matter of security. She wanted to be sure I knew what to expect if they had to use the portal to exile anything. Then, it was us being penpals. Then, grief partners." Sunset watched the hands passing over and stroking the pages as though exploring the skin of a lover after a long absence. "For me, this book is nearly thirty years old. For her, it's coming up on two thousand years."
Sunset rose to her knees, and looked at the journal. She saw how thick it was, how many pages lay between each new bookmark, and how many there were once her bookmark was set in. It wasn't more than all of the rest, but it was certainly more than she expected. "She never told me about you."
"That's good," the principal said, her voice growing younger as she flipped closer and closer to Sunset's pages. "We decided very early on that my world should remain unknown when possible. She was very... illustrative of the possibilities that this place offers to the mind of the usurper." At last, she reached the part of the journal that concerned them both. "You know, Sunset, she hasn't had a student like you in a very long time. You seemed to do something unexpected every single day."
"Not always a good thing," Sunset mumbled. To her surprise, Celestia laughed.
"No, I suppose not. Oh, where was it... Ah yes, here it is. The time you set Restaurant Row on fire because you were trying to make, and I quote, 'the perfect cup of orange juice'. What a brilliant magnifying glass you used to do it, though."
"I tried my best." Despite everything, Sunset smiled.
"Yes, always." The principal's own mirthful grin faded. "Sometimes, if you can believe it, you tried harder than she did. She compared you to Starswirl once, you know. Quite favorably."
"And then I messed everything up." Sunset pawed at the carpet in frustration, not even trying to hold back her tears anymore.
"Really? You messed everything up?" The principal held the journal in front of Sunset's face, and turned a page. "Then explain that."
The page was covered in multiple attempts at a sentence, nearly all of them crossed out or scribbled away. The only clear phrase, in horn-writing that was unmistakably that of Princess Celestia, read:
She's gone, and it's all my fault.
"No," she whispered. "That's a lie."
"Is it? She knew your destiny, Sunset. She knew that it didn't have anything to do with being an alicorn, or having a kingdom, but she let you believe it anyway. She watched while you made yourself bedridden from magical exhaustion, listened to you cry yourself to sleep when your latest experiment did nothing, unlocked more and more forbidden sections of the library for you and never once said that this wasn't the path you were meant to walk."
Sunset got back to her feet, and grabbed the journal away from the principal. "This changes nothing. I still tried to kill her for denying me what I thought was my destiny."
"Yes, and if she had told you the truth earlier, you never would have tried it." The principal got up and turned the pages, while Sunset's eyes scanned them on instinct. "The moment your blast hit, she realized who was really to blame. She wanted to apologize, to say that she was sorry. But you had made your own decision, and you ran."
"That's a lie," Sunset repeated, "and you know it. If she wanted to say sorry, why didn't she follow me? Why did she close the portal if she wanted me back?"
"I did warn you that your phone was ringing."
Sunset looked at her bag. She handed the journal to Celestia, then knelt and unzipped her bag. There was the journal. She pulled it out, and flipped to the latest page.
Dear Sunset Shimmer,
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that you thought you had to become an alicorn to be a proper student of mine. I'm sorry if you ever felt that I wasn't already proud of you. I'm sorry that I wasn't fast enough to stop you from running away. But most of all, I'm sorry that I can't be telling you this in person.
I don't control the portal. It opens and closes at its own bidding, and on its own clock. We haven't really tried to study how time passes differently between here and there, but on our side the portal is only open every thirty years. As bad luck would have it, last night was the last night. I swear, I have been trying for hours to get it open again, but there's been no success. The only thing I can do is try to send someone to help.
Hopefully, you've met her already. I know, it's a little disorienting at first, but the world you've found yourself in isn't all bad. And don't worry, she knows what's going on. You couldn't be in safer hooves. Well, hands in her case.
Again, I am sorry, Sunset. Of all the ends to your apprenticeship I envisioned, this was not one of them. I promise, the moment that the portal is open again, I will come for you. Even if all of Equestria is in flames, I will come for you. I cannot keep these things on paper. I need to be able to say it, because it can only mean so much on the page.
I will come for you, Sunset Shimmer. Make no mistake of that.
Sunset Shimmer put down the journal, and turned her gaze to Principal Celestia. She was holding a pillow and blanket in her arms, and smiling a kind of smile that Sunset had never seen on her own Celestia. It was hopeful, but also wary. Sunset greeted it with a bright, optimistic smile, and wiped the newest batch of tears away.
"I need a pen."
The principal nodded, taking only a moment to spread the blanket over the couch before reaching into her suit pocket and producing a pen. Sunset took it and sat down on the couch. As the doorbell rang, she poised her pen on the next page, and began to write.
