When we got back to the library, Twilight called to Spike and told him that she’d need him to watch the library for a while. She explained that she had to go see her other friends to invite them over to my ‘naming party’. That left me alone with some time to kill. I did have my newly acquired sketch pad and charcoal, though.

I set to work, trying to recreate the board from one of the simplest games I’d made back on Earth. It owed a bit to Settlers of Catan, but you could play it without too many board pieces. I was halfway done with recreating the map before I realized something. I was in a completely different world. Settlers of Catan probably didn’t exist here, nor did Ticket to Ride, Magic the Gathering, or any of the really famous games from Earth. I could recreate all of them, and probably even call them my own.

I shook my head, disgusted with the thought. Damned if I’m going to start out as a thief here, I thought. If I tried to take Pinkie’s advice and make some games for ponies to play, I’d bloody well make my own games, even if I knew they weren’t as good as my favorites from back home. That thought made me feel a bit better. My games, and ponies could enjoy or dislike them at their own whims, but whatever the outcome, it’d be mine, and not just me ripping off someone else’s creation.

After an hour of solid drawing, Spike finally got curious. “Hey Peter,” he said, walking over, “what’re you doing?”

“Making a game,” I replied.

“Really? What kind of game?” Spike asked, suddenly interested.

“Do you guys have board games here in Equestria?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Twilight loves them, but they’re kinda boring.”

“Well, tell me about them.”

Spike proceeded to describe the kinds of board games that they had in Equestria. Trivia games, a couple things very similar to chess and checkers, and a few others in the general style of American board games. The only real deviation were a couple he’d seen Twilight play that were strictly for unicorns. He didn’t really understand the intricacies of games that had to be played with magic, and I didn’t think I’d be able to, either. He didn’t say anything about what we’d called Eurogames back on Earth, though. Nothing like Settlers of Catan, and nothing like the little game that I was recreating.

“Hmm,” I said, “this is a different kind of game. It’s still a board game, of course, but it plays a little differently.”

“Maybe I could give it a try after you get it done?” said Spike, standing on his toes to see the sketch of the game board coming together on the paper.

“That’s the idea,” I said with a grin. “So anyway,” I continued, “how’d you wind up helping Twilight here in the library?”

“Oh, Twilight raised me from an egg, and so wherever she’s gone, I’ve gone. I’m officially her assistant, but she’s really more like my big sister. You can’t tell her I said that, though.”

“My lips are sealed,” I said. “So it sounds like you’ve known her a long time. She seems nice.”

“Yeah, Twilight’s the best. She was so amazing with magic that she actually created a new spell. That’s when she became a princess.”

I stopped. “She’s a princess? I thought the princess was Princess Celestia.”

“Oh, there are four. Twilight’s the newest princess. But Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are special. They’ve been around forever.”

“So she made a spell and became a princess?” I asked.

“Yeah, I don’t entirely understand it, either, but apparently creating new magic is such a big thing that the land itself, or the world, or something, recognizes you for it. Twilight tried to explain it to me once, but I didn’t really get it. I’m not entirely sure that she really knows how it works herself,” he said with a snort.

I set down the charcoal and turned to look at Spike. “So the past three nights, I’ve been kicking a princess out of her own bed?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” said Spike with a smile.

I groaned. “That’s not good.”

“Don’t worry about it! Twilight was really worried about you. She didn’t mind at all. Besides, she’s gotten a lot better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when we first moved here, Twilight was pretty much only focused on her lessons. But she met some nice ponies and they’ve helped her through most of that.”

“Most of it?”

“Well, I did have to talk her out of taking a checklist with her when she was showing you how to walk as a pony yesterday. But she actually listened to me and didn’t bring it with her. That’s a pretty big change from how she used to be.”

“A checklist?” I asked.

Spike proceeded to tell me the story of how she’d forgotten to send a progress report to Princess Celestia once and had wound up terrorizing the town while trying to come up with something to write about. And how in the end she’d learned that she’d been making mountains out of molehills. I had to admit, I’ve done plenty of that in my time, but I’d like to think I was getting better. Still, it did make me realize that Twilight was as human as the next pony, or as pony as the next pony. How should that go, anyway? I thought.

“Thanks for telling me about that, Spike. I didn’t know she was a princess, and I was worried I’d done something really stupid. Am I supposed to bow or something when she comes in?”

“Nah, Twilight doesn’t like that kind of thing. She doesn’t even really like to be called ‘Princess’.”

“Oh, okay. Umm, wait a second,” I said, suddenly making a connection. “So Twilight’s a princess and Princess Celestia’s a princess. Both of them have wings and a horn. When we went walking today, I saw quite a few ponies, but some had wings, some had a horn, and some had neither, like me. Is the wings and horn thing what makes a princess?”

“Yeah, in Equestria only princesses have wings and a horn. They’re called alicorns.”

“So if that’s the case, how in the world could she just have become a princess? Wouldn’t the wings and horn thing give it away?”

“She used to be a regular unicorn. I mean she was really powerful for a unicorn, but definitely just a unicorn.”

“So if she changed from a unicorn into and alicorn, why did they say that they can’t change me back into the old me?”

“Umm,” Spike paused. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Twilight. But I promise, Twilight wouldn’t lie to you. There’s probably a good reason.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. Maybe even if I couldn’t get back home, I could at least be me again, just here instead of there.

About an hour later, Twilight came back. “Whew,” she said as she came through the door, “why do Applejack and Fluttershy have to live so far away?” She shut the door behind her and continued into the library. “Hey, Peter, I hope you didn’t get too bored waiting for me.”

“Not exactly,” I said from the bench where I’d been sitting.

Before I could continue, Spike stepped back from the bookshelf where he’d been reshelving some books. “Hey Twilight,” he said. “Now that you’re back, I’m going to grab something to eat. Do you want anything?” He looked at me. “Or you, Peter?”

“No, I’m good,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Twilight. “Enjoy your meal. And for being such a great assistant today, you may want to check in the back of the third drawer to the right of the stove. There might be something there for you.”

Spike’s eyes got big, “What is it?”

“You’ll just have to see,” said Twilight with a smirk.

I almost lost sight of Spike as he suddenly zoomed out of the room, legs a blur as he churned for the kitchen.

“I wouldn’t have thought he could move that fast,” I said imagining a roadrunner-esque puff of cloud behind him.

“He’s pretty quick when he has motivation,” said Twilight, her amusement evident in her voice.

We both heard a loud, “Oooh!” followed by, “Thanks Twilight!” from the kitchen.

“You’re welcome!” she called back, then noticed the sketchpad I’d been working on before I’d gotten distracted. “You’ve been busy,” she said, eyeing the drawing on the pad. “This looks like a game board.”

“Yeah, it’s a board game I made a while ago. It doesn’t use many game pieces, so I thought I could put it together again without too much trouble. That’s just a sketch of the board. To do it right, I’d need some solid backing and some ink.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard to get,” said Twilight. “I already have ink and quills, and I’m sure Rarity would know where to get that sort of backing. She does a lot of sketches for her designs. Sometimes she frames the really good ones.”

“Um, I kind of got distracted while I was working on that. I was talking to Spike, and... he said that you didn’t used to be... like this,” I said, gesturing to her wings and horn and hoping I wasn’t offending her.

“Oh no,” she said, and I was glad her voice didn’t sound offended. “This didn’t happen all that long ago. I used to be a unicorn. Then I got... call it promoted.”

“No offense,” I said, deciding to dive right into the question, “but if you can be changed like that, then why can’t you change me back to human, or male?”

“Oh Peter,” she said, and her voice was suddenly concerned. “If I could, I would, but what did this to me, it wasn’t any other pony. It just happened.”

“But what did it? I mean, something changed you. If it can happen once, it can happen again, right?”

“Theoretically, of course, but even Princess Celestia doesn’t really know how alicorns are made. It’s like the laws of physics in this reality, something that just is. We don’t really understand it, probably because it’s so rare.” She paused. “I have been thinking about it, though. When I reached out for you in the human world, Princess Celestia called it ‘wild magic’, but whatever you call it, it’s like the spell wasn’t mine anymore. It started as a simple telekinesis spell. I just wanted to pull you out of danger. But even with an alicorn like me casting it, even an alicorn like Princess Celestia, it shouldn’t have been possible. It started off as my telekinesis spell to pull you out of danger, but suddenly, it wasn’t in my control anymore. I have no idea how that happened, but it did... all this, which I didn’t intend at all,” she said, gesturing to me, “and saved you.”

Twilight walked over to me, where my ears had started to droop and my head had started to hang as I realized the gist of her message was ‘not going to happen’. She laid a wing over my back. “I’m so, so sorry, Peter. I just don’t know how it happened, and there’s no way I know of to make it happen again.”

“It’s alright,” I said. “You’ve apologized before, and I meant it when I said you’ve got nothing to apologize for. It’s just... I kind of got my hopes up, you know?”

“I know,” she said, squeezing the wing over my back a little tighter, kind of like a hug.

We stood like that for a while, before something else popped into my head, “Hey Twilight. I just realized that when Spike asked me if I was hungry, I really wasn’t hungry.”

“Uh huh,” she said, stepping away to turn and look at me again.

“Well, I don’t think I’ve eaten or drank anything since I got here. That’s been like three days now. Is something wrong?”

“Uh, no,” she said, looking a little embarrassed. “Actually when you were asleep for two days, I cast a couple of spells on you. I learned them from the doctors at the hospital here in Ponyville. They use them on ponies who are bedridden or can’t eat properly.”

“Like in a coma or something?” I asked.

“Yeah, like that. One kind of takes care of business, if you know what I mean,” she said, with a glance toward the bathroom.

I felt myself blush, “Um, yeah. I hadn’t thought of it before, but I’m glad there wasn’t... manual cleanup involved.”

“Me, too,” said Twilight with a rueful smirk. “You were in my bed, after all.” My blush got even deeper. “But the other spell kind of takes care of needing to eat and drink. It’s not really good for you long-term, but not a problem for a few days. It should be wearing off today or tomorrow. When it does, you’ll probably be pretty ravenous. The first one just wore off earlier.”

“Oh, okay. What do ponies eat? I just realized I haven’t seen you eat anything.”

“Well, you’ve only been awake for a day, and I’ve pretty much eaten when you’re asleep. My favorite is a daisy and daffodil sandwich, though.”

“Daisy and daffodil? Aren’t those flowers?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’re flowers, and they taste great with some nice whole-wheat bread, and maybe a little mustard.”

“That doesn’t actually sound too good,” I said.

“Try it, I bet you’ll like it. Maybe not the mustard, though. I’m the only pony I know that puts mustard on a daisy and daffodil sandwich.”

“So just flowers and bread, basically? Grains and salads?” I said, hoping I hadn’t just been transported into a world of vegans.

“That would be the basis of a pony’s diet, but there’s all kinds of cheese and ice cream and chocolates to spice things up from time to time.”

Good, not vegans, which led me to, “But no meat, then?”

Twilight’s eyes widened, “Of course not!”

“No, no, of course not,” I agreed quickly.

Twilight looked at me for a second, “Did you eat meat on Earth?”

“Well, yeah...” I said, unconsciously running my hoof through my mane.

“Eww, that’s just... It’s just another culture in another reality, Twilight, and it’s okay,” she said, reassuring herself. “But, where did you get the meat?” she asked in a much quieter voice.

“Hey!” I said, far more brightly than I felt, “I thought of an exercise to try to develop your maniple field. Do you have some chalk?”

“Oh, really? Sure I have chalk, come upstairs with me,” said Twilight, turning and trotting off to the stairs, completely forgetting our previous topic. Twilight wasn’t stupid, though, just easily distracted. I was sure we were going to have that conversation sooner or later. Just not right now.

“I’m coming,” I said, following her to the stairs.

Going up stairs was somehow easier than coming down them. Going up, no problem: hoof on stair, hoof on stair, and the back hooves kind of felt their way along. Going down, I felt off balance. My rump was higher than everything else, and all my weight was coming down on my forehooves. Somehow that just felt wrong. I wondered if it would be the same coming down a steep hill. It should be easier, since there weren’t steps to stumble on, but the feeling of being oriented wrong was probably the same. I realized it was about the same as when I’d had to lay on the edge of a roof, feet higher than my head, to work on a gutter back on Earth. Something about having your head down like that really didn’t feel right, and in this body, I was apparently going to get that whenever I tried to go down stairs. Oh well, all the other ponies seemed to manage it. I was sure I’d pick it up somewhere, and at least in this body, it didn’t hurt when I fell.

I took my time getting up the stairs. By the time I made it to Twilight’s room, she already had a small slate out and some pieces of chalk. “I’ve got the chalk and slate,” she said, almost giddy with the prospect of learning something new. “What’re we going to do with them?”

“Okay,” I said, walking over to the board and taking one of the pieces of chalk. “First we’re going to make a patch of chalk dust, like this.” And I scrubbed the chalk sideways on the slate, creating a layer of chalk dust a few inches across. “Then,” I said, putting down the chalk, “you try to do this.” I held my hoof out over the board and thought of pressing on the board with just one finger. I felt my finger suddenly snap into being again and I could feel the slate under my fingertip. I dragged it slowly down the chalkboard, never touching the board with my hoof proper. Afterwards, there was a smudge in the chalk about a finger wide where I’d dragged my ‘finger’ down.

“Ohh, okay,” said Twilight. “So you’re actually pressing on the board, not just grabbing it. Oh right, like you grab that quill, you’re not just pulling in on it, you’re pressing out at the same time.” She looked at her hoof and then the board. “Okay, I think I can do this.”

Twilight grabbed the chalk with her magic and rubbed another spot onto the slate. Then she held her hoof out over it, not quite touching. I could see her move her hoof in ever so slightly from time to time, probably trying to press on the slate. She kept this up for nearly a minute before she dropped her hoof. “I can’t do it. Ponies always grab things with their maniple fields, we don’t tend to push on them.”

“Hmm,” I said, “I can actually feel through my fingers when they’re there. Maybe if you thought about trying to feel the board?”

“I’ll give it a try,” said Twilight. She reached up again, and put her hoof near the board. I kept quiet as she concentrated. It seemed like quite a while before she finally put her hoof back down. “I just don’t know how to think about feeling through appendages I’ve never had.”

“Maybe we’re overthinking this,” I said. “You said that this works more like just doing what you’re thinking about instead of trying to figure it out like what muscle do you move, right?”

“Yeah,” said Twilight.

“Okay, then,” I said, sitting back onto my haunches, picking both front legs up, wobbling a little before I got my balance, then picking up the slate in both hooves. “Hold your hoof out.”

“Okay,” said Twilight, holding one hoof out toward the slate.

I pressed the slate against her hoof. “Now, push the slate away.”

Twilight shrugged, then pushed on the board with her whole leg. I wasn’t too stable like this and she send me right over backwards. I did manage to hold onto the slate, though.

“Peter,” said Twilight, “I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” I responded. “Take this for a second, though?”

“Sure,” she said, and suddenly the slate was enveloped in a purple glow and lifted out of my hooves.

I got back to my feet, sat down, back onto the haunches, and gestured for her to return the slate. When I had it in my hooves again, I said, “Sorry about that. Let’s try this again.” Twilight held out her hoof again and I pressed the slate onto it. “Okay now, to clarify, push the slate away, but don’t move your hoof.”

Twilight’s eyes widened a little as she realized what I was after, and she nodded. I could see muscles in her shoulder twitch from time to time. Just as my legs were getting tired from holding the slate out in front of me, I felt a little bump.

Twilight’s eyes widened. “I did it!” she squealed. “I actually felt the slate there for just a second.”

“Great!” I said. “Now that we know you can do it, you’ll have to work on it. The next step will be this.” I held the slate in one hoof and drew two ‘fingers’ down through the blot of chalk that Twilight still hadn’t touched. When I finished there were two trails through the chalk dust on the slate.

Twilight frowned. “You’re going to lord this over me, aren’t you?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes, “You can cast magical spells that let you look into other dimensions, and you’re worried about this?”

“It is kind of silly, huh?” she said, with a sheepish smile.

“Meh, you keep your cosmic unicorn powers. I’ve got fingers!” I said with a big grin.

“That’s not very nice,” said Twilight, still smiling.

“Heh,” I snorted and started to walk out of the room. I was in such a good mood that I didn’t even mind winding up in a pile at the bottom of the stairs again.