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The Day After That

Before she opened her eyes, she could pretend.

She could pretend it was her lumpy zombie pillow she pulled over her head to block the sunlight pouring through the window. She could pretend she would swing her legs over the side of her floor mattress, set bare feet on a musty carpet strewn with wrinkled clothes, empty cereal bowls, and discarded textbooks. She could pretend to shuffle to her bathroom, scratching her back through flannel pajamas and wait outside the shower until the water ventured north of freezing.

She could pretend to start another wonderful day in her wonderful studio apartment, just before she hauled off to her wonderful university with all of the wonderful friends she had.

Life there was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

The pillow Sunset jammed over her ears this morning, however, must have enjoyed a previous life as the softest cloud in the world, at least before someone tricked it into a pillowcase. Instead of slipping out of threadbare blankets from the “upcycling boutique” (for “thrift stores” were beneath an undergraduate’s dignity), she emerged from beneath a fluffy, strawberry-scented comforter and set hooves onto floorboards that clacked, but did not creak.

The bathroom she stumbled into glowed, yellows and pinks dancing along the walls in alternating stripes. Only when she stepped into the claw-footed bathtub against the wall and melted beneath the steaming stream from the showerhead the moment she turned the tap—when she scrubbed herself all over, lathering her pasterns with soap smelling of cotton candy, when she breathed in the steam and let the water wash through her crest and tail—only after all these things did she stop seeing the point in pretending.

She stepped out of her shower as a pony.

Of all the times that had to sink in, it had to have been now? Not after she had tumbled through the mirror, or while that mare had dragged her all up and down the city? Not when she had returned to the Solarium for the first time in years?

Never mind that this was how the world saw her for most of her life—was she going to have an episode over the thing staring out at her from the mirror?

For instance, pony eyes were big. More than that—huge, so incapable of hiding secrets that they could teach books to read. Her eyes were as round as her face, or most anything on her body, really. She had forgotten how smooth pony bodies were—how hips, hooves, bellies, and horns filled out even on the fittest of them. She opened her mouth and saw teeth she’d possessed in the other world, though these were flatter and held less edge.

Her stature, too—she weighed enough to pin a collegiate wrestler to the mat, yet she wouldn’t have the height to reach her bathroom sink back home. Sure, the other world lacked the magic and strength imbued within each pony here, but it had sufficed to project a strong image to put herself on top before. This world didn’t care about the car she drove, not when a pony could walk the kingdom in seven days. Nor would it care about her cell phone, not when she could blurt her life’s story to a complete stranger in person instead.

The worst part about it all was that they’d listen.

They’d listen.

Sunset hated that.

Smoothing her mane—taking care to tease out the little curlicue at the base of her horn—she bypassed a bedside table without looking at the muffin there, or the folded card next to it all festooned within with crayon balloons. She trotted down the stairs without a word to the many ponies mixing, baking, packaging, serving, or eating various danishes, croissants, or tarts for the morning service, nor did she spare a thought for the ponies lined up outside in the mid-morning sun.

The filigreed lampposts of Libra Promenade rushed past her, as did every pony smart enough to step out of her way. She was too busy keeping her heart from beating itself out of her chest, and the sooner she got away from all of this, the better.

She was done with Canterlot, done with Equestria, done with ponies and their perfect little lives. She was done with Celestia, for all the Princess had failed to teach her.

And most of all, Sunset was done with that pink nuisance. Her counterpart was up for a very long chat once Sunset returned to the land of the ten-fingered.

All she had to do was get back to the castle.

A gust of wind blasted her in the side, bringing her to a halt on the wooden platform perched at the western end of the Promenade. A line of alabaster cable cars with stars painted on their doors circulated around the platform’s perimeter, while the cloud-laced air of Canterlot Valley yawned below them.

Had she but taken a few steps further, Sunset would have found herself bound for a very different place. Sunset selected an empty car and shut the door behind her. Cable traffic around this time of day was moderate, but nopony tried to join her for her ascent to Andromeda Terrace.

The car chugged once against the edge of the platform before it rose into the air. As Sunset draped her hooves over the sides of the car, Canterlot’s orange and purple spires receded away, relegated to viewing distances normally reserved for pegasi. With the wind in her mane and no one around, she closed her eyes, took her first deep breath of the day, and reclined in her seat.

Running away, are we?

Sunset cracked an eye open. Of course I’m not, she objected, snorting at the intruding thought. The mirror room, high in its Constellation Keep tower, floated before her mind. I’m heading home.

You’re running away, her thoughts insisted.

I was never supposed to be here, she said. That’s not running. Her gaze lifted toward the cable car’s canopy.

Like you don’t have unfinished business here.

As in getting on with my life? I’m through with everything on this end.

You know what I mean.

Sunset pressed the side of her hoof against her mouth. Sure thing. Let me drop everything I have going on back home. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.

’Cause you just can’t wait to get back to the university, can’t you? Celestia only knows how much you love the place.

“Of course I do,” Sunset muttered, folding her forelegs against her chest. She leaned her head back and looked at the sky. “Can’t get enough of it.”

Another gust of wind jostled her car. When it pulled into Andromeda Terrace a few minutes later, bumping rubber against the sides of the platform, Sunset was still sitting upright.

The door opened with a chunk, and a few steps brought her out to the plaza before the castle. Sunset’s eyes trailed down from the tops of its twisting towers, down Middle and Petty Keeps, until she found herself surveying the swarm of loud-shirted tourists gathered before the gilded gates leading into the castle lawn. Ponies of higher ranking, such as diplomats, bureaucrats, and other VIPs, queued outside a smaller, silver gate well removed from the hustle and bustle.

Sunset smirked, gathering turquoise energy around her horn. She had her own way to enter the castle.

“Is that Sunset Shimmer?”

The air snapped before Sunset’s eyes. The rebound tore a gasp from her lungs, leaving her wobbly in the knees.

Another voice spoke up—where the first voice had been somewhat meek, this one was as husky as it was melodic. “Wha—oh, geez, Louise.”

“Leave her, girls,” said a third, straight from the bushes of Faustralia. “She’s only gonna have a go at you.”

Three unicorn mares emerged from around the crowd of tourists while Sunset’s teeth ground together. She wasn’t sure what was worse: that she recognized who they were after all these years, or that she had allowed them to interrupt her casting. Senior faculty members had broken upon her defenses, and this was where she faltered?

The first of them wasted no time running up to her. She wore her red and purple mane even longer now, which framed both sides of her lithe, gray body. “How could you not want to say hello to an old colleague, Lemon Hearts?”

“Moondancer’s right,” said Minuette. Aside from ditching her braces, she had kept her walking blue-striped toothpaste commercial look, and her smile was as obnoxious to look at as the sun. “It wouldn’t be fair letting anypony miss out on all the amazing things I’ve done since graduation.”

“If by amazing you mean transporting half the Gobay in sand into our flat, that only cost us half the deposit.” The last, named for her sweet disposition and vivid coat color, turned her glare on Minuette. ”And you ate all my hay chips last night.”

“Gotta stop makin’ ‘em so delicious,” Minuette shot back, nudging Lemon in the ribs.

The latter only rolled her eyes and turned to Sunset with the briefest of nods.

“How nice to see you three again,” said Sunset, standing her ground. “Like old times, isn’t it?”

“I’d rather not go back to those old times if you’re going to ignore us again.” No venom seeped into Moondancer’s words—she had always been soft at heart. “Have you been well?”

“Did you blow anything else up after you left?” Minuette butted in.

Sunset didn’t miss a beat. “Most of my other school,” she said. “I also turned my fellow students into an army of teenagers and was about to take over Equestria.”

Minuette’s jaw had dropped lower and lower with every word. “Intense,” was the only reply she could offer.

“Rubbish,” said Lemon, snorting. “Always with the tall tales with you.”

Moondancer pulled at her own mane. “Is that really necessary?” she asked Lemon.

“It isn’t,” Sunset cut in, remembering her defenses this time. Enough was enough, and she wasn’t spending another second more than she had to here. “I was just passing through Canterlot, nothing more. Good to see you all again.”

“Sunset, just wait—”

No. No more waiting.

Gone were her three former classmates and the bustling gaggle of tourists behind them. Gone was the sunlight beating on her hair and the rush of the wind. She traded all of that for a circular room with two small windows, high up in a castle tower where no one would think to look for her.

It was over. In a moment, she would go home and put this chapter of her life behind her forever.

She just couldn’t stay here, not even if she wanted to.

Which I don’t, she reiterated. She flicked that troublesome thought away and closed her eyes, and collected herself.

When she turned around, the mirror wasn’t there.

***

Sunset knew the castle. She knew her teleportation skills, scroll-assisted or not, and she suffered no one to hold their pitiful candles to it.

This was the room. She ran her hooves over the wall, picking at the seams in the dark stone, only to smack it with a grunt. Her eyes scoured the rest of the room in case someone had only moved it aside for sweeping, but the place remained as barren as it had been yesterday morning.

Somehow, in the past twenty-four hours, someone had come and taken the mirror away.

Who did it? A bouncing, pink poltergeist came to mind right away—Sunset could almost hear that incessant giggling in her ears.

Her posture straightened. She tipped an ear toward the stairwell—was that a single pronk she heard? The specter of a snort? She was ninety-nine percent certain she would remain unmolested by company up here, but it wouldn’t do to tempt fate with that pony.

Sunset sat against the wall with a sigh, fighting for composure. Realistically, that pony had no chance of having her ducks lined up in anything but mayhem, much less rows capable of mirror abduction. They’d spent all of last night asleep in the same room—even for her, that pony wasn’t about to sneak into the castle in some ridiculous catsuit with a sidekick she paid in ice cream or whatever.

Lesser minds would have taken that bait. Greater wheels were turning here, wheels of a princessly persuasion. If you really wanted to see me again, Sunset thought, gritting her teeth, you would have made an actual effort by now.

Too bad princesses were never known for being direct.

Sunset considered the floor beneath her hooves. She had walked past several guards while leaving the castle yesterday—none of them had paused to interrogate her. Princess Celestia’s interest in barring her former student from the castle had vanished. Sunset could have dragged a marching band screaming and pleading for mercy through Constellation Keep, and no one would think to order her out.

She closed her eyes.

She opened them from outside the gates to the castle lawn, the throng of tourists supremely uninterested in the turquoise flash signalling her arrival behind them. Uninterested, that is, until she told them one thing.

“Be sure to ask about the mirrors,” she barked. “The castle has quite the collection. If you see Princess Celestia, ask her which one she finds the most interesting.”

None of them noticed the shadows falling across Sunset’s eyes as they turned back to each other all abuzz with speculation.

Andromeda Terrace played host to much more than just Her Generousness’s bedchambers, and a swift visit to the local Royal Bank of Canterlot branch would fund Sunset’s upcoming diversions. The teller had blinked no eyes at pulling up a royal stipend account unused for sixty moons, nor did she express curiosity about the mare requesting the withdrawal.

Sunset wouldn’t play into royal hooves so easily. If what Twilight had said was remotely possible? Celestia would come to her.

A little way down the lane from the castle grounds, a street mall curved along the southwestern edge of the terrace. Bistros, bookstores, and boutiques passed Sunset by as she walked beneath their awnings. Cinnamon and cardamom floated into the air from a candle shop, its proprietor hard at work cutting and twisting petals from her latest creation.

Sunset caught herself lingering after a minute. The mirror, she reminded herself. She wasn’t giving up on finding it by any means, but she needed someplace to sit down and collect her thoughts. Hunger had started to gnaw at her stomach, too, and she reconsidered the muffin she had left on the bedside table.

She glimpsed a two-story restaurant with a balcony across the street. The place was Louisiâne in decor, its railings draped with skeins of green, gold, and purple beading while whiffs of paprika and peppers wafted out the front door. The gnawing in Sunset’s stomach transmuted into a roaring.

A decent bowl of dirty rice near the university just didn’t exist. Sunset could go upstairs,find a table for herself, and be out the door looking for the mirror in an hour. Done.

A bell jingled on the doorway as Sunset stepped into an intimate, wood-paneled dining room, a brass chandelier turning in the middle of the ceiling. She made her way toward the hostess’ podium, only for the collared mare there to look up and smile.

Sunset tried to pull back, but momentum would not be denied. Ponies only smiled like that when they found something they were looking for, and Sunset prepared for the worst.

“Are you here to meet your party?” the hostess asked her. “Your friends are sitting right in the corner there.”

“I don’t have—” Sunset began, only to lose herself as she followed the hostess’ hoof.

Someone designed the universe, that much was certain. Whoever it was sitting behind that veil must have fallen out of their chair of galaxies laughing, for there was no way petty misfortune came close to describing the horror leaping out of her seat at the far corner booth.

“Sunny! You’re just in time! Come join us!”

Us, in this particular slice of pony misery, referred to the three unicorn mares sitting at the table with Pinkie Pie. The one with the sour yellow coat whispered into Pinkie’s ear, who in turn laughed and gave Lemon a hearty slap on the back.

All Sunset had to do was walk away. Find another restaurant, leave it all behind her—never mind how many eyes she had glued to her since Pinkie had to make a scene of herself. Sunset dropped her gaze to the floor and stamped.

“I was just telling the girls about my plans to go to the Candy Confectional tomorrow,” Pinkie told her as the unicorn slid into the booth. “Since it’s happening in Ponyville this year, Sugarcube Corner’s gonna get slammed. You should come and lend a hoof with me. You’ll eat a ton of scrumptious treats and get to meet my other friends there, too, though Twilight told me you already know them...”

Amid her ceaseless babbling, Pinkie paid no heed to Sunset’s efforts to drill a hole in the table with her horn.

“Pinkie.” Lemon Hearts tipped the earth mare’s jaw shut with a hoof and turned her face to face. ”She’s the friend you invited out to lunch?”

“Surprise!” Pinkie whipped her foreleg around Sunset’s shoulders. “We’ve really come to understand each other since yesterday.”

Minuette sputtered into her cola. “Haha, really?” she asked, drawing her hoof across her mouth. “You’ve done in one day what we couldn’t do in years.”

“We’re not friends,” Sunset retorted, throwing off Pinkie’s foreleg.

Lemon Hearts lowered her head with the air of a mare who’d seen it all before. “Pinkie, did you have to inflict this thunderjumper on the company? She doesn’t do friends, period. Trust those who’ve known her for a while.”

Sunset bit her tongue. She did have friends, she wanted to say. As if she’d be believed—her circle just happened to live elsewhere, since other worlds fell under that particular scope.

Pinkie chuckled. “Then why would she show me the High Solarium, where Princess Celestia taught her the latest findings of arcane theory and secret spells lost to the ages?”

The table went silent, except for blinking.

“The High What now?” asked Minuette.

“You heard me,” Pinkie said. “Top floor of the main school building, right in the middle of the central hall.”

Much to Sunset’s surprise, she decided to let Pinkie keep talking. The unicorn had to hide a smile as the others traded confused looks. When Moondancer spoke up, Sunset almost let slip a snicker.

“Pinkie Pie,” Moondancer said, cringing beneath that insuperable smile. “You’re talking about a janitorial closet.”

Sunset nodded with the rest of the unicorns as if to agree. Princess Celestia enjoyed spending time with her students, but she’d never have the time to teach her protegee in pony if she got stuck in the halls. With so many magical traces leaking into the halls at the School, nopony was going to investigate a glamour nestled behind the Princess’ potent look-the-other-way spell.

Instead of blustering or acting shocked, Pinkie burst into laughter. “Are you serious?” she asked, turning to Sunset and nudging her in the shoulder. “Wow! You sure got me good. I wish I knew how to make broom closets look like Canterlot ballrooms. Back in Ponyville, Twilight just keeps a mop beneath the stairs.”

Before Sunset could puzzle through what fresh inanity Pinkie had just unleashed upon the table, Minuette broke through it first. “That’s all it is,” she said, smiling. “You can’t even stuff a freshmare into it. What, did you honestly believe there’d be some huge space up there with a sun set into the floor and a balcony overlooking the quad?”

“That’s it!” Pinkie leveled her hoof between Minuette’s eyes. “That’s exactly what it looked like in there.” The cheery smile the earth mare gave Sunset belonged to a pony happily admitting her gullibility. “‘High Solarium.’ Got me good there.”

Either Minuette wasn’t blinking, or else she blinked at the same times Sunset was. “I was kidding, Pinks,” said the former.

“Look.” Lemon made no secret of what she thought of all this by rubbing her temples. “What’s behind that door isn’t important.”

Pinkie sat back down in her seat, folding her hooves beneath her chin. “Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked, flapping an ear.

Something shifted in the air, as though a window had been opened into the wintertime, bringing a sudden clarity over the ponies at the table. Pinkie Pie leaned in toward the center. The clatter of utensils on plates and the ambient chatter of other parties did not go away, but rather faded back as she spoke again.

“Sometimes, ponies need places of their own.” To say Pinkie had lowered her voice would not be accurate, technically—but the effect was the same. “Just ask my friend Fluttershy,” she continued. “She spends a lot of time alone in her cottage. I’ll go over there every now and then, and when I do, she’s always smiling and singing a song or two to the wild animals she takes care of. It’s the same thing for Twilight a lot of the time, too, only she sings to her books instead.”

Moondancer fiddled with her mane. “Oh, dear. She still does that?”

Lemon Hearts snorted as she leaned back in her seat. “So now you’re going to lecture us on how we’ve misunderstood out dear Sunny this whole time, and that she’s always been a good pony who only needed her own place somewhere.”

“Actually,” Pinkie said, grinning, “Twilight told me that Sunset used to be a really big butt.”

Even Moondancer got plenty of laughs out of that one. Sunset kept herself from lighting a tiny part of Pinkie’s mane on fire to see how long it’d take her to notice—Sunset didn’t need assault charges tacked on her list of things to deal with.

“But even if she was a butt back then,” Pinke went on, “she only wanted to be the best pony she could be. That broom closet let her be that pony. Know what I mean? When I was up there last night, listening to her, you could…”

Pinkie lowered her head and nibbled on her hoof, a gesture that tugged at the back of Sunset’s mind. She knew, somewhere deep down, that she was bearing witness to some astronomical convergence, though she didn’t know how to articulate what that was. A kind of gravity, centered somewhere in that nebulous mane of Pinkie’s, pulled the other ponies in even more.

The earth mare looked up, her cheeks dimpled and her eyes softening as she turned to Sunset again. “You could tell how happy she was up there. No other place in Equestria did for her what that closet did. And it means the world to me—more than that, even if we had cinnamon buns growing on bushes and peanut butter cup showers falling on plains of cupcakes every Tuesday morning…”

Pinkie returned to the land of the cognitive a moment later, her eyes still askew in reverie and her mouth a little ajar. “Heh heh heh…” She took a moment to recompose herself. “It means so much to me when ponies welcome me into places that important.”

If Sunset’s rump hadn’t been in a seat, she would have backpedalled out of the restaurant and possibly off the terrace. Showing Pinkie the Solarium wasn’t some ploy to become friends with her. That mare had been nothing but a terrible tour guide, lacking every destination even the meanest country bumpkin would know about the capital.

Sunset did not want to be friends with this mare. She was going to find the mirror before it closed, she would go home, and she would put this aborted part of her in the past, where it belonged, for good.

Her throat clenched up.

“So say I showed you my bedroom,” Minuette said, waggling her eyebrows. When her remark passed without scrutiny, she snorted and said, “Total mess, action figures, comic books, and sand from the farthest reaches of the planet all over the place, but it makes me happy. How’d you like that?”

Pinkie narrowed her eyes and tapped her lips. “That’s totally different,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure you’re comfortable there, and you’re proud of it, too.”

“Yeah?” Minuette said.

“But does it make you happy? If it was the last place in Equestria left to you, would it be where you could live out your dreams?”

Time sucked Sunset out of her seat and planted her in the hooves of a filly in the center of the Solarium. Off to the side, her teacher, alabaster perfect, stacked cherrywood bureaus against the wall in the warm light of the afternoon. The calm smile on her face never wavered.

“I think it’s time we moved on with your studies,” Princess Celestia said, showing Sunset the foot-wide hole she’d blasted through the last one. “I have no doubt you’re bound for great things, my faithful student.”

The words caught in Sunset’s throat before she could answer. Then she made the mistake of blinking—time whisked the Princess back into the dark crevasses of memory along with the Solarium, and Sunset opened her eyes in the body of a full-grown mare once more.

“You’re hearing this, right?” Minuette asked, poking Lemon Hearts with a chuckle. “Pinks, you’re brilliant, but this is a whole new level even for you.”

Pinkie fiddled with the tip of her mane. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things.” She straightened up in her seat, eyes alight—”Oooh, look! Our food’s here.”

A smiling stallion in a ruffled shirt approached the table with a constellation of dishes held before his horn. “How y’all doin’ today?” he inquired, sweeping the table with his eyes. “Hungry?”

Sunset didn’t get the chance to answer before the waiter called out the entrees he slid across the table—gumbos, jambalayas, stuffed peppers and casseroles, some rich, smoky fettucine in Pinkie’s case. Just the smell of it all swirling in her nose—paprika, thyme, brown sugar—Sunset remembered what she was even doing here in the first place, and she remembered she never got to order anything.

“And a bowl’a dirty rice for you, mademoiselle,” the waiter said, setting it down just beneath her nose. “Bon appetit!”

Sunset could only stare as the steam rose in her eyes. The dark brown color infused in every grain, the bits of brightbean, carrot, and onion dispersed throughout, the kick of black pepper swirling with parsley and notes of caramel…

“I think you broke her, Pinkie,” Lemon Hearts whispered across the table.

“No kidding,” Minuette said. “It’s like nopony was ever nice to her before.”

Blinking, Sunset took up her spoon, her eyes fixed beneath her. Moments passed. That was as far as she got before her grip spell fizzled, her spoon clattering on the table.

***

She was not about to rid herself of the sympathetic stares she had collected walking out of the restaurant that afternoon. The place was sure to tout how its cuisine could literally reduce a lady to tears, but the truth of it all soared above every witness there.

That said, that bowl of rice had been the best she’d had in years.

Precious little had come of her meeting with Pinkie there after that. Sunset had lost the will to ask Pinkie about the mirror. She hadn’t torn off looking for it, either. While Moondancer had leaned over, dabbing a napkin beneath Sunset’s eyes, it was Pinkie who had asked her, once more, if she was coming to Ponyville.

The sleeper car bounced gently along the tracks. Sunset turned on her side, looking out the window by her bunk as the lights of Canterlot receded up and out of the frame. She pulled down the shade, adjusted her pillow, and listened a while to the light snoring issuing from the bunk beneath her.

That one moment returned to her—the moment Pinkie had been lost for words. Sunset had witnessed the closing of Tannhorser gate in the stars, had walked the worlds for a new lease on life, only for it all to slip so suddenly away at the end.

Moments like that stayed with a pony.

Sunset had one more day to find the portal.

When she fell asleep, she felt like she had a hundred.