Fluttershy squinted in the blinding light as she stumbled her way through the strange, foreign buildings, their hay roofs stretching upwards into the ocean of light above her. Ponies milled about all around her, some casting her confused and concerned glances as she tried to navigate through the market-place crowds without the aid of sight, stumbling over her own hooves like a filly just learning to walk. A few of the shopping ponies greeted her with a polite 'Good Morning,' however, for the most part they remained silent, choosing to regard her plight with mild sympathy or annoyance.

After some time, her eyes began to adjust and she realized with a start that Ponyville was lit rather ordinarily for a bright, sunny afternoon. Shivering slightly in the cold, Fluttershy stopped her bewildered pacing and did her best to orient herself around the now familiar town. When she finally felt comfortable with her bearings, she continued her trek in a more dignified stature.

The library was ahead of her now, its glistening perfection sending torrents of memories, both good and bad, of the pony who resided within. Mostly, Fluttershy felt fear, but also anger and sorrow, as she recalled the reasons why she was here in the first place. But she would not let those meaningless emotions distract her from what mattered. Besides, she knew better than to blame such a close friend for what had happened to her, to everypony. So much had happened in so little time, and yet here she was amongst so many ponies who were apparently completely oblivious to the horror she had seen.

Extending a shaking hoof to the wooden door, Fluttershy cast several paranoid glances behind her, every instinct in her telling her to run away from this town, from these ponies, and finally be free of the threat of being judged, condemned, pursued...

The door in front of her opened at the sound of her knocking, and an immense smile tore across Fluttershy's face as she beheld the pony within.

"Twilight!" She screamed loudly, her ordinarily quite demeanor all but forgotten in the rush of excitement. "Sweet Celestia, it's really you! It really worked!"

Blinking in confusion several times, Twilight Sparkle glanced around her friend to see if this was some sort of lazy, half-baked prank of Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie, but from the looks of things, Fluttershy was alone. To her immediate knowledge, there was absolutely no justification for Fluttershy's extreme excitement at seeing her.

"Umm, hello, Fluttershy. How are you?" She managed, before being violently embraced by her formerly shy friend.

"It's been what? Three months? Four months?" Fluttershy laughed between tears of joy.

"Two hours, actually...Fluttershy, are you sure you're alright?"

Fluttershy released her friend promptly and took a step back, grinning sheepishly at her bewildered friend.

"I missed you a lot Twilight. I thought me and you would never see each other again..." Receiving only muddled and concerned stuttering from Twilight, Fluttershy ceased her rambling and suddenly took on a more nervous expression, her ears bending back and her gaze drawn downwards towards her hooves.

"I...I guess...You don't remember me, do you? This me, I mean..."

"What in Equestria are you talking about, Fluttershy?"

"The...The Mirror Pool...You came to our Equestria, the different one...and you helped save us from Nightmare Moon..."

The Mirror Pool. Twilight Sparkle knew about the mirror pool all to well...or rather, she had known about it rather well. Granted, she still possessed more technical knowledge than the average Equestrian resident, but her actual experience with the magical Mirror Pool existed only in the forgotten recesses of her mind, something that she had long-since dismissed. While most of the citizens of Ponyville could successfully pinpoint the exact purpose of the Mirror Pool, Twilight Sparkle knew that it indeed housed a much more ominous and powerful magic. The magic to not only observe, but to access and travel freely between worlds, realities separate from the perfect utopia most had grown so familiar with. From the little knowledge she possessed, one of those worlds was a war-torn, lifeless, dystopian Equestria ruled by Princess Luna, who for whatever reason credited Twilight with saving her entire realm.

She knew she had spent a considerable time in the Alternate-Equestria it had apparently housed, but the entirety of her experiences there had been wiped completely from her memory.  

"Maybe..maybe you should come inside." Twilight said, opening her wooden door wider.

"This seems...familiar..." Twilight Sparkle muttered to herself as she set down two cups of chamomile tea on her kitchen table and sat down, facing her clearly over-worked friend. Fluttershy's mane was disheveled and filthy, and while her tail was of a similar length to what Twilight had remembered, her actual mane had been trimmed down significantly. The smell of smoke filled the air as Fluttershy sat herself down at Twilight's table. "Now then, Fluttershy, everything is going to be alright—"

"Please, don't treat me like a crazy pony, Twilight. And everything isn't alright." Somehow, Fluttershy took the act of drinking tea and transformed it into an act of urgency, bringing the tea cup down on the table with a resolute slam. "I wouldn't BE here if things were alright."

"OK, I'm sorry. But you must understand how impossible it is for me to believe any of this. The Mirror Pool was sealed forever. It's completely impossible for you to have traveled through it, and even MORE impossible for you to have constructed your own."

Fluttershy played with her teacup nervously, gazing at the swirling liquid within. "You think I'm crazy...the last time I saw you, you were saving all of Equestria, and now..."

"I do not think you're crazy, Fluttershy. Maybe you're just stressed. I don't know. Is there anything you want to talk to me about?"

"We need your help again, Twilight. In my Equestria. Something terrible has happened, and it isn't Nightmare Moon this time. That's why I'm here. Even if you think I'm making this whole 'Mirror Pool' thing up, is there really any harm in just following me there so I can show you myself?" Fluttershy's eyes widened and in them, Twilight Sparkle could see a certain caliber of pain and sorrow that she had never seen before in her friend...except...

Her time in the realm of the Mirror Pool was not completely forgotten, but when the memories came to surface, she almost always disregarded them as the remains of some strange dream she had long ago. The most vivid and recurring memory was of her and a dying Princess Celestia...who or what had killed her and why remained a mystery to her, but one thing Celestia had said still existed as an evocative quote from an enigmatic time.

"It is too late, my little pony." Celestia had managed through dying breaths. "If I cannot save this world in life, then let my blood bring forth hope for my subjects."

What had this meant? Twilight had pondered this statement time and time again, searching in vain for an answer and yet too terrified to ask any questions. Perhaps the Mirror Pool truly housed the answers to these questions. Twilight searched desperately for something, anything to connect with Fluttershy's appearance here, and her wild claims of being a visitor from the mysterious and dangerous Equestria that had stole a week of her life, when suddenly, Twilight Sparkle's limited memory sparked a certain detail which most certainly did not correlate with the pony sitting in front of her.

"But...wait..." Twilight said in realization, rising from her chair and glaring at Fluttershy quizzically. "You say you're from an 'Alternate Equestria.' I don't remember much from that place, but I do remember you and Luna in Ponyville. You didn't have wings, Fluttershy. You said it was better if I didn't understand, and you and everypony else kept the details of our adventures hidden from me. But I remember everything after that clearly. And I remember that you did NOT have wings."

Fluttershy looked to her sides in comprehension and unfurled her wings accordingly. It took the best of her resolve to not spit out her tea as Twilight beheld the strange, bat-like wings attached to her friends torso. They were a darker yellow than the rest of Fluttershy's body, a skin-like membrane stretched over protruding wing bones, where any normal pegasus would have feathers. They looked incredibly delicate.

"Princess Luna, gave me these not long after you left. She said it was a type of magic she was slightly unfamiliar with, and it looks like she made a bit of a mistake. Rainbow Dash seems to like them though. She wouldn't stop begging Luna to give her some, too."

"But...oh, sweet Celestia..." Twilight gasped.

"I'm sorry!" Fluttershy said frantically, quickly closing her grotesque wings. "They are a tad...unnerving, I guess. I didn't mean to frighten you!"

"Not frightened." Twilight replied, exhaling loudly and draining her tea. "Just a tad surprised. You certainly have my attention now, Fluttershy. Lead the way."

Fluttershy nodded, choosing to simply abandon her tea as she rose. Taking her time to take in the contents of the library, Fluttershy crossed the main room and pushed the door open timidly. Almost immediately after stepping out into the sunlight, she began to shiver almost uncontrollably, despite it being a mid-summer day without a cloud in the sky.

"Are you okay?" Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're shivering like crazy."

"Yeah, I guess it's quite a bit colder than in my Equestria."

"Hmm. Alright."  Twilight shrugged.

As the two mares crossed the town, it was with relief that Twilight noted that this Equestria's native Fluttershy had gone to Canterlot on personal business. While she had her doubts about any 'Alternate-Equestria's,' she did not consider the fact completely impossible. And an encounter between two versions of the shyest and most terrified ponies in all of Equestria could not possibly have ended well.

On the borders of the Everfree Forest, Fluttershy stopped, letting out a sudden exclamation of fear when she looked into the dark and foreboding forest.

"Can you..lead the way from here, Twilight?"

"Didn't you have to travel through here earlier if you came from the Mirror Pool?" Twilight questioned.

"No. I appeared right in the middle of Ponyville." Fluttershy turned to look back at where they had come from, as if contemplating for the first time the sudden displacement and what it represented. "You didn't see the huge flash?"

"Too engrossed in a book, I guess. Those Daring Do's are pretty captivating."

Without saying anything, Twilight could clearly see in Fluttershy's expression that she had no idea what 'Daring Do' was. Even the concept of reading a book for entertainment seemed to take her by surprise.

In time, the two ponies reached the cavern which housed the Mirror Pool, which to the extent of Twilight's knowledge was now just an ordinary pond. Despite its insignificance, the entrance to the cavern was guarded by an immense boulder, to prevent anypony from discovering the pool.

"I guess it's a good thing you didn't teleport onto the other side of the pool here." Twilight noted as she lifted the heavy boulder, grunting under the magical strain. Fluttershy was still shaking, and Twilight assumed the darkness of the Everfree Forest had not helped her condition. What she did not consider was the fact that it was fear, and not temperature, that was causing her friend's unease as she anticipated returning to whatever remained for them on the other side.

Light broke through the entrance, evidently emanating from the surface of the water. Fluttershy began trotting downwards through the lighted cavern, but stopped when she realized she was alone.

"Sorry!" Twilight gasped, mustering enough strength to run down after Fluttershy. "Amazing how straining lifting things with magic can be."

The two mares soon found themselves gazing into the shimmering, murky water, before turning to face each other, one in fear and the other in curiosity.

"So it wasn't closed forever. I guess its purpose wasn't fulfilled after all." Twilight murmured.

"I guess I should tell you now, Twilight, because the second we cross through there, we're most likely going to have to avoid...well, dying." Stepping backwards from the water, Fluttershy sat down a flat, elevated rock and motioned for Twilight to do the same. "You might already know this, but the Mirror Pool isn't just ordinary water. In fact, it isn't water at all. Its blood."

"Blood of the Princess." Twilight said, remembering the dying words of Princess Celestia in that one, recurring nightmare.

"Yeah. Well, not just Celestia. Alicorns in general. Well, the reason the Mirror Pool reopened is because..." Tears welled in Fluttershy's eyes, but she continued, fighting her hardest to hold them back. "It's because Princess Luna was killed..."

"WHAT?!" Twilight Sparkle gawked. "Killed by who? You expect ME to fight something that even Princess Luna couldn't?"

Crying now, Fluttershy turned away from Twilight and looked back into the water of the Mirror Pool.

"No. I'm not forcing you to help us. But I just want you to know that our Equestria is going to burn if somepony doesn't do something. We were so close to peace. We had the sun back, and a loving Princess who cared about us. It isn't fair."

The sound of hoofbeats was the only sound to interfere with the serenity of the sacred cavern as Fluttershy walked towards the pool, turning to face Twilight one last time.

"I should warn you, though. Your Equestria is in as much danger as ours."

With that, Fluttershy turned and gazed into the shimmering water, closing her eyes as she anticipated whatever lay beyond its magical surface.

"Wait!" Twilight cried, cantering to Fluttershy's side. "I'm coming."

Her eyes still closed, Fluttershy leaped into the Mirror Pool, the sound of her body splashing through the water met a few seconds more by another, as the two ponies were pulled into Equestria's neighboring reality.

Next Chapter: The Other Side (II) Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 40 Minutes