Chapter One

March of twenty-eighteen. The world ends in about two months, and none are any the wiser.

This is not the important thing, however.

A single, redheaded figure huddled sleepily under the covers. On the one hand, I had the day off, and thus didn't have to get up for anything up to and including air raid sirens. On the other, slipping off into sleep again and getting more than six hours of rest felt downright unnatural to me. Thankfully, procrastination won again and I found that the choice was taken away from me.

A solid, heavy object struck my head. I gave a screech, rolled, and came up from the far side of my bed with an alarm clock held threateningly in one hand. I groped blindly until I found my glasses, slipping them on to find that... I was completely alone in the room.

"What new form of sleep madness is this?" I asked, thinking that the burglar/assassin in hiding would be stupid enough to answer. No such luck. All I found was a book, resting half under the twisted bedspread that was fast losing my precious body heat.

'Oh,' I thought. 'A book just fell off of my shelf. That sounds much more reasonable. Even if I don't own any such shelf over my bed, and I don't own any spooky tomes. And... well. Who the fuck tries to assassinate me with a book? Points for irony, I guess...'

Aiming to be as scientific about this as I could, I ducked to check under my bed -empty, minus some old socks- before coming back up and poking at the tome with my alarm clock. The book, predictably, continued to lie there. As books tend to do.

"Fuck it," I said. I was a brave, independent woman and no book would get the best of me. I was going to solve this mystery, read the shit out of this thing, and celebrate with ice cream. My weekend plans affirmed, I nodded sternly and opened the funny, arcane-themed tome.

Only to find nothing. Blank paper, rough, like drawing stock. Gilded edges. A red ribbon place holder. It was probably the most beautiful book I had ever laid my hands upon, and it was utterly empty of anything. I flipped back to the cover again. A six-pointed star, embossed in gold leaf on the funny leather surface, with little symbols written inside each point. My assassin was, apparently, a satanist. Or something.

"You don't make sense," I told the book, glaring. It decided not to answer. I turned and made to walk away, before unconsciously turning back, grabbing up the book, and hugging it. "You might not make sense," I told the tome. Tom? Tom. "But you're alright, in my book."

I chuckled, briefly, before realizing I'd just made a pun.

I sighed. "Another quarter in the jar." I'd have enough for a new computer, at this rate.

The coffee shop, half bookstore and all awesome, was as warm and inviting as ever. I wandered up to the counter, continually checking to see that Tom was still in my messenger bag. I smiled at Jill, who was actually working out front for once.

"How goes business?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes. "Same as it was yesterday when you asked at game group. Had to fire Danny- he showed up high to work again." To my surprise and delight, she already had my special, specifically-for-yours-truly coffee all made up. "On the house! Any dame who happens to leave a Wishing Necklace of the Raven Queen for my elven bard to pick up deserves it."

I glared and puffed out my chest. "I am scrupulously fair, and that was not special treatment," I told her.

"Want me to take the coffee back?" she asked.

"Sweet Gandalf, no! This thing is half chocolate syrup!" I exclaimed, grabbing the cup and marching for the quiet room in back of the shop. Jill rented me the room as the closest thing I had to an office. Really, it was a glorified closet, and I 'payed' for it by cleaning the shop after hours. And any of the three or so fans I had in the area of downtown Seattle were welcome to come in, buy a coffee from Jill, and chat. Everybody won!

I pulled out my computer, drawing tablet, and on second thought settled Tom on my lap for inspiration and got to work. Only maybe an hour had passed, half of which was trying out different color palettes for adorable, fuzzy aliens, before there was a knock at the door.

"Come in?" I tried.

Lo and behold, it was Crazy Dan.

Now, Crazy Dan wasn't, in fact, crazy. Nor was his name actually Dan. He'd once privately admitted to hating his first name just enough that he'd purposely started spreading the misnomer over a decade ago. That was cool with me- I was the last girl to go around bothering some dude about his naming choices.

What Crazy Dan was, though, was odd. He was utterly obsessed with the occult. Not because he believed in it, mind- he just thought it was nifty. Seeing a tall, dark man dressed like an affluent hobo interviewing Wiccans was a sight for the ages. More than that, he was my best consultant for the short fantasy novellas I wrote and published, from time to time.

"Hey, Tamara," he said, grinning wide and shuffling into the room's second of two chairs. "Anything new and exciting?"

"Yup," I said. "Magically appearing book hit me on the head in my room this morning. Mysterious- and totally blank."

He eyed the thing with interest. "Nice. Can I do a tracing of the cover? And did you check for invisible ink?"

"Of course I did," I said, having done no such thing. I wasn't crazy. But I would do it, later. "Trace away."

I actually only handed the thing over reluctantly, but I didn't let Crazy Dan see that. I simply went back to drawing my comic as he borrowed some tracing paper from my stock and got to work.

"Six symbols... unknown. Pictographic or gibberish. Star is the wrong proportions for the Star of David... Huh. I'll get back to you on this. Four of these symbols are three repeating squiggles, and that might be significant."

"Good to know," I said, hauling Tom back into my lap. "What did you think of chapter five?" I asked.

"Needs more wizards," the man told me.

"It's science fiction."

"Then make them science wizards," Crazy Dan stressed.

"Mm... I just figured out chapter seven then," I thought out loud. Crazy Dan looked pleased, and made his excuses to go out and bother Jill about the religious accuracy of her tattoos. Alone, I gazed down at Tom and asked it, "Why are you so darn huggable?"

Tom didn't answer. The tease.

The park is quiet. The sky has decided to... not shine, really, but not rain either. Fucking Seattle- I loved it. Really, I was only here because my daily planner had told me, in my own handwriting, that I hadn't gotten fresh air in a month. Past-me took herself too seriously, I think, and had eerie predictive powers.

I doodled in a ragged notebook. I did some math, figuring that I wasn't quite well-off enough to quit my day job, then resigned myself to doodling some more. Then I heard the voices.

"Codename, Purplesmart. Come in, Purplesmart! This is Pink Panther, over!"

"First off, you don't have to say 'codename'. Secondly, using actual aliases, the ones we established beforehoof, would be preferable to making up new ones every single time."

"Aw, just give it a break. Ain't no way she's gonna stop, anyways. Might as well go along with it and let her have her fun."

"Rainbow! Stay on the ground, for goodness sake!"

I frowned. Was it convention season already? I hadn't even finished my steampunk pirate outfit yet. That is to say, I hadn't gotten Linda to finish my steampunk outfit for me, yet.

Thoughts of any cosplay flew out of my head completely once I actually bothered to look up, and saw... ponies. Real, not rendered as vectors, wandering, talking ponies. I rapped my knuckles along Tom's binding.

'This is somehow your fault, book,' I thought, assuming something without ears could hear me just as well that way as it could if I had said it out loud.

While my mind was awash with great, overwhelming thoughts such as 'this challenges everything that mankind knows', or, 'this might be a legitimate first contact scenario that doesn't have to end in the aliens eating us for our delicious, delicious nutrients,' my first response was much different:

"Excuse me, magic talking ponies? Are you an hallucination?" I called.

Then I resisted the urge to slap my own forehead. 'Way to go, Einstein.'

Four ponies, with distinctly alien biology, froze in place in the middle of the lawn. I scoffed- did they expect nobody to see them, or something?

"We're not magic talking ponies!" said Twilight Sparkle, assuming the show's details were accurate, after quietly panicking for about a minute.

"And even if we were, you wouldn't be able to tell, because of magic!" said Pinkie, nodding certainly. Rainbow Dash began rubbing at her own temples with her wings' primaries, probably to stave off a headache.

"Okay," I said. "Because you totally look like ponies, not to be insensitive or anything." Because it was important to respect differences, even if they were really confusing ones. "Specifically, like really famous ones from a show."

On the one hand, I could have played it more calmly. Not mentioned anything, or rationed out knowledge of everything. But if they already knew, or found out later and decided I was trying to lie? Or what if they already knew, and were testing me, or they were hallucinations and I was testing myself...

Honesty was probably the best option, if only for lack of options.

"Show, like a... play? Or like cinema?" asked Applejack. Twilight began desperately trying to shush her.

"Show as in television. This is the twenty-first century- are you saying ponies don't get cable?" I asked, feeling light-headed and possibly delirious. There was no way I wasn't having a bad reaction to... to something. Anything. But there was part of me, some little remainder of my once ten year-old self that had promised that, even when she was all grown up, she'd never be like the stupid adults that would dismiss magic just because it was unexpected or, worse, inconvenient.

Ironically, my willingness to suspend disbelief and observe probably made me a better amateur science than not.

I pointed at each one in turn. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but... Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack. Is that right? My name's Tamara Whittle. Is there any way I can be of any help?"

'Please don't need me help to invade Earth and create a crapsaccharine dystopia. Or be robots mimicking our cartoons to lure us to nutrient farms under false pretenses, or...'

I smiled as hard as I could, so as to look like I wasn't thinking that hard about the impending disaster.

Twilight, at least, looked like she were about to say something, possibly even just to interrogate me, but her horn chose that moment to pulse with a magenta glow. "Oh no," she said. "Time's up, girls!" To my shock and just the slightest bit of terror, she narrowed her eyes in my direction and cast a spell at me. A literal, magical, from a magic horn, spell.

There was a blinding flash of light, and when next I was able to look without spots in my eyes, I was alone in the park again. It took me a long, confused moment to calm my panicked breathing and to stave off the anxiety attack clawing at my chest -because what the hell just happened?!- before looking down to find myself holding Tom like a shield. The book was warm.

"What the hell?"

Tom had changed. The first page, at least, had the first few inches full of dense, incomprehensible scribbles and strange diagrams that might very well have been over-sized letters. It was beautiful and also very, very incomprehensible.

"Yeah, mom, I'm fine over here," I said into the phone, eyes tracing the page even as I held my end of the conversation. "It's been pretty intense. Did you see I just put up the teaser pages online?"

"No, ma, I don't expect you to have actually read it. I know you're busy with the garden. Say hi to Libby, alright? I've got to go. Yes, yes, I love you too." And thus ended my bi-yearly contact with family.

I shut the phone off, dropped it onto the rug, and kept on staring at the book. "I saw magic today," I said, perhaps to the book, but mostly to myself. Just the thought, the sentiment, soothed something in me that I hadn't ever been aware had ached. Idly, I brought my index finger up to touch the line of alien text-

-Unknown-
-Unknown-
-Variable path-
-Declining energy state-
-Designating symbol 'target'-
-Unknown-
-Point description-

I tucked and rolled backwards, over the arm of the couch. Seconds later, I desperately dove back onto the couch and huddled over Tom. The tome had, thankfully, fallen shut when I had dropped it. Of course, that didn't excuse dropping it in the first place.

"What was that, and why are you causing me trouble, Tom?" I asked. Furrowing my brow and chewing my nearly-raw lower lip, I opened it. There was probably a better way of going about this, but curiosity can be a terrible, compulsive thing. I slowly, ever-so-carefully, let my finger touch a single, solitary symbol. It was like a half-spiral, and it-

-Point description-

Okay, next symbol-

-designate as-

I reached into one of my many piles of notebooks and, flipping to a clear section not filled with practice anatomical drawings, began composing a list.

Two days after first spotting ponies in the park, I was in my kitchen making a veggie pizza. It was one of the easiest foods in the world to make, delicious, and the half I didn't eat would make for an awesome breakfast with scrambled eggs, tomorrow. There was a blinding flash somewhere behind me, and I checked to make sure Tom was hidden in my cutlery drawer.

I turned, confirmed what I had suspected, and said, "Hello Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash. I'll assume the spell doesn't let you 'knock', first. Would you like some pizza?"

The two mares in question shook themselves. I guessed that the trip from magic pony land -my best operating guess, that- was a bit of a doozy.

"You!" said Twilight, pointing with one accusatory hoof.

"Me!" I said back. "Pizza?"

Completely ignoring her companion, Rainbow Dash flew up in the most literal, impossible, magical sense of the word and rubbed her hooves together. "Free food?"

"Dash! The mission!" called the alicorn.

Rainbow Dash's eyes widened in shock, then narrowed as her body took a more threatening stance. "You! What's the big deal?"

Doing my best to hide my nervousness, and wishing I still drank, I answered, "I offered to help you last time, then you disappeared. There's no need to get testy. Also, I'm still offering pizza."

"What kind?" asked the pegasus suspiciously.

"Cold veggie on cream cheese," I said. At her sour expression, I waved my hand at the counter. "Don't knock it until you try it. The tomatoes are fresh."

"Fine. But this better be the best damned pizza I've ever had!" said the cyan mare, disappearing behind me. I did my best not to follow her with my eyes as I was suddenly face to face with a royal alien demigoddess.

"So... will you be sticking around any longer than last time?" I asked.

"The last time was a fluke," she said. "There are more of us staying behind as anchors for the spell. This time, we're getting answers. For instance, how did you see through my spell?"

"There was a spell?" I asked. "I guess you guys weren't supposed to look like ponies? Wait- are you actually not ponies now, and the spell is making you see you like this? Please tell me you're not space wizards- I thought that idea was originally Dan's. He'd be heartbroken."

"We're not..." Twilight blinked, confused. "Are you usually this confusing to talk to?"

"Only when I'm nervous," I replied. "Do you always interrogate friendly strangers?"

"All the time!" called Rainbow Dash from behind me. She flew into view and jammed a square of pizza into Twilight's unprotesting hoof. "You've gotta try this!"

"Are you sure?" I asked, just lightheaded enough to let my sarcasm bubble up. "It could be poison."

"Is it?" asked the pegasus, completely unconcerned.

"Of course not- that would be a waste of pizza. Still, you should be suspicious of the alien who saw through your disguises. Or saw your disguises, as ponies. Which is it?"

"Dude, we're ponies, obviously," said Rainbow. "I mean, you were supposed to see us as other monkeys in the park the other day, but yeah. You get it."

"Humans, not monkeys," I corrected. "You might insult monkeys that way," I warned her, and she laughed through a mouthful of broccoli and pepper. Charming.

"Still!" interjected Twilight. "How do you know us? Or see through the spell- which I did cast, and it was a very good one," she added, grumbling. "Nopony here has magic. There's none anywhere!" She waved her hooves for emphasis. "It should be impossible for even a simple illusion spell to be pierced by anything!"

"Maybe humans are immune to magic?" I suggested, bemused.

"Unlikely," said the mare. "It worked on everypony else we passed."

"Then I have no ideas," I said, though I had at least one big suspicion in the form of an assassin tome. "As to recognizing you... you're in a show. Like, a serialized story about you and your friends. Moving, sequential art with sound, if the reference helps."

"That 'sequential art' is an egghead word for comic books, right?" asked Rainbow Dash. I nodded. "Sweet!"

"That shouldn't be possible," said Twilight, beginning to look frazzled.

"Eat your pizza," I said. "I'll demonstrate."

Queuing up the first episode of 'My Little Pony' was easy enough. I wasn't a die-hard fan, but I certainly had a thing for cartoons. 'Gravity Falls' was just as good, in my opinion. Less easy was being crowded on both sides by inquisitive aliens.

"Back off a bit," I said. "Touching a human's elbows is practically a proposition for sex."

"Eep!

"Yikes! Really?"

"Maybe. Still, personal space would be appreciated," I said, placing the computer monitor on the coffee table I'd scrounged up from a curb my first week living here. "Or else I might use my human powers on you."

"You're clearly magically neutral," said Twilight nervously, gaze only briefly able to escape from staring at the screen. "My sense for mana is rather acute."

"I said powers, not magic," I corrected her, then winked at Rainbow.

She stifled a grin. "Yeah, Purplesmart, beware the humans. Wait." She pointed at the screen. "If this is us, does it show, like, stuff?"

"What stuff?" I asked, blank-faced. "Like, how you lay your eggs for the brood mother? And wearing hats- very, very lewd. You'd think ponies were shameless. You'll be touching each others' elbows, next."

"You're yanking my tail," said Rainbow suspiciously.

"Relax," I assured her. "This is a show aimed at children. There's a hard limit. If the writers ever imagined what you got up to in the privacy of your own bedroom, or whatever, they sure as hell didn't show it."

"Good. Dash time is for Dashes only," said the pegasus.

"Should I be surprised you know so much about a show aimed at children?" asked Twilight, sounding a bit disgruntled. Probably from my 'elbows' comment.

"I'm very immature for my age," I told her. "And you're not surprised because you're a particularly perspicacious, perceptive, purple princess pony." I tallied up the words in my head. "Hey, six word alliteration! I just earned myself a cookie."

"You're taking this all rather calmly," said Twilight.

"I'm taking some very strong, anti-anxiety medication. It helps," I said. "Who feels like ice cream?"

"So... what actually brings you adorable aliens to my humble corner of reality?" I asked.

Rainbow Dash, inexplicably holding a spoon in one hoof by means that I had to dismiss as being 'magic', leaned back in her bean bag chair to glare at me. The effect was ruined since her head was upside-down from my point of view.

"We are not adorable! We're bad-awesome. That's your medication talking," she told me.

"Of course you are, and no it's not. It's the orange pills that make everything adorable," I said, as if I were seriously correcting her.

"Rainbow Miriam Dash, you will not make those kinds of jokes!" declared Twilight over her own bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. "Even if she's sort of egging you on."

"Thank you, Twilight. You are officially the most sensitive and caring Equestrian on Earth," I said. "Unless there are, like, a dozen more of you hiding on the planet. Seriously, what's your side of the story?"

Between that and waiting for Twilight's response, I glanced over at Dash and mouthed 'Miriam'. She made what I assumed is a rude gesture.

"A couple of weeks ago," said the alicorn, "some high energy magical researchers notices a particularly unique fold appear in the local magical fields. It grew bigger, and I was officially asked to step in and look into the matter. Seeing what was on the other side was a bit of a blind jump on our end, but we were protected, and had the other girls stay behind to act as an anchor. In an emergency, there isn't much the Elements of Harmony can't punch through, when push comes to shove."

"So... are you from another planet? Universe?" I asked. "Tiny planet hovering in the middle of Earth, which turns out to have been hollow all along?"

Despite giving me a weird look at the last notion, Twilight said, "That's just it. We don't know. This," she waved at the screen showing episode two, "just threw a wrench in our understanding. Maybe. And it might not matter, in any case. The rift is following a mathematically precise pattern- we expect it to close in about two months."

"Well, I'll do all I can to help," I said. Really, the whole thing was too interesting not to. "I'm curious, though- how did you find me?"

"Tracking spell," said Twilight. "It brought us back to your general area." She levitated her now-empty bowl to the table and sighed. "I haven't said it yet, but thank you. You've been very patient with us, mostly."

"Humans are all about hospitality," I told her. "Also, we can breathe fire. Want to meet my friends, next time? They're all humongous nerds- they'll be happy to help a bunch of space wizards such as yourselves."

"You know, I was almost certain the translation spell was working," said Twilight. "Up until we spent more than five minutes in your company. Still, I suppose that would be alright. When should we arrange the next jump?"

"In..." I checked the clock. "twenty-two hours, if that's alright. Use your tracker thingy. By the way, that's human Earth hours."

"I got that," said Twilight, wryly. "Come on, Rainbow Dash. We've stolen enough of Tamara's ice cream."

"No we haven't!" the pegasus shouted, suddenly. "They put cookie dough in ice cream! We need to steal this idea, pronto! Because-"

But there was a flash of magic, and suddenly the studio apartment only had one occupant, again.

Curious, I nudged open my messenger bag with my foot. There, where I'd placed it while getting the ice cream for everybody, was Tom. I couldn't be certain it had been close enough to Twilight, or if it really did exactly what I'd suspected it did, the first time with the alicorn's tracking spell, but...

A peek confirmed it- there was an entire new block of alien text, this one taking up an entire three pages. Time to get to work...

"Tamara, I hate to stretch disbelief, here, but you may be crazy," said Crazy Dan.

"Possibly," I said, rearranging the campaign map. "Still, if she's not here in... three minutes, we'll start the game. I brought donuts to sweeten the deal, and you've already started eating them. There's no backing out, now."

"I didn't know there were stipulations attached to this donut," said Linda.

"A law student should know enough to read the fine print," I countered.

"The fine print says 'serving size: one'."

"One pony, maybe?" said Jill, adjusting her stuffed mouse. It was her mandatory prop. I had a menacing, stick-on goatee. Really, game night wasn't the same without it.

"I, for one," said Crazy Dan, "am looking forward to-"

A flare of light filled the room, banishing all shadows and heralding the sound of distant bells. Having had to go through the same thing already, more than once, I recovered first.

"Hello, Twilight, Pinkie," I said, waving.

The violet mare shook what looked like excess static out of her fur, and then gave me the eye. "Not that I don't appreciate the informality, but I have to say that I hear 'Princess Twilight' more often than not, these day."

"You broke into my house," I reminded her. "That puts us on a first name basis." I frowned, but only slightly. Maybe I was getting more sociable, finally? 'No, probably the meds. Rainbow was right. Still, I've heard of worse side effects.'

"Hi, Tammy!" shouted Pinkie, bouncing in place.

"Tamara," I corrected her.

"Tammy!" she insisted.

"Fine!" I gave up. "Pull up some chairs, girls. Watch out, Linda bites."

"Just the one time! Stop embarrassing me in front of the princess!" the woman in question snapped. I threw up my hands, giving up yet again in the space of ten seconds.

"Ponies?" said Jill, blank-faced and wide-eyed.

"Yes, ponies. Pinkie? Give her a hug," I suggested. The mare obliged, and pink candyfloss wrapped itself around butch punk rock. It was beautiful- I nearly shed a tear.

"You are so soft!" rasped Jill.

"I know!"

Twilight coughed. "I hate to sound demanding, but do you have any more of that cold pizza? It was... really, really good."

"They don't feed you at the palace?" I asked, and her ears folded sadly. I pointed to a card table. "Right in the big ol' container, your highness." She beamed at me and trotted toward the back of Jill's loft.

"So," said Crazy Dan, notebook already out and ready. "You said this was a magical rift? Is that strictly speaking?"

Twilight nodded from over a growing mound of pizza slices. "Precisely. The rift itself folds space, time, and a few of the higher, fiddly dimensions, but I think that's mostly caused by the rift, as a side-effect. Mostly I'm just hoping to figure this out before it closes, and we lose the research opportunity of a lifetime." She glanced toward me in particular. "It may not seem like much, but most of the real work is being done back home. I'm here in the capacity of a mobile research station, so to speak." She wiggled her saddle bags, which beeped softly.

"Have you been able to conclude anything?" I asked, reaching into my bag for my emergency supplies. I'd had some small amount of faith that there would be ponies here and now, after all.

"We know the 'whats', but neither the 'hows' nor 'whys'," said Twilight.

"What about the who?" asked Crazy Dan. "Are you sure it's a natural event?"

Twilight's eyes crossed, and she shuddered. "Well, it's certainly not natural as we know it, but I would hate to imagine anypony so powerful as to cause it themselves. Faust save us from that."

"Faust, the show creator?" asked Jill. "I mean, your show?" she asked, still touching Pinkie's mane.

Pinkie giggled. "No, silly! Faust is a story- the first mother of Equestria! Except there were supposed to be ponies before that, so... I guess ponies didn't have to have moms?" The mare looked to have confused herself.

"It makes for an intriguing coincidence," said Twilight, pulling up her own chair. I discretely tucked my bag under her, while readying my special props. Rules were rules, after all.

"What is all this?" asked the princess, looking at all of our character sheets.

"A tabletop roleplaying game," I said. "Lots of imaginary adventure," and there, Pinkie perked up. "And lots of math and strategy." Twilight perked up. "Would you like to play? We've just started a new game- I killed everybody last time."

"Rocks fall, everybody dies," said Linda, shivering. I resisted the urge to laugh- I had made spiders crawl out of all of the walls, our last game session.

"I'll help Pinkie with her character sheet," said Jill. I nodded- she was the second-best rules lawyer I'd ever met. She wouldn't steer Pinkie wrong.

"Lean on in, Twilight," I said. "Time to learn about AC scores. But, first!" I pulled out the props. Pinkie got a floppy hat, and Twilight got a child's caricature of a sparkly wand, complete with yellow-painted star. "The first rule about gaming group- props are mandatory."

Pinkie donned her hat immediately, but Twilight poked at her wand with a hoof as if it were diseased.

"You're kidding," she said. Insisted, maybe.

I simply pointed to the space under my nose. "Does this look like the prosthetic evil goatee of a woman with a sense of humor?"

It had taken an hour to set up. And then we had to throw out about half of the house rules we had established for the sake of 'having the whole experience', since Twilight got a hold of the manual and insisted we do realistic travel checks.

"Ah ha! I have thirteen point seven arbitrary units of water," the alicorn cheered. "Twilight is greatest, most conscientious barbarian."

"Not bad for being illiterate, Twilight!" cheered Pinkie.

The librarian princess shuddered. "Yes. I'm... I'm sure they will fix that in a future edition. Or I can have my character campaign for literacy..."

"I draw my sword and make a solid strike, using my standard action!" Twilight declared, rolling her twenty-sider. While the table held its collective breath, she suddenly jerked up and stared into the middle distance. "Already? No!"

Her last 'o' trailed off as she and Pinkie disappeared in a blaze of light. Crazy Dan leaned over and whistled. "Damn, a natural twenty! Looks like we won this dungeon!"

"She'll be happy to hear that next time," I said, and pulled out the scratch paper I had set aside to assign experience to everybody.

Minutes later, when everybody else was gearing up to go home, I peeked into Tom's pages. The new spell block was short, probably the normal telekinesis that Twilight had been spamming. Still, there were more symbols and contexts for me to learn. Tom was still a mystery to me, but he was also giving me answers.

Later that night, I took scrap paper and wrote out five symbols. They seemed to be the bare minimum necessary to accomplish anything, so I tried:

-Designating this(point) as target, do-not-deny element(luminescence)-

There was nothing.

'I... I expected that,' I told myself. 'But I own't pretend I'm not disappointed. It's like Twilight said, nobody here has magic. There's nothing here that lets me...'

I gasped, but quietly, and turned back to Tom. I'd so painstakingly copied symbols out of it...

I wrote out the symbols once more, this time in a free corner of parchment on the third page. The symbols were exacting and specific, but the intent was clear enough:

'Let there be light!'

Linda and I sat in her kitchen, painting plastic sculptures and trying to draw anatomically correct feet, respectfully. This was because Linda reacted... badly to eating food anywhere that was not in the kitchen. Even at other people's houses, she would happily sit alone at a kitchen table while everybody else was picking stray popcorn out of seat cushions, or whatever.

"You got happy," came the unexpected comment.

I glanced up, blinking. "I did what now?"

Linda smiled. "When our visitors showed up. You were in one of your, you know, moods before then. Happy to be expanding your social circle?"

"No," I said. "I mean, I wasn't in one of my, uh, moods." I thought back a week. I didn't remember not being happy.

"You didn't leave your apartment for a week," said Linda, lowering her paintbrush accusingly.

"I don't remember that." I frowned. "Or maybe I'm repressing it. I became so filled with ennui, it became a black hole for emotions and memories, maybe."

Linda went straight from concerned -her default state of existence- to very worried. "You were getting weaned off of that one medication, though, weren't you? You literally sent out an e-mail to all of us, saying you didn't want to make us suffer your presence."

"Pshh. My account history would prove you wrong," I said, reflexively grabbing my bag and opening the smallest pocket.

"Tamara?" Linda prompted me.

"Just habit," I said, smiling back. A quick shake had told me, through long practice, that I hadn't taken a single one of my pills since I last refilled them. But I had refilled them over a week ago.

Had I been losing time?

Had I...

"Tamara," said Linda once more. "You zoned out, there."

I glanced down at my bag, wondered why I had been holding it, then set it back down.

"Just spending some time in the clouds," I told her.

Seven more weeks passed. Twilight and between one and three of her friends stopped in every other day or so. They told me they were making other trips, too, all over the world. Still, she had no excuse as to how their disguise spells never effected me. I thought that I might, ought to have told them about Tom... but part of me was afraid. Afraid that I was doing something wrong. Maybe afraid that it would be decided, without my input, that I somehow didn't deserve this wonderful, magical thing that let me build spells like clumsy structures out of children's letter blocks.

For once, I had found something I loved even more than writing: magic.

"Have some iced tea," I suggested to the mare. "It will make you feel better."

Twilight eyed the pitcher dubiously. "You drink your tea cold?"

"Only when it's hot out and the air conditioner goes fritzy," I told her. "Then putting on my electric kettle seems like a cruel and unusual punishment, so yes. Cold tea."

She poured herself a glass, sipped, and grimaced.

"Sugar's right there," I reminded her. She dove for the little container.

"Anyways," she said, once she dubbed the drink 'bearable'. "That energy curve is hitting its crest, tonight. I don't think we'll have the inertia to come visit, anymore. And we still don't know why this even happened in the first place!"

"Calm down and drink your tea," I said. "It's alright, Twilight. You got to visit a new, interesting place. I got to meet a bunch of space wizards from out of a cartoon. Just chalk it up to being... one of those experiences, you know."

"I... I thought you might be a little more broken up about this," said Twilight, pouting.

"I am deeply in denial. Denial is one of those human powers," I told her. "The day I finally realize I won't ever see you girls again, I might very well bawl like a baby. Or maybe turn to a life of crime and drug abuse. Who knows!"

"Stop that," she said, poking me in the shoulder. "You'll be fine. I have the utmost faith in my friends."

"Um, yeah," I said. "What about them? You didn't even bring them along, this time."

It wasn't often I was looked at as if I was an idiot, even by a mare as clever as Twilight Sparkle.

"I meant you, dummy!" she shouted.

"Oh." I sipped my tea. "Wow. Awesome?" I coughed. "Is this where you make your declaration of undying love? Because I think we should work our way up to that."

I never saw the pillow she levitated to hit me from behind. It wasn't long until I couldn't help myself from cackling like a witch.

"Oh sweet Faust, why do you keep cackling like an evil sorceress? Seriously, I've had to deal with those!" said Twilight, battering at me ineffectually. Taking advantage of her moment of distraction, I reached out and pulled her down to my level. It took her a moment to stop struggling, and then it was just the two of us at the base of the couch, me hugging her for all she was worth.

"It has been so, so awesome," I told her. "You're my friend too. I want you to come visit again if you ever figure out this junk."

"If I can," she said, patting at my hair. The strands had a mind of their own, to my irritation. "But the energy curve only takes three days to fall to nothing. We'll try, and I know the other princesses will back me up on this, but it might just not be possible. Promise me you'll take care of yourself, though, no matter what. You've still got friends here that you can depend on, and I know you still don't open up to them enough, either."

"I promise."

"Do you really promise?" she asked me.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," I told her.

Twilight winced. "That's... really morbid," she told me.

"Humans are grimdark as hell. Now get off of me- I got us ice cream."

I stared into the space where Twilight had been. I thought of Narnia, how at the end of the story everybody had to go home and just pretend nothing fantastic had ever happened to them.

I looked at Tom. I had three days, and I could make them count.

Author's Notes:

Currently: Seventeen chapters written. Suffice it to say, there won't be any shortage of material for a while. Tune in next time for... cover art!