The barrier between Earth and Equestria.
Not so much a true barrier, as a spatial membrane; a threshold between worlds.
The membrane’s barrier-like qualities were merely the result of the Thaumatic imbalance between the two pockets of spacetime.

Since Thaumatic radiation was so reactive, objects that were capable of surviving in such an environment could easily handle transition into a less charged universe, such as Earth, and the return trip as well.

The problems only arose when matter transited from the less charged universe to the more charged universe.

Wrenn didn’t understand the actual physics behind it, but someone had once used the illustration of legos to explain it to him in layman’s terms. Matter from Earth’s universe had all kinds of color patterns in it’s lego blocks. Equestria’s matter had a lot of the same colors, but in wildly different patterns to suit the addition of a new color or two.

Since the first law of thermodynamics stated that matter and energy could not be truly created or destroyed, only changed or transmuted; Earth’s matter could not simply disappear when it crossed the barrier.

Instead, the matter would be broken down to its ‘component blocks.’
If the object was sufficiently simple, such as an air molecule, or a drop of water, then it would swiftly recombine in the proper ‘pattern’ with the proper ‘new blocks’ included.

If the object was more complex, such as a life form, the recombination wouldn’t happen swiftly or precisely enough, causing all the ‘blocks’ to fall apart violently.
Essentially, nothing would be left but base elements.

This was the primary reason there was no known way to simply ‘adapt’ a human’s ‘block patterns’ short of Conversion. The recombination required certain new patterns to exist, and these ‘new patterns’ had been found to be fundamentally incompatible with human DNA, or anything even remotely similar.

If you happened to be an Earth life form, such as homo sapiens sapiens, that meant you would come out of barrier transit as a roughly person-shaped carbon dust cloud; blown away by the small explosion produced as the instant dissociation of your atomic bonds manifested as pure energy.

On the other claw, as Wrenn understood it; if one was an Equestrian life form, one could cross the barrier with trace elements of Earth, such as oxygen in the lungs, without suffering any pain.
The molecules of the simple non-living substances would adapt fairly seamlessly.

Transit tended to do odd things to complex matter, such as food, so anyone who was planning to cross the barrier from Earth in the direction of Equestria was advised to do so on an empty stomach.

Thus, to stock up on more food, and take on one of Sildinar’s chosen new team members, the group would have to stop at the port of Foals’ Haven.

Wrenn was looking forward to seeing Equestrian ships, and getting a glimpse of their lifestyle.
He was not looking forward to meeting the new Pony.
In his mind, there was no replacing Skye.
It was nothing personal, but he didn’t see the need to add in someone new and untried so soon.

It felt wrong somehow, as though it was dishonoring the memory of a fallen comrade.

A unit of soldiers was analogous enough to their little group that Wrenn figured some of the same rules were applicable. He had seen teams fall apart before due to the inclusion of a new soldier too soon after the death of a squadmate.

The interpersonal tensions were often too complex to handle, and were severely exacerbated by the grief of loss, and the suspicion of new faces. It was often times an explosive mixture.

Seeing the Barrier in person, for the first time, put all other thoughts out of Wrenn’s head.
The moment it came into visual range, it became impossible to ignore. The sheer scale of it demanded the attention of the brain in the way only a large imposing object can.

It looked like nothing so much as a God-sized soap bubble. A shimmering semi-transparent wall with an ethereally fluidic aspect, enhanced by the subtle, but visible, rainbow patterns that slowly danced across its surface in multi-kilometer long bands.

Air didn’t pass through the bubble by diffusion, but sometimes water did due to tidal forces in both worlds, producing strange eddies and currents along both edges of the membrane.

There had even been a very few sightings of Equestrian fish in Earth waters, before they either turned back to their own ocean, or the total lack of edible plants and prey starved them to death.

Wrenn craned his head, first left, then right, taking in the extent of the Barrier.
A recent newscast had cited its radius at just over one thousand kilometers, which meant that a very slight curvature was still visible from up close, especially to Wrenn’s Gryphon eyes.

The shimmering wall also stretched up vertically to his sight limit. The bubble had touched the very edge of Earth’s atmosphere, but didn’t seem to be going any higher. The general shape of the phenomena actually appeared to be conforming partly to the shape of the planet as it consumed it, leaving it ‘squished’ into a shape wider than it was tall.

Through the Barrier, a dizzying sight was laid out for all to see; a window into another world.
The time differences between Earth and Equestria were negligible, approximately 1.618 seconds, so it was night on both sides of the membrane.

The weather patterns, however, were startlingly different.
On the Earth side, the usual layers of gray clouds were visible, pushing up against the bubble, splitting to meander around it.

But on the Equestrian side, there was a clear night sky, filled with billions of vivid bright points of light, distorted only by the bubble, and occasionally occluded by a stray fluffy white cloud.

Casting a glow so strong it actually passed out through the barrier and provided some luminescence on the Earth side, was a massive silver disc of light.
With a shock, Wrenn realized what it was.
The Moon.

Or Equestria’s moon, in any case.
Equestria wasn’t a ‘planet’ like Earth, but an actual flat world, with a sky made up of magical points of light, so far as anyone could tell.

This was why matter from Earth was creating more land on the other side of the bubble. More of it could be used to create visible ground, since so little was required for the rock beneath, by comparison to Earth.

The group approached the barrier and slowed to a hover.
Varan called out, “Exhale as you cross, or you’ll be sorry.”

Wrenn raised an eyebrow, Carradan snorted, “Why?”

Kephic chuckled, “Because if you don’t, it usually results in a week long case of the hiccups.”

Upon seeing Wrenn and Carradan’s disbelieving expressions, Kephic shrugged, “I don’t know why. But believe me, its true. I’ve seen it, and it’s not pretty. But it is funny.”

Varan smiled slightly, “For those of us who know better, anyhow. Shall we?”
He exhaled and darted across, his transit momentarily producing ripples in the barely visible rainbow patterns inching across its surface.

Carradan glanced back and forth between Wrenn and Kephic, “Might as well... I feel like I should yell something....”

The salmon colored pegasus thought for a moment, then dived through the barrier as fast as he could screaming the whole way, “GERONIMOOOOOOOO.....”

Wrenn looked on in amusement, “He’s not the most creative of sorts, is he?”

Kephic chuckled, and prepared to cross himself.
The black and white Gryphon paused when he noticed Wrenn’s transfixed expression.
“What?”

Wrenn shook himself, “I just.... Its not every day you step into another *world.*”

Kephic nodded, beating his wings in a backwards motion to rejoin his friend, “I know what you mean. When I first crossed over to Earth, it was an.... emotionally moving moment.
Exploration is quite a thrill...”

Wrenn took a deep breath, “Well... here’s to exploration then.”
He exhaled as far as he could, and dived towards the barrier.

Passing through the membrane was easy. Wrenn hadn’t expected to feel anything, but for a split second there was the impression of pushing through a tiny bit of resistance. He didn’t know it, but this was the result of differing temperatures on the two sides of the bubble creating a small pressure front.

And just like that, Isaac Wrenn wasn’t on Earth anymore.

The first thing to hit him was the smell. As he filled his lungs with Equestrian air, for the first time, he experienced a normal atmosphere.

The effect was shocking.

The air itself almost had a flavor, a sweet salty tang from the ocean below mixed with the subtle promise of blossoming plant life not too far away. Wrenn had been born into a post-biosphere Earth; so to him, clean living air was a sublime discovery.

The next discovery, or rather re-discovery, was the sky.
The moon and stars had been surprising before, but now that he was actually seeing them, actually flying under them, it was a whole new experience.

He nearly fell out of the sky, he was so preoccupied with staring up at the blazing pinpricks of light. It was almost like looking at a painting, it was too beautiful to be anything other than contrived created artwork of the highest form; the way the patterns drew the eye along, the subtle variations to the shades of black and deep blue in the emptiness behind them.

Wrenn had to remind himself that, in this world, that was exactly what it was.

The moon itself drew his attention next. It was producing enough light that his eyes could process everything with the same detail as if it were under daylight conditions. The quality of the light fascinated him. On Earth, the only light quality besides ‘artificial’ were the sickly shades of teal the sun’s filtered light produced as it passed through the ruined atmosphere.

Equestria’s moon rendered everything in a blue tinged shade of liquid silver, lending life to every edge of every feather, and every crest of every wave in the ocean below.

The world felt so enormous. So real. So alive. Being under a true sky, over a living ocean, seeing everything under real light... it was very nearly too much for Wrenn.
He finally managed to regain enough of a grip on his senses to notice that Carradan was having a very similar transcendental experience.

The pegasus was busy mouthing ‘wow’ as he gaped at the star-strewn expanse above.

Kephic and Varan were busy with their own examination of the world.
This was home, but a home they hadn’t seen in a year.
It wasn’t unexpected to them, or new, but it was refreshing.
In this case, absence did make the heart grow fonder.

Kephic finally had to shake Wrenn out of his trance, “Come on! I’m starving, and its a good seven hours of full speed flight to Foals’ Haven. If we don’t start now, we won’t have the energy to make it. Besides, you haven’t seen *anything* yet.”

Kephic hadn’t been exaggerating. A seven hour flight was a gruelling prospect without food.
Wrenn wondered why they couldn’t have eaten an Equestrian meal beforeclaw, but the question answered itself almost immediately; if the food was overly tainted with Earth molecules, it was too big a risk.

Despite the increasingly nagging pain in his stomach, he found his attention divided fairly equally between the sky and the sea. He was immensely interested to discover that he could see, at times, schools of fish darting by in search of food, or currents.

Somehow the sight was at once familiar and alien. Against the backdrop of his human memories, seeing a living fish was an incredible new experience. But to the Gryphon instincts that were also part of him, the fish was familiar; an enjoyable easily accessible food source.

And Wrenn was in desperate need of food.

He only debated with himself for a moment. On the one claw, the other Gryphons probably hadn’t suggested it because it was a great deal more macabre to snag something live, kill it, and eat it raw. On the other claw, he was very hungry, and didn’t feel any sort of compulsion to avoid the inevitably messy aspects of eating a raw animal carcass.

He tucked in his wings and stooped, flaring to glide along the surface of the ocean.
On a whim, he splayed out one claw and ran his index talon through the water, producing a fresh cool mist of liquid that hit him full in the face.

He scanned the waves ahead, and picked out what looked to be a reasonably sized fish.
Wrenn beat his wings twice to catch up, then took a quick swipe at the creature.
He missed miserably.

It wasn’t that his eyes couldn’t account for the water diffraction, but he hadn’t thought out his approach properly, and this fish had seen his shadow. The water produced too much resistance for his claw to catch up in time, and the silvery piscine darted off into the invisible watery depths before Wrenn could try again.

On the next attempt, Wrenn felt his talons sink into the creature’s scales, and he quickly flared his wings to pull the wriggling prey from the water. His instincts told him exactly how to kill the fish, and he had a decent idea of how to remove the head.

As he climbed back up to join the group, he fell to removing the scales with the sharp edge of one talon.

Carradan turned away, looking slightly queasy. Kephic looked genuinely impressed, he shot a knowing glance at Varan, “I told you we shouldn’t bother easing him into it.”

Varan shrugged, and dived after his own meal, tossing off, “It seemed prudent at the time.” over one shoulder.

Kephic chuckled, Wrenn snorted, “Don’t ‘ease’ me into anything. I’m one of you now, I want to dive straight in.”

Kephic nodded, “I was hoping you’d feel that way. Now, I’m going to go find a meal before Varan takes all the good prey.” He spared a glance for Carradan, “You’ve seen worse! Fish gotta swim, we gotta eat.”

With that he dived rapidly to join Varan, leaving Wrenn to continue scaling his fish.
He felt sorry for Carradan, given that he didn’t have any food to sate his hunger.
Wrenn resolved to make sure the reporter got a big portion once they made it to Foals’ Haven.

When the last scales came off, Wrenn lifted the fish to his beak, and used the sharp edge to tear off a strip of the raw inner meat. As he chewed, flavor exploded on his tongue. In an instant, synthetic meat became the most disgusting thing in the world; and a whole new way of thinking about food took hold.

Wrenn’s hunger only served to magnify the experience. He scarfed down the rest of the fish, only stopping short of the membranous tail. He found the bones fairly easy to crush inside his beak and swallow along with the meat.

Around the time Varan and Kephic returned, Wrenn pulled ahead to net himself a few more fish.
Carradan was obviously doing his best to ignore the meat consumption, but Wrenn could see on his return trip that the pegasus was having a hard time ignoring the sound of crunching bones.

Wrenn finished his second fish as quietly as he could, and despite the fact that he felt like he could stomach at least two more, he refrained for Carradan’s sake.

After an extended period of silence, Wrenn asked, “How can you tell we haven’t started off in the wrong direction?”

Varan pointed up, “Stars.”

Kephic nodded in agreement, “It’s fairly easy to memorize the patterns and how they correspond to a map. I’ll show you if you like.”

Wrenn smiled, “Well it’s not as if I get GPS reception here.”

Foal’s Haven had once been a small seaside town known only for being home to a pineapple plantation, and being one of Equestria’s three ‘ports’ by the loosest possible definition.
It had been called ‘Pineapple Glen’ in those days, and it has seen, at most, a ship every two months.

When Ponification became a reality, the town had turned into the Equestrian nation’s fifth largest municipality overnight. The constant influx of newfoals had lent the town its new purpose, most of its streams of revenue, and finally its new name.

The first sign of the town was not the sight of a shoreline over the horizon, but rather a ship.
Wrenn had intellectually understood that Equestrians must build ships to bring newfoals across the ocean, but he had never really thought to visualise them.

The craft was wide and tall; built for space, not for speed. It looked to be made of wood, painted up in white with gold trimming, which seemed to hearken to Celestia’s own heraldic colors.
Bright blue pennants topped the masts, snapping in the breeze, their semi-reflective edges glowing in the moonlight.

The ship bore surprisingly complicated rigging given that it had to be maintained and sailed by creatures lacking in opposable digits. Wrenn looked closer, and noticed that the entire design was centered around accommodating either hooves or magic. He wouldn’t have thought it tenable until he actually saw it.

The sails were large, white, and square, with the Equestrian royal seal subtly worked into the center in an unobtrusive shade of beige. All in all, the ship brought to mind the word; ‘galleon.’
Except that Wrenn very much doubted that an Equestrian ship packed any sort of armaments to speak of.

As the group passed over, Wrenn spied a few Ponies on deck, a mixture of crew and newfoals, staring up with a mixture of curiosity and concern. Apparently Gryphons were not a common sight in these parts. Not yet in any case.

The ship wasn’t travelling with much alacrity, so it was a speck, left far behind, by the time Foals’ Haven itself came into view.

Wrenn hadn’t been sure what to expect of an Equestrian port, except that it would be nothing like any port he’d ever been to. No concrete, no steel, no sleek civilian hydrofoils offset by the gunmetal gray of a shark-like military vessel.

Foals’ Haven was like nothing so much as an old Earth Caribbean seaport.
Quaint wooden piers served as a safe resting place for three more galleons, framed from behind by the warm glow of candle-light emanating from the windows of multi-story wooden dwellings.

Even at such a distance, Wrenn could see the vast differences from any other settlement he’d ever been in. There was no sign of electricity, no form of transportation besides the ships and the streets, and no obtrusive orange haze from halon lights.

A few moments later, the town was close enough for him to pick out Ponies in the midst of their comings and goings. That was a touch of familiarity; from one city that never slept to another.
Wrenn found it almost poetically fitting.

Judging by the swarm of activity focused at the docks, the town was well aware that a ship of newfoals was arriving shortly. They were decidedly unaware that a flight of Gryphons was preceding it.

Their arrival did not generate the panicked reaction Wrenn feared, but it also did not go as unnoticed as he might have hoped. The group alighted in the central square, which opened on one side to the port itself, and was surrounded on the other three by two story shops, inns, and a tavern, with space cut into the opposite side for the main thoroughfare.

Many of the Ponies stopped to stare, which swiftly turned to whispered conversations.
Movement and routine resumed gradually, but Wrenn could tell that the presence of this many Gryphons together was slightly unnerving to anyone who had to come close to them.

He suspected this was alleviated in part by Carradan’s presence in the group.
Seeing one of their own walking and talking with Gryphons was bound to ease some of the concern the natives seemed to be feeling.

Varan and Kephic seemed to have an idea of where they were going, so Wrenn simply followed, devoting most of his attention to taking in the sights. It was quite an adjustment, to be surrounded by people, but not by humans. For a few moments, he became fascinated with cataloging cutie marks, and trying to discern their meaning.
It lent a whole new aspect to ‘people watching.’

Another few moments were spent thinking about the texture of the cobblestones under his paws and claws, before the group finally stopped in front of a tavern. The name, ‘Lotus and Lilac,’ was tacked up above the door in large violet letters, along with a stylized pair of flowers.

Kephic nodded at the door, “This is where Sildinar said our new companion would be waiting.”

Carradan grunted, “Forget the new guy... I’m *starved!*”

They filed inside, to be greeted by a homely central room; wood floors, candle chandeliers, oaken tables, and a big fireplace in one wall containing a small merry blaze.
Wrenn was surprised to hear upbeat piano music coming from a small box in the corner.
It had a peculiar trumpet-like protrusion made of brass, and a needle on an arm hovering over a spinning black disc.

It wook Wrenn several seconds to realize what it was; a phonograph.
He had never actually seen one, but he had read descriptions of it before.

Even though he was no longer overridingly hungry, the smell of food and ale was strong and pleasurable enough to make Wrenn’s stomach growl. Carradan looked as though his nose was actually going to drag him to the bar.

Kephic rolled his eyes, “Allright then, come on Stanley, let’s get some food in you before you keel over. I’m with Wrenn on this; we are not carrying you anymore.”

As the two made their way over to the bar, Wrenn managed to catch Carradan’s response, “Are you calling me heavy?”

“More like chubby...”

Varan made a sound somewhere between a low chuckle and a snort, “Come. Our new companion is likely to be in the upstairs room. We’re looking for a royal guard pegasus, that’s as much as Sildinar told me.”

As they slowly meandered to the stairs, being careful to avoid knocking over any chairs, Wrenn raised an eyebrow, “Royal guard? As in Celestia’s royal guards? The ones who always seem to be the same colors?”

Varan nodded, “The same.”

Before Wrenn could ask how they all turned out the same colors, and how a pacifist race could have a standing ‘fighting’ force, Varan cast a glance around the room and made an interesting observation, “It’s unusually empty tonight, considering they’re expecting newfoals in.”

Wrenn shook his head, “That’s probably *why* it’s almost empty. Everyones down at the docks right now. Give it till twenty minutes after the ship puts in; you won’t be able to find squatting room on the floor it’ll be so packed.”

Varan started up the stairs, “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

Wrenn chuckled as he followed, “I was part of a unit embarked on a destroyer for years.
Trust me; some things about port towns are just plain universal.”

Varan nodded, “In that case, we should collect our new companion and find somewhere else to make introductions.” Wrenn found himself in hearty agreement; Gryphons were ill suited to close crowds. It aggravated their battle senses and territorial instincts.

The upstairs room was a cozier twin to the main hall; the chairs were more plush, the tables seated fewer, and the hearth, which was tied into the same chimney, took up more of the wall.
Wrenn appreciatively noted that the tables all had an inlaid chess board, but that immediately set his mind spinning, trying to reason out how tables that looked older than contact could possibly have a board for a game that originated on Earth.

Before he could pursue his musings further, a white pegasus with a bright blue mane, and gold adornments caught his attention. The Pony was most definitely the color of one of Celestia’s royal guards, and was wearing the same armor Wrenn had seen a dozen times in newscasts, right down to the helmet which had been set on the table for convenience.

The only thing that seemed out of place, was the fact that this particular royal guard was a female. That was something Wrenn had *never* seen before.