Scootaloo looked in the mirror at her blank, gray-furred flank. "Two weeks was too short."

"You need to spend at least a week getting back into your pegasus self in time for school. Bon Bon is going to be going on another mission, and I'll be organizing a course to teach a single alicorn magic." Lyra was packing things up and using her magic to pack as much into each case as she could.

"Where will I be staying, then?" Scootaloo turned, her blank flanks forgotten (for now) at this new information.

Lyra finished stuffing one of the packs full of things they'd purchased or made and started on the next. "With Mum. She and Tufts said you can stay there anytime, and it means I can get things settled and on track with Screech. I'll be staying there too, but I just won't be around during the day much."

"So it'll mostly be me and Tufts?" The idea of spending a week learning all kinds of crazy stuff from Tufts excited Scootaloo.

"Yup. Mum still works at the castle and I'll be raiding the school for everything I can find. Possibly also accosting Cadance for tips." Lyra stopped and thought a little as she watched Scootaloo's face break into a big grin. "You know, you could ask him to teach you more dream magic."

"What?" In her surprise, Scootaloo's wings shot out. One knocked lamp off the bedside table and the other bumped the wall. Getting used to having wings that were each as long as she was had become one of the highlights of her holidays. "Really?"

"Totally. He literally made all this happen, kinda. If anypony can teach you dream magic, it'll be him." Floating the first pack aside, Lyra started on the second. "I'm sorry this didn't work out."

"'s not your fault." Scootaloo tried not to think about it too much. She'd had a lot of fun over the two weeks and she didn't want to lose sight of that.

Clenching her teeth, Lyra started packing things—mostly stuff they'd purchased—into the second pack. "Well, I'll keep working at this. Mum knows a ton of medical stuff, she might know somepony we can talk to, and Princess Celestia knows more about magic than anypony."

"You're going to talk to the princess about this? I mean, I…" Fishing for a word to use, Scootaloo came up dry. "What'll she do?"

"I have no idea, and that's why I'll ask her. Princess Celestia has a lot of what I'd call wisdom. She's managed Equestria for so long that she knows a little bit of everything. Her specialty, though, is magic. What Princess Celestia doesn't know about magic, isn't worth knowing. So, yeah, I'll ask her and anypony she suggests I talk to." Leaving yet-another-boomerang laying on the bed, Lyra walked over to Scootaloo and reached out a foreleg. It still surprised her when the filly would move in for a hug, but it charged her with determination too. "You belong in the sky, Scoots."

The conviction in Lyra's voice charged Scootaloo with energy. She squeezed back and stretched her wings out to hug Lyra a little more. "Thanks."

"I haven't been looking forward to this." Dream Thunder looked at Lyra Heartstrings with a measure of distrust. "You promise there won't be any hammers?"

"I'll try, but I really can't stop myself from—"

Dream cleared her throat and continued. "Or fish! I saw what you did to that creature. I didn't know you could actually bludgeon a namorodo and hurt it."

"Hey, my head, my rules. It made that mistake so it had to live with it. We could always run home."

Shouldering her own pack, Sweetie Drops nodded. "I like that option. Why don't we do that? How many days is it?"

"Too many. Look, all I want is for you to try to go a bit easier on the mental defenses, okay?" Dream reached her wing out, one of her digits extended toward Scootaloo's nose, and booped her into the Dreaming.

Scootaloo's surprise at being booped into a dream made her look up at Dream. "Whoa, you can do it that easily?"

"You're a bat pony right now. You could probably fly into the Dreamtime yourself. Now to get Sweetie in here…" Keeping herself in both worlds at the same time wasn't the easiest of tricks, but doing impossible stuff with Dreamtime was literally Dream's game. Reaching out her wing, she booped Sweetie in the real world and pulled her into the Dreamtime too.

"Good luck," Sweetie said.

Dream let out a soft screech. "Thanks. Ugh, why does she have to be this difficult?"

Scootaloo and Sweetie looked to each other and laughed. "Lyra," they said together.

Sliding her focus back to the real world, Dream looked at her arch nemesis and slumped her shoulders. "Please go easy on me."

"I'll try!" Lyra's eyes crossed at the leathery wing-finger that prodded her in the nose.

There was the slightest sense of something pushing into her head, and then it was gone and Lyra was standing beside Sweetie and Scootaloo. Something was wrong and she couldn't work out what. "Where's Dream?"

Popping back into the Dreamtime, Dream Thunder glared at Lyra. "You did it again!"

"What did I do?" Struggling not to giggle, Lyra had trouble taking this quirk seriously.

"You. Shouted. Ni! At. Me!" Panting, Dream tried to shake her head to free herself of the ringing cries she'd just had to deal with. "The only way I got out of that hellscape you call a mind was to shout It back."

"What's 'ni'?" Scootaloo asked.

"Oh. My. Gosh. We've been neglecting your education!" Lyra dropped to her belly and started crawling toward Scootaloo. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"You really should have watched it here with her while you had the time." In her head, every pronounced letter N echoed in sympathy with the struggle she'd gone through. "How long was I out for?"

"About five minutes. I'm sure we can come back next holidays and watch whatever it is Lyra wants us to see. Unless you have a version on film we can take back with us?" Trying to move things along, Sweetie reached down for Scootaloo and offered her a hoof up.

Swinging up onto Sweetie's back, Scootaloo looked around the room they were in within the Dreamtime. "So, how do we get out of here?"

"That door." Dream gestured to a wall and willed a doorway into being. She had to be careful to not make it too firm in the Dreamtime. There were bat ponies in Canberra working around the clock to keep the city safe and magic from going wild, they did not appreciate having a powerful Dreamer rip holes in buildings.

"There wasn't a door there a moment ago!" Scootaloo said.

Walking up to Sweetie, Lyra lifted her hoof up and booped Scootaloo on the nose. "That's because Dream is a wizard. When she makes holes in things, it's okay, but when I do it, everypony freaks out."

"That's because you literally blasted a hole in the side of somepony's house. How are they doing, anyway?" Sweetie adjusted the twin weights on her back to get ready for her run.

Scootaloo gasped. "You blew a hole in someone's house?"

"Derpy Hooves house, and yes. To be fair, we were chasing a monster at the time, and it wasn't entirely my doing, but at the end of the fight there was a hole in her house." Lyra stepped forward a little and kissed Sweetie on the cheek. "Okay, Dream, what now?"

"We fly." Dream stepped out of the doorway she'd made in the wall and into empty air. She didn't need to flap her wings to fly, but she preferred it to just floating there.

Sweetie forestalled Lyra's wit by stepping toward the edge of the doorway. She fully intended to ask how they were all going to fly since only half of them had wings, but as she neared the edge she realized something. "You're getting bigger!"

"No. You're getting smaller." Dream reluctantly stopped flapping and floated closer to the building so the tiny Sweetie could climb up on her back. "This way I don't have to mess with Lyra's form and we can get there in one night without exhausting me."

"Neat! And you get a tiny unicorn for your trouble!" Breaking into a gallop from a dead start, Lyra vaulted across to Dream's back and laughed. "This is a great trick, Dream! This is the essence of magic. You don't need to know the exact spell for every situation, you just need to know one that works."

The praise, from her sister, made Dream Thunder grin like an excited filly. She knew Lyra had attended Celestia's school, and knew she'd passed whatever requirements the E.U.P. Guard had for a unicorn wizard—to say nothing of Lyra being her literal big sister. It was almost as good as having a mango. "Thanks! Okay, now to get you three safely back to Equestria!"

Reduced to the size of about a chicken each, Lyra and Sweetie grabbed a hold of Dream's mane as she began to pump her wings and launch them flying south. The whole trip, this time, was uneventful. Sweetie and Lyra kept their grip on Dream's mane while Scootaloo maintained hers on Sweetie.

Dream had made good time, and as she swooped down toward Cowwarr/Stonecrop, she was still feeling quite fresh despite the flight. A quick mental check of her mother's house revealed the spare bedroom to be empty of any sleepers, so she circled down and landed in the back yard of the house.

Lyra blinked awake and looked at the mare she was snout-to-snout with. It wasn't Sweetie Drops.

"Psst. Can you get untangled from her?" Sweetie asked in a whisper. "Let's make them some breakfast."

Carefully disentangling herself from Dream's legs, Lyra slowly slid backward with Sweetie's help and managed to get off the bed without waking her sister. Only when they'd slipped all the way up to the kitchen without making noise did Lyra relax a little. "What are we making?"

"Well, they're bats, so it needs to have fruit in it. I was thinking pancakes—if they have the things we need—and a nice fruit spread topping. Try to find a mixing bowl and I'll hunt down some flour." Sweetie was already getting into Candela's cupboards.

By the time Lyra found a mixing bowl, measuring cups and spoons, and a skillet, Sweetie had located the dry ingredients. Both turned to the refrigerator.

Sweetie Drops stepped up and opened the fridge. "I already checked. She has enough milk, butter, and some eggs. How much should we make?"

"A stack each. Dream worked her butt off to get us here, we need to show her a proper thank you." Lyra left Sweetie to lift out the milk, butter and eggs while she used her magic to start working on the dry ingredients.

"I guess Candela has a more Equestria-centric diet what with being a pegasus. She and Dream mean a lot to you, don't they?" Measuring out the milk and butter, Sweetie put back what they didn't need in the fridge and started getting the pan hot.

"Want me to get onto the topping?"

"Sure."

"Candela and Dream taught me everything about being a pony. Not the walking and magic stuff, I mean what it really means to be a pony. They were such a huge part of our—Robin, Mum, and me—lives for just over a year that it felt like we'd been together forever. I kinda thought Mum and Candela might hook up at one point. They just fit so well together." Forsaking the few mangoes that seemed to exist in every Thestralian fridge, Lyra pulled out a bunch of grapes, some apples, and some pears.

Sweetie mixed the milk and eggs in with the dry ingredients and started mixing them together. "A tough situation like that can pull ponies together, but I find myself wanting to know more about Michael."

Lyra started at the name—her old name. "Michael Robertson was a strange boy. He grew up in Queensland, in Brisbane, and had a few people he called his friends. Life coasted along for him, until one day when his friend wanted some help selling drugs and offered him a score."

Her ears tucking down, Sweetie listened to the story of a part of Lyra's life she'd never spoken of before. As far as Sweetie was aware, Lyra hadn't existed before she'd arrived in Cowwarr.

"Michael was at least smart enough to talk to his mother about it. There was other stuff going on, not great stuff, but it was the drugs that were the tipping point. So, not exactly kicking and screaming—though there was bitterness and grumbling—his mother packed up the little family and drove all the way two states away and out in the middle of nowhere in time for the apocalypse." While she spoke, Lyra plucked the seeds out of the grapes and skinned them with her magic. "I don't want to know how those friends got on after all this, and Michael doesn't either."

Reaching out a foreleg, Sweetie pulled Lyra tight against her and kissed her cheek. "I'm sorry if I picked at an old wound."

"No. It's good to bring it to light. If there's one thing I'm proud of back then, it was telling my mum what happened. I wasn't ready to deal with stuff like that, but she was." Lyra had the advantage of being able to hug Sweetie back and continue working with her magic. "Mum was amazing. She literally pulled up roots and just got the buck out of there."

"What smells good?" Scootaloo asked as she walked into the kitchen. The light coming in the windows was a little tiring for her bat eyes to deal with, but it was mostly the inactivity of sleep that kept her from focusing so well.

Sweetie turned to look at Scootaloo, almost bumping her head against Lyra's in the process. "We're making breakfast for Candela and Dream. Want to help?"

"Sure. Dream is in the shower." Rolling her shoulders and stretching her wings one at a time, Scootaloo employed one of her wings to pull herself up onto Sweetie's back. "What do you want me to do?"

"We need five plates on the table, plus knives and forks for each." As she spoke, Sweetie continued working with Lyra to make more batter. "You able to do all that?"

"Piece of cake!" Jumping down, Scootaloo used a wing-claw to grab the bench as she landed on the floor and swung herself up so she could hang off the end of the bench. Inching sideways with her wings, she got to the cutlery drawer and opened it up.

By the time Candela realized there was movement in her house and gotten up to investigate, she found three ponies in her kitchen setting out plates of pancakes. "You didn't have to do all this!"

Lyra blushed a little at what was a very typical Australian compliment. "I hope you don't mind we used some eggs and—"

Candela, being a pegasus, was quick on her hooves to reach Lyra and pull her adopted daughter into a hug with her wings. "Honestly! Apologizing for using a few things to make me breakfast. You're still the timid little colt I first met, Lyra."

Unable to help herself, Sweetie giggled at the comment. "It's hard to imagine Lyra timid. You've heard about her attempts at ballistic flight?"

"Attempts nothing. I like to think I'm getting quite adept at it." Despite her protests to Sweetie, she hugged Candela back with a tight squeeze, then released her to float the stacks of pancakes across to the table. "It's all about throwing yourself at the ground, then missing."

"I-I may not have got my cutie mark as a bat pony, and I know I'll change back when we get home, but being here has taught me there's more than one way to fly. Pegasi use their feathery wings, bat ponies fly completely differently using theirs, and Lyra has her own thing." Climbing up onto a seat with an encouraging push from Sweetie, Scootaloo settled herself at the table. "And it's fun if you completely forget about the ground."

"See!" Lyra ruffled Scootaloo's mane a little. "Scoots gets it!"

When Dream Thunder stepped out of the hallway and saw a pile of pancakes with fruit and—figuratively speaking—her name on it, she pounced into the empty seat and began eating along with the others.

Though there was little chatter over the breakfast table, when it came time to leave Lyra was caught up in another of Candela's hugs. In all, it took them another hour before they were getting back on a waiting train to head back to Canterlot.

With one of her legs across Scootaloo's shoulders, Sweetie was surprised at how relaxed and normal it felt. "Are you sure you two will be alright? I could ask for a week's leave to let you take care of things, Lyra."

"Nah. We've got it all under control, don't we Scoots? Besides, we have a party to go to at the end of the week, and then we head back to Ponyville with Scootaloo looking like her normal self again and me all set to teach Princess Screech magic."

"A party?" Sweetie asked.

"Yeah. I got the invite just before we left. Turns out one of my old school friends is having a birthday party in Canterlot. You met her, I think. She's named Moon Dancer."

Lyra, how do you feel about the whole "big sister of the nation" thing?

"It's completely and utterly terrifying and humbling. How can I possibly know how to square this information away when I'm struggling to keep up with one filly? And don't get me started on Robin and Dream—those two are a lost cause so far as me being a responsible big sister to them. And on top of everything I have two parties in one weekend to contend with. This is madness!" Lyra mimed being hit in the chest and flopped onto her back—sticking all four legs up in the classic dead pose, let her tongue flop out of one side of her open mouth, and used her magic to summon a single white lily to hold.

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
A.P.O.N.I.
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Daremo
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