A sound somewhere between a whinny and a shrill scream ripped through the darkness, tearing free of Sunset as she jolted awake harshly. The former unicorn sought to push the magic burning just under her skin into her horn to cast a light spell, only for searing agony to lance through her skull, making her curl up in a ball of suffering to wait it out. As she lay there on her side, catching her breath, her brain shook off the lingering traces of her dream and re-engaged with her reality. She wasn't in Equestria, a creature of magic with hooves and horn and fur...she was on Earth, twisted into an uncomfortable position in a naked, ugly primate body, listening to the sound of a train in the distance and the occasional car driving by.

She rolled into a position more suited for her body, arms curled defensively around her midsection as heat and ache and want made her body tingle until it hurt. Tears made tracks down her cheeks and dripped onto her blankets as fragments of the dream replayed themselves no matter how hard the redhead tried to stop them.

Sunset hated her dreams, all of them, with all the passion she’d once felt for Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Princess Twilight, but this was one of the worst yet with how much it twisted a knife in her chest....

Her mother’s Sun beamed down on her with late spring warmth, making the wavy, plush amber coat practically glow gold and turned her curling mane and tail of red and gold into living flame that streamed behind her as she kicked into a canter across a rolling sea of verdant grass. A snort puffed from her lungs, playful, primal enticement and challenge to herself and her companion, as she slowed to prance around the smaller form, neck arched proudly, every movement, every stride screaming ‘Look at me!’ She reveled in being in her own body, powerful and strong, with muscles that rippled under her coat and her horn rising from her forehead right where it belonged...

She broke into renewed sobs from the echo of how it felt to be a unicorn again, in the body that felt so right, grass under her hooves and wind in her mane, and the freedom of magic singing in her veins as she ran. Being human was awful, and her body subjected her to so many indignities and disorienting feelings that it felt like she was choking on them. Especially with the dream so fresh in her mind, this beautiful fantasy that had made her dreaming mind feel like she had an alicorn’s wings.

The unicorn mare she was showing off for was, in Sunset’s eyes, the cutest thing on four hooves she had ever seen, with dancing purple eyes she recognized in a heartbeat, and a sleek lavender coat that contrasted sharply with her own...and it didn’t take much before that mare turned her efforts into a game, the two of them galloping through the grass, magic flaring and swirling between them, power dancing up one horn and down the other in a combined effort that sent erotic thrill straight to Sunset’s loins...particularly when the smaller unicorn had winked at her right as the magic had reached the base of her horn.

Amidst the tears she could feel just how flushed and overheated her whole body felt, on edge and craving release with a ferocity that not even her first cycle in Equestria could match. She could still feel the magic going through her, lighting up her body in a way that only one unicorn could do to another...the impossible scent of honeysuckle, paper, ink, and machines still burned in her nostrils from when she’d brought her muzzle down to nip at the place where neck met withers and that dark mane had tickled her face. “...Sparky...” she moaned in pained desperation into the dark of her loft, acutely aware of just how alone she was.

And that was what made it so torturous. She knew who the cute mare was. If she had been rendered blind, she still would have known...and it was all nothing but a beautiful, wonderful lie constructed by her subconscious. The one who occupied her thoughts and had started invading her dreams and nightmares had never been a mare, and she didn't belong in Equestria. The images dancing in her mind, taunting her were something that could never happen, not with her very human girlfriend and her own exile still being in effect. She let out another low whimper when her core throbbed.

The other mare rubbed along her side, and Sunset felt teeth nibbling at one of her ears, before the muzzle pressed to her neck, kisses ghosting along her pelt, sending fire heating her up inside. It made Sunset flick her tail with purpose, deliberately letting the silky hair drag along a lavender coat, tickling the nerve endings sensuously, even as she breathed sweet nothings and passionate promises in her companion’s ear. The encouraging whicker and the way that the body had bent and twisted only served to inflame her senses more, leaving her dizzy with pure carnal desire.

Sunset dragged herself out of bed, staring at the numbers on her clock. 3:24 AM. Far too early to be awake on a Monday morning, but she had lost all desire to sleep, even if her body hadn’t been tingling and charged with arousal. Pushing back mental images of a dark tail flicking flirtatiously across her nose, carrying a heady perfume she could still taste on her tongue, the former unicorn stumbled down the stairs, before heading for her attic, her steps jerky and uncoordinated as she fought to remember how her human body was meant to move. It was a struggle, and she kept having to correct a body that instinct wanted to put on all fours.

“Stupid monkey body,” she muttered, sounding more snuffly and pathetic than angry, and she scrubbed at the tears on her face before facing her new punching bag. Sunset had to get some of this energy out, and she wasn't about to give in and touch this horrible, hairless body—she knew it would only leave her feeling worse, disoriented and twisted up with how wrong being human felt.

Fists clenched and swung, smacking into the bag with a satisfying noise. “Stupid!” Smack. “Monkey!” Smack. “Hormones!” Smack! Tears that had almost stopped now fell in fresh streams in an outward reflection of the agony she felt inside, and she attacked the bag in a wild frenzy.

Purple eyes met hers, that achingly familiar voice panting her name needily...

A foot slammed into the bag hard. “Stupid!”

Soft lips brushing the fur on her barrel, whisper light and teasing...

Another punch. “Feathering!”

A dark tail flagging, a passive glamour dispelled to show her just how badly the other mare desired her...

The double smack of a one-two punch. “Dreams!”

Her actions were as much a form of self-punishment as they were catharsis, each strike paired with harsh words and choked sobs, with no regard for how her muscles ached and protested the abuse. Pain in her arms and legs, in her knuckles and wrists was better than the ache between her legs...

Burying a muzzle into a soft flank, feeling the sleek coat over powerful haunches...

But try as she might, it did nothing to banish the dream, all too soon, she collapsed into a sobbing heap, a miserable ball on the frigid attic floor, exhausted in every possible way.

Eventually, the tears spent themselves and the cold left her shivering, having sapped the heat from her body to the point where her fingers were nearly numb. Sunset shuffled down the stairs again, soaked with sweat that made her clothes feel clammy, snot and tears dried on her skin in a gross film, and feeling drained and filthy, covered in the stink of human exertion and other odors. The clock on her microwave read somewhere in the neighborhood of five thirty, too late to go back to sleep at all. So instead she headed for her bathroom and a wonderfully hot, steamy shower and copious amounts of soap.

The water beat down on her chilled, exhausted body, chasing away the tremors that rippled over her. Sunset let it warm her up, let it wash away the salty grit on her face and lips and soak into her curly, tangled mane. This was the third night in a week she’d woken up this way, though the first to actually hurt something inside her. Telling that this was the first of the erotic, steamy dreams that had featured her and Sparky as ponies instead of humans...

And that was at the crux of it all. She knew herself—just because she’d never pursued anypony had not excluded her from having a regular cycle in the few years before she left, or from noticing the curves of some rather fetching mares in Canterlot. Nor had it stopped her from sating the occasional physical urge with a clever spell she’d written herself for just that purpose. But that was in Equestria, in her natural body, thinking about other mares. Mares were pretty, mares had all the physical traits that registered to her as desirable. In this world though? She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Rarity and Flash how sexually unappealing the average human was, and how little it did for any kind of libido the unicorn-turned-teenage-girl had. Even her Twilight was appealing to her more because it was Sparky, her best friend, her nerdy, adorable girlfriend, and the person she trusted the most in this world, not out of some burgeoning attraction to primates.

The dreams that had them as they were in the human world left her body wound up, but she could sort that much easier, feeling detached from the physical need and able to push it down...but to dream of them in the bodies of her own kind had gotten to her, ignited something inside her she couldn't ignore, but the very nature of it left her more aware of the body she was in than ever.

Sunset scrubbed herself down roughly with soap, eager to strip the stink from her skin in favor of the mild scent from her bodywash. As vigorous as the cleansing was, however, it didn't completely dispel what the dream had done—it had presented the girl she was dating in a whole different way, in a context that Sunset couldn't get out of her head. The physical desire was no longer disconnected, and her breath caught as she thought about Twilight Sparkle, with her eyes dancing and her nose crinkled up with laughter while she pressed close to Sunset for a kiss. Heat pooled low in her belly, a sensation that had become all too frequent of late, but this time, it was accompanied by a whispered thought of desire and longing that was as much in her head as it was in her groin.

She wanted Twilight Sparkle. She wanted to pin her down and let her mouth explore every inch of lavender skin...wanted to hear those pleading sounds and breathy devotions falling from her lips...wanted to spend hours physically professing how the other girl made her feel, making sure she repaid her best friend for every kind word, every hug, every moment that made her heart soar and battered soul feel a little less broken. Because of the dream, human curves and angles that seemed so ugly and wrong everywhere she looked—even on herself—had taken on a different appeal when she pictured Twilight. They weren't pony ones, but she could feel her mind catching glimpses of traits that were exactly what she’d want in a mare.

Soap stinging her eyes was a useful distraction, and Sunset made herself focus her attention on getting clean, and then on drying off. Paying attention to the little things, like combing through her mane and getting dressed pushed back the thoughts that were plaguing her...at least until she stepped back into the main part of the loft. The air there felt cloying and heavy, thick with the reek of human pheromones and sweat, and the walls felt like they were closing in on her, suffocatingly tight. The former unicorn shook herself, trying to squelch the feelings, but her body moved of its own accord, grabbing her backpack and shoving her boots on so she could step out the door in a hurry, needing fresh air and to just escape.

The sky was just turning to that midnight blue touched with pinks and purples that would never fail to remind her of the girl that consumed her thoughts when her boots hit the sidewalk, and frost covered everything, making her shiver and shove her gloved hands deeper into her pockets. It was too cold to even drive...and the walk would clear her head. Boots on concrete didn’t sound the same as hooves on stone, and the steady beat of a human gait could never be mistaken for a quadrupedal pony…but for just a little while, Sunset let her mind drift, not really seeing her surroundings, and let herself pretend. Her thoughts drifted in a space somewhere between memory and dream, seeing the pristine white, purple, and gold of Canterlot’s spires of years long past instead of the drab slice of human suburbia, and remembering what it felt like to just be a unicorn pony.

A car driving by at a speed well above the limit, followed by a set of sirens and a police car jerked her out of the daydream, the terraced mountain city fading away and leaving the frigid winter morning in a human city, passing under the flickering street lights lining the sidewalk. Bitter regret and a longing for the crisp clean air of Equestria and the powerful sense of magic under her hooves rose up, making her eyes burn with tears and the sensation went to war with the aching desire left by her dream. With a heavy sigh, Sunset turned her feet towards the bakery, needing to assuage the hollow feeling in her stomach with something while she sought to get her thoughts in order.

Was she becoming so human that she was developing a taste for them, she wondered. Was Sparky just the first? Or was it just because it was Sparky, a girl who had already elicited a reaction from her body that no one else had? Was this just the next step in that? Was she losing part of who she was, just by the virtue of being exiled in this world and trying to make the best of what she had? Were her growing attachments, to her friends, to Twilight and the rest of the family...were those things changing her? The stress she had felt the previous week when the family was at odds, when they were sick from exposure to dark magic…even the warm feelings that she’d felt when she’d managed to find a way to help them…or the way she’d felt Friday and Saturday night when she and Twilight had laid awake into the late hours of the night, kissing, cuddling, and talking about anything that came to mind…it made her realize how deeply attached to not just her best friend but the other members of her family she had become.

Her mind shied away from delving too deeply into those attachments, especially from the way she was starting to view Velvet, something about it rubbing against a raw spot inside her, the warm eyes and soft hugs burning like acid because it was filled with emotions she’d once craved, emotions she’d long since had drilled into her were emotions she didn’t deserve and would never have. It was something she dared not give a name, because some part of her felt as though the instant she did, she would have it torn away, and she wasn’t sure if she could deal with that on top of everything else going on in her life right then.

All the same, those feelings, those attachments, and the desires that came with them…were they making her more human and less of a pony? Or was it that only some of the people she was close to knew about what she was? Would Twilight and her family be like the girls, be like Pinkie and her sister, like the principals if they did? Would they still expect her to act human? Or…would they accept that she wasn’t, that she would never truly be one of their kind? Sunset started to crib on a fingernail as she walked, but a shiver went through her with a sharp gust of wind, and just the short duration made her fingers go numb. She huddled deeper in her jacket and stuffed her hands deep into the pockets to try and retain a little warmth in them. The redhead’s thoughts twisted back on themselves, bringing with it the faint beginnings of fear…that the dream and the emotions that came with it were a sign that she was losing touch with the pony she had been.

Even as she thought it, it sounded ridiculous, but the thoughts lingered, nipping at her hocks. It made her glance surreptitiously at the other patrons in the bakery, looking to see if any other humans seemed suddenly more appealing than the week prior. It made her choose some raisin and oat bran muffins and a pear for her breakfast out of all the potential sweets and pastries, needing something that linked her to her nature that felt like it was slipping through her grasp like grains of sand. It gnawed at her the rest of the way to school, making her question her identity even as it made her hyperaware of everything in the human world that was different from Equestria.

She put a hand on the door and pulled, only to realize the school was locked. Her eyes took it all in, and dimly, she realized that she had gotten there so early that no one, not even Principal Celestia, was there yet.

“....now what do I do?” Sunset groaned aloud. She had no desire to walk all the way home, only to have to do it all over again, and she had been hoping to distract herself with an old tried and true method: magical studies.

The redhead turned around and sat down on the frigid stone of the steps, staring at the polished marble of the statue and taking solace from the buzzing of Equestrian energy that resonated from it like a faint but steady heartbeat. She might have been in a monkey body, but at least she could have the presence of familiar magic pressing against her senses.

Time lost meaning as she ate her breakfast, senses narrowing to focus on the calming presence of magic. In a way, the icy cold helped, numbing her senses to the body she was in, letting her distance herself from the ungainly limbs and furless body, from the smell of ozone and fumes and tar, from the faint buzzing of electricity like insects against her inner ear, until all she could think or feel or sense was the soothing thrum of Equestrian magic singing in her mind. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, staring at the polished white stone of the Wondercolt’s hindquarters. It was long enough that the winter cold seeped through leather and denim, leaving her extremities near numb and a shiver making her body tremble. She put it out of her mind, one more thing trying to join the messy jumble in her head—she could thaw out in class anyway.

“Sunset?” For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating, that her desire to hold onto being a pony was making her hear the Princess’ voice in her head.

“Sunset? Are you alright? What are you doing here so early?” A hand touching her shoulder brought her around, and she realized it was no hallucination as the worried face of her Principal came into view.

“I...no...” she found herself admitting.

The older woman hurriedly opened the door and deactivated the alarm, before helping Sunset up. “We need to get you inside before you catch pneumonia.”

She was too numb in both body and mind to protest, and she followed the administrator to the office, shivering in earnest now that she was aware of just how cold she had gotten. Principal Celestia fiddled with the office coffee pot, turning it on and filling a mug with steaming hot water and a teabag. She pressed it into Sunset’s grip. “We need to warm you up, Sunset. Your lips are blue.” From her office, she retrieved a thick blanket, and draped it around the teen’s shoulders.

The former unicorn said nothing, only huddled under the blanket and gripped the mug of tea in shaking hands so she could drink without spilling it. Her principal gave her a few minutes to let some of the warmth seep into her, before asking very gently, “Sunset? Can you tell me what happened?”

Maybe it was the genuine concern in the woman’s voice. Maybe it was how achingly similar it sounded to the voice that had always made her feel safe as a filly. Maybe it was the combination of cold and stress...or maybe it was just that she felt so overwhelmed and wrong and desperately homesick for Equestria. Whatever it was, homesickness welled up inside her, a painful longing for Equestria, her real body, and for Princess Celestia to take away all her fears. Before she could stop it, the words were in the air. “I...I want...my mo—” No, whispered a little voice from her memories. Not your mother. You don't have a mother. “...I want Princess Celestia...”

The human woman gave her a look of pained sympathy, and sat down beside her on the couch. “Sunset,” she began in that same tone that the Princess always used when she was worried. “I know I’m not Princess Celestia, but I am here to listen if you want to talk to me.”

It wasn't what she really wanted...but maybe it would be enough. Sunset nodded once, a jerky, stiff motion, gathering her thoughts as best she could. There was no way she could admit to the details—she wasn’t comfortable with that much, but...

“...The entire time I've been in this world...I’ve always known who I was. What I was. What I was doing here...” She took a sip of the tea to help a throat that felt too dry. “I was Sunset Shimmer, a unicorn, and this was just part of a plan to go home and prove to Princess Celestia that I was worth more than she’d ever thought. But then...” she trailed off, frowning.

“Then the formal occurred and your plans changed.” Though soft, it was not a question.

“My plans ended in a rainbow to the face,” Sunset corrected. “One I deserved.” She wasn't going to sugarcoat the truth here. “And my sentence was Exile. I can't go home again. I don't have a home in Equestria anymore...though...sometimes I wonder if I ever did.” Another drink of the tea let her keep her voice level. “I have to live here, in this world, because there's no place left for me to go.”

Principal Celestia touched her shoulder with one hand, concern written on her face. “Are you that unhappy here, Sunset?”

“No! That’s just it! I love it here—I have friends here, people who care about me, who treat me like I matter, who don't think that I’m dangerous and different or less than nothing because I don't have a family. I...didn't really have that in Equestria.” The former unicorn was shaking from more than cold, as the numbness in her heart had started to replace the chill in her bones. “I’ve got a life here, one I’m making for myself,” she confessed, “and I love it, but...”

Once more she hesitated, and the woman next to her made a soft sound. “But you still miss your home in Equestria?”

She shook her head, letting out a wry snort. “No...and that’s just it. I’m...I feel like I’m losing myself. Before, I was always just pretending, playing at being human to protect myself from the things that could happen...but now...I’m not so sure I’m pretending anymore.” Sunset dimly felt the tingling in her limbs as they regained feeling, but the ice that had formed in her chest blocked out most of the sensation. “I feel like the more I try to make a life here, the more I’m losing who I am. I can barely remember what some of my favorite foods taste like, or what it's like to have hooves instead of hands. And every day, there are thoughts...feelings...I don't understand, that I've never had before because that's not how ponies are.”

Silence, thick and nearly choking pressed down on her, and for a minute, Sunset wondered if she’d said too much. Eventually, her principal took a breath. “You feel like you're becoming more human and less of a unicorn, and it scares you.”

Sunset’s voice cracked on the response. “....Yes. I don't want to be human, Principal Celestia. I don't want to stop being a unicorn, even if I have to live in a human body for the rest of my life.”

Celestia made a thoughtful sound. “Why can you not just be Sunset Shimmer, who is a unicorn living in the human world? Embrace all the aspects of your life that make you happy, and find a balance between the two parts of your life?”

The former unicorn recoiled a little, some of that ice settling into her guts. “Because I’m not a unicorn right now...” she tried to explain. “I don’t have my horn—except when I pony-up, but it doesn't last—or hooves, or my fur, and I’m stuck in this awful monkey body...” Her hands shook so bad that the administrator took the mug from her before she scalded herself with its contents. “This stupid, horrible body! It does awful monkey things and makes me want things that I never would have thought about as a pony, and I can't seem to make it stop, because it's only getting worse and it's getting into my head now—” Teeth clamped shut to stop her from babbling. Not that she would have done so much longer with the way the ice was now squeezing her lungs, until black spots danced across her vision.

“Sunset, I need you to try and breathe for me,” Principal Celestia said, sounding like she was speaking over a waterfall. “Slow, deep breaths. You're okay. You're safe.” The teen did her best to follow the instructions, going so far as to mimic the technique her girlfriend used, bringing a fist to her chest and concentrating on breathing in time with its slow, slightly unsteady rhythm. “There we go,” the woman next to her encouraged as the roaring in her ears faded and some of the ice in her chest had melted away.

Once she had calmed, her principal spoke again. “Sunset, can you look at me for a minute? I need to ask you a question.”

The redhead turned to face the pale skinned woman, confused by the sudden seriousness she could hear in her voice. “....what is it, Principal Celestia?” she croaked, her throat still tight.

“You don't have to give me details, but I need to know. When you say your body is making you want things that you wouldn't want as a pony, are these things that are dangerous, harmful, or illegal? Is it anything that's going to hurt you or cause you harm?” The administrator’s face was painted with worry.

It didn’t take a genius to realize what she was referring to and Sunset shook her head vigorously. “No! It's...nothing like that. Drugs are stupid, Principal Celestia, and I learned the hard way about a hangover back in Equestria.” She sighed, sharing a little more than she’d intended, mostly to assuage her principal’s fears. “It's...because of a girl.”

Celestia let out a quiet sigh of relief that Sunset wasn't sure she was meant to hear. She could practically feel the tension draining out of the principal. “Thank you for being honest. I didn't think you would, but I needed to ask for my own peace of mind. There's a lot of bad peer pressure involving children your age, and I don't want to see you get mixed up in anything like that.”

“That’s...not something you have to worry about,” Sunset offered. “Drugs...alcohol...they take away a person...or a pony’s control. Bad things happen when I lose control.” Memories of fire and screaming flitted through her mind before she squelched them.

“Yes...I suppose I can see you responding in a highly displeased fashion to anyone peddling poison in your direction.” Principal Celestia laughed softly, before she returned to gentle seriousness. “That aside...if I may offer a little wisdom, Sunset?”

At this point, Sunset would have been happy with a shot in the dark, let alone some actual wisdom from an adult human she respected. She nodded, giving the woman the signal to continue.

“You will always be Sunset Shimmer the unicorn—the body you're in doesn't define who you are inside. The place you came from, the culture, the world, the way your experiences shaped you? Those things will always be part of your identity, even if how they affect that identity changes; you aren't losing them or replacing them, and you aren't ‘turning into a human.’”

A low sound of frustration bubbled up, “Then why does it feel like I'm losing who I am, like I’m turning into someone, something I’m not!?”

Principal Celestia patted her shoulder again, the gesture bringing some measure of comfort. “Part of life is growing and learning new things about ourselves, and I suspect that is as true for your people as it is for mine. Instead of seeing those changes as replacing or taking away a part of you, you might consider seeing how they add something instead, whether that thing is a new favorite food, a new friend, a hobby you never considered before, or even falling in love with someone you would never have imagined falling for.”

The former unicorn fell silent, mulling over the words, picking them apart and letting them sit in her brain. The principal let the words sink in, then added, “You will always be Sunset Shimmer, the unicorn who is living here with us humans...but you are so much more now than the unicorn who first came here to our world and ruled the student body with an iron fist. You are a unicorn who is growing into an intelligent, compassionate young woman, one I am exceptionally proud to have as one of my students. You are so much more than you were just as recently as the beginning of the year, not less, and that is something to be embraced, not feared.”

She didn't respond—she couldn't, not really. The words stuck in her head, and she found herself ignoring her Principal to turn the statement over in her mind, feeling for all the world like she was caught in the same kind of mental trap that her girlfriend ended up in so often, stuck with her thoughts circling back around over and over again with no escape in sight. She knew she was being rude at this point, but she couldn't turn her thoughts to anything else, not until she’d picked everything apart.

It didn't seem to bother the administrator all too much. The woman pressed the hot mug back into her hands. “You sit here as long as you need to, Sunset. Warm up and think about what I said. There's no rush.” She patted her shoulder one final time as she stood. “If you need anything, or need to talk more, I’ll be in my office, looking over the paperwork on that ‘semi-anonymous donation’ from the ‘Sunny Skies Education Foundation’--which is not as anonymous as its benefactor might hope.”

Sunset ducked her head at the comment, knowing very well that another Celestia would probably have used the same alias as the Princess on occasion, and resolved to worry about the questions from that later. She was already too caught up in her current crisis to deal with another.

Was the principal right? Could she adapt and change to fit this world, this new life without sacrificing everything that made her who she was? Were the feelings and wants starting to affect her head just about personal growth, and not about some horrible transition into being a human being inside as well as out? Could she have traits from both species, and still keep herself a pony?

And, her circling, spiraling thought patterns asked as she came back to the issue that spawned it all: her feelings for Twilight Sparkle. Even Celestia had tapped the subject without really knowing what was going on, her words echoing as Sunset pictured the dark haired girl in her mind’s eye: “....or even falling in love with someone you would never have imagined falling for...” Sunset wasn't ready to call it that yet...but...could she? Was this dream, and the way it affected her a sign not of becoming more human...but of Sunset...reaching a point where she could potentially find that kind of intimacy and connection with someone here—Twilight or otherwise?

The redheaded teen thought back to the bakery, where she’d taken the time to observe the other patrons. They all still just looked like humans—weird, skinny, long limbed bipeds—and while they didn't look quite so horrifyingly ugly as they had in the past, she had to acknowledge that none of them, even ones who would have been considered far more attractive by human standards than her girlfriend, made her mind wander in the direction of fantasy or send a thrill down her spine into her core. Yet when she focused again on a mental image of the girl as she’d woken to her that Saturday morning, hair tousled from sleep, wearing a pair of flannel pajamas and cuddled into Sunset’s side while reading an old, tattered paperback book, she could feel her cheeks heat and her breath catch. More than that, the longer she focused on the memory, the more her mind found things to notice about Twilight that made Sunset feel hot all over again. Like the way she fit neatly against Sunset’s side, or the way she smelled...the way her hair fell down around her shoulders in an adorable mess, or how her lips moved slightly when she read, as if she were resisting the urge to read aloud...

Wrenching herself out of those thoughts before she ended up in the same state she’d woken up in, Sunset took a long drink from the mug in her hands. Okay, Shimmer, she told herself, you can deal with this. Maybe Principal Celestia is right. Maybe this isn't all bad—it's not every human right now. Just Sparky. That’s not the worst thing in the world, since she’s already your girlfriend... She was aware that she felt a connection to her best friend, something that was different than her other friends. Twilight’s personality just meshed well with hers in all the ways she never knew she really needed. The human girl was smart, well read, and intensely curious, but her special skills and areas of expertise were different than Sunset’s, nor did she attempt to hold herself as superior to those around her, so it never really roused the former unicorn’s competitive streak or ire. Instead, it made conversation with Twilight incredibly fascinating, especially when they compared different approaches and understandings and ended up spring-boarding each other’s own knowledge and ideas to new heights. She never challenged Sunset’s sense of internal power and control, but she wasn't a cringing doormat either, and she had a way of communicating her thoughts and feelings in a way Sunset inherently understood.

Then there were the emotions that flared and surged back and forth between them. She cared fiercely for Twilight, for Twilight’s family who had shown her that they cared, for her friends...but the way Twilight affected her had always been different. They just...connected...in a way she couldn't fully explain, and the dark haired girl made her feel good and content and just happy, just by being in the room with her, and those feelings only grew when they snuck little intimacies like soft touch and eager kisses, or when Twilight was in her arms on Friday nights, pressed against her and sleeping soundly....

Her body had already started responding to her girlfriend’s touch, to the desire she could see burning in purple eyes...was it awful if she started seeing her the way she might have if Twilight had been a mare in Equestria? If her mind started finding things about her girlfriend that made her want, not just with her body but with mind and heart as well? Was she capable of being happy and okay with desiring physical intimacy with her very human companion? Or would giving in to that make her lose something she was desperately trying to hold onto?

Sunset didn't have an answer for that, especially when one of her fears began gnawing on her again. This whole dating thing had started as an attempt to explore what they felt and to let it develop at its own pace in its own way...what if Twilight changed her mind? What if she ended up wanting to stop being so close to her best friend? As they were, right now, Sunset could probably cope with that as long as they remained friends...but if she let herself go further, if she opened her heart like that, took that plunge...only to have it end...could she cope with that loss, or would it destroy her from the inside out?

Ponies weren't like humans when it came to relationships, flitting through partners like a bee amongst wildflowers. Her kind tended to form romantic and emotional attachments from among those with whom a pony had already bonded, usually as friends, as a growth of those already established relationships. Like she’d explained to Rarity, there wasn't a socio-cultural push to find a partner and have as many foals as possible, the way humans seemed to do. Relationships were about mutual happiness and enjoyment...but it also meant that the concept of casual relationships was fairly alien. Ponies invested a part of themselves when they did find somepony they bonded with, and it was that emotional investment that often drove a relationship more than any amount of physical, sexual desire. If she was desiring Twilight the way she would have as a mare, then she’d crossed a threshold without realizing it, and if her girlfriend wasn’t invested in the same way and ended things...

A low sound escaped her, as did a few tears, before she shoved the rest of that thought down roughly, to keep a hold on her emotions. She couldn't be thinking of that when she hadn’t yet told Twilight that she was a pony. Twilight deserved to know that, to have all of Sunset known to her before they crossed that point of no return.

Sunset squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn't ready to tell her—to tell any of the family that had welcomed her so readily, really—that she was an inhuman exile from another world and a creature that most of their species would consider an animal...even if it was a mythical one. Fear kept her silent, fear of their response, and just like Twilight telling her parents about her sexuality, it was something Sunset was trying to work towards having the courage to do.

And if she was starting to see Twilight the way she would another pony, if she had reached a point where she could fall in love with a human, where the emotions of the unicorn she had been raised as merged with the physical desires of the human form she lived in, then Sunset was running out of time to make the decision with a level head...

Poor Sunny.... So many thoughts and feelings and she's all mixed up....

She needs hugs.