“Not bad!” Ruby reviewed my campfire cooking. All I had done was toss the wild onion and leafy things we foraged in with some black-eyed peas. It was that or eat them as a side. Honestly though, the real reason the food was good was that it was warm and substantial: our little fire, dwarfed by the giant fire pit, did all the work.

I worked to keep our little flames fed. We agreed to not let it get too big, in case there was actually a camp counselor or groundskeeper around. That meant constantly feeding it twigs and dry brush while it slowly gnawed at the larger branches though.

I looked around the summer bible camp. It was a little creepy how out in the open we were in a place that was made to hold a hundred or more. The bulletin board we found told us none of the camp groups would be showing up until next month. The camp was completely empty for now: no lights, no electricity, no vehicles and no signs of recent human activity except for a few weeks' worth of tall, but gross-tasting, grass. Ruby suspected the taste was from a fertilizer.

My daughter went for another bite off of our commandeered plate then gestured for me to take another bite too. I stopped fiddling with the fire and obeyed.

After tasting it again, the beans and herbs were decent for what I had to work with. The dining hall’s pantry wasn’t exactly stocked yet. The only thing we found were two forgotten cans on a bottom shelf. It was this and a fruit cocktail for dessert.

As dusk had started, we considered where to settle down for the night. We understandably didn’t want to risk another barn. That seemed to leave us either building shelter or finding a natural one that wasn’t already occupied by something else. We nearly walked right past a cave in the dim light and considered it at first. Ruby wanted to go in but the man-made warning signs for bats and cave-ins gave me second thoughts. We ended up following the nearby paths and came across the camp.

By then our rainbow sky guide was long gone. We never saw any sign of that rainbow ending. It just faded away, still stretched past the horizon. It felt like we made a lot of distance but it was clear we still had a ways to go tomorrow if we were going to find Rainbow Dash and hopefully a way to find our friends too. Maybe they saw the Sonic Rainboom too somehow.

Definitely problems for the next day though. I was absolutely exhausted. I had been running off the high from whatever Princess Luna did that morning. Now, settling down with a headache and a slightly irritated digestive system, I still couldn’t believe I managed to walk most of the day. I was torn and dragged near death the night before. If this was what it meant to be an earth pony, to recover and keep going, I wasn’t too disappointed I didn’t have a horn or wings anymore.

That being said, I was stiff and didn’t feel like getting up. Most of my muscles and tendons ached. I felt too warm and I wasn’t sure what the tremor to my legs was from: exhaustion or withdrawal. Probably a bit of both.

What probably kept me going at the end was Ruby physically getting off my back. Of course that meant she had to walk the last few hours and was pretty exhausted now too. She was faring better at least. I was feeling tired, even mentally exhausted. It was a good thing walking east was so easy and I had my daughter to keep me straight.

“Ready for dessert?” Ruby asked, bringing me out of my slight stupor. She scooted the can of fruit cocktail between us.

I glanced at our plate. There was one bite left: probably left for me. I licked it up and nodded.

After convincing Ruby to break into the dining hall by applying her magic to a window, it’d be wrong if I didn’t eat my half. She agreed to our little heist but left all of the cash from her wallet as payment. I’d do the same but all I had was an overdrawn bank card and a non-driver ID.

I thought about leaving the ID, just to mess with the criminal justice system. There was probably a warrant out for my arrest for not showing up for my AA meeting and not answering any calls. I decided I didn’t want to leave it though: it was the only picture I had of ‘him’.

I pushed that thought away as I watched my daughter concentrate on the can: it was just a pop top unlike the can of beans I ground open so I figured she’d be able to get it. She opted to use her magic. While I knew she should let her horn rest, I wasn’t going to tell her she couldn’t do something. She was testing her strength, just like with the dining hall window.

The can kept floating up on her or awkwardly falling over. I quietly helped hold the can between my hooves. She accepted the help and had another go at it.

In her green light the ring pull lifted up.

Then the can’s lid and its contents burst.

I was too tired to flinch but for a moment I wasn’t sure what happened. I heard the lid fall away somewhere in the dark. I looked at my daughter, a smattering of the sticky syrup from the can on her face. She looked back at me then up a bit at my mane and smiled.

“Sorry. I got pear in your hair,” she said as she gestured up at me. I processed what she said then craned my head down. A few bits of fruit fell out of my mane. I bent down and ate it before saying anything: five second rule.

“What was that? You okay?” I asked while I chewed.

“I guess I grabbed some of the fruit with the lid,” she explained, feeling the sticky syrup on her face with a hoof. “I’m kind of all thumbs right now.”

I looked down at my fore hooves and cracked a tired smile.

“All thumbs? That’s weird: I think I’m mostly middle fingers now,” I said, doing my best to wiggle my hooves. I regretted that with how stiff my tendons and ligaments were. Ruby didn’t see my slight cringe because she was busy rolling her eyes. She dumped the remains of the canned fruit onto the cleaner part of our plate for easier consumption and licked some of it up.

I followed suit and we took turns eating syrupy fruit chunks. The sweet treat was a rush after our day of grazing greens. Dessert quickly disappeared.

“That really hit the spot!” my filly said, clearly feeling a little picked up from the sugar. She stood up and stretched out her back legs then her forelegs like a dog. The fruit was a bit of an energy boost for me too but it didn’t exactly hit the spot. What would do it for me would be a nightcap. I knew I wouldn’t get that though. I didn’t see any sacramental wine when we were in the dining hall and I didn’t think I’d take it anyway. I wouldn’t want to get drunk, of course, just something to ease the tension in my body.

I eyed the lighter and pack of cigarettes still pulled out of my bag: it was our fire starter. Ruby had helped me operate the lighter and I did the pull. I didn’t gag like I thought I would: too tired maybe. The taste was calming to me. Once we got the fire going I was tempted to finish smoking it. I knew my daughter wouldn’t like that though. She didn’t even really like it when I smoked as a human.

Even still, she’d probably help me light another if I asked.

“Hey, let’s see if we can get this stickiness off of me,” Ruby said as she started packing up.

If I asked.

I sat up and leaned into her face to try and fix her problem: I licked some of the syrup off her face. Her mane still had that thunderstorm smell to it.

“Ew, Mom,” she whined but accepted the licking. At least at first. “Okay, okay, stop,” she pleaded, pushing my face away. “Ponies don’t do cat baths.”

I gave up on being silly, which was probably from a combination of exhaustion and sugar, and laid my head down instead.

“Buddy system: your turn,” I tiredly suggested. There was a bit of syrup on me too after all. I knew she wasn’t going to reciprocate though.

“Hey,” she nudged me and I opened my eyes. I didn’t realize I closed them. “Let’s go see if there’s some water left in the bathhouse.”

I really didn’t want to but I knew she did and I wasn’t going to let her go off on her own. So, if my little gem didn’t want to go to bed sticky...

I sat back up and then worked my way to my aching legs to help her finish packing up: cigarettes and lighter included. We kicked dirt onto the campfire until it was reduced to smoking ashes. Then we headed off to where we saw the bathhouses.

As we walked I kept my tired head down and just focused on putting one hoof in front of the other. It was a familiar pattern by now. Our only light source was the light of the moon.

“They have a lot of odd decorations,” Pinchy commented. I glanced over to see she was looking at their totem pole. It wasn’t a very traditional one. Instead of animals it was things like heavenly bodies, a thunderbolt, and I think the Greek letter omega?

“Huh. Yeah, I guess so. Did you see that big stone slab?” I asked, remembering from our earlier exploration.

“Yeah, it was a sundial,” my daughter explained to me. I would have probably figured that out if we found it during daylight.

“Oh. That’s kind of cool. A little useless after sunset though,” I commented. I glanced back down to the pocket watch still hanging around Ruby’s neck and smiled at it. “Hey, what time do you got on that thing?”

She checked for me, the aura from her horn giving her enough light to make out the hands.

“5:20!” my daughter humored me.

"Hmm. I think that’s a little off,” I teased. That watch definitely couldn’t track time anymore. “It’s definitely past our bedtime,” I yawned. She could have left that watch in her bag with her Fluttershy plush but didn’t. Maybe she just liked wearing it. Or it reminded her of our friends. I’d have to ask her some time when I wasn’t so tired.

We approached the bathhouse and Ruby stood up and against one of the doors on her hind hooves. It was locked. Of course.

“You think you can unlock it?” I asked.

“It’s probably got one of those big turn dials on the inside,” Ruby said as the area became bathed in her green-yellow light. I saw her struggle standing against the door for a moment before she recomposed herself. There was a rattle from the door's bolt then something hitting the inside of the door. Then another.

"Got it," Ruby grunted. She relaxed and fell back onto her haunches. While she sat, there was a sound of the lock sliding out of place. Then without any fanfare we were thrown back into the dark.

"Are you okay?" I asked and nuzzled my daughter. My cheek touched the syrup on her cheek. Ruby’s darkened silhouette nodded.

"Give me a second. It's probably dark in there too," Ruby requested.

"Of course," I said and rubbed my little magician's back. "We can just go to bed if you want? I'm pretty tired."

“I want to wash up first. Then we can go to bed.”

Her mind was made up then. She really didn’t care to be dirty.

“You really think there’s water?” I asked, not considering that until now.

“If they use tanks there might be some left in there from the last time the power was on.”

I could understand why she was hopeful now. Once she felt recharged again she lit up and we headed in.

It was as eerie as traversing the dining hall had been but now we had absolutely zero light from the outside. The sound of our hooves echoing on the tiles was the only sound. Ruby was our only source of light as we trudged past sinks, bathroom stalls and rows of dressing areas and lockers towards the showers. Ruby approached the nearest shower and telekinetically nudged the handle. It sputtered to life and started raining water.

Ruby entered the stream then jumped back when the water hit her. She instinctively cranked the shower knob closer to “hot” before remembering that’s not going to do anything.

I nudged her in- she wanted this- and followed. It was definitely cold and smelled a little stale but it was wet like she wanted. Her horn went out with her little whine, like a candle in the rain. I could feel her shift and frantically scrub her face and muzzle with the back of her hoof. She clearly didn’t want to stay in it long. I just stood on the edge of the stream and let the water soak my mane and neck.

The running water was calming in the pitch black. The cold cooled my fever and I might have even fallen asleep standing up. What woke me up was her light coming back on and her cranking the water off. I looked down at my wet filly through my own water-logged mane.

“Better?” I asked her, half-awake. She nodded but also seemed to have her own little tremor now.

“Let’s look for a towel,” she suggested.

She searched over the place for towels and I followed along ineptly: first the back of the building then around the lockers for strays. If the camp kept towels they weren’t here. We gave up and moved forward to where the sinks and toilets were. The last place to look was some cabinets Ruby noticed coming in. They were locked though, of course. While she was fiddling with the locks on one I couldn’t help but notice her light reflecting from the sink mirrors across the room.

It had been a while since I had looked in a mirror. I had gotten wary of them since the transformation started. The last time I gave myself a good hard look was in Ruby’s room just after I finished turning back. My hooves shuffled over to the sink mirror, moved by curiosity. Using the sink I painfully climbed to a bipedal stance to check my reflection.

Bathed in nothing but yellow-green light a mare was staring back at me. There were details I didn’t remember: details I couldn’t have known at the time but I had seen more ponies since. My eyes grew wide as I touched my face and then felt my forehead, somehow not sure it was my reflection. The mare in the reflection mirrored my actions.

Sure enough, staring back at me… was me. The shocking part was that, unable to make out my colors in the light, all I could notice were my features.

I looked like... my daughter. I had the curls still in my wet hair that were all my own, but something about the muzzle or the area around the eyes or the bone structure or something - I didn’t know what it was- but it wasn’t like Minuette’s or Comet Tail’s or Carrot Top’s. It was Ruby’s. And it was mine. I obviously looked older and obviously didn’t have a horn but the resemblance was uncanny.

I was clearly related.

I was clearly female.

I smiled at myself. I thought the smile fit perfectly. I was tired and worse for wear, but after everything I was still me. Maybe, finally me.

“It’s not budging,” came my daughter’s voice from behind me. “Mom? What are you looking at?”

I gave a teary smile to my Ruby in the reflection. We made eye contact through it. She looked confused at first then smiled when she finished registering that they were happy tears. I eased back down to all fours and limped the distance between us.

She accepted my wet hug. The light from her horn evaporated as she squeezed me back. We stayed like that in the dark just hugging.

“Liked what you saw?” my filly asked, slightly confused as I held her against me.

“I look like you,” I strained. I nuzzled the top of her mane.

“Yeah: I took after you,” she gently corrected, nuzzling against my chest.

I was happy with the way I looked now, more than I ever had been as a human named Brian. I looked like my daughter but still like me. I never realized how badly I wanted that. My sense of gender had been thrown up in the air. Now, seeing how the pieces landed, I tenderly accepted it.

If we understood who we are by comparing ourselves with others, then I wanted to be like my daughter: female. I loved her and seeing her in me, or finally seeing myself in her I guess technically, I wanted to love myself now. I wanted to be the mare she could look up to as a role model. Maybe that was backwards, maybe the Brian part of me would deny it some, maybe I didn’t have the memories yet to know how to do it, but the rest of me wanted that now. I would be a mare even if it took me the rest of my life to figure out what that meant to me.

I knew my daughter and our friends would welcome that despite the twenty-five years of life conflicting with that and that just made me cry harder. I could have that, they would let me have that, but I felt I needed to ask her and I was scared to do so. As silly as that sounds.

“Mom? Are you okay?” my bundle stirred against me.

“Can I… be female?” I asked openly, vulnerably, with the darkness as my security blanket and my daughter as my plush. “Will you see me that way? Please?”

I felt her grip around my middle renew and her head rest against my chest again.

“Yes,” she promised easily. I think she was ready for this conversation a lot sooner than I was. For one thing, I knew her answer before it came and yet I still devolved into a gross mess of snot and happy tears. My little Ruby weathered my turbulent emotions with just sympathetic tears. She stayed with me in the dark like that for minutes until I could compose myself.

Once I was down to just sniffles and stuttering breaths she refilled the world with light. When I saw my precious daughter’s head again I kissed it.

I didn’t need that cigarette anymore: a good cry worked fine.

When we left the bathhouse my face was a little more damp than my daughter’s. I glanced back at the outside of the door. In my half-awake state I didn’t even notice it was the women’s side of the bathhouse.

Of course it was.

We made our way back to our bags from memory and the smell of ash. Warily I threw our bags back onto my back. The strap found one of the sorer spots on my back. It wasn’t much more weight but my legs protested the extra resistance. That wasn’t important though.

I let my daughter lead me back to the cabin we picked out. When we broke in earlier in the light I saw it was labeled ‘Ruth’. I softly kicked the door shut behind us and dropped our bags on the ground.

I expected her to just pounce onto the nearest bare mattress but instead she dug into her bag. Using her horn for light for just a moment I saw she had pulled her pocket watch off and pulled out one of her old dresses out of her bag. The room fell back into darkness once again, this time with a long, satisfied little sigh of someone who was done working for the day. I heard the dress get tossed and Ruby fiddling with it.

Then I heard her pounce onto the mattress.

I crawled onto the mattress and found the dress laid out underneath her. Of course: she was avoiding having wet ponies on a bare mattress. Despite being a bare mattress it was the softest thing I had laid on in days and it felt amazing on my sore body. A long sigh escaped me too.

I flipped my tail off the mattress and onto my body and neatly tucked Ruby against my chest to minimize our space. My limbs felt so heavy around her: they didn’t have to do any more walking now. They didn’t even have to support my weight. All they had to do was lay limply around her and they could keep her safe.

“...aren’t you glad we did this instead of the cave?” I asked my little spoon.

“It would’ve been fun to explore,” she quietly defended before yawning. “Yeah... this is better. I wouldn’t have had enough clean clothes left to make a pallet,” Ruby went on. I have to admit I was barely catching her words: my body was ready to give up consciousness. Something about clean clothes.

“We can wash some in the morning,” I reflexively promised. There was a blissful, dark silence.

“...how would we do that?” Ruby interrupted the silence after a moment. I realized I wasn’t sure how and was too tired to figure out an answer. So I just said nothing. There was more silence and then a slight snicker before she scooted further into me.

“Good night, Mom,” my little Ruby told me, rousing me slightly from my sleep.

“Good night, Ruby,” I mumbled and attempted to nuzzle the top of her head with the underside of my chin. It sort of worked. I held my precious gem close and fell asleep contently. We would find the end of that rainbow. We would find our friends again and then… we’d find home.

Tomorrow though. Tonight, holding my daughter, I was good with where I was.

“Good night, Minuette,” I told the blue unicorn standing at my doorstep. I loved this young mare but I was tired and exhausted from all the extra weight on my hooves. I wanted her gone so I could go to bed. It was getting late too: the lamplighter had already come by! Carrot Top would start wondering where her replacement harvest help was.

“Are you sure you’re all set?” Minuette asked as she looked about the room one last time as if looking for something hidden in plain sight.

“I have like four barrels upstairs now!” I exasperated and gestured behind me to the juice barrels in the kitchen: the very ones she had helped me bring up from the cellar. “I’m all set.”

“Yeah but what about for tomorrow morning?” she said with a smirk forming on her face. I tried to act indignant but her smirk snuck onto my face too. In an attempt to hide it I started pushing her out the door by her rump.

When the hay did my rear get bigger than hers?

“I’ll be fine!” I told her then wavered and stopped pushing. “…unless you want to come by before you leave tomorrow and help me bring up more?” Minuette giggled at my response.

“How about you come over to Carrot’s for brunch instead? We could make Bunny Marys~” Minuette put that thought in my head. Of course it’d be without alcohol -seven months dry now- but...

“...with extra pickle juice?” I asked. Minuette giggled again.

“With extra, extra pickle juice!” Minuette promised and raised up onto her hind hooves to spread her forelegs wide for emphasis. She then brought those forelegs around me and gave me a big hug with a few strong nuzzles against my side.

Wary of my balance, all I could do was quickly raise one leg up to put it around her. I put my leg down and she put her forehooves back onto the ground too.

“Other side too!” Minuette said as she went in for another two-legged hug, this time with her head going the other way so she could nuzzle my other side. Minuette always gave the best hugs. All I could do was raise up the other leg and pat her back before putting it back down.

Minuette let go of me: hug quota now met. She stepped back and into the night with her school bags thrown over her. It was a short walk to Carrot’s but if she slept here we’d end up staying up late and sleeping in and Carrot needed help in her garden at first light.

“Good night, Ruby!” Minuette turned back one last time to wave at me, or my belly anyway. My hoof reflexively went to it. “Good night, Mommy! See you tomorrow!”

I rolled my eyes in good humor and waved her off with a smile. When I returned I walked back inside and went to shut my door back. When I did I noticed only the bottom half shut: the top panel disconnected from the bottom. I went to shut the top half when something caught my eye.

It was the moon. It looked peculiar tonight. I studied it for a moment trying to figure out why. Failing to notice that The Mare In The Moon craters were gone, I caught my gaze wandering towards the nearby stars instead.

On a whim I tried to see if I could make out the constellations Comet Tail had shown me. I studied the patterns of the lights in the sky and determined I must be looking in the wrong direction. I turned around to reorientate myself. As I did, my house faded into the background so I could see the sky better. As did all of Ponyville. All I could see now were stars and to my back was that peculiar moon.

And then, as I studied that night sky, the distance between me and them seemed to gradually close. As the stars surrounded me I wasn’t scared because I saw the stars were floating in a deep, calming blue. The sky wavered, like we were in a great ocean, and I was in that current moving with the countless stars.

And I saw, just beyond that starry ocean, the sky unfolding, like great celestial wings which came down from the heavens to wrap around me in their power and beauty.

I knew what was happening was impossible and once I realized that I knew I must be dreaming. I understood now what this sky was, this horizon around me, the moon to my back:

“Princess Luna?” I asked the dreamscape before me.

“Good evening, Berryshine,” the moon behind me spoke. I turned around and as I did the wonder around me came into focus as the princess of the night in all her oneiric glory.

Her armor, from crown to shoe, shined with the mirror reflection of the starry sky. Her dark blue coat was immaculate and glowed with a luster from within. Her mane was that dark blue sky reflected in her armor, and it was filled with every star, billowing out slowly in a cosmic wind. Her wings were the horizon that had wrapped around me. As they returned to her sides my eyes traced up the form of her elegant neck to her face.

A pair of living sapphires were peering at me. They were immaculately cut and shone from a thousand sides. And yet, with all the light they collected I still couldn’t see down to the core of either one. In the middle of each, was a black abyss that stared back at me, not in indifference but in benevolence and amusement. A smirk grew so gracefully on her slender muzzle I wasn’t sure if it had already been there before it started.

Before I knew what I was doing I worked out some kind of clumsy bow as I lowered myself to the featureless ground before her.

“You do not have to do that. Rise,” she told me. I obeyed and stood back up. “It is a pleasure to finally meet each other under good circumstances.” I nodded in agreement. She gave a content sigh and seemed to relax but her poise was still immaculate. “I come bearing good news. Judging by where you rest now, I take it you know whose trail you are following?”

“Rainbow Dash??” I asked, hopeful. I knew it had to be her but to hear it from Princess Luna herself…

Princess Luna nodded. “Indeed! Rainbow Dash performed a Sonic Rainboom over Des Moines to get the attention of the world and to let the ponies in it know they are not alone. Furthermore, Rainbow Dash and her friends are at Applejack’s farm, east of here. They have prepared a place and are ready to accept as many ponies as I can shepherd to them.”

Princess Luna gave me the address to the Apple Farm in words as well as a general sense of direction and a vision of the road it was on. They were so close, tantalizingly close, and yet so far. We could make it there tomorrow! And then...

“Do you know where my friends are?” I asked Princess Luna. She looked up, as if to check with the stars before answering.

“They are safe now. I will visit them tonight and guide them there as well.”

“Thank you,” I said and bowed again, but less deep this time. It was more like a deep nod.

“And I thank you too,” she reciprocated with a graceful nod of her own.

“Me?”

“The Sonic Rainboom was to gather the ponies and it had many beneficial side effects: it cleared the fog disrupting my dreamwalking, it created an excess of magic, and as I hoped an earth pony was an acceptable conduit to save a most precious horn with some of it…” Luna smiled for a moment before that faded from her face. “But, as I suspected, it stirred up the humans. Especially the ones who were trying to enslave my little ponies. I knew they would react in fear... and rightfully so.” Her face slipped into a sharp, darkened scowl. For just a moment I thought I was at Nightmare Moon’s mercy again but then it found me again and melted back into a softer smile.

“I thank you, Berryshine, because you are a hero! With the information you read to me, I was able to locate ponies before they were moved after the Sonic Rainboom. Many ponies were saved today because of you.”

I wanted to accept her words but I couldn’t. At the same time, I couldn’t tell a princess she was wrong. I think she was able to read that on my face though. That’s probably easy for a princess of dreams inside a dream.

“Do you disagree?”

“No offense, but it sounds like you did all the work. All I did was get torn apart and then read a notebook.”

“I recall: you stood up against Discord to protect your daughter, faced three timberwolves alone and then delivered intelligence so that I could commence a rescue plan at the precise moment at which it could occur.”

I was taken aback at the phrasing at first, but honestly, putting it like that was generous.
It didn’t seem right to tell a princess she was wrong though so I only politely objected.

“And then you saved me- you saved us! I was going to die before you patched me back up.”

“That only makes what you did all the braver. If all of our ponies are as brave as you were, I have no doubt we will retake Equestria.”

I relented on the definition of bravery because something else grabbed my attention.

“‘Retake Equestria?’” Do you mean… we have a way to get back?”

“Not yet. Princess Twilight Sparkle is looking for the portal from the movie Equestria Girls. Are you familiar with that?” I nodded. “She will find it,” she assured me. “I have faith in her. I have faith in all of you.”

I wondered if her faith was misplaced.

“...do you really think we can win?”

“I do. When Discord sent us here he divided us up. When we return, we will attack as one! Our people’s true strength comes when we are in harmony. United we cannot fail.”

This sounded like Carrot Top’s plan to me. Just hopefully more thought out.

“We’ll just… charge?”

“I am sure it will be more complicated than that. There is much more wrong with Equestria now than simply Discord’s rule. From piecing together nightmares of the last days and my own knowledge, Tartarus has been unleashed: my own guards were sacrificed to a creature from the depths of Tartarus to free it. Sister has speculated the volcanic hole Discord cast her into was the way the creature escaped.”

”Wait, ‘Sister’? ...is Princess Celestia alive?!” I asked as I sat down to take in all this information. I nearly woke up from the implicit meaning of the sentence: the dream world around us dimmed and shook and only Luna’s brushing hoof grounded me.

“She lives as much as you and I: do not believe everything you see on the television,” the blue cartoon alicorn said with a mischievous grin.

On one hoof the horrible stone and ash monsters from my pony memory finally had an origin: they were essentially creatures from hell. On the other, we had both Princess Luna and Princess Celestia on our side now and Rainbow Dash could still perform her Sonic Rainboom. If Twilight Sparkle was still as amazing as Dash, who knew what she was still capable of.

“Maybe we can win,” I said, starting to believe. Princess Luna bowed in agreement.

“Princess Celestia and I are discussing what may come after. Equestria may be deeply in need of repair with all that we know and yet there are many ponies still lost in this world. We may also need her more diplomatic touch to guarantee their safety. It is possible we shall both help reclaim Equestria and then return here. Or she may go and I shall stay. Until every last pony is safe and where they want to be, our job between worlds won’t be done.”

“But… we need you, don’t we? You’re going to just… leave us there alone? Would Equestria even work without you? Who will move the sun and the moon? What if everything is dead?”

“Earth ponies can regrow and rebuild, pegasi shall restore weather and the seasons and the unicorns will reestablish order and civilization. I have faith in you and if you believe in each other I do not think there is anything the three tribes can not accomplish,” Princess Luna assured me. “If Equestria needs more care than we imagine, then what Princess Celestia hopes to accomplish here may grant our ponies asylum here until Equestria is viable again.”

I imagined a desolate post-apocalypse world stuck in perpetual twilight ravaged by decades of neglect: plant life dead and horrible creatures from hell roaming the country-side. Was that Equestria? Did it even exist still if it was so different?

Did we?

My conversation with Carrot Top on her porch came back to me. These were all my fears confirmed possible. The task ahead seemed insurmountable. Even if we could stop a mad god and restore a dead world, would it be worth the effort and ponies we may lose along the way?

“...should we even go back then? Is Equestria still our home? Even If we don’t really remember it? ...where is home then?” I asked her the questions I asked Carrot Top. I found myself wrapped up in her feathery embrace. The world of thoughts outside grew quiet and all I could hear was her when she answered.

“I believe, Berryshine, our home is our family and family is the people we yearn to be with. We will rebuild ‘home’ together from the pieces of our human and pony lives - no matter where that is. Things will never be what they once were but that is okay: that does not mean we cannot return home. For we yearn to be together again and we can have that there or here: our relationships are what we will rebuild. No matter where that is: that will be home.”

“...’home is where the heart is’,” I summarized happily.

“Precisely!” the dream princess nodded in encouragement.

I thought about the filly still in my hooves in the waking world. I thought about having a life with my friends and my daughter. I thought about the odd dream Princess Luna found me in. I wondered if that was a memory or just something I made up. Either way, I imagined a house but the house itself wasn’t the important part: it was the ponies in it.

On reflection, I felt my stomach again, the phantom sensation of being pregnant still fresh in my mind.

My barrel was back to normal though, or at least, as normal as it was now: my new scars were still there even in my dreams. I frowned as I tried to brush my coat in a way that the bare spots around my middle were covered. They stayed.

“Ah. Would you like to talk about those?” she offered. I didn’t know what there was to say. I stopped playing with my coat. The marks from where that timberwolf held me in its teeth were just a feature of mine now. As were the mess of scars along my legs or the wide claw marks down my back.

“They’re nothing. Just scars,” I claimed, even while I wondered why I saw them here.

“I think your stars look fine,” the night princess stated. I looked down at my pocked coat to see if it had changed somehow. It hadn’t. I looked up at her majesty in confusion.

“... you mean ‘scars’?”

“Are they not your stars?” Princess Luna suggested before she touched my chest with an adorned hoof. “Are these spots upon your barrel not the stars that guide you? Just as much as the lines upon your legs are constellations that tell a story? Or the stripes upon your back the arms to a galaxy one looks upon with wonder?”

I looked at my ‘stars’ again: a little differently this time. Even if it was just to make me feel better I appreciated the metaphor at least.

“‘Stars’, huh?” I repeated. I glanced at the stripes upon my back before turning back to Princess Luna. “Thank you. I’ll… try to keep that in mind.”

She bowed to me then looked up at the black sea above us. It began filling in with countless stars before she spoke again.

“The names we refer to things by are powerful: it affects how we see them and eventually how they see themselves. ...Names are much like titles that way: princess, mother, daughter, friend; pony names even more so. When we name children, or on occasion rename ourselves, it represents the hopes and aspirations we wish to instill: a destiny.” The princess looked at her stars for a moment before finishing with “...I feel like I have always been an angry, misunderstood loner but… I vow I shall do my best to be worthy of being called ‘Princess Luna’, Berryshine.”

I looked at this blue alicorn and understood what she was saying was for herself as well as me. Ironically though, she ended it by reminding me of the most awkward part of our interactions and now that the topic of names was broached, I think I had to make this whole thing even more awkward.

“...my name is Berry Punch,” I corrected her after a long pause. She continued looking at the stars a little longer before she quickly turned back to me.

“I apologize, Berryshine: did you say something?” She asked before turning back to the sky. “I am… very tired. I was distracted with my stars: I believe I have them just right.”

I was surprised and a little disappointed she didn’t hear me and started thinking maybe the talk about names was deliberate. Wondering if she was leading the conversation somewhere I looked up at the stars in our dream sky to see what she was looking at.

She said she had them ‘just right’ so I started looking for the tell-tale constellations I knew. I traced over the sky several times trying to make out The Little Dipper, Orion or Taurus.

I couldn’t find them. None of the brighter stars stood out in any recognizable pattern. At first I wondered if maybe this was the Southern Hemisphere and then had a different realization.

“Are these the stars in Equestria?”

“They are,” she confirmed.

“You remember them?”

“I believe so. I used to bring out the stars. If you do something a million times it becomes less a memory and more of a part of you.”

I looked in awe at the new night sky, which is to say, my old night sky, forgetting all about the name issue for a moment.

“Comet Tail would love this; he’s an astronomy teacher,” I informed the princess.

“I will be sure to share it with him then,” she promised. After another moment of appreciation she spoke again. “Did Comet Tail ever tell you why the stars shine?”

“Um... ‘the stars are masses of incandescent gas; they’re giant nuclear furnaces: where hydrogen is built into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees’?”

Princess Luna gave my answer an amused smile.

“That is how they shine. I asked why they shine,” Princess Luna gently corrected me. I gave it some more thought.

‘Why’? Stars don’t have reasons for why they shine. That would imply they have a will or something; stars aren’t alive. Then it hit me it must be a metaphor. I turned back to my princess.

“Why?”

“They have all that unfathomable mass and power and yet they burn it. The stars shine out into the dark to let each other know they are not alone. Even though they will never touch or meet, they burn for each other so that others may not be left in the dark thinking they are alone. It is that self-less gift of their warmth and light that fills the universe, that is felt even long after they’re gone, that allows life to also thrive on cooling rock. ...and that is beautiful. That is why the stars shine. Do you understand, Berryshine?”

I understood now and I nodded, smiling.

I stared up at the stars and couldn't help but feel like they were staring back at me now. I couldn’t see the ground anymore, my vision swallowed up by the stars. I felt the horizon wrap its wings around me.

“I must go now, Berryshine. I have many more dreams to visit,” Princess Luna told me. I wanted to ask her if the stars would stay after she left but I remembered I didn’t have to see them to know they were there. “Always remember why you shine.”

“Mom? ...Mom!” came a hushed whisper. The little body between my hooves wiggled.

“Ruby?” I mumbled awake. There was a faint blue light blanketing the world outside. It wasn’t quite sunrise but an hour or so before: twilight. Ruby shifted onto her stomach. I was going to go back to bed but a soft white glow grew in my face. It was coming from my daughter’s horn.

“Princess Luna visited me in a dream! She taught me more about magic and showed me where the mane six are,” my little gem sparkled in her horn light. I couldn’t help but smile at those beautiful eyes. The light dropped as she studied my reaction. “Mom, did you hear me? She told me where the mane six are! We’re super close!”

“I know. She told me too,” I told her and brushed some of her messy mane with a fetlock. Ruby looked extra excited at my admission and climbed over me. I ‘oofed’ as she stepped on my stomach a little to get over. She landed with a small clop onto the floor behind me and it sounded like she started fussing with the bags.

After a moment of just lying there and enjoying the sounds from behind me I pieced together that Ruby dug out her brush and was brushing her mane and tail out. It was easy to imagine she was getting ready for school and I started drifting back to sleep with that happy mental image before being nudged back awake.

“Mom! The mane six! They’re waiting for us!” she told me. I suppose they were. Although not specifically ’us’ they were ponies who apparently volunteered to take us all in. They would help us. Their place would be where our friends would meet us. Maybe our friends would even beat us there.

That thought, and Ruby’s excitement, got me out of bed. I rolled over and climbed off onto four heavy hooves. My legs were stiff but not painful. I had a mild headache and I was thirsty.

I figured once I got moving I’d be fine.

Ruby had already started repacking our bags. As soon as I got up she pulled the dress off the bed and stuffed it back into her bag. We got the bags back onto me and Ruby put her pocket watch back on around her neck.

“What time you got, Pinchy?” I asked her as I steadied myself for the road ahead. She looked at her watch for me.

“About 5:27,” she read off. That was actually probably about right.

Without anything holding us back, we left the cabin and started heading towards sunrise. We didn’t even look back. We were both excited about what laid over the horizon.

The sacrifice Luna speaks of is a reference to her final moments as portrayed in Lunar Phases but isn't incompatible with some other portrayals of her.

I believe said guards in Lunar Phases and in this fic are intended to be "Shadow Slash" and "Fireball" from the now-deleted story "Experiencing the Dusk" by Buckshot2825. If you wish to read about their adventure, you can still find it on fimfetch.net.