Tense silence ruled the room as Danielle stared at Amaryllis. Amaryllis looked at the lamp that had just been thrown at her. Thiemo was focused on the panicked face of his sister, not knowing how he should react. The only one who was not anxious and probably wished to have some popcorn was Lyra. She sat in her armchair and observed the events with a small yet malicious grin. If she was a foal, this would be the moment where she ran around the princess and sang, “My first contact went better than yours, so there!” And after all that she had to go through because of her and her human, she had more than earned such a moment.

If someone didn’t know what to look for, they would have missed the subtle movements. The young red-haired woman felt behind her with her left hand for another object that she could throw. It found the cushion that her head had rested on, and with a defiant shout that tore through the silence, she flung it after Amaryllis and brought the room to life.

Everything happened all at once. Thiemo stretched his hand while his totem started to shine in a bright blue, and a small block of ice banged into the cushion, whereupon both went down. The changeling princess, who had not counted on the intervention of her lover, flung the lamp aside and prepared herself to intercept the next object that would never come. With a loud clink, the lamp perished in the fireplace, as the cover and the funny clear crystal in it shattered into a thousand pieces. While Thiemo's head moved in surprise to the source of the sound, his sister jumped up and pulled her brother behind the sofa before she overturned it, scratching the old smooth wood.

Lyra listened in as Danielle started to spit words at her brother. He tried to get in a word or two in English, as did Amaryllis, to no avail. Finally, Thiemo decided to get up off the floor and above the sofa, which his sister was not about to allow. With both hands, she grabbed him by the hip and pulled him back to the ground behind the impromptu cover.

“What’s going on here?” And then it became quiet again. All heads turned to the entrance where a small orange foal had entered the room and stared in shock at what had happened. Amaryllis, probably because of the fear that the angry woman would throw something once more, wanted to position herself in front of Auralia. However, she didn’t keep Danielle in her site. Another loud roar sounded and, before the large ebony mare could react, the human rammed against her side and roared something to the foal.

Thiemo, released from his sister’s death grip, came out from behind the sofa and pushed it aside without any trouble. “And you couldn’t have stopped them?” he asked Lyra, who only grinned innocently and shook her head easily, her look not turning away from the wrangling on the carpeted floor. She twitched a little as one of Amaryllis’ hooves bored into Danielle’s stomach as she tried to get away. However, she showed an unbelievable perseverance as she kept her grip around Amaryllis even tighter. She didn't understand much English yet, and most of the time they talked too fast for her, but she believed Danielle yelled something about calves that could kick harder.

The obviously confused Auralia walked around the flailing limbs and was lifted silently by her father into his arms. “Why is Amaryllis fighting with that human?” she asked as Thiemo stroked her mane.

“Apparently my sister has something against changelings. The question is: how does she know Amy is one?” Lyra felt the look of the human on her neck and turned away her gaze, finally, from the events.

“What? No, I didn’t tell her anything! We’ve hardly changed three words.”

“That’s my aunt?” Aura asked excitedly. “I wanna take part!”

Auralia grinned, jumped out of Thiemo’s arms, and there were three beings rolling on the ground a few seconds later. Aura had locked jaws on Danielle’s pants as she tried to pull her aunt away from Thiemo’s marefriend, but Danielle held up her leg one moment later. It didn’t matter how strong the little foal was – without ground below her hooves, it was of no use. Lyra giggled.

There was perhaps nobody on this planet, or on Albion, who better understood what it was to have brothers and sisters than Amaryllis. At least if quantity over quality was valid. She might have left a lot of her brothers and sisters behind with her mother, but maybe she was glad she didn’t have to see some of them again. Changelings were generally, regarding their personalities at least, as different as the shapes they could take. Thus, some of her brothers and sister were gentler than some ponies she had known in her time outside the hive, while others could be rough and aggressive. However, they were a rather charming bunch, all in all.

Amaryllis also had an idea of the size of families that various races tended to have. With the ponies, she had learned that it generally came down to their type. Earth ponies loved big families, so that an earth pony had, on average, at least two to five brothers and sisters. Pegasi came directly afterwards – not for the love of large families, but because they were known to be very… affectionate and reluctant to leave their partners’ hooves. Hence, their family size tended to be similar. Then, before the unicorns, the thestrals and crystal ponies found themselves on this list. For unicorns, they rarely had more than two foals. This was because, if one was to believe the book from where she had read it, of the limited space that they had to live in in the past. They had themselves to blame since they kept building on mountains, at least according to the author.

Unfortunately, there were no references for humans. She had met only a few, and she only knew a little about the one she had gotten to know very well. Aforementioned family got to know Amaryllis a lot closer, as it laid on her and worked on her with fists and feet. In the beginning, it had been amusing. Even if the person on her wanted to injure her, with her present methods, she could also have tried to eat soup with a fork. But slowly, very slowly, it had stopped being amusing. The blows to her snout were coming more and more often, and the knee drilling in her stomach persisted. Now the pressing question was: how much did her lover value his sister?

Amaryllis shook her head and exiled the thought, as well as it could be done while lying on her back and holding her hooves in front of her face for protection. It also became apparent to her that Auralia had rushed into the fight, even if she had little success. The foal doggedly hung onto Danielle’s trousers and swung in the air. As strong as the small earth pony was, without any ground under her hooves, she couldn’t do much. What Amaryllis didn't like at all was that, if Danielle kicked out the wrong way, she could hurt the foal.

She pondered shortly what she knew from Thiemo about the use of magic, with what she knew about how much he loved the foal against what she knew about how much he loved his sister. After only a blink of an eye, her horn woke to life. With a little effort, she moved Danielle away from her and separated Auralia from her pants. Amaryllis flinched as the human, caught in her magic, suddenly screamed as if branded with a hot iron. With wide eyes and flat ears, the observed princess how Danielle arched and twisted, her fingers boring into every part of her body that they could get a hold on.

“Amy!” Thiemo’s shout made her magic fall silent, and Auralia as well as Danielle fell to ground. “What did you do?”

“N-Nothing! I only wanted to move her from me before she hurt Auralia.” In a great hurry, the mare brought herself again to her hooves and looked down at Thiemo. He was already bent over his sister, his ear to her mouth.

"Lyra," he spoke to the mare on the armchair without looking up. “Do you have any idea what just happened?”

“I would almost say a magic attack. Foals get them more frequently, though even such a thing can happen to coached and well-qualified unicorns if they lose control of their magic. The magic flows unhindered through their horn and can be very painful, and if it isn’t stopped soon, can even be fatal for a foal.”

“What does one do when that happens?” The panic in Thiemo’s voice was obvious. His hands trembled as he tried to find something they could do to help.

“As soon as the attack is interrupted, bed rest is the best medicine. At least, that was what my mom did when my sister and I were younger.”

Amaryllis looked down on Danielle. She breathed more quietly, and her features did not seem so pained. “Thiemo, I did not know… I didn’t think this would happen.” To feel the panic in her lover made her feel even worse. “I just wanted to levitate her down, really.”

“Is she okay?” Auralia asked and prodded one of Danielle’s hands with her snout. “I didn’t hurt her, right?”

“Nobody did,” Thiemo muttered. “At least not on purpose. We didn’t know she would react to magic like that. I think it might be best if I carry her to her room since I doubt she’s going to be waking up soon. Plus it might be better if she didn’t wake up to aliens underfoot.” He met her gaze. “Sorry.”

Amaryllis shook her head. “No, I understand what you mean.”

Carefully, Thiemo brought an arm under the shoulders of his sister, the other under her knees as he lifted. “You all should stay here. I’ll be back soon.” Everyone stared at him as he carried the unconscious human from the wrecked sitting room and disappeared up the stairs.

“I really had no idea,” Amy explained to Lyra and Auralia once more. “How could I? Though Thiemo told me sometimes about something similar, but that was when Zarni trained him.”

The filly cuddled up to one of her forelegs. “Dad says nobody was guilty.” Amaryllis forced a smile on her lips and nodded. Though the words of the foal did not help her feel better about the incident, at least one of them would be satisfied.

Taking two steps at once, Thiemo reached the second floor of the villa and looked down at his sister. When she had screamed and kneeled over in agony, he had almost gone after Amaryllis. For one moment, he had subconsciously thought that his marefriend had hurt his sister on purpose. Amaryllis’ face and the terror on it afterwards had proven otherwise, of course, but nevertheless, for a moment he had doubted. Certainly, they had known each other for little less than a year, but he believed he knew her better. Or maybe he had felt that way because his sister had been in danger.

Thiemo renewed his clutch around the person in his arms. “Either I’ve become stronger, or you’ve lost a lot of weight. I’ll go with the first one.” He had hoped that his words would have woken her and provoked an answer, but Danielle remained motionless. This brought him to another thought, namely the sofa and how light it had been to move, just like the fridge. Thiemo briefly paused.

"Eh, well, that is..." he mumbled to himself and thanked again his guardian angel that Albion and Earth were so much alike.

The next brief stop came when he reached the door to the guest lodgings. Because his empire was in the uppermost floor of the house, there were not too many possibilities of where his sister could have lodged. And because this room had already contained a very comfortable double bed in the past, he strongly doubted she had gone to the trouble of moving into another room. Besides, the window was aimed to the north, so that one was not disturbed, without closed curtains, too early by the sun

With a foot, he pressed down on the door handle and fell forwards into the room. To his satisfaction, he saw his assumption was right. Though she had exchanged the dull white wallpaper for a pale pink one with a pattern, the old four-poster from a prehistoric time still stood in the same place. Carefully, he placed his sister on the bed and shifted one of the cushions under her head. It was also a pink cushion, with a motif on it.

“Is that...? Should that...?” Thiemo slowly looked up and around the room. The space itself was nothing special. Directly beside the entrance was a desk together with a printer and a phone. On one side of the room was a large, four door wardrobe with mirrors. On the next wall was the window and under it the heater. “Why the fuck is there a plushie that looks like Fluttershy?”

Thiemo went over to the desk and lifted the, in his opinion, rather large toy in his hand. It did not really resemble the yellow mare he had gotten to know. Certainly, the mane and the cutie mark were similar, but the whole facial structure, with eyes almost as large as the head, made it seem that someone had made a caricature of Fluttershy. In addition, the mare appeared, at least in this small size, rather bloated, particularly with the tree stump-like things that acted as legs and hooves. The legs of a pony were actually the thinnest part. No, this was not Fluttershy, who could be seen as a model, but rather a cartoon figure.

He put the plushie back where it had been and looked at what his sister had stuck to the large mirror. It was a poster, a pink poster that contained some familiar colours. At the center of the poster stood a pony, a lavender-coloured pony with a darker purple mane, with lighter stripes running through it. On the forehead was a horn, though there was nothing at her sides. It, just as the plushy, was a cartoon figure. The eyes were huge, the remaining features basic and diminished. Twilight Sparkle looked more like a dog than a pony on the poster. The only signs that she even belonged to the equine family were the simple hooves and mane. Round them stood her five friends. Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and also Fluttershy had not fared better than Twilight. Thiemo was more at loss for words regarding the shape standing behind them. It had lasted a moment, but then he understood that it should be Celestia. He had met the ruthless alicorn face to face and felt her presence, and that there on the poster was not Celestia. As much he detested her actions that had caused the suffering of so many, this picture was insulting to the charisma that she had. Her mane, of an ethereal light of the colour and splendour of Aurora Borealis, had been done an injustice by being reduced to three basic colours. Her complete stature was bulkier and generally had none of the elegance that she radiated.

Thiemo shook his head and brought his concentration on a larger problem. Where the hell had the poster come from? The plushy and the pillow under the head of his sleeping sister had the same theme like the poster.

“Eris, if this is some sort of joke, you’ve gone too far this time.” Thiemo expected to hear a laughter that would be followed by the snap of a talon that would cause everything around him to dissolve, making him realize that he had carried a raccoon to bed or something similar. All he got, aside from the steady breathing from his sister, was silence. He changed to his magic view, almost overcome by the pure emptiness that surrounded him. The plushy was exactly as it seemed. Nothing. No magic, no magical construct. It was just a plushy. The only magic in his direct view was his hand. This time he threw the Fluttershy plushy through the room and threw up his hands.

"What's the hell is going on here?!" He paced for a while then stopped. His view of his sister had brightened up in the darkness. He was quite sure to himself that this had not been the case before. He tried to think back. Had he looked at his sister with his magic view before the incident? With the best will in the world, he could not remember. And far more important was that it definitely wasn't Amaryllis' magic flowing through her body. It was red, red like blood and garish. "Okay, one thing after the other." As his sister didn't seem to be ill otherwise, the cartoon figures were the bigger problem.

Danielle was a fan, at least if one went by the poster and toys. Any fan that had already spent money on a plushie must have DVDs of the series, cartoon, or the film somewhere. Thiemo extinguished his magical view and sat down in the chair at the desk. He considered a moment, then he started to search the drawers. This was the likely place where DVDs would be stowed away, as she didn’t have any shelves for them

However, the first drawer contained only paper pads and ballpoint pens with logos of several pharmaceutical companies. The second, he closed just as fast as he had opened it. Next to an emergency package of sanitary pads was a phallus-shaped object that created pictures in his mind he didn't wish on his worst enemy. For a short moment, he pondered whether he should put a sticky note on the drawer, telling her that she should buy a bedside table. The third drawer was filled with the paper wrappings for sweets, hair scrunchies, old batteries, loose change, and dust. The last was quite empty. No DVDs, which left open only one possibility.

Thiemo opened the lid of the laptop and waited for the operating system to load. “Technology really has progressed,” he murmured to himself as he checked underneath for the specs. A sound brought his look again on the screen where it showed him that a password was required. “Anyway, Bill's boys don't seem to have improved.” A fast combination of keys later, and the desktop was visible. "Well, it's not Microsoft’s fault that most people forget to add an administrator password." A notification from the operating system told him that the Notebook had a touch screen and he instantly went to work. First he started the browser, but because he wasn't logged in, the browser created a new profile and denied him access to Danielle’s browsing history. "Would have been too easy."

A quick press on the system key and a certain letter opened the search window. Again the curious human thought for a second before he typed the word ‘pony’, followed by a star, and pressed Enter with his forefinger. He loved the noise the keys made under his fingers. It was one of the things he had really missed.

The search would take a moment, and thus he turned again to the browser which was still open in the background. He tapped on the search symbol in the bookmark strip and waited a few seconds, only to get an error message that he would not be connected to the Internet. A short look showed him that he was not connected to a network. Only one was visible at the moment, and this was protected with a password. That would usually be on the back of the router, but that device could be practically anywhere in the house. There were, on every floor, at least three telephones.

A tone sounded once more that indicated to Thiemo that the search was finished. He tapped back into the other window and saw that he had apparently been more success. “~My Little Pony? Friendship is Magic?~” He read the title of the folder that had at least fifty files in them. Curiosity drove his fingers, and with another tap on the monitor, the video opened. A bright tone played, clouds came into the picture, and then a balloon. A balloon in the air from which Twilight Sparkle in a basket advanced.

~My little pony, my little pony. Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh... ~

Thiemo closed the laptop with such force that he initially thought that he had damaged it. This could not be. In a rush, he rose from the chair, grabbed the laptop under his arm and hurried out the room. He almost fell to his back as he reached the threshold and looked back. The plug was still connected to the printer. He tore the plugs from the laptop and hurried through the hall, taking the stairs with a few jumps, and going back into the sitting room.

“Amy! Lyra!” he shouted as he gasped for air. His marefriend had positioned herself on the sofa and seemed to have had a conversation with Lyra. Auralia was not in sight, and the door to the terrace was open, which left little doubt as to where his daughter had disappeared. “Lyra, I think I must apologize to you. I think I found the reason from where my sister knew Amy from.” Both stared at him with large eyes. “Hold on!” Thiemo went over to the television and started to look for a cable. He pulled the HDMI cable from under the TV where it had always been and plugged it into the laptop before he opened the device again. To his relief, the screen was not damaged and the operating system only asked once more for a password.

“What do you have there? Is this a device that recognizes changelings?” Lyra asked, seeing, thanks to her position, at least some of what he was doing.

“No, this is a human computer. Perhaps it’s not as grand as the one in the Crystal Empire, but this is more handy and able to do more things. No, that isn't the reason. It’s the data on this thing." He tapped the screen a few times and told the machine, if it would be so kind, to duplicate the screen on the second monitor. Thiemo’s hand grabbed the television’s remote and switched it on, allowing the laptop’s screen to be duplicated there.

He tapped the file once more and increased the player to full size, then went over to the sofa and sat down next to Amaryllis. “Okay, look at this.” His words mixed with the first tones of the melody that had just played. Both mares stared tensely at the moving picture.

“My little pony, my little pony. Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh...”

“Is that…?”

“And that has to do with this?”

“How?”

“What?”

Exactly like he had done before, both stared unbelievingly at the television and what was playing. Finally, after the end of what had to probably be the kitschiest introduction Thiemo had ever seen, a new voice came on.

“~Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…~”

Author's Notes:

Some of you seemed confused by the use of different names for Lyra in the last chapter. The thing is, why our names are "random" combination of syllables with no real meaning beside that we gave them later on, the names of the ponies are made of objects, adjectives and so on of already existing language. And since we're switching between two very different languages here, I used the "proper" English terms for their names in English. Example: Equisch: Lyra - English: Harper.
But because I'm a lazy fuck I didn't want to make up an entire new language. So I used just different English words to archive this effect. I hope that cleared that up.

So, the show is canon. There is a very good reason for that, believe me. And no, Albion is not a cartoon parallel world or the like. The ponies are related to horses and I intend to show that. Like Lyras squirting in one of the last chapters. She was exited, very much so. She didn't piss in that scene. And Thiemo knows what that was because he as experienced that with Amaryllis in the recent past.

To add some random fact, do you guys remember the first intermission? I never stated how long Thiemo was trapped inside the ruins. And that was for a good reason. He doesn't even know himself. He was in the dark sticky ruins for what? A few days to a week. Not just a few seconds. That actually the reason why I once said that he doesn't like to be alone in the dark. He has a little trauma right there.

Thanks to Verequus for translating this chapter.
Special thanks to JBL for translating and editing.