Danielle slowly awoke. Thoughts returned along with her consciousness, followed by the feeling of soft bed sheets round her. She had to fight the feeling of déjà vu, as though she had taken one nap too many. She tried to stretch but could only wince as her muscles protested her actions. She tried to remember why she was lying on her back again. There was her brother and Harper and… the shape-shifter! She yelped and jumped up quickly, though she had to quickly subside as the pain in her body convinced her of the folly of her actions.

The shape converter, it had attacked them. With magic. It had put her out of action. And somehow, a foal had appeared as well.

Shaking aside the light pain, Danielle stood up, though this was only done with the help of her hands on the bedpost. This time, at least she was in her room, which would allow her to surprise whoever had brought her here. And there were only two actual possibilities: Thiemo or the shape converter. Maybe it was also Harper.

Her look briefly wandered through the room, and the absence of her laptop and her printer from her desk immediately caught her attention. So it had been her brother, because Danielle strongly doubted that someone else would have had interest in them. Slowly, she further walked through the open door in the hall, the closer she came to the stairs, the closer the voices from down below reached her. However, it was different than before, in that it made more sense, though not completely. Not that she understood what was said, but the meaning of the words did not leave her completely clueless. If she had understood him properly, he had asked somebody about if she had done something wrong. He had gotten an answer from Harper that seemed to deny it.

Finally, she reached the sitting room and looked in. Harper still lay on the same armchair like before, only that a bowl with popcorn was placed between her hooves. Her look was fixated on the television, which explained why Harper hadn’t noticed her. The sofa had been positioned anew so that Danielle, at the entrance, now looked directly at the backs of the head of her brother and that what could only be the shape-shifter. But they did not fight or shouted at themselves. They talked and laughed.

“Wait wait wait, hold up. You want me to believe that Rarity, Rarity, rolled around in the mud to court a stallion?”

"Yep!” Harper giggled and pushed some more popcorn into her mouth. “She ran around for a few days with her father’s old straw hat on, following that stallion wherever he went. I only had to ask Bonny who he really was. Apparently, he was some self-appointed fashion expert who travelled throughout Equestria, always in search of the newest trend. But who hasn’t done something stupid when they were younger?”

“Then do feel free to regale us of tales from your youth, if it strikes your fancy, Professor,” her brother replied and threw a piece of popcorn at the unicorn.

"I will have you know that I’ve never done anything stupid in my youth as a part of Canterlot’s aristocracy. Now, perhaps, is something different. After all, I met this human whom I wanted to help from the goodness of my heart and as a result became a criminal and traitor to my country.”

“Miss Lyra!” gasped a new voice. “I believe we were cast out because of the same individual. He was the one who kidnapped me from my golden cage, dared to steal my heart, and desecrated my body. A dangerous criminal and very bad influence indeed.” The shape-shifter, or rather the changeling, leaned over to her brother and pressed her cheek against his. “I might have to take an eye for an eye.”

Danielle needed a moment to process the meaning of the spoken words, but when her brother gave the black mare next to him a kiss, she found that it was not required. Both hands rushed to her mouth in shock, and without them to prop up the door frame, her legs gave way to the weight pressing on them. Thiemo whirled around immediately when he heard her, and Harper also turned away from the television.

“~Danielle!~” In the next moment, her brother was beside her and reached to hold under her arms. “~Everything in order?~”

With the help of her brother, she got to her legs again, and he accompanied her carefully over to the sofa. Danielle twitched once more as she saw the changeling there. “I have rested enough. She can have my place,” the voice of Harper sounded.

"Thanks," Thiemo answered briefly. The unicorn hopped down with her bowl of popcorn, and Danielle took her place.

“~Thanks,” she also said to the unicorn before her gaze fell on the television for the first time. There, without any volume, ran My Little Pony. She looked back to the sofa where the changeling sat, but instead of popcorn, she had an orange foal between her forelegs that had closed her eyes.

“~She was tired. Tried to follow the stories on the moving pictures, but she lost the battle with her eyelids,” she said. “~I really am sorry. I did not know the pain my magic would have caused. No intention, really.~”

“~It’s okay. I… overreacted. The situation was maybe a little too much all at once. Plus, I’m sure I got in one of two hits.~” Thiemo sat down again beside the dark mare, and they were quiet for a few seconds. “~Also … It seems like you’ve found the show,” Danielle finally said and indicated the television.

“Oh! This is so thrilling. Thiemo just now had some theories about where humans could have gotten the idea of our existence. Maybe it was Eris, because she said she had already visited Earth and told somebody here about Albion, or maybe there was someone who was like him and found themselves on Albion but found a way back home. And these are only two of the most likely. There are so many possibilities!” Harper seemed to full energy when she spoke, the unicorn hopping up and down excitedly.

“~The chaos left stories behind?” Danielle asked. “~Can someone translate that?”

“~Erin would probably be the best translation for her name. The best description would probably be for you to think of the being that you know as Discord, only with a vagina,” he gave as a halfhearted answer. “~You understood some of what Harper said?~” Danielle nodded. “Give me the third decimal of Pi.”

“~I… don’t really understand the words. I more get the gist of the words, not the meaning. You … You wanted to know a certain number.~” for Danielle it was in such a way as if the melodies which put out this foreign language put pictures in her head which her brain could not process, however or understand, at least not completely.

Thiemo leant back and crossed his arms thoughtfully. “~When we came, you couldn’t understand a word, then you came into contact with magic, and then…” His head fell back, and a sigh escaped Thiemo’s lips. “~This doesn’t make any sense!”

“You can understand me? This is great! We can talk to each other, and you can tell me more about humanity. I could study you; I would be able…” Danielle did not want to interrupt the spirited Harper who sat beside her on the ground, but all she knew for now was that she wanted to understand everything about them. “We can draw comparisons of our cultures, our languages, our development and origin. We could finally make anthropology an approved science with a basis! “

Danielle pointed a finger at Lyra and turned once more to her brother. “~I take it she likes humans?” The rolling of his eyes told her all that she needed to know. Almost. “~Also … Is the show accurate? I mean, does Equestria look like that?”

Thiemo laughed. "Hardly. Look at Desire, Harper, and Tumanga. They resemble the ponies in the show, just like as the name says. Their eyes are big, but that is due probably to their forefathers. However, I think that even they are a little smaller than the eyes of a horse. Their snouts are smaller to better fit their rounded head, but you can see that yourself. Albion … Albion is not so different from Earth. They have the same colours and very similar flora and fauna, now that I think about it. However, the air is substantially cleaner. I saw cows talking, wart pigs, and even buffaloes. Still haven’t heard any rabbits speak though. The ponies live and die exactly like us and—” Danielle stopped him by lifting her hand briefly.

“~That’s great and logical and everything. I mean, you’re alive. Is the dimensions of the planet very different? It cannot be to different. It would have to have almost the same mass as Earth so that the gravitation does not kill you. The fact that you don’t have any illnesses also speaks for a similar Earth microbiology, like the composition of the air and the water. But forget about that. Did you meet them?”

“~Who?~”

“~Who, the Mane Six of course?!~” Thiemo winked briefly over at the black mare whom he had called Desire, then again to her. However, an answer did not come. “~You already met them: Dusk Shine, Elusive, Butterscotch, Rainbow Flash, Bubble Berry, and Applesnack.”

“~Met might not be the right expression…” Her look darkened. Danielle knew her brother, and if he started already in such a way, he had already done something wrong. “One could say that the first meeting went as good as that of you and Desire.” Didn't she nearly brawl with the mare?

“~Timo … What did you do?”

“~Umm… Now… Joa… You know Erin… steal Elements… Defeated by ponies…” He hummed and hawed, his gaze steadily drifting away from her. “~And I almost even won.” Desire smacked him with a wing against the shoulder. “Well, not so much. And they help.”

“~Oh no, you accepted the bet,” clarified Desire.

Danielle’s feelings moved from fury to amusement as Timo started to tell the history of how he had met the heroes from her favorite show for the first time. And it was it already ironic? After her brother had landed in the world of the show, she had only started to look to deal with his loss. When the show had started, he had been missing for half a year already, and the police had put the search on hold. Then a fellow student at the university had told her, over a plate of bad chips with fatty fish, about this great new series. And now here she sat, her brother here again, two ponies at his sides, aliens who came from a world that was only a cartoon here.

“~And then I woke up in a cell, packed together with Desire here, without clothes, winter on the way and a tail growing out from my back,” Thiemo finally finished his story. To make his position clear, he produced said tail from under his coat and waved it around a little. But I’ve never seen anypony doing what Applesnack did with it in the show. I mean, it’s only hair.” From his corner of his eyes, he could see how Danielle’s eyes followed the point of his tail like a moth the light. “~Now I also have a question. Who exactly is the inventor of the series? You seem to be a fan, so I’m guessing this is something you’d already know.”

Her eyes remained on his tail for a while longer before she answered. “~Yeah, the original inventor of the series is Bonnie Zacherle. She made the first generation for Hasbro in the eighties. What was just on…” Danielle turned to the television, but this had switched off itself, just like the laptop. The latter had certainly gone out after several hours of being on without the adaptor. “~What was just on was generation four. Hasbro wanted to make a new attempt after the catastrophe that was generation three and commissioned Lauren Faust with the project. If one had to name the creator of the project, I guess it would be her. Still, she officially left after the end of the first season of the show and a heap of different authors took over the writing.”

“~Which leads to the question of where it was only this Lauren Faust on Albion or also some of these different authors…” Thiemo asked nobody in particular.

Danielle cleared the throat. “~I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but could Lauren Faust really be in Equestria or even visited? I mean, she already was involved with the people who made the Powerpuff Girls and Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. It would have been noticeable if she had disappeared for a longer period. And even if it was before her time, then the fan base certainly would have dug out the history already.” That was his sister for him, always ready to throw a spanner into his mental gears.

“~Well, if she was, it’s the best clue we have. And I want to solve this riddle. At the very least, it would mean that there really was someone who managed to find themselves back on Earth besides me, but maybe she would even know how it was that I even reached Albion in the first place.” That was something that would give Thiemo a lot of pleasure finding out.

“If someone could speak a language I could understand, that would really be great, thank you very much! Or at least speak a little slower? I can hardly keep up!” Lyra complained. That had caused her to stop taking her notes. Now that she had already said her piece, her feather was back in her mouth again as she resumed her note-taking. Thiemo decided, as he had often done in the past, to ignore her.

“~Anyhow, I’d like to have a few words with Miss Faust. Any idea where to find her?”

Danielle looked once more to her laptop next to the television. “~I would have to look, but I believe her address is now private. I think she’ll be attending some events. And in a few months, she might even be coming to Europe for the Galacon in Germany. However, I am not quite sure whether she had accepted.”

Thiemo saw over to Amy who, much like Aura had done hours earlier, fought to remain awake. A look outside showed only the darkened sky, and a look at the clock confirmed his assumption: it was too late and they too long on their legs. “~We don’t have months. We promised Desire’s parents to remain here for one month maximum.”

“~WHAT?”

“~Not so loud! You’ll wake up Tumanga. And, yes, we can stay only for a month, then we have to go back to Albion.” The face that his sister presented him did not suit him at all. “~Hey,” he said and took her hands in his. “~It’s been four years since I’ve been gone. I am dead here, but not on Albion. I have a life over there. Or at least an existence. I have a wonderful girlfriend in Desire. I have a house and became the citizen of an empire. I have my daughter and—”

“~DAUGHTER?” Danielle pulled back her hands in shock.

“~Eh? I didn’t tell you already? Tumanga is my daughter.” He indicated to the foal currently asleep between Amaryllis’ hooves. In the meantime, his marefriend had also fallen asleep. “~It’s a long story. To make things short, she is a relative of Applesnack who I found on a remote island. No idea how long she was there as a stray orphan. I took her with me and made it my job to bring her to a place she could call home. She was the reason I even went near Equestria in the first place.” Danielle looked exactly as he did: in the direction of the sleeping Auralia. “~So yeah, I’m only here to see you. Maybe also Granny and the old goat. Mother… I just wanted to let you know that I'm alive, I'm well, and so on. Actually, I wanted to send a letter—” Thiemo was interrupted by a clout around the ears.

“~After four years, you wanted to send only a letter?” Danielle hissed at him. “~I hope you weren’t being serious.”

He did have to think about his answer. “~I wanted to visit you. To have you meet them.” Thiemo nodded over to Amy and Auralia. “~I wanted to show my daughter the world from which I came from. But now she doesn’t belong to even her native country. Now the Empire is my home, and she will have family there as well.”

Danielle rose, slightly shaking, from the armchair. Thiemo wanted to help her, but she motioned him to keep still with her hand. “~I … need some time to process this. I’m gonna go lie down.” And with that, she left the sitting room.

Thiemo waited until he could not hear his sister’s footsteps anymore before he fell back onto the sofa, causing some popcorn to fall onto the ground. The only sounds in the room came from Lyra’s feather scratching over paper and the ticking of the clock. “I think I’ll go to bed too, Lyra. Will you be alright alone? You don’t look too tired.” The mare set down her feather briefly and nodded. Content with the answer and too tired and mentally exhausted to care more, he lifted his daughter carefully on his left shoulder. Then, with her safely stowed away, he took hefted Amaryllis up to his breast, her head lying on his right shoulder
“Night, Lyra,” he still wished her as he left the sitting room.

This was hardly how he had expected his first day back on Earth to be. It seemed some of his luck from Albion had followed him here. First his sister had been frightened into thinking someone had broken into her house and then had been placed in a magical coma, a kitchen had been destroyed, a sitting room had gotten redecorated, and he had had his worldview shaken to top it all off. Just when he thought he had been the first person to have disappeared from this world and yet came back afterwards, it seemed he would be proven wrong.

Lyra spat the feather from her mouth. Ink colored her lips and fur around her mouth a deep blue. “And then there are those who get all uppity that we unicorns have the audacity to use our own magic to write.” She had tried to write down everything that she had gotten of the conversation between Thiemo and his sister, as well as that what she had seen in these moving pictures on the level glass.

The people seemed to have a coarse idea of Albion as Thiemo had already explained properly. But different events were not simply right or had become so twisted that it already made no more sense. Twilight Sparkle was, at the beginning of the moving pictures not an alicorn but a unicorn, and Lyra was quite sure that Twilight had always been an alicorn. But, otherwise, everything seemed to have been right at the beginning. Applejack had her financial troubles from that time. Now she still had them today, but more from habit. Rarity was a young designer at the beginning of her career, Fluttershy the secluded hermit that no one in Ponyville knew the name of because they could never understand her soft-spoken words. Rainbow Dash’s attitude was always pretty rotten, just like Pinkie Pie. The former was, actually, the only one who hadn’t changed over the years, now that Lyra thought about it.

The only bigger change of events was the return of Eris. On the one hand, they had decided to change her gender, and to make the constant siege that Equestria had faced one day instead of weeks. Besides, she had enchanted not only Twilight and her friends, but also hidden the Elements in what she no doubt thought were clever and ironic places. She did not want to think of the invasion at all. It was run through and played down to the point where it could be told to a foal. About what had happened in the Crystal Empire, Lyra actually knew nothing at all. But she strongly doubted that a stallion, who had apparently been a shade, had done nothing but stare at them and slobber on about crystal while almost taking over the place for himself.

Lyra sighed and rolled up the paper before she stowed away it in her saddlebag behind the armchair. Then she put to herself the important question of what she should do now. Without Thiemo, none of the moving pictures would work. At that moment, her stomach offered her a solution. In addition, his argument that a little popcorn was not enough to fill her was extremely efficient. Because she did not want to live on carpet and lint, however, because maybe it was possible, she went over to the door to the garden. The only thing she saw, however, was herself as it was reflected in the glass.

“It’s so dark outdoors. Does Earth lack a moon or something?” Lyra stretched her head forwards, though she was impeded by the glass. She felt a brief twinge of embarrassment at her mistake before the door swung open, allowing her to venture outside.

Clouds were in the sky, much higher than she was used to. Of course, without pegasi to get them down or arrange the weather, it was logical that they would lie further up in the sky. Then she saw the moon. It was so much smaller than that of Albion, maybe only half the size if she guessed right. Its patterns were foreign and also the colour was rather grayish instead of white. It made it clear to the mare once more that she was on a foreign planet.

A thought shot through her head, then a question, then a recollection to herself of the answer to the question. She was one of the first aliens who had ever entered this planet, the first non-human being with similar, if not even more intelligence. Danielle had seen her first. It was the first contact with a whole planet full of humans.

She opened her mouth to return her feelings in sound when it was interrupted once more by the growling of her stomach. “It’s fine,” Lyra said to her stomach, as if it could hear here. Luckily, there was more than enough grass out here on the terrace that she could eat. It was nothing special, but it had been enough for the wild ponies who had wandered thousands and thousands of years ago on Albion, and so it would be enough for her.

Hardly had she swallowed the first bite, with a bitter aftertaste, did a renewed thought came to her. Behind her was a house. The house of a human. A house filled with marvelous mechanical miracles, all waiting to be tested and documented.

In a great hurry, Lyra chomped down as much grass into her mouth as she could and hurried back into the house. She levitated her saddlebag on her back and went to the hall. Stairs and doors everywhere and every one kept open possibilities for new technical miracles. “Come to mama!” she shouted and disappeared into the kitchen.

Author's Notes:

Yes, this part of the story, chapter 5, is about the mystery of how Thiemo was transported to Equestria in the first place.

Tumanga is really just a different name for the apple sort called Auralia. And I know I was lazy with the "English" names of the mane 6, but I was so tired after two days thinking of new one without even one sticking.

Special thanks to JBL for translating and editing.