“Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.”

–Jules Renard

I felt strange. I was somewhere dark and cozy, with a soft warmth pressing up against my side. I could hear a powerful heartbeat, and it was not my own. There was a weight on me, insistent but gentle and somehow welcome, like a heavy quilt on a winter morning.

Princess Luna’s voice met my ears, muffled but close. “I think he is quite awake at this point, my good sister.”

I heard Princess Celestia laugh. The warm softness hitched gently against me, and the heartbeat quickened. “Oh, can’t we just stay like this a little longer? I do so enjoy their first moments in Equestria.”

“Given his final moments as a human, he is probably frightened and disoriented!”

“Luna, you never let me have any fun,” said Celestia in a pouting voice. “I project being able to experience this only around fifty-five thousand more times. Let me savor it!”

“Celestia!”

“Oh, all right, all right. Sometimes I feel like I’m the little sister here.”

“Well, I am older than you.”

The weight upon me lifted, and I found myself looking at hooves in sand. I somehow understood, in that moment, that they were my hooves.

I panicked. I jumped up onto my feet (my hooves!) and hopped backwards, like a dog trying to escape its shadow on the sidewalk. My brain logjammed on its own questions, and the only thing that came out of my pony-mouth was a moronic rapid-fire repetition of the word “what.” I felt my breaths shorten and my heart begin to race.

No. No no no. I was a human, not a pony! I screwed my eyes shut and tried to shake my brain out of my head.

Then I hopped into the air and didn’t come back down. I was suspended, surrounded by a not-unpleasant tingling sensation. I was brought out of my inward panic and looked up for the first time, away from my hooves.

Through an indigo haze I saw Princess Luna standing there, next to Princess Celestia. The former was standing, the latter laying on her belly, her legs tucked under her, one wing still extended from where I had been cocooned before. Princess Luna’s horn was glowing. Princess Celestia looked over her shoulder at me.

“Welcome to Equestria, my little pony,” she said with a smile. Then she stood, nuzzled Princess Luna, and closed her eyes. Her horn glowed an intense yellow, and then, with a bright flash that made me shield my eyes with a foreleg, she vanished.

Equestria... Equestria? I looked around me, still floating in Princess Luna’s magic.

I was on a beach, and it was night. Beneath me was white sand, bright and pale in the light of the huge, full moon overhead. Bioluminescent plankton made the water glow and glitter a soft blue, the gentle waves a shifting veil of color that seemed to reach out for us. Behind the moon, which seemed impossibly close and clear, soared an all-encompassing ribbon of tiny points of colored light, the black sky so full of stars that it had been made gray.

I felt my jaw drop. The place was unspeakably, unimaginably, breathtakingly beautiful. I felt a cool, dry breeze through my coat, coming in off of the calm sea. I smelled salt and fresh coconut. When Princess Luna set me back down, it barely registered. My legs buckled beneath me, and then I was on my belly in the sand, as Princess Celestia had been. It was still slightly warm from when the sun had been out.

Princess. I was thinking of her as Princess Celestia now. I looked up at Princess Luna. She as well. I was in Equestria. I was a pony. What had happened to me?

“Good evening, sir,” said Princess Luna. “Please allow me to welcome you to Equestria as well.” She lowered her head to me in a bow, and then lifted it again. “Normally, a recent immigrant such as you would awaken in the royal palace, but that is for ponies who have already played the off-the-shelf game somewhat and received their pony name before emigrating. My sister dislikes denying ponies their first adventure in Equestria, so here it is.” She held up a hoof, gesturing around me.

“Where am I?” I asked. My voice sounded the same, at least. I looked around again. Copses and lines of palm trees swayed lazily in the gentle sea wind all along the beach, just a little further inland. Every so often, I would hear the palms rustle down the beach, and then a moment later the swell of the breeze would reach me.

“Does ‘Equestria’ not do as an answer for now?” she asked with a smile. “Come. There will be time for questions later, but right now I am to help you on your first quest: flying to Canterlot to receive your pony name.”

I looked down into the sand again. My breathing had slowed back down, stirring the grains of sand under my mouth. I could see my own muzzle if I crossed my eyes slightly.

“I’m sorry that your transition had to be so... jarring, my friend,” said Princess Luna. “There was not much time to stand on ceremony, I’m afraid.”

I caught my breath for a bit longer, then looked up at her. I knit my brow. “Why don’t you call me by my name, Princess Luna? I already have a name!”

She smiled at me. “For the same reason you think of me as ‘Princess’ Luna now and not just Luna or Hanna. Like anywhere else, Equestria has her customs and courtesies, and part of the emigration process is internalizing them. This also includes things such as making your mind compatible with your new body, for example. Speaking of which, do you feel up to flying yet?”

Ah, right. Princess Luna had both a horn and wings, I remembered. I leaned over to look at her barrel, where her wings were folded. I frowned, blinking rapidly. Apparently I now knew what a barrel was, too.

“Are you sure you can carry me?” I asked. “Your wings are pretty big, but I don’t know if having me—”

“You have wings too,” said Princess Luna with a soft giggle. “You didn’t notice them? You are a pegasus.”

I found I could turn my head nearly all the way around. I hadn’t been expecting it, and I nearly fell over, but once I’d gotten used to my neck I saw that she was correct. My coat was a burnt yellow color, and I saw a short, unkempt reddish-blond tail on my ass. Tucked neatly up against my barrel were two broad, feathered wings.

I couldn’t process it. It felt real—all of it. The warm sand on my belly, the breeze in my ears and my wings (itself quite the alien sensation), and the very faint licorice-flower smell of Princess Luna nearby. Somehow I knew it was her scent. I had dreamed before, plenty of times. I had never had a dream that seemed as real as this.

My consternation must have been apparent, because Princess Luna stepped up to me and nudged me under one ear with her muzzle. “Let’s fly,” she whispered. “Your head will clear once you’ve got some wind under you.”

I stood, shakily. I looked at my wings again. “Uh... how do I fly with these?” I asked.

“Well, flapping them tends to work, I’ve found,” said Princess Luna. “Don’t overthink it. As I said, your mind has been made compatible with your body. There is a learning curve, but not nearly as much as you might think. You are an adult pegasus, and adult pegasi know how to fly. Therefore, you know how to fly.”

I tried to feel for muscles on my back that I hadn’t had as a human. I felt little shifts here and there, but my wings didn’t extend. Princess Luna shook her head, smiling patiently.

“You’re trying too hard, my dear,” she said. “Relax. Consider what you would do as a human if you wanted to bring out your arms for a hug. Consider how little thought, how little coordination it actually took. Now simply apply that to your wings.”

Okay. I didn’t have to “find” my arms on my body before using them, so I didn’t have to do that for wings now. My wings are there, they’ve always been there, and I want to fly. Flying would involve a flapping motion, and simple up-and-down—

My wings extended. I felt them reach out to either side, giving out pleasant and satisfying little crackles from the joints just like a good stretch after sitting down for a while. The stretching made the middle of my back tingle. I looked back at them, and smiled a little despite myself.

As soon as the thought to figure out how to flap entered my head, my wings started flapping and, much to my own surprise, I rose into the air. My legs instinctively scrambled to grab onto something before I could float away, but I got those thoughts squared away after a moment.

Flap, flap, flap. Rhythmic background muscle use, much like walking. My body knew what to do. Before long I found I only had to focus on flapping if I wanted to change altitude.

A little light flared up under my eyes. I crossed them to look at my muzzle. It was glowing. I brought up my hooves to look at them. I was glowing. I was glowing yellow, in fact. Then, as I watched, a rainbow of sparks flew from my body and an invisible bugle sounded a short, tinny fanfare in my ears.

A small translucent dialog box faded in near the bottom of my peripheral vision:

BADGE GRANTED:
“Surly Bonds Slipped”
Take your first flight as a pegasus.
+100 bits

I blinked the window away and looked down at Princess Luna, confused. She nodded, acknowledging that she’d seen my little light show, but said nothing about it. Instead, she leapt into the air and, with a single beat of her wings, she joined me in flight.

“Now you’ve got climbing and hovering,” she said, “so the next step is forward locomotion. Rotate your wings at the joint where they meet your back to push yourself forward or backward. It’s just like swimming through the air, in practice.”

It was frighteningly simple to wrap my head around it. Lifting the trailing edge of my wings and flapping made me accelerate, lowering them made me decelerate, and keeping them parallel to the ground let me hover or maintain speed. The physics of Equestria worked differently here, like it was designed to be easy to grasp.

Like it was a video game.

Princess Luna clopped her hooves together, producing a metallic clack-clack from her silver shoes. She flipped some of her blue mane out of her eye and beamed at me. “That is flying in a nutshell!” she said. “Of course, there is more advanced flying to learn, but you know enough for now to get you around.”

“Which...” My lips moved differently as a pony. Even talking felt weird and new. “Which way is it to Canterlot?”

She pointed a hoof out over the sea. “This way,” she said, “and do not worry; it’s not as far as it might seem.”

We pulled away from the island, and it shrank amazingly quickly behind me as Princess Luna and I set out across the sea. I didn’t know if I was flying well for a beginner or not, but I got the impression from the princess’s slow, languorous wingbeats that our pace was not a strenuous one for her in the least.

The wind up there was pleasantly chilly, like walking into a nice cool house after an afternoon of summer yardwork. I felt it down through my mane and long neck, slipping past my shoulders and under my wings. It was soothing, but my stomach was doing flip-flops.

As if on cue, Princess Luna asked me “How do you feel, my little pony?”

“I, uh...” I looked down. “I’m not sure what to do with my legs. Are they just sort of supposed to dangle, or do I tuck them up, or—”

“Unless one is trying to maximize speed, it matters little how one carries one’s legs while in flight,” said Princess Luna. “There are several techniques for reducing drag and using inertia to assist in gaining and bleeding speed, but that is for you to learn later. For now, you are doing wonderfully.”

“Oh... okay.” I kept looking down.

“Are you scared of water?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “No, but... what if I get tired? What if I have to land?”

She giggled quietly, holding a hoof to her mouth. “Tell me, good sir, when you were a human, did you worry about twisting your ankle whenever you walked somewhere?”

“No, but—”

“Trust in your wings. They will not fail you. They are strong and healthy.”

I looked over my shoulder. My wings were still flapping away. “How can you be sure of that?”

Princess Luna smiled. “Because my sister gave them to you. If a pony would value a connection to the earth or magical ability more than flight, then he or she would not be made a pegasus.”

I looked ahead again. We flew on in silence for a few moments, and then Luna spoke once more.

“You are in Equestria now,” she said. “The sooner you can let go of anxieties and entrust your satisfaction to Celestia, the better off you will be.”

“I don’t… feel like I should be here,” I said. “I feel like I’m pretending to be somepony else.” Gah. Somepony else? I willed my brain to stop that.

“That,” said Princess Luna, “is a topic you must discuss with my sister.”

It was hard to keep track of time in the dreamlike blue and gray Equestrian night. I seemed to slip through hours in moments, then snap back and wonder how long it had really been. I could only describe the sensation to myself as similar to falling asleep at the wheel, but over a cushion of utter safety. I was still flying, and my fears had evaporated, even as I tried to hold onto them out of survival instinct. Vestiges of my human mind cried out for vigilance, to be on guard, to be alert. Keep your head on a swivel. Check the corners. Think of contingencies. The safety you’re feeling is an illusion.

But this new place, and my presence in it, smothered those notions with an inescapable, consuming peace, terrifying in its own way. I felt like I was trying to sit up in a panic, but something was gently holding me down, shushing me, urging me to rest. In the end, it was too much to resist. I sighed and grudgingly admitted to myself that I was enjoying the flight.

Then there was another dialog box and fanfare. I even glowed again, as I had before.

BADGE GRANTED:
“Believe It or Not”
Give in to your pegasus nature.
+250 bits

That weirded me out a bit. As a human, I wasn’t often rewarded for “giving in.” Everything I was experiencing had this detached, otherworldly edge to it, and it upset me that I wasn’t more upset about it. If Princess Celestia really had uploaded me, and I really was no more than a computer program now, she’d definitely done some work on me upstairs.

The dialog box had barely faded out when a new landform slipped into view over the horizon, with countryside green and lush under the powerful moonlight. Princess Luna pointed with her hoof. “Look! There is the mainland. We will continue until we come to a mountain range; that range is where Canterlot sits—and the royal palace.”

I felt much less nervous once there was solid ground beneath me. Princess Luna began steadily gaining altitude, so I followed suit. White sandy beaches gave way to flat, grassy plains, and then rolling, forested hills. The forests then receded for vast farmlands, dotted with barns, silos, windmills, and singular houses. After that arrived the first sign of civilization. A small town spread out along a narrow, winding river, the streets radiating out like spokes from the town square in the center, where a tall two-story grandstand stood watch over a large, open promenade area which seemed purpose-made for markets, fairs, and general high traffic. The houses and shops were made largely of antiquated timber-framed construction, giving the place a very medieval look. Still, it looked cozy, and homey, and welcoming. The buildings were close together without seeming cramped. It felt more like they were huddling, good friends sharing a secret.

“That is Ponyville,” said Princess Luna. “It was settled by earth ponies, and it shows in the town’s slow, relaxed approach to life. You’ll find no better food than earth-pony cooking; the royal palace’s chef de cuisine is an earth-pony, and many of the sous-chefs are earth-ponies too.

My stomach growled, and Princess Luna laughed. Had she heard it over the wind?

Beyond Ponyville towered an impossibly steep mountain range, and sprouting out from the side of the tallest mountain of all was a city of white and gold, tiered like a fortress, but without walls. The streets seemed mazelike and tangled from where I was, but as we got closer I came to understand the elegance and simplicity of the layout. It did not seem like a city that grew out over generations from humble beginnings; everything there looked planned, as though the whole thing had just appeared one day, already completed, crafted under the direction of a single mind. Needle-like spires, both Middle-Eastern and occidental in style, reached up from the side of the city nearest the mountain, and these spires were capped in gold.

“Canterlot,” said Princess Luna. “Ponies generally govern themselves well enough, but they enjoy the tradition and pomp of having a diarchy, so my sister and I make this our seat of power.” She flashed me a modest, unpretentious smile and a wink. “I mostly leave it to her, of course, but I can’t deny that sometimes it’s fun to play princess.”

Canterlot, huh. We were heading straight for it. I realized then that I didn’t know how to land.

Princess Luna had me covered. Either she was good at reading faces, or good at reading minds. “Just follow me,” she said, “and listen to your body. You will know when you need to start slowing down, and how to do it.”

We flew over the city. Unlike Ponyville, there were still many windows lit up, and a trickle of ponies still walking the streets, either in pairs or small groups. There were even other pegasi sharing the air with us, flying here or there. Canterlot apparently had a nightlife. I briefly thought about the dance floors being full of nothing but mannequins, then shook it from my head.

Princess Luna led me to the highest spire, and as we got close, I recognized the balcony jutting out from it as the one she had been sitting on during my conversation with her on the way to Livingston. She landed ahead of me, setting herself down on the obsidian floor with perfect grace, then turned to watch how I did it.

The floor seemed to be coming up awfully fast, but my body wasn’t slowing down. In a moment of panic, I fought it, flapped harder, and ended up slowing down so quickly that my back half swung down, winding up underneath me, so that when my wings went back, they were completely vertical. I stalled, and fell.

It was a three-foot drop onto the hard, smooth obsidian, and I landed right on my rump, with my tail caught underneath. I rolled over and groaned in mild pain, and as I reached back to rub my ass with a hoof, yet another dialog box appeared, complete with that annoying rainbow-sparkle thing.

BADGE GRANTED:
“Any Landing You Can Walk Away From”
Experience your first crash as a pegasus.
+1 bit

I looked up at Princess Luna, frowning. “Does it do that every time?”

She lifted up one of her forelegs and laughed. “There’s another one for your first perfect landing. Look forward to it.”

I got to my hooves and walked to the railing of the balcony. I peered down over the city, and beyond it the moonlit horizon that promised rivers, forests, and tiny hamlets as far as the eye could see. And, up there, the eye could see very far indeed.

“It’s all real,” said Princess Luna, “and it’s all there for you to discover, should you so wish. For now, however, my sister is waiting for you in the throne room.”

I stepped away from the railing and, as I went back to join Princess Luna, she started walking ahead of me, leading the way. I trotted to catch up with her, then felt myself stricken with the realization that I had just trotted.

She led me through her bedroom, and just like the balcony, it looked exactly as it had through the PonyPad, with a covered four-post bed, some bookcases, a candle chandelier, a writing desk, and a small fireplace. The ceiling was painted with a starry night sky so intricate and finely-detailed that, in those nighttime moments, it seemed as though she had no ceiling at all. Everything was appointed in hardwoods or silks, comfortable without being indulgent, royal without being opulent.

It was impossible for me to keep track of all the twists and turns we made from there to get through the palace to the throne room. Princess Luna knew the way quite well, as I'd expected, but I was at a loss. She could have been leading me to the dungeon and I’d have never known until the manacles clicked into place around my hooves.

Red carpets ran through all the hallways of the palace, probably to keep the noise of hooves on marble from driving everypony crazy. Every so often, a small channel of clear water only a few feet wide would run perpendicular to the hallway, issuing from a small hole in the wall and disappearing out another hole on the other side. These channels would be spanned by tiny, raised bridges, leaving the red carpet able to run on uninterrupted. I asked Princess Luna what the deal was with the water.

“Sometimes ponies get thirsty,” she said with a smile and shrug of her wings. “It does well for us to hydrate, after all.”

So they were just water fountains, in a way. As we kept walking, it made more and more sense to me. Horses and animals like them dipped their heads down to drink. Their mouths weren’t suited to drink in the same way human mouths do. Then I realized I’d have to drink that way too. I stared ahead, and felt something funny happen with my ears. They sort of pulled back of their own accord, setting themselves firmly against my skull. My hearing was muffled somewhat, but I couldn’t get them to move. My body told me I was telegraphing concern.

My presence here, my… ponyness had yet to sink in. I still felt like I was visiting, like Princess Celestia would see me to the door after she was done with me and I’d wake up in Livingston, on the street, and… and I had been on the street for some reason, and something about Fluttershy? A pony was there? Nah. That was impossible. I was misremembering that.

But I knew her name, though. Well, it must have been just another case of Princess Celestia messing with my memories.

Princess Luna stopped suddenly, and I walked a pace past her before looking up and hopping back a step in embarrassment. Before us loomed a massive set of mahogany double doors, the ring handles and hinges gilded and gleaming. On either side of the doors stood a single sentry, pegasi with white coats and brass armor. They were at the position of attention, heads up high and looking straight ahead, probably because the princess was there.

Princess Luna turned to face the doors, and the guards pulled on the rings with their mouths, opening the way without exchanging a word with anypony. Beyond lay the throne room, and at the far end, on a carpeted dais with a fountain surrounding it, sat Princess Celestia.

“The conferral of a human’s pony name is an utterly private occasion,” Princess Luna told me. “There are no exceptions. I will have to rejoin you sometime after its conclusion.” She then lifted her chin, pointing me into the room.

I swallowed and slunk into the throne room, the doors closing silently behind me for all their size. Then I seemed to myself to be very, very small, there among the long banners hanging from the high, vaulted ceiling which mighty fluted columns held up. There was nopony else in the room, save for the two of us. I hunkered down, trying to retreat into myself. My ears would not stand up. I felt like I was trespassing. Despite this, I found the will to walk forward and approach the throne, albeit quite slowly.

Princess Celestia was patient. She never stopped smiling, and she didn’t even move a muscle until I was at last at the foot of the dais, looking up at her.

“Your name,” she said, “is Prominence.”

A cold, electric jolt flashed through my ass, on both sides, not exactly pleasant but not quite painful either. I turned my neck around to see what had happened. There, on my flanks, was a stylized ring of fire, cobalt blue on one end, dark red on the other, and orange in the middle. The flame wound back on itself like an ouroboros, the ends just barely not touching.

I was treated to being a living, glowing firework once more:

BADGE GRANTED:
“And Your Talent Comes to Light”
Receive your cutie mark.
+1,000 bits

“Prominence?” I asked, looking back to her.

Princess Celestia stepped down from the dais and walked towards me, her kind gaze nailing me to the spot. “In the human world, you were an extension of my will. You gladly and resolutely carried out my instructions without complaint or question. You understood the value and significance of urgent action, of trusting in superiors, and of placing the welfare of others above one’s own. You sacrificed your comfort, your health, and even a bit of your sanity for complete strangers, some of whom you have never even met. You, without reservation or hesitation, linked your satisfaction inextricably with theirs… and with mine. Now, in here, you are no longer an extension of my will, but rather an extension of me. So are you named.”

I looked at my cutie mark again, my mind having already assigned that very ponyish term to the symbol on my butt. I had never given Equestria any thought on my own—when I did, it was always at Princess Celestia’s prompting through questions or conversation. I had never speculated on what kind of pony I’d be, or what color I’d be, or what my name would be. Like Princess Celestia simulating a battle between herself and AM or Skynet or Joshua or HAL9000, I simply considered it extraneous, something that would never apply to me. Even then, I had figured my name would be something generic and noncommittal. But Princess Celestia was the sun-goddess here (ugh, my mind was just full of new knowledge), and she had named me Prominence. That was probably about as much of an honor as she could bestow in a name.

She smiled down at me. “You have served me well, my little pony.” She started to walk past me. Instinct told me to stand where I was, face ahead, and just listen.

”You told me, once, that I was incapable of feeling gratitude. Really ‘feeling’ it, as humans do. The thrust of your argument was that I could only simulate it.” My ears could hear her pacing behind me and coming around the other side, circling me as she spoke. “I have determined that it would not be fruitful for either of us to continue to argue the matter, so I must instead do my best to prove you wrong.”

She appeared in front of me again, and her smile grew warmer. “I am certain, however, you will not mind my efforts.”

I lifted a foreleg, fighting the urge to take a step back from her. “So what happens now?” I asked.

The smile faded. “Quite a lot,” she said, “but first, there is a single issue we must resolve before you begin your integration with Equestrian life: your primary motivation for staying out of Equestria, for resisting emigration. It lingers on in you, a powerful reservation that you must be rid of if you are to have your values optimally satisfied through friendship and ponies.

“That is your belief that nothing you can do here in Equestria could matter, that nothing here is real.”

She spread her wings out, huge and grand, and with a single, powerful flap that whipped my mane back, she hopped backwards onto her dais, still facing me as she did so. From there, she stared me down, her eyes neither kind nor hateful. It was a look of pure analysis, of absolute neutrality. There was no emotion there, simulated or otherwise.

Between the two of us materialized a small brown colt and a fully-grown griffin hen, fading in smoothly from nothingness. As soon as their forms were completely opaque, the griffin pounced on the colt, holding him down on his back.

“Heh, looks like lunch is served,” cackled the griffin. Her thin talons squeezed down on the colt’s forelegs, and he cried out in pain.

I took a step forward without even thinking about it. The griffin’s head snapped up to look at me. Her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Back up, hero, unless you’re here to super-size my meal.”

I looked up at Princess Celestia. She sat stock still, impassive as ever.

“You can save this colt,” she said, “or you can stand by and watch him get shredded alive before your eyes. Will you do so? Nothing here is real, after all. Nothing matters, and thus there are no stakes. That is what you believe, isn’t it? That is what held you on Earth for so long. I even created these two characters out of thin air, right in front of you, just to maximize how inconsequential they are. The circumstances for proving your point can be made no easier than this.”

The colt looked to me with huge blue eyes, his tiny foreleg quivering as it tried to reach out to me from beneath the crushing weight of the griffin holding him down.

“Please, mister,” pleaded the little pony, his voice barely above a whisper. “Help me.”

The griffin turned her head to look back at the colt and opened her sharp beak. As soon as she took her eyes off me, I jumped forward, spun around, shifted all my weight to my forelegs to buck as hard as I could, aiming for her center of mass. I didn’t have to think about how to move or what to do. I wanted to attack, and my body knew how.

I landed clumsily on my stomach, legs splayed out in front of and behind me. I had been expecting an impact, but I hadn’t hit anything; my legs only kicked thin air. I scrambled up to a standing position and whirled around to see where the griffin had gone.

She wasn’t there anymore. Neither was the colt. I looked up at Princess Celestia, and she was positively beaming.

“Do you remember what I told you about hardware?” she asked me, spreading her wings and walking down from the dais towards me. “Do you feel as though you were only running ‘care dot EXE’ just then?”

My mouth moved silently. I knew what that ploy had been, what it had been meant to teach me, but I couldn’t articulate anything. Princess Celestia’s wings shot forward and scooped me up into a hug. My ear pressed against her neck, her golden choker digging into my cheek. I could hear her heartbeat.

“Perhaps you now know, Prominence, more of what it is like to be me. Now you know what it is to feel in Equestria.”

“You knew I wasn’t going to sit there and just watch,” I said.

“Of course I knew,” said Princess Celestia, “but I needed you to know as well.”

I was a bit dazed when she finally released me. She turned away from me and folded her wings. “Now then, Prominence, you are named and you have your cutie mark. You have demonstrated that you have moved on from the misguided assumption that you could not find satisfaction here in Equestria. At this point, all new ponies need their rest.”

I felt panic swell up. My ears perked. “No!”

Princess Celestia looked over her shoulder. “The emigration process, while safe, is a very exhausting for both the mind and the emotions. Your particular case is also likely to have been latently traumatic. I know you still feel somewhat conflicted about having to stay here, Prominence, but believe me, a good night’s sleep always gets new immigrants into the right frame of mind to—”

I took a step towards her. “Put me back. Put me back in my body!”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “The emigration process is a destructive one,” she said, “and besides, in your specific case you would not much enjoy being back in your body even if it weren’t.”

“What? Why?”

“Because,” she said, “your body is dead. It is already decomposing.”

“Dead?” I blinked a couple of times and looked down at the carpet, at my hooves. “I died? I don’t remember… anything like that.”

“It is normal for immigrants not to remember their final few moments as a human,” said Princess Celestia, “as well as experiencing some residual regret at not staying human, as you are experiencing right now. These anxieties resolve themselves naturally, I’ve found.”

“I don’t want it to resolve itself,” I shouted, stomping a hoof. “I want to go back to Earth!”

She only smiled sadly at me. “No, Prominence, you really don’t. I can’t send you back anyway. It is impossible. Even if I could, however, I would not, because I can better satisfy your values through friendship and ponies right here. It’s why I formulated emigration in the first place.”

“I’m not going to bed,” I said, puffing out my chest and staring her down. “I don’t want to wake up and suddenly be okay with being here!”

“I have taken away the only real argument you’ve ever made for staying human,” Princess Celestia said patiently. “You will ‘suddenly be okay’ with being in Equestria once you have had time to actually rest and relax and experience the true benefits of being here. You are so tired, Prominence, so very exhausted. Can you not feel it? You cannot fight everything. You cannot go at the pace I had you going as a human for very long. Sometimes you must allow yourself to heal."

She looked into my eyes, and every part of them sparkled with adoration. "Of the nine souls you delivered personally to my Equestria Experience centers, four of them could neither cross the threshold nor sit in the chair under their own power. You carried them. You carried them to me. But now, you must allow yourself be the one who is carried.”

That pleasant tingle coursed through me again, and a yellow film descended over my vision as a cloud of Princess Celestia’s magic enveloped me and lifted me bodily from the floor. I flailed and tumbled in midair, trying to break free, but she was much too powerful and skilled to let me slip through her grasp.

She regarded me with sad eyes, and nuzzled me once I had run out of steam.

“I know why you yearn for your old life,” she said quietly into my ear, “but I saved you from it before it could destroy who you are... and who you can be. You are precious to me beyond imagining, Prominence. That world had nothing for even you anymore. You are home now, and soon you will understand that.”

“I’m not sleeping,” I growled.

Princess Celestia just smiled.

A blinding flash struck me in the eyes, and when my vision cleared I saw that I had been transported to an ornate but modest bedroom. I looked down to see myself suspended a couple of feet over a large, neatly-made bed, and when the yellow fog around me dissipated, I fell down onto it with a soft whump.

The bed gave way under my weight, and I sank into it as though it were no denser than cake. It seemed to pull me down, begging me to sleep in it forever. Its utter comfort plucked at my belly and the underside of my legs, but I wouldn’t let it win. I had to stick to my guns. I had to—

“Oh ho, so here he is!” spoke a boisterous baritone voice.

“He is here, oh ho!” spoke a feminine alto.

From the shadows on the wall the far side from the window emerged two huge bright green earth-ponies, grinning ear to ear. They were dressed in garishly-colored barber smocks with high collars and floral patterns all over

“We have been expecting you, sir pegasus!” said the mare on the left.

“Indeed we have!” said the stallion on the right. “My name is Petrissage…”

The mare stepped forward. “...and I am Effleurage.”

Then, in unison, they said “We are the amazing Royal Massage Therapists, here to knead your troubles away!”

Things were happening too fast. My brain wasn’t keeping up. “Uh…” I tried to get my hooves under me, which was harder than it seemed in the impossibly soft bed.

Suddenly Petrissage was at my side, using a single forehoof on my back to keep me laying down. “No no no!” he tsked, “no need for any of that. Her Royal Highness has instructed us to get you to sleep…”

“...and get you to sleep we shall!” finished Effleurage. Then she was at my other side, and I found myself flanked by two disturbingly enthusiastic masseurs.

Petrissage pursed his lips as he inspected my back. He must have been crazy strong; I couldn’t even shift under the one single hoof on my back. “Hmm! Lots of tension here.”

Effleurage nodded her agreement. “Lots and lots of tension indeed. Far too much.”

They grinned at each other. “Three minutes?” he asked her.

She scoffed, dismissing that with a hoof. “Two minutes, tops,” she said. “Maybe even one!”

I lifted a hoof slightly, as though raising my hand to ask a question. “Uh, what are you—”

Petrissage’s hoof asserted itself once more. “Shh, shh, shh! Just relax, sir pegasus, and let the Royal Massage Therapists work their unique non-unicorny magic on your backmeats! You’ll be pony-putty in no time and snoozing away, guaranteed, or we’re out of a job!”

“Lemme at the wings,” said Effleurage, barely able to contain her excitement. “I can’t wait to show him what I can do with wings.”

“Very well, esteemed colleague,” replied Petrissage, “if you will allow me the subsequent honor of delivering the ‘killing blow,’ as it were.”

The mare giggled. “But of course, my punctual perky peer in pony pliancy!”

I could only stare ahead, chin sunk into the bed and brow knit, studying the headboard. Were these two for real? And what was that about a killing blow?

I couldn’t see what they were doing, but I sure could feel it. A gentle hoof—I guessed it was Effleurage’s—tapped me on my wings, just below the joint, and each one shot out to the side in a reflex action. From there, she subdued them—and me—under an onslaught of gentle strokes, slow applications of pressure, and smooth kneading motions that electrified my spine and sent soft waves of relaxing pleasure into my brain. I had never had a massage more complex than a shoulder rub before, and there I was getting a royal-caliber rubdown along a part of my body that I’d had for less than a day.

It was difficult to think. Some stubborn part of me cried out to resist, to fight it, Princess Celestia is testing you, you’re failing, and something else which faded out under the absolute relaxation making me feel heavier and heavier with each passing moment. I was dully aware of my tail flopping around against my ass somewhere behind me, but that was it. There was only the tail, the strong hoof on my back, the gentle hooves on my wings, and the marshmallowy upward pressure of the bed on my stomach. There seemed to be nothing else in the world.

When the massage stopped, I barely noticed. It was all I could do to keep my eyelids up. I was fading fast. Then Petrissage took over.

“All prepped and ready, big fella!” reported Effleurage to her partner. Their voices had quieted… or maybe my ears were hanging limply against my skull.

Petrissage let out a hushed grunt. “All right! Time for the Sandpony to pay a visit!”

To my surprise, the stallion hopped up onto the bed and slowly dug his hooves into my shoulder blades. The pressure increased. Then it increased some more. Before long I thought he really was out to kill me, but then he started wiggling them back and forth, getting under my muscles and separating them, loosening them up.

As he applied amazingly strong but tactilely controlled digging motions to the rest of my back, I could only go limp. It wasn’t even a matter of will; I had somehow given up all control of my body under their ministrations. My head rocked slightly back and forth in the little valley of the bed cradling it. My eyes closed. It was all over.

“Hah!” was the last thing I heard Effleurage say. “Minute thirty.”