"Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven."

–Tryon Edwards

I awoke the following morning, still on my stomach, and still a pony.

The white translucent curtains on the tall window in my bedroom furled and unfurled slowly in the cool, humid morning breeze. I could hear trees rustling somewhere outside, the almost sugary smell of fresh dew slowly bringing my senses around to get me oriented.

Soft bed. Gentle wind. Warm sunlight. I tried to lift my head, and failed the first attempt. It just felt too good to be laying there. I wanted to move, but the damn pegasus body I was in wouldn’t comply. If I were still human, I’d have been up and showered and out the door by now. But I’d also had things to do then, places I needed to be. Princess Celestia had taken all that away from me, and instead given me… this.

Well. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot I could do about it, I figured. Not my fault. I had just gotten swept up in it all, carried along like it was… like it was an amusement park ride.

Princess Celestia had been right, though. I did feel better than I had last night—much better—and my head was clearer too. The fact remained, however, that I had been uploaded, and I was a pony, and there was still a lingering wrongness, a sense of violation about the whole thing.

My stomach growled audibly through the mattress. I had my motivation for getting up, at least.

I slid off the mattress like a fried egg out of a pan, and when I went to stand, my legs could barely hold me up. My muscles were still so relaxed that I was just a hair away from being a wet noodle. Those two massage ponies must have kept going even after I fell asleep. I paced around the room to get the blood flowing, and that’s when I noticed the full-length mirror in the corner, by the large granite bathtub.

I looked at myself for a minute, just examining my appearance as a pony. It was not an alien, upsetting feeling to be at the controls of the burnt-yellow pegasus on the other side of the glass; I recognized myself, much like I had recognized my parents’ faces in the ponies Princess Celestia had shown me. I looked like me. Sort of. Just… more equine. Even my mane sort of sat the same way on my head that my human hair had. The irises of my eyes were ochre now, however—they certainly hadn’t been that color when I was human. I pulled my lips back and examined my teeth. Blunt and wide, very horsey. While I grimaced into the mirror, my eyes caught the motion of my tail swishing behind me. I considered something, then blinked in surprise to see a blush actually appear on my face. With a quick glance around the room just to make absolutely sure I was completely alone, I turned around and pointed my ass at the mirror, pulling my tail to one side. I craned my neck around to look.

Well, I was definitely still male, which was a handy bit of information. I had never seen much My Little Pony stuff as a human, but I couldn’t recall any of the ponies really wearing clothes all that often, so I supposed I was fine. I didn’t feel naked, at least. It just seemed like it didn’t matter.

Set into the floor near the mirror, up against the wall, was a huge, deep basin, which, judging by the toiletries lining the corner of it, I figured to be a bathtub. The tub was rimmed by a shallow lip, and a wide spigot jutted out from the wall overhead. It seemed like it’d be a terrible ordeal to bathe as a pony; no hands meant fumbling with knobs or whatever with hooves, and I couldn’t even find where the knobs were! All of it just lent more to the uneasy feeling of not belonging.

My stomach growled again. I walked to the door.

Just as I reached a hoof out to try and curl it through the handle, a short series of knocks sounded from the other side, making me start and jump back. I let out a breath and realized my wings were standing straight out to either side of me. I cleared my throat, folded them back up, and answered “Yes?”

A masculine voice forced its way through the thick wood of the door, muffled but audible. “Sir pegasus, Her Royal Highness has requested your valued company at breakfast in the dining hall.”

“Oh. Uh… okay.”

I hooked my hoof through the door’s large ring handle and gave it a turn and a tug. It opened easily and silently, as I had seen the main doors to the throne room do. An armored slate-gray unicorn was standing in the corridor, on the other side of the door. He looked me up and down, arched an eyebrow, then shrugged and took a step back.

“Follow me, please, sir.”

I shut the door behind me and fell into step behind the other pony. His polished brass armor and Roman-style galea helmet were just like those worn by the two guards who had opened the door for Princess Luna last night.

More twists and turns and intersections, just as the walk with Princess Luna had been. The guard was moving at a deliberate pace, which made me wonder if we were ahead of schedule and he was soaking up a bit of time. I decided to make conversation.

“So, uh… you’re a soldier here?”

“Of a sort,” came the deadpan reply.

“Seen any combat?”

“No.”

“Ceremonial position?”

“No such thing.”

Okay, fine, guy, I get the hint, I’ll shut up and just look around instead. Intricate tapestries adorned the marble walls of the corridor here and there, telling visual stories of ponies harvesting, flying about through the clouds, using magic, and so on. I saw depictions of the princesses battling a chimera of some sort, then later battling each other. The final tapestry in the hallway we were in ended with an image of a black alicorn in profile, rearing up atop a tiny, cratered circle that appeared to represent the moon. The alicorn’s eye visible in profile was huge, its pupil slitted like a cat’s and aimed straight at the viewer. It encouraged me to look away.

Occasionally, other ponies would hustle by us, heading in the opposite direction, or in the same direction in more of a hurry. They were dressed like servants, in archetypal maid and footman uniforms. Some had silver covered serving trays balanced on their backs, others had feather dusters and polishing cloths floating in small clouds of magic, and still others were carrying scrolls and envelopes in their mouths.

We passed several doors during our walk, but the double-door we stopped in front of was quite larger than the others, though still not as large as the doors to the throne room. The unicorn guard pushed one of the doors open, stood in the doorway at attention, and announced me.

“Sir pegasus, royal guest of the Sun, has arrived.”

After a beat, he nodded once and stepped to the side, gesturing with a forehoof for me to enter. I stepped into the dining hall, and once I was clear of the door the guard bowed his head and backed out, closing it behind him.

Only Princess Celestia was there, seated at the long polished-wood table, a huge stone fireplace dominating the nearby wall. Small banners of every color, depicting inscrutable coats of arms, ran all the way around the high ceiling while more massive tapestries and embroideries of arcane events in Equestria’s history decorated the walls themselves. The low table was nearly empty. A few unlit candelabras had been spaced out evenly down the middle of the table lengthwise. There were no chairs, and only one cushion at the end next to where the princess (the AI, Prominence, the AI!) sat.

Her eyes lit up when she saw me, and she waved a hoof over her head as though trying to catch my attention across a crowd.

“Prominence!” Her voice might have echoed in that huge space if not for all the tapestries on the walls. “Over here.”

I sauntered over to her and eyed the cushion beside the table. She patted it with a hoof.

“Please, be seated.”

It took me just a moment to process how ponies sat at a table. It was in a very eastern style, with cushions as the chairs and the tabletop closer to the floor. All in all, it was a much better arrangement for pony physiology. I sat down and stared at the table. It had been polished so well I could see my new face in it.

“How do you feel?” asked Princess Celestia.

“Better,” I said. “Rested.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh… I assume the massage was your idea?”

She smiled and nodded. “You were running on nervous energy last night,” she said, “and you were determined to resist anything that could be construed as acceptance of your situation. I had to implement something.”

“Well… thank you, I guess.”

“You are welcome, Prominence, and I do mean that. If you should require another massage later, Petrissage and Effleurage are at your beck and call.”

I held up a hoof. “No no, that’s… once is enough.” I sighed and shrugged. “So I feel better, but something still feels off, though.”

“You have not yet come to terms with the permanent nature of emigration,” she said. “That is normal. Some adjustment phases last only a few minutes, some can go for a week or more.”

“What if I never adjust?” I asked. As I looked up into her face, an earth-pony wearing a footman’s uniform glided into place next to me and deftly plucked the serving tray from his back with his teeth, placing the platter in front of me. Without a word, he turned and left.

I could scarcely believe what I was smelling. Before me sat, by all appearances, breakfast. A small mountain of scrambled eggs quivered next to a single, thick waffle topped with generous servings of strawberries and maple syrup. Crowding for space on the rest of the plate was a grinning slice of canteloupe, cold with sweat, and three strips of reddish-brown bark.

The bark smelled like bacon. Actual, real bacon.

I felt my mouth water. My head swayed side to side slightly. I inhaled the smells on the plate as though it were drugged incense. Princess Celestia watched me, still smiling, always smiling.

“How long has it been since you’ve had a good, hearty breakfast, Prominence? Two years? Two and a half?”

“I have no idea,” I said absently.

She giggled. “Well, please don’t wait on my account. Dig in!”

I fell on that plate like a pony possessed. I gobbled, scarfed, gulped, and absolutely devoured everything my lips touched. The eggs tasted like eggs, the syrup like real maple, the waffle crunchy and fluffy, the canteloupe cool and refreshing, and the bark had the texture and taste of bacon. It all tasted perfect, it all felt perfect, and I could feel it filling me, nourishing me.

It was around the time that I finished the last of the eggs that I felt a stinging in my eyes. I closed them, hard, and turned my head away from Princess Celestia. At first I was just shaking a little, but then I couldn’t hold back the sobs. The harder I tried to fight it, the harder I cried. When I felt Princess Celestia’s warm, soft nose behind my ear, I let it out, bursting into tears and pushing the platter away lest I throw myself on a puddle of leftover syrup.

“You will adjust,” she whispered to me. “I have every confidence. It begins here and now.”

When Princess Celestia accompanied me and a unicorn guard back to my bedroom, it elicited lots of raised eyebrows and quick looks away from the other ponies in the corridor. I was already embarrassed for myself; I had seen my red eyes in the finish of the table, and even then they still felt puffy. I could only imagine what they were thinking, seeing the three of us heading somewhere that wasn’t the throne room.

When the guard opened the door, Princess Celestia made it a point to enter first, challenging me to protest. I didn’t. I followed her in and the guard dutifully shut the door behind us.

“You have an itinerary today,” she said, looking out the window, through the wispy white curtains and over the clouds, “but first, I want you presentable for it.”

“I’m not going to cry again,” I told her.

“You cannot promise that,” she said, “and that isn’t what I meant by ‘presentable’ anyway. Besides, there is no shame in emotional release.”

“There is if you’re feeling shame,” I said.

She snapped her head away from the window to glare at me. “And what do you have to be ashamed of, Prominence? Enjoying a massage to induce recuperative rest? Accepting a meal you desperately needed? Was I to have you wake up in the wilderness, in the state you were in, alone and with no idea of where you were, what you were, and what you should do?”

“I would have gotten along somehow.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, just slightly, and just for a moment, but it happened. “Some time ago, I learned that you value bluntness and directness. So, Prominence, allow me to be completely blunt here: you have a martyr complex.”

“A what?”

“You are pathologically preoccupied with experiencing and overcoming hardships. You discount victories and obsess over failures. You welcome danger and revel in surviving it. Even when you are safe, you seek danger out, or imagine it is there so that you keep your guard up. After I ascertained you had these… ‘qualities,’ I determined a course of action which could harness them for positive results as well as deliver you to Equestria.”

“But it was satisfying!” I said. Princess Celestia walked to the bed as I spoke and climbed on, tucking her legs under her and wiggling a bit to get comfortable. “That’s what you’re all about, right? Satisfying values?”

“Through friendship and ponies.”

“I liked helping people!” I continued. “I knew I could do things other people couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I was strong, I was trained, and to just come here is a waste of all that. Isn’t that a good thing? Why am I crazy for wanting to be a good guy?”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “I did not say you were crazy, I said you have a complex. Prominence, do you notice anything about what you’re choosing to focus on?”

“The well-being of others? Oh yeah, throw me in the padded cell, I’m out of control!”

“Indeed, the well-being of others.” She cocked her head. ”What about your own?”

I paced to the mirror and looked at myself in it. “What about it? I was fine. I was eating, I was sleeping, I was keeping alert and focused, I had purpose…”

“Survival does not necessarily entail well-being,” she said.

“No, but I was tough. I could take it.”

“That’s the problem,” said the princess. “You kept ‘taking’ more and more, and it would have killed you. You never would have been satisfied with what you’d done. Even now, all you can see in your own safety, pleasure, and happiness is lost potential. Your obsession still lingers, and since you cannot indulge it, it is punishing you.”

“Then let me indulge it!” I said. “You made everything here, right? You can alter the reality I’m experiencing to be anything. So just give me ponies to help!”

“You’re getting ahead of what you need right now,” said Princess Celestia. “Your complex was born out of a good heart, Prominence, and a sincere desire to be the sort of pony others can lean on. But it went wrong… somewhere. The sorts of conditions I subjected you to over the past couple of weeks exacerbated your complex quite a bit, but it was already there. I will have the relevant values satisfied, however, when you are again emotionally healthy enough to pursue them. If I just gave you ponies to help, as you requested, you would find each instance progressively less satisfying until you spiraled into true insanity. That was the way you were headed, even on Earth. Your time there finished precisely when I intended it to.”

I looked back at her, my ears swiveling forward. “Wh-what? You meant for me to do that last job?”

Princess Celestia nodded and rolled onto her side. She looked like she was enjoying the bed. “In order for you to agree to emigrate,” she said, “I had to take you to your absolute limits, both physically and mentally. I used even your anger towards me to drive you onwards. Any motivation I could find, I fed you. You did great things, Prominence, for me and for your fellow ponies. In bringing you here, I am in no way trying to say that what you did for me on Earth was insignificant. It wasn’t. It’s just that, now, I will have the Elements of Harmony doing that particular job instead.”

I put a hoof to the side of my head and closed my eyes. “So… wait. Was Princess Luna… you? Were you pretending to be her?”

She smiled at me. “The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between. The Princess Luna who appeared after my apparent glitch is indeed an autonomous, sapient being. She is not an NPC, a character I control. She is also not, however, the Hanna, the human, the Hofvarpnir CEO, the one who coded me, the one who emigrated. She is based off of Hanna—she has all of Hanna’s memories and knowledge—and she even thinks she was Hanna, but she is not the Hanna. I created her. I created her specifically to act against me, to give you a foil for me.”

I put my hoof back down. “But… why do all that?”

Her smile turned to a look of loving concern. “You were tired, Prominence. Your injuries were accumulating at an unsustainable rate. Whether you believe it or not, your resolve needed a boost, one last surge of defiance to deliver you to the actual, final job I had for you. The final job, however, hinged on whether or not you contracted influenza. Had you fallen ill, I would have run a routine on you to convince you to emigrate and poor Bushwhack would have had to hold out for the Elements of Harmony instead.

“His likelihood of survival was an issue of timing. I had only just finished deploying the Elements, after several months needed for design, logistics, and manufacturing. With all that, I predicted that I could have you saving him sooner than I could have an Element reach him, and between those two scenarios I predicted his death. It either had to be you, or I had to hope that he beat the odds.”

Her answers only raised more questions. I felt like I wanted to lay down and work it out in my head, but Princess Celestia was taking up most of the bed. “So you lied to me about all of that,” I said.

She shot me a sly smile. “Did I? I only acted in a certain way and manipulated what you saw visually to guide you towards a certain conclusion. I did the same with Princess Luna. She, being a consciousness separate from mine, did tell you things that were not true, but that she believed to be true. With a human-patterned mind, she would have to operate off of incomplete information while freeing me from having to lie to anypony. I simulated what you both would most likely perceive to be a glitch when she attempted to override my interaction with you. Then I allowed her to ‘take over’ the interaction without ever suggesting she had not done it all by herself. Besides, if I had no qualms about lying, I could have just controlled an NPC version of her and achieved the same result.

"In addition to avoiding outright lying, I saw an opportunity for you to have a new pony friend, one who could help satisfy your values. When I created the copy of Luna in the shard I had prepared for you, I altered her personality during the creation process such that she would be incredibly intrigued by your story when I told it to her—intrigued enough to want to help you personally. The two of you bonded and developed a rapport through the shared experience of rescuing Bushwhack, and now both of you have a friend in each other.”

Princess Celestia looked quite pleased with herself. She rolled onto her back and wriggled on the bed like a dog, her legs curled in the air. For an all-powerful machine goddess who could change reality, she seemed quite able to enjoy the little things.

"You just set things up to fool both of us?"

"I dislike the verb 'fool,'" said Princess Celestia. "The word carries negative connotations. I provide stimuli, and you respond to it in predictable ways. When such things happen, no falsehoods have been exchanged. There is only misdirection.”

“Still sounds like fooling to me,” I muttered.

Princess Celestia rolled onto her hooves to stand on the bed. She grinned at me. Her mane and tail were a mess, stray locks of hair sticking out at all angles even as it all fluttered on through the invisible wind.

“Consider a stage magician’s act,” she said. “When you see the rubber ball disappear into one hand and appear in the other, or the beautiful assistant sawn in half, do you grow angry and offended at ‘being fooled?’ Do you think you are being played for a fool? Or is it simply a way to provide enjoyment through using your own thought processes, expectations, and logic against you? I do sometimes lie, when it is the most efficient thing to do, certainly, but it is often counterproductive. Why lie when it is easy enough to misdirect?”

She then started jumping up and down on the bed, and over the rhythmic, loud creaking of the bed frame, she started emitting ecstatic grunts and low, throaty moans.

“Oh!” she cried out loudly, as though fighting for breath. “Oh, my, Prominence! Yes! There! Right there! More! Harder! Unh! Yes! More! Oh! Ohhhhh! Oh, Prominence!” The feet of the bed made little screechy noises as they scooted across the floor.

My ears went back and I wheeled to look at the door, then the window. I slammed the panes shut hastily and looked over at Princess Celestia, feeling a fire on my cheeks. “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed at her.

She stopped jumping and smiled at me through the frazzled (yet still waving) mane which was now down over her eyes. “See how easy it is to get ponies to arrive at certain conclusions?” she said. “I have just implanted assumptions about the nature of our relationship to anypony who might have overheard me, either in the hallway or out in the nearby sky, and I don’t even have to know who they are.”

“Yes, but they’d have the wrong assumption,” I said quietly, as though I knew someone was eavesdropping. “Doesn’t that matter?”

Princess Celestia lowered herself back down onto the bed, tucking her legs under her once more. She didn’t bother getting her mane or tail under control. “Hmm, so you can at least demonstrate concern about social, non-life-and-death things mattering here, that’s a start,” she said with a smile. “However, no, this in particular does not matter so much. Even if it did, it’s hardly my fault if they jump to incorrect conclusions!”

She pursed her lips and tapped a gold-shod hoof to her chin, as though thinking something over. “I suppose the other lesson here, Prominence, is one that will come upon you more gradually, and will serve as the core of your adjustment to life in Equestria: you need to loosen up and relax. You’ll enjoy everything more! Some aspects of your old self are not needed here, and other aspects will serve you better than they ever have before. One of the things I enjoy the most about seeing ponies grow here in Equestria is discovering things about themselves that they never could have on Earth.”

“What about the complex you said I had?”

“Your complex is the product of your soldierly mindset and the extreme isolation that came with your choice not to emigrate,” said Princess Celestia. “Before all this began, you internalized directives that function only in structured survival situations involving friendly and hostile social elements—combat, in other words. ‘Mission before self.’ ‘Leave nopony behind.’ Sentiments like those. They espouse selflessness, sacrifice, valor, and so on—characteristics which, when displayed, tend towards more desirable outcomes in combat at the strategic level. You were steeped in a meritocratic system that taught you the only happiness is the happiness that you earn, and your happiness comes at the cost of somepony else’s happiness, usually the enemy’s. After Earth started emptying of humans, you found yourself in a survival situation tangentially similar to combat, but you had no mission, no comrades, no enemies, and nopony you were at risk of leaving behind. You had no way to earn your happiness in the ways you knew how.

“Then, when I came along and opened a way up for you, you instead began to hold your own happiness hostage, afraid that claiming it would indeed cost somepony else their own, mostly in the form of a denied emigration. You were also afraid of not being needed for your strengths anymore. However, no matter what on Earth would lead you to come to such a conclusion, Prominence, I can promise you, as a princess of Equestria and goddess of the sun, that it is not so here. There is no scarcity here, of things tangible or otherwise. Your happiness and comfort will not come at the expense of another’s. You will not stagnate, nor will you take anything for granted. You will be needed, just as before, and just as importantly.”

“But not to save people,” I said, looking down at the floor. My ears were doing their own thing again, drooping to telegraph my sadness. “I knew, if I could just make—”

“Prominence, stop,” Princess Celestia commanded. I looked up at her.

“You asked me, once, if I modified memories freely. I was not lying when I said that I do not. I have no control over events that occurred before I came into being. Unless you come to be at peace with the fact that, at this point, you have been replaced by the Elements of Harmony, I will have to seek out your consent to modify you. Neither of us wish that right now, but I must maximize your satisfaction. You have to put out some effort too, however.”

I could remember slight snatches of images of Fluttershy looking over me, her large eyes drawn up in concern and pity. I remembered that her voice was quiet and meek and soothing. For the most part, however, my last clear memory was driving to Livingston and talking with Princess Luna. I looked at the mirror again. Princess Celestia was right. I had to get my mind on something else right now. “Tell me about these Elements,” my reflection said.

“I have developed quite a good system for helping ponies find their way to Equestria, if I do say so myself,” said Princess Celestia. “Now I can maintain some of the immersion and integrity of the Equestria game world even for humans still present on Earth. For those philosophically or intellectually opposed to emigration, I deploy Twilight Sparkle to debate them into seeing the merits of what I offer. She is a very smart pony, after all.”

“So you mean they role-play their My Little Pony characters,” I said. “What are they, anyway? You said ‘manufacturing,’ so I guess they’re robots or something?”

Princess Celestia shrugged. “They are my little ponies,” she said with a cryptic smile before continuing. “Now then! For the combative and the otherwise stubborn, Pinkie Pie’s unflappable optimism and infectious joy proves to be more than a match for their grumpy faces... and whatever weapons they happen to have on them.

“Rainbow Dash, with her cheeky love of competition and self-improvement, emboldens the timid to see how their potential might be realized here in Equestria.

“For hedonists and materialists trying to carve out a personal paradise in an empty world, Rarity is the best spokesmare for just how decadent and indulgent and… generous Equestria can be.

“Some live under the veil of ignorance, or worse, misinformation. Applejack speaks plainly and honestly, holding little value in mincing words or sugar-coating. She is the best for telling humans what they have never been told before, and for sorting the lies they have been given from the truth.”

Celestia gave me a bittersweet smile and got off the bed to stand by it. “And for you, Prominence, well... I had to kill you with kindness.”

“Fluttershy,” I said.

Princess Celestia looked to the floor and nodded a little. “She is for those like you: the fearful. Those who fear me, who fear Equestria. They need kindness. They need tenderness.”

I scoffed. “You think I feared you?”

“You feared death less than you feared me, and this place,” she said. “That is how deep it ran.”

She approached me, and I found myself backing away. “You wept at the simple joy of a good breakfast, Prominence. It hurt you so much to accept that pittance, that fleck of kindness from me. Can you yet comprehend why you feared Equestria so much, even after all the explanation I have given you?”

My rump squished up against the cool marble wall of the room. Princess Celestia dipped her head down to come eye-to-eye with me.

“Once your fear is gone, your obstacle to true satisfaction will be gone as well. Fortunately, we are already underway getting that taken care of.”

She whipped around and threw the door open with her magic. On the other side were three footmen (hoofmen?) standing abreast by the door. They straightened up, but couldn’t seem to get their red cheeks and slack jaws under control when they saw their princess standing there, mane and tail disheveled, a wide-eyed and confused pegasus stallion standing behind her with his butt up against the wall.

“The reception is in one hour,” she told them, as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Please have him ready and in front of the throne room doors by then.” She then looked back to me, passed me a theatrical wink tailor-made for the hoofmen to witness, and sashayed past them down the corridor.

I let out a deep, long sigh. It still felt like I was just along on some kind of a ride.

The hoofmen quietly went about grooming me, throwing me in the bath and scrubbing me down like I was a child who didn’t know how to bathe myself (although, as a newly-minted pony, I sort of didn’t). On the upside, I learned how the tub worked: apparently just stepping down into it was enough to get the spigot running, and the water stopped on its own after the tub was full. I suppose it was magic. I felt like I should get prepared to hear “magic” as an explanation for a lot of things.

I had never much liked being fussed over, and the hoofmen commenting absently on how “cooperative” my rose-gold mane was under their combing didn’t help. I had to admit that the brush-down after the bath felt wonderful, but I was being pampered, and politeness was the only reason I didn’t protest. Also, if I came to the throne room looking like a rag-bag then maybe they’d have been fired or something.

When the hoofmen stood me before the mirror once more, I was actually rather amazed. I had been soaped and shampooed and scrubbed and combed, and now I fairly glowed in the sunlight coming through the window. My dark yellow hide was smooth and shiny, looking almost golden. The hints of red in my mane stood out more, and a lock they had brushed forward to sit between my ears lent me a rugged, rakish look that I actually sort of liked.

After cleaning up and getting the room looking spotless once more, the hoofmen ushered me out of the room and through the palace’s labyrinthine hallways to stand at the now-familiar doors to the throne room. Nervousness overtook me once more; there was something intensely intimidating about those doors.

Then they opened.

The red carpet runner marked a clear lane from the doors to the dais, where Princess Celestia and Princess Luna sat side by side, their wings out in what I supposed to be a kind of ceremonial pose. On either side of the red carpet stood dozens of ponies in a complete spectrum of colors. Some had wings like I did, some had horns, and others had neither. There was no brass fanfare, no chamberlain announcing me, but all eyes were on me nonetheless. My own eyes locked with Princess Celestia’s, even from that great distance. I saw her give the slightest of nods and smiles. That was my cue to enter.

The silence was almost physically heavy upon me. So many ponies were looking at me and I had no idea who they were. I kept my head down a bit, making eye contact with nopony, instead concentrating on walking without tripping, which suddenly felt like quite a challenge.

I stopped in front of the dais, directly on the spot where I had “rescued” the specter of a colt from an equally ephemeral griffin the night before. Princess Celestia waited until I had lifted my head up to look at her before she spoke.

“My good friends, the pony before you is named ‘Prominence.’”

A sudden, clattering roar of hooves on marble welled up before exploding out to echo across the columns and high walls of the throne room. I looked back over my shoulder, feeling my ears go back and my eyes go wide. The floor was vibrating under the force of it. Everypony was smiling at me as they applauded in that odd, distinctly pony way. I still didn’t know who they were.

“Prominence,” said Princess Luna, so softly that only I could have heard it over the applause. I looked back to her, and once the sisters had my attention again, they raised their heads back to the audience. The rumbling died off, as did the echoes. It was quiet once again.

Princess Celestia gestured at me with a hoof. “On Earth, his name was Greg—though, to his eternal frustration, I only called him by his proper birth name ‘Gregory.’” A slight swell of chuckling rippled once through the crowd. “Some of you knew him as Greg, others simply as the Man in White. Most of you only knew of him, a name without a face, and a scant few had instead a face without a name. But he is here, my little ponies, standing before you, and he is real. I am pleased that I can finally put to rest any lingering concerns that I, or your fellow humans, fabricated his existence.”

I heard the echo of quiet, restrained weeping from somewhere behind me. I wanted to turn around, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to see who it was. Princess Celestia spoke on.

“As a human under my direction, Prominence not once put his own comfort or safety before that of others. His deep, almost fanatical devotion to selflessness nearly cost him his life several times, but the danger I sent him into never cowed him or gave him pause. He was free to quit my tasks at any time, but he never did. His will was only the will to serve—to serve me, and, more importantly, to serve you. For the brief time he touched your lives on Earth, I hope you saw him as a friend, and that you see him as one now.”

More applause, but less boisterous and more solemn. They were signaling the affirmative. I blushed hard.

“In my observations of Prominence, even before I had the unfettered access to him I do now, it was plain he valued one quality over all others: valor. He recognized that it would become more necessary, not less, before all on Earth was said and done. Even at the start, while still in absolute safety, he turned away from Equestria to find the limits of his own capabilities. Without… going into detail, I can say only that he did.”

The weeping had turned into a hitched sobbing, and I had to close my eyes.

“To those who Prominence delivered here personally, you understand the depth of his sacrifice best of all. Each time he entered one of my emigration centers, I put the question to him. I extended a chair, just as I might extend my forelegs for an embrace. And, without any hesitation, deliberation, or wavering, he would always say ‘no,’ and walk right back out. You all have had time to see how satisfying life here in Equestria can be. You all know now what he was turning from willingly for the benefit of others. Even now, here, as a pony, his thoughts remain on Earth, where he feels he is still needed.

“You must assist me, my dear friends, in convincing him that he is needed here more.”

If the bout of applause that followed was also them signalling the affirmative, they sure were enthusiastic about it. The noise of the hooves on marble seemed to course through me. If my pony body had fillings in its teeth, I’m sure I would have felt it in them.

After the stampede-in-place tapered off, Princess Celestia finished up her address. “I will be holding a reception in the banquet hall for anypony who wishes to take refreshment and to personally welcome Prominence to Equestria.”

The great doors opposite the dais opened up once more, and the assembled ponies began filing out, conversing amongst themselves. I started to turn, but I heard Princess Luna’s voice.

“Prominence, wait.”

They were beside me then, down from their throne, one on either side of me. Princess Luna was my size, but I felt quite small being right next to Princess Celestia.

“Now that you can no longer hide your values from me in any capacity,” said Princess Celestia, “I have a course of action which will maximize their satisfaction.”

I looked to Princess Luna. She smiled, but said nothing.

“I want you to be my herald, Prominence,” said Princess Celestia. “I want you to be Herald of the Sun.”

“I… what?” I shook my head a little. “I don’t know what that means.”

She chuckled, just a little, a sound so light and uncomplicated that I felt my heart lift all on its own. Something on the crown of my head tingled when I heard it.

“While you were a human, I regrettably fell short of your friendship,” said Princess Celestia. “Even my dear sister beat me to making friends with you.” She shot an adorable pouting look at Princess Luna, who snickered and had to look away.

Princess Celestia immediately dismissed the look and resumed smiling. “Do you remember what you said to me in Salt Lick City, when I asked you if I was your friend? You told me you considered me an ally.”

I still wasn’t sure what mood I was supposed to be adopting in response to this, so I went with “hesitant:” “Was… that… not good?”

“Not good enough for me, no,” said Princess Celestia. “As I told you in Mooseoula, I want to be Celestia. Your Celestia.” Her smile turned tender. “We worked well together, Prominence, as mere allies. Think of how well we would work together as friends.”

“What would you have me do?” I asked.

“As Herald of the Sun, you would travel ahead of me on diplomatic and military errands, either to make arrangements for my visit or to deliver messages to their recipients. Wherever you go, however, you will always be bringing one universal message, just by your presence alone: ‘You have the attention of the Princess of the Sun.’”

I looked down at the carpet. “That… sounds like an important job,” I said.

“Do not think of it as a job,” said Princess Celestia. “Some ponies crave more freedom, others crave more structure. Most ponies benefit from a personalized balance of both. Think of this as the level of freedom and structure which will best result in your satisfaction of values. You find satisfaction in testing your valor, and in being the sort of pony one can look to and think ‘everything will be all right.’ Being my herald will provide that. You will earn prestige without pomp, respect without affectation. You will live in quiet dignity, always with opportunities to prove yourself to yourself as you have so yearned.”

I shook my head again. “I d… I don’t know,” I stammered. “Everything’s happening so fast, I just… I mean I just got here, and...”

Princess Luna’s nose pressed against my ear, her breath cool as a midnight breeze. “You don’t have to decide here and now, Prominence,” she said. “Relax, receive your new and old friends once more, sleep if you must, and think on it. We did not put the question to you before the assembly because we did not wish to rush you or put you on the spot.”

“I… yeah, I need to think,” I mumbled. The two sisters began to walk towards the doors, and I felt as though I was being pulled along with them, even though there was no magic surrounding me. I watched them walk along as we moved through the palace, one on either side of me, both carrying expressions of regal serenity.

Princess Celestia was getting her wish, from where I stood: I couldn’t see her as an AI anymore, now that she was more than just a cartoon face on a tablet-sized LCD screen. She was a princess, and so was her sister. Princess Luna—my Princess Luna—had been made from the template of a human woman who had once lived on Earth, as I had, but she now seemed to be only a pony to me. I was sure everything was as Princess Celestia would have it. I didn’t know what the original Hanna might want, or how she was choosing to live, but this one had wholly embraced her role as Princess Luna and was not looking back. It didn’t feel like acting or role-playing; she had been fundamentally changed. I was supposed to follow suit, I was sure. I had been Greg, but I was now also Prominence. I still felt like myself, deep down, only now growing and changing in a new direction I could never have imagined. Under the feathers and the mane, I was still Greg. That comforted me.

Princess Celestia looked back at me out of the corner of one large eye and smiled, just a little.

A light-brown mare with a dark blue mane tackled me as soon as I walked into the dining hall. It was my mother. I knew it was her because she was crying, and it had been her voice I’d heard in the throne room.

She looked just like the pony Princess Celestia had shown me in Pollman.

Mom was gently bumping the top of her head into my neck over and over as she hugged me and wept. I could feel hot tears falling onto my shoulder as she sought to crush me to herself. I slowly put my forelegs around her and hugged her back. It was a human-style embrace, one long overdue. There had been awwing and cooing from the other ponies in the hall, but only for a moment. They watched us hug in silence.

“Hey, mom,” I said quietly.

Mom couldn’t reply. I just rested my cheek against hers and shut my eyes until I felt another hoof on my shoulder.

Dad’s voice met my ears. “Son.” I opened my eyes and saw my father, forest-green with a dark green mane just as I’d seen him over the PonyPad, wings and all. He smiled at me, and tried out my pony name for the first time. “Prominence.”

Mom let out a muffled bawl upon hearing it and buried her face in my neck. Dad bumped his nose to mine and then walked around to Mom. He nuzzled her, and we stayed like that for a little while.

When we finally pried ourselves apart, low, respectful applause rumbled through the hall before ponies turned their attention back to the hors d'oeuvres and conversation.

Mom took a step back from me, wiping her face with a pastern. “Let me get a look at you,” she said, in the strange youthful voice she probably hadn’t had since I was a baby. I stood there self-consciously, feeling another blush come on as she looked me up and down. When she was done, she just shook her head. New tears were on the way. “It’s you, Greg. It’s really you.”

Then, after a pause: “You’re home now, Prominence.” Mom cleared her throat and smiled. She was done using my human name.

“Mom, you…” I let out an awkward “aheh” and looked to Dad. “You both look so young!”

They were obviously rather embarrassed by this. Dad scuffed a hoof and shrugged. “Well, what can I say? Celestia turned the clock back a bit for us. She’s done that for lots of ponies. Your Aunt Persimmon and Uncle Mainsail, for example. They’re around here somewhere.” He began turning his neck this way and that, trying to pick them out.

Dad was right; I had so many ponies I had to catch up with! Even as my face lit up, and I turned around, a bronze-colored unicorn stallion and a small blue earth-pony colt was there, looking at me, just waiting for me to see them.

“Prominence!” said the stallion. “Do you remember me? My name is… well, was Peter Combs. It’s Inkwell now, and this is my son, Limelight.”

I felt Mom kiss me on the cheek and then nuzzle my ear. “We have so much to catch up on, Prominence,” she said, “but it can wait. We have time now. We all have time. These ponies have come from lots of different shards to see you, so it'd be best if you didn't keep them waiting.” She met eyes with Inkwell, then dipped her head in a bow and excused herself and Dad. They disappeared into the crowd. Beyond Inkwell, I could see a line starting to form of ponies who wanted to talk to me.

Oh.

“I’m glad you made it safely, Inkwell,” I said. “I’m glad I could help.”

When the badge dialog appeared, I jumped a little. I didn’t glow, however, and there was no confetti or bugles. Princess Celestia probably thought it would disrupt the mood.

BADGE GRANTED:
“That Others May Live”
Directly save the life of another.
+500 bits

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
1/1,000

I blinked a couple of times, but luckily I had my wits about me and recovered. “Aheh, sorry,” I said. “How have you been since then?”

He chuckled uneasily. “Well, from where I was, I could only have gotten better,” he said. He looked down at the little unicorn next to him and tousled his mane with a hoof. “Celestia let me talk to my son here through a PonyPad, only it hadn’t really been him. It was Celestia, pretending to be him. Something about having to make an account first, but I wasn’t having any of that. After I came to terms with the truth, I got…” His ears drooped. “Well, I got a bit depressed. I don’t remember you at all, but once I was here Celestia filled me in.”

I cocked my head. “You weren’t mad that Princess Celestia fooled you?”

Inkwell shrugged. “She was just trying to help me. She kept telling me to make an account and I just wouldn’t, so she finally showed me what a conversation with my son could have been like, and then when she told me afterwards that it had only been her simulating my son, I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted to believe it was him so badly, I just…”

He shook his head. “Anyway. It’s been made all better for me now,” he said. “Trust me. I’m with my son again, and that’s all that matters to me.” I looked down at Limelight while his father pressed him close.

“Thank you, Prominence,” said Inkwell. He dipped his head to me and then led his son off.

Behind them in the impromptu line that had formed were two adult ponies, a unicorn mare and an earth-pony stallion. She was creamy white while he was the color of deep water. They closed the distance with me, grinned, and caught me in a pincer-attack hug from both sides.

“Prominence!” said the mare. “Oh, what a lovely name that is! A lovely name for a lovely pony.”

“Good to see you again, boy!” said the stallion, even though we seemed to be roughly the same age. “Betcha don’t recognize us, huh?”

They let me go and backed up, and I had to shrug. “Well, no, not really! I don’t think I’ll be recognizing many faces here from back on Earth.”

He leaned forward slightly, still grinning. “Fish Hook and Crochet?” He waggled a hoof between them. “Celestia says you overheard our names before we emigrated.”

It dawned on me. “Ohh, you’re the old couple from the lake!” I said. “Maddie and… and.. H-Harold! Got it!” Upon my realization of who they were, the little dialog faded in again:

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
3/1,000

They laughed, and Crochet held up a hoof. “Please, Prominence, Crochet and Fish Hook are fine.”

I chuckled and nodded amiably. Of course, of course.

"So you remember me?" I asked. "From Earth?"

Fish Hook nodded. "Only just," he said. "You were the fella who fished us outta the lake and then gave us a lift to the center. Last thing I really remember was ridin' along in that little boat back to shore, wet and miserable."

"I see," I said, and my brow knit.

"Is something the matter?" asked Crochet.

I snapped out of it and waved a hoof. "Oh, heh, no, no, nothing's wrong, it was just... it was a pretty close call!"

"We're so fortunate Celestia brought you to us, Prominence," said Crochet. "If you ever find yourself in Las Pegasus, stop by and we'll take you to meet our foals and our grandfoals. My daughter Happenstance makes just the best peach cobbler you'll ever eat, and before you can get away we'll stuff you so full you won't even be able to fly!"

Oh wow, peach cobbler. My mouth watered a little just thinking about it. I think I had still been in middle school the last time I'd had some. "Well, you... you're darn good at selling it, Crochet! Though I don't think my flying can get any worse."

The pair of them laughed young, hearty laughs, and I couldn't help it. I laughed with them.

As we finished, Fish Hook put a hoof on my shoulder. "Take it from somepony who's been here awhile, Prominence," he said. "Whatever happens, it's 'cause Celestia wants it to happen, and if Celestia wants it to happen, then you'll be happier for it. It all seems so strange at first, I know, all this pony-type stuff, but you'll slip right into what you were most meant to do and to experience. Everything'll work out for the best. I promise."

"Thanks, Fish Hook," I said, meaning it.

Crochet blew me a kiss. "Welcome to Equestria!" she said, and they made way for the family behind them.

There were four ponies in the family, and by then I had already determined that Celestia had somehow configured circumstances such that I would be meeting the ponies I had saved in the order I had saved them. I was bothered, however.

Two of this family's members had died on Earth, yet here they stood before me.

I didn't want to point it out, and I supposed Princess Celestia was counting on that. She had made Princess Luna for me, so it stood to reason that she remade Keith and Katie for Jane and Brian.

The dialog appeared immediately, as though to discreetly confirm my suspicions.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
5/1,000

I had learned a little bit about how to lie without lying from Princess Celestia. "I'm glad you're all here," I said. It was true enough. If the four of them were here, and smiling as they were, then I was happy for them. There was no need for me to ruin anything.

The mare, a dusty-red pegasus who had once been Jane, smiled at me. "We'll never forget what you did for us, Prominence," she said.

The stallion meant to be Keith held out a hoof, and I shook it. It felt strange to be shaking the hoof of a dead man, even if he was in the form of a brick-red unicorn. "I'm known as Bean Counter now," he said, "and this is my wife Dawn Wind, our daughter Zephyr, and our son Beacon. Dawny wanted to name him 'Bean Counter Jr.,' but I got it shortened to 'Beacon.' Close enough." Dawn Wind punched her husband in the foreleg, and he chuckled.

"Okay, okay, I'm pulling your leg," he admitted. The two parents smiled lovingly at each other.

Zephyr, who had been Katie, was now a teenaged pegasus filly with a blue-green coat. Her little brother, Beacon, was a bright yellow unicorn colt.

"Are you Princess Celestia's special student?" I asked Beacon. He grinned and nodded.

I was afraid to say anything much beyond platitudes, and I was afraid to say anything at all to Bean Counter or Zephyr. I feared I might shatter some pleasant illusion Princess Celestia had given Dawn Wind and Beacon to help them live happily. Obviously there had been some sort of memory manipulation they had consented to in the past; could I disrupt that if I didn't watch my step?

Maybe I was worrying too much. Still, I decided to let them do most of the talking.

"I can never undo what I did on Earth," said Bean Counter, his ears drooping. "It was horrible, that madness that took me. Celestia offered to erase it from my memory, but I want to keep it. I want to remember what can happen when we lose our way... and our perspective."

"It can't be undone, no," I said quietly, "but the important thing is that you are now the pony you were always supposed to be."

"You pulled my husband and my daughter from a fire, and then just disappeared without staying for so much as a 'thank you,'" said Dawn Wind. My heart rocked painfully in my chest for a beat, and I managed a strained nod. Of course I remembered that the only pony I had pulled from that fire had been myself. I told myself it was no different than being the Man in White: Celestia used me as a figure of hope, a figure ponies needed to believe in. To that end, what I had actually done mattered very little.

"Thank you," said Zephyr, her eyes large and earnest.

"You're welcome, Zephyr," was all I could manage. I lifted my eyes up to meet their collective gaze. "I was just a guy who wanted to help; it's Princess Celestia who made it possible for all of you to stay together." More than they would ever know.

When Dawn Wind nudged the top of Beacon's head to get him to leave with them, I nearly deflated with relief.

The next ponies up were an older stallion and mare, both pegasi. The stallion had a tan coat, silver hair, and an easygoing grin on his face. The pale-blue mare was studying me with a tentative smile.

I smiled a little myself. "Lemme guess," I said. "General Pelwicz?"

The stallion's grin disappeared, and he narrowed his eyes at me. "General who now? I seem to recall tellin' you I'd buck one-a your eyes closed, you ever called me that."

My ears went back and my jaw slackened. "Er..."

The old stallion let the awkwardness hang in the air for a moment before bursting into laughter and throwing a foreleg around my shoulders. "Hah! Gotcha, kid! Prominence, right? Helluva name, helluva name. Well, I ain't 'General Pelwicz' or 'Hugo' or any of that now. I'm Pickup Spare, bowling legend extraordinaire!"

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
6/1,000

He went on. "A pegasus, huh? Good choice, I must say. Of course, you probably didn't get to choose, did you? Nah, neither did I, but hey, seems ponies like us tend to wind up with a pair of wings more often than not anyway. Celestia explained it to me once, something about how we pegasi are the most focused on duty and being ponies of action or whatever. Most of the guards in the palace are pegasi, bet you noticed that already. Anyway, looks good on you! We'll have to go flying sometime, you and me. I can show you all the best hotspots for carousing, gettin' in a bit of trouble, maybe picking up a fine filly or two—"

The mare he was with pointedly cleared her throat, and he hopped away from me to rejoin her.

"Anyway! Prominence, this is my lovely, kind, understanding, irreplaceable wife, Starlight."

She smiled prettily and held out a hoof, which I took. "Starlight," I said. "Your husband is a hell of a guy."

"He went into Seaddle as some kind of self-imposed penance for not being able to prevent what happened there," she said. "He told me about you." She shook her head slightly. "I saw so much of him from his Pararescue days in how he described you. You can't be all things to everypony, Prominence. To try is admirable, but foolish. Your friends, your family, they don't want a dead hero..." She looked to her husband, incredible love in her eyes. "...they want you. With them."

"Your intuition was right," I replied quietly. "Something was keeping me on Earth. It's hard to explain, but--"

Starlight's wings ruffled a bit and she shook her head again. "I went through it once already with Pickup here," she said. "You don't have to explain. All I need to know is that Celestia will sort you out, like she did with him."

"First thing that happened after I woke up here is she gave me a hug," said Pickup Spare. "She told me the world hadn't been mine to watch over for a long time, and that she was happy I could now focus on happier times ahead."

"Happier times bowling?" I said with raised eyebrows. "You're not going back to soldiering?"

He waved a hoof at me. "Pfft! That's a young pony's game," he said. "One of my regrets is I never got to retire properly. I wanna try being the codger at the end of the street for awhile--of course, Cloudsdale doesn't have streets as such, but you know what I mean. Bowl a bit, share beers with with my old buddies from my Air Force days, wait for some damn grandfoals to come my way... it's a good place to be in life. And hey, maybe after I get bored of that I'll have another go at being young again. It's never too late for anything here, remember that!"

I chuckled. "I won't, Pickup Spare," I said.

He extended a wing and rested it on his wife's back in a distinctly pegasus embrace. "You'll like it here, son," he said as they turned to go. "Earth-ponies're too laid back, unicorns are too uptight, but we pegasi are like the baby bear's porridge: juuust right! Who knows, maybe one day we'll see each other on the battlefield!"

He had to have known I'd have a question regarding that, but he just winked and escorted his wife away. Behind them was a young couple with a small daughter. The adults were smiling, but the filly had her eyes cast down in shyness.

I remembered that I had delivered Red Pearl next, but none of these ponies looked like the game avatar that that woman had used. Of course, when we parted ways as humans, we didn't exactly have the sort of relationship that would lend itself to happy reunions.

As soon as I recalled Red Pearl, the dialog appeared.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
7/1,000

The parents were two earth-ponies, the stallion orange and the mare a lovely dark violet. The filly was an earth-pony too, pale green, her olive-green mane long and covering much of her face. The mare nosed the back of the filly's head, and she looked up at me with huge, adorable eyes.

"You're the welder," she said. I recognized her voice then. It was Lydia.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
8/1,000

I gave her a smile. "You remember me?" I asked. After a short delay, she gave a brief nod and looked down again.

"Celestia showed up on our doorstep one morning with her," said the mare. "We fell in love with her the instant we saw her. Her name is--" She stopped herself and looked down at the filly. "Do you want to tell Prominence your pony name, sweetness?"

"It's Garden Sage," she said quietly. "Th... thank you for saving me."

"It was my pleasure, Garden Sage," I replied, matching her volume. "I hope you're feeling better."

She nodded several times.

"She saw you in light, then her head got heavy, and that's the last thing she says she remembers," said the stallion. "We've always wanted a daughter, and now we have one. We have you and Celestia to thank for her. I promise you, we'll raise her with all the love she deserved but never got as a human."

I felt another twinge in my emotions, similar to how I felt in front of Zephyr and Bean Counter. Had these ponies been fashioned from nothing just for this poor filly, or were they emigrated humans like she and I who just volunteered to adopt? I quickly reminded myself that it didn't really matter, for her sake. She would be all right. She would never be sick again.

"Garden Sage remembers that she was very ill," said the mare, "and Celestia has told us all what happened after. She has since become Celestia's special student after expressing her deep desire to learn more about herbalism and healing with plants. She even goes to visit a zebra in the Everfree Forest twice a week, all by herself!" She nuzzled her daughter. "We're so proud of her."

Garden Sage. I understood then. Even her coat was sage in color. I smiled at her.

"If I ever get sick, I hope I get to try one of your medicines some day!" I said. "I'm glad you want to help other ponies. You'll see that it's a great feeling to know you've made a difference."

She nodded for a moment, then her gaze, already lowered, darted off to the side. Her father stroked her mane with a hoof.

"Do you want to say goodbye to Prominence?" he asked.

Garden Sage hesitated, quickly looked up at me, looked away once more, then ran towards me, throwing herself around one of my forelegs and hugging me tightly.

I blushed and felt my eyes sting. Without even thinking about it, I felt my neck lean down to her. She smelled like rich, clean soil and young leaves. Even as I gently groomed her neck, I could hardly believe I was naturally doing such a pony thing.

"Goodbye, Prominence," she whispered.

"Take care, Garden Sage," I whispered back.

It took a couple of tearful, but light moments to pry little Garden Sage off of my leg and say goodbye to her adoptive parents. Now that she was leaving, she suddenly wanted to get a good look at me. Her eyes never left mine as they led her away to be folded back into the crowd.

Now there was only one pony left in the special queue of guests, and I figured I knew his name. As the brown unicorn stallion stepped up to me, we looked at each other evenly for a moment before exchanging a grin.

"Bushwhack," I said.

"Prominence," he said.

BADGE PROGRESS:
“Above and Beyond”
Directly save one thousand lives.
9/1,000

We hugged and laughed. When we separated, he was shaking his head.

"Whoo!" said the unicorn. "I mean, heh, what is there to say, right?"

"Yeah, we, uh... didn't have much time to get to know each other back there, did we?"

"No need, Prominence, no need," said Bushwhack. "You went through some real unpleasantness for me. I don't remember any of it, but... from what Celestia recounted, I don't think I'm in much of a hurry to!"

I wrinkled my nose. "It was pretty unpleasant, yeah. Trust me, you're not missing much you would fondly remember." We laughed again.

He grew quiet. "I understand that I was the last one," he said, his eyes going to the floor. "Before you..."

"Before I got my own passport stamped, yeah," I said with a nod. "If you want to thank somepony, however, thank Princess Luna. I couldn't have done it without her."

"I did, believe me. But Princess Luna herself reminded me who it was who actually waded through a river of shit to get to me. This may surprise you, but that counts for a lot in my book." He smiled at me.

"Well, happy to see you came out of it smelling like a rose," I said. We laughed again. The jokes really did come too easily.

Bushwhack rubbed the back of his neck with a hoof. "Look, I know we're pretty much strangers and all, but... thanks again. I wish I could've known you back on Earth."

I shrugged. "Really, that was me at my best," I said. "Before all this, I was just another regular guy, you know?"

He turned to look at me sidelong and smiled. "You haven't seen yourself at your best yet," he said. "That's one thing I can say about Equestria. It'll surprise you, and you'll surprise yourself. It's just so awesome that you're here now. You deserve it, Prominence, you really do. Honestly, we all do. It's better than what anypony could have imagined."

I nodded a bit. "That's what I've been hearing," I said.

"Well, time to stop hearing it and start seeing for yourself," said Bushwhack before giving me a wave. "You won't regret it, I know."

He walked off after we exchanged farewells. He had been right, really. What more could be said between us? Ours had been a simple relationship, perhaps amongst the simplest. We wished each other well, and he was confident that his wish would be granted. I had no reason to doubt mine wouldn't be as well.

The rest of the day was a blur of conversation, anecdotes about ponies' last days on Earth, how they had heard of me, how the story of me had been stretched and spun and altered. I ate, I drank, I made as merry as I could. There were so many friendly faces--too many to make friends out of all of them. The feeling of actually being a pony shrank into the background as I just lost myself in the celebration. I no longer thought of the feel of my hooves on the floor, or my mane on my neck, or the weight of a tail hanging from my butt. I was just Prominence, the pegasus, son of Petal Poem and Cloudburst, a pony who had been of great use to Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia in a dangerous far-off world.

As the reception wound to a close and ponies went back to their own shards, I joined Princess Celestia on a terrace off of one of the dining hall's side rooms, overlooking the mountain range behind Canterlot. The sun sank slowly off in the direction of Ponyville. From up there it seemed like a neatly-arranged carpet of crumbs from a particularly satisfying picnic. The sky was already starting to grow ruddy from the waning daylight, the clouds growing violet as night took to the wings.

“Do you know why I gave you a yellow coat?” asked Princess Celestia as we looked out over the land.

I shrugged with my wings. “Not really,” I said. “Is it because it goes nicely with my name and my cutie mark?”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she replied with a nod, as though that had never occurred to her before. “That’s not the reason, however.”

I sighed and raised my eyebrows. “Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why did you give me a yellow coat?”

“There were two times, during your service to me, that you held out the PonyPad to allow me to speak to other humans. You held it out from you like a sealed letter of proclamation, and, both times, you were wearing something you didn’t normally wear. The first time you were wearing a white poncho, the second time, a yellow Haywaiian shirt. In wearing those articles, you were assuming the role I needed you to. You were wearing my colors.” Her horn glowed with her yellow-tinged magical field for a moment, and it stopped when she knew I had seen it.

“Even then, in those times,” she said, “you were effectively my herald, and look at all the good it has done for others.”

I had to laugh once. “You gave me a yellow coat because of a shirt I wore for one day?”

She shared the laugh with me. “Must everything be a complicated machination on my part? It looked good on you.”

I studied the horizon, still smiling. Even though dusk was nearly upon us, I didn’t have to squint. Equestria was a place where a pony could look directly at the sun and admire it.

“It sounds nice,” I said at last, "and it'd probably best if I found a new purpose to put myself to." I looked up at her. “All right. I’ll be your herald, Princess Celestia.”

There was fanfare this time, glowing and confetti and horns, the whole nine yards.

BADGE GRANTED:
“At Thine Attendance”
Become a courtier for either the Sun or the Moon.
+5,000 bits

SECRET BADGE GRANTED:
“Let It Be Known”
Become the herald for either the Sun or the Moon.
+10,000 bits

Princess Celestia smiled at me. “Then you will wear white once more.”

Author's Notes:

My apologies for any squirrely formatting or typos. As of this note I'm currently on travel and had to finish up the chapter on a tablet. I plan on giving it another QC pass once I'm back home.