Applejack landed atop Twilight heavily after being ejected from the rift in reality and hurried back onto her hooves.
"Ah! Y'okay, Twi?" she asked the lavender earth pony.
"Ah...I think the tractor fell on me..." Twilight muttered.
"Ah ain't that big!" Applejack protested. She picked Twilight up from beneath her forelegs and started shaking her. "Ah told ya not ta get close ta that weird thing! Now look what happened!"
"Stop shaking me so muuuuch!" Twilight begged. "I'm so dizzy I'm seeing flying ponies!"
"Hm?" The farm pony looked around and dropped her jaw. "No, Ah'm seein' 'em too."
The ponies had landed in a hilly area where the grass was white in some patches and brown in others. A tree or two stuck around, but the bark was white and the leaves brown as well. The perplexed mares looked at an immense city stretching out before them. The houses were as colorful as the ones they knew, but the designs were...wrong. Rather than tall, cubic-shapes, these ones all sported arcing shapes and sat atop each other. Several slides and ladders led from the ground to the various floors of the overlapping and piling buildings. Flowers decorated the windows and the black, cobblestone floor from which they peaked through the cracks. Elderly ponies were seen around these buildings, and quite a few were having discussions with adults and playing around with young foals hopping around eagerly.
High, high above, however, is what caught most of the farmers' attention: Buildings. In the clouds. Clouds being walked on by ponies and pushed around. A group of flying ponies with rustic expressions were moving very dark clouds into the distance while one in uniform would yell at them and point aggressively. The buildings high above were made from the same clouds they sat on and almost disappeared in the sea of white illuminated by the sun and the sky-blue peering through the holes left behind. Unlike the ones on the ground, these structures had shapes that followed no engineering rhyme or reason. They would split off into two or three different shapes. Twilight spotted one that curved like a banana and possessed a twisting spiral growing from the upper tip. Applejack spotted one that was short and fat and topped by two half triangles that just barely didn't touch each other.
"There's...there's so many different types of clouds up there," Twilight realized. "Cirrus. Cirrostratus. Cirrocumulus! Altocumulus, Strato cumulus!" The lavender earth pony darted left and right. "They're too low! They can't form at this height! Not all at once."
"And the ponies that're flyin'." Applejack winced. "They got wings." She looked at Twilight. "Ah ain't never heard-a no pony with wings! Ain't a regular pony 'round none at all!"
"Did that rift pull us into a hidden city or something?" Twilight pondered.
Applejack shook her head. "Ah'm pretty sure somepony'd've noticed this kinda thing, fer sure. All them clouds ya mentioned mixin' tagether 'n movin' about like that? Ain't no way no pony'd've noticed."
"You're right...But then what?"
"Ah reckon the best thing we can do right now is try ta get home."
Twilight nodded. "Well, no way to get to those...cloud buildings up high..." She dragged a hoof across her face. "Even saying it sounds absurd." She gently moved her hoof back and forth while grumbling to herself. "Sorta envious now..."
"Cause they were born with the ability ta fly?" Applejack asked with a grin and a raised brow. Twilight responded with a grunt. "Well, let's hope they don't react ta our lack of wings."
"Shouldn't we disguise ourselves?" Twilight wondered.
"Ah thought of it, but then we'd have ta steal somepony's clothes." Applejack stood up straight and frowned. "And no way this pony is gonna steal somethin'."
Twilight smiled and shrugged. "Okay. Let's go and see if we can find anypony who can tell us where we are and get us back home."
The streets were, unsurprisingly, very crowded. Elderly ponies paced about, working at stores and receiving deliveries from younger ponies flying in from above. As they trotted, scouting everything around first, the pair noticed that ponies around were giving them strange looks. One such elderly pony intercepted the two just outside of a carpentry workshop. They were a rather large mare while fur had turned a faded orange shade. Their mane and tail followed the same pattern, but a vibrant green stripe still passed through them, unaffected by time.
"Oh my oh my. You poor things. Come, come! Into my shop," she invited them.
The mares looked at each other and shrugged. The entrance was relatively clean, although the wooden benches and tables covered in a bit of dust left something to be desired. Applejack noticed several misshapen wooden constructs lining the right, gray wall and frowned. The large pony noticed and chuckled nervously.
"That's...failed projects." She sighed. "Us pegasi aren't too good with working hard materials. Better at shaping clouds." She grimaced. "Although, it seems you two were dealt a worse lot in life than I was." She opened her wings and stretched them, producing a few cracking noises that made Twilight cringe.
"What do ya mean, old timer?" Applejack asked.
The elder leaned over the counter of her shop towards AJ. "Quite an accent you have there. I've never heard such sounds before. Where are you two from?"
"I don't really feel comfortable telling somepony we don't know yet. Sorry," Twilight explained.
The mare raised her hooves, in understanding. "No, of course. Of course. I understand." She looked at the lavender pony with a closed eye and grin. "But that just confirms to me that you don't come from here. Would be mighty strange that you do considering your strange fur color. Rare around these parts. More common in the southwest near the mountains," she mused.
"Ah see ya got some wood workin' done 'round this store," Applejack noted with a tinge of annoyance.
"Well, this is a carpentry workshop." She rubbed the back of her neck. "But us pegasi aren't that good with wood, as I mentioned already. We just don't have a feel for the material."
The farm pony approached a block of wood on a work table and inspected it closely. "This ain't how ya carve wood," she said quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"Twi, come look'it this."
The lavender pony acquiesced and noticed several signs of 'spalling' with the wood that had already been carved away or into.
"It looks like you were trying to make a chair?" Twilight asked the elder.
"I was trying to make a small table, actually. The leftover wood was going to be cups."
Applejack clicked her tongue. "Yer carvin' 'gainst the grain of the wood," she stated. "Ya do that 'n yer gonna split apart the cellulose 'n destroy what's in there, then ya can go ahead 'n grab another block 'a wood. Twi, pass me them tools."
The mare in question grunted in disgust. "They're all dirty." She narrowed her eyes on the carving blades. "They might be blunted." Twilight looked at the elder. "You're using tools not designed for the wood you're working with. The metal might be too soft or too hard."
The elder leaned against the counter and rested her head against a propped-up foreleg. "You two have an uncanny affinity with wood, like you have been working on them for a really really long time." There was an awkward pause as the two ponies checked the state of the carvings and removed any stray shavings still attached. "Is it because you two were born without wings?"
The two froze.
"How do ya know we didn't just lose them?" Twilight asked without turning around.
"Oh, my dear. Even a pegasus with a lost wing still has some signs that they were there. No need to be ashamed," the elder reassured. "We're all in Lower Cloudin because we're too old to fly or some ailment prevents us from flying, but we aren't rejected just for it." She gave the ponies a warm smile.
"So that's why they were all looking at us strangely," Twilight whispered to Applejack.
"Plus, I think you two could help our city benefit from your knowledge of woodworking."
"Well--" Twilight started before being interrupted.
The doors swung open violently, slamming into piles of straw on either side of the entrance. They were accompanied by a multi-colored blur and a gust of wind so powerful it pushed everything toward the back of the shop. The elder hung onto the counter, but Twilight and Applejack only had each other and the sculpture. They couldn't hang on forever and went flying into the workshop proper in the back, landing amidst the sawdust and unfinished craft.
The elder pegasus grunted while she struggled back onto her hooves, using the counter as a support, and grit what was left of her teeth. "Rainbow Dash, I told you to stop doing that! You keep destroying my shop with your stupid antics!"
"Aw, come on, Twirly. You know I need to go fast! I can't stay the fastest pegasus in the world if I don't use every moment I have as a way to train."
"Did creating a gust of wind that blew away every. Single. Thing. Is my store part of that training process?!"
The hovering pegasus looked around and put a hoof to her mouth. "Uh...oops?" she said with a sheepish smile.
Twirly glared at her with wide eyes and a huge frown. "I'm going to--" They were distracted by the sound of ponies grumbling in pain and moving some heavy things off them. The elder gasped in horror. "Oh no! The wi-visitors!" she corrected herself.
"What in tarnation?!" Applejack cursed. "Was that yer doin', ya uppity lightning bug?!"
She had rushed over to the flying pegasus in question and had jabbed her in the chest with her hoof.
"Who're you calling a lightning bug, roly poly?!" Rainbow responded angrily.
The two butted heads and started pushing against each other in an attempt to overpower one another. "That's what ya are, cuz yer makin' a bunch of fancy colors what don't add up ta nothin'!"
Twilight hadn't noticed it before, but the differences between them and the pegasi went down to even the finer details, such as their fetlocks. Where hers and Applejack's dropped down over their hooves, Rainbow's poked up into three parallel steps of sky-blue fur that looked like feathers. As for her actual feathers, they were insanely long compared to those of the elder and very colored as well. They seemed to change in gradients, somehow, as well, from red for the outermost feathers, to orange, then yellow, green, indigo, blue, then purple. Her mane, styled in a punk-rock mohawk fashion, and tail followed the same rainbow pattern: Front-to-back for the mane and top-to-bottom for the tail. She sported a pair of goggles made from polished wood for the frame, reinforced glass for the lenses, and more false leather for the strap holding in place on the pony's head. The lavender pony realized that her eyes would be completely hidden behind the tinted glass.
"I hear fighting!" a voice blurted out from the entrance. The sudden loud noise caused the two ponies to freeze in place and Rainbow to fall onto the floor.
"Oh. Pinkie. You startled me," Rainbow sighed in relief.
"What in blazes is wrong with y'all ponies here?!" Applejack asked angrily. "Ya go throwin' others left 'n right 'n then bang outta doors ta give 'em heart attacks?! Y'all're insane!"
The elder groaned and passed a hoof through her mane. "I'm sorry about that," Twirly apologized. "They're some of the more...uh...energetic ponies living here."
Pinkie bolted up to Twilight, upside down. "Hiya!" she blurted while waving her hoof. "Hiya!" she shouted again when meeting Applejack sideways."
"Pinkie!" Rainbow shouted. "We told you to stop flying sideways!" she whined. The mare shivered. "It's really creepy."
The pink pegasus giggled to herself. "But it's easy to do!"
She froze in place, floating in the air while consternation hardened her features. Twilight inched forward and waved a hoof above and below Pinkie Pie. When she couldn't find anything, she turned to Applejack and shrugged.
Pinkie's right wing moved forward, and with a strange motion enacted by two feathers, created a 'snapping' noise. "I'm forgetting the most important thing!"
And then she rushed out of the workshop as quickly as she came in.
"Uh--" Applejack started.
"Don't mind her. She's always like that," Rainbow said dismissively. She eyed the two mares, and her eyes slowly widened in realization. "You were born without wings?" she blurted out.
"Rainbow!" Twirly yelled angrily.
"Why're ya yellin'?" Applejack asked. "It's true. We ain't born with no wings."
"To be honest," Twilight added. "No pony is like all of you from where we're from." She rubbed her neck. "I didn't want to mention it because I was afraid of what might happen, but--"
"I totally knew that," Rainbow bragged. The two earth ponies stared at her, perplexed. "It's true! I-I have to go around working with the weather, so I meet other pegasi, and none of them talk like you!" She paused. "Well, none from around here at least." AJ gave Rainbow a 'look'. "Hey! I'm being serious!" the mare insisted.
"Ah'm sure ye are."
"Here it iiiis!" Pinkie shouted through the doorway.
Everypony froze in place from the party pony's sudden entrance. "A big welcoming present!" She grunted as she pulled a small wagon with a giant, roughly sculpted crystal with colors flowing within it.
"Pinkie!" Rainbow shouted. "That's your favorite decoration!"
"I knoooooow," the party pony cheered as she performed a loop in the air. "Buuuuut, if my friends have it, I still get to see when I visit them." She tapped her head. "It's better to see it brightening somepony else's home than just sitting in mine among all the stones."
"I'm still here..." the old mare sighed quietly.
Pinkie raised a hoof and looked at the others with excitement. "And look what happens when I tap it here!" she said.
The mare poked a part of the crystal and immediately looked worried. "Oops."
"Oops? What does 'oops' mean?" Rainbow asked hurriedly. She grabbed Pinkie's cheeks. "Why are you saying 'oops'?"
"I poked the wrong spot," she muttered with a smushed face.
The crystal started vibrating violently, and the group noticed that afterimages were appearing in quick succession, overlapping each other as the stone grew brighter and brighter.
"Get that thing out of my shop!" Twirly exclaimed angrily.
It was too late. A rift had opened up, much to Twilight and Applejack's surprise. While they and Rainbow Dash screamed in terror as they were sucked in, Pinkie just let herself go, giggling the whole way in. When Twirly stood up from behind the cover of her counter, everything in her shop had been thrown about from the rift sucking the ponies in.
"But I just organized everything..." she trailed off despondently.
--
"What is happening?!" Rainbow shouted. She was waving her legs wildly and trying to right herself, but in the swirling void the four found themselves in, she could find no purchase in the air. "Pinkie, what did you do?!"
"I don't know! It never did this before!" the pink pony said excitedly. "I thought we were going to be flash-blinded!"
"We don't know what this is either, but it's where we ended up last time," Twilight exclaimed. "That's how we ended up in your world."
Rainbow covered her mouth with a hoof. "I think I'm going to be sick."
"...ur help," a voice echoed.
"What?" Rainbow said.
"Ya heard it too?" the farm pony asked.
The four looked around for the source and saw some form of vaguely pony-shaped light standing on a floating platform of transparent, red material. It was reaching out towards them as a wave of black came out of the white light.
"I need your help!" it said. "Free me from this curse! Ponies need to be together!" It looked behind it as the wave of darkness grabbed hold and pulled it back into the orb of light. "Please, my little ponies! Come back here as quickly as possible!"
The four didn't have time to react when another rift tore open and took them in.