"Here, you had better let Trixie help you pack." The platinum blonde shoved her way past me into my room. "Where do you keep your camping supplies, Finn?"
"Uh...outside, in the shed. We'll get them before we go." I frowned at her as I grabbed a duffel bag and started shoveling clothes in. I glanced back over at Trixie. "You don't have to help me pack." Of course, I hoped desperately that she'd pick up on the subtext: Please wait outside so I can pack my underpants in peace.
She snorted, as if she'd picked up my subtext loud and clear and didn't think it was worth paying attention to. "You most certainly DO need my help. Those aren't going to be much use to you." She crossed over to my duffel and tipped it out onto the bed. "You won't have to worry about clothes. Trust me on this one." Something in her tone, her note of unvarnished honesty, brought me up short, and I caught myself wondering-not for the first time- just what I'd gotten myself into.
"So...wait, how do you know?"
She crossed her arms over her chest, which I found fascinating for purely platonic reasons. "Vast experience, Finn." Her expression softened. "You'll want something familiar with you. Stuff from home." She snorted and picked up something from my bed. "A favorite stuffed toy, perhaps?"
"Hey!" I said in mock indignation. "You leave Mister Ed out of this!"
Trixie snorted as she stuffed it into my duffel. "Trust me, you will want as many tokens of home as you can take."
I glanced back at the door to my room, seeing if any of the other three were listening, and asked in a low voice "Why? Just what is it I'm getting into?"
"Nothing bad." Trixie said, emphatically. "Really! It's going to be a good move for you, career wise." She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "Look, Tri...I don't like to admit it...but Purplesmart in there and her friends really are on the level. Everything they've told you is true." She gave me a stunning smile that did really funny things to my stomach. "Come on, let's get you packed up."
~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~
An hour later, I'd managed to fill up a duffel bag with what I'd considered to be The Essentials: Toothbrush, toothpaste, my Tolkien collection, the best of Discworld that I'd picked up, a cellphone charger, my phone, and Mister Ed all went into my duffel bag. Scoff if you must, but show me a red-blooded American man who says he didn't have a favorite stuffed animal, and I'll show you a liar.
Into my backpack went a few other items of more sentimental value: my harmonica, a few collections of sheet music, a few of grandad's old cookbooks, a towel- because you can't be a hoopy frood if you don't know where your towel is- and a pair of old, old photo albums. From the shed outside, I'd retrieved the small tent I used when I went camping, the dutch oven and tripod I used to cook with, a warm weather sleeping bag, fifty feet of rope, and a ten foot tarp. Because you just never know when you'll need one.
Trust me on this one. Tarps are handy.
All that managed to get wedged into the back of the rental Cadillac, which, now that I looked at it...
"Hey, Sunset."
"Yes?"
"When you picked up this car, it had a front bumper on it, didn't it?"
"I'm...not sure. You know how it was, late night, didn't bother to look at it, you know how it is."
"Uh huh..." I glanced over the car again. "And it wasn't running on a spare tire either, was it?"
"Ohhh, so THAT'S why we couldn't get it up to speed on the freeway." She shook her head. "Honestly, your company has to take better care of its cars."
"Clearly." I shook my head and glanced at the house. "Are you guys ready to go?"
~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~
We managed to limp the Cadillac back to the airport, though I had to stop after the first few blocks to re-tighten the lugnuts on the spare tire after we had a worrying amount of wobble. We left the car in the express return lane as I hustled up to the Payne Rent-A-Car office. The company might have been made of full-spectrum jerks, but at least the individuals I worked for were pretty decent, and I knew my boss would be in. I briefly felt bad that I hadn't given notice, but this wasn't the sort of opportunity I could pass up.
Sunset, oddly enough, went to accompany me, staying a discrete distance behind me. I turned and gave her a look. "Are you fascinated by the internal machinations of a more or less modern rental car company?"
She gave me a bright smile. "I just thought you might need some...moral support." She gestured for me to keep walking. "Ladies first."
I snorted and walked up the ramp to where the offices were. As I expected, I found Dennis hunched over one of the computers, going over the reservation projections for the day. He was a heavyset, balding, middle aged man, with a body that was built of too much junk food and too little exercise He didn't look up from is cluttered and disorganized desk until after I'd opened the door and knocked a couple of times. "Hey boss, you got a minute?"
"Finn!" He turned fully around to regard me with a degree of foreboding. His expression flickered, his pale, intelligent eyes going vague for a second. "You're here. What are you going to do to make my job harder, besides quitting?"
"Aw, Den, don't...How did you know I was quitting?" Don't get me wrong, Dennis was fairly sharp and had forgotten more about the business than I'd learned, but I knew the guy had limits.
"What do you mean? I've got your notice...Damn, now where did I put it." He began flipping through assorted papers, notes, correspondence, damage repair forms, and mountains of carbon copies of each. He muttered to himself as he was looking. "I know it's here because I was just looking for it..."
"Try under your keyboard." Sunset shimmer offered from the doorway. The red-headed woman was leaning casually against it, watching the menfolk work. "I usually lose so many things there."
Dennis gave her a puzzled look, but flipped the keyboard up. "Well, there she is." He pulled out an envelope and opened it, reading aloud the contents. "Dennis, I'm sorry, but I must ask that you consider this my two week's notice. Finn Kelly." He turned it around, showing it. "That's your handwriting, isn't it?"
I studied the paper. "Yeah...That's my handwriting." I glanced back at Sunset, who merely smiled and gave me an unhelpful shrug. "Yeah..." I turned back to Dennis. "I just wanted to say goodbye, Dennis. This job might have sucked sometimes, but you were a good boss."
Dennis snorted and shook his head. "Well, Can't say I blame you for wanting to find greener pastures. Good luck, kid." He held out his hand and we shook. "You too, Dennis."
He nodded and turned back to his desk. "Just leave your ID card and keys on the filing cabinet as you go."
I waited until the office door was shut behind us and we were halfway back to the others when I muttered to Sunset "What was that all about? I know damn sure that I didn't put any notice in two weeks ago."
"Not yet." She reached into one of her bags and fished around for a pen, envelope, and paper. "You remember what was on the note?"
"Yeah?"
"Here." She thrust the pen and paper at me. "Write it down." I did, with a mounting sense of confusion and bafflement. I handed it back to her, and she thrust the envelope at me. "Now write your boss's name here." I did, frowning. "Okay, but how is this going to-" She snatched the envelope from my hands, stuffed the note in, and sealed it. "What, are you planning on going back two weeks for us to deliver it?"
"Not exactly, no." She winked at me, then pulled out a lighter and flicked it on, holding a corner of the envelope over the flame. The envelope caught and in an eyeblink was engulfed in a flash of eerie green flame.
Sunset kept talking. "There isn't enough ambient Magic or Harmony in this world for us to go back in time two weeks, and the window for doing so even if we could would only be a few minutes. But, on the assumption that we would need to, Twilight and I enchanted this dragonfire parchment to go back in time two weeks. It's easier to put an enchantment on non-living objects and actually have them stay there." She glanced over at me and the expression of Near Terminal Crogglement that had blossomed over my face.
And she started Snickering, which segued into full blown Giggling, followed by a full Belly Laugh in the First Degree. It took her a full minute for her to get control of herself. "Oh! You sh-should s-see-hee-hee your fa-ha-haaaaace!" She erupted into further gales of laughter at my expression. "Oh, this is going to be fun."
I shook my head. "So, you...you were joking?" I was half expecting camera crews to jump out any minute by this point, especially the way Sunset was reacting. I was impressed by the way she hadn't missed a beat coming up with my cockamamie idea she'd go back in time.
Sunset grinned at me, and she looked like she was on the verge of breaking out laughing again. "You know what, never mind. Let's get back to the others and get going."
The others, as it turned out, were waiting in the main rental car concourse. Trixie was complaining loudly and rather vigorously adjusting her bra.
Which I took only a superficial, passing interest in. Really. She might have needed assistance.
"...cannot wait to get home. Trixie has absolutely no idea how you handled these-"
Tug
"-Elastic-"
Shimmy
"-Torture devices! The Great and Powerful Trixie would be a laughingstock if she couldn't get her tits to behave!"
Twilight rolled her eyes. "You just get used to it." She glanced over at us. "Are we ready to go?"
Sunset nodded. "Yep. We are. Right Finn? Finn?"
Sunset lightly thumped me upside the head for reasons that may or may not be connected with me being mentally preoccupied with what Trixie was doing with portions of her anatomy.
"Ow! Oh, uh, right. When's our flight?"
Trixie gave me a withering look and muttered, under her breath, "Stallions." Sunset and Twilight traded a look, and the latter woman gave me a smile. "Pretty soon. Let's get going."
We walked partway down the rental terminal, before Twilight stopped and said "Here we are!"
I looked around, confused. "Um...This is a wall." I gestured to the expanse between the Men's & Women's restrooms, which stubbornly looked completely like a nondescript part of an airport terminal. I glanced back at the other four women, who were gazing at the wall intently. Twilight, for her part, had pulled out something from her backpack; an amethyst crystal as wide as my thumb and as long as my hand. She pressed it along a seam in the wall, and suddenly the wall, just...rippled in a manner very much like a pond someone had thrown a stone into and very much unlike a solid wall.
Twilight nodded. "Alright, let's get home!" And to my increasing amazement, she stepped through the wall, vanishing as if it wasn't there.
"Finally! Trixie cannot wait to get back!"
Sunset gave her a look. "Maybe you should have stayed and listened to what Twilight said in the first place."
The platinum blonde tossed her hair back in a magnificent display of indifference. "Where would the fun in that be?" and with that, she too just walked through the wall.
"Come on," Sunset said, taking one of my hands, "The portal's going to close in a minute."
"Portal?! But, wait, wha-"
I felt a pair of hands on the back of my shoulders. "Just relax, Mister Kelly. You're on your way."
And with that, she pushed me through the wall, and into what felt like a combination of a rave, kaleidoscope, and a tilt-o-hurl. I felt like every fiber of my being was being bent out of shape, and I closed my eyes as the disorienting display threatened to bring my lunch up.
I slammed to the floor, hard, and the lack of movement was disorienting enough that I couldn't do much more than try and hold onto the ground to keep from flying off the face of the earth. Somewhere, over my head, I heard Sunset say "Hello Finn, how are you doing?"
I threw up and fainted. As my consciousness faded, I heard a woman say "Ok, who had 'Vomit and Pass Out' in the betting pool?"
~~~~~~~🏥~~~~~~~
My consciousness started to swim up from the black depths of something that could only be loosely related to sleep. My eyelids felt too heavy to lift, so I started taking a list of what I was feeling.
I was in a bed, covered to the chest in a blanket. Both were Soft and Warm to the point where I had to seriously redefine my previous standards of the terms. My limbs felt...odd. Heavier than normal. There was a strange tension in my head...almost like a hangover, but without the pain or dizziness. It was almost like...potential. Like my mind spring-loaded, ready to snap into action. At the same time, though, I felt a tremendous lassitude in my limbs and body. When I was younger, almost too young to remember, I'd spent a night in the hospital getting my tonsils removed, and when I'd been coming out of the anasthesia, I'd felt a similar disconnectedness.
After that thought, I gradually became aware that I was hearing noises in the background which gradually resolved into voices.
"...ell, it looks like the patient's vitals are perking up."
"That's good. He seemed a healthy specimen when last we saw him."
"The Solicitous and Caring Trixie wishes everyone should keep quiet. He has a way to go before he is awake."
Trixie was here. Damned if I were to let that overbearing, self righteous woman lord things over me without my being conscious. I forced myself to make a supreme effort and spoke. "Quit shouting. 'M awake." My voice was cracked and dry, and my mouth felt I had fallen asleep tongue first on an antique bear pelt, but by golly I was going to talk if I was able.
This touched off a course of nattering and crosstalk I decided was too much effort to make sense of. At least, until a voice I recognized as Sunset spoke up. "Nice to see you're back with us, Finn. How are you feeling?"
"Not Terrible, but I'm starting to reconsider the terms of my employment."
She chuckled at that. "I suppose I could see why that would be the case. How do you feel about opening your eyes?"
I shook my head. "Don' wanna. Wanna sleep for another week."
More chuckling at that. "I can sympathize, I've had times like that. Still, if you wanted to keep waking up, we would appreciate it."
"Mrnnnngh...." I muttered, shaking my head. "Want you to let me sleeeeeeeeep." I tried to pull my covers over my head, roll over and bury myself into the pillows, but my hands seemed strangely uncooperative. "Long daaaaaaaay. Go 'way and let me sleep."
But no, as the Unwritten Law of Women Who Encounter a Man Asleep clearly stated, this must not endure. Sunset kept speaking. "I don't think that's possible, Finn. Could you keep waking up? There's some folks here who'd quite like a word with you."
"Fine...Fine!" I muttered. "But under protest."
Blearily, I cracked an eyeball. Then, once the blaring assault on my optic nerves abated, another.
At first blush, the room I was lying in bore superficial resemblance to a dorm. However, it had the sanitized, industrial feel of a place that was never intended to long term livability. There was plenty of light, plenty of air, the walls were painted a pleasant, inoffensive beige... Everything screamed "Hospital" to my senses.
Of more pressing concern were the room's occupants.
I'd seen horses. I'd even spent time with a few, part of a court-mandated community service with a wild horse rescue some fifteen miles north of where I'd lived. Every year, I attended the Reno Rodeo with friends of mine, mostly as an excuse to drink adult beverages and eat fried foods while watching rednecks rope horses and wrestle cattle and all sorts of civic good-mindedness.
I'd never imagined horses like these, never mind seen them.
Nearest to my bed were a pair of horses, as different as fire and ice. One had a warm yellow coat and a mane and tail of firey red, laced with gold. She tossed her head and her mane flipped aside to reveal a horn, an honest to goodness horn-a unicorn, my brain supplied to me, as I stared in uncomprehending bafflement. On the other side of my bed, another unicorn, this one with a cerulean coat, haughty expression, and a mane and tail of palest blue-white, was regarding me with an expression of mingled pity and distaste.
I took a second to study both of them. Both resembled horses in a superficial sense: they had hooves, manes, muzzles, tails, et cetera. But beyond that, their faces were capable of expression beyond the average terrestrial equine. And, for that matter, they exhibited greater flexibility; beyond the two at the edge of my bed, one, a pale purple creature with wings folded to her sides, a deep purple mane with pink highlights, and a lavender horn that did little to distract me from how sharp and pointy it was, was sitting on her haunches at the edge of my bed, nothing so much like a great lavender dog or housecat.
The firey unicorn smiled at me and said "Hi Finn. Nice to see you among the land of the living." Her voice was familiar, and it took me longer than I cared to admit to place it.
"...Sunset?"
She grinned. "Right in one, Finn."
The icy blue-white unicorn opposite her snorted and pawed at the linoleum floor with a hoof. "Trixie is satisfied that his brain has not been damaged. Let us get him out of bed and put him to work."
I closed my eyes and shook my head. "I must have gotten my bells rung something fierce. I could have sworn you two looked like unicorns just now."
I cracked an eye again. "Huh...Sunset, why do you and Trixie look like unicorns?"
The red-maned unicorn gave me a kindly smile on her oddly expressive face. "Because...we are unicorns?"
"Hoo boy...these must be some primo painkillers then."I resolved to enjoy the trip, I opened both eyes fully and relaxed into the bed. My voice sounded funny, but I figured that was just par for the course. "Well, this should be interesting. So, where are we?"
Sunset glanced aside at the winged purple unicorn at the end of my bed, who strode forward. "You are in the private infirmary at Castle Canter."
I snorted. I must be high as a kite, I thought to myself, but out loud I said. "Pull the other one."
"I assure you, Mister Kelly, that you are probably suffering from nothing worse than the aftereffects of interdimensional travel than any chemical-induced cognitive impairment." Both the unicorns in the room turned to the door and lowered their heads in obvious deference to three newcomers who entered my hospital room.
The first was considerably taller than the others, with a white coat and a mane and tail that seemed to somehow float and waver, as if stirred by a nonexistent breeze. She wore an enigmatic smile across her face, though her eyes were hooded and gave few secrets away. From the reaction of Sunset and Trixie, she was clearly an authority figure, but even had I been alone with her, she radiated a palpable sense of authority. I mean, as much my brain could comprehend a horse radiating authority. But her eyes...her eyes had a great and terrible weight to them, belied by a mischievous glint. Put all together, I filed her immediately into the "Not To Be Messed Around With" category of my brain, a space that was previously occupied by First Responders in general, Sister Temperance Jones from my Elementary School Days, and her yardstick.
She was also, somehow.... "Mister Kelly, good to see you again."
Familiar
"...Celestia?" I ventured, also becoming increasingly aware that my brain was only clouded by the lingering fog of sleep, and that if I were high, it seemed distressingly similar to being stone cold sober.
She nodded to me, her smile broadening as she turned to regard the horse to her left. "There, see? He did recognize me. Pay up."
This one, an indigo mare with a midnight blue mane and tail that shifted the same way as Celestia's rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out. A small bag lifted out of her mane in a blue aura and floated over to Celestia, who took it with one hoof -I didn't know horses could do that- before she turned to regard me. This one had the same regal bearing and timeless grace that Celestia seemed to possess, though she was slightly shorter. Glancing between the two of them, I had the sudden thought that they must have been related, and though it wasn't anything more than intuition, I was equally certain it was correct. "Laugh while you can, Sunbutt." She glanced back at me and nodded. "It is good to see you in the flesh, Mister Kelly." A smile blossomed across her face. "Though it seems that it would be a while before you're able to play the piano again."
"I could never play it as well to begin wi-um...wait...how did you...what...?"
She glanced back at Celestia. "You were right, sister. It is more fun when you club stallions over the head with it." She glanced back at me. "I should perhaps introduce myself. I am Princess Luna, Guardian of the Night and keeper of the Moon. My sister you have obviously already...experienced." She quickly stepped to the side, dodging Celestia's sideways kick with her hindleg.
I cleared my throat. "Um, excuse me ladies, but could I ask one question?"
Celestia and Luna traded a glance before Celestia spoke. "By all means, ask away."
"Thank you." I took a deep breath and shouted at the top of my lungs "JUST WHAT THE HOWLING BLUE THUNDERCUSS IS GOING ON HERE?!"