"Three hours, you say? It's not long enough; I still feel tired," I complained to Spritelight.
The other unicorn didn't immediately reply, instead using her magic to heat up some more air to make sure we stayed afloat.
She looked back at me once her horn stopped glowing, smirking lightly. "And here I have been making sure we don't drop from the sky. Poor you with your three hours of sleep."
I felt my ears fall back against my head. "I could help with that if you trust me to not blow a hole through it."
"Ah, let's not," Spritelight decided. "So, you have met Luna then?"
I shrugged at the question. "I guess? If dreaming about her is the same as meeting her?"
The unicorn chuckled. "Yes, but that's only true for the princess Luna. She protects us against our nightmares, as you have found out."
"I honestly can't remember," I grumbled. "Just my luck; I meet a princess and can't remember anything of it."
Spritelight stared sideways at me, then nudged her head forward. "Josey counts; she's an alicorn princess as well."
I peered on ahead at the three flyers and their wings moving up and down, Josey at the head of them with the map held somewhat in front of her by her magic.
"You're right, but she's from Earth like Turkey and me," I decided. "It felt different somehow when I dreamt of Luna."
"More like an older sister or aunt, right?" Spritelight agreed. "They're older than most buildings in Equestria. There's something about being in the same room with them which makes you wonder about your own mortality."
I tried to grasp at the remnants of the dream, but to no avail.
"I don't remember," I honestly admitted, looking away at the sky around us.
There were no clouds; only flesh in the sky and the blood rain falling down from it as if the many demonic eyes were crying and bleeding all at once.
Rainbow Dash, princess Josey, and Turkey were flying through that rain and were absolutely soaked by it.
Every flap of their wings made the red liquid fly away from them.
With the balloon above our heads you'd think Spritelight and me were safe from the rain, but it fell upon us just the same.
What rain fell upon the outer skin of the balloon leaked down it and the ropes tethering it to the basket we were in, and then rained from the opening in the bottom onto our heads.
At least the basket itself was porous so it didn't fill up with it.
I mused on this. "What an umbrella could've done at this point..."
"Yes, we should have brought one," Spritelight agreed. "I'm going to need a long vacation at the hot springs after this is done."
"Oh yeah, hot springs are amazing. Or how about a sauna?" I suggested with a smile.
"And don't forget a visit to the spa. My hooves are going to need a pedicure after running around those hard roads of yours," the unicorn beside me pointed out, pulling her left forehoof up so I could look at it.
Just like my legs were a sort of marshmallow shape of fur leading down to partly cover the harder hoof structure from sight, lifting it up was the first real good look I got of Spritelight's hooves.
Where mine were still pristine since I had only just been transformed the other day, hers were clearly showing signs of damage like if a human would have dragged their fingernail across a piece of rough sandpaper or such.
"Oh right," I realised. "None of us are shod, are we?"
"...shod?" Spritelight started, lowering her hoof again.
"You know, metal horseshoes? We don't have any to walk on?" I pointed out, lifting my own more pristine right forehoof up to look at the bottom of it.
The other pony snorted. "No, of course we don't have horseshoes to walk on. Those are from a bygone era when ponies were still barbaric."
I raised an eyebrow at the outburst. "Barbaric?"
"Yes! Can you imagine having to hammer nails into your own hooves?" Spritelight asked me with some disgust to her voice. "It would ruin the hard work we put into our hoof care."
I winced at the idea of putting a nail into my hooves, somewhat knowing how it might feel as I had once had an unfortunate accident with a fingernail and a pushpin. "Oooh, and it wouldn't feel good either."
"Exactly!" my companion agreed wholeheartedly. "No, no... If you ever make it to Equestria we can visit a shoe store for some well-made hoofwear, but there will be no metal horseshoes or the like."
I chuckled weakly. "Sorry, that was just my inexperience coming out I guess."
"You have only recently become a pony, so it's to be expected," Spritelight offered with a wry smile. "How could I have ever considered making proper ambassadors out of humans without staying around to teach you what it means to be a pony?"
"Well, maybe you just thought more about trying to fix the problem at ha... hoof, than the details?" I pointed out. "You know, given that you also missed a detail like the end of the world..."
Spritelight's mood soured again and she looked away. "Bah... I was sure I was doing the right thing."
"I'm sure you thought you were, just like when I thought I was helping my mom by putting all the cake ingredients in the bowl without realising eggs had to be cracked," I suggested.
The other pony's ears lowered and she shivered. "That must have been a crunchy cake."
"My mom didn't bake it, so we had no cake. Such was the sad tale of the five year old who had storebought cake for her birthday party," I revealed. "My mom was smarter than me in that regard. I'm not so sure about some other things as I get older and can do my own research on them."
Spritelight's eyes set themselves upon the horizon to our left. "Isn't that just the case that foals grow up to become smarter than their parents? We all stumble as we try to prove ourselves, but then have to pick ourselves back up again as we mature on our own."
"I guess so, did I mention I'm a teenager? I'm still doing that stumbling right now," I pointed out. "One of those moments got me sent to boarding school, so there's that one for me to recover from."
Spritelight glanced over to me and seemed to make a decision. "Tell me more about your life here on Earth. I could ask Turkey, but she's flying ahead of us."
"What do you want to know?" I wondered.
"How do you deal with the death and destruction you have in the news all the time?" she wondered.
"Don't pay attention to it, for the most part. It's not like it's in my power to solve it," I revealed to her. "I mean, it's sad that people aren't nicer to one another, but what am I going to do? It's governments and big organisations which do those things."
"But what if you could do something about it? Why not pressure your government into brokering peace?" the unicorn suggested.
"There's a hundred million people living in my country, if not more," I reasoned. "I'm just one voice in many. There are groups who try to move the government to action, sure, but until I'm living on my own and have my own income and such, I can't really do much to anger my parents more than I already did."
"Can I ask what that was?" Spritelight asked cautiously, tilting her head slightly.
"I kissed my girlfriend and my dad walked in on us," I explained way too casually.
It wasn't like I had gotten over it yet, it was just that I knew how much of a raging homophobe my dad was and I still risked it.
"I don't get it," the Equestrian pony responded.
"Then you must live in a utopia where people aren't judged over who they love," I sighed out longingly. "There are too many people who want to decide how others live their lives over here on Earth."
"Yeah, no... we mostly leave everypony be," the unicorn agreed. "I mean, just look at Turkey and me. We've only known one another for a few days now, and she used to be a male human, but I don't want to part with her. She caught me entirely off guard."
"Same with me and my ex," I sighed longingly. "We just sort of grew together on the playground and only slowly realised that that was actually love and not just some fun hanging out time."
"Well, if your father can't see how beautiful your love for another is, I don't think he's a very good dad," Spritelight decided. "If I ever had foals, I would love them regardless of what they do."
I felt my throat pinch shut. "Ah, yeah, no..."
"I'm sorry, I'm crossing boundaries again... Just like me treading into your world and throwing it into upheaval, I guess," she sighed. "I guess I'm also quick to judge."
I was fighting back tears thinking of how simple this pony's thoughts about it were; if you loved your kids you would do so regardless of what they would decide to do with their lives.
And yet my parents had decided to ream me for daring to kiss a girl. Something that they claimed was unholy, against our religious views, and would damn me to eternity.
And then they threw me into that boarding school where I ended up being turned into a pony...
"Well, it's not like I'm going into Heaven as a pony anyway," I reasoned, getting some control back over my emotions. "It's not like I turned out the way they wanted me to or anything. I don't think their opinion should matter as much to me as it still does."
Spritelight nudged me with her shoulder. "Don't think like that. I'm sure your parents try their best even if they have issues to overcome themselves."
"What if the issue is a religion they're so bound to that I'm not sure they can see past the sermons they hear every Sunday?" I wondered.
The unicorn peered over the edge of the basket. "It's a big world out there. Two of them; Equestria and Earth. We don't even know what all of our planet looks like; so many undiscovered places. So many new experiences."
I eyed her, trying to figure out where this was going.
"Since coming to your world I've been fighting this turmoil in my brain. It's not what I expected your world to be. Not at all. Some of you have given me food for thought," Spritelight continued. "Made me realise I might have come at this problem the wrong way."
"The blood rain didn't tell you that?" I chuckled.
"There was no blood rain when I transformed Josey, or when I met Turkey," Spritelight explained. "That's just a thing which followed after I destabilised the world. And the flesh in the sky, and the storms, and the wall of flesh moving across the planet..."
"Yeah, about that... That sounds like something I don't want to ever meet," I decided, shivering at the thought. The eyes in the sky raining blood down on us were bad enough for me; I at least knew I could blow a hole in them with my magic.
"Oh, it's coming; it's also headed for Yellowstone's mana well," the other suggested matter-of-factly. "I'm wondering if Josey can fight the effects before it catches up to us."
"Let's both hope and pray for that, then," I coughed uneasily.
"Yeah, let's," Spritelight agreed.
