Wallflower had stood in front of the statue.

Her escape.

The midnight air kept bristling her unkempt air and tossing it in the wind, the chill enough to bite threw her ratty sweaty. She shivered, her exhale condensing in the cool night before being whipped away.

She looked back towards the school.

What exactly was there left for her here?

It was only take a few more steps and she would have a new start. A new her.

Where people would remember her.

Where people wouldn’t forget her.

The gem shimmered in her clenched palms. She took a second to look over its features, tracing her index fingers across the carved indentations. 

She sighed, wrapped her fingers around the artifact and muttered the spell lowly, the words lost in the wind. There was a faint glow and the tensing of magic in the atmosphere that raised the hair on her arms, and then the feeling dispersed, as the aura spread out from Wallflower, rippling through Canterlot High.

She pocketed the stone and then withdrew her phone from the other pocket. Sunset’s contact information blared on the screen, the edge of their message history lingering on the screen.

Wallflower bit her lip, trying to ignore the burning in her eyes as she tapped at the keys.

“I’m sorry. For everything.”

The ding came only a few seconds later, barely long enough for Wallflower to reconsider her decision.

“Hello. Who is this? I’m afraid I don’t know this number.”

It was done.

To be fair, there were only a few tears. Not half as much as she had expected.

The last ties were cut, and as Wallflower strolled forward towards the statue, her last vestiges of nervousness melted away.

There was nothing left to be attached to.

And then it was towering up in front of her. The Canterlot High mascot statue, as indiscriminate and innocent looking as any monument.

But Wallflower could feel the hum of mana buzzing in the hollows of her ears, feel the crackling over the contours of her teeth.

Her hand pressed against the cold, metal plaque, and for a second there was solid contact. But Wallflower concentrated, and she felt the stone in her pocket vibrate.

In an instant, that contact disappeared, and Wallflower’s arm disappeared inside the solid statue. A pleasant, cooling sensation flowed up through the limb.

She glanced back over her shoulder, taking one last look at the like she had known. The life that had forgotten her.

And threw herself forward into the abyss.

Spinning darkness all around her, pulsing with so much energy that she could feel her it reverberating in her brain, in her cells, in her soul.

She couldn’t see, couldn’t touch, couldn’t feel anything around her, and when she tried to scream, there was nothing, just the dull stretching of her vocal cords in the unnatural silence.

Her limbs tingled, and she was sure something was wrong with her. Her form twisted, burning and stretching and compacting.

And then there was a light at the end, a brilliant white the glimmered radiantly in the dark.

Wallflower swam towards it, or at least tried to. But there was no where else to go and eventually her slid past the horizon waiting for her.

There was light, and there was feeling. Numb and uncertain at first, but her limbs quickly sprung to life.  She tried to stand, only to find her body not responding the way she had wanted to. A quick look showed what was wrong.

Not hands, but hooves. No fingers. No toes. 

Not human…

But a second chance was a second chance. So the screaming and panicking could wait.

It wasn’t long before another creature poked it’s head out to see what all the commotion had been. This pony’s purple bangs looked strikingly familiar to someone she had seen back home.

Twilight Sparkle, as she had introduced herself. Amazed that someone had stumbled through.

Wallflower lied, saying she didn’t know what she had done or where she had come from. 

Twilight nodded, slowly at first, taking down notes on paper she had grabbed with her magic.

Wallflower could only stare in amazement.

But then the unicorn had turned, saying that there was a letter she needed to write, and when she had turned back, there were clouds in her eyes and confusion on her face.

"Um, who are you?"

Again.

Wallflower could only nod, feeling the heat on her face. 

The tears from earlier flowed freely.