Parcly Taxel: From my experiences over the last four days I’ve seen how different life is between Hong Kong Island and the rest of the territory. The former is more local and inward-looking, the latter desires to connect with the world and its novelties. All this stems from their seperate histories as colonies: the Island was colonised around fifty years before the remainder was added as an extension, during which attitudes on trade evolved significantly.
 
Most tourists’ travels are limited to the area around Victoria Harbour, comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and shopping centres on the northwest shore of the Island, alongside some isolated tourist attractions farther out like Ngong Ping. This preference is reflected in how the MTR lines converge in these places and diverge elsewhere; the South Island Line had opened only six months ago, cementing attraction status for the places it served. I had been beyond this.
 
Sonata Dusk: Spindle really is the creature I should have aspired to be, a mix of her own windigo or my own siren species (feed on hate) and either type of changeling (feed on love). She changed her heart – I mean, her whole spirit since she doesn’t have a heart – at first to survive the treatment targeted against her and now to keep Parcly from suffering the same fate as her ghostly peers. I only enriched myself before I was defeated twice, while she was the support to a lonely pony who later ascended into royalty. When I checked out Parcly at Sai Wan and heard her story, it rocked my heart to its deepest abysses…
 
Spindle: Is that a compliment or a lamentation?
 
Sonata: I can’t sing anymore so I can’t lament. You’re my role model now.
 
Parcly: For our last breakfast in this city of happenings we went to the nearest Café de Coral (大家樂) for beef noodles, pork chop and scrambled-egg-on-toast. This is a local fast Chinese food chain, with neat queues at the counter for food instead of waiters attending to individual orders. While I did appreciate the increased efficiency and subsequent popularity, I’ll always love the old breakfast shops I also patronised on this trip, for they have this vibe of intimacy so closely linked to the tangle of streets and apartments around them that’s lost when they’re scaled up.
 
Spindle: Now our exit plan began; everything we had bought and found was put into Parcly’s luggage, whose interior was enchanted to expand with its contents so no item would find itself short of space. We checked out of the Dorsett at 11:30, taking a direct shuttle bus to the Kowloon MTR (the same bus we were waiting an eternity for upon arrival in Hong Kong) and the Airport Express afterwards.
 
Parcly: The scenes beyond the Airport Express window were rather different from last time. I saw shiny new bridges and supports of incomplete bridges, and the airport itself was reclaiming land for a new terminal. Some of these developments had support from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, but the posters I saw in the airport brought something different to mind: it was now twenty years since the return of Hong Kong to China.
 
Would the city still grow with the hinterland across the border, or would it start to shrink like Tokyo already has? Would it maintain effective autonomy and stay receptive to all forms of opinion? Would Mandarin replace Cantonese as the majority dialect in the area? I wondered these, even as I pushed off the ground with hooves and wings towards home.
 
Though I am an alicorn princess, I’ve always flew under my own power to foreign lands, never taking an aeroplane, because I want my journeys to relate to the masses. I don’t like it when I get treated like Celestia or Luna or Cadance; I show a simple pony to the passerby but mostly keep the full complexity to royal occasions. It contrasts with Chrysalis, Trixie and similarly extravagant personalities who seek maximum attention upon themselves.
 
Spindle: At seven in the evening, after three and a half hours of braving turbulence and breaking several urges to sleep (no, Parcly was not influenced by Sonata’s singing, just tired and somewhat weighed down by the food she ate in Hong Kong), we arrived at the top balcony of Canterlot Castle. The rising full moon and setting sun were in balance at blue hour, with winds changing their course as the land cooled – Parcly’s mane was ruffled as we descended some stairs. Luna was there to receive us in a lounge.
 
“Welcome home,” she greeted. “I can read that you two are still filled with excitement and curiosity, perhaps to spin a thread of your dreams?”
 
Parcly: That’s where we are now, Spindle. With our voyage concluded after five days, it’s ready to sink into my subconscious, but I must sleep for that. And you?
 
Spindle: I’ll just keep a warm air pocket around your bottle and wish you a dreamscape full of skyscrapers.