What Is “The Meld?”

If you’ve read Under Rolling Stars, you probably remember something I called “The Meld.” I didn’t really explain it in-story because that was never the point. The story’s set in the world, not about the world. You get hints and fragments. It’s there, just not front and center. The world-building takes a backseat.

But if you’re curious what actually happened, this post is for you.

Discovery

It started in the late 1910s.
A research team in the Himalayas stumbled on an anomaly. A distortion in the air, like a mirage that didn’t move with the wind. Instruments back then weren’t built to handle something like it. It was described as a “glare of light, floating in the cold.” Around the same time, halfway across another world, the Abyssinians of Equus discovered something eerily similar.

Neither side knew the other existed yet, but both began studying their anomalies. They grew slow, pulsing as they did. And then, in the early 1920s, they became unstable. That’s when the world began to break.

The Collapse and The Meld

At first, it was just small disappearances. A farmhouse gone missing in Idaho, replaced by a strange orchard no one could explain. Then whole towns. Then coastlines.
By 1925, Earth and Equus were overlapping in unpredictable patches.

Throughout the decade, pieces of both worlds blinked in and out of existence, sometimes for minutes, sometimes months. Maps became meaningless overnight. Trains derailed where tracks used to be. Letters couldn’t find their destinations because their destinations didn’t exist anymore.

By the end of the 1920s, reality itself had grown… thin.

When things finally began to “settle” in the early 1930s, it wasn’t because the crisis ended, it was because both worlds fused completely. Geography as we knew it was rewritten.
You might’ve owned a farm in 1921, and by 1933, there was a pony village sitting between two halves of it. Halves now miles apart. Oceans changed. Continents reformed. Old borders were gone, replaced with what scholars now call the Stitched Earth.

A New World

The ponies of Equestria found themselves primarily in what used to be North America.
Abyssinia and its deserts appeared across South America’s northern rim.
Griffonstone merged with Eastern Europe, and the Dragon Lands fused into the heart of Australia’s outback.

The rest of the world… well, it’s still a mystery. There are rumors of zones where time doesn’t flow quite right. Where the air hums and compasses spin. But most folks just learned to adapt.

They had to.

Because coexistence wasn’t a choice. It was survival.

The Princesses and the Sky

Even now, Princess Celestia can technically move the sun and moon. Technically.
But it’s far harder now, and far riskier. The sun and moon aren’t hers anymore. They belong to a universe half made of another world. She could, in theory, shift them, but doing so risks unraveling the balance of this new sky. That’s part of why she stopped.
That, and the fear it caused.

Princess Luna, of course… well, if you’ve read the story, you already know how the moon landing fits into that. Let’s just say humanity’s first steps didn’t go unnoticed.

Aftermath and Integration

By the late 1930s, when the world finally stopped shifting under everyone’s feet, a global effort began to rebuild. New maps were drawn. Trade lines reopened. Sometimes between species who didn’t even share a language. Entire careers formed around trying to understand what had happened. Philosophers, scientists, theologians. They were all arguing over whether it was divine, cosmic, or something else entirely.

By 1982 when Under Rolling Stars takes place, the world has learned to coexist, at least on paper. There are integrated towns like Morgantown, West Virginia, where humans and ponies live side by side, and others that remain strictly one or the other. There’s no war, no open hostility, just a quiet disconnect.

Why Does It Matter?

It’s the world Josh and Twilight were born into, two people shaped by the aftermath of an impossible event.
To them, The Meld isn’t a myth or a legend. It’s history. The reason a pony can board a train in Canterlot and end up talking to a human from Nashville.

When I finally came up with the idea of The Meld, that’s when Under Rolling Stars truly clicked for me. It gave me a world where both wonder and weariness could exist at once. A world where everyone’s still trying to understand what “normal” even means.

I’ve had the idea for Under Rolling Stars in my head for years, but The Meld gave it purpose. It made everything else possible. The tone, the tension, even the quiet little moments that make the story what it is. I’ve written pages and pages of notes about the Melded world: cultural touchstones, regional fusions, old technologies rediscovered through new magic… all of it.

And yes, I’ve already finished the sequel, Under Rolling Stars II.
The only thing keeping me from publishing it right now is the artwork. (Well, that and nerves. Let’s be honest.)

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope this gave you a better glimpse into the world behind the story. It’s a strange, beautiful place.