I spent the next few days working on refining my technical drawings. The original set was somewhat rough, since I had been still learning to write as a pony, I ended up redoing much of it. By halfway through the following week, I had a new set, and even had drawn up designs with some alterations that would hopefully would make it easier for earth ponies and pegasi to shoot.
Life at the castle was getting to be fairly lonely. I knew I should have made some effort to go out and make some friends but I wasn't sure how best to meet new ponies. I did make some effort to get in touch with a few of the ponies I knew. I stopped by Short Fuses' once to check up on her progress but she let me know that she had to catch up on some orders before she could take a look at my powder. Kitchen Sink was still out of town and I hadn't been able to get in touch with either Silent Night or Thunderbolt. Cadance and her husband had traveled north to a city in the Crystal Empire to take care of some sort of legal dispute and that had left Twilight to run things in Canterlot all alone.
Sadly that meant she had zero time for spending any time with me, in fact I saw her exactly once during that entire week. When getting back from a late night bar run, I ran into her stumbling down the hall, a look of exhaustion plastered on her face. She let me know that court had run well into the night due to the number of ponies that had shown up that day and then she mumbled something about solar alignment. I had done more than my fair share of drinking and I had to piss like... well like a horse so I nodded and suggested we meet up at another time.
On Thursday I was going stir-crazy so I did some more traveling. This time, instead of heading southwest towards Ponyville, I went north. I flew for several hours, but for the most part it just seemed to be farmland and open fields. Eventually, I spotted a huge cloud formation in the distance. As I got closer I saw hundreds, if not thousands of tiny moving dots, hovering in and around the clouds. It took me a few moments to realize that they were pegasus ponies. The clouds formation was a massive city, floating in the sky. It had to be Cloudsdale, Golden Dawn had mentioned once before. I thought about visiting, but it was still at least an hour's flight away and by then I was getting tired. I decided to turn around and save visiting Cloudsdale for another day, perhaps with Golden Dawn.
When I got to my room, I found a letter had been slipped under the door. My heart skipped a beat when I noticed that it It was from Golden Dawn. Hurriedly, I tore it open and read it. I let out a whoop of joy when I saw that she was going to be arriving back in Canterlot in the morning. She wasn't sure if the letter was going to reach me in time but if it did she asked if I could meet her at the station. I still wasn't sure what would happen between the two of us, but no matter how things turned out I was glad that she would be back. I missed her terribly.
The next morning, I woke with the sun. After shaking off the bonds of sleep, I threw on my saddle bags and flew to the train station. Golden Dawn's train was due to arrive at 7:00AM. I found an empty seat at the busy station and waited patiently for the train to come in.
When 7:30 rolled around and the train still hadn't arrived, I checked the board and saw that Golden Dawn's train arrival time had been updated. It now just read 'Delayed'. I trotted around until I found a station worker to see if I could get some more information. Finally I spotted a unicorn tending an information booth that didn't already have a long line. I galloped over to the booth before anypony else could slip into line and asked about Golden's train. Unfortunately information was sparse, the only thing that the pony knew is the train had some mechanical issue. It had been fixed and would be arriving as soon as possible.
I headed back to find my former seat occupied so instead I stood at the platform. Half an hour later I was just about to go see if I could get an update when I heard a loud whistle in the distance. I looked up to see a train pulling into the station.
The train slowed to a halt and let out a loud hiss as a puff of steam was released from the engine. It was on the right track and had the matching number of Golden's train so I headed towards it.
Ponies began to disembark, hurrying off to their destinations. I watched and waited, looking up and down the platform for any sign of Golden Dawn. The stream of ponies dwindled down to a trickle but I still hadn't spotted her. I was about to take off so I could get an aerial view when a very dirty and disheveled Golden Dawn stormed out of the first car, her pace only slowed by the enormous amount of luggage she was struggling to carry. Besides a very full set of saddlebags she was carrying a large duffel bag, with the strap in her mouth. She also had two small bags tied by a rope draped over her body, covering up most of her wings.
"Golden Dawn!" I shouted, trying to get her attention as she headed away from me.
Her ear swiveled towards me at the sound of her name, she stopped and turned, looking around for the source of the sound. A haphazard smile replaced the frown that she wore when she finally spotted me in the crowd. I trotted up to her, getting a better look as I cleared the crown of ponies that separated us. Her mane was completely frazzled and her forelegs and wing tips were covered in dark black splotches.
She put the duffel bag down and breathed a sigh of relief. "Hail Storm!" she said tiredly. "Am I glad to see you. I was afraid you wouldn't get my letter till after I got back."
"Likewise, I've missed you." I reached in for a hug but she brushed me away.
"Watch it, you don't want to get this crap all over you," she said, indicating at the greasy oil stains covering the front of her body.
"What happened?" I asked.
"There was a problem with the train. One of the brakes seized up and I volunteered to help fix it. Of course they didn't have the right tools so I had to futz it with what they had... it got a little messy," she said with a sigh. "It's been a long trip and I just want to get back to the castle and take a bath."
"Can I help carry some of that stuff?" I asked nodding at the two extra bags she was carrying in addition to her overstuffed saddle bags."
"That would be great," Golden Dawn lifted the double set of bags laying across her back. I took them from her and carefully stuffed them into my own saddle bags. Then I ducked my head under the saddle bag strap and let it rest on my shoulder.
"Where's the rest of your stuff, I thought you were bringing up most of the shop?" I asked.
Golden Dawn smirked. "That's all coming up on a freight train silly, I don't have anywhere to put it yet. I've arranged to have it stored at one of the Canterlot warehouses until I buy a new place."
"Oh that makes sense," I said feeling kind of dumb.
As we began to trot out of the station, I asked Golden Dawn how things had gone in Hoofston. After she finished filling me in she wanted to know about what I had been up to. I wanted to talk to her about the kiss at the station all those weeks ago but my stomach was jittery with nervousness, so I didn't bring it up.
Instead I filled her in on all the work I had been doing in preparation to start up my business. Being able to talk about the progress I had made seemed to give Golden Dawn a boost of energy and soon she was grilling me on every little detail. I brought up my meeting with Kitchen Sink and the told her about Short Fuse. Golden Dawn was very excited when she heard that I had found a pony that might be able to help with creating smokeless powder.
"So while we are on the subject, I've got a meeting in Ponyville this afternoon, I'm going to talk to the mayor about buying some land. I know you just got back from a long trip but if you can make it, I'd appreciate it. I don't know anything about land prices in Equestria, I want to make sure I'm not overpaying. I can show you the area while we are down there."
"You're right it has been an exhausting trip, but if I can get a quick nap in before you leave, I think I'll be okay." Golden Dawn said as we navigated our way out of the crowded station. "When were you planning on leaving?"
"The meeting is at 3:00 so maybe 2:00." I said, giving it some thought.
"Is that enough time for you to get down there?" Golden Dawn asked. "You're going to have to gallop the whole way."
"Oh I was going to..." I trailed off. I hadn't told Golden Dawn I could fly yet. Hmm, what was the best way to go about this?
She raised an eyebrow curiously. "What was that?" she asked.
"Oh, I um. Maybe you're right, I might want to leave earlier. But that means you might not have enough time to nap. We should hurry up and get to the castle," I said, plan formulating in my mind.
"It's too crowded to run," Golden Dawn said pointing at the thousands of ponies bustling about.
"Run? Who said anything about running?" I asked. Before Golden Dawn could answer, I unfurled my wings and took off, straight up, as fast as I could. Once I was clear of the crowds, I aimed myself at the distant castle and began to accelerate to a comfortable speed.
A few seconds later, my ears swivelled towards the sound of wingbeats coming from behind me. I turned and looked, just as Golden Dawn pulled up just above me.
"Hail Storm.... you.... you.... featherbrain! You didn't tell me you could fly!" she shouted at me, before she deftly maneuvered in close, kicking me in the shoulder with one of her forehooves. The hit caught me off guard and I wobbled in the air a little, futility trying to dodge a second blow that never came.
"You didn't ask!" I said, beaming back at her while I corrected my flight path. I was slightly drifting to the right, most likely because I had never flown while carrying so much stuff before and the unbalanced load was throwing me off a bit.
"Sweet Celestia, this is awesome! I noticed you were moving around on the ground just fine, but I was nervous that your fear of heights would keep you grounded for a while," Golden Dawn said, returning the grin.
"When those healing spells went out, the jolt of energy I got was insane. If I had been inside I would have been bouncing off the walls. Instead, I was walking around the castle garden, talking with Cadance. Suddenly, I got overwhelmed with a need to move. I just started running, I couldn't really focus on anything else but even that wasn't really helping. Cadance caught up with me and let me know what was happening. The need to fly was too strong and it only took her bringing it up and the next thing I knew I was rocketing skyward."
"Were you scared?" Golden Dawn asked.
"I didn't have time to be scared, I didn't even realize what I was doing at first, I was just so focused on flying it didn't even occur to me to me that I was several thousand feet up. I was following Cadance and she eventually landed on a cloud. I followed her in and when I landed that's when I noticed where I was. I almost had a heart attack, but then my fear... it just kind of fizzled out. Sitting up there, I was forced to face the reality of what I had just done. My fear... it was a human fear, and I won't say it was completely unreasonable to have it when I was human. But... as a pegasus, it just didn't hold the same weight anymore. I can fly now, what do I have to fear of the sky?
"That's awesome Hail Storm," Golden Dawn said with a huge grin.
"It is, it was like I had an epiphany, as long as I'm a pegasus, I don't think I could ever be afraid of heights again. Flying is... It's freedom. Just look at all of this," I said, pointing my hoof at the sky, "it's just too amazing to be afraid of. Being up here, it's like nothing I've ever experienced before."
A chill ran down my spine when I felt Golden's wing tips brush up against my own. She was looking at me with a smile as wide as the open sky before us. "I'm so happy for you," she said, eyes glowing in delight.
Canterlot Castle was below us, and we began to circle downward. The balcony to our room came into view as we rounded the building.
"I know both of us are going to be busy for a while, but we should take a day off now that you're back. We can just go flying, just you, me and the sky. It will be great." I said, as we came in for a landing.
When I didn't hear a reply I glanced back to see if Golden Dawn had heard me. Unfortunately at that moment the duffel back I was carrying shifted just enough to throw me off balance again and I clipped my wing on a large potted plant sitting on the balcony railing. The pot was knocked off onto the balcony and shattered into pieces spilling dirt everywhere.
My hooves hit the ground with a thud but after a second of stumbling forward, I was able to catch my balance and keep myself from face planting into the floor. Lucky for me, four legs made for a fairly stable platform. My wing hurt a bit but I didn't think it was serious. Still, I wasn't sure so I gave it a look over.
"You alright?" Golden Dawn asked, as she landed next to me.
"Nothing hurt but my pride," I said as I looked myself over. "Then again, first crash in almost a week of flying on my own power. That's got to be a world record for humans."
Golden Dawn laughed at that. "I thought you had accepted being a pegasus now?" she asked.
"I have but... well it's weird. I'm still human on the inside no matter what body I might be in, I've just got pegasus mixed in with it as well," I said, as I folded up my wings.
The wing that had hit the flower pot was a little sore. A few of the feathers were slightly bent or misaligned and the wing itself was covered in dirt but nothing felt broken and there was no blood. Other than being a little sore, everything looked to be in good shape.
"You want to go unload your stuff, I'll clean this up," I said, pointing my nose at the mess I had just made.
"Unless you've got a dustpan hidden out here, most of it is going to have to wait." Golden Dawn said.
"That's true, maybe I can find something inside." I opened the glass door and Golden Dawn followed me in.
We searched around the apartment for several minutes. Golden Dawn excused herself and headed off to the bathroom to clean off the dirt and the grime she had picked up working on the train. I kept looking but eventually gave up. I took a seat on the couch, waiting for her to return, the butterflies in my stomach a constant reminder of what I had to talk to her about. On top of that my injured wing was feeling itchy. One feather in particular seemed like it might be loose. I stretched out the wing so I could get a better look at the damage. I was so engrossed in looking it over that I nearly jumped off the couch when I heard a disapproving hum coming from behind me.
"You've got to clean and straighten those feathers," Golden Dawn said.
I turned towards the bathroom door, Golden Dawn was standing in the entrance watching me. I felt my jaw open slightly. The oil and dirt stains had been washed away, leaving her coat pristine and shiny. Her mane hung down flat against her back, the hair still wet from her bath. As she turned her head slightly her eyes, those lovely eyes, sparkled as they caught a bit of light. I felt the bottom of my stomach drop out as part of my brain informed me that cute was perhaps no longer the right word to describe her. Beautiful worked though. All through this, the human part of my brain fought with the pony part. Part of me still wasn't sure if I was physically attracted to ponies, but I could tell my body sure was.
This was the second time I had found myself staring at her since I had been turned into a pony, but unlike the first, this time I got caught. She shifted her gaze a bit and for a moment our eyes locked. I forced myself to turn away, hoping she wouldn't notice the flush in my cheeks. I fiddled with my wing, pretending to inspect it, half hoping she wouldn't say anything, but half hoping she would.
When she didn't, I started to actually inspect my wing. I brought a hoof up to poke at the messed up feathers.
"So... um, like I was saying, If you don't fix those, they're going to interfere with your flying," Golden said.
I continued to concentrate on the wing and avoided looking back at her. I moved my hoof to the feather that was most out of alignment. I pushed and poked at it, trying to get it to go back into place. I heard Golden Dawn start to giggle.
"What in the world are you doing?" she asked.
"You said to straighten the feathers! I'm trying to."
"Yeah, by preening them, with your mouth!" she said with a snort.
"Preening? Isn't that something birds do?" I asked.
"Birds, pegasi and griffons, anything with feathers," Golden Dawn said with a smirk. "Why don't you go wash the wing, get the excess dirt out, it doesn't taste good. Then I'll show you how."
A few minutes later I was rinsing off my wing under some warm water. The big loose feather came out entirely as the stream of water rushed over it. I finished cleaning off the wing and then picked the feather up in my mouth. It was enormous, which only made sense giving the size of my wings. I brought it out of the bathroom with me and trotted over to Golden Dawn who was sitting there, nose buried in one of the drawings I had left out on the table.
"Hey, " I said, poking her with the feather to get her attention. I held it out towards her as she looked up. When she saw the feather, her eyes instantly locked onto it.
A moment of silence passed, I wasn't quite sure what was going on. She was still looking at the feather and I didn't know why. I decided to speak up. I let the feather drop out of my mouth so I could talk.
"I lost a feather, is that bad?" I asked.
"Oh... " Her ears drooped slightly and there was silence for another moment. "Oh... um no, that's fine, it will grow back in a week or so," Golden Dawn said before letting out a sigh.
I felt like I had done something wrong but before I could ask, she began to talk again.
"Hail Storm, I know it wasn't intentional but..." she sighed again. "Look, you know how I felt... still feel, about you. I said in my letter that I wasn't going to bring it up, but I need to. Back when we were flying in, you asked if I wanted to spend a day flying with you. That sounded to me like you were asking me out. That's a fairly common first date for pegasus ponies."
Suddenly four legs weren't enough, as knees started to feel weak. I wanted to talk to Golden Dawn about it, but I just wasn't ready. I didn't know if I would ever be ready. The entire thing made me nervous and procrastination seemed like a good idea.
"And, when I looked up and saw you holding out that feather... we share feathers like... well, you'd give them to your marefriend. Just like you said humans give flowers to girlfriends. I know you had no way of knowing either of of those things and it wasn't intentional and I know you aren't interested but it's still throwing me for a loop because it reading like very mixed signals," she said with a shaky voice. Her wing moved to clear away the mist from her eyes as she looked at me sadly.
"I... didn't'... um" I stumbled over my words. I had never been good at relationship conversations. Talking to women was no problem, unless I wanted to ask them out, in which case I was reduced to a bumbling fool. I wanted to talk to her, but I didn't know if I could. My mouth moved and a few incomprehensible sounds came out. It was clear that the lack of nerves had followed me both into Equestria and my new body as well as I tried to stammer out a reply.
"Look, I know, you didn't know." Golden Dawn said with a sniff.
"No, it's not that, it's uh..." I managed to get out half a sentence before I gave up. Talking wasn't going to work.
"Screw it," I mumbled to myself. Actions spoke louder than the words I couldn't get out. I leaned in and returned Golden Dawn's kiss three weeks late.
There was a moment of hesitation from Golden, but then she responded, joining into the kiss. It was a simple kiss, but the seconds it lasted stretched out towards infinity. I enjoyed the happy warmth that spread throughout my body as time slowly ticked by. When the moment was done, I broke away and looked into Golden's eyes. There was a happiness in them, but also a hint of confusion. She started to talk.
"But... at the..." I gently placed my forehoof on her mouth, silencing her. I had to get this out, even if it if came through half mumbled.
"At the station... I... I didn't respond, not because it was unwanted. I mean... it was unwanted. Well not unwanted. More like unknown. I didn't know I wanted it. I..." I said, babbling on. I stopped and swallowed hard and took a deep breath as I struggled to put the thoughts racing around my mind into coherent sentences.
"Look, the whole station thing. I was caught off guard... that's all. Humans, well... to put it simply, we don't have interspecies relationships. There are no other species where that kind of relationship would be appropriate. I was so surprised because the idea of it hadn't even crossed my mind. But after some confusion... and some helpful advice, I figured things out."
"Advice?" Golden Dawn asked.
"I had a run in with Princess Cadance."
"You went to the goddess of love to talk about us?" Golden Dawn asked in shock.
"Went to is a bit of a stretch... I ran into her, literally. She figured out something was up and sort of lead the conversation into me talking about it," I said with nervous laugh.
"So what does all this mean?" Golden Dawn asked quietly.
"It means." I stopped for a moment to collect my thoughts. "It means... um what are you doing tomorrow?"
Golden Dawn tipped her head to the side, shooting me an expression of confusion. "Um... I don't have anything planned?"
I took her hoof in my own and looked deep into her eyes.
"Do you want to go out with me tomorrow, like on a date? We can just go flying, just you, me and the sky." I said with a smile, echoing my earlier question, but this time I made the intention clear.
"Yes... I'd like that," she said with a happy smile. She leaned in and nuzzled me gently. My heart soared with joy as I returned the affectionate touch.
Golden Dawn fell asleep on the couch while I went and found something to clean up the mess I had made earlier. I tried to keep the noise down while I worked but tip-toeing on hooves is hard. Fortunately she slept through my bumbling and soon all evidence of my crash had been taken care of.
She was still asleep so I flew down to the market and bought two sandwiches so we'd have something to eat when she woke up. Just as I arrived back in the room, Golden woke up from her nap and let out a cute little yawn. We ate a quick lunch and then headed to Ponyville.
Since we were early, I suggested stopping at Sugarcube Corner and getting an after lunch snack.
"Goldie, Hail Storm!" Pinkie said as we walked in.
"Hi Pinkie," I said with a wave. "How's it going?"
"Terrific! I thought I had baked an extra cake but now I know who it was for," Pinkie said before disappearing into the back of the store.
"Wait what?"
Pinkie trotted out with a small cake and placed it down on a table in front of us with two sets of utensils.
"Double chocolate surprise cake," Pinkie said.
"What's the surprise?" Golden Dawn asked.
Pinkie Pie leaned in really close, her eyes darted back and forth as if checking to see if anypony else was listening.
"The surprise is it's a triple chocolate cake," she whispered loudly. "But don't tell anypony."
"I guess we're having cake?" I said, looking to Golden Dawn. She gave a shrug so we took a seat.
"Dig in you two!" Pinkie said as she returned to the counter to help some customers that had just walked in.
"Are we really going to eat a whole cake? I asked.
"Well, it is a small one..." Golden Dawn said, she cut out a slice and took a bite. Her eyes lit up and she quickly shoved another piece into her mouth. "Yes... yes we are."
Once again, I was not disappointed in Pinkie's ability to match ponies to confectionery. We finished our dessert, paid, and then headed to the town hall.
There was no line today so I walked right up to the counter. Quill Pen was sitting there going over a large notepad, she glanced up as I approached.
"Hello, I'm here to see the mayor, I have an appointment," I said.
"Oh yes, Hail Storm. You're right on time, Mayor Mare is ready for you, go on in," she said, nodding to the double doors off to the left.
We entered and found an older looking earth pony sitting behind a large desk. She looked up as the door opened and gave us a smile.
"Hello, you must be Hail Storm. I'm Mayor Mare. Please, take a seat."
Golden and I sat down on the bench in front of her desk.
"Yep, that's me, and this is my friend Golden Dawn," I said.
"I understand you are interested in purchasing some land over near Short Fuse's place?"
"Yes, I think so, but right now I'm just trying to get a feel for the price."
"That's fine. Do you already know what you are going to be using this land for?"
"Well," I said scratching my head. "I'd like to open up a business. But, I'm not originally from Equestria and I don't know the legalities involved in doing that."
Mayor Mare cocked an eyebrow at that but didn't say anything about it.
"I see. Well, first things first. I went over the area you showed Quill Pen and it is directly across the street from Short Fuse. She has been running her store from that plot of land for years. Due to the nature of her work, she generates a lot of noise on occasion, which is why she's located so far outside the town. I warning you about this now and I want to make something absolutely clear, I will not tolerate complaints about the noise."
"Oh yes, I heard somepony tried to start a farm and gave you some trouble?" I asked.
"I take it you've talked to Short Fuse then?" Mayor Mare asked.
"Yes I did, and I won't have any complaints. In fact, one of the reasons I'm looking in that area is I'd be generating quite a bit of noise myself. I'd rather set up shop somewhere that's already noise so I'm not disturbing anypony."
"Well that's rather thoughtful. May I ask what exactly you'd be doing?"
"I'd like to open up a target shooting range, along with store where I'd design and create firearms."
"What kind of target shooting? Is this like archery? Also, I'm not familiar with the term firearm, can give me some more detail?" Mayor Mare asked.
"So yes, there would be some similarity to archery. Actually it would be a bit closer to crossbows. Firearms, or guns well, they don't exist here yet. They're kind of a new invention in Equestria. Think of them as a very advanced crossbow with much longer range, more accurate and quite a bit noisier. That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, although I'd only be using these devices for target shooting, they, like bows or crossbows are weapons, I don't know if there are any restrictions I need to be aware about."
"I'm glad you asked, we used to have a pony who sold bows here in Ponyville, so I'm familiar with the law. There are a few restrictions. First, in order to sell weaponry, you must be a citizen of Equestria. You said you weren't from Equestria, have you applied for citizenship?" Mayor Mare asked.
"Actually, I am a citizen now. Princess Twilight gave me this," I said. I dug through my saddlebag and pulled out the scroll Twilight had given me.
Mayor Mare took the scroll and looked it over before giving it back to me.
"Very good, this appears to be in order. There are two other things you need to know. First, you are not allowed to sell weaponry to minors without a guardian's permission which must be given in pony."
"What constitutes a minor in Equestria?" I asked.
"Anypony under 15 years old. The only other restriction is that you aren't allowed to knowingly sell to a criminal or anypony you suspect is going to use the weapon for a criminal act. That being said, since this is something new, I'd like a bit more detail about these firearms."
I gave Mayor Mare the best explanation I could, sweating with nervousness the whole time. If this plan fell through, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I gave some basic information on the model guns I was planning on making and gave some examples of different styles of target shooting. Lastly, I went over all the precautions I would be taking at the range to ensure that everypony stayed safe and the basic rules of gun safety. She had a lot of questions, but in the end I must have done a good job presenting my information because she let me know that if I wanted to, there was no legal reason I couldn't start production.
With that we moved into discussing the actual land. Because I hadn't yet made concrete plans on how much I was looking to purchase, she gave me an estimated cost per acre and let me know to setup a meeting with the town surveyor when I was ready to make a purchase.
The land itself seemed fairly inexpensive, I was tempted to just buy a huge plot, but Golden Dawn pointed out that I should find out how much it would cost to get a building built before I made any purchases. She believed I had enough bits from the treasure I had acquired that I would be fine as long as I didn't go too overboard but it made sense to check first. I didn't want to get caught in a situation where I ran out of money before I had bought everything that I needed. That evening we looked into construction firms and found a few based in Ponyville that we could check out when we had some time. Some of the tools I was going to need, I could get at a hardware store but others Golden informed that that I would have to special order, which I could do through the mail or from a store.
On the way back to the castle, we flew over Short Fuse's shop and I showed Golden Dawn the surrounding area. I gave a rough description of what I wanted to do and how much land I needed. Golden Dawn looked around and gave a nod of approval.
Saturday morning we slept in late, only rising well after the sun had come up. We packed a picnic lunch and set out on our date. Flying as an date activity was new to me so I hadn't thought to plan a location. After we had been up in the air for 20 minutes I began to get a bit jittery, not knowing if I was supposed to have an actual plan. I nervously explained the situation to Golden Dawn.
"We don't need somewhere to go. Just being up here and spending time together is nice. But, if I might make a suggestion, we should circle the mountain. It gives a great view and I know where there's a small lake on the other side of the mountain where we can stop and eat lunch. There's a trail that leads up to it but it's a tough hike so for the most part only pegasi go there."
I agreed and let Golden Dawn take the lead. We left the sky around Canterlot Castle, flying higher and higher until the grand towers looked no bigger than a child's playset. Around us were other pegasi, diligently working on managing the city's cloud cover, running mail routes or enjoying the sky as we were, but as we moved farther from the city the number of ponies began to thin.
Forests circled around two thirds of the mountain, stretching out as far as even my pegasus eyes could see. In the distance I could make out Ponyville and to the north, the general area of the clearing where Short Fuse's shop was. As we flew, Golden Dawn pointed out different areas of interest. The surrounding forests and the mountain itself had quite a large number of hiking trails, each with their own unique scenery and breathtaking views.
"I've missed this area, Hoofston was nice but it's just too... dry. I grew up on this mountain. I love the forests, the rivers and waterfalls, it's so green and full of life. It's good to be back," Golden Dawn said as we continued to fly.
As we moved further north, the forests began to thin, the rolling green hills eventually giving way to endless fields. Far to the northwest I could just make out what I thought was Cloudsdale, from here it looked like a massive stormfront, except more white than grey. Golden Dawn saw me looking at it and spoke up.
"That's the outskirts of Cloudsdale, that pegasus city in the clouds that I told you about. We should go visit it someday."
"I thought so, I actually flew up this way the other day. I was maybe 20 miles north of where we are now, so I got a decent look at it," I said. "As for going there with you, I was going to ask you that, let me know when you want to go."
It was early afternoon when we finally reached the eastern side of the mountain. A range of smaller, but still impressive mountains ran eastward. The gap between Canterlot mountain and the other range formed a snaking valley, in the center of which a mighty river flowed gracefully. A number of smaller rivers and streams flowed down Canterlot mountain, coalescing into one large river which itself met up with the central one in the valley. Golden Dawn turned and began to descend towards one of the many waterfalls.
At the base of this waterfall was a small blue lake. A curtain of mist, coming up from the rapidly falling water, surrounded the base of the falls. Under the mist, the water frothed and churned as it ran up against the rocks jutting up out of the water. Farther from the falls, the motion of the water slowed down, giving the majority of the lake a clam and peaceful quality.
Much of the shore and part of the falls were shaded by tall rocky cliffs on one side and a green wall of trees on the others. It wasn't until near the middle of the lake that the sunlight finally broke through the thick canopy, making the water there sparkle and shine as it reflected off the glassy surface.
True to her earlier description, the lake was virtually devoid of other ponies, I saw only a hoofful of other pegasi sitting around its shores.
I spread out the blanket I had brought on a large gray rock and unpacked our lunch while Golden Dawn patiently waited. I tried to make small talk, a skill I was sorely lacking in, while we ate our sandwiches but it was obvious I was fumbling around for something to say.
"Relax Hail Storm, you're doing fine." Golden Dawn said. I caught myself staring deep into her magenta eyes as she she rested a wing on my shoulder.
"This is, as far as I know, the first human - pony date in the history of the universe, it's a little nerve-racking," I said with a timid laugh. "Well, sort of human," I said as my tail flicked involuntarily, as if reminding me of my current state.
"It's a first date and we already know each other. Just talk to me like you normally would," she said with a gentle smile.
"Alright," I said, forcing a smile of my own.
I put my best effort into controlling my nerves, and to my relief it worked. Soon we were deep into a conversation about our upcoming plans.
"So what do you think about those land prices?" I asked.
"They're fair, though depending on how many acres you end up buying, you might want to see if you can get a bulk discount," Golden Dawn said. "Actually, I was thinking of something. Did you notice the rail line running near that land? It was about a mile down the road from that fireworks store."
"Fireworks and dynamite, an odd combination, but who am I to judge," I said, after finishing the last piece of my sandwich. "And no, I didn't notice it."
"It looks like there was a small loading station over where the road and rail intersected. It makes sense. Shot Fuse must get supplies and also ships her products out. Rail is the best way to do that."
"If so, that would make me getting my own supplies a bit easier, with luck I can get my powder straight from Short Fuse, but I'll still need wood, steel, lead and other stuff too."
"This is true, but I wasn't just thinking about your own place. Don't forget that I need to set something up too. I had been originally thinking about settling closer to Fillydelphia or possibly Detrot because of their industrial bases, but now that I'm back in this area, I'm not sure I want to leave. Canterlot isn't known for big industry but we're still close enough that I can get what I need fairly quickly. It's not like when I was in Hoofston and I had to wait a month or more for orders to be delivered."
"So what exactly are you thinking then?"
"Well, we'd have to work out the financials, but why not pool our resources? We could buy a large amount of land, and set up both of our buildings on it. If I do that, I could design my own workshop instead of buying an existing building and renovating it. I'll have to set my schedule back a bit while I wait for the building to go up but that's not so bad."
"That certainly sounds like a good idea. On Monday we should head to Ponyville, talk to those construction ponies and see if we can get some quotes." I said happily.
"Good idea," she said as she stood up suddenly.
"What are you doing?" I asked curiously.
"I do like talking business with you, but this is a date, so let's leave that behind for now," she said as she started to walk towards the lake.
"Where are you going?" I asked as I got up and followed her.
"I'm not going anywhere, we are going swimming!" she shouted with glee. With that she took off at a fast trot and jumped into the lake. I charged after her, plunging chest first into the cool water.
I stuck close to the shore while I tried to familiarize myself with swimming in a pony body. My rear legs had a different range of motion and my forelegs, while far more flexible than an earth horse's, were still less useful at propelling me forward. Between my barrel, which was quite buoyant and my long neck, I was able to keep my head well out of the water as I got further out into the lake. I watched Golden Dawn, she was doing a sort of underwater trot to move forward. I quickly got the hang of it, though it seemed slower and more unwieldy than swimming as a human.
That was until I saw Golden stretch out her magnificent wings and make a large sweeping motion in the water, propelling her forward quite quickly. I experimented with the technique and once I had it down I followed her out towards the middle of the lake. I wasn't quite as graceful as she was, but like everything else I did as a pony, I expected I'd improve as I got more practice.
Once Golden Dawn noticed I had joined her, she quickly initiated a game of water based tag and I spent the next half an hour fruitlessly chasing her around the lake only to find her employ her much better skill in the water to narrowly escape at the last moment.
I eventually had my fill of our very one sided game of tag. Since we were both getting tired, we decided to return to the shore. There we cuddled up in one of the few spots where the sun broke through on the shoreline and waited for our coats to dry off.
After we were dry, Golden Dawn suggested that we circle the lake and then follow the stream that it emptied into for a while before heading home. We followed a small hoof-worn path through the trees that ran around the outside of the lake. As we got closer to the base of the falls, the muddy path gave way to large moss covered rocks, half submerged in the water.
From the angle we were approaching, I could see that the constant flow of water from the falls had eroded a small cavern like overhang in the rock wall behind the water. Getting there required abandoning the path, which had more or less ended at that point anyway. We climbed up and over the rocks, getting closer to the cascading stream of water.
I would have never attempted something like that as a human. The glistening surface of the rocks, wet from all the moisture in the air, proved to be quite slippery. More than once I had to rely on my wings after an ill-planned jump. In my old body a near fall like that would have sent my heart into my stomach, but now I wasn't phased in the slightest. One moment my hooves were skidding on the wet rock and the next moment my wings were beating without me even having to put thought into it.
After several minutes we reached the rocky overhang. The constant spray of water quickly undid what progress we had made on drying off. Golden Dawn said something but the roar of the water made it hard to hear her. I trotted over to where she was standing.
"What was that?" I asked, leaning in so I could hear her better.
"This was a good first date," Golden Dawn said, leaning in and giving me a peck on the cheek.
"It was," I said smiling brightly.
On Sunday Golden Dawn and I went over our financial data, Golden Dawn had 10,000 bits earmarked for purchasing land and her new building while I estimated the bits I already had, plus the gold to be worth around 20,000 bits based on the exchange rate I had been given in Hoofston. Golden Dawn let out a whistle when I gave her my totals. She had been with me at the bank when I first converted some of that gold into Equestrian bits but she had never seen the entire treasure so I don't think she had realized how much I had sitting around. If needed, Golden Dawn was sure she could secure a loan but with the price Mayor Mare had quoted us per acre, we could each easily afford a good sized plot and still have bits left over even without pooling our resources.
Golden Dawn said that she didn't want to make it seem as if she were partnering up with me just to increase the number of bits she had access too. She decided that we'd each be responsible for our own portion of the purchase, not excluding the contribution we had made, but when making the purchases we'd act as a single entity to try to get any sort of discounts for bulk purchasing possible.
"I don't think you'll have to worry about running out of money, I'm pretty sure you could pay for the land and both of our buildings and still have some left over," she said.
"Well, I guess if this doesn't take off, I'll still have enough to prop me up while I find something else I can do," I said. "Actually I've been meaning to ask you. I know that you are planning on building more of your engines, but do you have any idea what you will be doing with them?"
"I've actually been thinking about this quite a bit. There are a number of things I could do. Generators should be easy enough to design. I've got a few sketches for a diesel train that should be significantly more efficient than even the best steam powered ones. But I want to start smaller than trains," Golden Dawn said.
She stood up, walked over to a box, opened it up and dug through it before returning with a cardboard tube. She opened the tube up and pulled out a roll of paper. She spread out the paper on the table in front of me. On it was a number of sketches of something that looked suspiciously like an old fashioned car, blended with a modern truck.
"This is my top plan right now. I had started working on this before I met you but I've made some adaptations from the studies I did on your truck," she said. "It won't be anywhere near as powerful or versatile as yours, but it should be able to fit two ponies comfortably and still have room for cargo in the back. I have another design that sacrifices cargo capacity for two more seats in the back, but I think a utility vehicle will sell better than a passenger one. At least at first."
"This fantastic!" I said as I looked over the blueprints.
"Thanks, I plan on marketing them to farmers, workponies, mailponies. Anywhere a pony would normally have to pull a cart, one of these should be able to pull as much as the average earth pony without the need for rest."
In terms of horsepower that didn't seem all that high, but while ponies in Equestria were smaller than their Earth counterparts, they were stronger and had far more endurance due to their magically enhanced bodies. I had once seen a team of four, admittedly very large, earth ponies pulling a broken locomotive with the rest of the train cars still attached. Sure it was on rails but the engine alone must have weighed 20 tons, not to mention the rest of the passenger cars.
I had to talk to Twilight to get access to the vault. Once she let me in, I grabbed the rest of my money and the gold and we headed to Canterlot Central Bank. It was much larger than the tiny bank back in Hoofston and they had no problem converting the rest of my treasure to bits. In fact I lucked out, because of some fluctuations in the price of gold, I received a better rate than I had back in Hoofston. Golden Dawn and I opened a joint account and we deposited our funds.
When the weekend ended we headed to Ponyville and setup appointments with the three different construction companies based in Ponyville. Golden Dawn had actually drawn up a blueprint of how she wanted her own store laid out, while I was hoping they had a some sort of standard workshop layout. The first two dealt primarily with new homes, they could do the work but we both wanted something that was a larger than they typically dealt with and they'd both be custom jobs, which both drove up the cost and meant I would have to design my own building, something that I didn't really have the skills to do.
We met up with a salespony for the third company, Grey Hammer Construction. Gray Hammer Construction did have considerable experience in setting up larger buildings, typically used for businesses and in fact had a number of pre-designed templates to choose from. I chose one that I thought would be suitable, Golden Dawn looked it and agreed. Running some numbers in my head, the building and the land, assuming I went with a 15 acre plot, the smallest amount I figured I could fit both a building and public range on, would run me approximately 8000 bits, about 40% of the money I currently had.
Golden Dawn's building was significantly larger than my own, and it was custom design. After some discussion around the design and some colorful swearing when she saw the price, Golden Dawn decided that a custom building wasn't going to work for her. Instead, she looked through the list of templates until she found the closest thing to her original design. After a good deal of haggling the salespony agreed to some minor modifications she wanted to make, without the normal customization surcharge, provided we purchased both buildings from them. Even with that fee waived, her building was still going to run her 8000 bits all by itself, nearly her entire share of the pooled supplies.
I asked about how quickly construction could start and about how long it would take to get the buildings up. The salespony insisted that if we signed a deal that day, he could have construction in progress before the end of the week. Total time would be about two months. They had a separate team for each building so they could go up simultaneously. Golden Dawn and I discussed the offer privately and then gave the salespony our tentatively acceptance, contingent on being able to secure the land itself.
It was still early in the day so we headed to town hall and met up with the town surveyor, a pegasus pony named Treasure Map. We had initially looked at purchasing 20 acres which would allow us to each have 10 but when we inquired about a discount for a bulk purchase Treasure Map informed us that there was one, but it had a minimum of 25 acres. In the end I decided to purchase an extra 5 acres.
I drew the oddly shaped perimeter on the map, the extra acreage went into a narrow but very long strip of land that gave me enough room to set up a 1000 yard range. As to whether or not any guns I'd be building could reliably hit something that far away, that was yet to be seen, but it sure gave me a nice goal. Treasure Map recorded the boundaries and we returned to his office to fill out some paperwork.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that paperwork was an area ponies had humans beat hands down in. The process for buying the land involved signing a single sheet of paper and presenting the bits, or in this case, because large sums of coins were unwieldy to carry, a banknote from Canterlot Central Bank. Before flying back to Canterlot we met up with the salespony from Grey Hammer Construction, signed another sheet of paper. Then we hightailed it back to Canterlot so we could pick up our banknotes.
"If I ever make it back to Earth, I'm going to miss this," I said to Golden Dawn as I handed over the note for our land payment.
"What do you mean?" Golden Dawn asked.
"It took me an hour to go through the purchasing process for my first car. I must have signed 50 pages. If we exclude travel time, it took us like half an hour to buy 25 acres of land and pay for 2 buildings."
"50 pages!" Golden Dawn exclaimed in shock.
"Well that might be a slight exaggeration but it was a lot."
All in all we had spent 22,473 bits, leaving just over 10,000 bits left over from my exchanged gold. Golden Dawn had spent her entire contribution but she had a separate budget for updating her tools, buying supplies and hiring ponies.
Grey Hammer Construction was actually even faster than the salespony had lead me to believe and they started work two days later. We stopped by the fireworks store after taking a look at the initial construction and I introduced Golden Dawn to Short Fuse. They immediately hit it off and quickly started talking about everything and anything until the topic turned towards me. Short Fuse still hadn't learned of my origins and Golden Dawn started telling an exaggerated story of the alien she found, dying of exposure in the Badlands.
"I might as well join in if you want an accurate version of the story," I said hopping into the conversation.
Between the two of us, we filled Short Fuse in on nearly everything that had happened in the nearly 3 months I had been in Equestria for.
"You're pulling my leg," Short Fuse said as we finished the tale. "You're not really a pony?"
"Well, I am now, but I wasn't always," I said. "In fact it was just about two months ago when Golden Dawn and I stopped in Ponyville on the way to Canterlot."
"You know, I think heard something about that. Supposedly it was a sickly bald diamond dog riding in some sort of mechanical contraption. That was you?"
"Eeyup," I said nodding. "Went into shock when somepony caught me in her magic field when I tripped."
"I guess that explains the missing cutie mark, I just guessed you had some sort of disability or magical ailment, I didn't want to bring it up."
I laughed at that. "So far only a hoofful of ponies have mentioned it to me directly. I've caught a few ponies staring but for the most part ponies seem to just pretend I have one. Honestly it doesn't bother me, humans don't get cutie marks, so not having one as a pony isn't a big deal. Though if I am completely honest, I do wonder if I could get one. I don't really understand magic so I haven't the foggiest idea how they work."
"You said you know Princess Twilight, you could ask her. If anypony besides Princess Celestia or Princess Luna knew, it would be Princess Twilight," Short Fuse said.
"You aren't the first pony to tell me that. I keep meaning to ask her about it, but then I forget to bring it up. To be honest, I haven't seen much of her lately either."
"I ran into her the other day," Golden Dawn said. "She seemed really tired. I asked her if she was doing alright, she said she was fine. I wonder if the stress of ruling is getting to her. I can't imagine having all that responsibility."
"Princess Celestia managed it for her considerable reign," Short Fuse said. "I think Princess Twilight just lacks the experience, her heart is in the right place though. My theory is that this whole thing with Celestia and Luna needing to go on vacation is just Celestia helping Twilight grow into her new role of Princess."
The topic shifted towards the politics and I sat there quietly, not having any real knowledge in that area. Eventually Short Fuse had to get back to work so we headed back to Canterlot. Golden Dawn and I had a second date that evening and I promised to take her to her out to eat at any restaurant that she wanted. I had expected her to pick some form of upscale dining, of which Canterlot had plenty, but she surprised me with a hole in the wall pizza parlor.
"We'll save the fancy dining for another date. Say the fifth?" she said with a wink. "That will give you time to get a suit."
I groaned loudly. "I need a suit? I thought I had escaped that nonsense by joining a race of nudists."
"Nope."
"Well poo. I guess I'll have to go talk to Rarity, she offered to make one, but I was hoping I didn't need it."
The date with Golden Dawn went swimmingly, after splitting what was one of the best pizzas I had ever eaten, we took a stroll through the Canterlot gardens and attempted a no flying, no pegasus navigation powers run through the hedge maze that I had spoken to Cadance in weeks prior. It was getting quite dark when we both agreed that finishing the maze with the sun down was hopeless and flew back to the castle.
That weekend I was going over a copy of the blueprints for my building when something struck me.
"Hey Golden, can you come here?" I asked.
She got up off the couch and walked over to the table.
"I... think I might have made a serious error when I picked out my building."
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Well most of the businesses I've seen in Equestria, they all have a living area, usually on the second floor for the ponies that run them. But this is setup more like an actual workshop, there's no living area at all. I didn't even think to check for it."
"Oh... I thought you would just be staying here in the castle. Twilight did say you could stay as long as you wanted."
"I mean I could, it's not that long of a flight, but I'd really like to have a place of my own. I'm getting sick of mooching off of Twilight's hospitality. It was understandable when I didn't have a job, but if I launch a business of my own and start making money, well I'm not going to be content living off of someone else's bit."
"Well you could buy an existing house in Ponyville, you have the bits, or if you didn't want to buy, you could rent."
"I suppose that will have to do. I'll have to check prices, I kind of want to keep as much of my leftover bits saved as possible, just in case this gun thing doesn't pan out. I don't really have any other skills that would be useful in Equestria."
"Nonsense, you could always come work for me. In any case, you could just do what I'm going to do."
"What are you going to do?"
"My building doesn't have a living area either, heck even if I had been able to afford the building I designed, that one didn't have living space either. I'm going to build a cloud home."
"Cloud home... oh yeah, you showed me the one back in Hoofston. How does that even work?"
"Well you know as a pegasus you can stand on clouds, we can also form them into permanent shapes. It's pretty easy, I can teach you."
"How much does a cloud home cost? Are they cheaper than regular houses?"
Golden Dawn burst out laughing. "It's made of clouds! It doesn't cost anything. You just have to assemble it yourself, or I suppose you could pay somepony to do it for you, but it's so easy I've never heard of a pony paying somepony else to do that."
"If it's so easy and free why would a pegasus ever live in a regular building?"
"Well, I guess it isn't completely free there are some costs involved. Everything in the house that isn't made of cloud has to be enchanted so it doesn't fall through, but that enchantment is so basic that it only adds a small amount to the cost of most items. As to why all pegasus ponies don't live in clouds, well it makes it tough for non pegasi to visit. A cloudwalking spell for occasional visits isn't too bad, but imagine if you live in a mixed tribe family. There's also less modern comforts. You can't really get electricity in a cloud, anything powered has to be run on a gem-battery."
"Hmm, that does make sense. So you can show me how to build one of these things?"
"Well, I can teach you, but why don't we just build one together?"
"You wouldn't be inviting me to live with you if you had seen the garbage pit of my old apartment back on Earth," I said with a laugh.
"Nonsense, we're sharing this apartment here in the castle and it's fine."
"That's because I don't have any stuff to make a mess with, this is more like a hotel than an actual apartment, the only thing in here that's mine are my drawings and a few things I've pulled out of the trailer, most of my junk is still packed away. When I get my own place I can start acquiring piles of useless junk," I said with a grin.
"You can keep your own room looking however you want." Golden Dawn said. "But the rest of the house will be kept relatively clean and you will help keep it that way."
"Ah well, I suppose if I can have at least one room for junk, I can live with that," I said, adding a fake pout. "It really will be my room through right?"
"Sure, why not," she said. "But if you're good, you won't have to sleep there," she added a wink.
The next day Golden Dawn took me up into the sky so she could teach me cloud shaping. As she had promised, it was very easy and I picked it up quickly.
While the work itself was as easy as Golden Dawn had said, it did take us the week to assemble the whole thing. We had to fly quite a ways around, covering a considerable amount of distance to find enough clouds to actually find enough spare clouds to actually assemble a house. We spent the first two days gathering those clouds and the rest of the time forming them and assembling the building piece by piece.
Putting it together was as simple as gathering up a bunch of cloud, shaping it as needed and mushing the new part into the house itself. Except for the scale, it was almost exactly like building a model out of clay, except the clouds were even better at sticking in the shape you wanted them to. Golden Dawn followed the same basic design as the home she had in Hoofston. The only difference is we slapped an extra bedroom into the house and doubled the size of the living room.
Cloud homes definitely had to be the lowest cost living structures I'd ever encountered. You didn't even have to buy land. A pegasus was allowed to build their home pretty much wherever they wanted. It was considered polite to ask before building over another pony's privately owned land or a public space like a park but virtually anywhere else was free game. And if you grew bored of the location, it only took a little bit of effort to move it from one place to another. We decided on a spot on the outskirts of the town, just about half way between Ponyville's center and where our buildings were going up.
When the house was finished, Golden Dawn hired some pegasus movers to unpack some of her belongings that were in storage. Everything she had from her old house was already enchanted. On looking into what I would need to do to get my own belongings enchanted, I found that generally speaking only large items, such as our refrigerator had their own enchantment. I didn't actually have to get every single one of my things enchanted, instead I could buy a gem that projected a spell on every object in the room, preventing them from falling through the cloud. These gems were usually embedded in something that you'd need anyway such as a bed, a desk, or a storage container.
That Saturday we finished putting the final touches on the home and called it complete. We were getting ready to head down to Ponyville so I could buy some household items that I desperately needed. I headed outside and a thought crossed my mind. Golden Dawn walked out of the house a minute later and noticed me staring at the small cloud "yard" we had surrounding the house.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"I'm trying to figure something out. If I built a cloud garage, how exactly would I get my truck in it?"
We flew into town, landing on the main street. While larger than Hoofston, when compared to Canterlot, Ponyville was still a tiny town. It didn't have nearly the amount of hustle and bustle going on that you'd find in the capital. For me this was an improvement, I was never much of a big city guy, though I had to admit Canterlot was no where near as bad as when I would have to make the occasional trip to Boston. Driving through there gave me nightmares.
Smaller size meant less stores and it also meant less crowds in the stores. We went straight to the general store and I filled my saddlebags with all sorts of the necessities I'd need for a new place. I paid for my purchase and then we headed back out.
"You hungry?" I asked Golden Dawn as we trotted along the street.
"A little, not eat a meal hungry, but I could go for a snack," she said.
"Sugarcube Corner for cupcakes? I'll buy."
"You had me a cupcakes," Golden Dawn said, giving me a squeeze with her wing.
The store was in sight when a yellowish blur zoomed past us, bumping into me. I stumbled as the speeding pony took off down the street. When I caught my balance I noticed there was brightly wrapped gift at my hooves that hadn't been there before.
"That pony dropped this," I said to Golden Dawn. She picked it up and tossed it on her back as I turned to call out to the pony. At first I couldn't find her but then I caught the end of a tail disappearing down a narrow alley.
"She ran that way," I shouted, charging after the pony.
We gave chase but every time we turned a corner, the quick pony would turn down another side street or alleyway and while we weren't losing ground we weren't catching up either. I tried shouting out but the pony either didn't hear us or didn't know I was trying get their attention.
"Wait, why aren't we flying?" I asked just as we were about to round another corner.
"I... don't know?" Golden Dawn asked.
We spread our wings and leapt into the air. A few flaps later and we were rising up, giving us a bird's eye view. Of course that's when the pony we were chasing chose to run into tree. Actually a more correct statement would be the pony ran inside a tree. The tree she ran inside was huge, it was nearly as wide as it was tall and it looked like someone had turned it into a building. I even saw a balcony right around 3rd floor height as we landed in front of what appeared to be the entrance.
"Golden Oak Library," Golden read the sign on the door out loud as we walked up to it.
"Someone built a library inside a tree?" I asked without really expecting an answer.
"Looks like it."
It had to be a fairly small library. The tree was large but it looked more appropriately sized for maybe a small 1 pony cottage, not a library. I opened the door and we walked inside.
The first thing I noticed was that it was dark in the tree. Like almost can't see the hooves in front of my face dark, if it wasn't for the narrow sliver of light coming in from the open door I wouldn't have been able to see anything at all. Considering the number of windows and the fact that it was mid afternoon, this seemed strange.
"You think it's closed?" I asked Golden Dawn.
"But we just saw that pony run in here." she said.
"Hello?" I asked taking a few steps forward. Golden Dawn followed me and the door swung shut behind her.
"Well, now I can't see anything," I said as I turned, hopefully towards the door.
"Sorry, didn't mean to let that shut," she said.
"Can you..." I started to ask when I heard a giggle.
Without any warning at all, light returned in full force to the room. It was joined with a loud shout of "SURPRISE!" by at what sounded like at least a dozen ponies but as my eyes were still adjusting I couldn't actually see anything. A second later, sight returned. Since I had successfully turned around, all I could see was Golden Dawn. Her wings were spread wide, feathers fluffed up in shock and her jaw hanging open.
"You're facing the wrong way Hail Storm!" I heard a familiar voice say.
Turning towards the sound, I saw Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Spike, Cadance, Shining Armor, Short Fuse, Dazzling Sparks and about a dozen other ponies I didn't recognize standing next to an enormous sign that was stretched across the room which was much larger than I had thought the size of the tree would allow.
The sign read "Welcome to Equestria / Congrats on not dying / Welcome to ponykind / Welcome to Ponyville"
The conversation I had with Pinkie weeks ago bubbled up to the top of my memory. Pinkie had mentioned a surprise party, but since she told me about it, I had assumed she was joking.
"You were serious?" I asked looking to the pink pony.
Her face hardened and she looked me right in the eye. "I'm always serious about parties."
The gift we thought had been dropped was actually intended for us. Golden Dawn and I opened it together. Inside we found a map of Ponyville, a coupon for a free dozen cupcakes at Sugarcube Corner and library cards.
Over cake and punch, Pinkie Pie introduced us to the ponies we had not yet met yet. One of them was a butter yellow pegasus named Fluttershy. The name fit her perfectly and even with my fantastic pony ears I could barely make out the "hi" that she squeaked out.
"Wait a minute, you're the pony we were chasing," Golden Dawn said. I hadn't gotten a clear look at the pony but now that Golden said that, I was I was sure they had a yellow coat. I looked around and no other pony had a coat that color, it seemed strange to me, this shy little pegasus didn't seem the type.
"Nope, that was me," I heard from behind me, I turned around and there was an exact duplicate of Fluttershy where I thought Pinkie had been standing.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"It's me, Pinkie!" the pegasus said. There was a zipping sound and Pinkie Pie stepped out of a suit as it collapsed to the ground. "I wanted Fluttershy to do it because you hadn't met her so you wouldn't be suspicious but she wasn't up to it."
"Why do you... " I turned to Fluttershy. "Why does she have a... you suit?"
"I... don't know?" Fluttershy choked out, hiding her face behind her pink mane.
"Alright, moving along." Pinkie Pie said as she nudged me with her nose, pushing towards some ponies I hadn't met yet.
A mint green unicorn named Lyra spent five minutes apologizing to me and then another ten asking me questions about hands. I didn't recognize her but apparently she had accidentally exposed me to some magic back when I was in Ponyville as a human. My memory of that day was hazy at best. I told her not to make a big deal of it, since she had no way of knowing and didn't intend any harm.
The pony I had purchased apples from a few weeks ago when I first visited Ponyville as a pony turned out to be a friend of Twilight's. Her name was Applejack. She and her brother, a very large red earth pony appropriately named Big Macintosh, ran Sweet Apple Acres together with their grandmother, Granny Smith.
Eventually we had made it through the group and Golden Dawn and I split up. I headed over to Twilight who was motioning for me.
"Hello Hail Storm, it's been a while." Twilight said.
I hadn't gotten to talk to Twilight since when I let her know I was going to be moving out of the castle the day after Golden and I had started building the cloud house.
"Yeah, I haven't been seeing much of you lately. How goes it?"
"Running Equestria is a lot of work. I don't know how Celestia managed it on her own. But, I don't want you to think I've given up on trying to find you a way home. I haven't had a lot of time to look personally but I have a few very smart unicorns working on it."
Home... I had been thinking of it less and less lately. Or more accurately, I had been thinking of a different home. I glanced over at Golden Dawn. She was chatting with Cadance in the corner of the room. Cadance noticed me looking over at her and Golden Dawn and winked at me.
"Is everything alright?" Twilight asked.
"Oh yeah, sorry. You were saying?"
"Well that was kind of it. I've got ponies working on it but nothing yet. With you moving out of the castle, I'm going to be seeing even less of you. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to stop by. I know what it's like being in an unfamiliar world."
"Actually, I have two right now, if you don't mind."
"Go on," Twilight said.
"Is this tree... bigger on the inside?" I asked looking around at the room we were standing it. The tree was big but from what I remembered of the outside, there was no way the 20 something ponies and a baby dragon could fit inside even if there hadn't been shelves full of books. And that was just this room, I saw a few other doors and a staircase leading to another floor.
"Indeed it is, the tree has what is known as a spatial compression field cast inside of it. When Ponyville was first founded the library was tiny, only a few dozen books, so it actually did all fit in here, but as the town grew so did the library's collection. Eventually they ran out of space. There was talk about setting up a new library but the town didn't want to lose this unique building so they hired a unicorn to enchant it."
"I think that's what was on Trixie's wagon that made me pass out. I don't really remember it though. The other question I had was... Can I get a cutie mark?"
"Well I can't give you one, if that's what you are asking." Twilight said shaking her head. "Not even magic can make a cutie mark appear before it's time." The way she recited that made it sound like she had given a lecture about this before.
"Sorry, that's not what I meant. I meant, am I able to get a cutie mark? I'm curious. Humans don't get them, and I'm not a real pony so I wondered if it would even work."
"Well first off, you are a real pony, at least you are now. Just because you weren't born one doesn't make you any less of a pony than anypony else. Secondly, yes, as a pony you can do all the things any pony can do, including earn a cutie mark. If I might ask, why the interest? Is anypony bothering you about not having one?"
"No, not really," I said shaking my head. "Sometimes, I'll get the odd stare, or a double take, but most ponies seem to avoid talking about it. I'm just curious that's all."
"Oh alright." Twilight said. "Was there anything else?"
"Actually, I've got one more thing, I heard you moved my truck to the castle, can you help me get it back to Ponyville? I didn't see a good way to drive it out of the castle grounds. I assume you got it there with some form of magic."
"Sure thing, how's tomorrow work for you?" Twilight said.
"Fine for me."
I wandered around the room, eventually making my way over to the dessert table and snatching up yet another piece of cake. It was too good to pass up seconds. I had a feeling that I'd be eating thirds before the party was over. As a pony I had a far more active lifestyle, I could afford some extra cake.
I saw Golden Dawn talking to Short Fuse and I trotted over.
"Good to see you Hail Storm" Short Fuse said. "I've made some progress with your smokeless powder. It's definitely based on some sort of nitrocellulose compound. I haven't narrowed it down quite yet, but I'm getting closer."
"I've heard of nitrocellulose but I don't know exactly how it's made, is that something that ponies can make?" I asked.
"Yeah we can, it's tricky to work with, very flammable, but as long as you take the proper precautions, it can be done," Short Fuse said.
"That's good to hear," Golden Dawn said.
The party flew by and before I knew it, the number of guests had dwindled to Pinkie, Twilight, Spike, Golden Dawn and myself. Cadance had left hours earlier, only able to stay for a short time before she had to return to Canterlot so Twilight could stay longer. I didn't get a chance to talk to her but I did talk to Shining Armor. When I told him about my business plans he seemed interested and said he'd try to find some free time to visit, once I went into production.
"Ready to go home?" Golden Dawn asked I was helping Pinkie put away a table.
Home, not the first time that day I had thought about the word. I had been in Equestria for just over three months now and I had stayed in many places but I hadn't called any of them home. Up until recently, I had just been passing through, still trying to reach my real home. And while Earth would always be my first home, I was finally starting to feel that I could make Equestria into a new one. I set the table down in the corner, walked over to Golden Dawn and wrapped a wing around her. "Yes, I am."
The next day I was going to head up to Canterlot to get my truck but I found it sitting under the house when I flew outside. I shook my head and made a mental note to send Twilight a thank you letter.
Golden Dawn and I had quite a bit to do while the buildings went up. I was starting up a small workshop with no tools and no supplies. Golden Dawn was setting out to start an automobile factory. By human standards it was tiny, but she wasn't going to be able to run it all by herself. She needed to hire a crew. She already had made contact with a few ponies she knew from school and was waiting to hear back from them. Apart from that she needed to start ordering supplies and purchase additional machinery. The stuff she had in Hoofston was, according to her, antiquated, but inexpensive. She couldn't afford the latest and greatest but there were a few things she absolutely needed.
I found myself in basically the same situation. When it came time to order tools, Golden let me know that there was no way I was going to get brand new, modern equipment on my budget. The best I could do is pick up some older tools, similar to what she had. Apart from tools, I also needed to order supplies. Fortunately, since I was going start at a relatively small volume, I could get most of those locally. What I really needed help with was figuring out exactly what I needed. The only reference I had was what had been in Rick's shop. That wasn't going to be enough though, since some parts, like barrels, he didn't produce himself. I decided to ask Golden to see if she had any advice.
"I meant to tell you this earlier, but I got sidetracked looking at my own stuff. You should look into hiring some ponies to help you out. Look for a metalworker, a unicorn if you can find one," Golden said.
"Why a unicorn?"
"Some of the parts you need to make will be hard to do without developing new tools to make them. You mentioned barrels, you could drill them out with a lathe but it's going to be tough. Most lathes, especially the ones in your price range, aren't likely to work great for drilling out holes that deep with the amount of precision you want."
"Yeah, that's one of the things I'm a little worried about. I've heard it's possible to do it on a regular lathe but normally there are specialized drills, they're actually called gun drills, in fact. How's a unicorn going to help with that?"
"We didn't always have machines to make things Hail, and we still don't use machines for everything," Golden said with a smile. "In fact, going back in history, many of the tools ponies have invented have been done to try to emulate what unicorns can do with magic. Earth ponies and pegasi can't manage the fine manipulation unicorns can do with magic. In the same way that unicorns are always building better spells, we're always building better machines. The real interesting stuff is what we've started doing in the last 10 years or so though. Mixing technology and magic together, that's going to be the future I think. Anyway, what I'm specifically talking about is magical forging, you want to find a unicorn that can do that."
"Magical forging?" I asked. "Is that like making magic weapons or whatever?"
"No, that's enchantment. Forging is shaping metal using compressive forces, you know like when you beat on it with a hammer."
"Yeah, I know what regular forging is," I said. "In ye olden times it you might have a blacksmith with a hammer but now we've got machines that do the hammering."
"Exactly. Well, you've seen what unicorns can do, levitate things, move them around with magic. Apply those forces to a piece of hot metal. With a hammer you can really only beat on the one side of the metal, with magic you can apply force on any part at all, even the inside of something. Of course the more complex the thing you're trying to make the harder it's going to be and the longer it's going to take. Unicorns with the right skillset can also do magical casting. Instead of having to make the mold they can form one out of magic."
"That's... I mean I haven't even considered that, that's incredible. How come you didn't have a unicorn to help you out back in Hoofston?" I asked.
"I told you, Hoofston's in the middle of nowhere, plus it's got a pretty low unicorn population to begin with. Not every unicorn has the skill to do something like that, and you have to find one who's good at it if you want to do anything complex. I knew a few, but I'm trying to get them to come work for me," Golden said, sticking her tongue out at me.
"Alright, I guess I'll add that to my list of things to do."
"Good, magical metalworking is usually good for low volume production of custom parts, but it's going to be slower than what you can do with the proper machinery. It does however, mean that you don't have to put everything on hold to design the machine first. Eventually, if you need to expand, you can automate more of the production. I know that as soon as they are available, and I can afford them, I'm going to buy some MNC machines to cut down on the manual labor," Golden said.
"MNC machine?"
"Magic numerical control. It's a pretty new concept, still mostly in the development stage. There really aren't any commercial products yet and the experimental ones are are pretty expensive. They use a combination of magic and machinery to automate machining. Let me give you an example. Say you want to cut a unusual pattern from some sheet metal. You could get a unicorn who knows a cutting spell to do it, but that's slow and requires a unicorn with the proper skills if you want it to be consistent. Same deal with cutting it with a torch, and, depending on how you are doing it, you may lose the precision that you can get with magic. If you've got a MNC cutter, it will have an cutting tool that can freely move around on multiple axises. The movement of the tool is controlled by an enchantment programed into the machine. It will follow the pattern automagically, over and over again. If you need to change the pattern you just get a unicorn to modify the enchantment."
"Wait... that sounds like a CNC machine, or... at least the magical equivalent of one," I said staring at Golden Dawn in shock. Just when I thought I had pony tech figured out, Golden Dawn threw another curveball at me.
"CNC?"
"Computer numerical control. What you just described sounds like some sort of CNC controlled cutter, like CNC laser cutting."
This lead to even more discussion as I attempted to explain what computers were to Golden Dawn. The existence of MNC machines intrigued me greatly. It was so hard to pin down how advanced ponies actually were, once again magic was throwing things for a loop. It reminded me of a discovery I had made earlier in the week. The local newspaper had an article about the 10 year anniversary of the Equestrian State Building, the tallest skyscraper in Manehattan. The images of the city looked like something out of the 1940s, far different from the western town I had arrived in. Golden Dawn had repeatedly told me that Hoofston was not representative of modern Equestria, and that image had cemented that statement.
At Golden Dawn's suggestion, I placed an ad in the paper, looking for a metalworker experienced with magical forging. With any luck, by the time my building was finished, I'd have gotten a response.
We were both very busy, but Golden Did ask that we set aside some time so I could meet her dad. We flew into Canterlot one day and after a quick lunch, headed to the house she had grown up in. Her father's name was Deep Blue and true to his name, he was a dark blue unicorn sporting a very distinguished looking grey beard. The unicorn part came as a bit of surprise to me, seeing as Golden Dawn was a pegasus. Ponies didn't seem to follow any sort of genetic rules that I was aware of. Identical parents typically had offspring of the same race. Or, if your parents were mixed races you had a very high chance of ending up as one or the other. Neither of those circumstances guaranteed the race of offspring, in all actuality, parents could end up with any kind of pony. On top of that, there was no hybrids of the races, for example, a half earth pony, half unicorn.
The only exception to that was the extremely rare alicorns, who apparently weren't born that way if Twilight was any indication. You were either born a unicorn, a pegasus, a bat pony, or an earth pony.
I learned these fun facts about pony reproduction when I whispered to Golden asking her how she ended up a pegasus with a unicorn father. First she whispered back that Twilight had already told me all this before I went through the mirror.
I barely remembered anything that had happened right before I went through, so I let Golden Dawn know that. When I did she told me that her mother was a pegasus, but then she decided to fill me in on the entire topic. It had something to do with a pony's soul, which could be influenced by the parents but could end up as anything. Deep Blue overheard her talking and pointed out that he was rather confused as to why I didn't know these details already. I then found out that this was taught to ponies when they learned where foals came from and he was deeply concerned that his daughter's new coltfriend didn't know these very basic facts.
That lead to Golden Dawn filling him in my entire story, at which point he gave me a pass on my lack of knowledge. Of course now he knew his daughter was dating an alien, so I wasn't sure if I was in a better situation or worse. Still, he seemed like a genuinely pleasant pony once I got to know him. I also took perverse pleasure when I saw him pull out a chess set and ask Golden Dawn if she had been keeping up on her skills. Even though Golden Dawn was his own flesh and blood he held nothing back and proceeded to crush her nearly as bad as she wrecked me whenever we played.
Speaking of chess, it wasn't a few weeks later while in the middle of a game where I was actually holding my own we heard shouting from far below us. I paused the clock, got up from the table headed outside and peered over the edge of the cloud down at the ground below. Short Fuse was standing down on the grass next to my truck looking up. She saw me and motioned me to fly down. When I reached her she had a huge grin on her face.
"I've got it!" she said loudly. "It's a double base compound, using a mixture of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. There are some stabilizers to prevent the powder from decaying and the flakes are coated in graphite."
"So what does this mean?" I asked.
"Well, I looked at the two powders you gave me. They do burn at different rates. The rifle powder uses those small stick shapes, they have less surface area and are larger which helps contribute to the slower burn rate. The pistol powder uses much smaller ball shaped particles which burn much faster. By varying the combination of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, the size of the grains and the surface area of the shapes I can adjust the burn rate. I've already synthesized some that matches the burn rate of your pistol powder almost exactly." Short Fuse said.
"How much is it going to cost?" I asked.
"Well that's the rub, it really depends on how much you need. If I'm making small batches by hoof it's going to be kind of expensive but if you are ordering in bulk, I can work on automating the process. I could probably get it down to near spark powder prices."
I was happy to hear that, spark powder was cheap so if I could get smokeless powder for anywhere near that price, I'd be in luck. Still I'd only be needing smokeless powder in quantity if my business took off.
"I guess I'll have to wait and see how sales go," I said.
"The primers are giving me trouble. I'm not sure what they are using yet, but whatever it is, it's got some kick to it. More than the powder. I had an idea of using mercury fulminate, it's what we use in blasting caps but mercury fulminate goes bad over time and I'm afraid the mercury will interact with the brass in your cartridges and weaken it. That would cause issues with reloading, which you mentioned wanting to be able to do. Either way, I'm going to have to get help for these once I've figured out a good compound to use. It's a matter of time but eventually I'll figure out something that can be used for a priming compound but I can't manufacture the primer itself and making them in quantity is going to be a pain in the flank."
"Why's that?" I asked.
"Well the primers are made up of three parts. The cup, an anvil and the priming compound. An impact on the cup squeezes the priming compound between the cup and the anvil which sets the primer off. For this to work, the priming compound has to be very sensitive. That means it will be very easy to set off. To prevent accidents, the primers will either have to be assembled by hoof, which will be a painstakingly slow process, or a very complex machine. Since I don't have the skill to build such a device, I thought about asking Golden Dawn about it."
"I'll let her know," I said.
I had plenty of primers so that wasn't an immediate concern. Worst case scenario I could ask Short Fuse to look into making ones with mercury fulminate. Not being able to reload brass wouldn't be the end of the world. As long as I could make cases, which I planned on doing anyway, I didn't need to have them be reloadable.
My building was finished two weeks ahead of schedule which worked out great because I misjudged how quickly my order would come in which arrived the same day Grey Hammer Construction handed me the keys. Thankfully that meant that Golden Dawn was still free because I was in way over my head. I had experience in a modern human workshop in assembling custom firearms, but, while some of the pony tools were similar to their modern counterparts, there were tools I had never used before. Golden Dawn went over everything with me, multiple presses, lathes, milling machines and more. Without the help and instruction that I got from her I would have never gotten my business off the ground.
In addition to the new machinery that I ordered, I also setup all the reloading equipment that I had brought with me from Earth. That part was quite simple and in a few hours I had reloaded a number of cartridges using my existing supplies.
Golden Dawn's factory was up and she was getting shipments of supplies by train almost daily. My own place was well stocked, but I still hadn't figured out how I was going to make barrels.
Nopony had responded to my advertisement, which meant I was going to have to try drilling them out with a lathe. Shorter barrels wouldn't be too bad, but I had a feeling I wasn't going to be able to do a 20" rifle barrel with the equipment I had.
While I was waiting, I got to work on my other problem. Once I had barrels, I was going to need to rifle them somehow. Fortunately, I had once seen a homemade rifling machine and had a pretty good idea of how it worked.
The idea was to make a number of grooves in the barrel that twist at a specific rate. As the bullet moved through the barrel, the grooves would cause the bullet to spin which would help stabilize the bullet's trajectory.
I started by taking a long sturdy steel pipe and and some twine. I carefully twisted the twine around the pipe, and then traced the spiral it made. From there I took a small steel rod and twisted it around the larger one, following the pattern I had traced out. The twisted rod was welded to the pipe creating what sort of looked like an oversized screw.
I built a long frame with a some holes that the pipe could pass through. Then I attached a handle on one end of the pipe and stiff steel road at the other end. As the pipe was pushed through the frame, the guide rod caused the pipe, and the rod that stuck out of it to twist at a fixed rate. A cutting bit was attached to a rod. The frame held a barrel in place and the rod went into the barrel. As it twisted the bit would cut a single groove. When that groove was finished, the barrel would turned 1/6th of a turn and the next groove would be cut. This was repeated until all 6 grooves were cut.
Since I didn't have any barrels to test it on, I tried it out on a piece of pipe that had a diameter similar to the barrels that I wanted to produce. I had to make a number of adjustments, but eventually I got it cutting consistent grooves.
The next thing to do was to try drilling out a barrel from some round bar stock. In order to produce a hole deep enough and straight enough with the equipment I had, I was going to have to make some modifications. I wanted to run some ideas by Golden Dawn before I tried anything but our busy schedules were making things difficult to get some free time. Once again, I found myself on hold until a unknown pony walked through my front door.