//------------------------------// // Winter and Exploration // Story: Crazy, Clever and Cunning // by Fresnor //------------------------------// After Luna left I spent the rest of the night trying to reassure Selene that the princess wasn’t going to hurt her, and if something did happen I would keep her safe. Scootaloo was confused as to why she was scared of the princess, but also did her best to cheer her up as well. Eventually she fell asleep allowing me to check in on the thestral who will now be staying with us. I found her still in the entryway, but at least she had recovered enough to find out what was going on. After a short explanation, with the more delicate bits left out but still letting her know of Selene being an alicorn, she understood the importance of what she had been tasked to do. I didn’t think I needed to do so, but I still asked her to keep the information a secret, as things could get out of hand if certain ponies found out. Things were a bit livelier around town for a while as Umbra got to know the townsfolk better since she was going to be around for a while. This was especially so as she started pranking Rainbow Dash after being hit by an errant snowball. While it didn’t escalate to the levels that it did when I was involved, it was still enough to get Twilight to step in quickly. Of course from that she learned why the thestral was here, and from that about Selene. While she didn’t understand why Selene was scared of her and why I had kept her hidden so long, she did insist that I get her enrolled in the school. Since I had planned on doing that anyways, though preferably when the filly was ready, it wasn’t that big a deal. Enlisting the help of the Crusaders in getting her to go, as well as them promising to take care of her, quickly eroded any objections that she had. Getting her supplied for going to classes was the easy part, getting her accepted by the rest of the class though was a bit harder. Cheerilee was actually very helpful in making her feel welcome and even I was feeling happier at her bright attitude, but the other students were another story. Two colts, one short and chubby the other tall and gangly, started a bit of a panic with screams of vampony and other things related to her current looks, but they weren’t the worst. The worst offenders were another pair of fillies, one that I recognized as the daughter of Mr. Rich. They immediately started in on the verbal bullying regarding how different she was, though I wonder what their attitude would have been if they knew the truth about her. I decided not to intervene for now, as the Crusaders were doing that without being asked, so I took my leave after letting her know I would pick her up when class was done. Having nothing else to do I wandered the town until school ended and found that, barring the bullying, she had actually enjoyed herself. Winter passed slowly as things started to settle into a routine again. Seeing as I had so much free time I decided to work on a project I had planned a long time ago when Trixie came through town. I had long ago read through the books she had in her wagon, and found most of what I was looking for. I was still waiting on that book I ordered through Twilight so I could finish fixing the wagon, but until then I got a few books on fireworks along with what she had and started experimenting. Needless to say things were not as easy as they looked, and my first few experiments end up as massive failures. While most just fizzled out and did nothing, a couple of them blew up in my face, making me glad that I kept myself shielded and had the area I was using dug out by the diamond dogs to the edge of my property away from town. Even then some of the ponies heard the noise from those failures and had Twilight over asking questions. I didn’t keep any secrets about it, as I had taken it up mostly as a hobby to pass the time, but she still was a bit worried about the danger. She couldn’t fault the precautions that I took, but still cautioned against doing anything too dangerous just the same. I decided not to mention my plans for the smoke pellets at that time, as she already disliked the idea of me growing that one variety of peppers, and loading them into an easy-to-use container would have caused her to panic. I also avoided telling her of my attempts to acquire some liquid rainbow through Rainbow Dash. After hearing about this substance from Pinkie Pie I had want to see what kind of things I could do with it. Unfortunately getting ahold of a sample of it is easier said than done as the weather pegasi are very touchy with letting any of it out of their control. Luckily the cyan mare’s weakness for cider made it rather easy to come up with a bribe for her to try and get me some. Still beyond that things had been rather boring lately and with the upcoming Hearth’s Warming holiday coming up I was almost expecting Pinkie to try and drag me into something for it. Luckily they had been asked by Princess Celestia to perform in some play for it, and with her still being a bit wary of me it was best that I avoided it. I did plan some things of my own though for Selene’s sake, and she actually enjoyed the games I got for her while Scootaloo was surprised when she was given a pair of tickets to an upcoming Wonderbolts show. When I suggested that she give the other one to Rainbow Dash her eyes really lit up with joy. With that the last thing of winter to deal with was wrapping it up again. Of course this year things went much more smoothly with Twilight organizing everything. Of course she was thrown off a bit when she found out about the little support team I had set up the previous year and had to redo some of her plans at the last minute to accommodate for it. She seemed to be a tad put off about not noticing the group last year, even after I mentioned how it helped out during an accident she apparently caused. With the warmer weather returned, as well as my normal fur colors, things started to pick up again. The school had set up an event for families, which also happened to coincide with some events dealing with special apples at Sweet Apple Acres. After remembering what happened with the cider I made sure to reserve a few jars of this Zap Apple Jam, though I was assured that there would be plenty of it to go around. Still, after seeing how many Mr. Rich ordered for his business I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. Speaking of families it seems that another family in town had grown without me noticing. I found this out after hearing about Pinkie Pie’s little adventure into babysitting for the Cake family. While at first I may have agreed with their wariness at letting Pinkie watch their twins, after seeing how she dealt with Selene and knew when to calm down I thought she could use the experience. Shortly after that I decided to actually start exploring more of the Everfree Forest with the help of my self-updating map. Over the many months I had it I took some time to learn what it would do as well as any limits I could find. One of the biggest problems I found was that it was locked into being centered on its location, yet I could zoom in and out from there to see the surrounding area. It also didn’t record changes to an area until it moved into range of it once again, a fact I found out when Derpy caused some major damage around town, especially to the town hall. Strangely enough I could have sworn I saw her chasing some weird creature around town with that brown stallion I often see her with. Still once I packed a few essentials I let Selene and Umbra know that I would be gone a couple weeks as well as where I was going. They looked a bit worried about where I was going, but after showing them everything I had packed to deal with any problems they were a bit better about it. Umbra commented on the lack of maps of the place and having a reliable one could actually be very useful. On my way by Sunny Town I wondered what progress Princess Luna had made in fixing that place as I had yet to hear back from her. I had let Mitta know about what was going on and the talk I had with Luna, which she had mixed results about. On one side she agreed that the town was too dangerous to be around, but she still felt that she didn’t deserve any help to which I stayed silent on. Traveling through the forest was rather easy going at first, mostly as I mapped out the areas nearest the town first which were usually clearer of dangers. As I moved deeper I started to spot more and more denizens of the place which I avoided when possible. Of course there were times when I couldn’t avoid them, such as when I stumbled upon a group of timberwolves residing in a cave I decided to explore. A pepper smoke pellet allowed me to escape from them easily enough, though they were definitely not happy about it as I made note about the cave on my map. That was another useful function I had found with the map, I could magically add notes to landmarks on the map which made it easier to identify dangers. Of course it only worked for specific objects so when I found a cockatrice nest out in the open I couldn’t do anything about it on the map. Of course that didn’t stop me from leaving a present for when the creature returns, and I hoped something else would end up taking care of it from there. Things didn’t go completely smoothly out there though, my encounter with a hydra ended with me coated in some rather smelly mud and other substances. Apparently it was making its home in some kind of sulfur springs and I surprised it with my arrival. Not wanting to try and fight such a large creature I immediately took off running just for it to give chase. I had to double back a few times to confuse it and throw it off my trail before I took cover in what I thought was only mud, but I found that it also happened to be a pile of the hydras dung. Needless to say I wasn’t happy when it finally fell asleep allowing me take sneak away from there. I almost got into a fight with a river dragon when I was cleaning the gunk off, but a quick apology and mentioning how familiar the purple bit of hair he had was things turned out for the better. It seems he had been helped in the past by Rarity and he kept the hair from her tail he was given as a memento. He hadn’t seen her in a long time and was happy to hear news of how she was doing and I made note to mention him to her later on. Eventually I started to run low on supplies and made my way back home again. I decided to come out at the normal forest entrance as I could still smell the hydra all over me and the spa would have something to get the stench out, I hoped. I had actually managed to fill in a good portion of the map with the areas nearby to Ponyville, with details on a few cave systems I found. I wondered if the information I was gathering would be useful to anyone in the future at all. As I passed Fluttershy’s cottage I noticed that she wasn’t around, which was probably a good thing given how I smelled. This was further reinforced by the looks of disgust and wrinkled noses of the ponies I passed on the way to the spa. Of course I just had to run into Rarity outside of the spa who I think was about to faint at the sight and smell of me. “Darling what in the world happened to you!?” I shook my head at this and gave her a simple answer. “You don’t want to know Rarity, I’ve been traveling a bit the last couple weeks and some of the places I’ve been were not pretty. I just hope the spa has something to remove the smell.” She just nods at me while keeping a good distance, but still follows me inside. I find that Fluttershy was already in there and I realize this must have been their usual spa trip day. The spa sister at the desk, I always forget who was Aloe and who was Lotus, looked at my appearance in shock and wasn’t surprised when I asked for their deepest cleaning service. I was quickly hustled into a side room, where I placed my packs, and was led to a small tub that was filled with some strong smelling soap. I quickly clambered into this one and worked even more shampoo into my fur, trying to remove all the grime and smell from it. After almost an hour of work, and a couple refills of the tub, I finally couldn’t detect a hint of odor from my fur. The sister assisting me agreed that I got it all out and was led to the hot tub to relax for a while. Rarity and Fluttershy were both already there, though the former was much relieved at how much better I looked and smelled. I spent the time catching up with what has been happening around town lately, as well as telling them what I had been doing. It seems that things had gotten a bit interesting while I was gone as Applejack decided to run away from town when she couldn’t fulfill on a promise to earn enough money to fix the town hall. This led to some interesting things happening, as well as me hearing about the dangers of Pinkie Pie. I was actually a little scared at what happens when someone breaks a Pinkie Promise and made sure to never do so. I also had a bit of a laugh at how they weaponized Pinkie Pie’s inane ramblings, though I felt sorry for Rarity who had to go through it when they got left behind. Also while I was gone Twilight had somehow managed to get Rainbow Dash to start reading books. After she hurt her wing in an accident with a failed stunt she was stuck in the hospital for a while. With nothing else to do she actually looked in the book that was left for her by Twilight and the hospital staff. It seems that Rainbow Dash had enjoyed that Daring Do book so much that she actually tried to break into the hospital to finish reading it. I remember seeing those books at the library before, and made a note to check them out to see what caught the athlete’s eye in them. Nothing else really happened around town, so I told them of what I was doing out in the Everfree. They were shocked that anyone would actually decide to explore the place, and were horrified at what I had to do to escape that hydra, especially Rarity who almost fainted. She perked up again when I mentioned the river dragon, having almost forgotten about him. We left the spa soon after that and all went our separate ways from there. I made my way home and noticed that ponies were starting to put up decorations for the upcoming Hearts and Hooves Day. This reminded me about Pinkie Pie and I wondered if I should just give in to what is bound to happen eventually or try to avoid her again. Considering what happened the last time I stalled her from throwing a party it was probably a good idea just to get it over with. I dropped my packs off at home, as well as some extra strong soap to clean them off with later. Selene looked to be out somewhere right now, and Umbra was nowhere to be found as well. There didn’t seem to be any notes or mail for me to deal with so I made my way out to Sugarcube Corner where I was most likely to find the pink party pony. I tried to convince myself of the wisdom of what I was going to do, especially in light of how crazy she would get if I waited to tell her and she decides to make up for lost time. When I arrived at the bakery I found that it was in a state of madness. With all the planning and baking needed to be done for the upcoming holiday, as well as taking care of the twins that wouldn’t sit still, I found that Pinkie was actually starting to look worn down. I ordered a few chocolate cherry cordial cupcakes, which they selling after reactions to the cake, and took a seat waiting for a time where Pinkie had a break. It actually took quite a while as more and more ponies kept coming in to place order. It took over an hour for her to actually get a short break to talk, and that was only because the Cake’s twins fell asleep. When she came over to where I was waiting she took a seat before flattening her face into the table. I almost thought she passed out, but a tap at her head caused her to groan. “Wow Pinkie, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this worn out before. It makes me wonder if I should be sorry for keeping this a secret, or sorry for telling you it and making more work for you.” At this she lifts her head up to look at me with big teary eyes and a quivering lip. I almost feel sorry for her and just walk out, but this had to be done sometime and at least she would be ready for next time. “Well since you seem to know the birthdays of everyone in town, yet you haven’t set up a party for mine I figured you just didn’t know when it was.” She looks surprised at this and I see a smile start to spread across her face, not knowing what was really coming. “Well to head off any problems like what happened with the last party you threw me by waiting, well it’s on Hearts and Hooves Day.” At this her smile fades and her eyes roll up into her head as she promptly faints.