Pinkie Pie couldn't hold this party at sugarcube corner, of course. They'd end up packed in nose-to-hoof if they tried that. There would be enough room for the party in the town square, but that might leave things too wide-open to gate crashers. She like and cared about Lemon Hearts and Sweetcream Scoops a lot, but she really didn't want to let them spend time in close proximity to her human friend.
Pinkie Pie looked around, to make sure that nopony was watching her. She snuck into Bush Berry's garden of cherry tomatoes, pulled out an eyepatch, and wedged it between the animal-shaped ceramic plantholders. You never could be too careful.
The trouble was that private places, like Bush Berry's backyard, tended to be rather small and close together, and didn't have a lot of room for big gatherings. The really wide-open places that had room for a significant portion of Ponyville's pony population also tended to be areas where anypony could stumble in, as the Seafoam Swirl incident during Silver Spoon's outdoor birthday party attested. Seafoam Swirl hadn't even tried to gobble anyone up, and had calmed down once kind ponies took her to a place where she could metabolise the seaweed until the “hairy scorpions big as your arm” went away.
Pinkie snuck through a few more private backyards in her catsuit and night-vision goggles, just to keep in practice. She stopped just outside Lemon Hearts's patio to serenade her struggling lemon tree sapling and watched the leaves perk up. That mare was really determined to do things all by her lonesome, but a little spot of earth pony mojo couldn't hurt.
She had almost completed her circuit of other ponies' backyards when she felt a cold hoof on the back of her neck. Pinkie almost screamed when she turned around. The sun's glare reflected off a sleek black visor. Labored breathing whistled in and out of a wide dark-green nozzle.
“It's a good thing I found you here,” Golden Harvest said, pulling off her compost-technician gas mask. “You're friends with Rainbow Dash, right?”
“Of course, silly filly!” Pinkie Pie said. She put a companionable hoof around Golden Harvest's back. “I'm friends with everypony!”
“Well then, could you please please PLEASE tell Rainbow Dash to keep a closer eye on the weather? She must have let some nasty cold fronts in from the everfree, because my entire patch of Atlas-top carrots has been devestated by a killing frost! The three-meter high carrot fronds are practically a maze of unintentional abstract ice sculptures, and it's so thick with chilly mists that Wildfyre's gotten lost in them! I swear to Nightmare Moon if Rainbow Dash can't get a grip on her weather patterns, she can just FORGET my offer to give her some cloud-customized sky carrot seeds.” She sniffed.
“That's it!” Pinkie Pie squealed. “The maze outside of ponyville!”
She dashed off, making a mental note to ask Rainbow Dash about the unseasonal cold front when she dropped off the invitation.
#
It was almost dusk when Fluttershy got back from the spawning grounds. She had the nagging sense that she'd forgotten something. She made sure to seperate the eggs, she decanted the right ones into smaller pools, she'd overseen everyone storing the remains of the fish for later use. Everything was right on time.
“Have I forgotten to take care of something Angel?” Fluttershy said.
Angel glared. He pointed at the horizon, then at a magpie nest, then at the quail coop.
“Dusk nest coop?” Fluttershy said.
Angel groaned.
“Please don't be impatient with me,” Fluttershy said, patting his ears.
#
“Why did you scare off Spike like that? I told you we don't even have dragons in New Jersey, and it's certainly not from killing them all off! Anything dragon-like died off millions of years before the first human was born.”
Twilight opened her mouth to explain. Nothing came out. Her brain stalled and she was speechless.
The weird creature from another world had a good point. She'd gotten so caught up in all of the ramifications of this, in exploring the legends and the possiblities of another cosmos, that it had all become completely academic. She'd thought about famous feasts that changed the course of nations. She'd thought about fantastic biology and theoretical technology. She'd gone on about a lot of things while forgetting that, in the same room with her, was a dragon who still sometimes sucked his thumb and had nightmares for a week when she told him the story of the headless horse.
“I wasn't thinking,” Twilight Sparkle said. Her stomach roared, barely sated by the snacks that Spike had brought her. Her number-one assistant always took care of her when she let scholarly enthusiasm run away with her.
The human stared at her. It blinked those beady, disturbingly small, yet pony-like eyes. “Ah, well.”
The human looked down at his restraints, and his extremities. “Can I have some clothes now?”
Twilight blinked. “Why?”
“Because I'm naked?” he said, after a long pause.
“So? I'm naked too,” Twilight Sparkle said, waving her tail and spinning around. “I know your bodies are mostly hairless, but you said you've got internal climate control and most of your habitations are at least in the temperate zone.”
“It's just...we don't like being naked. It's a thing animals do and people don't, unless you're taking a bath or having, you know, intimate relations.” He coughed. This caused part of his anatomy to fluctuate. She wondered how his larynx was set up to do that.
“I'm sure Rarity could stitch up something for you,” Twilight Sparkle mused. “I'm sure she'd like to design a dress for a creature from another world, assuming she doesn't get hungry first.”
“What was that?” Jamal said, fiddling with the restraining straps.
“Oh, nevermind.” That's when it hit Twilight Sparkle. The Otherworld Corridor! She'd have to channel some of the energy through Tartarus, but she could perform a full cleansing ritual before and afterwards. It could still bring her into contact with matter from another universe! She'd just need some, well, rather odd materials, and something rich and iron.
“Good news! I just figured out the spell that can help me solve your problem. I'll need a little help from you, though. Which hand do you write with?”