An Old Stallion's Story

by Icer

Prologue

The Prologue

The snow on the ground reveals that it’s Hearths Warming Eve, and the location of the sun tells us that the day is over, and ponies have finished the pageants and are now spending time with their families, which brings us to an assuming cottage in Ponyville, where the tale will be told to those who are willing to listen…
An old unicorn stallion is sitting in front of a fire, his family surrounding him, some of the adults are busying themselves in making a dinner, and still others are talking to each other, clearly catching up as they have not seen each other in months. The foals are playing, rough housing around, some with dolls, and others with a board game with a title of “Canteropoly.” The stallion himself has a smile on his face, looking at the large family that he has been so blessed with in his old age. His mane is grey with age, though some of his old brown shines through. His cutie mark, a shield embossed with a book, sits upon his grey flank.

His grin grows wider as he notices his youngest granddaughter walking towards him, a little green pegasus filly with a blue mane, and calls out to her, “Cloud Chaser! Come over here and give your grandpa a hug!” Her face perks up, and she picks up the pace and jumps into his arms, giving him the biggest hug that a filly can give to her grandfather.

Cloud Chaser looks up at her grandpa with big pleading eyes, “Grandpa, can you… can you tell me a story?”

With the mention of a story, all the rough housing stopped, and colts and fillies alike clambered over each other to get the best seat for one of their grandfather’s legendary stories, “Yeah!” “A story!” “Make it awesome!!!!!” “Can it be about the Princesses?” and such other sentences filled the area around him, and he smiled big as his descendants

“Well, since you’re the one that asked Cloud, you’re the one that gets to choose!” The old stallion said, looking at his granddaughter to a collective sigh of disappointment from the impromptu crowd.

Cloud looked up at her grandpa, eyes pleading, “Well... I was wondering if you could tell us something about the Humans grandpa?”

“Hmmmm. I guess I could, what about an Indiana Jones story?”

“No!!! That’s just Daring Do as a human!” Shouted one of the colts in the back.

“Well, what about Sherlock Holmes then?

“Grandpa, you’ve already told us most of his stories! I want to hear something new; I just want to hear about the humans!” Cloud said, with a slight huff at the game that her grandfather was playing with her.

“Well then, in that case everypony get comfortable, it’s going to be a long tale then.” The stallion said, settling down into a more comfortable position and watching while everypony else did the same.

“Now, where to begin, I know, we’ll start with the human towns and cities and work our way from there, shall we? Human towns are not much larger than most of our towns here in Equestria, they hold anywhere from a couple hundred to several thousands of humans in one area. Their buildings are larger than ours, due to the fact that they are about a foot taller than most ponies, bar the princesses of course. Their homes are much like our homes, but with many more things, and because of a lack of magic they use something called electricity.”

“Humans don’t have magic!? How can they do all those things that you’ve talked about in your other stories then grandpa?” Interrupted a wide eyed Cloud Chaser.

“Well, they used their hands, their feet, and their minds mostly. Humans are really good about creating unique and different solutions to problems. They can’t use magic to create a light, so they created a way to make a metal burn hot and show light. They don’t have to rely on candles, and they don’t have to worry about growing tired from making the light. Electricity is how they power that light; it’s created in these massive factories that exist just for the purpose of making this portable lightning. This electricity is not only used for their lights though, it’s used for heating, cooling, keeping their food fresh, and even for getting from one place to another! Electricity is so essential to human’s that you might as well call it their magic.

“Now, back to their cities, they’re much much larger than anything in Equestria, some of them holding over ten million people! And part of the way that they can get away with having so many people in such a small place is that they have these large buildings called apartment buildings, where you have hundreds of people in a small city block, all living there! And then you have the skyscrapers, each one as tall as a small mountain, gleaming things of metal and glass that you can see for miles around. The humans know how to build big, and they don’t care if it doesn’t work well or not, they’ll keep trying until they get it right. “

One of the older fillies raised a hoof, “Grandpa? How do so many humans get around in such a small area then? It must be really cramped to walk anywhere with that many people!”

“Well Crystal Dream, that’s a good question. Humans use a type of cart that can move itself, they call it an automobile. The automobile, or car as most humans call them, can hold anywhere from 2 to 100 people for the biggest ones, and they use them to transport just about everything from people, to food, to furniture, and many humans have them! Then they have the subways, they’re like our trains, but underground and propelled by electricity.

“All of these machines work together in a system of roads and rails to get a person from place to place, which, to any human, makes them incredibly useful. Then they have aircraft, great flying machines that hold dozens of humans at once, and fly at speeds almost unmatched by most pegasi! These magnificent metal machines fly constantly between cities, carrying millions of people at any given time.” Cloud’s eyes went wide at the thought of the speed, and the number of humans in the air, but the grandfather continued on without a pause, “The humans need these fantastic flying fortresses in order to travel the great distances between their cities, sometimes ranging in the thousands of miles in distance, and oftentimes they will continue their travels after these long flights.

“I can tell by your faces that you don’t like the idea of working that much, especially you Apple Blossom.” The grandfather said with a chuckle, looking at one of his granddaughters, who had a grimace on her face matching her well known penchant for procrastination. He laughed at Apple’s face before continuing with his description, “But to those humans, work was to them as breathing is to us, if they stopped working they thought that they would die. It’s just who they are, not everyone was as loving as work as them, Apple, some liked to be lazy and smell the flowers every day, all day, as much as you!” He said with a wink at his now blushing granddaughter.

“If everypony hasn’t figured out by now, humans really are not that different from ponies, they have lazy people, workaholics, studious, not so studious, smart, dumb, silly, serious, shy, and everything in between. They have their own methods of going about things, once again thanks to their lack of magic, but they refuse to let that get in their way. Humans are innovative, if nothing else. If they cannot do something on their own, or if they think that it takes far too long for them to do it, then they figure out a machine or device or a better way to do it! They had inventions for just about everything, lighting, reading, communicating, and even, if you could believe it, backscratching! Anything they wanted to figure out, and given the time, and they’d have it built or solved before you knew there was a problem in the first place.

“And all of this was because of something they called ‘science,’ which to me was just an excuse for their inherently inquisitive natures. Science is many fields of study, all of them relating to advancing everything, medicine, technology, farming, even the humans themselves. Science, on its own, does not have much of a purpose, but when combined with the inquisitive nature of humans, nothing would stand in their way.” The stallion said, taking a break to grab a drink.

“Grandpa, how did they do this? I mean, we’re inquisitive, and earth ponies and pegasi can’t work magic for a lot of things like unicorns can, shouldn’t we have created just as many things as the humans?” One very disgruntled looking colt with a light pink coat with a shockingly bright orange mane, and a cutie mark of a beaker said to his grandfather.

The grandfather just gave a smile at this point, as he had been waiting for such a question since his tale had begun, “Well you see Bunsen, unlike Equestria, where we have control over the weather, and the animals are usually quite nice outside of the Everfree Forest, Earth is pretty wild. No control over the weather, as there are no pegasi with pegasi magic to manipulate it, no control over the animals, other than ones that they’ve bred to be domesticated. So, to the humans, every day, up until their modern times, has been a struggle to survive and adapt, forcing them to be more innovative than Equestrians and other ponies have been.”

“Grandpa!” Shouted one filly in the back of the crowd that he couldn’t quite see, “What about schools? They must have schools to learn all about these things that they do, right?”

“Well of course they do! And many schools they have, even though they didn’t want to admit it to themselves, their schools were the best that they have ever had, with so many being educated that it was nearly unfathomable how many had gone through their systems. The schools were set up in a 3 school system, you have your primary, or grade school, that would be for the kids, the fillies and colts as it is. And then they have a secondary school, or as the Americans called it, high school, which was for their teenagers, those usually between the ages of 14 and 18 or so. And then you had their post-secondary schools, things like colleges and universities, the grandest education systems in the history of Earth. I can remember my time at university, so much knowledge, such a grand library… It was almost enough to make a person pause if they really thought about it too much.”
“Grandpa… you said ‘I,’ why would you say ‘I remember my time at university?’” Cloud Chaser said, with a look that was both questioning and worrying.

“Well Cloud Chaser, I wasn’t always a pony.”

---

Author's Note:
Well, I hope you ponies are enjoying this, I'll be uploading these as I finish them, and as my wonderful editors finish them as well. I don't know how long each chapter is going to be all told, nor how long the story is going to be. This is my first story, so feel free to tear things apart as much as you want, in fact I encourage you to. I think that I got the formatting down for FIM as well, but here's to me guessing things correctly!

Comments

[AliCentaur Br0ny]

This story seems interesting. It also seems to be a different take on the Human in Equestria genre, and I also think that it has some really good potential to be a great story. I did notice a problem, but it was mostly just that you switched tenses. You started off in the Present tense, but then changed to the Past tense. It's not really a big deal, but I thought I'd tell you anyway. I'll be tracking this story to see where it goes.

[Icer]

275426
To be completely honest, I didn't even notice that I did that! Thanks for pointing it out, and I hope to have another update by Saturday or Sunday, really depending on my schedule for other things.

Glad you found it interesting!

[AliCentaur Br0ny]

You're welcome.

[Draco Dei]

SPOILER ALERT!!!

not everyone was as loving as work as them,
-I suggest "not everyone was as loving of work as them,"... also I find this talk of humans loving work more than ponies to be a bit odd given that while ponies DO like to play, they also generally have their career-path magically emblazoned on their hips and may become mentally unstable when they can't pursue it any more.