A Tale of Crafters and Ponies

by Dolphy Blue Drake

Chapter 10: A New Set of Rules to Break

Chapter 10: A New Set of Rules to Break

Year 8, Day 17

I was the first up again this morning (or so I thought), so I went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. I soon found out I wasn’t the first up after all.

Pinkie was rummaging through the storage chests we use for non-perishable food, and I could see various food items just sitting on the counters.

I cleared my throat to get her attention, and she stopped looking through the chests to look at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I want to know how you made those cakes!” she replied.

“You know, you could’ve just asked,” I told her as I started returning the food to their proper places. “I’d be more than happy to show you my crafting recipes. Anyway, I need to make breakfast for everybody.”

“Okie dokie lokie,” she responded, and then left the room.

Once I had everything I didn’t need for making breakfast put back away, I proceeded to prepare the meal: apples, milk and bread for everyone, porkchops for the children and I, and berry medleys for the ponies.

With breakfast ready, I called everyone down, and we began eating shortly afterwards.

After an uneventful breakfast, the children washed up, and then I proceeded to give them a lesson on cooking. Pinkie tagged along, and the other ponies separated. I didn’t pay attention to where they went, though.

I led the children over to a set of crafting tables in the kitchen and began my lesson.

------Ponies------

“Okay children,” Dolphy began, “we’re going to start with preparing food that doesn’t need an oven or furnace. For those of you who have grasped these concepts well already, this will be more of a review, but please still pay attention.”

The dragon-like pulled out a wooden bowl, an apple, a slice of some kind of melon, and a berry that Pinkie couldn’t identify. Not that it mattered that much.

“For a fruit salad, you’ll need these three fruits,” he explained. “Remember to use the generic berries instead of the special, named berries.”

He placed all four items on the table with a grid on it, and they suddenly combined into a bowl of fruit salad just like the ones from breakfast the day before.

He proceeded to show them how to make stew from a red and a brown mushroom, salad from a potato and two different kinds of carrots, a mushroom salad from a portobello, a toadstool and some strange kind of blue mushroom, a glowing version of the mushroom stew from green, purple and blue mushrooms he called “glowshrooms”, a bowl of berries like the ones from the last two breakfasts, and then…

“And now for my three favorites,” Dolphy said. “Cookies, pumpkin pie and cake. We’ll start with the cookies.”

Pinkie watched as he took two bundles of wheat and a small handful of brown beans and showed them to the children.

“I’m sure you’re all familiar with wheat,” he said. “But these,” he held out the beans for everyone to get a good look, “are cocoa beans. We need them for the chocolate in the cookies.”

He then proceeded to place them on the grid, and they then combined to produce eight blocky cookies, ready to be eaten.

He didn’t need to cook them? Pinkie was surprised, but kept watching intently.

“Next up,” the adult Crafter continued, “we have pumpkin pie. For this, you’ll need: a pumpkin, an egg, and some sugar.” He pulled out the three ingredients and placed them on the grid. They then combined to form a blocky pie.

“And now for the cake,” the blue dragon-like announced, “you’ll need three buckets of milk, an egg, two piles of sugar, and some flour.” He pulled out each ingredient and showed them to the children.

“Before we knew about flour, we had to use three bundles of wheat instead of a single pile of flour,” he explained. “Making flour is much more efficient, as it saves grain.”

He then placed the egg in the middle of the grid, the piles of sugar on both sides of it, the three buckets of milk in the squares on the far side of the grid, and the single pile of flour in the center of the near side, leaving only the near corners empty.

With that complete, they combined to form a cake just like the ones from the day the ponies arrived.

The children applauded, and Dolphy picked up all the food he’d left on the counter.

“That looks like fun!” Pinkie exclaimed. “Can I try?”

“I don’t see why not,” Dolphy replied.

With that, Pinkie rummaged through the various chests and fridges to get the same ingredients the Crafter had used for the cake. Pinkie thought for a second, then grabbed two sets of cocoa beans, as well.

Dolphy looked at the ingredients, and did a double take when he saw the beans.

“Uh, Pinkie? What are the cocoa beans for?” he asked in confusion.

“I want to make a chocolate cake!” she announced.

“But the crafting guide never mentioned any kind of cake besides the kind I made,” the Crafter told her. “There’s no other kind.”

“Don’t be silly! There are lots of different kinds of cakes,” Pinkie replied.

Dolphy shook his head, but let her try anyway.

Pinkie placed the ingredients in the same formation the Crafter had, and then placed the two sets of cocoa beans in the empty spaces.

The Crafters watched in amazement as Pinkie picked up a brown cake from the table.

“But that’s…” Dolphy’s mouth struggled to form the word he was looking for. “That’s impossible!”

The Crafter attempted to do the same thing, but nothing happened.

“How’d you do that?” he asked, dumbfounded. “There’s no logical explanation for how you can craft something, but I can’t even though I used the same recipe! This makes no effing sense whatsoever!”

Pinkie wasn’t listening, and just wandered off.

The Crafter started saying something about ovens and furnaces, but Pinkie was soon out of earshot. She didn’t know where she was going, but she didn’t care that much at the moment.

Suddenly, she found a room full of those diamond trimmed chests. There had to be about fifty of them! She opened the first one and looked inside. Inside was a collection of stones that looked like some kind of eye. She picked up one and pulled it out, then was about to close the chest, but she bumped a button on the inside of the chest, and suddenly the contents of the chest changed. Now it was full of some kind of yellow and red rods. She pulled one of those out as well, and then hit the button again, just to see what would happen next.

The contents of the chest changed again. This time, it was filled with a bunch of pink gems, so she took one of those, too. Pushing the button again, she saw the contents change to a collection of black cubes resembling the material the portal that had sucked them into this world was made of. She grabbed two, and then hit the button again.

Now the chest was full of some kind of red dust, so she grabbed a hoof-full and hit the button again.

Pinkie was disappointed to see that the contents had returned to the stones that resembled eyes.

Pinkie spied one of those tables with a grid on it, then placed the items on it. They combined to form some kind of large, blocky tube with a handle on each side of one end.

Picking up the strange object, she ran back to the kitchen to ask Dolphy what the item she made was supposed to be.

------Dolphy------

As I was teaching the children how to purify rotten flesh using a freezer and cooling packs, Pinkie burst into the room with some kind of… thing. It looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“Hey Dolphy!” she said, “Look at what I made! Do you know what it’s supposed to be? I sure don’t!”

I gaped in astonishment at the strange object and shook my head. How did she even make something like that?

Before I could say anything else, she gasped and said, “I wonder if this button does anything…”

The next sound I heard was the click of a button, and then some kind of deafening noise I can’t describe, combined with a blinding light bursting from the end of the tube!

Luckily, the tube was aimed at a wall at the time, but to my astonishment, there was a gaping hole in the wall! Did she use TNT in the recipe or something? That’s the only weapon I know of that can damage terrain…

After regaining my composure, I asked her to give it to me, and when she did, I promptly put it in the kitchen’s rubbish bin, which would safely destroy it in five minutes.

“I don’t know how you made that,” I said after disposing of it, “but something like that could be really dangerous, especially if you don’t know how to operate it. Look what it did to the wall! I’m going to have to replace those blocks…”

She apologized and left the room. Hopefully, she wasn’t going to cause any more trouble, so I resumed class after rebuilding the destroyed wall. This has been a very strange day so far.

Author's Note:

Special thanks to mrlordowaffles for being my editor! Your help really means a lot to me.

Comments

[Dolphy Blue Drake]

Chapter 10 is now here! Chapter 11 should be here soon, too!

[Nonexistent]

Ah, so that's the chocolate cake. And a shotgun or rocket launcher or something. Yikes.

[Dolphy Blue Drake]

3756064 I take it that you liked it?

[Nonexistent]

But of course I did. You took two of my favorite things and splashed them together.

[Dolphy Blue Drake]

3757906 Well, Chapter 11's finished, but I'm waiting for my editor to get back to me before I post it. If all goes well, I'll be posting it soon! Also, I'm glad you enjoyed it!