Sideboard of Harmony

by FanOfMostEverything

Magical Lyrical Nougat Time

Four years before the return of Nightmare Moon

Ponyville. A sleepy little suburb of Canterlot. A peaceful, quiet town where the biggest excitement was the scramble to finish Winter Wrap-Up within a week of schedule. Despite the proximity to the Everfree Forest, nothing terribly exciting ever seemed to happen here.

"Not good, not good, not good!"

The sea-green unicorn charging through the main thoroughfare seemed not to have gotten that memo.

"It wasn't supposed to happen yet! We were supposed to be living together by then! She still thinks my posture is weird!" Thus did Lyra rant to herself as she ran like her tail was on fire. Instead, her horn was aglow, though there no evidence of magic at work. As she zeroed in on one of many small houses, she felt the need to make one last impassioned cry to the heavens. "She still thinks humans are as fictional as seaponies!" Now that that was out of her system, she felt mentally prepared to knock on the door. So she did.

A pale-yellow earth pony answered the knock. Her pink-and-purple mane matched her wrapped-candies cutie mark, and her look of confusion went nicely with with the unicorn's anxiety. "Lyra? What are you doing here?"

The words came tumbling out as thought they'd been dammed. "Bonbon, I'm sorry, I know this is really short notice, but I need you to come with me. Now."

A dozen different objections came to the confectioner's mind. As is frequently the case, the most inane one came out first. "But I have fudge in the oven."

Lyra gave an exasperated snort, then gathered her focus. For a moment, the glow around her horn grew so bright that the protrusion couldn't be seen within it. Then came a chime from the house's kitchen. "There," the musician said flatly, "now can we go?"

Bonbon looked behind herself in confusion. "Just... just a second." She trotted to the oven, whose timer had indeed hit zero. She turned the appliance off and returned to the front doorway, more perplexed than ever. "That batch had a good twenty minutes left. What did you do?"

"Time compression spell. Colgate taught me. Could we please get going?"

"What... Where... Why?" Satisfied with this question, Bonbon expanded upon it. "Why me?"

Her fillyfriend gave a sigh that, coming from a pony with a few more years under her saddle, might come off as world-weary. "That's the really fundamental question, isn't it? I know I've asked it enough." Lyra locked gazes with the other mare. "Look, I know this is going to sound horrendously cheesy, but ever since I first laid eyes on you, I knew that you would be an essential part of my destiny."

"What, I'm going to be the muse for some masterful harp concerto?"

"Okay, first? Lyre, not harp. Fine distinction, but an important one. Second? Special talent does not equal destiny, and there's deeper symbolism to the strings on my flank than we have time to get into. Third, I don't have time for fourth, because we need to sally fifth." Lyra paused, went back over the list, and nodded to herself.

Bonbon sighed and muttered something that sounded awfully like, "Why are the cute ones always crazy?" She then shrugged and resignedly said, "Okay, fine. Just... just why?"

The unicorn gestured at her still luminous horn. "This is my spacey-wacey detection spell. It goes 'dong' when there's things."

"Uh huh. And that means the two of us need to be wherever it goes 'dong' the most?"

"Basically."

The earth pony fought an urge to facehoof. Maybe it was that she preferred unicorns. Maybe pegasi were sane. "Why?"

"The full explanation would require quite a bit of advanced theoretical magic, a Pinkie Pie musical number, and that friend of Colgate's who runs the clock shop. The point is, by the time I explain everything to any degree of comprehensibility, it will be too late. I'm going to have to ask you to trust me on this. Please?" This last bit was punctuated with puppy-dog eyes that no fully grown pony should still be capable of.

Bonbon rolled her eyes. "Fine. Lead the way."

The look of relief those four words brought to Lyra's face was almost worth the headache that had led up to them. Almost. With a wide grin, the unicorn mused, "I'm so getting sued for this, but I don't care. ALLONS'Y!" With that, her head snapped backwards sickeningly, her horn apparently having remembered an appointment in the town's main square and not about to let the rest of her body make her late. As such, it began dragging the meatsack to which it was attached with astonishing speed. For her part, said meatsack adjusted herself so that she was moving on leg power as well, and so she didn't dislocate something en route.

As Bonbon galloped after the hybrid-drive pony, she shouted, "I didn't know you spoke Prench!"

The response had a slight Cloppler effect from sheer velocity. "Iiii doooon't!"

---

Outside of the Sugarcube Corner, Ditzy Doo was just as confused as Bonbon. This was hardly her first time in a ground-town, but it was the first time she'd been in one populated by ponies. Furthermore, it was her first social interaction with her own species in six years, not counting the brouhaha her sudden return had whipped up. As such, she was racking her brain, trying to recall whether it was normal for earth ponies to gasp like an inhaling dragon upon seeing a pegasus. Maybe it was a new fad?

In any case, after narrowly averting two ruptured lungs, the pink dervish had insisted she "Wait right there!" before zooming into what was hopefully a bakery. If not, Ditzy would have to be sure to find out who'd built it, so she knew whose work to avoid. As she waited, the cross-eyed mare couldn't help but savor the irony that, out of the last half dozen planes she'd been on, she felt the most awkward and out of place on the one where she'd been born.

"Oh good, you're still here!" The bundle of energy reemerged from the building, bouncing like there were springs in her hooves.

"Yes. Yes I am." The blonde took a cautious step back. This pony was reminding her of a goblin with explosives: Excited and probably a danger to herself and everyone else. "What am I waiting for again?"

Pinkie Pie narrowed her eyes and gave a positively bowel-loosening smile. "Oh, you'll see..."

Ditzy swallowed nervously. "I-if you say soOOOH HOLY AVACYN!" As a unicorn practically rocketed towards her, the planeswalker realized both that she'd reflexively taken to the air and that she'd invoked the wrong deity. "I mean Asha! Serra! Celestia!" She sank with her spirits and, as she landed, hung her head in sorrow. "Dang it..."

Ponyville's self proclaimed one-pony welcoming committee gave her a reassuring pat on the back as she leaned in for a whisper. "Don't worry. I won't ask and they didn't hear."

The pegasus looked up at the kindhearted mare. "They?" Pinkie pointed, and Ditzy saw the earth pony retracing the unicorn's trajectory at a much more reasonable speed. "Oh."

Lyra chose this moment to look up from the sliding faceplant in which her horn-boosted sprint had ended. "Hello there, Lyra to Bonbon. I'm Ponyville and she's Welcome." Her brain then decided that now was a good time to take a break.

"Um... hi?" Ditzy looked to the more conscious newcomer. "I don't suppose you could tell me what's going on?"

She got a helpless shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that a certain unicorn," and here Bonbon gave a meaningful look to her significant other, "owes me some time compression magic next time I get a bulk order." She turned to her fellow confectioner. "Hi Pinkie. That pan of specialty rocky road fudge was finished a bit ahead of schedule. When would you like it?"

The party pony tilted her head curiously and replied, "Anytime that's convenient is fine." She then looked into the sky and squinted. Her head moved from side to side as though following a match of invisible pegasus tennis, and the occassional muttered phrase could be heard. "dozen different objections... grew so bright... more perplexed than ever... Ah!" She smiled upon the still prone unicorn. "You made sure her fudge wouldn't burn! No wonder you're her waifu."

Lyra's mind rushed back into the office to take this call. She looked up, still dazed but feeling more coherent. "That's about the fifth time you've told me that and I still don't understand what you mean."

"You'll see..." Pinkie singsonged. Or possibly sangsung.

"Um..." Ditzy had decided that if she didn't get a word in edgewise by now, she'd be irrevocably lost in this conversation. "Does anypony know if there are any jobs currently available? That's really all I wanted to ask."

"Oh, sure," piped the pink pony. "The post office is so understaffed I think it's technically a wand. Head down Mane Street and it'll be the building with the blue sign with the white alicorn."

"Thanks. I'll, uh, get right on that." She began to slowly head in the indicated direction, not wanting to startle any of the crazy ponies.

"Hey, hold on!" Ditzy's knees locked as the unicorn called to her, then approached her. The green pony offered a small smile, as if acknowledging the high dose of ridiculousness the pegasus had just had to swallow. "I hope we didn't get off on the wrong hoof. I'm Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."

The young grey mare returned the smile. Crazy as ponies could get, it was nice to be home. "Ditzy Doo." After a hoofshake, she set off again, far less concerned about madponies giving her the crazy disease.

---

Lyra entered her apartment with a sigh. Between the sudden activation, mending her nascent relationship, and convincing the town that she didn't need a new jacket with extra-long sleeves, it had a busy afternoon. The last thing she wanted was to look at another pony before tomorrow.

Naturally, there was another pony waiting at her coffee table, a blue unicorn mare blowing on a steaming teacup.

Colgate smiled. "So, how was your first day?" She sipped from her cup, then grimaced. "Find any tea worth drinking?"

Lyra scowled. "I thought you said I wasn't going to have a mission for years!" A beat. "And what's wrong with my tea?"

The blue mare shook her head. "If you have to ask, then I've clearly been remiss in your training. As for the mission? If you'll recall, at the time, I told you that it appeared most probable that you would be activated a few years thence." She shrugged. "As often happens in my department, times change." To underscore the point, she tried the tea again, on the off chance that it had become more palatable since the beginning of the paragraph. Alas, that wasn't the case.

"But... but you do time," noted Lyra. "I'm supposed to do space."

Colgate offered her a pitying smile. "You'll find that where you are in the Bureau has very little bearing on what you actually do. This isn't like the weather, Lyra. We don't just write out a schedule each week and carry it out as best the Everfree allows. For all the bureaucratic subdivision, time and space are inextricably intertwined. One cannot be manipulated without somehow effecting the other."

All joviality vanished from the elder agent. "If for some reason you thought this was a hobby you could pencil into your free time, Agent Heartstrings, I must inform you that you were mistaken. This is your job now. You may not be permitted to know that most of the time, but it is. While active, you are not a musician. You are not a young lover. You are not a pony. First and foremost, you are a member of the Bureau, a small but essential part of what ensures that everything doesn't all happen at once, and that it doesn't all happen to you. If you have a problem with that, you should not have accepted this position."

Lyra found herself split between terror and indignation. "But... but you never told me any of that!"

Colgate sighed. "I told you all of it and more. You chose not to hear me, just like everypony else. You're all made willingly deaf by the promise of adventure." She sneered, her words growing distant. "As if adventure were something desirable. Real adventure, not some tidy there and back again with a few stories for the grandfoals and something shiny to put over the mantle. Especially not for those of us with a dozen extra lives to burn..."

"Colgate?"

The mask dropped. For a moment, a terrible thing stared back at Lyra. It was no eldritch monstrosity from beyond imagination. It was simply a pony who had gone too far, seen too much, lived too long. A pony who knew that there was naught but more of the same ahead of her. "I am Lieutenant Romana Minuette, alias Colgate Turner, deputy head of the Department of Causal Affairs. I have logged more than two hundred years subjective helping the universe pretend that it has some kind of sane, linear chronology." She sighed, the terror fading but the indefinable air of age still there. "And I don't want to see anypony else become the sort of bitter, dried-up old crone that I have."

Colgate found herself in an unexpected embrace. She smiled and leaned into Lyra's hug, feeling magic wipe at the tears. "Sorry, love. This job gets to you. At least you'll have somepony who can understand as you find your way."

Despite the dark diatribe, Lyra found her hopes rising. "Bonnie?"

"Well, yes, but not just her, and not just in the ways you think." Colgate magically lifted a folded sheet of paper from her saddlebags. "Give that tune a go and you'll see what I mean."

She rose and stretched. "Thanks for the tea, love."

"I thought you hated the tea."

"Oh, it was dreadful stuff, but you don't drink somepony's tea without thanking them."

"Oh." Lyra bit her lip for a moment. "Colg– um, Lieutenant?"

"You can call me Colgate, dear. I was just feeling a bit sorry for myself there."

"Why does everypony from Causal Affairs sound like they're from Trottingham?"

This got a chuckle out of the deceptively youthful mare. "Blame the BBC for that one." She left before Lyra could inquire further.

---

Warp Spacetime 1GU
Instant
Return target nonland permanent to its owner's hand. You may put a land card in your hand onto the battlefield tapped.
"Time is just another direction to explore. Kindly do so elsewhen."
—Minuette, temporal operative

Author's Note:

Backstory aside, this was inspired by the following thought: What if, among other things, every Lyra's job were to greet visitors from other realities while subtly making sure they weren't a danger to the world... or vice versa?

Comments

[Blissey1]

"She still thinks humans are as fictional was seaponies!"

you've got a w in there

"Why are the cure ones always crazy?"

pretty sure that should be cute

[DreadedCandiru2]

So, her first mission was meeting Ditzy? That's weird with a capital WE.

[Alaborn]

You also wrote effects where I'm pretty sure you want affects.

[Starscape]

Holy Avacyn lol! Wait, is Serra a deity? (Serra Angel)

And I will blame the BBC.

[Tsujin Rilauco]

2277529 Serra Angels were created by the planeswalker Serra, named after the Dominariana goddess Serra. Serra the walker also created her own realm, which most Serra cards are drawn from.

The more you know, about Serra.

[Chaosglory626]

Heehee, for some reason Pinkie saying waifu is really funny.

[InMyMind]

Despite the proximity to the Everfree Forst, nothing terribly ever exciting seemed to happen here.

Forest*

[DragonMaus]

Third, I don't have time for fourth, because we need to sally fifth.

I need to find a way to weave this into a conversation at some point.

[garfan]

you know, if he message never gets across as she means it, maybe it's not the call to adventure, maybe it's she just sucks at delivering it

[yamgoth]

Four years before the return of Nightmare Moon

Wait. How old is Dinky suppose to be again?

The response had a slight Cloppler effect from sheer velocity.

I'm thinking of something completely different. You know how dirty my mind is, Foamy

[FanOfMostEverything]

7150640

Wait. How old is Dinky suppose to be again?

Somewhere between four and five by the events of Elementals of Harmony. This continuity operates on a headcanon positing that ponies age at about twice the rate of humans until they hit age ten. Sadly, that was debunked by "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils," but it's still grandfathered in here.

[Malandy]

7150703

Why did Bonnie need to meet Ditzy?

So, if ponies age at twice the rate of humans until they're ten... They're a human's 20 when they're 10?

[Malandy]

9968770

No, me, About Twice, not precisely twice.

Gonna presume it maps precisely onto the logarithmic EQG age shifting thing from Fine, Fast, Fierce.

...

Now I'm wondering how they knew it was centered on 16... Magic Scanning, or did they just toss kids in until they figured it out???