The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
Spring was coming, and it would soon be time to put the flower garden in.
Already, the ponies in Haywards Heath were preparing. Greenhouses were doing brisk business from dusk till dawn. Seed catalogs arrived in Milfoil’s mailbox, and they provided some diversion for Windflower, even though Milfoil had to flip through the pages for her.
As often as not, that would lead to corrections in the garden drawing.
I wasn’t much help in that department; I knew a few flowers and common vegetables and that was about it. Nevertheless, I’d sit in the kitchen with them, studying the catalog and watching as Windflower found a new plant she thought she might like and then considered where it might fit in the garden.
Surprisingly, she didn’t change things around as much as I thought she might. At her age, I would have been changing what I wanted on a daily—even hourly—basis. Windflower was more constrained. I wondered if that had something to do with their cutie marks, if they never wanted to wander too far afield from what their cutie mark said, or would say.
That was a thought that kept me up at night sometimes. I’d learned before coming to Equestria that a pony got one when she discovered what made her unique, and there had been endless theorizing about what that actually meant. There were times that I thought that cutie marks would be a disadvantage, that they would limit a pony to only doing one thing for her entire life.
But then I remembered that there were people on Earth who did that. Some people fell into a rut and didn’t have the courage or the skills or the desire or the opportunity to learn something completely different from what they’d done before. People in waning industries often clung on to what they knew as long as they could, even though the writing was clearly on the wall.
And it wasn’t like the ponies were automatons. That was something I’d quickly learned. They could do plenty of things unrelated to their cutie marks. Some ponies didn’t even have jobs that related to their mark, at least as far as I could tell.
Granted, a lot of my observations had been at arm’s length. I couldn’t say what the stallion in the general store who had a measuring cup for a cutie mark did in his free time. He knew the stock that the store had, he was friendly, and more than once he’d suggested a new product I’d never tried that I wound up liking. I couldn’t relate his cutie mark to customer service, and at best it was a fuzzy connection to inventory or retail in general. Maybe in his free time he measured things really accurately, sort of as a hobby.
My relationship with Milfoil had furthered the notion that a cutie mark didn’t prevent other skills. While it was true that Milfoil seemed a bit wistful, a bit depressed during the winter—something I would have expected, since she couldn’t grow plants in the winter—Windflower changed the equation. If she hadn’t been around, how might Milfoil have acted?
Then again, if she hadn’t been around, I never would have had the opportunity to meet Milfoil, and we probably would have stayed cordial neighbors and nothing more.
One day, this was going to be the strangest love story ever.
•••
Just looking at catalogs and sketching out a garden plot was not adequate preparation for the looming spring.
I only really considered landscaping when the big box stores suddenly opened their garden centers, but of course there was all sorts of prep work that must have gone into stocking them. Managers deciding what would sell and what wouldn’t, then ordering it and scheduling deliveries at the right time. Developing plan-o-grams for the shelves and for the open pallets.
We had to think about that in advance, too.
I could have gone into a seed store or a greenhouse and showed them the drawing, and since I trusted ponies more than I trusted human salesman, I probably would have gotten what we needed, in the quantities we required. It would have taken forever, because I surely would have gone from one store to the next, not knowing who carried what.
Milfoil did. So I followed her lead, I stood by patiently as she discussed what was required with the shopkeepers. I helped her hitch up to her market wagon and unhitch when we got to stores, and I learned how to put her harness on and take it off again and I marveled that ponies could do this with hooves and mouth while I struggled with hands.
There were plenty of things to order, as well. Seeds and bulbs that weren’t stocked—I was used to just finding things in a catalog and making a phone call or even better, just clicking a few buttons on the computer and waiting for things to arrive at my door a few days later.
A couple of flowers we did order that way—although by mail instead of mouse clicks—while for the most part, Milfoil knew who to ask, who did business with which larger suppliers and could get a discount, or who piggybacked orders on top of each other to save money on shipping or qualify for bulk rates.
There were tools to buy, as well. I wasn’t much of a gardener, but I had an idea that by the end of the springtime, I was going to be.
We could have gone into dozens of stores and never found tools that were right for me. I imagined that minotaurs would have similar hand tools to humans, but there weren’t any minotaurs in Haywards Heath.
But there were plenty of craftsponies, and it turned out in Equestria, you could buy the iron parts of a tool by themselves and make your own handle.
Or, if you weren’t much of a craftsman, you could take it to a pony who was.
Thus, I found myself spending an afternoon in a wood shop, working with a couple of craftsponies named Snead and Helve. Both of them welcomed the challenge of making something new, and to my mind charged far too little for the finished products.
•••
We had plenty of plants to work with. Literal wagonloads, wagons that I’d helped load and helped unload.
Milfoil had decided that we should keep as many as possible over at her house, and I didn’t question that decision.
She’d also decided that with so many plants, it was a good time for me to start really learning proper earth pony magic, before I did something dumb again.
On one hand, it was kind of a disappointment to have to go back to kindergarten after I’d experienced the full effect of pony magic. On the other hand, I’d nearly wound up killing myself with my utter lack of control, and that was something she wanted to avoid in the future.
Human kindergarten had been practicing forming letters. Cutting things out with safety scissors, learning to color inside the lines, and not eating the paste unless the teacher wasn’t looking.
Here, I got to fill little starter pots—which were arranged like oversized egg cartons—with soil, and then carefully put a single seed in each. Sometimes that was easy; they were big and I could grip them. Other times they were tiny, no bigger than a grain of sand.
Milfoil had mouth-held tools to help her with them, which she let me use.
Each time we’d fetch a new seed packet, she’d instruct me to hold it in my hands, in order to feel its unique song, and I did my best to hear and understand.
She taught me how to feel the soil for its content, whether it was wet or dry, how tough it was. When I’d started to master the basics, she started mixing things together and every day when we were finished with planting and fertilizing and watering, she’d give me what she called a challenge jar, containing a mix of two soils we’d worked with before.
Once I got decent at identifying a mix of two, she bumped it up to three and then four—and she didn’t tell me that she was doing it. I had to figure that out.
We also practiced sharing our magic. Even though I knew the risks, I wanted to push it, but Milfoil was more cautious, sometimes frustratingly so. As dumb as it sounded, I kept my focus by imagining movie montages, all the parts of the training that they left out of the finished movie because audiences would get bored. I was in the un-montaged version of the film, the extended edition where I rested my hand on her back or held her hoof as she worked with a seedling. And then I tried to replicate what she’d done, what I’d felt as she guided me.
The waters muddied; she was my mentor and my love, she was my boss and my partner, and sometimes it was hard for my human brain to completely sort the conflicts and it was easier to just cast off what I had been on Earth, what I had known. It was easier to just start over, to focus on the now, to become a child again, where the world was fresh and new and where possibility was still somewhat undefinable.
I’d never imagined that I’d celebrate the first showing of a sprout, but I did. Cynically, I knew that a plant did what it did, that eons of evolution had resulted in a seed that would sprout despite my clumsy skills and unfocused magic, but I celebrated just the same as the first little shoot emerged from the soil. It was nothing short of a miracle, and I wanted to parade it around town, to show the ponies that I, too, could make a plant grow.
The kind of miracle that happens so often you forget about it.
Just pop the question already!!!
Blast it, now I've got the A-Team theme blaring in my head.
"I wanted to parade it around town, to show the ponies that I, too, could make a plant grow."
Look! It's a bean plant! I grew it all by myself! Isn't it great! It's all green and everything! (snicker)
Just let it go, there's only conflict if you make it. Let the music play!
She's doing a wonderful job, getting the basics down, growing strong roots. Fundamentals are everything, they're the difference between real understanding and rote repetition.
Yeah... pushing my body to levels of strength beyond what it could physically endure is kinda a big part of why it's now cracking.
It's not that I did not like this chapter, but the last two chapter were very focused on Windflower coming tot erm with her death, and what to do with it. Now it's been swept under the rug and it's back to just slice of life with spring and growing plants. It felt really dissonant
9521342
Hey, I don't knock a guy developing a green thumb....spot. Although I might send him to a doc to get it looked at, gan-green and what not.
A human learn proper earth pony magic... Twilight is going to write tons of papers on him when she finds out.
Or tangentially related, anyway. (My favorite example of this is Rarity - her cutie mark is gems, and her special talent is finding gems, but that's secondary to what she does for a living.)
Sounds almost as great as Billy Madison's method of learning.
9521551
And what she is, in fact, really freaking good at. At MOST she's taking her mark metaphorically, making people shine, but as for getting the unique magic that's better suited to a miner? She's a living refutation of the cutie-restriction hypothesis.
9521598
I've seen multiple alternate versions of Rarity where something went different with her school play and she actually ended up becoming a miner instead.
Also, it's interesting how canon Rarity and Maud actually have the mining/rocks/gems thing in common, when they are almost completely different otherwise.
9521652
Good point. I haven’t actually even seen them ever written interacting.
edit: And now I’m just remembering her human counterpart acting as a disgruntled miner in a play, wanting to be a dazzling dancer...
9521652
I vaguely recall there's a blog/comic out there somewhere which has alternative versions of the characters, with Rarity as a miner and Applejack as a manufacturer and seller of apple-based cosmetic products. Rarity is notably more physically imposing than AJ.
*rummage*... ah, it's Unity is Alchemy, on Tumblr.
9521681
Mm, there’s another one I liked but can’t remember the title. It’s a very What If alternate universe. Rarity is trying to make it as a unicorn rock farmer, Pinkie Pie is a Beat Poet, Fluttershy is happily married to a calmer Iron Will, and so on. Twilight is in the Guard like her brother.
The guy at the shop is Even Measure? Not that long ago when everything was loose bulk supplied, the measuring cup was the legally enforced standard sales amount, which is why they had a sharp rim instead of a side mark, so when overfilled then swept down flat, was always the same measure sold?
I know there was a local bulk shop a couple year back but cant remmeber which town it was in or if its closed. Theres still Pic N Mix at least.
Flowers. So many Flowers.
This has been your obscure Star Trek shoutout for the day.
Becoming more proficient. Can he hear Windflower's song now?
Wonder if Cutie Mark magic can strengthen her presence in world? It's too bad she doesn't appear to have affinity with a random paper; experiment g8h788np-4w suggests partially ingestion of a page may enable vocalization if her vocal cords can affect it...
Keep going! ;)
I wonder if twilight or the others will make an appearance at some point
Yep Steve, you've become a true druid now with faithful loving Milfoil at your side.
So are all humans earth pony equivalents magically? Are some humans naturally attuned to different magics, and Steve just got lucky? Or do humans have the capability to learn multiple types of magic, but just lack the innate proficiency with it that other magical creatures have?
9522216
Well thank you for that image. Human druid with his pony animal companion.
9522254
Animal companion who he has nightly fun with mind, guess being a druid has better perks than it once did.
9521681
Yep, that's one of them. It also swaps the base personalities of Twi and Dash, and Pinkie and Flutters.
9522254
Eh, more like the other way around as the lumbering human clumsily wields magic like a torn off branch, thrashing the problem while he gets schooled at every turn by Milfoil.
And then it turns out that Steve is a sorcerer and starts being able to throw fireballs in another 4 levels.
Unfortunately learning this will make it impossible for him to wear armor.
9522947 Since I'm in the Pine Barrens, I just go out back and scoop up some glowing marsh water.
Is this the first time he's used the word "love"?
9523071
On her mother's side. Let's just say her family reunions are .. interesting.
9521319
I know, and yet, I can’t make a plant grow to save my life. They do alright if I leave them alone, though. I got a nice little glade going on, and it did it all on its own.
9521329
One wonders if ponies tend to have marriages like humans think of them.
If so, he’d probably have to get up to speed on a bunch of rituals.
9523259
If you thought Zap Apple Jam was bad...
9521341
I never watched A-Team . . . but I’ve got this.
I’m kinda sorry, but only kinda.
9521342
Can you grow a bean plant?
I know I can’t.
9521364
Exactly! The faster he lets his human expectations go, the better results he’s gonna have.
It’s funny you should mention this. It is important to understand; lack of understanding the fundamentals is one of the reasons I really sucked at trying to learn foreign languages. Ironically, I know next to nothing about the parts of speech, the difference between a direct object and an indirect object, etc. Couldn’t define what an adverb is, nor can I explain different tenses. But I read more than enough novels to fake my way through it.
9521393
I’ve been lucky and never pushed myself that far; for me, it’s wear and tear from my job just adding up over the years.
9521411
I think that going forward, you’re gonna be glad that there was a bit of a break.
9521413
As long as parts don’t start falling off, he’s probably doing okay.
9521426
Well, assuming he’s the first. Could be that more humans have done it than just Steve . . . probably not all of them, mind, but a few. And I can’t help but wonder if those few wouldn’t talk about it, because they know that the ones who haven’t experienced it won’t understand it.
9521551
It’s been a while, but doesn’t she give some kind of non-explanation that it’s about finding beauty or something like that?
I think that for a lot of ponies, the mark means what they say it means. That it isn’t like heraldry, there aren’t rules about marks and mark interpretation.
9521568
As long as it doesn’t end with “Everybody here is dumber for having heard your explanation.”
9521598
She’s good enough at mining to crash the diamond market on Earth if she puts her mind to it. <----shameless self-promotion
9521671
Perchance, is this a fic that you know?
9521704
Yes, in an older, traditional grocery store, having Even Measure as your salespony would guarantee you got what you purchased, no more, no less.
The common one in my neck of the woods is Gordon Food Service (GFS); they sell bulk food and are open to the public. There are some things that I occasionally buy in more bulk than I can get at the supermarket, things that have a largely indefinite shelf life, like rice or pasta.
And yet, are there ever enough flowers?
9523302
Equestria Girls Short. Where we learn that, among her many talents, acting is not one of them.
9521775
Maybe just, although he probably wouldn’t know quite what he was hearing.
Eating paper? That probably won’t work for Windflower; she’s dead, and the magic’s broken for her.
9522210
They will not.
9522216
The more I think about it, the more I consider it’s the other way around. After all, we’re not on Earth any more; it’s their land, and their rules. Milfoil’s the druid, and she’s got her faithful, loving Steve at her side.
9523268 I like to delude myself into thinking I can. The year before last, every okra seed I put in the garden sprang up all green and leafy. Last year I was a mass murderer, and killed about four packages of seeds to get a row and a half. Poor things. The potatoes did fairly well. I figure the five bucks of potatoes I bought for seed made about a dollar's worth of picked ones. And the onion sets I bought three years ago are just about the size they can be picked. All two of them.