The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
It would have been nice if we could have brought spring by just running through the woods.
I knew that wasn’t how it was going to be, but I still pictured that in my head—like in Excalibur, where King Arthur rode with his knights out of the castle and the land bloomed behind them.
Winter Wrap-Up was nothing but work, from dawn to dusk.
We got up before sunrise, and I had an unpleasant reminder of what farming used to be. The two of us ate a quick breakfast of cold oatmeal, and then I helped Milfoil into her harness.
To save her the effort, I dragged her wagon around front, and tossed my shovels inside, then the two of us made our way towards the center of town.
There might have been an honor in being the first pony in the green. Some ponies might have been lining up since last night, or there could have been some way that Hayward’s Heath decided who the Winter Wrap-Up Queen was, and nothing would start until she made her way onto the field. The oldest pony in town could be the one, as well, or the youngest.
I could have asked her, but I was content to listen, both with my ears and with my mind.
•••
As the crowd grew, I began to feel a shift in the song. It was a happy change, welcoming—as well it should have been; we were all gathered to welcome Spring back. To draw the land out of its winter hibernation.
By sunrise, the entire square was full. All the ponies looked to the east as the rim of the sun broke the horizon, and stood in place until it had completely crossed into the sky.
I’d expected there to be an inspirational speech, but they didn’t go for that here. They didn’t need to. All the pegasi took flight again, briefly shadowing the ground-bound ponies in a thunder of wings, then the crowd dispersed from the village green in all directions to wrap up winter.
Were I back on Earth, any such event would have been barely-controlled chaos. Between foals and malingerers and unclear instructions and simmering small-town feuds, it would have happened, but not neatly.
Ponies didn’t operate that way.
I should have known that from the Running of the Leaves; I should have known that from the song. When they all decided to get together and do something, they really did. They went all-in, and they made it happen.
Had I been left to my own devices, I would have managed to screw something up. Milfoil knew that as well as I did, and she was constantly at my side, patiently explaining what I needed to do next.
Back on Earth, I might have bristled at the commands, I might have tried to exert some autonomy, but I was growing to understand that I was a small part of a symphony, even if I didn’t understand exactly what it was or what my role in it was. I trusted that at least Milfoil did, so I never once questioned her as she told me what I—what we—needed to do next.
We ended the day at the family farm, and that felt proper to me. I wound up steering a plow towed by Sabi Star and Sanguinary. I would have felt better doing it behind Milfoil, but she had correctly figured that I would be terrible at it, and need constant instruction in how to operate a plow. So she walked next to me, giving direction while steering a plow pulled by her parents.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t claim that I was good at it. My ancestors would have smacked me upside the head for being unable to master a skill they’d no doubt possessed, at least assuming that cotton required plowing in order to plant. That was something I’d never wondered about before today.
•••
I didn’t want to lie about why we had to leave after the day’s work was done.
Luckily, I didn’t have to.
There was never an excuse to miss a holiday, not back on Earth. I couldn’t say that I didn’t want to visit my parent for Thanksgiving because Uncle Terrance always found a new way to ruin the holidays, so I had to lie. Come up with a prior commitment or car trouble or the fact that I was in Equestria now and they didn’t have telephones.
Milfoil didn’t lie or make an excuse. She just said that we needed to get back home. No questions were asked, there was no attempt at a guilt trip, nobody said that it wasn’t right that she wanted to spend time with me instead of her family.
She stated a fact, that fact was accepted by her family, and that was that. There weren’t protests; nobody said that this year it wouldn’t be sleeping on a cot because Wal-Mart had had a sale on air mattresses and there was at least some privacy in the corner of the living room.
There were nuzzles all around, and a few hugs, and of course the ritual gift of food, along with the presentation of a bottle for later.
We didn’t talk of anything of great import on our way home. Milfoil could have asked me what I thought about participating in Winter Wrap-Up, and I could have asked her if I might have been more useful doing literally anything besides trying to wrangle a plow built for ponies. We could have discussed how much the holiday was symbolic and how much it really mattered for pony agriculture, and whether or not her parents would re-plow the wavering trenches I’d made, or deal with a crooked crop come the fall.
•••
The only thing that would have perfectly completed the picture would have been if Windflower was impatiently tapping her hoof when we arrived home.
She wasn’t. She’d gotten out the plant book and had it open on the kitchen table. I was more sure than ever before that she already had the whole thing memorized, that she could have told us about every plant on every page with little to no prompting.
As soon as we walked in, she pulled the drawer open and pointed down at the sketches of the garden. Milfoil obliged her and set them on the table while I put away the food and bottle.
I’d expected that Windflower would want to go back to her planning, but that wasn’t what she had in mind at all. She pointed to the drawing and then to the backyard.
I wanted to protest. I had every reason to. It had been a long day already, and we were both exhausted. This was a thing that could wait until tomorrow.
But we all knew it couldn’t, so we followed her out back and began digging.
•••
I didn’t know how to translate the sketch that Milfoil and Windflower had made into an actual garden, but that didn’t matter, because they knew, and once again I was more than willing to follow their lead. To have them tell me where I needed to dig, what I needed to do.
Milfoil and I didn’t work alone: Windflower dug, too. She only had her little trowel, but that didn’t dissuade her one bit.
•••
By the time the moon was over the trees, we’d stopped talking, as there was no longer a need. Whether it was from exhaustion or tiredness or openness or something else, I could clearly hear and understand the song, and I knew what the land wanted, so I kept moving forward, turning over one shovelful of soil after another.
The moon was high overhead when I noticed the old stallion was working with us as well. I had no idea how long he’d been there.
For a while, every part of my body cried out to stop, that I’d done enough, and I ignored it and the shovel bit into the dormant sod again and turned it aside and I moved forward a few inches. Everything else in the world faded out until there was nothing left but us and the nascent garden and the song.
•••
The false light of dawn was in the sky when we finally finished. Windflower was gone, no doubt back to her forest glade, and the entire garden was dug.
The three of us staggered back to the house—it wasn’t right to send the old stallion back home—and he settled onto the couch while we went upstairs.
Milfoil still had her harness on and I fumbled with the buckles and straps: I could barely uncurl my fingers enough to work them. She leaned down and unlaced my shoes for me, and I lifted each foot long enough to let her pull them off.
We got in the shower together, just long enough to rinse off the sweat and the mud and then dried off as much as our fatigue allowed before collapsing into bed.
For those of you who haven’t seen Excalibur:
bossy mares even the little one xD
I hope the old stallion is ok in the morning after giving so much in a single day...
Still loving this story!
Is it wrong that I find myself hoping more and more that the magic of the song will eventually cause our protagonist to transform into an actual Earth Pony himself?
Ah, Twilight Sparkle is a conductor.
9531087
Reminds me of a story:
A man wanted to be in the band, but he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. So they gave him two sticks and had him stand in the back.
Turned out he had no rhythm, either. So they took away one of the sticks and had him stand in the front.
Man, I was gonna make a totally necessary joke about them being in the shower but...
EXHAUSTION SHOWERS ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER.
The more I read, the more it reminds me of Orson Scott Card talking about greensong.
The old guy must be related to granny smith if he's not dead yet.
There's a trait of humanity that the Green will appreciate, the ability to work for as long as needed to see the job done. Humanity's brute endurance is second to none, they may not be the strongest or the fastest, but they will last forever.
Well, theres your problem son.
When digging the garden, you step backwards each time.
That way, your shovel is breaking the ground into the hole left by the previous dig.
If youre really massochistic, theres always Double Digging.
I love this story, but one pet peeve of mine that it seems to be tripping into is the "Ponies do everything better than humans" trope.
I guess it goes back to that motto, "Stories about ponies are stories about people." Clearly, real ponies aren't good at any of the things going on here. They can't organize festivals or plan events or know what day of the year to bring back Spring. There's no particular reason to assume that if you gave real ponies intelligence and magic and a foam-edged world to live within, they'd be better than humans at anything other than what they're already better than humans at – pulling large loads, running away from danger, and eating plants instead of meat.
So why does so much literature in this fandom go down that road?
🎶 how will I do without the magic, hear the harmony song? 🎶
🎶 I'm gonna walk on, 'cause I must, harmonize with throng! Harmonize with the throooonng! 🎶
9531295
I see what you mean. But I'm mostly taking it as 'ponies are better at farming than a city guy from Earth'.
9531295
Ive noticed this too, on top of this man being terrible at everything.
Really killed the story for me, its hard to root for a loser
And Mayor Mare felt vaguely insulted without knowing why.
Not in this town, anyway.
Based on the demographics, I can only conclude that unicorns ruin Winter Wrap-Up.
Yeah, they're all going to feel that in the morning.
9531295 9531328
This struck me as more "new cog in an old machine" than any kind of pony supremacy. It's just another case of Steve awkwardly trying to fit in, denigrating his efforts to do so, and marveling at those who already do. Plus the "unlearn what you have learned" training from the last chapter has really opened him up to being impressed by the little things.
9531295
In a way I can see what you mean, but I felt it was often about (as pointed out by 9531328 ) a human from the city that suddenly loose a lot of modern convenience and is learning to adapt.
For exemple, a lot of epople often rely on prepared meal, here he is forced to learn how to cook. It's not that ponies are better cook, just that Steve did not know how and certainly not how to do it with pony kitchenwares.
The feeling expressed in this chapter are very relatable; on my first day at my job I needed things explained to me too, I followed the cues of collegues with more experience.
( see 9531518 "new cog in an old machine" metaphor)
The only parts where there is something explicitely easier to ponies then human are: using earth pony magic -make sense- and working as one, something I would expect from a herd species.
In every instance, we see that he is learning and getting better, even when it comes to earth pony magic, meaning that human can do just as good provided they take the time to learn how.
9531157
I can only imagine what the bedhead is gonna look like on him and all over her. There's a reason I never take a shower before bed.
After work showers are the best. Made even more special with company. One of these days, we're gonna get fan art of these two/three, and it's going to be adorable.
A new chapter on my birthday. Heck yeah.
I really like your take on a human having to unlearn what counted in his world and replace it with what counts in this one. Combined with the actual learning of physical activities of course.
To me this isn't so much a theme of the ponies being superior... he's probably the first human to learn magic(!) in addition to all the specialized human knowledge that no pony possesses. Given time he's going to be at least equal in many things and maybe better in areas where the ponies have no innate species-specific advantage. But that's the thing - it takes time. It also takes dedication and he doesn't strike me as one who's going to strive for mastery, even if he could. And that's okay. As long as Milfoil puts up with it of course since she's his love, friend and tutor all in one. But she's also nothing if not patient.
He may be an idiot at times, but given the circumstances he's an admirable idiot who doesn't give himself enough credit. ;)
9531832
Happy birthday!
9531023
9531029
He’ll be fine--earth ponies are stronger than they look.
Thanks!
9531086
You’re not wrong.
That won’t happen; that’s not how magic works, but you’re not wrong for wishing that it would.
9531087
In both senses of the word, in fact.
9531130
I’ve heard that joke before and laughed at it . . . but, I can also recall my band director in college directing in 4/4 time with his right hand for most of the band, while conducting in 12/8 time for the tympani with his left hand.
And I also recall in marching band when Plymouth-Canton did Miss Saigon, there was a moment where one of their drum majors was marching backwards across the field, while conducting her section, and while also singing a solo.
If the conductor hasn’t got rhythm, the band’s sunk.
9531157
There are few who know what those are, but those few are all nodding their heads with you.
9531184
I haven’t read enough Orson Scott Card to know the reference, but if it’s what I assume it is, I’m flattered.
9531224
Earth ponies are strong. Not flashy like unicorns, or speedy like pegasi; their strength is that they endure.
9531248
It’s not just endurance--there are animals out there that put us to shame in that department, by any measure you care to take . . . but IMHO it’s half the factor, and the other half is our pure bull-headedness: not only the endurance to pull it off, but the willingness to put our heads down and do it.
Currently, Milfoil’s probably stronger than Steve is, and since she’s better attuned to the land, she can probably stretch herself further than he can--but his advantage is that he’s willing to just stare a force beyond himself in the face and go on doing what he needs to do regardless of the eventual cost.
9531295
Is it?
Sure, real ponies aren’t good at building a civilization or talking or inventing calculus or magic or flying or doing much more than following simple commands and pooping a lot. I could find any number of infants and some adults that can only manage simple commands and pooping a lot.
What you’re forgetting, I think, is that Steve is no gardener, nor does he have much experience with Equestrian magic (he’s got more than your average human, but it’s also fair to say I’ve got more basketball experience than my friend’s six month old daughter, which does not make me Shaq). He’s out of his wheelhouse, and even more than that, he’s working with tools that were developed by ponies for ponies.
If he was Amish, and brought over a team of mundane earth horses and a plow, he’d give most of them a run for their money.
And if we flipped the script and it was Milfoil on Earth, she’d struggle to use the microwave (small, not hoof-friendly buttons), to say nothing of playing a video game or putting spark plugs in a supercharged Ford Mustang.
And don’t forget to consider that in many ways, Steve’s an unreliable narrator; he’s seeing what he wants to see. He probably doesn’t notice a bunch of foals pushing clouds the wrong way, only to be corrected by an adult. He doesn’t know that by group consensus, Cletus was awarded a week-long vacation down south--again!--which happened to span the duration of winter wrap-up, nor that Screwhead is on doorknob polishing duty because she can’t really fuck that up. The only way he’d notice if somebody was making a mistake in the field would be if they accidentally set it on fire with the plow.
I can’t speak for what you know and what you don’t know, but I can speak as a hands-on professional, and I can tell you that when I first started as a mechanic, I marveled that the older techs could keep bolts straight (what goes where), or knew what size fasteners were, or any number of things that are now totally routine to me. I also wouldn’t have imagined how dysfunctional most shops actually are, because in my few impressionable moments as a youngster, I didn’t hear the mechanic bitching about how much of a jackass the manager was, or how the customer was such a cheap bastard that they wouldn’t fix the tie rods which were on the cusp of failure. I didn’t know that a lot of being a mechanic was puzzling over wiring diagrams that are maybe accurate and maybe not to figure out why the windshield wipers don’t work, or that a lot of auto repair falls into the ‘let’s try this and see what happens’ category.
And if I weren’t a professional auto mechanic, I probably still wouldn’t know that, but as I hope is clear from my various mechanic blogs, that’s how the world actually works.
Escapism.
9531308
New HiE genre: sing or die.
9531328
Yeah, that. I don’t know if I’m better than a pony or not, but I’m damn sure that I’m not as good at farming as an Earth pony.
Hell, at a draft horse show years back, I watched a couple young Amish girls riding a draft horse--bareback, without reins, giving commands in German--better than I could ever hope to ride a horse.
9531482
He’s not terrible at everything. There are probably literally dozens of things he’s better at than Milfoil, and if she were on Earth, their situation would be completely reversed.
To illustrate my point, I’ll give one example: Chevy Cruze, 1.4L. Here’s the trouble codes:
P0106-00 MAP performance
P0131-00 HO2S circuit low voltage 1/1
P013B-00 HO2S slow response lean to rich 1/2
P015B-00 HO2S slow response lean to rich 1/1
P0171-00 Bank 1 lean
P0506-00 Idle low
P0507-00 Idle high
P1101-00 Intake Air Flow System Performance
P2270-00 HO2S stuck lean 1/2
What’s wrong with it?
Practically any experienced mechanic could answer in a second without even seeing the car. Can you?
I can--but I can’t garden for st, and if you give me a traditional horse-drawn plow, the best I could hope for was to not be dragged under the soil by it.
I wouldn’t consider slowly learning new skills but being bad at it at first to be a loser, but that’s just me.
9531518
Maybe that’s what she’s doing wrong.
Or maybe she should have kept Sparkler as the organizer instead of replacing her with Twilight.
Exactly!
There are some things that should be left to earth ponies and pegasi.
Based on personal experience, if the cause is good and the motivation high, they might not.
Yeah--and I think some people are missing that. People who are no doubt experts at traditional, horse-drawn farming. My own experience at growing things is the less I attempt to help, the better results I have, but that’s just me. And I can say that I’ve fixed plenty of cars where part of the problem is that the owner tried to fix it first rather than going to somebody who actually knew what they were doing. . . . Steve’s learning, but of course he’s not as good as a pony who’s spent her whole life with both the magic and the physical tools, and he’s also handicapped since he’s working in a world of pony-made tools designed for ponies, not humans.
9532617
I think part of the reason some people see it this way is that, while we see him catching up to Milfoil in the Pony field, we don't get to see him do much where he's actually in his field of expertise. Now like I said, I enjoy seeing him learning and think it makes sense that he's playing catch up at all this stuff, but it's still a matter of perspective.
Doesn't help that he's very self deprecating and wowed by his new magic either :p
9531556
Dude, if it doesn’t come in a box with the directions printed on said box, I’m in trouble. And let’s not even mention that I’ve started accidental fires on an electric stove; if what I had to work with was a wood stove, I’d be lucky to still have a house around said stove. I learned the hard way in Boy Scouts that you can’t start a campfire with dry grass and hardwood, but I still can’t identify the difference between hardwood and softwood without seeing if it’ll burn or not. And my experience with gardening is less is more--if I plant it and forget it, it’s got a better chance than if I try and help.
Could I get better? Surely, if I practiced . . . but I don’t.
Every factory job I’ve worked ever. Even on an assembly line, at the beginning of the day, the machine’s gonna kick my butt. It knows what it’s doing, and I don’t. I’m smarter than it, and more knowledgeable, and in time, I’ll conquer it, but it won’t be the first day.
And don’t forget that every tool that Steve has to use was designed for a pony, not a human.
Yes. Of course, there’ll be species limitations; he’s never going to be as good at earth pony magic as an actual earth pony is, but even without that, he can learn plenty, given enough time and practice.
9531620
Oh, yeah, it’s gonna be terrible, but that’s the price you pay sometimes.
9531664
It’s funny how those of us in physical trades shower after work, rather than before. And you’re right, company makes it better.
Possibly sooner than you think. . . .
9531832
Happy birthday!
9531949
That’s one of the things that’s often important in a new situation, and which would be even more important when travelling to a new world. The rules and expectations are different, and one ought to learn to adapt.
Whether he’s the first or not really doesn’t matter; from his perspective, he’s not only learning new skills he never had (but which in many cases his ancestors probably did), but he’s also learning to tune into the song, and that’s something I feel most humans in Equestria wouldn’t be lucky enough to have an opportunity to do.
Yes, exactly so. He’s got a job (currently unspecified), in which is is presumably as good as any other pony who might have applied. He’s also slowly learning the skills and techniques of ordinary earth ponies, some of them quite mundane, such as cooking on a wood stove, or putting on and taking off equine harnesses [and I bet most of my readers don’t know how to do that--I certainly don’t]. Yes, over time he won’t be striving to be the best gardener in all of Haywards Heath, but of course he’s going to increase his skills.
Back when I was dating a veterinarian, we had an understanding. She didn’t know my job, but knew enough that we could talk about it. And I didn’t know hers, but I knew enough we could talk about it. And there were times where I’d mention a fascinating dog I’d seen--but couldn’t describe it in terms where she’d be able to identify what it was, even though I’m sure she’d have known if she’d seen it with her own eyes. And likewise, she could describe an interesting car she’d seen, but not always well enough that I knew what it was. Different areas of knowledge. . . .
He is an idiot at times, but he’s trying his best, and he gets smarter every day.
9532629
Yeah, that’s exactly it. The story doesn’t really focus on what he knows, but rather what he doesn’t.
He’s learning lots of new skills, ones he might not have striven for if he didn’t have a ghost, or hadn’t fallen in love with an earth pony. He’s got a lot of work to do to reach the level of foal, but he’s trying his best.
I’ll be honest, I often am self-depreciating even though I know I know stuff y’all don’t know. And I think that for most of us who were put in his shoes, we’d be playing catch-up, too. While my experience with my readers and followers has shown me that y’all are a pretty diverse group, both physically and in terms of knowledge and experience, I’d be willing to bet a few dollars of cold hard cash that few--if any--of my readers actually have any real experience at horse-drawn farming. Steve certainly doesn’t, but he’s willing to give it a go.
9532567
Just a glossing on the subject, but:
http://journeytothesea.com/magic-alvin-maker-red-prophet/
9532680
Yeah, basically agreed on all points.
9532598
Even with a pony-friendly microwave some ponies will still cause a disaster.
9532598
I have no complaints when it comes to Steve not being as good a farmer as a pony, because that's really just a case of a non-farmer not being as good a farmer as a farmer. It's logical and expected. What catches my eye is when ponies are portrayed as being simply better people. A few passages that caught my eye:
And:
It may be, as you offer, that Cletus was sent away on vacation and there are foals screwing up somewhere that he just doesn't see. But we don't see them either. All we see is what Steve sees; that is the story.
You point out that Steve may be an unreliable narrator. And sure, maybe he is. For that matter he may be in the lunatic ward of the local mental hospital, hallucinating his adventures in Equestria. But unless there is some textual clue that Steve is unreliable and there really are ponies screwing up and malingering and foals causing chaos and generally acting human, all those things remain firmly within the realm of 'maybe.'
Steve is describing a world where an entire village gets along without any strife, where they all understand and follow instructions perfectly, where there are no children causing chaos, and no one complains about any of it. Later he explains that, unlike on Earth, he doesn't have to lie.
That's not about being a farmer vs. a non-farmer. Or being acquainted with modern vs. 19th century technology. You're describing a superior people and a superior society. An ideal, and directly and deliberately contrasting it with the world we live. And if this story were some grand moral lesson in which readers were supposed to absorb the ideal and strive to be better people in order to instantiate that ideal in reality (what philosophers, in their desire to use needlessly complex words, call 'reification'), I would have no problems, because that's what most stories are. But there's no chance for that here; a recurring topic but one especially driven home in this chapter is that ponies are better simply because they are ponies. We, the readers, cannot become ponies; we cannot reify this story's ideal any more than a monkey can become human by watching TV.
It is in those moments (though not, thankfully, in its entirety) that this story becomes, to use the term you offered, escapism.
I enjoy this story. I intend to keep reading it. But whenever I come across snippets like those it does dim my enjoyment a bit.
9532622
Thank you. Finally someone said it.
Twilight could have offered to first help and teach Sparkler instead of just pushing her out of her job, but then Purplesmart has always displayed the best social skills. That always irked me with that otherwise brilliant episode ;)
Anyway... eagerly awaiting Boo's next episode.
9532642
Kinda surprised there has been plenty of "wet mane" art but none of the aftermath when you sleep like that and wake up with your hair (and fur) shotgunned to one side like a demented mohawk. As for after-work showers, I always in the morning since I'm lazy and just do everything in the shower-- sonicare toothbrushes are incredibly messy if you're not careful but at least they're waterproof enough.
9533171
I feel that you are maybe letting prior perception color your judgment here.
The first exemple as I said yesterday, I can understand why you would feel that way about it. I did not interpret it like you did, but sometime I guess that YMMV and that it.
The second exemple you gave though? I mean, it's purely a personal judgment of value. Steve is comparing two things, he imply that he prefer one to another, but that is on him.
There is nothing about how important family meal at holyday are that count as better or lesser, it's just the way you do things and what are your values.
That is actually a very good exemple of what Biscuit said about Steve being an unreliable narrator, he often color is descriptions with his own personal judgements and perceptions. So when he say that something is better, it's relative to him.