Sneak Peek Of Chapter 38 · 5:41pm Oct 14th, 2015
The first part's kind of a flashback to an earlier point in time. The second place takes place in the proper present. Enjoy this look into Swapped Applejack's mind!
* * *
Platform horseshoes.
Applejack closed her eyes, welcoming the urgings of her Muse. Welcoming them! Welcome was the last emotion she thought she’d be feeling towards her Muse. Especially… especially since...
...Well, with everything that’d been happening these past couple days, what with her and Sweetie Belle and Spike going out to where the Diamond Dogs were, her Muse had fallen mercifully quiet. When her Gem Hunches had reawoken inside herself, it’d felt like a good omen. By the time she’d gotten all her bejeweled dresses up on those ponyquins, she had been convinced that this just might’ve silenced it for good!
Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes.
And then, just moments ago… that troglodyte of a walk-in customer! Plucking her jewels off that dress she’d labored so hard to sew! Like grapes off a grape stem!
Now she had a no-good baby dragon wailing and hammering his fist on the other side of her boutique’s door, begging to be let back inside.
“Please, Applejack, please!”
So at this moment, it was a rare relief to have her Muse back. Inside her head. Taking the reigns. Monopolizing her mind, drowning out all other distractions…
You will make a line of platform horseshoes designed to enhance their wearer’s height by three feet and ten inches. Except for that of the left foreleg; that one shall be four feet, one inch. You shall use hobnails, all glued together, as the material to make these horseshoes of yours, for a standout statement that will have heads turning and tongues wagging.
“PLEASE, AJ! Don’t shut me out!” the voice of Spike begged from outside. Applejack’s door shuddered from being pounded on.
Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes are what you shall now focus on making. You shall now make platform horseshoes. Hobnails will be what you shall use for these horseshoes. You shall find glue.
“We can still make this work!” Spike was yelIf you have run out of glue, you shall need to leave the house for a brief timespan and shop at the store and buy more for the sake of making these platform horsesh“Don’t give up on yourself like thi!You shall use this glue to unify these many hobnails together into horseshoe shapes. And then you shall glue more hobnails onto this base and “Don’t give up on MEEEEEthen paint all the right foreleg platform horseshoes and left hindleg platform horseshoes to be boysenberry-colored.
Applejack felt like a pincushion welcoming the pins back inside her as she rose up, away from Spike and towards her storage room. She was pretty sure she still had enough boxes of hobnails left over from the time her Muse had her make pantyhose.
Whilst the right hindleg platform horseshoes are to be colored cinereous. The left foreleg platform horseshoes are to be left unpainted. Twelve tablespoons of milk of magnesia shall then be stirred into each can of paint you use for the platform horseshoes, for an ultra-modern finish with serious it-girl flair.
Giggling, Fluttershy turned the next page of Pinkie Pie’s diary while biting down on her cupcake. Mmm! Triple cinnamon with a marshmallow fluff center!
Dear Diary,
Ugh. Even after resting, I’m still feeling pretty wiped out. And bummed out. Because a day like today isn’t the sort of day that you really want to write up about any more than a schoolfilly wants to write up a big essay on why her last essay flopped so bad. More like a rather-everyone-forget-this-day-ever-happened-especially-me kind of day. But they won’t forget, and I don’t think it’s fair to them or myself if I forget today, either. Because then I’ll also have forgotten the important life lesson I learned at the end of this super-embarrassing disaster day. And if I forget the life lesson, I might end up repeating this same exact mistake at a later point in time! (This sort of thing happens to ponies more often than we’d like to acknowledge.) So in the interest of making sure this day never, ever happens again…
Do you remember me telling you about my Nana Pinkie’s legend of the Mirror Pool? The one which you activate by saying, “And into her own reflection she stared, yearning for one whose reflection she shared, and solemnly sweared not to be scared at the prospect of being doubly mared?” Well, it all stared when...
Fluttershy didn’t feel that reading the old curly-maned Pinkie’s diary was invading her privacy. Twilight Sparkle had said that half of Fluttershy’s soul was the old Pinkie Pie… so really, it was like reading her own diary. And it was like that! It REALLY was so much like she was reading her own diary! Kinda.
Reading this diary was like hearing a brass band playing a familiar old tune specifically written with woodwind instruments in mind. With occasional segments skipped and completely new bits freestyled in. As she drank in the story of Curly Pinkie and the Mirror Pool, (with an enthusiasm to do Twilight proud!) Fluttershy was swept back through her own memories of the Duplicate Fluttershies, who had been every bit as featherbrained and self-absorved as the ones Curly Pinkie had made of herself.
When all was said and done, the Duplicate Pinkies had been a much easier problem to deal with than the Duplicates of herself. Because earth ponies couldn’t fly, her friends had been able to round the Pinkies all up much quicker, and the Pinkies hadn’t been able to perform quite as much mischief as the Fluttershies. So much junk that hadn’t been spilled over so many rooftops and heads… Fluttershy was almost jealous!
Fluttershy was just getting to the part where Twilight Sparkle had opened the curtain to reveal the wall of drying paint, when Mrs. Cake called up from downstairs.
“Fluttershy! Fluttershy, dear! There’s, er, somepony at the door, wants to see you!”
Fluttershy set Pinkie’s diary aside, (though, since her Swap, she’d been using it as her diary too. Fluttershy had been naturally compelled to pick up where old Curly Pinkie had left off; writing her own entries. Now that she’d gotten her Equilibrium, she was still undecided whether she should continue on with that.) She shouted “Be right down!” and was right down within less than half a minute.
She’d’ve expected it to be Lero or somepony from his herd, come for a secret Swap-related powwow. It was almost ten o’clock at night, after all. But instead of Herd Bellerophon, this late-night caller at her door was a handsome, white-coated pegasus stallion, wearing armor that marked him as a soldier of Princess Celestia’s.
“Miss Fluttershy,” he began, “Princess Celestia would like for you to come to her castle at once.”
“What for?” she asked, eyeing the sky chariot behind the soldier. The other soldier still hitched to it was looking up at her.
“I’m not at liberty to say, I’m afraid.”
“Is it anything I should be worried about?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, I’m afraid,” repeated the soldier.
She thought about it. “Okiedokie!” she decided, and flew forward, landing neatly inside the chariot.
"Does this dress make me look fat?"
“I’m not at liberty to say, I’m afraid,” repeated the soldier after the 20th question.
"Oh you flirt."