Happy Birthday, Nighttide | Transmission 01 · 6:00am Mar 10th, 2016
Happy birthday, my little scenester.
Dear Nighttide,
Hi there! It’s your friend Pinkie Pie from Ponyville! How are things back at home? We’ve sure missed having your shiny self around these last few months! Hopefully you haven’t forgot about your friends back here in Equestria?
You probably won’t get this letter for a few months from what Twilight says, but I wanted to let you know we’ve been thinking about you! Do you remember when we went on that crazy awesome totally unplanned super short adventure to the mountains to rescue Twilight? Sure you do! I know it was kinda scary at the time, and it seemed like we were gonna freeze to death, and Rarity used that spell that almost turned us into pony confetti, but it was kinda fun too!
I really hope you’ve been having fun back home. I remember you said you didn’t get to have a lot of that before you came to Ponyville. I still can’t believe there’s a place out there that doesn’t have balloons! Maybe I should have sent you with some? Then you could have shared the fun with other ponies! And hey, that’s a great way to make friends too! I know you needed some of those too when you went back home. But don’t worry, your friends here in Ponyville are still here for you! Six good friends who hope you’re having the time of your life!
I sure hope we can have fun together again one of these days. I feel like we didn’t have enough of that. So, as a remedy, I packed a pack of Pinkie Pie Party Perfect party balloons – patent pending – with this letter! Just make sure not to open them in a small room; Twilight specially wrapped them and mentioned something about implosion or something like that if you open them too fast.
Anyway, wishing you the best! Can’t wait to hear back from you!
Your friend,
Pinkie Pie
The very first drawing of Nighttide. She looked a little cramped. - 10 March 2015
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Dear Nighttide,
Howdy, partner! Heh, I bet you think I write my letters the same way I speak, huh? Well, sorry, but I can’t say my countryisms come across on paper as much as they do elsewhere. But I figured I’d throw in a few here and there just for you, so you could read it like I was speaking to ya face to face.
So, how’s city life treating ya? Things looking up any since you got back? Guess I probably won’t get an answer to that for a while now, but figured I’d let you know what’s on my mind in the here and now. Me and the girls been thinking ‘bout you a powerful lot here recently, ‘specially with the talks and what-not going on between the Princesses and your folks back home. Twilight says they should have a way to send stuff like letters and such between your world and ours here in a few months. There’s a lot of magic, sciency mumbo-jumbo that I don’t quite get, but I suspect you’d find it all mighty interestin’ if you were around to hear it all. Hey, who knows? Maybe you’re over there helping to make it all happen! Either way, I hope you’re doing something you enjoy.
Can’t say I’m one for long letters, so I’ll mention this last thing before I go. You remember that big hunk of pony I call a brother, Big Mac? Well, just the other day, I heard him grumblin’ on about something out in the orchards while I was on the way to town. You know what he was going on about? I kid you not, when I was rounding a bend nearly out of earshot, I heard him say, “Darn metal mare’s better at bucking trees than I am.” Now, unless he’s gone and found some other pony with a ridiculous outfit such as yours, I’m pretty sure he was talking about you. So, I cantered over and caught him off guard, asked him “Say, Big Mac, whatcha’ grumblin’ about over here? Everything alright?” He lifts his head up proud and gives a sure “Eeyup.” So I lean in and say, “Ya sure you’re not jealous that filly was stronger than you?” Quick as lightning, he says, “Nope,” then turns around and bucks the snot out of an apple tree. I swear I could hear the thuds clear into town after I mentioned that!
Well, hopefully you’ll get a ‘kick’ out of that as much as I did.
Wishing you the very best, sugarcube. Looking forward to when we can have a real conversation again one of these days. Sure would like to have you back to the farm – if not to outbuck my brother, then to enjoy some of Granny’s apple pie at least. Take care of yourself.
Your friend,
Applejack
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Dearest Nighttide,
Please tell me you’ve been able to do something about your home’s fashion sense.
I remember when you showed me an image of the latest… fashion, as you called it, on that projector thing you had in your suit. To think mares would consider casual business attire a universal solution for any formal affair! How preposterous. I expect the basic, non-trademarked designs I gave you came in good use? Hopefully you remembered to share them with the right ponies so you could help restore some sensibility into the ponies back home.
But I digress. How have you been, dear? Not too encumbered by work, I hope? When you left, I know it was hard to tell exactly what your superiors had in mind for your return. From what Princess Luna mentioned at our last meeting, it sounded like things were going well enough on your end at least. I’m not particularly fond of the way some officials from your world carry themselves during delegations, but that is more a matter of personal taste than expectation. It just seems a shame they have to speak in such a dry, stilted manner. Now I see why you and Pinkie were so adamant about the lack of “fun” back home, at least as far as the ponies I’ve encountered are concerned.
Nevertheless, I am quite happy to see things moving forward as well as they are. In a matter of months, we should be able to send letters to your homeworld – which, I imagine at that point, will include quite a few if Pinkie Pie has anything to say about it. You would think with Twilight and Princess Luna at the head of delegation matters, they would be the ones acting as ambassadors, but it seems Pinkie is on a mission to prepare a warm greeting for as many ponies as she can over the coming months. I admire her spirit, but I do not believe my jaw nor my magic could handle writing that many letters in a row. Hence why I hope to make a splash in the fashion scene as a way of introducing myself.
Fashion and letters aside, I do hope my good friend Nighttide has been taking care of herself. We’ve been wishing you nothing but happiness and health these past few months. I will admit that it’s been a little unnerving to go so long without any communication. Normally I wouldn’t fret over such things; I’ve managed to maintain a long-distance relationship with friends and relatives over the years myself without much issue. But considering communication is a bit limited at the moment, I can’t say we have much of a “relationship” right now as we hold hope we can have one again in the near future. We are still your friends at heart here in Equestria. We just hope you still consider us your friends as well.
Wishing you the best, darling.
Your friend,
Rarity
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Nighttide,
You better get back here ASAP so I can kick your flank at a rematch.
You see, I’ve been thinking. That first race we had? That was more like a warm-up exercise. We didn’t really know each other that well, and we weren’t exactly competing in the Iron Pony challenge or something like that. So I don’t feel like either of us really gave it our all, you know?
So, I challenge you to a rematch. Not just another race, but a rematch – our first official race. You and me, Whitetail Woods, we’ll start on hoof and end in the sky. I’ve got the course all laid out so we can really go at it, and if we time it right, I bet we can even get a crowd to watch. After all, it’ll be the first race between two different worlds, right? There’s no way anyone would miss out on that.
It’s too bad your ponies are gonna have to watch your metal butt get kicked by the fastest pegasus in Equestria.
Oh yeah, hope everything’s going awesome on your end. Hope to hear from you soon.
Stay cool, crazy mane.
- Rainbow Dash
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Dear Nighttide,
Hello! This is your friend Fluttershy.
How are you? It’s been awhile since we’ve talked, and I haven’t really heard much about how things have been for you. Our friends and I have thought a lot about you recently since we started talking with your ponies a little while ago. We’ve wanted to check in and see how you’ve been, but Twilight and the Princesses have been waiting until they get some official things out of the way first.
You know, sometimes when I walk down the upstairs hall, I still want to peek in the guest room and see how you’re doing. Well, I guess I can’t really call it a guest room anymore. Since you left, I might have started putting some of the animals things back in there. But if you ever come back to town, I’ll be sure to clean it up again just for you. Unless you prefer my room. That’s fine too.
I guess it will be awhile before you read this letter. I hope all is going well for you, and I can’t wait until we get to chat again. If you can come visit sometime, I’ll show you some new things around town. You wouldn’t believe it, but Twilight has her very own castle now! Or maybe you’ve already heard about it. It’s worth seeing up close though, and I think you would like it.
By the way, if anything happens to the quilt I gave you, you can always bring it back and I’ll patch it up for you. Or if it gets lost, I’d be more than happy to knit you a new one. I just remember how happy you were when I gave it to you before you left, so don’t be afraid to tell me if anything bad happens to it. Just let me know and I’ll take care of it. Promise.
We miss you, Nighttide, and we can’t wait to talk with you again soon. I’m very excited to hear how things have been. Hopefully they’ve been good? If they haven’t, please let me know. I’d hate to hear things haven’t been going well, but I’d hate it more if I didn’t get to hear it from you first so we could talk about it. You have friends here in Ponyville, and we’ll always be here for you.
Your friend,
Fluttershy
Celebi-Yoshi sketchy sketch for Patreon support
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Dear Nighttide,
Once upon a time, I used to write letters once a week to Princess Celestia. You might remember me mentioning them to you; they were called “Friendship Reports,” and they were concise accounts of lessons I learned from real-life experiences with friends. In that time, I learned how to pack in as much pertinent information into a short account as feasible – one, so Princess Celestia didn’t have a mile-long letter to read, and two, so Spike wouldn’t get a cramp from writing it. Efficiency was key in those letters.
Honestly though, I can’t bring myself to do the same with this letter. Writing to you is not only a personal matter, it’s also a special one, given this is the first letter I’m writing to you. So forgive me if I get a bit wordy.
I guess I’ll start with the technical stuff first. As you may have heard, we’re in the middle of delegations with your ponies back home to figure out… well, a lot of stuff. Right now, it’s not so much a matter of politics as it is logistics; we’re still exchanging a lot of information over radio transmissions to figure out how to replicate some of your technology, as they are doing with our own. We’re looking at a window of roughly nine to twelve months before we can get a stable warp drive built by our own means to exchange physical material between our worlds. We’ve considered having a model hoof-delivered by someone from DIRE, but we agree with some of the concerns they have shared, not the least of which include unnecessarily risking somepony’s life. So that option is crossed out unless we run into an impassable barrier on our end.
I can’t speak about everything that’s currently happening between your world and ours – some of it falls under political protection, or “it’s a government secret until we get everything figured out” in laypony terms. But one thing I can say, just speaking personally, is I’m impressed with how professional and organized some of the officials with whom I’ve spoken are. They may come across as a bit dry at times, but all in all, they’ve been quite cooperative and have really helped to keep things moving along. Princess Luna seems to mesh well with their approach to government affairs, although I believe she shares some of my sentiments as well. Not that we’ve really got to know these ponies personally, of course. For all we know, they could all be as carefree on downtime as Pinkie Pie, though something tells me that’s probably not the case.
I would say I hope things have been going well for you, but I recently had a chat with Colonel Rubedo out of DIRE’s PR department. For now, I’m choosing not to share this bit of information with the others until I hear it directly from you – I just don’t see any need in making them unnecessarily concerned. But from what I understand, you were put into active duty three months ago? The Colonel wasn’t able to give out specifics, save your deployment date and duty status, but he did mention you were off somewhere else performing “special operations” for the military. Is this true? And if so, how has it been? I’m still not acclimated enough with the political climate of your world to understand everything that’s going on, but I know there has been some tension with bordering nations. In one sense, it’s exciting to know you might be outside doing something rather than being cooped up in a facility. But in another, I can’t help but worry.
Nighttide, it probably goes without saying, but we here in Ponyville miss you very much. I know I do. There are still days when I want to walk over to Sweet Apple Acres just to see if you’re out with Big Mac tending to the fields, or stop by Sugarcube Corner to see if you’re still learning how to bake with Pinkie, or even Fluttershy’s just to say hi. It’s not that I don’t go to see my friends just to see them anymore – hardly. It’s simply that these were the places I knew you would be, among friends who were yours as much as mine, enjoying yourself. I can only hope you’ve made even more friends back home.
I’ll close off with this. Not long before you left, you and I had a chat about your “place” in Equestria – that you felt you would never quite fit in if you never got to go home, and that you were hogging all of “my” friends. I know I tried to dispel those fears back then, but I’m afraid I had a lot of my mind at the time that kept me from really saying what I wanted. Which was this:
Friendship is not something that is shared among others in a quantitative sense. Friendship is very much a qualitative thing. My relationship with Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and anypony else are all based on the amount of time and effort I personally invest into them, as they are on their ends. The fact that I call any of these ponies my friends does not prevent anyone else from having as close, or as quality, of a friendship with them as me.
Now, you might think because of the short amount of time you spent here, the quality of your friendships may not compare. But therein lies another point: friendship is not something to be compared in the first place. It’s something you make your own, something you make between yourself and another pony. I can tell you, especially from the talks I’ve had with our friends, that you have quality relationships with a good few ponies back here. And they’re very excited at the idea of making them even richer given the chance to talk with you again.
If you don’t believe me for some reason, just remember that I’m the Princess of Friendship. Title says it all.
Anyway, hopefully in the next few months, we’ll have a streamlined way of communicating beyond broken radio transmissions over semi-secret lines, and you’ll be able to read this letter. I intend by that point to either hear directly from you, or to gain confirmation of some sort on how you’re doing. Just know we’re wishing you the very best – which hopefully doesn’t come across as demaning. Really, it’s just our way of holding hope in an otherwise inflexible situation.
I for one do hope all is well with you. And I will make sure we get to speak with you soon.
Your friend,
Twilight Sparkle
Does this mean you are writing a sequel?!