A short story about waiting, hay fries, and the dangers of space and silence in matters of the heart.

Takes place in the background of "Twilight Time".

(Featured by Equestria Daily, The Royal Guard, and the Royal Canterlot Library. Thanks so much, everyone!)

First night guarding turns into a strange turn of events for a newly recruited guard.

Edited by a great person called Alticron

Special talents.
That thing that sets ponies apart from each other and gives them a path in life. The one thing that they excel at, broadcast to the world by their cutie mark.
The spectrum of special talents is as wide as the day is long and twice as varied as you think it is.
But, interesting talent or mundane, everypony needs a job to put food on the table and not every talent lends itself to one.

After all, not everyone can be blessed with specific high-demand talents like "growing plants" or "cleaning" or "flying". Even less often does a pony get a particularly nebulous concept or multi-faceted skill like "magic" or "partying" that can apply to any number of jobs.

Sometimes, no matter how good you are at what you do, it's just not something you can make a career out of.

But for those unlucky few, there's a group filled with other ponies who face the same problem that they do.

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Editted and proofread by the wonderfully helpful NecroHorse!

Hi, my name's Nightingale and I think my Mommy's the best Mommy in the world. She doesn't just have one face, but many. And she always saves the very best face just for me.

Mommy has a great big list of ponies that hurt her before she adopted me. I really hope she gets to meet them all again. To make them apologize.

Artwork by LaurenMagpie.

There's nothing quite like a bad idea whose time has come. With ponies, all it can take is one charismatic idiot with an audience: for cattle, the 'charisma' part is optional. The young bulls among Applejack's tenants have gotten ahold of a truly bad idea, and all she wants to do is stop it before anyone really gets hurt.

Which means she's taking on the power of hormonal idiocy.

...it's probably time to bring in a friend.

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.)

Charlie, being displaced for reasons everyone is of course aware of, has a sudden hankering for Pinkie's company - because she might be able to make a particular pastry he's fond of.

No other reason.

It's hot out, too damn hot, and JB - local human - regrets being outside.

Still, he does bump into someone who isn't strictly-speaking in need of help but would still appreciate some, at least. The only thing warmer than the searing heat of the sun is the warm fuzzy glow of helping someone out.

So it's not all bad.

-

Has a reading, here! By, uh, Poniverse, I guess? And whoever the 'Show more' bit says did it. You know how YouTube works.

Rhys, the local human, is not particularly socialable. Indeed, he spends most of his time in house out towards the edge of Ponyville or else with Twilight working on how he is going to get home. He talks about home a lot.

One night, quite unexpectedly, Rarity finds him outside her door. He is very drunk.

She's annoyed by this, though less annoyed when she discovers the reason why.

Chrysalis might be one of the most evil, vile, and dastardly villains that Equestria has ever known. She might have been responsible for nearly destroying the world more than once, she might even be a soul-sicking, shapeshifting monster, but she is still a mare.

She had never been given a genuine, honest compliment from someone that wasn't under threat or stuffed into a feeding pod or mind controlled. Today that is going to change.

Cadence really hasn't happy about the whole thing.

Artist is llamacheesecake

How do you kill a pegasus's soul? Put her in charge of the town's weather, then only let her schedule sunny days and gentle evening showers. Not thunderstorms, not blizzards, certainly not hail or tornadoes.

Nothing fun, in other words. Celestia forbid the weather team make some real weather, the kind Rainbow Dash dreams about. The farmers would never stand for that.

Well, screw the farmers. Screw the fashionistas and screw the library princess too if she complains. Rainbow Dash has a dream and she's going to share it with the world, whether the world wants it or not.

A story dedicated to anyone who's ever been passionate about something.