//------------------------------// // 5: Make it Through the Day/The Night's Magic // Story: Sour Days, Sweet Nights // by pjabrony //------------------------------// Different ponies needed varying levels of sleep. Garlic was one who could happily get by on three hours a night if he needed to, and as a chef it was often necessary, since he had to rise early to get to market. So that morning he got up with the sun and found a nearby spring for water. The fire that Hoof Dame had made the prior night had burned low, but the embers were still glowing, and he coaxed them back into flame, and put the first kettle on. He was pleased to see that Sour Sweet was the second one awake, rather than the last. He watched her shake off her blanket and stretch her wings, then he put an egg into the water. “Would you like some tea?” he asked in a low murmur, hoping that Sour would pick up his cue and not wake the others.” “Thank you, I don’t really drink it, though.” Garlic picked up in her tone a touch of the two-faced, but he put it down to the earliness of the hour. Shrugging, he put on a second kettle for his own tea, added and coddled more eggs, and slapped a griddle on one of the pots to heat up. The sounds and smells roused the other ponies. Hoof Dame inquired where the spring was before trotting off for some ablutions. The others just brushed themselves off and declared themselves ready to eat. It was a bountiful breakfast, as Garlic was whipping the flour into biscuits, pancakes, toast, anything that anypony could ask for. And with the eggs and fruit, everypony ate beyond their fill. “Sign me up for that every day,” said Moon as she picked her teeth. “You want to get married and cook for me all the time?” “Yes to the second, no to the first,” Garlic replied. “I’m holding out for an alicorn princess.” Reggie leaned over to Sour. “They’re both joking, just in case you can’t tell.” But she shrugged and gave no indication that she could, or that she cared. “In any case, forget about every day. We’re going to need more stuff if we want to have anything good tomorrow.” Little raised her head. “I thought we just stocked up at Canterlot.” “We don’t have the room we need on the cart, so it means lots of stops. Or eating off the land.” She leaned over to Sour. “Don’t worry, we won’t let it come to that.” With so much of their stock eaten, everypony was able to fit in the cart as Little drove them to the next town. As they came upon it, Moon took a deep breath and smiled. “There’s Rainbow Falls. Now, isn’t that pretty?” It might have been rhetorical, but Sour answered. “It is pretty. But if I lived here I’d get sick of those rainbows awfully quick.” After an awkward silence, Hoof Dame turned around. “You know, I see the value of looking at both sides of things, but just being contrary for its own sake is no good.” “You should have drunk the tea,” said Garlic. “I think you’re suffering from a theine deficiency.” Sour stared blankly. “It’s the same stuff as caffeine, but in tea,” Little explained. “Garlic’s just trying to be fancy.” Hoof Dame brushed the incident aside. “In any case, if you did live here, you could avoid looking at the rainbows by moving to Upper Rainbow Falls. A growing community.” “Is that near this town?” Sour looked around, hovering off the ground. “As the name implies, it as above it. A cloud city, you understand.” “I do not.” Moon came over. “Cloud cities are just what the name says, cities made of cloud. Pegasi can walk there naturally, but the other types of ponies need to have magic spells if they don’t want to fall through the clouds. Many of the cloud cities are close to a ground-based city, and they interact. So Cloudsdale is associated with Ponyville, and Upper Rainbow Falls is associated with Rainbow Falls. Pegasi might live in one and commute to the other, and the ground city gets the benefit of tight weather control.” “Interesting. My world wouldn’t put up with a segregated place like that. But I’m not in my world. So, do you think we could visit?” “Do you really want to leave everypony else behind?” Sour didn’t answer immediately, and Moon pawed at the ground. She understood that Sour wanted some alone time with her, to fly and to be with other pegasi. Even she herself longed for that sometimes. But this trip was supposed to be about all of them. “Why don’t we see if we can stop by on the way back?” The only answer was for Sour to hop in the cart and lean over. Everypony else got in and they made for Rainbow Falls. Garlic took the cart to load up, and Hoof Dame, Little, and Moon wanted to browse the shops. Only Sour and Reggie were content to sit at a café and relax. “What Moon was telling me about cloud cities was interesting,” Sour said, “and it would be a good item to put into my essay. You haven’t forgotten about that, have you?” “I haven’t, though I’m not thinking of it all the time. Do you want me to put in a few lines about cloud cities?” “Yes, but more than that, I want to know about the different types of ponies in general.” Taking a deep breath, Reggie seemed to recite from memory. “Pegasi fly, of course, and the unicorns do magic—“ “Wait. I have a feeling that everyone’s going to have those basics. Plus we know some of that already. I want to know about the cultural differences.” “How do you mean?” Sour bit her tongue. “Well, ok, there are cloud cities, but do they do things differently there? Are there different jobs or what?” “You want an economics lecture?” “I…sure, that’s a good place to start.” Leaning back in his chair, sipping his coffee, Reggie collected his thoughts. Then, not looking directly at Sour but shifting his gaze as though he were a lecturing professor, he began: Before I start this, let me qualify it by saying that everything I tell you has exceptions. A pony is free to do whatever they want, even if it’s atypical of their race. I can give you examples of how that works, but let me give you the idea first before I start talking about the exceptions. Most Earth ponies have extensive families, and they keep in regular contact with them even if they don’t live in the same area. Many of them enjoy genealogy and create extensive family trees. They are also the most frequent breeders of the three races, and their positive qualities have been reinforced over the generations. Because of all this, they are the hardiest of the races and in many ways the most productive. Certainly they understand the economics of the staples of existence the best. The interactions among Earth ponies therefore follows strict traditions and family guides. Most families will have a matriarch or patriarch or who directs the distribution of the production. But basically there are three types of interaction for Earth ponies. Within the same family, everything is shared. If my brother needs my hammer, he goes ahead and takes it, and it’s understood that he has permission. Disputes are rare, settled by arbitration of the family leader, forgotten immediately afterward, and never discussed with outsiders. Between different Earth pony families, there can be more of an adversarial position. If one family specializes in, say, oats, and another in wheat, they will still reach a barter agreement, but each side will try to get as much as it can. I stress that this is only when no tie of relation can be found. It’s happened more than once that in the middle of a barter session a genealogist will find a long-lost link or two of the opposing sides will get married, and the dynamic of the trade completely changes. Then of course come the interactions with the other races which have to be carried out with bits and contracts and all the trappings of a modern economy. The only difference is that Earth pony families are pseudo-corporate entities. If you go to a farm stand and buy a bunch of grapes, you may give your bits to the pony at the stand, but it’s likely that they then belong to the entire Grape family, and the necessities are purchased first. What that amounts to is that the individual Earth pony never has to worry about where their next meal is coming from or about having a roof over their head. There are places that will take them in. But it also means that luxury and recreation tends to come last. That doesn’t mean that Earth ponies don’t have any fun. To the contrary, for parties and celebrations hoedowns and hootenannies, you can’t beat an Earth pony bash. But you can’t decide that you’re going to take out a few thousand bits and go on vacation, or buy yourself something fancy without consulting a bunch of other ponies. Most pegasi work for the Crown. Certainly all of them receive a stipend sufficient for them to survive on, but they’re expected to perform civil service to get it, and they can work their way up the pay grades if they have a taste for luxury. In some cases this is a matter of necessity. Only pegasi can manipulate the weather on a grand scale, and you really couldn’t run a postal service without air transport. So a pegasus pony splits their work between local and collective. There’s one well-known pegasus who cares for animals, and only joins in the weather team during times of absolute need. But she also must be very careful and budget her money well. Conversely, you have ponies like the Wonderbolts, who are famous and wealthy from performing stunt shows, but who can also be pressed into military service at any time by the will of the princesses. Now, I said that they work for the Crown, but in fact there is a large council of pegasus ponies who do nothing but arrange for what work gets done where and when and by whom. The princesses have authority over the council, but they limit it to choosing the members and occasionally dressing down or replacing one who has taken too much control or is not operating efficiently. The council members themselves are rewarded handsomely. But I said that they are paid by the Crown, which means that if the treasury happens to run low in a given year, it’s the pegasi who suffer the most. Or at least the soonest. There have been lean years where even the best of pegasi only get the basic-need payment, even though they did much more work. One way they have dealt with problems like that is through cloud cities. Obviously nopony else can go there, so with a pegasus-only location, they can engage in community living similar to what the Earth ponies do. Pegasi can be assigned dormitories that have plain living for very few bits. They do not, as far as I know, go to the full-on barter system as Earth ponies do. Pegasi trade mostly in bits. At this point I should also say something about the banking system here in Equestria. We do not have banks that are privately held and run as businesses. It would not be illegal to make one, but the princesses have made it clear that they do not care to have such things, and as such there aren’t enough ponies who would use one to make it worth the effort. What we do have, though, are banks that are collectively owned by the depositors in proportion to the money they keep. Interest is still charged on loans, but that is more of an insurance premium on default rather than a payment of time. We have seen predatory and usurious charges that are levied by the privately held banks in the griffon kingdom, and we have seen that it makes people too concerned with money. Then there are the unicorns. They are the most independent of the three races. A unicorn virtually never barters, but deals always in bits. Most of the artisans and creative types are unicorns, so it stands to reason that they would trade with other ponies on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis. That is not to say that there aren’t any unicorn conglomerates, but where there are there’s likely to be a rank order, as opposed to the pegasi and Earth ponies where the best pony for the job takes the lead. Many unicorns have grown wealthy, and their wealth is theirs to keep or to distribute as they see fit. The rich and the heirs of the rich flock to Canterlot. Initially the rush there was to attempt to buy favors of Princess Celestia. But she proved rather shrewd. She happily accepted any donations to the treasury, and she endorsed any charity foundations a wealthy unicorn wanted to found. But when she was asked for a quid pro quo, she would go public in a show of faux naiveté, letting everypony know what special privilege the unicorn asked for. Usually they were too embarrassed to press the issue. “Go on, I’m sure the princess will want to hear all of this.” Reggie had been so deep into what he was talking about that he hadn’t noticed everypony else returning and sitting back down. He looked over at Sour, who clearly had, but was either too engaged in the lecture or wanted to see how far he could go. He looked over at Hoof Dame, who had interrupted, and said, “I wasn’t saying anything against her.” “I know, but she always wants to know what anypony thinks of her.” It took a few moments for the red to drain out of his face. “Come on, let’s get out of this town and put some miles behind us. I’m tired of all this talking anyway. I’ll just get a drink and we’ll be off.” The others let him go, but Sour said, “Hear, hear!” “Are you that eager to leave, Sour Sweet?” Garlic asked. “Well, kind of. I want to get all the traveling over with so that we can set up camp again and I can hear more of the music. Honestly, it’s the highlight of the trip for me so far.” Everypony else now blushed, although it was hard to see on Garlic’s and Hoof Dame’s faces. Reggie retuned, wiping the excess water off his muzzle. “What’s going on?” No one responded. “Then let’s stop standing around here. C’mon, Gar.” They strapped into the cart, which was too full for everyone to ride. A few minutes later, Rainbow Falls was behind them, and the vast expanse lay ahead. ***** Although the setting sun had been ahead of them for the entire day, leading Sour Sweet to conclude that they had kept going westward, she had no real inkling of where they were, even looking at Reggie’s map. “I’m too used to GPS,” she muttered to herself, thinking that she should be able to figure out her location by landmarks. They were in a remote area. Mountains lined the northern horizon, but without distinctive peaks, she couldn’t tell which ones they were. It was pleasant enough country, with grass and flower fields all around and rolling hills and valleys. They had set up camp near the base of one hill so that they could lean against it for shade and comfort. Part of her issue was that she had dozed again during the trip. Not deeply enough that she lost any time, but she wasn’t paying attention to where they had left the road. But she was fresh now. She put away the map and took comfort in the fact that the ponies seemed to know where they were going. Or, if they didn’t, then Moon could fly up until she could identify their position. The instruments were coming out again, and that was what Sour was really looking forward to. Little took out her strings and laid them down, with Sour noticing a sharp look from Hoof Dame. She treated her own with care, keeping it floating in midair as she oiled the strings themselves. The stallions polished their horns while Moon took her time setting up the drums. It gave Sour a chance to speak with her hostess. “So,” Little said, “are things getting any better? I know we didn’t make the best first impression—“ “They are. I’m glad that you brought me out here. Seeing the country is…refreshing. Although, I see what you were going for initially, and if your original plan of inviting Hoof Dame out to Manehattan had come to fruition, I think I would have liked that, even a little better.” “Oh?” Sour waved her hoof at the open spaces. “All this area would be great to listen to the music to, if we had a whole bunch of people here. But if it’s in close, I bet it would sound better in the acoustics of your apartment. And, meaning no disrespect, but that’s what I’m going to remember when I get home, is the music.” “I’m glad that you like it. Do you play music where you come from?” “Oh, sure, I do chorus and such. Music is a required class at Crystal Prep. But I’m not up to the performance level like you guys. Especially you.” It seemed like Little was only half listening, but she turned back at Sour’s last words. “How do you mean?” “Well, all the others just play their instruments, but when you do it, it’s almost like a stage show. The way you move your hooves and put in little sparks of your magic, it’s a whole separate entertainment.” “Those things aren’t anything to be proud of. It just shows off how amateur I am. Everypony else can play without doing all that, but I need to move my magic and my hooves to keep time. In some cases the chord is too difficult for me so I have to use my hoof to stop one end of the string. If I were a professional musician, or even called to play at court like Hoof Dame, they’d laugh at me.” Giving her a skeptical look, Sour said, “I still think that you’re the best musician here.” “Hey, Hoof Dame!” Little waved the other unicorn over. “Sour Sweet here thinks I’m a better musician than you.” “What?! No! I didn’t say that!” Sour flashed red, but Little was laughing as she said it, and Hoof Dame had a rare smile. “I’m glad you have a fan,” she said. “I don’t get the joke.” Little still had a grin on her face. “She’s trying to be courteous in her pride, because she knows how far ahead of me she is.” Everypony seemed ready, so Hoof Dame said, “Maybe you can get better. Let’s try that slow beat song.” “Wha?! See, there you go. You know I can’t do that one, it’s got a time shift.” “And you need to learn those. Go ahead.” Thinking back to the previous night, Sour said, “I’ve heard you shifting time signatures in the middle of songs before.” Little was confused for a moment, but then she said, “No, not a change in the time signature. It’s a thing where you sing…a note…only…” Hoof Dame sat down next to them. “Sometimes in music, you have one phrase that ends after the next one begins. For example, there’s a song that goes, ‘My little pony, I used to wonder what friendship could be,’ with the ‘be’ landing on the downbeat of the next bar. But then it repeats, so that the ‘My’ is on the same downbeat. “When we want to sing a song like that, what we do is to finish the first line and start the next one, but send the first note back in time by one beat so that they sound simultaneous.” “What do you mean, ‘back in time’?” Sour asked, but that flummoxed even Hoof Dame. “You mean, actually back in time? Like, time travel? You can do that?” “It’s just with a bit of sound.” “Yes, but it’s time travel. It breaks the laws of causality!” “It’s just magic.” Sour was gritting her teeth, but she couldn’t make the ponies understand how momentous it was. “All right, how about this? If you can send music back in time, why have more than one singer at all? Why not just have one pony do everything and send it all back to be an ensemble?” It was Little who answered. “What fun is there in that? It’s much better to play with friends. All right, let’s go. I’ll try the slow song.” They got through the song without incident. Sour was listening for the time shift that Little had mentioned, but couldn’t detect it and concluded that that meant that it had been done correctly. After Garlic and Reggie each had a turn, Hoof Dame cleared her throat to sing. After the first bar, Sour realized that she couldn’t understand the lyrics, and that Hoof Dame was singing in a foreign language. It was pleasant enough to listen to though, and even if she didn’t know what was being said, the sounds were pretty in themselves. When it ended, she held up her hoof. “What was that?” “Hoof Dame was singing in Old Equestrian,” said Moon. “It was the language of our ancestors.” Hoof Dame put down her strings and assumed a lecturing tone. “Thousands of years ago, long before Princess Celestia and Princess Luna civilized the ponies, we were true beasts of the earth, living as wild animals do. Our language was limited to the sounds our mouths could make, which is why you hear no plosives in Old Equestrian.” “Sorry, what’s a plosive?” “The letters b, p, t, d, k, and hard g.” “Ah,” said Sour, “Got it. That’s why you sounded like, well, a horse.” Everypony was silent for a moment. “Sorry! That’s probably offensive. I didn’t mean it. Really, I didn’t. My people evolved up too, from something similar to the chimpanzee. And we didn’t even have language then, so you’re ahead of us there. I’m sorry, I’m rambling, but I wasn’t trying to do my thing.” “It’s all right,” Moon picked up her drumsticks and started beating out time for the next song. They did not go as late into the night as they had the previous evening, but nopony was fatigued. Rather, they were exhausting their A-list set of songs, and did not want to move to the inferior ones. As they started to break down the instruments, Sour cornered Little, who as usual was the first one to finish. “Hoof Dame’s Old Equestrian singing was fairly impressive. Can you sing in it too?” “A few songs, and half of the words I only know phonetically. Even when I do, Hoof Dame says I sing it with a Manehattan accent, and she finds it amusing. She can speak it like a native, though, and when she wants to say something to Princess Celestia without anypony else understanding, they use the language.” “Well, for what it’s worth,” Sour said with a deep breath, “I still think you’re the better singer to watch. I know that you said that she’s doing more difficult things, and that she can sing in another language, but it’s all about preferences, and I prefer you.” Little smiled wide and looked to the heavens. “Oh, dear. Hoof Dame, dear? How about you show Sour Sweet how good you really are?” Sour watched the reactions of the ponies, seeing the hope in their eyes. She watched to see what would happen. “Well…she is a guest, and I suppose.” Hoof Dame’s reluctance came through, but since she acceded, everypony gave a cheer and Garlic kicked his hooves up. Then they got serious and sat down to listen. “What shall it be, then? The Blue Sky song or the one about Tears at Morning?” “Ooh, Tears at Morning, do that one,” said Moon. “All right. Reggiano, friend, may I borrow your flute?” Hoof Dame was more serious than Sour had seen her, and that was serious indeed. She barely noticed that she had learned Reggie’s full name. Hoof Dame took a long time looking over the flute and magically inspecting it. She double checked her own strings as she returned them to the ground. With her eyes closed, she held the flute to her lips and started up a magical glow on the strings. Everypony else held their breath for silence. From the strings came only the sound of a piano. It was a simple song, a call-and-response with the flute, and Sour Sweet could picture two lovers both playing one part to each other. It was slower than she usually liked her songs, and though Hoof Dame was playing masterfully, she found nothing remarkable at first. Once Hoof Dame had passed the first few bars, though, the glow of her horn increased. Sour looked to the strings, but it wasn’t there. Instead it surrounded Hoof Dame’s entire body, and she rose in the air, her rear hooves dangling below her body as she hovered. There was a burst of light, but no accompanying sound, and Hoof Dame was nowhere to be seen. Sour Sweet’s first reaction was to cry out, but she had neither the ability nor, after a moment, the desire. The song was still going on, flute and piano, but instead of coming from a few feet ahead of her, Sour could hear the song from all directions, as though the air itself were playing the music. No other sound was possible. More than that, the music was coming from her. And from Moon and from Little and everypony else and the grass and the trees and the stars. When Sour opened her mouth, she could feel her breath escape as though she was blowing into the flute herself, and she could also feel the strings vibrating in her hooves and under her wings. The song lasted less than two minutes, and as the final rising notes of the piano faded out, Hoof Dame popped back into existence and all magical light faded. She collapsed to one side, but not so fast that Reggie couldn’t leap over to catch her. “Thank you for the flute, and for a pleasant evening, everypony.” Hoof Dame passed the flute back to Reggie, still using only her hooves. “Good night.” “I’ll put your strings away for you,” Little said. “I’ll do it right and take my time, just as you’d want me to.” Moon and Garlic were helping her to bed, and it became clear to Sour that whatever magic had been done had drained Hoof Dame to exhaustion. “What—“, she began, but the question was understood. “It is a variation of something called Haycartes’ Method.” Little was speaking in a low murmur. “He was a scholar who figured out how to learn more by entering a book. It was later adapted so that ponies could enter music. When she was playing, Hoof Dame was the song, and the melody, and the music. “I could not hope to learn that, not in five hundred years. But Hoof Dame learned it, because she is sometimes called on to sing or entertain at court, and anything she does she puts her entire self into until she does it superlatively.” Sour was still agog, but she managed to get out, “But what’s the range?” “Range?” “How far did her music, or her magic or whatever, how far did it carry?” Little looked at her with confusion, then, in the manner of speaking the obvious to a child, said, “It’s not about distance or anything like that. She was playing for us. Her friends.” She turned her attention to the delicate task of putting away Hoof Dame’s instrument, and Sour Sweet was left alone with the music still ringing in her mind. She quickly fell into a deep sleep. *** “Yes?” Sour Sweet sat up. It took her a moment to realize where she was. She could not tell what time it was, except that it was still deep in the night with no sign of the sun. She was certain that someone had spoken to her, that she was having a conversation of great importance. Grasping for memories that were flowing from her head like water, she had a picture in her head of a bright land with no trees, and someone giving her a task…or were they asking for help? It wouldn’t stick. Fully awake, she flew over to the cart and took a drink of water from one of the skins. As she lay back down and closed her eyes she thought back to the previous night. Now that she thought about it, it was the same dream, and that bothered her, since normally Sour didn’t even remember her dreams. Was dreaming different in Equestria? She decided to ask her friends in the morning, if she remembered. The last thought she had before falling asleep again was that she had thought of the other ponies as her friends.