I stepped down the stairs, intending to sit next to Stalwart again, but everyone was on the ground in front of the couch, a low square table set out in front of that couch. Stone Wall was in front of his usual spot on the couch, with Lemon Bloom on his right side, and Stalwart sitting across from his dad.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I walked over to the empty side of the table.
“Father and son want a rematch,” Trickshot chuckled.
“Oh? Well, this ought to be good.” I chuckled in reply as I took the seat across from her.
“It is,” Stalwart chimed before adding, “Why don’t you play too Dawn? Four-way free for all!”
“I see your game.” Stone Wall’s eyes glinted as he shuffled his deck of cards laid in front of him before showing the remaining decks, “I’ll still beat you.”
I smirked, picking out one of the decks at random.
“Be careful Stalwart,” Trickshot warned, “don’t want to look bad in front of your marefriend.”
I laughed before shuffling the cards, letting familiarity with how I would have done it with my hands take care of the technicalities, “Oh trust me, if he’s not careful, he may even be shown up.”
“Is that so?” Stalwart glared, a smile visible on my lips, receiving a similar playful glare in return, “I see how it is. This means war!”
They started me off with the explanation of the rules, and soon we began to play. Trickshot played the highest power card from her hand and won the first play of the game.
I watched as the family came into their most relaxed element. I watched everyone closely, just as much to get an idea of how they work as to looking for cues to play on. Even as I made my turn, laying down some defenses with some bison characters, I had to smile as the family rivalries really came out. Well, their rivalries were coming out. I took the time between their banter to look closely at the cards and one pony’s name ‘Blond Suede,’ thinking of John Wayne. It wasn’t a perfect match, but even so, it was funny to see.
Stalwart and Stone Wall were both going at each other every chance they could. I watched as Trickshot gave a sly smirk sometimes as she played, leading me to smirk as well. She was far more clever than the boys estimated her. She had a good defense and offense set up, but still had plenty of cards available to her. Her attacks were calculated and focused, never destroying her minions without getting one in return. Stalwart was reckless, assuming his character’s larger health pools would get him through. Stone Wall was harder to figure, but he never touched his wife’s position, which only told me how much he loved her still.
The match started to draw to a close, Stalwart being knocked out first. He grumbled but placed his cards face down and put everything together. He did a huge number on his father’s side of the table but still failed. I knew that I needed to shore up my defenses because this game was about to go two on one.
“I play High Noon,” I smirked when it got to my turn. “Trickshot, you’re going to lose that pixie you’ve been so fond of.”
“But it’s almost midnight!” she protested in mock horror.
“It’s high noon somewhere in the world,” I smirked, teasingly adding in the stereotypical whistle that cartoons of westerns loved to throw in with a little horn magic, but kept it quiet. “but really, I’m going to use it, and there’s five monsters on the field not counting my own? Yeah. So, I’ll focus two of those on that pixie of yours, and the remaining three… oh hi there Stone Wall, I see your forces could use a bit of thinning out.”
“You wouldn’t!” Stone Wall gasped, raising a hoof to his chest as he leaned back toward his wife.
“Oh but I would… see, out here, we don’t like prejudices… out here, we let ponies get along.” I said as I put the five coins in the box and shook the box up, our substitute for flipping coins due to a lack of thumbs. When the box reopened, “Yes! That’s four heads and only 1 tail. I kill your pixie Trickshot, and Stone Wall, oh my, you’re defenseless!”
“Am I really?” He asked, looking back at me confidently.
“Let’s find out,” I said with a smug look, “I send my bison squads to stampede your hive and remove all your hit points.”
“Drat…” He grumbled, starting to chuckle a bit. “Ye’ called my bluff.”
“Well, wasn’t much of a bluff. You had two cards left in your hand, so you were just a bit overextended.” I chuckled, “So now it’s down to the two women of the table.”
“Oh?” She asked quietly, “I only see one left in the next three turns.”
“We’ll see.” I replied, narrowing my eyes at her in friendly rivalry, still smiling. “Your turn.”
It turns out, she wasn’t wrong. After three turns she managed to wipe me from the game, though I tried to make it as difficult as I could. I burned through defenses and used my traps up, and in the end, she only had two almost dead monsters standing between me and her low health.
“And that’s game.” Trickshot chuckled, putting the cards down as she extended a hoof out toward me. “Well done Dawn.”
“I can’t believe you did so well!” Stalwart laughed as he leaned against me.
“Never underestimate the power of beginner’s luck!” I replied with a broad smile, bumping Trickshot’s hoof with my own, “I always ended up on the second place victory for nearly any new game my church group played every Tuesday.”
Stalwart and Stonewall both turned toward me with obvious looks of confusion, but Trickshot more a look of deep thought, making me worry for a few seconds before her voice broke the small silence starting to ensue.
“Well, it was a wonderful game dear. I’m sure you must be tired and you need your rest for all the studying you plan on doing tomorrow!”
“T-that’s right.” I nodded, jumping on the excuse being given before slowly getting up to my feet. “Thank you for the game, and I hope all of you sleep well.”
“Good night.” Trickshot and Stalwart called as I approached the stairs, heading up to my guest room.
-----
The next morning Dawn woke up to find the sun already risen in the window. She raised her head slowly before Stalwart’s voice called out.
“Hey Dawn. Glad to see you’re awake. Mom is already almost done with breakfast and asked me to come get you.”
“Oh… sorry.” I mumbled as I tried to shake the feeling he was snickering at my sluggishness.
“Not a problem, just trying to make sure you’ve got a good breakfast before we pack ourselves a lunch and get going to the Magic Globe.”
“Oh Right!” I called out, perking up almost instantly, “I almost forgot.”
“Dawn… you never cease to amaze me.” He said quietly as we left my room and went down the stairs.
“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked looking at him with half narrowed eyes, still unable to hold back a smile.
“You have a terrible poker face, you know that?” He replied before we walked into the dining area.
“Good morning you two!” Trickshot smiled as she picked up a plate of pancakes and deftly brought them to the table.
We said our greetings and had a good time, though by the time we had made ourselves a lunch, emptied my saddlebags and the dozen books inside them to make room, we ended up arriving to the globe a couple hours before lunch.
In my eagerness, I went right back to the stands I had seen before, hoping that there were some ponies there to help demonstrate the magics I wanted to learn most.
I almost rushed up the stairs to the third level where the advanced magics were. Already a bit of a crowd was gathering as a pair of ponies took a small raised platform that wasn’t present yesterday.
“-we will be performing several of these advanced magics for everypony and taking questions from some of you! We encourage any unicorns in the crowd to please avoid imitating any of these spells during our examples unless you’re called to the stage!” The one pony called, both of them exchanging lines but staying perfect in their pacing.
I walked right on up to the crowd, trying to respect the personal space of those around her, but I was really interested in hearing and watching this performance.
“First up, a rather complicated bit of illusion magic, is where the unicorn must keep a constant mental grasp of what sort of illusion they are trying to maintain, and keep that focus. Any interruption of that focus, and it will fade.” The first pony explained as the companion started to have his horn shimmer and took on a dark skinned, almost insect-horse like body with translucent wings. In spite of this, something looked odd about it.
“Illusions,” the second pony under the illusion spoke, not sounding different at all. “are the specialty of changelings. You know a pony is performing an illusion if their disguise shimmers, doesn’t quite move right, or seems to grow transparent at times. These are indications of lack of focus or power. A changeling might not have these weaknesses. Our liaison in the Crystal Empire is still finding out more in the meantime.”
“Is there anypony who has questions?” The first pony called as the first one started to revert his illusion, a glow going from his hooves up to his horn to reveal his original appearance.
A couple questions about trying to show off a couple examples came out. I was eager to give it a try if it was so simple a concept. Yet if it took that much concentration, it was bound to be a good challenge for exercising the magic ‘muscle’ to boot.
“Next up on the list,” the showpony started to say, “is the flight spell. This handy spell gives a pony wings that reflect the nature of the pony that is given them!”
They focused their horns and after a small flash of bright light of their respective colors, wings appeared on their backs, one looking more like an eagle’s wings, and one looking more like a hummingbird, with how small it was. He started flapping his wings and I had to keep from laughing as I realized that’s exactly what they were like, flapping the small things fast and furious, raising him off the ground and darting about around the crowd and hovering in place easily while the other one took a single wingstroke, and pushed a blast of air at all of us and sent himself careening backward. He did a flip in midair and then trotted back up onto the platform.
“This spell is temporary, but very handy if you want to do more than cloud-walking. On average, it lasts about a couple hours or so, depending on the pony’s strength and understanding of the spell and flight.” They said, continuing to explain it.
I smiled broadly and drank in all of what they were saying, feeling confident I knew a fair bit about how to make flight possible from their talks. I already knew about flight as they talked about the various wings and so on, if only because of my mother’s birds she enjoyed keeping in the home. A slightly different smile crossed my lips as I felt a twinge of sadness, missing ‘Beakmonster,’ ‘Dusty,’ and ‘Lady.’
“-does anypony want to come on up here and see their wings?” The second pony called out.
Many hooves went up like hands raised, and they eyed the crowd with a smile before picking a young earth pony out of the dozens of foals that I could hear calling to be picked.
“What’s your name colt?”
“Strider sir.” He replied. I had to stifle a chuckle as I immediately thought of a certain ranger of the wilds.
“Well Strider, today is your lucky day!” He said as the showpony stood back and his companion made his horn glow brightly before a beam of chromatic light spewed onto the foal. Soon, he had a set of Pegasus wings on his back that he flapped eagerly amidst admiration from the adults and a couple foals. The others expressing disappointment at not being picked.
The colt quickly and almost easily got the hang of it, throwing himself up into the air and flying forward a bit in a glide back to his guardians.
One foal looked up at them and asked in an almost snobbish way, “Why give the wings to an earth pony? Seems kinda stupid.”
“Because,” I interjected immediately, feeling a bit of anger well up at that kind of attitude. I spoke slowly, to keep my reply calm and simple because of their age, “he won’t be able to have wings when he grows up. You can, if you practice, study, and use your magic every day. You’re a unicorn aren’t you? You’ll be able to fly whenever you want when you’re older if you really want to. Let him have his fun.”
The foal grumbled as the parents gave a snort at my reply before the three of them walk off. I looked over to the colt and his mother who nodded and mouthed a quick ‘thank you’ before walking away. The colt smiled and waved before fluttering upward and flying around in circles around his mother as she walked, giving her a broad smile I could still see from here.
“That’s all for this demonstration everypony, we’ll be here for questions after a brief lunch rest.” They said as they bowed before turning toward the back of the impromptu stage to their own section.
“You ok Dawn?” Stalwart’s deep voice asked quietly.
“Yeah.” I replied quickly before turning to him in confusion, “Why do you ask?”
“Because you rarely do that, confronting ponies like that. You’re still standing pretty stiffly too.” He said as he took a step forward to stand as close as my saddlebag would allow.
I sighed before speaking directly to him using the same horn magic I learned about yesterday. “I grew up in a really strict home, as I’ve kinda told you about. Thing is, that behavior would not be tolerated at all. It was punished so heavily I still just… some part of me instantly wants to just quash that immediately too. But then I have to remind myself I’m not their parent, and kids are selfish when they’re young, and they don’t always know better or mean badly by it. It’s one reason I’d always been scared of being a parent, and why I kept avoiding the idea of having a special someone.”
“I see.” Stalwart said quietly, still using his deep voice so close to my ear it almost tickled and caused my spine to shiver. “You know, my mom used to have a phrase she loved to say at one point growing up. ‘Your first thought is what you were conditioned to think. The second thought reveals what you’re really like, or trying to be like.’ I think you’ll do a lot better than you give yourself credit for. Anyway,” he paused, speaking up and pulling back from my ear, “enough of this kind of talk, let’s go ahead and get out that lunch of ours and wait for those ponies to answer some questions eh?”
“Sounds good.” I smiled, my mood feeling much lighter after that little pep talk, though his raising his voice at the end didn’t hurt any.
We ate together happily, eating the prepared lunch at one of the last empty tables available, and approached the showponies to learn as much as I could. They had a lot less questioners than I would have expected, and I could only surmise the crowd was there to see the examples for entertainment rather than learning.
I asked as many questions as they would allow, focusing heavily on the illusion because it was such a fascinating idea, though teleportation and flight both were asked about in the end.
It was midafternoon before the showponies finally had to excuse themselves to clean up the stage area, leaving us to look around for more things to study.
‘Hey Starlight, what about this healing stuff? We have a basic idea of medical stuff and that seems to be a part of it…’
‘Nah, we’ve never been one for medical science. Remember that time you were in high school and dissecting an earthworm? You wore a turtleneck like a mask that day because you hated the smell of all of it and you could barely cut the thing.’ Starlight replied before smirking, ‘besides, Teacher doesn’t really know much of anything about it, so we’d be on our own.’
‘Fair enough…’ I shrugged, moving on to the other displays.
I continued my studies, getting more into the intricacies of magic with Starlight until my mind started to swim a couple hours later from sheer detail and trying to keep track of so much new information. It sounded harder and harder as we went on.
“You ok Dawn? You’re a little unsteady on your hooves.” Stalwart said, voice sounding off to my ears.
“Huh?” I turned to him before stumbling in the process, spreading my legs out to catch myself.
“Yeah… we’re done for the day I think.” Stalwart smirked, moving to my side.
“I’m fine really!”
“Dawn, you need to rest. You’ve pushed yourself too hard, and you’re on vacation. I’ve humored you and now it’s time you go actually enjoy yourself for once. I’m not taking no for an answer.” He said, adding that last bit right as I opened my mouth to protest.
I snorted and shook my head but followed him down the stairs toward the first floor of the building with a relieved smile, soon leading us both out entirely. I was rather grateful for his taking me here, and I at least felt like I had learned a lot, but sadly it was becoming a bit too much.
‘You know, we always did do better in shorter bursts every now and then with examples,’ Starlight commented, ‘I mean, we’re able to have lengthy discussions about stuff we care about a lot, but for learning…’
“Yeah, you’re right Star.” I replied with a sigh, looking through the crowds on the way back home.
“Right about what?” Stalwart asked.
“Oh, right,” I said, startled and not realizing I had talked out loud, “he was talking just to me. He basically said I should cut back, that we do better in small bursts until we understand a subject, so we were thinking about how to address that.”
‘We were?’ Starlight teased.
‘Guess so. Sounds better that way or something. Shut up I’m tired.’ I replied in kind, adding in a weak chuckle.
“You think too much.” Stalwart laughed, bumping his chin on my head before saying, “For today, let’s focus less on thinking and more on feeling. What do you feel like doing?”
“Hm,” I thought out loud, looking at some of the buildings nearby, “I dunno, I’m doing a lot of thinking instead of feeling and it still hurts my head the same.”
“All right,” Stalwart laughed along with me, “Let’s just go home and relax. You hadn’t even paused to eat lunch yet.”
I snorted but then heard my stomach rumble and then nodded, “All right, you win.”
Stalwart took a turn I didn’t expect, but I followed him, trusting that he was avoiding some heavier traffic on the way or something. What I didn’t expect, after walking through more streets than I dared count with the impending headache, was to be led to a large park with a great deal of grass and a few benches.
“Here we are.” Stalwart said, seeming to ignore the laughter of some children playing nearby. “Where would you like to set up our picnic?”
“I… well, what about under that tree over there?” I asked, before looking at a bench and chuckling at the idea of sitting on one like back home. ‘Probably should hold off until after we get some clothes for that one.’
Stalwart nodded, heading toward the tree that was past where the foals were playing as he reached for his saddlebag and pulled out a neatly folded blanket with his mouth. The foals ignored us as he then in one neat flourish laid out the blanket nearly perfectly onto the grass.
I chuckled and tried to straighten it out but stalwart quickly flopped onto it and shook his head at me.
“Dawn, rest.” He said simply.
“Awwww, but daaaad.” I teased on back, walking around him and laying down on the other side of the blanket, looking into my own saddlebag to see what was packed. I had practically forgotten by now.
Inside was a bowl of salad, carrot slivers and tomatoes with a sprinkling of cheese, and some bread for the side was left in. She smiled and dug right in, using her horn to gather it up and eat like she had a fork, while Stalwart simply lowered his head to the bowl and grabbed a mouthful that way. I couldn’t help but chuckle just a little at the sight, remembering the horses back home.
“What?” he asked after he finished his mouthful.
“Oh nothing, just a memory coming back from home is all.”
“Oh really, what is it?” he asked, flicking his ear once before grabbing another mouthful.
“just my ex feeding a pet of theirs and it reminded me of back then… Nothing huge.” I said, shaking my head.
“Is that a good thing?” he asked, looking amused and feigning offense.
“Perhaps.” I said quietly, “but those parents… geeze that was rough. I used to live with them for a few months, but after the mental abuse I had gotten, being blamed for things that weren’t my fault or things they perpetuated… I was glad to be gone.”
He looked on concerned but said nothing, getting up to sit next to me. I took another breath and decided to open up a little more.
“In the end, I’m glad to be away from them. I had a few good moments, but being the scapegoat of their problems wasn’t what I had in mind for my life.” I said. I debated saying more, but that was plenty. It was a life that was behind me now, and while I could return if starlight allowed it, I doubt it would happen. No point in saying what other nastiness I had gone through, and how they tried to harm my name after I was gone.
“Well, I’m glad to have you here.” He chuckled, putting his hoof on my neck and rubbing it for a couple seconds, “he didn’t know what he was missing out on. His loss.”
“Actually,” I smiled, as he chuckled at the end. “It was a she, before I realized I was actually Dawn deep down. Though I guess another way of putting it is that was Starlight’s Ex then.”
Stalwart smiled mischievously, “Oh? Did that steer you entirely from mares then?”
“No no,” I said trying to return his mischievous look, “In fact, I still like mares more often than I do stallions… but when one catches my eye,” I paused, giving him a kiss on the cheek, chuckling afterward, “That should say something. Either that or it has to do with being physically a mare… that helps a bit.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He said, looking around before finishing off his salad, letting me do the same as we laid on the blanket for a bit.
The sounds of the park weren’t quite as busy as I expected. Sure, there were still playing children, the chirping of birds and other nature background noises, but the sound of cars and other things were so much less frequent. My ears flicked as I heard the familiar hum at a distance, and couldn’t help but wonder how they had certain technologies like cars and electricity and refrigeration, yet not others.
I looked over at Stalwart, who seemed to be enjoying the time together, even looking back at me when I looked, only to have me look away smiling. It was such a simple thing, but I appreciated it.
We laid there enjoying each other’s company for a while, watching others and the nature around us. It felt nice with a breeze occasionally stirring the furred coat I almost took for granted, but soon I grew restless, and we went to go back to his home.
“Hi mom, we’re home!” Stalwart called out as we stepped in.
“Welcome back Stalwart.” Lemon said as she walked into view, “How went the studying?”
“It went pretty well for a bit, but Stalwart says I’m pushing myself too much for what he thinks is a vacation.” I chuckled, smirking at him before smiling at Lemon Bloom.
“Well, Dinner’s not going to be for a little while longer. Stone Wall is out with his friends and will be back in an hour or two.”
“All right, Thanks mom!” Stalwart replied before walking over toward the living room. “Up for a round of Hoof and Horn Dawn?”
I smiled and almost answered when Starlight’s voice spoke out quietly in the room, “Well, I would like to at least, and since I was doing most of the studying for her except for the last bit…”
“Hey, that’s not fair, what about all the study we’ve been doing together and at the castle?” I protested, rather looking forward to the idea of having a vacation proper.
“Maybe we should move this conversation upstairs,” Stalwart said quietly.
I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt, I was making progress in magic, exercising it nearly every time I could. Sure, I wasn’t exactly doing much that was ‘new’, but I was reading those books even if I didn’t understand it half the time.
Before I realized it, we were up in my guest room, starlight standing by the desk and Stalwart by the now closed door.
“I’ve been studying.” I repeated.
“Yes, but how often, how long, and how well do you understand what you’re reading?” Starlight asked.
“Well,” I hesitated, thinking and answering at the same time, “I mostly understood what you were talking about in the magic globe… I remember really struggling with the studies back home…”
“And why do you think that is?” Starlight asked.
“Starlight, why are you grilling her on this? She’s making improvement after all.” Stalwart said, stepping in closer, which felt like a relief.
“Because she promised to help Silver get home, and teacher says we have a lot of work to do to get to that point, but he’s confident that we can master it and pretty quickly. We have the power, the three of us, it’s just a matter of her knowledge, as she’d be the one to need to fix the magical markings on the mirror to help it reconnect to a new mirror in the same world.”
“Well, but still,” I protested, not expecting a version of myself to be against our having time off, “What’s the rush? We’ve done a lot for just having learned how to use magic in the last several months, right?”
“She has been working hard hasn’t she? Come on, you can play too.” Stalwart chuckled.
“I… All right… Sorry, I just… after years of only being with the teacher, who would keep pushing me to learn more and didn’t want to do any play, I guess it sorta rubbed off on me, and Dawn’s a lot more laidback than I ever remember being.” Starlight said.
I could feel the apology more than hear it if I were honest, but I didn’t mind. Truth was he knew far more than I did, and if I had to guess, he resented that he couldn’t just freely do what he wanted for fun anytime. To top it off, here I was doing exactly that without keeping him in the loop, just continually expecting him to put up with it and give me space. I couldn’t help but stop and really understand him just a little better, even as he sat down and used our shared magic to get the game ready.
‘You don’t have to pity me you know.’ He replied directly.
‘W-what?!’ I replied back, confused.
‘You left your mind an open book right then. Couldn’t help it. Something I was conditioned to do by teacher once we reconnected. I do know more than you, and it’s not as rough as I feared getting you caught up. We always were good at learning, and we know how we learn, but we have a long way to go.’
‘You’re right… but next time, argue with me without an audience please.’ I replied, feeling a bit annoyed. He didn’t have to invade on my thoughts, even if we were together like this.
‘Sure, sure.’ He replied, already looking over the cards he was dealt.
I looked between them, stretched, and climbed up into the bed to watch them play. The match was one-sided at first, then Stalwart came and swept the field and Starlight instantly demanded a rematch. Stalwart accepted and shuffled his deck again as Star did, only to lose to Starlight a short while later.
Dinner soon came and we went down to eat, only to return to the guest room and I played against Stalwart, losing each time. It wasn’t long before I slept after the matches, tired out from the walking, the learning from earlier, and the argument, brief as it was.
-----
I woke the next morning before sunrise, opening a book and rereading the magic basics as a warmup for later that day with the light from my horn. Stalwart might be fine with taking a break, but honestly there wasn’t that much else to do. I didn’t want to wake Stalwart up to ask what I could do like a child, and I didn’t like the idea of exploring to find out more.
It felt like it took forever, yet I managed to finish the book with a clearer understanding of the material by sunrise. I groaned and put the book away, moving to pull out the next book, letting myself chuckle at the idea of pulling it out of a ‘saddle of holding.’ I knew it was an old joke, but I liked it all the same.
After breakfast, we stayed in the living room, each to our own area and had a book to read. Stalwart laid on the couch, and I hopped up to join him. He seemed to frown as I had brought another magical studies book, but we talked by horn so we didn’t disturb his parents, who were reading on their recliners.
‘Don’t worry Stalwart, I’m going to take it easy.’
‘You’re studying magic on a vacation Dawn, you can do that anytime!’ he replied before speaking out loud, “Dawn, time for us to get going.”
“Huh? Where?” I asked, ‘that came out of nowhere.’
“It’s a surprise.” Stalwart said, a mischevious smirk I would know anywhere.
“I don’t suppose you won’t let me stay at home and read huh?” I asked, slowly setting the book down before getting off the couch, stretching in the process, “All right, show me what you have in mind.”
He smiled and followed suit, before taking the lead outside the home.
I followed him just a half pace behind him and to his left, unable to stop with a small smile on his lips. I didn’t like going anywhere new, but there was a sense of adventure that he had about him like this. He kept me wondering just where we were going, with all the turns down streets I wasn’t familiar with. I started to get nervous at the fifteen minutes of walking before he spoke up.
“Here we are.” He nodded, heading toward a wider brown brick building with glass front doors.
“And where’s here?” I asked, confused.
“Look at the doors Dawn.” He chuckled, going inside.
“Penny’s Arcade” I read as I opened the door and walked in, snorting immediately afterward at the irony, then froze just inside the entryway, happiness starting to come over me as I looked at the stations. “You mean to tell me I’ve been missing out on this since we got here?”
“Yup, you mentioned how much you liked your games back home once, so I figured this would be a good distraction.” He chuckled, watching my reaction.
I continued to smile and looked around. He might have misunderstood what I meant by ‘video’ games, but it wasn’t bad. It almost reminded me of some other arcade areas back home I used to enjoy when I was younger. I still couldn’t help but notice some of the cabinets and the floor games out on the premise and wonder, they clearly had some electronics with how things lit up or seemed random, so how did they not have televisions or other related technology?
“So,” I asked, smiling as I walked into the area toward the token purchasing area, “which one am I beating you at first?”
“You? Beating a guardspony at changeling chomper? I don’t think so.” He chuckled, heading toward the counter next to me.
Stalwart used ten bits to buy a hundred tokens on a special going on for this day of the week. I couldn’t help but chuckle, no wonder this place was crowded, it was a good deal from what I could see.
We had a blast for the next several hours. His ‘changeling chomper’ game was a large plastic-like pad of green with a weird partial liquid texture and buttons poking out. When the game started, he used his hooves to press on the buttons when they lit up and a silly sound of ‘splat’ came out from the speaker. Chrysalis lit up only rarely, and she replied when pushed “Get them drones! Bring them down!” and a flurry of button pushing ensued afterward. I laughed harder when he explained breathlessly after stopping at 107 changelings ‘bopped’ according to the chart, that he called it ‘booping’. I asked him why, and he simply tapped his hoof on my nose and spoke, “boop!” with a wide grin.
When I tried, I fell pitifully short of his coordination. I barely made it to 40 before all of them were lit and the game ended, chrysalis never lighting up.
“See? I don’t know how somepony made it to 200 like that says, but I have a suspicion or two.” He chuckled.
“Oh? What do you think happened?” I asked, trying my hardest not to pant.
“Two or three foals got together and teamed up.”
“ahhh, so you suspect they cheated?” I smiled.
“Cheating? Foals? Never.” He said as we moved on to a bowling arcade that I recognized from back home, but practically on the floor instead of elevated, “Besides, if they don’t trip over each other in pushing the buttons, more power to them.”
“True. We had a game like that I only got to play one day, but my brother and I tried to split it up, and while we got a little farther, it was only by about 10 or 15… wow, that must have been a good twenty years ago… just a little less but still…” I said, thinking about my past.
“Then you know what I mean.” He chuckled.
I chuckled back, turning to the next game, determined to show him exactly how good I was.
-----
Stalwart and I went through every game several times, the whole day going by faster than I could keep track. I was exhausted, but grinning as we walked back. Neither of us had high scores for the day, and it kept me moving or dancing all throughout. The changeling splatting one was the one most visited, if only because I thought they looked silly and it was the most familiar game.
“I still can’t believe you can’t get above 50!” Stalwart said as we walked back, “how are you that clumsy?”
“Hey, It’s not like I can help it…” I replied, blushing and looking away, mumbling, “Not like I’m used to four legs yet either.”
“What was that?” Stalwart asked, smiling, “Trying to keep more secrets away from me huh?”
“What? No!” I protested. “Just said I wasn’t used to moving my legs like that!”
“Uh huh, a likely story.” Stalwart teased as we walked back. “Hungry at all?”
“Yeah, I’m starving.” I replied, walking on home.
“Good, cause it’s your turn to cook.” Stalwart said with a grin.
“Wait, what?” I asked, completely surprised. “You’re going to make your guest cook?”
“Well, no, but we figure if you’re from outside equestria, you probably had some different food than us. So, if you’re up to it, we want to know what kinds of things you’re used to and see what it’s like.”
“So, gonna be honest, not much of a cook. At best I know how to make pizza dough from scratch, but I don’t know how to avoid getting dough in my hooves.” I replied hesitantly.
Stalwart chuckled, “Magic, Dawn. Magic.”
“Never used it before in cooking, but it’s worth a try.” I nodded.
“Still, Pizza’s pretty good.” Stalwart said.
“Homemade is even better. I just hope I remember the recipe.” I replied.
We bantered on as we headed toward the market, getting supplies for what I hoped would go over well. Last time I made it, I was human, and the dough came out heavy and overworked. Now I was a pony, it had been a few years, and I was trying to impress stalwart and his family. I sure hope I remember it right…