CALENDARS

An “Equestria Girls” fanfic by Erin Mills

The scream could be heard at least three blocks away. In Pinkie Pie's bedroom, Fluttershy cautiously removed her hands from her ears.

Pinkie Pie was splayed out face up on the floor, hyperventilating. Her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. A calendar was lying next to her, tented from where it had landed when Pinkie realized her mistake.

“How?” the pink party girl whispered. “How did I forget to put Sunset's birthday on my calendar?”

“Um... I'm sure you didn't mean to,” Fluttershy ventured. She frowned as a thought crossed her mind. “Actually, I don't think that I know when her birthday is, now that I think about it.”

“WHAT?!” Pinkie went from lying down to sitting upright with no discernible movement in between. “How can you not know her birthday either?”

“To be honest, I never thought to ask.” She pursed her lips as she thought. “Pinkie, have we ever done anything for Sunset's birthday?”

Pinkie's brow furrowed. She got up and went to her desk. She yanked open a drawer (which pulled out much further than it logically should have been able to) and began riffling through the files lined up neatly inside.

“September... October... November...” she muttered as she flipped the pages in each folder. She looked up and slammed the drawer shut. She whirled around to face her friend. Fluttershy let out an “eep” at the wild stare that had formed on Pinkie's face. Another “eep” followed when Pinkie grabbed her by the shoulders.

“We. Have. NEVER. Done. Anything. For. Sunset's. BIRTHDAY!” Pinkie's eyes bored into Fluttershy's then filled with tears and the party girl collapsed on the floor, sobbing wildy and drenching Fluttershy's shoes. “I'm the worst friend eh-eh-eh-EVERRRRR!”

Fluttershy tried not to wince at the squelching noise her shoes made as she leaned down to pat Pinkie on the shoulder. “I'm sure it's okay, Pinkie. I mean, I didn't know when her birthday was either. I don't think she's ever told us!”

In an instant, Pinkie was back on her feet and posing dramatically. “NO! I will not stand idly by and let one of our best friends' birthdays go uncelebrated! It's wrong! It's mean! It's downright unpatriotic!”

“Well, I'm gonna do something about it!” Pinkie said, ignoring her. “I'm gonna find out Sunset's birthday and then I'm gonna throw her the bestest brithday party ever! With cake! And ice cream! And enough streamers and balloons to choke a horse!”

But Pinkie was on a roll. “I'll even get a clown! No! Two clowns! No! A whole clown car full of clowns clowning it up all over the place! And a mime for good measure!”

“A whole company of them! Big muscular strippers with the tiniest of thongs!”

“A co-ed company of strippers with the tiniest of thongs! Boy strippers! Girl strippers! Non-binary strippers who are just as valid as any other stripper or person in the sex work industry! All with the biggest bazooms that correspond to their preferred gender identity! All slathered in oil!”

“SLATHERED!” Pinkie confirmed. “A whole company of gender inclusive, giant bazoomed strippers in tiny, tiny thongs slathered in oil!”

“BUT!” Pinkie whirled around, causing Fluttershy to quickly remover her hand from under her skirt. “Before that, we need to find out Sunset's birthday!”

Fluttershy blinked. “Right,” she said. “So what do we do? Get dressed up in stealthy outfits, break into her apartment, find anything that might give us a clue as to her birthday and sneak out again?”

Now it was Pinkie's turn to blink. “Wow, Fluttershy. Breaking into a friend's house? That's the first place you go?”

Pinkie flopped onto the floor again and hugged her friend. “That's okay! I won't tell anyone about your evil criminal tendencies.”

“I... don't know if I can answer that question,” Sunset said. She, Pinkie, and Fluttershy were in their usual spot at Sugarcube Corner. Coffee, tea, and a sugar infused caffiene abomination unto God and Gordon Ramsay were in evidence.

“Yeah,” Pinkie chimed. “How can you not answer 'Hey, Sunset, when's your birthday?'”

Sunset blushed and rubbed the back of her head. “Well... because... I'm not really sure when it is.”

Fluttershy looked confused. “I don't understand. You had to put your birthday on your driver's license, right?”

“That's not actually my birthday,” Sunset explained. “It's just the date on all my paperwork. I picked one at random so I had something to put in the box.”

Fluttershy's confused expression continued. “I'm still not following you. You have a birthday in Equestria, right?”

Sunset nodded. “But the problem is that Equestria doesn't use the same calendar we do over here.”

“WHA-MMMPH!” Pinkie's latest squeal was cut off when Sunset stuffed a cruller into the girl's open mouth.

“So, you're saying there's some kind of time difference between here and there?” Fluttershy asked. “Like a week here is a month there or something?”

Sunset shook her head. “No. Time flows at the same rate in both worlds, the difference is in how that time is measured.”

Pinkie swallowed the cruller whole with a loud gulp then looked at Sunset. “I don't get it.”

Sunset sighed. “Okay, it's like this. Most units of time measurement over here are based on natural phenomena. Humans worked out that the planet completes one rotation in 24 hours. That became the standard day. The moon orbits the planet once every 30 or so days and that became the basis for a month. Then you worked out that it takes roughly 365 days for the planet to orbit the sun and that became the basis for a year.

“But in Equestria, the sun and the moon are controlled by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Which means that day and night can be as long as they want. That's part of why Princess Luna became so resentful and became Nightmare Moon, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, back when they first became the rulers of Equestria, time measurement was a mess. Each tribe of ponies had their own calendar and it made trade and communication between the tribes difficult. If a pegasus received a letter from an earth pony to trade on the 26^th, which calendar you use? The earth pony could show up a full week before the pegasus thinks they're supposed to meet. The princesses established what's now known as the Equestria Standard Calendar.”

Sunset took a sip of her tea and continued. “By one of those weird coincidences, they established that there were sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour, just like over here, but the difference comes in the larger units. To make things easy on everypony – “

Sunset rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as she did. “Anyway, to make things easy, the princesses established that there would be 20 hours in a day: ten of day and ten of night on the dates decided to be the equinoxes. They adjusted the length of day and night throughout the year, based on crop cycles and weather needs. But an Equestrian day would be 20 hours long in total. They decided to move exponentially and decreed an Equestrian year would be 200 days long.”

“Well, yeah,” Sunset said. “They move the sun and moon, so they can determine how long a day is and by extension, how long a year is. There's even evidence that similar things happened over here. Two Roaman emperors wanted to be represented in the calendar so they shoved two extra months into it. That's why October isn't the eighth month of the year, but the tenth, despite the name.”

“But... does that mean Equestria is flat? Where do the sun and moon go when they're not in the sky? I NEED ANSWERS, SUNSET!”

Sunset yelped as Pinkie slammed her hands down and thrust herself into Sunset's face. Sunset put her tea down and gently pushed Pinkie back into her seat. “I don't really feel like going into all that right now, Pinkie, okay? It's really complicated and I think it might actually be a state secret, so I'd rather not open that can of worms.”

“I still don't see how that's not a time difference,” Fluttershy said. “The years aren't the same length, so doesn't that mean time passes more rapidly over there than over here?”

Sunset shook her head. “Years and days are different lengths on other planets in this solar system, aren't they? I mean, on one of them it takes longer for the planet to rotate than to orbit the sun, so its day is longer than its year. But if I tell you that it takes five years on this planet for another planet to orbit the sun, the same amount of time has passed for both planets, it's just measured differently since it's been established over here that one year equals the amount of time it takes a planet to orbit the sun. The same thing is true between here and Equestria.”

“Okay, I think I understand,” Fluttershy said. Her eyes widened. “Wait, doesn't that mean, with shorter Equestrian years, that you're actually older over there?”

Fluttershy thought for a moment. “You must have been an Equestrian adult when you came over! How old are you really, Sunset? In Equestrian years.”

Sunset sighed. “I think I'm about 39, but I'm not entirely sure. When I came over, I was 26.”

“WHAT?!” Pinkie's screech caused everyone to stare at them. Sunset and Fluttershy blushed and glared at her. Pinkie soon had a blush of her own and sat back down.

“When I came through, I had the body of someone who was roughly twelve years old,” Sunset answered. She saw the confusion on her friends faces. She grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen from an inside pocket of her leather vest. “I know, 'why did that happen?' Okay, so we've established that Equestrian minutes and hours are the same length as minutes and hours over here, right?”

Sunset began scribbling numbers on the napkin. “Okay, so, 20 hours in an Equestrian day, 200 days per Equestrian year. Multiply 20 by 200 and you get 4000 hours in an Equestrian year.”

She pulled out her phone and opened the calculator app. “Since we know hours are the same length on both sides of the portal, we can divide 4000 hours by 24 and that makes an Equestrian year correspond tooooo... 166.6666 repeating days over here. So just under six months on this side. Now, I was 26 when I came through the portal. Multiply 26 by 166.666 repeating, you get 4333.316 days. Divide that by 365, and you get just a skosh under 12 years here. Which is why when we go through the portal, we come out as adults on that side, but are teenagers on this side.”

“So you're saying that for every year that passes over here, just over two years passes in Equestria?” Fluttershy asked.

“The amount of actual time is the same,” Sunset clarified, “But because Equestria uses a different method of measurement, the calendar is different. And as a result of that, I can't use my Equestrian birthday as a basis for my birthday over here, because it would basically be in a different place on the calendar every year, and it would show up twice. I figured it was too confusing to bother with... and it wasn't like I had anybody who would have cared until the last couple of years anyway. And once we became friends, well, I just never mentioned it.”

“But... but... but we ALWAYS celebrate our birthdays!” Pinkie protested. “We just did Rarity's last week!”

“Look, it's okay, Pinkie. It's nobody's fault. I've never bothered to figure it out myself and I just used the day I came through as my own reference point to determine my age over here. It's not exact but...” Sunset shrugged. She looked back down at her phone. “Oh, jeez. I need to go. I'm meeting Flash at the movies. Sorry to bail on you.”

“That's okay,” Fluttershy said as Sunset stood up. The redhead looked over at Pinkie who was sitting with a blank expression.

“I think she just needs some time to process,” Fluttershy answered. “Go meet Flash. We'll talk to you later.”

“If you're sure.” Sunset looked skeptical. Fluttershy stood up and gave her a hug.

After Sunset left, Fluttershy turned back to Pinkie and put a hand on her shoulder. “Pinkie? Are you okay?”

Pinkie's hand shot up and grasped Fluttershy's wrist with an iron grip, causing Fluttershy to “eep!” again. Pinkie looked into the other girl's eyes, the blue dark and cold as the sea when a storm was rolling in.

When Sunset got home that afternoon, she opened her front door to find her small studio apartment filled with streamers, balloons, and her friends who shouted “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SUNSET!”

Sunset stared at them then looked at Pinkie, confused. “I told you I don't know when my birthday is over here.”

Pinkie threw her arm around Sunset's shoulder. “Yeah, but you still deserve a day we can celebrate you being here. So we all decided today's that day!”

“Neither does your crazy pony calendar!” Pinkie replied. “So we can make your birthday whenever we want and today is it! Cake?”

Rainbow Dash hit a button on her phone and raucous party music blared out fo the speakers of Sunset's sound system. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door.

“Oh, jeez,” Sunset said. “I hope that's not Miss Bookbinder complaining about the noise.”

“Oh, I'm sure it isn't,” said Fluttershy. “We told her we were throwing you a party tonight before we set everything up.”

“Oh, good.” Sunset looked at the card table that had been set up for the refreshments. “Why are there so many bottles of chocolate syrup and whipped cream? There's only a couple of tubs of ice cream here.”

“THE STRIPPERS ARE HERE!” Pinkie grabbed Sunsest's wrist and threw her into her desk chair. “YOU sit right there, young lady. The birthday girl's getting a lapdance!”

The next morning, Sunset awoke to find herself in a warm, happy (and naked) pile of three of the strippers. She peered around at the mass of male, female, and non-binary flesh surrounding her and noted the not-unpleasant ache in her thighs.

From downstairs, she heard a low moan and Fluttershy's voice drifted up. "Quiet, you'll wake them up. And I told you, we're not done until we each get twenty."

Best birthday ever! Sunset thought, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

Calendars

by shallow15

Birthday Math