Tracy woke to the chimes of his phone alarm, only a little earlier than when he’d normally rise for work. Granted he usually got to sleep in on weekends, but… his only chance to participate in an alien holiday was probably well worth a little tiredness. He got ready in a rush, showering quickly in the bathroom with its embarrassing lack of privacy.
Rose wasn’t leading him on—at a time when the horse world outside was usually dark and subdued, the streets were lit with torches and lanterns from one end of town to the other. He cleaned up as quickly as he could, this time mercifully without any of them waving at him through the window.
He almost wondered if he was doing something wrong and they were ignoring him, until he noticed he hadn’t turned on the light. “Weird…” He flipped it on, then winced, shielding his face with the back of one leg. “When did that thing get so damn bright?” He flicked it back off, using the light of distant lanterns to style his mane.
He really didn’t know what he was doing, but even his own failures at horse fashion had to be better than the nothing he usually did.
Rose said the holiday should be spent naked, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. Even if he wouldn’t be leaving through the Earthside door until Monday.
Granted, the pony equivalents of his clothes didn’t really do much. Stupid things on his legs and a vest in the same pattern as the polo shirt it was on the outside. But if he didn’t wear it, he might just die of embarrassment. Besides, Tracy had so much practice with clothing on the pony side that it barely even slowed him down. He was well ahead of schedule by the time he finally made it downstairs into the kitchen.
The ruin of the flower sisters’ hard work was spread everywhere, with fallen stems covering the kitchen floor and empty crates packed against one wall. The chilled cart was gone, though a damp stain remained on the carpet where it had stood.
Good thing I didn’t make that mess. The contract had fines in place for damage to the property, to be paid by the offending party. They were all sufficiently arcane that Tracy had just resolved not to do any of them.
Tracy made his way to the door, slowing slightly as he finally noticed the music from outside. It sounded at once traditional and modern, with ancient harpsichord and percussion occasionally blended with poppy beats. How are they even playing that? Maybe if he asked Rose about their technology this time, she wouldn’t assume he was planning for an invasion and might answer.
Tracy slipped out the door, hesitating for a moment as the light of so many candles disoriented him. The house had been so comfortable without any lights switched on.
The streets were packed with more ponies that he’d ever seen in one place, thronging together far closer than human ideas of personal space would permit. He approached nervously, wings spreading slightly as he prepared to flee. Not that the wings would help much with that. He didn’t know how to use them.
“Spring this way!” a voice called, over the sound of cheerful voices chatting together. “Remember, only one circuit for everypony! We have too many visitors for seconds!”
He couldn’t even guess at what that meant, but Tracy didn’t really feel like he had to. Rose and her sisters were in Spring with the fresh flowers, that much was obvious. He could catch up with her there.
He’d barely made it two steps into the crowd before someone thrust a plain wooden necklace towards him, tossing it over his neck. “You forgot yours!” they said, one high-pitched voice among dozens of overwhelmingly colorful blobs. “Here’s an extra!”
He looked down to investigate, though there wasn’t much to see. Like a charm bracelet without any actual charms. He tried to squirm out of it, but by the time he’d managed to take it off, he couldn’t even see the pony who had given it to him. Tracy shrugged and slipped it back on, head down as he squeezed through the crowd. The sooner he could get to Rose’s stall, the sooner he could figure out what the hell was going on.
He found her basically where he’d been told to expect, up against the city hall building. A line of ponies trailed out behind it for hundreds of feet, practically clambering over each other to reach the front. Tracy didn’t wait, walking along the line. They weren’t leaving in frustration when they got to the front, so he could only assume they’d been right about their purchasing decisions.
“You made it!” Rose appeared from behind the stall, waving energetically to him. She had a necklace too, though little wooden sections filled every opening with intricately carved flowers. That probably meant something, though he was as clueless about that as everything else he’d seen so far. “Enjoying the festival?”
“I have no clue what’s going on,” he said flatly. “But it looks like your stall is doing good. That’s enough reason to celebrate all by itself.”
She nodded, ears perking as pride filled her voice. “A few ponies were disappointed we didn’t have their favorites this year, but… on the whole it’s been great. But nopony could predict the princess would come here to celebrate. She usually prefers the bigger cities.”
What would a big city of horses even look like? “Your… royalty?” he asked instead. “Guess that is pretty exciting. All these people are here to try and see her?”
Rose shrugged. “See her, or just celebrate in the same place she is. Princess Luna has only been back a few years, so there are still lots of ponies who haven’t seen her for themselves. Maybe that’s why she picked Ponyville, so she could apologize for her first visit…”
Before he could ask what any of that meant, Tracy felt a hoof wrap around his, tugging him away from the flower-stand. “We can’t celebrate the whole Equinox from here!”
As baffled as he was, Tracy didn’t resist. There was just so much here to see, so much that as an outsider he couldn’t even guess where to begin. Then again, at least he had someone friendly to ask, so maybe he could start there. “You haven’t even told me what we’re celebrating.”
Rose nodded eagerly, or at least he thought she did. It was hard to get a very good look at what she was doing when she insisted on dragging him towards some unknown destination, instead of just talking to him like a normal person.
“You know what the equinox is, right?” she asked. But she didn’t even wait for an answer before barging on ahead. “Well, that’s what we’re here celebrating. In Equestria there are four seasons, and moving between them is important. Sometimes there’s more hard work for ponies to do, like the Winter Wrap Up. But the Equinox doesn’t really make us do anything to change the seasons, we just… well, focus on the harvest I guess. My family hasn’t done very much to help with that kind of thing in a long time. Generations.”
She slowed, enough that he could finally pull his leg free and catch up with her.
The more she said, the less confident he became. Maybe it would be better if he just asked the questions that would prompt the most direct answers. “There are several holidays like this on my world,” he said. What does ‘celebrate the Equinox’ mean for you, exactly? What are these necklaces, to start with?”
“Oh, those?” She beamed, holding hers up. “Yours won’t look like this; this shows I’m staff working in the Spring part.” They were rapidly approaching a tent in the middle of the road, with a wide entrance and several ponies outside. The whole crowd seemed to be funneling through it one at a time, so he wasn’t too worried. And they all have the ass-tattoos. I should probably ask about those when this whole thing is over. “I’ll see you on the other side. The staff goes through at the beginning, so I already did all this. It wouldn’t be right of me to go through twice.”
“Wait!” His wings splayed involuntarily in discomfort, and he reached out towards her. “I don’t even know what I’m doing! Is this a religious thing, because I really don’t want to—”
Too late. She retreated into the crowd, which parted around her far faster than he could keep up. He tried to follow, but the line kept shoving him back into place.
Soon he was shoved through a set of blackout curtains and into the tent proper.
For the second time that night, Tracy was completely blinded, by something that was almost sunlight.
“The time for seedlings is over,” said a high-pitched voice, not much older than a seedling itself.
The inside of the tent was covered in bright green things, flower displays, and an exaggerated cutout of the sun. If this was a religious holiday, it had striking similarities to an educational diorama. “The time comes to strike the earth and sow, or the summer will pass us by without a harvest.”
A tiny pony—even tinier than usual—waited by the back of the tent, handing out little bits of wood. This one had a flower and a leaf, and fit into place perfectly in his necklace.
Then he was out again, feeling more confused than ever by whatever the hell he’d just seen.
At least Rose didn’t leave him to be lost in the crowd, but joined him just a few steps outside the tent, grinning eagerly. Past this first tent, the decorations around town had changed. Instead of green and flower themed, these were yellow and orange, with trees and growing wheat and bright yellow suns. The Summer section, he supposed. “One down, three to go!”
He suppressed a groan. This might feel like morning, but this wasn’t what he imagined when he’d thought about an alien festival. “You don’t have anything more…” He hesitated. “Is this what it’s like? Going through the year by visiting different tents?”
She nodded. Her grin was so wide, whatever cruel thing he’d been imagining just wouldn’t come out. It was childish and pointless, but what was the point of telling her? “The procession of the Equinox is the least important holiday of the year for lots of ponies,” she said. “Now that we have better tools for remembering harvests, it’s mostly just an old tradition. Ponies like giving out gifts for Hearth’s Warming, or spending Hearts and Hooves Day with their special someponies. But the Equinoxes have always felt more… real…”
She trailed off, leading them out of the densest crowd. He was eager to follow, out of the flow where he could finally breathe again.
Out here he could get a better view of the whole event. Past some farming dioramas up ahead there was a marketplace, where most of the activity seemed centered. He could smell the cooking food even from here.
Yet the flower display gets to sell food earlier, while everyone is still hungry. No wonder you make so much money today.
“All those other days are really just celebrating things that ponies do. We could’ve done them differently, or maybe we did and it’s just lost to history. But the Equinox is… so much more important than that. If we didn’t advance the seasons, the planet would get sick, animals would die… it’s a reminder of our fundamental connection to the earth, you know?”
If we didn’t advance the seasons. Maybe there was a quirk in the translation he inherited whenever he came here, assuming it… even was a translation thing.
“I shouldn’t linger, though. There’s authentic Apple family cider in the Autumn section, let’s get there. You’ve never had any before, so I’m only buying you one mug. I don’t like being around ponies when they’re drunk.”
“You don’t have to buy me anything,” he said, hurrying to keep up with her. She knew a more direct route, dodging between the thickest crowds, behind a few displays, then past an alley blocked off with a plain wooden barricade. They emerged in a patch of open starlight, the first calm place in a sea of activity. “I just got promoted, actually. I can afford to get my own alcohol—”
He walked right into her rump, and nearly tripped over her in an even more embarrassing display of clumsiness.
Why the hell was she bowing?
A horse stood alone just in front of her, body all in dark blues and purples. Her mane was the strangest part, blowing faintly in a breeze that Tracy couldn’t feel.
“I didn’t expect anypony here,” she said, her voice low and confident. “Shouldn’t you two be somewhere else?”