Since Mr. The Bearded said he’d send me home the day after Wrap Up, I decided to spend the days leading up to the Spring’s Eve festival getting my affairs in order. This mainly consisted of playing a few magical pranks on Dr. Leech with Starswirl and saying goodbye to the ponies I’d befriended who couldn’t see me off.
Ever since I met them, Cranberry and his family managed to find an excuse each week to invite me to their house and give me free food, so it was easy to find time to tell them.
The stallion nodded as though he knew this was coming, and Red Delicious promised to make me a week’s worth of food before I left. But the kids’ reactions really surprised me: both Jam and Juice started crying when I told them I was traveling home and probably wouldn’t be back.
I ended up staying far later than usual and even taught them how to play charades. I usually avoid sharing pieces of home with the ponies, but unless Discord took power because of the lack of fun games, I doubt I did any real harm to the timeline.
The next day I was invited to join a few ponies at a local bar after work. We mostly wasted time bitching about the cold and boasting about who’d do the best at various competitions during the fair. They lost their shit when I mentioned it would be my first.
“So,” a young mare belches out, “you’re telling me you ain’t never launched an anvil?”
“Not even a small one,” I answer tiredly.
“Or tasted the desserts at the best bake-off of the year?” questions the drunk stallion who declared himself my best friend about an hour ago.
“No,” I answer for what feels like the hundredth time. “But I know what desserts taste like.”
“Not if you’ve never had Mrs. O’s famous candied oranges!”
“I wait all year for those!”
Our conversation has been spiraling like this for the past three—or was it five—drinks, so my ale-addled brain decides to ask something I meant to bring up to Cookie: “What are the rules on non-earth ponies at this thing? Because I have a few-”
“Piss off,” my best friend requests.
“They ain’t the ones who need some fun before the hardest day of the year!” the mare declares.
“They do things differently on Spring’s Eve,” sputters one of our companions who fell asleep after his third mug. “I snuck into the castle for it once when I was a colt. Absolutely no brawls! And don’t get me started on their music, it’s…”
Before he can finish that thought, his head plops right back down on the table and he resumes snoring.
“The pegasi might be able to cut loose the earthpony way.”
“Yeah, as long as it doesn’t involve getting their hooves dirty.”
“I get it, I get it,” I groan.
Well, that kind of kills my plan to hang with Luna and Celestia all day. Maybe I can drag my pegasus friend to the unicorn party, although the princess of the night doesn’t really seem that into night life.
***
Sadly, over the next few days, I don’t see Luna once. Normally I’d spot her flying low over the hills between the farms and Cookie’s house when I’m heading home, but she hasn’t been flying or stargazing at her favorite hill as far as I can tell. Although that’s probably just because of the near-constant snow this past week.
After I expressed concerns, Celestia literally popped by during work the next day to tell me she tracked Luna down with some weird spell and made sure she knew to be at the castle to see me off.
I’d normally be a bit down thinking about leaving all my new friends behind in a couple days, but damn it if trying to beat the Chancellor’s team in tug-of-war isn’t fun!
“Smart Cookie!”
“Yesh shir?”
“What if we stopped pulling and started pushing instead?” The pony holding the highest office around asks after completely letting go of his portion of rope. “I think then we could-”
“Ge vack on va rogh!” The old mare is starting to lose her cool.
“Ovay evey pomy,” I cry out. “Ash harg ash mew cahn on free!” I count us down, and we each dig our hooves in and give a mighty pull.
The world turns over and I fall on my back with two or three other ponies on top of me. But when I hear an expletive that really has no place in an old government mare’s mouth, I know we managed to yank Cookie and the others into the mud.
“Darn it, we lost!” the chancellor complains, although his grin betrays him. He then proceeds to lick his face clean in one fell swoop. “Bleh, usually when I do that, it tastes like pudding.”
“Chancellor, can you please get off of me?”
“Sorry S.C., but if you didn’t want me standing on you, you really shouldn’t have fallen under me.” The eccentric stallion proceeds to hop away to the next event that catches his eye with his irritable second following behind, but not before I flash her a ‘that’s right, we beat your asses’ smile.
From the moment the flugelhorn sounded at dawn to begin the first competition, it’s been nonstop fun. The earthponies, my friends and coworkers, have been filling me with food and ale, and pushing me to join in the activities with the rest of them. Cranberry even helped me take a turn on the drum line providing music for everypony. I definitely made the right call asking Starswirl to hold off on my departure. I’m going to have to repeat this semester anyway, so fuck it! I’m having fun today!
About an hour after sunset, I hear a rapid series of cracks and explosions that sound like New Year’s fireworks. But these ponies couldn’t have invented fireworks before discovering gunpowder, could they?
I approach the sound which is soon overshadowed by the laughter of children and find the retired archmage turned circus performer at the center of it all.
“Hey, Gandalf!” I call out. “You got a quest for me?”
A little colt standing away from the other kids pokes my leg, “Don’t you know who that is? Mr. Starswirl The Great is famous! He sent the evil Tirek to Tartarus! He- um… he even banished the sirens to… I’m not sure, but they were really bad and he made them go away! He’s the most powerful-”
“I got it kid,” I laugh, patting him on the head. “It’s just a nickname.”
“Does that mean you know Mr. Starswirl?”
“Yes, he knows me, young colt. Although, I would like to know what gandalf means before it becomes my new nickname,” the old man chimes in, approaching us. “Now take these and run along to play with your friends.” He hands the small child what looks like a bag of firecrackers and smiles.
“Oh,” the colt looks away. “I don’t really have any-” But before he can finish, the other little ponies run up to him and the dangerous toys excitedly.
Starswirl, unconcerned with the children or me, begins walking off towards the stalls.
“Did you just give explosives to a five-year-old?” I gape at him when I catch up.
“Of course not, just some prepackaged spells. Color changing illusions, temporary transfiguration magic, that sort of thing. Celestia’s mother made me stop using the really fun ones decades ago after the Desideratum incident.”
“Okay… So, you came here to entertain the kids?”
“I came to bring you to the party. Celestia couldn’t teleport you herself.”
“Then why are we walking away from the castle?”
***
Clover gets all the credit for being clever. It’s understandable. It takes some serious brains to track down a sorceress who’s erasing your memories. But she had to learn that kind of out-of-the-box thinking from somewhere.
I guess the equestrian history books never gave Starswirl the same moniker because his intellectual powers were spent on devising the most efficient way for us to split up and buy him all the snacks he wants in the shortest amount of time. I hate to admit that I was actually pretty impressed with his plan and the accompanying diagram he drew for me.
As I’m waiting in line number five, Hooffield Hay Fries, my friends from the bar spot me and head over.
“Hey, Astraeus, what’s going on?” My self-proclaimed best friend asks. “Get it? Hay!”
“Nothing much, just helping that one get food.” I point at the old unicorn who’s putting all his years of wisdom into picking which jar of pear preserves looks tastier.
“You never told us you wanted to invite the archmage!” the mare says.
“Actually, I wanted to invite the other archmage’s student.”
“Ooooh, somepony has a crush!” My best friend sings.
“You know,” interjects the stallion who spent most of our night together passed out, “nopony would have had a problem with Celestia being here.”
“But you guys said-”
The mare of the group punches my shoulder. “I know you’re new here, but don’t you realize there ain’t a single pony here she hasn’t fixed up at least once?”
“Four times for me,” my best friend nods. “And she’s never arrogant like most unicorns. She’s one of the good ones.”
“She certainly is,” Starswirl comments from behind us, causing my three companions and me to each have mini heart attacks which pre-equestrian medicine probably can’t treat properly.
***
“Honestly the whole thing sounds ridiculous to me,” Starswirl grumbles as we walk towards the castle’s grand banquet hall. “The only reason I was more powerful when my mane turned white is that I had more years under my belt and I’m certainly not planning on dying just to see if you’re right.”
“He didn’t die, or at least I don’t think he did. But this all is from a play, we don’t even have magic in my world.”
“Fiction or biography, I still don’t see why he didn’t call for the eagles earlier.”
“Well, that’s what everyone says, but I think…” My thoughts are cut off by a completely unexpected scene.
There, surrounded by ponies cheering for her and playing instruments, Celestia, Princess of the Sun, Harbinger of Dawn, immortal alicorn goddess, neurotic magical protégé, overprotective sister, almost murderer, and one of my two closest friends in this world… is dancing on a table.
I can’t help but stare at her svelte form as she turns with wild grace. Her hooves hit the table rapidly in time with the music in what feels like the pony-equivalent of Irish step dancing. Every few seconds, there’s a beat, and she hops into the air and appears to float like a pegasus. The whole sight is entrancing.
“That’s incredibly difficult, you know, ” Starswirl comments next to me.
“Yeah, there’s no way my hooves could-”
“No, the levitation. When she goes to jump, she casts a levitation spell on herself and uses it to temporarily fly.”
“Wow.”
“You don’t understand the gravity, forgive the pun, of the act to say wow. I doubt there’s a single unicorn in here who could levitate their own body, save for Clover and myself, of course, and she’s doing it as part of a dance just because it’s fun.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, I’m glad you understand now.”