I wore the dress Shorey gave me to work at the library the first chance I could. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something I could wear every day, which I knew, but the day I did, I felt unbelievably nice while I worked. Page gave me a weird look seeing me in it, but didn’t say much about it other than a little comment about how it looked nice on me. After that, I hung it up for the rest of the week, knowing I had to take care of it.
I wore it again at the end of the week when I went in to talk to a cab service about working for them. They advertised themselves as ‘Crystal City Carriage Carrier’ and said that they’d be paying seventy five bits a week, not to mention tips. Unfortunately, I wasn’t excited about the weird looks I got when I went in to their office to talk to them, ones that looked at me like I was the weirdest person in existence. But bits were bits, and they said they’d hire me after a few minutes of talking to me and looking me over, despite not being an earth pony. I was up front with them about being a girl though, and told them that’s what I wanted to be called. They were weird about it and tried to ask why, but in the end, they agreed.
More advancements came when we got mail back for the letters we mailed out. In both Equestria and the Crystal Empire, all you needed was a name to get a letter to somepony, so the ones we sent out actually got delivered. Even better was the fact that it came from Beating Heart of all ponies.
She explained that both she and Lilian were in Ponyville, just like Shorey had asked. Apparently they were talking to members of the group chat, and expected Davey to be coming to Equestria, too, along with Dusty.
Forrester wanted to, but didn’t have any money, and the rest of our group chat just didn’t care, hiring Lord Zulu for using wishes on other things. Burning Flame learned it was a ‘one wish per person’ type operation, which was interesting, but not particularly helpful. What was helpful was learning the coat and mane colors of Beating Heart and Lili, the former being a changeling and the latter being a pegasus, so we’d be able to find them when we went to Ponyville.
They talked about the experience they went through, which, compared to Shorey and I, was extremely easy. The two of them showed up at about the same time, Lili showing up a few hours after Beating Heart, about a week after Moberly did from what I could tell. They saw Twilight a few times, but whenever they tried to talk to her, she just brushed them off, as did the rest of the Mane Six, although some of them were more polite about it than others.
Other than that, they explained that they were given free housing until they found jobs, and were now living in an apartment together for the time being. So yeah, they had a vastly easier time getting things done than we did.
I was happy though, because she mentioned in the letter that she’d make sure I got the letter I made out to Twilight into her hooves and that no one would look at it. She also seemed interested in the idea of Moberly being with us especially, and offered to see about making the trip to Crystal City to be with us. It was something I knew we’d have to put a stop to the first chance we got, although also tell her that if she could get her hooves on some train tickets for us, that she should mail them our way.
Shorey added some stuff onto the letter I was writing back that I missed, and so did Moberly, who also took time to write out an entire letter of her own to send to Beating Heart. It was pretty cute to watch her try and be discreet about whatever she was writing, especially given her relative coldness, but I didn’t say anything since she hated being teased. After that, all that was left was to mail them out again and wait for another response. It gave me the sense that something was actually happening and we were advancing toward our goals, although I still left out the fact that I was a stallion right then. My hope was to get that fixed before I met up with them if I could.
“You know,” Shorey said, “we’re honestly making a lot of progress with getting to Ponyville already. If you’re gonna be making seventy five bits a week on your own, we can speed through all of this in less than a year for all three of us, especially if I start making more money.”
“That’s the idea. Have you gotten anywhere with finding a new job?”
“I’m gonna try and talk to publishers this week and buy magazines and stuff to explore the fiction market here. I was just a few months out from publishing on Earth, so I figure it shouldn’t be that difficult to see how to do things here. I’d probably start with short stories in magazines, I think.”
“Ooo, if I could do that, too, that would be perfect, and I would want to do that, too. I mean, I doubt I’d have as much success as you, but any extra income would be fantastic.”
“I’m sure you’d do good, because I know what you write is good,” she said politely with a smile, making me smile too. It took all my willpower to not melt into a puddle right where I stood. How she was always as nice and adorable as possible, I didn’t know, but I loved and envied her ability.
“When do you start working for that cab service?”
“They said I could start training any time, but I figured it’d be good to give two weeks notice first with Page, just in case it doesn’t work out for some reason. I wanna leave with a good reputation if I can. I’m gonna put that in on Tuesday.”
“I guess I should probably throw in that I’m gonna talk to Friendly Flats about paying for an apartment of my own at the start of next month,” Moberly suddenly interjected. “I don’t want to be the third wheel interrupting your relationship.”
I avoided blushing and smiling at the idea as Shorey commented, “That sounds like a good way to make things less cramped at least. It shouldn’t be an issue if Rally’s bringing in more money for us. I don’t know what kind of process it is to change your address here, so that’s something you’d want to look into.”
“I was already going to do that,” she said. “But yeah. Thought you guys would want to know.”
The conversation ended with that, and it was another boring week of working. Moberly found a deeper book on magic, one that did more than just explain how to use telekinesis. It was one that went over physics and math of how magic interacted with the universe, something that went completely over my head. It made her quite a bit more chatty as she talked our ears off about what she read and what it might mean, not that I minded. If it made her more friendly, I decided I would take it.
Shorey checked out a more sensible book on spell casting, although casting actual spells was much more difficult than just using telekinesis. So much so that we hardly made any progress over the course of a week, although it wasn’t that worrying that we didn’t. We had plenty of time to learn all the spells in the book.
Moberly bought a roleplaying game for us to play in the evenings, something both she and Shorey absolutely loved. When we weren’t playing that, she was content to read about magic and physics, as well as write everything down that she could think of. A few glances every now and then showed it was things like engines and computer code and equations and whatever else that went over my head. It gave me the idea that she was just gonna run around and conquer Equestria or industrialize it or something.
When I asked what she was doing, she simply said, “I don’t want to forget all of the things I learned,” explaining that if she could, she would want to be a professor or a teacher or a scientist or something. I had a feeling her goals were bigger than that, but didn’t comment on it. Either way, it seemed like she was exactly as smart as I thought.
While she did that, Shorey and I spent time reading fiction books and trying to write stuff and trying to bounce ideas off each other (which mostly involved her helping me with my stuff because she was vastly superior to me at the craft of writing). We read for a good hour or two each night, and were able to get through one or two books with not much else to do. She did talk to a publisher of a magazine once with something to turn in, but they turned her down, something she said she was expecting to happen a lot at first.
That was basically how the next two weeks went, with us writing letters back and forth between us and Beating Heart and Lili and Shorey helping me try to exercise away my dysphoria and me sleeping next to her when I had nightmares. Not that it wasn’t like it was most every day I had them. By the end of it, the two of us were at a point where I was preemptively lying down next to her in bed on the days she got the bed, and she with me on my days.
Not that it’s weird to do since she’s your marefriend, I thought to myself as I lay down one night, pressing my back against hers. Is making her my lifeline a bad thing? I’m not burdening her with all my issues, am I?
“What’s wrong, Rally?” she asked, turning over as she was probably able to sense how nervous I was.
“I’m just… letting my thoughts fester when they shouldn’t be,” I said. “It’s been harder to prevent that from happening these days though, but you already know that entire novel’s worth of story.”
“Well you know you can always talk to me if you need to,” she told me kindly, staring me in the eyes with those amazing gray ones. “Or even if you don’t need to, I’m here.”
And part of the issue was the intense feeling that I couldn’t. I’d already done a lifetime’s worth of complaining since I’d gotten here, and did not want to drive a wedge between me and my friends by complaining more. Was it bad? Probably, but even as I lay there wanting to say something, the words wouldn’t come out because of that feeling.
God, I’m so mentally unhealthy right now. How the hell did Shorey deal with all of this for so long? This is absolutely frustrating. Not to mention, I couldn’t cry again. Wonderful.
“I don’t want to burden you,” I said, turning away, frustration working over me. I couldn't say anything else though, because a second later, the mare was wrapping her hooves around me from behind and pulling me into her grasp. It made me sigh in contentment as I settled into her, and almost got me to be able to cry again.
“I’m just feeling again like you’re only with me because you feel sorry for me, and I don’t want to complain about that because that’s gonna make the feeling worse.”
“I’m not,” she said. “What is it Forrester would say? That’s not how I do business.”
That actually made me smile. “You’re amazing, and I love you so much for it,” I told her as my heart beat hard against my chest.
“Love you too, Rally,” she said kindly, her smile practically heard in her words. “I’ve known you for years by this point, and I know this is just a rough patch you’re in. But you’re gonna get out of it, because you’re a strong mare.”
“Am I?”
“Absolutely. Like you would say, do you want me to lie and say you’re not?” That made me giggle again, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the moment of being held like this. Yeah, I was making her my lifeline, but what could I say? She was the nicest and most adorable pony of all time.
“Since I’m gonna be making more money, we should buy makeup tomorrow,” I said. “And some mane care products, plus a dress for you. I want to do you up and make you look absolutely adorable, even more than you already are.”
“That sounds like fun,” she said. “I do have a couple of mare related questions I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said kind of shyly, “but I’ll save them for tomorrow. Learning how to do makeup sounds like fun.”
“I think it will be,” I said as I yawned and closed my eyes, starting to drift off. The words ‘I’m sorry’ were a second away from coming off my tongue, but I stopped myself. Instead, I finished with, “Thank you for being here. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Thank you for finding that magician,” she responded. “I’m glad to be here, and I know exactly what I’d be doing without you. Thank you.”