//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Parade Coverage // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Parade Coverage Chapter 5 “So why can’t we just dump some water on her or something?” asked an impatient Rainbow Dash. Rarity leaned down to bring her horn in contact with the prone Twilight Sparkle’s as she closed her eyes. A faint blue glow appeared around the two horns for a moment, before the white unicorn sighed and raised her head. “Because, Rainbow Dash, Twilight here is completely drained of magic,” she said wearily. “So if we wake her, she’ll be powerless to do anything.” “And if she can’t do anything, she’ll go bonkers,” Rainbow concluded. With a sigh, the pegasus launched herself into the air, floating a couple ponyheights above the others. “This place is all wrong, you know,” she said petulantly. “The air’s completely dead.” “What do you mean, ‘dead’?” Applejack asked. “I mean that back in Equestria, there was a certain something in the air,” Rainbow Dash explained, “the same thing we pegasi pull clouds out of, that lets the weather do whatever we tell it to, the same thing that the air over Everfree Forest has a lot less of than anywhere else. It wasn’t...I guess you couldn’t really call it alive...it was a sort of something that wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t alive, either. It just...listened. And it’s not here. Also the air’s really stinky.” “Yeah we all noticed the smell,” Applejack said with a grimace. Experimentally, she pushed a hoof into the ground and concentrated. “The ground’s different too, but not quite the same as what you’re saying with the air. There’s life, but I can’t talk to it.” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “You talk to the dirt?” she asked, half-jokingly. “Yeah, the same way you ‘talk’ to the clouds,” Applejack said dryly. “Oh. Yeah, I know what you mean. What about you, Fluttershy? Are the animals here any different?” Fluttershy, why had been lying listlessly on the ground, rose to her hooves, closed her eyes, and then slowly swung her head around. She then looked back at them with a broad grin. “Yes,” she told them giddily. “This place is different. The animals here think for themselves!” The other (conscious) ponies looked at each other in confusion. “Don’t they already do that back in Equestria?” Rarity asked. “Not exactly,” Fluttershy explained. “They’re able to do a lot on their own, but at a certain level, they are all very like children—if a forceful enough pony comes along, they’ll do whatever she tells them to. That’s why ponies like me are needed, to keep the animals from getting themselves into trouble. But if these animals get into trouble, they do whatever they need to, to help themselves. It’s just like—” “It’s just like the Everfree,” Applejack said, completing Fluttershy’s sentence. “This whole place is like the Everfree.” That made the ponies sad, until everypony’s ears suddenly caught a new sound coming from the street. “I don’t know about you,” Rainbow Dash said with a grin, “but there’s no way I’m calling this place another Everfree if it comes with a sweet marching band!” The song being played by the band on the street was strong, proud, and just a little bit sad. Before long, it was accompanied by the full-throated singing of several hundred creatures in whatever language it was that they spoke. “Something gives me the feeling that those singers are not professionals,” Rarity noted, a sparkle nevertheless in her eye. “I don’t know what it is,” Applejack said wistfully, “but it’s kinda like that song’s sad that we’re not friends.” The song’s ending was followed by an odd sort of chattering noise. “What in Equestria is that?” Rarity asked. “Clapping,” explained Pinkie. “They slap their ‘hands’ together when they like something.” Fluttershy looked at the earth pony in quiet alarm, realizing how very quiet she had been to this point. She was going to say something about Pinkie to the others, but the beginning of new song by a second marching band changed her mind. This song was a lot more dark and portentous than the last, and nobody was singing along, with the exception of the occasional word barked out in a strangely metallic voice. ~ ~ ~ The farm pony sat down suddenly and took off her hat. “I wish I knew what to do. Those seem like friendly enough folk some of the time, but at the same time if this is as much their world as Equestria is ours, then...I’m scared.” She added this last part in a quiet voice as she fiddled with the hat’s brim. “You don’t have to know what to do,” Rarity said, putting a leg around Applejack’s neck. “It’s obvious those creatures are not only letting us stay here, but also giving us some free entertainment, so why don’t we just wait for Twilight to recover?” “Because she trusts me to take care of things when she can’t!” Applejack said, jumping to her hooves and slapping her hat back on her head. “We all are going to get ourselves into a lot of trouble if there’s only one of us who can handle the unexpected. What are we supposed to do without Twi when we don’t have any of the answers? Like: Who are these creatures? Are they nice or are they mean?” Fluttershy noted how Pinkie Pie, lying flat on the ground, muttered a quiet, impossible to hear answer to each of these questions. “Can they take a joke?” added Rainbow Dash with a grin. “I mean, I for one am going to be in big trouble with them sooner or later if they can’t.” Fluttershy slowly raised her hoof in the air. Rarity grinned. “This isn’t a classroom, Dear. If you want to say something, just say it. You know we won’t judge you.” “Yes,” Fluttershy said shyly, “but, um, I’m not the one who has something to say.” She pointed at Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash landed in front of the earth pony and noted the worried expression in her eyes. “Pinkie, we have a bad habit of not listening to you when you know something we don’t.” From her prone position, Pinkie shrugged. “That’s OK,” she said sadly. “I make things confusing a lot, so I get that you can’t always tell what I want to say. I mean, I don’t even know what I’m saying a lot of the time.” Applejack pursed her lips as she thought carefully about the best way to get an answer out of Pinkie. It wasn’t that Pinkie didn’t want to be helpful, she knew. It was just that she was very impulsive, and prone to wander off into ‘randomness’ if given the slightest opportunity—she just couldn’t help herself. Of course at the same time that quality of unpredictability was her greatest asset to the team in a crisis. But right now Fluttershy seemed convinced that she knew something important. Applejack eventually decided her best approach was to make her questions as straightforward as possible, to leave the pony before her nowhere for her mind to wander off to. “Pinkie Pie,” she finally asked, “those creatures out there, in the stands—what are they called?” “Well, I always called them ‘tree ponies’,” Pinkie Pie calmly replied. “They’ve got a lot of different names for themselves, but I thought, since they went around on their hind legs like I did when I played Tree, and because the only mane they have is on the top of their head...why not?” Everypony’s eyes went wide. “How long have you known about them?” Applejack asked. “Oh, my whole life,” Pinkie tossed off. “Your whole life?” Rainbow Dash butted in. “How come you never told us about them before?” Pinkie pouted, and her hair started deflating. “I couldn’t,” she told them. “It was a crazy story, and I didn’t have any proof. My family calls that ‘bearing false witness’, and it’s really serious.” She looked sideways at a patch of land far away from them. “I don’t do everything my family told me to do anymore,” she said, nearly too soft to be heard, “but that doesn’t mean I tossed out everything.” She turned her head to look her friends once more in the eyes as she said, “They taught me right from wrong, and when a joke was going too far, and how you should always treat a stranger like she could be your friend one day. And they were right about this—” (she punctuated that last bit with a hoof as she slightly raised herself off of the ground) “—if I couldn’t prove that the tree ponies were real, why should I worry anypony about them? They were in their world, and we were in ours, and I was the only one that could see them, and then I couldn’t see them anymore, so why would it matter?” She blinked a couple of times to get the tears out of her eyes. “Well, we’re here now, so it looks like you’ve got your proof,” Rainbow told her, putting a protective hoof on her withers. “Yeah,” Pinkie said with a little smile. “I guess I did.” Applejack sighed. It was obvious that something about these “tree ponies” made Pinkie sad, but unfortunately she needed more information about them, so she had no choice but to press on. “How did you see them, Pinkie?” she asked. “In my dreams,” Pinkie Pie said, rising to a sitting position. “My sisters and I shared the same room, and each of us had our own corner where our beds were. When I slept in my bed, I dreamed about the room with the tree pony. When we switched beds—we did that for fun—I dreamed about other things.” “And your sisters didn’t dream about the tree ponies when they were in your bed?” Fluttershy asked. “No, only me,” Pinkie replied. “And did you dream about any other tree pony places?” asked Applejack. “No, only that one,” said Pinkie. “What did the room look like?” Rarity asked. “Um, it was gray.” Pinkie’s eyes flicked around her, like she was surveying the room around them that very moment. “And tall—twice as tall as a normal room. But tree ponies walk around on their hind legs, so they need high ceilings, and don’t need wide chairs.” Rarity thought for a moment. “I suppose that would be true,” she said. “What was in the room?” “There was this really thin gray carpet,” Pinkie answered, “and a tiny table that folded up with medicines on it, and a bed on wheels with a thin gray blanket tucked tightly into it, and a fat little table on wheels, and a brown box with a window on it on top of the fat table.” “And what else?” asked Rarity. “Nothing else,” said Pinkie, slumping her head down. “There was a narrow door, but nobody came in or out. I wasn’t even there. Instead, I was a wee ghostie—the tree pony couldn’t see or hear me, and I couldn’t touch anything. Oh, and parts of the ceiling glowed this ugly blue-white that flickered so fast it made your eyes hurt if you stared at it.” “What about windows?” asked Rarity. “Surely there must have been—” “No windows,” interrupted Pinkie. “There was nothing else in the room.” “But you said there was a tree pony there,” Fluttershy said cautiously. “He was in the bed,” Pinkie said. “He never left it.” “Never?” Rarity asked incredulously. “Surely if he’s an organic creature such as ourselves—” Pinkie closed her eyes and sighed. “There was this tube that went under the covers and—” “I withdraw my question,” Rarity said curtly, her face paler than normal. “Well, what did he do in this bed?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I know if I ever had to stay in bed, I’d go crazy!” She stopped to reconsider her words. “Not that I’d ever let anything like that happen to me.” “He smelled,” answered Pinkie with a silly grin. “It wasn’t that bad a smell, I guess, but it was his smell, and nobody else’s. He coughed.” (And there went the grin.) “He’d cough and cough and cough sometimes, like he had something stuck in his throat, but he couldn’t get it out. And he stared at the box all day. Or all night. I couldn’t tell what time of day it was when I visited. It was a magic box, and the little tiny tree ponies that lived inside it did everything they could to make him happy.” “Did they ever succeed?” Fluttershy asked. “No,” Pinkie said sadly. “They never did. He never cried, he never laughed, he never said or did anything at all when he wasn’t coughing, except sigh sometimes and turn away from the box. He was sick, and as I grew up he got sicker, and sicker, and sicker, until he was the same color as the walls and the floor and the blanket.” Applejack thought carefully about what she had heard. For the moment, she didn’t bother trying to figure out how it was that Pinkie was able to dream about tree ponies. What was clear was that she only knew directly about one specific tree pony (she guessed that the ones in the box were some sort of illusion), and therefore whatever she learned from him might not be representative of his whole species. Also, she knew in her gut that this story had a sad ending that she didn’t want Pinkie to have to relive, so it was best to try to steer questions away from that. “The tree pony in the bed never said anything, but I take it that the ones in the box did, right?” Pinkie nodded. “They talked a whole lot.” “And you heard them talking since you were a foal.” “Uh-huh.” “So did you ever figure out what their talking meant?” Pinkie thought for a bit. “Yeah, I guess I did. Actually, the way I saw it was that they started talking more and more like ponies, until finally I understood everything. I guess what was really happening was that I was learning their language.” “Well that’s great!” Applejack said with a smile. “That means we can talk with the tree ponies out there!” “Oh, I can’t understand what the tree ponies out there are saying,” Pinkie said. “You can’t?” Applejack asked, her momentarily raised hopes crashing to the ground around her. “No, tree ponies speak more than one language. I know, because sometimes the ones in the box would talk two different languages at once, with one much louder than the other—I guess they had hidden translator tree ponies doing that. Or sometimes one would talk funny, and words explaining what he said would appear under him. These words appeared so many other places that I eventually figured those out, too. But I didn’t see any of that kind of writing at the parade. I guess whatever language I learned, it was tree pony dragon-talk, while these tree ponies speak pony-talk. You know what I mean?” Applejack nodded sadly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” ~ ~ ~ “Pinkie Pie, what would you say tree ponies are like, based on the ones you saw?” asked a new voice. Everypony looked over in surprise to see a tired Twilight Sparkle sitting up and looking intently at Pinkie. “I think they mean well,” said Pinkie Pie after a moment. “They’re a little bit like us, and a little bit like...well at the time I thought they were a little bit like monsters, because I didn’t know much about Equestria, but now I would say they are a little bit like griffons, if Gilda is like most griffons. Don’t be mad, Dashie!” she added rather desperately. “I don’t mean that Gilda is a monster, just that she’s kinda attack-y on everything. I mean, she eats meat and stuff, so you kinda have to be attack-y to do that, right?” Rainbow Dash’s brief feeling of resentment at Pinkie’s comparison of her former friend quickly dissipated. “Yeah, that’s what griffons are like,” she said in agreement. “They got these big tempers they have to deal with.” “Or, they could use that temper to get things done, right?” Pinkie Pie asked. For the first time in several minutes, she was actually in a positive mood. “Yeah, I guess that’s right,” Rainbow replied. “That’s exactly what tree ponies are like!” Pinkie exclaimed. “They can be nasty monster-y things, but most of the time they choose not to. And they can be really funny. I laughed way more in my dreams than I ever did when I was awake.” “That’s good!” Twilight said. “That means that I feel a lot better about stranding everypony here until I get my magic back.” “You are getting your magic back, right?” Applejack asked cautiously. After all, if this world was so very different from Equestria, did it even have magic? “Oh yes,” answered Twilight. “It’s coming back a little slower than usual, but it is coming back. I can get us home in about an hour. But I would like to meet these tree ponies first. Even if was a complete accident and we never see them again, I’d like to learn more about them, and let them know more about us. Even without a common spoken language, I’m sure we can get something across to them, and vice versa. And if they have any way of recording our voices, then you can say something to them in the tree pony language you know, Pinkie, and I’m sure they can send that recording all around their world until they find somebody that understands it.” “Ooo, I like that idea!” exclaimed Pinkie. “So, does anypony else have any other questions?” “No, I don’t think we need to ask anything else,” Applejack said quickly, warning Twilight with her eyes not to say anything. The unicorn didn’t understand the earth pony’s reason for this warning, but she was fully trusting in her judgment, so she remained silent. The other ponies shook their heads. Pinkie looked around at each of them, as if looking for them to ask one question in particular. When none of them did, she sighed in relief. “Okay,” she said.