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// Meet and Greet 
// Story: Interesting Events: Lilac Cove 
// by Chris Kingsley 
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As they walked back towards the village, Fae trotted with a sour expression. She stayed behind Mud and Eloni as they walked in silence.
As they crossed the bridge, Fae stopped to watch the ferry leave the quayside. Looking away as the steamboat turned outside the cove, she heard a short sharp hiss from beneath her.
“Psst! Down here!”
She dropped down to the bank to find Tide relaxing on his back in the hollow under one end of the bridge.
“Hey Fae. Why are you sad?”
Fae darted up the bank to check her parents hadn’t missed her.
“I, um, might have called Miss Star a villain… and my parents might have heard me.”
Tide looked at her confused.
“Miss Star a villain?” he said. “And those two are your parents?”
“I panicked. She grabbed me and stuck me in a chair and the light was so bright and she must have wanted information so I clammed up quicker than a marine behind enemy lines.”
Fae gasped for breath as she finished her sentence while Tide looked incredulously at her.
“Miss Star wouldn’t give me ten lines if I went and burnt the school down. Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”
Fae fidgeted uncomfortably.
“Red unicorn mare, orange mane, talks incessantly and has a cutie mark of a five pointed star inside a five pointed star?” she said.
Tide nodded and shrugged.
“I guess she can be a little scary if you don’t know her?” he said.
The silence stretched awkwardly for a moment before Fae remembered the second question.
“Do you still want to know about my parents?”
“Sure!”

As they reached the village Eloni nudged Mud.
“Fae’s not behind us anymore,” she said.
“She dipped down by the bridge to meet that orange colt we saw earlier. No point letting one event ruin her day.”
“And you didn’t even blink…”
Eloni began chuckling and Mud grinned a little.

Fae settled herself under the stones on the opposite bank. The stream wasn’t very wide but the bridge was still large enough that it wasn’t claustrophobic.
“The short answer,” she began. “I am adopted. The long answer is really, really long and boring and involves a skiing accident, three broken hooves and a bottle of cider. The medium sized answer is that my biolow… biolocki… old parents vanished on the Nevermoor, and my new parents picked me up from the place my old parents were staying. They couldn’t find any other family, so they took me along with them.”
Tide nodded slightly.
“But why is your mum stripy?” he asked.
“She’s a zebra.”
“A zebra? What’s a zebra?”
“A zebra is a stripy pony that’s not the same as an earth pony.”
“Weird.”
They sat there for a little while before they heard hooves on the bridge above them and a merry humming. Peering out, they caught sight of Miss Star trotting merrily towards the village. Tide nudged Fae, but she suddenly began taking great interest in the pattern of the frog of her forehoof. He sighed and clambered up the bank before calling out.
“Miss Star!”
“Tide! There you are! Why weren’t you in school today? Were you sick? I hope you aren’t sick. You don’t look sick… But I guess you had a reason not to come to school, or else you would have come, right? Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow! Bye!”
As she turned to go away, Fae buzzed reluctantly up behind Tide.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Fae! It was so nice to see you earlier and you found Tide! He’s such a nice little colt, I bet he was showing you round this afternoon. That would explain everything. I’m so glad that Tide was so thoughtful. Mr Ringer thought he had just skipped school randomly, but I said that he must have had a reason and he did! Oh, I’ll see you and your mum tomorrow too! Don’t worry Tide, I’ll tell Mr Ringer why you weren’t in today. See you two!”
As the unicorn bounced away, juggling a couple of flowers telekinetically, Fae and Tide looked at each other.
“I can see what you meant about her.”
“Me too.”

Eloni and Mud got back to the cottage to find Salt weeding the garden. The mare looked up from where she was levitating her trowel and they exchanged nods. Inside Mud returned to setting up his equipment and desk while Eloni took a scroll from her saddlebags.
“How are you going to start?”
Mud grunted, his mouth full assembling a small device. He finished putting it together and placed it on the table.
“I’m going to prepare some camera traps, maybe a flash bulb or two…” he said. “Without more information, I can’t decide what else to do. It could just be a thieving bovine with weird shoes on.”
Eloni raised an eyebrow.
“Why are you always so negative about your chances of finding creatures worth seeking?”
Mud looked behind him at her and smiled.
“Because then I know that I’m not feverishly making things up to fit a theory. Anyway, I have you to be the optimist.”
Eloni chuckled before reading the scroll through a couple of times. Mud gave her another smile as he left with the equipment he needed on his back.
“See you later Eloni.”

Fae and Tide wandered down the hill towards the beach, chatting about whether the Mare in the Moon was really a big alien or a signpost for space-faring ponies. Fae occasionally fluttered over the difficult obstacles while Tide just ploughed straight through them. As they reached the beach Tide’s orange coat was decidedly more brown.
As Tide went to dip in the ocean, Fae took the opportunity to look at the sea again. The blue waves lapped against the shingle quietly, seaweed and kelp drifting in and out. She bent down and gave it a sniff to find that the salt made her sneeze.
Tide finished cleaning himself in salt water and turned to find Fae sneezing repeatedly.
“Fae, are you okay?”
Fae was about to speak before she sneezed again. She grimaced and forcefully prevented herself sneezing. Having recovered, she was about to reply when Tide began shaking salt water all over her.
“Hey!”
She launched herself at Tide and they both fell into the water, splashing around and getting each other completely soaked again. After a while they both lay on the shingle grinning.
“Truce?” asked Tide.
“For now.”
As they went to the quay to find a source of fresh water to rinse the salt out of their fur, they returned to the discussion of whether aliens were even real.

Mud climbed the hill with the equipment on his back. He passed the pub, now proudly displaying a freshly painted sign declaring it to be “The Preserved Apple”, and continued onward up to the edge of the village. Instead of continuing to climb, he turned right onto a farm track that led around the outskirts of Lilac Cove. The land up slope was shallower, a bowl in the rest of the slope allowing land for crops to be grown on. Mud spotted the farm up ahead and headed towards it.
As he arrived he saw two bored colts hanging over a fence. The unicorn had a dirty pink coat and the earth was a gentle brown, and both were staring at the ground. The pink one looked up as he approached.
“Hey Mister! Have you seen Tide?”
“He’s really small and more orange than a very orange orange,” added the brown colt.
Mud nodded politely.
“I think he’s with my daughter somewhere down by the schoolhouse.”
“Thanks Mister!” they chorused and galloped off down the hill.
Mud kept walking to the farmhouse and knocked on the door. An earth mare opened the door and raised her eyebrows.
“Um… hello? Are you here to see Spring? He’s up in the fields.”
“No ma’am, I’m here to set up camera traps. I’ve been hired to tidy up the monster problem.”
“You are?” she said, shaking his hoof enthusiastically. “That’s wonderful news. I’m Corn, Corn Bushel, co-owner of the largest corn-farm in Lilac Cove. We’ve already lost the field by the lighthouse, and I think the Flow family lost the crop up over the ridge on the other side of Lilac Cove.”
“Have all the losses been by the lighthouses?”
“No, there were one or two fields lost in the basin, but the crops were wild from rotation. There was also a cart of apples brought down from the woods that was plundered.”
“So I should camera trap the basin and by both lighthouses. Thank you Mrs Bushel, you’ve been most helpful.”
“No problem Mister…”
“Mud.”

Eloni finished reading the scroll she had unpacked and stared up at the ceiling.
“Huh. Who’d have thought it.”
She tossed the scroll into her saddlebags, which she then stowed under her bed. She walked out of the room, hearing Mrs Salt humming a sea shanty in the kitchen, and opened the front door.
She peered up at the sun. Despite being only halfway down the sky, there were already shadows cast by the schoolhouse ridge, and boats were mostly coming in and staying in. She decided to head down to the village hall to search for a library.

Fae and Tide were walking up through the village when two colts came rushing round the corner.
“Tide!” cried the lead colt, a dirty pink unicorn.
“Hey Anchovy! Hey Trowel!”
The two colts slid to a halt in front of Fae and Tide.
“Where have you been Tide?” “You weren’t in school-” “-and then you weren’t at the hideout-” “-and then we ask a guy we hadn’t seen before-” “-and he said you were with his daughter-” “-and that means you must be his daughter-” “-and so you must be…”
The two colts stopped as they looked at Fae. Their faces lit up with glee and they looked at each other.
“Hey Anchovy, you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Sure am Trowel!”
“She’s a pegasus/ got lizard eyes! Wait.”
As the two began fussing over the fact that once again they had failed to say the same thing at the same time, Tide gave a cough.
“Fae, before they get carried away trying to synthesise their speech again-“
“Synchronise,” the two corrected.
“Yeah, that – the pink one is Anchovy and the brown one is Trowel. Guys, this is Fae.”
Fae stood there in silence for a brief moment nervously before steeling herself.
“Hello native creatures of the planet Lilac Cove, I am the great space explorer Captain Fae! I come in peace.”
Anchovy and Trowel tilted their heads, mouths open. Tide, however, was bothered by something else.
“Fae, I keep telling you, aliens don’t exist.”