There is a known phenomenon amongst ponies of learning - that putting a pony in a situation that was almost entirely normal but just that tiny little bit different and wrong could cause an instinctive unease that somehow exceeded even a Discord-worthy unreality.
There were many theories to what might cause such a reaction, ranging from an evolutionary protection from changelings or a magical sixth sense, back down to simple herding instinct. Even if a pony couldn't tell exactly what was setting off a warning in the back of their head, they would know that something, somewhere was not quite right.
Twilight could never be described as anything but a pony of learning, so not only was she well aware of the existence of the phenomenon, but quickly recognised its effects as she started walking through Ponyville - and again as a pony of learning, her immediate response was to attempt to quantify it and what was causing it.
For science, of course. Not because it helped distract her from that very same little queasy feeling she couldn't shake.
There was something about the town that just didn't quite fit. It wasn't the fact that she'd constantly see ponies she recognised every day, then a half second later do a double-take as the cutie mark she spotted was higher or lower, on a flank rounder or squarer than she expected; the faces changed beyond recognition, but still with similar manestyles, identical eyes, and easily-recognised expressions. That was... disconcerting, and still made her jump a little from time to time, but she could get her mind around it.
Nor was it the way those same ponies would stop briefly and stare at her as they passed - embarrassing, certainly, but for the most part they simply waved and greeted her as usual. For this town, seeing their prince had become a princess was hardly the strangest thing to occur in the last few years. A history of monster attacks, apocalypses and magical mishaps could encourage a remarkably accepting attitude towards the unexpected.
No, there was something else, something niggling at her concentration that she just couldn't quite pick that was just that tiny bit different.
So focused was she on trying to notice the difference that she almost completely ignored the first resident of the town who actually tried to start a conversation with her - of course, the fact that they were using the wrong name to call her didn't help with that either.
"Dusk? Dusk, is that you? Hello? Your highness?"
"You don't have to call m-- oh! Sorry, um..." Twilight grinned, embarrassed, as she turned to face...
It took her a moment to put a name to the cherry-coloured stallion before her, even with the curls of multi-tone pink. The gentle smile on his face - and the three more on his flank - clicked it in her head...
"Oh hi, Cheerilee..."
"...Cheeri... lee?"
...and she naturally immediately got it wrong. Cheerilee really isn't a stallion name...
With a deep breath, she calmed herself and tried her best to smile disarmingly. "Sorry, long story, magic mishap."
"Yes... I can see that." The schoolteacher nodded warily, looking Twilight over with a strange look on his face. Twilight stared as the awkward moment stretched on and on, before finally clearing her throat.
"Anyway, sorry, was there something you needed?"
The stallion jumped slightly, before turning back to meet Twilight's eyes. "Oh! Um, no. I just wanted to make sure you were alright, and... um... you're not planning on casting that spell on other ponies, are you? Or teaching it?"
"Oh! No, no. I haven't even got it down myself yet, I don't even know if I could teach it. And it's not catching or anything, it doesn't really work the way you'd expect... um..."
"Oh good... because, umm... I don't think I could handle the Crusaders as fillies."
Twilight couldn't help herself, laughing out loud at the ironic ridiculousness of the statement, getting her further strange looks from the stallion. "I... I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. But I'm not turning anypony else into fillies today. Wait, I mean, I'm no-- actually, nevermind. No more fillies." She gave what she hoped was a reassuring grin to the teacher.
He just kept giving her the same strange look, before backing up slightly and turning towards the schoolhouse. "Right... I'll... I'd better get going. Class starts soon."
"Alright! Take care and good luck!" Twilight turned away, continuing on her light trot into town. A few steps in, she froze for a step, realising after all that, she still hadn't got his actual name on this side, but after the strangeness of that conversation it seemed like it would be difficult to bring it up.
I'm going to need to work on a system for this. I need to find out names first if I start talking to someone, and he seemed really awkward. I suppose it is a little strange, but it's something they'd get used to - not that I'm going to be in this Ponyville long enough that anyone needs to get used to anything!
...I really need to be careful about thinking things like that.
Anyway, let's find Rainbow Da-- I mean, Rainbow Blitz.
I really hope I don't need to get used to this.
I wonder what Cheerilee was worried about... it would be kind of an interesting experiment...
And as Twilight put together theoretical frameworks for experiments to determine the reactions to unexpected gender-switches, she never even came close to the correct thoughts flitting through the stallion's head as he trotted away a little faster than he would normally move:
I am SO glad my coat hides it when I blush...
~-~-~-~
One of the most surprising things Twilight had encountered when dealing with her friend Rainbow Dash was that she was, in fact, an even earlier riser than Twilight herself.
She had laughed at first, when the pegasus made the claim, assuming that she was joking. Applejack getting up early was expected for the farmpony; It was hard to imagine Pinkie Pie sleeping at all; but the idea of Rainbow Dash - the brilliant-but-lazy pegasus more frequently seen napping or showing off than working - being one of the first in town to be up and about, when there was no light and nearly nopony awake to see her trying out her tricks?
And then Twilight learned just how embarrassingly little she knew about weather maintenance.
Weather was a job that needed constant upkeep. Clouds, winds, rain and dry spells had no respect for the preferred working hours of the average pony, especially so close to the nightmare that was the Everfree forest; and the change between daytime and night was one of the most difficult and critical periods, as the sudden change in light and temperature could throw an otherwise perfectly organised weather pattern into chaos if not carefully prepared and managed.
As the Ponyville weather manager, Rainbow did not have set hours, but did almost all of the work for both the dawn and dusk changeovers, and simply kept an eye on the local weather throughout the day and night. Twilight had been completely taken aback to learn that Rainbow's napping was much less motivated by laziness and was more of a staggered sleep schedule, ensuring she could remain reasonably rested while keeping an eye on the weather throughout day and night.
The discovery had prompted a heartfelt apology to Rainbow for making assumptions, a friendship report on the same, and a marathon study session into the intricacies of the weather system. When she had earned her wings, she had jumped on the chance to turn theory into practice - as soon as she had gotten the hang of flying, anyway - and today, she had another lesson to look forward to, as soon as she could find Rainbow Dash - or in this case, her male counterpart.
One of the least surprising things, on the other hoof, was that Rainbow found her first, and she had only a second of warning before impact.
It was an arms race of sorts. Rainbow seemed to have an unerring instinct for cushioning her crash lands with her friends' bodies - instinctive pegasus magic thankfully preventing any severe injury for either party. Long friendship with the speedster had given her an instinct of when to dodge, honed further by her newly gained instinctive sense for all forms of magic - and Rainbow's magic signature was as distinctive and loud as her mane, even if it came from behind and above.
Rainbow, when confronted, had denied up and down that she deliberately aimed for Twilight, let alone adjusting after she dodged, but her hit-miss ratio was evidence enough to the contrary for Twilight's analytical mind.
And so, in that split second when she sensed the blaze of fast-incoming pegasus magic, she feinted left then dodged backwards, and still only escaped the impact by inches, feeling a hoof nick her mane as it was blown about by the strong winds of the near miss, before the cyan-and-rainbow missile crashed hard into the road, skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust.
Twilight cheered herself on in her mind and added another mark in her mental "miss" column as she trotted forward to check her friend was alright - although the analytical part of her mind traitorously noted that if she'd been a few inches taller - say, like a stallion - she would not have been so lucky.
The dust cleared as the pegasus regained his feet, and a gravelly and somewhat familiar voice spoke out. "Hey, Dusk, everything alright? I saw the yellow flag..."
And he trailed off as their eyes met, and his mouth hung open.
Twilight took advantage of the moment to look over her friend's counterpart. The differences were... surprisingly few, truth be told, but it was hard to see past the usual striking combination of red eyes, sky-blue fur, and rainbow mane to the actual changes in her friend.
He wasn't that much taller, for starters. Rainbow Dash had always had the smallest build of the six friends, and that had apparently been emphasised as a stallion - he didn't seem to be any taller than her right now, though admittedly she had grown a little since gaining her wings.
Like his distaff counterpart, he was pretty much nothing but lean muscle, fur and feathers, on a slightly larger frame admittedly; his muzzle was less squared off than most stallions'. The mane was shorter and spikier, and his tail seemed to be styled in a jagged lightning-bolt style rather than the smooth rainbow sweep of Dash's.
Interesting... in my Ponyville, Dash has a reputation for having a rather coltish personality, whereas as a stallion he would meet the stereotypes for personality but has a somewhat feminine look...
And then, of course, Twilight was interrupted by Rainbow Blitz falling over and laughing uproariously.
She sighed, sitting on the road with a thoroughly unamused expression while Blitz convulsed with laughter, soon reduced to gasping for breath as he tried to right himself.
After a full minute with no sign of stopping any time soon, and growing attention from the early-morning populace, Twilight sighed and spread her wings, scooping her friend up in her magic and taking to the skies, trying to ignore the writhing and shaking of the stallion in her magical grip. Pointedly ignoring the stares of the few pegasi already up and in the air, she flew the cackling stallion to a high cloud, dumped him unceremoniously to its fluffy embrace, and waited.
And waited.
And then he finally seemed to be calming down... then his eyes fell on her again, and that set him off all over again.
Rolling her eyes with growing irritation, she considered taking more direct action for a moment before Blitz took the decision out of her hooves, rolling with laughter so excessively that he rolled right off the edge of the cloud.
She dove for the edge in a panic as the laughter turned into a yelp of shock, but Rainbow was still Rainbow, and by the time she spotted him he had recovered smoothly and was gliding his way back up towards the cloud. He was still chuckling slightly as he landed, using his wings to wipe tears from his eyes as he grinned at her.
"So. You totally turned yourself into a mare."
Twilight sighed heavily enough to ripple the cloud beneath them.
"No, I didn't. Look, we're... we're already running well behind schedule because you've spent the last ten minutes laughing like a hyena. Let's get going on this, and I'll explain it to you on the way."
"Sure, sure, we're working on keeping things clear on the Everfree boundary today," Blitz explained between snickering. "Don't worry, it's more subtle stuff, not cloud-bucking. Wouldn't make a mare work on that kind of heavy labour."
Twilight's feathers bristled slightly. "Really? Because I've seen a mare buck the sky clear in, oh, I don't know, ten seconds flat?"
"Hah! As if! That's my thing, as if anyone could beat my--" Blitz cut off, backing off suddenly as he saw the somewhat dangerous smirk on Twilight's face. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you are NOT turning me into a mare. Back off." He tensed, ready to shoot off at the first sign of a purple glow around the horn.
"What?" Twilight was entirely thrown for a loop. "No! Nopony is getting turned into mares. I wouldn't do something like that without you being okay with it, Rainbow."
"So, you meant to turn yourself into a mare?"
"I didn't--"
"So I'll still be careful. Maybe it's contagious." Rainbow grinned. "It'd almost be worth it to see everypony else freaking out about it..."
"Rainbow! It's not contagious! It doesn't even work that way!"
"Well, after seeing what you did with that cloud library, sorry if I'm not taking your word that you know what your magic is doing, prince...ess." He snickered again and Twilight facehooved at the reminder.
The cloud library had been Twilight's - and by the sound of things, Dusk's - very first introduction to her new and interesting powers. As soon as she'd gotten sufficient control over her flight, Rainbow had demanded that she try napping on a cloud, eager to show the superiority of the cloud as a bedding surface.
And it had been almost as good as Rainbow had made it sound, wonderfully soft and comfortable. She'd not expected to actually fall asleep - she was a creature of the indoors for the most part, and sleeping in the outdoors - let alone hundreds of meters in the air - was not something she expected to enjoy, but the cloud had lulled her off within minutes.
But habit meant she expected to wake up in her bed at home in the library, and instead of instinctively teleporting herself home, her magic had brought the library to her, in a way - rounding up all the clouds in the area, and reforming them into a rather impressive facsimile of the library tree. In what she later learned was the characteristic dazed semiconsciousness that often followed her sleep-casting, she had wandered downstairs, made herself a cup of coffee, and picked out a book to study, and not realised anything was wrong until the coffee had disintegrated into vapour in her mouth and the book had opened to display semi-solid blankness.
Her panic increased as everything she touched began to come apart under her hooves, wings and magic. Rainbow Dash had been woken by her scream, and had been somewhat freaked out herself as she found herself suspended in branches of cloud - some of her house, including her bedroom and herself, had been sucked into the construction spell to make the house. After she had burst in to find Twilight in a bubble of magic shielding yelling not to come near her, it had taken her a few minutes to figure out what had happened, and five times that long to convince a frantic Twilight that her power wasn't going to destroy Equestria and that she could come out from the bubble.
Not her finest moment.
"You're never letting me live that down, are you."
"Well, I did have to practically rebuild my whole house."
"It took you less than half an hour."
"And it was hilarious." Blitz grinned widely. Twilight sighed, but couldn't help but smile a little - the smile given by Blitz was almost identical to Dash's same smile the last time they'd had this conversation. Even if he was abrasive, he was still the Rainbow she knew.
"Look, trust me, there is absolutely no way in Equestria this spell can end with you as a mare. Let's get going, and I'll tell you about it."
~-~-~-~
The subject for the morning was thermals and air pressure, and the effects of the sun's heat as it built up in the air and ground, across the various roof styles, terrains, and proximities to the Everfree throughout Ponyville.
Twilight smiled and turned to Rainbow as they reached the small cloud that he had set up, barely large enough for the two of them. "What now?"
"Alright, spread your wings wide, over the edge of the cloud."
"Like this?" She twitched the still-slightly-unfamiliar muscles, opening out her wings wide and clear, spreading them out as far as they could go, closing her eyes and enjoying the stretch and feel of the air as it ruffled her feathers.
After a few seconds of not receiving a response, she opened her eyes again. Her companion was staring at her wings with a somewhat distant focus, his own wings fluttering half-open to keep him balanced on the small cloud, she assumed. "Rainbow?"
He seemed to suddenly shake out of a daze and refocused on her. "Um... yeah. Mostly like that. Tilt them a bit further down though, we're dealing with air from below so you want them mostly in line with the ground. Like halfway through a flap to take off, but spread out more - you want to feel out the air, not catch it just yet."
She followed his instructions, making a few more minor adjustments at his suggestion. She finally got it as he demonstrated with his own wings, then he told her to hold position as he set things up below, and pay attention to the difference in the feel of the air.
I wonder what that was about? She thought as she settled in, concentrating on keeping her feathers spread wide and waiting for changes physical or magical to become apparent. Probably just hit home that I'm different from Dusk. Males and females have slightly different wings, mine are probably a bit shorter than his. For someone like Rainbow, that'd be something she - or he - looks at more than anything in a pegasus...
Then her thoughts cut off as she first felt the changes in the atmosphere, and that held her focus for some time after that.
~-~-~-~
Learning weather from Rainbow was a very interesting task for Twilight. She had read nearly every textbook worth mentioning on the topic, but this was almost more of a hindrance than a help when learning from a pegasus who had dropped out of school and was effectively self-taught, using nothing but finely-honed instinct and experience. The concept still boggled Twilight a little - doubly so because Rainbow was unquestionably the best Ponyville had to offer.
All the terminology Twilight had learned was useless in the face of somepony who had made up her - or his - own names for almost everything, and fifty pages of describing the effects of subtle and careful use of weather-altering pegasus magic were summed up in a few minutes as Rainbow Blitz demonstrated directly, making her spread her wings out wide and feel the differences in the air and her feathers over the various parts of the town, as he worked his craft on the air below.
She listened intently as he explained the various causes and effects of the issues with the weather, how to spot and react to each in turn, cross-referencing them against the books she had memorised and carefully noting where the two did not mesh for further study later. Rainbow's wings-on teaching techniques were very different from what she was used to, but she had learned enough from her adventures of being taught to fly to appreciate the difference, though she had to give her full attention to her friend the whole time.
However, it was surprising to note that Rainbow Blitz seemed to be returning the attention in full. Between their various lesson points, Twilight took the opportunity to explain the situation she had found herself in, and her friend paid just as much attention to her while they flew together as she did on the clouds.
While it was a surprise to get minutes of lecturing in on Rainbow without a snarky reminder or taking something strange out of context, she was hardly going to complain at her rapt audience, never taking his eyes off her and nodding along as she explained what had happened and its consequences.
Her explanation dissolved into giggles as Rainbow, concentrating so hard on her, ran headfirst into the cloud they were supposed to be working on next. She snickered as he tried to play it off as an intentional move, but it was flattering to know he was so interested in what had happened. Maybe Rainbow is more interested in magic as a stallion? I can't see how that would make a difference, but oh well!
~-~-~-~
"The whole thing is really interesting, though. I mean, it gives me a really solid chance to see how the dynamic changes when the stallions outnumber the mares, instead of vice versa. I mean, for the most part everypony seems to be in much the same position as they were previously, but it's clear that gender roles haven't been completely inverted by your previous comments. I could probably write a whole study on this - although it'd probably be problematic to include the appropriate sources for it, since they'd not really be accessible to anyone who can't cast the spell..."
They were coming to the end of their scheduled lesson, and heading towards a watch cloud hanging over the edge of town. Rainbow had again been entirely distracted and almost flown straight past it, in fact, and corrected sharply, Twilight following and settling beside her friend on the cloud, spreading her wings wide, ready for the final lesson of the day.
"Oh, and I just wanted to say, Rainbow - thanks for listening." She smiled at him, her wings still spread wide. "I know usually listening to me talk magic isn't usually your thing, but you've been really focused the whole time I've been talking. I really needed to get some of that off my chest, and I'm glad you found it so interesting. You've been really quiet, though - do you have any questions?"
Rainbow blinked, refocusing from checking her wings were ready to her eyes. "Um... questions. Yeah, I think I have one?"
"Sure!" Twilight smiled encouragingly.
"Well, I was just wondering... are you planning on taking advantage of being a mare?" Rainbow grinned widely.
Twilight froze, her thoughts completely thrown off the rails. "Take... advantage? What do you mean?"
"Well, y'know. Try it out from the other side. I know I'd try it."
"Try what out, Rainbow?"
"Geeeez you're such an egghead, even as a mare." Rainbow Blitz rolled his eyes. "Sex, Dusk. You turn yourself into a mare and the thought didn't even occur to you? What were you even thinking when you first changed yourself? Do you ever get out of that library? Have you even done it as a stallion?"
Twilight's muzzle went bright red as Rainbow's insinuations and interrogations sunk in, her face went from shock, to horror, to confusion, to flustered anger in a matter of moments. "R-Rainbow! What on Equestria-- I'm not a... I just finished explaining-- Have you not listened to a word I've been saying?"
"Hey, I tried! But I didn't really get it and you're kinda distracting, y'know?"
"What?!"
"You're really hot as a mare, okay?" He grinned. "And if you are interested in trying it out, I certainly wouldn't turn you down..."
Twilight stared in horrified fascination as her brain completely reconstructed the last hour's events. Rainbow had been entirely focused on her the entire time she had been talking... on her, not her words. And the whole thing had started... when she'd first spread her wings for him. Oh no...
And now, he was looking at her still, frozen there... looking at her wings, still spread wide.
"So... is that a yes?" Rainbow Blitz grinned, raising an eyebrow suggestively.
She gave a strangled yelp and slammed both of her front hooves down on the cloud, dissipating it instantly and leaving them both with a drop. She caught herself almost immediately before she started falling, and immediately put on some speed, shooting away from Blitz as he yelped and tried to right himself in the air.
Fortunately, he didn't give chase, but she heard him laughing behind her. "You know where my house is if you change your mind!"
She redoubled her speed, heading for the ground and out of his territory as fast as she could, trying to outfly the idea of getting ogled and hit on by one of her best friends so blatantly.
Maybe there are some differences between mares and stallions after all...