I followed my ears down the fourth path.
I woke early that morning. Far earlier than most ponies would, but I needed to. I wanted to follow through on my plans. I got ready quickly, but very quietly, and made my way out the door to Fluttershy's cottage. The sun hadn't risen yet, but if I'd come any later I would miss out on helping with half of the animals like last time. When I arrived she was just starting walking outside to feed the night animals.
"Morning Fluttershy." I called out from not too far away, so as not to be too loud, and not too close, so as not to startle her.
She turned to see me. "Oh, hi Sal- I mean, Dolce. I didn't expect to see you today until the party."
I smiled a friendly smile. "I wanted to help with the animals from the start today. Maybe you should handle the birds."
We both shared a little laugh at that. We started with the raccoons, and the bats, and other night animals, slowly moving over to the early risers like the bunnies, and the ground birds. We finished off with me going inside to make some tea, while Fluttershy fed the birds, including the hawks. Hawks are scary!
Together it only took about two hours, and it was still before half of Ponyville was awake. We sat on her front porch to drink our tea.
"How do you get up that early every morning?"
She tilted her head downward and smiled, hiding half of her face behind her mane. "W-well, when you really care for something it makes it easy to do it."
I liked that. "Well, I can't come every day, but I like going to sleep early on Mondays, so I could come by on Tuesday mornings to help if you like."
She seemed excited, but I could still only see half her face, so I couldn't quite tell. "That would be... nice."
The plan was set. "I do like animals, even if some of them are scary. So I will see you at the party tonight for sure?"
"Oh, yes. I'd never miss one of Pinkie Pie's welcome parties." She said in her calm quiet way.
I stood up and set my cup down on the tray. "Thank you for letting me stop by, and I hope you enjoy the party. See you then!"
"Bye." She set her cup down and carried the tray inside as I made my way back into town.
Everything was looking fine, but I still had a few things to get done. Nothing all that important, but still something that I needed to do. I had to write my cousin a letter. A letter in our special strange code of using musical notes to tell each other something. To most it would look like a strange song that you couldn't really listen to, but to us it was always meaningful. She'd want to hear about the decisions I'd made, and not just the one about the party. I went back to my temporary residence at Rarity's, and got to writing. It didn't take long.
I still had a long while before the party, and had little idea what to do with my time. I decided to gather some materials for a spell. Some leaves, sticks, string, and paper. I then lay them out on the bed on either side of myself. The spell was a rather complex alteration of materials, and I had learned it a long time ago from a great teacher, and a crumbling scroll. The scroll was too damaged to recover the whole spell, and now I was the only pony that knew it, but I wasn't sure I was powerful enough to do it alone. I started casting it, and the materials aligned. The sticks forming the frame, the string connecting them to each other and the leaves, the leaves forming the feathered texture as well as the pseudo muscle, and the paper forming the pseudo skin. The sticks aligned properly, and the string began to hold them in place. The leaves began knitting into muscle as the outer layer easily formed the feathers. The feathers were the easiest part of the spell. The paper began to turn into skin wrapping everything up nicely. The paper was halfway done, the leaves were three quarters, and the sticks were hardening to be more like bone, but I was at my limit. Exhausted I broke the spell, and the materials returned to normal. I would be without magic for a few minutes at least from that. It was just too much to do on my own. I lay there making sure not to fall asleep until I felt good enough to walk again. I carried the sticks and leaves back outside, and put the paper away where it should be.
With nothing else to do for the next few hours I decided to help set up at the party. I grabbed my pristinely finished suit, and made my way to Sweet Apple Acres to help. I was greeted at the gate by an enthusiastic little filly who asked a lot of questions very quickly. I answered as best as I could. "It's pronounced dole-chey, but spelled D O L C E." "It means sweet." "I'm rather good with sewing machines." "No." "I don't know my dress size." "I can't tell your dress size by looking." She asked as many as she could between the gate and the door of the barn. We were still about twenty yards away when she asked the big one.
"How did you get your cutie mark?"
Since I was going to tell everypony at the party later I decided to have some fun. I made sure no one was in earshot, then leaned close to whisper. "It's fake." I stepped back, and moved my hoof past the area while my horn glowed, making it disappear, then reappear with a second passing.
She stood there slack-jawed, and I made my way inside.
"Want any help setting up?" I called out to the several ponies moving around inside of the barn including Pinkie, a white pegasus that looked a lot like Pinkie, the AJ and her big brother Mac, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash who was resting in the rafters until it was time to hang banners and streamers.
AJ spoke up first. "Ah reckon we could use a little help setting up the stage."
Pinkie jumped in second. "You're not supposed to help set up your own welcome party! Where's the fun in that?"
I just smiled. "It's always fun setting up something that will be fun for somepony else."
She thought for a moment. "True, true, I guess I can let it slide, but for your next welcome party you don't get to set up."
"Deal." I made my way to the stage wondering if I would have another welcome party or if this would be my last one. I could have welcome parties for things other than moving somewhere I guess. The stage was in multiple pieces and needed to be lifted, hammered together, and otherwise attached to the other parts of the stage so that it could support itself, a band, instruments, and an acrobatics team at the same time. At least that's what Pinkie Pie said. I didn't think there would be an acrobatics team. Set up of everything took almost the rest of the time until the party. At several points the pegasus that I had since learned was named Surprise had lived up to her name and jumped out of things several times near myself and the others, but I held my composure enough to keep my illusion from failing. Toward the end Pinkie Pie, she, and I were talking about the party. "Toward the end I have a little speech I'd like to give with a few surprises in it."
They responded at the exact same time. "Ooh! Ooh! What's the surprise? Tell me. Tell me, TELL ME!" Then the looked at each other, and giggled. "Jinx." They then both sealed their mouths.
"Pinkie Pie, Surprise, come on. You know the rule. If I tell you it's not a surprise. Though three ponies that I think will be at the party already know about it." For about a half an hour I had to keep not answering any of their questions about what it was, then it was time to set up the food tables.
With everything in place I changed into my suit, and started greeting the early arrivals. Three little fillies were spying from behind a corner, but walked up when the stream of ponies showing up died down for a bit. They stood in front of me and gestured for me to bend down to have a more private conversation. I did as I was bade.
Apple Bloom spoke first, making sure to whisper. "Show them what you showed me earlier, because Scoots doesn't believe me, and Sweetie Belle wants to know how to do it."
Scootaloo responded. "Faking a cutie mark? That doesn't make any sense."
I just smirked playfully. "I can't really do that right now because it would ruin the surprise for later but..." My horn glowed and my eye color changed a few times before returning to the color for my disguise. "I've always been good at illusions."
The fillies began whispering on top of each other, Apple Bloom, then Sweetie Belle, then Scootaloo, then too much of a muddled mess for me to tell who was talking.
"See, I told ya he could do it."
"Show me how. That was so cool, and I would totally show Diamond Tiar-"
Scootaloo cut her off. "Whoa, how did you do that that was so cool!" She was almost not whispering.
I laughed, and walked inside to enjoy the party.
The decorations were very colorful, including welcome banners, and bright table cloths, and the food provided mostly by the Apple Family but also by Sugar Cube Corner and a few smaller local places was very pleasant. There was a DJ, but a few ponies that wanted to play did, and even a few amateur bands. They weren't... awful, but this could easily have been their first gig. I found Fluttershy in a corner. She had been talking with few of the others that had helped save Equestria, but Twilight had gone off talking to someone else, Pinkie was getting some food and then having fun on the dance floor, Dash was showing off, AJ was making sure that nothing got broken in her barn, and Rarity was showing off her dress to a few colts, and a baby dragon. "Are you enjoying yourself."
She smiled, but hid behind her mane. "It's... nice."
"Nice? I guess it is. Quite lively." It wasn't hard to tell that she wasn't the biggest party pony. "Should I tell them all the surprise early on, or wait until the party is almost over so that I don't ruin the mood."
She looked slightly shocked, but it was probably her stage fright imagining what it would be like if she was doing something like that. "I... I'd wait until the party was almost over. The crowd might be smaller by then."
"Well that's the issue. I want to tell everypony at once, but I want to keep the party fun. It can't wait TOO long, or I'll only be telling a hoofful of ponies, instead of the whole town. It'll ruin the grand opening."
She raised the eyebrow that I couldn't see, but I could tell by how the rest of her face moved what she had done. "Grand opening?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Since I'm moving to town I'll be opening a workshop. Basically for nothing but the cost of supplies anyone that wants to can come in and make whatever they know how to make, or whatever they want to try. Painting, watchmaking, sewing, you name it. Everything I've ever learned how to do."
She giggled a little. "You were a watch maker?"
"Yeah." I smiled. "I was pretty good at it too. It can be a pretty good way to clear your head, but it just wasn't my thing."
We kept on talking on simple topics for a while, interrupted by other ponies saying hello to her, and welcoming me to town. I also caught Surprise trying to listen in a few times to find out what my surprise was going to be, but she never heard anything. The fifth time I caught her I did have to ask her something, though.
My magic pulled her out from under a nearby table by her tail that had been sticking out, though I made sure it wouldn't hurt her. "It was going to just be an announcement, but how flashy should I make it?"
Her eyes lit up, and her smile was huge. "From one to ten?" I nodded. "Fireworks and a guitar solo."
It might not have been on a scale from one to ten, but I think I got what she meant. "I don't play guitar, but I think I have something in mind."
I let her go and she left after asking five more times what the secret was, and me not telling her each time. She saw something that looked fun gasped, and flew off toward it disappearing into the crowd. Neither of us had had food since the party started, so I got some snacks, drinks, and some real food for the two of us, and brought it back to our corner. We ate, and talked for a while longer. Admittedly I did most of the talking, and she did most of the blushing, hiding behind her mane, and making cute squeaky noises, but it was still a nice conversation.
I spotted the perfect time for my announcement. "Surprise time. This should be fun. Meet you right here afterward?"
"That would be wonderful." She said it in her small voice that I could barely hear over the rest of the party, but it was more forward than she usually was, and I liked it.
I smiled. "I'll come right back." No one had really left yet, but the party was definitely past the peak and about to wind down to where they would start leaving, so I took the stage. The DJ was just finishing a song, so I tapped her shoulder, and asked for the stage. She nodded, and stepped aside.
After a few moments of looking on stage I found what I was looking for, two violins. I asked her to play a simple track that I had heard earlier that worked with my plans. It had a long build up, so I used that part for talking.
"Attention, everypony. I have two announcements. One is that tomorrow will be the sneak peak opening of my new workshop in town, and two... is this." As the music picked up I began playing one violin by hoof. I started simple, then after about twelve seconds I took it and the other violin with my magic, and kept both going. I had only played violin with techno a few times, but I did it well enough. I got a few cheers from the crowd. As the song progressed I stood on my hind legs, threw my head back, and held my forelegs to the sky as slowly my mane and coat changed back to their normal color. Cheers turned to muttering, and by the time I'd finished changing back to Salieri Starr they had turned back to cheers amongst confusion. I only saw one pony faint. I dropped back to all fours to finish my solo before speaking again, but keeping the violins going. "Please save your questions for tomorrow, and enjoy the rest of the party." The song finished soon after, and with that I blinked back to the corner.
Fluttershy was giggling when I appeared next to her, then was startled a bit.
Surprising her was fun. I had a big snarky smile as I spoke. "I take it you liked it."
She calmed down a bit before responding. "Yes." She giggled again. "They didn't expect it at all."
"Thank you, thank you." My smile softened. "I'm probably going to be surrounded for the rest of the party, once the others notice that I'm back here now. I can't wake up that early every day, but how about I help you with your animals every Tuesday?"
Her eyes lit up just a little bit. "That would be wonderful."
"It's a date." I meant it just as the expression, but I did see her blush before my head was turned toward Pinkie Pie and a pretty much perfect image of her as a pegasus.
This time they alternated words instead of talking in unison, but said the last word at the same time. Starting with Pinkie.
"That,"
"Was,"
"Totally,"
"Completely,
"Super,"
"Mega-triple,"
"Awesome!"
They were silly.
"Well thank you. It's been years since I've really been the real me. It'll be good to not have to keep up a facade, even if I won't get to relax for a while."
Pinkie could hardly hold herself in long enough for me to finish talking. "So you're really him? I mean you're really you? I mean... You're Salieri Starr the guy who played four string instruments at once and got to play at a bunch of super awesome super fancy parties when you were just a kid?!?"
I shrugged. "Surprise."
She chimed in. "Yes?"
We all giggled before they asked more questions and all but dragged me from my seat. I steered the conversation more toward jokes and other things while the party continued on. I did not get more than a few minutes at a time without questions, but I kept telling everyone that tomorrow at the store was when the Q&A would be. It was well past dark when the party ended, but still only around ten. As the focus of the party I was one of the last to walk out the door. I thanked Pinkie and her peculiarly similar pegasus pal for throwing the party. Then asked the question that I had to ask. "Are you two related? Other than colors and wings you're practically identical."
The looked at each other, shrugged, and giggled in unison.
I thanked the Apples for letting us use the barn, and said my last goodbyes, then went to my new permanent residence for my first night asleep there. After a shower I slept soundly.