Clouds of dust kicked a battered truck across the steppe. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Motor vehicles were rare enough anywhere near this barely-paved ribbon of a road. But this particular vehicle was an even more uncommon sight. There was a pony on board. A yellow pegasus perched in the bed, with all four limbs splayed to keep herself firmly there.
They were in between cities. They were in between clusters of ger, the traditional dwellings, and city grids made from ugly Russian concrete. Both miles and miles away. But the stop was here. Here was nowhere. Nothing but bitten hills, tentatively called green, as far as the eye could see.
But Marigold was still grateful to get off, because the ride had been more than long enough for her satisfaction. She collapsed on her belly as the truck pulled to a merciful stop, waiting there until an old man in a brown robe and fur hat emerged from the driver’s seat. He helped her to pull her packs down from the truck. The pegasus loaded up with as much as she could carry without shaking legs. She tied what was left of her chopped-short mane and tail into elastic bands. Then there was a grunt, a roar, a cloud of dust. And she was alone.
Fine.
Marigold took a deep breath of Mongolia. There wasn’t even a trace of human on the wind from where she stood, let alone of ponies. This road was the only evidence of civilized habitation. But this was all okay. Marigold thought she’d had enough of humans for a little while, and would be able to tolerate this otherwise-disconcerting solitude. Besides, the open space was very comforting to a pegasus. There were no ceilings anywhere for countless miles. After spending so long in claustrophobic Canterlot, it was enough to make her prance across the hard ground.
She followed her nose on a long walk. The going wasn’t too tough, with firm soil underneath her horseshoes. And the sweeping green carpeting of the world calmed her in a way that felt mysteriously familiar. But for the first few hours it was never quite warm enough. She should have come in midsummer. Marigold tried to tell herself that the thick northern-tribe coat she’d inherited from Dad was finally coming in handy for something, but the truth was she was used to Canterlot’s perpetually mild clime.
Around mid-afternoon she found what she was looking for. In the distance, seven equine forms browsed next to an arid little lake. Even from a distance, they clearly weren’t ponies; they looked as though some alicorn had taken the Saddle Arabian form and made a parody out of it, part joke and part eerie specter. But Marigold was used to seeing horses from pictures. To her, they were at once awkward and beautiful. She got as close as she could.
She didn’t even have to worry about approaching from downwind; they smelled similar enough to ponies that her presence didn’t seem to alarm them. The only possible cause for concern among her supplies would be the gas stove. She might be eating cold sandwiches for a few days. Unless she wanted to try some of the feather grass poking up all over the place.
It was almost too easy to be true. The horses merely milled around, browsing or flicking their tails at each other, while Marigold took as long as she wanted setting up her plastic tent. One of them turned her way and caused her to freeze up for just a moment—but the animal was only taking a dip in the lake. The water muddied and splashed. Other than that, there weren’t many noises out here.
Well, what did she expect? A welcoming committee? It was time to begin.
Marigold sat at the mouth of her tent and pulled out her first notebook. It was purple, her favorite color, shielded by a hard cover of recycled cardboard and full of fresh white pages. She produced a pack of one hundred pencils and sharpened the first in a purple plastic sharpener.
Found my first observation subjects, a herd of seven in Khustain Nuruu, Mongolia.
The first thing to do was form a clear picture of this social group. Marigold used her first page to assign a number to each horse and match it with the most detailed notes she could make about their appearance. A bit more involved than trying to describe ponies, because each wild horse was colored the same peachy dun. There were a couple skinny mares which she had some trouble telling apart, but one had a faintly juniper-ish scent, as she discovered when she crept around the lake to get a better whiff. Hopefully that would be enough.
Based on my initial observations, #5 seems to be doing well. There’s only one stallion in the herd, so I assume all of these females are his. A sizeable harem. I will refrain from making snarky comments that personify the subjects.
At least on paper.
Marigold ground her pencil down over the course of the afternoon, tailing the herd as they went on a jaunt to browse for fescue on an adjacent hill. And that was all she did for the rest of the day. Quite a change of pace for a city filly. It would have been quite boring if she hadn’t been waiting to do this for so long.
But she was chewing on her pencils, eyes darting over the animals’ smallest gesture. What was here that a human researcher would miss? What was here that a human wouldn’t even bother to look for?
Probably more than she could fit even in her stack of notebooks. The Takhi were the last truly wild horses on the entirety of Earth. It astounded Marigold—just as it had ever since First Contact—that humans hadn’t taken more time to plumb the precious goldmine of information here. In fact, they were so careless that the wild horse had nearly gone extinct some decades ago.
But maybe it was to be expected that ponies would care more about such things. Just as well. Marigold intended to make her scientific career proving how much a pony could learn of these majestic creatures.
She wrote her observations on every other line of her notebook, leaving space for corrections, addendums, and footnotes. There were thousands of pages of space among what she’d brought with her. Marigold had been saving these notebooks for so long that it made her giddy to finally be filling them up.
Each horse in the herd, as I have noted in my initial labels, has a slightly different smell. Some of the more piquant strands in each subject’s scent resemble grass smells, which may be an indication that each individual favors a slightly different diet. I have yet to learn the smells of all native plants in this region, but I will be able to make more confident conclusions about this evidence once my studies in flora are complete, and once I have been observing the herd long enough to separate each subject’s personal odor from the smell of what they’ve been eating. (NOTE: Collecting qualitative information by smell is a well-established and reliable practice in Equestrian biology. Our noses can tell us just as much about the world as our eyes. I will, of course, attempt to corroborate each finding with as many forms of datum as possible.)
In keeping with patterns seen among mustangs, the herd appears to have a lead mare in the form of #1. She has so far exerted dominance over all the other mares in the herd. I also believe her to be the oldest subject in the herd, even older than #5, and so far note that she seems to spend more time with #5 than any of the other subjects.
“Tut-tut, number five,” Margiold muttered around her pencil. “Don’t you know you need to spend time with everypony in your herd?” Then she shook her head to continue writing.
In contrast, #4 and #7 seem to exhibit a form of submissive behavior towards the rest of the herd. As of now, I’ve been observing the herd for four hours (CORRECTION: 4:27) and three times the pair of them, who were standing together under the lone shade tree in the area, have been moved out of the way by another horse looking to take their spot. #1, #2, and #6 have each dislodged the pair respectively, stayed under the shade for a time, and then moved away, at which point #4 and #7 resumed their original spot. I should re-iterate that these two mares appear somewhat smaller than the rest of the herd. Though they may simply be malnourished, I wonder if they are in fact offspring of one of the other subjects, perhaps #1.
Marigold was determined to miss nothing. Celestia knew she’d been telling everypony she would go observe wild horses for months now. Almost none of her friends believed she would really do it. So it had become a little something more than her scientific dream. When she came home with a field-shattering field journal it would prove them all wrong.
So much for her crush on humans. Coming here had been the best decision of her life so far. Everything was going swimmingly.
Almost swimmingly. Marigold was still bothered by the sky. That cloud layer was so high, the whole expanse so gunmetal and huge. It was unnatural. And it disturbed her just as much as ever. She wasn’t averse to hiding under her tent with three blankets when the sun set, and the cold dropped like a cymbal onto the steppe.
My first morning in Nuruu was eventful. I awoke to find half the herd sniffing at my tent.
My first thought was that I should have been more cautious, knowing the old truism that a researcher invariably affects whatever she observes. My second thought came as half of my right wall collapsed, and the hoof tangled within it crushed my stove. The horses were strong enough to trample me by accident.
I was lucky to slip out of my tent intact, and even luckier to salvage the rest of my supplies by leading the curious horses away. Since they all immediately turned to look at me when I emerged, I surmised they were far more interested in the newcomer than in her oddly-shaped rocks. I set off at a careful trot and got all of the welcoming committee to follow.
They didn’t seem quite able distinguish me from another horse. With this in mind I was careful to keep my wings folded, for I didn’t know what kind of alarm they might engender.
#1, 2, 3, and 7 followed me for three miles. Then #1 left off to head back to the others, and the rest followed me for two more miles. It was a very queer experience to hear hoofsteps behind me—the first sound of life I’d heard in a day—and know that I was being followed by wild animals.
I thought I might discourage them by crossing the road, but I hadn’t made it across the last hill when two of the mares broke into a canter and surrounded me.
#2 and #7 approached the closest, coming near enough to circle me and sniff. Holding completely still was the best defense I could think of. I could only hope that they would lose interest after a minute and let me go.
But more likely they were waiting for a response. My fears were confirmed when #2 pressed up against me. It was a benign overture, but she didn’t seem to realize that she was large enough to knock me over. I had no recourse but to break into an open gallop. And when their tall legs proved faster than mine, I was forced to reveal my wings to make an escape.
Marigold shivered and tucked her notebook away. That was enough for now. She was still airborne. She was trying to clear her head. Flowing air was needed to wash away the smell of wild horses, if just for a minute, and she didn’t want to touch ground until she felt more settled.
That mare’s touch had spooked her. It was so immense, and so warm—the only warm thing in this hard plain. Most eerily of all, it reminded her more than anything of the touch of her cuddly roommate from Canterlot.
What was she going to do now?
Marigold could have screamed for her carelessness. But out here, it wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction of annoying anypony. Now how could she argue that her close observation wasn’t corrupting the results? She’d be lucky if her grant-writer didn’t tell her to throw her precious notebooks away.
She’d had a hard enough time convincing her Canterlot professors to take her seriously—nopony else seemed to find Terran horses a worthy topic of research, for what reason, Marigold couldn’t fathom. And she’d had every advantage at school. Her family came from five generations of higher education, on all three sides. She’d been hoping that the natives of this world would take more interest in her ideas. But it was also a world where research was dominated by males, who weren’t even of her species to boot. What chances did she have for publication if she couldn’t force them to take her seriously?
At least when she came in for a landing, her supplies hadn’t been molested any further. Marigold had just about been making contingency plans to run home, half-expecting that the mustangs would get into her 7-grain bread and her jar of daisy petals while she was on the wing. Daisy petals, she imagined, would be a gourmet treat for any horse living on the steppes, but apparently the airtight seal on the jar did its job.
At the final tally, nothing but the stove was really unsalvageable. So she managed to talk herself into staying. She made a few observations of the local plant life to help herself feel like she’d accomplished something that day. She moved her tent three hills further out to discourage any more welcoming committees.
And she tried the feathergrass. It was disgusting.
Week Two has been quite profitable so far. Today, I observed #3 leading #4 to a patch of greenthread. This, combined with my observations three days ago, leads me to be very confident in my hypothesis that the horses actively share food and feeding opportunities with one another, and even that they are aware of each other’s preferences.
The social dynamics of the herd have also become more clear. There are clear bonds present between several subjects. #1 and #5 spend much of their time together, as do #2 and #3, also #4 and #7. But the herd definitely has a certain amount of cohesion. The entire group is quick to respond to any individual in distress, and though clear displays of dominance have been observed, all instances of aggression that I’ve seen so far have been quickly resolved.
#5 has proven to be a more equitable stallion than initially thought. He makes some effort to spend time with every mare in his herd each day. This is aside from mating, which he is also doing with every other subject except for #7.
This brings me to my next point of interest. #7 has not gone into heat, even though she most certainly should be by this time of the season. I’m quite sure that she is at least three years old, so there must be something wrong with the poor mare. #7 has been examining her for much of the day. He appears to be more concerned about her than anything; this hypothesis is supported by the fact that he took number #1 this morning to help escort her to a patch of unidentified shrubs, taking great care that she should eat her fill, and by the fact that he hasn’t once tried to mate with her despite the lack of signals in her scent. I will match the shrub to its Latin classification later so that I can record any further instances that may suggest the horses instinctively view it to have medicinal properties.
Most interestingly, I’ve witnessed several instances of nuzzling between mares of the herd. It leads me to suspect that I may be witnessing the seeds of Equestrian sexual behavior. Our own scientific literature theorizes that in prehistoric times, the pattern of a single male in charge of a larger group of females was dominant in many regions, long before we developed the more equitable herd system which we practice today. Obviously, forthcoming findings related to the Cross-Contamination Paradox (see Lewisheiner, Jerry, “How did we Know about My Little Pony?”) will inform the field further as to whether any species indigenous to this dimension can be considered a ‘missing link’ for ponies.
Week Three has been a disaster. It—it got worse. I’ve been holding off writing it down, because it feels like admitting it to myself—but #5 is taking an interest in me.
He was the only one who’d trotted all the out to her tent, and circled it while she was still stretching off the morning. He made patient circles and stamped once or twice as if to wake her up. Marigold had nearly shrieked when she stepped outside and felt something sniffing her withers.
And she nearly fell to using the pop-gun she’d swore she wouldn’t use. Wild horses were even flightier than pegasi, or so she’d read, and if she gave in to that temptation she might lose everything she’d worked for.
Instead of scaring off her research subjects, she’d cursed under her breath. Threw a few English swears in there as well, just for color. “Shit” was a word she found particularly satisfying. Marigold had dealt with unwelcome attention from guys before. But this was ridiculous.
She ground her teeth whenever she imagined what her Canterlot professors would think of this farce. All her dreams of proving everypony wrong about her seemed to be crumbling. She’d spent the better part of a year preparing her paper on mustangs despite everypony telling her it was a waste of time. Her elder mother had worried she wouldn’t graduate.
It had taken a rash trip to Earth and an empty bed in a stinky dormitory to convince her to finally chase her dream across the Atlantic. And now she was trotting at half-speed, trying to ease herself away from a horse without appearing to run away. It was motion-for-motion the same trot she’d used to skip out on horndog colts when she ate lunch around undergraduates.
The idea of a pony coming all the way across an unfathomably vast alien ocean just to do this was so funny that she would have laughed him away, if it hadn’t been infuriating. She wanted—so badly—to be anything but a joke.
Before long she was desperate to get away from the stallion so she could return to her tent and hide from the world under a blanket. In that moment, it felt like there wasn’t a single living being in the multiverse who took Marigold Meadows seriously.
But she did get something out of that fury. It must have been her peeved scent that finally convinced the stallion to give up.
Marigold had hoped that would be the end of the day. Observing wild animals 24/7 had proven to be so boring that she’d worked her way through the whole stack of novels she packed, but today, boring would have been perfect.
But the mares wanted to say hello too. Later in the afternoon, while I was making sketches of the shrubs I had seen #7 favoring, #2 and #4 approached. #2 has consistently seemed—and I must be pardoned for yet another attribution of pony emotions to an animal, but there is no other way to put it—very eager to make friends. #3 was always more suspicious of me, however, especially after my first fly-over of the herd on my second day. She tries to turn #2 around whenever the latter starts to approach me around the lake.
Marigold moved her tent another half-mile away.
A boring day today. Most of the herd spent it napping. #3 galloped off to the east for a while, but came back hungry.
I wake up each day worrying they’ll be gone. Though the cohesion of the group is striking, over the past week they’ve taken to disappearing for longer journeys. When they go downwind I’ve often spent days just trying to find them. Perhaps it should be surprising that a wild herd has stayed in one place for so long. The lake must be a valuable resource. But even that can’t tie a horse down forever. I don’t know how I know this, but they’ll be moving on soon.
Boredom made Marigold even more antsy, especially since she had long since finished all her books. She’d eaten through the Manehatten Bestseller list in a mere week, although the English books she brought with her had lasted a little longer. Marigold’s English was pretty spotty, and she’d brought the books specifically to work on that so she could make her journals as successful as possible when she translated them.
It turned out that the effect boredom had was to let the sky get under her skin even more. Marigold had thought she’d gotten used to it, but when she once made the mistake of spending half an hour lying on her back, staring at it, she started to itch. All this wide open space may have been fine, but it had the side effect of exposing her to the full breadth of the dome day and night.
Eventually she must have dumped all her anger on that sky. It was the only logical explanation for her madness. She pawed the ground, snorting at the sky, and rummaging around wordlessly in the grass while watching it with suspicious eyes.
Clearly, sleeping outside of the tent for a few days hadn’t had the desired effect of curing her. It only made the situation worse.
And one morning, she made a quick running start and took off.
Marigold was in flight before she knew what she was doing. The tent, the lake, the herd was far beneath her, and she was letting out a long breath. She wasn’t supposed to leave the herd, of course. Neither was she supposed to show them her wings. But this sky, this sky that refused her its caress—she was going to reach it.
She had moonlit as a weather pony for a couple years in school, since the Canterlot weather teams were an easy gig. She was a strong flyer. Not being able to touch the clouds made her feel as if even the sky thought she was a joke.
The climb was slow. Tortuously so. It had always been difficult to gain altitude on Earth. She had to pace herself anyway, because before long she found herself so high that the pressure difference might have knocked her out.
Naturally, there wasn’t a single updraft to be found. She clambered through the middle sky flap by flap, thrashing against the vignette that gathered at the corners of her vision. It was cold. Worse than down below. She felt as though she must have been alighting on the top of the Canterhorn, and wondered if icicles could form on a pony’s wings in summer.
Her feathers scrabbled for purchase on the increasingly thin wind like they never had before. At one point, the pressure dropped so low that Marigold suddenly panicked, overtaken by the feeling that her wings weren’t doing anything. She was dead certain for one instant that she would fall straight back to the steppe, and for an instant, a pegasus knew vertigo.
She had to close her eyes for the home stretch. The clouds still weren’t close, then—they were as far as they would have been were she standing on the ground in Fillydelphia.
And then all at once she felt the cool blast-kiss of moisture. Marigold gasped, eyes coming open onto total whiteness, squelching out one more anemic flap and then letting herself grab onto the cloud-stuff. She scooped it together into hoofholds she could dangle from, a couple thousand wingbeats off the ground. Tunneling through the cloud from underneath like a diamond dog, she emerged exhausted and flopped to her belly on the whitecap.
“Hah!” Marigold had occasion to speak for the first time in a month. Her voice felt cramped and needed a stretch. So she punched the cloud. “Take that! Not so…” huff, “…big,” huff, “, are you?”
Collapsing again to catch her breath, she shimmied around until she found a dip in the cloud to settle in. “Stupid, big ugly clouds anyway. Probably no point in coming—”
Then she looked up.
The clouds in this sky were vaster than the mountains. A plane of cirrus stretched out in front of her, sloshing with gold-foaming waves under the noontide. There were a couple darker cumulous hanging over the cirrus like tors of a fantastic shape, throwing deep blue shadows miles wide.
And in the far distance, the sea rose up to become a high valley pass. At least, it would have been a valley, verdant with little streaks of green and yellow, if the vapor hadn’t closed up overhead to turn it into a cloud tunnel. It was the largest cloud tunnel Marigold had ever seen, and the through the distant end the sun was blinding.
Had this just…swirled together, all on its own? Whole teams of pegasi worked for hours to sculpt cloudscapes one-tenth this size. Still light-headed, she shuddered to her legs like a newborn foal. The fact that she felt faint didn’t register. She just had to know what it would be like to walk this endless plain.
Marigold trotted the skies. For what felt like an eternity, she forgot that ground even existed. But she never did catch her breath. She was in danger of freezing to death the whole time as well. When she had to fall to Earth, she did it reluctantly, letting herself sink through the crust and gliding steep across the underbelly. The climb had felt nearly hard enough to kill her. She knew that she might never come back to this utterly silent kingdom.
She was still shivering late that night. She wasn’t sleeping in her tent, but she had at least brought out the warm part—the blankets—and laid them over herself.
Something moved. She startled. Before Marigold could get up or even complain, the smell of a horse hit her like a brick thrown from the dark. Their sides were practically touching. And she knew perfectly well who it was.
“Hey, Fiver,” she sighed. “See me flying, huh? Are you suitably impressed?”
Fiver gave a wordless snort that could have meant anything.
Marigold laughed—part chuckle, part whinny. She was too tired to drive him off again, and he didn’t smell like he was going to try anything. Her heat was out as of yesterday, so that would keep her safe enough.
“I wish everypony else was so easily impressed. Not hard to make you happy, is it?”
This time he didn’t answer. Marigold pricked her ears and found that he was tearing up a clump of greenthread near their outstretched legs.
“Of course not,” she answered for him. “Why wouldn’t you be happy? You’ve got six mares all to yourself out here. Of course, there’s worms to worry about….drought. Hypothermia. Or wolves. You can get wolves down here, did you know that?”
She flopped onto her side. “Oh, listen to me trying to get you down. Maybe I’m jealous. It’s not your fault I’m an idiot. Honestly, if I don’t want to be such a joke, why am I so obsessed with horses? I should be studying computers like everypony else. My roommate came out here to study computers. I ever tell you that? She’s living west of here. A little place you’ve never heard of called California. And she got a grant five times the size of mine.”
There was no impetus to talk quickly, no rush to get in everything that she wanted to say. Fiver wouldn’t interrupt. Marigold eased her words over his heavy breathing. Now that she had woken a little, she could hear horses breathing all around her. Near the base of the hillock she’d chosen for bed, Spot and Periwinkle nickered good night to each other. Peach Cobbler was sleeping upright. That made Marigold smile. Peach needed to relax, for she was always in such a hurry. Just like silly old Fiver needed to stop thinking that he could lure her away from his favorite stand of purple flowers with a charming neigh. She saw right through his little game. Personally, Marigold wondered that she was never tempted to play along. Fiver may have been a bit thick, but he was a sweetheart.
“I must be scared of something,” said Marigold. “Hey, Fiver. What do you think I’m scared of?”
Fiver snorted.
She closed her eyes and smiled. “You’re a good listener.”
He nuzzled her shoulder—Marigold jumped up and skittered away, lying back down only when she was out of nose-reach. In the dark, he looked almost disappointed.
Marigold couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, at least I know you’re serious. As far as the stallions in my life go, that puts you pretty high on the list. How sad is that? But I should warn you, I’m a new wave mare. I’ve always hoped to get a stallion all to myself.”
For some reason she thought of the Vespertila Warden back at Canterlot University. There had been one assigned just to the school, and for some reason he’d always had time to talk to Marigold about how ‘wonderful’ it was to have a big herd. About never being alone, having the company of other mares in a relationship, and accountability and sharing and all that tripe. She hadn’t wanted any part of it. Those were old ideas, her parents’ ideas, far too old for her, weighed down and spicy with the smell of incense to alicorns.
For a moment, Marigold’s head drooped. She shuffled in a roundabout way towards Fiver and leaned against him for just a second. “At least you want to keep me around. I almost wish…”
Suddenly breaking out in a cold sweat, she jumped away. Marigold stomped and shook herself. “I must be losing my mind out here!”
But when she fetched her notebook to try and salvage some scientific detachment from what was left of her daily rambles, she felt a bolt of inspiration. There might be a new, even better way to continue her studies out here, and learn even more about wild horses.
What did she care if Nature wouldn’t publish her? There were other places to go. She could present her research directly to Twilight Sparkle. The Element of Magic loved science, after all, and she was in with Princess Celestia. Surely she would find a way to make her findings known.
There had to ponies out there who wanted to know what a field biologist could accomplish if she used the magic of friendship as her guiding method.
She still had bread for a lot of sandwiches. She couldn’t give up so long as she had that. Maybe she would stay out here a few months, and lose her mind for just a while longer.