Time on Their Hooves

by Pineta


Chapter 5: The First Second

“So that was how they came to realize the fundamental problem of using a water clock,” said Twilight. “Of course… As the flow rate is inversely proportional to the viscosity of the water and the viscosity falls as the temperature increases, this will limit its accuracy as a timepiece. With hindsight, it’s surprising it took them so long to realise this, but I suppose as they didn’t have any modern instruments, and they were using the water clock to set the official time…”

Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle all glared at Twilight.

“Can we hear the rest of the story?”

“Oh… Yes… Carry on Doctor.”


The porter’s announcement caused a momentary panic. Only three minutes until the most important celebration in five hundred years. Everypony had been so distracted by the experiment, the cider distribution, and the princesses, that they had forgotten the reason for the feast. They hurried back to their places. The Abbess remained calm and shouted instructions at the porters and Fellows.

“Put the barrels to the side. Now get to your places.”

Together with the other Fellows, she discretely exchanged places at the table to let Luna and Celestia remain side by side. Order was quickly re-established and in two minutes the ponies were in the proper places, standing silently as they did at the daily ceremonies. The Abbess looked around the hall. This moment was to celebrate the restoration of order to Equestria and the defeat of chaos. It was important that the hall should be perfectly arranged.

“Can you mop up that puddle?” she asked the Steward, pointing at a small pool of liquid where a careless novice had spilled some cider.

The Steward looked around for a mop or any sort of cloth, but saw nothing he could use. It was less than two minutes until the hour. No time to run to the stores for anything. With no other option, he removed his beautiful frock coat and laid it on the floor to absorb the spillage, before neatly folding it and stashing it under the table. The Abbess breathed a small sigh of relief. Everything was in order.

The events which unfolded in the following minute have been held up by many scholars of history as evidence that, at this point in time, the draconequus master of chaos was not completely immobilised and encased in stone, as was generally believed, but that some spirit of the demon was still present and up to his usual mischief, albeit not as dramatic as when he was at his full power.

Other scholars, who have studied the consecutive chronology in more detail, have concluded the opposite, saying that while it appeared to be the work of chaos, it was actually an ordered process, playing out in mysterious ways.

The Abbess always upheld that it was simply down to chance.

Outside the hall, in the dark night, a solitary nightjar was flying past the mountain. Focussed entirely on hunting moths, he paid no attention to the towers and terraces of the abbey, treating them simply as part of the cliffs and rocks that made up the terrain. Suddenly a gust of wind blew hard, throwing him off course and towards the walls, where he collided with a leaded window. Unfortunately the catch on the inside had not been properly fastened, and the crash pushed the hinged window inwards and the poor bird was thrown into the dining hall. Blinded by the light of all the candles, sensing that the wind had vanished and the air tasted different, but with no idea what had happened, he was thrown into a total panic. He squawked, flapping his wings wildly, and flew one way, then another, crashing into the upper walls, then flying through the candles in the chandelier and crying louder as the flames singed his feathers. All sorts of wild thoughts and fears appeared in his mind. Had he somehow flown through the gates of Tartarus?

Down on the floor of the hall, the ponies all looked up at the mad squawking avian visitor, unsure what to do. However the Dean kept her head. Throwing off her gown, she leapt up in the air and flew up to the top of the wall, opened another window, and gently coaxed the young bird out into the night air. Once outside in the dark cool air, he quickly calmed down and half a minute later had forgotten all about his brief existential crisis and was back happily hunting moths.

Inside, the Abbess and other ponies waited with bated breath. The Dean closed the window that she had just opened. This was on the opposite wall to where the nightjar had entered. With two windows open, a strong draft had blown across the upper space of the hall, setting the chandelier swinging. As this blocked her from flying across to the other wall, she called out to the crowd below, “Can somepony close that one?”

As she flew down to return to her place at the table, she assumed this task would be completed by one of the pegasus porters. However they were beaten to the task by a little filly. An eager-to-please young not-quite-novice, with an uncanny skill in running up walls.

Rap was not a pony to miss a chance to prove herself. Jumping up, she ran across the floor to the wall just below the open window, and hooking her hooves onto the moulding of the wooden panels covering the surface she shot upwards, flapping her wings madly to maintain balance, knocking aside a portrait of the ancient scholar Primum Mobile [1], and another of an unknown member of the Order [2]. On reaching the window ledge, she grasped the window—a metal structure supporting a grid of small squares of glass—and pushed it shut. Unfortunately fixing the catch with one hoof was beyond her skill, and when she reached to secure it with a second, she realised too late that there was nothing supporting her.

[1] Primum Mobile (345-397), an outstanding pony mathematician and philosopher who had made many important discoveries. After some early work studying the motion of stars, she was the first to show their movement was inherently random and unpredictable—a fact later attributed to the intense magical fields surrounding Equestria. She then advanced the theory that time could be regarded as a fourth dimension. Unfortunately in her later life she grew increasingly eccentric, and became convinced of a crazy notion that the universe had only two spatial dimensions, and any perception of depth was just a creative use of perspective. Declared mentally unstable, she died confined to the infirmary.

[2] It was a lovely portrait showing a happy earth pony stallion with a brown coat, and broad friendly smile. Unfortunately nopony could remember who he was, and the label had been lost when the painting was brought down for cleaning eighty years before.

Flapping her wings madly, she fell back, and grabbed at the only support in reach—a thin rope supporting the central chandelier. This ran from the horizontal wheel supporting the candles, up to the ceiling, where it went through a metal ring secured to a beam, then across to the eastern wall, and through another ring, just by the window, and down to the ground level where it was tied to a metal support.

As Rap fell down, she pulled the rope down with her, which in turn caused the chandelier to shoot upwards and crash into the ceiling, sending the burning candles and molten wax falling down onto the central table. Waving her legs and wings, she desperately tried to swing herself over to the wall, but only succeeded in wrapping the rope around her hoof. Tugged by the extra force, the knot securing the rope at floor level suddenly gave way. The loose end shot upwards, and Rap fell down, but still linked to the ceiling, she was swung across the width of the hall. At the lowest point, she sailed just above the heads of her friends. Her momentum carried her onwards, and up, almost touching the opposite wall. From this zenith, she swung back towards the eastern wall.

At that moment, the bell of the clock tower struck marking the eleventh hour. The Steward raised his hoof across his eyes unable to watch any more. The Dean stared at the hall, littered with half burnt candles, and upturned food, as the young filly swung back and forth. She had no idea what to do and simply looked across at the Abbess for guidance. Celestia and Luna both burst into a fit of giggles, but the rest of the hall was shocked into silence.

The Abbess took a deep a breath, then stood up and addressed the hall.

“My friends, members of the Order, novices, Fellows and princesses. We are assembled tonight to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the defeat of Discord, the evil Master of chaos, who turned our world upside down, and covered it with sour cream and chocolate sprinkles. Thanks to the bravery of Celestia and Luna, our gracious and noble protectors, he was vanquished. And thanks to the Order—to you and your predecessors, we have lived in ordered harmony since then, and counted the years, days, hours and minutes ever since. Two hundred and sixty-two million, nine hundred and eighty thousand minutes, to be precise. While this day has not gone quite to plan, it is perhaps not inappropriate that we should be reminded that we do not always get it right. No timepiece is perfect. But together we have kept sufficient order to let Equestria prosper, and together, we will do better in the future. So let us drink to good times.”

With that she raised a tankard of cider into the air beside her and all the other ponies followed. The Steward kindly levitated a mug towards Rap, still swinging back and forth, who caught it and drank with the rest of the Order, without spilling a drop—quite an impressive feat given her inverted perspective.

The hall of ponies let out a loud cheer. A group of musicians took up their lyres, flutes and horns and started playing a lively jig and soon a large crowd were dancing between the tables or clapping their hooves together with the beat. Luna and Celestia leaped over the main table and joined them. This was not part of the scheduled ceremony, but the Abbess could only smile as she watched the princesses hopping among the novices. Above them, Rap continued to swing back and forth.

“I suppose we should release her,” said the Abbess.

As Rap swung towards her side of the table, the Dean flew up in the air and caught the young filly with her hooves. She held her steady as the abbess focussed her magic on the rope wrapped around her hooves to untie the knot.

“What will the next five hundred years bring?” the Dean said to the Abbess.

“Whatever it brings,” replied the head of the Order. “We will need an improved timepiece to measure it.”

“How will we do that? The atomic clock?” The Dean released Rap from the rope and let her fall to the floor. The little filly landed on four hooves and grinned at the two Fellows.

“I know what to do,” she said.



Four weeks later, every pony in the abbey was crowded into the Eastern Hall. Row after row of fillies, colts, mares and stallions were standing on the polished wooden floor, packed so close together that they could feel each others hearts beating with anticipation. They were all silent. If they had listened very carefully, they could have just heard the faint snores of Strombol the Dragon, resting on the treasure of the abbey in the undercroft beneath the floor they were standing on. But everypony's attention was focussed on something else.

At the front of the hall, in a narrow space kept clear of ponies stood the Abbess. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna stood in the front row of the audience. High above the Abbess, a large metal hook was mounted on a girder running across the wall. From this a long metal chain ran down to the floor, held away from its equilibrium position by Rap, standing atop of a wooden crate.

With all eyes watching her, the Abbess turned towards the pegasus filly and nodded her head, at which Rap jumped off her support, gripping the chain between her hooves, and swung across the room. She sped past the Abbess at maximum speed and swung up to the height she had started at, but on the other side of the hall, where her speed dropped to zero, before she swung back in the opposite direction.

Behind the Abbess was a similar mechanism built to a smaller scale, with a pendulum as tall as a pony connected to a clock mechanism. The Abbess pushed this rod to one side, and when Rap had swung back to her starting extremity, she released this so that the two pendula fell down together. But the smaller version fell faster, such that by the time Rap had completed a full cycle and swung back to her origin, it had completed three such periods. With each passage, to the left or right, a cog-wheel on the clock was advanced by a peg and a clear 'tock' sound resonated around the hall.

For a while the Abbess waited as Rap swung back and forth in front of her, in phase with the pendulum clock. The repetitive motion and tocking sound had cast a spell of sorts on the audience so that they said nothing, but simply watched and listened to the pattern.

The Abbess walked over to the two princesses to explain the new ceremony, addressing the alicorn sisters, but loud enough for everypony in the room to hear.

“It turns out that a simple pendulum, nothing more than a weight attached to a chain or the end of metal rod, is the most isochronous measure—the best way to keep time—that we have found to date. Provided it is only swinging back and forth by a few degrees, then the time it takes depends only on the length from the pivot to the weight. The chain which young Rappel is riding is nine times the length of my standard pendulum here. It takes precisely three times as long to swing back and forth—the square root of nine.

We have tested this new clock against our best hourglasses and every other time measuring device known to ponykind. It is at least as accurate as every one of them. And by comparing two separate pendulum clocks, and seeing how long it took them to get out of sync with each other, we conclude that it is accurate to a small fraction of a minute per day.

Hence we propose to retire the Minute as the standard clock of Equestria, and replace it with a new clock. We propose a new unit of time, equal to the period it takes this pendulum—with a length equal to the height of an adult pony—to swing from one side to the other. This shall be called The Second. The Minute shall now be defined as equal to sixty seconds. The hour shall remain sixty minutes, and the day twenty-four hours, as before.”

While she was reciting this speech she looked at the two princesses and was pleased to see them gently rubbing their necks together as the best of friends. She glanced at the rest of the audience and saw that they were not watching her, but just staring at the swaying pendula.

“Does the Order vote to support this motion?”

While there was no precedent for agreeing such a move. The Abbess felt that such a major decision of changing the very definition of time required the unanimous or near unanimous support of the full Order. Hence the decision to summon everypony and the princesses for a full demonstration, and to seek their approval.

The day after the historic feast, after the chandelier in the main hall had been repaired, she had spent hours adjusting its height and measuring how the time it took to swing from side to side varied with the length of rope supporting it. She had then spent several weeks at work with Rap and the clockwork mechanics in the workshops, testing pendula of all lengths. The Practical Scholar had made numerous suggestions, and the Dean and other Fellows, as well as Patina and Ginger Root had also joined in the project. Eventually they had constructed a new sort of clock in which the timekeeping element was a swinging pendulum. The power to sustain the swinging was provided by a weight, connected to a chain wound around a spindle, such that as it fell, it turned the spindle, providing a kick to the swinging rod. Provided the weight was lifted each day to 'wind up' the clock, then it would keep going forever—or at least until some gear or lever wore out.

Relying on a pony to wind the clock each day troubled the Abbess—what if the pony assigned to do so overslept? Therefore she had designed a mechanism to do this automatically, driven by a lever arm connected to a water wheel in a similar fashion to the Minute.

The Abbess waited for a response from the audience but they were all silent. She realised that they were no longer listening, but had fallen into a hypnotic trance induced by the motion of the swinging pendulum. For a moment she was unsure what to do. But then a decision was made for her by Rap. The little filly grew tired of riding the swing and let go, sailing through the air and landing on the floor on four hooves.

“Everypony stomp your hooves for The Second!” she shouted.

The action woke up the crowd, and they promptly hammered their hooves on the floor in agreement. Rap gave a big grin. “Okay, now let's go for dinner!”

Although it was not the usual procedure for a novice to order the entire abbey community, all the ponies of the order obeyed without hesitation and filed out of the Eastern Hall, across the courtyard, and into the dining room in the Western Hall.

We just said 'a novice' but if you remember back to chapter two, we said that Rap was still not even a novice, as she had not yet demonstrated her special talent and gained her cutie mark. You have no doubt guessed the new detail which we have not mentioned until now. For as Rap walked out of the hall, together with the Abbess, the princesses, and her best friends, every pony could admire the image of a simple pendulum on her flank.


“She did it! She did it! She got her cutie mark!” The crusaders jumped around the Doctor thrilled to have finally reached the climax of the story.

“Could we get our cutie marks in inventing a pendulum clock?” said Apple Bloom.

Sweetie Belle looked sceptical. “You can only invent something once. I don’t know if you can get a cutie mark for reinventing something.”

Scootaloo was more enthusiastic. “We could try. It might be quite fun anyway.”


The ponies of the Order entered the Western Hall where the kitchen ponies had set out a huge feast. The Abbess, other Fellows and the princesses sat at the plush cushions at the high table. Rap, of course, as a novice, sat at the lower benches among her friends. Following the custom, the Abbess turned the hourglass over and banged the gavel to signal the start of the meal. In this particular case, the hourglass merely timed the duration of each course. The feast would continue late into the night.

And it was a banquet appropriate for the grand occasion. Pastries and pies stuffed with vegetables, potatoes, carrots, swedes, turnips, cauliflower, rich cheese sauces, bread rolls, huge bowls of rice, beans, lentils and salads of every composition and flavour. The food was accompanied glasses of wine and mugs of ale and cider. There was laughter throughout the hall.

At the high table Celestia and Luna sat side by side, thrusting their snouts into bowl after bowl to sample the delicacies on offer, then chatting and laughing together as if their fifty-year quarrel was of not the slightest importance. Opposite them, the Abbess sat watching them with a contented smile.

“Now I think about it,” said Luna, while munching a mouthful of salad, “your predecessor—what’s his name—Fanonical Flowers?”

“Canonical Hours,” said the Abbess.

“That’s him. He said that the water clock wouldn’t last.”

“That’s true,” said Celestia. “When it was inaugurated, he said that it was a temporary measure until you could find something better.”

“He was right,” said the Abbess.

“I just wonder why it took so long?”

“Because the Order has its priorities,” said Celestia, taking a bite of a caramelised onion, garlic and olive tart. “If they had focussed too much on telling the time, who would have developed these wonderful recipes?”

Eventually—after the vegetable and salad courses had been followed by cake, chocolate pudding, sweet pastries, cheeses, further salad, then more cake—the Abbess banged her gavel to signal the end of the formal dinner. The novices and younger members would stay partying in the hall for another few hours. Luna and Celestia had decided to have a sleepover at the abbey, and were escorted to a suitably regal guest bedroom. But as soon as the Fellows had departed, they returned to the hall to continue the party with the young foals. (The Dean would ensure that they were sent back to bed by midnight—nopony wanted to risk that they would not be in a fit state to perform their duties the following morning).

While the younger ponies were laughing, screaming, and singing songs, the Abbess and Dean slipped quietly through the door, taking a bottle of port with them, and climbed the spiral staircase to the Abbess's room. Where, following their usual custom, they settled down on cushions for an evening chat.

“Well...” said the Dean, pulling the stopper out of the port bottle with her teeth and positioning a glass with her hooves. “It's great the way everything turned out clockwork. Climate change is under control. A new clock. A new initiated novice—who seems to have rather more brains than some of those much older than she is. It's the start of a new era for the Order. And best of all, it's lovely to see the princesses as friends again.”

“Yes,” said the Abbess softly, levitating the port bottle towards her and filling her glass.

The Dean turned to face her friend. “You don't seem quite as happy as I would have expected. Is something wrong?”

“No... Well... It's just something I was thinking during dinner. While listening to Luna and Celestia telling all those jokes about us...”

“They didn't mean any offence, it was all just good humour.”

“I know... But... It's just clear that they see us in another way now. I guess they've grown up a bit. They used to respect the Order absolutely. But now that they've seen that timekeeping isn't quite as absolute as all that...”

“They still respect us.”

“Yes... For now... But maybe not forever. Now they can see that we sometimes get things wrong, they will question what we do. Heaven forbid that immortal alicorns should think that they have the right to question the authority of mortal ponies.”

“Surely they wouldn't dare?”

“I guess not... But... What would we do if one day Luna were to refuse to lower the moon?”

The Dean paused for a moment to contemplate the thought before shaking her head and looking back at the Abbess.

“Pass the port.”