Life Ever After

by Goof Theorist

Interlude The Second

Dancing Jenny

---

It was a cool, star-lit night, but the weather schedule had pinned it as really being the last warm night of the season, and Ditzy wouldn't let it go to waste.

She had gone by another name, once. She had lived another life. Now, though, she was Ditzy, and that was what she went by for all the new friends and family that loved her as she was. She had a daughter, now.

"What're we doin', mama?"

Ditzy smiled to the little filly trotting at her side. Letting the girl nap had been a good idea, or else she wouldn't be able to put this night to good use.

"We're going to do something I used to do with your grandmother," she told the little unicorn.

Dinky perked up. "Grama Tilly?"

"Yup! It's something her mom told her, and her mom told her, and so on." Ditzy glanced at the sky. "The moon is full, which means it's perfect. We can see and do the old tradition."

"What tradition?" her daughter asked.

Ditzy grinned. They had reached the old, empty meadow, already.

"On two feet, muffin- I'm going to teach you how to dance."

Both females triggered their reflex. Ditzy had known from the very first minute after Germane had offered his gift to her baby that Dinky had gotten her family's grace. Grace that Ditzy herself was only ever rarely able to show, as a pony. She was a powerful flyer in spite of her condition, after all.

"Up here and take my hands, dear," she said, and the little girl hurried to comply. Both mother and daughter wore plain white dresses, easy to move in and easy to make twirl in the night air. "First the steps, and then the spin, and then you'll learn how a proud McDoogal woos the world itself."

Ditzy smiled, and until the moon fell, two pale figures danced with only the night's lights as witness.

---

Dinner With The Apples

---

The pegacorn -not that anypony would know- awkwardly fiddled with his tie. He hated ties, and formal clothes, and formal situations, and he just wanted to go to bed until everybody stopped looking at him with so much damned pity. But he had things to do, and too little time in which to do them, and five especially stubborn mares and stallions in particular expected him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with giants.

Or to pass on one short announcement, in the more immediate future.

He was just within the property line of the Acres, unwilling to pussyfoot and wait on the road, yet just as hesitant to actually approach the farm house over the next hill. It took a loud, officious cough to break him out of his thoughts.

Well, sort of officious, if the tone had been squeezed out of a tiny, furry balloon.

"'Scuse me! Scuse me!"

Germane looked down at the worlds smallest, largest-eyed filly ever. "Er, yes, miss?"

"Ah'm Apple Bloom!" the balloon insisted. "Why you here?" She couldn't have been older than six years old, or maybe less- earth ponies bulked up a lot faster than the other tribes, after all.

"I'm... here to see Grenadine Smith," Germane finally admitted. "I need to talk to her. Is she home?"

"Of course!" said the filly, waving her hooves to emphasize just how dumb the question was. "Granny's always home!" She hurried down the path and looked back. "You comin'?"

"I... guess I have to, now, don't I?"

---

The Apple Homestead was homey- there wasn't really any word for it. Germane had grown up shuffling between houses, and lately in a building that was more steam read-outs than chairs, and never had he felt such a sense of... this. He wiped his hooves, checked his feathers, and eventually followed after the impatient filly.

The ceiling was low, but the rooms were wide. Typical earth pony fare, cradling its inhabitants yet not closing in on them. The furniture was well-maintained, but broken in. Movie farmhouses just didn't measure up, as far as they stuck in Germane's memory.

He followed the little orange balloon, topped by a ribbon, into the kitchen. An older mare, alive by sheer stubbornness, was at the counter folding dough. She smiles at the filly and glances at Germane with a steady, penetrating gaze. He shuffles, feeling like he busted some neighbor's window with a baseball.

"Olive's gone. Heard it on the grape vine, boy, don't need to tell me nothin'," she said, not unkindly.

Germane nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The night before. It was... peaceful," he added, because that was the best way he could phrase 'went in his sleep' without sounding like a cliche. "I've... there's a box." He shrugged a low, wooden chest off of his back. "It had your name on it."

"No doubt," said the mare, turning away from her dough. Apple Bloom had already hopped onto one of the wooden stools, staring with fascination at the two adults' byplay. Germane set the box on the table and glanced away. Sounds, of an opening lid and shuffling paper, met his ears, until the snap of the box closing occurred. He looked back.

The mare's expression was... closed. Not pained, but heavy. "Going to the earth, is he?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am," said Germane. "He was set on the old ways." More than she could know, he was pretty certain, but it was true. Earth ponies were buried, pegasi given to the sea, and unicorns were sent by burning pyres. "The service is on this week's eighth day, just after dawn. They want me to say a few words..." He grit his teeth, fighting for composure.

"Sit," said Smith. "Dinner should be ready in a bit. You eat with us, tonight. Anypony else in that big old workshop of yours?"

"Just me," said Germane. "Nobody... just me. Maudlin's sitting with him tonight, and I've got the house. And..." His frame shook, but he held it. He noticed the scent of cooking for the first time. "Is that pisto?" He was more than a little shocked.

"Yup," said Grenadine. "Ah still make it from time t'time. And croquetas and fritas," she added, with just the right pronunciation.

Foods from home. Or, at least, Olive's home. He made Spanish dishes for all the ex-humans, for weekend dinners and the holiday meetups and-

The kitchen disappeared in a blur of tears. Olive Branch was dead. Four years in this damned wonderland and Olive was dead and he had been the first to ever come forward and tomorrow night Germane would have to go out in the forest by himself and Simba wouldn't know where his daddy was and-

"Hush. Hush now, s'alright young one." Strong, aged forelegs wrapped over his head and he sobbed like a child.

Half an hour later, the other two Apples wandered into the kitchen to find a guest for dinner, one with a freshly-scrubbed face and a little filly patting him on the wing making 'shush' noises.

---

All Quiet On The Western Front

---

"Get a move on, chico, I need to take care of this."

Germane glared at the old earth pony, then back to the cart harnessed to his own back. "You're sending me to the scrapyard now, of all times."

"Oh, yes," said Olive, harnessing his massive smith's hammer along his barrel.

"With the mad golems surrounding the town and you and Archer as the last sane men in this place."

"You are such a clever one," Olive told the seventeen year-old blank flank. "I am blessed to have you as a student!" His grin was teasing, and not nearly stoic enough for the situation, in Germane's opinion.

"I can help!" he declared.

"So you could," said Olive, nodding. "But not today. Besides, you clutter my building with your... projects, and that means you have to clean them up. So, clean up!"

Germane groaned, in the tone perfected by all teenagers, and pulled at the harness with low, grumbled curses in English. At least that way, he wouldn't traumatize any pony children who hadn't already been rounded up and brought to the shelters.

Behind him, Olive and Archer were trading businesslike shorthand and going to stave off Ponyville's latest disaster. Unless Germane was very wrong, the current weekly crisis was the result of one of the flower trio having been on a date with an amateur 'archaeologist'. Whose talent mark was a half-cobbled shoe, chrissake. Then, they woke up a small army of golems, which had been resting under Ponyville for the last several centuries. Apparently.

'There is literally no end to how weird this place is,' grumbled Germane. 'I'm going to dig even under where those golems were, and keep digging, until every damned ancient evil down there is out in the open in a nice, civilized manner.'

He strained against the harness, eager to dump its contents and somehow sneak back to where the action was. The outer buildings of Ponyville, to the north where low income housing and its cottage industrial buildings were -it was too small for any actual factories- passed by him at a crawl, with each brick he passed and counted mocking him.

And then he heard the noise. Shifting earth, grinding, ancient clay...

"I take back everything I said," he declared, wishing that the universe would see fit to undo its latest snarl in his plans. It didn't work.

In the windows above, ponies becoming aware of the approaching ruckus, and the crowd which had fled the southeast end of the town, began to panic.

He wasn't aware until that very moment, but Germane found that a pony could, in fact, back a cart up via harness. It only took ruffling most of his coat to seclude himself in an alley.

"Okay. Okay, okay. Big clay monsters, and I have a clumsy body with half-useless wings, a cart full of broken appliances," he paused, and grimaced at the top layer of toasters that had met unfortunate ends, "and not much else. I gotta... I gotta..."

There was a crunch of shifting earth. And then a second, closer crunch- that of a hoof bending a thin roll of copper wire. Germane glanced down, and then things went... fuzzy.

---

A tall creature -or something very much like a creature, in most respects, lumbered onto the street. It was three legged, cracked with age, and dripped hellish fire from where a real, living being might have had eyes.

A loud, screeching whirt! echoed out from the alley to its right, a slice of burnt tosat tumbled onto the ground, and a ray of heat cut through the sky with all the subtlety of lightning. Incidentally, the path of the wavering beam cut through, into, and out of the golem's chest. It crumbled.

A maddened, frothing figure with eyes that had seen strange, strange things headbutted a cart out into the street. On his flank gleamed a brand new design, a mostly complete circuit done in gold against the grey coat.

The next golem in line roared at him.

He roared back.

And then he loaded more bread into the glowing, sparking contraption.

---

A young, pink mare watched with wide eyes as a horde of those nasty dirt monsters exploded, one after the other. She saw the stallion load bread, then saw the bread propelled with deadly efficiency.

And she thought: 'Bread is a lot like... cake!'

And she saw the possibilities.

---

Olive looked to the strange young stallion, then to the street covered in still-cooling pottery, then back to the stallion.

"Boy, you are going to be trouble for me, I can tell."

Germane rubbed sheepishly at the back of his head. "I can... clean it up?"

---

Mad, Mad World

---

This, Germane knew, was it. The world had turned mad and sideways, and several other directions he couldn't quite name. One of the most common jokes passed between Equus's humans was that this world was like Earth on LSD, but they hadn't meant it to be so damn literal.

He flapped his wings, drawing himself out of the soapy muck bubbling around past his hooves. A god was out today, walking under the strange sky and spreading his own, unique brand of entertainment. News had been scarce, and the Element Bearers had been acting distinctly strange... er.

They called it Discord, and said it looked like-

"Germane?" Maudlin's voice sounded breathless and horrified.

Germane looked up and found out he didn't have to depend on rumor, anymore. The massive, serpentine figure with so many parts added on, seemingly as an afterthought, grinned down at them in cruel amusement. Six beings stood behind the coordinator, all ex-humans or those in the know, and it was all the mad scientist could do to spread his wings and grit his teeth at the strange thing.

It -he?- seemed to lean in closer, staring at something that wasn't quite there. Its eyes widened.

Then it snorted. Laughed. It fell into the sudsy mud and laughed until it was literally sick. The creature had to crawl away, because just looking back at the group sent it into further paroxysms.

Once it was gone, Germane looked back at Ditzy. Ditzy shrugged. Germane turned back to where Discord had disappeared to.

"What the buck?"

Comments

[Moongaze14]

Great chapter. Nice to see that this story is back.

[DRaily]

Lovely to see the story continue still.

[nocara]

Uh a quite confusing but nice scenes. Ditzy one is very sweet
I am surprise to see something spanish related :)
Nice spanish btw, but I dunno any dish called frita xD frito maybe, but it is for mallorca

[Goof Theorist]

5927821 Yeah, the interlude chapters are meant to sort of jump around, between time periods and perspectives. Let me know if it's too confusing, but they are supposed to give a collage-type impression.

[nocara]

5928540 the firat couple of stories were easy to understand. But the rest left me a bit out of my feet

[Oliver]

This deserves far more exposure than it apparently has.

[Greatazuredragon]

A maddened, frothing figure with eyes that had seen strange, strange things headbutted a cart out into the street. On his flank gleamed a brand new design, a mostly complete circuit done in gold against the grey coat.
The next golem in line roared at him.
He roared back.
And then he loaded more bread into the glowing, sparking contraption.

He should never tell the CMC how he got his cutie mark... never...

And Discord laughing himself silly was amusing.

[Prismmirror]

This was excellent. I love the interludes, but -damn- Germane is such a boss when he gets his cutie mark. How did Twilight manage to make him the village pariah? I guess Germane just lends himself to being an epic anti-hero. No wonder he was described as an urban legend.