Chapter 1: The Gentlemare
Ten Years After First Contact
It began, as do so many things, with something unusual in Ponyville.
It wasn’t that a human stood dead-center on Crayonberry Lane, with his hands in the pocket of a crisp suit. That wasn’t terribly unusual, because Day was not the first human to visit Ponyville. He would have liked to be—he had wasted days and nights dreaming of such things—but those had been silly dreams. Besides, he was here now. Better late than never.
It wasn’t even that he had been still for ten minutes, seemingly content to do nothing but stand and watch the creatures which passed him at sternum height. Ponyvilleans were used to maudlin humans.
The unusual thing was a certain trembling which occasionally flowed in waves to his hands, though he would grab one in the other and wring them to keep them still. He was in the center of a picturesque moment, but there was something which niggled at the edge of his mind—he couldn’t remember what it was.
This might seem like a very small thing, but the denizens of Ponyville were used to their visiting humans being made quite happy by their time here. If anypony passing had been sufficiently studied in human body language to pick up the shadow in Day’s mood, they would have wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with this one.
If asked, Day would have answered that he was having a wonderful evening. But he would have been lying, to keep anyone from feeling obligated to inquire further into his life. His suit, which had seemed like a marvelous idea at the time, was clearly doing nothing to impress anypony, as equines hardly recognized the formalwear on hm. His dark hair was getting a bit on the shaggy side and desperately needed a trim. He felt like a mess, not at all fit to make his first appearance in another dimension.
He’d arrived in Ponyville to find that his purchase of the house hadn’t gone through properly—something to do with the contract being in the wrong format for the wrong bank at the wrong time. The realtor pony had been unbelievably understanding, and had opened the house up for him anyway without even asking for a down payment, but by the time that happened Day had already paid for a week’s time at a hostel, so there went that much money down the drain.
He knew that he should have been the owner of the place exactly a week before the date his Dimension Gate tickets had been booked for. So the afternoon had been spent in expensive, cross-planar long distance calls to his bank back home, trying to sort out the mess.
The end result was that he hadn’t even begun unpacking yet, though the day was almost over. He had to get up tomorrow, too, because there would be an orientation at work in the morning for all the new arrivals. At least, if the passenger rail on this world was as timely as everypony made it out to be, there would be enough time for breakfast.
Day could have gone inside and unpacked before going to bed, trying to recuperate in time for tomorrow. The rooms were still occupied by an invading host of brown boxes slathered in packing tape. But it was Day’s first evening on another world—right here, right now. The sun had ripened into a brassy orb, braising the streets in gold as if Celestia meant to make the most of her last hours with the sky. A crowd of ponies flowed in both directions along the alley, taking care of their business but also taking time to prance occasionally in the sunlight, as if they, too, were conscious of making the most out of what glow remained to drip along the eaves.
Day surprised himself by deciding that it was the perfect time to take a walk—a sort of thing he’d never done before.
Although it did make sense that he should get to know his new home. Ponyville was an unassuming hamlet fifty miles from Canterlot, and Day was only here because it was close to the project headquarters. What with his reading habits, he knew more about Equestria than some humans who had been here before, and yet he’d never even heard of Ponyville until the same day he found himself forwarding his mail to an address there.
Although it seemed to have a few local claims to fame. Day had heard that one of the inventors of the Dimension Gate—some purple unicorn whose name he couldn’t remember—still resided here.
The city proper was small, but the streets had been laid out without any apparent logic. Instead of working to get you where you needed to go, they seemed more interested in taking you on a scenic tour of balcony windows and cobbles roads. It didn’t bother him; he had been in this world for only hours, and there was something new to see around every corner. There were little differences, everywhere, tucked under the guises of familiarity. The ceilings were a little lower, half of the doorways looked like barn stalls, and there was pink on just about everything. Pink on the buildings, pink on the carriages, pink on the ponies. Pink utterly unabashed, and almost regal in its prolific volume. Clearly, the color pink commanded a respect in Equestria which knew nothing of its marginalized status on Earth.
Day kept to himself, speaking to nopony except when necessary. He was an old hand at not drawing attention to himself. There were a few stares thrown at him every now and then, and that was to be expected with the way he towered over the crowd, but by large the residents of Ponyville paid for less attention to Day than he paid to them.
He did keep a sharp lookout for bipeds. In addition to the usual mix of donkeys, cows, and the odd griffon, there were–or so Day had heard–other humans living in this town. Apparently, right around First Contact, there had been a number of number of people who were particularly excited by the arrival of ponies, while most of mankind was still trying to figure out when Equestria would drop the impossible sunshine-and-rainbows charade to begin the abductions and brain-siphoning. Nopony Day questioned ever seemed to remember exactly why. But, apparently, a large number of these trusting humans had packed up and flocked to Ponyville, out of all places in Equestira. It seemed like very odd behavior to Day, but he had to admit that this was a charming little town. Besides, it wasn’t Earth. That was good enough for him at this point. That made it an adventure.
He also made careful note of any amenities he’d need while he lived here. The train station was easy enough to find, since the locomotives here were old-fashioned coal behemoths; a great white column of smoke followed the engine wherever it went. He also found a post office, wedged in between a pair of residences, and done some window shopping for stamps. There were no e-mails in Equestria–at least, there wouldn’t be until Day’s project gave ponies the tools they needed to type them. He suspected he’d have to get used to writing letters by hand again. The place was surprisingly small, for a world without electronic communication; a wall-eyed but surprisingly pleasant mare behind the counter explained to him that most of the mail was delivered by pegasus, and so the majority of the packing floor existed on a cloud city near to Ponyville.
A city of clouds! It sent Day roaming the street for high spots, straining his eyes in all directions until he thought he spotted it behind a mountain.
It was after thoroughly losing himself in this escapade that Day’s stomach began to note the time. When it finally complained loudly enough to risk drawing attention, he forced himself to consider dinner.
Luck would have it that he was at the edge of the open-air market just then, and the instant the smell of food came to mind, his mouth began watering like a switch had been flipped. He couldn’t help but suddenly noticed that he was surrounded by a profusion of vivid, fresh produce, including a giant cart with the largest, juiciest-looking apples Day had ever seen in his life. If that was what they even were—this was a whole new world, after all.
At home, on the counter, was a stack of microwaveable meals which pressed against the ceiling. Each one was packaged with everything short of a legal guarantee of tasteless safety. Work was advising everyone they relocated to take their time acclimating to life in Equestria. Culture shock, allergies to alien microbes, and other such hiccups could put a dent in productivity. When he’d packed the TV dinners, Day had fully expected to live contently off of them for his first few weeks here. But suddenly he had to dig his heels, because his palette turned at the very thought of them.
And, despite all of his better judgments, he found himself throwing a bit of caution to the wind. What the heck? It was a night for exploration.
At first he made a beeline for the apple cart, but by the time he got within ten feet of it, he’d found the line, which extended a good deal farther. Day didn’t want to stand around until dark just to find something to eat, so, with a little reluctance, he tore his eyes away from the full red globes. There had to be plenty of other options here.
There was a stand selling cherries across the way. That looked pretty enticing, until Day realized that the stallion behind the counter was charging by the cherry. He didn’t really feel like making a dinner out of celery stalks or raw asparagus. One booth had piping hot beignets, and that caught his nose’s attention, but Day managed to get in line just as the last one ran out.
Fragrant-smelling hay, sold in a large tent, was priced by the bale and in plentiful supply, but Day wasn’t feeling quite that adventurous.
Finally he stumbled over a small stand near the edge of the market, painted lime green and manned by a single orange pony. There were only two customers in line, and Day caught sight of carrots as he approached.
Normally he didn’t like his vegetables any more than the next human, but Day was partial to carrots. His childhood overflowed with memories of buying them by the bag at school lunch lines, in the hopes that if he consumed enough, he wouldn’t need to wear the glasses that embarrassed him so much at school. Day’s nose was just a little too wide to be attractive, and a little too flat to be practical; any pair of glasses was constantly falling off of his face, and being called ‘four-eyes’ would have been a mercy in his youth.
Alas, he was navigating the streets tonight with contacts. That scheme had finally thrown in the towel at about the age of nine. Still, a nice carrot—it had been a while. That might actually hit the spot.
“Two, please.” He held up fingers, just in case he got the words wrong, but the earth mare behind the counter seemed to understand his Equus. She set about chopping the leafy caps off a pair of carrots.
Day looked intently at the way she held the knife steady with nothing but the cleft of her hoof, terrified that she was going to cut herself until it became clear that she knew what she was doing. It was almost magical. For the first time, it seemed possible to design a keyboard that a being such as this could use.
He also watched intently when she picked up his food in her mouth to move it around. But he was starkly determined to say nothing at all about it. With the advent of tourism and casual travel, sprung up a few years ago after the First Contact fireworks died down, the stereotypical image of the narrow-minded, entitled American had begun spreading to other worlds. And Day knew that he was being overly dramatic whenever he felt like an ambassador for his entire race, but there was something about Equestria’s native race that made him need desperately to put his best foot forward.
His travel advisor said it was perfectly normal, and to ignore it. That was what they said to everyone. Many a human shown about this world, with its wars behind it and its social inequities on the run, a world where children were brought up taught to do what they loved and where kindness was celebrated over wealth—far too many a human fell to their knees and wept the first time. It had quite distressed a number of ponies in First Contact who hadn’t been at all sure what was wrong.
And it was a brash man indeed who could do anything but cover their face in shame whenever a pony, eyes wide with what looked like innocence (though it was really just curiosity), asked what life on Earth was like. Crime, senseless violence, and factory farming loomed heavy like the specters of original sin.
The anthropologists did their best to reassure the rest of the species, insisting that it was all a psychological coincidence, which was a fancy way of saying it was all in one’s head. They explained with reassuringly long words that it wasn’t fair to compare an omnivorous species from a turbulent, tectonic planet to an herbivorous herd species from a small, magically-charged one. Ponies themselves, eager to participate in any act of comforting, further reassured the troubled that they were quite used to dealing with both carnivorous and territorial species. Equestria was full of dragons and griffons, they said. It was quite alright, they said.
Surprisingly few humans took the boon of listening to either. Most seemed almost eager to admit, with a wistful smile, that notwithstanding any number of hard facts or long words, ponies were the betters of men.
Science 0, The Heart 1. The bases of the multiverse were loaded and Day was up to bat.
Meanwhile, the mare rinsed his carrots in a tin pail of water and dried them by towel. Day was fascinated by the mechanics of her movement. He’d seen ponies hundreds of times before, but never so close, and in real life. The way her forelegs joined to her barrel, the way muscles in her flanks bunches as she pivoted on her hooves to turn to one shelf or another, and the adorable way her muzzle wrinkled when she stared cross-eyed at whatever was in her mouth; it was all tinged with something exotic and new.
This particular pony had a tabby orange coat, complimented by a spectacularly curly mane in much the same shade as the vegetables she was currently wrapping in brown paper. As she turned to one side, Day caught sight of a colored icon in the shape of three carrots.
The pony noticed him staring when she turned to give him his food, and just as Day made the series of mental leaps and displacements of perspective necessary to realize what general region of his vendor he was gaping at, and just what that might imply. He straightened and tried to stammer out a red-faced apology, but the words got scrambled, made an abortive takeoff from his tongue and shattered on the cobbles at his feet.
The mare indulged in a little chuckling before waving him a hoof. “It’s alright,” she smirked. “You can look.” She swiveled again so he could see the mark on her other flank. “It’s all good to have a peek at a pony’s cutie mark,” she reassured him. “Just don’t gawk all day and you’ll be grand.”
Exhaling gratefully, Day picked up the parcel she had pushed across the counter. “Is it that obvious that I’m new here?”
“I haven’t been invited to a party in your honor yet, so I’d say yes. Carrot Top, by the way. That’ll be three bits.”
“Amadeus–or Day, if you like, Miss. At your service.” He added a gentlemanly nod in an attempt to regain a scrap his dignity. But it lasted only until his hand, reaching into his back pocket, encountered a wallet full of crumpled bills.
His hand crossed the distance to his face like a slow-burn thunderbolt, eliciting a smack that widened Carrot Top’s green eyes in alarm. His posture came to a Halt and Catch Fire stop.
Bits. How could he have forgotten something so simple? The house had been taken care of, the furniture, directions to the center of Flankstaff…he should have known he’d forget something. But he hadn’t stopped to think, and now, only three hours in a whole new world, he’d managed to screw things up. So much for combating stereotypes about humans. What choice did Day have now but to look like he was begging for special treatment? He felt like scum just having to think about it. The only reason he didn’t consider bolting was that there was clearly nowhere to run.
“I…seem to have forgotten to change my money.” Day pushed up on the bridge of his nose, a nervous habit leftover from days when wire frames were constantly slipping down his face. Carrot was still looking at him—looking rather concerned, actually. “I don’t suppose you take USD?”
One ear folded to the back as Carrot raised the other eyebrow. “Not normally, no.” She took in his face and then smiled as if he was a lost puppy in a cardboard box. “But…”
Her eyes closed now, her voice rising and falling as if she was reciting a poem aloud.
Take this newcomer as a guest into your home; is not every mare your sister? You say you want no
strangers in your town, and indeed, you should have none; so shower each one with friendship until
no one is a stranger any longer. (Celestia 29:197)
Day shuffled his feet. “I…pardon?”
Carrot’s eyes shot open. “Sorry, did I do that again? Old habit.”
“But what was it? If you don’t mind my inquiring.”
“From the writings of Princess Celestia, of c–Oh. I suppose you wouldn’t know much of them, would you?”
“I’m not ignorant!” Day snapped up straight. “I don’t just blunder around. I learned as much about your culture as possible.” Though this, strictly speaking, wasn’t true—he’d picked up more than enough about Equestria in his spare time to be a shoe-in candidate for a position here. Who knew how much information Day could have absorbed if he’d been consciously putting effort into it?
“It’s alright, it’s alright!” Carrot Top looked a little alarmed by his vigorous defense. “You did nothing wrong. Och, half the ponies here don’t know any of her words. I keep forgetting they don’t make the foals memorize chapters anymore. They’re good lads all, but in Ponyville we tend to take the Avatar of the Sun a little…glibly.” A soft-edged shrug. “Anywho, you can go on and pay with whatever you have. I’ll change it with Sand Dollar later.”
“Thank you so much.” Day counted out a couple bills, then froze again. What was the going exchange rate between bits and dollars? Deciding that it would be criminally rude not to make sure he had paid enough, he ended up putting three dollars in front of Carrot Top. She could keep the change. “You’re an angel. Just—I really am so sorry about this, Miss, and I promise on my honor it won’t happen again.”
“It’s no problem.” Carrot Top swished her tail dismissively.
“No, really. The very first thing I’ll do tomorrow is exchange for plenty of bits. I simply can’t thank you enough for being so very understanding, and…”
He reeled off short as Carrot Top hopped off of her forelegs, propping them up on the counter and crossing the limbs over each other in a debonair fashion. “What’s an angel?” she drawled with a wide white smile.
“Oh.” It took Day a moment to drag up the word he’d used without thinking. Now why had that image come to mind? “They’re these mythical creatures, you understand…” He waved a hand through the air. “They have…wings, I suppose...”
Carrot smiled lopsidedly. “I got some friends with wings, lad. But you might be talking to the wrong pony just now.”
“Well, no, it’s a turn of phrase, you see. You might say someone’s an angel if they’re particular kind, or beautiful, or–” he stammered. “But I meant kind!”
Carrot took on a hurt expression and placed a forehoof on her chest, just below the V of her collarbone. “What, you don’t think I’m beautiful? And here I thought you were being sweet.”
Day stammered another few red seconds away before gathering the will to forge on through the conversation, which by this point seemed to him quite dangerously out of control. “You’re very beautiful!” he blurted quickly. “That is, I’m sure you are, as a pony. I’m sure the stallions’ heads all turn when you go by—err, that is, in a…totally non-offensive and socially appropriate manner…I hope.”
Carrot Top emitted a loud braying noise. Day tensed up again before realizing that the pony was laughing. “You’re very sweet for a carnivore,” she said, once she’d recovered herself. “If you really want to make up for it that bad, lemme’ bop you on the nose.”
Day made a noise which, unbeknownst to him, was a very good approximation of the sound made by a juvenile blue whale beached on a bed of nails and strong coffee grounds.
The mare’s expression demanded a bit more clarity.
“Would you care to ask that again?”
Carrot Top hopped on all four legs. “I’ve wanted to a bop a human’s nose forever! Ever since they first came around, but Lyra monopolized them all then because of that stupid cartoon she’s obsessed with, and you haven’t come by Ponyville since! They look so soft and squishy! Oh! Come here, come here.” She gestured towards herself; Day bent over at the waist.
Something like a smooth rock pressed on his nose, flattening it even more than usual. Then Carrot Top’s hoof retreated. The pony was grinning at him and flapping her tail.
She didn’t seem offended, and Day did have the carrots at that point. He thus decided to declare victory and beat a retreat while he was ahead.
The anonymity of the crowded street closed back over him; Day seized onto it like a welcome blanket. It let him enjoy his carrots. They tasted much the same as those he remembered from home, but he relished the taste more than he could recall. Was it just because he hadn’t had one in a while? Or was there something about these? He tried to describe the difference—the crunch, perhaps, the flavor—and could only come up with ‘grown with love’. It sounded silly, but somehow it tasted perfectly accurate. By all accounts, these had been worth three dollars, if not the embarrassment he’d put himself through.
While licking his fingers, Day reflected that he’d just experienced one of the top-three attractions A Hitchhiker’s Guide To: Equestria said all visitors should experience: pony-grown vegetables. The second had been a Wonderbolts airshow, and those were in the capital. Day very much doubted he’d get to one of those tonight. The third item on the list, however…
Day glanced up. The sun was nowhere to be seen, and the sky quickly fading amongst deep blue and purple. The third experience happened to be starting right about now.
For the first time that night Day had a destination in mind. He quickly found what he had spotted earlier that night, a high round hill with an oak tree at the crown. It would have a perfect view of the night sky. A little self-consciously, he turned off the street and climbed about halfway up, patted the grass, and lay back.
It itched a little through the dress shirt, but other than that, it was actually pretty comfy. Day scanned the air above—he knew this world had a moon—and found it, just now peeking onstage to the east. His first sight made him shiver. It was immediately apparent that this was not the heavenly body he knew. The huge white circle was almost entirely without blemish, and this might have accounted for the intense glow which began spilling silver all over Ponyville once the sun was good and buried behind distant mountains.
“What’cha doing?”
Day scrambled to a sitting position and hit his head on a pony. A mint-green unicorn was standing directly over him, examining him with a certain sly smile which Day found familiar but couldn’t quite place.
He pried his mouth open, but the pony didn’t wait for an apology. “It’s just that the last time I saw a human lying so still was after I dropped a piano on him. So I wanted to make sure you were okay. Nopony dropped a piano on you, did they?” She pressed the side of one fetlock on his forehead, considerately using the hairy part of her leg instead of laying her bare hoof on his skin. “Was it Pinkie?” She punctuated with a sharp inhale. “It was that mare–Octavia! It was her, wasn’t it? It’s okay, you can tell Auntie Lyra.”
Day failed at speaking for a couple seconds more, shook his head and lamely pointed up. “I just wanted to watch Luna’s night.”
Lyra’s head tilted to one side. “You wanted to watch the night?”
Day nodded. It hadn’t sounded quite so stupid in the Hitchhiker’s Guide.
She pranced back onto her hind legs and clapped him on the shoulders. “Hah! Aren’t you easy to entertain! And here I thought all humans were obsessed with video games.”
Abruptly, she shouted at the top of her lungs to a pair of passers-by. “Hey! Thunderlane! Flitter! Forget bowling and a flight. You want to come stare at the moon instead?”
Day wilted and tried to hide his face between his knees.
He was beginning to despair of ever going unnoticed again. He’d come fully warned that Ponyville was a small town, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone, and had already known intellectually that ponies were thought to be more social than humans, as a herd species. But until now he hadn’t fully appreciated the idea that it could be impossible for him to avoid talking to others.
The two pegasi across the way looked at each other and then started towards the hill. Laying down on the grass next to Lyra, they struck up a conversation while glancing periodically at the sky.
Day lifted his head, not entirely sure what had just happened.
If this was a joke as his expense, it was very drawn out. Lyra grabbed ponies out of the street several more times in quick succession, including a butter-yellow pegasus who had been busily herding a clutch of rabbits along in front of her. Each time Lyra insisted that they were ‘helping a human look at the moon’, and somehow, most ponies took a look at the gathering and seemed to find this an agreeable idea. Soon the hill had a regular crowd, and more ponies were simply wandering in and out of the group of their own accord. A pink earth mare came around handing out donuts at one point. By some impossible luck Day ended up with one covered in sprinkles.
The ponies were just as interesting to watch as what was going on in the deepening night sky. Like people, they clustered naturally into small groups, but they seemed to have no effective personal space; a pony would walk up to another and nuzzle a quick greeting, then take places pressed together or all but on top of each other.
Nopony invaded Day’s personal space. He didn’t know if it was because they knew and respected his cultural preferences, or simply because he was the outsider. He was a little surprised to discover himself worrying over it so much, and chastised himself over his uncommonly lingering stares at the closely-packed groups. He ought to be very grateful that he had his personal space.
His attention was diverted from the hill for a moment when he noticed that Carrot Top, the mare from the market, across the street from the impromptu moon-watching party. The pony was glancing in the party’s directions and whispering with a silvery-blue pegasus by her side. Day thought nothing of it until, a few minutes later, both ponies approached and took seats on either side of him, sandwiching him firmly in between pony hair and feathers. Body warmth flooded into his sides.
Carrot murmured a greeting he didn’t catch. Day held stock still for a couple moments, determined that he couldn’t shift his seat without telegraphing his alarm, and after a few desperate heartbeats decided that he would do nothing about it. Though ponies had been engaging him all through the evening, he had to admit, looking back, that they’d been nothing but friendly the entire time. He’d had nothing to be afraid of. Had he known that beforehand, he might have even enjoyed talking to strangers. Maybe, Day thought, he could get used to living here.
They all looked up as one. The moon had glided with infinite poise into center stage of the sky, and around it, billions and billions of scintillating backup dancers. Day couldn’t believe he had seen so many stars in all his life before now.
In fact, most of his time on Earth had been spent in places where he’d have been lucky to make out the Big Dipper on any given night. He wondered if the Milky Way had looked something like this before all the light pollution, and found himself profoundly moved by the thought. If his own galaxy wasn’t this beautiful, he felt an almost consuming, yet petty jealousy; if it was, he felt a crushing blow of shame even attempting to imagine why his own race would have given up on such beauty without a fight.
The transient twinkle of lights gave the whole sky an impression of an ever-shifting cloth. A web of points which glittered all at once, for a long moment, caused Day to point and shout. “That constellation looks like a rabbit!” He retracted his hand in the same instant, immediately feeling that he must have sounded childish and hoping nopony had noticed him, though they had.
But they must have been paying attention to the heavens more than to him. Only oohs and ahs followed. A second later, Day lost the constellation as its constituent stars faded into the crowded backdrop; while he was trying in vain to find it again, frustrated at the loss, another pony raised a hoof at a different section of the sky. “That one looks like a slice of cake!”
There was another chorus of appreciative vowels. A few other suddenly-realized pictures were noted, one after the other, between the skylines of Ponyville’s rooftops. Lyra even joined in by boldly jumping to point at a spot near the moon. “That one looks like a human.”
“Oh, stuff a bit and bridle in it,” drawled a voice from the crowd. “You just have humans on the…holy horseapples. You’re right.”
While Day was trying to find it, something batted him on the shoulder. He leaned back to find Lyra smiling down at him, her face almost in his.
“Looks like you got the Night Princess’ attention, two-legs! Great party.”
Thank goodness he resisted the impulse to jump–Day would have wound up kissing her flat on the lips. Pony conversation distance seemed to range between about three and four inches. “Is this my party…?” he blinked.
“Yeah,” the pegasus on his right said huskily, leaning in to give his neck a nuzzle. Day shivered; he could feel the moisture of her nose tracing his skin, and a warm spout of breath fluttering under the collar of his shirt. Carrot Top, for whatever reason, moved quickly to follow suit, and then there were two noses touching his skin. Much of said skin blushed vein-red.
“Hey!” Carrot top snapped. “Don’t go hitting on him already, Cloud. He’s been in Ponyville, like, a day. You’re going to make him uncomfortable.”
The pegasus snorted, but mercifully, broke off what she was doing. “We’re just being friendly.” She crossed her forelegs primly and snorted.
“Yeah.” Lyra narrowed her eyes. “I believe that.”
Day, still light-headed, made a series of extremely awkward ducking motions to wriggle free of Carrot Top’s snout. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to wriggle an inch of personal space between the two mares without letting them notice. He didn’t want anypony to think that he was bothered by their form of hospitality. But his vision of acclimating to the friendly jibes of ponies had just turned back into a pipe dream.
He remembered in full-flooding dread what had been nagging him since his first glimpse of Ponyville. He had been trying with all his might not to think about any of the locals here like…like…like that. And until just now he had been succeeding handily, thank-you-very-much.
He knew that things like—like—that—between humans and ponies—did happen sometimes. It was one of those things you just had to know, and refrain from mentioning in polite company.
But in the early years Day had devoured every journal that came back to Earth from human explorers, scouring the net for words and pictures from beyond. At one point he’d found himself lingering over pictures of Equestria, and discovered in ink-bleeding shock that he was examining the mares with more than scientific curiosity.
He’d been aghast at himself, but it hadn’t been a tragedy. He’d got used to the idea, and then buried it. Day couldn’t go back to the way he’d thought about ponies before he looked at them that way, but he could ignore it, the same way he’d ignore the impulse to gawk at any other woman he shouldn’t. At least, on Earth he could. There were ponies all around him now, flesh and blood. They couldn’t be ignored. They even joked about it. These mares were casually flirting with him as if it were a harmless source of amusement–at least, he hoped it was casual.
Day didn’t know how he’d survive the night. He wasn’t the kind of person that got into these situations. Granted, that may have been less because of personal standards and more because most women on Earth left him alone. But he was growing more nostalgic for that old invisibility with each passing second. Try as he might, he couldn’t help noticing that both of the creatures sandwiching him in were girls.
The pegasus had a silver-blue coat that reminded him of his first car, less shiny and yet sleeker at the same time. Her barrel narrowed towards the haunches, giving her a toned, athletic look. Whenever she caught Day glancing in her direction, she responded with what he could only describe as bedroom eyes, and given the size of those eyes, the effect was quite impressive. She would also nudge something, presumably a hind hoof, alarmingly far under his leg, and make a show of stretching her wings in motions she seemed to think must be very alluring. If she was a car, she was less like his old Ford and more a dragster with a pinstripe decal reading ‘Fully Loaded Sex Machine.’
The earth pony on his left had an unbrushed coat. With her hairs mussed in all directions, she looked scruffy instead of sleek; her mane was curled and frayed, and her figure stockier—though she was a still a pony, and Day, for better or worse had yet to encounter a mare without shapely curves. Every couple minutes she would glance over at him, and quickly turn away again if he caught her.
Day tried to keep himself from checking. The nervous way she feigned interest in the clover at his feet made him surprisingly eager to pretend that he didn’t notice being looked at. Besides, he would rather have not noticed. His only goal at the moment was to survive the rest of the evening.
It would be too rude if he got up, left early—too obvious that he wanted to escape from his present company. No, he would have to wait another hour or so. Then he could go home without offending anypony. An hour couldn’t be too hard to tough out. He let himself snuggle into the warmth for once.
And from anything else, he distracted himself by watching constellations. Different stars were glittering brightest in every fresh moment, as if the famous night princess wished to point out all the uncountable pictures hidden in the night sky. Day was just getting to the point where he could look up without losing his breath in a sigh, and he was about to try his hand at being the first to call out the shapes of new constellations. Hust as he was about to identify a fez-clad alligator, it got up and swam across the sky. Day blinked; he tried to track the points of light. With a silence that fell onto Equestria, stars began to dart around the moon, and giant beasts of the heavens to move.
Day threw his head back, plastered to the ground by his own breath, which was left moaning softly in the back of his throat. To look up was dizzying. He couldn’t look away until the constellations had settled down a bit; immediately he checked for panic in every direction. Ponies were looking up in calm unison.
“It’s not supposed to do that!” Day gasped as loudly as he dared. He would have come across something about this in his readings if it had ever happened before.
Lyra shrugged without looking down at Day. “I won’t tell Celestia if you don’t,” she said tonelessly.
So there was plenty for a mind like Day’s to occupy itself with. Ponies themselves even provided a good source of distraction from other ponies. The rabbits belonging to the yellow pegasus had gotten loose, and a cluster of foals banded together to get them back, scampering energetically while the animals; owner flitted overhead. Near the base of the hill, older ponies stood in a tight circle conversing in low tones. However it had happened, everyone seemed to be enjoying the gathering. Day smiled in spite of himself.
Unfortunately, his immediate surroundings were determined to make themselves noticed. ‘Cloud’ cut across an invisible line when her hoof went just a bit farther than Day had expected it to. With a small yelp he yanked himself away, landing squarely on Carrot Top. The earth mare didn’t seem too bothered by having Day crush her. In fact, if he was to go by her grin, she wasn’t bothered enough. Day panicked and scrambled away from all physical contact until he was on his hands and knees in the grass.
In dread of being asked if he was alright, he forced his mouth open and reached for the first words that came to mind. “What time is it?” he said a little too loudly.
Lyra reared back on her hindlegs and pointed to one bare fetlock with the other leg. “Time not to get a watch!”
The surrounding ponies stared at the unicorn.
“Come on! Do you ponies know how long I’ve been waiting to use that?”
Carrot tapped Day with her muzzle, and ignored his twitch. “There’s a fine clock-tower in the town, but you’ll get used to telling time by looking at the sun.”
“I suppose you’re going to inform me that this isn’t the sort of land where the minute and the hour stand on much importance.” Day looked downcast at the timepiece on his wrist, a skeleton watch which he had been very proud of from the time he purchased it until about a minute ago.
Carrot nodded with a hum. “We have the clock just in case Celestia freezes the sun. Otherwise everypony’s schedule would become a train wreck.”
Day’s eyebrows stitched themselves together. “She…does that?”
“Och, she doesn’t do it often.” Carrot drew herself up, responding defensively to his incredulous tone. “Only if she really has to.”
“But doesn’t anypony say anything?” he said urgently. “Doesn’t anypony stop her?”
The mare looked up at Day with a kind of smile he hadn’t received since the last time he saw his kindergarten teacher. “The Princess is wiser than anypony. You can trust her.”
She snuggled once more, stretching out alongside him and patting his hand. Day, fascinated by her texture, placed his other hand over her leg.
“Speaking of time,” she said in a low voice, “I have plenty on my hooves this time of year. I couldn’t but notice you wandered by my booth half a dozen times. If you like, I could show you around Ponyville. Give you the grand tour. We have some especially darling meadows east of town. Oh, you should see the marigolds before they go out of season.”
“That sounds wonderful!” Day bumped her hoof with a fist. “Why, I was just thinking about how much I wanted to know my way around here. Once work begins I won’t have much time during the week for errands and such. So if somepony who knows the ins and outs could–”
The words ‘meadow’ and ‘darling’ registered with the smack of ice. Day clammed up instantly, then turned the corner of his eyes to Carrot. Her expression was amicable, but he couldn’t read a pony’s face. Not quite well enough. He bit his lip, but the soft lull in her voice…he couldn’t dodge asking.
“I’m-err, I’m, sorry for—that is I’m sure you’re not—but I just have to ask, you see—that is—are you—you aren’t—asking me on a date…are you?”
“Oh, no date in particular,” she said blithely. “I could go whenever you’d like.”
“Not what I meant,” Day muttered from behind crossed arms. “A date, as in just the two of us–”
“Oh,” Cloud piped up from Day’s other side. “I can get some more mares if you want! I don’t think Cloud Chaser and Flitter are doing anything this weekend.” Her wings fluttered in the most fascinating expression of thoughtfulness. “Flitter’s been pining after Caramel lately…eh, but they owe me one ever since I helped them put down a tornado. They’ll come.” She inserted her muzzle indelicately into the space of Day’s face, tapping their noses together and causing him to fall back. “You can’t say no to that! Four mares, a picnic basket from Veggie-Flank, and the Ponyville back ninety. It doesn’t get any better than that.” She nodded towards Carrot. “She’s an amazing cook.”
Cloud made an urgent swirling gesture with her front hoof. Day tracked the motion in confusion for several seconds before realizing who the signal was meant for, and just as he turned to look, Carrot seemed to realize it too. She scooted herself away from Day and then rolled onto her back, coming to rest against his side with all four legs splayed in the air.
A host of uncomfortably warm feelings blossomed in Day’s stomach. Her chest was crested with a tuft of coat hair, and it was all he could do not to reach out and scratch it as though Carrot were a dog. He reminded himself firmly and repeatedly that she was a woman who needed to be respected. While doing so, he took extra care not to look too far down, given what he might find. This woman of respectable social standing didn’t happen to be wearing any clothes.
“It would make my day if you said yes.” Carrot locked him in her luminous green eyes. Day’s lungs constricted—why were a pony’s eyes so very bright? “Please?”
He felt poised on an edge, ready to plummet the vast distance into those enormous irises. He didn’t answer right away—he told himself that it was because he didn’t dare to answer carelessly. After all, he wouldn’t be able to bear it if everypony went away talking about how the human, fresh through the Gates from Earth, was insensitive and cold.
Besides, Carrot’s words reminded him too much of an old version of himself. This was Day’s chance to see if he was a bigger person than the women whose forgotten faces went with many lackluster memories.
“That’s very flattering,” he began, “and you seem like a very nice person. Pony, I mean. Pony.”
Carrot’s smile faltered, sensing something in his hesitation.
It spurred him to stumble on. “But I’m in a committed relationship!” he said quickly. “It has nothing to do with you. So—yeah.”
Impossibly, Carrot Top’s smile righted itself. “Oh, that’s fine! I’m happy to date both of you!”
Day blinked. That wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go.
“What?” Carrot ambled her words onward, tilting her head. His paralysis seemed to perplex her. “You have an old-fashioned kind of gal who doesn’t let you set up dates on your own? That’s okay. I’m a touch old-fashioned myself. Ah–not that I think a mare needs to be in charge!” she added quickly. “I’m not stuffy like that. But if you want to be proper, I don’t mind waiting to ask her. Or him. That’s all I mean. I am a gentlemare, after all.”
While Carrot was stumbling through this proclamation, Day was rubbing frantically at the bridge of his nose, and Cloud was using her wing to nudge him closer to the earth pony. Presumably the pegasus thought she was being subtle.
He’d read about this before. At least, an article in the back the corners of the net had once mentioned that in many parts of Equestria, ponies followed old ‘herding’ traditions rooted in primordial, matriarchal family structures similar to those of wild horses on Earth. It had said they were polygamous—or polyandrous, polyamorous, polypeptide—something like that.
Anyway, it was yet another thing one didn’t talk about in polite company.
“We could just go as friends,” Carrot added tepidly. “If you like.”
He dared another breath. “I…don’t believe you know how we do things where I come from.”
“Sure.” She lifted her head off the ground. “But we aren’t where you come from, are we? We’re where I come from.”
“I still think I should only be with one person at a time,” he said into his shirt collar.
Carrot scrunched up her snout. “That doesn’t sound very convenient,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Do you just have to wait until one special someone leaves before you can see another one? And how do you schedule dates? It would be a nightmare. Besides, it’s more fun if to go out all as a big group. Haven’t you ever been on a big skating date before?”
“Uh…” Day creaked. “I mean…that is, I meant–”
Carrot Top screwed up her face; Day stuttered on for a couple seconds longer before she burst out laughing with Cloud, her legs pedaling with mirth in midair. “Sorry,” she snorted as soon as she could breathe. “Dear me, I couldn’t help it! You should see the look on your face.”
Day didn’t respond. After a moment of cool silence she bounded up on all fours, hovering worriedly around him. “I’m sorry!” she crooned. “I didn’t hurt your feelings, did I? You’re a fine lad.” She brushed the edge of a foreleg against his front bangs, giving him an unaccountably tender smile. “Handsome lad.”
“How–” Day closed his eyes for half a moment as his he felt his hair being brushed across his face, then shook his head. He backed away. “I insist that you explain yourself.” His arms swept down his sides. “That’s the last thing anyone would call me. Even my fiancée admits I’m on the chubby side.”
“Chubby. Chub-bee. Is that bad?” Carrot smiled and poked the flesh Day had been indicating, tickling him. “Och, I don’t know about that. All I see is a nice fellah I’d like to take on a date.”
He frowned skeptically. “You sure?”
“Oy. What do you see?” Carrot spun in a circle for him. “I see you haven’t mentioned my flat flanks yet. Or my hair. Haven’t batted an eye at the bit of swayback I’ve got from falling off the swings as a foal. And not to slight this monogamy bit you’ve got going, fellah, but, um,” she clicked her tongue twice, “You sure didn’t have any complaints about my nose a minute ago.”
Day sank against the hill. “Well…I didn’t notice any of that stuff. I don’t know what ponies are supposed to look like in detail.” His cheeks glowed red. “And I don’t make a habit of browsing pony models or gossiping about mares or anything like that!”
She sat beside him and leaned hard into him, making him sway. “But you think all mares are cute, don’t you? We ponies have a name for that, my little scientist.” She threw a leg over his shoulder and gestured at the million stars. “Anti-selective sexual pattern generalization.”
Day furrowed his brows, clammed his hands together. “I must say I’m surprised you know a term like that.”
“Och, no, I just made it up on the spot. Harpflank called it something-or-other.”
Day didn’t resist as Carrot pushed his shoulders this way and that. “There’s a billion different kinds of life out there,” she breathed dramatically. “We’ve always known that. By odds, a couple species have got to find each other attractive eventually.”
“I never said I…” Day looked into Carrot’s face, and trailed off in response to the eyebrow she lifted.
“But when you find another species pretty, you don’t pick up on the same things you do at home,” she went on. “Sexual attraction is designed to help you find the healthiest partner you can. When you latch onto another race, you’ve bypassed the whole system of instincts. You think all ponies are pretty.” She snuggled closer, grabbing him so he couldn’t scoot away. “And I think you look just grand. Honest. I can’t see whatever you think makes you such a poor catch. It doesn’t matter what you look like in this new age of exploration—anyone can be beautiful.”
“That’s amazing,” Day breathed. “Wait.” He spun and looked Carrot Top up and down, taking in both her smug expression and the sly one that sprouted as she responded to his scrutiny by lifting a foreleg. He pointed. “I thought you were a carrot farmer.”
Carrot chortled. “Ooh, lad, you’re not the only one who knows a thing or two. You like it when I talk clever?” She lifted her chin smugly. “I’ll have to catch up on my reading.”
She must have owned a stack of books about Earth and about Gate travel—just like Day did. He lifted his shirt collar over his face and whispered into it with a small, pained voice. “I still think it’s wrong. I’m sorry. But I belong to someone.”
There was a shadow, a silver flicker, and a rush of wind; Day looked up too slowly to see what had been overhead, but now Cloud was gone, and when he finally found her, she was just a speck halfway over the town sky. Gone like a breath.
Carrot wrapped one foreleg around Day’s arm. “All I want right now is a chance to get to know you better,” the mare said plaintively. “Is that so bad? Just give me a chance, Mister Day. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Day found that he was shaking his head. He could dream of circuits that would let magical talking horses type on a computer, but he couldn’t stretch his imagination this far.
He drew the arm out of Carrot Top’s grip, slowly, making no secret of his reluctance, as if that would make things better. She squeezed once and then let go. He coughed, brushing blades of grass and beads of dew from his hopeless dress shirt.
“Why, would you look at the moon? Time flies in Ponyville. I had best get to bed. Good night, everyone. Pony.” Carefully stepping over the assorted equines, he retreated from the hill and into the bare streets.
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Soundtrack: “Moonlight” by BlackGryph0n and Baasik
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For the first few minutes he walked briskly, keeping his mind stiffly on the path ahead of him. Of all the things to happen to him! But the cobbled roads were deserted, and a few minutes of their misty click relaxed him again. There were no ponies out at this hour, and to go with them, no streetlights. It took Day half an hour to find his way home in the dark. But once he made it onto the right stretch of Crayonberry Lane, the rooftop silhouettes gave away the strip of houses with high ceilings, room that had been built to house human engineers.
He went to the only door with a light, reached for his house keys, and promptly panicked upon finding his pockets empty. There followed a brief dance of spinning to check every pocket and wondering where in town he could have lost a key ring. Then he stopped, thought for a moment, and reached out with a single finger to push against the door. It swung open without a sound.
A human girl was waiting for him in the living room, surrounded by half-empty boxes. “Well?” she said in airy English. “Did you have a good time exploring the universe?”
Day pointedly raised his chin, passing by to pour himself a glass of water in the kitchen. “As a matter of fact I did, Alexandra. Did you have a good time organizing your shoes?”
“Oh!” Allie’s mouth fell open. “I do not have that many shoes.”
By this time, Day sported a smile bubbling just beneath the level of open laughter. He cupped a hand to his ear. “Let me hear you say it in Equus then.”
Allie screwed up her face and worked one-by-one through a series of boulder-shaped syllables. The contrast between her words and the sounds from outside was startling. Day knew that he sounded more like her than anything else; ponies must have thought he had a horribly thick accent.
It seemed that training by book could only go so far. Day had been toying with the words of Equus for years, but only today, after hearing it spoken by real ponies, did he understand how it was supposed to sound. Allie had called it an ugly language, and he’d been hard-pressed to deny it. But inflection and the phrasing were all falling together in his head now. The sounds weren’t supposed to be neat; they were meant to tumble and flow over each other, a language like the babbling of a brook as it crashed its way through verdant mountain meadows.
When Allie got hung up on the last word, her helped her through sound by sound, placing his fingers on her cheeks to guide her mouth when she struggled. Then he asked her to repeat the sentence again, and they went through it together, snowballing into a slow, basic conversation.
Day knew she would rather have been out tonight, making a million friends with ponies who would have been only too happy to do the same. But he hadn’t pushed her to come outside. He also knew that she could never be happy using him as an interpreter, that she could only be free talking at breakneck pace with every soul in earshot.
So he kept her at it as long as he could. Despite Allie’s frustration with memorizing things, he knew that she didn’t mind studying when they did it together. It was a blast of nostalgia for days not long gone by. Those days, of course, hadn’t been as much fun as they seemed through the lens of memory—but unlike the college years they’d stumbled through, there was no fear here. The way Day saw it, Allie was confident that if she ever needed anything Day knew, she would be able to learn it from him. That was why she’d left fearlessly to start their life together on a new world, signing the papers at a time when she’d known no more than a dozen words of the language she would have to speak.
He tried to work in a couple of the sounds as he’d heard them outside, thinking that Allie would warm up to Equus a lot more if she discovered how pretty it could sound. Trying to talk like a little horse was taxing on the jaw, though; when she finally got too sore with it, her speech disintegrated into aimless moaning.
“Buuaaaaaah,” she honked, pinching Day’s squashed nose. “Screw it. I’m talking in Seal.” She moaned again. “That’s seal for ‘I love you.’”
Day sighed contentedly, letting his hands drift from Allie’s shoulders to her stomach. “That,” he answered, “I can understand in any language.” She pulled him close for a kiss.
If this mysterious Night Princess had taken an interest in Day, he didn’t know about it. His sleep was dreamless that night.
Carrot Top left without saying goodbye to Lyra. She left when the sky was still ablaze, turning away from town towards a tiny patch of fields set between Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres. The way home was just a sliver of a dirt road around the hill, over which hung the odd shapes of the lone telephone poles in Ponyville, erected a year after First Contact. There was no sound along the dirt track. Nothing save for the earth’s usual whispers, the croaking of bullfrogs and the steady plod of her shoes on beaten ground. Her tail dragged. But she didn’t bother to lift it out of the dirt.
Her one-room house was surrounded on all sides by tilled ground; in the dark, it looked fragile and isolated, a brittle sentinel for rolling hills. Carrot Top didn’t bother to light a lamp. She beat her tail on the welcome mat inside the creaking door, a lazy way to throw the pebbles out. That was as ready for bed as she cared to make herself before flopping into the sack.
She pushed her horseshoes off too, but the last one got stuck, and it was the shoe on her left-hind hoof, with the nail that had been pounded in too close to the sensitive inner wall of her hoof. When she jabbed at it, a blast of pain shot through her leg, and she lay down cringing with the final shoe hanging half-off.
Two minutes passed in silence. Three.
Carrot Top sighed and rolled out of bed. There was nowhere in particular to go. She wandered out the back door, into the yard, and picked her away across the seed beds.
The naked earth felt so good on her bare hooves. Carrot Top gasped, letting her hooves wiggle themselves deeper into the soft dirt, deeper into the thrumming heartbeat of the land, the earthsong which only earth ponies could hear. The pulsing in her head was a pleasant sensation when she didn’t want to think about anything—it made it easy not too.
Every patch of ground had a different melody, and Ponyville was Carrot’s favorite music. The very plot of land where her farmhouse stood was her favorite spot in all Equestria, and she could have listened to the sound of home until she faded into the earth.
But Carrot Top didn’t let herself go that deep, or, indeed, quite deep enough to really forget about the day. The earthsong was the oldest comfort to earth ponies, even older than the comfort of Celestia’s guiding light. Digging herself in up to the fetlocks always made Carrot a bit uncomfortable, even though she’d liked doing it even as a filly. It carried uncomfortable connotations to ancient pagan rituals, to dark old days with earth ponies crying praise to the soil itself and rutting with strangers under wild moonlight. It was an effort to pick up her forelegs and throw them on the pickets of her yard fence. But she had indulged enough.
Carrot Top could see the rest of Ponyville from here, and the moon. The moon was a queer thing to her, far as it was from the earth. It always seemed so calm, despite everything it shone upon.
She inhaled a deep breath of Equestria and held it in her lungs as long as she could. When she let it out, she imagined that her sigh drifted up into the sky, becoming a part of Luna’s cold night.
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Quite interesting... I look forward to reading more! So, was Cloudkicker just being Carrot Top's "wingmare" or will we be seeing more of her?
Wow, I like it. Would like to see this continue. Faved and liked.
Wow, you almost NEVER see Carrot Top. Kudos for taking the road less traveled!
I liked that you showed that the languages are indeed different. That is a nice touch that most other stories don't go into. Now what is really rare is a couple dynamic, he has a fiancee . That is going to make one interesting story as they learn the culture together.
Also Luna is a show off.
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Well, I told myself I wouldn't spoiler, but Cloud was indeed playing wingmare--in just such terms. Sad to say she won't be back. There was a lot of pegasus-related stuff that didn't make it into the story.
Always nice to see someone come along, take a relatively common concept and, with their talent, make it new and interesting again. There may be nothing new under the sun, but everything is new if you haven't personally experienced it.
I can already tell that this is going to be a gem to pay attention to. Thank you so much for writing it.
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Heh. You've made an olden pony very happy. I've been waiting eight years to hear that.
A really interesting fic, good job.
I like it. I know I'm a bit late to this, but this is interesting. Although, the way he was reacting he seemed to want (on some level) to go out with Carrot Top. I thought he was making up an excuse until the end of the chapter. Interesting dynamic that you've built up here.
this is not bad, very much to read but i think i could like that. I don´t understand all right away, but it make sense somehow to make it short.
Holy crap he really does have a fiance. I thought he was making shit up.qq
Gotta say that your interpretation of Carrot Top is very different than what I'm used to. Not bad, but it's gonna be an adjustment.
yush im excited!
Is Carrot Top Scottish in this? Some of her verbal inflections seem to suggest so,
Interesting story so far the usual clash of cultures, I did like CT going out at the end to enjoy the earth song, a nice look into Earth Pony magic.
This was an awesome chapter. I especially liked the pseudo-bible passage that Carrot Top produced, that was a nice bit of character and world building.
Take this newcomer as a guest into your home; is not every mare your sister? You say you want no
strangers in your town, and indeed, you should have none; so shower each one with friendship until
no one is a stranger any longer. (Celestia 29:197)
Okay, I have to say that everyone here is missing the most interesting thing in the chapter. Or maybe I'm just broken, I don't know. Annnnnyway... Your idea on "Anti-selective sexual pattern generalization" is pure brilliance. I've never seen it anywhere else and quite frankly it makes a fantastic amount of sense. Evolutionary psychology is a bit of a hobby of mine, and the idea that once a human decided ponies were attractive it would apply to all ponies seems to be extremely likely. It seems likely a human would probably still have some preferences based on existing affinities for traits like particular eye color or such, and it's likely that sexual orientation would continue to play a role, but the nuance of what make one pony prettier than another to other ponies would be almost entirely lost. Very neat idea!