Chapter 8: Resistance
And a Derpy Hooves Cameo
The citizens of Ponyville took care to spend time getting to know each other again in the weeks after Princess Twilight’s ascension. The conviviality in the air pleased Carrot Top to no end. Even Day showed his face outside more often.
As she leaned onto her fence, relaxing after an hour of laying mulch, she could see the human across the street with a cluster of stallions, playing a game of hoofball on the emerald lawn by the old Ponyville hill.
She wasn’t sure if they’d bothered telling Day the rules; whenever he got the ball, he would run in a direction that vaguely indicated a goal near his opponents’ side of the field, but he seemed to have a hard time remembering which ponies were on what team. He was far from the fastest, either. But the energetic equine athletes would let him carry the ball a few yards just for sportsmanship before taking him out at the knees, and snout-bopping the ball out of his arms as he tumbled.
“Surprise, surprise, Carrot Top’s in her garden.” Carrot turned to found that Lyra had let herself in through the gate. She hopped her forelegs onto Carrot’s fence herself. “I might just join you this time. It’s a beautiful day.”
Carrot Top’s gaze drifted back towards the human, who was trying to execute an interception by jumping over another pony. “You can say that again,” she sighed with a dreamy smile.
Lyra waved a hoof in front of her face. Carrot snapped out of her trance, frowning at the green mare. Lyra giggled.
“Oh!” Carrot Top threw herself back to all fours, stamping her hooves on the ground in frustration. “I’m not supposed to be doing that! That’s the third time today!”
Lyra leaned in, concerned. “Third? How’d you find time to water any of those wilting asparagus over there?”
“Uh…” Carrot briskly swung away from her fence and grabbed a nearby watering can, turning out the rest of its contents over the neglected greenery. “I’m still getting things done! It’s just ….all these lost minutes are going to add up if I don’t get back to work.”
“You were standing there for half an hour, filly.” Carrot winced as the unicorn trotted after her. She leaned into to give her addled friend a nuzzle for comfort, then stopped, inhaled deeply, and sniffed around Carrot’s barrel.
“Mmm...” Her ears twisted thoughtfully, and then she leaned in close to whisper, even though there was nopony else within earshot. “Your time of the season?”
“Getting there.” Carrot sighed deeply. “I can feel it coming on. Not too bad yet. A little pain in the morning sometimes.”
Lyra glanced back over to the stallions’ game. Then back to Carrot Top.
Carrot shrugged, as if to ask what she was meant to do about it. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most productive view to have while riding the big one, but what could she do? Most certainly not go around telling other ponies about her private matters so they would move the game. Even the rustiest old gentlemare had an appreciation for the basic points of discretion.
“You’d better stay away from him, then.” Lyra pointed.
“I know. I’ll do something I’ll regret if I don’t.” Carrot swung her head back towards Day, then, remembering in a moment, snapped it back. “I’m not the best at handling these. My first big one didn’t even come until I was twelve.”
Lyra nodded, withers shaking with silent laughter. But she didn’t allow herself to be taken off-track. “Are you still going in at the Café? Or did they ask you stay home?” She leaned in and narrowed her eyes sternly. “You did talk to Sourdough about this, right?”
Lips pressed together, Carrot shook her head. “I won’t work there this week.”
“Okay. Better on the safe side, I suppose. Got a good supply of things to keep you busy?”
Carrot nodded. “And the river is only a hop and a skip away.” She looked dolefully towards a twist of the Candywine; Ponyville’s creek could be seen through a crack in the knolls between here and Sweet Apple Acres. “The nice, cold river.”
“Good.” Lyra nuzzled her. She spent another moment in thought, then looked over Carrot’s back toward Day again. “Have you thought about…well, not telling Day. But maybe letting Allie know, just in case?”
Carrot Top declined vigorously. “I haven’t even explained it to her,” she said. “I feel like it would be pushing, and I don’t want to push her. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know how it works…” She sidled up nearer to Lyra. “Did you know that human women are on all the time?”
Lyra attempted and failed to stifle a self-satisfied smile showing through her eyes. “There’s not a lot I don’t know about the human reproductive system, honey.”
Carrot Top had found the idea incredibly kinky, not to mention unnerving. It had explained a lot of things she saw on Earth, though.
And it probably had its upsides. Being a fillyfooler whose partner was never in heat at the same time was a stupidly frustrating experience, and led to all sorts of undignified antics in the attempt to reschedule one’s own body.
Not to mention the fact that Allie, apparently, would never have to deal with what Carrot was going through now, with its attendant aches, queasiness, or distractedness.
A mare ran through their normal heat every two to three weeks, her sex drive cycling on and off in a rhythm that was easy—second nature—to deal with. But Equestrian mares also had larger, overarching cycles, and those were either lots of fun, or absolutely no fun at all, depending on one’s marital status.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself in hoof. If you need anything, let me know, okay?” Lyra turned to go and stopped at the gate. “But you can’t borrow Tom,” she added flippantly.
The earth pony chuckled darkly. “It’s not like I’ve never done this before, Lyra. I don’t think it will come to that.”
Carrot Top passed the days keeping herself busy, and trying not to think too much about Day. She didn’t really expect too much trouble just because of her newly discovered feelings for Day. Carrot Top was an expert at keeping busy, and from the wide acres of her home, it wasn’t hard to cut down on her interactions with the general public whenever it became a strain. The hours of her market stand were entirely up to her whim, after all.
She passed Wednesday morning much like all the others, viciously and laboriously eradicating every single weed in both the front and back fields. She even gnawed away the grasses encroaching on her fences until all her gardens were an immaculate picture of brown loam and delicious vegetables. It wasn’t quite the epic feat it normally would have been, given that she’d gone through this exact same process on the previous three mornings—the weeds couldn’t grow back fast enough to keep up with her anymore. It was only noon when she stood surveying her work, but Carrot decided that she ran the risk of worrying her plants to death if she kept at it any longer. So she made herself a nice carrot stew, a slow-simmered recipe from Mother which she hadn’t taken the time to treat herself to in ages.
She planned out the rest of her day while sitting in the field, blowing steam off her soup. At some point, she ought to sell what was left of her picked carrots at market, but then again, nopony would be expecting her there today. This was normally one of the days she waited tables at the café. Maybe it would be better to go tomorrow.
So she went in and read the latest Daring Do novel instead, picked off the top of a stack of books stockpiled from the library beforehoof. She lay down in a sunny spot and decided to just read the whole thing cover to cover. Daring Do had never come off as a particularly three-dimensional character to her—brash, full of one-liners, and, to be frank, just a bit sexist—but Carrot Top had always had a soft spot for Ahuizotl.
Although, the author seemed to be adding more and more pointless side characters with every addition to the never-ending train of sequels. Far too much of each chapter in Daring Do and the Fires of the Golden Ziggurat was taken up by some fresh-faced white stallion who was clearly only present as a love interest. It was almost amusing how far away Carrot could see the kiss coming—when Daring and her new companion had no choice but to spend the night in the same hammock, suspended over a pit of vipers, and he shared a soulful sob story about his unhappy childhood amongst much tossing and turning and blushing and accidental brushing of feathers. When the ponies found themselves pressed side-to-side thanks to his own endearing clumsiness, Daring stared into his deep grey eyes for a moment, then slowly, as if dipping her leg into a pool of water to test the temperature, hooked the cleft of her hoof under his chin and pulled his muzzle into hers, so she could tug at his lower lip–
Carrot abruptly tossed the book over her withers, got up, paced a circle, and sat back down. She grabbed the next book off of her stack.
It happened to be an issue of Mare’s Guide to Adventurous Dating, from the best-selling line by Dazzleflap–in particular, the Humans volume. Carrot Top, since she began turning pages without really looking at the title, found herself diving into a wonderfully informative exploration of various Earth cultures, including stunning photos of places she had never seen before: the Pyramids, the Moai Statues, the Forbidden Palace. She successfully lost herself in between lines of text for an hour.
But there was a table of contents, too. When the next chapter turned out to be nothing but a beginner’s guide to learning English, which Carrot Top was just about fluent in by this point, she found herself using it to flip to next section that really caught her eye.
‘To kiss a human, you’ll want to come in at an angle so that you don’t crush his nose. Just tilt your head about twenty degrees to one side, and you should come together perfectly. Now, when you do, because his face is so flat, your lips could actually be pressed against his entire mouth at once. It’s kind of weird, but once you get used to it, some humans definitely like it when you sink into the kiss a little and cover their mouth.
The best kiss with a human is nice and long. You’ll know what I’m talking about once you get into it. There are a few different things he might try to do, like cupping your head with his hands, or move along the side of your muzzle some. Pretty much all the normal human practices—and they have plenty of imagination—work out fine, so you don’t have to worry too much about what he might try to do.
The only thing that can end up awkwardly is if he tries to put his tongue in your mouth. It surprised the feathers off me the first time I experienced it, but apparently back home, they all think it’s incredibly hot. You can make it work with a little practice if you feel curious enough to try; when you feel him going for it, the best thing to do is carefully push your own tongue a little ways into his mouth, and keep it on top of his. Since his tongue is a lot smaller, this will keep him from getting lost short of the roof of your mouth, and let him explore your bottom teeth. In our mares’ experience so far this should keep him happy…'
Carrot Top realized what she was reading a few paragraphs in, cued off by the fire on her face and in other regions. Desperately, humming an old folk tune, she slammed the book shoot, trotted to her door–then turned back and hid the book under her bed, all before dashing outside. She could move on with the rest of her day out of the house.
But first she galloped to the river and took a flying leap into the crystal blue.
Carrot Top had plenty of other things to do. A good long walk in the woods, for instance, which she could extend by bringing along her notebook and cataloguing all the forest creatures she saw. The exercise was mostly pointless, but it was technically a favor to Fluttershy. The pegasus was ostensibly supposed to be performing wildlife research, as the official animal tamer of Ponyville, and this would give her something to show if she was ever pressed about her non-existent findings.
It had been a wonderful idea to ask dear Fluttershy if there were any chores Carrot could do out here. A little bit of brisk wind, sunshine, a couple stands of beech, and Carrot Top was feeling right as rain again. Yes, just fine! Her coat dried out in minutes under the sun, and even her mane was well on its way to recovery, though there was no escaping the frizz at this point.
If she made a through survey of the Everfree outskirts, some of the safer trails near Zecora’s hut, she could even stretch out this walk until nightfall. That would be just about perfect.
But as she was recording the happy tumble of a hedgehog through a rotten log, Carrot Top’s attention drifted from her mouthwriting, and before she knew it she was hearing the snap of her quill breaking against the notebook. She grumbled quietly, inspecting the tip to confirm that it had been rendered useless—Carrot Top was no stranger to breaking quills. Her penmanship had never been too great, even for an earth pony.
As she stared at the quill in dismay, the plans with which she had filled the rest of her day began to fall away. Other things began to fill their place, suggestions of places to go and people to talk to.
She shook her head and hurriedly re-established discipline. She had to get herself out of town and on that long walk tonight. But in order to do so, a visit to Sofas and Quills was in order, and that would mean going back into town. There was nothing for it.
Hopefully Happenstance wouldn’t be out of quills this afternoon. Thanks to Princess Twilight, the shop was very often out of half its advertised goods. If Carrot was lucky, Twilight had been too busy to pen another epic treatise what with her recent ascension. She imagined that becoming an alicorn had to be a rather busy affair.
She was walking home to get a bag of bits when, around the turn-off to the dirt road past her fields, she heard a sort of squeak. Carrot paused only for a second at first, turning about to find the source of the noise. The only thing out-of-place was a brown box lying in a ditch, and she didn’t think the sound had come from there. So she moved on, not wanting to linger and let herself get too distracted by anything.
Inside, once she’d gotten the money she needed, Carrot opened her fridge to grab an apple so she wouldn’t have to come back early when she got hungry. When she reached inside, the fridge was barely cold; that was odd. Maybe it was broken. Day understood how these electric appliances worked, maybe she could get him to have a look at it sometime—but later. There was nothing in here that would spoil right away.
She was trotting back across the same turnoff when she heard the same squeaking sound again, along with a small buzz. This time Carrot stopped where she stood and made a careful scan in every direction. Nothing in the direction of Ponyville; nothing on the way to Sweet Apple Acres. In fact, there was nopony out here but her.
She went and inspected the box, but it did nothing to clear up her confusion. According to this label, it contained the new hoe and hatchet she’d ordered through the mail last week. What was it doing here? Unless…
“Help!” said a voice.
Carrot frowned. A pair of sealed envelopes fluttered out of the sky and landed at her hooves just before she looked up.
Carrot gasped. “Derpy!” she yelled. “What happened?”
“I don’t know!” the grey pony cried desperately. “It said 002 Apple Drive and I was going to 002 Apple Drive! I know I was! I didn’t get turned around, I promise!”
The pegasus had become hopelessly entangled in the power lines running above the road. With every pull and trash, Derpy managed to become only more hopelessly entangled, and with every gasp time squeezed from the twitching body of the pegasus, there was a threatening buzz from the lines that held her. Derpy moaned every time the buzz sounded loudly, going stiff and even shaking as she did.
Carrot dashed across the road. Then she dashed back in the opposite direction. “You don’t know what when wrong?” she shouted.
Derpy drew in a sharp breath.
“Noooooo!” she wailed, crying out wordlessly for help until she was cut off by another soft buzz.
“Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh.” Carrot stopped in the center of the road and closed her eyes. “Celestia help me,” she whispered.
“Just hold on!” she bellowed upwards. “I’ll find a way to get you down!”
But how would she manage that? Carrot top bucked at one of the roadside poles, but despite an unearthly twang from the vibrating cables, they didn’t loosen their infernal hold on her friend. If anything, the tugging only seemed to make poor Derpy even more uncomfortable.
She didn’t have anything tall enough to reach Derpy. Or did she? There was still the spare rake in her closet and a snow shovel, and some duct tape. Carrot was quick with a set of nails. Did she have time to—well, there wasn’t time to doubt herself. She didn’t have any other ideas.
Day saw it just in time.
He had begun to wonder when Allie’s hair dryer started warbling in the bathroom. Allie complained about the dryer alternating between a cool gust and a scathing gale without warning, but he hadn’t thought too much about it at first. Electric grids were fairly new in Equestria, after all. A hundred things could be going wrong, and most of the possibilities Day could think of involved the power plant. Ponies hadn’t wanted to burn any coal after getting a good taste of smog, but the idea of hooking lightning-spiders up to a capacitor did strike him as a little touch-and-go.
But when he needed a shave and his electric razor nearly sliced a gash in his chin, Day found himself thinking about it some more. He idly wondered if a bird, unused to the sight of electric power lines, might have crashed into the transformer or a cable near the edge of town. And from that thought, it was a short leap one dreadfully stark possibility.
He broke from a jog into a sprint when he saw Derpy, and more importantly, who was below her. Carrot Top was positioned underneath the stranded pegasus, raising a makeshift pole tacked together from several garden rakes, a shovel, and a fishing pole. Derpy was reaching out towards it with a yawning mouth, straining to reach and bite down on the end.
“No!” he bellowed just as Carrot was managing to balance her pole. He tackled the earth pony and sent the implement tumbling as they rolled across the street, landing in a dust-covered, pebble-studded ball in the roadside ditch.
Carrot sputtered and shot up. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t ground her!” he shouted. “You’ll get shocked! I—gah, I don’t have time to explain!”
He scrambled out of the ditch and shaded his eyes to look at Derpy more closely. The mailmare’s satchel was slipped half-over her head, spilling a letter every now and then which floated down to litter the road. The pegasus’ face contorted every couple of second as, with an audible buzz, another jolt passed between the high and low-voltage lines.
“Celestia’s horn!” Day breathed. “How is she still alive?”
“It’s—it’s just lightning, right?” Carrot panted from beside him. “Pegasi are lightning-resistant. That’s how they kick thunderclouds around. But Day, we have to get her down! It’s hurting her!”
“He-e-elp!” Derpy wailed. “Mister Day, can you get me–”
She cut of midsentence. As Day examined the pegasus once again, he noticed how every time Derpy’s muscles slacked, she would buzz and smolder until she was stiff, sweating and straining again. It must have taken a tremendous effort to keep herself from conducting minute after minute. Even from here, the mare looked exhausted. Droplets of sweat were staining the envelopes on the ground.
“She’ll be a lot worse than hurt if we get a real power draw on those lines.” Day stared, following the wires towards town. It didn’t matter which one went where—the pegasus had managed to entangle herself with every single one. “If the Cakes turn on their industrial-strength ice cream mixer, we’ll get…” He muttered rapidly, nonsense syllables aiding the numbers whirring through his brain. By a back-of-the-envelope estimate, as it were, the ice cream mixer could draw as much current as the rest of Ponyville’s appliances twice over.
“That’s bad, then?” Carrot’s breathing was fast. Her eyes darted between Day and the grey pony. “How long do we have before Pinkie Pie gets off front counter duty?”
Day looked at his watch. “About ten minutes.”
Carrot Top seethed, galloping several abortive steps towards the path back into Ponyville, then stopping short. She danced on her hooves. “Well, how am I supposed to get her down if I can’t touch her?” she shrieked angrily, her voice beginning to climb into stressed registers.
“You can touch her,” Day said quickly, “just not while touching the ground. Or any of the other wires. The thing you need to avoid is completing a circuit—oh, Celestia, Carrot I don’t’ have time to explain it all! Do we have anything we can use?”
Carrot held up a brown postmarked box. “I’ve got a hatchet and a shiny new hoe. That help?”
He grabbed the cutting tool and swung it dimly. “You haven’t tried chopping the tower down, have you?”
“It’ll just drag her down with it!”
Day sighed. Carrot was right, of course. Looping the hatchet’s thong onto his belt, he took hold of the hoe. He could see no immediate reason that a hoe would be of any use in this situation, but he forced himself to think. He was an engineer! This was his job! To think of something! Now it finally mattered, and this was what he was supposed to be good at!
With enough motivating force, the cogs began to turn. Images started to come together in Day’s mind, loose, disconnected, but still places to start. “If you could get up there,” he said, gesturing with a hoe, “you could at least hang onto a wire using this.”
“I won’t get shocked?”
“Not if you only touch one.” Day ran to the nearest pole, tried to wrap his arms and legs around it, and gave up three splinters into a pathetic attempt to shimmy up.
He jogged back. “But I don’t know how to get you up there!”
Carrot Top glared at the power lines while Day stood tapping the hoe against his hand, mentally squirming in agony at the act of helplessly standing and watching Derpy.
“Right,” said Carrot. She trotted around Day and took a stance facing away from the lines. “Haven’t done this in a while. If you break my back, Day, it’s your fault for eating too many of my carrot cakes.”
Day scowled without looking down from the problem he was trying to solve. “Carrot, this stuff is dangerous. Derpy can survive touching those wires but you can’t. You don’t understand how they work, so just shut up for a second so I can figure out how to fix this.”
“Day,” Carrot whinnied, “get over her and put your head against my tail.”
Day’s face went red. He looked down. “What? Carrot, this is no time...”
“Now!” Her voice brooked no argument whatsoever. Day, almost trembling at the force, obediently backed up to her hindquarters and sat down with his head resting against the base of her tail. Familiar warmth flooded into him from that direction, even more molten than ever. This the wrong time for all of this!
He blinked as orange hairs lashed across his face. Carrot was swinging her tail. “Bite down,” she commanded.
Day wanted to protest. In fact, he wanted to scream at the pony, but instead he closed his eyes shut and bit.
“Now jump. And when I buck you, let go of my tail or so help me, I will try my hoof at being a carnivore.”
When Day’s mouth dropped open he had already pumped his feet obediently against the ground; at the top of the arc, he froze in shock. “What–”
Then the mare bucked him in the back.
Day was held up on her hind legs at the moment of the kick, pressed against the earth mare’s hooves. Because she pushed instead of kicking him outright, the impact didn’t break him. Instead, it sent Day rocketing into the air like he’d been shot out of a cannon.
Day couldn’t even scream. He could only squeak helplessly as he watched the plane of his vision skim over the top of the power lines. His entire body felt surreal, like jelly, but the hoe in his hands acted on survival instincts without instruction from the brain, and latched onto the wire which practically came rushing into Day’s face.
The section of power lines were bowed by the weight of the pegasus hanging in the middle. Day felt himself slide along the line on his make shift hook, until the head of the hoe bumped into a grey hoof entwined three times in the electrified cord. Hyperventilating as if trying to catch a breath which was eternally two steps ahead of him, he twirled there in space, staring in disbelief at the distance to the ground.
“Don’t look down!” Carrot Top shouted. “Cut her free!”
Day managed to fumble for the axe after a minute of increasingly fiery exhortations from below dragged him kicking and screaming out of shock. The adrenaline pulsing through his head made it hard to believe that he was really hanging here, and three times that difficult to take even one of his two hands off the garden hoe. But despite the fact that his thoughts seemed no more coherent than a rushing slurry of electrons, his training still stayed his hand before he swung out blindly with the hatchet.
He couldn’t cut Derpy down. The second the tool in his hands touched another cable he’d complete a circuit. Briefly he considered sacrificing himself to save Derpy Hooves, but no—he’d be lucky to saw through a single wire before falling back to ground, a crisp piece of humanoid remains.
He could hear Derpy moaning next to him—and smell her. She smelled rank with sweat, and scorched–the burnt aroma was coming from her coat, along her forelegs near the places where she touched the wire. The pegasus heaved for breath, taking in quick gasps of air and making increasingly futile attempts to struggle against her bonds in between the extended periods of time she withdrew into a still, struggling ball, quivering silently with the effort of keeping her electrical resistance up.
An off-track train of thought marveled at what Day considered a natural miracle on display in front of him, and made a note to investigate the pegasi’s ability to resist lightning strikes in the future.
But what if neither of them made it out of this? Day would have traded his legs for a pair of rubber gloves. Even one glove. But all the way up here, there was still nothing he could do to save her. He checked his pockets, hoping against hope there would be something inside he could use as an insulator. To have the hatchet and not be able to use it! If he just had enough rubber to hold onto the handle by a thumb and forefinger…
Suddenly, another cog spun into action. Day nearly let go of the hatchet as he gasped. “I have an insulator,” he choked. “I have a pegasus!” Looping the hatchet back into his belt with a manic giggle, he reached out to Derpy and kissed her fiercely on the nose. “I have you!”
His face tingled from the contact. Ignoring the sting, Day unceremoniously shoved the handle of the hatchet into her mouth. “Cut yourself loose!”
The first thing she did was to nearly cut Day’s arm off as she flailed. Day whimpered, drawing his legs into a ball and squeezing his eyes shut as the power cables jumped all around him, like the stingers of a deadly jellyfish. If Day touched even one he’d be playing Russian roulette with a half-loaded gun, so he made himself as small as possible while he wobbled.
Once Derpy managed to strike the first cord, purely out of luck, her neck was given a couple degrees of freedom and she could direct her swings with some imitation of accuracy. One by one, the bonds electrocuting her fell away, terrifying Day with every jolt and shift of the wires.
He was so preoccupied with trying not to get electrocuted that he didn’t even think about falling until Derpy cut the line that was holding up his hook. Yelping as he felt gravity beginning to take him, he dropped the hoe and seized onto the nearest piece of Derpy that he could reach. Since he was no longer touching any of the lines, he didn’t form a circuit on the other side of the pony, and no electricity touched him. There was, however, the matter of the ground whose dizzying height reasserted itself below.
There were only a pair of cables left, both of them wrapped around a single hind hoof. Day squinted up into the sun and watched them begin to slip towards the lump of her fetlock, feeling his weight pull the pegasus towards the critical moment when they would give up their hold on her sweat-slicked leg.
“I…don’t…like…this,” Derpy moaned nauseously around the hatchet in her mouth.
“Yeah, well…” Day looked down. “Neither do I.”
Carrot scrambled back and forth across the road. She could see that Day and Derpy were going to fall several seconds before it happened. Unfortunately, there was no trampoline and no Pinkie Pie nearby to provide one. The biggest thing she had was a partially-crushed postal box.
Right before Day began his plummet, Carrot tried scraping together a pile of letters in desperation. But there was no help there, none anywhere. She looked in every direction, and had just enough time to arrive at the dismal conclusion that she was the softest thing nearby.
The impact made everything turn black, though Carrot Top couldn’t tell if that was because of the knock on her head, or because Derpy’s flank was smushed over her face. Carrot Top lay sprawled in the road until both of the moaning bodies on top of her rolled pitifully away.
It felt best just to lay there, waiting for herself to un-squish like a flattened piece of foam, but Carrot Top forced herself up. The world stopped spinning just enough for her to find Day with his legs tucked in, and to drape her upper body onto his shoulders and give him a hug. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s over. You did it.”
Day let loose a warm sheet of breath, burying his head in his hands. Carrot stayed propped against him for balance and murmured whatever verses came to mind into his ear. They stayed that way until the ambulance arrived.
Somepony had heard the power cords snapping—and, no doubt, at least some of Ponyville had noticed when all of its flickering electrical appliances shut off. By the time Nurse Redheart arrived on the scene, a regular crowd had gathered, crowding the three ponies and the human who were bundled up for medical inspection right there on the spot.
Day came alive again to watch, along with dozens of other hushed ponies, when Nurse Redheart began looking over the limp grey form draped on a wheeling table. Her frown depend in weathered lines as she prodded and lifted Derpy’s wings, running a hoof along her side and applying thick bandages whenever the pegasus winced in response to the touch.
All onlookers were quiet for a solemn period. Nurse Redheart scowled even further when she began inspecting Derpy’s chest, sounding her way through the inspection with ominous humming grunts.
“Is she going to be okay?” Carrot dared to ask first.
Redheart glanced up. “She’ll be fine. I just wish pegasi watched where they were going once in a while. They dragged me out from my coffee break saying somepony was dying. If I could find an excuse to amputate wings…”
The sheet fell aside as a frizzled blonde head popped up. "Amper-taken?" Derpy mumbled. "Aww. Derpy doesn't want any more amperes..."
Day nudged Carrot Top in the ribs. “See?” he said. “I told you I had everything under control.”
For some reason, Carrot Top found that horribly funny. The pair of them were still snickering when Lyra Heartstrings skidded onto the scene at a full gallop, nearly knocking aside Featherweight just as the spindly foal was snapping a photograph of Derpy sitting up with a woozy smile.
“Ooooh, no. What did you do this time?” Lyra, trotting in place, bounced to Carrot Top’s side. “I came as soon as I heard! Are you okay? Oh, that’s a stupid question, but at least you’re alive!” She leaned onto the mobile hospital beds, causing Carrot Top and Day to lean back. “I’m not too late, am I? Is there anything I can do?”
With a quick glance at Day, Carrot reached out and lightly place a hoof on Lyra’s shoulder. “Lyra…” She moaned in a suddenly raspy voice. She threw in a cough. “There is…something I need you to do for me.”
“Anything!” The unicorn bent down, the better to listen. “What is it? How can I help?”
“In my house…” Carrot pointed feebly at her farmhouse a short walk down the way. “In the back of my kitchen…”
“Yes, what’s in the back of the kitchen?”
“Could you get the rest of the leftover apple pie for me? I feel like I deserve some dessert after all that.”
Lyra reared back and her eyes glazed over, but she galloped away and came back five minutes later. Her hooves were empty. “Carrot Top,” she said, “your fridge is empty! What pie are you talking about?”
“The pie right on the bottom shelf?” Carrot said in a normal voice. She scratched at her head. “What do you mean, empty? I had a whole sack of turnips in there too.” Her eyes narrowed. “Lyra, are you sure you didn’t go into the wrong house?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Oh!” a bubbly voice interjected.
They turned to look at Derpy; eyes rolling in freeform circles, the pegasus burped and covered her mouth. “Sorry. That was me.”
Day and Carrot Top couldn’t hold their laughter in any longer.
“Does anypony have any pie?” Lyra called around the crowd of bystanders. “We have ponies who want some pie over here!”
Carrot Top would have tried to stop her, but the streamers and confetti exploded from nowhere before she had the chance to speak. Allie had been hanging around Pinkie Pie during the last couple weeks, and the results had been….Pinkie-er than normal. The pair had pies going all around the crowd in no time, while Day and Carrot Top jogged a few circles around Lyra to reassure her that they really were okay. The mischief duo set up a picnic, tables and everything included, through some exploit involving billiard cues, Apple Bloom, and a flotilla of empty Apple family cider barrels, which Carrot Top couldn’t have recounted if she tried.
That was how it had come to be around Allie once Pinkie Pie got into her. Before anypony really knew what was happening, the nervous smile of relief at Derpy’s rescue had inflated into a full-fledged block party. Not that most ponies needed a very strong excuse to celebrate.
When she found Allie, the girl was at a grill mixing up apple and leek pancakes. Carrot Top took a dozen back to Day and they raced each other to the bottom of the stack. Rainbow Dash spun swirls around the party, a pickup game of hoofball from earlier in the day resumed, and in the middle of it all, Day and Carrot Top sat side by side on a hill near the riverside, letting the sunset burn its way to late evening.
The pony-watched, and they poked each other. They talked about life, and a little bit about death, and about whatever came to their minds, including love. Carrot Top didn’t try to prove anything. Day didn’t try to deny anything. They night was wrapped in some queer sort of spell which Carrot, afraid to break it, didn’t poke too closely at.
Carrot had never sat and talked with Day for hours before. It felt good in a whole new way. They talked about things they had never mentioned to each other before, from recipes all the way to crazy news from the outside world.
“Did you hear the rumor in the Equestria Daily yesterday?” Day said. “There’s this colt in Manehatten who claims to have acquired a taste for meat.”
Carrot Top wrinkled her muzzle—half in disgust, and half knowing that Day’s eyes flitted to her face whenever she did that. “I can’t imagine. The smell alone is enough to make me want to throw up.”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking. Some ponies are saying he just enjoys the shock value of it. Whenever he walks into a foreigner’s restaurant and orders a steak, you know, he gets a big reaction out of it. And he did get his name in the papers.”
Carrot Top stuck out her tongue as the mental image intensified. “Well, I’ve heard some bad reasons to go on a crazy diet, but that takes the cake.”
“On the contrary, my dear zealot.” Day sat up, puffing out his chest until it made Carrot Top laugh. “Clearly,” he declared in a hilariously pompous voice, “It must be perfectly acceptable. After all, he hasn't injured anypony, and therefore no matter how ridiculous it sounds, it’s a perfectly good idea.”
“Oh, oh!” Carrot scrambled up and tried to puff out her own chest, striking what she thought to be a very affected air. “But it’s not the right way for ponies to live,” she said in a voice echoing Day's. “It might be fine for humans, but when a pony does it, it’s completely different. In fact, it’s just wrong, and it’s wrong because it’s wrong and for no other reason, so really it’s proven already.”
Day doubled over, clutching his stomach and clapping hands over his mouth. “Are you sure we shouldn’t all try it, just to be sure?” he said, quavering on the edge of losing his fake accent to mirth. “Maybe I could subsist exclusively on hay and thistle for a week, and you could take up Burger King and Slim Jims.”
Carrot shook her head, waving with a demure hoof. “Obviously he must have deep-seated emotional issues,” she drawled in her nasal tone. “Perhaps this is a cry for help.”
Day suddenly stood straight up, raising one finger. “Aha! But if so, it’s all just because he didn’t have enough lovers!”
Carrot shrieked with laughter, threw herself on her back, and pedaled her legs helplessly in the air. She was just barely aware of Day looking down at her and smiling.
Ponies began to dwindle when the food did. When earth ponies with a cherry-picker equipment stopped in to look at the damaged lines, Allie and Pinkie worked some magic to clear any party-related detritus from the road. The grill was folded up. A few late-comers hung around the banks of the river, telling stories with Granny smith around a fire kindled on the banks. A couple entreaties were made from Applejack to fetch her guitar, but she declined in favor of kicking back with her hat tipped over her head.
Carrot Top and Day were still on the bank, chatting about nothing. When suddenly struck by a peculiar beauty in the murmur of the river around its reeds, and the warm night air, Carrot Top sat. “Hey, Day. Do you want to go for a swim?”
He shrugged, glancing at the water. “Do you want to?”
She took a look at the dirt caking her hooves, and much of the rest of the body. “We could both use a bath.” She grinned devilishly. “Race ya’!”
Carrot Top darted into the water, forcing Day to follow. The water wasn’t quite so cold as it had been earlier, and she entered slowly, savoring the sensation of the wet lapping up the hair of her coat until it inched up over the top of her tail and left her submerged in the fresh, gently tugging flow.
Day followed, tearing off his shirt as he stumbled loudly into the river. They splashed a little ways downstream, waving and calling out at the ponies around the fire who called back at them.
Carrot half-walked, half-waded around Day, splashing him whenever his back was turned and prompting him to spin back in annoyance, running his hand over the surface of the stream to skim water in his face. When Carrot pointed down towards the river and raised her eyebrow, he crouched, lowering his body into the river and pressing his open hands together to race her.
She puckered her lips and sounded off an imitated gunshot, half-whispered—as loud as she dared this late. Day took off and outdistanced her quickly, but as Carrot Top floundered after him he slowed enough for her to catch up. Then they swam together, making no effort to chase after an imaginary fishing line. The lagged onward until leaving the bonfire behind, stroke after stroke in tandem, Carrot’s legs churning the river beneath her and Day’s arms rising and falling like the arms of a waterwheel, splish, splash. Splish, splash.
They kept going and going, and the Candywine carried them around Ponyville and then away from it. They floated into meadows that were silent now save for bullfrogs, owls, and crickets. Carrot Top kept no track of where all the other ponies had gone, or where they were. In this light she couldn’t even tell where she was. They must have followed the river half a mile downstream.
She didn’t care. She just kept swimming, just kept at Day’s side. Not a word passed between them, only the breath billowing from her nostrils and Day’s gasps every time his face came up out of the water and he looked sideways towards her while taking a breath. They passed under willows, and high banks of flowers, under bridges and past low banks filled with toadstools. Whenever they came to a narrow or shallow behind, they clasped themselves together into one floating mass and treaded water. When the current sped up, they let their limbs slack and floated along, content to follow the earth at the Candywine’s pace.
The moon rose and turned the water into gurgling quicksilver, and still they swam, quiet, through the singularly peaceful nighttime of rural Equestria. Carrot thought about saying something every now and then. She thought about a lot of things, watching Day rise and fall, his shoulders flash in even cadence beside her. But every time, she decided it was better not to break the night’s spell.
Eventually—she wasn’t sure how long—they stopped. They had to, when they ran into a waterfall. Carrot nipped at Day’s arm to direct him to her side of the river. On her bank was a broad semicircle of grass cut out from the trees and thick growth, capped with a single green-speckled rock. They pulled themselves out and lay flat as pancakes, letting air flow in and around them, drying and restoring them without saying anything for another long stretch of time.
From here they could look out over the wide plain which spread beneath the falls. They were clearly far from Ponyville. Carrot pulled her legs under her when she felt recovered enough to speak, and looked over at Day. He was still on his back, arms spread as if to embrace the star-studded sky swirling with dizzying nearness overhead.
With five short, hesitant steps, she stood over him so that both her front and hind pairs of legs straddled his body. Bending down her head as if to graze at a particularly fragrant patch of grass, she planted a soft kiss on his check, nuzzling and nibbling at the skin. When his face turned away so that his check pulled away from her lips, she began feeling up and down his arm with a fetlock, careful not to let her hoof press against him.
Day raised the arm and halfheartedly pushed Carrot away so that she had to step backwards.
She snorted and pawed heavily at the grass, tearing up a chunk of soil. “Why?” she said. “Why?”
He leaned his head up, looking at her distantly.
“You let other ponies kiss you on the cheek. Why, I saw Time Turner give you a kiss like that on two separate occasions when you met at the train station!”
Day looked away. It was just a bit too dark for Carrot to tell what color his face was. “That’s different,” he said. “We become good friends at work. That’s normal.”
“And what, I’m not normal?” Carrot ground her teeth; as a pony with only a set of wide, flat molars, they sounded like an avalanche compared to any noise a human could make, and the sound made Day shiver and cover his ears—quite intentionally. “Or am I not your friend? Is that what you were trying to say?”
“It’s different,” he mumbled again.
“Why is it different?” she demanded, pushing forward like a plowhorse against his hand until she could glare into his face.
He wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Because of what it means.”
She stood there for a long time, watching him.
“You’re right,” she sad at length. “It means I love you.” With a sob, she lowered her head and kissed him again, going in hard so that he had to swat her away. She tilted her head just twenty degrees so that her own nose slid beside his. “And I…I really care about you, and yet all that you think of me is that…” She kissed him again, and his second swat was weaker. “Oh, Amadeus! Amadeus! You fool!”
He finally looked into her eyes. “You can’t love me,” he pleaded in a whisper. “You can’t really be in love with me.”
“Why not?” Carrot had no inhibitions against being loud. There might not have been anypony around for a mile. She stamped.
Day clapped a hand over his forehead. “Because then someone will be sad, no matter what.” He fought to continue speaking even though Carrot interrupted him by throwing feverish kisses all over his face. “And I hate it when people are sad. Because then they get angry, and then they argue…I just want everyone to mind their own business so I never have to fight.”
“You stupid, stupid colt.” Carrot Top kissed his chin and his neck and his ears. “Argue is all you do! Come on, kiss me back.” She delved back to his lips, pushing her wide tongue through them and holding him down with a hoof when he tried to force her head away. She ran it over his incisors, the fangs so exotic to her, and exited his mouth when she had memorized their shape. “You have to!” she demanded, barely remembering how to speak. “I kissed you, now you have to kiss me.”
Day glared at her. Then, grudgingly, he sat up just enough to lay a furtive, dry kiss on her cheek.
She waited in the dark for more, and none came. She decided not to call it out for being inadequate. “Now, did that make you upset?”
“No,” he mumbled.
Carrot Top lay down on top of him. She was careful to settle her weight slowly on his chest, to make sure that it wasn’t too much. And she clamped her folded legs against his sides, finding that she fit onto him as perfectly as a glove. His arms were trapped under her forelegs, but he strained and she let one of them go.
Her tail wanted to lift, but that wasn’t what she needed right now. She swept it back and forth in low, unhurried arcs, letting her curls brush over his legs. She could just barely feel the texture of his soaking wet jeans against her hair. And from here, she could feel his breath, and every heartbeat, just the way that she could feel the beats of the earth when she lay down on it.
Day’s face was a grimace, his free hand pushing with no effectuality whatsoever at the top of her leg. “Why do you want to stop it?” Carrot half whispered, half cooed, half sobbed. “You could…” She nuzzled his cheek. “We could have things perfect. I would be so good to you, Day. I would work so hard to make you happy. I’d build a great big house for us. What—whatever bothered you, I would do my best to—to make it work.”
“I know,” he whispered tensely. “Can’t.”
In silent question she nuzzled him again. He moaned and began to mumble.
“Can’t. M’not supposed to have everything. M’not supposed to be that happy. S’not the way things are.”
Carrot Top closed her eyes.
Never believe that the foal which is tomorrow will grow up into the grave that is yesterday. I awakened
when Equestria was only a cold rock, falling without purchase through a void without light. I have
slumbered through eons when the oceans leapt to the sky, and watched over eras when the ground
never ceased to tremble. If you believe that the time is soon coming when every pony can live in perfect
harmony, I promise you, my little ones, it will come. It is not the strangest thing which has come to
pass in this world. (Celestia 52:47)
Day growled. “Admit it.” He pulled his other arm free by writhing until she had to let it go. “You’re not a gentlemare.”
Carrot’s head swung away.
“But you want to be. I know how your mothers raised you. The right word from me, mare, and you’d go trotting home shame-faced with your tail between your legs. If I said you were pushing me too far. Hell!” he spat. “If I said you were trying to–”
“You admit you love me,” she said quickly, bulldozing over his speech, “and I’ll admit I’m not a gentlemare.”
Day sat in shocked silence. Carrot felt his chest press up in slow, deep arcs. His hands, like timid butterflies, crawled up her barrel with delicious slowness until his fingertips rested on the saddle of her back.
“I love you.”
He pulled Carrot down on top of him so that he could press his face into her neck. “Oh, Carrot Top, I love you.” He returned her kisses one by one. “Yes. I want to run my fingers through your mane. I want you to kiss me just like this. I want to watch every sunset in the world with you.” He gushed, lapping at her coat. His nose ran all over her neck. “Your nuzzle! Oh, Carrot, nuzzle me like this. Cover me in your scent so everypony knows who I belong to.”
Carrot Top most happily obliged him. Her gut ignited with a molten song.
She began sliding her belly along Day’s. And the last vestiges of sunset gave way to blindness—the moon timidly showed itself out behind the trees, the last spotlight turned aside, letting everything fade to a deep, deep velvet black.
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D'awwww.
I noticed a few spelling mistakes on my first read through, do you want me to find them for you?
Eh?
Oh my, he took the plunge. There is no going back now. Can only hope it works out for them.
Ya, maybe grounded wires would work better when a third of your citizens can fly. Nice tension though.
4562024
They'll put up some of those red foam balls that we have.
4561983
Yeah, I might as well fix the darn things.
Your prose started getting a little more purple than normal there at the end, but still it's good to see that horrible beta Amadeus stop being such a coward. Here's hoping he gives her the d soon.
4564561 Righto then!
*centre
I'm guessing that should be "on".
*smoulder
Touch?
*marvelled
*her
*rumour...I think(damn Yankee spelling)
*Day's
*pedalled
*race
Hopefully that's all of them. Also the scene where they're mimicking each other is great.
Can't wait for the next chapter!
awwwww how cute, he finally admitted his feelings!
4564615
We do not accommodate your English spelling here. We revolted against King George so that we could spell 'center' and 'smolder' the right way.
Thanks for the others, though, I've fixed them. I was getting kind of annoyed at the number of typos in this chapter even before I posted it.
Another chapter? THANK GOD! I was starting to get desperate!
4566519
It's only been a week.
4566570
......your point?
4566579
Well, I'm just tickled pink that you're going through all the trouble to translate my work and read it.
I'm not sure that I'm the best source from which to learn English; my grammar is more correct than most when I'm not making typos, and I don't recall playing around with it much in this story, but I don't write the simplest English prose you could ever find.
I wish I could explain everything, but there's only very little I'm willing to spell out, cutting it off from being open to more nuanced interpretations. You're getting all the overt things being conveyed; there's argument going on in this chapter over whether characters are pressuring each other into things they're not comfortable with. Also, as I mentioned in the first chapter, the ponies' heads generally come up to about the sternum, which leaves their withers, I think, a little higher than waist level.
HOT!
I have no idea what happened. Maybe I'm just tired, but I don't see how their conversation changed their relationship she admitted to not be a gentlemare and now he's admitting to loving her. I'm so confused.
Then again that's what five hours of civilization 5 and sleep deprivation does to me. Brain no work good.
Regardless of my understanding of anything it was an enjoyable chapter.
What just happened? Why did he suddenly change his mind? I don't freaking get it!