The Faith of Carrot Top

by Dawn Stripes

Chapter 9: The Morning After

And the Ape Fadeth Into the Night

Day’s first thought upon waking was that he must be hungover. He had never experienced a hangover before, but had the idea that it must very strongly resemble the fuzzy sense of drifting that was keeping him from stringing three thoughts together in a row.

There also the fact that he seemed to be lying flat on his back, stark naked, in the middle of nowhere.

But no—he reached up to touch his forehead. That wasn’t it. Day hadn’t had anything to drink last night, had he? There had been a party for something, but he couldn’t remember the taste of hard cider…

He finally accomplished the feat of sitting up. As he did so, something large and fuzzy rolled over, crushing his toes. Day’s memories flowed in like the river winding past the grassy bank.

Carrot Top was curled up on his legs, snoozing gently with a blissful smile across her muzzle. He could see some clothes lying in various directions, so he leaned to grab them without moving his legs and thus disturbing the slumbering mare. While throwing them he, he glanced around the fields to make sure that nopony wandering the wilds had chanced upon them in this state.

Later, he would explain this action by saying that since he had been outside, in clear view of half a mile of gentle hills, getting dressed was ‘the only sensible thing to do’. But the truth was that nopony had come this way recently, and nopony was likely to chance by anytime soon. Even if they had, the sight of a naked human would have caused them to stare for no longer than a second or two before they bid the human good day and went on with their day, utterly un-scandalized.

Perfectly aware of all this, Day burned with shame until he made himself decent enough that he could at least have stepped outside in New York to fetch a morning paper.

He felt that he had just thrown off a set of rusty shackles for a new and vast kind of freedom. It was exhilarating, but terrifying. Both feelings worked in accord to speed the beating of his heart, which was still pounding from all of last night, and his first instinct was to cover himself—to shield himself from the blinding openness he found himself staring into. It was too much. Too much, he thought, too much to take in at once, for someone who had lived their entire life in the shade of a cozy alcove.

Once dressed, he settled himself down to wait. It didn’t seem right to wake the mare. She looked happier than Day had ever seen her before, snoring the sound of a light breeze through dandelions. The images and sounds of last night, which made Day quiver every time he thought of them, were still the last things she remembered.

Day hadn’t thought a human and a pony would be able to make love seamlessly, but….Carrot Top had it down to a fine art, something he wouldn’t have suspected of the quiet pony. It was like she understood the purpose of making love in a way that was a level beyond him.

She stirred once without waking, her hoof finding Day’s leg and curling around it. Day assumed she would get up before too long, but in the meantime he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He watched the river passing by. He thought he would simply drum his fingers on the bank while he waited, but his mind began to drift as he stared into the water.

He saw a twin extra-long mattress decorated by striped bedsheets, scattered papers, and the beleaguered light of Sol, which slowly died over the edge of the bed. There was a girl on a beanbag chair by the edge of the bed, and she looked with a glazed expression over all of these adornments as if trying to decide whether the papers were worth crying over, or indeed looking at in the first place.

Day entered the memory here, through the thin door. “Cass?” he said while knocking and opening simultaneously. “I just came back from the party, no one could tell me where you were…”

He stopped, seeing her hunched over open books. “Something wrong?”

“I made a terrible mistake,” she said. Day gestured urgently for her to go on, and she flung her head against the mattress. “I looked at my grades.”

“I see.” Day stood awkwardly still near the doorway. He was never quite sure what to say in this sort of situation. Or any situation, for that matter.

“I hate calculus,” she said forcefully into her sheets. “I hate actuarial science! I wish I could be a marine biologist and swim with dolphins.” She glared at Day as if he were the source of all affronting math in the universe. “Integrals are so fucking dumb.”

Day’s mouth fell open. By the time of this memory, he knew Alexandra rather well, and the idea of her spending an evening in quiet isolation, rather than in raucous company, deeply offended his sense of rightness with the universe.

And there was a second thing that deeply offended his sense of rightness as well.

“Oh, no.” He squatted by the bed frame. “Integrals are—are beautiful.”

She only stared at him blankly, so he pulled over a simple chair and tore off a piece of notebook paper. “The way I like to look at it, math is like a perfect world—you wake up every morning and you know the sun will still be in the sky. The most fantastic things happen, but when you look closer, you always find that everything works out, like it was always meant to be that way….”

Allie squinted up at Day and scooted little closer to his chair. He scooted a little closer to her and they pored over the paper together as he drew a long, flourishing S in the shape of a violin’s sound hole.

The memory faded from there into a long, blurred thrill of exploration and mutual wonder. Day floated back to Equestria in time to see an orange face looking up at him.

“I sort of get it now, but can you say it again? I like hearing you talk. You make it all sound so interesting.”

The first thing Day was blush and lazily smile. Then he did a double-take at Carrot Top and curled his fingers tightly into the grass.

“What did you say?” he breathed urgently.

Carrot Top giggled and put out a hoof to bop him on the nose. “I said I like hearing you talk. You were talking to yourself. You have a nice voice.”

She tilted her head as if it stretched her little grin into place. “Do you always talk to yourself in the mornings? Not that I mind. I could get used to it.”

Day dumbly shook his head.

Her eyes drifted down his chest, and Day could make out distinctly the fire that sparked behind her irises when last night came back to her. She hugged him until he couldn’t breathe. Then she trotted circles around him, bouncing with excitement as if content to absolutely nothing but celebrate the mere state of her existence.

But that didn’t distract her from Day for too long. Before Day could really make any suggestions, she pulled him onto her back and forded the stream, kicking up a wide spray while forcing through the water that reached to her chest. She broke into a gallop the minute she reached the far bank, leaping through the valleys whose colored folds invited the beholder to do just that.

Day finally got a tour of ‘the Ponyville back ninety’; he saw it all at a pony’s speed. The wind stung his eyes, but the rocking world swung so fluidly around him, he hardly dared blink for fear of missing a breath of the feeling. He could feel the warm muscles on Carrot’s back, flexing against his thighs, and feel the earth plunging easily underhoof. Being carried by her now was totally different than it had ever been before. He held onto a couple curls of mane to stay on, but quickly found a way to keep his balance tight to her back. Then he had a hand free to run fingers lightly over the sensitive corners of her ears.

He could tell that it tickled in the way she laughed breathlessly at every touch, stumbling midstride to catch air for more giggling.

She bolted through foxgloves and lavender, splashing three times across shallow fords of the Candywine and never slowing down until she barreled through the heart of Ponyville. Carrot Top was utterly heedless of the stares, even though a shirtless human was riding her bareback through the village. Day found himself wishing he could disappear. But he bore through it.

He had said, last night, that he wanted everypony to know. They most certainly knew now.

Carrot Top kept up her pace right through the front door of his house, slowing only down when she had no choice but skidding into the carpet to avoid colliding with a couch.

“Allie!” She trotted an anxious circle, with Day growing dizzy on her back, until the girl in question appeared.

“I have the good news!” she squealed the very minute Allie’s face popped in from the hall. The girl, seeing Day on ponyback, appeared to grasp Carrot’s meaning right away. She squealed in return and grabbed Day’s arm to plant a loud kiss on his cheek. Carrot slid Day neatly off her back, onto the couch where he could recover from the ride. Then the pony grabbed Allie, who shrieked once without alarm, and pushed her onto the couch beside him.

Carrot propped herself up on the couch, between Alexandra’s knees. “Now you can kiss me!”

Allie laughed like chimes in the summer breeze, and momentarily covered her outrageous smile with one hand. “You have been waiting for a long time,” she said after regarding the pony studiously. “Okay.”

Carrot Top needed no second urging. She immediately jumped onto Allie’s lap and plunged into a deep kiss, turning her head sideways to meet the human’s mouth. Allie’s eyes shot wide open, and her hands splayed to grip the couch on either side of her. Her cry of shock was muffled by Carrot’s lips.

Day tightened up. Then he relaxed, in sync with Allie; her chest heaved only a few times before her eyes began to flutter closed and she worked one hand around to rest on the flank of the mare atop her.

Then Day blushed and looked away.

None of the furniture in the house was terribly wide. Everything had been bought pony-made in lieu of trying to import it, at much greater expense, through a dimensional Gate. The picture presented by the living room was perfectly symmetrical: Day sat on one side with his hands on his knees, and Allie sat on the other side with Carrot Top on hers. The pony was beginning to moan softly now.

“Guess she was waiting for that,” said Day with a chuckle that sounded like bubbles trying to force their way indecorously through a telephone wire.

He smiled over at the girls. “So, it’s, uh—your turn now, I suppose.” To be honest, he wasn’t sure who he was talking to, because Allie didn’t seem to hear him at his current volume.

Carrot Top was reaching behind Allie’s back now to pull the swell of her chest against the pony’s barrel. The girl’s hand alternately tensed and relaxed against Carrot’s side, letting the pony know what movements were allowed. Because of the tilt of their faces Day had a pretty good view of what was going on between their mouths.

He had never watched a kiss so intently before. It dunked him back into the ice-cold river of memory.

Instead of the thin pony hairs tickling Allie’s nose, Day saw a muddy creek flowing past the silver trunk of a hand-me-down car. Day was sitting on the trunk with a small pile of riverside pebbles the only company sitting next to him. Each time he hurled one into the water, he imagined a face in the stream. Most of them were hopelessly beautiful faces—if not always accurately so—but Day ran out of pebbles before he ran out of faces. When the time came, he couldn’t be bothered to get down from the car and scoop another handful off the ground.

Suddenly, there were more pebbles being thrown into the stream a few yards down. Or rather a hail of pebbles being kicked up by spinning tires. Day looked up—as if somehow he hadn’t heard an engine revving across a horizon-length stretch of dirt road—to see a bright purple truck easing onto the bank beside his car.

“Allie?” he said in disbelief. Day peered suspiciously back at the girl’s bright smile. It seemed impossible to him, at the time, that anyone could have possibly figured out that he would be here, let alone why, and it was even harder to believe that anyone would have driven the miles from campus to join him there. Somehow, she had gathered the necessary variables and made those calculations. It seemed surreal to Day.

She swung up onto the trunk of his car, light like a fairy. Day looked back into the turgid water, hoping illogically that she was only dropping by for a brief hello and would soon be on her way again. The hum of her vehicle, the chatter of her voice, and most of all, her face, interfered entirely with the catharsis he had been performing before she arrived.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said happily, as if this statement ought to make perfect sense. “You totally didn’t give me a chance to say anything before! Like, you really shouldn’t say something like that to a girl and then run away.”

Day sighed. He took without thinking the rock she handed him and plopped it into the river. “You’re very nice,” he said quietly, “but if you don’t mind, I just want to be alone right now.”

“No you don’t,” she said firmly.

Day didn’t know what she was doing for the first few spinning seconds when she reached a hand around his head—utterly confused until she pulled him over to kiss him lightly on the temple.

The brief point of moisture sent a lance through the grubby, crusty shell which loomed a cave around Day’s heart. Air and humidity began to pour in through the breach, and, panicked by the overload of sensation, his heart began to throb like–

–well–

–a heart. Like the way a heart ought to throb.

Day came to and found that his fingers with interlaced with Allie’s, the same way they had become in the memory. Nothing had changed on the couch. Tentatively, he leaned closer to the girls and tried to join in kissing Allie. But Carrot Top’s mane hung over her face like a curtain, and he had to spit out strands of hair to get to Allie’s cheek. When his lips finally did find her skin, he could feel Carrot’s muzzle only inches away, working over Allie’s mouth like a tractor churning a hillside in the spring thaw. Moist exhale from her nostrils gusted across Allie and into Day’s face. He panicked, seized up and pulled away.

He spent a couple stiff moments trying to get his bearings. Day knew intellectually that he was okay with this. That was the important thing. This was what he had signed up for, after all. Why, in no more than a week or two, this would be nothing more than another normal day around the house—himself, Alexandra, and Carrot Top. All three names together, side by side. There would be one more toothbrush in the bathroom, perhaps. One more plate at the table. One more pillow in their room.

This didn’t bother him. There was definitely nothing wrong with seeing Allie, the woman that had made him a man, going at it with this pony. It had been explained to him so clearly, after all. That pony was a part of the bond that flowed between him and Allie now. Carrot Top was included in that love, and surely it could only grow stronger because of that.

He was so certain that this was normal that he decided to open up his laptop and get some work done. After all, he wasn’t busy with anything else at the moment. His fingers hovered over the keys for a few seconds, as he temporarily forgot the password which he typed into the machine a dozen times a day.

The girls came up for air, and Day turned back towards them when Allie reached out one weak arm to pat him on the shoulder. When he looked, Carrot Top was staring at him, with her mouth still half-pressed over Allie’s in an almost comical way.

“You don’t have to watch if it’s weird for you,” said the mare. A flushed Alexandra nodded from underneath her. “After all, we wouldn’t…”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted her, slamming the laptop shut and leaning forward on his elbows. “Whatever I’m comfortable with. I get it.”

“Al-right…” Carrot shied away. She looked between the man and woman for a second, her bouncing curls following the swivel of her head.

After a minute of examining them both in silence, Carrot Top nuzzled Day’s arm and worked his gaze towards her. “Day?” she mewled. “Are you sure everything is fine? If this is all a little too fast, we can slow down.”

Day cracked a determined, blazing smile and reached around the top of Carrot Top’s neck.

“Everything is wonderful,” he said with feeling, and kissed her passionately just to prove the point.

Afterwards, Carrot Top stepped carefully off of Allie’s lap and into the squeeze of space between the two humans on the couch.

“Hey…” She swung herself around so that her hindquarters were perched on the front end of the couch, near their knees. “Can you…I want you to touch my cutie marks. Both of you.” Allie swung liquid eyes to each of them in turn. “Allie, you get this side. Day…just put your hand right here.”

Day shrugged and reached over. His hand hesitated over her flank when it suddenly tensed in response to his hand’s proximity to her cutie mark. “At the same time,” she said after replacing her lost breath, and Day waited until Allie’s hand could—now, very carefully—brush her coat at the same time as his. Inch by inch, he placed his open palm over the precisely colored hairs, the icon of three carrots that identified the mare he had just kissed.

Carrot shuddered and sighed when their hands clamped down, sinking even further into the couch, if that were possible. “I’m with my herd,” she whispered into the backing of the couch, and grew a smile of perfect peace just like the one she’d worn on the riverbank.

Allie cooed with pleasure upon seeing the smile, and combed her fingers a couple times through the pony’s mane. She toyed with the curls that bounced when she pressed on them.

“Hey,” Day heard the mare whisper to Allie. “I have an idea.” She leaned up a bit to reach Allie’s ears, and slowly spoke a stream of words which must have fled straight to Allie’s face, because they colored it bright pink. For a second Day blinked, and almost envisioned Carrot Top as a guy on Allie's lap, kissing her so ardently.

“Oh, wow.” Allie’s grip on Day’s hand tightened. Their fingers were still interlaced even though Carrot Top was sitting on them.

“Okay,” she whispered back at Carrot. “If you want to.”

A fire blazed into life somewhere within Day’s chest. But this wasn’t a fire like last night, or even like he’d felt ever before. It was a wet sort of burning which stung, and it licked up furiously when Carrot Top pawed at Allie’s side. When she made the girl giggle by blowing into her belly button, something Day happened to be fond of doing, the feeling threatened to blacken his entire insides away.

He prevented it from immediately combusting him only by leaning forward–landing on top of Carrot and nearly smothering the pony–to steal a long kiss from Alexandra and pull her attention back to himself.

He leaned back. Carrot went back to kissing at Allie’s stomach—and with a distinctly perceptible spark, the fire in Day began burning again.

Uh oh.

Carrot Top didn’t notice, if any of the fire showed on Day’s face. In fact, she didn’t seem to mind having been made the center of a make-out sandwich.

“Hey,” she said huskily, swinging her head to nuzzle Day. Then she began wriggling between Allie and the back of the couch to push her off of it.

As Allie unfolded her legs to stand and follow, Day’s knuckles ripped over the textured cover of his laptop. He stood sharply. “I have an idea too!”

He held that pose for a moment, then caught himself upon finding that both females were watching and waiting for him to finish. “We should…er…go out to eat!” he forged on. “To—celebrate! After all, we have so much to talk about.”

He glanced hopefully in the direction of Carrot Top. “Right?”

“We do,” Carrot agreed, then put her cheek against Allie. “But…I’m not really that hungry right now. I’m still full from last night.” She looked towards his bedroom with naked longing.

“Same,” Allie shrugged, seemingly oblivious to the strained gestures of the others. “I had breakfast before you came.”

Carrot Top didn’t notice either, though Day faltered and held himself upright by the coffee table. She swished her tail thoughtfully, muttering to herself. “But a little date does sound nice…oy!”

She stood suddenly on the couch. “How about we go get socks?” Enthused by this idea, she poked Allie in the ribs to tickle her again. “I’ve always wanted some, but now I have a reason to use them! Och, I could wait for socks…How about it?”

Day agreed with unusual wholeheartedness, echoing each of Carrot Top’s reassurances to Allie (which were also unprompted) that Rarity the dressmaker could ‘work magic of a dozen kinds’ and would probably take no time at all to knit up a fine set of socks. Day grabbed a shirt, and everyone was out the door into Ponyville in short order, braving both the befuddled stares and the slyly congratulatory ones that followed them on their way.

It being a slow day of the week, Rarity was only too quick to invite them into Carousel Boutiqe. She looked the entire party up and down; Day twiddled his thumbs to avoid meeting the unicorn’s crystal-sharp eyes, Carrot Top stood grinning like a fool next to him, and Allie had somehow gotten into her box of combs and was currently picking out the one that most struck her fancy.

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “My my. This is a big day for you, isn’t it?”

Carrot Top’s smile only grew more helplessly than before.

Rarity promised right away to make Carrot Top the softest socks she’d ever touched, and when Day, feeling rather guilty, tried to chip in for the payment, she scorned the idea. “Absolutely silly,” she declared, “for a favor that won’t take more than a minute.”

She walked Day to a rack of fabrics and unfurled a cloth roll with a glittering chime of magic. With a glance back at the waiting mare, he took his time running a hand over the surface, whistling appreciatively.

“It’s very…soft.”

“Hmm…” Rarity replaced it with a different stretch of material. “Try this one.”

Day was genuinely surprised by the difference. “Oh, this is even nicer.”

“No to cotton, then, yes to cashmere…” Rarity happily pulled an entire roll off the rack and began levitating supplies all about her store, clearing off space on a worktable. Before Day’s very eyes, a preparation that would have taken a human tailor ten minutes flew together in one.

“Ah– ” Day started and lurched in front of Rarity just as she was about to walk to her sewing machine. His physical presence didn’t do much to slow her down.

“B-but,” he said, pushing up on the bridge of his nose, “we should try a few different ones, too! Just to be sure.”

Rarity crossed her eyes at the fabric she held. She looked skeptical. “I place great faith in cashmere,” she said doubtfully, “but…perhaps you’re right. Would you care to arrange a soirée with the silk?”

Day appeared, to an outside observer, to develop a sudden and patient fascination with tailory. While Carrot Top bounced impatiently on her hooves and Allie got into Celestia-knew-what, he monopolized Rarity’s attention by poring over the various qualities of the silk she possessed, and discussing how it compared to silk produced on Earth. She launched only too happily into detailed discussions of each area Day expressed interest in, quickly drifting away from the task at hoof and spending quite a lot of time, under encouragement, lamenting what she referred to as ‘the tragic state of quadruped fashion in the rest of the multiverse’. When Carrot Top brought her attention back around to the promised socks, Day asked to go over the cotton one more time, and the wool and cashmere too, just to be absolutely sure, though he finally settled on the same material Rarity had originally intended to work with.

At that point the unicorn asked Carrot Top over to be consulted about the color, so the earth pony peeled herself away from Allie and used her teeth to pluck out the ribbons which had been woven through her mane. She mostly stood there with Day while the unicorn held up lengths of cashmere and answered her own questions. “Do you think I should try to match her coat, sir? Hmm—I could, but for a tabby like you, Carrot, I think a nice iris shade would flatter those legs much more…” Shapes folded in and out of hovering fabrics. “Green is so very much your color, after all, darling. It just makes your mane—pop! Now as to patterns. Do you like stripes? Of course you do, dears…”

Needles plucked and dove at an impossible speed. The first few bands of a stocking veritably materialized before Day’s eyes.

Carrot occupied Rarity by catching up on gossip, so Day decided he wouldn’t be able to have much effect on the unicorn’s attention without embarrassing himself. He retreated.

Allie was standing by herself now. Day sidled up to her and squeezed her arm in both hands, gripping her so tightly that she arched her eyebrows in surprise before giggling and giving Day a peck on the cheek.

“Hello, there,” she said.

“Hello, beautiful.” He rested his head on her shoulder and pulled her even closer.

“You’re in a good mood today,” she commented, tracing a finger playfully through his hair. “She must have really been something.”

His hands clenched again around her arm. “You’re really something,” he exclaimed forcefully, fervently.

“Aww!” Allie reciprocated his embrace in full. “You are too, honey.” She rested there for a moment. Day could feel energy coursing through her.

“No rush,” he called over her shoulder to Rarity. “Don’t be afraid to take your time. We can wait.”

“Pfft. Speak for yourself.” Carrot hopped over and caught Day’s hand in her mouth, nibbling on various fingers. Day became icy inside, even though it felt amazingly good. He carefully removed his hand, and then forced himself to lean down and give the earth pony a quick embrace.

She moved onto Allie with a playful little skip. Over the next few minutes, Allie kept trying to get her absconded comb into the pony’s mane, but Carrot Top jumped out of reach each time and ran circles around the girl to dodge the implement. When she succeeded in getting close to her while avoiding the comb, she nuzzled Allie from behind. Allie yipped, startled, and Day sent a sharp warning in Carrot’s direction which went utterly unnoticed. He thenceforth determined to look away from the pair, and focused his attention on watching Rarity work.

But while he stared, he didn’t see a white unicorn so much as he saw a slightly younger version of himself, hunched over the steering wheel of a dirty silver car. The back seats—and occasionally the front seats—were crammed with documents, each dislodged one of which had an over-inflated sense of its own importance. Day balanced his attention between calculating the factor by which he could speed without getting pulled over, and trying to keep the sliding documents from rearranging themselves to spite his passive-aggressive contempt for their egoism.

Paid by the hour in those days, he couldn’t afford to waste more than half an hour on his lunch break, which was why he became a rather reckless blur crossing the length of downtown to reach a certain burger bar on the east side. The lunch itself was not a matter of concern to him; Day didn’t like the way grease soaked through the bags there, and he was especially unfond of the sullen way the boy behind the counter took him in whenever he crisply enunciated his order.

But Allie insisted on eating there every day. So, stowing the greasy mess in a hopeless briefcase, he would swing around to the back of the building and set his shoulder against the wall. Often he didn’t even look to see if there was a body two feet to his left, but only reached his hand across the sun-bleached bricks until, in a very particular spot at the seventh row of bricks from ground level, it met another, slender hand.

They would grin tired grins at each other, the sweat of hours clamming their skin together, the occasional car honking at them while making for the drive-through. The hand-holding would only last for a moment, but over three long years of this tradition a noticeable divot would be worn in the brick, in that particular spot, which would stand to this day and perhaps long after.

Some days, falling behind on an overambitious thesis or a project, Day would need physical bearing up, Allie extended her arms to keep him from falling as she reassured him that he would manage to overcome every deadline. More commonly, falling behind on rent or the money for gas to flit between impossible class and work hours, she would simply cradle his head at the ears and promise him, with a firm gaze, to see him through, even if she had to take extra hours.

That meant so much to him because neither of them were doing anything they wanted to do—except for this.

“You aren’t alone,” she would say—it was a tradition—and squeeze his slightly-sore fingers. “You never will be.”

“I’ll spend the rest of eternity trying to be worth that,” Day would say, and gently kiss her ring finger despite the sour taste of a long, unwashed morning. Somehow they wouldn’t even hear the horns, and the acrid smells would disappear until nothing but the pair of them remained.

Something bumped into Day. His mind snapped back to Ponyville, yanked from its pleasant reverie.

It had been Carrot Top who jostled him. She was bouncy as a filly now. The thunderstorm which had begun rumbling outside while Day wasn’t looking might have had something to do with it. So that was why the Boutique was so empty today; one of them should have checked the weather schedule before going out. Where was Day's head today?

Carrot seemed to be running out of patience. The mare was rubbing her snout all over Allie now, and using her mouth to tug the girl across the Boutique by the wrist. They were heading in the direction of the door, but only ever made it a few feet at a time before Allie would manage some clever turn with the comb, or Carrot Top simply dissolved into private giggles.

“Hey, Rare!” she called in an unnecessary stage whisper. “How much longer are these things going to take?”

Two of the four socks were complete now. Rarity appeared to be on the edge of making a very dirty remark, but Carrot didn’t wait to hear it. While Allie was distracted by looking at the unicorn, and by the positively seductive gaskin-high socks, Carrot dropped her nose and plowed her the rest of the distance across the Boutique. Her tail twitched furiously. She wasn’t fit to be out in public much longer. “You know what? It’s okay,” she nickered hurriedly. “Just send Day along with them as soon as they’re done, okay? He’s a good lad.”

Allie found herself sliding out the door. She looked in bewilderment at Day. “Uh, alright. We’ll just see you in like a few minutes at home, okay? Day? That cool?”

Carrot Top turned just once, when she had almost passed out of sight. “Bring socks!” she hissed. Then the door swung shut behind her.

Day had stood in a sort of paralysis while this was going on. He sprang into action the moment they disappeared. Lurching towards the door, abortively, he reached out to the spot they’d occupied half a minute ago and then rushed to the window to watch them dash together through the early sprinkles of the storm.

He looked back and forth between the window, the socks, the roads outside and the garments which suddenly seemed to be taking shape at an agonizing snail’s pace. “Er—Miss Rarity? You said they wouldn’t be long now”

“A little patience, sir,” she said with an abruptly razor look. “I’m sure she’ll keep for half an hour longer.”

Half an hour! Day privately disagreed. Rather than going away last night, the sensation of being about to explode had only grown more unbearable.

Day already couldn’t see Carrot on the road outside the Boutique. By now, she and Allie were probably at Walnut Alley, and in five more minutes they’d be passing the train station. Ten minutes from now they would be crossing the town square, and in fifteen minutes, at Allie’s pace, they’d be up to the human end of Crayonberry Lane.

But what if Carrot Top decided to carry her? Then it might only take them five minutes to get home! With the mood she was in now, not to mention the burgeoning rain, Day couldn’t know that Carrot wouldn’t decide to scoop up his girlfriend at any second.

But he couldn’t catch up and head them off if he didn’t have the socks, could he? What could Carrot Top think if he left without waiting for the socks—no, no. The real question was, what was he even going to do? He was so desperate to catch them, but when he caught them—what? He had no idea.

But whatever it was, his heart told him it wasn’t worth taking chances about. “Now that I think about it,” he said with a loud cough, “I had better go with them. To make sure they don’t get…lost. I’d better go. I can come back and pick them up some time, if it isn’t a bother…” Still muttering explanations in this manner, he pushed at the door and found it, as he hadn’t found any door in six months, to be locked.

He frowned, unable to grasp the concept for a moment, and pushed again. It didn’t open. He couldn’t see any lock. So he pushed again. The door didn’t let him through. But it did give about half a centimeter, resisting with a cloud of pale whitish sparks.

“Come and sit with me for a moment, Day.”

He spun to the sound of the needles slowing, and found Rarity staring at him intently. Her horn was glowing.

Day didn’t move. It occurred to him to jump through one of the windows, showering shards of glass all over the street, but he hesitated when he began to consider the expense of the elegant panes which decorated the front walls of the Boutique.

“Tut-tut, Day. No need for such a hurry. Come here and have a cup of tea with me.” Day’s feet left the ground. Both of them at the same time. He began to pedal his legs with comic ferocity, to no effect whatsoever, as the unicorn simultaneously levitated him and set a table. She quickly arranged an elegant afternoon tea on a round furnishing tucked in the nook of a set of bay windows. Day was kept in midair until it was all properly done up with saucers, cups, a couple scones and a piping hot kettle of what smelled like jasmine tea, whereupon he was plonked firmly down across from Rarity and poured a serving.

Day struggled a bit, but he could tell it was futile; his bottom wouldn’t leave the seat. It felt like it was glued there. As Rarity dropped a couple cubes of sugar into her own drink with tortuous patience and little plonk-plonk sounds, Day reflected that his girlfriend and the mare were probably at Mulberry Boulevard by now.

He thought of asking Rarity what she wanted, but the look in her sapphire eyes said to Day that she would reveal it in her own good time. And, furthermore, that if he interrupted her she would probably start all over again. So Day took a sip of the tea, in the hopes that by appeasing her he could hasten the end. It was in fact delicious, but he burned his tongue and besides didn’t pay enough attention to enjoy the taste.

“So.” Rarity paused for a long, careful sip, took one bite of a scone, and paused to watch the bay windows filling up with droplets. “You’re an item with my friend Carrot Top, are you?”

Day opened his mouth and nodded humbly. “Yes’m.”

“She’s very fond of you. You know that.” Day nodded again. By this point, he was a bit slouched at the table, while the unicorn sat upright with infinite poise; even without overpowering magic, it was possible that her presence alone could have pinned him in place.

Another sip. A flash of lightning outside. “And you intend to treat her with respect, the way a pony deserves to be treated?”

Day nodded furiously, wishing there was a ‘yes to all’ nod he could have given. The corner of Mulberry and Watercress now—that was where Allie and Carrot probably were. But maybe there would be wagons blocking the bridge, like there often were. Yes, that was it. There were wagons at the bridge. They’d have to wait to cross. There was still hope. The worst hadn’t happened yet.

In fact, Allie was not at the bridge, but neither was she yet past the corner of Mulberry and Watercress. She was at a standstill—and trying to figure out if anything in her situation was changed by the nearly-blinding light before which Carrot Top was busy curtseying, blinking rapidly so that she could gaze openly upon the princess contained within.

She wondered how Celestia was here, for starters. There hadn’t been any plans for the princess to visit Ponyville, had there? No, she would have noticed. It was too important to Carrot Top for her to avoid paying attention to that sort of thing. Nor could Allie tell why Celestia was here on a drenched town road, but Carrot Top seemed beyond worrying such trivial questions.

Maybe this was just what Allie needed. After all, she was doing her best to pull this all off, but the more difficult the slope she tried to navigate, the more starkly it stood out that there was only so much one girl could do. How could anyone pass up the opportunity to learn from someone like an immortal princess? She’d give a lot for the wisdom of a thousand years, or the tranquility she felt radiating from the luminous being before her.

Allie quickly tried to remember how to curtsey, and wound up settling for dipping her head and stooping halfway to one knee. Carrot Top seemed to lie down on the ground, and Allie wondered how she could think this was a good time for a nap until she realized that the pony was prostrating herself.

“We thank you and thank the light, oh Celestia, for your presence which deigns to grace our dwelling place. May you think of us ever as your children, and may my heart forever walk in the light of day.”

Celestia’s mouth formed a small O momentarily, until she smiled and stepped closer to her subject, offering a gold-clad hoof to bid Carrot Top rise up. “I haven’t been greeted that way in quite some time,” she mused, in just the tone of voice that suggested it was a pleasant surprise to brighten up a monotonous day. “Is there something weighing on your heart, my little pony?”

Carrot Top, a bit dazed, shook her head emphatically. “No, Princess!” She pointed to Allie. “Actually, I wanted you to meet someone!”

Allie glanced up nervously. She felt her ears burn, Celestia’s attention turning to her.

“They didn’t like you very much at first, I think, but–” Carrot positively beamed in her direction. “Thanks to me, I think that’s all past now! You have two new loyal human subjects, Princess!” She smiled into the breach that was the unimposing but somehow bright face of the Princess, waiting on her every word.

Celestia’s head tilted. She smiled at Allie, and Allie grinned back. It seemed like all the warmth of the sun was contained in the smile.

“I wish Day could be here too.” Carrot poured on words to fill the silence. “He didn’t want to be like us. But don’t worry! I changed his mind for you.”

“My dear child,” said Celestia more gently than Allie even knew how to speak. “Did I ask you to do this for me?”

As Carrot Top’s entire posture trembled, flailing like a foal in a raging sea, Celestia loosely curled one angelic wing around the earth pony. Allie couldn’t hear what transpired on the other side of the alicorn feathers. She settled herself back onto one knee to wait for several minutes, until, with another rush of dry light, the princess was gone.

“Very good.” Rarity took another bite of her scone and pushed the plate aside for the sake of being dainty about it. “I wanted to take a moment to be perfectly clear about that, sir. Carrot Top has been a private mare for quite some time, and I’m happy for her, of course, but you are in every possible position to break her heart right now. And I do look after my friends in these sorts of matters.”

“Don’t you feel a little abashed saying these kinds of things to a stallion?” Day burst out. He had lived long enough in Ponyville by now to have absorbed its social scripts, and to be genuinely struck by something so far out of place.

Rarity raised an eyebrow over her teacup, eyelashes arcing along with it. “And does that mean you shouldn’t be responsible? Carrot Top and I have had our own talks,” she said, and her gaze fell away suddenly to one side, rolling off the table like an upended teacup. “At least…Celestia knows I’ve tried.”

Day surreptitiously wriggled; he could feel the magic glued to his bottom weakening as Rarity’s focus drifted. If the spell slipped from her just a bit more, he thought he could break free.

“Besides, you aren’t quite a stallion, sir,” she reminded him with a droll look up and down. “I’ve heard quite the rowdy stories about your sex from the more in-tune social circles in Manehatten. I do some work there from time to time, you know.”

The soft words struck home, and Day shrank shamefully into his seat, reminded of any number of uncomfortable facts about home. “Surely men aren’t that much trouble?” he muttered miserably.

The wagons which may or may not have been on the bridge could only be long gone now. Allie and Carrot Top would be turning past the market now. Maybe they would be distracted by Beignet…no. No, there was no chance of that. Carrot Top wouldn’t let herself get distracted.

Rarity’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and she forgot her spell a bit more as she leaned towards him. “Oh, don’t fret, please,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I–I’m sure they’re not at all bad on the whole. Why, no doubt there are plenty of simply wonderful herds with humans in them, just like—who was that pony, a cousin of Applejack’s? Braeburn. That was it. Why, I hear he’s in a wonderful relationship with three of your kind.”

Day nodded, folding his hands on the tablecloth.

Rarity poured some more tea. “Only,” she added, “I’ve seen how you look at her.”

“And?”

“And she’s not a toy. You had best remember that.”

Day echoed the words under his breath, replaying them distractedly. “Not a toy. Not a toy. No, she’s not a toy at all,” he repeated.

For a moment they sat rather quietly, Day trying to figure out how far he could wiggle without tipping Rarity off, and the unicorn staring at the torrent which now hammered with ten thousand fingers on the bay windows.

“Miss Rarity?” he said around a magnificent crack of thunder. “Have you ever been in love with somepony?”

Her eyes flew open to their whole lash-batting extent. She almost spilled her tea. But after a demure cough, she carefully set the saucer down and released her magic. “I suppose a little tit-for-tat is fair game,” she replied after a moment. “There was…oh,” she clicked her tongue, “there was this one overgrown colt, but…it seems like ever so long ago now.”

She had quite forgotten Day’s presence a mere sentence into her memories, and she stirred a near-empty glass without even noticing it. “At the time he was very dashing, and I was in love, as all fillies are, but—it was silly of me, I’m afraid. I don’t believe I knew what love was at the time. How very much I’ve grown.”

The panes flickered, white, black, white and rattled a bit, as if shivering with excitement. “Did he love you?” Day asked, leaning onto his elbows.

“Good Celestia, no. If he had anything even resembling love in any bone of his body, he would have been more concerned about how I was faring and less about the number of pearls on my gown. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have minded that my makeup was an utter mess by the end of that evening.”

She lowered her voice, as if to not be overheard by curious raindrops. “I must confess that many ponies here imagine me to be quite the expert on love, but you musn’t start spreading the same mistake. In truth, I’m not at all sure I know what love is anymore. But,” she added firmly, “I do know a thing or two about what love isn’t. I know that much.”

Day exhaled, leaving ripples on his tea. “I think you’re a very perceptive mare.”

She grinned. “Flattery, I’m afraid, will get you very far.”

“So there was only ever just the one? Surely there must have been a few men…a few herds, I mean, which would have wanted attention from you.”

“I suppose,” Rarity said, resting a cheek on her hoof and staring out the window. “But it was never quite what I wanted.”

“And what do you want?” Day whispered.

She looked up and grunted. “Do you know what it’s like to be the center of somepony’s world? I had a fairy tale that I would have given everything to live. I wasted the best of my youth dreaming that I’d find somepony who would be totally in love with me…and only me.” A sigh. “Selfish of me, not to want to share. It’s probably for the best that nopony indulged such a self-centered impulse. I’m starting think that kind of love can’t possibly exist. Not really. Do…you feel that way, sir?”

Day was about to nod, but he caught himself. One of his hands was trembling. To keep the other still, he gripped hard on the table. “No,” he said, beginning to stammer all over.

“I try–” Cutting herself off, Rarity squinted at him. “Why, are you alright?”

Day answered her by pushing himself to his feet in a clatter of serving ware, and hurling himself headlong into the storm.

It couldn’t be anything other than too late now. Day also couldn’t do anything but sprint, even through the muddy patches between cobbles where the paving was bad around the corners of the market. The very few ponies that were outside, and not by desire, called at him to slow down as he passed, lest he slip on his sparse set of legs and give himself a nasty bump.

The thunder was now drumming a regular tattoo overhead. Ponyville was generally a very sunny part of Equestria, but when they did get storms, Rainbow Dash was fond of playing up the lightning. It wasn’t one of the traits that made her popular with the town; aside from pegasi, ponies hated to be outside during a downpour.

Even when late to work, Day had never crossed Ponyville at this speed. But still, he didn’t meet Carrot Top or Allie on the road. He knew he wouldn’t. He pushed himself so hard that when he burst through his door, he had to stop and spend a long minute catching his breath, collapsed against the wall of the den hallway.

He didn’t hear anything inside. He didn’t see much of the room, either. Someone had turned off all of the lights. But his eyes were quickly adjusting, because it wasn’t all that bright outside. The raindrops were drumming on his memories. It wasn’t because of the darkness that the living room wasn’t what he saw.

This is what he saw.

At first, outlined shadows. The shape of an umbrella stand, a mud mat, a lightswitch. All of human proportions. All utterly mundane. Day was leaning against another beige wall, very close to a lightswitch, but instead of simply hitting it and striding inside the Earth-side apartment, he paused in the dark to collapse against the drywall and just breathe.

It was a long, dark pause which Day had had occasion to use several times in his life—a moment, escaped from the demands of the daylight world, when he could try to catch up with it all. Normally Day prided himself on being able to handle the stresses of everyday life, so he only used it on occasions when the act of moving forward seemed a particularly heavy yoke.

On this particular day, he should have been light as a feather, given all he’d accomplished. He had finished his final report for a project which had won him an award from IEEE. It was entirely his own brainchild, an exhaustive and brilliant analysis of certain obscure problems facing the miniaturization of capacitors and other components. It was not necessarily the sort of project which would move the industry forward in great leaps and bounds, but it had been a terrifically thorny problem from a mathematical standpoint, and Day had pursued it mainly for the challenge. The insights required to detail the phenomenon had been very original, and when Day had gotten his first ideas, he’d been quite proud of himself, throwing his days into overtime with a vengeance in order to obtain a small grant for the study. It was a feat, he knew, that only a handful of engineers in his generation could have matched, at least in the amount of time it had taken Day.

And now everything was submitted, timestamped, and more or less wrapped up with a pretty bow. Nothing about today had gone contrary to Day’s expectations—nothing had gone out of the ordinary at all. But then, perhaps that was it. It had been exactly like every other day.

He hadn’t called his mother. It would have been a waste of time even trying to explain what he had done. He hadn’t called his father. He hadn’t bothered calling anyone, in fact. And he hadn’t talked much to his friends today, even the ones he carpooled with. They had gone on about their vacations and the last football game, about normal things which they talked about every day. And there was no reason they shouldn’t have talked about such things today. But Day, though he normally joined in, had stayed quiet and held his award to his chest, underneath his suitcase.

In a sudden fit of oddness he had tried explaining his theories to a homeless man on a bench, but the man had only sneered grittily at him and demanded a dollar, which Day had duly handed over.

As he usually did whenever he found himself losing money to strangers, Day reprimanded himself for being silly. He’d had some vague notion that there would be a commotion when it finally happened—that what happened in the isolation of his office would suddenly be released into the world, like a long kept-secret project in an underground lab taking the world by storm. That there would be a kind of ceremony perhaps, with flashing cameras, like on TV, and that people he knew would be there looking on in awe.

Time had been when he would have at least called mother, and made the effort to talk through it even knowing that the words meant nothing to her. Because even if there was no slap on the back, no one to appreciate a job well done, mother would have tried to say something helpful, like, “It sounds like you’re doing wonderful, dear,” or, “I always knew you would do great things.”

Now he felt guilty just thinking about pestering her. What did anyone care about capacitors, when you got right down to it? After months poring over them—what did he really care about capacitors? After paging through explorer’s journals of a world called Equestria, and after scouring the net for information on the cultures of words beyond the pale of dimensions, he would stand by himself and wonder if all his work wasn’t a waste of time.

These moments, Day realized as his forehead began to sweat into the wall, had been occurring with increasing frequency since First Contact. He was just digging into the mystery of why when suddenly his lights came on.

Day stepped forward into his tiny dining room, looking about in shock. This wasn’t the home he had left this morning. It was as though a natural disaster had passed through. There were paper ribbons thrown over everything, a new tablecloth on the table, and balloons filled with real helium bobbing against the ceiling. There were bottles of soda on the table, next to a cake slathered tastelessly in pink frosting. Over a doorway, a string of cardboard letters had been tacked together to spell ‘Day, World’s Greatest Engineer’ with all the exclamation marks in the bag appended afterwards.

Allie was standing under those letters wearing a conical paper hat. It was eleven o’clock at night. She bounced, clapped and yelled ‘Surprise!’ the vey second he stepped forward.

The cake said ‘Happy Birthday’, which wasn’t really appropriate, but there were only two guests at this party, and both of them voted that it didn’t really matter. It tasted like cardboard, as cake invariably did when Allie picked one out. It was the best thing Day had ever eaten.

There were many such nights buried in Day’s memory—more, in fact, than he had remembered there being. He had to pull himself out of them in order to keep moving forward in the present.

Forcing himself up with two last deep breaths, he muddled his way through the Ponyville home, reaching out to feel his way along the walls. His foot ran into something, and he picked it up. It was a shirt.

Dropping it, he stumbled forward. He ran into a pair of jeans next, with a narrow pink belt that had been undone.

A few feet after that he ran into his couch, too, because even though he could sort of make out what was in front of him, he hadn’t really been paying attention.

He hung there, with his arms dangling over the back, and found himself staring straight at his bedroom door. The door hadn’t been closed this morning, but it was now.

Day scrambled off the couch and barreled through. “Allie,” he cried out, casting about until she found her in the room. He took a step towards her, but stuck there and stumbled as if he had hit something again.

“Please,” he meant to say, but it came out extremely weak, and faded completely before he could even finish the unintelligible word.

Carrot Top stopped what she was doing, though she had been doing it with a great deal of focus, and hopped onto the floor. She came to Day with a look of alarm on her face. Day fell past her, stumbling the final two steps to where Allie lay. He threw his arms out as he fell to the knees so that his hands were touching her side.

“Day!” Allie was just as distraught by his sudden appearance. She repeated his name several times over, scooting awkwardly towards him so that she could wrap her arms around his upper back and lift his fallen head to see what was the matter.

Carrot Top, just as concerned, laid a fetlock on his shoulder from behind.

Day made an effort to pull the quilt over his girlfriend’s shoulders, though most of it was trapped under her legs. “Please…” he said, fading again.

When Allie pulled her legs away from Carrot Top, who had been idly caressing them this entire time, the pony’s face folded into an angry frown.

“What’s with you?” she demanded. “I slept with you last night. And now I can’t even touch your girlfriend?” Air billowed from her nostrils. “What? Because she’s your property or something? She can’t decide for herself?” A stamp. “Day, I love you, but I don’t know how much more of this nonsense I can take. What is wrong with you?”

Day sucked in a deep, body-wracking breath.

“I’m jealous,” he shouted. And then, for a good long while, he sobbed brokenly into the arms of the woman he loved.

He felt—not exactly better, after that moment—but a good deal calmer, the way a ticking time bomb might feel after it has finally exploded into bits.

Day cried for a long, talking about many things Allie couldn’t quite make out. Much of the time she didn’t think he quite made it out either.

Some of his words came through. He spent a lot of time talking about different things they had done together, long ago. It terrified Allie that she couldn’t tell why he was bringing up these memories now.

He also spent a lot of words on praising her, the same way he often did when taking her on a romantic date. Normally his silly, overly poetic flattery made Allie laugh and kiss him, but for once Allie didn’t feel like laughing. She was still terrified. Day had never been quite like this before. He’d been sad before, of course, but it had always been a strong and quiet kind of sorrow, the kind of sorrow where he would sit by himself for a long time and stare at the stars.

She pressed her cheek against the top of his head and whispered fiercely while squeezing the awkward hug she had around him.

“Shh. It’s alright.” Allie didn’t know what else to do. It scared her out of her mind that she might be doing the wrong thing and making an even worse mess of it all. It felt like being blinded with a poker, suddenly being confused by someone as predictable as Day.

“M’sorry,” Day was saying over and over. “I should leave—should leave you two–don’t deserve to be here–”

“I wouldn’t send you away!” Allie tried to quell his trembling by tightening her embrace again, though it was all but suffocating him. “I just wanted you to be happy.”

With that exclamation, she added a splash of tears to the pool herself, but then sniffled and recovered herself.

Allie smiled wanly over the wisps of Day’s hair. “Heh…I’m not being a gentlemare, now, am I?” She bent even more into her boyfriend. “I’d forgive you no matter what,” she whispered. “I want to be with you.”

For a moment she rocked him back and forth, rubbing his back and listening to the sounds he made. All was quiet in the room, and there was little sound of the storm outside.

She gasped and stared skyward. “Oh God…we have to stop.”

Suddenly, her throat hitched; immediately after those words, Allie looked up into the face of Carrot Top. She’d almost forgotten about her. The pony had been standing silently in front of her this whole time, for—how long?—only trying to catch her attention. Only trying to look either of them in the eyes.

Allie’s voice choked entirely. She shifted her grip on Day so that he was moved behind her.

“I mean…” She reached out with one arm taken off of Day’s back, and Carrot Top stepped backwards out of reach. “No, Carrot Top. We can make this work.” She went on desperately, saying everything that came to her to pull Carrot back. “We can talk about this, right? That can make it all better. That’s what a herd is supposed to do.”

The pony’s eyes were still liquid wide. Allie waited for her to come back, but her head only shook in a daze.

Allie gasped in frustration. Her fingers curled against the sheets. “Don’t worry, he really likes you. You—you just went too fast, that’s all. We’ll try again different and it’ll be great.”

But still those alien eyes glimmered like garnets.

“You two obviously have something very special,” Carrot Top managed to say in a strained voice. She swallowed. “And I’m happy for you.”

Here the pony cut herself off abruptly, and instead of saying whatever she had been planning to say, she turned and ran.

Allie lunged for Carrot Top, reacting when she spun towards the bedroom door. She was struck totally off-guard when she actually caught the mare. There was no way for her to match the speed of an earth pony. But nevertheless, a thick length of Carrot’s tail was snagged in between her fingers, more than enough to hold the pony in place long enough for a few more words.

But Allie hadn’t expected to succeed, and she didn’t know what to do at this point. Carrot Top didn’t move because her tail would have hurt like crazy had she tried to tug, but neither did she turn around. She stood there. Waiting.

Slowly, painfully, Allie let go, her fingers letting slip the curling locks of orange. The last one fell away like a skein of saliva, and Carrot’s tail dropped back onto her haunches. Even after the pony had galloped away, Allie hadn’t come up with anything to call after her.

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Soundtrack: “In Too Deep” by Genesis
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Once beyond the doors of the house, Carrot Top dashed with her head down so nopony would see what her face was like. But in the kind of rain that was bucketing outside, no one could have noticed anyway.

And her farmhouse was clear on the other side of Ponyville. And she was suddenly tired. By the time she made it as far as the town square, she didn’t have the will to gallop headlong anywhere, or even to canter. She walked past the town square, kicking a pebble ahead of her every few steps.

Ponies passed in both directions, on the ground and on the wing. Of those that weren’t weatherponies, most were on their way to shelter of some form or other, and most called out to Carrot by name as they passed, urging her to pick up her hooves and get out of the wet as they flickered by like scenes in a pop-up book.

Carrot Top didn’t pick up her hooves. She shuffled past the train station, and then Watercress Lane. The south bridge turned out to be flooded, because it was a flat footbridge, and while Carrot might have been able to ford it on a normal day, the water was rushing angrily with storm-swell. So she turned around, and one hoofstep at a time went back the way she’d come. She turned right at the town square instead of left, and went the east bridge, which was a sturdy stone arch, and detoured around the outside of town on dirt lanes turned to mud.

There was a large stick lying across the center of the path. It had been knocked down by the wind. So she picked it up in her mouth and dumped to the side.

There was a hill. She walked to the top, and then she walked back down the other side.

She crossed an intersection. She crossed another bridge. She turned off near the old hill with the oak, and towards Sweet Apple Acres. The gate in the road had been swung shut by the wind again, so she kicked at the bottom of it. It swung open.

Princess Celestia once wrote and illustrated a book, entitled The Royal Pony Sisters, when in the course of uniting the three primeval tribes it became the case that too many ponies sought her advice, and too many the valuable records of her memory, for her to see to them all. In her writings, which often turned into musings on the mysteries of life—as those of an ancient mind were wont to—she set several records straight and left as much of her most cherished wisdom to her subjects as possible, so that their lives, though short, could be illuminated by all the light she could give them.

It has been added to here and there by the more meddlesome of scholars over the centuries, and experienced some inevitable corruption when being translated, as it must be, whenever the ever-flowing Equus language leaves it behind. But with just a little supervision from the original author, it has preserved its core intent, and all of the most important passages. Even those ponies who care little for the thoughts of alicorns are exposed in their school years to the famous first chapters of the book, filled with astounding descriptions of Equestria’s beginning, and patriotic promises extoling the virtues of Harmony.

And the Light took pity and begged to come down to the rock, where it took on the form of a mare,

that all might see and know that they were loved. (Celestia 1:2)

But according to Carrot Top’s younger mother, Carrot Grater—who taught her to be a gentlemare always—the most important passage in this book is a small, forgotten set of verses buried deep in the middle. It is a short chapter, unremarkable, and cut entirely from abridged versions. It tells the story of a visit by the Princess to a tiny village, and her brief conversation with a hopefully filly who is paralyzed by the fear of being rejected by the stallion of her dreams.

Go to him—don’t wait until tomorrow. You have so little time. But if he does not return your

affections, don’t cry. Your heart is no less beautiful for it. It is in loving, not in being loved, that you

shine with the splendor of the sun. (Celestia 37:15)

Carrot Top remembered neither of those passages that evening. She was not thinking about books.

Fifteen years from today, on the dirt track between Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres, three teenage ponies frolic down the lane.

Their boundless energy would send them along a mile a minute, but that they keep stopping to jostle each other, bump each other out of the road or stomp all four hooves and belt out a crude joke or a harmless insult. One pony tussles another into a headlock, a third breaks them apart. One jumps up on a fence, high-wire trotting in a vain acrobatic display, and the others pull her down before she can hurt herself.

From behind, it looks as though they are prancing into the sunset, which is wide and burning on this particular evening, melting into the ground as if the road leads straight for the glowing heart of Celestia herself. The foals’ laughter and roughhousing seems energized by this backdrop, as if they have some unconscious sense of the portrait painted by their shadows, on this road, where the hoofbeats of millions of ponies have sounded before them.

The pony on the right, a chestnut-and-strawberry colored filly, will be the one that listens most often to the story of how Amadeus quietly asked to be transferred back to Earth just after dropping out of the Royal Guard military research program, and summarily out of the pages of history. She will be the only daughter who notices something out of place in the frenzied way Carrot Top dotes upon the five stallions she marries, loving and sturdy ponies all who provide her with three healthy foals in quick succession. Their marriage will draw no stares from anypony else—in fact, most of town will look upon the herd with admiration. It will seem a strong and healthy bond, unmarred except by one much-hushed and inexplicable affair with a human in Toronto, during an equally inexplicable trip made by their mother without any warning.

And after her mother’s death, when this filly is finally forced to move out on her own, she will flit from lover to lover, and even from world to world, as if searching for something that she can never quite find.

The middle filly has a cyan coat and navy blue mane, with a single streak of red. The sunset proudly alights upon her cutie mark, an icon in glassblowing which takes after one of her fathers. Her greatest talent, which will make her a craftsmare of the highest echelons in Canterlot, will be a rare capacity to judge how quickly a piece of glass is capable of expanding, and how far it can change shape without breaking.

The pony on the left is a colt with a humble chocolate coat and a blonde mane. He will be the only one of his siblings who learns The Royal Pony Sisters from cover to cover, and we will respond to his late mother’s passing by taking a place in the Royal Canterlot Guard. Unlike his sisters, and the young brothers which he will have by then, he will never marry. But he will be a cornerstone for the tiny community of weathered and lonely stallions which fill his barracks. Over thick mead, these stallions will one day surprise each other by each claiming confidence that he might have asked them to be his beloved, had he been just a bit more willing to seek his own happiness.

But they will never say that this colt seems unhappy; indeed, his infectious good humor will be immortalized in long-remembered fireside toasts ‘to the good lad’.

Carrot Top didn’t make it home until after dark. The storm was over by then, and the sky achingly clear. The bullfrogs were out—content as they always were in the summer, for all they really wanted was a little water and plenty of bugs to catch. The door still squeaked on its hinges, and her left-hind horseshoe still struck to her foot when she tried to pry it off.

She didn’t go into bed. It wasn’t even worth attempting to toss and turn in her frayed sheets. After doing something with herself that she had never done before, because she had always been taught that it was shameful, she went outside and dug her hooves deep into the loam of her vegetable patch.

The loam thrummed under her. Then in beat within her, quaking its way up her hooves and pumping a rhythm through her veins. Carrot Top wriggled her hooves even farther into the soft soil, as deep as she dared. She soaked it in the way the green shoots of a young carrot would soak up rainwater. All of Ponyville was within her senses now, and she could feel each yard of it, warm, embracing, eager to listen as well as speak. She tried to fill herself up with the chanting of dirt and stone, to leave no room for anything else inside her.

It didn’t work, of course. Her restlessness never disappeared, and though she wanted to fall asleep, there was clearly not a hope of it. So might as well take a moment to relax. Carrot leaned on her picket fence and stared up at the sky, where a full moon was tracing an unperturbed arc through the stillness. She sucked in a deep breath of Luna’s night, staring at the cold, untouched white of the moon–

And she held it–

Comments

[Azure Blackstone]

...

[Kman]

But.......there was no "sad" tag........

[Lupus]

Most of this seemed...out of place. I don't really know how to feel about it

[ArcaneVisions]

Too rushed I feel. He went from refusing to date her to sex, and then to a herd....