11. A Day Out in Equestria
Meg flew past the hot air balloon, which was deflated and secured on the balcony, and headed towards the river bordering the east end of town. Her introduction to weather magic was to take place above Sweet Apple Acres; Applejack was okay with it if the barn got a good washing out of it.
She climbed several hundred feet, high enough to pass above the local pegasi traffic but well below the patchwork layer of clouds, remnants of the solid cloud cover that had hosted her flying lessons the previous day. Weather pegasi in a few hours would start clearing them out, but for now the clouds above the apple orchard would serve as her instructional materials.
Last night’s sleep had done her a lot of good. She was fully in touch with her pegasus instincts, automatically correcting for a cross breeze, taking advantage of thermals, or maintaining a level flight path. It was as natural and effortless as walking.
She banked left to line her path up with the river, sparkling in the morning sunshine. That direction more or less will take her straight to the homestead. It was almost impossible to get lost. She could already see the orchards on the southern border of Ponyville, and how could she miss a collection of buildings in the middle of orchards and farmland?
She maintained a comfortable cruising speed, about as fast as driving a car through town—but without the intersections and red lights. The air blew through her mane and tail, but not as hard as it should have given her speed. Her eyes barely felt the wind at all. Must be pegasus magic at work. This was so much better than fighting the commuting traffic back home.
A gray pegasus below her caught her eye. The mare was ahead of her and off to the right, flying almost parallel to her. Her heart skipped a beat as she noticed the blonde mane and a uniform. Could it be? She sped up, closing the distance between them, so she could get a good look at mare’s cutie mark, but before she could do so the mysterious pony banked and came in for a landing.
Meg did not change course to follow. Even if the pegasus mare was who she thought it was, how would she introduce herself? She wasn’t allowed to reveal her true identity or origin. Then there was what Pinkie Pie had told her—after first getting Gummy off her finger—when asked why Derpy had decided not to come. The answer was a reality check; worse, she couldn’t blame her for feeling that way.
Hi, Derpy! You wouldn’t meet me in my world, so here I am to meet you in yours! You have a daughter, right? How’s Dinky doing? Why are you delivering mail on a Sunday? By the way, what’s the story with your eyes?
Yeah, great idea.
As she approached the southern boundary of Ponyville, she could make out far to the right the schoolhouse, quiescent on this weekend morning. She tried to imagine the playground full of fillies and colts playing at recess, including the three fillies she had already met. Did they really get bullied by Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon all the time?
Off to the left was the Everfree Forest. The canopy was dense, comprised of twisted and intertwined branches, seemingly at war with each other. Flying through that would be a nightmare. The boundary of the forest at ground level was no more inviting, perpetual gloom hiding lurking dangers. What the cartoon portrayed was a sanitized version, warm and fuzzy compared to the real thing. Did Zecora really live in that?
Fluttershy’s cottage was supposed to be in that direction too, just outside the forest, but Meg couldn’t make it out. An upcoming hill forced her to focus on her flying, and she banked to go around it.
Thousands of apple trees came into view, all neatly lined up in rows. A quarter mile away was the homestead, a collection of rustic, red buildings in a large clearing. A violently shaking tree in her peripheral vision caught her attention; that could only be one thing.
Meg began her descent, banking towards the now motionless tree, deprived of the color red. It was doubtful Rainbow Dash was down there, but she wasn’t flying around up here either; Applejack would probably know where she was. Besides, she’d love the opportunity to see the earth pony at work, and maybe even meet Big Macintosh.
The holes in the canopy were more than big enough to fly through, but she didn’t yet feel confident enough to do that. Meg slowed to a stop above the canopy between two trees, then descended vertically to the ground below.
Canterlot loomed before them. The four pegasi of the Royal Guard pulling the chariot began to slow down as they entered the capitol’s airspace. Princess Twilight Sparkle adjusted her crown with a golden slipper adorned hoof. She had nearly forgot to put on her regalia before departing, which would have been quite awkward. While visiting Equestria’s seat of power, she was now expected to dress the part, nor would it have been proper for her to arrive on a passenger train.
Twilight sneaked a peek at the cause of that momentary forgetfulness seated next to her. The humans may have known about her “adventure” on the other side of The Mirror, but there was no reason to believe they also knew it had led to the current crisis. She gazed at her former home as she wondered how would they react when they discover it had been her actions that now threaten the existence of their world.
Unaware of her ruminations, Steve was enthralled with the approaching city, taking in the bountiful waterfalls, the majestic palace with its well manicured gardens, the self-important mansions that surround it, the lesser suburbs and business districts where most live and work—including the block where she grew up and her parents still lived, not that she mentioned that to him. He took plenty of pictures with that device of his.
Those suburbs and business districts clung to the mountainside in layers below the palace and noble mansions, invisible from Ponyville as they occupied the gentle slopes on the opposite side of the mountain. The chariot flew far above them, heading towards the palace grounds.
They approached a set of multistory buildings surrounding a large, rectangular plaza, in the center of which was a large garden, full of exotic flowering plants and topiaries. Walking paths meandered from one side to another, cutting through the undulating terrain. It seemed improbable that the chariot could manage the steep descent required to land on the plaza, but the well-trained pegasus guards brought the chariot to a halt at the entrance to the Royal Archives.
A waiting unicorn Royal Guard came forward to open the door and unfold a set of stairs from the chariot. Twilight exited first, walking down the stairs as the guard bowed, doing her best to ignore him, as was expected. Steve followed, as the guard resumed standing at attention.
The Princess and her guest walked towards the entrance, where two more unicorn guards opened the doors, bowed to the alicorn, and let them through. Once inside, Twilight headed down the spacious corridor to the Star Swirl the Bearded wing. Steve gawked the high, vaulted ceilings and frosted glass windows embossed with the Solar Crest; to him it was all new and exciting—and he didn’t even suspect that those windows would show the Lunar Crest when illuminated by the Moon during the night. It had been many years since Twilight experienced that awe and wonder for herself.
They reached the locked gate at the entrance to the wing. While the gate did not look very substantial, physically speaking, the enchantments upon it—indeed, on the entire room it protected—were anything but insubstantial. Not even Celestia herself could trivially teleport in or out of that room.
The alicorn’s horn softly glowed as the spell was cast to unlock the gate. Being a princess does have its advantages, Twilight thought, as she remembered an earlier attempt to sneak in. She still couldn’t believe the guard had simply let her in without asking any questions, nor that Celestia herself did not question her presence upon walking right past her. My messed-up mane was all she noticed?
Twilight opened the gate and entered, holding it open for Steve, then letting it close behind him, auto-locking as it latched shut. All the scrolls and manuscripts around them, most of them untold centuries old, were too priceless or dangerous or both to let just anypony in here. Only Celestia or Luna could grant permission. Celestia must have done so for her many years ago, but for some reason had never told her. She never had the nerve to ask her mentor for fear of the questions that would be asked in return.
A few dozen feet in front of them, at the end of a corridor formed by rows of shelves on either side, was the huge hourglass symbolizing the research for which the ancient mage was famous. Steve trotted over to it, then walked around it, inspecting it from all angles, coming back on the other side. “This is where you found the spell to go back in time to warn yourself?”
Is there anything they don’t know? She reminded herself she needed to watch everything humanity had on them.
“Technically, Pinkie Pie found it, but yeah. I also found out the hard way that time travel is pretty useless.”
“Not surprising, really. We don’t know if time travel into the past is possible—well, I suppose it has to be, because what would stop me from going back in time here, then crossing over back to my universe… uh, anyway… a lot of theoretical research has been done. Quantum Mechanics does not forbid traveling to the past, but it may forbid temporal paradoxes. You went back to unknowingly create the very conditions that would cause you to go back.”
“And that was no fun at all,” she droned. Twilight remembered reading something about that in one of the books she borrowed from Steve. It had to do with constructive or destructive interference of the probability wave function with its past self. An attempt to change one’s own past would destructively interfere such that it had zero probability of happening when the wave function collapsed upon observation; or, in her case, by creating her own past, she caused constructive interference, making it more likely. Theoretically.
What would Star Swirl think of all this? He hadn’t known anything about Quantum Mechanics. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have bothered with most of his time related spells. Here they were kept, locked up, not because somepony might use them to alter the past—the ancient mage had determined, the hard way, that it was almost certainly impossible—but because time loops made all sorts of weird stuff possible in the present, whatever it took to make the time loop stable. Not that she knew any of that when she used the spell. She had been in too much of a rush, desperate to warn her past self, to first read that part of the scroll.
“The spells for manipulating space are this way,” she said, as she headed off into the stacks.
Steve followed close behind. “Are there spells that manipulate both time and space simultaneously?”
That made Twilight come to a sudden halt and look at him. “No, what would be the point?”
“Relativity, remember? The two are connected, and to some extent interchangeable.”
“Right…” she slowly said, as she resumed walking. “Hyper dimensional rotation of one frame of reference with respect to another.” They turned left at the next junction and continued walking. “No, there aren’t, at least not intentionally,” she said after mulling it over.
“What do you think such a spell could accomplish?”
“What d’ya mean ya don’t know?!” Apple Bloom said, stamping her hoof in the dirt.
Meg gulped. She was afraid of this. “I’m sorry?”
“Well, what were ya doing when it appeared?” the filly demanded.
Applejack and Big Macintosh continued laying baskets around the next apple tree, for now not getting involved.
“Just standing around?” she weakly said.
“Seriously?!” she exclaimed, her eyes shooting daggers.
Once she had descended beneath the canopy, Meg had spotted the Apples two trees over. Apple Bloom had been the first to spot her as she flew over. She must have been told she was coming, and that she’d be a pegasus, because she had lost no time in checking her flanks.
“Sugarcube, that’s enough,” Applejack softly reprimanded. “She’s tellin’ the truth.” Having finished placing the baskets, Applejack had come over to finally intervene.
“It’s not fair!” the young filly petulantly said.
Applejack put a hoof on her younger sister’s withers, and sighed. “It’s not like she got it to spite ya.”
A light breeze ruffled the leaves as Apple Bloom looked up at her big sister, her anger and frustration deflating into a forlorn look on her face. “I know…”
While the show liked to play it up for laughs, the blankness of their flanks really did torment them, driving them to try ever crazier stunts. And here she was, a human incapable of getting a cutie mark, getting one anyway just for having been a pony for a few minutes. It must have seemed like some cruel joke.
Perhaps that’s why they never seem to get punished for the trouble they cause. She didn’t see any evidence Apple Bloom had been punished for visiting her home. Regardless, she wasn’t going to bring it up; she didn’t need Applejack also telling her something was none of her business.
Applejack returned her hoof to the ground. “C’mon, one last tree to go.”
Apple Bloom silently nodded.
Applejack sauntered over to the tree, turned around and gave the tree a solid buck. Even standing a half dozen feet away, Meg could feel the impact. Every single apple broke loose from the shock wave passing through the trunk of the tree and into its branches, plummeting into one of the surrounding baskets.
Oddly enough, nearly every single apple landed in a basket, undamaged from its fall, without so much as a tiny dent. Earth pony magic? Of the small number that missed and landed in the dirt, Apple Bloom unenthusiastically trotted about, collecting them up, dusting them off, and putting them into a basket. Once she had finished with that, Big Mac began to load the baskets into the wagon, his bulging muscles effortlessly—no, stop it…
She averted her gaze from the stallion, looking for something to distract her. Applejack walked towards her, thankfully provided it. Meg was still finding herself getting caught off guard by the whole attracted to stallions thing, and Applejack’s big brother was undeniably one heck of a stallion.
“Ah reckon Rainbow Dash wasn’t flying around when you arrived?” the farm pony asked, as she looked up into the sky.
Meg shook her head. “No.”
Applejack adjusted her Stetson as her gaze returned to Meg. “Well, she ain’t exactly a morning pony.”
“Nnope.”
That was the first word Big Mac had uttered since she arrived. He really talks like that.
“We’re heading back to the barn. You might as well wait for her there.”
They watched in silence as Big Mac loaded the half-dozen baskets onto the wagon. This time Meg had no trouble keeping her thoughts under control.
Applejack interrupted the silence. “Don’t take it personally, Twilight tryin’ to talk ya out of it. Tain’t anypony objectin’ to y’all becomin’ ponies.” Her voice took on a more subdued tone. “She’s had destiny on her mind of late and she was only tryin’ to spare y’all that.”
Another basket was loaded before Meg replied. “I think it may have been too late to worry about us getting destinies.” There were too many inexplicable coincidences for it to be otherwise. Who am I kidding? They’re inexplicable, period.
Applejack gazed into her eyes, seemingly trying to peer into her soul. “I reckon yer right about that. Becomin’ ponies just made it official.”
Big Mac finished loading the wagon and walked around towards the front of it. Applejack joined him there and hitched him up. Apple Bloom jumped into the wagon, making her way to the front and peering over the side. They all started back in silence, with the two mares out in front.
After a few minutes Meg’s curiosity got the better of her. “Applejack, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s it like being an Element of Harmony. What was it like to turn me into a pony?”
The farm pony briefly glanced at Meg, then took a moment to consider her answer. “Honestly, you’d get a better answer from Twilight, though ya might not understand it.”
Meg facetiously pressed her question. “I could ask Rainbow Dash, but all I’d get out of her would be how awesome and cool it was.”
That got a chuckle out of her. “I’ll try, then.” She took another moment to compose an answer.
“Can’t say it makes a difference, most of the time. It’s there inside me, but sleepin’, waiting for Twilight to awaken them. When she does, Ah become one with the harmony of the Elements. We can sense the disharmonies around us, and we possess the power to harmonize ’em.” She gave Meg a smirk. “We sure harmonized Tirek.”
“Eeyup.”
“As for your transformation, we supplied the magical energy, but Twilight did the transformation herself. What she could not do alone was give ya magic. A pony without magic is not in harmony. We all felt your disharmony and we harmonized ya, and you became magical.”
“I really do want to thank you for that. I would not trade this experience for anything. I’ll miss these wings when I go back home, as much as I miss having hands here.”
“Why d’ya have to leave?” Apple Bloom asked, causing Meg to turn her head back to look at her. The filly’s front hooves were hanging over the front of the wagon. Becoming a pony had done nothing to reduce her perception of the filly’s cuteness; it merely had made her a larger, but still impossibly cute, filly.
There was really only one answer to that question. Meg simply replied, “My life is back home.”
“Will you visit us?”
“I’d like that, but it’s out of my hooves.”
“Considerin’ all you’re doing for us, I can’t imagin’ Princess Celestia forbiddin’ it without a good reason,” Applejack opined.
They walked the remainder of the way in silence, the sound of the turning wagon wheels competing only with the sound of rustling leaves and softly clopping hooves. Upon reaching the homestead, Rainbow Dash called out to them. The pegasus was lying on her back on a branch up in a tree.
Meg flew over to her and hovered in the air beside her, wondering how she was pulling that off. It didn’t look very comfy, and what stopped her from tipping over and falling off?
Applejack shouted across the distance. “Now remember, Rainbow Dash, Ah want you to wash the barn, not electrocute it!”
“Clouds can be finicky, what can I say?” the weather pony shot back.
Applejack just shook her head and carried on, as she and her big brother slowly walked to the barn. The wagon would be relieved of the baskets once inside.
Electrocuted? As in lightning? Pegasi did trigger lightning in the cartoon. “This isn’t dangerous, is it?” Meg asked, suddenly wondering if this was a good idea.
A scroll levitated off a high shelf and floated down to Twilight. A clasp unhooked and the first two feet were cautiously unrolled, exposing the document’s synopsis. Steve had ceased being amazed at the condition of these scrolls. Like everything kept here, it had been subjected to powerful preservation spells. This scroll had to have been over a thousand years old, having been written by Star Swirl himself, yet it had barely aged at all—and most of that probably occurred before it was preserved.
“This one looks very interesting…” Twilight muttered.
Steve tried to read along, but with limited success. It wasn’t that Equestrian had changed much over the past millennium; it hadn’t. Being ruled by immortal alicorns no doubt helped stabilize the language. Disturbingly though, it meant that ponies were speaking and writing something extremely close to modern English centuries before it existed in the human world.
Part of the problem was the handwriting—or whatever to call the unicorn equivalent. Cursive writing had evolved over the centuries, subject to fashions and whims, and apparently Star Swirl had a few whims of his own. Twilight had long ago become fluent in the writing of her idol, but Steve found it difficult to read.
But the real problem was the specialized terminology. Even the synopsis was full of strange words, never mind the exotic symbols and drawings that described the spells themselves, like some bizarre mixture of chemical formulas, mathematical equations, computer software, and drawings of a zen rock garden—not that he was terribly surprised at that. Every branch of science tends to develop its own specialized terminology, not to intentionally obfuscate but out of simple necessity.
Fortunately, Twilight served as an interpreter. “This spell makes a container bigger on the inside than the outside.” She unrolled more of the scroll, as she also rolled up the read pages onto the other roller.
“That sounds innocuous enough, not to mention incredibly useful,” Steve commented. “Why is it locked up here?”
The alicorn scrolled through a few more pages before replying. “It’s tricky to cast correctly… mistakes can have serious side effects… contents can be crushed by irresistible force… or vanish completely and irretrievably… the interior can expand indefinitely, sucking in air without limit…”
“Those sound like good reasons,” he dryly said. “Yet, somehow, I’m not surprised by those potential problems.”
“Oh, that’s interesting… it’s used on some of Princess Celestia’s highest security vaults—not just to make them bigger, but because it makes it impossible to enter the vault through the surrounding walls.”
“I suppose it would, if it’s doing what I think it’s doing.”
“Yes…” she said, as she quickly scanned through the remainder of the scroll. “I think I see what you’re getting at… Heh. Celestia insisted on casting the spell herself, over Star Swirl’s objections. Well, he doesn’t say that in so many words, but I can read between the lines.”
Twilight got out her notepad and quill and made some notes, then carefully rewound the scroll and put it back on the shelf. “The spell has a lot of complications, some of them having to do with time. That mystified Star Swirl; he never could understand why. But now that I’ve been exposed to Relativity, I do. The spell curves space, extruding a bubble, but time is inextricably linked to space, so it’s unavoidably affected too. He tried to manipulate them separately, the time component being a corrective factor, which is why the spell’s so fragile, so easy to screw up in terrible ways.”
“I bet that irresistible crushing force was an unintentional gravitational field created by the wrong kind of space-time curvature.”
She put the notepad and quill back into a saddlebag as she gave him a warm smile. “And that is why I wanted you here with me.”
Glad I could be of assistance, he thought, as he gave a smile back. To be honest, it had become a bit boring for him, once the novelty of being there had worn off, to just stand around as Twilight checked one scroll after another. At least he was allowed to take a few pictures, so long as they didn’t reveal the contents of the scrolls or even the names of the scrolls.
Twilight started walking through the stacks. “Time to pay the temporal section a visit.”
“Nah, just ignore her,” Rainbow Dash said dismissively. “She’ll never let me forget that one time she got zapped by lightning.”
Meg gaped at her in disbelief.
“She was barely singed!”
Meg rolled her eyes. Whatever… none of my business and clearly they remained friends.
She then realized she might have been referring to the season three episode Apple Family Reunion. Applejack had Rainbow Dash fill a line of buckets with rain from a cloud. The cloud obliged, filling the buckets, but then lashed out with lightning that struck Applejack. Well, she would try to be more careful. Somehow.
Rainbow Dash got airborne and lost no time in changing the subject. “First thing we need is a cloud. Leave your saddlebags on this branch.” After Meg did so, they proceeded to climb at a steep angle.
She wasn’t going fast at all, but Meg still found it challenging to keep up. It wasn’t just a matter of developing her wing muscles. She could tell Rainbow Dash wasn’t exerting hers much at all. It was a matter of using pegasus magic more effectively; she was doing a much better job of ignoring gravity.
This was not a flight exercise she had done yesterday. Apparently, her flight instruction was still in progress. Ignoring gravity while climbing was much harder than ignoring it while hovering, when potential energy remained unchanged. Meg concentrated on willing gravity away. It had some effect; she found herself climbing faster. The pegasus above her instantly matched her new speed.
Of course I’m not going to outfly her. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t try to go faster still. She didn’t really understand what it was she was doing, but she tried to do it harder. It had rapidly diminishing returns, not to mention driving her pulse rate and breathing to unsustainable levels. Using magic consumes oxygen? She had to back off. Surely I’ll get better with practice.
Several thousand feet they climbed until they reached one of the small, left over clouds littering the sky. After they perched on it, Rainbow Dash began her lesson in weather magic.
“It’s all about showing the cloud who’s boss. Tell it what to do by bucking it or jumping on it or anything else with your hooves. The more powerful the contact, the more stuff happens. Just standing on it is enough sometimes—like this.” She suddenly fell through the cloud as if it was nothing but mist. A few seconds later, she had flown around to the edge of the cloud and reappeared on top, hovering next to her student. “Got the idea?”
Meg simply nodded.
“Okay, first lesson. Make this cloud disappear.”
Meg went airborne, flew over to the cloud’s side, and positioned herself to give it a good buck. Dissipate, she thought, as she bucked it. The cloud dissipated as instructed.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” Rainbow Dash said approvingly.
Meg turned around and stared at where the cloud used to be. That wasn’t so hard. The air felt more humid, but then the water had to go somewhere, right? Yet a cloud exists because the air is already saturated with water vapor. It’s magic; what do I expect?
Rainbow Dash was flying over to another cloud. After Meg caught up to her, Dash said, “This time, I want you to move the cloud. Just push it.”
If it was solid enough to walk on, it’s solid enough to push. Meg went to its side and pushed with her forehooves. It felt slightly elastic, but nonetheless solid, and it moved.
“Now I want you to fly through it, just go through it horizontally.”
Meg stared at the cloud, hesitating. How ironic. She was once afraid to stand on a cloud because she feared falling through; now she was afraid to fly through a cloud because she feared it’d be like hitting a brick wall.
Rainbow Dash sensed her hesitation. “It won’t be solid if you don’t want it to be. Show it who’s boss!”
She certainly didn’t want it to be solid if she was going to fly through it! Don’t overthink it; let instinct handle it. She flew straight at it, as fast as she could, her forehooves pointing straight ahead; she was committing herself to flying through it. As she made contact, the cool mist offered no resistance, showering her with relief.
Dash was waiting for her on the other side. Meg shot right past her, banked a one eighty, and came to a hover beside her, a big grin on her face.
“That was the easy stuff. Now we move on to rain.” Dash led her student back over the edge of the cloud. “This requires some skill. You hafta get a feel for the cloud. Watch and learn!”
Rainbow Dash perched on the edge of the cloud while Meg hovered off to the side, giving her a view of both the pegasus on top and the precipitation soon to fall below. One quick bounce up and down on the cloud and some rain briefly fell out of it. A bigger bounce, and it briefly rained harder. Three bounces, and it rained continuously. One last bounce, and the rain stopped.
“There’s no substitute for practice, so give it a try,” she said as she flew over to where Meg was hovering.
Meg flew to the edge of the cloud and perched. She mentally psyched herself and gave it a bounce, willing some rain.
“You got a brief drizzle. Try for more.”
Meg bounced again, hard. This time it was a brief but massive downpour. The cloud visibly shrank.
“That was the other extreme. You need to get a feel for the cloud.”
This continued for about an hour. Slowly but surely, Meg started to get the “feel” for a cloud. She had no idea how she was doing it, but she found herself able to fine tune the cloud’s response to her bounces. Every so often they switched to a new cloud as they used up an old one.
Rainbow Dash finally felt Meg was ready to make a cloud wash the barn. She picked out a suitable cloud, one with plenty of water, and expertly trimmed it so that it was slightly larger than the barn. They were about to push it down to the barn when Meg remembered something.
“Wait, how do I make lightning? Or rather, how do I make sure I don’t make lightning?”
“Same as always, tell it to do what you want it to do—or what not to do. Go ahead and make some lightning, without any rain.” Dash lifted herself well above the cloud. “Make sure the lightning goes down.”
Right, because I will be above the cloud. She set down on the cloud. Lightning below, no rain, she thought as she bounced hard. The sound of thunder jolted her, and the smell of ozone wafted up from the side of the cloud.
Rainbow Dash flew over to her and offered a hoof-bump, catching Meg off guard. She awkwardly accepted it, as the weather pony said, “Awesome! You’re definitely getting the hang of it. Let’s push it down to the barn.”
They moved to the center of the cloud and began pushing down. The cloud, being big enough to cover the barn, did not want to move very fast, nor could they see where they were going as they pushed it. Every now and then, Rainbow Dash flew off to the side to see where they were and make a course correction.
Once they got the cloud into position, Rainbow Dash gave the word. “Okay, Meg, make it rain hard!”
She went bouncy bouncy like on a trampoline all over the cloud in a series of long jumps, willing the cloud to rain hard until it exhausted itself, then flew over to where Rainbow Dash was hovering and inspected her work. It was a nice steady downpour. She was feeling like a full-fledged pegasus, not to mention having the time of her life.
“That was awesome!” They hoof-bumped again as Dash tossed her mane out of her eyes. “If you want to help out with the next Winter Wrap-up, I’d be happy to have you on my team.”
You would? That seemed like an honor, but then she remembered that no special qualifications were needed; even Derpy was helping to move the clouds in that episode. None of that was a reason to turn down the offer, however. “I’d like that.”
The real problem, of course, was that winter was months away, never mind spring. Would she still be welcome in Equestria then?
Twilight had been scanning the shelves of yet another stack when Steve’s attention was interrupted by his ringing phone. He retrieved it from his saddlebag, looked at the caller id, and silently cursed to himself. Damn it, we forgot all about that. He accepted the call with a magical tap and held the phone up to his ear. “Hey, Tom.”
“Where are you? You’re not home, but your car’s still here.”
Twilight was looking at him with curiosity, her ears angled to best listen in. Steve had little doubt she’d be able to. Let her, he sighed to himself. It involves ponies anyway.
“It’s a long story. I can’t go into details.”
“Is everything okay? Meg isn’t answering her phone. Are you with her?”
Naturally, he would try to call her first. She was the one who was hosting the committee meeting; he wasn’t a part of it. It had been scheduled weeks ago and it completely slipped their minds with everything that had happened.
“No… she’s not with me, and, yes, everything’s okay. We’ll be back tonight.”
“We’ll have to reschedule, but we really need to get started on planning this contest.”
Twilight slightly tilted her head. “Planning a contest?”
“Is someone with you?”
Her ears folded as she realized she had just injected herself into the conversation. “Hang on a moment,” Steve said as he tapped mute.
Ignoring her faux pas, he explained. “This contest is to see who can ad lib the best impression of a pony. Meg’s on the committee to organize it and the first meeting was supposed to be right now at our home. We forget about it.” Hopefully, the insatiably curious pony won’t ask about when and where the contest will be held and what else would be going on around it.
“By ‘impression of a pony,’ you mean ponies like me?”
Steve wasn’t sure he liked where this might be going. “That’s right…”
“Could you use this as an excuse to let me talk him?”
“You mean, have him talk to you as a hypothetical contestant?”
She eagerly nodded yes.
He rubbed the back of his neck as he thought about it. It was a way for her to talk to a different human, and it would be a nice joke on Tom, even if he never finds out. Heck with it. Can’t make it worse. Might make it better. He un-muted the phone and switched to speaker mode. “Hey, Tom, you still there?”
“Yeah.” It sounded like he was back inside his car, still parked.
“Yes, I’m with someone, and it turns out she does a killer Twilight impression. Why don’t you do a trial run as if she was a contestant. Don’t worry, she won’t actually enter the contest, so you won’t be giving her an unfair advantage.”
After a brief silence, he dryly replied, “Sure, got nothing else planned right now.”
He stood next to Twilight, holding the phone between them, taking a second to note how effortless it has become to do simple levitation. “All you have to do is answer his questions trying your best to sound like Twilight Sparkle,” he matter-of-factly explained.
“But I am Twilight Sparkle,” she replied with a grin.
“That’s the spirit!”
“Well, you do sound like Twilight, I’ll give you that. Can you tell me where Meg is?”
Steve rolled his eyes at that. Did he think he was cheating on her or something?
“I most certainly can!” Twilight replied enthusiastically. “She’s with Rainbow Dash right now, above Sweet Apple Acres, learning weather magic.”
“Guess I deserved that,” Tom muttered. Recovering, he asked, “It’s possible for humans to do that?”
“Not in the slightest. I turned her into a pegasus yesterday.”
“Did you turn Steve into a pegasus too?” Tom’s smirk was quite audible.
“No, he’s a unicorn.”
“Is that true, Steve?” he went through the motion of asking.
“I’m not a contestant,” he droned.
“He can’t admit to it without breaking his Pinkie Promise,” she explained, repressing a giggle.
“Okay, okay… you get points for creativity,” he said. “I’m now going to give you a scenario. Lyra Heartstrings has come to you asking for help with scientific research she’s conducting on the hands of a human she has in her possession. What do you do?”
Steve’s heart skipped a beat as Twilight blinked, stunned by the question. “Lyra research what now?” she asked.
“Should I repeat the question?”
“No… I heard the question; it’s the premise I don’t understand. Why would Lyra be studying human hands? She’s a musician.”
“Because she’s obsessed with hands,” he explained, a bit irritated he had to spell it out.
Twilight shot Steve a questioning look, but he couldn’t explain while Tom was listening. She must have noticed their silly nervousness when they had encountered Lyra yesterday. He settled for a face-hoof while slowly shaking his head.
Not getting an answer to her unspoken question, Twilight continued. “I rather doubt that; she doesn’t even know humans exist. Nor has she ever expressed, to my knowledge, any interest in the hands of minotaurs, which are somewhat similar to human hands. However, if this scenario were to happen, I would not permit intelligent creatures to be held in captivity and become the subject of experimentations.”
“I would expect nothing less from my faithful—and former—student.”
Steve almost dropped the phone as he turned his head to the source of that voice. A white alicorn towering above him with an absurdly long and flowing multicolored pastel mane gave him a wink.
“You can do a perfect Celestia impression too?” said the disbelieving voice from the phone. “That’s enough,” he said with a tired voice. “Have Meg contact me ASAP to set up another meeting.”
Steve tore his head away from the Solar Princess. “S-sure, will do. Bye,” he said, and ended the call. How did she sneak up on us like that? I should’ve heard her clopping hooves a mile away! Or flapping wings… or whatever.
Facing Celestia again, he gave a quick bow, saying, “Your Highness,” and received a subtle nod and a serene smile in return. “Uh… how much did you hear?”
“Enough to be intrigued,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
Steve next turned to look at Twilight. She was looking at him expectantly, with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, about that whole Lyra thing…”
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Steve's busted!
Trickster Celestia makes an appearance.
Ah, the Lyra thing. Be nice to see that explained.
So far, so interesting.
Fantastic new chapters, Sharp Quill.
Your changing of perspectives was done expertly and the way you slowly advanced the story through random events like the phone-call and it's unintentional revealing of Lyra's quirky personality was a perfect cliffhanger for the next chapter.
I'm sure this will be getting very interesting soon.
This story is very entertaining to read and I'm sucking it up like a sponge. I'm glad you continued it and I'm excitingly looking forward to the next chapters.
5601947
Wow. Looks like the ESA spent more on that promotional film than they did on the probe.
5621117
Meg and Steve aren't exactly volunteering everything they know either.
5623898
Twilight's kinda insisting it gets explained.
5624385
Thanks for the confirmation that I have a clue. It's been said that every good writer must first write a million words of garbage. I've written far fewer than a million words.
That phone conversation was rewritten several times over the last few months; the whole scene kept feeling phony and forced. I'm glad I finally got it right.
This story shall be completed. It's already mostly written, which is the only reason I can do weekly updates. Alas, I'm getting to the not-so-mostly written part, so two weeks between updates may become more frequent. But there is an ending; the epilog has already been written and serves to keep me on track.
Doesn't mean there won't be a sequel
5625462
Sequel! Wohoo!
Count me in for that^^
Oh and take your time if you feel like rewriting stuff. All good things take their time. I can be patient.
5625462
As she should! It'll be interesting to see just exactly what things are different from the show and the real ponies.
Poor Lyra... Well, your version of her. I hope she never finds out.
Aw man, why do binge reading sessions always seem to end right before something interesting
I noticed this:
You changed tense in the second sentence from Past tense to Present tense. It should read: 'Weather pegasi would start to clear them out in a few hours, but for now the clouds above the apple orchard would serve as her instructional materials.' if you want to keep the tenses consistent.
What could go wrong? I just don't know!
It's funny because this became canon in the Season 7 Finale.
*have
all I could think of Starlight.