• Published 6th Jun 2014
  • 5,031 Views, 221 Comments

A Confederacy Of Dunce Caps - Estee



Getting passing grades through copying off Silver Spoon has served Diamond Tiara well. But Cheerliee just forced Diamond to switch desks and now the only ponies she can cheat off are -- Snips & Snails. How can she make them study and save her?

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It was the first time Diamond had truly slept in three nights, and it had been from betrayal.

She'd managed to get through the rest of the school day, go through the routine necessary to round the boys up and bring them to the estate. After that, it was into the study, where she'd started to go over the first part of the lesson plan, the facts that the two would readily take in and never actually fieldwrite onto paper until deep into the summer unless Diamond could think of something. And she'd tried, as the two read. She'd concentrated as best she could, focused, and -- neither concentration nor focus had truly been there, displaced by the room required to store about a dozen yawns. Her head had dipped multiple times during the first lesson, her eyelids had sagged as if bearing the weight of a thousand false lashes (or slightly less than half of the bulk order which that one dumb designer placed every couple of years), and...

...then she'd woken up. In her bed, under Sun, with the dancing dust motes inside the rays mocking her.

She'd lost a night. A whole night. Because her body, which had always been perfect in every way up until that point, with what she felt was just about the perfect build for somepony her age, not to mention those elegant, entirely-natural mane and tail streaks, and then there were her ears, Diamond had the best of all possible ear shapes, those of the models chosen for so many magazines just about guaranteed that -- it had betrayed her. Two nights of poor sleep, yes, and missed meals, that might have been a factor, but she'd felt that her own perfect body would surely be able to get through another study session before any need to seek (and probably fail at finding) rest, especially with earth pony endurance driving the way.

But she'd fallen asleep. And she wanted to curse her body, insult it in a way that would humiliate it into never doing such a thing again, but that would ultimately amount to insulting herself and Diamond felt like that was crossing a potentially bad line. So instead, she lay still in bed for a few extra minutes, fuming in a way she dearly wished to take out on somepony. And then the day got even worse when she went to breakfast, didn't find her daddy there again, and couldn't even truly vent on the servants because with her stupid body so desperate for recharge (especially after having slept through what would have been dinner), she finally managed to keep her breakfast down.

Five days left. Five. Because even the thing she had the most control over in the world, her own body, had turned against her. Five days to think of something before the exams and what seemed to be an almost-guaranteed failure and her daddy --

...was.

She almost had to force herself to trot towards the school, subject herself to the gazes and giggles of ponies who were convinced Snips & Snails were her new friends, not to mention being in the presence of Cheerilee, who finally had something she could truly use against Diamond, a looming punishment on top of everything else and who knew what form that would take, plus she'd told the teacher that the boys were her friends and....

It had worked. It had been the lie of her life, and it had worked. Cheerilee had believed it, and that was why she'd agreed to let Diamond continue the tutoring -- well, that and the chance to punish without her daddy to stop it, something the mare must have been dreaming of for years. But the thing about believed lies was that ponies treated them as the truth, and what did so many gossipy kids and adults do with what they thought was the truth? They passed it along. Normally, that was something which worked in Diamond's favor: create the story, watch it echo from a dozen throats, and the world changed to suit the false tale, culminating in that moment of surprise when the target found out what they'd been doing, who they'd been with, and how long they were going to be grounded for it.

Diamond had told Cheerilee that Snips and Snails were her friends. It had been believed. It might be repeated. And should that reach the schoolyard, and Silver...

Trot accelerated into gallop.


"...what?" The expression was purest confusion, which naturally made the stupid glasses slip.

"It's not true," Diamond quickly repeated. "Whatever they say, everything they say, it's not true. They're just saying stuff. Because I had to say some stuff and because I said it, everypony believed it and --" She normally didn't speak that quickly, and wondered if it was somehow giving the words extra authority. "It's not true, Silver. Don't believe it. Anything they say about me until the end of the semester. Anything at all."

She'd been lucky for the first time in what felt like forever, spotting her friend a short distance from the schoolhouse, still on the approach. There had been a few seconds available for interception, scrambling behind a shielding tree. But there was only a few seconds available, and Silver just looked confused.

"Diamond -- what's been happening?" her friend slowly asked. Too slowly. "I've been trying to stay out of your way because I know how hard this is, with -- those two, but -- you nearly fell asleep in class yesterday, you still look kind of tired, and -- is everything okay? Is there anything I can do? Anything at all to help. You know I'll help if I can, and --" Concern now. Another slip. "-- you're breathing kind of fast..."

"I galloped most of the way here. I didn't know if I had time --"

More confusion. The dumb glasses looked as if they were about to fall off. "-- we've still got a little time before the bell --"

"-- you've got time." She stopped, waited until the hoofsteps and piping voices on the road behind them had faded again. "I have to talk to Snips and Snails this morning, before we all go in. I had to hurry so I'd have time to talk to you too. I just -- I..."

And once again, her words were failing her too. Couldn't she rely on anything any more? Not body, not mind, not --

...was.

"...I'm getting there," she told Silver, because she had to. "It's working. But it's taking a lot of time. And I had to say some things in order to make it happen, and --"

More hoofsteps. Familiar ones, because she'd reached the point of being able to identify that group of sounds, after they'd twice followed her to the estate. She knew their hoofsteps...

"-- just -- I have to go talk to them. Just -- whatever they say about me, anypony says... don't believe it, Silver." And then the word she couldn't remember ever using with her friend before: "Please."

Pinkish-purple eyes blinked at her, perfectly visible because the glasses were just about all the way down her snout. "I... okay, Diamond. I won't. But if there's anything --"

Diamond missed the last part of it, the words caught in twigs and bits of near-bloom Lady's Mantle which shifted behind her departing form. She had to reach the colts, and that meant accelerating, but -- nopony had been in very much of a hurry to reach school on this near-summer day, except for her. Too many students were still on that last approach, some of whom she'd passed during her initial rush, she was about to be seen going right up to them, on top of all the recesses and everything else...

But she didn't have a choice. This time, she had to meet them before the first break. There were questions which needed answering, immediately.

"Hey, Diamond," Snips casually acknowledged her as she galloped up on his right? "Feelin' any better? 'cause I've gotta tell ya, last night, when you just passed out on us, we were kinda --"

"-- how did I get into bed last night?" Because she'd quizzed every servant she could find in the little time she'd had, and none of them had done it. And then she'd remembered she was dealing with the day shift.

Snails shrugged. Casually, "We carried you."

That got her to turn, and the head movement rotated her ears enough to pick up on the abruptly giggling fillies who were just starting to pass them.

"They put her to bed?" one of them laughed.

"Both of them?" giggled the other.

And then something they never would have done before the bench switch. They never would have risked it.

Together, voices raised in mutual singsong, "Diamond's got some coltfriends..."

She fought the urge to spin back. To charge. And, at least temporarily, won, mostly because the new single most humiliating moment of her life wasn't quite over yet and so all the plans her suddenly-back-on-her-side brain had just come up with for completely destroying those two were going to be put on hold. Additionally, you could really only completely destroy somepony once and so while every last one of those plans looked perfect, Diamond was still going to need some sorting time.

She forced herself to take a deep breath, planted her hooves a little harder on the next step, and finished her glance towards Snails. The taller colt's field was active, with two beetles carefully carried in a bubble hovering a few hoofwidths away from his head.

"Carried me," she carefully half-repeated.

"Yeah," Snails shrugged. "I got my field around your forelegs, Snips got your hind legs. And then we..." Was that a blush beginning to manifest under his coat? "Um..."

"We galloped around with you for a couple of minutes," Snips grinned. "Because Snails thought you might be sick."

"Did not," was the immediate protest.

In a boyish version of that same singsong lilt (which neither colt had remotely acknowledged), "He was all worried..."

"Yeah?" Snails challenged, "So were you. Whose horn ignited first?"

The smaller colt hesitated. "Well... she was tired all day..."

Snails' expression briefly suggested that even though something less than complete destruction had been achieved, he'd still won. Another shrug, and the field bubble bobbled in time with the movement. "Anyway, we wanted to make sure you were okay. The back of your ears didn't feel hot, but there's lots of stuff that can make you sick and it doesn't all have fevers, so we just found a servant who could make sure. And then we put you in bed."

"We studied for a while," Snips offhoofedly continued. "Because our parents were still gonna quiz us and I don't think they would've believed me if I said you'd just fallen asleep. And we went and had some playroom time twice, but just with the blocks because we kinda figured the closed stuff was gifts for other ponies and didn't want to mess up anypony's party. Your servants brought in dinner, and they were really nice about it, too! Even explained what the stuff was that looked too ugly to eat, and one of them dared us to..." He laughed. "Snails, do you remember the name of that one really weird fruit? The stuff that sort of tasted like gum?"

Snails considered. "Cherimoya -- I think." (Diamond's nod was more or less automatic, because of course she had to prove that she knew that.) "And then we studied a little more and went home. You just slept. Feeling any better?"

She went with the answer they probably wanted to hear. "Yeah. A little."

Both nodded. "Okay," Snails said. "See you inside. I've gotta keep my promise." He glanced at the field bubble. "Time to go home." And he turned, galloped towards the still-disturbed dirt. Which reminded Diamond: she needed an excuse for him, something which would keep him from tapping his hooves in the hopes of summoning bugs ever again, and she'd fallen asleep before coming up with anything...

"I'd better help him," Snips added a moment later. "Two horns are better than one!" And followed.

Diamond finished the trot inside on her own, trying to ignore the looks and giggles and what was apparently fast-becoming a popular mini-craze in juvenile music, something so catchy that one of the Blank Flank Maintainers had gone so far as to start humming it to herself, and if that one somehow actually became bold enough to sing the words...

She was about to make a move, try and stop that before it could spread any further. But that was when Cheerilee came in, and eventually, the boys were at their desks again, with her between them, still, between them, and --

-- she'd woken up under her blankets. So unless her daddy had come in (when he wasn't coming in) and moved her without even a single moment of her waking...

They'd tucked her in.

Carefully.


Even though it was making everything worse by the second, it was almost a comfort, going around the side of the schoolhouse during recess and lunch, because most of the sound didn't carry that well around corners and it meant Diamond didn't have to hear the song.

For the most part, she stayed quiet during the breaks, and the majority of that time was spent in watching Snails. He was back at it again, of course: there wasn't a warm-weather time outside when he didn't spend at least a few minutes trying to find new and disgusting specimens. And she needed something to keep him from hoof-tapping, especially since after yesterday's false success. She'd fully expected him to start it up immediately. But for some reason, he was back to his usual method, and his legs only shuffled to change position. She didn't understand that. Snails had what he must have believed to be a new and winning strategy: why wasn't he trying to increase his find profits with it by luring in extra carapace-covered dividends? Her daddy would have said he was reverting to start-up tactics. (Which was bad business form, and didn't speak well for his potential to expand.) If the tapping could have worked at all on its own, which it wouldn't, and... she was having trouble thinking of anything. It was possible that she'd come up with so many believable lies over the last few days as to bring her inventory dangerously low.

But -- he wasn't doing it...


'For a certain personality type, deadline anxiety is a very real thing, and just about everypony will start to become anxious as the last hours before a project's completion approach, especially if there's still any real degree of work remaining to be done. Some ponies will actually become inspired under those circumstances, and a few truly will do their best work under pressure. But others will collapse. And before you put any team together to work on a timed project, you have to know exactly how everypony in it will respond to the last ticks of the clock.'

Diamond's current enterprise was certainly a timed project. But it was one where the workforce had been effectively assigned to her, and she still had no idea how they would truly react to a fast-approaching deadline, especially since neither truly understood just how crucial the labor was. The goal was to keep Diamond at the summit, and they didn't even know they were meant to be doing it. There was no pressure because as far as they were concerned, there was no work.

But she was starting to wonder if her daddy's advice also applied to the leader of a project. Because there were only five days left, five days (and less now) in which she had to find a way to make them write down the right answers for her to copy, and when it came to ideas for making that happen, her mind seemed to be as blank as a certain trio of flanks, possibly with the same potential duration of permanence.

Still, over the last few days, her best lies had come out when she was up against an approaching deadline which threatened to arrive in seconds. Her experiences with Mr. Gastrope and Cheerilee seemed to indicate that she might be one of those ponies who worked best when the clock was down to a last few ticks. And so she considered herself to still have time for figuring everything out. Just... not as much of it as she would have liked.

It was time to pick Snails up for the afternoon: she was gathering him first, mostly to get any potential encounter with his smirking father over with. And she also meant to use that meeting as a test of her deadline skills, because that was when she was going to give Snails her tap-prevention excuse. An excuse she... still didn't have, even as she slowly trotted up to the front door, but sometimes when you started talking, the rest of the lie just naturally came out, and so maybe the best thing she could do was say his name and then find out what followed.

Words led to words. And words led to... well, she was about to find out.

Diamond knocked. The door quickly opened, and there were no smirking violet eyes staring at her, waiting for news of failure. Snails had answered his own door.

"Ready?" Diamond asked. She didn't want to lead with the excuse and besides, her daddy had often spoken about the benefits of what he called a talk-and-trot.

He looked down at her. It was a natural thing to do: there was a fair amount of difference in their heights. It was still something Diamond didn't particularly like anypony doing. If she had been capable of envy (which really didn't come naturally when you were the best at everything important), she would have considered envying the Princess for her sheer size. Diamond still had faint hopes of hitting a major growth spurt somewhere along the way.

"I wasn't expecting you this early," he eventually said. "I've still got some work to do on the farm."

It was the second time the word had come up, and this occasion irritated her enough to say something about it. "What farm?"

"Huh?" His natural response to just about anything.

"You live in town. Your house is just about up against the one on the side of the next street, so there isn't much of a backyard. And --" she'd just remembered this part "-- your father said your farm was upstairs, and you can't keep dirt out of the sun and expect it to do anything unless you're an earth pony. So how can you have a farm at all?"

He was staring at her again, and there seemed to be an unusual amount of thought crossing his face.

"Come inside," he said.

Inside a colt's house. After the others in her class had been singing? "I can wait out here," she immediately told him. "Just --"

"-- I've gotta do it anyway," he interrupted, and she managed not to take visible offense at having her words cut off, even though employees really weren't supposed to speak over management. "And it's easier to show you. It'll just take a few minutes. Maybe less if you help."

Diamond doing the work: it was as if the entire world was out to offend her today, and she momentarily felt as if her vengeance plans required some serious expansion of scale. But if it got him under her supervision any faster...

Besides, he was obviously on his way to do work, no matter what that mysterious labor actually was. He was probably doing it wrong.

"I'll come in," she told him, which did not form any kind of legally binding verbal contract committing her to actual labor, and he nodded, turned to lead the way.

The interior of the house wasn't bad. It wasn't good, either; whoever had decorated it liked reds a lot more than Diamond did, and too many of them reminded her of apple hues. But on the whole, it was acceptable, as long as you didn't like being rich.

Snails trotted steadily, heading for the ramp to the second floor. Leading the way. Well, of course he was: it was his house. But Diamond had to pay attention to the path because in the remote event that they ever did it again, she'd know the way and could get out in front.

Up the ramp. Down a still-too-red hallway, which seemed to be growing subtly warmer as they progressed. There was a door just ahead, and Diamond couldn't smell much in the way of soil. Couldn't smell much in the way of anything: the door was unusually tight against the frame.

Time to test her deadline pressure theory. "So," she began, "about those beetles yesterday -- the tapping I ord -- asked you to try..."

And before she could see what lie would naturally flow out, Snips' horn ignited, and his field began to interact with the lock as he casually said, "Yeah. I forgot to tell you: I'm not gonna be doing that again."

She blinked.

"Ever," he quickly added.

Twice.

"Why... why not?" Had another pony reached him first? Had Cheerilee been oddly lacking in confidence for Diamond's abilities and talked?

"Because they didn't think it was berries falling," Snails said, still facing the lock, which was beginning to glow. "Their tunnels collapsed."

And for the second time in two days, she couldn't move.

...how... how does he...

"It was slow, though," Snails added. "And just from one end. They were just going up to the higher levels for safety, and no one got hurt. I think... I think I must have been tapping just the right way, and maybe the soil was a little drier down there than usual, because we haven't had much rain scheduled for the last half-moon. It probably wouldn't work again, and if it did, I might not get as lucky, not hurting anyone at all." She could see the concern on his face, even from her current frozen angle. "So I'm not going to risk it. Ever. But --"

There was a soft click. Glow and corona faded, and Snails glanced back over his left shoulder.

"-- no one got hurt. So I'm not mad, Diamond. It wasn't a bad idea, and you just didn't know what actually happened. We just don't do it again."

His left foreleg pushed on the door. It opened, and he trotted into the room.

Diamond barely saw that, and her hooves seemed to be carrying her forward more or less on their own. More rebellious employees. "But..." She had to find out. "...how do you know? That it was their tunnels collapsing?"

She stepped inside.

And Snails, standing proudly in the center of the well-lit room, surrounded by shelves and heat lamps and dozens of glass terrariums, each containing plants and soil and water and crawling residents who'd been granted perfect indoor living conditions, said "They told me."

She stared. She stared at everything. At the spiders and their giant orb webs, strung inside a huge glass case. At snails calmly sliming their way up the interior of clear walls. Ants moving through perfectly visible tunnels, looking as if the glass had somehow bisected an active colony without harming a single resident. Ladybugs and crickets, a praying mantis, bugs she had no name for, more bugs than she'd ever known to exist or that could exist...

And then she was staring at the farm's owner.

"You talk to bugs." It wasn't quite a statement.

He nodded.

"You can't."

She'd been insulting him on and off for years now, on those rare days when water just bothered her that much. It was the first time she'd seen him look offended. And then he silently nodded towards his right flank. To his mark.

"But... but... they're not smart!" she protested. "Not even a little! Maybe that one pony talks to animals, and animals are dumb enough, but at least they've got fur and feathers and their heads are bigger! And they're not still smart enough to be invited to treaty signings! How can -- how can bugs talk?"

His dark eyes hadn't narrowed. His voice was calm, level.

"They don't talk about much," he said. "But I think that just makes what they do have to say more important." And he turned away from her, trotted over to a shelf full of small boxes. His horn ignited, and lids raised. Small pellets were floated out, and he began to carry them towards one of the terrariums.

But Diamond wasn't looking at that so much as the field itself. At the tiny hints of jagged spikes surging along the boundary lines.

Snails... was upset. Angry. Only a little -- but he was angry for the first time ever, she couldn't risk having one of the colts mad at her...

The words were hard. She hated having to say them, did everything she could in her life to avoid saying them at all. But they were necessary.

"I'm -- sorry."

The field's borders smoothed. Slowly.

"It's my mark," Snails said. "Most ponies don't question a mark."

Most. There was that weird pegasus mechanic, and Diamond had been meaning to make a few choice meant-to-be-overheard comments if she ever ran into the adult --

"Except when it's me," he quietly finished. "You're not the only pony who doesn't believe it, Diamond. But they talk. They all talk. The way they hold their legs. Tilt their heads. It's all words, when you know how to listen. Miss Fluttershy knows that, for her herd and flock. And even ponies with pets... they learn what some of the words are. Sometimes I think anypony could learn it, and my mark, her mark, we just -- got it all at once."

She was still staring at him. He, busy with the feedings, hadn't noticed.

"But we don't... share anything," he added. "Me and Miss Fluttershy. I went out to the cottage once, and she believed me. But there's a line. She's on one side of it and I'm on the other. I can -- sort of hear where she starts, and she could tell where I stopped. That was it."

"You can really hear them," she said, and wondered why her voice was so soft. "Understand them."

"Yeah." And that was a statement. "But you could too. If you wanted to."

He glanced back at her then. The dark eyes were calm. Patient. And -- something else.

"Come over here for a second," he said. And, not knowing why, she came.

So many shelves. So many glass boxes. So many ugly, hideous, revolting...

"I wanna show you someone," Snails said, and Diamond prepared to do her best not to vomit.

His horn inclined, and a fraction of glow indicated the terrarium, something with oddly-sandy soil at the bottom, but a large number of triangular green leaves growing out of that. Nothing nightmarish currently in view.

Snails approached that glass box, nodded for her to come closer and for no reason she could understand, she did. He put his head close to the clear surface.

"Come out," he whispered.

It came.

It was beautiful.

The insect crawled out from under the sheltering leaves, and gold hit Diamond's eyes, brilliant gold which shone in a way no bit ever had, reflective not even in the way of normal metal or the metallic-furred stallion she'd seen all of one time and hadn't been able to figure out mockery for before the earth pony had trotted out of sight. Reflective in a way she'd never seen before, that perhaps nopony but Snails had ever seen. Light didn't dance on the carapace, it tilted, seemed to twist. Every movement created new reflections and refractions, all six legs wove in a continual ballet of walking wealth and mystery...

"What is it?" Diamond breathed. She was betting on expensive.

The back of the carapace gently lifted, parted, and delicate wings painted the air in iridescent gems.

"Mr. Guffey brought her back from Saddle Arabia for me," Snails quietly said. "He promised me that if I passed last year over a certain final grade... well, he did it. And he promised something else if I didn't see him for classes this summer, but..." He shrugged. "Chrysina resplendens, Diamond: that's the species name, and that's Griffonant because a lot of species were written down that way for the first time, and I guess ponies just got into the habit. But in Equestrian, she's called a jeweled scarab."

Diamond mostly heard the last part. She was looking at living jewelry.

"Her shell," she softly said. "The way the light..." She didn't have words for what was happening to the light.

"Miss Twilight says..." Snails concentrated. "...that she's 'pre-fer-en-tial-ly left-pol-ar-ized.' I think that means light reflects differently."

The scarab came up to the glass. A tiny head tilted, bringing the body with it. Diamond saw the little black eyes, and then noticed two of the elevated legs weaving, while the other four maintained balance.

"She wants to know who you are," Snails said. "I don't have guests much."

"Much?"

"Miss Fluttershy came by once after I went to the cottage, after we talked about how to get things set up. She has medicine herbs in her attic year-round and a friend who visits, to keep them growing. So I asked my dad to find somepony who'd just drop by once a week, because some of their food has to be grown and nopony in town sells it. And Mr. Guffey was here that one time. And... that's it. My parents mostly stay outside. So she's surprised to see new company. Is it okay if I take her out? Give her a closer look?"

She didn't look slimy at all. Or repulsive. Or... "It's okay."

His field dipped into the terrarium, gently surrounded its resident, levitated up and out. The scarab was now floating a little away from Diamond's face, no more than two hoofwidths. And she wasn't recoiling. She didn't want to run at all. Not from a living jewel.

She looked at the beetle. It -- really did seem to be looking at her. Wings shifted. Legs wove again.

"She likes your tiara," Snails told her.

"She... does?"

"Because it's so bright and shiny. She'd like to touch it. If that's okay."

A bug. On her tiara --

-- a jewel...

"I... okay."

The little field bubble floated closer, and the scarab's wings began to buzz, almost in anticipation -- and then the energy winked out. The scarab, already hovering, took a second to get its bearings, and then flew forward.

Diamond didn't pull back, not even by the width of a tail strand. And so the scarab landed, tucked its wings away, and rested, while the pony who was now carrying her looked at the reflection in nearby glass.

Her own face, which she'd always felt was perfect, along with the exact suitable manestyle to set it off. Her tiara, always present at any time she could wear it at all. And... a jewel. A living jewel.

The next words, spoken under no pressure at all, turned out to be exactly the right ones.

"What's her name?"

And Snails smiled. "Cameo."

"Hi, Cameo." Because that was only polite. (In the reflection, wings briefly emerged, were tucked back in.) "Could you tell her... she's very pretty?"

"You just did," Snails quietly said. "I'm going to finish up so we can go." And he moved away, began touring the terrariums, softly calling out names and watching their bearers approach...

Diamond just kept watching her reflection. The new arrival within it, quietly resting.

"Diamond?"

She wasn't about to look away. "What?"

"Snips and I went over a lot of your place last night, looking for help. Well, as much as we could in a couple of minutes, which might not have been much because it's so big. And we found that servant, but..." He hesitated. "You don't have any pets, right?"

"No." The response came easily enough. Pets were... well, as far as Diamond could tell, they were mostly a hassle. You had to feed them and clean up after them and -- well, actually, she had servants who could do that, but pets were also common. Sure, some were more rare than others: you seldom saw ponies with cats, mostly because for some reason, living with an open and shameless hunter didn't go over well with most prospective owners. But overall, pets were everywhere. They made noise. They shed. They slobbered. They...

...were something you could say good night to.

They were always there.

They didn't forget about you.

They didn't...

...was.

"She really does like you," Snails said.


And they were outside, with the terrarium held carefully in Snails' field. He was also carrying a heat lamp, several little boxes, and two books which he'd made Diamond promise to read. Cameo was still perched on her tiara.

"Now it's okay to go outside with her when it's warm like this," he said. "She likes it warm, and because she's so far from home, none of the birds know she's something to eat -- sorry, Cameo, sorry! But Diamond has to know! -- anyway, nothing around here is a predator for her, so she's safe, as long as you're always careful about where she is. But once it starts getting colder, you've got to keep her inside. Now you're not gonna have any trouble growing the food because... well, because. And as for cage cleaning..."

She nodded, trotted along, feeling as if her legs were being raised a little higher than usual. All they had to do was pick up Snips, who would course have something to say about her new pet, a pet nopony else in the settled zone had, especially since Snails had just --

-- Diamond stopped.

"She's -- your only one?"

"She was," Snails truthfully said. "Now you're going to be her friend. But I'll drop by sometimes after the end of the semester, if that's okay."

Diamond was trying to get her mind around the concept. She was failing. "You gave me -- your only..."

"I'll see Mr. Guffey in a little while," a smiling Snails told her. "Maybe we can make a deal for another passing --"

And his eyes went wider than Diamond had ever seen them.

"MOVE!"

She didn't. She didn't know why she had to move. And in the time she would have needed to ask --

-- Snails' corona flared. The light around it intensified, and before her eyes, a second layer appeared. Energy projected, surrounded her --

-- she had a split-second to figure out what he was trying to do, another for deciding he couldn't do it, and yet one more for finding out she was wrong.

The field lifted her. Not very far off the ground. A hoof-height or two, just enough to get her clear. And then it pushed.

Diamond had flown before: when her daddy needed to reach the Canterlot branch in a hurry (and she'd never entirely understood why they hadn't just moved there to live among more of the somewhat more elite, even if they weren't quite up to her level), he would occasionally forgo the train in favor of a hired air carriage. And if it wasn't a school day and he knew he'd have some time to wander streets and shops with her after business was done, he would invite her on the ride. Silver had even come along a couple of times. And so Diamond was familiar with the feeling of wind in her mane and land rushing by below.

This was nothing like that.

There was air, but it mostly moved around the field: she had a faint current on her face, just enough to register. The ground was only a little below her. The interior of the bubble was a little warmer than the weather. And where the field's energy touched her fur, there was a faint tingle, as if one of her limbs was just starting to fall asleep and had decided to bring her entire body in on it.

It also wasn't being pulled along behind hard-laboring pegasi. It was a shove.

She flew into the nearest gap between houses, nearly all the way to the back, deep into the alley's shadows -- where the field winked out.

Momentum, however, maintained.

She stumbled as she landed, but she was facing forward and the natural pitch of her legs made it easy to go into a short gallop. However, she wasn't the only thing in the alley and so she wound up dodging around some storage bins before coming out on the next street, her breaths short, sharp, and angry. If she'd stumbled a little more and gone down headfirst, then she could have hurt --

Why did he do that? Why would anypony...?

She turned, ready to gallop back --

-- is she okay? Is she still on my tiara?

She... had to check. Any nearby window --

-- and by the time she got close enough to confirm that Cameo had stayed with her, Snails was coming down the street from the west. There was sweat in his coat, more was dripping from his snout, and his eyes --

"Why did you do that? We could have both been --"

"-- Mr. Bradel!" Snails gasped. "I'm sorry, Diamond, I'm sorry, but I saw Mr. Bradel down the street, it looked like he might turn around and he can't see us together! And I couldn't hide and leave you alone because --" He stopped, wincing: sweat had just gone into his eyes. A subsequent fast head shake got rid of a lot, with none of it hitting her. "I had to get you out of sight, fast! And... um..." Panting. "...are earth ponies just naturally kind of... you know... for your size..."

She glared at him. Took a slow breath.

"You didn't warn me."

"There wasn't time. And if he'd seen us...!"

At the very least, it would have required excuses. And parents suspicious enough to follow their sons everywhere would probably check up on anything Diamond could invent.

"I'll go pick up Snips," she decided. "You go to my house. We'll all meet up there. And maybe somepony should just go there on their own tomorrow. That way, I'm only getting one of you."

He nodded. All four of his knees were still trembling. "Okay... let me just get Cameo and --"

She pulled back.

"NO!"

"...huh?"

"She's mine now! You gave her to me! No takebacks, no lies! She's mine!"

"Diamond, you've gotta listen, I was gonna do this before we --"

Which was when his horn ignited.

"No! She's mine! You can't have her back!"

And she galloped. Back into the alley, the shadows, and where the colt could not see, he could not aim. Galloped to safety and beyond, nearly all the way to the Bradels' house before she finally began to slow.

Snails had not followed her. He couldn't. They -- she checked the nearest reflection -- they were safe.

Just... just get Snips. And with that, she waited for the sweat to slow, came up with an excuse for it in case anypony asked, and approached the door.

If she had to, she could do it with one.