31: Life in the Dink City
“Oh, but it feels good to be back on Earth!” Derpy arched her back and spread her wings. Karyn had never realized how impressive her wingspan really was, though soon she folded them back.
“It’s only been two weeks.”
“It feels like much longer.”
“I missed you too, Derpy.” Karyn sat down in her chair and leaned back.
Derpy matched the gesture by getting quite comfortable on Karyn’s bed. “So, Equestria?”
“But you just said you missed Earth.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to break your promise, right?”
Karyn racked her memory for something she had pledged to Derpy, but it wasn’t coming to mind. “What promise?”
“To be Dinky’s study buddy, of course.”
“That’s today?”
“Well, it’s kind of every day. I don’t mean that you have to go to Equestria and Canterlot all the time, but you should whenever you can.” Derpy gave her a look. Karyn could have interpreted it as guilt-tripping, but she knew that it was all out of concern for her daughter.
“OK, I’ll do it. Transportation is your department, though.”
A dimension-hop and a train ride later, the two off them were walking down the streets of Canterlot. Karyn reflected that this was the first time she had been to the city without the pressure of having to race to Princess Celestia’s castle. She craned her neck at the towers and turrets.
“It really is different in the big city, isn’t it?” said Derpy.
“I’ve been to big cities back home, like New York and Pittsburgh, but they’re all so boxy. This is almost like being in a forest of stone and wood.”
“All forests have wood, Karyn.”
Karyn nodded, realizing that she had said something silly. “But Canterlot’s completely different as a city. Maybe Washington would be the closest, but I’ve never been there.”
“What’s Washington?”
“You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to ask that question. It’s a city, the seat of our government. There are also a lot of beautiful things there, monuments and parks and archives.”
They came to an intersection, and Derpy was unsure which way Dinky lived.
“Haven’t you been here before?” asked Karyn.
“Only by air. It’s so much easier when you can cut corners. Excuse me!” Derpy accosted a passing unicorn. “Do you know where the Royal Library is?”
The unicorn looked down her nose at Derpy and Karyn, as if wondering what they would need a library for.
“It’s actually the School for Gifted Unicorns we need,” said Karyn.
The unicorn was even more incredulous, but it happened that she had a sister who attended the school, so she pointed them in the right direction.
“Why didn’t you ask for the school?” Karyn asked.
“If you ask for directions and they give you the whole path, it feels like cheating, you know?”
“Well, how about going up to the top of a building and seeing if you can spot the school? Is that fair?”
Derpy stopped in her tracks with a look of “Why didn’t I think of that?” A minute later, she knew exactly where she was going, and they were at Dinky’s dorm in ten minutes.
“Karyn! Mommy!” Dinky rose to her hooves and ran toward the two of them. Karyn gave her a hug and looked around the room, and was a little envious. The furniture that Karyn was issued by her college was stylistic to a college, designed for mass production and easy cleaning. Dinky’s dorm was like a log cabin in the woods, made all the more homey by the fact that is was in the big city.
“How are your studies coming along, Dinky?” Derpy asked.
“Good. Real good. I aced my last test.”
“And are you completing all your assignments?”
“Yes,” Dinky said, but she broke eye contact with Derpy as she did.
“Dinky! Tell the truth.”
“I did! I would never lie to you. But you didn’t actually ask if I was completing all my assignments on time.”
Derpy’s head drooped.
“But really, like ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine of them I am!” Dinky shouted.
“So, you missed one out of a hundred thousand?” asked Karyn.
“Yes! I missed one, and I’m not going to miss another for the next hundred thousand. At least, not now that you’re here.”
Derpy relented and headed for the door. “All right, I’ll leave you two to study.”
“You’re going out, Mommy?”
“Yes. I so rarely get to come to Canterlot I thought I would take the opportunity to do some shopping.”
“All right, but be careful. Canterlot’s not like Cloudsdale where everypony is laid back or like Ponyville where everyone knows everyone else. The merchants here will take advantage of you if you’re not careful.”
“I know how to make my way around a city, Dinky. Don’t worry your head about me. You might wear out your horn doing so.” She rubbed Dinky’s head with her hoof and went out through the door.
“You really think she’ll be OK, Karyn?”
Karyn knew that the question was more for reassurance than for information. “Of course she will. She’s really a very capable pony.” Our of the corner of her eye, she saw Derpy circle around and wave to them from beyond the window. Steadily backing up, Derpy found herself in the street, and the stallions pulling an omnibus had to signal her to get out of the way. Karyn closed the curtains.
“So how have you been?” said Dinky. “How are things at your school?”
“Good. Not nearly as pleasant as things here must be.”
“Ha! Have they asked you to master shrinking spells and write a report on the structure of them?”
“Yes.” Karyn put on a very serious face. Dinky stared at Karyn for a moment before they both broke up laughing. “All right, no, they haven’t. What’s the challenge?”
“Well, it’s hard to describe.”
“I know, but that’s what I’m here for. Pretend I come from a completely different world and know nothing about how to use magic.”
Dinky blinked. “But you do come from a completely different world.”
“That should make it easy.”
Dinky went over to her desk drawer and pulled out a scroll, a quill, and a book. “For practice, I’m allowed to work on inanimate objects, but in class, I have to be able to shrink animals and plants and not damage them.”
“You can do damage with that kind of spell?”
“Oh, definitely. See, think about it. Say you had a grasshopper that was your size.”
Karyn shuddered at the thought, but Dinky said, “No, it wouldn’t be scary because it couldn’t move. Its legs would collapse under it. And there are problems going the other way, too, which is what I’m dealing with.”
“I see. I think I’ve read about things like that.”
“Yeah, and that’s the thing. Practice on inanimates is easy.” She concentrated and fired a bolt from her horn at the book. A moment later, it was a pocket edition.
“Wow. Dinky, you’re awesome!”
“No, I’m not. Go pick up the book.”
Karyn reached over and grabbed the book, trying to lift it, but she misjudged the weight and it dropped back to the desk.
“See?” said Dinky. “I didn’t even change its weight. That was the most basic shrinking spell of all, and it’s almost useless. The only thing I changed was volume. I suppose if you needed to slip something through a narrow space, you could do that, but you’d still be moving more weight than you should.”
“So if you did that to me?”
“You’d still weigh as much, and you’d have far less muscle to work with. Your heart would probably stop right away.”
“Yikes,” said Karyn, but she wasn’t nearly as put off as she was by the grasshopper analogy. Something was eating at her memory, and she was trying to pull it up.
“But there are more advanced ways of doing it that involve keeping the mass in proportion,” said Dinky, as she restored the book to its former size.
That tripped Karyn’s memory, and she said, “Back on Earth, I used to play around with editing music, you know, like mixing? Some of the software I used, when I wanted to speed up a section of the music would also change the pitch, which it wasn’t supposed to do. I think that’s kind of like what’s happening here.”
Dinky looked confused. “What’s software?”
“That would take a while to explain. But ask your mother some time, she probably knows the most of anypony in Equestria about computers.” Karyn shuddered a little at the realization that what she said was true. “But I think that magic could work the same way. All right, let’s say I sing a few notes.”
She sung the opening bars of the Friendship is Magic theme song.
“Now, I can sing it at half speed but keep the same notes, or I can lower the pitch so that I’m singing alto, and keep the same beat. Either one is easy for anyone who can carry a tune. But if you tell a piece of software to do one, it’ll do the other.”
Dinky listened, still a little confused, but she mostly followed what Karyn was saying, and wanted to be patient for her anyway. At last, she said, “OK, so you’re saying I should try to do everything at once?”
“No, I’m saying you should think less about following the rules of magic, or of physics or biology or anything else, and look at things from your own perspective.”
“Well, OK, looking at it from my perspective. . . “
“Yes?”
“I think that we should take a break and go have snacks!” Dinky slammed her book closed, floated the quill and scroll into the drawer, grabbed her coat and dashed to the door.
“Dinky! I’m supposed to be your study buddy. What’s your mom going to say if she finds out that we’re barely studying at all?”
“Do you like hay cakes? I know a great place.”
Karyn stomped her foot. “You’re dodging the question.”
“Does that mean you do like hay cakes?”
“I’ve never had them, but probably not. Humans don’t eat hay.”
Dinky’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you’ve never eaten hay at all? Not even in cake form? Then you’ve just got to try it! Let’s go.” She opened the door and Karyn concluded that she was not to be swayed.
Back out on the streets of Canterlot, Karyn’s nervousness returned. She felt more comfortable when she was with Derpy. Dinky was still a younger pony, and she didn’t have all the protective spells that Derpy did. On the other hand, Karyn thought she had a responsibility to stay with Dinky, so she followed her as she made her way down the city streets.
Finally catching up to her, Karyn put a hand on her shoulder and spun her around. “All right, now listen. First off, I can’t try the hay cake. It’s not a question of taste. As a human I can’t digest it. It’s bad for me. But if you really want one, we’ll go to your place, you can have the cake, and then right back to the dorm for more studying, OK?”
Dinky pursed her lips and nodded. They moved off at a comfortable trot. Karyn looked out of the corner of her eye at the ponies passing by. In Ponyville, most of the residents had gotten used to seeing a human in town, either her or Lyra’s, and some would even wave or say hi. When she first began visiting, there were a few stares. But now, in Canterlot, some ponies weren’t even noticing, and those that were quickly turned away.
The shop that Dinky led them to was only a counter that faced the boulevard. A few round tables sat outside for ponies to eat at, but most of them were taking their food away. The line was short and they quickly acquired the hay caked Dinky had mentioned. Karyn looked over the limited menu and decided to just have a drink. “Hot chocolate, please,” she said.
Once they sat down, Dinky looked a little relieved to not have to spend a great deal of bits. As a poor college student herself, Karyn understood.
They sat, sipped, and ate. “You really don’t know what you’re missing!” said Dinky.
“It smells nice, but still like hay. For humans, it’s not an appetizing scent. Not like this chocolate.”
Dinky thought of something. “Mommy said that you don’t eat ponies, right? I mean, I know you wouldn’t eat me, but the ponies on Earth, you don’t eat them?”
Karyn sighed. “OK, I’ll go over this. I don’t eat any animal. No one I know eats ponies at all. A very few humans do, but they’re from distant lands, mostly.” Then she thought of something else. “And there are also a few that won’t eat anything from an animal. Like, they wouldn’t have this hot chocolate because there’s milk in it.”
“That’s just weird.”
“Well, all the humans who eat animals—but again, I stress, not ponies—think that I’m weird for not eating cows and chickens and—“
Karyn had taken a sip of her drink as she was talking, but when she looked up, Dinky was gone, and a streak of wind was blowing in the opposite direction, carrying the napkin that she was using. A moment later, from an alley down the road, a pale violet hoof stuck out and made a “come here” gesture.”
Blinking, she put down her cup and stepped toward the alley. As she poked her head around the corner, she felt a magical glow surround her body, and she was pulled in like a magnet to the opposite pole. “Shhh!” Dinky said, her hoof to her mouth. She pointed back out to the street.
Karyn stuck her head out and understood. Down the boulevard, flitting about in front of windows oohing and ahhing, was Derpy. She had a couple of shopping bags on her left hoof and was flying a little awkwardly because of them. Karyn yanked her head back in.
“What are we going to do?” said Dinky. “She’s heading this way! She’ll see us!”
“Let’s duck back in the alley. Maybe she’ll pass by.”
They looked behind them. The blind alley didn’t go back far, nor did it offer any easily accessible hiding places.
“We’re doomed!”
“Let’s just stand still. Maybe she won’t see.”
Dinky was shocked. “Karyn, this is my mommy! Der. Py. Hooves. She sees everything in all directions!”
“Oh, right. Yeah, we’re doomed.”
They pushed as far back as they could go and waited for the inevitable.
As Derpy passed the café where they had left the hay cake and the drink, she stopped and looked at it, perhaps wondering why somepony had left tasty treats out instead of finishing them. Distracted, she bank-turned and bumped into a passing unicorn couple.
“Oh, please excuse me.”
“Mm. Yes,” the stallion said in a snooty tone.
She tried to go around the couple, but then her bag ripped and spilled its contents all over the sidewalk. Dinky saw a number of fancy cheeses and vegetables. One round cheese rolled slowly away.
“Oh, pony-pies!” Derpy swore.
“Come on,” whispered Karyn. “Now’s our chance to get away!” But Dinky was still watching her mother try to gather all her purchases.
“Just a second.”
The unicorns had not moved on, but were looking down at Derpy. The mare reared on her hind legs, ostensibly to give Derpy more room, but it looked to Dinky as if she was looking down her nose.
Sotto voce, but still quite audible, the mare said, “Clearly she’s not from around here.”
Ever the innocent, Derpy stood up from her mad scramble to say, “You’re right! I’m Derpy Hooves of Cloudsdale and Ponyville. Nice to meet you!”
If the unicorns had given a polite hello, or if they had plead that they had urgent business and no time to stop, or if they had been going in the opposite direction, or if they had waited one more block to exchange the look they did, things might have turned out differently. As was, Dinky from her hiding place saw the look in their eyes and burst out into the street.
“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. High-and-mighty! Why don’t you try watching where you’re going?”
Derpy was more shocked than the unicorns. “Dinky, what are you doing here?”
“Not standing idly by while some stuck-up ponies who probably inherited every bit they have dishonor my mother!”
The unicorn stallion said, “If you’re her filly, why don’t you just help her carry her bags? Then she wouldn’t be in our way.”
Dinky didn’t like the tone that he had taken for the word “our.” It implied that they were on a different level. “I’ll do better than that!” she said.
Concentrating hard, she fired a field of magic from her horn. It swept all of Derpy’s purchases back into the bags. Then a red bolt slammed into the bags and a puff of smoke dissipated around them. Two tote bags that would be easy for anypony to carry sat on the ground.
“Oh, what a disgraceful daughter you have there,” the unicorn mare said to Derpy. “Ruining your food like that. Shrinking spells take all the flavor out of food. Everypony knows that.”
“Maybe everypony in the finishing school knows that,” said Dinky, “but those of us attending Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns can take care of these things. Especially when we’ve got good friends to help us out.”
She pointed back to the alley, and Karyn stepped out. If the unicorn couple thought Derpy and Dinky low before, they didn’t know what to make of them now, associating with a human. Privately, Karyn wished she had fangs or claws to bare, just to end the encounter.
As it was, she joined the other two and they walked off, Derpy now having a very easy time carrying the bags. “I still don’t know how you got here,” she said.
“Let’s just wait until we’re out of earshot of those two,” said Dinky. As they passed by the café, she floated the remaining half of her hay cake back into her possession.
They turned the corner and wound their way back toward the school and Dinky’s dorm room. Derpy now seemed to know her way. In fact, another pegasus pony walked up to her and asked directions to a certain museum.
“Ooh, I’m not sure I know that.”
Dinky stepped in and pointed her toward where she wanted to go.
“You’ve saved me again,” said Derpy. “But why did she ask me for directions, of all ponies? There must be hundreds of native. . . Canterlotians? Canterlotites?. . . residents that she could have approached.”
“I got stopped and asked three times last year before I figured it out,” said Dinky. “Let’s say you’re in Cloudsdale, and somepony you’ve never seen is flying by down the road. What do you do?”
“I don’t know, say hi?”
“Right, but even if you don’t, you look at them with a friendly expression. But Canterlot ponies don’t do that. In the first place, they see tourists all the time. But it’s also a cultural thing. They don’t make eye contact as much.”
They walked another few yards when Derpy said, “I hope you don’t get too much like them, little one. It just doesn’t seem right to not look at ponies’ eyes. I’ve had too many look away from mine.”
Karyn saw an opening. “Well, if Dinky’s going to be a big, famous Canterlot unicorn and a graduate of the school, you’ll just have to get used to it.”
“Well, maybe it would be a good idea to live closer to Ponyville.”
“Give up the school?” said Dinky.
“I don’t want you to do that either.”
“There’s no reason she has to stay in Canterlot after she graduates,” said Karyn. “Of course, she wouldn’t have all the opportunities.”
Derpy grumbled, but Dinky caught on and gave Karyn a wink.
“Well, there’s plenty of time to think about it.”
“Yeah,” said Dinky. “and plenty of time to have fun.”
They arrived back at the dorm and Dinky unlocked the door magically. “They expect us to know the locking spell right off,” she said. “If you don’t, you start losing your stuff and you’ve got incentive to learn. They give everything back eventually though.”
Derpy looked in and saw Dinky’s notes on her desk. She had a delayed reaction. “Wait, fun? What were you doing outside anyway? You’re supposed to be studying!”
“Oh, well, you see—“
“I told her to go,” said Karyn. “She was raving about these hay cakes and lamenting that she had to stay in and study. I told her that we should go get them and that’s when we ran into you. It’s all my fault.”
Dinky stepped in front. “No, Karyn, you don’t need to lie. I made Karyn come with me, mommy. But it all worked out for the best. That spell I used is that thing I’m supposed to learn!”
Derpy focused one eye on the desk and one on her daughter. “I thought that the problem was getting the work done, not learning the spells.”
“Oh, right.”
A light appeared over Karyn’s head. “But now she can write up our adventures and everything that happened.”
“No, Karyn,” said Derpy. “This is supposed to be serious work.”
“Derpy, how many of these assignments do you think that the teachers have to read? Honestly, a fresh, new angle on what’s probably boring to them might get Dinky some extra points.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I don’t see how magic could ever be boring, but then I’m not a unicorn.”
Derpy pictured it in her mind. “Neither am I. But yeah, I certainly wouldn’t want to read about flying all day. OK, you’re forgiven this time.”
Relieved, Dinky gave Karyn a hug. “Thanks so much. I’ll have to set up a way to call you the next time I’m having problems.”
“I’m sure you can do it, too. You’re a great unicorn, Dinky.”
Derpy and Karyn left for the train. Back at her house, Derpy prepared to take Karyn to Earth. “Let me just put away all this—oh, no!”
“What’s wrong?”
“We forgot! All the food I bought in Canterlot, it’s still shrunk!”
They shared a laugh.
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Yay, update!
Also, how long is this going to be? Your not really doing an "ancient evil comes and human must get rid of it" theme, so theres not really a definite time frame.
1790246
Until I run out of ideas.
1790270 I like that thought
EDIT: not you running out of ideas but that there is no defined end
I like it.
Each chapter's like an episode of a TV series.
1790270
Don't worry, if you run out, you've got all of us to help you along.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw5656-1790.png
This is my mommy! Der
py
Hooves
I liked this chapter with gusto and the part about the royal canterlotians going "hmm, yes" made me do that...MMMmmmMmMmmm yes, quite
DJ-Pon-3 approved
P.S. I can't wait for the next chapter
2829918
Dinky made me think of this song.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=puFeAhqisZA&list=PLcTg6kQa-C33skslZDYuOOewv81AfHOSs
Protective as in escape, or as in self defence?
Because Im pretty sure she essentially just said she can turn a pony into a black hole and then let them evaporate without a trace.
I mean, I don't know if she could, but she could definitely do some damage.