Slice of Life
SEPTEMBER 26, 2015
09:35 AM
"I could have run up here, you know. I'm not even bringing back any milk - just checking on how full the tanks are."
"I know," I told Karin. "But I was bringing everypony else to come see the farm, and I figured I'd offer."
"Well, thank you," she smiled, relaxing in the passenger seat of the car, while Greg, Jenn, and Randy sat in the back seat. The youngster was enamored with the electric car, and his surrogate parents were divided between it and the desolate communities we were passing.
I'd also been advised, on the sly, that it would be entertaining to see Karin's reaction when she got to the farm. I had no idea what was planned, and managed a decent poker face (I'd like to think) on the way up.
"Nobody else is around here, hmm?" Greg asked.
"Just us," I confirmed. "There's a pack of dogs that actually claim the strip mall across from us, but that's all we've encountered so far."
"A pack of dogs?" Jenn said with a partly concerned expression, sliding her eyes towards Randy, who was obliviously looking out at the train tracks we were passing.
"Smart ones, like Buddy," Karin spoke up. "It's weird - a lot of the animals seem to have gotten a lot... I don't know if smarter is the right word. Social, maybe? Expressive? You'd think they were on the cusp of sapience."
"What's sapience?" came a young voice.
"Intelligence," Greg explained to Randy.
"You mean dogs might talk and stuff?"
"Maybe eventually," I said. "Though if Buddy's any indication, they've kind of plateaued... no offense meant to him, but the animals seem to have gone as far as they will in terms of intellect."
"Maybe," Karin shrugged. "He's a fantastic running partner." She turned in her seat to look at Jenn. "You might enjoy running, if you don't mind me saying. Earth ponies seem to have a need to stretch out and exercise. I know I felt better since I started doing it."
"I'll think about it," Jenn smiled.
I turned the car onto the side road, heading down towards the farm, listening to the banter going on between my friends. It was interesting thinking about this being the new normal. We now had a family among us, and we were spending a lot of our time growing food and tending to livestock. The time of scavenging was over, mostly, with only a few occasional trips to look for something of particular importance or uniqueness.
We had a meeting planned for all of us later that day, to discuss the bombshell - or plural - that the phone call from Alexandria (formerly Paris, Illinois) had dropped on us. Learning what had truly happened wasn't vital to our survival, but it was news enough that we should all share in it.
"What the heck is going on?" Karin was muttering, with a confused expression on her face, as we pulled up to the driveway that led to the field. As we turned off the side road, she snorted out a laugh, and I snerked as well.
"What?" Randy said, putting his forehooves on the back of my seat, to look past me.
What he and the rest of us saw were twenty-two cows milling around, doing what milk cows do, but all of them with party hats on their heads.
Karin turned to me as the back seat occupants made some polite laughter. "You did this!" she chortled, accusingly.
I held my hooves up. "I had nothing to do with this, honest," I said. "I have no idea where they came from." I looked back out the windshield. "They don't seem to mind them, do they?"
We got out of the car, and indeed, every cow was tolerating the multicolored paper cones quite passively, munching on grass, wandering around, chewing their cud, and doing everything else one might expect cows to do.
Pretty ingenious, Jeff, I thought to myself with a smile.
After showing off the field and its operation to the Somerset family and taking them back to 'town' (I was actually starting to think of it as 'home' or a 'town' now that there was more than six of us there), I went for a solo flight down towards the lake.
It wasn't that I didn't enjoy Randy's presence - his childhood enthusiasm was infectious and a delight to experience, especially in this world. I just had some thoughts of my own to work through.
I guess I had to concede that I was the de facto 'mayor' now - people were calling for me by name on the radio, though there was an obvious reason why that was, since the voice they heard was mine over 99% of the time. All the residents of Ponytown looked to me when there was a decision to be made, or an opinion to be gathered.
That wasn't why I was off to be alone with my thoughts, though. My excuse was that I actually had purpose to be down by the lake. Several weeks ago we'd contemplated some storage places for our harvest, and I was scouting out places we might dig out a root cellar. That concept had also put my brain on two separate tracks for similar concerns about our resources - one, how and where do we store our winter food without it spoiling or freezing, and two, what do we do for water when the bottles we'd scavenged from everywhere finally ran out?
Lake Ontario was a freshwater lake, but I wouldn't drink from it even if I was dying of thirst. Well, maybe... no, no, it wasn't potable in any sense. We would need to either boil everything we drew from the lake, or find a way to purify it. And those purification tablets and filter pitchers for your fridge would only go so far.
I wondered for a moment if there was anything in the nuclear plant that would help us. It was built where it was built, for among other reasons, the proximity to the lake to draw water for cooling, so obviously there were pumps in there. Could I convince ponies to drink water that had been in a nuclear power plant - even one that the HPI had withdrawn all the fuel rods from?
The HPI weren't going to be any help any longer, either - at least, not substantially. That was what the phone call that night was about. Now that we were in touch with Alexandria, apparently the HPI had decided that that was to be their sole source of contact with ponies. I could understand that - to hear the HPI tell it, their resources were stretched beyond thin, and only venturing out in one direction for supply runs and such made good sense. It meant that we'd have to work out a delivery plan to get stuff to Illinois instead of waiting for a robot or aircraft to drop in right here in Ponytown for a pickup.
Maybe the American ponies will have some advice on the water situation, I mused. I should give them a call before the snow flies.
Looking to the sky, I had to give that some thought as well. I was able to manipulate rain clouds, and make it rain in places I wanted, and make it stop as well. I could move storm clouds someplace else if I didn't feel like putting up with overcast skies and rain showers. Would the same apply to snow storms?
Logic implied that it would, but it was hard to make an argument about logic and physics when talking about manipulating the weather.
When I came back to Ponytown, I found Greg, Rich, Swift, and Serge sitting around chatting.
"He'd call the whole phenomenon rubbish," Greg said, causing Serge to laugh.
"Ambitious," Serge said, adopting an odd accent. "But rubbish indeed."
"What are you on about?" I said with a smile, getting a drink from the fridge and lying down beside Buddy, among the lot of them.
"Celebrities," Swift explained. "Wondering if any of them might be around. How they might react."
"Ohh," I nodded, getting the reference Greg and Serge had made. "I'd hope all three of them would be back if any of them."
"What do we do if somebody 'VIP' reappears?" Rich asked.
"How do they prove it?" Swift argued. "Somepony walks up and says they're the Prime Minister. What do we do, hand them the launch codes?"
"It's the American President that would have launch codes," I countered, "unless you mean to launch our flotilla of rabid Canada geese."
"You ever been face to face with a Canada goose?" Serge shot back. "'Rabid' is a redundant term."
Greg laughed at the exchange.
"Rich brings up something I wanted to talk about, though," Serge said. "'Reappearing'. Is that what happened to us? And Karin?"
"What do you mean?" Greg asked.
"It happened to you, too," I said. "You told me Randy was alone for a week, even though you were just a kilometer or so up the road? The truth is, you skipped forward a week in time. Rich lost a couple of weeks, if I recall?" I said, looking to him.
"Three," he nodded.
"I lost two days, and Karin eight days," Serge replied. "According to what Storm was told last night, the... 'aliens' that did this to us held our souls in ...some kind of storage, until 'they were ready' to be returned to Earth in pony form." I studied Serge, watching his expression for any internal struggle. "My question is, what was the criteria for 'being ready'? What did God - or, in the eyes of some of you, these 'alien princesses' - use as a yardstick to determine if I was ready? Was this Judgment Day? Were the sum total of my sins worth only two days in the 'penalty box'? What does that say of Rich, who took three weeks to come back? No offense, of course. Or better yet, what does it say about my family, who hasn't reappeared yet?"
"Is it too cliché to say that God works in mysterious ways?" I suggested. A couple of ponies flinched, but I knew how Serge would respond; we'd had talks on this tangent before, and he knew my position and I his, and neither took affront at the other.
"Maybe," he sighed with a shrug. "Maybe this is the next Great Question. Perhaps I'll not find its answer until the next time humanity needs to be saved."
"Regardless," Greg said, "I hope you find your answer, friend."
"Thanks," Serge responded eventually, and we sat in silence for a few moments.
Karin and Jeff and Jenn and Randy came back from the fields a short while later. Randy was giggling and clinging to Jenn's back, and she was panting from exertion like the farming couple.
"That was exhilarating," she smiled to them.
"It was fun!" Randy laughed, hopping down as he saw me.
"We do that all the time," Jeff said to Jenn. "You're welcome to join us if you like."
"I just might," Jenn said.
Randy ran up to me. "We just ran from the farm all the way here!" he said.
"'We' did, did 'we'?" I smirked. "Looks like you had a good time."
"Uh-huh," he said. "I like the cows. They're funny."
"If you say so," I said, looking over to Jeff, who grinned back at me. Karin was heading over to the chicken coop, and I wondered if she'd find them with party whistles in their beaks or something.
"That doesn't mean I don't wanna go flying later," Randy warned me.
"I know, pal," I said. "We will, but we have to be back in time for us grown-ups have their talk this afternoon, before supper."
"Okay!"
I went over to Jeff as Jenn took Randy inside for a snack before our jaunt. I said quietly to the earth stallion, "She really loved the thing with the cows, you know."
"I know," he grinned broadly. "She told me. They were really supportive, too."
I blinked and stared at him. "Supportive."
"You know what I mean," he said. "I explained it, they didn't try to kick me when I put the hats on."
"From my time with Buddy, I should learn not to doubt what you say about the cows," I said. "If they start talking, let me know."
"Of course," Jeff said, then added in jest, "You're our ambassador, after all."
Before I sought out Randy for the excursion, I dug through the baby supplies in the piles of junk in the unused part of the store. From that, I extracted... I have no idea what their real name is, but people used to strap them to their torsos and put their child in a specially-made cradle that held the kid to their body. Some creative manipulation resulted in the device being fit to attach another, smaller pony to my barrel.
Randy wriggled his way into the contraption, and we looked like a pair of skydivers doing a tandem jump, but with the logos on the harness indicating sponsorship by a stroller manufacturer. That, and I had no chute.
"Have fun," Jenn said. "And be careful!"
"I will!" Randy replied, wiggling a forehoof in a wave as I trotted up the stairs to the roof.
The one downside, it seemed, was that there was no way for Randy to get his wings out of the harness.
"Sorry, bud, I'll figure that out for next time," I apologized, shouting over the wind.
"That's okay! This is great!" he yelled back. I could tell he was instinctively straining against the straps, though, trying to spread wide and enjoy the currents along with me. He adopted a Superman pose and 'flew' along under me.
I found a thermal updraft and rode it a couple hundred feet into the sky. Randy hooted and cheered even more, so much I thought he might have a hard time breathing if he kept it up. Then again, I never felt the effects of the thinning air no matter how high I flew (though I hadn't truly tested tens of thousands of feet, yet).
We did some aerobatic stunts and maneuvers, fluttering and flitting all over the sky. I did all the moves I could think up from the stunt team shows I'd seen over the years - at least the ones that had no chance at causing us harm. Anything that threatened the integrity of the tandem-flight 'suit' was off the table, at least until I was more sure of its construction and design. Still, that left plenty of fun to be had, with corkscrew rolls, barrel rolls, sudden 'bat turns', wingovers, split-S'es and Immelman turns, a couple of outside loops, and even one or two fake 'stalls' just to make my young charge giggle at the gravitational changes.
After half an hour or so of that, I found myself actually tiring - a sensation I hadn't experienced yet, no matter how hard I worked at it - so I looked around and spotted something that would put the cherry on top of our little endeavor. One last great push took us up another few dozen feet to a football-field-sized cloud, where I turned over and landed on it on my back, wings and legs all spread wide.
Randy wouldn't stop laughing and giggling and having the time of his life, squirming around 'on top' of me now, still strapped into the harness. He yelped in shock only once, when I reached up and unsnapped the belts holding him in, causing him to tumble off my belly and land hooves-down on the cloud. Once he realized he wasn't falling thousands of feet, he danced, then romped on the cloud surface happily.
I watched him for a bit, lying upside-down, sinking into the cloud like it was a waterbed, or a plush comforter. For a moment I thought of the concept of sleeping on a cloud, just lying on its immeasurably soft surface and relaxing, and knew that the next time I had some free time, I had some 'research' to do. However, for now, I had to ensure my young protégé didn't fall off the edge.
I eventually sat back up and watched him playing like a kid seeing snow for the first time - 'digging' in the cloud, kicking at it, mashing its form this way and that, and burrowing within the vapor ball's structure. He laughed and commented on how what he was doing was impossible, yet he kept doing it just the same.
I finally got up to my hooves and trotted over to him, 'picking up' a strip of the cloud and wrapping it over him like a blanket, which caused another fit of giggles.
"Like it up here, huh?" I asked him.
"You bet!" his muffled voice came from within the 'blanket', which he wriggled free of a moment later. "How is this possible??"
"I got no idea, pal," I said. "Same reason Jeff and Karin make things grow crazy fast and Swift and Rich can pick each other up with just their minds."
Randy's eyes widened. "I have magic?" he said in a hushed tone.
"You bet," I nodded, smiling. "Everypony does now. That's part of why all this happened. Magic came to our world... our universe."
"Wow," he drew out for a long moment. He plopped his butt down on the cloud, sitting and staring at the view, collecting his thoughts, so I mimicked him, though I was watching him instead of the horizon.
"Whatcha thinkin' about?" I asked.
He was silent for a few moments, then said, "Is that why my mom and dad and sister aren't here? 'Cause they have no magic?"
I ran a hoof through his mane. "Not at all," I said. "That phone call I got last night? They explained it to me." I made some of it up, to fit a ten-year-old's frame of reference. "There's only so much magic to go around, and the universe has to collect more in order to bring more of us back. Everybody needs a different amount of magic, and a different kind too. The trickiest part is that your mom, your dad, and your sister have to wait until there's enough magic to give to all three of them together. They all have to come back at the same time, because they were all in the car together - it'd be really dangerous if, for example, your sister came back without the car, right?"
He nodded.
"So it's harder for the world to bring together that much magic that's needed to bring back three people all at once. The way nature works, it does the easy stuff first, then the harder stuff, and then the hardest stuff it saves for last."
"So my mom and dad and sister won't be coming back for a really long time?" he asked.
"Oh heck no, not true at all," I said. "It might be a long time, but they're not going to be among the last, I'm sure. Think about it. There are planes out there with hundreds of people, and cruise ships with thousands. It's gonna be way harder to gather up enough magic for 350 people on a jumbo jet than it is for 3 people in a car. Right?"
"I guess," he said, the gears obviously turning in his mind.
"I have to admit I have no idea when they'll show up. It could be tomorrow or it could be years down the road." Or it could be hundreds or thousands of years after you and I are dead and buried, I didn't tell him. "But when they do, first of all, think of how awesome it'll be to see them again. Have you ever gone away to camp or on a vacation without some of your family? Remember how happy you were to see them when you got back?" He nodded. "That's what it's gonna feel like when they find your note and come join us here. And even better still? Imagine what they'll think when you fly right up to them and show off your skills."
He smiled. "That's right," he acknowledged, nodding.
"First things first, though, we have to get you better at this," I said, flapping my wings once in demonstration. "And unfortunately I have to get back down for the meeting. But I promise, next time we come up, I'll try to have the harness modified so's your wings can come out to join the party. Okay?"
"Okay!" he grinned, nodding more vigorously.
"For now, come climb into this and let's get you back down to Earth."
Randy did as instructed, and I cinched the straps tight, making sure there was no chance he would slip free. Then I burrowed through the cloud (instead of jumping off the side) and simply fell through the lower layer into the atmosphere. Needless to say, my passenger was enjoying every foot of the flight once more.
We got back down and buzzed the field a bit, playing with Jeff, Karin, and Jenn. Randy tried to high-five (high-one?) somepony, but we were too high and too fast - to be honest, we were too high because I lifted him up, because we were too fast - I didn't want him to crack his hoof from slapping it too hard against something, even another hoof.
I kept the harness after we landed, setting it down at my 'usual' place in the common area, so I would remember to ask someone if they could figure out a way to make wing-friendly holes in the sides. With luck, somebody would have some sewing experience and be able to poke some holes through and stitch them together.
And then it was time for our group chat about the revelations from Alexandria.
We didn't need to reiterate what I'd heard over the phone the night before; we'd exchanged that information at the time, and it was still fresh in our minds. Since several of us had discussed some things earlier in the day, we did have some things to go over again, and we did.
The big question was, what does this change in the grand scheme of things? Is there anything arising from this information that will change our way of life?
"One thing I can see that might become necessary is checking local homes and businesses for survivors reappearing," Jeff suggested.
"We can do some patrolling," Greg offered.
"Stormy's radio broadcasts should count for some of that," Swift said. "And I will work at making more posters like I did a while back, so we can make people aware of where we are and how to reach us."
"Does that mean we need to plan for more arrivals?" I wondered aloud.
Serge nodded. "Better to be prepared and not need it than the other way around," he said.
"We should go bigger than posters, with all due respect," Rich said to Swift. "We should paint over some advertising signs. The ones on the roadside," he added, struggling to come up with the English term.
"Billboards?" Karin suggested.
"Exactly. Cover up the current ad with our own. 'Come to Ponytown, we have donuts.'" He cracked a smirk.
"I'm okay with it if you guys are," I said, smiling at the joke as well.
"I'll come up with bigger versions of the posters, then. We'll have to scout them out and decide where's the ideal place to make our mark," said Swift.
"Sounds good," Jeff said.
"I know something I want to know more about," Rich added. "And I'm sure you do too, sensei: These rumored books and documents from the alien world."
"Yes!" Swift said, eyes lighting up. "If there's a way to obtain that information they said they have down in Illinois, please, please bring it here." She faced me and made an insanely heart-attack-inducing puppy-dog expression. "Pleeeeeeze?"
"Gaaah," I recoiled. "I'll see what I can do!"
We went on like that - in other words, our usual crazy selves - for a couple of hours, going over every bit of the data we'd been given from Alexandria. By the time anyone glanced at a clock, it was almost six PM.
"No wonder I'm hungry," Jenn said.
"You need to eat for your new size," Greg poked at her. "I'm the tiny one in our relationship now. And let me tell you, it's strange getting used to that."
"We all have lots to learn," Swift smiled. "I need to get on teaching you how to use that horn as well."
I got up from the meeting and made my way over to the radio shack. Settling down, I realized I wasn't alone. At first I thought it was Randy, but when I turned my head, I realized it was a much larger pony that had followed me.
"Hi," Serge said. "Do you have time to talk?"
"If you don't mind me working at the same time," I nodded, waking up the laptop and preparing it for use.
"Not a problem." His eyes drifted to the thin, worn-through-in-places AstroTurf beneath me. "Oh, by the way, I found a source for some decent carpet for up here. Sometime you have to come pick out a style."
"Oh? Thanks," I smiled. "Yeah, this is getting kinda beat."
"That's not what I was up here for, though."
"Okay," I said, with the intention of letting him continue. When he fell silent, I stopped typing, spat out the stylus, and looked up at him.
"I was watching when you were coming back with young Randy this afternoon," he said. "How much fun he was having... and to tell you the truth, how much fun you were having. And I've had plenty of time to think on this, especially with regards to the other things we've discussed lately, now that we know what happened, and that my loved ones will be back. And I've decided... if it's not too much to ask... if you would teach me to fly."
I blinked with surprise, eyebrows darting up into my hairline. "Really? I mean, yes, not a problem. I'd be happy to."
"There's a 'but' in there."
"No... no, not at all," I said. "Though to be honest, I always figured you weren't interested in... well, you know," I said, shrugging my shoulders and giving my wings a flap.
"I have to admit, I had my doubts at first. You know what I mean."
I nodded.
"The truth of the matter is, you were right. Part of me wondered if this entire situation was an affront to God's wishes, and a punishment for all we've done as humans."
I sat and listened to him.
"But listening to what Alexandria had to say, and talking about it amongst ourselves... I decided to bring it up with my Lord. And He answered me, and He said that I should embrace what I've become, and learn that a pegasus is no less one of His children than any other creature on this world."
Around 45 minutes later, after my radio broadcast was done, I went back to the common area, ready for a late dinner. We'd partially planned it late; well, to tell the truth, we hadn't, but it was a happy coincidence, considering the meal that had been prepared.
Somehow, though I suspect she knew it was coming, Jeff had managed to co-opt a number of people to help with making a profoundly large buffet of food for Karin's birthday dinner. None of it would go to waste, of course - we were all hungry, and had no problem taking on a little bit more than our usual intake, considering we rationed most of our food these days.
What bewildered me was the inviting smell I'd almost forgotten, which emanated from a huge salad bowl at one end of the table. I blinked as I realized what it was full of.
"French fries!" I exclaimed.
"We cleaned out one of the fryers from the A&W over in the food court... you remember it, right?" Swift winked at me. "Found some fresh oil and fired it up."
"Oooh!" Karin squealed, taking a hooffull of the fried potatoes and chowing down on them happily.
There were plenty of other foods, too, some of which were regular staples now, and some which surely took a large amount of preparation and effort to make happen, especially in our situation. We ate to our hearts' - or at least our stomachs' - content.
"For those who haven't figured it out yet," Jeff said, standing up at the end of the meal, "today is Karin's eighteenth birthday." He had to pause as the assembled ponies stomped on the floor - our new way of applauding - and began to sing. Jeff halted that effort promptly. "A moment, please," he said. "Karin, I'm not sure if I would have made it to this point without you. I know we as a group owe you a lot, being our sole medic and my fellow farmerpony. I don't have a gift to give you, because these days, if there's something we need or want, we just go ahead and get it. I'm hoping this day is going to make up for that."
Swift and Rich had slipped out of the room while all eyes were on Jeff, and suddenly they returned, walking slowly and carefully into the room, with a blue glow supporting a tremendous chocolate frosted cake, several layers high, with multiple layers laid out side by side on the platter - there had to be at least fifteen individual cakes in the whole concoction.
I was wondering what Swift's purpose for being there was, if Rich was carrying the cake, when all of a sudden, the candles were surrounded by yellow sparks, which solidified into flame after a moment.
Now the assembled group sang, led by Jeff and a boisterous Randy, and a blushing but laughing earth pony seated at the end of the table grinned as the multi-tiered cake was set before her. "Thank you, everyone, and thank you Jeff," she said as the song finished.
"Here you go," Swift said, levitating a large cake knife into position between Karin and the confection.
She took it in her hooves and smirked. "I thought from the size of it, we were all just welcome to bash our faces into it and chow down," she said, causing everypony else to laugh.
I sat back and smiled, basking in every moment of our shared joy.
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Actually, how is there relationship with the dog pack? Do they get halfhearted threats if they venture into the area?
6494977 Other than being there, I haven't really intended to dwell on them much. Buddy put them in their place during The Coming Storm, and they keep their distance now. If somebody tried to take over their home, or steal their food, they'd surely defend it, but otherwise they leave one another alone.
And to think you wrote about writer's block yesterday...
I'm not complaining!
A babycarrier for a pegasus colt? That's brilliant, good thinking Stormy.
So... the first chapter with real thoughts about the future. Ponytown, possibly one of the first citystates.
I see that Stormy has enticed Randy over to the pegasus side. Join me and together we can rule the mall...
I was going to comment how they better enjoy that chocolate (cake) as the supply is surely going to dwindle. Then it hit me, earth ponies and pegasi can likely grow things from very different climates locally.
I love the way "the cows didn't kick me when I did it" is described as being supportive. It kind of implies that there's some kicking going on whenever the cows aren't co-operating. Probably just as well they've got earth pony endurance, though I hope they're mostly just being sensible enough not to stand where the cows can easily kick them...
Pretty neat though that Jeff involved the cows in Karin's birthday celebrations.
6495080 I actually had a lot of this in my head all weekend, but a hard time getting it out "on paper". What I found helped out was arranging the scenes in notes written into the chapter where I wanted to put them, and writing some of it out even if I hadn't written the stuff before it yet. So if you ever see anything I write peppered with {curly brackets}, that's what's going on.
6495342 Now there's a thought... trying to grow tropical plants in the medium latitudes.
"Hey Stormy, do you like mmmbananas?"
Ponyville might be a little tricky to get to at the moment. Probably better off advertising Ponytown.
6495750 Whoops! I don't suppose I could handwave that away as a translation error from Quebecois to English, could I?
Fixed, thanks.
What I most like about this group is that they are coming together like a family rather than just individuals banding together for the purposes of survival. I think that this will be a source of great strength in times to come. They also have a great responsibility as future ponies won't have the same resources to scavenge any more, and therefore there has to be stuff put into place for them by these pioneers. It's quite an awesome task, so to be able to work together so well will help ensure their success.
I'm rather envious.
And later that night, Stormy had to take Randy on a sudden late night flight, and many months later a foal was born to Jeff and Karin.
Anyways, nice chapter.
*Blows whistle* Minor Penalty, Toronto, #5, Serge, 2 days for Too many men on the Earth.
(Sorry if the # is wrong. I'm not sure 100% sure if Serge was introduced to them 5th or 6th, so coin toss gave him #5. Get gets Toronto since that's the town where he worked, and I assume lived)
Dammit! I just realised my ship with Stormy and Serge may have hit a reef.
Serge is pretty religious and gay stuff is a big no no, and Stormy was a guy! Does this mean no Sergeant-Stormy D: I guess she'll be demoted to Private-Stormy :(
My favorite part of this story is when Serge comes to term with being a Pegasus. That God told him to embrace it. As a Christian I know it's all too easy for people to go the cheap rout, and put us in as crazy/hateful/etc. I just want you to know you did a FANTASTIC job of portraying Serge as a good Christian. That although he had struggles, he has not abandoned God.
So thank you for including a religious character done RIGHT! <3
6498005 I've always been slightly envious of people who can draw strength from their faith in God (or any other god, deity, or deities or whatever). The concept of adhering to any religion is utterly alien to me, but as long as there is nothing bad committed in its name my stance is live and let live.
Now portraying Serge as one of those who can draw real strength from their faith suddenly gave him a lot of character depth and made him feel real. Hadn't really thought about it until you brought it up, but you're spot on with it.
So now that I've read through the first story and this: Yes. This is great. More? Also, Stormy is best Three Dog
6497667 Depends, it's fairly commonly held among liberal Christians that the "homosexuality" and "effeminate"ness condemned in the Bible is more accurately translated from the Hebrew version as two specific types of ritual prostitution, not two people of the same gender in a consensual loving relationship. Avoid the "Bible belt" like the plague and you'll find people are really quite accepting (especially in Canada where "being nice" is the default).
I commend the author on inserting religion into a story like this: it's a brave and difficult thing to do well (so easy to cop out with "simply not true"), and this author is so far pulling it off fantastically.
Still waiting for the central conflict, though this might've been the first sign of it so far. Could it be the story is going to be about adjusting and adapting the needs of ponytown to newcomers as they arrive? It might make for a story. Or getting knowledge about ponies from Alexandria. I'd suspect Stormy could fly the distance over the course of a good long trip, if we didn't already know she hadn't visited the town in person until Founders five years later. It's possible they'll use satelite internet to transmit a digital scan of one or two, though it will be some time before they've scanned any number of them. Even making it a priority, they still have to survive over there...
Looking forward to seeing that question answered. As before, I think it's the Randy sections that stand out to me. Maybe it's just that he needs so much help that makes his parts interesting. Regardless, another great chapter! Even if I'm still not sure where we're headed yet.