May 28 [Aquamarine Arrives]
May 28
When I woke up, I watched the birds at the feeder and the squirrel who had figured out how to get past the obstacles Aric had put on the ropes.
He woke up not too long after the squirrel had finished his breakfast and gone back home, at which point the birds returned.
I wonder if it bothers them to have to wait for their meal?
Aric said I was getting distracted, but I thought it was nice to be able to look out the window, and it wasn't like I wasn't paying him any attention. Except when the cardinal and blue jay got in a fight; that was a bit distracting. And he was the one who had asked what all the angry chirping was, so it wasn't my fault I stopped long enough to look out the window and see.
There was still only oatmeal and Pop Tarts in the kitchen for breakfast, so I had a bowl of oats and Aric had one and a half Pop Tarts—he shared part of one with me because he thought I might like it. He said it was ice cream sundae flavor, and it was. It was kind of like astronaut ice cream in a way—it had nearly the right flavor, but not the right texture at all.
We both rode in Winston down to the train station. I wouldn't have minded walking, but Aric said what if she had a lot of stuff with her? I doubted she would, and he told me that girls pack way too much stuff for trips.
I said that maybe human women and unicorns do, but pegasuses and earth ponies are different and we pack light.
We got there but the train was delayed. There was a McDonald's right next to the train station, and Aric went there to get a cup of coffee and he offered to get me one, too, but I didn't really feel the need for one.
When he came back, the train still hadn't arrived. He had the coffee and a cinnamon roll which he shared with me. It was really sugary and wound up getting glaze all over my muzzle (and he pretended not to look while I was licking it off myself, but I saw him watching).
We had to wait nearly an hour for the train to finally arrive. I'd gone out to the platform and flown up a couple of times to see if I could spot it, but with all the trees leafed out, even from the air I couldn't see that much of the tracks.
He was getting a little bit impatient, too, 'cause he still needed to finish his theatre assignment that he hadn't finished last weekend. And I felt bad that I was keeping him from that but he said it wasn't that big a deal, but I thought it really was.
I told him that he could go home and do his work, but he crossed his arms and said that he'd promised to give her a ride, and he would. And then we didn't have to argue any more, 'cause both of us heard the train off in the distance, and pretty soon it was at the station.
They must have been trying to make up for some of the time they'd lost, because it didn't stop for more than a minute. And I think that everyone who was waiting to get on and off kinda knew the routine. The doors were opened before it came to a stop, and the conductor set down his little step and got off, and he helped a few people and Aquamarine off, then he was herding people onto the train, and he grabbed his little stool and waved at the front of the train and then they were moving again. It can't have even been a minute.
Aquamarine and I nuzzled and then hugged each other and then I introduced her to Aric. I didn't have to tell her anything else, 'cause she sniffed it out right away. Aric was surprised to know it, though, and maybe a little embarrassed, too.
I saw her ears drop when she got a look at Winston, but she got up inside anyway. I told her that I'd helped put a radiator in and I'd also driven it before, and that got her attention. Aric said that was true, and maybe we could do go-karts together.
We sort of had a little bit of catch-up on the drive back to campus. Plus she told me that Michigan State had some pretty beat-up trucks, too, for out in the fields. She said that there was an old green Dodge they had that only started when you swore at it, and even the professors did. She'd heard that they could get a new truck if they wanted, but everyone liked having the old truck to yell at, so maybe that was another weird human thing.
Aquamarine admired the campus all the way to the dorm. She said it was a lot prettier and a lot less crowded than hers, and she was surprised that on the way to Trowbridge she saw almost all of it.
Aric dropped us off behind Trowbridge and I kissed him goodbye and he said that he'd let me know later tonight when he expected to be free, and then he drove off.
Peggy was happy to see Aquamarine again, and we talked until it was lunchtime, which really wasn't all that long. If we'd had more time, I would have taken her down to Brianna's room, but they couldn't have had much of a conversation before lunch.
Everyone at the table besides Peggy was surprised by how bulky Aquamarine was. I don't know why; there had been an earth pony here before.
Joe said it was just because they were seeing the two of us together, which made it more apparent how she was bigger than I was, but it wasn't obvious when there had been only one pony. So we had to explain how the three tribes were different, and the earth ponies were the biggest and strongest of the three tribes.
Well after they'd gotten to know her a little bit, everyone wanted to know what we were going to do, since I'd never really decided on a specific plan. So the same ideas as before got offered up again, and by the end of lunch we'd decided that this afternoon would be a good time for her and Brianna to bond, and then after dinner we'd have a party in my room.
I think Aquamarine might have been happy without the party in my room, but I had too many friends who all wanted to spend time with her.
So after lunch we went to Brianna's room and knocked on the door and she let us in and I sat on the bed while the two of them talked about plants and botany and I don't know what else because I didn't understand one word in three. But they were both having a really good time and it wasn't too long before they decided that a dorm room was a really bad place to talk about plants (even though Brianna had a bunch of them on her windowsill).
So we went in Brianna's car which was called Avalon and drove to the nature center and started walking around the trails and studying the native plants. Aquamarine demonstrated what earth ponies could do on a couple of plants, making them grow a little bit. She said that she could make them grow even taller but it wasn't good for them to do all that growing at once, and she explained how if she were pushing a crop, she'd do it in small bits over weeks, rather than all at once.
I guess in a lot of ways, earth ponies have magic that's a lot like unicorns, but it takes longer to manifest, unless they're clumsy. It's usually pretty subtle.
They also found a sick tree, and Aquamarine laid her hooves on it and worked some of the sickness out.
She said that if she had a special talent relating to trees, she could have cured it right then, but she didn't.
It was funny to think how that last time I'd been here, I'd been galloping around the paths, and now we were stopping every decameter to look at an interesting plant.
We stayed until it was dinner time, and then we stayed even later. I was getting a little bit bored, to be honest, but I had wanted the two of them to get together and talk about plants, and they were doing that, and it would have been rude of me to complain. So I tried to figure out what they found interesting, and I mostly didn't manage, but I did find an interesting yellow flower that Brianna said was called a prairie coreopsi and they were kind of uncommon in Michigan.
On our way back, we stopped at a Taco Bell for food, and then we all went to my room to hang out. Everyone from our table was there, plus Ruth and Kat. Peggy had gotten a lot of beer for us to all share, so we gathered on the floor and played some euchre with me and Aquamarine on a team. They played it at Michigan State, too, and she was pretty good—good enough that we beat Sean and Christine twice in a row.
By the end of the evening, I was pretty drunk. Peggy had started making White Russians and I knew what they did to me but I had three of them anyway. Aquamarine drank more than I did, but she's got a higher tolerance.
I fell asleep on the floor, and only got woken up after everyone had left. I stumbled into the bathroom and thought about brushing my teeth but decided that was too much effort, and went back to my room and got in bed with Aquamarine and promptly fell back asleep.
Stats
Page generated in 0.1 seconds
Total duration
1,030 users online
1,965,861 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
The drunk ponies have been doubled!
7432430 *hic* Drunk is best Silver… wait…
Plus?
7432433 She swears to drunk that she's not Celestia!
She said that there was an old green Dodge they had that only started when you swore at it.
I think that is pretty much any dud.
What was it you stopped doing, Silver? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
You know what he's thinking about.
Ah, to be young again... Or just not single.
>frosting
Oh Biscuit.
I think they had been able to tell the difference in bulk beetween Action Shot and Silver Glow (from the sound of it, it was obvious enough), but they most likely just assumed that it was Action Shot that was bulky and/or Silver that isn't.
It's called nostalgia. I suppose it is not a pegasus thing since you don't keep many possessions.
Great, now you've got me imagining ponies marking their mates much like cats mark territory.
Silver: "Hold still, honey."
Aric: "What're you-?"
Fssst!
Aric: "Oh, God!"
7432376 Cool story, bro.
hahaha can't wait for the next chapter !
FUS ROH START.
Be careful what you wish for; you just might get two botanists caught in a nerd loop.
Very interesting to see that Silver doesn't seem to think of her own abilities as magic, but it does make sense. She's had them all of her life; to her, they're nothing special, even when she's turning meteorology on its head.
Aww that's great to see Brianna and Aquamarine bonding so well! A great feel good kind of chapter this was!
That's racist/sexist.
It's a good thing ponies are a fairly easygoing bunch. With all the casual / friendly racism we see Silver exhibit it wouldn't to far to imagine things getting much nastier if ponies were inclined in that direction. I know that the pony tribes are actually different from one another, unlike people, but that only raises the potential for conflict. Thankfully friendship is magic and calling Unicorns cone-heads probably pisses off Celestia.
7432430 Nah, you're just seeing two of them because you've been drinking.
Aric, you're supposed to offer to help. Duh.
Aric and Meghan both have to miss out on ponysnuggles today, the ponies are busy snuggling each other.
7432430
7432433
"I'm not as think as you drunk I am."
7432437
Correction made; thank you!
7432477
Or is she? She's got wings; Celestia's got wings, and therefore by the transitive property. . .
7432568
I got my inspiration for that one by seeing an ad on MSU's property disposition website for an 87 Dodge pickup for $600 that didn't run.
7432582
Bedroom olympics.
7432647
7432751
It's only frosting, nothing more.
7432931
Action Shot was probably a little smaller than Aquamarine, too, because she wasn't a farm pony.
I think pegasi would be less nostalgic than the other tribes. At least the ones Silver Glow knows are.
7433016
Actually, funny story: when I lived in Lansing, my g/f had rabbits. They have a scent gland on their chins (rabbits, not girlfriends), and so they'll rub their chin on stuff they want to mark. One of them--Freddy--particularly liked to do this; whenever he was out of his cage, he'd hop over to things and then mark them, and then he'd usually look up at us as if to say, 'See, that's mine. Don't touch.'
7433067
Nothing like waking up the morning after a party, and wishing you were dead. At least nobody got covered in puke.
7433113
7433281
I've seen it happen. The best thing to do is slowly back away.
I think that the ponies largely haven't quantified the non-unicorn's magical abilities, so the other tribes probably just see their magical abilities as something that they can naturally do, without really considering that it is magic. And we see ample evidence of that in the show, in my opinion. Some of it's probably unconscious, and that may be the big difference. Unicorn spells are (usually) planned out and deliberate; whereas the trees as Sweet Apple Acres thrive because Applejack touches them and talks to them and walks on the ground around them.
7433446
It's so much better than it used to be, though. At least here in the US it is.
7433665
7433901
Of course, we know from their history that things did get nasty once, much to their detriment. And of course there's the fact that they still don't seem to particularly like other equines, such as donkeys, mules, and zebras.
Potential for conflict, or a required symbiotic relationship . . . I think that the ponies have largely learned that the latter option is the best option, and while there is (in my headcanon) still a fair bit of tribalism going on, all the ponies know that they really need the other tribes in order to thrive.
7434798
"You're so drunk, you're probably seeing double."
"Thas okay. I got two guns, one for the each of ya."
7435029
He's not bold enough to lick the frosting off her muzzle at the train station.
It's true. That's the tragedy of when the ponies visit each other.
7438145
Are you sure? It would explain a great many things, from what I've seen.
7438250
Not entirely.
7433446
From what I understand, the infamous "sued because the coffee was hot" was actually a legitimate case due to the fact that they heated it far more than necessary or reasonable.
Lunch
11012027
It was; the coffee was so unreasonably hot she needed skin grafts.
Here's a link to the wikipedia article about it.
11312889
Correction made; thank you!