It was a fine day in Ponyville. How couldn't it be? With little excited giggles, Cherry slowly pulled a lever out of place with a little shred of metal in her mouth she was using as a tiny pry bar.
Pinkie leaned over her shoulder as she worked. "I don't think it'll work like that..."
"Of course not." Cherry set her tool aside. "Breaking it is part of understanding it." She ran a hoof gently along the massive clock. "Look at how it tries to work now."
Pinkie tilted her head slowly. "It doesn't look like it's working at all now."
"That's where you're wrong!" Cherry pointed into the exposed guts of the grandfather clock. "See, right here. It's trying to turn. If you listen, you can even hear it going tick tick tick."
Pinkie frowned a moment before the expression faded into a smile. "Oh I can hear it! Shouldn't it go tick-tock, not tick-tick?"
Cherry pushed the piece back into place, and the great weight began to swing properly again, the device restored. "I'm still learning how it all works, but I love it. I love every little piece!" She swatted the clock and something fell. Cherry's eyes went wide with horror. "Oh no!" She dove for the ground, flopping as she began searching for the missing piece. "Please tell me you can see it!"
Pinkie picked up a small gear from the ground. "Is it this?"
Cherry sprang up to her hooves, living and metal. She leaned towards the little gear and bobbed her head. "Perfect! You're the best assistant ever." She accepted the gear from the giggling Pinkie and carefully put it where it belonged, her tongue stuck out just a little with concentration until it slipped back into place. "Phew. That's enough clockwork for one day."
"Good! Wanna get a snack?" Pinkie smiled brightly. "I still owe you a cake, and today's the day we fix that, riiiight?"
Cherry carefully shut the front and back panels of her clock. "Let me get wet and I'll meet you in front of the castle, alright?"
They parted ways, only for Cherry to emerge from Twilight's castle, glistening with water, but much more pleased about it than most ponies would be. "Have you seen my room, Pinkie?"
Pinkie tilted her head. "I saw the top of it, but I haven't been in your room."
"You should! You can swim, right?"
"Course I can! I can skate too, but I bet you don't want your room frozen." Pinkie stuck out her tongue a moment.
Cherry was baffled. "Skate?"
Pinkie led the way towards the town of Ponyville. "When water gets really cold, it turns into ice, like magic. Then you can skate on it, because ice is all hard, and slick."
As they wandered through the town and the generally cheerful inhabitants, Cherry veered off towards a familiar face. "Good morning, Applejack!"
"Well howdy there, Cherry, Pinkie. What're you two upta?" She was manning the apple stand that day, with many fresh apples waiting for a good home. "Come t' get some apples?"
Cherry licked her lips. "Maybe one..." She offered a bit and received an apple, even if she could have claimed more than one at the price. She seemed happy to crunch into it as Pinkie approached.
"Hey Applejack. I was about to show Cherry the magic that is cake!" Pinkie clopped her forehooves together excitedly. "I can't wait to see her joyful expression on the first bite."
Applejack laughed at that. "Ah reckon ya would be pleased as punch fer the opportunity. Ah confess Ah felt much the same when she had her first apple. You go on and have a good time, y'hear? Tell me how it goes later."
"Will do!" Pinkie saluted before they departed, heading for the sweet emporium that was Sugarcube Corner.
There were some ponies lingering nearby, nibbling on tasty treats. They looked at Cherry curiously and some offered friendly waves. She was a novel sight, but not an unwelcome one. Pinkie returned the wave, but was focused on getting Cherry inside, and soon they had entered the secret lair of sweets, which wasn't so terribly secret.
One of the ponies behind the bar gave a smile. He was a stallion, dry sort, of course. He seemed a touch skinnier than most of the others. "Well hello there, Pinkie, who've you got with you there?"
"Hello hello, Mr. Cake. Meet Cherry." She gestured between the two. "Cherry, this is Mr. Cake. This whole bakery belongs to him and Mrs. Cake. I just work here."
Mr. Cake offered a hoof. "She says that, but she's an invaluable part of the team, practically part of the family. Welcome to Sugarcube Corner, Cherry. That pronunciation, it reminds me a bit of Prench."
Cherry tilted her head at that even as she offered a hoof, meeting his with a soft clop before she guided her fins to make her metal legs begin walking to take in the sights of the place. Everything was bright and colorful, to say nothing of smelling so sweet. "This is a very nice... um..."
Pinkie quickly supplied, "Bakery."
"Ah, yes, Bakery." Cherry frowned a little. "What's that?"
Mr. Cake's curiosity would go unfulfilled, but Cherry's naked ignorance and curiosity distracted him nicely. "A bakery is where ponies bake. It's how we make all these treats." He waved a hoof over their counter where cookies, muffins, and cupcakes were on proud display.
Cherry approached the glass case and leaned forward, bumping her nose as she misjudged the gait of her metal backlegs just one precious inch. Rubbing her nose with a hoof, she eyed the bonanza of delicacies. "You eat a lot of different things. Whatever they are, they smell good!"
Mr. Cake smiled gently at the new guest. "Funny thing about that, most of what you see is made with the same basic ingredients, prepared in different ways and with different additives mixed or sprinkled in."
Pinkie bobbed her head in swift agreement. "Like those are vanilla dough, but the rainbow sprinkles make all the difference in the world, believe me! But we're not here for cupcakes today, nuh uh. Mr. Cake, permission to make some of your namesake?"
Mr. Cake blinked, at first not getting it before it clicked. "Oh! Of course. Clean up after you're done."
"Roger wilco!" Pinkie trotted past Mr. Cake into the kitchen, looking quite eager to get to work.
Cherry followed along and settled to the ground to watch Pinkie hurriedly get to baking. The entire process was fascinating, but baffling. The idea of cooking that way was foreign to her. How could one cook that way in the water? It was a uniquely dry way to make food. Even the heat it made seemed drier around the ovens than elsewhere. It was the pure power of dry itself that made things happen. "We'll have a drink with this, I hope?" asked Cherry a little worriedly.
"Milk goes great with baked stuff." Pinkie bobbed her head as she pulled open a closed place and retrieved a bottle of white fluid. Was that really milk?
Cherry squinted at the bottle. "That isn't how you use milk normally, and I'm not a foal. Why do you even have that?"
Pinkie blinked with confusion. "It's tasty? You don't have to be a foal to enjoy milk, silly."
Cherry shook her head. "I'm pretty sure you do. Nopony I know drinks milk after they're weaned."
A new mare entered, round and matronly in appearance. Like the stallion up front, she was an earth pony with no wings or horn. "Pinkie, dear, she may be lactose intolerant."
"Lact-what in-what?" Pinkie looked increasingly baffled. "Does that mean she can't have a nice glass of milk?"
"That is exactly what that means." The larger and older mare took the bottle from Pinkie's sad hooves and placed it back in the cold place. "What would you like, sweetie?"
Cherry smiled. The older mare seemed kind and she decided she liked her. "Water's good. Do dry ponies have lots of different things to drink like that?"
"Oh my, yes." She nodded. "An almost countless variety of drinks to wet the whistle, as they say. I don't think we've met." She offered a hoof. "I'm Mrs. Cake. Have you met my husband already?"
Cherry met the hoof of Mrs. Cake. "Nice to meet you. I'm Cherry and yep! He's in front." She pointed the way. "That's pretty amazing. It's so dry that you separate out the kinds of water you like."
Mrs. Cake fetched a glass of water and gave it to Cherry. "Here you are, dear. Let me go check in with Mr. Cake. Pinkie, be mindful of our guest. She's not a normal pony and may react differently to the things we like."
While they had been talking, Pinkie had returned to the process of creating three small discs that smelled great, and only got better when she added some kind of smooth topping to each that hid the original discs beneath. "It's time! I hope your tastebuds are ready, because I'm about to blow your socks off."
"Socks?" Cherry shook her head. The dry ponies had so many new words for so many new things. "Will it work if I don't have whatever those are?"
"Don't be silly! Besides, nopony around here wears socks hardly at all anyway." Pinkie waved it off. "Go on, try some!" She picked up a sharp bit of metal in her mouth and cut out a piece of the first disc. "This one's vanilla with strawberry frosting and topped with kiwi."
Cherry blinked softly at the assault of new nouns, but decided to simply trust Pinkie and reached for the slice provided. Her hoof got dirty instantly with the sticky stuff covering it, but that didn't stop her from taking a big bite of it, her snout also becoming messy with the stuff.
Mmm... Cherry chewed softly, trying to digest the flavor itself a moment before she took a second bite, licking her lips clean as she went.
"Do ya like it?" Pinkie was practically vibrating with excitement. "Best thing or best thing?"
"It tastes weird," confessed Cherry as Pinkie deflated in place. "But I think I like it." Pinkie perked right back up and began to giggle happily. "What's the next one?" asked Cherry as she put down the slice she started with, mostly devoured.
The taste testing proved to be a success. The sea pony palette was unaccustomed to such things, but Cherry liked each flavor enough to eventually finish her share. "Thank you, Pinkie."
"Best part," Pinkie exclaimed as she pointed to the three partially-devoured cakes. "The insides were mostly made of the same thing."
Cherry couldn't believe it. Each had tasted completely different. "You're fibbing. That's not nice."
"I'm telling the truth. Look, I'll show you what I baked with." Pinkie showed off her ingredients, and they ended up making a fourth cake with things Cherry wanted to try. It was... new, Pinkie gave it that, but likely not being added to Sugarcube Corner's regular menu.
YAY! She gets to explore! :D
This story is VERY creative.
7197443
Yes, decently enough. Admittedly, this explanation of events relies on Sand and Cherry's mother being complete morons, which, in turn, is a bit illogical since everything could have been settled cleanly if either one of them had been even a bit proactive, but lets face it, probably 80% of plots rely on character stupidity to stay afloat, so no one can really fault you for doing the same. If you tried to write a story where everyone had a good head on their shoulders, it would probably end up pretty boring.
Now if you went back and inserted all that information into the story, preferably scattered throughout chapters starting at least one before the mob attacks, people would have accepted the siren arc a lot more happily. I mention putting some of it before the turning point so it would serve as a bit of foreshadowing and thus make it all less charring. As I doubt you want to go back and rewrite that much, perhaps an extension of the info dump where Sand explains herself would suffice.
P.S.
There is a bit of a plot hole in this explanation that isn't someone being an idiot, and that is saying Cherry was rapidly departing and was too far gone to hear her mother by the time said mother was calling her name.
Combining the fact that the mother was woken up before Cherry left the house by the sound of the legs and that Cherry was traveling at robot leg walking speed, there's no real reason why Cherry was so far away by the time her mom got outside. Really, what with not having her pace limited by a couple of clunky legs, Cherry's mom should have been able to cover the distance in a few short seconds.
But this is just a minor case of plot convenience, which again, is something everyone uses from time to time.
I'm okay with a not so adventurous adventure.
I'm glad you decided to continue this.
But isn't there milk in the cake?
Yea!! The story continues! Now she can continue to explore the Dry and meet all sorts of new and exciting things!
where it belong - where it belonged
glass cake - glass case
and settles to - and settled to
a close place - a closed place
*****
I'm happy to see this continue!
Not much else to add at the moment, but I'm looking forward to the next chapter.
7201428 Probably, but checking shows that, since it's a lot less per nibble than a glass full of milk, someponies may tolerate it, or Cherry may have issues later.
7201444 Fixed, with a missing typo fixed along the way. Yay!
7201453 As a lactose intolerant myself I can say that "cooked" milk is a lot less troublesome in general. Especially when baked into some sort of pastry.
7201457
Shoot. That's what I get for hurrying and posting after only one read through.
7201461
Alright.
Is Cherry actually intolerant though?
So... I'm curious about what the last cake was made with... Was there salt?
Cherry is suprised at ingredients making up different cakes, and yet she uses various materials to make her tools, leversl, springs, clockworks etc. An awful lot of it can be iron with various ingredients added such as carbon, chromium, nickle, cobalt etc.
If you take a rock with silicon, aluminium, oxygen and a smattering of other elements, with a bit of reorganising you can make a computer.
Ah, and at last the official pronunciation comes down from on high. So "Cherry" is pronounced "Sherry" or rather, like the French word Chérie (which, ironically, means "darling" but in a close friend context like how Rarity uses it). So essentially her nickname is "friend". I am very okay with this. Keep up the good work!
7197443
... But Sand said she was being paid a sum of husks by the mother to retrieve Cherry.
If Cherry was just on the horizon,
why would the mom choose to pay her friend instead of going on her own and retrieving her? Why would a friend demand money to do something so easy? Why would a mom be so lazy as to rather waste husks on such a simple yet important task? If I saw my child wandering off, you can bet your ass I'd go get them myself. That's like, basic parenting 101.
"Cherry! Cherry come back...! Well, I've done all I can do. Hey Sand, my dimwitted, unscrupulous friend, you mind getting my kid? They just went over that hill over there. I'm going back to bed."
You imply clearly in the above quote that Sand was not directly on Cherry's heel by having her say she had to do some minimal tracking. Tracking and following someone with line-of-sight are completely different things, after all.
Sorry, nice effort, but try again. Your explanation still doesn't make a lick of sense, and honestly, there aren't a whole lot of explanations you can use that won't sound convoluted unless you go back and slow things down.
Don't try to fight this fact, it's like trying to argue that the sky is green and the grass is blue. Completely insane... Unless you live on Namek
7201606 Hello. You clearly missed the part where she admitted that she was not paid, and did it as a favor. This is in the chapter itself, not one of my comments
"What do you mean you want seaweed and sea urchin roe in your cake?"
I get the feeling that since this siren incident was pretty minor and nobody got hurt all that badly (if anyone even did get hurt) that the whole prophecy thing is still in effect and we're not in the clear yet.
Yay
7201686
Ah, sorry, I haven't read the newest chapter yet. When I saw this come back into the feature box, I decided to see how the comment section had evolved since the story itself had lost my interest. Guessing Sand lied to sound tough? Did she also admit that she did not track Cherry at all and simply watched her from a distance for the whole day?
So did you address the other stuff I mentioned in the new chapter, like how the mother's behavior made no sense? I mean, if she did see her daughter in the distance, was worried, yet did not go herself and trusted a friend instead, what did she do when they did not immediately return? After all, even if this mother was bad enough not to at least join Sand in the seemingly short swim to her daughter, I'd expect she'd at least wait at the entrance to their home for Sand and Cherry to return. Like, from her perspective, it should have seemed like it would only take five minutes tops for her daughter to return, so after ten or more minutes of no Cherry, what did she do? Go back inside and say, "Screw it,"?
There would be easily followed tracks in the silt from the robot legs, so you can't say she couldn't chase after them, just as you can't say a mer-pony's speed wouldn't be fast enough to catch up to the comparatively slow speed of a clumsily walking pair of metal legs. So why?
I'm sorry dude, but just give up. In the end, the arc did not make sense, probably never will make sense, and no amount of mental gymnastics will fix that. Sometimes you just have to face the fact that you flubbed up and learn from it. Admit it and become a better writer for your future works.
The lesson you should take away: The bulk of this plot relies on stupid characters acting stupidly, which is the worst way to create drama.
Remember that.
Ingrain it on your soul.
And Never, ever, do it again.
7201743 This is not in the newest chapter. I did not read all your comment and never will. That part of the story is done, and so are you. Find another story to haunt kindly.
That's very petty. They made some good points. You should listen to all your criticisms, not just the good ones. Don't be childish, be a man.
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d3/b3/c8/d3b3c8f0c1cb159091d15db0e7853035.jpg
Why did Mrs. Cake go instantly from 'we don't drink milk' to 'she must be lactose intolerant'?
7201816 She said 'might' not 'must'. Testing with a big cup of milk seemed ill-advised.
7201801 Okay, at your request, I read it. Most of it was 'Shame on you!'. This was not helpful. Why did I read this again?
Yes, it's back.
7201416 To be fair it's all an adventure to Cherry.
That's how I originally saw the adventure tag.
7201825
There's a good idea if you look for it. It would make a lot of sense that Mom would follow Sand if she didn't come back quickly since she would think something bad happened. Any good mom would do that so it would be good motive for her to show up. In one of the next chapters, Mom should make an appearance looking her her daughter and friend. Maybe she'd even think the ponies captured them. Why else would they not come back.
A question for the new chapter that I was confused about. Did Sand or some pony go to tell Mom about what has been decided? Sand wasn't in the chapter so I'm guessing she went home, but it hasn't been said yet. Seems mean to let her worry. Guess if they did, the idea for another chapter wouldn't work. Oh well.
Also like 7201727 said, it does seem like that was a pretty small misunderstanding to have a prophecy for. The last one was for the return of Nightmare Moon and that was a lot bigger then this siren being crazy. If you want to take another crack at adventure, it would be a good way of foreshadowing it.
You can say ponies are stupid in this, but if Mom really did just send Sand and forgot about it, than you can say she is being Celestia. Celestia does that all the time with sending Twilight places. Maybe you are simulating the show too well and that is bugging people? The show can get pretty ridiculous.
7202007 The prophecy is not fulfilled.
I would be a happier writer if people treated it more like episodes. You find out when you find out. If it's not said, maybe it'll say later, maybe, or not. You watch and find out. Sand is not currently present. She could be hiding the next room over, or gone. It didn't come up. Does it matter for the sake of her fun time making cakes with Pinkie Pie?
To be honest, that whole siren "arc" felt contrived and unnecessary. THIS chapter, however, was EXACTLY what I was expecting and even looking forward to for the meat of this story. This story is, from what I can tell, about looking at things that are commonplace from a different perspective. Exploring Ponyville from the viewpoint of someone who has lived their entire life underwater and watching them learn about it in ways that make others reevaluate how they themselves view the world around them. Adding in an antagonistic character that ended up not even being a villain in the first place just to make this more of an "adventure" which was unnecessary when the simple act of going outside is an adventure was, in my opinion, a mistake. I like where this chapter is taking this story and hope to see more along these lines.
That was nice.
7201686 I thought Sand meant she was paid, but below her normal fee. She was going up to the big, scary Dry after all.
7202116
agreed the siren stuff was.... weird and made little sense.
this chapter however seems to put the fic back on track with our little mermare learning the wonders of the Dry World.
just wanted to thank you for continuing your amazing story!!it is a real pleasure to read! and this chapter was the best with pinkie, congrats and continuesuccess with it!
7202207 Glad you like it, even if people seem to enjoy kicking dead horses.
7201951 that's why I was drawn to the story in the first place. I didn't really care for the siren arch, but i didn't hate it. I'm not going to be a critic about it. It's just a fanfic after all. So I'm looking forward to a more casual laid back story again.
*spits drink*
Commence read.
Milk being a whacky thing.
Trying out something made of dry things from an almost liquid/soggy based diet.
7201816 Most adult mammals are lactose-intolerant, really. Or, to be more accurate, only a very few weirdos among the mammals have lactase persistence; everyone else grows the heck up!
I'm guessing Cherry made a sashimi cake?
Ah, I thought this was over. Would like to know exactly how the whole Wet/Dry relations are going now.
7202913 You are not wrong. Over 50% of humans have a degree of lactose intolerance, Some minor and others major. Humans actually have the one of the highest rates of lactose persistence in any species of mammal.
Gah, I was going to read this today, as it was marked as 'complete', only to find out "Nope, not really!".
I hope the next time it gets marked as 'complete' it won't be a tease XD
Very nice story so far, good work.
7203033 I'm lucky. Nobody in my household has any known intolerance or food allergy. Although I do have avocado sensitivity. Gives me bad gas and can cause "the trots"
7203189 Oh me too! i was so happy to find more
ice
He can't really know that. If Pinkie said "Sherry" Mr. Cake has no way of knowing whether it's spelled CH or SH.
Just Minty, and we don't talk about her.
7207024 Typo fixed! Is sherry a word?
7207129
It's a type of wine.
7207024 Just guessing, but he might have meant "chéri."