Better Living Through Golemancy

by TheDriderPony

Failing to Not Make an Impact

Ponyville was, at it's best, a very weird place. It hadn't always been that way; the process was slow, gradual. One incident at a time the weirdness seemed to have integrated itself into the town like some kind of fungus or creeping vine. It was the kind of weirdness that the denizens could grow accustomed to—much like a frog sitting in slowly boiling water—until even extraordinary events became normal and mundane.

Explosions in the distance? Time to check the Crusader betting pool.

Rogue magical portals rending the sky? Better bar the windows and pull out the board games.

Rampaging monster climbing town hall? Must be a Tuesday.

It was a truly odd state of existence, one which would make for a fine focus of any number of magi-scientific papers. At least it would if the ponies who came to investigate didn't usually end up themselves becoming inured to the chaos and eventually moving in.

Which is all a very long-winded way of saying that the gossip in Ponyville was perhaps the juiciest and most outlandish anywhere in Equestria.

---

On the patio of a small café, near where the line between businesses and houses started to blur, a mare glanced up from her cup of more-sugar-than-coffee as something colorful tickled her peripheral vision.

"Whoa." She let her glasses slide down her muzzle as she took a second look. "Well there's something you don't see everyday." She elbowed her companion. "Hey Tavi." No response. "Tavi. Tavi!"

"Just a moment."

She did not relent. "Tavi. Yo. Tavi. Tavi. Ta-"

"Oh for the love of- what is it Vinyl?" The other mare finally glanced up, irritation coloring her expression. "What is so important it cannot wait five seconds until I finish this page of my novel?"

Vinyl grinned. "You owe me twenty bits."

"What? How so?"

She indicated her head across the street. Octavia squinted until she finally noticed the patchwork figure and her eyes shot wide.

"Good heavens! What is that?"

"That..." The smugness dripping from her voice was thick as syrup. "is Fluttershy."

"What? No."

"Yup." She popped her 'p', for extra smugness.

"Fluttershy? Certainly not."

"Get the crumpets out of your eyes and look closer."

Ignoring the jab, she did. The figure was strange, with an odd mishmash of body pats. But there was rather a lot of yellow fur on its barrel, and their mane was just the right color and length and there was something about how it cowered in on itself like-

"By Jove it is Fluttershy!"

"Told ya."

Octavia shook her head. "It's certainly strange, yes, but I fail to see how Fluttershy looking like... that means I suddenly owe you any bits."

Vinyl's grin failed to diminish. "Oh I bet you do, you just aren't putting the pieces together. You remember last Hearts and Hooves day? We made a few bets on which of our single friends might couple up by next year's...?"

"Vinyl just speak plainly. It's too early for guessing games."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes. "Spoilsport. I think she and Discord just made it official."

"What?!" Octavia had chosen a poor moment to take a sip of her tea, resulting in it being splattered over the adjacent table from the force of that casual bombshell. "Discord? Since when were they an item?"

"Based on that," she gestured again to Fluttershy, "since now."

"...No. No I don't believe it. It's too impossible. She's probably just wearing a costume."

"Oh yeah?"

The pair watched as Fluttershy approached a wide puddle in the road. They watched as she appraised it, squatted down, squared up her haunches, and leapt with the full force of her frog leg, her massive wings flaring for just a moment to dazzle the street with their kaleidoscopic display. They continued to watch as she cleared not only the puddle, but the rest of the block as well.

Octavia could sense Vinyl's smirk without even looking. "Pretty good costume."

"Alright, fine. Perhaps there is something going on there."

Vinyl leaned back in her chair, balancing it precariously on two legs. "I always said she and Discord were more than just friends." She tapped her nose. "Mare's intuition."

Octavia scoffed. "Poppycock. You don't have enough 'mare's intuition' to guide you from one side of Rarity's shop to the other. You'd get lost midway through the formalwear and end up raiding her icebox."

"Hey, I resemble that remark!"

"Indeed you do."

"Do you think her new look was intentional or some kind of side effect?"

"What kind of thing would cause a side effect like that?"

Vinyl wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully.

"Oh. Oh! You mean they-"

"Can you think of another reason?"

"I presumed that was the chaos equivalent of a mare dyeing her mane as to not clash with her coltfriend's colors."

"Huh. Yeah, I guess that could be it. I figured she did some kinda crazy ritual to partake of his power and now she's his queen and some kind of junior chaos goddess."

Octavia let that thought sink in. She then made a mental note to stock up on birdseed. It wouldn't hurt to have the favor of the local animals, just in case.

"Either way, I wouldn't have thought a pony as self-conscious as Fluttershy would ever go as far as that."

"Eh, I can see it. Be honest, did Fluttershy ever look that comfortable as a pony? Besides," she took an intentionally long slurp of her drink, letting the sentence dangle, "when's the last time you saw her with a smile like that?"

That was true enough. Fluttershy was smiling. Widely, at that, despite being in town with the most spotlight-grabbing style possible. And yet she was smiling like she'd received some grand and wonderful gift.

Octavia found herself without a counterargument.

"I suppose you're right. Funny, I never would have imagined her and Discord. Or anypony and Discord, really. I would've put bits on her and Applejack though."

"Applejack? Really?"

"A farmer and a rancher. Of sorts. One's rugged determination complimenting the other's quiet temerity. It seemed a perfect match."

"Huh. I guess I can see that. Anyway," Vinyl stood up and let her chair clatter back onto all four legs. "Come on. Let's get going."

"Going? Where?"

"Gotta find Rose and her sisters. They gave me fifteen-to-one odds on Fluttercord panning out. Then another few visits to make after that."

"Just how many ponies did you make bets with?"

Vinyl flashed a devilish grin. "Let's just say I'll be taking you out to dinner tonight. One of those fancy places where they don't even let you in unless you're wearing clothes."

Octavia shook her head, a small smile on her face. Meanwhile he distant figure of Fluttershy made her way deeper into town, unaware of the ripples cast in her wake.

---

Of all the duties required of the Ponyville Volunteer Weather team, it was generally agreed that cloud busting was the worst. Other jobs were harder, certainly. There were no shortage of weather disasters when you lived right next door to Equestria's largest patch of wild weather. No, the problem with cloud busting was that it was boring.

Spot a cloud not on the day's roster. Approach it. Buck it into vapor. Repeat ad nauseum for however many wild clouds had decided to drift in from the Everfree overnight, which on a bad day could take hours.

It was a job usually given to the greenest members as busywork or, if she was available, Rainbow Dash, whose technical flying skills were so well honed that the task barely registered as an inconvenience for her. What took others hours she could do in minutes -- and somehow always a little faster every time.

However, Rainbow Dash was not available, so the task fell to Flitter, who out of all the Weather Team members minded it the least. She found the simple yet repetitive motions of cloud busting meditative. A simple way to work out the kinks in her muscles and square away her thoughts before getting on with her morning.

It helped that she had her own personal white noise machine.

"...and that made the other ladder fall down. So then Amber --you remember Amber. Amber Gaze, from that one party? She was the one with the necklace-- well anyways she was there too and she said I needed to go put the first one back up, but I was all 'How am I supposed to do that if I'm holding this one?'. Meanwhile Rivet's still trapped up there and yelling about --ooh look! A crested swallowtail. You don't usually see them about this early. Didn't there used to be a nest of those outside mom and dad's house? Maybe. It might not be one. I'd know if it sang something. They kinda sound like whippoorwills except for..."

Cloud Chaser was something of an acquired taste, like licorice, craft cider, or Pinkie Pie. Best handled in small doses until you got accustomed to it. As her fraternal twin (older by a whole minute), Flitter had a lifetime's worth of experience parsing her chatterbox monologues down to important information. The trick was to allot her only a quarter of her attention while letting the rest of the words slide way. Trying to take all of it in would only result in headache.

"...so anyway he totally misunderstood me and got really mad and I as like 'Well what do you want me to do about it?' and he was like 'Fix it!' and I was all 'That's what I called you for..."

She let the words wash over her as she busted another cloud, sound without meaning, like waves on a beach.

"...but in the end we ordered a new cake and it all worked out in the end. Which reminds me, did I ever finish that story about carrots the other day? So I'd just finished settling things with Notary when-- Oh hey, it's Rainbow Dash! Wow she got fat-- So he and I were on Cypress street-"

It was generally a bad idea to interrupt her mid-stream, but sometimes her comments came so far out of left field that they demanded immediate follow-ups. "Wait, what was that about Rainbow Dash?"

Cloud Chaser blinked and went silent for a second as she refocused. "Huh? Oh, she got fat. Down there, in the alley behind Quills & Sofas. See for yourself."

Flitter did see for herself, and for once her sister hadn't been exaggerating. It was definitely Rainbow Dash, recognizable even at a distance with her rare mane color that all but made her a walking 'notice me!' sign. It also didn't hurt that she was clearing wearing her Wonderbolt's flight suit. No one else in town was a member, and anyone who was enough of a fan to own a replica suit certainly wouldn't be wearing it out and about the town. Foals nonwithstanding, of course.

But what almost threw her was the most important point of Cloud Chaser's observation. Rainbow Dash, poster foal for personal fitness, was looking pretty out of shape. Her legs a little blobby and uneven, her neck scrunched weird. But the most obvious of all was her barrel. The stomach panels of her suit, usually hugging tight against her abs, were now visibly distended and lumpy. But it didn't look like fat. Flitter knew fat; her aunt hadn't been able to so much as lift herself off the ground in years. No, it wasn't distributed right for fat. If anything, it almost looked like...

"Oh Celestia's cankles," she swore.

"I know right?" Cloud Chaser continued in a tone that clearly conveyed that she hadn't put it together yet. "No wonder she works out all the time if all it takes is one long weekend out of town to end up looking like that."

"No, you- she's- ugh." Flitter rolled her eyes. Sometimes her sister could be so oblivious. "She's not fat."

"Yes she is. Look."

"I did. That's not fat."

"Well what else could it be?"

"Stop for a minute and think. Why else would a mare look like she's put on weight?"

"I dunno. I guess maybe if they were-" Flitter could actually see the precise moment she got it. Cloud Chaser froze so fully she forgot to flap for a moment. She managed to drop nearly fifty feet before she recovered and zoomed back up, a wild smile on her face. "No way!"

Flitter shrugged. "It sure looks like it."

"But how? She's only been gone for like a week! Isn't it supposed to be, like, a few months before you can see anything?"

She shrugged again and bucked another cloud that had drifted into her strike zone. "It's Rainbow Dash. She does everything fast." There was probably more to it than that, but so much weird stuff happened around Rainbow Dash's little posse that it was a fool's errand to bother wondering about the details. If it came down to it, she'd probably accept 'A unicorn did it' as a solid explanation for basically anything. Her sister didn't even need that much.

Cloud Chaser nodded along in complete acceptance. "That makes sense. She wouldn't want something like that slowing her down for long." She sighed. "So I guess she's spoken for now. Probably one of the Wonderbolts. Soarin maybe? I think he might be gay though. Maybe one of the reserves?"

Flitter arched an eyebrow. "What, were you waiting for a chance?"

"Not really, but, y'know, she's Rainbow Dash. I'd give it a shot if the opportunity presented itself. But actually I did have some bits riding on her eventually getting together with Fluttershy."

"Fluttershy? Really?"

"Why does everypony always say that!?" Cloud Chaser demanded, throwing her hooves in the air. "You sound just like Roseluck. They're foalhood friends! It could happen!"

"If you say so." It really wasn't any business of hers how her sister chose to waste her money. Even if it was in gambling on something impossible. That's why she'd put her bits on a much safer investment; that of Fluttershy and Rarity getting together. A model and her designer was miles more plausible than foalhood friends, anyone could see it. Which was why she'd only been given three-to-one odds on it, but any small safe profit was better than a risky gamble in her book.

"So I guess we need to throw her a shower or something?" Cloud Chaser asked, "I've never really done this before."

"Won't Pinkie Pie have that covered?"

"I'd think so, yeah, but I haven't actually seen her around lately. I think she might be on a trip. I remember she was saying something a few weeks ago--It was before that thing with the ladders but after I bought that new dress. With the trim? I really should go back to that shop. See if I can find some matching ribbons..."

Flitter let herself tune out the noise as she detected the conversation receding back into one of her sister's tangent-filled spiels. Even if Pinkie was out, they could probably manage to host one surprise party without her. No doubt Amethyst Star would jump at the chance to organize one. And maybe she could take the opportunity to convince Rainbow Dash to stop trying to hide it with her uniform. The form-hugging material was making it more obvious than she would haven been without. Every pony she met on the street would probably be able to figure it out.

---

When she was just getting into the business, one of the most oft repeated warnings Roseluck received about running a food stand was how hard the morning prep-work would be. How she'd never get any sleep and come to fear waking up third only to tax season and irate customers.

But in the six years since she and her sisters had opened their stall, she still couldn't see what the big deal was.

Sure there was still perp work to be done; flowers tasted best freshly cut and the displays needed tasteful arranging to entice buyers, but beyond that all she really needed was to restock regularly and make sure the goods were bug-free.

Honestly she pitied the poor bakers that had to get up before the crack of dawn so all their wares would be hot and ready when the first ponies started to arrive with empty tummies. Not to mention the tragedy of having to throw away everything they didn't sell at the end of the day. Compared to that, flowers were way easier.

Admittedly a part of it was just good teamwork. With one sister running the till, one assembling orders—all their dishes were custom crafted on the spot, which was a very salesmare way of saying they combined the correct ratio of flower types together in a wrap—and the third taking care of certain other tasks and record-keeping, running the stand was a breeze.

It also wasn't exactly what one would call "profitable". She couldn't risk charging too much for something any pony could just go and get from the forest themselves if they had the time. Roseluck stayed in the red thanks to rarer breeds she and her sisters cultivated themselves, but not nearly enough for three mares to live on.

Which was fine because, despite what they said on their tax statements, the flower gig really wasn't their main source of income.

"Morning, Roseluck."

"Good morning Bookend, Flightsong. What'll it be today?"

"I'll take the daisy and azalea blend."

"Wildflower special for me."

"Really?"

"What?"

"Wildflowers again?"

"It's my cheat week."

"Awfully long week. You're going to get fat."

"Pfft. Pegasi don't get fat."

"Try telling that to Rarity when you suddenly need your good suit let out."

"Bookie, if I ever need a suit let out, it'll be because I'm getting too ripped for it to contain me. Check these pecs."

"I would if I could see through that rat's nest you call a chest fluff. And stop posing!"

"I'll just go ahead and pass your order on to the back. Shouldn't be but a minute. It'll be seven bits when it's ready." Roseluck gave the bickering stallions a genial smile and made for the curtained off back of the stand. Behind the curtain was a quieter world, soundscaped only by two mares counting under their breath. "Order up. One DZ mix and one leftovers." She cleared her throat, catching her sisters' attention. "And boost the BookSong score another fifteen points."

"Fifteen?" Lily frowned as she set down her half-finished order of rose and crocus. "That's pretty outside the projections."

"You didn't see them. They're like an old married couple already."

"Your call." She turned to her other sister. "How does that affect the rankings?"

"Hold on. Let me recalculate." Daisy said as she turned, eyes already glazed over with internal math, to her Wall.

Daisy's Wall was a marvel to behold. A feat of engineering and scrapbooking ingenuity several years in the making. Conspiracy theorists and hardboiled noir detectives alike would gaze in slack jawed awe upon her work, overcome by feelings of impotent inadequacy. That is, if the mares ever allowed anyone outside their sisterhood to see it.

Photographs of dozens of ponies, most taken from clandestine angles, warred for space with pages of notes and scribbled calculations. Colored tacks like a field of wildflowers held everything in place, the lot of them webbed together with enough red string of fate to knit a whole winter ensemble. At the heart of the chaos, the eye of the storm of numbers and notes, sat a large framed chalkboard with a massive painted grid. Ponies names ran down two axes while pairs of numbers filled the intersection middle cells.

"Fifteen points in compatibility moves them to 4.5 to 1 for. BookQuill also drops by 1.7, WillowEnd by 0.3, and RiverSong by 3.3."

"Does anypony even have wagers on those?" Lily asked.

"Only one each. Two of Bookend's neighbors and also Flight's mother."

"All of which are practically guaranteed losses anyway," Roseluck added. Despite Flightsong's mother's insistence, River Rapids had practically no interest in her son. Her eye was firmly set on Fairy Circle, and they were such a perfect match that Roseluck would only accept fool's bets against them. But who was she to prevent a fool from parting with their bits? Somepony had to pay to keep the lights on. "Mark it down anyway. They're not exactly hot-ticket items."

Daisy nodded and took to the board to modify her odds.

"And the orders?"

"R&C is done," Lily said, passing it over the table. "Give me two minutes and I'll have the others."

Nodding, Roseluck took the order and returned to the public facing portion of their stand. "Pickup for number forty-three," she called.

As odd a pair of careers as it may have seemed, being both flower vendors and a bookies was surprisingly symbiotic. Ponies coming to sell gossip or place a bet could buy a few flowers as a pretense, and the rapid turnover of goods made it foals play to disguise illicit profits as as "custom orders", "consultancy fees", and "tips". The popularity of their flowers with even the non-gambling crowd let them keep a hoof on the pulse of the city, and the success of their data analysis and predictions on prospective couples helped them get a leg up on other wedding caterers.

Matchmaking was a skill that required a keen eye to spot the difference between good friendship and budding romance, the ability to read ponies at a glance, and a hefty knowledge of probabilities to appraise their chances. While no one had actually needed a matchmaker in over a generation, that hadn't stopped Granny Bouquet Toss from teaching her three granddaughters everything she knew. With a bit of ingenuity and modernization, Roseluck and her sisters had turned that knowledge into the most successful underground gambling ring east of Las Pegasus.

Bits collected and with no new customers waiting, Roseluck cast her gaze to the meandering crowd and settled in for a little bit of pony-watching. The peak of the midday rush had passed, but the plaza was still a wealth of information, open to anypony who desired to glean it.

Off to her left she could hear the sound of a friendly argument between Golden Harvest and Strawberry Surprise. Close friends, definitely, but nothing more than that. Golden was too focused on her career to date, and Strawberry preferred pegasi anyway.

Across the way, two ponies laughed over some joke she hadn't caught. Spice Rack and some out-of-town stallion. They looked platonic... for the moment. But if his body language was any indicator, she'd have to keep an eye on them.

And over near the fountain was...

"Huh."

Roseluck blinked and did a double take.

Her eyes had not deceived her and a second look showed as much as the first. There was a paper pony. A pony made of paper sprinting through the plaza like her tail was on fire. A costume? No, there was tightness to her movements, a quickness to her turns that flesh and blood was just too heavy to pull off. Even far away she could make out the thin strings of inky text that crisscrossed her body like someone's strange idea of a zebra. Her mane of thick purple strands flapped less like hair and more like ribbons on a kite. Funny, it almost reminded her of-

"Sorry!" it yelped as it crashed into and over Hayseed's wagon, knocking off a few loose watermelons. "I'll pay you back later! I promise! Just send the bill to the library!" Stumbling past a few more ponies with the grace of a windswept leaf, the figure vanished around a corner.

"...huh." Roseluck repeated, as the memory continued to fail to fit into any of her nice little mental compartments of pony behavior, and was eventually unceremoniously dumped into the junk drawer labeled 'Miscellaneous Ponyville Weirdness'.

"Order up, Rose!" came the siren song from behind the curtain. Following its call, she shook away the cobwebs from her thoughts and stepped back inside.

"The DZ and the mix?" she asked. Getting a nod, she grabbed the wrapped bundles on the counter. "I think we might need to adjust Twilight's odds."

Lily perked up an ear. "Oh? She's back from her trip?"

"And finally giving us something we can work with?" Daisy groused. Despite her local fame, or perhaps because of it, Twilight's relationship potential was a tough nut to crack. The mare seemed almost universally platonic, which of course had lead to a lot of speculative wagers with no pairing having a clear advantage. For someone who liked her calculated results clear and unambiguous, Twilight was something of a sore spot for her.

"Maybe." Roseluck pursed her lips in thought. "Still no sign of Twilight herself, but I think I just saw her daughter."

"What? Her daughter?!"

"Since when has that been a factor?!" Daisy cried as several pins popped off her wall and fell to the ground.

"I don't know," Roseluck admitted. "I didn't exactly flag the mare down and interview her. I know we used to joke about Twilight loving books more than ponies, but I swear if you asked an artist 'what would happen if Twilight and her favorite book had a kid' she'd give you a drawing of the pony I just saw run through the plaza."

Daisy's eyes went wide. "A book?! No way!"

"Way. Paper fur. Bookmark mane. But her face was the spitting image of Twilight's."

Neither noticed how Lily had frozen stock still.

"You're joking," Lily said. "That's impossible."

Roseluck shrugged. "You'd think so, but if anypony could find a way, you know it'd be Twilight, wouldn't it?"

Lily considered that for a moment before blowing out a noise halfway between a raspberry and a sigh. "Well that's just great." She turned to her Wall with a forlorn expression. "This changes a lot. I'd going to have to redo so many calculations from scratch. A shame it came out of left field. And just when Fluttershy was starting to gain a lead on the others."

"Fluttershy? She was leading?"

"By a narrow margin, but yeah. I suppose we count this as a win for the asexual wagers." She chuckled. "I guess it's a good thing no on placed a bet on her being a literal bibliophile!" Roseluck giggled along with her.

Then they noticed Lily wasn't laughing. Her mouth opened and closed with a rigid hesitancy, but no sound came out.

"Lily? Talk to us. Use your words."

"...I thought it was a joke." Her voice was strange and distant, unsettlingly disconnected.

"What?"

"I thought she was just being funny..."

Dread welled in the pit of Roseluck's stomach. "You thought who was being funny?"

"Pinkie Pie. We laughed about it. About Twilight being more likely to marry a book than a pony." She turned her glassy thousand-league stare to Daisy. "I had one of your betting forms in my apron."

Daisy's face went a ghastly pale. "Lily... what odds did you give her?"

"I just... I just made some up. It was so ridiculous..."

"Lily!? What were the odds?!"

"...million to one."

A moment of incredulous silence passed as the information sank in.

"We're ruined!" Someone shrieked, though no one could have said who it was, and three mares collapsed in a dead faint.

Silence briefly reigned, though it was swiftly dethroned by the trill of a bell dinging from outside.

"Uh... are you okay in there?" Bookend asked, "Are our orders almost ready? We're kind of running late."

Author's Note:

You know, I've now written chapters of this at three different jobs.

Comments

[Raging Mouse]

Well, seeing this chapter in my notifications was the crowning delight of my day. Thanks for the funny read!

[Thought Prism]

LMAO, this is getting even better. Literally all the other locals are assuming the Mane 6 got laid instead of killed. Let me guess: somepony will think Rarity hooked up with her fainting couch, another will posit Pinkie went to some sort of baker's orgy and didn't bother to clean off the frosting, and a third will figure AJ bucked one of her trees in the other sense.

[Jest]

Well that was great. Hopefully we can get another chapter before the next election XD

[Hillbe]

What about nasty paper cuts?
How about plan B?
How about a plan to start with?
It's like cake! Every pony gets a piece!

[Xanderfox]

Trying to ship "real people" Is a bad idea cause they are unpredictable. But while shipper logic is pretty flawed I could see the flower sisters being the kind to obsess with gossip and haveing "shipping goggles" which distort the world like that, making every interaction, every look, every activity have romantic overtones.

[WanderingPony]

Always bet on black pink.

[Herald of Opera]

"Do you think her new look was intentional or some kind of side effect?"

"What kind of thing would cause a side effect like that?"

Vinyl wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully.

While Vinyl is wrong in the context of this story, she came up with more or less exactly Fluttershy's portion of my "Twilight will not outlive her friends" setup; nobody saw it coming except possibly the crossover character in the version where they're present.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Let's just say I'll be taking you out to dinner tonight. One of those fancy places where they don't even let you in unless you're wearing clothes.

I do cherish these lines that only make sense in an Equestrian context.

Lovely stuff in this chapter. Looking forward to seeing the ripples propagate. And I'd love to see what Cadence thinks of the Flower Trio's operation.

[verypeeved]

well that's... incredibly disturbing. and i thought the surveillance state was bad.

[Geminii]

11001399
Well, that or Applejack did a little Timberwolf hunting...