Book Horse
When I got back to my room, I was excited to finally get some answers about the Equestria I was in. The bookbags themselves were almost as interesting as their contents. Some of the books were clearly too large to even fit through the opening of the bags, and yet they did. I was kinda expecting them to be bigger on the inside, but that wasn’t the case. Instead it was the books that were smaller. Reaching my hoof into the bag, it was still the same dimensions it appeared to be on the outside, but when books (and only books) approached the mouth of the bag, they shrunk. I could see tiny versions of the books I’d borrowed and grab them.
When I tried to pull Graymane’s Anatomy out of the bag, I collapsed under it as it returned to its original size. Luckily nopony was around to see that.
As I tried to flip through the pages of Graymane’s Anatomy using the edge of my hoof, I noticed two of the pages were separated more than the others, as if someone had placed a bookmark. Giving up on flipping the pages with my hoof I found a ruler and used it to flip to the page in question. The heading at the top of the page read “Female Organs of Generation”, but the thing that caught my eye was the colorful pamphlet which had been inserted between the pages, “Your Body and You: Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask!” The leaflet was colour-coded pink, and the cover was adorned with pictures of filles looking confused.
I almost face hoofed but I caught myself just before impact and instead placed my head onto my hoof gently.
Really, Twilight?
May as well at least take a look. I opened the pamphlet expecting to see the standard information about puberty, periods, pregnancy, and prophylactics. My eyes widened.
Wait a minute, what the heck is estrus?
Five minutes later, I was much better informed and feeling slightly ill. My only comfort was I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this for at least a few years. For the first time since my arrival in this world, I was really confronting the fact that my body was female, and I wasn’t sure that I was okay with it. I’d have to spend some time figuring out the general consensus about gender-issues in pony society before I risked talking about it openly though.
I mentally chastised myself for looking left and right surreptitiously before sliding the booklet back between the pages where I’d found it. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, damnit, and looking around like that would only make it suspicious for anypony watching. I was careful to put the pamphlet back exactly where I’d found it for plausible deniability. No doubt Twilight’s intention was that I would find it if I had borrowed the anatomy book to look up ‘naughty bits’. I was above such childish nonsense and I didn’t want Twilight thinking otherwise! I was still a bit nervous. With Twilight’s eidetic memory she could probably remember the exact lines of text that the edges of the pamphlet cut off and I hadn’t paid enough attention when I removed it to place it with that level of accuracy.
Skimming through the rest of Graymane’s Anatomy it was just as dry and specific to the locations and physical descriptions of organs rather than their functions as the seldom opened copy of Gray’s Anatomy I had in my apartment back in the human world. The illustrations were incredibly detailed however, and sometimes a little disturbing when you remembered that the sketches were drawn by someone witnessing an actual human dissection.
It was interesting to learn that ponies had eye plates rather than eye balls, and that non-pegasi had the same bones found in pegasi wings; internally in the form of tiny vestigial bones that flanked their spinal column. At a certain point of foetal development, appropriately known as the pseudo-alicorn stage, both the wings and the hole in the skull where the horn would form on a unicorn were present in all ponies. These and innumerable other facts I was able to extract from the dense paragraphs of text were strands of spaghetti thrown against the refrigerator that was my mind.
Frustratingly, I couldn’t take notes. I could make letters on a page, but the amount of time it took to ensure they were legible reduced my writing speed to only a few characters per minute. And they still looked like they were drawn by a five year old. The taste of wood and graphite in my mouth didn’t help. I’d seen other ponies writing with their mouth so there must be something to it. Making the decision easier was the fact I couldn’t hold a pencil in my hoof and keep it steady while I pressed it against the paper.
I tore a piece of lined notebook paper Applejack had given me into vaguely rectangular pieces to use as bookmarks, and, with great effort, wrote a number on each one. Then I started writing acronyms on a second page. I didn’t bother numbering them, I just put one on each line so that the line number was the same as the bookmark number it corresponded to. I read the section of text that contained the part I wanted to remember, put it in my own works and recited them out loud, then I wrote out an acronym for the key words in the section, closed the book and said it again while looking at the acronym. Concepts that were linked got arrows that pointed from one acronym to another. Soon enough, the paper was a complete mess of seemingly random letters and connecting arrows that it would take a codebreaker to decipher.
I felt like I was back in college again. The good part, where I could study new subjects; that first rush of excitement when everything starts to ‘click’ and you’re making connections to information you already know. In my youth, I’d read everything I could get my hands on. It was my dream to know everything. A childish dream. Inevitably, I hit a wall. There was too much knowledge in the world for any one person to know, and the higher levels of each field were frustratingly unintuitive and esoteric. Now, though, I had entirely new fields to study, and I could enjoy the excitement of discovery all over again.
I wrote the letter ‘A’ at the top of the page and underlined it. Alright, enough anatomy for now. I’d go back tomorrow and see how much I could remember before flipping back to my bookmarks to reread the relevant sections.
I really should have tried to read the history book first if I was going to be a proper anthropologist. It would have been the best way to put everything I was learning into the proper context, but... I just didn’t want to. I’d get to it eventually. Instead I pulled out the book on magical theory.
The book was titled “The Modern Mage”. The first chapter was on Thaumatology, which I remembered was the name of a department in the hospital.
Introduction
Magic is a topic that is seldom considered by the average pony. Magic simply does what it is supposed to do. A pony needn’t think about how the magic they use in everyday life is channeled any more than they need to understand the structure of their legs in order to walk, but just as athletes benefit from an understanding of their physiology, a mage will be better able to hone their craft when they have an understanding of thaumatology.
Mana Pool
A pony’s mana pool is not a physical organ. There is an area in the center of the chest with a greater density of thaumic pathways which gives the perception that mana is pulled from the chest, but in fact mana is stored throughout the body.
Mana pool is a measure of a pony’s ability to store magic. A pony’s mana pool naturally expands as they grow to adulthood, but it cannot be trained. The ability of an experienced mage to cast more powerful spells in quick succession than a novice with a similar mana pool is the result of greater casting efficiency due to better mana shaping skills, and by more disciplined mana assimilation.
Thaumic pathways
In the simplest terms, thaumic pathways are a body system that allows the rapid transfer of mana from one part of the body to another. Disruptions to the thaumic pathways not only impair the ability of a pony to draw mana from the affected area, but completely nullify the ability to shape mana with any foci distal to the point of disruption.
At the bottom of the page on Thaumic pathways there was a diagram of a pony with lines that looked similar to the circulatory system with the distinction that it wasn’t a loop there was no return path, instead the thaumic pathways became smaller and smaller branches until they were too small to be illustrated.
Magical Foci
The most obvious and versatile magical focus is a unicorn’s horn, but magical focus describes any part of a pony’s body that can be used to shape mana. The wings of a pegasus and the hooves of all three tribes can act as foci, but the ability of such foci to shape mana into novel spells is absent or at least severely limited. In theory, any part of the body can be used as a focus, but in practice such experimentation is purely academic and has no practical application.
A unicorn’s horn is uniquely suited for novel mana shaping due to its close integration with the caster’s brain. While a unicorn’s neurons do not extend into the horn itself, the thaumic pathways that channel mana to the horn pass through the brain forming a dense knot within the frontal cortex. The core of a unicorn’s horn is highly enervated, but protected by a dense layer of keratin. Contrary to popular folklore, the keratin in a unicorn’s horn possesses no magical properties of its own. The use of horn shavings in potions and rituals is purely superstition and does not enhance their efficacy.
Ambient Mana
As with any living creature, ponies cannot survive without magic suffusing their bodies. Fortunately, ponies are endo-thaumic, which means they can generate and maintain their own magic field. As a result, ponies can live almost anywhere. This is in contrast to ecto-thaumic creatures, such as Timber Wolves, which rely on ambient magic to maintain their life essence. Ecto-thaums can only survive in areas with a sufficiently high ambient magic level.
Endo-thaums are not capable of directly utilizing raw mana from their environment. When mana is drawn from an external source it must be assimilated into their own mana pool before it can be used. An endo-thaum’s internal magic field will repel magic that is not attuned to them, forcing raw magic into the body can cause serious injury.
My page of notes was getting cramped, I flipped the page to the back for more room.
Magical Exhaustion
Under normal circumstances, pain and fatigue prevent a pony from draining their mana pool below the level necessary to maintain their vital bodily functions. The fatigue ponies feel when approaching this level is often colloquially referred to as magical exhaustion. In medical terms, this is not accurate. For the purpose of clarity, actual magical exhaustion will be referred to hereafter as Clinical Magical Exhaustion.
With enough stubborn determination, or when placed in mortal peril, it is possible for a caster to push through the limits of their pain and fatigue and face Clinical Magical Exhaustion. CME is debilitating and in extreme cases it can result in permanent injury or death. The risk of CME can be greatly increased by the use of certain illicit and prescription drugs. If you are taking any medications a physician should be consulted before engaging in high yield casting exercises.
The biological mechanism by which CME causes harm differs depending on location. In a high magical environment, reducing a pony’s internal magic pressure below ambient results in raw mana being involuntarily drawn into their body leading to acute mana poisoning. In a low magical environment a pony’s biological functions will begin to fail as there is insufficient magic to maintain cellular respiration.
CME may also be a symptom of several rare medical conditions, but that is outside the scope of this text. If you believe you or somepony else may be experiencing CME, emergency medical care should be sought immediately.
A knock at the door dragged me out of the intense focus. What was I just thinking about, it was important but...ugh. I closed my eyes and tried to reconstruct my train of thought but it slipped away and now all I could think about was why someone was interrupting me.
Applejack was standing in the doorway with a kind look on her face and I felt a little bad for being cross with her.
“Did you need some help?” I asked
Applejack chuckled.
“Ah’m fine, Sweetpea,” She said, “But y’all need to be gettin’ off ta bed. It’s a school night.”
“But I don’t go to school.”
“Maybe not, but ya still need yer sleep.”
I almost protested that I wasn’t tired but I had to stifle a yawn at the mere mention of sleep, so I figured there was no point in denying the obvious.
“Yer books will still be here in the mornin’.”
The weight of my head on the pillow confirmed that I was indeed, very tired. It had been a long day but, for the first time since I arrived in Equestria, I was eager for tomorrow.
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Good chapter, Green is a very studious filly. Happy to see her eager and happy!
Doc I have a headache why make info dump chapter absolute cringe disliked and unsubscribed
Cute!
Aslo interesting. They have cell theory and apparently they believe magic is necessary for cellular respiration...
I wonder if that's true or not.
It's so nice to see Green enjoying things for once, happy about... well... anything.
what a cute and informative chapter
Ah, world building of the highest calibre; Anatomical and Thaumagical studies!
Keep up the good work, my little Author. I'll see you next chapter.
(Green, honey, baby, cutie-pie... when a child asks for a book of anatomy and information regarding the body, one of the natural assumptions is that they're curious. And if they're curious, it might mean their body is changing in ways they don't understand. And if that's the case, a quick helpful pamphlet, is better than a long winding document of text, to highlight and address the issues. At the least, it doesn't hurt to provide some quickly summarized and practical body information.
Also, a complete read would take you there eventually, are you going to go back to the Book Horse and say you didn't notice because you DIDN'T read the whole book? Frankly, that'd probably disappoint her more than learning you were checking it out TO look up the naughty bits... well, just as much maybe.
Also, eye plates! I think I remember that reference from "Oh to be Old Again", I think that one did eye plates.
Now, I have to say, it is lovely to see Green just... enjoying themselves. Reading in deep. Studying like a little mini-scholar! Truly, Green is a pony after Twilight's heart! Heheheh, most lovely! And yeah, it actually was pretty nice to get just some Green reading time and slice of life where Green was just doing something they enjoy. And world-building is nice! Good to get a little more of the world nicely defined! Personally, I'm looking forward to the history research. You get a lot of world-building in that arena!)
Pegasi. It's Greek, not Japanese.
The three bolded instances are singular, not plural, and thus should be "focus" rather than "foci". The rest are correct.
I like to see how this is so official sounding, really makes me remember some college books (though not health related, but Physics related). Real props for creativity on this one
10798880
Ok, fixed I think.
Well Green just got some necessary information that many would naturally know. Or at least some of the basics.
10798788
It could've been worse. I've read fallout fics that do an info dump explaining the usage and maintenance of a rifle when the protagonist reads about it. In those instances, it doesn't do world building and was put there solely to artificially inflate the word count. The entire length of this chapter was nowhere near the size of those. Then the story continues in the same chapter, so you have to skim carefully if you want to skip it.
I personally enjoyed the part with Grey's Anatomy. It was probably written from personal experience.
I love chapters like this
Finally green can actually start putting that 50 grand of debt into good use!
Hey... Wait a minute. New body means no medical college bills! Woo!
10798880 10798889
Yep, you got 'em. I was going to point those out also, but I got beaten to the punch.
This was an interesting chapter! Yeah, a bit of an info dump, but it's cool to see what people come up with in terms of how ponies 'work' and what Green needs to learn to really understand herself. I'm actually kinda looking forward to another chapter like this if you've got one planned.
All in all, keep it up!
10798942
Yay! YEars of stress worth it! Oh wait... She'll probably fall back into student debt when she realizes she has no actual known medical background.
But hey! At least this time around school will be a breeze! Except now she has crippling, "Pony body." And then she'll be rejected because they don't want ponies who have "problems" to be near injured ponies. Then she realize she has student debt. And last but not least, she find out that, the readers who read this comment just wasted their time reading the last half of this paragraph.
If I remember, I believe green had some issues as a human, and yet he was still a nurse, why would ponies be any different.
"Love to learn, dislike studying"
10798942
If it was that simple
Betcha in a world where true transformation was plausible and proven, they'd have invented legalese for the transfer of debt specifically for that occasion.
And here I assumed the pamphlet was something Twi hid in the book long ago or something and would be embarrassed to come across it.
God, now I can only think of someone throwing a plate of spaghetti and staining a fridge with sauce and bits of pasta, lmao
I hope next chapter will be about Equestria*s history...
Wew, happy chapter for a change!
I already see Green turning into a mini Twilight, and continuing her study when she is sure that AJ left.
Damn fine lore!
Edit: I missed that part ¯\_(~.~)_/¯
If Mana cant be increased via training than Twilight is simply obsessed with knownlage not with self performance increases like a Athlete would be.
10798880
All I could think of when seeing pegasai was Friendship is optimal if run by Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy(You can emmigrate to equestria, you know, if you want to).
Stop making green a doormat
Nice world building stuff in this chapter. A LOT of authors tend to leave that until it comes up. Props.
10799267
Ooh, fascinating anatomical tidbits.
Rumors of so-called rampant pool growth, or "ramping," have never been substantiated in laboratory conditions.
(Poetic chuckles sound from the Everfree.)
I do love a well-crafted bit of world-building, and this has it in spades. Wish I could borrow those books myself.
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This was based on a joke, green posted the chapter and promoted it on discord just as I was complaining about a headache, I read it anyways. I thought people would realize from the disliked and unsubscribed part that it was a joke.
Good chapter, interesting take on magic
10799267
The ability to shape mana is trainable, and increases the efficiency, power, and versatility of spell casting.
To cast more complicated spells you need to have the requisite mana shaping ability, which requires effort to train.
Being more skilled in mana shaping also makes your spellcasting more efficient, so you use less mana to cast the same spell.
10799413
I see, love the lore
10799416
It's loosely based on the magic system from Mother of Learning with significant modifications for it to work with ponies.
Alright, from what I gathered, Bending is a possibility, they just haven't thought to simplify things enough.
Time to find a flying bison. It's gotta be somewhere, or an equivalent, in the hodgepodge of fantasy that is the setting.
Not too sure about the concept of all ponies having both wings and horns when in the fetal stage. This would suggest they begin to develop and then get absorbed. Why develop at all?
Primary point of contention: Animals with horns are born with horn buds. They do not pop out with fully formed horns the way many people in the fandom think they do. The horn bud does not begin as an outgrowth of the skull either and in breeds that are naturally "polled" the horn bud never forms.
The following is from a study on bovines but would more than likely hold true for all horned animals.
Antlers start out much the same but their growth is regulated primarily by the presence of testosterone and shed every year. Reindeer (caribou) seems to be an outlier, or in-between, in that their antlers are primarily for defense serving much the same role as horns on cattle.
Granted that Flurryheart developing into an Alicorn so quickly, yes I know, born an alicorn... if she'd had that horn and all that plumage at birth - Cadance, oh dear sweet Cadance, she's lucky she survived.
On the other hand/hoof, if Flurry was, say about a month old when Twilight and party first saw her, it'd make a lot more sense, and could potentially mark her as a throwback to a parent species that had to develop that quickly to survive. 
I can at least see all ponies starting out with the same basic skeletal structure.
I can even see some Earth ponies intentionally removing the bud at birth so their foal will develop into a proper Earth Pony. Might even explain Pinkie.
I said it before and Imma say it again - eye plates are creepy.
10799538
In the psuedo alicorn stage the vestigial (in non-pegasi) wing bones are visible and the *hole* in the skull where the horn would form is present. It's not so much that they develop and are then absorbed, its just that you can't easily tell what kind of pony they will develop into until after this stage.
This type of fetal development is actually seen in animals on earth. During one stage of fetal development, human embryos have a vestigial tail.
10799545
Glad to see you're still reading!
Yeah, they are a mite creepy.
10799292
how is Green a doormat, especially in this chapter?
10799615
Letting a book walk all over her.
Ooo
Using our sciences as a base and inspiration for world building. I like this. I can see that even magic study is also grounded and plausible
This story is the best thing ive read in a long while keep it up
10799521
A fellow man of culture I see. This chapter got me excited even before I heard that, I look forward to seeing what Green achieves!
10799624
Tbh that book is very strong. Second strongest only to Green's ability to panic and worry about everything.
P.S. book op plz nerf
Nice to see lore being established even if it may not have any practical value from story perspective and is probably not setting anything up.
10799545
You're alive? That's great news.
Curious to see whether this is a filler chapter, or relavant to something coming in the future. green has spent a long time moping and wallowing about. It would not be unwelcome if she evolves as a character and moves on to do new and interesting things.
Yay.
You gave it real thought to work out how ponies work, I admire that. A good brick in worldbuilding even while it's quite a bit of exposure. Oh, and you managed to give explanation why artifacts like Alicorn Amulet and shapeshifting amulet Tia owned are harmful. Just mere physiology, immune system and hormones.
We can expand it and say that alicorns have increased ability to to reuptake magic field, so they can assimilate thosr artifacts without harm, while normal pony would get frantic or paranoid, and hurt in long term.
Green thinks that Twi is a pony James Bond... heh
10798876
Gray's Anatomy really isn't the kind of book you sit down and read cover to cover, it's more of a reference book. It's three hundred A3 pages of dry technical language that describe, in detail, the physical structure and properties of every single part of the body from the perspective of someone dissecting it, there are even diagrams of how the dissections were carried out with instructions. There's no narrative structure or through line and it never builds up to make any point, unless you're going to be surgeon the only parts that have actually useful information to commit to memory are the introductions to each chapter. That said if you're having trouble visualising how certain body structures fit together, or what they really look like when they're not drawn in a stylized manner, it can be enlightening to read the relevant section in Gray's Anatomy and study the exquisitely detailed illustrations.
tl;dr: No I don't think Twilight would be expecting Green to read all of Graymane's Anatomy before returning it.