> Pony Planet: Side Stories
>  by Admiral Biscuit
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Making Repairs (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pony Planet: Side Stories
Making Repairs
Admiral Biscuit

Rarity snapped her head up as the bell over the shop door rang. The cracking of her neck was a reminder of just how long she’d been studying the damaged alien garments. Much to her annoyance, she had very little in the way of results to show for it.

The stallion’s leg-coverings had been the first thing she’d fixed. The denim was finer than what she usually saw, but the mills in the Shropshire region had been improving every year, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that with a little more ingenuity they’d be able to mass-produce a similar fabric. It was something she knew how to work with, anyways. A majority of the uniform clothing she mended was made of similar cloth.

The coppery rivets were marvellously small. It was a detail she might have expected to find in a well-crafted watch, perhaps, but unusual for clothing. Still, they were clearly decorative, so perhaps it was a signature of the clothier, just as her garments either had a three-diamond motif, or a stylized R.

Her true admiration had been reserved for the zipper. Its tiny teeth had been cunningly crafted, each one perfectly identical. A patient craftspony would have to labor for days to create such a marvel, which made the fact it was hidden by a flap of cloth even more puzzling. Had she put such an intricate zipper on a piece of clothing, she’d want it to be where everypony could see it. Still, it could be uncovered, so maybe there was a certain etiquette to whether it was shown or not.

She’d sewn strips of similar denim inside the cloth to avoid damaging the lines of the leggings as much as possible, and used thread that was the closest blue to the fabric that she could find. She’d also made a second pair—using the first as a pattern. She’d replicated the rivets with small opal chips; the front opening had been left without a zipper. She’d considered embroidering a zipper pattern on, but decided to determine the function before committing herself.

The white shorts had also been an easy fix; the only trouble she’d had was stitching the stretchy bands. Both pairs of socks had been replaced—there was no sense in fixing them, not in their current condition. The geometric pattern on the bottom had been a little harder to duplicate, but she managed well enough with embroidery floss. It was curious that both the mare and the stallion had the same pattern on their socks, although one was pink and the other red.

“Welcome to Carousel Boutique,” she began with a cheerfulness she didn’t really feel.

“Rarity, if it’s not too much trouble, I wonder if you could do a little mending for me.” Hazel Harvest trotted into the gallery.

“Ah—” Rarity reluctantly looked up from the trousers.

“It’s my suit. It’s just a little torn, but you know it’s no good if it’s got a tear in it.” She reached back into her saddlebags and started tugging. After several grunts of effort, she finally managed to get the balled fabric out. An unmistakable odor immediately started rising from the garment.

“You . . . didn’t wash it,” Rarity muttered.

“I didn’t have time,” Hazel said. “I meant to, but . . . you know how it is.”

Rarity poked a hoof at it. She really didn’t want to know what was on it.

“The hole’s at the bottom of one of the feet. I must have gotten a shoe caught on it.” Hazel started trying to un-crumple the suit, but Rarity held up a hoof to stop her. Flakes of what she hoped were just dirt were falling onto her clean floor.

“I’ll wash it for you, darling. And air it out.”

“Thanks! Can I have it back by tomorrow morning? I need it for work.”

Rarity’s eyelid twitched. “Tomorrow? It might not even be dry by tomorrow morning.”

“Well . . . what am I going to do?”

Rarity resisted the urge to say, you should have brought it in yesterday or the day before. She grit her teeth. “I could have it done by noon. No sooner.”

Hazel threw her forelegs around Rarity. “Oh, thanks Rarity! You’re the best! That’s why I always bring my clothes to you!” She trotted out the door.

Don’t I know it. Rarity kicked the suit across the floor. But do you ever buy a single dress? No. Do you ever spend a single bit more than you have to? No. She expertly punted the balled-up suit into her washtub. I’ll let that soak for an hour and see if it’s fit to touch then.

She eagerly returned to her worktable and lifted a roll of sketches out of a pigeonhole. She’d drawn them after Twilight had shown her the clothing in the picture-book. The sketches had been meant to inspire further clothing designs; who could have imagined they would have come in handy so quickly?

Rarity looked back over at the stack of clothes which still needed to be mended. She’d already given up on the orange vest; she had no idea what it was made out of. The orange fabric felt slippery, almost like it was made of wax. The inside squished down when poked with a hoof, but sprang right back. Are they putting cloud in fabric now? Like the socks, it was going to have to be completely re-made. On her next trip to Canterlot, she could try and find some fabric which matched the vest, or else she could try and make her own on her loom; either way, it was a project which would take some time.

She finally decided to tackle the mare’s blue shirt next. She could cover the seams on the side with orange piping—while it was a color combination she found abhorrent, apparently the mare liked it.  The sleeves were a different matter. One of them had been partially burned off, and there was no fixing that. She’d have to use the left sleeve as a pattern for the right, and transfer the patches over. If she simplified the cuff to having one functional button and one decorative, she’d have enough to complete the shirt: she had no buttons which were a match for the ones on the shirt.

She floated some fabric swatches out of her cabinet and carried them and the shirt over to a window. She moved each swatch up to the shirt in turn, trying to find the fabric that was the best match in texture and color. It felt almost like cotton, but wasn’t quite the same.


•        •        •


Rarity was stitching the patches back on the shoulders of the shirt when the bell above the door jingled again. “Welcome to—”

“It’s me,” Sweetie Belle said. “Didn’t you hear the school bell?”

“I was distracted,” Rarity replied, wincing as she heard a bowl land on the kitchen table. “I have a special order to complete as soon as possible.”

“Can I see?” 

Rarity jerked her head around. Her sister’s voice sounded awfully close. . . .

“That’s kind of . . . bright.” Sweetie poked a hoof at the orange vest. “Is it for a construction pony? It’s awfully big.”

“No, it’s for an alien that’s in the hospital.” As soon as the last word had left her mouth, Rarity wished she could have had another moment to think before she spoke. The wide-eyed look on Sweetie’s face told her all she needed to know. I might have a chance to distract her . . . think, Rarity. “Who won’t be getting out for a while because, um, he had an accident with, with bad magic. Badly-cast magic. Which can land a unicorn in a hospital. Which is why—”

“I wish I could do magic. Dumb horn.”

“—I’d like to help you practice your magic.” She isn’t going to take the bait.

Sweetie broke into a huge smile. “Really? Right now?”

Oh, Celestia, she did. “Well, of course.” Rarity set down her scissors and neatly laid her glasses by her sewing machine. “You should eat your snack first. It’s best not to try to cast on an empty stomach, because that can cause indigestion.” Well, if this produces any results at all, she’s probably going to fall asleep as soon as she’s had her dinner. She looked back at the pile of clothes still waiting to be mended and sighed. I’ll be up all night at this rate.







> Nobles' Council (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pony Planet: Side Stories
Nobles’ Council
Admiral Biscuit


The meeting chamber of the Nobles’ Council was unusually full today. Normally, most of the hundred benches either stood empty, or were filled with junior clerks and secretaries, hoping to curry favor by taking on a task nopony else wanted to. Twice a month, an official vote was held. On those days, the benches were filled with actual nobles—or at least senior clerks.

Typically, Raven would call them to order. The session would open with the most junior member making a motion to replace the benches, and the most senior member reciting a dry speech about how adversity built character, and the motion would be tabled until the next meeting. Nopony except Celestia knew how long that traditional call-to-order had been around.

After that, whatever noble had a pet project would step up to the dais and recite off his new proposal. His backers would give him their utmost attention, while everypony else ignored him and discussed the latest fashions out of Manehattan or the scores of the hoofball games the week before. Sometimes the two camps would come together and discuss the newest uniforms that the Canterlot ‘Bolts were wearing, but that was rare.

Today was a different story. Raven noticed the serious mood as soon as she came into the room. Everypony was staring up at her in rapt attention, and every noble who lived in Canterlot was in attendance, even Prince Blueblood.

Raven banged her gavel on the podium. “Gentleponies, this session is called to order.” A hoof waved in the air. “The crown recognizes Ivory, representing Their Highnesses Cadenza.”

“I make a motion to replace all the benches in the chamber,” he said simply and sat back down.

“Motion to replace the benches. Does anypony second the motion? No? The crown recognizes Prince Blueblood of Canterlot.”

“I make a countermotion. I propose we keep the old benches.” Blueblood sat back down. Raven raised an eyebrow. So far, Blueblood’s shortest speech on the subject of the benches had been three minutes long—and that was on the eve of the Grand Galloping Gala. Ever since they’d had a crystal pony in their midst, Blueblood had gone out of his way to make the poor stallion uncomfortable.

“I second Blueblood’s counterproposal.” Black Marble stood and sat again so fast he might as well have been a jack-in-a-box.

“Motion to keep the benches, seconded by Black Marble. All in favor? Motion carried with unanimous vote.” Raven looked down at her notes, although it really wasn’t necessary—it was a force of habit. “The Nobles’ Council will rise to welcome Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia, Bringer of the Sun and Protector of Equestria.” Celestia grimaced every time she heard that, Raven knew.

Princess Celestia walked through the archway on the east side of the chamber and stopped in front of a garishly ornate throne which had only been used once—to honor the pony who had built it. She walked to the edge of the dais and looked over the crowd, a small smile on her face.

“During the week of Winter Wrap-Up, I inadvertently made contact with a heretofore unknown species,” Celestia stated simply. “Per convention, I have sent letters to all of our allies and protectorates that they might be informed. I have extended an offer towards one of them to become their ambassador, and have the highest confidence he will accept. 

“Naturally, the Council needs to decide upon a representative to staff the Equestrian embassy. The new embassy will be located in Ponyville, and the ambassador will be expected to remain there unless personally summoned to Canterlot. The posting will be for the traditional six-year period. If I may call Prince Blueblood to the floor?”

The slow beat of his hooffalls rang out over the silent chamber. Never in anypony’s memory had a new embassy been opened. Each noble was privately wondering what sort of sapient creature Celestia had discovered, where it had come from, and what it looked like. There had been an upsurge in interest in the moon since the Nightmare Moon incident; could the new creature have come from there? Rumors of moon mares had run rampant throughout the summer after Luna’s return; coupled with the reappearance of her bat-winged guards, anything had seemed possible. More recently, the newspapers had been abuzz with stories about the re-emergence of the Crystal Empire, and there were even suggestions that the Equestrian Games might be held there. To follow that with yet another land, and a new embassy was . . . unprecedented.

“It has been over a century since the Zebrican embassy was opened,” Celestia continued as Blueblood stood awkwardly next to her. Faint mutterings regarding his choice in suit and decision to wear his medal could be heard. He was proud of it; he was the sole recipient of the Order of the Croupiere, given for his dedicated service as a quartermaster for the Royal Guard. The newspapers occasionally made fun of it; unfortunately none of the other nobles could, since none of them had served in the Guard. “And it is a great challenge—and a great honor—to be named the first ambassador. Prince Blueblood, do you have a statement?”

“Thank you.” He turned to face her and bowed deeply, stopping just shy of kissing her golden shoes. “My fellow nobles, it is indeed a great honor to be chosen for an embassy—any embassy posting—and more so if it is a brand-new embassy, located in an out-of-the-way location. A unicorn who accepts such an assignment must be the best, most qualified choice, as in the early stages of diplomacy even the slightest misstep may lead to disaster. 

“There is, I feel, only one pony who is qualified to take such an august post. Therefore, without any further ado, I wish to propose Lyra Heartstrings to the position.” A consummate speaker, Blueblood waited until the shocked conversation had died down to a whisper before continuing. “She has spent the most amount of time in his country, and is intimately familiar with his customs. She has an unparalleled command of his language. Her insight into his culture is unparalleled in all of Equestria, and, as such, I cannot think of a more qualified pony for the position.”

Raven smiled. Blueblood never heaped praise upon anypony besides himself—apparently Princess Celestia’s plan had worked. “Motion to nominate Lyra Heartstrings.”

“I second the motion.” 

“The Crown recognizes Cobalt as a proxy for Fancy Pants, seconding the motion.” A murmur went through the crowd. Besides Raven, one could count on Fancy or Fleur being at every single council meeting—for them to both be missing was an unlikely event, and another murmur ran through the crowd.

“I propose you.” The voice caused Bluebood to wince. He’d anticipated this, of course. Everypony knew Graphite wanted the Prench Embassy for himself. “You’re champing at the bit to get an ambassadorship. You’ve got a medal and all that; you’re a retired Royal Guard.” As sweet as his praise was, the venom practically dripped off his words. “I can’t think of how much of an honor it would be for you to serve this post.”

“I would be honored indeed.” Blueblood took a step forward, coming dangerously close to falling off the dais. “But this is about more than honor. This is about Equestria. A pony shouldn’t take an important position just because it’s his due; he should think about what’s best for everypony. I would never think of accepting the offer when there’s a more qualified pony who would be eager to serve.

“Nonetheless, Mayor Graphite, you have made a good point. Sometimes a pony is called to greatness, even when he is not the most qualified for the position. If I were elected, I believe I would leave the existing team largely intact—after all, it’s unreasonable to believe I could be up to speed on a new language in a matter of a few days.

“However, I would want a second noble to help me. Somepony who is experienced with small-town politics. Somepony like a mayor would be perfect—I understand you have experience with the customs of earth pony towns? I believe the two of us—together—could make a brilliant embassy team. I can see us now, gaily galloping through Whitetail Woods during the annual running of the leaves—your dark coat would serve as such a marvelous contrast to mine.” He smiled broadly.

“I second the motion to nominate Prince Blueblood as ambassador.” Sky Dream stood.

“The crown recognizes a motion to second from Sky Dream.”

“Prince Blueblood speaks highly of this Lyra Heartstrings out of one side of his mouth, but from the other we hear how important a posting this is. We would be foals to entrust such a position to a comm—an outsider. We have no idea how she might behave, nor how she might carry out her duties. Does this Lyra even know Equestrian laws? Is she familiar with our legislative process? Only a member of the Nobles’ Council is qualified for an embassy position.”

Blueblood cringed. He’d expected the challenge from Mayor Graphite, and had prepared his rebuttal. Blue Moon hadn’t spoken yet, but he was sure to get in the fray on the make-Blueblood-do-it side. Fancy Pants had promised him that he would put in a good word for Lyra, but he wasn’t here, and aside from Cobalt’s second, there had been no movement from that camp. He could try and dilute the pool by nominating somepony else and hoping it would be seconded, sweat it out until the vote was taken and hope he lost, or try and move some of the moderate ponies.

“Does anypony else wish to make a nomination? No? Very well—”

“Wait!” Blueblood raised his hoof. “I wish to make a rebuttal to Sky Dream.” 

“Go ahead.” Raven set the gavel back down.

“Gentleponies, Sky Dreams raises some very good points. As it appears many members of the Council are unfamiliar with Lyra Heartstrings, allow me to list some of her other qualifications. She can trace her lineage back to Princess Platinum.” This statement was lead with a few hoof-stomps, mostly from minor nobles who had little else in their family history. The truth was that Platinum and her descendants had been quite prolific, and there were very few unicorns who couldn’t trace their bloodlines back to the Platinum house. “As a member of the Royal Guard, her loyalty is unimpeachable.” Blueblood proudly puffed out his chest, causing a bright glint off his medal. This did little to help his case. “She . . . she’s also the youngest unicorn Grandmaster in Equestrian history.”

“Furthermore, she is not constrained by our rigid procedures. While these procedures are good for passing laws which affect all of Equestria, they could handicap an ambassador, who must have a more abstract way of thinking—especially during the delicate process of establishing a fledgeling relationship between two countries. I have been informed that she has made remarkable progress in a very short period of time, and has established a fine network of assistants to aid in her task. Were we to replace her at this juncture, it would be akin to replacing the Canterlot ‘Bolts midfielder at halftime. She has been doing an admirable job so far, and I think we would be foals not to let her continue.”

“Thank you, Prince Bluebood.” Raven banged her gavel. “Are there any further statements to be made?”

“I wish to be heard.”

 “The crown recognizes Ivory, representing Their Highnesses Cadenza.”

“My fellow nobles—I just wish to state that our nation was saved primarily by the heroism of a young dragon, who is normally an assistant to a rural librarian. Perhaps if we had held a vote, we could have found a more-qualified hero—but Spike did the job admirably, and in the end, that’s all that matters. And I also wish to say that he could not have done it if not for the close relationship he has with several other ponies who were there, including Her Royal Highness Crystal Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. It is the opinion of Their Highnesses that a good relationship should not be sundered.”

“Thank you, Ivory.”

“I make a motion to take a vote between Lyra Heartstrings and Prince Blueblood.” When he had finished speaking, Ivory sat back down.

“I’ll second that.”

“Motion seconded by Cobalt. Are there any dissenters?”

The hall was silent.

“Very well. Cast your ballots, gentleponies. Red for Lyra, white for Blueblood.”

There was a flurry of activity as the nobles opened their desks.and took out a sheet of paper and their ink pads. Each noble placed a hoof into the appropriate-colored ink, and then stamped his hoof on the paper. The marking would stay on the hoof—ensuring that nopony made more than one vote. Raven smiled to herself—in the back she could see a couple of reporters whispering to each other. They had no doubt seen the red mark on Blueblood’s right forehoof, and were discussing among themselves the last time the prince had voted against himself. Without having to consult voting records, Raven knew the answer was never.

Blueblood—who had returned to his desk for the vote—shifted on his bench. He could feel himself sweating, but to wipe his brow was simply Not Done. He suffered in silence as Raven counted the ballots, sorting them into two piles. Finally, she banged her gavel on the podium. “The vote is for Lyra Heartstrings, with forty-seven for, forty-six against, and seven abstaining.”

Blueblood slid down in his seat. He’d lost an election, and it felt great. Maybe he could try to talk himself off a committee next.




> A Night at the Bar (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Night at the Bar
Onto the Pony Planet: Side Stories
Admiral Biscuit



This chapter takes place between chapters 6 & 7, on the evening of Dale and Kate’s first full day in Equestria



The east side of Ponyville is the old part of town. Here one would find buildings that date nearly back to the founding of Ponyville. The eldest of these buildings is a sturdy stone structure, with two half-timber additions flanking it.

The worn sign above the door shows a fat pony rearing on its hind legs. It was painted once, although only the eldest remember that. In those days, it’s said, paint didn’t last as long—yet, if one looks closely, traces are still there, in the spots which are shielded from the weather.

But a building’s worth is not determined by the paint on its sign. Shortly after the Apple family accepted the first land grant in what was to become Ponyville, old mare Butterbeer sent her youngest foal off on into the wilderness with a wagonful of ale, bits, and a freshly inked deed. In no time at all, an inn was raised for all the ponies who would soon be arriving in town.

The inn had become the focal point of town, the anchor to which all important business was tied. Contracts and marriage proposals had crossed over the heavy tables, and gossip flowed as freely as the ale.

In short, Barlimare Butterbeer, the third generation of proprietrix, had every reason to feel proud. She opened her doors every night at the same time, and regular as clockwork, the patrons started streaming in. First came the laborers, fresh from the fields; next came merchants, stopping by to trade gossip as soon as they had closed their shops. Eventually, the common room was filled, and her servers were running their hooves off, waiting tables as fast as they could.

As if the usual business wasn’t brisk enough, a group of Royal Guards had marched in, commandeering four of her tables. She had waited on them personally; years of experience had taught her that wherever the Guards went, trouble followed. It wasn’t their fault—but she still knew better than to take her eyes off them for too long.

“Hey, Barli! Can I get a pint of Warlander?”

She nodded, and slid a clean mug under the tap. “What’ve you been up to, ‘Shine?”

“Ah, nothing much.” Shoeshine hooked the mug off the counter. “Fixed a set of shoes for a Canterlot unicorn.” She leaned over the counter and looked around to make sure she wasn’t overheard, before lowering her voice. “I heard that Fancy Pants is in town, and that’s why everypony’s in a tizzy.”

“They wouldn’t have called out the Royal Guard and the auxiliary guard for him,” Barlimare whispered back. “Last night the tavern was half-empty.”

“It’s got something to do with the reservoir.” Both mares turned. Thunderlane had his hooves on the counter and a smug look on his face. “Rainbow told us two days ago that we weren’t supposed to move any clouds over there, gave me and the girls the day off. And that’s the second time in a week.”

“But you went there anyway, just to see what was going on, right?” Shoeshine leaned close.

“Not a chance.” Thunderlane looked around the tavern and nodded at a hoof-wave from Flitter. “Hey, I had a whole day off. With pay. Think I was gonna spend it trying to sneak around?”

“Yes!” both mares said simultaneously.

Thunderlane rolled his eyes. “Why don’tcha ask Sunny Rays? I heard she got pulled off weather duty to patrol with the Guard.”

“Really?” Barlimare handed Thunderlane a pitcher of Brabant.

“As Celestia’s my witness, I swear it’s true.” He grabbed the bail in his teeth and launched himself from the bar in a short flight to his table.

“No flying in the tavern!” Barlimare shouted after him.

“I’ll go look for Sunny,” Shoeshine offered. “See what she has to say.”

“Not gonna say nothing with them in the tavern, I bet.” 

Shoeshine looked over at the Guards. Watching them was like watching a funeral. The hubbub of the tavern just washed right over them. Each one of them had a nearly identical plate of casserole in front of his muzzle, and each had a half-empty glass of beer. She suddenly had the terrible vision of them all eating at the exact same pace, and wondered if the level of all their mugs was as equal as it looked from the bar. Tearing her eyes away, she decided she didn’t want to know.

“They came in last night, too,” Barli muttered. “Probably the same bunch, but who knows?” Shoeshine nodded and pushed off from the bar. With a practiced ease, she navigated the bar over to a corner table, bunching up against a group of her friends.

“Hey, ‘Shine, ‘sup?” Cherry Berry gave her a quick hug before sliding against Golden Harvest.

“What do you know about the reservoir?” If she couldn’t get an answer from a pegasus, she’d ask the next best thing.

“Off limits.” Cherry took a drink. “Too bad. Last two days were perfect for ballooning. Not a cloud in the sky. They were all piled up along the edge of the Everfree. There were a coupla Wonderbolts up there, did you know?”

“Really?” She sighed. “How come nopony knows nothing about the Guard?”

“Never mind that. Did you hear Lyra got some kind of ambassadorship?” Golden Harvest leaned over the table. “It’s true! I heard it from Apple Honey! I had to get new hame strings for my plow harness, and when I was there she told me that Fancy Pants had just told her. She was gonna go ask Lyra for an interview tomorrow.”

“Ambassadorship? In’t that some kind of boat? What’s she need a boat for?”

“You’re so dumb, Millie. An ambassador is somepony who is a representative to a foreign country.” Cherry bopped her with a hoof. “As you’d have known if you paid attention in school.” She looked back at Golden Harvest with interest. “How come Lyra, though? She isn’t noble, not really, and they usually get nobles for that kind of stuff.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s got something to do with that project she was working on with Twilight.”

At the mention of the librarian’s name, every mare at the table leaned forward. For better or worse, Twilight had rapidly become a legend in Ponyville, and her exploits were always worthy of gossip. Rumor had it that she would soon be the new mayor—why else would Celestia have sent her to Ponyville?

“Go on,” Shoeshine prompted. “What new project?”

“Bon Bon didn’t say.” Golden paused for a drink, a signal that she knew more than she was telling. She drank very slowly, set the mug down and wiped her mouth before speaking again. “Here’s what I know—Bon Bon told me all about it yesterday in the market.

“Right before Winter Wrap-Up, Lyra got called back to Canterlot for some kind of . . . thing. She didn’t know what, but Twilight went, too. Remember, Mayor Mare was furious?”

Everypony nodded. They’d run a day late clearing winter.

“She’d told Bon Bon that she was just gonna be gone a couple of days, but then she didn’t come back. Neither her or Twilight. After a week, Lyra finally sent a telegram—but she didn’t return until last week, I think it was.

“So, she told Bon Bon that something was gonna happen out at the reservoir. And that’s when the guards all showed up. Lyra told Bons that there was gonna be a signal if something went wrong, an’ last night, there was.”

All the mares looked around the tavern. Everything seemed normal. No parasprites, no dragons, not even a zebra to be seen.

“So?” Millie finally got the courage to speak. “Nothin’ happened last night.”

“Didn’t it?” Golden Harvest leaned over the table. “Something went wrong up at the reservoir, and now they’ve gone and made Lyra an ambassador. You don’t think that’s connected?”

“I’m sure it is,” Cherry said in a patronizing tone. “Somehow.”

“How come she’s been up at the hospital past two days, then?” Golden Harvest glared at Cherry. “Huh? Tell me that.”

“Maybe she’s having a foal,” Millie offered. “Maybe she went to Canterlot when her belly got big, ‘cause she dint want anypony to know.”

“Somepony would’ve smelled it,” Cherry muttered. “And why would she want to hide it?” She looked around the tavern before continuing. “Isn’t like when Berry Punch got knocked up.”

“As if that was a secret. Cormano might as well have put up a sign right in the square, as much bragging as he did.”

“What happened to him, anyway?”

“I think he moved to Dodge Junction.”

“Girls!” Golden banged her hoof down on the table. “Who cares about Cormano?” She leaned closer to the table. “I know why she’s been at the hospital.”

“Ooh.” 

“Bon Bon went over there this morning, before she went to market. She got word from Pinkie that Lyra had been admitted to the hospital. So she went over there this morning. And Lyra was in one of the hospital rooms, ‘cause the nurse said that she’d lost almost all of her magic when a spell went wrong. But that’s not all.” Golden Harvest looked over at the Guard’s table and raised her eyebrows. Everypony leaned in closer. “She wasn’t alone!

“There was a creature there! It looked kind of like a minotaur, but it didn’t have any horns or fur. It was all wrapped up in a bedsheet, an’ just staring out the window. Lyra said it was a Dale, but Bon Bon said she’s never smelled anything like it before. And then—well, Lyra missed lunch, even though she said she was going to eat at the market, and there was a bunch of fancy ponies from the University in town. One of them even asked Dinky for directions to the hospital, right in front of her booth!”

“Where did the Dale come from?” Shoeshine rolled her mug around on the table with her hoof.

“It musta climbed out of the reservoir,” Golden replied. “Where else could it have come from?”

“I could follow them an’ see where they go,” Millie offered, pointing to the now-departing Guards.

Cherry bopped her with a hoof. “Don’t even try. You’re as subtle as a mule at a cute-ceañera.”


•        •        •


“The Prancing Pony?” Ivory Star looked at the building in disgust. “You think we should eat at a common tavern?”

“Well, why not? When in Prance, do as the Prench do,” Lecol stuck her muzzle up in the air.

Perry looked around nervously. “Anypony could be in there.”

“That’s the idea, sport.” Lecol draped her hoof on his withers. “Mingle with the common ponies.”

“I don’t like mingling,” he hissed.

“How would you know? You haven’t left your office in years.” Ivory glared at him. “Not even for what’s-her-name’s surprise retirement party.”

“Inkwell? I knew she was going to keep her job.”

“Would you all QUIT! All I want is to eat a nice dinner. I don’t even care where. We could go back to the hospital, even. If it’s like Canterlot General, they’ll have four colors of mush.” Bright Star massaged her throbbing head. Not for the first time, she deeply desired a career change to something more relaxing, like mountain climbing or skydiving.

“We could have eaten at that cafe we passed in town,” Ivory muttered. “It looked nice.”

Lecol shook her head. “It was too open for poor Perry, wasn’t it?” She lowered her voice, imitating his whiny voice. ‘Anypony could come by and see us!’ Don’t you worry your pointy head, we’ll get a booth and let you sit on the very inside. Or maybe you could crouch under the table, if that would make you more comfortable.”

“Let’s just get this over with.” He pushed the door open and scanned the room. His scrutiny failed to reveal the hindquarters of Sparkler, and he walked right into her.

“Hey, Pokey, watch where you’re going.” Sparkler glared at him, before realizing her mistake. “Oh, sorry, thought you were somepony else.”

“My fault,” he growled, turning his attention back to the crowded common room. Unaware of her wide-eyed stare, he shouldered his way through the room, finally settling on a corner booth. He scooched against the wall, and slumped down in his seat. 

Ivory bumped into the backside of her taller Prench companion. “Hey, watch it!”

“They’ve got musicians!” Lecol pointed a hoof across the room. “There’s a hurdy-gurdy and a fiddle . . . oh, I hope they play something traditional. I haven’t heard anypony play the hurdy-gurdy since I was a filly in Brittaneigh!”

Ivory muttered something under her breath, and started to climb into the booth, before Perry stopped her. “Lecol, can you sit here? You’re . . . bigger than Ivory or Bright Star.”

“You sure know how to flatter a mare,” she groused. “How on earth you ever managed to win over a lover to jilt I don’t know.”

“Where’s the waiter?” Ivory looked around hopefully. “We’re here, might as well eat.”

“You’ll be lucky to hear anything over this din,” Bright Star muttered.

Lecol frowned. “The ponies aren’t all that loud.”

“I wasn’t talking about those other ponies.” She waved a hoof at Ivory and Perry, who were glaring at each other over a vase of flowers, the single menu held in two telekinetic glows.

“Hey!” A voice boomed through the babble of the crowd. “No flying!”

“Ok, I won’t!”

Perry dropped his head against the table. “That was Featherbrain, wasn’t it?”

A light green muzzle poked above the back of the booth. “Hey, fancy running into you here, huh? What were the odds of that?”

Bright Star glared at her. “Where have you been all day?”

“Oh! Well, first I went to the hospital. I got pictures of the creatures; I shot a whole bunch of rolls of film. Then I went and got them developed. While I was waiting for that to be done, I went with a pegasus I met at the hospital called Fluttershy and talked to her about the animals in the Everfree. She was waiting for her animals to find her some carrion and grubs, ‘cause that’s what the creatures eat, she said. Then I got my pictures back and I was at the hotel looking at them, when I remembered I hadn’t eaten all day. So I asked the nice pony at the desk where to go for food, and here I am. Simple.”

“You were supposed to be at the hospital with us.”

“Oh, I know. But I thought I could go early. And then . . . Ikindofgotkickedout, and I had to wait for my pictures to be developed; you know that takes time. Hours. Pictures are very important—”

“Did you say you got kicked out?” Perry grinned. “Why, I can’t imagine how that could have happened.”

“Whatever.” She waved a hoof at him. “I talked Twilight Sparkle into letting me back. Eventually.” Featherbrain lifted a half-eaten plate of eggplant parmesan over the divider. “Does anypony want to finish this? I’d hate to have it go to waste.”

A low drone began from across the tavern. Featherbrain dropped her plate in surprise, while Lecol clapped her hooves together. A moment later, a fiddle joined in, and then a blue stallion began singing in a rich baritone.

Here’s a health to Celestia and a lasting peace.
To faction an end, to wealth increase—

“What will you have, miss?” The waitress—a heavyset tan earth pony—looked at Lecol with a bored expression.

“Whatever she’s having,” Lecol said, pointing to the dean. 

—for there’s no drinking after death.

“She ordered a plate of fish,” Perry muttered.

“Whatever, it’s fine. Let me listen to the music.”

“I did not!” the dean hissed. “That’s disgusting!”

Featherbrain climbed halfway over the divider, her wings flapping eagerly. “Oh—I heard from one of the nurses that they ate fish for breakfast!”

“Who?” Bright Star cocked her head back so she could see the pegasus. “The nurses?”

She shook her head. “The creatures. There’s a dock in town where anypony can fish, I found out.”

Ivory turned to look at her. “Lots of animals eat fish. What’s so special about that?”

“‘Cause there’s a lake where they just let anypony catch them. You can’t eat the fish in the ponds in Canterlot.”

“Who’d want to get their hooves all wet trying to catch one, anyways? If I wanted a fish, I’d just go to a Neighponese restaurant and buy one, ready to eat.” Ivory scowled at the pegasus. “Why don’t you join us? It’s kind of weird having you hang over the edge like that.”

She turned an ear in annoyance at a loud hoofstomps behind her. “Lecol, can’t you curb your enthusiasm for a little bit?”

“You’re no fun.” Lecol stuck her tongue out at Ivory. “Maybe I’ll invite the hurdy-gurdy stallion back to the hotel after he’s done playing for a private session.”

“You’d better not! We’re sharing a room, remember? And aren’t you supposed to be at the hospital early tomorrow morning, to help Dr. Stable and Dr. Goodall?”

“Well, yes, but—”

Ivory stuck a hoof in Lecol’s muzzle. “Do NOT give me some homespun wisdom about how bedding a stallion will help you focus in the morning. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Really? It does?” Featherbrain leaned further over the seatback, nearly falling on Ivory’s lap.

Perry sighed. “On a different subject, where’s Apple Polish? I haven’t seen her since we left the train.”

“Helping at the mayor’s,” Bright Star told him. “She’s got some experience with the laws that go with opening an embassy—at least enough to give Mayor Mare and William Wright a head start. She wouldn’t have been much help at the hospital, anyway. Apparently, Twilight thought to take Dale to the kitchen and identify what he could eat.”


•        •        •


“Where the hay’s Hazel?” Rivet waved his hoof over a giant platter of baked potatoes. “I can’t start eating this without her. She bought half of it.”

“Probably got stuck in her suit again,” Ambrosia muttered. “I’ll go find her.”

“Don’t bother.” Rough Tumble sat down next to Ambrosia, picked up a potato, and deftly slit it open. “She’s gonna be late, if she gets here at all. Slipped unloading Night Soil’s wagon—after she took her helmet off.”

Rivet winced. “Spa?”

“Ha!’ Rough Tumble started filling his potato with sour cream. “You think Lotus or Aloe’s gonna let her in? Hosepipe.”

“You having any potato with your sour cream?” Ambrosia hoofed him in the shoulder.

“You’re not my mom.” He stuffed the whole potato in his mouth and began loudly chewing.

“Allie, Silver.” Ambrosia stood and hugged the two unicorns. “Where have you two been?”

“I had to stop by the hardware store and order some pipe,” Silver Spanner muttered, depositing a tray of drinks on the table. “And I ran into Allie there, so I waited for her.”

“Had to order some more chisels. For fine work.”

“You’re doing the busts and reliefs, aren’t you?” Allie nodded.

“I still don’t get why we got pulled offa that house we were building on Stirrup Street for this. Last week, the mayor was saying she’d pull our permits if we didn’t finish by the Summer Sun Celebration and today it’s ‘drop everything and remodel.’” Rivet grabbed one of the drinks.

“Twilight said so, that’s why. Got a letter from Princess Celestia. I saw it!” Allie’s eyes sparkled. 

“How did you get to see it?” Rough Tumble set the potato he was garnishing back down on the table. “Did Mayor Mare show it to you?”

Allie shook her head and blushed a little. “Ran into Spike. Literally. Knocked the poor little guy over. He had a basketful of scrolls, and they went everywhere. He said Twilight was running him all over town delivering scrolls, and that he had a message from the Princess for the Mayor.”

“So you didn’t see it, then,” Rough Tumble commented.

“Have you ever known the little guy to lie?”

“Well, I heard the building’s going to be a new embassy. Goldengrape said he overheard them talking about it when he was at the town hall.” Silver swiped a potato before Rough Tumble could grab it. “Said the Crown bought the title in the morning. Explains why they want me to put plumbing in.”

“Embassy for what?” Rivet grabbed at a potato before they were all gone. “And who the hay would want an embassy in Ponyville?”

Ambrosia smacked her hoof down on the table, sloshing ale all over the serving tray. “For the creatures in the hospital! Of course!”

“What?”

“Those weird monkey-things! I saw one of them; I even bumped hooves with him. He helped me patch the wall.” She looked at Rough Tumble. “I told you all about him.”

“Ah . . . I kind of wasn’t paying attention.” He flattened his ears. “I thought you was talking about something you read. It sounded like something from a Power Ponies comic.”

Ambrosia shook her head. “I really saw him! I did. Sweetheart had me come over to fix a wall. She said that they’d had a patient who’d thrown a . . . what are those beepy things called?”

“Short-range Thaumic Field Analyzer?” Silver said.

“Yeah, one of those. Threw it at a wall. Threw everything in her room, the nurse said. Busted up her table, and had to be put down by Lyra. I thought maybe Screwy had had another relapse . . . but Sweetheart said she was fine, said it was some kind of weird creature Lyra had been investigating. Royal Guard was all over the place last night, galloping through town with wagons and stuff, you remember.

“Well, right as I was about to start, this ape wearing a bedsheet comes out of the room. He goes over in front of my toolbox, and I thought he was going to steal it. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I’d have galloped off as fast as I could,” Allie admitted.

“I wanted to, but I didn’t want him to take my stuff. So I just kind of stood there, you know, waiting to see what he’d do. Ready to bolt. But he crouched down and just waited.

“I kinda took a second look at him, and he wasn’t so scary after all. He held out a talon, or paw, or whatever it is that apes have, and just kind of stayed there. I got a good smell of him—it was unforgettable. Kind of musky, with a subtle bit of forest and rain. And a hint of cow. Strong odor of salve—and his head was all bandaged up.

“He didn’t seem to be doing anything too aggressive, so I bumped hooves with him, and then—well, you’ll never guess what he did. He helped me fix the wall! He was kind of clumsy; you’d think with paws like his he’d be pretty good at cleaning lath and stuff, but he wasn’t that great. He did an okay job, though.”

Rivet sighed. “So what’s all that got to do with the embassy?”

“Rain, Rivet. Use that noggin of yours for thinking. Did it rain in Ponyville yesterday or the day before? No. Not a drop for the last week. So he musta come from somewhere else. Somewhere with a forest and cows.”

“Maybe he’s a minotaur,” Silver Spanner offered. “Remember Iron Will?”

“Too skinny, too short a muzzle, and no horns.”

“Did he look like this?” Allie pulled a sketch out of her bag.

Ambrosia eyed it critically. “Well . . . vaguely. Smaller eyes, a pointier nose—more of a beak, really. Mouth looked smaller, too. And he didn’t have any hair except on his legs, which was kind of weird. What is that thing?”

“I dunno. I got a letter from Twilight asking me to carve a relief of it as soon as possible. That’s what I needed the chisels for—it’s got shaggy fur, see?”

“Weren’t gonna tell me, were you?”

Allie raised an eyebrow. “I was too! I just hadn’t yet.”


•        •        •


“It’s nicer tonight than it was last night,” Daisy said. “We should’ve waited for the Guard to leave last night, before we came over.”

Roseluck swallowed a mouthful of clover. “Well, who knew they would be here?”

“I saw a couple of ponies running through town carrying a wagon,” Lily offered. “They were heading towards the hospital, they were.”

Junebug frowned. “Last night? Didn’t I hear that Lyra got hurt somehow? In a training exercise or something? Oh, who was it that told me?”

“I heard that, too.” Rose frowned. “Word was all over the market today. Nopony knew how, but that a big spell went wrong.”

“Hmf.” Lily dropped a tong-full of salad into her bowl. “Unicorns are always messing stuff up with their spells. Sometimes I think we’d be better off without them.”

“Half the stuff in your greenhouse is unicorn-made,” Junebug reminded her.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“Is she okay?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d stop by the hospital and ask, but there were Guards there and I thought maybe there was a quarantine or something, so maybe it was better that I didn’t go.” Junebug pawed at the table uncertainly. “It’s not like we’re close friends or anything.”

“There’s Bon Bon.” Rose pointed across the room. “She’ll know. Let’s ask her.”

Daisy frowned. “What if it’s bad? She might be mad if we ask.”

Rose pushed away from the table. “I’ll go over and see what’s going on. She’s with Apple Honey, and I’ve got some trellises on order, so I’ll just kind of make that my excuse.”

The three mares watched as she weaved through the crowd and over to the table where Bon Bon was talking while Apple Honey took notes. Lily bit her lip—the only reason she could think of for Apple Honey to be writing something down was if she had to write an obituary . . . but that couldn’t be, could it? Maybe Bon Bon just wanted to advertise some new candy or something like that.

Rose stood a small distance away from the pair, her ears focused on their conversation. As soon as it was obvious she’d been noticed, she moved forward and talked to Apple Honey for a few minutes, before giving Bon Bon a polite hug.

Once she’d returned to the table, the other mares bombarded her with questions. Rose held up a hoof for silence.

“I heard part of the conversation,” Rose began. “Bon Bon said Lyra’s moving to another house!”

Her companions stared at her in stunned silence. Finally, Daisy spoke. “No way.”

“Yeah. That one near Pearly’s old place, you know, that they’re fixing up.”

“Bon Bon said that?”

“Kinda. Not in so many words, but it was what she meant. I overheard that Lyra was okay—at least, it sounded like that, from what she was saying.” Rose ate a zinnea out of her salad. “Here’s what I think. She spends a month, near enough, up in Canterlot. Comes back, then she’s off to the reservoir with half the Royal Guard. Something happens, and she’s in the hospital, there’s Royal Guard at the entrance, and she’s okay but she’s not leaving. Isn’t it obvious?”

Daisy frowned. “No.”

Junebug shook her head, and Lily shrugged.

Rose sighed. “She found a stallion! She must have gone to Canterlot to train with the Guard, and when she was there, she met a handsome stallion. That’s why she didn’t come back, ‘cause she was madly in love with him. Then he came here to do that thing out at the reservoir, and he got hurt—maybe real bad, so he can’t be in the Guard any more. So all his buddies chipped in and got him a house in Ponyville, so he can recover with Lyra at his side.”

“I’m surprised that Bon Bon didn’t give him a good bucking—even if he is hurt. Poor girl.” Lily pushed her bowl away. “I wouldn’t let a stallion come between us, and if I see the stallion, I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind.”

“I’ll go talk to her at the market tomorrow,” Junebug offered. “Maybe invite her to join us here tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Lily looked at her brightly. “That’s a good idea. I’ll water the flowers over at the hospital—hasn’t rained all week—and see if I can spot Lyra’s mystery stallion. I wonder if it’s somepony we know?”













> Sea Swirl's Dive (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Onto the Pony Planet: Side Stories
Sea Swirl’s Dive
Admiral Biscuit



 This story takes place at the same time as A New Dawn part I.



Sea Swirl sat in the back of a small boat, in a spot which was mostly shaded by the derrick’s supports. Even in the cool morning air, she was too hot, but there was nothing she could do about it now. It was too hard to put her suit on in the boat, especially over all the layers of clothes she was wearing.

She glared at Coco’s back. He was leaning over the bow of the boat, slowly lowering a weighted shot-line. She could hear him counting quietly as each knot passed his hooves. When he reached fifty, she grimaced. That was one hundred fifty feet, and farther than she’d ever dived before. And still the line was spooling out.

They’d been lucky when it came to this salvage operation. Twilight had not only remembered that Sea Swirl had a diving suit and knew how to use it, but she’d also informed the Royal Guard that they were to offer her their assistance—which meant that their boat had been towed to the reservoir and launched with no work on her part. She’d even gotten a Unicorn Guard to braid her mane and tail before she got dressed.

If my tail wasn’t tied to my hind legs right now, I’d be swishing it in irritation, she thought. She wiped some sweat off her forehead. Coco had finally stopped playing out line and was clipping on a buoy.

“One eighty,” he announced. “Are you—”

“What’s the dive table say?”

Coco squinted down at a piece of oiled canvas nailed to the foredeck, by the winch. “About one hour down. Four up.”

She grimaced. It was going to be a long day. “All right.”

Sea Swirl double-checked her equipment. It was a ritual she’d learned years ago, and one which she never deviated from. What she was about to do was extremely hazardous.

Her boat was crowded, with two pump mechanisms on the foredeck and a derrick in the stern. The bespelled accordion bellows was happily pumping up and down—she had great faith in Twilight’s spells, and assumed it would keep operating for the required six hours, but machines and magic were known to fail, which was why it was backed up by her old hand-cranked air pump and Coco Crusoe. He’d also handle all the heavy lifting that was required.

Her last task was to throw a hoofful of enchanted orange and yellow glow-gems overboard. By finding them on the bottom of the reservoir, she’d hopefully define her search area. If not, they were going to have to wait for a diving bell to be freighted in from Baltimare.

“I’m ready,” she told Coco.

“Sure? It’s a long dive.”

She grinned. “If it works, Twilight owes me big-time. If not, we’ve lost nothing but a day. If things go really wrong . . . sell the house and what equipment you can recover, and head to the tropics like you’ve always wanted.”

“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” he muttered.

“I’ll be fine, Coco. I’ve done this before.” She lifted up her helmet and floated it over to her head. “Come on, bolt me in.”

She heard him fiddling with the fasteners for a minute, then her head was pushed forward as he connected the air hose. Now all the sounds from outside were completely muffled by the heavy copper helmet and the constant pulse of the bellows pump.

From now on, it was hoof signals only. Coco walked around to her front—where she could see him—and made a motion like pulling a rope, then nodded. I’m tethered, she thought. He walked around her, pressing his head against each of the joints in the suit, making certain none of them were leaking. She could feel his head against her body, and tensed when he pressed up against her rump. Instinct told her to buck him away, but she just took a deep breath and soon enough he moved on.

Once again he stood in front of her. He reached a hoof up and made a motion over his brisket, then nodded. Suit is airtight. Next he tapped his temple. Suit lights are on. She’d paid dearly for two crystal lamps, but without them she’d be operating mostly blind when she was underwater. Finally, he touched his forelock. Sea Swirl concentrated and slowly lifted a belaying pin out of the rail, eight feet in front of her muzzle. They’d devised that test years ago; it gave her an idea of horn range. The helmet blocked her spells, but she’d found the distance wasn’t always consistent. She wasn’t sure why, but it was important to know her assets and liabilities before each dive.

She stomped twice, then twice again: the signal that she was ready to dive. Coco moved away and a minute later she felt the reinforced straps around her barrel pull tight. As soon as her hooves were off the deck, Coco tugged on the derrick and swung her over the water. This was the tensest point of the operation—the boat was unstable with the derrick arm out, and if it capsized it would drag her down to the bottom with it. She was unlikely to be able to cut free from the rope and drop her weights in time to ascend.

Once he’d rotated her around and secured the counterweight, she began to feel the rhythmic tugs of the winch being wound out, and watched as the boat seemed to rise in front of her. Her hooves splashed into the reservoir, and sooner than she expected, the water was at neck level, then it was rising across her faceplate, and then she was underwater.

Her descent stopped after her helmet was fully submerged. She looked up, and a moment later Coco’s face peered out over the stern. He was making a final check for air bubbles. Finding none, he nodded and disappeared again. A moment later, Sea Swirl felt the air pressure in her suit begin to rise, before the spring valve kicked open and started venting the excess pressure. With a jerk, the line began to move again, and she started her descent.

When she snorkeled, there was a huge difference between above and below. Sounds became muffled and unfocused—it was kind of frightening to almost completely lose one of her most vital senses, and it was the first one that she noticed was gone. In her hardhat suit, though, there were no sounds except for the pssh-pah of the bellows pump, and the slightly oily smell of the air.

At this shallow depth, her headlights served no purpose except to attract fish. Already, they were schooling towards her, investigating the stranger in their midst. Some of the fish would just dart around her, while other kinds would bump into her suit before swimming off. She’d been nipped a few times when she was snorkeling, but it didn’t hurt. It was more like a pinchy kiss.

She focused her thoughts on the task at hoof. Coco was going to lower her until she got within a few feet of the ground, based on the length of the shot-line. She should come down in the middle of where the crystals landed, hopefully. After that, the plan got a little bit more vague. The last few feet of hoist-rope were run through a block-and-tackle, which she could use for minor altitude changes. If she needed more, she could inflate a green bag from the exhaust valve on her suit and send it up, and Coco would give her a hundred feet of line. At that point, she’d be able to move about pretty freely, but would be stirring up the muck on the bottom of the lake.

Sea Swirl tilted her head as far back as she could manage. She was in dusky water now, her vision limited to the extent of her headlamps. She could no longer make out anything on the surface, and of course the bottom was too far away to see. She’d entered a strange limbo world of blackness where nothing had meaning any more. A few larger fish swam up to her, darting in and out of her headlamps. One of them stayed with her for an eternity, lazily swimming circles around her. She could occasionally see him flash through the stream of bubbles coming from her exhaust valve.

Eventually, the water seemed to lighten—just an illusion caused by her lights reflecting off the bottom. She carefully reached up and turned her left headlamp off, sending that side of the world into darkness. Off in the distance, she could see a few crystals glowing. A yellow crystal had attracted a crab, who was attempting to eat it.

She kicked her legs to rotate herself around the rope. She had to be careful, because it was very easy to overcorrect. A careful, controlled motion was needed, but it took a few kicks to get moving. As she turned, she counted the crystals, watching their spread carefully. As best as she could tell, she’d landed on the very outside of their arc. It was a good sign; it meant that there was no current to speak of, and things generally fell straight down.

The rope stopped her a foot from the bottom. She tapped her left headlight back on and reached all four of her legs forward. The combination of the heavy helmet and her weighted boots shifted her center of gravity forward of the rope, and she pivoted nose-down until she was facing the bottom in a very weird position. Sea Swirl waved her front hooves to start her turning again, looking carefully where the light was focused. The last thing she wanted to do was land directly on top of the glasses.

After she’d completed her inspection of her landing zone and found nothing, she moved her legs back and slowly leveled out. She reached out with her horn, feeling for the brake on the block and tackle. When she found it, she tugged it loose, letting the rope unwind and drop her unceremoniously onto the lakebed. A huge cloud of silt billowed up around her, reducing her vision to inches. She counted patiently as it settled, watching to see if it drifted.

By the time she’d reached “30 pegasus pony,” it was clear enough to see the bottom again. Not great, but not terrible either. She’d dived in a lake where the bottom was so silty she’d only made two steps before being completely blinded, waiting out her time until Coco pulled her back up.

She grabbed the green bag off her suit and carefully held it in her aura over her exhaust valve. Once it was swollen with air, she tugged the drawstring shut and let it drift upwards. Once Coco saw it, he’d give her more slack.

There would be no signal to pull her back up. Once her bottom time had been reached, Coco would simply start winching the hoist. If they deviated from the plan, the rest stops would not come at the right time, and she’d suffer a very painful lingering death. That fact had been pounded into her by her instructors, day after day. She wasn’t sure she believed them—after all, fish could swim from the bottom to the surface with no ill effects, and dolphins could dive pretty deep, too. Still, they were so earnest, it was hard not to believe what they were telling her, and she’d seen the evidence for herself when she met a sandhog from Manehattan who acted like he was stepping on glass whenever he walked.

A minute passed before she felt the rope on her back loosen, then slowly fall across her body. She knew he would play the line out slowly, to give her time to move clear of it. She picked a pair of orange gems as her targets—one in front of her and one behind. She’d walk a line pattern, using them for a reference. If she was lucky, she’d find what she was looking for.

She cast a metal-finding spell—one of the handier spells she’d learned for underwater work—and began walking. One pace forward, moving slowly to minimize silt. Scan the lakebed. Look up at the glow-gem. One pace forward. It was a process that would stretch on into forever, and at the end of it she might have nothing to show for her effort.

Already she could tell that the pressure was affecting her. While her vision through the front port wasn’t very good to begin with, a faint greyish haze had begun to creep over her peripheral vision. It was not unexpected; she’d noticed that symptom on much shallower dives. It would go away once she ascended. It was inconvenient and annoying, but nothing more.

Step. Stop. Search. Spot. Step. Stop. Search. Spot. Her world narrowed to the nearly featureless grey landscape in front of her hooves. To deviate from the plan was to miss something, so she continued her cautious automatic pace. She reached the first glow-gem and turned around, walking one body-length over from her previous path.

Her horn occasionally picked out a small bit of metal. She’d give each a pull; if it was shallow enough in the silt to come out, she’d float it in front of her mask and inspect it before putting it into her bag. It always amazed her at the objects she found, and today was no exception. By her tenth lane, she’d picked up a half-dozen rusty nails, an ore-bearing rock which she tossed over into one of her previous search lanes, two empty cans, one bit coin, and a very rusty buckle.

Sea Swirl caught a movement out of the corner of her eye—sort of in the grey haze—and blinked. Did that gem just move? She glared at it, and it stayed in place, but now the bubbles coming from her exhaust valve seemed to have taken on a faint green hue. She turned her attention to the bubbles, and saw the gem begin to dance around again, and it was no longer alone. Whenever a gem was not in her direct line of sight, it started moving. I’ve never seen that before. A small knot of fear began gnawing at her stomach.

On her twentieth lane, she ran into a spear which was jabbed point-first into the bottom. She was so busy concentrating on the area of ground right in front of her muzzle that she walked right into it, knocking it over in a small puff of silt. She lifted it back up and held it in front of her muzzle, looking at it carefully. The tip was sparking in a faint magenta color, and she watched in wonder as motes of light spun off it and vanished into the dark water.

The spear seemed very important, and she struggled to remember if it was why she was here. It was getting harder and harder to remember what she was doing in this wasteland. But she remembered that there was a pouch on her left foreleg, and that was where the . . . thing she was looking for was supposed to go. The spear wouldn’t fit, so it must not be what she wanted. She dropped it again and moved on. Step. Stop. Search. Spot. 

Another long stretch of slow plodding yielded her an additional copper coin—nation of origin unknown—and a horseshoe. Her dive bag was beginning to look like she’d been gathering the detritus found outside a smithy.

She found the glasses on lane twenty-seven. Without her spell, she never would have spotted them, but the faint glow around the frames made them stand out. 

As she had with the spear, she held them in front of her face mask. She fought to find the perfect distance—too far, and she couldn’t see details; too close and they were inside of the helmet lights. Sea Swirl had to work to keep them steady enough to examine. Whenever she looked away from them, they twisted away from her telekinesis and she had to move her head around until she could find where they went.

They had thin wire frames and unusual earpieces that didn’t seem like something a pony would make. She almost threw them back down as useless, but there was a nagging thought in her mind that they were important. Somewhere, she had a pouch which they should go in, but she couldn’t remember quite where it was.

She reached up a hoof to steady them—they were wavering in her field again—and noticed a small pouch on the leg of her suit, with a short length of twine floating freely. Gingerly, she slid them into the pocket, holding her leg uncomfortably high so that it was fully illuminated by her suit’s lights. She worked slowly, because most of her dexterity was gone and if she dropped them during her ascent, they might never be found.

She carefully laced the twine on the flap closed, cinching the top down tight, before looping a clove hitch over the bottom button. She yanked it as tight as she could. The lacing would have to be cut off when she got back to the top, but that was all right. She’d no longer have any use for the pouch this dive, and she could re-string it on the boat. 

She began her slow, plodding walk again. Off in the distance, she could see a single orange glow which remained steady, and thought it was something she ought to head towards. Her hooves were absurdly heavy, and it was very hard to walk. She began to sweat despite the chill, and felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck. 

She stopped abruptly when she came across a trail of hoofprints in the silt. They were not clear at all, and looked like somepony had been dragging its hooves. The only creature she knew that wandered around in dark, vacant places and dragged its hooves was a zombie. She began to become convinced that a zombie was following her, and looked around in fear. There were no zombies to be seen—but that’s when zombies were the most dangerous. When they couldn’t be seen. Everypony knew that. Her heart began to beat faster.

Suddenly, the harness around her belly pulled tight and tugged her hooves off the bottom. Sea Swirl shrieked as she bounced up and dropped back down.

In a panic, she tried to run, but there was something holding her back. It was like a nightmare as her hooves dug into the soft ground, kicking up clouds of sediment but accomplishing nothing else. She could feel herself beginning to be dragged backwards, and there was nothing she could do about it. Her head was filled with a loud panting noise that she knew was coming from herself, and a strange pssh-pah that was obviously coming from the monster.

Clouds of silt completely blocked her view, reflecting the lights on her helmet back at her face. She thought about trying to pull the helmet off, but vaguely remembered that it was held down with large wing nuts she probably couldn’t loosen in time. Some other reason was nagging at her memory, but before she could ponder it further, her hooves lifted free of the ground for the final time and left her uselessly trying to gallop while suspended.

She started twisting on her rope, and started to feel nauseated. Finally accepting defeat, she stopped moving, closed her eyes, and waited for whatever came next. She hoped it wouldn’t be painful.

A faint jerkiness to her upward motion finally percolated through her brain, and she remembered that she had been diving. Coco must be pulling me back up. She concentrated on slowing her breathing and paying attention to the movement of the rope. He liked to move the winch crank faster on the downstroke, letting her know when she was moving and when she was not.

Details began to come back, and she thought about the strange things she’d seen on the bottom. Another diver had told her that deep water dives could cause hallucinations, and she wondered if that had happened to her. Certainly, there hadn’t been any zombies on the bottom; that was in her imagination. It wasn’t her imagination that the pouch on her leg was securely tied shut, so she knew she’d gotten what she came for.


•        •        •


The anticipation of the dive had long since worn off, and the euphoria of finding the glasses was gone now, too. All that was left was the slight giddiness of breathing compressed air for so long, and she tried her best to ignore it. There wasn’t much she could do, anyway. She was totally alone, floating in a hostile environment, utterly dependant on Coco for her life. Of the thousands of things that could go wrong, at this point he was the only pony who could fix them; if he couldn’t, she’d die. It was that simple, and strangely, it didn’t bother her at all. It was liberating—short of cutting her own air line or the winch rope, she had no control over her destiny.

What was it that allows me to trust Coco so fully? She didn’t know. They didn’t have what anypony else would consider a normal relationship; neither one of them had the slightest interest in starting a family together. Coco wanted to go to the tropics, and sooner or later she’d move back to the coast to stay, but they just went on with their lives together. He had his friends and she had hers. She liked to go to the bowling alley or hang out by the water, while he preferred an evening at the tavern if he was feeling social, or sitting home with a book about the tropics if he wasn’t. Sometimes they’d go weeks without any contact, and other times they’d spend the night together—usually at Coco’s home. Sometimes they had sex, other times they didn’t. 

She watched as fish darted through the beams of her headlamps. She liked watching fish. Sometimes she’d put her weight belt over her back, strap on her goggles and snorkel, and just walk into the water and watch the fish play for hours.

She slowly rose further. The water lightened to the point where she no longer needed her headlamps, so she turned them off.  She could see the shadowy shape of the boat above, but was still too deep to make out any details. What felt like an eternity of waiting began, and she knew it would only get longer as she got closer. The last few stops were tantalizingly close to the surface, but to leave too quickly would kill her. In that regard, she had much in common with her scaly friends.

She shivered inside her suit. The water was still cold—and all the layers she was wearing didn’t seem to be doing their job. Of course, it didn’t help that she’d been panicking down there on the bottom. The light that was filtering down from above was little more than a tease, and she knew that she still had hours to go before she could come back out of the water.

Her clothes were uncomfortably bunched up under her elbow, right where the front strap of the hoist ran, but there was nothing she could do to shift the wrinkles. She could already feel a welt forming.


•        •        •


The sun was blazing far overhead when Coco finally pulled her free of the water. He cinched the brake on the winch and released the counterweight, carefully swinging her around until she was back over the deck, rocking slightly back-and-forth on her rope.

When he finally lowered her to the deck, she had to take a moment to remember how to stand. He wasted no time in unbolting her helmet and pulling it loose. As her suit sagged around her, Sea Swirl took deep breaths of fresh air, blowing a couple of times to clear the residue of oil and rubber and her own sweat from her nostrils. 

Coco, meanwhile, unstrapped the weights from her back and loosened her lead-plated shoes. He gently lifted each hoof free and set it down again, letting her take her time getting her legs back under her. His eyes went over to the pouch. “You got it?”

“Yup.” She yawned. “Help me out of this suit. I’ve got to pee like crazy and then get some food in me.” She untied the pouch from her leg and floated it over to their valuables box. The box was watertight, and painted a brilliant yellow, so if it fell overboard and sank, she’d be able to find it again. With just the glasses in it, the box would float, so she made sure it was clear of any obstructions. If something happened to the boat, she was damned if she was going to go back down again.

Coco nuzzled her gently, unbothered by the film of sweat on her neck and her matted-down coat. Her mane had come askew from its braid and was crazily sticking up. “Roll over.”

He worked the suit loose, carefully sliding it down her body an inch at a time. He moved slowly, making sure it didn’t snag on anything on the boat. As awkward as it was, it was the only way for a pony to remove a one-piece suit. Any fastener could leak, so it was best to avoid them entirely.

The inside of the suit was filled with condensed sweat, muddy talcum powder, and clumps of loose fur. It was unavoidable, really; a watertight suit worked both ways. Once Coco had set it off to the side, he began helping her take off the rest of her clothes. They worked quickly, throwing them into a pile near the derrick. Later, she’d have to wash all of it. 

Once he got the socks on her hind legs off, he unwrapped the cotton strips that held her tail to her cannon, letting it fall free. Later, once all the dive gear was secured, he’d help her unbraid and untangle her mane and tail, but for now just being free from her legs was good enough.

“I’m going up to the bow,” she said, flicking her liberated tail.

“Wind,” he reminded her.

“Stern, then.” She stuck her tongue out. He ignored her and picked up her suit with his teeth, hanging it on the side of the derrick and securing it with a short length of rope. Her saddlebags were tucked under the winch mount, and her helmet was slid into a box. 

He unspooled a few feet of winch line, and snapped the hook around a short steel rod. He cranked it up, to take tension off the safety pins, and pulled them loose, then unwound the winch until the counterweight had descended to a few inches above the water. It looked silly, but it would make the boat far more stable.

“Box of sandwiches up in the bow. Made ‘em myself.”

“I’ll take you up on that.” Sea Swirl stepped carefully around the tangle of lines.

“Wanna keep the shot-line down, or pull it?”

“I got what we came for,” she said, lifting the lid and selecting a sandwich. She floated it to her muzzle and took a sniff before stuffing half of it in her mouth. “Af e’m wron, u’ll cwm ay awter tomaww.”

“Didn’t your mom tell you it was rude to talk with your mouth full?”

She swallowed and glared at him. “You come up here and I’ll show you rude.” He ignored her and sat on the center bench. He slipped his hooves through the loops on the oars.

“Get the anchor.” Without waiting for a response, he dug the oars into the water and pulled, causing the unicorn to stumble before regaining her footing. As he rowed, she started turning the crank on the windlass. There’d be a lot of line out; the depth of the water demanded it. Fortunately, there was no current on the lake, and there’d been no appreciable wind, or else he’d have had to set all three anchors, and they didn’t own enough line for that. As it was, he’d spliced the stern anchor line into the bow anchor. and it was still shorter than it should have been.

“I’m gonna hand those glasses over to the guard as soon as we get ashore,” she muttered, starting a second sandwich. “You know what I’m gonna do then?”

“Nope.”

“I’m gonna trot over to your house and go soak in your tub long enough for you to stow everything on the boat and get her out of the water.”

“Uh-huh.” He kept rowing, picking up speed now that the anchor was finally clear of the water.

“Yeah. Then I’m going to head over to the spa and have Lotus untangle my hair.”

“I can do that, if you want.”

“You’re going to be busy making sure the guards don’t damage the boat.”

“I will be.” He’d reached his perfect pace, and just concentrated on dipping the oars in the water, pulling them up to his barrel, and repeating the process.

“I’ll come back once Lotus’s done, don’t worry.”

“Wasn’t.” 

Sea Swirl glared at him. It did her no good; his back was to her. “I’m not gonna let you mess up my mane.”

“You’re the one who needs to calm down,” he muttered. “If it gets mussed, it’s on you. I’ll have dinner waiting for when you get back.”

“There are some veggies in my pantry. Can you make a salad with them? I don’t want them to spoil.”

“Yup.” Pull. Return. Dip. Pull. “Everything hold up okay down there?”

“Not very good visibility. We might want to think about running more line through the pulley. Try it out in shallow water and see what works. Too much and I risk tangling the air hose.”

“Gotta tell Twilight her come-to-life spell worked like a charm.” The bellows-pump was still merrily going up and down. “I’ll keep an eye on it, so we know how long it’ll run.” Not breaking his rhythm, he turned to look at her. “How did you do?”

Sea Swirl gazed out over the reservoir. Flashes of sunlight off the wavelets glittered like diamonds. Up close to the shore, a pegasus guard swooped low to the water, dragging his hooves to raise a splash before banking towards them. She knew she was taking too long to answer, but he didn’t press her. “It was difficult.” She didn’t want to lie to him, but she didn’t want to tell him the whole truth, either. As much as she trusted him, he had never done a deep dive, and that was a gulf between them. She didn’t expect him to, not if he didn’t want to—but neither could she fully explain what it was like, when he had no frame of reference.

The two of them fell silent. Sea Swirl sat down in the bow, her hunger abated. Coco kept the boat moving at a good pace across the placid waters of the reservoir. 

She put a hoof in the water and watched it vee around her, the ripples and splashes glittering like diamonds. Already she missed the bottom, the strange world that few ponies knew. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t dive—she couldn’t—but maybe the day after they could bring the boat back out to the reservoir and she could explore in shallower water. Take her time. Maybe just watch the fish swimming around. That would be nice.




> New Embasee (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Embasee in Ponyville!

Ponyville is now home to the newest Equestrian embasee which is located at Moonglow’s old house.  Which is currently being remodeled.  Many local construction ponies are working on the building.  Which is going to be finished next week.  So stop by and greet them when your out and about.

Yesterday, Fancy Pants, of Canterlot told me that our very own Lyra Heartstrings had been voted by a majority of the Noble’s Council to be the Equestrian ambassador, her being voted over Prince Blueblood.  Which is a great honor for our small town.  You may remember that Lyra hasn’t been around town for a month, well she was in Canterlot.  She had been meeting with a new species.  Which ponies haven’t met before.

Last night, I spoke with my cousin Bon Bon at the Prancing Pony, where fresh spring garden salads are back on the menu!  So you should stop by.  Bon Bon has met one of the creatures.  Who is called ‘Dale.’

She said he looked pale and gaunt, but that it was hard to tell because he was wrapped in bandages.  She said he looked like a little lost foal.  I know a certain pink pony is planning a welcoming party, but we can all help make him feel welcome.  She said Lyra told her that he had protected her during their last meeting, and made sure that Lyra came home.

I am having an exclusive interview with Lyra tomorrow.  Which will be published in a special eddition of the Ponyville Express.  Which you can get in the morning.  Also tomorrow  their is an assembly at the Ponyville town hall, where Mayor Mare will officially announce the Embasee and, we hope, introduce Dale.  Its sure to be a big deal, and I hope to see you all.

> Cartoons
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Twilight's cartoon drawing of Dale and Lyra walking to the town hall






Dale's sketch of him and Twilight taking turns asking questions
> Ponyville Express: Special Edition
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ponyville Express
Special Edition
Admiral Biscuit

Yesterday, our small town has seen an event the likes of which it hasn't seen before except when Nightmare Moon returned or the Star-Bear. Which was a trial of one of our own, Lyra Heartstrings.

You may remember that Lyra recently met with a new species and was voted as the new ambassador. Well, yesterday she had to go to trial, becuase some fancy unicorn from out east accused her of all sorts of terrible things. Which weren't true at all.

In no small part because of the brilliant defense by Fancy Pants, Lyra was found innocent, and the stallion who said all the terrible things was punished by Princess Luna. Hopefully he learns his lesson!

After it was over, Fancy Pants talked to me at my shop (where theres a sale on leftover seeds, so come and get them if your thinking about planting a garden this year). I can now tell you the WHOLE story about how Dale came to our town. His name is strange becuse he isn't a pony.

Princess Celestia visited an alien land, and she had Lyra with her. This was a few months ago.

They met Dale there. Some of Princess Celestia's guards were scared, but not our Lyra. She wanted to step outside of the protective field, and see him more closely. Which she did. They coulnd't talk, but they got the idea acorss that they wanted to meet again, and Princess Celestia thought it was a good idea, so Lyra and Twilight Sparkle started to study that, until they had a good idea what to do.

The first meeting went off without a hitch. Lyra learned a lot of stuff from him, and he gave her books which she brough back. Books so complicated that even the unicorns in Canterlot can't figure them out.

Lyra spend a day back in town before she went back again. This time, Dale showed her to his home. He lives simply, close to nature, in a small clearing in the woods. He was not with any other of his kind. Lyra and Dale shared lunch and spent the whole day talking to each other, until it was time for Lyra to go home again.

When they came back to the beach, there were two stallions like Dale there who came in boats. Except they were more agressive, and so he held them at bay. While he gave Lyra time to get back to the spell, and make her way home again.

Once he was sure that he had held them off, he galloped along with her, just in case somepony else tried to stop her. And it was a good thing he did. There was a mare on the beack, who was confused. She had a powerful wand, and she used it to suck all the magic out of Lyra who didn't have time to prepare a proper defensive spell.

That caused the magic field to collapse.

So then Lyra came back, but so did Dale and the mare. We've seen Dale around town, and he's kind of weird and looks like a starved minotaur but without fur because it came off in the spell, but everypony agrees he's got a good heart, and he made quick friends with not only the nurses in the hospital, but also with a pony who had to repair a damaged wall. He was at the embasee meeting with Mayor Mare and Twilight Sparkle and they both said how nice he was.

Some 'noble' unicorns think they know better than we do though and they wanted to put Lyra on trial and lock her up and take him away from us. They said things which anypony would see were completely made up. I was at the trial, and watched as someponies fell for Noble Voice's slick talk and fancy words but Fancy Pants and Fleur Dee Lis weren't fooled and showed him. Also Princess Luna saw through his tricks and even though she let him continue for longer than any sensible mare would have she had him taken away before he could finish. Which he deserved.

So now Lyra has been found innocent, and we hope she will put this behind her. And Dale can be seen at the embasee. Soon, we're sure, he'll be walking the streets of Ponyville, and we hope that everypony will be nice to him. Give him a hoof-bump or a nuzzle. He went out of his way to make sure that Lyra came home, and even if he looks kind of funny and can't talk much, he's the kind of stallion which does a town like our's good.

Also, you may remember that recently a small herd of Canterlot unicorns came into town on the train? Well they were to help out with medical treatement for Dale and the mare whose called Ka-th-rin, but they didn't have much to do. Our exemplary doctors and nurses at the hospital—aided by Zecora and Doctor Goodall—made the mare all better, so she just was released from the hospital and is at the embasse now where she will finish her recovery.

And I know your all curious after Mayor Mare's speech . . . I've heard that as soon as the embasee is finshed, it will be open to the public, and we can all go meet Dale. My cousin Ambrosia says its coming along nicely, and they will be done in a couple more days. If you don't see her, be sure to stop by the library or Sugarcube Corner for the latest updates—and have a strawberry shortcake while your there. The strawberries are freshly picked, and Daisy Jo's sent a special batch of cream. So now's the time to have one.



> Analyzing the Visual Dictionary in Canterlot
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

OPP Side Stories
Analyzing the Visual Dictionary in Canterlot
Admiral Biscuit

Professor Rowan resisted the urge to rest his hooves on the balcony railing as he looked down into the foyer at the students milling about. Somewhere down there would be their department’s guest, a stallion he'd never met before in his life.

Not that that was a new thing. Each semester, he saw new faces in his classroom . . . but they were mostly bright-faced young unicorns, eager to have the wisdom of the ages imparted upon them. Was it any wonder that he was apprehensive at the thought of meeting somepony who existed far outside the hallowed halls of academia?

Rowan knew him the moment he walked through the doors. The stallion was wearing nothing but a sweat-stained cap on his head, and an unfashionable yellow bandanna around his neck. Why didn’t we have him come in a back entrance, out of sight of the students?  

The stallion knew he was out of place. His eyes were wide as he glanced around the spotless lobby. As a duo of mares changed course to avoid him, he glanced down at his soot-stained fetlocks and absently rubbed a hoof on his kerchief. Professor Rowan died a little inside—such behavior was unforgivably gauche.  No wonder the students were avoiding him.

I have no choice, he reminded himself. As the most junior professor in the Mechanical Science department, the unpleasant chore of meeting with an actual workingpony had fallen upon him.

Professional pride, he reminded himself as he straightened his bowtie. Rumors of what had befallen Bright Star and some of her department heads ran rampant through the university, and they had been warned to be certain that the same fate did not befall them.  They would do what they had to in order to get results, distasteful though it might be.

Rowan moved from his position and began carefully descending the curved stairway to the ground floor. His guest had stopped in the center of the room, and was staring with wide-eyed wonder at the fountain in the center of the lobby. Don't even, he thought, but it was to no avail; the earth pony reached under his yellow bandanna and flicked a brass coin into the water. Conversations in the lobby temporally lulled, before returning full-force.

If he'd noticed that he was suddenly the center of unwanted attention, the stallion gave no sign. He moved to study the small plaque under a statue of Starswirl as Professor Rowan finally reached the polished marble of the lobby floor.  Rowan flinched as he caught the stallion’s scent—smoke and grease and sweat.

“Mister Steamer?” The stallion glanced at him. “Will you follow me, please?”

Once again, the conversation in the lobby quieted, only to return with a vengeance a moment later. Rowan pretended not to notice, but he could hardly help his ears flicking about as the students began their gossip again. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched as he crossed the final gulf between himself and his visitor.

The stallion held up a foreleg, and Rowan gritted his teeth and gave him a brief bump back, trying not to think of what foulness might be on the stallion's hoof.

“Fancy building you've got here,” the stallion said.  “Not used to being someplace this fancy.”

“The University was commissioned by Princess Celestia Herself,” Rowan said mechanically. “It was the second public building to break ground in Canterlot, after the Palace compound.” He led the stallion along the wide corridors, keeping up a brisk pace. One ear was cocked back, monitoring his guest's progress, while the other monitored the voices around him. He couldn't help but worry that he might run into one of his students—or worse, Professor Goldenrod, who he was working up the courage to ask out on a date.

Several flights of stairs and corridors later, they finally arrived in the nascent Mechanical Science wing. Even though it was looked down upon by most of the faculty, he was proud to offer a scientific basis for machinery here in Canterlot, unlike the uneducated experimenters in Detrot who simply threw together machines which as often as not tore themselves apart. Here, everything was planned out on paper beforehoof.

“Right this way, please,” Rowan said, opening a door with his magic. “Wipe your hooves on the mat, if you would.”

Steamer let out an annoyed snort, and pawed at the mat hard enough to wrinkle it, before crossing the threshold into the room. His eyes were immediately drawn to a gleaming brass steam engine, bigger than a pony, that took up an entire wall. The chimney passed along the ceiling and out a window. Without Rowan's leave, he walked over to it and ran a hoof lovingly along the shining boiler.

“We fire it for the students,” Rowan explained. “So that they can get an idea of how to operate one. They're the up and coming thing, you know. Can do the work of several ponies. One day, we might be able to make them small enough to power a single cart.”

“Hmf.” Steamer frowned. “Who'd want that? A cart's easy enough to pull. Imagine how much water and fuel you'd have to carry if you wanted it to go any distance. The future of the steam engine is in bigger trains and boats.”

“That's why we called you here.” A middle-aged stallion with half-rimmed spectacles stepped forward. “I'm Professor Neighsmyth, head of the Mechanical Science department.  You’ve met Professor Rowan.  These are my colleagues, Professors Flankine and Hackworth, and visiting professor Sir Neigel Gearsley.  We . . . well, we're in a bit of a quandary.” He lowered his head. “In fact, we've got something we can't make head nor tail of, and Princess Celestia wants to know just what we're looking at.” He motioned over to a table in the center of the room.

Steamer trotted eagerly over to the table, and the other professors moved slightly back. He didn't notice; he picked up a heavy iron apparatus and gave it a quick glance. “It's a governor. Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not that.” Neighsmyth had the courtesy to blush slightly. “Drawings. I know what a governor is.” He plucked it out of Steamer's grasp and set it gently on a workbench behind them. “Over here—these drawings. Let me spread them out for you. They're copies from a book that came from a foreign land.”

Steamer looked at the drawings intently, moving back and forth along the table as he studied one and then another. Stopping at one in particular, he leaned down until his muzzle was nearly touching the paper. Rowan took a step forward to move him back from the precious documents, but Neighsmyth held up a leg to stop him.

“One of the things I learned in Detrot,” he whispered, “is that many of the tinkers have a very good eye for how something might work, or how it might be put together.”

“Nopony knows how these are put together,” Rowan insisted. “I don't know why we're wasting our time with—“

“Okay.” Steamer took a step back from the table. “Is this some kind of joke? Who made these drawings? Griffons?  Cows?”

“No, it's—“

“Minotaurs,” Professor Flankine interrupted. “Well, a cousin to the minotaur. They live in a far-off land, we've been told.”

Steamer waited for a better explanation, but none was forthcoming. “You know, it would be very helpful to give me a better idea of what I might be looking at in order to tell you what I'm seeing.” He pointed to a drawing. “What's their track gauge, for one? Equestrian standard? Broad? Narrow?”

“I don't know if we can tell you,” Rowan said.

“Well I don't know if I can tell you what I see, then.”

“What Professor Rowan means to say,” Neighsmyth said, “is that this is a new situation, and we're not sure how much the Princesses want to be public. I don't have terribly much more information than what you see before you. We do know that the creatures who drew these are about the size of an adult male minotaur.”

“Are you assuming that they're meant to be used by the same creatures?”

“That's a reasonable assumption, yes.”

“Thank you.” He took of his cap, brushed his mane back, and tucked his cap back on. “Let's begin with the passenger coach. I’ve never seen one—how tall would you say a minotaur is?”

“About twice as tall and twice as wide as a pony,” Rowan said. “They have broad shoulders.”

“So that gives us a good size reference,” Steamer said. “Obviously, this is a passenger coach. It has individual seats instead of benches, so that gives us a really good idea of just how big it is. Using your estimate, the coach would be as wide as ten ponies standing shoulder-to-shoulder, or even a little bit wider, since minotaurs might not like crowding that tight.  Aren’t they kind of solitary?”

“There are only four seats across,” Rowan countered.  “Two on each side.”

“Got to count the aisle, too,” Neighsmyth reminded him.

“Exactly.” He stepped back from the table. “It looks to me like the wheels are tucked in quite far, so their track gauge might not be that much wider than ours. It looks quite unstable, to be honest. Such a coach would have trouble on curves—it might fall off the inside, or the outside if it were moving at any sort of speed.  Superelevation would help it keep to the rails, but it still couldn’t make any kind of sharp turn—the overhang in the middle would be quite pronounced.

“What interests me more is this.” He slid a drawing towards himself. “This is clearly a steam locomotive, built to an unimaginable scale. Whoever came up with this is technologically far ahead of us.”

“Why?”

“Because it's huge. It would have to be, to pull cars that size. Just imagine if one were full to capacity with ponies—the passenger weight alone would be ten tons or more. Add the weight of the coach, and it must weigh thirty or forty tons when it's full. And nopony builds a train to haul just one coach . . . . if it had ten, that's four hundred tons that the locomotive has to pull. Plus its own weight, of course. I can't imagine how they can build a big enough fire to make enough steam . . . unless. . . .” He touched a hoof to the drawing. “Ingenious.”

“What do you see?” Neighsmyth looked at him hopefully.

“They made the firebox bigger by putting it behind the drive wheels. See, that's what those wheels in the back are for, to carry the weight of the firebox. They can extend it all the way out—here's the line between the firebox and the boiler. All the running gear's exposed; that's not very neat, but I suppose it would make maintaining it easier.

“And it's fast. Look how big the drivers are. Oh, I'd love to see the real thing. I bet you could stand on your hind hooves and barely touch the tops of the drivers.”

“Why does that make it fast?” Rowan asked curiously.

“Because the bigger the wheel, the further it goes on each stroke of the piston.” Steamer balanced himself on the table and began to move his leg back and forth. “Imagine my leg is a piston, pushing on the side rods. It can only go so fast before it breaks—there are mechanical limits to how quickly you can move a piston back and forth. You can get more distance traveled out of each of those strokes by making the wheel bigger, see? The downside is that it has less tractive effort when it first starts off, so it needs loads of extra power to get those wheels moving.

“Now, if we look at the tender, we can get an idea for how much appetite this locomotive has.  It looks like they use coal, and it’s piled up as high as the top of the cab.  Behind that would be its water supply, fed into the boiler from a pipe, no doubt.  It’s carrying a lot of water; that’s why the trucks have six wheels each.  Boilers may have a healthy appetite for fuel, but they go through water like a swarm of parasprites.”  Steamer squinted at the drawing.  “There’s some kind of ladder . . . probably so the firepony can get on top without climbing the coal.  There would be water hatches on the back deck, of course.  But what’s this next to the coupler?”

He leaned forward to get a closer look while the professors chattered behind him. “I think they've invented automatic brakes, too,” he declared. “I think that's what this little piece is for.”

“That could be a safety connection,” Professor Hackworth suggested.

“No.” He shook his head. “Look at their coupler design. It's like two interlocking hooks, and it's big. Whatever this little piece is, it's not to assure the couplers stay together. It's not big enough. You'd need a massive chain for that—a normal rope wouldn't do it.  You could make a wire rope strong enough, I suppose, but it would have to have an eye in the end, unless you planned to never unhook the cars. See, all the other drawings of railcars have them, too. I bet when they're all connected, the brakepony can pull a lever in the locomotive and it applies the brakes on all the cars. The locomotive itself wouldn't be able to stop that many cars at once.”

“Why not? Our locomotives can.”

“Not on hills, they can't. Haven't you ever seen a train slide through the station? Why do you think we put brake vans on the end of some trains?” He squinted at the drawings of the cars. “I wish that there was a detailed look at their brake system. We always seem to have problems with slack in the ropes.  I’ve heard Westinghorse is experimenting with a hydraulic system, but they can’t build enough water pressure in the pipes to get good braking action, and if the system leaks, you lose all your brakes.  But if the minotaurs built something this big, they've got that problem licked.”

Gearsley nodded his head. “Is there enough information here, do you think, for your shop to build one?”

“A locomotive like this? No. Give us another decade or two, and then maybe. Maybe we'd understand the principles enough to build one this size.”

Rowan stepped forward. “What if we can get actual blueprints?”

Steamer shook his head. “No ironworks would be big enough to lay the frame. I doubt wheels that size could be cast . . . and it wouldn't be of any use, even if we did build it.”

“I don't understand why not.”

“It's too big and too heavy. It would collapse the first trestle it ventured across, if the thrust from the drivers didn't tear the rails out from underneath as soon as the engineer opened the throttle. Unless the middle drivers were blind, it would never make it around a curve—and it might not, even then.”

“Oh.” Rowan looked at the drawings sadly.

“What about this, then?” Neighsmyth picked up another drawing and held it in front of Steamer. “What do you make of this?”

“They understand the principles of streamlining . . . but it has no drive wheels. Hmm.” Eager faces crowded around him, awaiting his next pronouncement. “It could be gear-driven, I suppose. I don't see any smokestack, and the roof's pretty clean, except for this array on the top. It could be a magic receiver? No, that doesn't make any sense. It would take dozens of unicorns to power this over any real distance. Even some strong come to life spells wouldn't take it all that far—believe me, we've tried. Unless that wire isn't attached to the locomotive, but is strung overhead . . . then it might pick up enough field energy to move the thing. They'd have to have a complex crystal array inside, though. Or it could just be a way to communicate with the telegraph system while in motion. Yes, that makes more sense. They put these on the front to streamline the train, and a locomotive pushes from the rear.  That’s why it doesn’t have a coupler at the front.  A pilot up here can relay train orders back to the engineer.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Smoke.  It’s bad enough on our locomotives, especially if you’ve got a green firepony who can’t build the fire right, or an engineer who works it wrong.  Imagine how much smoke this would make.  Every light-coated pony on the train would be bitterly complaining about the soot.  But, if the locomotive is in the back, the smoke runs behind the train, and nopony aboard can see it or smell it.”

“I meant talk to the telegraph.  Why would you need to do that?” 

“So you don't have to stop at every station and pick up train orders. Look at the size of the tender on that locomotive. They mean for it to carry a lot of fuel and water, so it won't have to stop as often.  That’s the only reason why you’d want to carry that much weight in water—but you lose that advantage if you still have to stop at every station to pick up orders. Our locomotives don't carry enough water to skip a station and still make it to the next without stopping; this one could.”

Rowan shook his head. “I still don't understand. Why does it need orders? It's on a track; it can't go where it's not supposed to.”

“Look, son, most of Equestria is single-tracked. That means that only one train at a time can be on a particular section. But they need to go in both directions, right? So they have to meet somewhere where there’s a siding and pass each other.

“When things go right, it's all governed by the timetable. Let's say that the train to Baltimare leaves Canterlot and stops at the base of the mountains so the train from Baltimare can pass it and head up the mountain. Well, now suppose the Baltimare train is running late? The Canterlot train will waste a lot of time waiting for it to arrive. So, maybe the dispatcher tells them to go on to the next station and wait there. Now the orders have been modified, and the Baltimare train has lost its track rights. If they don't know that—if, for whatever reason, they run by their station without stopping—they're going to run head-on into the Canterlot train.

“Or let's say that a train breaks down between two stations. When it's late, all we can do is have somepony walk the rails until she finds it—or fly, if there’s a pegasus at the station—and all the other trains that are supposed to be traveling down that line are stuck until it's located, and then we have to find out if it's an equipment failure, a derailment, a damaged section of track . . . it takes hours and hours.

“This way, all the trains can communicate with each other at once, and with all the stations, too. It's much safer. They'd have to have a telegraph operator in each train, of course. He could pass the orders along to the engineer. We've been experimenting with a similar system ourselves. It's still got a ways to go; we really need a way to isolate the public telegraph system from the railroad system, and extra train-only wires might just be the way to do it.”

“That's interesting.” Neighsmyth looked at the drawing thoughtfully. “Professor Sparks, would you have your students do a feasibility study of the type of communication system Steamer is describing? Once you've come up with some workable ideas, I'm sure the railroad would be interested in experimenting with them.”

“So, here’s how they must run their trains,” Professor Flankine observed.  “The have this streamlined pilot coach in front.  Behind that, a number of passenger coaches, and then the locomotive bringing up the rear.  How do you suppose they would crew such an arrangement?  It seems less efficient—we can make do with an engineer and a firepony.  They could have no less than three.”

“Four, I would say.”  Steamer furrowed his brow.  “You’d have a pilot in the lead coach, watching the tracks and relaying orders to the engineer.  Then the telegraph operator—I don’t think you could expect the pilot to also translate telegraph code.  He could also serve as a head-end brakepony.  On the hind end of the train, you’d have the engineer who’s faithfully carrying out the pilot’s orders, and the firepony.”

“But how could an engineer properly run the train if he couldn’t even see where he was going?  He’d bang the coaches together too hard, and everypony would complain.”  Rowan looked at Steamer earnestly.  “I was on an overnight train from Manehattan that banged so hard when it left the station that my wineglass nearly fell over.”

“That was slack action,” Steamer told him.  “Because all the coaches run into the locomotive when it stops, and then are pulled apart one after another when the train starts again.  With the locomotive on the back, that wouldn't be a problem.  It has nothing to do with the engineer being able to see where he’s going.”

“It’s my understanding that a train is slow to respond,” Professor Flankine said, “because it weighs so much.  A good engineer looks at the rails ahead of him, and can adjust his speed in advance.  How could he do that properly if he can’t see what lies ahead?”

“Steamships use a speaking tube or a bell to communicate between the pilothouse and the engine room,” Steamer reminded him.  “Surely the same system could work on a locomotive.  It might take a bit of getting used to, but it could be done.”

Neighsmyth nodded.  “It might be a better system,” he admitted.  “Perhaps, Professor Flankine, you would be so kind as to have your students delve into the operating advantages of pushing rather than pulling.  It could be that we’re so used to pulling carts that we have made a logical mistake in applying pony principles to a machine.”  He turned back to the desk and selected two new sheets of paper.  “Now, Steamer, your trains also have freight cars, don’t they?”

He nodded.  “Of course.  Moving freight by rail is the most efficient system there is—why, whole industries have sprung up around that concept.  Did you know it used to take almost a month to get a wagon of wheat from Neighbraska to Manehattan?  We can do it in a week!”

“We've guessed that these must be different types of freight car,” Rowan said, pointing to another page. “Do you agree?”

Steamer’s eyes widened as he looked down at the page.  “So many different types. Using the wheels as scale, they must be as big as the passenger cars, and carry as much weight. Can you imagine how much you could haul in one? Each would take the place of hundreds of wagons. Each railroad must have hundreds of craftsponies just building railcars, and a huge rail network.”

“What are they all for?”

“I . . . don’t know.”  Steamer gave them an apologetic shrug.  “We have boxcars, of course.  Like that one there.  Very versatile; you can put practically anything in it and keep it safe from the weather.  It’s like a barn on wheels.

“The next one looks like some kind of water tank  They’re stronger if they’re round, you know.  Maybe they need to carry water places?  I can’t think of any other liquids anypony would want to move in large enough quantities to carry it loose in a car that size.

“This one . . . it doesn’t have any doors.  I don’t know what they’d use it for.  And this one has open sides— it’s just a bunch of slats in a box form.  Maybe they’ve built enough that they can dry corn in it?  Like a portable corn crib?  But that doesn’t make any sense.

“These two . . . they have openings at the bottom, see?  And you can tell that this one has slanted ends.  So they’re filled with something loose, like coal, that you can load in the top and dump out the bottom when you’ve reached your destination.  We use them to bring in coal for the trains—some of our yards have trestles where the car can unload beneath it, otherwise it has to be unloaded by hoof.”

Neighsmyth pointed to the second page.  “And these?”

“Well, that’s a flat car.  Very useful; probably the most common type of car we have.  See, each of these has different things on it.  This one has big boxes, this one has some kind of box with wheels; there’s one with bulkheads for loads like rail that you can’t have shift back and forth as the train moves, and this one has half-sides . . . like a gambo wagon.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully at a sixteen-wheeled flat car with a depressed center section.  “This one’s a bit of a puzzler.  I guess you could carry a taller load with it, but I’m at a loss at how it would be built.  I don’t see how the structure could hold together— it would be very hard to bend wood that way and have it hold its strength.  Especially if the cargo is so heavy that it needs sixteen wheels.”

“Thank you, Steamer. You've been very helpful.” Neighsmyth began to motion him out the door. “We'll send somepony for you if we need more help, but right now we need to begin writing our findings for the Princess.”

“I want to see it for myself,” Steamer muttered. “Or a picture—whoever got these . . . ask the Princess if she can arrange to have a photograph taken of one of these pieces of equipment, maybe with a pony standing next to it for scale. I just want to get some idea of how big they really are. I want to see a movie of one of them operating . . . because that is the future. One day we'll be able to build trains like that. Maybe not in my lifetime, but one day. . . .”
> Fluttershy Gets Meat (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Onto the Pony Planet: Side Stories
Fluttershy Gets Meat
Admiral Biscuit



This takes place right after Chapter 6



“It would be better if you go,” Lyra said quietly.

“I only want to help him,” Fluttershy insisted, tears welling at the corners of her eyes.

“I know. But he's upset.” She turned her ears towards the bathroom down the hall. “He's sick—the woodchuck made him sick. It's making me queasy.”

“You're right.” Fluttershy's ears drooped further. She grabbed the dead woodchuck of the table and put it back in her bags, then trudged off in the hall, her head hung low.

She couldn't figure out where she'd gone wrong. The grubs—he looked kind of like an ape, and they sometimes ate grubs. Even Harry would, when food was scarce. It might not have been the best food choice, but surely if he were hungry?

To say nothing of the carrion. Both Lyra and Twilight had been certain he was a carrion-eater. Mr. Buzzard had found it and led her to it. Picking it up had been a little bit distasteful, but it wasn't like she'd never had to do that for her animal friends before.

After she’d crossed the bridge near her cottage, she walked a little ways off the path and set the woodchuck down behind a screen of shrubs. It was far enough away from her home that the smell wouldn't upset any of her animals unless the wind shifted unexpectedly, and she could tell Mr. Buzzard where it was. No sense in letting it go to waste.

She listlessly pushed her front door open and stopped in her living room, patiently waiting as her animal friends charged up to her and began excitedly chattering.

“He wouldn’t take the food,” she said. “I don't know why he wouldn’t eat.”

A flurry of fresh chatters broke out.

“No, Chip, I appreciate your offer, but he hasn't got the right kind of teeth to eat acorns. Yes, I tried grubs. They were very nice grubs, all fat and juicy. I brought a whole bag.” She pulled it out of her saddlebags; a small flock of robins, red-winged blackbirds, and a nesting cardinal flew over to it eagerly as she unknotted the neck and folded the top of the bag down.

“I don't know what to do.” She absently got out bags of seed and started filling food dishes. “Maybe . . . Lyra was wrong? It could have been a fish sandwich she ate.”

Fluttershy had tried little bits of almost everything her animals ate. Sometimes it was to be polite, sometimes to prove that she was offering food, and sometimes it was unintentional. She knew she'd be able to tell the difference between fish and red meat even with a blindfold on, but would Lyra?

Maybe. The unicorn had trained under a Neighponese maestro, and Fluttershy had seen her down at the lake fishing a couple of times.

She looked down as a fox bumped its head against her leg and gave a short, submissive whine.

“I know, Ms. Fox. I need to find food for him, so he can get better, like you when you broke your jaw.” She brushed the vixen's head with a wingtip. “You were so thin, remember? I had to cook down your food into a broth and—“

Fluttershy's eyes widened. Cook it.

He was no animal. He wore clothes, and Lyra had said he preserved his food in glassy fabric. And he'd had a campfire.

Why else would he have one, if not to cook his food?

Carrion was out. Without the right digestive system, it would just make him very, very sick. But fresh meat would be fine.

“You're so smart, Ms. Fox.” Fluttershy brushed her head again. “Yes, you are.”

Fresh meat. But where to get it? Most of her animal friends were small, as were their prey. Something his size would require a larger quantity of food, maybe as much as a couple of pounds a day. Even if she were to go ask Harry, or a cougar, it would be unfair to take so much of their prey—they needed it to live, after all.

She’d often enough had her raptors bring back some small prey, to feed another sick bird.  If enough of them brought back one or two small animals each, she might have enough, although it would have to continue day after day, and the predation would be so severe that her tiniest friends would either leave her in horror, or mob her cottage for safety.

But the griffons—they had a network which distributed meat to their embassies. Gilda had talked about it, no doubt for the shock value, and some of the other pegasi had been disgusted at the concept, but Fluttershy had been fascinated. It was much more complicated than the pony system, because unlike grains, fruits and vegetables, fresh meat didn’t keep very long.

She was sure she was right this time.  This was what Dale ate.

Tomorrow, she would fly to Canterlot, and buy some meat from the griffons.


•        •        •


It took her a while to find it, and even longer to work up the courage to approach the front gate.  The embassy was an intimidating building, and if she hadn't been a mare on a mission, she would have turned and fled in the face of the two sentries.

She closed her eyes, and thought of Dale's gaunt face, and Kate's pale skin. Then she boldly marched up to the gate before she could change her mind.

“Um, excuse me?”

One of the griffons looked down at her disdainfully. “What do you want, little pony?”

“I, um, need some of your meat.”

The two guards exchanged a look and then began chuckling.

“Can you handle it?”

“It's not for me.” She looked back at her saddlebags. “I have bits—I can pay for it.”

The guard on the left only chuckled louder.

“It isn't funny.” Fluttershy stomped her hoof. “There are two sick creatures in the Ponyville hospital who might die if they don't get fresh meat.”

“This isn't a store,” the guard on the left said. “It's—“ He clamped his beak shut as his counterpart held up a talon.

“Hold on. You have injured griffons in your hospital? Why haven't I heard anything? Why hasn't the embassy been informed?”  He moved forward, his talon tightening around his halberd. 

“They're not griffons.” Fluttershy gave him a pleading look as she stepped back. “They're omnivorous alien apes.”

He exchanged a brief glance with his partner, lowered his weapon, and gave Fluttershy a very curious look.  “You'd better come with me.”

He led her through the gates and to the main building. Fluttershy quailed as they passed by another cluster of guards and into the spacious atrium.

He paused outside a plain door. “Listen to me carefully, little pony. I'm going to take you to Commander Lleó Àguila. Your only hope of getting what you need is to tell him everything, do you understand?”

Fluttershy nodded meekly.

“Good.” He knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice more, before opening the door.

The room they entered was some kind of office.  Two young griffons were sitting at a desk on one side of the room, while a griffoness was busying herself sorting papers in a tall wooden cabinet, which stood between a pair of doors leading further into the embassy.  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a fourth griffon, his talon curled around a halberd, standing just behind the door.

Four pairs of eyes locked onto her, and she shrank away, moving closer to her escort.

He paid them no heed, but crossed the room in an efficient stride, opening the door to the left of the cabinet.  He motioned for her to enter with a short head-bob.

She timidly stepped through, getting her first look at the griffon sitting at the big, polished desk.  He had scars in his coat, and missing feathers on his head. An eyepatch covered his right eye.

He gave her a bemused look.

“Tell me why you are here.” His voice belied his appearance. It was quiet and almost melodic, not at all what she expected from a creature who towered over her.  Gilda had been forceful and rude; he seemed amiable, even if his appearance was a bit unsettling. 

“Oh, um, well, we have a pair of injured alien apes at the Ponyville hospital, and they're omnivores.”

“Alien apes?”

Fluttershy nodded eagerly.

“What are they like? Describe them for me, please.”

“Um . . . well, they're tall—about as tall as Princess Celestia, they walk upright like a minotaur, but they're not as broad-shouldered. They have manes, but no tails, wear clothes, and have a civilization on a distant planet.”

“How did you ponies come by them?”

“I'm not entirely sure,” Fluttershy said. Twilight had only filled her in on a few pertinent details, and she didn't want to bother the griffon with trivialities. “But they accidentally wound up in the Ponyville reservoir, badly hurt. They're in the hospital now, but it's the talk of the town that soon they'll have an embassy of their own in Ponyville. I heard that at the market.

“I tried to bring them some carrion, but it made him sick. I didn't offer any to the mare—the female.”

Commander Àguila raised his eyebrows. “You have a breeding pair?” he asked incredulously.

Fluttershy's cheeks reddened. “Um, well, I don't know if that's the plan.”

“What makes you think they even eat meat, then?” Àguila looked at her curiously. “A hungry griffon would probably eat carrion, if it was fresh.  Not like you ponies.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes there just isn't enough prey.” He tapped a talon on the desk. “Though it's not an ideal choice.”

“A lot of my animal friends will do the same,” Fluttershy said reassuringly. “It's nothing to be ashamed of.  But it made him sick! He was vomiting!”

“Maybe you're wrong. Maybe he doesn't eat meat.”

“Lyra says he does. She shared a sandwich with him at his home before he came here. If the meat were cooked, I think he could eat it.”

Commander Àguila opened his beak and closed it again, then tapped on the desk with his talon thoughtfully. Finally, he spoke.

“I think we can help you. Yes. I can have the chef give you some meat, and ice to preserve it. It has to be kept cold, you know, or it spoils.”

Fluttershy nodded.

“I can also give you a book on how to prepare meat. It's in Equus; sometimes we don’t bring our chef to diplomatic functions.”

“That would be helpful,” Fluttershy told him.  “I’ve only ever prepared it for my animal friends, and they’re not too picky.  Except for Angel.”  She sighed.  “I wouldn’t want to offend them with poorly-prepared meals.”

“Wait right here,” he instructed.  He stepped around the desk and went through the door.  Fluttershy noticed he slightly favored his right hindleg, and felt a pang of sympathy for the poor griffon.  Sometimes it was hard to be a predator—animals were clever, and fought back.  A lot of ponies found it hard to believe that some of her sparrows would harass hawks whenever they saw them, although she didn’t allow any of that in her cottage.  It was a place of refuge for all animals.

Àguila limped past her and back to his desk.  “That’s taken care of,” he told her.  “A griffon will be here shortly with plenty of fresh meat for your sick apes.”

“Thank you so much.”  Fluttershy smiled at him.  I’m such a silly goose.  All along I’ve been afraid of nothing.  “Um, have you tried a teaspoon of molasses every day?  For your leg?”

“My leg?”

She nodded.  “I saw you limping.  Sometimes molasses helps with stiff muscles.  You can mix it with something, if you don’t like the taste.”

“I will consider it.  Can you tell me more about these apes?  What else do you know?”


•        •        •


Despite the weight in her saddlebags, she had a happy lilt in her step as she left the embassy behind.  She’d gotten enough to feed them for a week, and Lleó Àguila had promised to send her two more shipments via the Friendship Express.  He was unwilling to offer any more, unless there were a formal request from the Crown.  But she was sure she could persuade him if they ran short before a deal were reached.  He was such a nice griffon.

She would have preferred securing a long-term supply—if they really were making an embassy, then they were expecting Dale and Kate to stay around for a while.  Still, three weeks would certainly be long enough for them to have healed, and surely Princess Celestia was negotiating with Dale’s tribe to get supplies.

And, on the slight chance that she was wrong again, she could give it to some of her animal friends, as a special treat.

The griffons were quite generous, she thought as she soared off the side of the mountain and banked towards Ponyville.  And quite curious.  I never thought that they were that interested in land-bound creatures, except as prey.





As soon as the yellow pegasus was escorted out of his office, Commander Àguila sprang into action.  

His first act was to write out a contact report.  Protocol demanded that every time an agent was approached, he document it.  This would be the first he’d done since his forced retirement from the field, and while he’d always hated them, he was glad the gate sentry had had the presence of mind to bring the pegasus to him.  A more junior griffon would have probably unintentionally intimidated her into silence, but his deceptively gentle voice and easy questioning had won her over.

After that was done, he scribbled out a quick note on thin rice paper.  They imported it at great expense—nominally to use in the kitchen, but half of it was diverted to the espionage division.  Once the message was encoded, the rice paper would simply be eaten, and no evidence of the message would be left behind.

He rolled up the note and limped to his door.

“You,” he ordered, pointing to his coder.  “Transcribe this message for the telegraph.  Append it to every telegram we send today—it’s urgent.  The rest of you, come into my office.”

“I want to know what’s going on in Ponyville,” he said, as soon as the pair of agents were in his office with the door closed behind them.  “We already got a memo about troop movement; the first major deployment there since Princess Celestia’s protege became librarian.  We wrote it off as an exercise, but I have just recently come to learn that two alien apes have arrived, and no doubt the guards were deployed in anticipation of their arrival.

“There has been no word from the Crown on this.  I want both of you to make contact with your spies as quickly as you can, and find out what’s going on.  Leave no stone unturned, and leave nothing out of your report.  If we do this right, we can get a jump on other nations, and we can give the ambassador a bargaining chip to use against the Princess.  Screw it up, and I’ll see your heads on pikes outside the Eyrie.  Have you got it?”

They both nodded.

“Then what are you waiting for?  Get out there!”

Commander Àguila leaned back, a small self-satisfied glint in his good eye.  They were good agents; by the end of the day, he’d know everything anypony in Canterlot knew.

He stretched out his leg and flexed his paw.  “Molasses,” he said to the empty room.  “I wonder if the kitchen has any?”
> From the Baltimare Sun (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the Baltimare Sun
Admiral Biscuit


Ambassador Indicted, Tried for Treason


The ink was hardly dry on her nomination letter before Ambassador Heartstrings found herself in hot water. Although no formal report has been published of the charges sought, a pony close to the case revealed that she was charged with the attempted murder of foreign diplomats, knowingly bringing monsters into Equestria, and treason.

Her sordid tale began a week earlier. She was nominated for an ambassadorship in front of the Nobles' Council, where Princess Celestia spoke on her behalf, as she was allegedly unavailable to speak for herself. Claims were made of her supposed noble lineage, although no such written record has been found; as well as of her legal standing as a guard—which, it should be noted, she won in a tournament.

Breaking with protocol, Fancy Pants' proxy forced a simple majority vote without sufficient deliberation, in an attempt to net her nomination before any disturbing facts about her past came to light.

That very same day, she was indicted, yet inexplicably given diplomatic immunity for actions which she had committed before her nomination.

Both her ranking and her noble lineage require her trial to be held in a Crown court, yet once again the protocol was broken, and the trial was instead held at the Ponyville town hall, with the proceedings kept under wraps.

A representative for Noble Voice, the prosecuting counsel, said that Mr. Voice had been given barely any time to prepare, and that even his train had been delayed for track maintenance, although it's obvious to anypony who's ever travelled the line between Baltimare and Canterlot that track maintenance is the last thing on the railroad's mind. They never even tried to run the tracks in a straight line through the mountains, despite the clear superiority of such a route.

Early reports from the trial indicated that the prosecution had put up a front of unassailable evidence into the nature of Heartstring's character. It's no surprise; even when she was in school, she was making waves by sleeping with a minotaur bull, and spending most of her free time either in the dueling ring or with her Neighponese maestro rather than concentrating on her coursework.

It should come as no surprise that Heartstrings was defended by none other than Fancy Pants and Fleur De Lis, who had been conspicuously absent from Canterlot while Heartstring's nomination was rammed through the Council. They were already in Ponyville, riling up the locals and poisoning the jury.

By the afternoon, it became clear to even the most thick-skulled where the trial was headed. Any evidence that Noble Voice offered was summarily rejected, while the judge allowed Fancy Pants unbelievable latitude in his choice of witnesses and lines of questioning. Even physical evidence was rejected when it proved damaging to the prosecution's case.

As if that wasn't enough, Fleur resorted to personal insults directed both against Noble Voice and his witnesses, rather than sticking to the actual facts of the matter.

The theme continued, when the defense was allowed to present Twilight Sparkle—the Princess's personal protege—as an expert witness. Shortly thereafter, Ambassador Heartstrings took the stand . . . and Noble Voice was censured before he could even finish questioning her.

Oddly absent were the injured parties. The defense claimed that Ambassador Dale was injured, and did not speak the Equestrian language; both claims are easily dismissed, as the day before he appeared at the town hall and gave a speech to the entire town.

Naturally, only select ponies were allowed at that event. But a photograph from the supposed meeting shows Fancy Pants, Fleur De Lis, Heartstrings, Twilight Sparkle, the Ponyville mayor, and Ambassador Dale all lined up on the stage. All of them are smiling, and why shouldn't they be? Every small town would do well to have an embassy in it to bilk bits out of the Royal Treasury. And is it a coincidence that Heartstring's entire defense team was neatly lined up on stage with her?

Although the courtroom transcript has not been made public and probably never will be, we learned from Noble Voice's co-council that Heartstrings was cleared of all charges. She was spirited off before any newspaper reporters could even interview her and taken to a secret location. The judge, on the other hoof, revealed just how much of a farce this whole trial was when she went off to the brand-new embassy—a gleaming edifice of stone and gold leaf, filled with decadent furniture and priceless artworks—and all provided with your tax bits for a pair of diplomats from a nation nopony has ever heard of.
> A Morning at the Farrier's (Onto the Pony Planet)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Morning at the Farrier’s
Admiral Biscuit

Peachy Sweet pushed the covers off herself and rolled out of bed before the rooster had even finished crowing. She leaned back and gave Red Delicious a brief nuzzle; as usual, he made no reply, so she headed downstairs to begin the day.

Getting the fire up in the stove was her first order of business, followed by a trip to the outhouse, and then a seat in front of her vanity to coax her mane into order.

Once she'd finished making breakfast, she went back upstairs and unceremoniously yanked the covers off Red. He was curled up with her pillow nestled in his forehooves, and she briefly toyed with the idea of getting back in bed, but it was going to be a busy day and there was no time to dilly-dally.

She poked at his withers until her finally cracked an eye open. While he was transitioning from horizontal to vertical, she pulled back the curtains to let in the pre-dawn light. Once she was sure he wasn't going to wimp out and climb back into bed, she went outside to feed the chickens.

He was in the kitchen gnawing a thick slice of buttered bread when she came back in. An empty coffee cup stood by his left hoof. As soon as he saw her, he pushed the rest of the bread into his mouth and walked beside her to the barn, chewing in silence as he went.

She helped him into his harness, hitched him to their farm wagon, and then struggled into her own farm baskets. Once she had them positioned, Peachy let him reach under her belly to tighten her girth strap, then the pair of them went out into the south field.

By the time the sun finally made it above the trees, they were hard at work. He dragged the plow through the untilled earth, and she followed behind, putting the rocks that it turned up into her baskets. Every second furrow, he'd get a drink of water while she emptied her bags into the wagon.

It was plainly obvious that this field wouldn't be ready for a spring crop, but they could plant some good root vegetables in the summer and have plenty of food for the winter.


•        •        •


They'd made a quarter acre of progress by midmorning. It didn't seem like a lot, but only one moon before, the land had been nothing but scrub brush and weeds and tree stumps. She and Red hoofed the plow into the back of the wagon and brought them back to the barn.

They got out of harness, then took turns with the hose, rinsing off the sweat and mud, which—along with rocks—often seemed to be the major harvest of their farm.

Peachy combed her mane into a pair of pigtails and clipped a ribbon on each. She kept a mirror and a small collection of beauty supplies in the barn, to save time. “Need anything from town?”

“Nope. Have fun.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. “I'll be walking funny the rest of the day.”

“Yup.” He stretched forward and kissed her. “Love ya.”

“Love ya too.” Peachy flicked him with her tail on her way out of the barn, and gave him one more wave when she was at the gate.


•        •        •


She was the first of her band of friends to arrive at Sugarcube Corner, much to her surprise. She bought a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee and carried them over to her usual corner booth, picking a spot on the bench where she could both watch the door and look out the window.

She was halfway done with her cinnamon roll when Lavender Fritter came in. Rather than order any food, Lavender came straight over and slid in beside Peachy. The two mares nuzzled each other affectionately.

“I saw Caramel in town already,” Lavender said. “So he'll be here soon. Haven't seen Apple Leaves since she left to take Apple Crumble and Apple Mint to school.”

“You smell like bread.”

“Spent all morning baking. Do you want a loaf?”

“Sure. Can I come over this afternoon?”

Lavender nodded. “I've got some extra eggs, too. If you want any.”

“I've got rocks.” Peachy sighed. “Do you need any rocks?”

“South field?”

“South field. Are you getting anything to eat?”

“Nah.” She rubbed her belly. “Always get butterflies before, y'know?”

“I don't.”

The two mares looked up at the newcomer—Apple Leaves set a tray on the table and dropped into the chair across from them. “Find it kind of relaxing, actually.”

“Anything that takes you away from your brood is relaxing.” Peachy ran her eyes over the contents of the tray. “You aren't pregnant again, are you?”

She shook her head. “Don't think so.”

“You'd be the one to know,” Lavender said. “I hope Caramel gets here soon. I hate waiting.”

“He's probably putting it off, like a scared little foal.”

“Nope, there he is.” Apple Leaves waved a hoof at him. Peachy took the opportunity to finish her cinnamon roll.

“Sorry,” Caramel said. “I had to muck out the hog pen this morning for Miss Applejack.”

Peachy frowned. “I hope you washed your hooves when you were done.”

“That's what took so long.” He scrunched up his muzzle. “Of all the things I could have been doing this morning. . . .”

Without bothering to ask his permission, Apple Leaves picked up a forehoof and scrutinized it.

Carmel rolled his eyes. “I got it all, mom,” he muttered.

“Just making sure.” She set his hoof back down and looked brightly at the other two mares. “Are you ready?”


•        •        •


Shoeshine had been up since the wee hours of the morning. It was her busy season: planting season. Her business ramped up right before Winter Wrap-Up, when all the farmers came in for their first spring shoeing, and it didn't taper off for two months. She was well into the second surge—some of the heavier stallions like Big Mac wore out a set of shoes in a month.

She'd gotten the forge started right after she got up, before she’d even used the little fillies’ room. Her breakfast was eggs and toast, cooked right on the forge, along with a pot of coffee to keep her going through the day.

Covering a yawn, she began pulling out her equipment while the eggs sizzled in the pan. She had a full day's work ahead of her, and she was already looking forward to spending a little bit of her profit at the spa after dinner. One of her hooves was throbbing, probably from the rush of work she’d had lately.

She scooped the two fried eggs onto thick pieces of toast and carried the plate over to her counter, where she glanced down at the wrinkled paper which made up her schedule—Apple Honey was kind enough to give her scraps that wouldn't go through her spirit duplicator in exchange for free farrier work. She'd even bargained for free copies of the paper for her customers who could read.

She skimmed over the list of cutie marks she'd drawn on her schedule. It was going to be a full day, that was for sure. During lunch, she'd have to trot over to the train station and see if the brass shoes for Lightning Bolt had come in yet—just another thing to add to her day.

After dusting the crumbs off the counter and returning the plate to her kitchen, she went over to her boxes of used shoes. She started her day by pulling out Pinkie's last pair—the baker went through shoes almost as quickly as Big Mac—and grabbed a new set of flat general-purpose shoes out of their shipping box. Starting with the left forehoof, she expertly began matching the new shoes to the old.

She'd learned that from her master, back when she was a green-hooved apprentice. After a shoeing, keep the old, in case one gets thrown, and to save time on the next shoeing. They wouldn't be perfect, but they'd be close enough that a few more taps on the anvil would set them right, and she could work more efficiently.

She knocked a toe-clip into each one as she worked. This was where it paid to know her customers. Unicorns didn't like them, and try as she might, she could never convince any to try a set. But toe-clips made her job easier—they helped her set the shoe properly—and most earth ponies were pragmatic enough to want to spend as little time as possible being shod.


•        •        •


It's days like these that I'm glad I'm prepared. Shoeshine marked two tallies in her ledger book as Comet Tail and Cherry Berry headed out of her shop, each sporting a new set of shoes: steel with threaded caulks for Cherry, and bronze for Comet. As usual, she'd had to do some extra filing on one of Cherry's hooves: she'd badly broken her coffin bone and split her hoof as a filly, and it had never healed quite right. A little bit of extra work relieved the pressure on her pastern joint—Shoeshine knew how to get the angle on her hoof just right, but it had taken a winter's worth of going shoeless, with weekly filings until she'd found the sweet spot.

She'd just finished tidying up when the bell over the door rang, and four members of the extended Apple clan walked in.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully. "The usual for everypony, I hope?"

"I'd like to try a set of brass shoes this time," Lavender Fritter said.

Shoeshine's ears fell. "Really?"

"No, not really." She lifted up a forehoof and wiggled it around. "Nails are working loose again."

"You've just got lousy hooves." Shoeshine moved back and gave Lavender room to stand by the tools. It was true: even without knowing her ancestors, she was sure Lavender had a pegasus or two in her family tree. Her hooves were notoriously soft, and her shoes were constantly working loose. Shoeshine and the Spa Twins had experimented over the years with an assortment of hoof products, but none of them made much difference.

Still, it could be worse—at least she was coming in with all four shoes this time.

Unlike most of the farmponies that Shoeshine shod, Lavender Fritter only ever got simple flat shoes. Anything else would leave her with sore hooves.

Shoeshine got to work as soon as Lavender rested her leg on the stand. She brushed the small amount of dirt off, then used a small wedge and her hammer to fold the tips of the nails straight again, so that she could pull them out.

Then she took a pair of pliers and gently rocked the shoe loose. She dumped the nails out of it into a waste bucket, and hooked the old shoe over the edge of her tool bucket.

She picked up her hoof knife and began trimming the edges of Lavender’s hoof. "How's the homestead?" Shoeshine muttered around the knife in her mouth.

"Good. My sisters and I are gonna put in a chicken coop, so we can trade eggs at market." She winced as Shoeshine trimmed down the front of her frog. "We also bought a couple of patent beehives from Apple Honey this spring, 'cause everypony in town says that they make the bees happier and more productive."

"Mm-hm." Shoeshine set the knife in her toolbox and picked up a flat file. "How's the leg feel? Any pain?"

"Nope."

“That’s good.” Shoeshine leaned in with the file and started working around the edge of the farmmare’s hoof, eyeballing it for the proper taper. When she was satisfied that she was close, she picked up one of the new shoes for a test fitting, centering the clip right at the point of Lavender’s toe.


•        •        •


Shoeshine breathed a sigh of relief as she finished the last of Lavender's shoes. When ponies came in in groups, she always liked to start with the toughest first. Her master had been the opposite way, preferring to start easy, and put off the tough ones as long as he could.

Foals are the worst, she thought. Experienced mares like Apple Leaves made sure their foals got their first set after the fall harvest, but a lot of ponies waited for the springtime, adding them into the rush of other work. Shoe selection took a while, and for a first shoeing, she had to make a new set.

Pegasi weren't much better. Too many of them didn't like having their hooves touched, and waited until they were actually in pain before they'd consent to being shod.

Lavender Fritter took a lap of the shop, testing out the fit of her new shoes. Shoeshine watched her intently, making certain that she was walking well.

“Looking good,” Apple Leaves commented.

“Feels funny.” Lavender Fritter pulled up her foreleg and shook her hoof. “Never can get used to it.”

“Who’s next?” Shoeshine asked.

Peachy and Apple Leaves exchanged a look, then without a word, Peachy stepped forward and set her leg on the stand. Shoeshine grabbed a box of new shoes in her mouth and went over to the farmer.

“You okay, ‘Shine? You’re limping a little bit.”

“I’m running my hooves off,” she admitted. “Seems like more ponies than usual for this time of year.”

“Should go to the spa,” Lavender suggested. “Soak in one of the tubs after work and let Aloe and Lotus pamper you.”

“That’s my plan. Plus, I’ll get a chance to rest up over the weekend.” She leaned in and clipped off the first of Peachy’s shoes. “I don’t see why you want to wear shoes—your hooves are made of iron.”

“So are the rocks in the south field.”

“At least it’s not a pigpen.”

“So that’s what I’ve been smelling. I thought your breakfast just hadn’t sat right.” Shoeshine pulled out her rasp and started in on Peachy’s forehoof.

“They’re clean,” Apple Leaves insisted. “I checked myself.”

“Yeah,” Caramel said defensively. “Hey, is that this week’s Ponyville Express?”

Shoeshine nodded absently. “Got it from Apple Honey yesterday.”

“There’s a whole article about the trial in it,” Peachy said. “I read it yesterday; Red got a paper when he was in town. Oh, and there was a story about how side-backer harnesses are better than D-ring harnesses.”

“Bah.” Caramel picked up the paper. “I’ve been using a D-ring for years. Had to borrow my cousin’s side-backer once, and it was terrible. None of the straps felt right, and I thought I was going to get tangled up every time I turned a corner.”

“At least it’s not a breastcollar.” Lavender Fritter touched a hoof to her brisket. “It’s so hard to breathe in one of those.” She looked over at the newspaper. “I heard about the trial—my sister said that there were all sorts of guardsponies and newspaper reporters in town. Said that even Princess Luna came.”

“She was the judge, wasn’t she?” Apple Leaves leaned in to look at the paper. “That’s what I heard. Carrot Top told me, and she’d heard it from Applejack, who’d heard it from Twilight so it must be true.” 

“Surprised she didn’t hear it from her coltfriend, as often as he’s at the mayor’s office.”

“What does it say?” Apple Leaves pushed in beside Caramel. “If you’re not gonna tell us, I’m going to read it myself.”

“I’m not moving.”

“Yes you are.” She shoved him over a bit more and leaned down.


•        •        •


“I was always in favor of the embassy,” Apple Leaves said, obligingly lifting her leg onto the stand. “Even if it means having some dumb noble ponies in town every now and then.”

“Stop moving so much,” Shoeshine instructed. “I won’t be able to file your hooves right if you’re flailing them around.”

Apple Leaves looked back at the farrier. “Sorry.”

“Noble ponies aren’t so bad,” Lavender Fritter said. “Fancy Pants is nice.”

“They’re not all like him,” Peachy reminded her. “I heard that one of them picked a fight with Derpy right out in the middle of the street.”

“How come?”

“I dunno. Just ‘cause unicorns don’t like pegasi, I guess.” She shifted on her hooves. “Still feels weird. Anyway, are there gonna be other species coming here too? Like that griffon who came to the first meeting.”

“There was no griffon there.”

“Was so. He was all the way in the back. Daisy Jo saw him.”

“Cows lie about stuff all the time,” Caramel protested. “The mayor wouldn’t let a griffon in town after that one . . . oh, what was her name? Grizelda?”

“I don’t think she ever banned griffons from coming to town. I don’t think she could.”

“Why not, she’s the mayor.” 

“Probably an ambassador griffon would be nicer than Gilda was,” Peachy said. “Plus, wouldn’t it be neat to have all sorts of other ambassadors coming to Ponyville? Maybe even minotaurs—I bet there will be minotaurs. Dale looks like a minotaur, kind of. They’re probably related.”

“The newspaper hasn’t said,” Apple Leaves told her. “But he kinda looked like it from when he was on stage, and Ka-th-rin was almost as tall as he was.”

“I hope she’s getting better.” Lavender Fritter looked out the window. “Hey, does anypony know who that green pegasus is?”

Caramel stuck his muzzle to the glass. “I’ve seen her before.” He turned his head to follow her flight as she circled over the street and then finally alighted on a lifting beam. “She came to town the same time as all the university ponies, didn’t she?”

“She doesn’t look like a university pony,” Lavender said. “They’re all unicorns anyway, aren’t they? I saw a bunch of them at the Prancing Pony a while back. One of them was tall and skinny like Fancy Pants’s wife.”

“Weird, it looks like she’s watching for something in the street.” Caramel wiped a bit of condensation from his breath off the glass and then stuck his muzzle back to the window.

“Hey.” Lavender nudged him with a hoof. “It’s your turn.”

“Really?” He turned back to see the vacant spot in the middle of the room.

“Really. I only ever get my hind hooves done, remember? So it goes quicker.” Apple Leaves flashed him a bare forehoof. “Shoeshine, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I could wait and get shoes later,” Caramel offered. “Give you some time to rest up.”

“I’m fine. I’ll go to the spa tonight, soak in the tub for a little bit, and that’s all I need. Besides, I’m not changing my schedule just because you don’t want to get shod. It’s now or you wait half a moon.”

“Yeah, don’t be a wimp.” Lavender pushed him towards the center of the room. “We’ll go outside and see what that pegasus is up to.”

“Maybe she’s a thatcher,” Peachy suggested, pushing the front door open and motioning for Apple Leaves to pass.

“Could be.” Apple Leaves looked up at the pegasus and gave a tentative wave. “I don’t think I’ve seen her before.”

“Could be a burglar.”

“You read too many novels. They’re bad for your brain.” Lavender Fritter pushed Peachy out the door and then closed it behind them. “It’s probably another reporter; the whole town was lousy with them during the trial. Amazing anything got done at all.”

“What’s she reporting, then?” Apple Leaves looked down the street. “There isn’t anything going on.”

“Who knows?” Peachy glanced back up at her, then turned towards the window of the farrier shop. “They like to do all sorts of background stuff sometimes. I read an article in the Canterlot Times once that spent as much time setting up what the Nobles’ Court looked like as it actually did talking about what they were doing. ‘Course, since they don’t ever do anything but sit on their butts and talk about unicorn stuff, there wasn’t much to write about.”

“How come you were reading the Canterlot Times?”

“Um. . . “

“Trying to impress a stallion, I bet.” Apple Leaves turned to the window and began to study her reflection. “Does my mane look okay?”

“She hasn’t got a camera.”

“Who’s to say that there isn’t a photographer travelling with her? Big-town newspapers like pictures.”

“It looks fine.” Peachy wrinkled her muzzle. “That’s weird. Something—can you smell that?”

“Probably just Caramel.”

“He got all the pig sh—stuff out of his hooves. I looked. Believe me, I know a thing or two about it. You’d be amazed what foals will walk through.”

“It’s not coming from inside,” Peachy decided. “I think—“ She turned her head, and the other girls followed her motion.

All three of them spotted Dale nearly simultaneously. Lavender Fritter reflexively lifted her tail in case she needed to get rid of her morning coffee before galloping off, Apple Leaves took a step back, away from the possible danger, and Peachy Sweet stepped sideways, giving herself a bit of distance from the other two. None of them were particularly conscious of this; they kept their eyes and ears forward, trying to gauge what Dale might do.

When he didn’t immediately charge them, Apple Leaves glanced over at her companions, then without another word ducked into the store, to warn Caramel. Lavender Fritter dropped her tail back down and took an uncertain step forward. The mayor said that he was friendly, didn’t she? She wouldn’t have said that if it wasn’t true, and he wouldn’t have helped out Lyra if he was a monster. Her nostrils flared as she tried to pick up some clues from his scent.

“Hi, girls!” She turned an ear towards Lyra’s voice—she’d been so focused on Dale, she hadn’t even noticed that the unicorn was there. “We were tired of being inside, so Dale and I thought we should go for a walk around town.” 

“Um, good morning.” Lavender swivelled her ears back at the sound of his voice. She’d heard Dale speak before, and he wasn’t very easy to understand. At the meeting, his voice had been too low to hear clearly, and it wasn’t any different now. “How are you?”

“Er, yes. Getting new shoes,” she said, then glanced over at Peachy for support.

Dale turned to Lyra and put his hand to his mouth; even so, they could both hear him slowly say, “What did she say?”

“He hasn’t got very good ears,” Peachy mouthed, and then the two mares both covered a giggle.

Once their moment of mirth had subsided, Lavender tilted her head towards the farrier’s shop. Peachy got the message and headed inside, while Lavender started walking down the street towards Dale. She didn’t want to shout; that wasn’t very polite. “Good morning, Dale,” she said slowly. “I saw you at the town meeting. I’m Lavender Fritter. It’s nice to see you out.”

“Thanks,” he replied. He glanced over at Lyra, as if to confirm that he’d said the right thing, then looked back at her. Unsure of what he might do next, Lavender Fritter stopped a reasonable distance from him and took a quick look at her surroundings. Lyra was right next to him and would probably keep him in line; besides that, there was a guard behind them, trying to remain somewhat unobtrusive and failing miserably.

He took a half-step, then crouched down, extending his hand out towards her at just below muzzle height. She guessed that that was his version of a hoofbump and moved in to greet him politely.

She extended out a freshly-shod hoof and lightly bumped his knuckles. He dropped his arm and spoke again. “May I know your friends?”

Her ears pinned back instantly.

“Meet,” Lyra hastily amended. “Meet your friends.”

“I have only spoken for a week,” he confessed. “My language is not good.”

Apple Leaves would be better at this: he behaves like a foal. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “You’re doing better than you did at the town meeting.” That much was true. It was a marginal improvement, but she could at least understand most of what he said. “Yes, my friends would like to meet you.”

She was reasonably confident he wouldn’t do anything, but she kept her ears on him anyway as she walked back to the shop. As she pushed the door open, she heard Lyra tell him to wait outside—she hadn’t considered that he might follow her in.

The ponies in the shop looked at her intently as she entered.

“He wants to meet all of us,” Lavender said eagerly.

“Really?”

“I can’t—“

“We can go outside,” Apple Leaves decided. “That’s best.”

“What if he comes inside?” 

“‘Shine’ll hit him with her hammer, won’t she? You’ll be fine, Caramel.”

“I told you I should wait to get shod.” He swished his tail, catching Shoeshine in the face. “If you’d have looked down the street you’d have seen him coming in time.”

“The mayor said he’s okay,” Peachy said. “Twilight Sparkle said so, too, and I hear she’s been over at the embassy a bunch. She even was at the trial, speaking for him.”

“Come on, girls!” Lavender shoved the door open again. “Let’s not keep him waiting.” She stepped back out, her two friends following.

The three fanned out slightly, studying him. 

“Good morning,” he said, giving a little wave of his hand again. “I am Dale.”

Apple Leaves reached out her hoof first. “Apple Leaves,” she said, bumping his extended hand.

“Peachy Sweet.” She also bumped his fist lightly,

“I am happy to kn—to meet you. Can I come inside? I would like to see what is inside.”

Peachy Sweet immediately shook her head. The last thing poor Caramel needed was to have Dale intrude on him when he was trapped mid-shoeing. She barely registered the nod from Lavender Fritter.

Dale turned away from them and leaned down towards Lyra, and the three mares put their heads together. 

“The mayor said we were supposed to show him around,” Lavender insisted.

“But what about—“

“He’s a grown stallion. Anyway, what can Dale do if Lyra’s right there? She could put him flat on his back in an instant.”

“Caramel’s still gonna be edgy. He’s sensitive, you know. What if he panics?”

“He won’t panic,” Apple Leaves said. “I can comfort him.“

“He’s an adult,” Lavender insisted. “He shouldn't need mothering.”

Peachy sighed. “Okay, but I still think it’s a dumb idea. What if Dale gets the idea it’s okay to go in the spa or the hospital or something?”

“He’s been at the hospital.” Lavender reminded her. “If he’s got any sense at all, he’s scared of Redheart.”

“She’s pretty scary sometimes,” Peachy agreed. “Remember that time you tried to hit on Dr. Stable?”

“Unfortunately.” Lavender absently rubbed her hoof across her shoulder. “Alright, let’s tell him.”

“Let me get inside,” Apple Leaves said. “Give me a moment to tell Caramel, so he doesn’t try to bolt right away and hurt himself. Applejack’d never forgive me if I got one of her farmhooves injured.”

Lavender and Peachy nodded, and let Apple Leaves slip back inside. Dale, they noticed, was still talking with Lyra.

He looked up a moment later, and saw the two of them standing sentry by the door. “You can come in,” Lavender Fritter told him as she pushed the door open. To make sure he got the idea, Peachy went through, and then Lavender followed.

She stood out of the way of the door to give him enough space to enter. He hesitated as he crossed the threshold, and Lyra nearly ran into him.

His eyes went all around the room, cataloging what he saw. She tried to imagine it from his perspective, but she couldn’t wrap her head around how the room might appear to him. In her mind, it was a necessary feature of the town: not her favorite place to visit, but at the same time familiar. 

Her mother had brought her here for the first time just after she’d gotten her cutie mark, and she’d suffered through the indignity of having her hooves abused, first with a file and then with nails. She’d tried her best to be brave, but through most of the process, she’d whimpered into her mother’s coat, dimly aware that this was one of the terrible costs of growing up.

She’d limped out of the shop, her hooves heavy, and they’d gone to get ice cream.

By the time her younger sister had been shod, she’d become numb to the process. It was just something that had to be done. She still didn’t like it, but accepted it.

True to her word, Apple Leaves had put herself between Dale and Caramel. The stallion had his head resting on her back in a clear position of defensive submission. Shoeshine, meanwhile, was doing her best to ignore Dale, but her movements weren’t as sure and practiced as usual. She’d moved around behind him where she could keep an eye on the alien, which was hampering her normal rhythm.

For his part, once he’d gotten his first look around the shop, Dale settled against a wall, clearly trying to be as out-of-the way as possible. Lavender casually moved to where she was flanking him, just in case he wound up trying anything funny.

Her position didn’t go unnoticed by Shoeshine, who shifted around to a more natural posture as she finished her work on Caramel’s hoof.

Lavender turned her ears back to Dale as he spoke. His voice was soft; the tone made her relax just a bit. She could hear a note of curiosity in his words as he asked Lyra about the display at the front counter.

And Lyra replied like she was speaking to a colt. It was hard to imagine how she had the patience for it. Lavender didn’t have any foals of her own, but then neither did Lyra. This was a side of the unicorn which she’d never imagined existed. It was common knowledge around town that Lyra was impulsive, which made it hard to square her relationship with the acerbic confectioner—this filled in a few of the pieces. She’d scoffed at the idea that Lyra was a grandmaster, having never seen any proof of the unicorn’s patience, but here it was.

The mood in the shop lightened measurably as Shoeshine lifted Caramel’s leg off the stand and set it back on the floor. Apple Leaves moved away to give him room, and headed for the door. Caramel nodded his head politely at Dale, then followed her out.

Lavender waited until Peachy had left as well, then gave Dale a friendly wave and went to join her friends.


•        •        •


Shoeshine watched her customers leave, unfortunately not followed by Dale and Lyra. She gave a dissatisfied snort—if they stuck around too long, she wouldn't have time to go down to the train station and check on the shoes she'd ordered for Lightning Bolt.

Then her ears perked up—maybe he needed shoes! It would have to be custom work, but she'd heard from other ponies that the Crown was paying all expenses.

“Let me put my tools away,” she told him.

He didn't reply, so she set to work putting her kit back in the tool-bucket. It really wasn't the most convenient thing for the shop, but sometimes she had to make house calls, and it was just easier to to keep everything in one place. There was nothing worse than walking all the way out to a pony's house and then discovering that she'd left her nippers back at the shop.

If she was rich, she'd have two sets of tools, like some of the farriers in Manehattan did. She had bought a second anvil, just to save her the effort of loading it into her wagon every time she made a house call.

With everything squared away, she looked back at Dale. He was studying the rows of boxes she kept on shelves like a filly at the window of a candy store.

She took the opportunity to examine his feet. Unfortunately, they looked soft and flexible, just like his forepaws. Shoeshine could see the flesh shifting around as he adjusted his weight, and realized that there was nothing she could offer him.

When she looked back up, he was looking down at her curiously. “I can't fit shoes for you,” she explained. “Sorry. Maybe the cobbler can make you some kind of hoof boot.”

I remember when she first set up a stall in the market, I thought she was going to take all my business. A few unicorns had jumped on the idea of wearing hoof boots instead of horseshoes, and for a brief period, Shoeshine had dreaded the day when Earth Ponies—always cautious when it came to adapting to new things—decided that the advantage of being able to change shoes as the need demanded outweighed the higher initial expense.

Luckily, her fears had been unfounded. It only took a few days before word got around that hoof boots could easily get pulled off in mud, and thereafter no farmpony had any interest in them at all. Comet Tail lost three in a hayfield, and only two had ever been rediscovered.

Since then, Welly had been working with a very limited clientele, and while it would still hurt to give up a potential Crown contract, she really didn't begrudge her the bits. Besides, Welly made very nice hoof boots—she'd bought herself a quartet of galoshes for the winter.

“I just came to look. I was . . . I do not know the word?”

“Curious,” Lyra said.

“I am Dale.” He stuck out a clenched fist at her, and she reached up and bumped it lightly, wincing at the brief throb it sent through her hoof. “Shoeshine.”

“Can I look here?”

“Look?” She had a vision of him pulling out boxes and messing up her carefully arranged filing system. She wasn't enough of an artist to do justice to a pony's cutie mark, and a lot of them looked kind of similar, so if things got misfiled, it would take her forever to straighten out.

“At all the things you have here.”

Well, the only way to make sure that he doesn't mess my stuff up is to lead him around myself. “Sure,” she said with more cheer than she actually felt at the prospect. “Follow me.” She bumped him in the hip with her muzzle to make sure that he got the idea—there was no harm in him groping the display shoes, and maybe that would sate his curiosity.

He hunched over and began studying the first shoe on display. It was the basic shoe, just a stamped steel flat with four small cleats for traction.

“You can pick it up,” she advised him. When he didn't immediately take her up on her offer, she pulled it off its peg with her mouth and tilted her head up so that he could take it from her.

Her ears instinctively flattened back as his hand reached down toward her face, and too late she realized what a stupid idea that had been. Then he closed his fingers around it and gently took it from her, and she relaxed slightly.

By the way he was examining it, she thought he had probably never seen a horseshoe before.

Once he was satisfied with that shoe, he hung it back on the hook and picked up the next one, a flat shoe with threaded holes for caulks. That was a popular seller; ponies could get traction when they needed it, but not tear up their floors. For a first-time shoeing, she'd give her customer the tool for screwing in the caulks, but she charged a bit for a replacement wrench if it got lost. 

He moved down the counter, examining the different orthopedic shoes she had to offer, as well as the small collection made of exotic metals. Sometimes a traditional shoe would mess up a unicorn's field, so she kept alternates on display. They could try to lift each one with their telekinesis and get an idea how their field would react. Generally, the weaker the unicorn, the more copper she needed in her shoes, but there were exceptions. Likewise, shoeing a pegasus could cause problems; sometimes with the wrong material they lost the ability to move clouds, or would wind up building a static charge in flight, which got painfully dissipated when they landed.

Shoeshine shifted her weight and flicked her eyes over to Lyra. The unicorn was patiently standing there, letting Dale indulge himself.

He finally reached the end of her samples and looked over at her as he put the last shoe back on its peg. I hope he doesn’t want to look at my tools, too. She’d put them behind the counter, but he had seen her do it.

Instead, he nodded to Lyra, then leaned down and extended his hand again, waiting until Shoeshine gave it a gentle rap. Then he walked out of the shop, with the unicorn following him.

Shoeshine dropped down on her haunches once they were gone. She wasn't sure what to think about what had just happened: he'd disrupted her whole lunch, and now Lightning Bolt was going to have to wait another day to get her shoes, unless somepony at the train station though to bring them over. But she'd gotten to see him up close, and he was an interesting creature, even if he didn't wear horseshoes.


•        •        •


“Well, I never expected a morning spent getting shod to turn out that exciting.”

“Me either.” Peachy brushed her muzzle along Lavender's shoulder. “Just goes to show that you never can tell what's going to happen.”

“I wish we woulda had some kind of warning.” Caramel lowered his head. “Strange creatures shouldn’t be allowed to roam free in town.”

“He had Lyra and a Guard with him.” Apple Leaves took a step closer to him. “And I did warn you.”

“After you'd already decided that he was gonna come in,” he groused.

“Yeah, so?” Lavender grinned. “He's nice and respectful, just like they said at the meeting. Fancy Pants said that we were the friendliest town in all of Equestria. I was almost next to him when he said it.”

Peachy nodded. “That's right. Besides, it's not inconvenient, it's an honor. How many other ponies have got to see him up close?”

“How many other ponies have gotten to hoof-bump him?”

“I knew he was nice. Ambrosia said so. Red told me that she'd told him that, right after she met him in the hospital when she was fixing the wall that was busted.”

“Hey, maybe I could invite him over to my house. The foals would love to meet him.”

“Do you think he's going to go to the school?” Lavender looked at Apple Leaves. “He ought to.”

“Berry Punch told me Miss Cherilee goes over to the embassy a lot,” Caramel said. 

“See, she thinks it’s okay too, and she’s really smart. Aren't you going back to Applejack's?”

“Yeah.” Caramel looked up at the town clock. “I told her I'd be back by noon. I ought to get going.”

“I'll walk with you,” Apple Leaves offered. “I've got to pick up Apple Tart. Carrot Top's foalsitting him, which was really nice of her.

“She's not at market today?”

“No, her mom is. Remember, she runs the stand one day a week.”

“Oh, yeah.” Peachy nodded. “Alright, see ya. You too, Caramel.”

“Don't get your new shoes dirty,” Lavender advised, then turned to Peachy. “You wanna come over and get some bread?”

“Sure! Red'll probably be happy to have something different for breakfast tomorrow.”
> Fragment: Minuette Takes the Train
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fragment: Minuette Takes the Train
Admiral Biscuit

Minuette stood on the platform of the Ponyville train station, watching with interest as a pair of mares unloaded boxes from the train into a waiting wagon. She'd gotten used to the usual travelers she saw on her usual commuting days, but since she was traveling a day late, everything had changed.

She was sure that they were regular visitors to Ponyville—in her experience, most tourists invariably started looking around and taking in the sights as soon as they'd detrained, but these two mares showed very little interest in the town, and were more concerned with ensuring that the boxes all made it into their wagon in good order.

Finally, the gray mare, who was already wearing a breastcollar harness, backed up between the shafts on the wagon, and the pink mare fastened them through the tugs on her bellyband.

She could have kept watching, but she saw the firepony swinging the water spout away from the locomotive, which meant that the train was almost ready to go.

Minuette hopped aboard the first coach. She liked sitting as near to the locomotive as she could, because that let her hear it working, and sometimes when she was bored she pretended that she was driving it.

A quick glance around the coach confirmed what she already knew: nopony that she knew was aboard. So she took an available bench on the right side of the train, and she slid into it far enough to pull her window down so she'd get a little bit of a breeze when the train started moving. With that task accomplished, she stretched out along the bench.

It had been pure luck that she'd had her camera with her, and she felt her saddlebags one more time just to make sure that it was still in there. Her mind was still replaying the meeting from the evening before. The excitement of meeting Dale and Kate hadn't worn off yet—in fact, she'd had trouble sleeping—and now she thought that there was a good chance that she might meet the Princess when she got back to Canterlot.

She unconsciously shifted her weight as the train rolled back then jerked forward, and her ears turned towards the locomotive as it began working. The station moved out of her view, and before too long the cluster of buildings outside her window was replaced with small orchards and a broad field of heather.

Her only regret was that she'd never gotten a chance to take some pictures of the inside of Dale's mouth. She'd wanted to, but every time she'd tried that before the picture hadn't come out right, and she didn't know why. When she was in dental school, she had seen some pictures of pony mouths, and those had turned out. Maybe her camera wasn't good enough, or maybe there was something she didn't know about taking pictures, but it seemed to her that if she could see it, her camera ought to be able to see it, as well.