Day 103- Guy Newman - Playing with Legos.

There’s nothing quite like spending Christmas Eve having a girl who doesn’t know how Legos work build a large castle out of Legos. It was eleven am the morning of December 24th, and it was already getting difficult to contain Pinkie Pie’s excitement for the upcoming holiday. So with no other ideas to kill the time, I decided this was as good a time as any to pull out the secret weapon i had stashed away in one of Rarity’s giant suitcases: Three boxes of Legos. The past two weeks or so had been nothing but running outside to secure provisions from the woods, be it firewood or berries Fluttershy said were okay to eat. Not sure what kind of berries thrived in winter, but if Fluttershy said they were safe, I believed it. Rarity and Fluttershy were out on one of said “Nature walks right now,” leaving me to entertain pink pony girl as she bounced off the walls in anticipation. And that’s how the construction of Fort Forty Fort began. It began with Pinkie dumping out every last Lego onto the floor and beginning to sort them by color. This took about 3 minutes. For three bigass boxes, this was a pretty impressive feat. This was followed up by several minutes of attempting to stick those annoying connector rods into bricks they didn’t go in and seeing which ones spun around the best. Much less impressive.
“So, what do these do?” She asked, pointing at the two castle gate pieces.
“They’re the doors.” I replied, assuming she’d get the jist of this soon enough. That was probably my mistake, as I’m not sure how long was spent giving details on the uses of each and every piece in that pile. And somehow I don’t think there was a single repeat. After that, she went back to the spinning thing.
“Put the brick on a stick and spin it around, look at this fun new game I’ve found ♪.” She hummed to herself. I figured with that, I could probably leave her be for a little while and go do something else. Probably step outside and see if Rarity and Fluttershy were near back yet. It was pretty close to lunchtime, but I didn’t want to start making anything just to have them not come back any time soon. Too much longer and I’d just switch over to single serve and let them figure out their meals themselves, but I was willing to wait a little bit longer.
“Alright Pinkie, don’t make too much of a mess while I’m gone.” I said to her.
“Wait, hold on, one more question!” She stopped me.
“Yes?”
“Is it okay if the fort extends outside?” That was her question? There weren’t THAT many bricks, so I wasn’t exactly sure how she planned on managing that in the first place, but…
“Sure, if you can make it go that far.” I decided to issue her the challenge, hoping maybe it would keep her busy for a little longer.
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She grinned. “Well, have fun out there.”
“Yeah, and you enjoy your Legos.” And so I left her to her brick-themed devices as I gathered up my boots and gloves and got ready to step out into the winter wonderland I had grown rather accustomed to over the past week and a half. Once you got used to being cold, it wasn’t really that bad to see snow all the time. This is probably because in no way shape or form was I expected to shovel an inch of it, but given that circumstance, having a snowball fight or two had been kind of fun, and the snowman we had built on day 5 was still standing, albeit having been reinforced a few times by its architect, she who was playing with Legos. All in all, I suppose it had been an okay vacation. Refocusing on the current moment, I began to gaze into the forest around the cabin to see if Rarity and Fluttershy were anywhere nearby. My quick scan didn’t yield any results, so I decided to go a little bit in, since it wasn’t like there was much else for me to do. The trees weren’t exactly thick, and there weren’t any leaves to obstruct vision, so I could see the general area pretty well. As long as the altitude didn’t shift too much, I’d be able to see them easy enough if i got close to them. I wasn’t planning on going very far, but it was also nice enough outside that I figured a little walk couldn’t hurt. And so that was how I ended up out in the forest on Christmas Eve.

It had probably been about ten minutes since I had started walking now, but I still hadn’t come across the other two members of my party. I couldn’t imagine them being too far out, since Rarity was involved. If it were just Fluttershy, I wouldn’t put it passed her to be literally anywhere in this darn forest, but she had a much more indoor inclined companion along with her this time around, so I was starting to wonder just where exactly the two of them had managed to get off to. But just as I was about to give up and head on back to the cabin, I started hearing the sound of voices up ahead. As I got closer, I realized I was approaching a clearing in the woods to a field, and I could now make out the voices, as well as see the figures of the two girls I had come out here looking for.
“Oh please, please, PLEASE can’t we stay out here just a little bit longer, darling?” At that moment, I began to wonder if I had fallen asleep outside at some point and passed on without realizing it. In what world was Rarity begging to stay out in nature any longer than she had to? But when the trees parted and I saw the large pile of shiny rocks behind her it started to make more sense. More specifically, it was a pile of gemstones. Sure enough, there was a hole in the ground in front of them, a big break in the otherwise snow-covered field, and Rarity was bent down over it reaching into it, occasionally tossing more gems out into the pile behind her.
“We really should be heading back now though… we’ve been out for almost two hours, and the others are probably wondering where we are…” Fluttershy gave as a response.
“Well, I was, but now it makes sense.” I put in as a reply as I walked up behind them. Fluttershy jumped a little in surprise, but murmured a greeting once she realized it was me, and Rarity made no recognition that I had showed up and just kept digging, a new gemstone joining the pile every 30 seconds or so. “You guys come outside for two hours and end up finding a potential fortune.”
“Oh? You use gems as currency too?” Rarity perked up, suddenly interested as the conversation took a turn towards gems.
“Well, more like you can trade them for currency, but yeah. And they can end up being pretty valuable, depending on some factors. I’m not an expert myself, so we’ll have to wait til we go back to the dorms to get them appraised. But if they’re real, they should be worth a fair bit either way.” With this information, Rarity returned to her digging with a renewed vigor, to which Fluttershy sighed.
“Just as I had almost convinced her to leave…” I heard her mumble.
“Sorry, my bad.” I apologized, now realizing what I’d just caused.
“If you really feel bad, help me dig so it gets done faster!” Was the reply Rarity gave, now from all the way inside the hole she had created. I looked over at Fluttershy, who shrugged and said “Might as well.”
And so that’s how we ended up spending the next hour or so digging through the ground to collect shiny rocks for Rarity. After that time, two things were realized: First was we had now been out here a long time without eating and our stomachs were empty; second was that we had just dug up a massive amount of gemstones, and now had to carry them all back to the cabin. I had lost track of exactly how long I had walked to get here in the first place, but had probably been about 15 minutes total. For a normal walk, that would be no problem, but the only thing we had that could be used to carry the gems was a small backpack Fluttershy brought with her whenever she went out into the woods, and it was half-full of supplies already. The lack of any snacks was an oversight we would have review later. But either way, the stack of gems was far more than we could fit into the “nature sack,” as it had been nicknamed.
“We can always come back with a sled or something and pull them all back.” I suggested, but Rarity looked at me like I was nuts.
“What? And leave my precious gems out here alone in the cold?! What if something happens to them? Oh, I can’t even bear to think about it!” So apparently, that was out of the question, too.
“We could come back and get her?” I looked at Fluttershy, but she shook her head.
“We shouldn’t leave Rarity out here alone.” I guess that was a valid point. Since she wouldn’t be willing to move, we really shouldn’t leave her out in the middle of the forest by herself. So… what to do…
“Well, either I’ll go back, eat some lunch real quick, and grab something to carry these, or we could just try and carry it all. Between the backpack, jacket pockets, and hands we could probably get at least most of it.”
“Hmm….” Rarity seemed like she was pondering these options very deeply, but within a few seconds she shouted “Carry them we shall!” Somehow I figured that’s what she would go with.
“Let’s get going then.”
Five minutes of picking up gems later, we did in fact manage to pick up all the gems. A fair bit of them did fit in the backpack, and many of the smaller ones managed to get squeezed into the pockets of our coats. With three sets of jackets, it was a decent amount, but we had actually dug up a lot, so there was still even more for us to carry in our arms. Cupping them around our stomachs, Rarity scooped up the gems and piled them into the cradles we made. With all this done, she was able to pick up the last few herself, and we began our journey back.
The walk over hadn’t been too bad, but the return trip proved significantly more difficult, being weighed down with these shiny things. Between the gems in hand, and the snow on the ground, our pace was painfully slow.
“So, how’s your day been?” I asked, deciding might as well try and make some small talk while we had nothing else to do.
“Oh, darling, any day with gems is a wonderful day!” Rarity said in an upbeat voice.
“Fluttershy?” I asked, hoping for something that didn’t have to do with rocks.
“It was a lovely day outside. Even though there aren’t really that many animals out at this time of year, I did run into a few squirrels while we were out here.”
“Really? I thought Squirrels hibernated during Winter?” I asked.
“No, actually. Though they do sleep a lot and spend most of their time huddled together in their dens, it’s not a hibernation by definition. And they do come out from time to time. Turns out these squirrels come out every winter and have a frolic through the forest together. They collect all kinds of things while they do.” How Fluttershy managed to learn things from animals never ceased to amaze me, but I felt like this one she was completely making up. But since I figured I might as well go along with it for the sake of conversation.
“And what kinds of things might that be?”
“Well, if there happen to be any acorns, they grab those first, but they’re pretty rare at this time of year, so they’ll usually just look for anything sticking out of the snow. They especially like shi-...ny…” She slowed down for a second, looking down at the pile in her arms, he last word slipping out her mouth a second later. “things. Oh dear. We need to hurry.” She said, sounding a little panicked, as she drastically picked up her pace.
“Wait, why?” I picked up my speed a little bit to try and keep up with her, but it had caught me a little off guard so getting moving was difficult. “Weren’t you just kidding?” I asked, but as she looked back and opened her mouth to answer, I began to hear faint sounds from behind us. They rapidly grew louder, and it didn’t take long for it to solidify into a clearly defined chirping. Even so, it didn’t sound like birds. “Oh, you’ve GOT to be kidding me.” And yet I knew it to be so. And so I broke out full speed ahead, as fast as I could get going through all the hindrances.
“Wait, what’s happening? Why are we running? Oh, I hate running.” Rarity groaned, but picked up her own pace. As we ran, the chirping and chittering grew louder, and from behind us, we were now able to see snow flying through the air as things running kicked it up into the air. And soon they were close enough to see that it was, in fact, an army of squirrels. I never thought squirrels would be something to scare me, but this was a lot of squirrels, running very fast, and seemingly chasing after us.
“Hey, if we toss the gems back, do you think they’ll stop to pick them up?” I yelled at Fluttershy. But before she could even open her mouth, Rarity yelled “Don’t you dare drop my gems!” As she plowed past us with her increasing speed. The squirrels weren’t on us yet, and I could start to see the outline of the cabin up ahead, so maybe, just maybe, we could make it inside before they jumped us… and probably tickled us with their paws while they took all our shiny rocks. And then our hope faded away as the cabin came into full view. Or rather, a massive wall of Legos came into full view. I was almost so shocked that I stopped running, but I just barely managed to keep running. THERE HADN’T BEEN THAT MANY LEGOS! But somehow Fort Forty Fort expanded around the entirety of the cabin, with no visible entrance from this side.
“Pinkie!” I started shouting, hoping she might hear us in time to show us whatever opening she may have made. If that didn’t work, we could run behind and see if there was another entrance there. “PINKIE!!!”
“Yeeeeees?” She replied from within the walls of the fort, dragging out the word.
“Pinkie, how do we get in?!” I yelled back.
“What’s the password?”
“WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS! Where’s the door?”
“In here.”
“What?”
“It’s not a fort if it’s that easy to get into, silly. I sighed. We had reached the brick walls of Fort Forty Fort, but we were now unable to bypass its state of the art security measures. Pounding on the bricks with my forehead to try and bust through didn’t work, our arms were still full of gems, and the warden wasn’t about to budge on her password policy.
“Fluttershy, is there anything you can do about the squirrels?” I kind of figured I’d already known the answer, but might as well try. Sadly she confirmed my doubts.
“Sorry, there’s far too many of them and too riled up for me to take care of that quickly.” Time seemed to slow as the tsunami of fur closed in on us. With it like that, I was able to take a brief moment to appreciate all the small details of the scene. Fluttershy seemed totally calm, so I imagined we weren’t in any personal danger, only our gems had to fear. Pinkie was giggling behind the walls, not realizing the perils beyond the walls, and Rarity was panickedly still trying to force her way inside of the fortress. And so I accepted it was over. There would be no easy fortunes for us. It would be taken away by squirrels. In that moment, I closed my eyes as the furry tidal wave crashed over us.

***

Turns out squirrels are quite good at getting into sealed places. For example, a coat pocket, or perhaps a backback. In other words, the swarm had plowed over us, found all the gems we had been holding on to, and whisked them away. The only evidence to prove that it had happened in the first place was all the small paw prints in the snow. And Rarity. Physically, Fluttershy and I were unharmed, as we had just accepted fate. Rarity had struggled against the flow of the River Acorns, and as such had gotten a good number of scratch marks as the tide passed over her. But in the end, she had been unable to fight this great force of nature, and succumbed to current. And now we all sat out here, backs leaned against the Lego walls of Fort Forty Fort, in too much mental shock to do anything else.
After a little bit of doing nothing, we eventually called Pinkie back, and began taking turns guessing at what the password was. Fluttershy and I managed to have a little fun with it, but Rarity just guessed “My gems…” in a sobbing voice every single time, to which Pinkie would always reply “Still nope!” cheerily. Who knows how long it took us to figure it out, but it turns out the password was “Santa Claus.” Of course it was. But with the code cracked, we were once again allowed inside our cabin. When the password was guessed, the bricks parted in a giant-sized version of the gate pieces I had showed Pinkie earlier, but these blended in perfectly with the rest of the bricks. I could question how exactly Pinkie had managed all this, but I was too worn out to care by this point. Rarity and Fluttershy felt similar.

We went inside and had lunch. Pretty late in the afternoon, but lunch.

“Alright kids, time for bed.” I said as I lugged myself away from the table.

“What?! But it’s barely 3 o’clock!” Pinkie yelled in protest, but Fluttershy replied with “No, he’s right.” And lugged Rarity away with her. Fluttershy said our friend would be fine after she came to terms with it, which pretty much equated to a night’s sleep. And the rest of us were too wiped to do anything else.

“If you want something else to do, you can always rebuild the fort into a second Christmas tree.” I gave her as a suggestion, and as I collapsed in bed, I heard Pinkie running outside. But that’s where I fell asleep. It had been a unique Christmas Eve.

Day 104 - Richard Dickinsun - Log Cabin Paradise

The days passed quickly, Twilight healed up fully halfway through the trip which meant she joined the now-daily competitions between Dash and AJ...which also meant she was stuck outside the rest of the week. But they learned, we all laughed, and we all bonded. It wasn’t family bonding, but it was as close as we were going to get.
But it was Christmas Day, and here I was, stuck in the woods with three horse people...one a flat chested tomboy, another a stick-in-the-mud bookworm, and the last a hypersexual amazonian woman with a penchant for apples. Meanwhile on the other side of the mountain sat my loving lady, Fluttershy...what is a poor love-struck soul to do…

“You know we could just go visit them right?” Rainbow Dash stated after my 300th sigh of the morning.

“Yeah, but I just figured laying around here and bemoaning my fate would be less work for once.” I rolled over on the couch and looked around the cabin. Twilight and AJ were in the kitchen preparing our meal for the morning, some kind of apple pancakes...better than cardboard I guess. Rainbow on the other hand seemed to be prepping...something else.

“Rainbow...what is that?”

“A present.” She held up the wrapped up...something that she was holding.

“Ok I get that, but who is it for?”

“Pinkie. It’s you human’s version of Hearth’s Warming right? Well we normally give presents to our friends on that day...and I wanted to give Pinkie something for a change.”

“That’s actually...really thoughtful of you. What did you get her?”

“A bottle of chocolate syrup.”

“Hmmmm….I can work with this.” I ran off quickly to my bag of gear. Hidden deep deep down in a small hidden pocket I retrieved a small flask. And returned just in time for the girls to be sitting down to eat. “Alright ladies, today Rainbow is going to be taking a hike to the other cabin for Christmas. It has a tradition of giving presents, which she has one for Pinkie and I’m giving her a little something special as well.” With that I tossed Rainbow a small wrapped container, which contained a flask of my favorite whisky. “Give that to Pinkie and just let her know it’s a special present from me.”

“Hmmm...ok. I think I can do that.” She looked prepped and ready, after quickly inhaling her pancakes.

“Good. But you better head out soon if you want to actually spend some time with everyone over there.” I gave her a sly wink, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you mumbling about missing Guy.”

“You...SHUT UP!” Her face turning bright red by the time she got to me, grabbed my present and rushed out the door.

“Innocent love...how adorable.” I smiled mischievously. I might have to do something to expedite that...juuuust a little. Now, what should the three of us do today. “Twilight, can you take care of making a list of all the materials we used from the cabin so we can work on replacing it, you know, restocking the wood, and toiletries and whatnot.”

“How did you know making lists was my favorite!”

“I...assumed. And AJ, you and I are going to go for a walk.”

“Where to sugarcube?”

“I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there.”

And there we split to our respective tasks. AJ and I walked out, passing a few smaller clearings in the woods before finding a larger one with a lovely look at the clear blue sky of the day...I guess I’ll have to remember this place for later, it should have a great view of the stars. But we continued on, skirting the edge of a frozen lake, finding a cliffside suitable for climbing, and finally finding ourselves on a small hill overlooking a snow covered valley, where I cleared a fallen log for us to take a seat.

“So...are you doing alright?” I looked over at AJ as she sat down next to me.

“What do ya mean?” She looked mildly confused.

“I mean with...Scott...gone.”

“I reckon it will take a bit of time with Rarity and me getting used to livin with just the two of us...but it’ll sort itself out…’ventually.”

“Do you have anything you want to talk about? Anything that might get that all sorted out a little faster?”

“Not particularly,” She said laying her head on my shoulder...a strange feeling from the usually sensual girl, “but...I’ll let you know of any other ways you could help me.”

“AJ, why do you always try to make things sexual?”

“What do ya mean by that? I thought this was normal actin fer you folk.” She sat upright and turned to look at me fully.

“Wait, what? Who taught you that?”

“Well the family I was livin with on that farm had four sons, but they had always wanted a daughter, guess I fit the ticket well enough. But them boys liked playing their games with me, touchin and prodin and the like...I guess I just thought all humans was like that.”

“...they did what to you? Did you tell Celestia?”

“No? That wasn’t normal?”

“Gods no. That’s not normal at all. If you asked for it and agreed to it, sure, that’s fine, but no, that’s not how normal people act…”

“Well shoot...and Rarity didn’t help the matter with what she was doing for work and all...just made me think this was how things were supposed ta be.”

“No...it isn’t. But now that you know...you can ask me anything you want on the matter...guess Scott never had the chance to get around to that.”

“No, he didn’t...but are you sure you don’t wanna just buck instead of talkin bout all these feelins?”

“Yes I’m sure.”

And so our afternoon passed, chatting about life, giving her an actual understanding of courtship in this world, and trying to right the wrongs of a false education…but when we finally returned, it turns out Rainbow had gotten back and was now lying on her bed in her shared room with AJ, in a daze with a large bump on her forehead and muttering something about Legos and trees. AJ excused herself quietly so she could be alone with her thoughts, leaving Twilight and me out in the common area.

“So, all of our materials are listed here, with the total usage of their provided supplies mirroring it. And here is our estimated time table for gathering what we need to replace all of that, as well as our time to pack all of our things to leave.”

“Yeah cut about half an hour for my packing time...I’m pretty efficient with that. Too many years camping I guess.”

“Now...I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something different.” She pulled out a sketchbook, coated in drawings of machinery, and quick mathematical notations.

“Down to work?”

“Down to the real work.”

And that’s how it went. We spent hours brainstorming idea’s for getting them home, and trying our hardest to drone out the sounds of AJ crying and Dash yelling ‘Bricks!’ randomly from the other room...not my most ideal way to spend Christmas...

***

Author's Note

It's a real fort!

S&S - Well, meant to get this up sooner, but eh, 2 weeks is better than 3 years. I hit some writers block here, so squirrels happened. Please forgive me.

TH - So here is another thing. Enjoy it...or don't. Your prerogative really. But in either case drop us a line on here, tell us what is working and what isn't. And do us both a favor, and have yourself a good day, I know Guy will in the next chapter.