The Faith of Carrot Top

Chapters

Chapter 2: The Semi-Obligatory Towel-Clad Scene
Chapter 3: How I Met Your Mothers
Chapter 4: The New New Lunar Republic
Chapter 5: From Sea to Shining Sea
Chapter 7: The Liturgy
Chapter 8: Resistance
Chapter 9: The Morning After
Closing Notes
Chapter 1: The Gentlemare
Chapter 6: Of Hearts and Hooves

Chapter 2: The Semi-Obligatory Towel-Clad Scene

Five Weeks Later

Carrot Top rose with Celestia’s sun, kicking to extricate her tail from the tangled bedspread. Within three seconds flat of awakening, she jumped to her corner trough, splashed water on her face, and gave two quick hoof-pumps to the bellows of her log-fired cookstove. The resulting blast of hot air removed any lingering traces of drowsy temptation.

Carrot Top didn’t believe in sleeping in while the Pony of the Morning Star was beckoning her subjects to face the day. Her morning routine was swift and decisive. She rustled up some hay pancakes on the stove, pounded her hooves into her shoes and got the weeding done in her backyard patches, all before the Apple family rooster could be heard over the hills.

But she did do one thing different this morning. Instead of moving onto the east field, Carrot dusted off the mirror on her beech-wood vanity and gave her mane a long, hard glare.

Today was the day. No more waiting.

Five weeks. For five weeks she’d let Day run in and out of her market stand with nothing but a hot and bothered mumble. She’d let him stumble away, watching his stiff, two-legged gait with a lopsided smile instead of chasing after him like a mare ought to. He was tall, he was well-mannered, and he was brilliant once you got to know him. A good lad. And Alexandra, the human who came with him, was clearly a girl of excellent taste if nothing else. So what was Carrot waiting for?

Maybe the difficulty of pinning him down was one of the things she liked most. He was shyer than a pre-pubescent colt, despite the fact that she could make him smile with nothing but a wink. She had to admit that she derived a certain pleasure from chatting him up, getting him to kneel his face close to hers, and then whispering the most romantic thing she dared, only to watch him slip away with a cardboard excuse. Each time, the urge to knot her harness on his neck grew even stronger.

But no more. She was going to catch that human, and it was happening today.

Thus the glare for splits hairs and sprigs of frizz. She was hoping to replicate Ma’s ‘mom look’, which in Carrot Top’s foalhood had seemed capable of sending thunderclouds scurrying for their rooms, to say nothing of unruly manes.

But she had a backup plan tucked safely away in her closet. It took a little searching, but Carrot found her pink hairbrush near the back under an old broken plow-harness, still wearing its price tag. Carrot bit it off and applied with gusto.

Combing an unruly mane had been described as the next best torture to flight for an earth mare, and Carrot had always heartily agreed, but she twisted her limbs and mouth in every direction they would go, tugging right past the stings in her scalp every time she hit a snag. It was, if anything, worse than she remembered. She’d no doubt let her mane get a little longer since she moved to Ponyville–probably without even thinking about it. So many other mares wore their hair long here. By the time she was working on the backmost curls, Carrot felt like the Apples’ dog Winona spinning in circles to chase her own tail.

But that was the worst, and soon past. Carrot’s tail was a little harder to reach, but it submitted to the new world order with much less resistance. It was an everyday matter to glossy up her coat with the curry comb and dandy brush sitting in the top drawer of the vanity.

She paused for just a moment to overlook her final reflection before setting out. She hadn’t prettied up like this in a long time—not since stallions she had long since forgotten, and who had surely forgotten her. Maybe Applejack’s attitude had rubbed off on her. Ever since she’d been old enough to run her own farm in Ponyville, Carrot Top had privately shook her head at mares who went through this fiasco every morning.

But today she had good reason to spare no effort. Today was the day she’d thought might never come. It was time to get serious about love.

With a brief whisper asking Celestia to watch over her, she was cantering through Ponyville—avoiding the impulse to break into a gallop, which would undo her morning efforts. She did obey the impulse to pick up a bouquet of carnations when she ran across Morning Dew setting up in the marketplace. It was always best to be a gentlemare. Ma wouldn’t have expected anything less.

It was no secret where the humans lived in this town. Lyra had her plaything stashed up on Crayonberry Lane, and when the new row of houses had gone up, everypony had known by the drab colors inside that they weren’t for ponies. Rumor had it that the outer walls had been planned to be painted entirely in beige, but the Mayor had intervened for the sake of the town atmosphere and convinced whatever Earth-side company contracted the job to have them done over in lovely shades of mauve.

Carrot had only to trot down the row and follow her nose to the front door which smelled the most like Amadeus. It was built in Earthling fashion, one solid rectangle intimidatingly tall. She sucked in a breath around the bouquet, steeled herself, and knocked.

Day steeped himself in swirling steam, toweling off just before he kicked open the bathroom door to let it escape down the hall. Though he wasn’t one for superstitious thoughts, he found himself wishing a blessing on whoever was responsible for the miracle of engineering and/or unicorn magic that brought hot running water to this quiet corner of the multiverse. And it wasn’t the first time. Hot showers were one of the few quick ways he could relax after the caffeine-sped nightmare that was work.

Pressure was mounting at the project headquarters. Vedalkan had been seen on the upper floors, moving parts with unsettling blue calm. Explosions from the thirteenth floor weren’t uncommon either; according to Shiny Springs, they were trying to sculpt antennae that functioned as artificial unicorn horns and launch the field of automated spellcasting.

It was true that US defense contractors could smell easy money through a mile of solid rock. It was also true that the military on any world told their contractors little, and the Princesses everyone kept whispering about told them even less. But the orders that filtered down filled the team, down to a man, with dark unease. If all went according to schematics, Equestria would soon have surface-to-space missiles capable of taking out a Turian dreadnaught, and Day shuddered to imagine ponies dealing with anything that rivaled such a scale. The multiverse grew wider every day, in this age of exploration, and Day almost regretted that ponies had bonded so tightly to mankind that they would plunge headlong into whatever dark and terrible things the curiosity of apes unearthed.

His own team was still failing to make much progress on the ergonomics issue. Existing keyboards couldn’t be used except by well-trained and very talented unicorns. And if ponies couldn’t use whatever they were given effectively, the whole ordeal was rather moot. Day had been quoted at one point as sitting in a corner mumbling over and over again that he ‘hoped to God’ someone had a breakthrough before they fell to hitting each other over the head with soldering irons.

But that was like a different story from a far-away world. Here…here in Ponyville, life was sunny and harmony reigned supreme.

Day was just considering whether he wanted to rifle around for some clothes when the sound of conversation—in Equus, no less—stopped him short. He hung back, listening to see how Allie was improving. He would have rushed to get dressed if he’d thought it was important, but random ponies were fond of calling in on them now and again, as if they just didn’t want any house in Ponyville to go unvisited for too long.

A loud, delighted squeal in a familiar voice jolted him back into action.

Day peeked into the living room just as an orange mare bounded off the sofa, stopping less than a foot away from being able to grab his towel in her mouth. He stepped back. “You?”

“She said yes!” Carrot Top shrieked with a great big smile, jumping up on him. Her footloose forehooves supported her upright against Day’s bare chest, until he jumped away from the contact an instant later with a horrified look at Allie.

“Yes to what?” he cried. He was acutely aware of the need to keep his eyes front and center, now of all times, but the sudden smoothness of Carrot Top’s coat wasn’t helping the situation. He had to fight not to pay attention to the interesting curls in which her mane cascaded over her sides.

Carrot hardly seemed to notice that she’d been dropped back on all fours. “I’m going to take you to a musical, and I’m going to take you out to dinner, and I’m going to take you on long walks in the forest, and I’m going to take you to the spa, and I don’t even know if that’s a good idea, but hayseed if I care…”

She gave one more happy squeak, and took notice of Day once again. Despite the total bewilderment with which he met her grin, she looked him up and down without the slightest attempt to disguise her enjoyment. “So you do have a little coat hair. I like it! Gives you character. Now I know you have this obsession with bundling up, but sun’s light, would it kill you to wear a little less for once? Go outside like this. You could stand to show off!”

Day pulled the towel a little tighter around his waist. “Where I come from, we have this concept called modesty.”

“Never fear, my little human.” Carrot patted his leg with the edge of her fetlock. Had she picked that up from Lyra? “I’ll cure you of those artificial values now that we’re together.”

“We’re not together! I thought I made that perfectly clear!” He looked up at Allie in horror—what she must be thinking! But the woman was looking on with nothing more scrutable than…was that amusement?

Carrot Top whimpered. As she drooped, falling back on her haunches, her ears followed by flattening to either side. “B-but you said I was a nice mare,” she nickered. “You said I was pretty.” A step forward, reaching out as Day backed cautiously away from her. “You meant all that, didn’t you?”

Day was now backed up all the way against his living room wall. “Of course I did! But I’m Allie’s! Miss Carrot Top, I know I explained this!”

Utterly unfazed, Carrot Top pointed at the girl herself, who was still seated demurely on the sofa. “But I asked her and she said yes! So now we can! Isn’t that the grandest?”

Day’s eyes went slowly wide, darting back and forth between the two girls in the room. “She said what?”

“Yes,” Carrot repeated with slow, enamored emphasis. And a little hop. “Is next Friday alright? Och, maybe we can go out today! Do you have time?”

“What?” Day looked to his girlfriend for answers, but she was just toying with the kerosene lamp that sat beside their electric lampshade, plugged into the only outlet in the house. “Allie, what does she mean, you said yes? What is Carrot talking about? We’re not going somewhere, are we?”

Allie shrugged, still looking at the lamp. “I don’t figure she’d lie to you, Day. Guess you’d better grab some pants.”

“But–” He looked at Carrot Top. The pony’s hooves were tensely planted in his pile carpet, her eyes wide with gentle sparks of electrified hope.

Back to Allie. She still wasn’t meeting his eyes.

“Miss Carrot,” he said carefully, “you’re going to have to give us a moment alone.”

“Not a problem,” the mare declared, crossing her chest with a hoof. “My mothers raised a gentlemare. You can have all the time you need to talk it out.” She poked at one last unruly wing of hair sticking from her mane. “Can I try out your sink in the meanwhile? Might be just the thing.”

Day tried to catch Allie’s face again, and just for an instant, she looked him in the eye.

“Actually,” he found himself saying, “this might take longer than that.”

Day closed the door behind Carrot Top when she finally left, turning quickly back to the living room where his fiancée waited for him. Day approached carefully, patted out a spot on the couch, and scooted himself in until their legs were touching.

“Honey,” he began–he didn’t know how to begin. “Honey, Carrot Top didn’t mean the kind of date we used to go on with your brothers. She meant a real date.” He fidgeted. “As in a candlelit dinner. That kind of date.”

“I know, she’s like, dead-set on it. And so serious! You should have heard her asking me for permission while you were still in the shower.” Allie chuckled like wind through chimes. “I totally felt like your dad!”

Day turned cautiously, as if about to keep his head down and try to back away. “Wait. You know?”

“She brought flowers.” Allie thumbed towards the kitchen. “I put them in water for you.”

Day groaned. When his hand was done massaging his forehead, he used it to wave dismissively. “Okay. Whatever. What did she say to you while I was in the shower?”

Allie glanced towards the kitchen and back. “Aren’t you going to go look?”

“Maybe later,” he said with a touch of irritation. “I’m trying to talk about something important here!”

“Important,” she spat back. “Day, when someone gets you flowers, you don’t ignore them. Go look!”

Day wasn’t going to get anywhere fast unless he played along. With a sigh, he got up to the kitchen; a butterfly alighted on a twig in his stomach when he first saw the dozen carnations in voluptuous full bloom. They were big, beautiful and ostentatious—and they’d been bought for the sole purpose of impressing him.

To his own amazement, he quite forgot his interrogation for a moment, quietly bunching the stems in his hands to take a deep whiff of the blossoms. Why should this have any effect on him? Sure, no one had given him flowers before, but he was a guy. He’d bought plenty of them in the past for Allie, and for his mother.

Allie was leaning against the kitchen entryway. “She said to ask if you liked carnations, since she didn’t know if you’d want to eat them or not. She heard humans don’t eat their bouquets.”

“Never tried carnations,” Day muttered, running his fingers across the petals. “If you knew, why did you say yes to her?”

Her neck disappeared in a smiling, unhelpful shrug. “Like I said…I thought you would enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it? Honey, you realize this pony is trying to get me to cheat on you?”

She crossed her arms as if to fend off the words. “The way she explained it to me, she’d be dating both of us. Apparently that’s how it works here.”

Day forged through the tiny, endless steps to his fiancée. He cupped her cheeks. He searched her face. “Allie, what are you trying to tell me?”

She clapped her hands over his. Her fingers were slender enough to balance on top of his. “I don’t how I can make it any clearer, Day! She asked to go out with us and I said that was fine. She said you totally wanted to. Do you not want to?”

Day muttered a curse under his breath. “Don’t listen to her. Besides, forget about what I want. I can’t do this to you!”

She bit her lip. “Maybe we could.”

Day was clearly lost, so she took his hands. “We can stay here if we want. You know you can get another job after this one. There’s openings all over the place, and the taxes are, like, nothing.” She snuck under his arms and into a stolen embrace, pressing her cheek to his collarbone. “I love it here, Day. Our house is beautiful, and this town is beautiful. And—‘When in Rome’ you know? You said that yourself.”

“At the time, I was talking about what kind of wallpaper to put up!”

“What’s taking so long?”

Carrot Top paced the window of Lyra’s bottom floor, looking across the street to the distressingly quiet house on the other side. Her friend provided the perfect place to wait for Day’s herd, but it had been ten minutes with no sign of activity. What could have happened to take them so long?

“Maybe I should go check on them.” She skipped towards the door, but not before a mint-green blur blocked her path.

Lyra rolled her eyes, pushing Carrot Top back to a piano bench with one hoof. “Oh, no. You just sit right here. They have a lot to talk about.”

She went back to the music sheets scattered across the cover of the upright, but stopped to watch the earth pony. Carrot curled up miserably wherever she’d been placed, glancing constantly out the window for any sign of humanity. Lyra’s muzzle tightened for a moment; she draped herself over the piano and played a few bright cords. “I never knew little old Carrot Top would be head over fetlocks for a human. This is such a scrapbook moment!”

Carrot Top rewarded her with a faint, lazy smile. “There’s just something about them…”

“I know!” Lyra squealed. “Finally, somepony who gets me! They’re so…so…”

Carrot raised her head. “Tall?”

“Tall and dark!” Lyra hopped enthusiastically. “Go to Canterlot and read the papers sometime. Have you heard all those stories? Earth is such a terrifying place! And humans, to live in it–so tough.”

Carrot tilted her head. “That’s just a bit of it,” she suggested softly.

“You’re right!” Lyra agreed, immediately pouncing on her thought. “Then you find out that underneath all that, they’re just as soft and squishy as any little colt. Oh, I just want to hug and fix all of them!”

Carrot tried biting her lip, but it didn’t hold back the laughter. Lyra had her forelegs wrapped around her barrel and was rocking herself back and forth. She was standing on two legs now without even thinking about it.

Lyra installed them in a more comfortable space to wait. The Human Research Laboratory, really more a bulletin of newspaper clippings and a foal’s chemistry set, had been dismantled since First Contact, but now the reading chairs served as a wonderful place to sit and talk. “I mean, I dated this human once–”

“Really?”

“You!” Lyra batted at her ears, careful to miss. “He only had one leg.”

Carrot’s ears shot up. “Oh, the poor thing!” she cried. “Was he born with just the one?”

Lyra shook her head. “Nuh-uh. It stopped at the knee. He was a soldier, and he’d been in battle where it got blown clean off.”

Carrot leaned close in morbid fascination. Lyra put a hoof to her forehead and threw herself back in a swoon worthy of Rarity herself. “Celestia, it was so sexy!”

Carrot’s left ear twitched when her friend invoked the Princess’ name in vain, but she didn’t say anything. She’d had to get used to that sort of thing. It was just how ponies talked here.

“We used to fight a lot, though.” Lyra looked askance into her old bookshelf of myths. “He was the first one I was serious about, you know. We were always trying to tell each other what to do. Dumb Earthman thought the guy was supposed to be in charge of the relationship, and of course I wanted to run everything, because I was a stupid little filly and he was my first real crush.” A wrinkle bunched around the base of her horn. “He had to go back to Earth. I hope he’s okay.”

Carrot pondered the fire and turmoil of that faraway land, and reached out to pat Lyra’s hoof. It was the only thing she could think of to do. “I’m sure he’s alright.”

Lyra hummed a tiny note of gratitude and turned one on Carrot. “You have that problem too,” she said. “You’re going to keep fighting with Day unless you learn to back down a little.”

“I thought you said I was a quiet mare.”

“But listen to the stories you tell me about Day!” Lyra smirked. “Put you around those two and you turn into a completely different pony.”

“Do I?” Carrot looked downcast at her hooves. “I suppose I did slip up here and there. I just—can’t think straight when he’s around. I want to sweep him off his feet, just like a storybook. Only it never works out the way it ought to.”

“Don’t worry, filly. It’s love.”

Carrot groaned a steam-valve release of frustration. “I believe you! Do I ever!”

As a follower of Celestia since the cradle, Carrot Top was an unshaken believer in true love. She had never doubted that somewhere, out there in the world—or on some world—were souls made just for her. All that remained to her was to find them. And, as she admitted, “I think they’re the ones, Lyra. I mean truly the ones. I’ve just got to make him understand.”

“And that’s why Auntie Lyra’s here to help!”

Carrot Top gave a silent thanks to the Princess for Lyra Heartstrings. Not only was she a goofey mare to spend the day with, Lyra must have known everything there was to know about humans. The unicorn managed to occupy Carrot’s mind for quite a while with some good straight mare talk: advice on faux pas to avoid, things humans liked to do, and how to get a human to put their hand on your withers without noticing. Carrot was able to check piles of hearsay against Lyra’s first-hoof knowledge.

Not all of the advice was exciting and fun, though. When she asked what Carrot Top was planning to wear on her first date and Carrot thoughtlessly replied that she never bothered wearing anything, her friend would have nothing of it. She marched Carrot Top all the way back to her farmhouse so that they could lay out an outfit right then. “You’ve got to trust me on this,” she insisted. “All humans are big on clothes. All Westerners, anyway. Don’t worry, they don’t go for the pearly frilly stuff. It’s actually better to wear something simple. Something light. I have this skirt Tom had Rarity make for me, and it doesn’t go more than an inch up my tail. I swear, there’s nothing to it. But if I’m feeling frisky, I just throw it on and he goes nuts.”

“I don’t like clothes,” Carrot muttered as the unicorn pushed her towards her closet. “They get in the way when I’m gardening.”

“You don’t have to wear them when you’re gardening, silly. Now let’s see what you’ve got.” Lyra flung the closet doors wide. As she gazed within, her throat echoed the rusty squeak of the closet door’s hinges.

While the floor of Carrot Top’s closet was cluttered with boxes and with farm implements in various states of repair, the hanging bar sported a dozen empty hangers—oh, and one dusty Winter Wrap-Up vest against the edge. Judging by the way it peeled off the wall, it had been hanging there untouched for the better part of a season.

Lyra swapped Carrot an incredulous glare for a sheepish one. “Okay, filly. Time for a wardrobe transplant.” She thrust a hoof dramatically skyward. “To Rarity’s!”

Carrot Top rolled her eyes and followed in chorus. “To Rarity’s.”

After the twelfth circuit of heavy footfalls round the kitchen, Day wagged his index finger at Allie. “I know. I know what this is! You’re doing this for me. You think it’ll make me happy if you pretend not to care who I fool around with.”

“Oh, Day.” Allie crossed her arms. “I love you when you don’t act too smart to understand.”

“Nope.” Day waved explosively, fighting back the insipidly cozy urge to quit questioning her. “I’ve figured you out, and I won’t let you do it. It’s ridiculous–it’s mad–but I’m convinced you’d do anything if you thought it would make me happy.”

The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. Well, there weren’t any other obvious explanations. At least this had historical precedent. She’d moved to another world for him, hadn’t she?

When the race to design the hoof-compatible computer had begun—almost overnight—everyone had been brought in for interviews, so that the finest talent from every department could be cajoled, inspired, and bribed with inconspicuous raises to pack their bags for Equestria. It had all happened so fast, the most fateful interview of Day’s career. He’d thought they were looking to fill marketing positions two floors down.

He’d astonished both himself and his superiors by proving that not only could he catalogue more alien species than anyone else in the office, he could already stumble through a few halting words of Equus without breaking a jaw—an immeasurable advantage in speed.

Day had thought that all the time spent digging the corners of the net for explorer’s journals had been wasted, until it turned out he’d been preparing for his new job for years without even realizing it.

Allie had been there, watching him through all those years. He’d used to think he was pretty good at hiding his feelings about mares, even from himself, but the shields that used to feel like glaciers now appeared to him like a trickle of thin cracks. What conclusions might she have drawn, watching him bury himself in those pages? Those stupid pages. Suddenly, a tremble of fear—he was so bad at this relationship thing! Might Allie have thought that he wasn’t happy, there on Earth, with her?

But that wasn’t true. He’d never expected to come to Equestria! Not everyone could be an astronaut, after all; someone needed to stay behind and keep the Earth spinning. Day was needed at home, and at his job. That was why he’d buried the dream of adventure. Ironic, wasn’t it, that it was his job which eventually sent him into the multiverse?

And yet, these thoughts had a sick tang of familiarity, gagging Day like petrol fumes. In fact, this whole day was infected with it. Mightn’t he have dreamed about just such a day as this, even once, all those nights he spent fawning over photographs of mares? He would have crushed such thoughts immediately, of course, because they were wrong, wrong, wrong, but still they might have lingered where he couldn’t see them.

And a girl like Allie…she could have noticed feelings in him that even he couldn’t see.

He reached out from a blinding lurch of guilt, squeezing her shoulders. What were the words a man ought to say at a time like this? “Allie, I don’t feel that way about ponies. You don’t need to do this. You’re the only one I love!”

She responded to his distressed urgency by tapping him on his nose. “Don’t lie to me. I saw what color you turned when she got a hoof on you.”

“Ah–” Day blinked. “No, you’ve got it all wrong…”

With a curt groan, she rested her fists on her hips. “Look, would it help if I said I thought she was cute too?”

Day opened his mouth and then left it there, still clinging onto her shoulders like the last pitons on a cliff face.

This was too much to imagine at once. It wasn’t the revelation that Allie was partial to a pretty girl; he’d always known that. According to the word around the sororities, she’d been something of a womanizer before Day came along. But once they were together, she’d insisted that it made no difference, because she had chosen him to spend her life with. Day had assumed that the logic made sense. At the time, he’d felt privileged and even a little guilty that she was giving up the chance to strike up romance with another female ever again, all for his sake. But he’d been much younger then. Nowadays that notion seemed silly. At least…it had.

But—ponies!

“There’s no way.” His hands slipped. “Do girls even go in for that sort of thing?”

“Oh, come on.” She threw her gangly arms around him, kicked up both of her feet and laughed, as though he were the silliest thing in the world. “What girl doesn’t want a pony?”

“But I only like you,” he insisted. “That is…” Gagging on the confusion, he threw his hands around her waist and set her down on the nearest chair. “Am I the only one who’s straight anymore?”

Allie coddled his shoulders with another giggle. “Odd man out, aren’t you? I think ponies have a more, like…open-minded taste. Maybe you should try it.”

“I, for one, think it’s rather silly. If you must ask.”

Rarity poured herself a glass of red wine and offered the bottle to Lyra. Carrot Top hoped it wasn’t an expensive vintage, though she could smell the soil of Hollow Shades in the grapes. Rarity really shouldn’t have been sharing that, but Carrot wasn’t in a position to do anything about it herself. She stood frozen in the center of the boutique, with limbs outstretched while telekinetically animated measuring tapes made an uncomfortably thorough examination of her curves.

“In Manehatten,” the dressmaker went on, reclining against her sofa and swirling the glass, “the stories you hear! Even my own acquaintances. You remember Stitcheroo, don’t you? She met a young man herself, and he was very charming. But do you know what happened when she decided to walk him home? The minute he came in the door, the young woman who was in the apartment—oh, I don’t think I can say it.”

She slammed the glass down, rolling over Lyra’s attempt to say it for her. “An attempted murder, in our very own Manehatten! With a curling iron! And for what reason was an innocent curler desecrated?” She shrugged, apparently finding solace in another swirl of her untouched glass. “I don’t mind saying that I’d be hesitant to consort with any creatures prone to fits like that. What have we come to, that we tolerate these sorts of things in Equestria? Are we even civilized? You’d think we still drank out of troughs.”

Carrot chuckled nervously along with the rest of the party, remembering with some discomfort the rows of water troughs used at every bi-annual Carrot family reunion. She had a rather tender spot in her heart for the heirlooms, for tradition’s sake if not for hygiene’s.

“Hey!” Lyra pulled Rarity’s measuring tape out of the air to gesture with it. “Relationships with humans have a ninety percent success rate. And in Equestria, their rate of violent crimes is two points lower than griffons.” She crossed her arms with a smirk. “Don’t diss the chosen race of a girl with facts.”

“To each their own, of course.” Rarity inclined her head towards Carrot Top, and, while she was at it, stuck out her tongue and lit up her horn to try to effect of a bow tie around Carrot Top’s neck. “I wouldn’t dream of standing in your way, dear. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

Day kneaded Allie’s shoulder with his chin, tightening his arms around her while plumbing the quiet which he had cocooned around them. The curtains were drawn, the lamps off, and none of the few appliances they owned were running. They had been about an hour on the sofa by now, but half of it had been spent looking into each other’s eyes, drawing out invisible threads with soft and silent conversation. Day had hoped he could pull out her soul by these faint emotions, if only he took the time, but so far a magical connection which transcended words refused to surface.

And for planning purposes, of course, time spent this way didn’t count. “Are you sure we’ve thought everything?” he said with a nervous tap on the cushion. “We couldn’t bring her home for anything.” Abruptly, his fingers snapped. “Christmas! Oh, man. What if we showed up with her on Christmas?”

Allie rolled a long-suffering glance towards heaven. “We thought of everything, Day. Even Christmas!”

“No. You never mentioned holidays!”

“We’ll just stay here and celebrate with ponies instead!” She flounced around the sofa in exasperation. “You don’t even like half of the holidays back home. Day! We could totally live here.” She squeezed his cheeks. “Oh, Day. Let’s never leave Equestria.”

“Oh, man.” Day got up and paced the room. He had nervous energy to burn. The solidity of the plan was dawning, and it was hard to take in. “Maybe we really could do this.”

“We can do whatever we want. If Carrot Top scares you, we could ask out anypony we wanted.” Catching a laugh that had snuck up on her, she covered her mouth, drawing her legs onto the couch. “I can just imagine that. You and me on the prowl, checking out ponies at Sugarcube Corner.” She winked, pointing at an imaginary pony. “How about that one? See anything you like?”

Day’s head rattled like an electric toothbrush. “Oh, no no no no no. “Let’s just—stick to this.”

He paused, took a deep breath, and grasped Allie’s hand. He had to stop pacing before he made her dizzy. So he oriented himself towards the front hall. “I guess we should go tell her then. So just the one date, for now, and no kisses on the first date. I still have to have that in there, Allie.”

He trailed off with a loud start when Carrot Top, who tapped around the corner of the hall just as he was turning for it, appeared in front of his face. She was carrying something in her mouth, which might had been the only reason she didn’t try to plant one on his lips the entire extended moment he spent in shock.

“Guess what I found!” she sing-songed, setting them in full view on the coffee table.

The top magazine on the pile was a back issue of Wingboner, with corners beaten and colors faded by coffee more than by time. The chocolate-brown pegasus on its cover, however, was immaculately groomed and well-oiled to boot. She faced away from the camera with wings outstretched to their full six-foot span, putting every single feather on flagrant display. The cover left most of its space free for the scandalous image, but left just enough word space to advertise even worse things within.

Day’s paralysis boiled off under the friction of his storming forward. “You looked in my dresser?”

Carrot’s eyes shot open. “What?” She backpedaled. “No! I wouldn’t do that! They were sitting on the buffet table!”

Day halted. That couldn’t be, because he would never, ever have left them anywhere in the open. He had been proud enough of the fact that he hadn’t touched them from their hiding place in at least a week.

He spun. Allie was plugging their daisy chain of power splitters back together, and from her expression, it would have seemed that the chore pleased her immensely.

“Don’t feel bad. As least it’s got good taste. I hear Wingboner is the best publication of its kind.”

“If by that you mean the only,” Carrot remarked as she sifted through the pile. “Never made much sense to me. If you want to look a pony’s body, go outside.”

“You might like the thundercloud pictures,” said Allie. “With models kicking lightning bolts around and everything. They’re kind of cute. I mean—unless you don’t think anything of ponies,” she added, twirling a lock of her hair with a diagonal glance at Day.

“Ooh, that does sound interesting.” Carrot Top slowly reached for the cover of the magazine. Day’s had shot out to race hers, but he had to stoop towards the coffee table. Her hoof came within half an inch of grabbing the cover before pulling away and laughing as it crumpled against Day’s chest. “Just kidding! I wouldn’t be that mean.”

She went for the next one instead, which announced its name–Herdmate Magazine–in crisp prismatic letters. On the cover were eight mares in ball gowns giving each other a group hug, and in between them page numbers for articles like 15 Group Dates Under 50 Bits, and Introducing the New Flame: how to make the new pony feel welcome in your herd without pressuring your herdmates to fall in love.

Allie leaned over Day’s horror-frozen shoulder to peer inside, as Carrot flipped through the pages by licking her hoof. “I don’t get it. Why’d you hide this?” she said after skimming the first few articles. “Nothing embarrassing here. Och, that’s a lot of mares, though. This the kind of herd you want, Day?”

“Uh.”

Carrot Top didn’t appear to notice his had creeping towards the magazine. She wasn’t looking up from it. “I think I could go for that!” she said brightly. “I always rather wanted a big herd myself.” She thumped the cover of another Wingboner in the pile. “If you’re curious about pegasi, Day, I might be able to find you one. I always suspected that Raindrops liked me a little bit. Want me to ask?”

“Ah.” Day shook his head, snatched at the magazine, and winced as Carrot pulled her head back to draw it out of reach.

“Mind you,” she said with a chuckle and an overly wide grin. “I don’t know if I want to share you with that many ponies. I was hoping to take up a lot of your time!”

She held her pose for a moment, waiting as if she half expected a rimshot. When even now Day didn’t punch through his crimson face to respond, and nobody laughed, her smile began to slip.

Day did move though, if only to point with signpost stiffness in the general direction of the door.

Carrot stared at his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Get out of my house.” He repeated himself in barely controlled puffs, barely loud enough to be talking to anyone but himself. “Get out of my house.”

“What? What did I do wrong?” Carrot Top’s voice cracked around the Herdmate Magazine still grasped between her teeth.

Day advanced. He redoubled his stony gesture towards the door, forcing Carrot backwards across the carpet, and crescendoing into a shout far unseemly for a closely packed neighborhood. “Miss Carrot Top, you are no longer welcome, I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you to get off of my property!”

Allie put a hand on his shoulder. He shook, as if stung, throwing her off. “Out!” He was on the balls of his feet. The pony, reduced to the whites of her eyes and a flicker of orange, fled at a gallop.

In twelve minutes, Carrot Top was back at Lyra’s house.

“Oy!” Her blazing groan was cut off, halfway into its ascent, when her face dropped onto the table. “What did I do wrong, Lyra? How was I supposed to know he was so sensitive? We were just having a little fun!”

“Hang on. I got you. If I can find it…” Lyra was digging in a chest beside her music stand, tossing aside sheafs of sheet music. She let Carrot wave her hooves around until she finally came up from the box with a blank-covered tome. “Here it is. The Descent of Man. Still has the bookmark in it!”

The book feel open between them with a dust-rattling thud; Carrot Top, drawn in curiosity to the eldritch-looking letters of Day’s human alphabet, pored over pages which Lyra skimmed by magic. Carrot couldn’t read a word of it, but the two columns of fine print, stamped in queer precision onto every page, radiated a sense of weighty knowledge.

“Birds…insects…fish…Aha!” Lyra suddenly smacked the open book, beginning to read halfway down the page. “…a man never obtained a wife for himself unless he captured her from a neighbouring and hostile tribe, and then, she would naturally have become his sole and valuable property.”

“What?” Carrot nudged Lyra’s face out of the way so her own nose could trace over the writing, trying to pick out the offending lines.

“It’s mostly about evolution, but they talk a bit about the way humans are in here. Tom thought it would be the easiest way to explain why humans where he grew up are so weird about big herds. Here, it says more somewhere else...” Lyra tapped another paragraph. “The most probable view is that primeval man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with as many wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously guarded against all other men.” Carrot sat in stunned silence, trying to imagine the world sketched in those few lines.

“That’s sick,” she said curtly.

Earth seemed like an even more foreboding place than ever. Carrot Top’s life was built on the bedrock of the family that had raised her. Perverting motherhood itself couldn’t have turned up her gorge any faster.

Lyra watched Carrot’s distress play itself out, but her eyelids dipped, and she smiled salaciously. “Admit it. You just want ’em even more now.”

Carrot hung her head and blushed.

Once Lyra was done snickering, she groaned again, slamming the book angrily shut. It wasn’t fair. “I finally find someone I really like. And they like me back. And we can’t be together because of dumb rubbish like this!”

Lyra immediately quieted. After a moment, she leaned close, patting the earth pony’s back and accepting Carrot’s head tucked for comfort beneath her own muzzle. “Hey,” she murmured, “it’ll work out. Remember what you used to tell me? Waaaaay back when I was just a crazy little filly who believed in imaginary creatures?”

Carrot closed her eyes, reciting easily from a long and sacred memory.

Never be afraid for love’s sake; love will endure until the end, if it has to wear down mountains and

drain deepest seas. Love would melt the sun and moon should we ever stand in its way.

(Celestia 57:11)

She cracked one eye open. “The Princess was talking about true love, you know. I mean…” she whinnied softly. “I hope I truly love Day. Or that I will. I want to love someone the way my parents loved each other.”

“Mmm.” Lyra kept mostly quiet, continuing to pat Carrot Top. Carrot knew she wanted to let her talk, and was grateful that somepony would listen; there was hardly anyone else she could complain to about the impossible difficulties of falling in love for a human.

But she didn’t keep talking. Carrot Top frowned pensively into the scruff under Lyra’s neck, just for a moment.

Then she shot up out of Lyra’s grasp like a firework. “That’s it!”

She caught up to Day halfway across Ponyville, as he and Allie were making their way to Town Hall in damp silence to run the errand of paying their electric bill for the month. Day caught sight of her first when she was only a galloping heat shimmer; when her orange coat distinguished itself from the melting of the sunset, he let go of Alexandra’s hand with a kiss and dashed to meet her halfway.

Carrot Top skidded to a halt before they collided, waited a respectful couple of feet away, if on the tips of her hooves, while Day caught his breath.

“Carrot Top!” he gasped. “I…didn’t think you would want to see me again today after…what happened.”

“You can’t keep me away that easy!” Carrot whinnied. “Besides, I brought you to it. I should have realized you couldn’t take a joke.” She dared to put one hoof forward, drawing a little closer to Day, and he mirrored her, lifting an arm to the level of her cheek.

She sniffed the air around him, and they closed another half of the distance. But when he could feel the heat of her body within reach of his palm, she suddenly stopped, pulled back and drew herself up.

“But on the other hoof, it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve said something hurtful to me.”

Day’s blood chilled as he snapped to attention, hands to his sides. Those were the kinds of words that could get him fired. There was no excuse for cruelty in Equestria. Not that Day wouldn’t have wanted one.

Mind racing, he dropped to one knee. “What did I do?”

Carrot raised a hoof along with her chin, gesturing overtop his head. “Hmph. You only implied that there was something wrong with the way my family has raised its foals since before the fall of Luna.”

Oh. That. Day wanted the apologetic Carrot Top back just as fast as he had let her go.

“But it’s fine,” she went on. “Because I’ve decided to forgive you. On one condition.”

“Name it,” he said. “Whatever it takes to make it right, I swear I’ll do it.”

“Good! Then I can book your train ticket for the Carrot family reunion next weekend.” Discarding her offended air, she trotted a blithe circle around him. “Saturday afternoon. You can make the time?”

“You want me to meet your family?” His voice was laced with suspicion and confusion in equal parts.

“I want you to see a real, live herd,” she said. “Clearly you have such backwards ideas because never really met one before. Once you get a chance to spend some gab time with my folks, you’ll understand that there’s nothing better than an Equestrian family. I’m just doing my basic equine duty, really.”

Day thought about it for a minute. Maybe Carrot Top had a point. Who was he to tell a pony what was right and wrong? But there were other ways to learn, ways that didn’t involve so much messy interacting with ponies, and he’d been to parties with Carrot in attendance before. “If I said yes, it would involve taking a train ride with you halfway across Equestira—just you and me. Am I right? And how late does this reunion go?”

“Och. We’re going to party until the cows come home!” Carrot Top pumped a hoof in the air. “And the cows in Golden Hills really know how to party until sunrise.”

“Uh-huh.” His eyes narrowed. “And this is all for civic duty.”

“What’s the matter. You don’t like civic duty?” Batting lashes, Carrot circle a little closer to his side, from where she could whisper in his ear. “We can come up with another reason if you like. I know I can think of a few.”

Day’s knuckles went tight, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t be mean to this mare. But neither could he reach out, as close as she was, to run his fingernails along the underside of her snout.

“You should totally go!” Allie said from over his shoulder. “You’re supposed to be learning about the local culture anyway. Didn’t they say that at work?”

“There was going to be a PowerPoint presentation,” Day offered meekly.

“Then what did you do?” Lyra demanded.

Carrot Top held back a moment by pushing her bowl across the ice cream counter. She wiped her mouth with a napkin before indulging the mare across from her. “I told Day that if he came, he could have the frosting rosette from the World-Famous Carrot Family Carrot Cake.”

“Wow,” Lyra breathed, not without a pause to dive her muzzle into Carrot’s serving of Fudge Raspberry Swirl. “You don’t mess around.”

“Not now that I finally know what I want.” Carrot Top rested on a self-satisfied sort of smile, happily watching Lyra trying to eat like an earth pony. Things, she felt, were becoming the way they were supposed to be, and there was something rejuvenating about that. Day had said yes—not exactly to going out with her, but she would make it work.

“I’m a Carrot,” she said, “and sometimes a Carrot has to play rough for love. Fair, but rough.”

Chapter 3: How I Met Your Mothers

The Death of Amadeus' Favorite Tie

Among all the races that the human expansion of the twenty-first century has brought into contact, Equestria’s ponies are famous for their beauty. Even the much-lauded Twi’lek do not draw admirers from as many races, although it’s been suggested with good reason that this may have less to do with pony visual appeal and more to do with pony habits. In distinct contrast to the Occidental civilization of Earth, which places a premium upon a strict set of sexual guidelines, pony culture can be traced to its deepest roots without running aground of inhibitions against cross-species romance. The Royal Pony Sisters, a compilation of the writings of Princess Celestia, even contains gentle encouragement of the practice, with the result that Equestria is experiencing none of the soul-searching which rages in the United States today over couples of mixed species. Conflicts over a pony’s relationships tend to pit alien families, holding more restrictive ideologies, against equine parents with a long history of knowing how to deal with such objections—with, in the popularly derogatory image, the pony’s herd offering outraged alien parents a wink and a chance for a date on Thursday night.

One of the greatest generals of the old griffon empire, one Kawrim Harptalon, famously decried ponies as ‘the harlot race’ after his defining military campaign was brought to a halt by the unexpectedly warm reception his soldiers received in the besieged city of Stalliongrad. The most comprehensive history of this war was written by a rather cheeky scribe who depicted the Siege of Stalliongrad under the assumption that her audience already had a basic knowledge of the event, which was, at the time, universally notorious.

As a result, there is still a community college in Massachusetts whose Equestrian Studies course teaches verbatim from a book which recounts the conquest of Harptalon as having been stopped in Stalliongrad ‘by the power of friendship’. They have not yet been corrected.

To be honest, a hundred years later, ponies are still rather smug about the whole thing.

Day was almost entirely unaware of these things, despite the degree to which they determined his present circumstances. He was more occupied with trying not to look conspicuous on the deck of the Golden Hills train depot.

Only a few miles north of Whitetail Wood, Golden Hills was about as far from a Dimension Gate as it was possible to get in modern Equestria. Day had the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that many of the stallions here, staring across the street from their rocking chairs perched like thrones, had never seen a human before.

To make matters worse, he’d dressed up again for the first time since Moving Day. It had seemed appropriate for a bi-annual event. At least, it had when he was taking the suit out of mothballs. Now, sweating profusely under the suit coat and tugging at his favorite tie, Day reflected that the Carrot family mightn’t have known the difference between a man in an Armani and one in khakis and flip-flops.

He told himself to suck it up. He’d wanted to explore strange new worlds? Well, here he was. And they came with sticky heat and grumpy old stallions. Live the dream.

All the same, he was grateful when Carrot Top came back. Day gravitated towards the familiar clip-clop sounding across the wood of the station floorboards—and pulled himself up short when the mare herself came into view.

“Something the matter, Day?” Carrot Top spun in a slow circle.

He shook his head quickly. “N-no. Let’s get going.”

Barely-transparent folds of green were draped all about her orange frame, the colors popping against each other to accentuate her vivid mane. A loose V in front of the garment left most of her neck and chest exposed, coming together in a pearl clip attached generously far down. Her underbelly was covered up—technically—but instead of clinging, the dress hung loose, leaving several tantalizing inches of space between the fabric and the mare.

On the bright side, he wasn’t the only one dressed up anymore.

“I’ve never seen you wear a dress before.” Day stumbled down the stairs, trying to keep up without looking away from Carrot Top.

“I can be pretty if I want.”

He pursed his lips. “You know the answer is no, right?” He’d taken time on the train to make that clear again, but sometimes he wasn’t sure anyone listened to him. “I can’t date you.”

“I know.” Her tail flicked impudently, causing him to try and look away at the last second and crash in a heap at the bottom of the steps. Carrot Top didn’t seem to notice Day had fallen over, though he was pretty sure nopony else missed it.

As she led the way, Day had all-too-ample opportunity to observe how her new dress split at the tail and flowed in cavalier fashion over either flank. The curvaceous thing hardly covered up anything behind Carrot’s cutie marks. He hoped dearly that she didn’t notice how often it was drawing his vision in that direction.

He hoped even more that she hadn’t thought of that before she bought the dress.

And all of this without the least bit of hard evidence Day could use to accuse her of being intentionally salacious. After all, she went out every day in the nude. Nopony else on the street gave her a second glance.

There could be no doubt about it. Ponies cheated.

Day kept up a trickle of questions, just to keep the silence from becoming awkward. In the early afternoon, Carrot’s hometown had a kind of quiet that was at once eerie and serene, broken only by the squawk of an odd seagull wheeling overhead. Day had thought Ponyville was a rustic town, but Golden Hills was spread out over miles of unpaved ground, broken only by splintery whitewashed homes, and the phrase ‘middle of nowhere’ came to mind.

The rolling countryside was dressed more modestly than the ponies themselves, cloaked in sheets of goldenrod which shimmered orange whenever the sun flickered against a cloud. Eventually, Day found himself staring out at the fields more often than at Carrot Top’s tail. That was a great relief off his conscience.

Carrot had already signed forms which he could give to the office. He was getting out of an orientation for this ‘cultural credit’, ditching five hours in an office where the carpet was slate and the air was still. When he looked at it that way, this really wasn’t a bad deal.

Carrot turned deftly off the homestead-dotted landscape and down a series of narrow wooded hollows, leading Day across log bridges where she mocked him mercilessly for trying to save his dress shoes. When the trail opened again, it speared a grand expanse of saffron-tinged fields, and ended at a spacious barn crowning the rise. Half a mile away from its walls Day could make out the sounds of a fiddle and of shouted Equus.

The barn. Of course it would take place in the barn.

A pair of ponies appeared in the doorway when they were still a long ways down the path. Carrot took off without warning, bolting over the final stretch and leaving Day in the dust as he refused to embarrass himself by trying to keep up. After a lot of jumping about at the entrance, Carrot seemed to remember that she had brought a guest and galloped back. She was breathing hard by then, and the trails of her dress were beginning to show stains, but she made no notice of them. “Go faster!” she whinnied. “I’m missing family time!”

And so saying, she ducked her head and ran right between Day’s legs.

Day could only emit an undignified squawk as he felt himself lifted off the ground. This was so far outside the acceptable range of behavior that he had no response at all prepared.

Suddenly he was looking back at the treeline, and it was speeding away from him. The heels of his shoes scraped against the ground with every bounce, and he had to try with all his might to stay atop the pony as he lifted them to save his faux-leather. He’d never even ridden a Terran horse before, and now an Equestrian pony was carrying him bareback and backwards at full gallop. Every second rushed with the terror of wind and the thought that he would fall off and be trampled before Carrot even knew what had happened.

Then wooden beams flicked overhead, and he was surrounded by a ring of ponies. He took a quick look around the celebration, noting the lack of formalwear with a mote of irritation, before the prevalence of orangeish hues reminded him that he was still sitting on one of the Carrot family members. Whereupon he contributed with a flush to the overall color scheme himself.

He also looked down and realized where his hands had wound up while he was trying to keep his balance.

That’s all wrong, he thought while his brain quietly went into shock to save him the bother. My hands are on Carrot’s bottom. Not the top.

Then, due to the speed with which he yanked his arms away, he wound up a pile on the ground for the second time in the last hour.

A pair of dusty-colored stallions loomed over Day with about half as much embarrassed disappointment as he felt. He latched on eagerly when somepony stuck out a foreleg to help him up.

“Carrot Top!” the other exclaimed while still scanning Day with unabashed interest. “Two years? Two years since you bothered coming home to your old geezer of a dad, and you only show your face around the farm to bring someone home? When’s the next time I’m going to have a look at you? When you’re introducing the foals?”

Day jumped to his feet in order to forestall anything Carrot Top might say. “It’s not like that! I mean to say—she did ask me out once, but instead I offended her, and now she’s forgiving me but only as an acquaintance, and I’m here to meet her family, but not to meet them, just so I can see them you underst–err–” He crossed surly arms over his chest and retreated into a mumble. “I’m…just a guest, sir.”

The quieter stallion tossed his mane in an agreeable nod. The other, on whom Day could see a cutie mark of a plow, looked between Carrot and the human with a mix of skepticism and admiration. “And I thought your mother knew how to keep a stallion in hoof,” he said in low tones. His accent was a bit thicker than Carrot Top’s.

Carrot chuckled deviously and allowed Day to retreat by taking his spot between the two stallions. “Hi, Dad.” She gave the left stallion a firm kiss on the mouth. “Hi, Pa.” She exchanged similar affection with the other, adding a nuzzle by rubbing her head vigorously into the taller stallion’s neck.

“Wait.” Day pointed to each stallion in turn. “That’s your dad—and that’s your dad?”

Carrot Top made a point of getting him to bump fists and hooves with both ponies. “Yep,” she corrected him, introducing the pair as Frosty Furrow and Plowshare. “Herding family, remember?”

“I wouldn’t dare forget.” Day remained glancing between the two tan ponies, however, as if with enough consideration they might fuse together into a single stallion. He hardly trusted himself to speak anything more on the matter without offending sompony. “It’s…a little new to me.”

Carrot Top brushed up against his leg. “Think of it this way. You love your pa, right?”

Day shrugged. “My father was a little too fond of the cigarette, but—I’ll accept the argument. Yes, I love my dad.”

She gave a little hop for emphasis. “Then having two stupendous dads would be just twice as grand, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m—not entirely sure it works that way…”

Mercifully, Carrot didn’t try to wrap his mind any further around it yet. She seemed determined to say hello to each of the several hundred ponies crammed within this barn, and quickly vanished into the masses. Day was left stranded with the two dusty stallions who dutifully kept him company.

“So,” said Plowshare. “You from Ponyville too?”

Day nodded.

“Growing weather still fair down there? My daughter making her sales?”

Day cleared his throat. “She’s doing well.”

“That’s grand. And how about you? Work bring you to Ponyville, or did ye’ find something to do after you came?”

“I came for an engineering job. We’re working at an office park a few miles closer to Cloudsdale, adapting human machines so that ponies can use them.”

“That sounds interesting.”

Plowshare was steadily chipping away at Day’s social ice. He tried to regenerate it by keeping his hands in his pockets and his head down, but he was too tall for that to be of any use. He suffering through the suspicion that this was exactly the kind of polite hospitality he would be shown if these ponies thought of him as Carrot’s date to the reunion, regardless of his protests.

Fortunately, they were quick to move on when Day’s stomach betrayed him. It had been a long train ride from Ponyville, and here, lunch and dinner both looked to be in full swing. Neither showed any signs of stopping, despite impromptu bouts of what Day could only label as a quadruped form of square dancing in between the tables.

Most of the furniture, including the table Day was ushered to, was constructed from bales of straw—there were ancient wooden stools scattered throughout the barn, but not nearly enough to accommodate the entire clan. Steaming plates of stew and sandwiches on thick rolls were passing Day by at all speeds, and at this point in his hunger, he thought nothing of the novelty of sitting on straw to eat. He was about to work his way into a sitting position when a bark from Plowshare startled him solid.

“Carrot Top!”

On command, a contrite orange mare popped out from the throng.

“Get over here and treat this lad with some Carrot Family decency! Did I raise ye’ to go running off every five minutes?”

“Sorry, Dad!” Carrot Top hurriedly pulled out a bale by biting the cord around it, and pushed it back in with her hind legs after Day had taken a seat. “I was catching up with the cousins.”

“They’ll be here all night,” he admonished without force. “I’d rather see you haven’t forgotten everything you learned at home.”

Carrot vanished again, but only for a minute. She returned balancing one full plate on her head and another halfway down her back. “Here we go!” She slid the dishes effortlessly onto the straw in front of him. “Wild leek and raspberry soup, a nice big tomato and gouda sandwich on pretzel bread, and Carrot Cranky’s cabbage rolls to top it off.” She smiled neatly. “What can I get you to drink? Water, punch, carrot juice? I’d offer you cider, but we can’t break that out until later. Tradition.”

“You don’t need to be my waiter,” Day said apologetically. The food was gathered on central tables in clear sight, and most of the ponies that looked like Carrots were happily serving themselves. “Go ahead and catch up with your cousins, I–”

“Ah-ah-ah.” Carrot top waved a forestalling hoof in his face. “Dad’s right. If I want you to be my colt, I’d best start treating you like it. The rule is that only family members serve themselves, so unless you want to marry into the Carrot family real quick, just tell me what you want, sit back and enjoy.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Day surrendered and allowed Carrot Top to fetch him a glass of punch. He distinctly felt he’d been tricked into this whole escapade, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t muster up any spleen about it. He kept thinking that he ought to—well, to mind. But he never did.

He tried to sort out his feelings over the cabbage rolls. It wasn’t as though there was any point to the courtesy. She wasn’t saving him much effort by pulling out a bale of hay for him to sit on. But the way Carrot doted over his meal was unexpectedly…nice. No wonder, he thought, that Allie enjoyed it so much whenever he held a door for her, or cooked surprise dinners, even though he was a terrible chef. There was something infinitely warming about the thoughtfulness involved.

He vowed immediately to do these things more often. Hmm. How ironic was it that this mare with a crush was teaching him how he ought to treat the woman he meant to love for the rest of his life?

Ponies may have been cheaters, but perhaps they knew a thing or two.

There were no utensils anywhere in sight, but Day managed to get by with his hands, imitating Plowshare who sat across from him. He didn’t have the facial shape to tuck into a meal mouth-first without making an awful mess. He was also hungry past caring.

All around him was a grand confusion. Dances broke out left and right with songs that, half the time, seemed to be beyond the control of the very ponies singing. The family structure was even less clear. Day got the idea that all of the ponies here were in some way related, but past that he was incapable of following. An endless parade of warm greetings took place on all sides of him, but the terms of address implied less a family tree as he understood it and more of a wibbly-wobbly ball of yarn that tangled over itself in all directions. He slowly learned a whole new vocabulary’s worth of Equus, which he deciphered as terms of address for relationships that had never existed back home. There were words for the same-gender herdmate of a cousin’s parent, or the grandparent on the side of a certain parent out of six. And dozens of others; sometimes, even the ponies who flung the words around the barn seemed to become confused. While Day was slurping up his soup, which proved to be delicious, he unintentionally eavesdropped on a pair of colts who were trying, without success, to figure out exactly how to address each other as they were related through the Carrot clan. They got about as far as agreeing that the green colt’s only female herdmate was a sister once-removed to a cousin of the brown colt through a herd that hailed from Appleoosa, before giving up on the math of it and settling the filial ties with a cordial session of midriff-nuzzling.

The Carrot family reunion wasn’t the exclusive province of ponies, though. A pair of old donkeys and a zebra also navigated the dinner, and from what glimpses Day got of them, they were venerable members of the family. His old net-scouring memories resurfaced, in fact, as he also spotted more non-native Equestrians than he’d ever seen since his last visit to a Gate Nexus. Amidst a flurry of glowing congratulations on a recent marriage, a latecoming stallion arrived with a Turian girl Day recognized from the project headquarters. In similar fashion, several high-browed elves arrived in the company of some unicorns. Day even spotted aliens beyond his ability to identify, which hadn’t happened to him in months.

Plowshare had probably eaten already, because he didn’t touch much food. While Day was busy gorging, he poked at a few biscuits, and Day had almost forgotten about him until he was down to sipping contentedly at his punch.

“So,” said the stallion, “are ye’ seeing anypony else?”

Day adroitly avoiding making a spit-take of himself. “I am not Miss Carrot Top’s date,” he enunciated slowly.

Plowshare nodded and waved a hoof. “Right. Apologies. So are ye’ seeing anypony?”

Day nibbled on the tomatoes he’d picked out of his sandwich. “My fiancée and I are engaged to be married this July. She’s a human.”

“That’s lovely.” Plowshare passed him the pepper shaker for his tomatoes. “You two are getting along well, then?”

“Daddy!” said a whiff of orange which spun out of a square dance and resolved into a mare. “Be nice.”

“I’m allowed a few questions,” her father responded. “By the way, now that you’ve slowed down enough to talk to: Carrot Smoothie’s been calling on the lads down the row. You remember Sunflower and Cinnamon Stick?”

A gasp. “That’s wonderful!” She clapped her hooves on the ground. “I was worried she’d never find anypony.”

“Go easy on your sister, now. You know she’s timid.”

“Och.” Carrot nodded. “She’d never start her own herd. But Sunflower should make it easier for her. They’ve got a good thing going already.”

As if remembering something, she turned her attention on Day. “And I daresay she’ll be good for those colts. That herd could use a third pony. Whenever they get in a fight, they can go to her now, and she can help them make up, instead of sulking all over Golden Hills.”

“I suppose you mean to tell me that’s an advantage?” Day said with a careful nibble on his tomatoes.

“Oy! You bet it is.” With a swish of her tail she was leaning up on the table, waiting on no further urging. “It’s a lot harder to hold a grudge when you’ve got somepony who knows just how to remind you how much you love each other. Even waiting to make up isn’t so bad.”

Day took a thoughtful quaff of punch. “But that could just as easily go the other way,” he retorted. “What if they gang up on you? Besides, don’t you think a pony might wonder if you like one of them better than the other?”

Carrot reeled momentarily. “You sound like a foal accusing his mother of loving his brother better.” Her eyebrows snaked into an S. “You don’t fuss over that on Earth, too, do you? Here in Equestria a mother loves all of her children.”

“Carrot Top!” The mare hopped off the hay bales when Plowshare snapped at her. “This colt has his own way of doing things where he grew up. I don’t want to hear you insultin’ his mam!”

“Yes, Dad.”

“It’s alright,” Day interjected. “Nothing wrong with a little debate.” He polished off his last crumbs and murmured dismissively. “That’s not the important part anyhow.”

“Than what is?” Carrot insisted.

“Top!”

“Sorry, Dad.”

Day mulled quietly.

He was still mulling when Carrot Top had wandered off again, presumably to find Sunflower. When he looked up and noticed that Plowshare was still keeping a careful watch on him, he sat up straight to make it clear that he was doing fine.

He ought to make some conversation.

“So, Carrot Top. She’s yours then?”

“Well, of course.”

“Naturally.” Day gestured with one palm. “I just—couldn’t tell if she was yours or Mr. Furrow’s.”

“Oy! You mean like that.” Plowshare tapped his chin. “Aye, even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. She’s daughter to both of us. You understand?”

“Maybe.”

Day was saved from having to provide a more thorough answer by the arrival of a towering cake through the west doors of the barn. It took up several tables shoved together in the center of the room, and the frilly white frosting on every layer, to say nothing of the enormous ornamentation on top, must have taken some talented pony days of effort.

Day dropped his napkin in his lap. Plowshare was looking on approvingly. “Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

Day nodded. “Carrot said I’d get that flower on the top.”

Plowshare burst out laughing. Day frowned bemusedly until the stallion quit guffawing enough to speak again. “Big words for a little filly! Some of her brothers are home today. There’s draft ponies in the Carrot clan, you know.” Rubbing his chin, he looked on towards the emptying area in the middle of the barn. “Och, I’m going to enjoy this. You ready for your kiss?”

“What?” Day jumped half out of his seat.

“What, that’s the tradition of it. She didn’t tell you? The winner gives the flower to somepony else, and they give her a kiss in return.”

Day threw down his plate and cast about for an absent orange mare. “Carrot Top…”

Plowshare seemed to think it was funny. He continued chuckling into a mug of punch. “Och, kids. Think mating makes the whole world go ’round. I remember being that age.”

Day couldn’t tell what the presence of draft ponies had to do with frosting or kisses, but the next time he saw Carrot, she was licking a donut-shaped block of salt which hung from a string around her neck. Many other ponies could be seen with salt blocks of their own soon, as more tables were cleared out of the space around the enormous cake.

Day understood that ponies took their dessert food seriously. But there was something about Carrot Top’s demeanor as she swaggered up to the dessert, and something about the chorus of calls which egged her on from all sides. She wasn’t being the quiet mare from the Ponyville market, that much was certain.

That suspicion was confirmed when she jumped onto a table and bellowed. “May I have your attention please?”

Most ponies didn’t quiet down upon her declaration, but someone did bang a few pans for her. Carrot pointed to the top of the cake when there was a least semblance of quiet. “Everypony! I hereby claim the Carrot Cake Rosette!”

“Who for?” came the shout from the crowd.

Day saw it coming too late to hide; Carrot pointed him out halfway across the barn, and the eyes followed her. “For the best darn two-legged whatchamacallit to ever grace Ponyville,” she shouted. “For Amadeus!”

He was saved from the spotlight by another mare, who leapt up onto a wooden table just as fast. “Well, I claim the rosette for Pixie Pie, handsomest colt in Dredgemane!”

Six other ponies had jumped up to lay their own claims by the time Day had found the second colt for whom the flower was being staked. Carrot Top didn’t seem unduly surprised by the competing claims; she stalked a circle around the cake table, looking each pony in the eye as they came forward—it seemed to Day that the younger half of the extended Carrot clan were all set to vie for the swirl of pink sugar.

“Well then,” she nickered quietly. “We’d best get started.”

To a chorus of hollers–to Day’s simultaneous fascination and mortification–she bit down on the pin of her dress and slid it off in one clean yank. The salt block followed, wriggled off her head a moment later. The other young ponies, none of them dressed, lead a regular stampede out of the barn.

Day followed the crowd, half from curiosity and half from worry. He could have dealt with sitting alone by himself in the cavernous barn, but he wasn’t sure he could bear not knowing what Carrot Top was doing in his name.

The sun was just beginning to wink into the tree line outside. Day remembered the bales piled up on either side of the clearing before the barn, but he hadn’t noticed their resemblance to bleachers until the older ponies and younger foals split to either side began hopping to their seats. He didn’t remember the water puddled on the ground in between them, water which cast a great deal of suspicion on the now-empty buckets set to one side of the barn.

Carrot Top was the first to gallop into the puddle. She spun adroitly as she skidded straight through the wet, instantly churning her wake into thick mud.

But almost before she had turned around, the second mare who had stood up to claim part of the cake barreled into her with a flying tackle, plowing Carrot into the mud face-first.

Day charged forward with a yelp, shouting for help to pull Carrot Top’s attacker off of her. But a chortling Plowshare blindsided him when he wasn’t looking down, and after Day folded, winded neatly across the stallion’s back, he carried the human to the bleachers.

His alarm faded before his breathlessness did. A pair of stallions were wrestling in the far half of the puddle and garnering numerous cheers in the process. Carrot Top, far from being in danger, was holding her own. Before the mare who had jumped on her knew what was happening, Carrot Top slid out from underneath and belly-flopped on top of her opponent, pinning three of her hooves to the ground. The mauve pony squirmed underneath her for several seconds, but apparently Carrot’s grip was iron firm. After a brief struggle some signal passed between them, and, to a round of cheering heartily joined in by Plowshare, Carrot let the other mare up and cantered a victory lap around the mud pool while her opponent sulked into a circle of consoling peers.

Carrot Top bested her next challenger with similar ease, and the one after that. Day managed to relax enough to drift back out of the foreground. Judging by the number of challengers, this wrestling contest would go on for quite some time. But nopony seemed to mind, and Day had to admit to himself that it was kind of fun. He barely even noticed the passing of time as Carrot flipped her way through two more mares.

It all seemed okay until he realized why he was paying such rapt attention. He was sitting here—he would be sitting for another good half hour yet—watching Carrot Top wrestling with other mares and getting covered from tip to tail in mud.

Day had to wipe away the sweat with the end of his sleeve, because he had nothing else. By the end of the third round, Carrot and whoever she was wrestling became nothing but slick brown piles of limbs tangling over and over each other. Surreptitious glances to either side failed to confirm whether any of the equines present were experiencing a similar reaction to the competition. Hopefully not. They were supposed to be related.

But Carrot Top—she had certainly known. Ponies were dirty, dirty cheaters.

Next to Carrot Top’s father was the last place to lose control of himself. Day weathered much of the competition by closing his eyes, keeping tabs on the action by the way Plowshare cheered every time Carrot wrestled and won.

When the stallion nudged him urgently in the shoulder, he opened his eyes again on the arena. There were only two brown blobs left around the mud muddle, and they were circling each other at the edges. Day stared hard. The smaller of the two blobs was Carrot Top.

She shook a little of the wet off her muzzle and flashed a white, toothy smile. “Hiya, big brother! You look a little dirty. Some mean colt didn’t trip you, did they? You need to run to sis?”

It would have been jaunty if it hadn’t been absurd. The stallion across from Carrot Top was a towering pillar of a pony whose head would have nearly come up to Day’s. “You sent all four of your sisters running home to Momma’, Top. Don’t play sweet with me. Only one of us can take the cake topper.”

“Gee.” Carrot advanced, testing her footing in the mud. “I hate to headlock a guy.”

“That’s a shame,” countered the brother, “because I hate to pin a filly. But if you insist…”

The stands whooped. Both contestants paused abruptly in their self-conscious banter and broke off the advance to soak in whistles from either side. Instead of turning back to the wrestling match after a moment, Carrot Top’s older brother turned and ran away from the puddle.

Shouting, “I will fight with a token from my fair maiden!” he galloped into the crowd, where Day lost sight of him. He returned to the center a moment later with a torn green cloth tied around his neck.

“Oy!” Carrot belted out. “No fair!”

“No one said you couldn’t wrestle with style,” said her brother, making a ridiculous show of sporting the already-soiled scarf. “You brought a lad. Go get your own!”

Day saw Carrot’s reaction coming before anypony else; she promptly tried to ignore the scarf she’d just shouted over. But the stands were chanting now for her to wrestle with her own token, and she skulked to the stands under hollering echoes, jumping on the straw below Day’s seat.

Day scrabbled away from the mud puddle which followed her. “No way am I giving you a hanky,” he said before she had even opened her mouth. “I didn’t bring anything like that.”

“Please!” Carrot hissed. She frantically scanned his suit, no doubt to confirm whether he really did have nothing to give away. Day sat tall under her scrutiny until her eyes her eyes stopped cold on the navy blue tie around his neck.

“Oh, no.” He crossed his arms over it. “No.”

“You’ll embarrass me in front of everypony!” She crawled up further onto the bales, putting those luminous eyes to work on him even though mud was still dripping from her lashes.

Day tried looking away. “No, you’re embarrassing yourself. I didn’t have any part in it. You knew what you were doing when you dragged me here.”

Carrot Top’s ears drooped. “I…guess you’re right,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.” Her tail fell limp, snagging on straws as she turned away with her eyes cast into the ground.

Day mentally streamed a string of curses against all of ponykind. Then he reached up to undo his tie.

The beloved article was easy to loosen from his neck—it always had been easy to work with. Though Carrot Top was nearly out of reach, Day gave it a kiss before gingerly reaching out to knot it around the retreating pony’s neck.

Carrot stopped short. The tie pulled her back by the throat until Day had slid the knot closed against her neck, whereupon she perked up immediately by leaping with a fantastic spin to hug Day, and ruin the rest of his suit to show her gratitude. The crowd cooed with adoration when she pranced back to the mud with her bright blue token and her head held high.

Her brother didn’t waste any more time. Day looked away before the first collision, after which the last speck of color disappeared.

Both wrestlers had fought their way through half a dozen ponies each in the previous hour. They were snorting for air in moments, the gusts of their flaring nostrils audible from where Day sat. But they were also the best of the Carrot clan.

At first, it was an even match. Day hadn’t imagined that Carrot Top, even with the miraculous strength earth ponies seemed to pack in their bodies, could overcome her mountain of a brother. But she was inevitably slipperier, taking advantage of the mud to wriggle out of any hold he could contrive to put her in. She made a couple halfhearted attempts at jumping on his back or locking his head, but her forelegs could barely wrap around him. The stallion bucked, jumped, and sent her on fantastic sprawling tumbles which made Day’s heart leap just as high into his throat.

They wore each other down to bare panting in no time, coming at each other with slow swipes and dreading any waste of energy. A couple enterprising ponies filled some extra buckets at the creek and threw them on the puddle to freshen up the mud. Soon it was flying like never before. Day hid behind Plowed Shares to save what was left of his clothing, much to the earth pony’s amusement.

Carrot Top became even slicker now, and it seemed that nopony would ever get a hold on her when, just then, the griffon stood.

The first keening syllable sent all the ponies seated near her scrambling, curling their ears against their heads. Day ducked even from across the yard as the mountain of feathers rose up, flaring like a fan full of knives. He had to remind himself that griffons were at a long-standing peace with Equestria, which made them allies of the human coalition, in a loose sense. Even if they did have talons the size of steak knives, and even if there was something vicious about the carnivore’s eyes…

None of the ponies, at any rate, raised a hoof to chastise the griffon for interrupting the family gathering. She screeched and swung her wings, standing at full height on the bleachers which began to shred underneath her talons. Day couldn’t make out whether the griffon’s deafening pitches were in Equus or in another language, but the stallion within Carrot Top’s headlock, quivering attentively at the creature who wore the other half of the scarf around his neck, seemed to understand.

At the time of his fair maiden’s exhortation, he was buried up to his nostrils in the mud, with Carrot Top trying to find the room to pin something even though she wasn’t physically long enough to reach two of his hooves at once. When the griffon’s speech ended as starkly as it began, he reared up as if on cue, swinging the mare around like a necklace until she was hanging underneath his trunk-wide neck, and then crashing back down on top of her with a mighty splash.

She writhed, but less this time. The struggling grew less fervent over two seconds, then three. All Day could see was a tip of her snout from under the stallion’s chest. He held her firmly in place, staring down intently for so long that Day almost jumped to his feet, terrified that she would drown until her head reappeared out of the sludge with a valiant effort.

He wasn’t sure if he really saw her lift her muzzle to her brothers ear, or if he saw it moving, forming words for several desperate seconds. He wasn’t quite sure if he saw the stallion on top of her look in Day’s direction out of the corner of his eye.

But he did see that, at the last impossible moment, when she had surely lost, Carrot Top gave a heave, and, almost without resistance, the larger pony tumbled onto his back.

Carrot sat triumphantly on top her brother, splaying her hooves to pin down his legs. He hardly looked trapped, because she still couldn’t reach very well; but maybe Day was no judge of wrestling. After several seconds, the unseen signal passed again, and Carrot trotted out of the mud to a thundering cheer. Her brother was left to gather himself back up.

The stampede back into the barn carried Day around on its shoulders. Carrot Top led the second charge, skidding short of the pastry itself when a mare wielding a great cake knife barred her way with a vicious snarl. “Don’t ye’ take another step, young lady! Not with those soiled hooves!”

She climbed a ladder and gingerly sliced the top layer off the cake herself. After she put it on a paper plate, Carrot Top carried it to Day in her mouth; he tried to slide the frosting rosette, which covered most of the paper, away from the brown flecks left behind by her nose.

The Carrot family looked on from all sides. He had no choice but to go on with it. The flower was too big to lift without falling apart, so Day broke it with as much delicacy as he could and filled his cheeks with half.

Carrot glowed. The family watched the two of them intensely.

“Top.” Plowshare’s voice cut in from one side just as the moment was beginning to warm. “If that lad doesn’t want to smooch…”

“Relax, Dad.” She showed off the space between them. “I wasn’t going to do anything. I know how to be a gentlemare.”

“Good lass.”

Day was the most who most relaxed. He savored the taste of the rosette now, while the Carrot family still looked on; then he shrugged and looked up. “Tastes like frosting.”

The rafters shook with merriment.

One by one, the ponies who’d participated in the wrestling contest sprinted across the property to a pair of rope swings over the river, whooping and splashing until most of the frigid way seemed to be out of its bed and on the ponies gathered at the banks. Shouts of “it’s cold!’ and “I’ll never be warm again!” met with more laughter, carried distorted through the warm air rippling between the glens and the barnyard. There was more ribbing, and more cheers; as the sunlight blew its last lingering kiss to Golden Hills, torches were lit across the front fields, and ponies began spreading out into smaller groups. Barrels of cider appeared, courtesy of the Apple family, and flagons were broken out. The dimmed fields soon smelled of smoky flames and alcohol. Day caught one whiff of the scent and decided he wouldn’t be averse to a round himself; he didn’t drink, but then again, he didn’t often have a shot at free Sweet Apple Acres cider. Clearly it didn’t count.

Plowshare kept him company the entire time. Relatives kept coming around to exchange greetings and pleasantries with the stallion, but he dutifully made sure that Day wouldn’t be left floating alone while Carrot Top cleaned off.

It wasn’t that bright in the shadow of the barn. Only the nearest ponies, within the glow of the same torch, could make each other out. By the time Day and Plowshare had drained their first flagons, they were alone with each other’s company.

Day had already tried to dodge his host a couple times today. After Carrot Top’s fiasco at the wrestling contest, having to eat that mound of sugar in front of everyone, ponies looked and no doubt saw what they thought was Carrot Top’s intended getting to know a future father-in-law. Day would have worn two suits at once to avoid that.

But as the night air settled in, after looking around to make sure that nopony was approaching, Day tapped the stallion and spoke without being spoken to for the first time.

“You know, the real reason Carrot brought me here was to introduce me to…the herding lifestyle. She knew I had…reservations about it, and, well, you saw. She was hoping to change my mind.”

Plowshare nodded and swiveled his ears intently onto Day.

When he didn’t reply with any words of his own, Day was left forging on. “I don’t know if I wanted to have my mind changed, but—I think perhaps I owe it to her to at least give it an open mind.” He looked away. “But things are very different in my country. I don’t want you to think I’m criticizing you!” he added hurriedly.

Plowshare wrapped a foreleg around Day’s waist, because the human’s shoulders were too high. “I don’t know much about where you come from, lad. Why don’t you tell me what’s eatin’ your mind and I’ll see if I can set you at ease?”

Day shrugged. “I feel like I’m confused about everything. Err—there is one specific question I could ask. But I don’t know that I should.”

Plowshare gave Day a squeeze. “You need somepony to talk to about these things. Am I right? You got to have someone for a little stallion-to-stallion sort of talk. And the way I see it, if you’re so charming that my little Carrot Top saw fit to bring you round the barn, you must mean well.”

“Well, I saw you and Frosty Furrow talking earlier. And you don’t exactly act…married.” He stuttered over himself several times in quick succession. “…Maybe like an old married couple, but that’s different. This feels like prying, but…” Almost reduced to a sheepish mound unfit to talk, he raised his hands in an infinitely vague gesture. “What is it…like?”

Plowed Shares nodded sagely. After a long moment of considering the look in Day’s eyes, he threw his head back and broke into raucous laughter. Day jumped, but he covered the motion. Plowshare was trying to set him at ease, and Day appreciated the thought.

“Tell you the truth,” he said, “I was never one for the other stallions.”

“So it isn’t between you two like…um…”

“Naw.” Plowshare tossed his mane. “Frosty’s more like a brother to me than anything.”

“So that’s what it’s like.” Day stroked his chin. In spite of himself, he was beginning to daydream of an explorer’s journal with his name on it, detailing aspects of pony culture hidden in out-of-the-way towns like this. Whether it was because humans were drawn to Canterlot like flies or because no human had ever gathered the bald-faced gall to ask about these things, Day had never found herding practices thoroughly documented on the Earth-side net.

“Allie thinks all ponies are…” Day coughed. “Well, never mind what she thinks.”

Plowshare shook his head. “Hold onto your bridle there, lad.” He pointed through the dusky lights to a row of three red-headed mares passing by on their way to the cider barrels. “See yonder? The lasses with petunias in their cutie marks? That’s a full herd there, and, by the good Princess Celestia, they’re all over each other.”

“How do you know?” Day murmured, staring out of the corner of his eye.

“Carrot Poppy’s my own girl.” Plowshare scrunched up his square snout. The effect was much less impressive than when a mare like Carrot Top wrinkled hers. “And we had them stay over at the house once in the same room. That was a mistake.”

He pointed out more links in the Carrot family tree as they cycled around the gathering. One tremendous herd had twelve ponies, and others numbered only two, though Plowshare didn’t seem to make any distinction between couples and larger herds.

Day kept respectfully quiet and listened to Plowshare’s whispers, because the stallion used herds joined by his sons and daughters as examples. It quickly became clear that the variety was bewildering. Every herd seemed to work just a little differently. There was one herd which supposedly never got intimate except in pairs, and was shy even of dating as one big group. There was another herd with a set rule to just the opposite effect, although that particular family had one exception—a shy dandelion-colored colt which, Plowshare explained, wasn’t comfortable being with more than one pony at a time. “They have to go off without him on Saturday nights, but they care about him just as much. Purple Carrot, anyway, loves that little old colt to death. Know that for sure.”

He talked about less touchy aspects, too—work schedules and the disciplining of foals, house building and breadwinning. Day was sure that he did, and that the techniques involved were all very fascinating and domestic, but they happened to slip by his mind.

Day was, of course, sitting on the ground before too long, bringing himself to pony height as he’d learned to do since living long in Equestria. Plowshare nuzzled the top of his head in a filial manner. “To put it simply for you, lad, everypony works out what’s good for them. If you have a herd that loves you—as I’m blessed by Celestia to have—I can’t think of a single good reason why anypony would force you into doing something you don’t want.”

Day didn’t say anything–about the advice or about the gesture, which he accepted without resistance. The stallion was at perfect ease with his place in the world, and Day didn’t know what he would say without disrupting that.

“If you ever need to talk again, don’t be shy of coming around. I got no trouble treating you like family, even if my little Top is just being hopeful.”

Day suspended the weight of his thoughts over another round of cider. He remembered the flat-out rejection which had knotted in his gut on that first night in Ponyville, when Carrot Top had only been asking him to a walk in the meadows. There had been reasons for that, he remembered. Good reasons why anything but clinging to the one girl he loved had been definitely, unquestionably wrong. What were they? He clutched at them, but they retreated through his memory like the straws under a griffon’s talons.

Why couldn’t he remember what was wrong with this family whose laughter trickled through the night? Day cradled his head in his hands, trying to make the world feel clear again. Had he spent too much time around ponies? Maybe that was it.

He reasoned in the quiet space of his mind, the same place circuits appeared to him, a place where he could shut out the din of the party. Living among non-humans for so long had to be affecting him if he was having trouble even looking away from Carrot Top. In odd moments, he was able to convince himself that he wasn’t attracted to her at all. If he squinted a little, the people resolved into unidentifiable horses. That was all they were. Little, friendly horses. It was like a joke he’d taken too seriously by accident.

But he couldn’t tell whether these times were the lucid moments or the mad ones.

Plowshare let him go once Carrot Top arrived, back in her dress after toweling off from the river. Day looked down from his burdened thoughts to find her nuzzling her way under his hand, looking like her normal orange self again, though the tie still on her neck was blotchy and irreparable. Leading him aimlessly around the gathering, she kept up a constant stream of chatter about family news, the growing of carrots, and the wonderful nature of a foalhood spent under a big herd.

Day was happy to kill time like this. Letting Carrot talk, letting it drift in one ear and out the other like a balmy breeze. Enjoying the very real breeze toying with the torches, never heavy enough to strike the fields with a chill. Topping off his cider every now and then. Slotting a few new words of Equus into his memory. And resting his hand on Carrot Top without becoming a tight-fisted ice sculpture over it.

He wasn’t worried what anypony would think about it, and not just because Carrot Top seemed determined to convince them that he was hers. Affection was easy to give and receive out here—not free, Day decided—no, that wasn’t it. It still meant something, otherwise it would have lost its value. But he didn’t have to feel bad about just letting his hand sit there, right below Carrot Top’s shoulders, in a friendly way, feeling her soft curls and idly kneading her withers with his thumb.

But then, when had he put his hand there? Day looked down without interrupting the pony’s monologue. He didn’t remember doing that—only Carrot Top sticking her snout underneath his hand at one point.

And was that the last torch they were passing now? Day looked up—where were they? Carrot appeared to be walking along without any attention paid to where she was going, but if that was the case, then how had they drifted this far from the rest of the party?

A branch passed overhead, tapping him with a sudden shadow. They were far from the torches now, and they would be invisible at this distance from everpony else. The river gurgled off to one side, and nearer, the wind whorled around a downy circle of heather and gorse bushes. That was the loudest sound. As a chill under the trees first touched him, Day became aware of his own heartbeat.

Day tried to quiet the hammering in his chest before noticing that Carrot Top had stopped speaking. She was just standing, patient and still next to him, and every couple of seconds flicking her tail gently against his leg. It felt like the spots she touched alit on fire.

She waited until he looked down at her, and then, with a pretense of stretching, walked her forelegs up a tree trunk. With a click, her dress slid to the ground behind the legs that were stretched out to keep her balanced. He couldn’t see her expression, only a silhouette, the curves of her barrel fully exposed.

How long had she even put it on again for? Had it just been so she could take it off again?

No, that wasn’t what was stupid about it. What was stupid about it was that it worked.

“Hey, Day,” she whispered. “Down here.” Day hesitated half a step closer. Her facial features loomed out of the moonlight, beckoning him closer. When he was within reach she looped a hoof around the back of his neck, ever-so-slowly pulling his face down towards hers.

Day’s breath caught. He suddenly wanted to pull out, but any resistance he gave was countered by an insistent pressure on the small of his back. Was he strong enough to pull out? Was he even giving any resistance, or just imagining it, anyway? He felt a bit light-headed. Maybe he could wriggle and duck out from under her grip, but maybe his forehead would smash into her nose if he did that. He couldn’t smash her nose, could he? Would that be bad?

If he didn’t do something, she was going to kiss him. Day got out by dropping straight onto his bottoms, scooting backwards through a pile of leaves as Carrot matched him step for step. “Th-the music sounds nice,” he blurt out with a longing glance towards the torchlights.

Carrot Top didn’t follow his gaze. She backed him up until he was up against a tree himself and she could loom comfortably over him. With every step her flanks swayed, hypnotically left then right. “Where are you going to run now?” she whispered with a smirk.

Day didn’t answer, but a staccato rush of hoofbeats saved him from having to.

“Carrot Top!” The words made even Day jump, as awkwardly as he was positioned. Carrot herself just about crawled out of her coat, and was out of the human’s personal space in no time flat.

Plowshare took in Day’s posture, Carrot’s, the dress lying on the ground near her fetlocks, all in a second. “Get in the house,” he whinnied at his daughter. “And don’t go anywhere.”

Carrot Top couldn’t keep all her hooves on the ground at once. It was as though she was standing on unbearably hot sand. “Daddy, it’s not like that.”

“That’s fine,” he bellowed without any indication that it was in fact fine. “You can explain it to Ma and Mum when I come inside. I’m not gonna’ ask you again, Top. Do I have to count to three?”

From the outrage with which green eyes seared the night, Day was left no doubt that Carrot hadn’t endured the indignity of a father counting to three for some number of years. Her cheeks burned at the presence of other ponies—Day couldn’t make them out—lurking in the lightless ground behind Plowshare. How old was Carrot Top, anyway? It was so hard to tell with ponies. They didn’t age quite the same way humans did.

“But I love him!” she shouted, bearing herself down on forehooves as if digging in against a storm wind.

Plowshare reared back. He stared at his daughter for a good solid moment, and then turned abruptly away as if she had become of no consequence. “Ye’ won’t mind asking him, then, if he wants to go back to what you were doing.”

Loudly sniffing back tears, Carrot bolted, disappearing in the direction of a farmhouse across the fields.

Day picked himself up, keeping to one side, shying from the moonlight as he dusted himself off. But he felt it was important enough to say something that he came into the light for a moment, dipping his head rather awkwardly towards Plowshare. “Sir, if there’s anything which I might do to–”

The pony spun on him, nostrils flaring. Day had to tense up in order to avoid staggering back.

Plowshare stared for a moment before speaking; he was, by the sound of it, carefully measuring words out in order to keep the floodgates closed. “It looks like you’ve satisfied your curiosity. Glad you won’t be needing any more advice.”

Day frowned, drawing himself up. “Now, sir!” he retorted. “If I’ve caused any offense, then I’m–”

“Frosty Furrow will hitch up a wagon and take you back to the station. Good night.” Plowshare was already trotting away. The mares and stallions who had clustered around him were following, diverting only to cast backward glances at the curious human and make Day burn like Carrot Top had several moments ago.

“And you were all set to call me family,” he muttered to himself.

He hadn’t thought Plowshare, or anypony, could have possibly heard him speak at that volume. He certainly hadn’t meant for it to be overheard, but he’d neglected to bear in mind the sensitivity of equine ears. Plowshare turned stiff, but he did not turn around. “Save it for the Princesses,” he eventually muttered with a shake of his mane. He didn’t canter away, didn’t even trot, though the stretch of ground between here and the farmhouse was long. He walked.

Day thought better of following. Indeed, he welcomed the rickshaw which pulled up on the main path, getting in with flowing gratitude that the taciturn pony on the harness needed no second urging to break into a brisk retreat.

Chapter 4: The New New Lunar Republic

How Not to Train your Humans

Ironically enough, Carrot Top was wearing clothes again when she next met Lyra. Her old Winter Wrap-up vest was dusted off for the first time in three moons so she could help to sweep up after the hailstorm on Thursday. Pegasi couldn’t do all the storm work, after all, and when there were opportunities for earth ponies to participate in Ponyville weather they were expected to haul their share.

Carrot Top volunteered for more jobs than most of her neighbors. Day was forever remarking on the ‘almost frightening’ sense of community in Ponyville, just because everypony knew everypony else’s name. But Carrot Top was used to a kind of community where the entire town came together every week there was a barn to be raised, and sometimes she felt a little isolated in Ponyville. She wondered every now and then if ponies here remembered that they were called to higher standards than most of these exotic beings from beyond the stars.

“So did you bag him?” Lyra asked, as she held open a crinkling trash bag so Carrot could sweep a pile of hailstones inside.

Carrot Top started. After a second of meeting glazed eyes with the concerned expression of her friend, she tightly shook her head and shoveled the lot of ice inside the bag.

Lyra darted anxiously around her, trotting to keep up as Carrot moved mechanically to the next portion of the street. “It’s just that when you didn’t come back with Day, I assumed you’d stay with the family for a few days. Did everything go okay up there?”

Carrot Top inspected a crack in the cobbles filled with hailstones, and began plucking them out.

“Carrot?” Lyra circumnavigated her friend, dipping her head almost to the ground so that she could look her in the eyes. “Were they…not okay with the whole human thing?”

Carrot Top nearly dropped her rake as she looked up. “Hm? Of course not.” She closed her eyes and recited.

Just as every pony is different, so is every pony’s heart. You will discover different things inside: some

of you, love for another pony, and some love for the wild griffons, and some for the stately buffalo. And

some…

She was cut off by a hoof drumming on her barrel. Lyra was staring at her with dry suspicion. “This sounds like one of those long verses. Does she go through everyone?”

“Oh. Carrot’s face colored. “Y-yes. I’ll just skip to the end.”

“Whatever you want, filly.”

Carrot closed her eyes again.

But be proud of what makes you unique, and spread your love, which is my love, to the corners of the

world and beyond. (Celestia 39:8-15)

Lyra gave a noncommittal hum around the bag in her mouth. Carrot, in return, glared at the hailstones on Crankey Doodle’s lawn. “I was this close,” she nickered. “Three inches from a first kiss, I swear it. But I scared him. I went too fast, the oldest mistake in the book.” She sighed tightly once again, and looked up at Lyra as if daring her to challenge the assertion. “That’s all I did wrong.”

“Well, then…” Lyra patted her uncertainly. “I’m sure he won’t hold that against you.”

“No.” Carrot Top tossed her mane defiantly, though her curls wouldn’t wave, only bounce awkwardly atop her head. “Celestia won’t let true love fail. She’ll watch over me.”

“Right.” Lyra smirked and withdrew her hoof. “I’d forgotten. You don’t need me. You’ve got an answer for everything.”

“Of course not, silly.” Carrot was soft-spoken but steadfast as she picked up a hailstone and dropped it in the nearest trashcan. “I trust that I’ll always have what I need to figure it out.”

The two mares had more free time for their mouths while they pushed the laden bags of hailstones onto the bed of a bulky chariot. Once full, it would be flown by a pegasus up to the recycling centers of the Cloudsdale weather sector. And, since it was a strenuous flight task, ‘pegasus’ meant ‘Rainbow Dash’, barring the coming of the Third Age of Chaos or some similar upset in the world order.

Or the Second-and-a-Half Age of Chaos, depending on one’s preferences. Some ponies said that whole business last spring with the cotton candy clouds shouldn’t rightly qualify as an Age. Carrot would have agreed, but Third Age just sounded so much more dignified.

“Maybe you’re coming at him the wrong way.”

“How do you say that?” Carrot asked, helping Lyra with the heavier bags by bucking them until they stayed packed in tight.

“Maybe you do need to sweep him of his feet. But you’re not going to do that by just fighting with him all the time. Do something he wants to do. Take him somewhere fun!”

Carrot pawed at the ground. “I thought the reunion was fun…”

“Did he get to mud wrestle?”

“Well, no.” Carrot looked askance at her unicorn friend. “How come I get the feeling I’m about to have more advice from ‘Auntie Lyra’?”

She grinned. “I know a place where both humans and ponies can enjoy themselves. Princess Luna herself set it up in Canterlot.”

“The Night Princess?”

Carrot Top hadn’t actually met Avatar of the Moon in the flesh since the end of her banishment. A chance to speak a Goddess…

What Carrot Top had really always dreamed of was an audience with Princess Celestia, so she could thank her for bringing Sunflower home. The Dawnbringer had interrupted her flight to find Carrot’s little sister when she’d wandered past the fields before a dawn five years ago. But they said Princess Luna was like a pony from straight out of the First Age of Harmony. Maybe she would let Carrot Top do her homage in the old chants. That would turn half the clan green with envy!

“Do many ponies…” Carrot gestured in circles. “Who read the holy book come to this place often?”

Lyra thought for a moment, tied the latch on the back of the chariot, and came up with an outrageous giggle. “I think humans are Luna’s real followers these days.” She grinned, waggling her eyebrows.

Carrot sat on her haunches and tapped her skull. “I don’t get it.”

Canterlot did much for Day’s understanding of ponies. Until now, he had always associated ponies with the sleepy atmosphere of Ponyville, but here the crowds bustled like crowds were supposed to, lights were properly bright and buildings were properly tall. The Dimension Gates in and out of Canterlot were some of the busiest in the Terran Alliance of Worlds, so there were plenty of humans for company if Day felt like keeping up his English.

Best of all, no pesky polygamists to twist his chest into knots. Coupled relationships were coming into fashion among the urban classes of ponykind, a shift accelerated by First Contact and Equestria’s subsequent ties to the US and Australia.

From where Day stood now, the Equestrian world didn’t seem quite so disconnected from the project lab. Here neon signs adorned the flashier locales of the tourist trap, and in the more congested low-sky lanes, electric streetlights controlled the flow of chariots which hovered impossibly on the harnesses of foam-white pegasi. The results of progress at headquarters could actually have an impact here.

In fact, that was what brought Day to Canterlot in the first place. Carrot Top had been honorable enough—or ‘a gentlemare’ as she kept calling it—to repay the favor incurred by borrowing his unsalvageable tie. Her gifts had been more than satisfactory: train tickets and a door pass to a place where computers were making their first appearance in the civilian pony world. Day suspected she was apologizing for some other things as well, but he’d decided to take a turn being a gentleman and not force them into the open.

Only his present looked suspiciously like a nightclub.

Day had expected something prominent. Maybe a stallion in one of those straw boater hats, shouting over a gawking crowd about the wonders of the digital age. Instead, he’d missed the last turn on Allie’s handwritten directions because they pointed him down a dark alley. The block letters glowing over the door read ‘The New Lunar Republic’, and someone had used spray-paint to squeeze a second ‘New’ in just before the first one.

It wasn’t much lighter inside. An amoeba-shaped bar lurked at the center of thin carpeting and low ceilings. Day’s nerves were allayed, however, when he saw projector screens lining the walls. The lights had been dimmed so that screens were more easily visible to the circle after circle of humans and ponies who sat together, playing videogames.

Day hadn’t seen some of these games since his childhood. Well, he hadn’t seen a single videogame at all since moving to Ponyville two months ago, but not all of the consoles here were as new as the sleek boxes which ran Halo in the center of the beanbag-chair rings. There were older systems present, all the way down to what Day wracked his brain to identify as a Sega Genesis. An earth colt in a propeller beanie was sticking out his tongue as he tried to maneuver Sonic the Hedgehog past an army of evil robots.

The pony was mashing the buttons by placing the controller on the floor in front of him and sitting low to slap at the controller with angled forehooves. The pony must have been coming here for a while, because he’d gotten surprisingly good at the slapdash technique. Day only heard him whine in frustration twice when his large digits depressed the wrong buttons and sent Sonic spinning off a cliff.

Day found a variety of imaginative techniques by looking over the shoulders of gaming equines. Several pegasi were cradling the controllers in their wings, and one earth stallion was even battling a human in a strategy game by holding the remote in both hooves and tapping the buttons with his nose. It needled a thread of pining through Day’s heart to see that most of the ponies were unicorns—for he didn’t think that it was because other races wanted to play the games any less. Not that unicorns had it effortless; even the better telekinetic spellcasters were sweating after long rounds of Street Fighter.

And Day’s pangs of pathos were eased by the fact that there was one game ponies happily excelled at interfacing with. Humans didn’t even bother getting into the line for the DDR machines unless they were suckers for punishment.

Day’s chest swelled with a new rush of passion for his work. The job had become a little abstract lately; the threats of vast cosmic annihilation were all too vague with secrecy, too remote. Too big to properly conceive of anyway. But here, leaning up against the bar, Day marveled over two different species having fun side by side. It reminded him why he’d moved to another world in the first place, leaving behind so much of what he knew.

Maybe the tricks here could even help him contribute towards the long-elusive solution. “I should start with a pad of larger buttons,” he mused quietly. The fact that he was talking to himself was disguised by the electronic noises in every direction. “If hooves are going to have anything to do with it, that’s still obvious.”

“I’d want some way to hold it, though,” said a voice over his shoulder. “How am I doing that if my hooves are pressing those little circles?”

“That’s true.” Day nodded carefully. “But for a game controller like these, I could whip up a halter so you could just wear it. The real challenge is a full keyboard. Equus has too many letters…wait, what are you doing here?”

That voice was no stranger’s. He turned around, and Carrot Top waved at him from atop a barstool.

In response to his death frown, she chuckled sheepishly and twirled the chair in a circle. “Uh…fancy meeting you here!”

“Yes,” Day growled. “Fancy.”

Carrot Top followed the human’s frown to the bar behind her. “Before you say another word,” he added, “if you offer to buy me a drink I will throw it in your face. Luna help me, I will.”

Carrot kept her most inoffensive grin and tilted her head. “Och. Well, you know that the Princess is there to help you. I think we’re making progress.”

“Hah hah. I’m serious, Miss Carrot, don’t try it. I don’t care if you’re pony, woman or the inventor of quantum computing.”

“But I’m a gentlemare.” She waved forcefully. “And a gentlemare will treat you better than that.”

But she didn’t get the chance to demonstrate. The lights, which had been too dark before, vanished entirely without warning. Carrot spun blind, trying to control the swiveling of the stool under her so she could search for a source of light. “Did…the electricity break?”

Day mumbled a wordless shrug. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but from the sound, none of the other patrons sounded particularly concerned.

Some amount of a gleam finally relit the room when a glittering silver ball descended from the ceiling. The next thing visible was the stage, where a unicorn in giant purple glasses sat at a table full of buttons. Colored spotlights started to spin around the hall without settling anywhere, and everything filled up with a low thudding noise that reminded Carrot of the time a really bad flu had passed around the cows in Golden Hills.

Soundtrack: “Bass is Kicking” by DJ Splash

She clung at the slippery bar, trying to keep her head from swimming. So long as she couldn’t even see the floor, and every source of illumination was…spinning so much…she barely trusted herself to stay balanced on this human-sized chair, let alone get down. She was stuck.

Just as Carrot Top managed to identify the noise as music, it accelerated in pace and volume. A few humans shrieked. Some of the ponies broke glow sticks and wrapped them around their fetlocks.

Perhaps the only sound that could have cut through that din to her, bringing her swimming sense of balance to a still despite the volume required to be heard, was the sound she heard next. It echoed impossibly, as if off of a vast and ghostly plain.

“Your princess has arrived!” decreed the booming voice. Carrot Top gasped and tried to curtsey, or at least dip her head, but failed from her awkward perch. It was just as well that it was dark. The Pony of the Midnight Eye, accompanied by a tremendously irreverent chorus of whoops from below the stage, came out wearing a suit that glittered brighter as the ball on the ceiling.

“Polyester disco,” muttered Day. “Didn’t think I’d live to see that come back in style.”

When the Night appeared, the music grew again, as if to prove that it was just now really getting serious. A vibrating energy filled the entire building, an energy which Carrot Top could feel building in her veins like a sneeze determined to get out.

She attempted to smash her ears against her skull and block out the sound. From what Lyra had told her of this place, it was certain that no fewer than a quarter of the foreigners here were virgins to Dimension Gates, tourist yuppies from Earth who had never before been swept away in the raw magic of an Equestrian musical number. They were having the time of their lives just feeling the first tantalizing call, and their excitement was increasing the threat of an outright musical number with every passing second.

Carrot, on the other hoof, had gone through quite enough musicals in her life, and she wanted nothing to do with this one.

Watching Princess Luna was enough of a shock to keep her distracted from the music for now. The Goddess of the Night boogied across the stage in her spangly attire, conspicuously bumping flanks with the DJ and even singing along to the spotty, scattered lyrics of the song. Was this the same regal Princess which Carrot had barely been able to glimpse this morning when she’d arrived in Canterlot early to catch the changing of the guard? The same Avatar of the Moon which had paraded in formal sequence to the royal court with a guard of twelve black pegasi? This was her Goddess? Prancing across a club in the lower levels of Canterlot with magic-buzzed strangers?

It was an illuminating glimpse of her diarch. But Carrot Top was resourceful enough to reason her way out of shock. Even alicorns must need to let off some steam once in a while.

Dancers were taking over the open floor space. It was a far distant thing from the fiddle-powered square dances back on the farm, but Carrot Top had experienced turntables and their ilk on one or two occasions in Ponyville. This kind of dancing, it suddenly occurred to her, was the kind of dance she’d very much enjoy doing with Day. She poked in the direction he’d been standing before the lights went out.

“Day?” She found his chest and prodded him several times. “Day, do you want to dance?”

Some green lights chanced to flash across his face. Day was staring towards the stage with a trancelike intensity, mouth hanging open, and only turned a sterile stare downwards after Carrot Top had nearly pushed him over three times. “Oh! Hi, Carrot.”

Carrot snorted. What was so distracting to him anyway? She tried to follow his line of sight again, and all she could make out was Princess Luna coming down from the stage. That couldn’t be it. Day didn’t revere the Princesses. Despite the fact that he could rattle off every fact of the Equestrian political system, he barely even knew their names.

“Hey, I’m going to go dance,” Day shouted over the speakers. “See you in a bit.”

Carrot Top seethed, but the noise was utterly squashed under the DJ. She was alone now. And still stranded on this stupid chair.

The first song blended smoothly into another, and another after that, all of them in the same key and mostly identical in every other way. So the Celestia-forsaken musical trying to escape through her limbs just wouldn’t die. She invariably caught herself swaying, or even trotting in time by standing on the barstool, whenever let herself move a muscle. The thudding pulse was so thoroughly entangled with the ambient magic now that it was impossible to resist tapping at least one hoof at any given time. Most of the ponies in the room were happily banging away with all four. Magic was playing loose with the physics in the room.

The strain of resisting the primal urge to join them was doing nothing to put Carrot Top in a better mood. She’d always been unfond of musicals. She claimed it was annoying to be pulled away from her work, but the truth was that, subconsciously, ever since that one little number her first-grade classroom had belted into about shoving glue sticks up one’s nostrils, she lived in dread of getting a singing part.

Eventually a colt appeared—of what color, she couldn’t tell under the lights—and offered to help her down from the bar. When he started making little tugs towards the dance floor, Carrot Top allowed it, deciding she had to do something to entertain herself, and possibly hoping that Day might see her and flare up a bit of that pesky human jealousy he was always so on guard about.

But when the young stallion shimmied closer and closer, clearly baiting for a kiss, she turned her head aside. After a lot of ineffectual shouting and impossible gesturing, they pulled each other around until finding a corner that was mercifully—ever so mercifully—sheltered from the sound. There Carrot Top explained as patiently as she could that she was an ‘old-fashioned filly’ who didn’t smooch on a pony she had no intention of courting, family excepted.

The colt’s ears drooped. “No intention?” he repeated dolefully. “That’s all it takes, one look at me? I don’t even have a chance?”

Carrot had to pull herself up short. Her heart suddenly constricted. She touched the colt’s shoulder before stopping her half-open mouth from plowing into the first comforting thing she could think of to say.

She evaded the question by explaining that she was trying to get into another herd, and in no position to be fooling around with other ponies at the moment. But the truth was that he’d been right the first time; she really did have no intention of courting him after just one look. How judgmental was that? Carrot Top’s mothers hadn’t raised her to be so cold. Of that she was certain.

She found it more than a little frightening to look inside herself. Was she even attracted to her own kind anymore? What had all this time spent gazing after humans done to her?

“I’m sorry,” she said as softly as she dared, and took her hoof off of the colt.

They sat for a moment awkwardly avoiding each other’s eyes. Carrot Top sought a change of subject. “You look like you’ve been here before. About the Princess. Is this…?”

He nodded. “Her joint. The Night Princess took to a lot of human things. There’s even a rumor going around that she has a human consort hidden away in the Everfree Forest.”

Carrot guffawed helplessly. “I’m from Ponyville,” she scoffed. “I think somepony would notice if Princess Luna kept making mysterious trips into the forest.”

“I don’t know. It sounds like a crazy conspiracy, but some ponies have pretty detailed theories. There’s even a name for the guy. Everyone refers to him as ‘Chester’.”

Carrot Top cradled her head in one hoof. “Ridiculous. The Princess couldn’t do that, even if she–och, you know–could. It’s not as though she could ever marry.”

“Yeah.” The colt leaned back–hopefully distracted from his recent rejection–and stared at the press of the crowd. “It’s almost sad to see her like this, when you put it that way. One prefers to think their Princesses are made of stronger stuff.”

Carrot felt her soul twitch. “They are made of stronger stuff,” she insisted with a little stamp.

The colt jumped. “Er—I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just that everypony thinks the burden they carry doesn’t bother them. And Celestia might be that sturdy, I guess—or else she’s a master of putting on the strong face—but the younger…”

He gestured towards the stage once more. Carrot lay her muzzle down on the floor, inexplicably miserable.

It didn’t get much better as the evening progressed. Ponies drifted back and forth between the games and the dance floor, dragging humans with them. When Day wasn’t out shaking his legs he was sitting around one of those human machines, hitting at buttons with the Night. Carrot didn’t know what was so fascinating about them.

She tried sitting atop the back of the couch where he slouched and letting her tail dangle to his shoulder, but he barely noticed. He hardly even moved so long as his attention was locked on that screen. The only time he budged was to jump whenever an explosive noise came out of the speakers, and toss his controller so that it nearly flew into Carrot’s face.

“Never thought a pony would beat me at 007,” he declared.

The Night set down her controller with an elegant show of fine telekinesis, and sipped at a drink before lifting a regal hoof in the human’s direction. “You may continue your adulation, my worthy adversary!”

Day laughed from belly to nose and kissed Princess Luna’s hoof guard.

Only four could play the game at once, so ponies and people were rotating out. Even Carrot, since she’d been hanging out on the couch for so long, was invited to take a turn. She tried to demure, but Day chose that moment to pay attention to her and insist that she not be left out.

She was ready to put the controls down in disinterest after one round. It was too much work to hit the right buttons with a hoof, even when she’d had hers trimmed just a few days ago. But then again, the Night herself—the Dream-Weaver, the Maiden of the Stars–was seated on a beanbag not one foot away. So she hung in there. Forget about Day! There were much greater things for her here.

She found a dark corner in the game to hide in, under a staircase, and turned towards the Night, who was levitating two controllers at once. “Princess Luna,” she said, “it’s a great honor…”

A burst of simulated gunfire made her jump. Carrot looked back to the screen in time to see her corner of it turning obscenely red.

“Grr!” Day leaned even closer to the screen on Carrot Top’s other side. “No noob farming! Fight me like a mare!”

“You wish to face me, do you?” boomed the Princess. “Then come hither!”

“Don’t mind if I do!”

More gunfire.

“My family,” Carrot Top started again, “is one of the twelve clans of the Earthsong Compact. You might recall the Carrots from the First Age, your majesty? We burnt twelve logs’ worth of juniper incense to celebrate your return…”

“Take that!” shouted the Night. The crowd of spectators exploded into cries of amazement, and Day threw his arms up in mock despair.

Carrot Top quietly got up and walked away.

She tried finding Day again every half hour or so, but his attention was never available. It was even more impossible to attract his notice when he was on the dance floor. The Sentinel of Darkness was a whirl of white and blue there, rubbing various lengths of herself against almost anyone who danced close too close. When Carrot Top even dared to seek Day out near the stage, she found him pressed up against Princess Luna, and the hips of both grinding up and down in time to the music.

Carrot Top’s cheeks caught on fire. Oh no. It couldn’t be like that. That was more than she could handle learning about her Princess in one night.

She marched through the hot logjam of bodies, step by step. Day finally noticed Carrot Top when she stood glowering directly in front of him. Only at that point did he seem to realize what he was doing and come to a stock still stop.

“Oh! H-hi, Carrot,” he said weakly. “Did—you want to dance?”

Princess Luna moved on behind him. When the support he’d been leaning against disappeared, Day pratfalled into the mosh.

“Thank you for the offer,” Carrot seethed, “but I’d better go.” She spun curtly. “I am having the most unholy thoughts about my own princess.”

Three long days passed without sign of Day. Carrot Top had ample time to cool down all the various parts of herself, but that should have been ample time for Day to calm as well. She tried not to get discouraged, but Day had never avoided her before, no matter how hard he protested her. If was following her gut, she would have fixed everything by tracking him down and kissing him hard enough to wipe all his problems away. But in this one instance, she looked away from her oil-painting of Princess Celestia and refrained from doing what her heart instructed; Ma’s instructions on behavior befitting a gentlemare had been very firmly impressed. Maybe in a week she could try to knock on his door again.

Oh, but it was so long to wait! Not even to talk to him!

So she was back in her garden, applying tender love and care to marshal the vegetable beds which had been losing their battle against wilderness while she was gone. The Ponyville produce market didn’t have much tolerance for less-than-stellar goods; if Carrot Top wanted to keep her customers, she couldn’t let the weeds in the rutabaga patch regroup their forces and live to fight another day.

Where had these turns of phrase about fighting come from? Carrot paused with a crabgrass shoot hanging out of her mouth, a frown pooling around it. Honestly. Ma would have been more than a little disturbed if she heard her daughter talk about weeding as though it involved slicing up other creatures. Maybe she was spending too much time around humans; maybe it was affecting her.

Which was only more encouragement to get back into the swing of agriculture. The hard work of raising plants was the perfect thing to keep her occupied; while Carrot was out under Celestia’s sun, soaking up her birthright of sweat and dirt, her thoughts only occasionally drifted to Day.

At least, she managed until Allie appeared along the road. Carrot dropped her watering can then and galloped across the garden, jumping up against her fence with her ears perked and her foreleg waving like a flag.

Allie couldn’t have failed to hear her call out, but she kept walking in a straight line as if she didn’t realize that she was being hailed. She was no more than two ponylengths from Carrot’s fence; when Carrot found herself looking at the girl’s back instead of her face, her ears fell down with a nearly audible squeak of sorrow.

But just at that instant the girl froze, mid-stride, one leg straight in the air. Carrot held her breath until the girl pivoted, playfully skipping towards Carrot’s fence and having a good laugh at the mare’s exuberant relief from being teased.

Carrot nickered happily. “You look marvelous today!”

“Aw.” Allie smiled into the ground. “You’re always so nice to me. Why don’t you come see Day and me tonight? It’s been a while.”

Carrot Top turned aside in the undertow of a barely-vocal breath. “Er, no…I shouldn’t.”

“Oh, why not?” Allie leaned further, and the fence sighed in lovelorn way beneath her weight. “You still like him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do!”

Allie’s grin returned with Carrot’s urgent affirmation. “Aw, you’re totally hooked, aren’t you? I get it. He has such wonderful eyes.” She was whispering now, as if sharing a special secret. “Especially when he’s doing something romantic. He can be so sweet.”

Carrot came up with a cursory response and they chatted that way for a bit—she didn’t remember anything about Day’s eyes. She liked him for other reasons. Allie, who had never spent much time around a real herd, was engaging in the romantic fantasy that there was a special connection between two mares in love with the same pony, and Carrot, who had grown up around large herds, was playing along, a technique she knew to be tried and tested for firming up the cohesiveness of a herd about to expand.

Things seemed to be going well on the Alexandra front. Carrot tried to push herself a little higher on the fence, closer to Allie’s face. “Give me a kiss.”

Allie pushed her away by the nose. “No!” she laughed. “Like, we haven’t even been on a first date yet.”

Carrot was beginning to worry there might never be a first date, but she backed down right away and crossed her chest. “Very well. I can respect that.” She nodded firmly at Allie. “In fact, I think it’s awfully gentlemarely of you to keep your hands off me for your herdmate. He’s a lucky man.”

Allie nodded—then laughed again. “Gee, you know how to make a girl feel special. I didn’t think I was doing anything special.”

In some respects, Carrot reflected, it was a lot easier to court Allie then Day. Whenever she tried to do something sweet, things went more as planned. Allie went along with things.

Allie pointed farther down the road which led into Poynville. “You can walk me home if you want.”

“Okay!” The rutabagas could hold the line for another couple hours. Carrot ran for her gate. Allie walked home every day now from the Ponyville Bank, where she was interviewing for a position. Apparently she’d spent quite a few years in school, which was the norm where she grew up, and she wanted a job where she’d get to apply the skills she spent so long training. Something called actuarial science, though Carrot Top decided that she’d have to live without taking a big interest in her herdmate’s careers after the third failed attempt on Allie’s part to explain it to her. Allie didn’t seem to mind.

It was joyous to skip through Ponyville at a human’s side. “You have no idea how happy I was when we hit it off.” Carrot smiled. “After everything Day said, I was terrified you wouldn’t like me and that would be the end of it.”

“Not at all!” Allie grinned down. “You’re cute as a button, my little pony!”

They reached Crayonberry Lane still talking about nothing and scheming about the future. Carrot Top’s heart skipped a beat, despite her better instincts, when Allie casually invited her inside.

She hung around in the living room while Allie went into the bedroom to change her clothes. Carrot Top told herself not to get excited; she’d been in this house plenty of times. Allie probably hadn’t even been thinking when she held the door open for her. But, unable to resist noticing that she had a human alone in their house, was acutely aware of Allie’s movements: her gaze flitting over Carrot Top, and towards the door. Was she worried Carrot might find a reason to leave?

“Allie,” she asked carefully. “Is there anything you…wanted to do while I’m here?”

“Oh, um…” The human bit her lip. She was staring at Carrot’s hooves in that shy way again, and Carrot felt her tail twitch. Allie was clearly working up to ask something.

“Hey. Hey, now, it’s okay.” She allowed herself to dare nuzzling Allie’s leg. “You can tell me anything, darling.”

“Could…”

Carrot held still, swallowing with her cheek still against Allie’s thigh. “Yeah?”

“Could I brush your mane?”

Carrot pulled away and blinked.

“It’s sort of a childhood dream,” Allie said with a look of apology about her.

“Well—hay.” Carrot spun around to present her mane. “If someone else wants to do the work to make me look good, go crazy.”

She sat at the foot of the couch to give Allie easy reach for teasing out the snarls. True to her word, she seemed to enjoy the monotonous chore of brushing out Carrot Top’s mane. Carrot spent the bulk of the time staring at the nascent daffodils sprouting from a windowsill planter, considering the thoughts that had flashed through her mind just before Allie made the request.

And less than half an hour after she’d promised to respect Allie’s wishes about keeping her hooves off until Day got over his issues! She dragged a hoof over her face. Lyra must be right. She really did turn into a different pony when left around these humans. At first it had just been Day, but now either one of them was enough to make her lose all her reserve.

“You know what?” she suggested. “Even though it’s early, we should set up some ground rules for everyone.”

“Rules?”

“Och, yes. You always have to have ground rules when a herd gets bigger’n two.” It might also, Carrot hoped, help to keep her accountable. She’d never forgive herself if she jeopardized her own chances with these two—not when she felt in her heart they were the ones.

“What kind of rules?” Allie said tepidly. “Like, how much should we spend on dates? Day pays for most of them, but I haven’t gotten back to work since we moved. When we were in college we always split the bill.”

“Okay. That’s grand to think about.” Carrot closed one eye as bits of her mane fell over it. “I have to say I wouldn’t mind splitting three ways. Up here, a mare normally pays for the whole herd if she wants to take them out on a first date–it can be expensive to get into a large one.” She looked over her shoulder. “At least, that’s how I was brought up. I suppose even the Apples don’t think that way anymore.” She sighed. “I guess I’m old-fashioned.”

“Well,” Allie declared, “I like you just fine old-fashioned.”

She went quiet for a moment as she worked her comb into the hardest part, right at the nexus of tangles in the middle of Carrot Top’s mane.

“We should talk more about money later,” said Carrot when the tugs on her head were no longer painful, “and gab on some rules about bringing new ponies into the herd. Actually, maybe we should lock that down for a while, just to keep Day comfy. But anyway, what about affection?”

“Mm—affection?” Allie murmured. Her arms tucked in closer to her sides at the elbows, and she hunched over as if trying to hide behind the cloudy frizzes of Carrot’s hairs.

“Better to just talk about it early,” said Carrot. “No good putting it off. That’s what Ma always taught me, and I’m sticking to it.”

She felt the human hesitate. Allie came close to saying something, but hovered back on the edge and fell backwards into awkward silence.

The mare rolled her eyes. She sighed in mock exasperation. But, if she was to admit the truth to herself, she was rather enjoying Allie’s naiveté. She turned about and planted her hooves on either side of the human’s shoulders. “Out with it, lass,” she said quietly but forcefully. “If I start kissing on Day, do you want to be around or not?”

Allie bit her lip. “Um…I’m not sure,” she admitted in a whisper. “I guess I thought about it some—that it would happen—but I didn’t know how I’d feel…”

“It’s alright.” Carrot Top dropped to the floor. “That’s not odd. Try thinking about what it would be like if I was around while you and Day were getting it on. Would you be okay with me watching?”

Her tail twitched. “Och…I would really love it if you let me watch.” For a moment, she was swept off her senses into imagining herself sitting by a beside while Day did all sorts of fantastically interesting things to Allie.

“Ah—ooh–or…” She shook herself back to reality hoping that she hadn’t moaned out loud. “Or if Day was watching while you and I kissed.” She paused. “If, you know,” she added quickly, “you want to do that kind of stuff.”

Allie remained hrming, just sort of responding with actual words. She was still embarrassed to talk about it, Carrot thought. It would have been an annoying facet in a pony she expected maturity out of, but in Allie, a delicate giant with the excuse of having never learned about real relationships, it was ridiculously adorable.

Still, they’d be here all day like this. She needed to nudge her along. “One of my sisters had some pretty safe herd rules,” Carrot suggested. “How about we use that as a place to start? The first time anything happens—a kiss, anything at all—we agree everyone should be around. And whenever we’re about to take another step with someone after that first time, we have to get in touch with the others and make sure that they’re alright with it. We don’t have to set any rules in stone, so don’t worry about that. We can change them later as much as we want.”

“That sounds cool!” Allie picked up her comb, looking relieved. “Let’s do that.”

Carrot top chuckled. “Och…don’t worry, Allie. I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure everything works out okay.”

She glanced at a clock on the wall and frowned. “I also need to take care of my carrots. Thank you for this, Allie, uh—my mane is really groomed—but I should probably go…”

Allie glanced back towards the door. “Oh, do you have to? Just a few more minutes.”

Carrot thought about it, found insufficient will to resist, and plopped back onto her haunches. She was starting to enjoy this little activity, not to mention that it dangled the possibility of getting free mane care out of her future relationship. “Just a minute though.”

She tensed suddenly when she felt bristles on an unexpected part of her body. At first she held still, so that she could pay rapt attention to the feeling of the brush sinking into the first few inches of her tail. It was tempting to let it continue, onwards and downwards…but she decided to whirl away, flirtatiously flicking it to the side. “Ah-ah-ah! Naughty girl.” She smiled as she backed away. “If I don’t get a kiss, you don’t get any of my tail.”

Allie’s mouth formed an O which then clamped shut as she crossed her arms. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she pouted. “I wanted a pony as a pet when I was a little girl. Now you’re making it sound dirty. ”

“Gee, sounds pretty kinky to me. Do I going to have to wear a collar and call you ‘master’?”

Allie bit her lip against laughter and made a show of throwing the hairbrush. “See if I brush your hair anymore,” she said.

Carrot gasped and ran to pick it up, lowering her ears in a conciliatory gesture. “I won’t do it again!” she swore around the handle. “Don’t say something like that!”

They dissolved into giggles.

But Carrot Top froze again when she heard the front door open. A moment later Day was standing in the entryway, lines forming in his face as he gazed around the living room. “Allie…what’s going on here?”

“Yeah, what’s going on?” Carrot Top backed towards the kitchen. “He shouldn’t be back–” she pointed at Day, “you shouldn’t be back for three hours!”

“Did I forget to mention he got off early today?” Allie got up, smoothly flowing around the pair of them. “Oops.”

Day tried to back out the way he had come, but already found his girlfriend behind him, pushing him firmly forward. The man stared at Carrot Top but set his mouth resolutely shut.

Carrot mirrored him for a minute. But when the silence stiffened, she broke. “Oh, buck it,” she said. “I ought to be the bigger pony. You were getting the chance to spend time with Princess Luna and I got in the way.”

“Wait. What?” Day stutter-stepped closer. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Mad at you? You’re mad at me, lad! What did you do?” Carrot sighed. “Okay, okay. I was mad at you. But be fair. You were grinding up on my duly appointed deity!”

Day’s eyes flew wide. “Oh, crap! I hadn’t even thought of that! But…that’s not a problem anymore?”

Carrot Top shook her head solemnly. She had stormed out of the New New Lunar Republic to get rid of her blasphemously impure thoughts, blaming Day all the while for giving them birth in the first place. But among the many undesired images that had flashed through Carrot Top’s mind while she watched the Night dance had been a few sensations that brought a chill instead of a flush to her chest—brief glimpses, or so it felt, of a cold which was beyond her, a night-time chill without end.

With or without lunar banishment, being a goddess was a very lonely thing. And how was it Carrot’s place to decide whether or not the Night’s dignity needed defending? No—she had been wrong. When she thought about it, it was her pride that had really been stung, not the Avatar of the Moon’s.

She had ridden home sick to the stomach with herself for questioning her own Princess. Luna wouldn’t have allowed Day to do anything she hadn’t wanted him to. And so Carrot, if she wanted to be holy, should only hope that Day had brought a minute of warmth to that unfathomable cold.

But then what had so paralyzed Day that he avoided her for three days? Carrot Top took a moment to review what she knew about the human’s culture. It seemed unlikely, but… “Horseapples! You thought you were rubbing it in my face?”

Day nodded a shamed face. “After all the times I turned you down, I thought…”

She tightened her brows. “Well, you weren’t, were you?”

“Of course not! A gentleman would never do that!”

She dared to try and force a grin through the mulch of the awkwardness. “So what are we caterwauling on about, then?”

On Carrot’s way out, she found Allie and stopped to kiss the back of the girl’s hand. Maybe that human knew more about being in a herd than she let on.

And she actually broke into song on her way back—a prancing, private little ditty about love letting Celestia’s sun shine through on even the cloudiest days. Dad couldn’t even be angry if she proved that Day was madly in love with her. Everything in life was coming together. Perfection was within reach, anyway. The only thing left to do was take care of those niggling little uncertainties Day had stuck in his head, keeping him from reaching out and taking the same happiness.

Chapter 5: From Sea to Shining Sea

I for One Welcome our New Pony Overlords

It had been three months since Day last passed through a Dimension Gate; three months he set foot in any world but Equestria. Already magic felt less exotic, and Earth, when he finally returned to it, struck him as mysterious by compare.

The skyscrapers of his hometown, though they towered impossibly high compared to the spires of Canterlot, now appeared to him as ugly as apathy. The clouds were wild and untamed, and Day found himself checking every couple moments for a pegasus to come along and clean up the zigzagging tails of an errant cirrus. There were no pegasi, of course—few winged beings wanted to visit a place where they weren’t allowed to fly. The bill was in Congress which would free up most of America’s low airspace for pegasi, but it hadn’t passed yet. Only about one in two constituents wanted to give up valuable commercial flights for the comfort of talking ponies.

Day wondered how he could have failed to notice, while growing up, just how few grasses, trees, and flowers there were here. It wasn’t natural. He’d thought he would find the thrum of car horns and jet planes to be comforting—these had been the sounds of his cradle, after all—but mostly he just missed birdsong.

“How did I let you talk me into this again?” he asked Allie.

“Simple, really.” She grinned. “I’m dying for a rack of ribs. And you’re dying for a chance to use your vacation days.”

“And what about her?” Day pointed sharply at Carrot Top, who was a few paces in front of them.

Allie didn’t miss a beat. “She was dying to see our world. And it was a bunch cheaper to book the hotel rooms and Gate tickets together. You did say we were close friends with her, after all.”

Day waved over his shoulder. “Yes, yes. I get it.”

To occupy himself, he counting the number of non-humans in the parking lot—of the five, four were ponies. There would have been more Turians and Vulcans, no doubt, if the lot had been connected to something other than a petting zoo. Still, five—Earth’s doors were swinging wider every year. Races less outgoing than ponykind even beginning to grant humanity the time of day. A time had been when Day would have thrilled to see that many extraterrestrials in one place.

“Alright,” he said finally. “What did she bribe you with?”

“Chocolate.” Allie’s face stretched like taffy into a smile.

“Uh-huh. Pony dark is good, I take it.”

Allie hugged herself in a way that suggested Day could never even understand how good.

But he leaned in close, over her ear. “She’s a carrot farmer,” he whispered huskily. “Whatever she offered you, I can pay double.”

Allie tapped a finger over her lips. “Ooh…”

“It’s too late!” Carrot called over her shoulder. “No take-backs.”

Day sighed and waited to take another step forward.

It had rained recently, and under the grungy sky a usual assortment of worms was plastered on the asphalt path. Day hadn’t noticed them until it became the reason that he wasn’t making more than five feet of progress every five minutes. Carrot Top would stop at every single one, carefully pick up the worm and place it in the grass to either side.

At least she was covered up. At Day’s urging, she’d given into the necessities a pony had to submit to if she wanted to visit the human homeworld. Her dress this time was a much more modest, fetlock-length affair which covered her in dull blue. She’d been less than enthusiastic about it, but accepted it easily enough when it became part of her ticket to Earth.

Only, she was in a good mood ever since the Gate crossing, and happy ponies tended to lift their hooves when they walked. “Don’t prance,” Day cautioned the happy mare for about the twentieth time; he had come to muttering it automatically by this point. “Don’t want your dress coming up.”

Allie batted his shoulder. “Quit fussing, Day, she’s fine.”

Carrot Top interrupted her task for just long enough to roll her eyes at Day. “You make it sound like if I wasn’t wearing this cloth, everyone inside a block would be staring at my vagina.” She went on, barely fazed by Day’s sudden near-collapse. “It’s just a vagina. There’s nothing unusual about it.”

She backed up to sniff at his blush; Day was having trouble moving after Carrot’s banter at open conversation volume. “What’s the matter, Day?” She sprouted a sly grin and dropped her voice into a softer range. “Did you want to see it?”

Allie hung back because she didn’t want to leave Day behind. Day hung back because he hoped that no one nearby who understood Equus would think he knew this pony.

But it was difficult to walk more slowly than a pony who stopped for every single worm. And she drew attention just by being herself. Ponies weren’t riot-inducing since the first couple years of First Contact, but they were still uncommon enough in most parts of Earth to note a few stares.

Once Day had given up on avoidance, and grown impatient again, he called out exasperatedly. “You can’t pick them all up, you know!”

Carrot paused and looked up. The walk to the petting zoo shelter was covered from front to back with beached annelids. They looked like quickly greying confetti from a long-dead party.

“I know,” she said after a minute, and quietly bent to pick up the next one.

What was worse, some of the children broke away from their parents to start following her example. Before too long, Carrot Top trailed an entourage of kids who had the time of their life trying to clear the entire path of worms. The older ones giggled and let the creatures slither between their fingers. A few of the younger ones accidentally squished theirs.

Carrot Top was with one of those younger ones, showing him how to be gentle to a worm, when the first mother took notice. It wasn’t long until parents were dashing over, pulling their kids away, wiping dirt off their hands or just idly calling over for them not to touch the worms. If they happened to catch sight of Carrot Top, a pony unperturbed in the center of it all, they usually stopped for at least a couple seconds of embarrassment before tugging their child away.

The last boy, pulled away from Carrot Top’s side, tossed his last worm over the fence. “Fly, little wormy, be free!”

And Carrot carried on without the children, just as she had before.

The whole episode failed to bring Carrot Top much closer to the petting zoo proper. There was a news stand near the end of the walk, so Day went to get a paper, leaned up against the fence and read through it while waiting for her to finish.

By Celestia, was it a read. How long had it been since he’d caught up on the events of Earth? Without an internet connection, he fell out of touch so easily. Day hadn’t seen so many pictures of human beings in months. There were so many stories he could barely follow. It took him a few moments to even make sense of the front-page headline: ‘New Mexico Becomes 17th State to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage’.

Legalize? Marriage? Oh, right! Right, of course! It came flooding back in fits and starts. That had been the issue under the public eye when he left. It struck him as so odd now for people to be fighting over who could marry whom in a court of law. Marriage wasn’t usually a legal matter in Equestria, unless nobility was involved. As Day read the article, it began to sink in just how far he had drifted from his homeland.

He was still staring at that headline when Carrot Top appeared, leaning around his hip. “What does it say? Is there anything interesting happening around here?” She pointed. “That rainbow on the front’s pretty.”

Day quickly folded the paper up. “It’s nothing important,” he said quickly, shoving it in his back pocket. He could smell one of Carrot’s lectures coming on, and his life-long policy was to do everything in his power to avoid debates about politics or religion. Before Carrot Top, he had been largely successful at doing so.

Day’s private opinion was that religions were superstitious holdovers from a primitive age when man had needed to invent explanations for the existence of rain and sunrises and disease. He was quietly sure that in a few decades, a few centuries at most, all the generations of stubborn old believers would pass away, and the secular, civilized world would breathe a collective sigh of relief.

But he wasn’t about to say that sort of thing out loud. Day went into the shelter to purchase three tickets, leaving Carrot with Allie, and, or so he thought, deftly avoiding any opportunities for Carrot to try and ‘educate’ him. But when he came back out, he found Carrot by the news stand, poring over a second copy of the paper with Allie, who had clearly read the whole thing to her without hesitating.

He grimaced. “We can go in,” he said loudly, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t–

“Day!”

He winced on the inside as Carrot Top held the headline up. “Did you know about this? It’s against the law to marry certain people together! Och, that’s so mean!”

By this point in time, Day thought legislating love to be a pretty silly idea himself. But he wasn’t any more sympathetic to Carrot Top’s immediate dismissal of his country’s inner struggles. Her smug, Princess-powered superiority, thinking she knew everything—that bothered him more than anything else.

“You’re not on your world anymore,” he snapped. “Don’t expect everything to go the way you want.”

“Oh!” Carrot Top cowered against the news stand. She dumped the paper back where it had come from in a flash.

Allie interposed herself between Day and the pony, giving Carrot Top an enveloping hug around the neck as if to protect her. “It’s okay, Carrot. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re too right, I didn’t!” Carrot wriggled out of the hug to march towards Day. “Listen here. Just because–”

And Allie was between them again. “Why don’t we go pet some animals?” she said brightly, turning hopeful looks on each of them in turn.

“Fine with me.” Day turned and walked into the corral.

The interaction with unintelligent goats took a bit of adjusting to, but other than that the petting zoo began as a relaxing experience. Carrot Top was fascinated by the horses; she spent ten minutes standing practically underneath a chestnut-colored quarter horse, looking up into its face.

“This is so weird,” she exclaimed breathily. “But amazing!”

The Terran horse seemed similarly entranced by Carrot Top. They locked gazes, moving only to sniff at each other every couple of moments.

Day couldn’t explain the goosebumps the sight gave him. But Carrot Top wasn’t hurting anything, so he avoided them by simply looking away from the scene. He spent a nice moment of quiet petting a glossy black Shetland, checking—when he thought no one was looking—that there was no electric tingle when he gave the horse a quick kiss on the nose.

He found to his satisfaction that there was nothing. No pleasant burning sensation, just a musty smell not quite as sweet as the scent of an earth pony.

He also stopped worrying about Carrot Top’s communing with the horses when he next turned around and found her on the wrong side of the petting zoo fence.

Day immediately rushed over, leaning against the fence to seize her attention. “Get out of there!” he hissed.

She didn’t pay him any mind. She was sticking her nose back through the wires to be patted by a five-year old boy who didn’t seem to find anything unusual with a talking orange pony’s presence in the corral.

Carrot smiled and made adoring baby-talk over the boy as he patted her. She nonetheless eyed the kid cautiously when he uncurled his other hand in front of her, with some rather bedraggled-looking oats clinging to his sticky fingers.

She sniffed once at the hand. “No offense, lad, but I think I’ll pass.” Her left ear flicked across the corral, pointing down the walk. “I just don’t know where those have been. That girl over there’s picking them up off the ground.” Her head swung towards his pocket. “That candy of yours, on the other hoof, I’d be more than happy to share.”

The six-year old paused thoughtfully for a second, and then unwrapped a couple pieces of Starburst, which Carrot Top shamelessly licked right out of his fingers.

“Carrot!” Day hissed again, “You can’t do that! It’s obscene!” He wished Allie would come to his aid. Maybe the mare would listen if it came from both of them.

Conflating Equestrian ponies with mute horses was the worst racial slur on Earth since the Turian Olympic Snowboarding Team. If he didn’t get Carrot Top out of there, he could wind up in the next paper’s headlines, and Day didn’t think anyone would stop to listen to the explanation that the pony had simply hopped inside the corral and let children hand-feed her of her own accord. It sounded even more ridiculous than it looked.

He scanned for the child’s parents. A group of matronly-looking woman were standing in the awning of the center building, chatting it up with one of the caretakers. None of them were looking this way.

So maybe he had a few moments to get Carrot Top out of the paddock before anyone noticed. But as he turned away from Carrot for only a minute, things got worse. Somehow, she’d gotten one of the children inside, and was now trotting a wispy little blonde around on her back. The girl shrieked with delight as Carrot bounced her passenger up and down; the women near the shelter smiled, but didn’t look over.

“Carrot Top!” Day leaned over the fence and hissed so vigorously that she was forced to look at him. “You’re going to get me in trouble! Get that kid off of you and get on this side of the fence!”

Carrot blew him an insolent raspberry and started a second lap around the enclosure. “Not going to do it. I’m having a ball!”

“You’re not even allowed in there!” Day snatched at the pony, but pulled back quickly when all he got was a fistful of her retreating tail. “And you can’t give a human a ride on your back! It’s indecent!”

“You and your decency!” She called all the way across the enclosure, and Day winced, imagining who might overhear. “This little kiddo is cute as a button! I’m going to start a business giving little human girls ponyback rides on their birthdays. And a whole mess of ponies will join me because the hours will be grand, and we’ll become famous, and then we’ll be a fixture at every birthday party in your nation. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

Allie was at Day’s side, but only to tug at his sleeve. “Stop yelling,” she asked in a murmured whine. “Not in public!”

“Carrot, would you just stop and think for a second?” Day muffled himself short of a shout while Carrot Top made a show of laughing maniacally. “Can you just think about what might go wrong here?”

“Like what?” Carrot trotted to the fence and faced him, chin held high.

Day’s stare was blank. He couldn’t bring himself to say that Carrot would be giving people an opportunity to treat her like a dumb animal, so for a moment he was tongue-tied. “…The kids might yank on your mane,” he finished lamely.

Carrot turned to one side. It revealed the little girl listing dangerously to the left, digging both fists deep into the pony’s curls for balance. “I see what you mean. Ah, well. It was a nice idea while it lasted.”

Carrot second-favorite part of the trip, after the petting zoo, was riding in a car. She spent the entire time sticking her head out the window, making noises by letting her gums catch in the wind. Every time Day eased the rental car up the freeway, she had even more fun whistling and hollering at the other pony tourists who were constantly appearing alongside them in brightly-decorated electric passenger vans.

Day knew for a fact that Carrot Top, a pony who spent plenty of time doing manual labor, could pull thirty miles an hour on her own hooves if she applied herself. He had imagined that she’d get tired of the car after half an hour or so. He was shortly forced to revise that opinion.

But Carrot avoided humiliating Day by a consistent, if narrow, margin. At least so far. The only thing he really had to complain about had occurred while they were taking their seats in Allie’s favorite restaurant. Carrot had asked Day to sit across from her with Allie, “just as if I was really taking you both out on a date!”

“Oh, no,” Day had replied. “I’m not playing along with your fantasy. Allie, my love, you can sit across from me.”

And while Allie took her seat with a shrug, Carrot Top had jumped into the booth so that she slid right up against Day like a bookend.

The pony had acquiesced a little too happily to that command, in retrospect.

But she seemed content to behave at the diner, save perhaps for the fact that before their meals had even arrived, she’d drained three tall glasses of Cherry Coke. She was now hugging her forelegs around the fourth glass to get the straw in her mouth.

“You know, that’s mostly sugar,” said Allie, once she managed to break through her glazed stare of awe. She put a hand over Carrot’s hoof. “Maybe you should, like, switch to water.”

Carrot trained her wide eyes silently on Allie, and her head tilted to one side so that the far ear flopped interrogatively. Her mouth was busy providing continuous suction.

“I’m not saying it isn’t good, but a few more glasses might weigh down your plans to charm my boyfriend, if you know what I mean.”

Day shook his head with a snort. “If only. Carrot Top could drink all night and not become any heavier, dear.”

In response to Allie’s bewilderment, he leaned over the table to explain. The motion pressed Carrot Top’s flank against his hip–he sighed inwardly.

“Humans have an adaption which lets us process small amounts of sugar very efficiently. It’s also where our addiction to sugar comes from. Ponies don’t have that adaption. You know how you when we first came to Ponyville, you thought it was weird that ponies were eating desserts with dinner all the time? They can do that because getting fat on sugar is mostly a human thing.”

Allie’s mouth fell open in awe. She took in Carrot with a whole new level of admiration as the pony positioned her muzzle to drain the last drops of her fourth cup.

“I can’t even tell you how jealous I am.”

“Shouldn’t be jealous,” said Carrot, smacking her lips in between drinks. “Only leads to unhappiness.”

Allie nodded sagely. “I suppose you’d say that’s something Day and I both have to work on.” From behind Carrot, Day rolled his eyes.

The pony took her hoof from under Allie’s hand and used it to gesticulate in the air. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s not behind all the issues humans have about mating.”

Day crunched his eyes shut and tried to disappear into the walls of the booth. Not back to this again.

“Do you really think so?” Allie didn’t seem to have any such inhibitions. Was she blind to what she was diving into, or had she fallen so in love with Ponyville that she would sit at Carrot’s hooves like a plaint disciple?

“It’s like…” Carrot waved thoughtfully. “Everybody cares so much about what everybody else is doing with their lovers, and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why. You don’t see it, after all. In fact, you go to ridiculous pains to hide what happens in your bedrooms. Logically, it ought to matter even less. But then I realized there are all these rules, you see. And everybody had been following these rules for their whole lives—and then people ignore them, and mayhap they get jealous that other people are getting up to things they didn’t let themselves do.”

Allie rested her elbows on the table and stared up at Carrot Top. “That’s deep.”

“It’s not deep!” Day tried to interject, but the waiter arrived with their meals, and he was cut off into fuming quietly. Identical mushroom, walnut and water chestnut salads were set before Carrot Top and himself. Day appreciated the determinedly neutral gaze of the waiter who set a rack of ribs swimming in barbeque sauce in front of Allie.

The salad had been the only ‘pony-safe’ item on the menu. In restaurants of the modern age, a tiny horse icon marked every item which had been produced without coming into contact with meat, or with certain pesticides that ponies, to whom the concept of non-organic farming was alien, frequently had an allergic reaction to.

Allie had been ready to fret over Carrot’s limited selection, and Carrot had repeatedly assured the humans that she didn’t mind. But now, as the smell of the ribs made Day’s mouth water, she shrank away from that side of the booth. Allie tucked in with gusto. Her knife plied away large strips of tender meat; Carrot Top tried to bury her nose in Day’s jacket.

Day tensed up as an extremely pleasant fiery sensation flooded his side where she snuggled into him. But he didn’t push her away. He sat with his hands folded over his meal, refraining from eating or even moving his arms so that he wouldn’t accidentally dislodge her. Carrot Top was trying to put on a brave face about this, and he didn’t have the heart to make it any harder for her.

He’d done his best to spare her from this. While he only saw food when he looked at Allie’s plate, he knew that an herbivore like Carrot still saw mutilated muscle and flesh. But even when Day had tried to talk to her about this, she’d insisted on coming. He’d warned her that Allie was dead set on breaking her fast from fresh meat; Carrot had said she would be fine. Day’s suspicion, now confirmed, was that she hadn’t really thought about it.

There was another matter, however, about which he felt no particular mercy towards her. And since his mouth wasn’t occupied with eating…

“That’s a childish view of my country,” he whispered, knowing his voice would carry easily to the pony’s pricked ears. “Do not come here for half a week and then presume to tell me why we do the things we do.”

A muffled sound came from the vicinity of his shoulder. He shifted a little, and Carrot repeated herself. “Then why do you think two men can’t marry each other?”

He stammered, scouring his mind for a response. “Well—why would you know anything about it?” he retorted stiffly. “What’s right for ponies isn’t all the same as what’s right for humans.”

“Guys?” said Allie. Day looked up to find her glancing over with a mouthful of meat. “Everything cool over there?”

“Just fine!” He grabbed at his fork. Carrot fled his armpit to nibble on a couple spinach leaves—but apparently that was as long as she could brave Allie’s ribs, because the second the human girl turned back to her own meal, she fled back into Day’s jacket.

“Well, alright,” Carrot muttered. “But it would make them so happy! It’s not hurting anyone, is it?”

“Some things are just wrong.”

“I don’t think so,” Carrot answered. “Only things that hurt someone should be wrong.”

Day bit his lip, but not because of the argument. Every time Carrot spoke, her breath seeped through his clothing, and Day could feel it against his skin. It was no small effort to ignore it. His heart was beating in a mixture of very different feelings, each of them warm for different reasons, that were hard to deal with all at once.

He would have agreed with Carrot Top had anyone else entered their conversation to take the side Day found himself defending. But while he privately mocked the prayerful humans left in the world, he discovered an unexpected sense of loyalty towards them when they came under the attack of this smug little pony. They weren’t this cocksure. How dare she assert that her primitive, backwards impulse to abdicate moral responsibility to a cosmic parent figure was superior to their primitive, backwards impulse to abdicate moral responsibility to a cosmic parent figure?

“That’s too simple,” he said hotly. “You can’t wave away any issue you want with a blanket statement like that—and don’t you dare quote that book,” he added swiftly as he caught Carrot closing her eyes contemplatively. “Some things don't hurt others in obvious ways. Some things aren’t natural.”

Carrot nickered in annoyance–and then turned to smile over-brightly at Allie, because the girl was looking at them again.

“Is your food okay, guys?” She wiped her mouth with a fifth napkin. “You haven’t eaten much. Day? You sure you don’t want to share any of these ribs? They’re really good.”

Day felt Carrot’s muscles bunch up against his side; he tried not to enjoy the sensation. “No, thank you,” he said with a light smile. “We’re just fine over here.”

“Your people flew to the moon in a bottle,” Carrot said under her breath. “I don’t think that’s natural. But you don’t seem too broken up about it.”

Day finally took a few bites of his food; he was stymied for an answer, and unwilling to continue with anything less than a scathing retort. He considered pointing out that Earth’s satellite wasn’t the same moon as lie under the province of Carrot’s precious Princesses, but she would have shot back with the fact that her point still stood.

Suddenly, a devious thing occurred to him. He had once watched a stallion named Thunderlane being browbeat by a mare he was with—an uncomfortably public spectacle for all bystanders who’d been involved. Day couldn’t even remember what the argument had been about, only that Blossomforth had been seen putting Thunderlane down on more than one occasion before then. The fight had been heated and quiet, and a thousand times more awful to listen to than if the ponies had aired their feelings with a good old-fashioned shouting match. But suddenly, that wish had come true; Thunderlane had burst into tears and fled the train station at a gallop. Blossomforth had called out after him and then cantered away with her head held low after a solid round of disapproving looks from everpony around her.

And after Day’s evening commute back from work, he had barely walked a block from the station before he’d found the couple sitting together under the oak tree on the old Ponyville hill. The mare had been nuzzling tentatively at Thunderlane’s back and apologizing profusely as she plied him with bundles of flowers. But the stallion had kept her out of cuddling distance, jumping on the tips of her hooves, by continuing to sniffle every minute or two.

Day didn’t need his obsessive readings on ponies to understand the scene. He’d experienced Allie using that kind of leverage on him before, back when they were a little younger and he’d had the occasional tendency—Celestia only knew how—to take her for granted and bury himself exclusively in his work.

It had never occurred to him to do the same thing before. He was a man. Men just–didn’t do that. But colts… Day was suddenly struck by the certainty that he had the option to cry, or even sniffle, and simply walk out of the restaurant. Even if he only fled to the restroom for a few minutes, he could make Carrot shamefaced and bring her to a halt, all logic forgotten. It wasn’t the kind of thing Day could picture himself doing. But he was shocked at how tempting it was. He could even feel the ready tears, like a reservoir behind his emotional bulwark.

No! He couldn’t do that. That was no way to stand up for what believed in—or for what he didn’t believe in, all the same.

“Very well, then.” Day thought even harder and darker. He carefully reached his fork over to Allie’s plate and brought a slice of meat over to his salad. It was a delicious-looking cut indeed, basted to an even brown with just a touch of crispiness at the edge. “Let’s assume what you say is true, Carrot. In that case, would you mind if instead of ordering another of these, I cooked up my next meal with a few ribs from an Equestrian cow?”

The color drained out of Carrot’s face, which was quite a spectacular transformation for a mare with such a healthy coat. That shut her up.

“Marge Buttermilk’s grandmother, perhaps,” Day continued. “She perished just recently, didn’t she? Train accident; quite tragic. But, be that as it may, she’s clearly not using her body anymore.”

“You—you wouldn’t,” Carrot stammered, slipping on the very edge of the seat. Her ears were fanned back, and her barrel expanded and contracted in shallow spurts.

Day maintained an atmosphere of perfect composure. “Why not?” He picked off a crumble of beef and licked his finger. “It’s a modest proposal. It won’t hurt anyone to eat a body that isn’t being used anymore. And I thought you said that nothing was wrong as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else. So it couldn’t possibly be a crime in a harmonious place like Equestria.”

In the middle of the crackling dry thunder between their barely-parted noses, he stopped; something was suddenly different. Day listened for a moment before realizing what it was. It was the sound of Allie munching happily at her ribs; that sound was gone.

Turning to find her watching them intently from behind her seventh napkin, Day realized that they weren’t whispering under their breath anymore.

“Guys?” Allie squeaked.

Carrot Top drew herself back up. “You…monster.” She raised a hoof, and Day flinched; the cover of the seat broke as she plowed her foreleg into it, and at the strength of the impact Day’s smug composure broke for just an instant. “How dare you even suggest such a thing?”

“Carrot Top?” Allie reached across the table, too timid to bring her hand all the way to the mare’s flaring nostrils. “You’re going to break something. Calm down.”

Day refused to let himself be intimidated. He knew she wouldn’t hit him. “How dare you be such a hypocrite,” he said, a little louder than he’d intended to. “You make blanket assertions about anything you want, and then flip them inside out as soon as anyone turns them on you!”

“You don’t care about anything but being right!” Carrot Top was standing in the seat now, tail lashing, which made an unfortunate tangle of the back trails in her gown. “All I’ve tried to do since you came into my life is show you some love, and you throw it into my face because if everyone isn’t doing things your way, they have to sit at arm’s length and take whatever friendship you deign to give them!”

Allie managed to get a hand on Day’s arm as he was rising from his chair. “Day,” she said desperately. “Honey. Please—please calm down. We’re all friends, right? It’s no big deal. Right?”

“Wrong!” Day twisted hard, forcing her off of him. But Allie the woman wasn’t quite as sturdy as Carrot Top the pony; he wound up throwing her back into her own seat, flush against the wall of the booth.

“I don’t know why I paid to bring you here,” he announced. “You probably don’t even care about my planet. This is just another chance for you to practice being a home-wrecker. If you were any kind of gentlemare, you’d understand that no means no and no and leave me alone.”

The tables in the two adjacent rows were now sitting in unbearable silence, watching the towering pair which made such a strong centerpiece to the isle. Waiters were ducking into adjacent rows to avoid coming anywhere near them. Doubtless, no one understood the Equus Day and Carrot Top were shouting at each other, but no matter what the shape of syllables, their tone was unmistakable.

“Hah!” Carrot cried. “That’s a laugh. You can’t last two days without crawling back to me. I let you pretend it’s just so you can talk about carrots. With mixed signals like that, I’m surprised you’re even good enough for–”

Both man and mare stopped for a second and turned to the other side of the booth.

Allie was sitting flat exactly where she had landed, her face streaked with tears winning slow but steady ground against her composure. She trapped them in quivering wet eyes for several frozen seconds before picking herself up, covering her face, and running away in a tight stride as if determined not to break into sobs in public.

Day and Carrot Top immediately sat down—causing a maître’s de to pause in their beeline for the table. The mare and the man didn’t look at each other, nor did they touch their food.

Eventually, Day picked up a napkin and watched it flutter, navigating the long stretches of silence between himself and opening his mouth. “We should go after her,” he forced himself to say.

Carrot Top nodded right away. The pony was staring miserably at her own plate, but she responded in an equal tone. “Don’t know if it’s the same as with…ponies. Should we go now, or wait a few minutes for her to calm down?”

“Not too long,” Day murmured. “But a few would be best. Check the bathroom on our way out, but she’ll probably at the car.”

“Okay.”

They fell back together into sullen silence. The less discrete patrons within earshot were still staring. Day and Carrot kept themselves apart, but together within a quiet sphere of silence. They tried to take shelter inside it.

Day fidgeted. Carrot Top tried to eat a couple more leaves off her salad.

“I wouldn’t ever do something like that,” said Day. “I was just trying to make a point.”

“By being as cruel as you could!” Carrot pounded a hoof on the table, stopped herself when the silverware rattled, and slouched. “I mean—oh, horseapples.”

“Yes,” Day drawled from behind crossed arms, “clearly you’re one to talk about making mistakes.”

“And I’m going to keep making terrible mistakes.” Carrot furiously nuzzled Day’s upper arm. “Because you’re worth making mistakes for.”

She’d pinpointed the most sensitive spot Day would let her go after without raising a fuss. How did she know him that well?

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I think a lot of people who think humans of the same sex shouldn’t marry each other get their ideas from a book not too different from yours.”

“Then why do they have to fight about it so much?” she sighed.

Day used his free arm to quietly take a look inside the English-Equus dictionary he kept with him at all times. He discovered, with a sense of frustration it may be difficult to convey, that there was no Equus word which translated to ‘religion’.

“I’ve—been told,” he said, fishing for words, “that not everyone agrees on how to interpret what it says.”

Carrot hummed, low and hum. “That does sound like a bother. Whenever we get confused about The Royal Pony Sisters, we just ask Celestia.”

Day sat up suddenly, the way he did when an equation became crystal clear in his head. Turning with deliberate slowness, he looked down at Carrot Top for a brief and intense moment.

“And that,” he murmured solemnly, “is the difference between a pony and a man.”

Twenty hours later, the front door to Day’s Ponyville flat creaked open. A thin-stretched after the lights came on, it admitted Day, his girlfriend, and a mass of wheeled luggage that looked half as bedraggled as the pair. Allie went straight to the couch and collapsed, while Day set each of their suitcases out on the floor to pull items out of each and fold them into piles by type and color. He wouldn’t be able to relax properly until he had the wash ready for tomorrow.

But the clean clothes far outweighed the dirty ones. He already regretted leaving Earth early.

The flat was filled up with companionable silence for a while. Around the time Day finished re-folding the shirts, Allie propped herself up on an elbow. “Are you okay?” she asked suddenly.

Day set the next sock aside and leaned back against the couch. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’ve had it with all this love,” he sighed. “I wish that pony had never taken a shine to me. I wish no one ever had.”

Allie gasped and reached down to wrap her arms around Day’s neck. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” he said. “I would rather still be the quiet, sullen engineer with the glasses and the rumpled clothes that no girl ever talked to. That would be better than this.”

“Day,” she moaned desperately. “What about me?”

“Allie–” He choked back a noise and held onto her arm. “Yes. I love you.”

She held him through the next aching breath.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m going to explode.” He whispered so quietly that she had to lean halfway off the couch to hear him. “Sometimes I don’t even know what’s wrong.”

With a tiny whimper, she pressed her face to his neck and began to nuzzle him—something she must have picked up from ponies. It felt far too good to resist, so Day didn’t try. He just enjoyed the warmth as she sought to make him relax.

“I love you, Day,” she cooed. “And I would never want anything to make you feel miserable. I just want you to be happy.”

“Okay.” He reached up a languid hand to cup her face, and tilted his own back for a kiss.

She slid further off the couch onto him, guiding her hands down her chest until she leaned too far, tumbled over Day’s head and landed in his lap. Day was perfectly positioned to blow into her belly button, making her laugh.

Five minutes later, the lights at 138 Cranberry Lane went out.

Chapter 7: The Liturgy

One Week After the Ascension of Princess Twilight Sparkle

For days after the coronation, all of Equestria was infected by the buzz of celebration. Nearly every soul in the country had tried to cram into the central courtyards of Canterlot to hear the new alicorn’s address, and even now that they had returned to their own cities and towns, a renewed sense of unity and equine pride flooded the streets and hillsides. It felt to Carrot Top like the whole world had been done over in a fresh coat of awe and wonder. There hadn’t been an alicorn ascension in most ponies’ lifetimes. Carrot had used to guile her way onto the Apple front porch to hear Granny Smith tell accounts of Mi Amore Cadenza’s transformation, but now she had a story she could tell her own foals someday.

And to make things even better, Twilight—rather, Princess Twilight—was from Ponyville, so Carrot would be able to participate in her post-ascension Requiem ceremony. Not just be in it, in fact—host it! Nopony in town had volunteered faster than she had to organize the traditional celebration, which was why at this moment, several hours before the Requiem was scheduled to begin, the brand-new Princess was sitting in her very own home.

Regrettably, Carrot was less than a perfectly-attentive subject. Her eyes flitted about the room, making plans for last-minute adjustments while she herself fussed devotedly over Twilight’s mane with a comb. Shockingly enough, the princess hadn’t given much attention to her grooming before she came over, so, with permission, Carrot was brushing her up to standard. Twilight had to be perfect, of course, but Carrot also wanted to make sure there would be plenty of snacks for the guests while they were arriving. And there wouldn’t be enough room inside her house for everypony, so she had to drag all these snack bowls out into the yard, along with her old trough and some picnic tables–and while she was at it, the carrot beds could use a net thrown over them to keep them from being trampled…

But she had to focus! There was royalty in her home—true royalty, chosen by Celestia. Details could wait.

Twilight was holding a book, staring at the cover with grim thoughtfulness. Carrot Top leaned around her comb. “Is everything alright, Princess?”

The princess groaned. “Carrot Top, for the last time! Just Twilight. I’m still the same pony I was a week ago!”

“Och, I know you’re still Twilight.” Carrot gave a few gentle brush-strokes. “But you’re not just Twilight anymore. That’s what we’re celebrating tonight.” She looked again—Twilight’s frown had drifted back to the book. Placing a hoof on the cover, Carrot Top looked into Twilight’s face. “Does that—bother you? If you don’t want to do this tonight…”

“No, it’s fine.” Twilight shook her head emphatically. “I don’t mind having a Requiem. It’s traditional for an alicorn to have one when she first returns home.” Her feathers bunched nervously. She stared up at the cracked oil painting of Celestia which hung to the left of Carrot’s front door. “To be honest, the only thing I’m worried about is that I’ll do it wrong and disappoint everypony.”

She picked up the glowing item on the table–a series of concentric bronze rings, inscribed with sigils and set with onyx and topaz which burned like tiny stars. “I’ve been pouring spellwork into this for three days. I haven’t even used a mana loom in ages, but I wanted to make sure my spell was perfect beforehoof—I wouldn’t want to cold-cast something like that while I’m nervous.”

Carrot smirked, totally without worry, gently teasing the metal from Twilight’s grip and putting it aside. “If I know you a bit, Twilight Sparkle, then you’ll do just grand.” She went back to the combing her mane. “Just think of all this as a party in your honor.”

Twilight grimaced. “I’m afraid that you aren’t helping things any, Carrot Top.”

The purple pony was finally released from Carrot’s ministrations when a knock at the door sent her bolting to open it. “Sunshine and marigolds!” she exclaimed. “They’re showing up already?”

Day ducked to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling, and Allie duck-walked inside after him. When Day saw the alicorn in the center of the room, he grinned and waved. “Good afternoon, Twilight! Happy—oh, what’s it called again?” He glanced down. “Carrot, what’s she celebrating today? Requital?”

Carrot didn’t answer; she was urgently gesturing towards the floor with one hoof. Day snapped his fingers. “Oh, right!” He dropped to one knee.

Twilight spun in response. “Oh, no you don’t! Not you too! I can’t take it anymore!”

“Day!” Carrot hissed quietly. “Just do it!”

Twilight stretched out her hoof towards the two humans before they could finish humbling themselves in front of her. “If you bow to me, I will banish you both from Equestria!”

The humans froze halfway to the ground. Carrot Top slumped a little. “You came too early. She’s not quite ready for tonight.”

Day shrugged, showing no evidence of concern, and produced a brick-sized package wrapped in red paper. “Where do I put the presents?”

Carrot Top sighed as she stared at the gift. “They’re not presents, Day, they’re…och, never mind. You won’t be the only one to do that. Just lay them by the mantle.”

As Day roamed around the inside of her house, Carrot hovered, sweeping aside any clutter she suddenly noticed. Day took a special interest in the refrigerator, with its orange extension cord running through a hole in the wall to Ponyville’s one power line outside. It was the only thing in the house that rang of human influence.

Carrot noted self-consciously how he barely managed to fit under the roof. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d come. It makes me dearly happy that you decided to join us, Day.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I came because it would have been rude to Twilight Sparkle not to come. Don’t imagine you’re going to make a convert out of me tonight.”

“Convert? Convert you into what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Day sighed.

He did at least help her move the picnic tables, a task for which his hands proved to be surprisingly useful. Twilight offered to help, quoting verbatim from the Official Guide to Equestrian Alicorn-Requiems—which apparently existed—to demonstrate that there were no rules preventing an alicorn from helping with mundane chores. But Carrot Top shrewdly deflected her by noting that other guests would probably arrive soon, and sending Twilight to the yard greet to greet the ponies who soon arrived.

Carrot Top was pleased with the turnout, compared to what she expected. Most of the older folks in Ponyville chose to attend, along with the Cakes, the Clouds, and the local herd of the Apple family. Twilight’s closest friends were there for her sake, and Derpy would surely arrive at any minute, because Carrot coaxed her to social occasions at every opportunity. Twilight greeted each guest, and, with a little lip-biting and meaningful looking-on from Carrot, managed to be gracious about the bows and curtseys everypony gave her.

Carrot had sent invitations beyond Ponyville as well, thinking of dozens of ponies outside town who would have liked to attend a Requiem. Not many chances came up to be at one, after all. She had taken special care to write a cordial invitation to the Carrot farm back home in Golden Hills. But although she leaned up against her fence to watch the western road time and time again that evening, she never saw the telltale dust of the clan’s towering travel wagon. Nor did she expect to. Her parents hadn’t written in the last few weeks. She hoped they would soon. She wished they would have come.

For better or worse, she soon stopped looking; being a host was more work than she’d expected. It almost impossible to spend any time with Twilight herself with one thing after another coming up. Carrot Top had spent the afternoon working up her courage to ask Twilight if she could do her homage in the old chants someday, but at this rate, she might not exchange another word with the alicorn before the night was over.

First it was the celery running out. Applejack was a enough of a dear to run to Sweet Apple Acres, which was much closer than the market, and fetch a few loaves of bread and some apples to replace it. Then Lyra tripped on Carrot’s hoe—which Carrot shouldn’t have left leaning against the fence to begin with—and snapped the old thing in two, so Carrot had to spend what felt like an hour reassuring the unicorn that it wasn’t a bother and she wasn’t upset.

She had just earned herself a moment of respite by then—all the guests had arrived, and everypony was happily munching and talking away. Carrot scouted out Twilight, who was seated at a table by the humans; she found the alicorn just in time to see her fill her mouth with hay fries and squirt tomato sauce from a bottle in after it.

Carrot took an extremely deep breath, waggled her ears, and massaged her closed eyelids as she muttered to herself.

And these, the chosen few, will bear the weight of the world upon their backs. (Celestia 40:3)

Carrot was just about to trot up to the wayward princess when she was blindsided by a sobbing Derpy Hooves. So she had to forget about Twilight again, letting her attention be absorbed by the next calamity. She tried to guide the disconsolate mare inside her house so she could ask what was wrong in private, but Derpy didn’t even make it that far. Carrot didn’t have much to do but embrace her friend and offer a patient pair of listening ears, right in the middle of her backyard garden.

Apparently the pegasus had discovered, over a lunch break with her co-workers earlier in the day, that after a pony worked five straight years for the Cloudsdale county postal service they were given an automatic raise. It had been very exciting; the raise would have been enough to send Dinky to music camp and pay Twilight for the magic lessons she’d been previously giving the foal for free. Dinky had helped her to check her payroll, and they hadn’t found any raise on it yet, so Derpy had gone to her supervisor expecting to sort things out.

But when the mare had asked why nothing had shown up in her paycheck, the supervisor had replied that raises were ‘for ponies who can fly straight and deliver packages on time’.

Honestly, sometimes Carrot Top wondered if that stallion was worth the air he breathed. No! No, she couldn’t let herself think that way. She was twenty feet from an alicorn, for goodness’ sake. No, just…Carrot Top tightened her hold on Derpy and comforted her in the best way she knew, closing her eyes and murmuring into the pegasus’ ear.

Derpy sobbed for a little while longer, and Carrot Top, ignoring the crowd around them, let her get it all out. Eventually the whimpers quieted, and as Carrot Top continued to whisper in Derpy’s ear, she could feel the grey pony relaxing under her embrace.

At some point, she became aware of Day watching her with a peculiar intensity. Carrot continued whispering without paying him any mind, and when she had run out of things to say she nuzzled Derpy over to the picnic table so she could take comfort in food and the company of friendly ponies. But her ears burned; Day’s gaze remained fastened on Derpy Hooves.

Allie leaned over to Carrot Top. “She going to be alright?”

Carrot Top nodded discreetly. She had strategically positioned Derpy that so she herself would be seated next to Twilight, and so she moved to catch the alicorn’s attention. But Day spoke first.

“You were reading from that book,” he said flatly. “From memory. You were quoting that book to her.”

Though toneless, it sounded almost like an accusation. Carrot’s ear twitched again. Did he have to talk like that in front of Derpy? “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. ‘That book’ just helped me to comfort a very dear friend.”

Day sank back pensively. “Yes…I suppose.”

“The Royal Pony Sisters should be in every home,” Carrot pressed on. “It has something for everypony. Even you, Day, if you’d give it a try.”

Day snorted, hazarding a fleeting smile as he reached for a poppyseed cake. “Oh, I bet.”

“Oy. If you’re so sure, why not give it a try and find out? I could fetch mine out of the house right now.”

Day ground to a temporary stop over his meal; Carrot tasted a thin satisfaction as he stammered to backtrack through blank seconds. “No, I—no thank you,” he finished lamely.

“Why not?” Carrot raised her hoof. “Unless you’re scared you’ll actually learn something.”

He set his plastic fork down with a clink. “I’m not letting you bring that book out to bludgeon me over the head with.”

“You. And. Fighting,” Carrot growled. “As if I would treat my most prized possession like a blunt instrument! Everything is some sort of battle with you!”

“Oh, isn’t it?” Day looked up sharply. “No doubt you could find plenty of things for me to ‘learn’ if you looked hard enough. But no…”

He paused for a moment and looked down at his plate. When he came back up it was with a plastic butter knife in his hand. “It’s okay,” he said, “because I have a weapon of my own.” He swished the knife through the air. “My sword…is Occam’s Razor, and you and I…”

He thrust the knife forward, causing Carrot to stumble back. “Are dueling into eternity!”

She tilted her head and stared. “Come again?”

Day looked around the table at his company, which was all looking at him with the same vague expression of bemusement. Dropping the knife, he sat quickly back down.

Allie groaned and turned to Twilight. “Sorry, Princess. They’re always fighting like this,” she said to Twilight.

“Fascinating,” Twilight murmured in a slow and absent voice. She was fixed on Carrot Top and Day until, several seconds after being addressed by Allie, she turned up to the human with a short twitch of her feather. “Hm? Oh, don’t be.”

She leaned a little closer to Day. “Mr. Amadeus, I don’t remember seeing you at the parade when Princess Celestia visited Ponyville. But you moved here in the early spring, if I recall. Couldn’t you come?”

“I wish he had,” Carrot interjected. “He missed out!”

“No, it’s not big deal,” Day said into his plate. “I don’t mind.”

Allie tossed her hair to look at Day. “I don’t know, it was really cool. Why did you stay home?”

Twilight was watching more intently, and Day, sawing intently at whatever was on his plate. “I felt ill,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” Derpy piped up. “Like Carroty?”

The pegasus, Carrot was pleased to see, had recovered greatly from her earlier ordeal. At the very least, her appetite must have returned, because the cupcakes had vanished almost miraculously. The disappearance of any pastries within several yards of Derpy was usually a good indicator that the mailmare was getting back to her normal self.

Day knitted his eyebrows and finally looked back up. “Oh? When was Miss Top sick?”

“At the parade!”

“It was nothing,” Carrot said hurriedly.

But she spoke just a little too quickly, and Derpy was already giggling at the memory. Day folded his hands and waved the mailmare on.

“When Princess Celestia passed Carrot Top,” she chortled. “And Carrot got to talk to her! She leaned down to whisper in her little pony’s ear—and Carrot fainted on the spot!”

Day burst out laughing, nearly falling back off his stool. As Carrot looked around the table, she had to suppress a burning face, finding that even Twilight was suppressing laughter now.

“I remember that!” Twilight clapped a hoof over her mouth and shook. “Lyra had to get a bucket of water. And then…” A snicker slipped out of her. “And then Celestia said ‘I hope that wasn’t the pony who was going to cut the cake!’”

The entire table enjoyed a solid round of laughter. Carrot Top suffered through red-faced, letting them have their fun.

“It could have happened to anypony,” she grumbled.

“I know,” said Allie through tears of mirth, patting Carrot on the neck. “It’s just—snkkt—oh, Carrot.”

Carrot simply sat with as much dignity as she could muster. Eventually, the laughter died away, and everypony returned to their nibbling in a good humor.

“It wasn’t so awful,” Carrot said over the quiet. “I got to commune with her later.”

“When?” Twilight inspected her curiously. “The Princess had to leave within the hour.”

“Oh, not like that,” Carrot said with a wave. “You know—just an hour in the sunshine and quiet. Not quite as nice, of course, but it feeds the heart to know she’s listening.”

Twilight’s tail swished and her jaw slid open. “I thought that old mare’s tale had died out years ago,” she mused. “Carrot–I hate to disillusion you or anything–but Princess Celestia does not possess some mystical awareness of all your thoughts and feelings.”

“Twilight, I’m surprised at you!” Carrot let her mouth fall open too. “How could you not know? Everything which passes under the sun is in Celestia’s eyes. I ask her for guidance all the time.”

Twilight responded with a thin smile. “That’s very nice, Carrot Top. But I am the Princess’ personal student, and I can assure you that I would know if there was the least speck of truth to that story. If she knows all of your thoughts, Carrot, doesn’t she know everypony’s. And can you even imagine what it would be like to hear the thoughts of millions of ponies all at once? No sane mind could bear it.”

“But who’s to say what the mind of the Sun can do?” Carrot retorted, reaching across the table. “Explain the miracle of Hearth’s Warming during the Potato Famine of Baltimare. How did Celestia know what toy each hungry little foal was wishing for that night? Hmm?”

Twilight’s expression was even thinner now. “There are a dozen plausible, rational explanations for the account of what happened that night,” she said stiffly.

Carrot sighed and gave up, resting her head between her forelimbs. “Och, my Princess. What kind of way is that to live?” She shook her head, staring at the orange-banded. “Ah, well. That’s alright. You have time.”

They managed to eat quietly for a minute. Carrot, at least, had a legitimate excuse to withdraw from the conversation for a while. She wanted to seize the opportunity to get some grub down her throat before something called her away again.

“So, Mrs. Alexandra.” Twilight turned towards Allie. “You two are close friends with Carrot Top?”

Allie nodded. “Oh, yeah! Totes. She’s going to join our herd.”

“Your herd?” Twilight’s feathers creased in sync with her face. She took another glance at Day. “And that doesn’t bother you? From what I’d read about modern human practices…”

“Of course not!” Allie stopped eating, leaning tightly away from Twilight. “J-just what kind of girl do you think I am? Like, jealous or something?”

“No!” Twilight threw up her hooves placatingly. “I wasn’t trying to accuse you of anything. I’m…just curious. So, I suppose you’ve adapted well…”

Carrot Top’s attention drifted away from Twilight’s conversation. Dinner was winding down by then, and Carrot had to keep an eye on everypony so that she could keep things moving when they needed to move. Conversations were beginning to dwindle into the evening, and that was soon set to dwindle into night, so she decided it was time they got on with the occasion.

A few brows lifted when Carrot Top stood on a table to grab everypony’s attention the best way she knew how. Day’s utensils shook with the impacts from her hoof.

“Everypony! It’s time for the Offerings now. Make a line by the fence, please, if you brought something.”

Carrot Top had her own offering, of course, but since she was too nervous to leave Twilight to her own devices, she stood with her near the edge of the farmhouse while the other guests approached the alicorn one by one. Day went first, presenting Twilight with a device he called a calculator. He took a few moments to show her how the various buttons worked; Carrot reigned her muted disappointment, as she observed that the calculator clearly wasn’t an item Day had owned or used. The gift was still in its original packaging.

And once Twilight had calculated some square roots, Day almost walked away without waiting for her to take his name. Carrot Top moved in to give Twilight a nudge in reminder, but she needn’t have worried; the alicorn smoothly called Day back and pulled out her book.

It was a freshly bound volume, covered with fine black velvet and stamped with a copy of Twilight’s cutie mark. The pages were blank until, dipping a quill, the princess wrote Day’s name in neat lines on the first page, along with a brief note about what he had given her.

Things went smoothly enough, even if what most ponies had brought amounted to presents. Applejack came through by giving Twilight the first collar she had ever fashioned for Winona, but many of the other guests simple gave her books. Pinkie Pie, who Carrot hadn’t seen in the line, appeared from nowhere at one point to present Twilight with a cake. Carrot Top face-hoofed, but couldn’t really get too upset about it; she ought to have seen that much coming from Pinkie.

She went after all the other ponies had gone, stepping into the house to fetch her offering. Ironically enough, it was a book, but it wasn’t something Carrot had gone out and purchased because she thought the library didn’t have a copy yet.

The white cover of the hefty tome was a scratched here and there, and the weathered corners spoke to a long history of being pulled off shelves. But despite its age, the book had been kept in serviceable condition by years of care. Not one page was torn. The brass clasps on the cover, which framed an iconographic portrait of two alicorns standing on a cloud, shone with a well-dusted gleam.

Carrot Top opened her copy of The Royal Pony Sisters and flipped through it one last time, watching along with Twilight as ornate pop-up illustrations rose and fell with every page. “This copy of the book was a gift from my grandma when I left to start my own farm,” she said softly. “It’s the last thing I have that belonged to her, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. This book has seen me through every sleepless night in my life. I treasure it more than anything I own.” She shut the back cover with a tiny fwump. “And now I’m giving it up to you.”

While she had been paging through the book, Twilight’s eyes had shone in wonder and what Carrot imagined was a librarian’s appreciation for the hoof-painted pages of the tome. But the instant Carrot pushed the book towards her, Twilight seized up in horror, leaning back with shrinking pupils. “Carrot! I—I can’t take this!” She shook her head. “Not something so important to you!”

Carrot’s muscles stiffened. She held the book out further until she was almost off-balance. “Yes, you can,” she said firmly. “You have to.”

“But I know how much this must mean to you!” Twilight tried to push back the book, continuing to look at it with naked wonder and shock. “This is the book you memorized!”

“Then I don’t really need the object anymore, do I?” Carrot tried to harden her eyes and dig in her hooves. She didn’t want to beg.

Twilight held out for another moment, but before long, her head hung and she gave in. She must have known Carrot was right. The princess held the book with great reluctance over the pile of other gifts which had been given her, and then, with the utmost care and reverence, placed the book near the top.

Carrot top looked on with eager fascination as Twilight carefully took down her name.

Now that all the offerings were in, Twilight placed her own velvet-covered book next to the pile. The mana loom was levitated outside a moment later, and Twilight instructed everypony else to step back.

When every guest was at a fair distance, Twilight raised the mana loom—on a final thought, she bent to take a self-conscious nibble of the cake. Somewhere in the crowd, a wild Pinkie Pie giggled.

Then the alicorn stood over the gifts, grasping the magical instrument firmly in two hooves. With a spark of concentration, her horn ignited.

Carrot Top was surprised to find that alicorn magic looked much the same as Twilight’s usual aura. Perhaps it had something to do with what a powerful spellcaster Twilight had been before her transformation, but the color of her aura was the same, and the intensity of the spectacle was nothing beyond what had been seen of Twilight before. A white spark blinded all onlookers, and a mauve glow suffused the yard when their vision returned; when that too faded, the stones in the spell-loom were inert. Twilight’s wings dipped as she came down off the edge of a hard breath.

Carrot trotted up, sniffed once, and made sure her princess was okay. When Twilight looked up and nodded, she took a look at the pile of offerings and the book of names. Needing to satisfy her curiosity, fetched a hatchet from her closet.

She gripped the handle firmly between her teeth, steeled herself, and brought the blade down as hard as she could onto her copy of The Royal Pony Sisters.

The head of the hatchet broke off and landed against the fence. Her book didn’t sport a single additional scratch.

Carrot Top wiped away a tear and smiled. She had no lack of faith in Twilight’s magical ability; if Twilight said she had worked hard to make the preservation spell perfect, then Carrot Top felt safe that her name and memory, in the two volumes stacked in front of her, would stay with Twilight Sparkle until the end of time.

Twilight picked up the broken handle, staring at the pile of gifts. When she leaned in to smell the cake, the hoof which she tapped against the frosting made an almost wooden clink.

For a moment, her eyes quivered; momentarily, Carrot thought she saw them grow wide. Then Pinkie Pie was suddenly near Twilight, nuzzling her happily. The princess flared her wings and turned away from the offerings, back to her friends.

Carrot Top fell back onto her haunches, suddenly fighting back tears.

Soundtrack: “Chant of Immortality” by 4everfreebrony, featuring Chi-Chi

Dear Princess Celestia,

Today was my Requiem. I know that it’s customary for an alicorn to have the ceremony upon returning to the city of her birth, but since I was born in Canterlot, it seemed to make more sense to hold it here in Ponyville. The guidelines seemed to have been written with the idea that a Requiem should take place at home, and Ponyville has been my home for some time now. I suppose ponies move around a lot more than they used to.

An assembly of ponies, of all ages and colors, shuffled their hooves and gave each other unsure glances from the edge of Carrot Top’s backyard. The guests weren’t certain if they were expected to stand quietly or at ease; none of them had ever done this before.

They had only a minute to wait. Carrot Top was dragging her water trough, filled with sky-colored river, to a nice spot in the center of the yard. She set it down next to Twilight, who waited with an imperial detachment that quieted the tongues of the crowd which would have otherwise been gay.

It might interest you to know that I’ve broadened my recent line of study to include our newest ally race: humans, or, formally under their own taxonomy system, homos sapiens sapiens.

Just this evening, I made some very interesting progress by unpacking more of the books I ordered from Earth and making a comparative cross-study between alicornhood and several subsections of human culture. There are many queer sides to humanity, to be sure, but the deeper I dig—and I have just barely scratched the surface—the more fascinating the parallels I find between Equestrian culture and the history of this vast world of theirs.

A tiny unicorn foal waddled up to the princess, eyes wide; as Dinky Hooves was encouraged forward by mother nuzzles from Derpy, Twilight met both of them with a warm smile. She stepped forward to bring herself closer to the unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi gathered apart from her. When Dinky plopped herself down at Twilight’s hooves, the princess bent to kiss her once on the forehead, pulling away from the foal with a moist breath and blinking quickly as she lifted her head. There was a quiet—yes, here, for some reason, was a little fitting solemnity. There was the princess Carrot Top had been looking for all night. Or perhaps she had always been there?

Ah, well, what did it matter? She stood tall, her heart bursting with pride to be a tiny part of history.

My research is progressing so well, I’m getting ideas for a thesis. I checked with the Academy for Gifted Unicorns, as well as Canterlot University; my honorary Ph.D. for work on the effects of interpersonal relationships on thuamic fluctuations still stands even though I’m an alicorn, so I might publish a paper.

Despite the fact that my new duties haven’t left much time for research, material seems to simply jump out at me everywhere I look. I’ve met as many reactions to my ascension as I have ponies in the last few days—and I can’t help but wonder what it must be like for you every day, if the expectations on me are already so varied.

Day lowered himself onto both knees so that Twilight wouldn’t have to hover to plant a kiss on his forehead. Allie followed right behind him, grinning cheekily up at Twilight the whole time. Carrot Top’s breath hitched, but the alicorn only reciprocated the grin and nuzzled her wispy golden hair.

The humans, like Derpy and like all the ponies who had already gone, let themselves out the gate in silence and departed for the streets of Ponyville. After delivering a peck of affection to each pony, Twilight would turn to the trough, dip in her hooves and splash the water on her face.

Fluttershy hid behind her mane, such that Twilight had to step forward and almost chase her down to kiss her. Rarity and Applejack submitted with warm smiles and bent heads. Even Pinkie Pie was surprisingly subdued, though Rainbow Dash turned red and tried to fly away, sticking out her tongue even as Twilight snared the pegasus in a telekinetic field.

Each one left without a word, as tradition dictated. By the time Twilight had made it past Pinkie Pie, water from the trough had soaked most of her mane and much of her neck. It dripped across her face with every splash, running onto her hooves and forming a small puddle.

Carrot Top found herself barely breathing. Suddenly sick to her stomach, she looked behind Twilight at the enchanted offerings, still set near the house, and at the cake which would never become stale.

She could see Rainbow Dash’s gift too, a collector’s copy of the latest Daring Do novel. Fluttershy had purchased a nice wreath of bluebells, and Rarity had crafted a diamond brooch.

Carrot Top felt stupid somehow. The cake—what a wonderful thing. It hadn’t been a poor offering, just because it couldn’t be eaten. Just because it wasn’t something a pony had owned and treasured. Wasn’t the idea that an offering left behind part of a pony’s spirit? What better way to leave Pinkie Pie than with a pink-frosted cake?

No—it was the perfect offering. Hah! How about that? Pinkie Pie knew more about how to act at a Requiem than she did.

But I didn’t write this letter just to gossip about half-completed studies. I need to apologize for my outburst on—that night.

I know that you forgave me on the spot, but then, you’ve forgiven every foalish temper tantrum I ever threw, haven’t you? It’s true that there is no easy way to break eternity to a pony. But that was an excuse you made for me. I was upset by what you told me, but I realize now that the real reason I flew into a rage was because the Celestia I thought I knew wouldn’t have needed to put me in such a situation. The Celestia I thought I knew was perfect, and never needed any help to keep the forces of disharmony at bay.

The Celestia I thought I knew was a figment of my imagination. Perhaps none of us ever really know another pony, only an image of them we construct in our minds—oh, but I was so sure that I understood you. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I would have marched to certain death for what I thought you wanted. Only now do I appreciate how difficult it must have been for you to ask this of me—and how much harder I made it for you. For that, I can only say I am deeply sorry.

What is it that makes ponies so obstinate about their princesses? To submit to one’s own conception of you is so easy, even a foal could do it. To submit to another’s conception of you is impossible.

Carrot Top, as host, was once again the last in line. By the time Twilight turned to her, she was the only soul left in the yard, save for the drenched alicorn caught in a burning sunset light.

She trotted closer to Carrot.

Carrot flinched. She squirmed and backed off from the impending kiss. “Don’t!” she squeaked when Twilight’s lips had almost pressed through her coat to the skin.

Twilight backed up to look down at Carrot. Was it just her, or was the alicorn taller already?—Carrot shivered at the flint in her eyes. For a moment, the princess said nothing, instead allowing Carrot Top time to slowly break into tears.

She nuzzled Twilight’s neck, her chest shuddering lightly every couple of seconds. “I don’t want to leave you here,” she said. “This whole ceremony is stupid! I—I’m sorry it’s so stupid—I’m so sorry for the cold—it’s so cold—I’m sorry–”

Twilight took her by the shoulders and held her still.

“You have to leave,” she said.

Carrot bit her lip, but she didn’t try to resist. Twilight would have held her in place with magic otherwise, and some part of Carrot Top knew that if she steeled herself, she would feel a little better when she looked back on this night from the future.

She felt the flowery touch of Twilight’s lips, firm against her skin. Carrot galloped off before she could hear the splashing of the alicorn washing the kiss away in the trough.

Carrot Top would return to her house only after dawn; for the rest of that night, her yard would become a sacred ground, and Twilight would stand vigil there with the stars and the blackness of infinity for company.

So many ponies came to my coronation. Fewer to my Requiem. But I don’t mind. It was a good night. A wonderful host ran the whole event for me, a very devoted subject of yours by the name of Carrot Top. In fact, I hear from Rarity that she’s been hard at work turning some of the local humans over to your wisdom. I think she even wants to start a herd with them.

Oh, now I really am gossiping!

But Carrot Top is truly a loving pony. I find myself wondering if she wouldn’t have made a better alicorn. There are so many ponies here who would make fine princesses. At least as good as I will. So why did you choose me?

I know that you have reasons, and that they’re good reasons. But it’s so hard to see what they are sometimes. Please, write to me if you have time. I just want hear you say that what you’ve done is for the best, even if I already know.

Your Faithful Student,

Twilight Sparkle

P.S. Princes...you don’t happen to hear the thoughts of every living thing in Equestria, do you?

Lyra lifted her hooves as she trotted back through the moonlight that night. Her tail swished every now and then with spirited energy, and she hummed gaily to herself, smiling at every shadow that stirred in the empty streets.

Something about tonight left her feeling right with the world. Everypony was supposed to go straight home after the Requiem, but Carrot Top had caught up to her and spent some night hours reciting journey poems from The Royal Pony Sisters out of memory.

Maybe it was because Celestia’s words always had a calming effect on her. The Equus in the book was certainly very pretty. Lyra didn’t try to analyze it more deeply than that. She was happy to have Carrot Top around, in she ever started to worry about the meaning of life, but until it worried her she generally left the musings to ponies who enjoyed that sort of thing.

She pushed into a cozy two-story on Crayonberry Lane, quickly washing her face in the sink and kicking off her horseshoes as she clambered up the stairs to a bedroom smelling of linen sheets. A wedge of floor was lit by what little starlight streamed through a window with the curtains thrown wide open.

The comforter was crumpled and lying halfway off the bed, which was far too wide to have been built for a pony, much less a single pony. The mattress was set so high that Lyra didn’t even see over the top until she bunched her legs and jumped, in an awkward catlike maneuver she’d had to work out herself.

There was a human sprawled across a good three-quarters of the bed. He was lying facedown, undressed, snoring gently. The sheets covered up his lower half, but a warmth gathered in Lyra’s stomach as she took in the play of starlight on his uncovered back and shoulder blades.

He was also very much asleep. She let out a little noise of frustration and leaned down to sweetly kiss his neck, giving it a lick afterwards just because she felt like it. Tom was far too exhausted for any fun and games tonight; he’d pulled his double shift today to make up for the time off on Hearts and Hooves Day.

Hearts and Hooves Day had been totally worth it, though.

The man pushed a tiny mutter through his pillow, and the fingers on his left hand twitched, acknowledging Lyra’s arrival. Lyra snuggled into the mattress beside him, pushing as much of her neck and barrel against his cool, smooth skin as equinely possible. “Tomorrow,” she whispered huskily into his ears, “you’re mine. Got it?”

Tom grunted a single note of assent.

Lyra’s tail twitched. She grumbled a little to give vent to her sexual frustration, and then, because she didn’t feel drowsy enough to fall asleep just yet, got back out of bed.

She unfolded a couple of her socks from the nightstand. She had just one set, nice and long ones, striped with the same green as her coat because that was what Tom liked. Lyra used her teeth to pull them on tight, but she just put the two on her front hooves—that was all for tonight.

Her bare hooves were uncomfortable for Tom, but with these on she could touch him a little more freely. Lyra straddled Tom’s back, letting her back hooves clamp against his hips, and started working her forehooves in firm circles around the small of his back.

Tom didn’t have to move. He just had to continue to lie there, and occasionally he chose to let out a small, soft sound of satisfaction as Lyra found a knot in his muscles, or just the right spot between his shoulders. She happily occupied herself this way for the better part of an hour, until the torture she inflicted by teasing herself was too much to bear. She lowered herself onto his back, bringing her muzzle close to the back of his head. “First thing tomorrow,” she whispered.

Tom’s shifted under her. Lyra got off and watched him make the tortuous and immense effort of rolling over, accompanied by an equally drawn-out groan. The reward, when he collapsed onto his back, was that he could look up at his mare and smile sleepily, prompting Lyra to immediately rush in for a kiss.

“Kay, Lye-Lye,” he said when he had the opportunity to gather air.

Giggling in delight, Lyra gave a quick love-nip to his ring finger, letting her teeth linger over the golden band there.

Her mind raced ahead of her in spite of itself, filling her head with pictures as it grew drowsy and loosened its hold on her imagination. Lyra put her forehooves against Tom’s chest and held him there, drinking in the delicious warmth which flared as he made a paltry struggle against her weight and found himself locked firmly in place.

She traced circles on his skin. Lyra felt as though her heart was filled up—no more could possibly fit inside, or surely she would explode.

Pondering Tom in the night, Lyra was moved to tears and new depths of devotion. Why couldn’t she feel like this all the time, now when she understood how important he was to her? Why did they ever have to fight?

“Tom,” she whispered, “I—I’ll let you hold onto more of the money. I know it bothers you because of the way you were raised.” She hung her head—her nose drifted on his chest. “You told me! And I should have listened! It’s not like you would be any less responsible with it than me. I want to let you be any kind of man you want to be.”

Tom snorted once, still motionless. He mumbled something—Lyra leaned in, pricking her ears to make sense of his lazy, half-formed syllables.

“Don’t care.” He made the effort to drag a hand up onto his own chest, where his thumb and forefinger could circle around Lyra’s sock-clad hoof. “Fuck my culture anyway. You can watch all the money if you want, Lyra. Buck it. You can tell me what to do. I’d be your slave if you wanted.”

Lyra laughed through an inexplicable curtain of tears, pushing down playfully with one hoof in rebuke. “You’re just tired,” she admonished. “I don’t want you to be my slave.”

“I mean it though,” he mumbled insistently. “You gave up just as much for me—I can’t make your parents speak with you again, but…I can give you something. I don’t care if I forget about the whole world outside Ponyville. I wouldn’t even care if…I don’t know, if they gelded me. I would stick by you. No matter what.”

Lyra’s heart felt so swollen from joy that she felt certain that it would burst, leak through her veins, and flood from her pores, washing all over her husband like frosting on a piping hot pound cake. She didn’t deserve this. Not Tom. Upon reflection, it made no sense that the fevered dreams of her entire life should turn out to be true, almost by magic, fulfilling every hope she had ever dared to dream that life was preparing her for. But—by Celestia’s grace—here he was in front of her.

Lyra sat up for a long time, even though she could have snuggled into his chest, curling her head under his chin so that her horn gently traced the side of his cheek. She even pictured doing it, and decided to fall asleep that way. But for now she sat up watching Tom as the rise and fall of his chest slowed again into snoring, adding her slow, random caresses into his sleep—his face, his shoulder, the back of his hand.

What little moon was out tonight spun away, out of the window. As Tom’s form drifted into silhouette in her bed, Lyra’s thoughts drifted to other faces. Amadeus, the heart’s desire of Carrot Top who played hard-to-get, and also another shape, a different shape from her memories.

There was something else. Something more had gotten her frisky tonight than holy reminders of the rightness of the world and her actions. A letter had come last week from a man with only one leg. Tomorrow, the man was due to step off a train in Ponyville. His days on Earth were finally through, and he said he wanted to live there, or maybe in Appleoosa—he was looking at ranches in Appleoosa, but he had written that he wanted to stop by and see her after all these years.

The man had also asked if Lyra was doing anything tomorrow night for dinner. Her heart had skipped a beat when she read that line.

She’d read that line over and over. But despite the number of times she looked at it, the letter wasn’t sitting out on the table. Instead it was hidden in her vanity, behind hairbrushes and a bottle of mane spray where Tom wouldn’t stumble across it.

She’d told herself there was no reason to hide the letter. But she still never brought it out when Tom was around. The guilt had pestered Lyra all week, and even worse was how confused she felt at feeling guilty in the first place.

Carrot Top had put her into such a particularly good mood tonight because she and her book had a way of helping things make sense. Coming home Lyra hadn’t been the least bit concerned. But here, in Tom’s arms…the confusion was starting to come back like a shadow on the edge of the bed.

Lyra’s face creased. She didn’t want to keep hiding anything. The way she felt right now, with her heart burst, she could be fearless. With a shuddering breath she gingerly leaned down, not pressing herself into the valleys of Tom’s chest the way she wanted, but hovering close to his cauliflower-shaped ears. “Tom?”

She broke the night again. “Tom? Are you awake?”

A grunt.

“Hey, Tom. What if we made…us…um…into a herd?”

“Mmm?”

Lyra’s heart was being a fickle beast, betraying her with such erratic beats. Why did she have to get so nervous? It felt like being a love-struck filly daring to ask Tom out for the very first time, all over again. There should have been nothing nerve-wracking about adding another stallion to her life.

“Y-y-you know, Tom. A herd. What if we…invited someone new? Not to live with us. Not right away,” she qualified hastily. “Baby steps. Take courtship nice and slow, like proper ponies. A few dates, things like that.”

Tom’s skin went just half a degree colder—although that was clearly the product of Lyra’s overactive imagination—and she felt his muscles, which she had long since carefully mapped, tense and shift.

“Maybe we could get them to take us that five-star restaurant you liked. Remember the Violet?” Lyra wasted a grin on his barely-open eyes. “Or we could take them to the park where we first kiss. Oh, and we could have fun teasing them. You’d have fun!”

“I dunno’.” There was a pause. Lyra watched the subtleties flicker over his face. A crease. A tilt. “A mare?”

“M-maybe.” Lyra trembled. “Or maybe not…”

There was utter quiet in the bedroom. “Dunno’,” Tom repeated at length. “Can we talk ’bout it tomorrow? Awake?”

Lyra nodded, several vigorous times, before noting that he probably couldn’t see her nod. She opened her mouth.

“Forget it!” She flung herself against him. “I won’t make you do anything, Tom. You can fuck my culture—er–” She blushed, in the dark where he couldn’t see. “I mean…well, it doesn’t matter I meant.” Almost deflating with shuddering relief, she finally gave into the valleys of his chest and closed her own eyes.

“I belong to you. Oh, Tom, only you.” A kiss. “And that’s okay. I’ll be yours if that’s what you want.”

The screaming, crying, dying part inside of Lyra, this pony part of her wailed as it spiraled down into the grave of her unconscious. She stomped it out like a weed upon fine grass. For Tom, she would sacrifice that part—slit its throat, bury it out back, and cover up the murder by pretending that it had never lived at all. This was a price she swore to pay in a midnight promise. She had her paradise already, after all, and nothing could be worth endangering that.

The mare and the man folded into one shape in the night as stars flashed across their window, dancing the slow dance that was their habit under Luna’s reign. Eventually, Tom’s breath evened out into snores, and Lyra’s joined them. And then, without either of their notice, Luna passed over them and stitched their dreams together so that they could walk in the same fields of unwaking, where the flowering meadows extended forever and the hills shuddered with song at the passing of lovers, as in the days of old.

Chapter 8: Resistance

And a Derpy Hooves Cameo

The citizens of Ponyville took care to spend time getting to know each other again in the weeks after Princess Twilight’s ascension. The conviviality in the air pleased Carrot Top to no end. Even Day showed his face outside more often.

As she leaned onto her fence, relaxing after an hour of laying mulch, she could see the human across the street with a cluster of stallions, playing a game of hoofball on the emerald lawn by the old Ponyville hill.

She wasn’t sure if they’d bothered telling Day the rules; whenever he got the ball, he would run in a direction that vaguely indicated a goal near his opponents’ side of the field, but he seemed to have a hard time remembering which ponies were on what team. He was far from the fastest, either. But the energetic equine athletes would let him carry the ball a few yards just for sportsmanship before taking him out at the knees, and snout-bopping the ball out of his arms as he tumbled.

“Surprise, surprise, Carrot Top’s in her garden.” Carrot turned to found that Lyra had let herself in through the gate. She hopped her forelegs onto Carrot’s fence herself. “I might just join you this time. It’s a beautiful day.”

Carrot Top’s gaze drifted back towards the human, who was trying to execute an interception by jumping over another pony. “You can say that again,” she sighed with a dreamy smile.

Lyra waved a hoof in front of her face. Carrot snapped out of her trance, frowning at the green mare. Lyra giggled.

“Oh!” Carrot Top threw herself back to all fours, stamping her hooves on the ground in frustration. “I’m not supposed to be doing that! That’s the third time today!”

Lyra leaned in, concerned. “Third? How’d you find time to water any of those wilting asparagus over there?”

“Uh…” Carrot briskly swung away from her fence and grabbed a nearby watering can, turning out the rest of its contents over the neglected greenery. “I’m still getting things done! It’s just ….all these lost minutes are going to add up if I don’t get back to work.”

“You were standing there for half an hour, filly.” Carrot winced as the unicorn trotted after her. She leaned into to give her addled friend a nuzzle for comfort, then stopped, inhaled deeply, and sniffed around Carrot’s barrel.

“Mmm...” Her ears twisted thoughtfully, and then she leaned in close to whisper, even though there was nopony else within earshot. “Your time of the season?”

“Getting there.” Carrot sighed deeply. “I can feel it coming on. Not too bad yet. A little pain in the morning sometimes.”

Lyra glanced back over to the stallions’ game. Then back to Carrot Top.

Carrot shrugged, as if to ask what she was meant to do about it. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most productive view to have while riding the big one, but what could she do? Most certainly not go around telling other ponies about her private matters so they would move the game. Even the rustiest old gentlemare had an appreciation for the basic points of discretion.

“You’d better stay away from him, then.” Lyra pointed.

“I know. I’ll do something I’ll regret if I don’t.” Carrot swung her head back towards Day, then, remembering in a moment, snapped it back. “I’m not the best at handling these. My first big one didn’t even come until I was twelve.”

Lyra nodded, withers shaking with silent laughter. But she didn’t allow herself to be taken off-track. “Are you still going in at the Café? Or did they ask you stay home?” She leaned in and narrowed her eyes sternly. “You did talk to Sourdough about this, right?”

Lips pressed together, Carrot shook her head. “I won’t work there this week.”

“Okay. Better on the safe side, I suppose. Got a good supply of things to keep you busy?”

Carrot nodded. “And the river is only a hop and a skip away.” She looked dolefully towards a twist of the Candywine; Ponyville’s creek could be seen through a crack in the knolls between here and Sweet Apple Acres. “The nice, cold river.”

“Good.” Lyra nuzzled her. She spent another moment in thought, then looked over Carrot’s back toward Day again. “Have you thought about…well, not telling Day. But maybe letting Allie know, just in case?”

Carrot Top declined vigorously. “I haven’t even explained it to her,” she said. “I feel like it would be pushing, and I don’t want to push her. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know how it works…” She sidled up nearer to Lyra. “Did you know that human women are on all the time?”

Lyra attempted and failed to stifle a self-satisfied smile showing through her eyes. “There’s not a lot I don’t know about the human reproductive system, honey.”

Carrot Top had found the idea incredibly kinky, not to mention unnerving. It had explained a lot of things she saw on Earth, though.

And it probably had its upsides. Being a fillyfooler whose partner was never in heat at the same time was a stupidly frustrating experience, and led to all sorts of undignified antics in the attempt to reschedule one’s own body.

Not to mention the fact that Allie, apparently, would never have to deal with what Carrot was going through now, with its attendant aches, queasiness, or distractedness.

A mare ran through their normal heat every two to three weeks, her sex drive cycling on and off in a rhythm that was easy—second nature—to deal with. But Equestrian mares also had larger, overarching cycles, and those were either lots of fun, or absolutely no fun at all, depending on one’s marital status.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself in hoof. If you need anything, let me know, okay?” Lyra turned to go and stopped at the gate. “But you can’t borrow Tom,” she added flippantly.

The earth pony chuckled darkly. “It’s not like I’ve never done this before, Lyra. I don’t think it will come to that.”

Carrot Top passed the days keeping herself busy, and trying not to think too much about Day. She didn’t really expect too much trouble just because of her newly discovered feelings for Day. Carrot Top was an expert at keeping busy, and from the wide acres of her home, it wasn’t hard to cut down on her interactions with the general public whenever it became a strain. The hours of her market stand were entirely up to her whim, after all.

She passed Wednesday morning much like all the others, viciously and laboriously eradicating every single weed in both the front and back fields. She even gnawed away the grasses encroaching on her fences until all her gardens were an immaculate picture of brown loam and delicious vegetables. It wasn’t quite the epic feat it normally would have been, given that she’d gone through this exact same process on the previous three mornings—the weeds couldn’t grow back fast enough to keep up with her anymore. It was only noon when she stood surveying her work, but Carrot decided that she ran the risk of worrying her plants to death if she kept at it any longer. So she made herself a nice carrot stew, a slow-simmered recipe from Mother which she hadn’t taken the time to treat herself to in ages.

She planned out the rest of her day while sitting in the field, blowing steam off her soup. At some point, she ought to sell what was left of her picked carrots at market, but then again, nopony would be expecting her there today. This was normally one of the days she waited tables at the café. Maybe it would be better to go tomorrow.

So she went in and read the latest Daring Do novel instead, picked off the top of a stack of books stockpiled from the library beforehoof. She lay down in a sunny spot and decided to just read the whole thing cover to cover. Daring Do had never come off as a particularly three-dimensional character to her—brash, full of one-liners, and, to be frank, just a bit sexist—but Carrot Top had always had a soft spot for Ahuizotl.

Although, the author seemed to be adding more and more pointless side characters with every addition to the never-ending train of sequels. Far too much of each chapter in Daring Do and the Fires of the Golden Ziggurat was taken up by some fresh-faced white stallion who was clearly only present as a love interest. It was almost amusing how far away Carrot could see the kiss coming—when Daring and her new companion had no choice but to spend the night in the same hammock, suspended over a pit of vipers, and he shared a soulful sob story about his unhappy childhood amongst much tossing and turning and blushing and accidental brushing of feathers. When the ponies found themselves pressed side-to-side thanks to his own endearing clumsiness, Daring stared into his deep grey eyes for a moment, then slowly, as if dipping her leg into a pool of water to test the temperature, hooked the cleft of her hoof under his chin and pulled his muzzle into hers, so she could tug at his lower lip–

Carrot abruptly tossed the book over her withers, got up, paced a circle, and sat back down. She grabbed the next book off of her stack.

It happened to be an issue of Mare’s Guide to Adventurous Dating, from the best-selling line by Dazzleflap–in particular, the Humans volume. Carrot Top, since she began turning pages without really looking at the title, found herself diving into a wonderfully informative exploration of various Earth cultures, including stunning photos of places she had never seen before: the Pyramids, the Moai Statues, the Forbidden Palace. She successfully lost herself in between lines of text for an hour.

But there was a table of contents, too. When the next chapter turned out to be nothing but a beginner’s guide to learning English, which Carrot Top was just about fluent in by this point, she found herself using it to flip to next section that really caught her eye.

‘To kiss a human, you’ll want to come in at an angle so that you don’t crush his nose. Just tilt your head about twenty degrees to one side, and you should come together perfectly. Now, when you do, because his face is so flat, your lips could actually be pressed against his entire mouth at once. It’s kind of weird, but once you get used to it, some humans definitely like it when you sink into the kiss a little and cover their mouth.

The best kiss with a human is nice and long. You’ll know what I’m talking about once you get into it. There are a few different things he might try to do, like cupping your head with his hands, or move along the side of your muzzle some. Pretty much all the normal human practices—and they have plenty of imagination—work out fine, so you don’t have to worry too much about what he might try to do.

The only thing that can end up awkwardly is if he tries to put his tongue in your mouth. It surprised the feathers off me the first time I experienced it, but apparently back home, they all think it’s incredibly hot. You can make it work with a little practice if you feel curious enough to try; when you feel him going for it, the best thing to do is carefully push your own tongue a little ways into his mouth, and keep it on top of his. Since his tongue is a lot smaller, this will keep him from getting lost short of the roof of your mouth, and let him explore your bottom teeth. In our mares’ experience so far this should keep him happy…'

Carrot Top realized what she was reading a few paragraphs in, cued off by the fire on her face and in other regions. Desperately, humming an old folk tune, she slammed the book shoot, trotted to her door–then turned back and hid the book under her bed, all before dashing outside. She could move on with the rest of her day out of the house.

But first she galloped to the river and took a flying leap into the crystal blue.

Carrot Top had plenty of other things to do. A good long walk in the woods, for instance, which she could extend by bringing along her notebook and cataloguing all the forest creatures she saw. The exercise was mostly pointless, but it was technically a favor to Fluttershy. The pegasus was ostensibly supposed to be performing wildlife research, as the official animal tamer of Ponyville, and this would give her something to show if she was ever pressed about her non-existent findings.

It had been a wonderful idea to ask dear Fluttershy if there were any chores Carrot could do out here. A little bit of brisk wind, sunshine, a couple stands of beech, and Carrot Top was feeling right as rain again. Yes, just fine! Her coat dried out in minutes under the sun, and even her mane was well on its way to recovery, though there was no escaping the frizz at this point.

If she made a through survey of the Everfree outskirts, some of the safer trails near Zecora’s hut, she could even stretch out this walk until nightfall. That would be just about perfect.

But as she was recording the happy tumble of a hedgehog through a rotten log, Carrot Top’s attention drifted from her mouthwriting, and before she knew it she was hearing the snap of her quill breaking against the notebook. She grumbled quietly, inspecting the tip to confirm that it had been rendered useless—Carrot Top was no stranger to breaking quills. Her penmanship had never been too great, even for an earth pony.

As she stared at the quill in dismay, the plans with which she had filled the rest of her day began to fall away. Other things began to fill their place, suggestions of places to go and people to talk to.

She shook her head and hurriedly re-established discipline. She had to get herself out of town and on that long walk tonight. But in order to do so, a visit to Sofas and Quills was in order, and that would mean going back into town. There was nothing for it.

Hopefully Happenstance wouldn’t be out of quills this afternoon. Thanks to Princess Twilight, the shop was very often out of half its advertised goods. If Carrot was lucky, Twilight had been too busy to pen another epic treatise what with her recent ascension. She imagined that becoming an alicorn had to be a rather busy affair.

She was walking home to get a bag of bits when, around the turn-off to the dirt road past her fields, she heard a sort of squeak. Carrot paused only for a second at first, turning about to find the source of the noise. The only thing out-of-place was a brown box lying in a ditch, and she didn’t think the sound had come from there. So she moved on, not wanting to linger and let herself get too distracted by anything.

Inside, once she’d gotten the money she needed, Carrot opened her fridge to grab an apple so she wouldn’t have to come back early when she got hungry. When she reached inside, the fridge was barely cold; that was odd. Maybe it was broken. Day understood how these electric appliances worked, maybe she could get him to have a look at it sometime—but later. There was nothing in here that would spoil right away.

She was trotting back across the same turnoff when she heard the same squeaking sound again, along with a small buzz. This time Carrot stopped where she stood and made a careful scan in every direction. Nothing in the direction of Ponyville; nothing on the way to Sweet Apple Acres. In fact, there was nopony out here but her.

She went and inspected the box, but it did nothing to clear up her confusion. According to this label, it contained the new hoe and hatchet she’d ordered through the mail last week. What was it doing here? Unless…

“Help!” said a voice.

Carrot frowned. A pair of sealed envelopes fluttered out of the sky and landed at her hooves just before she looked up.

Carrot gasped. “Derpy!” she yelled. “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” the grey pony cried desperately. “It said 002 Apple Drive and I was going to 002 Apple Drive! I know I was! I didn’t get turned around, I promise!”

The pegasus had become hopelessly entangled in the power lines running above the road. With every pull and trash, Derpy managed to become only more hopelessly entangled, and with every gasp time squeezed from the twitching body of the pegasus, there was a threatening buzz from the lines that held her. Derpy moaned every time the buzz sounded loudly, going stiff and even shaking as she did.

Carrot dashed across the road. Then she dashed back in the opposite direction. “You don’t know what when wrong?” she shouted.

Derpy drew in a sharp breath.

“Noooooo!” she wailed, crying out wordlessly for help until she was cut off by another soft buzz.

“Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh.” Carrot stopped in the center of the road and closed her eyes. “Celestia help me,” she whispered.

“Just hold on!” she bellowed upwards. “I’ll find a way to get you down!”

But how would she manage that? Carrot top bucked at one of the roadside poles, but despite an unearthly twang from the vibrating cables, they didn’t loosen their infernal hold on her friend. If anything, the tugging only seemed to make poor Derpy even more uncomfortable.

She didn’t have anything tall enough to reach Derpy. Or did she? There was still the spare rake in her closet and a snow shovel, and some duct tape. Carrot was quick with a set of nails. Did she have time to—well, there wasn’t time to doubt herself. She didn’t have any other ideas.

Day saw it just in time.

He had begun to wonder when Allie’s hair dryer started warbling in the bathroom. Allie complained about the dryer alternating between a cool gust and a scathing gale without warning, but he hadn’t thought too much about it at first. Electric grids were fairly new in Equestria, after all. A hundred things could be going wrong, and most of the possibilities Day could think of involved the power plant. Ponies hadn’t wanted to burn any coal after getting a good taste of smog, but the idea of hooking lightning-spiders up to a capacitor did strike him as a little touch-and-go.

But when he needed a shave and his electric razor nearly sliced a gash in his chin, Day found himself thinking about it some more. He idly wondered if a bird, unused to the sight of electric power lines, might have crashed into the transformer or a cable near the edge of town. And from that thought, it was a short leap one dreadfully stark possibility.

He broke from a jog into a sprint when he saw Derpy, and more importantly, who was below her. Carrot Top was positioned underneath the stranded pegasus, raising a makeshift pole tacked together from several garden rakes, a shovel, and a fishing pole. Derpy was reaching out towards it with a yawning mouth, straining to reach and bite down on the end.

“No!” he bellowed just as Carrot was managing to balance her pole. He tackled the earth pony and sent the implement tumbling as they rolled across the street, landing in a dust-covered, pebble-studded ball in the roadside ditch.

Carrot sputtered and shot up. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t ground her!” he shouted. “You’ll get shocked! I—gah, I don’t have time to explain!”

He scrambled out of the ditch and shaded his eyes to look at Derpy more closely. The mailmare’s satchel was slipped half-over her head, spilling a letter every now and then which floated down to litter the road. The pegasus’ face contorted every couple of second as, with an audible buzz, another jolt passed between the high and low-voltage lines.

“Celestia’s horn!” Day breathed. “How is she still alive?”

“It’s—it’s just lightning, right?” Carrot panted from beside him. “Pegasi are lightning-resistant. That’s how they kick thunderclouds around. But Day, we have to get her down! It’s hurting her!”

“He-e-elp!” Derpy wailed. “Mister Day, can you get me–”

She cut of midsentence. As Day examined the pegasus once again, he noticed how every time Derpy’s muscles slacked, she would buzz and smolder until she was stiff, sweating and straining again. It must have taken a tremendous effort to keep herself from conducting minute after minute. Even from here, the mare looked exhausted. Droplets of sweat were staining the envelopes on the ground.

“She’ll be a lot worse than hurt if we get a real power draw on those lines.” Day stared, following the wires towards town. It didn’t matter which one went where—the pegasus had managed to entangle herself with every single one. “If the Cakes turn on their industrial-strength ice cream mixer, we’ll get…” He muttered rapidly, nonsense syllables aiding the numbers whirring through his brain. By a back-of-the-envelope estimate, as it were, the ice cream mixer could draw as much current as the rest of Ponyville’s appliances twice over.

“That’s bad, then?” Carrot’s breathing was fast. Her eyes darted between Day and the grey pony. “How long do we have before Pinkie Pie gets off front counter duty?”

Day looked at his watch. “About ten minutes.”

Carrot Top seethed, galloping several abortive steps towards the path back into Ponyville, then stopping short. She danced on her hooves. “Well, how am I supposed to get her down if I can’t touch her?” she shrieked angrily, her voice beginning to climb into stressed registers.

“You can touch her,” Day said quickly, “just not while touching the ground. Or any of the other wires. The thing you need to avoid is completing a circuit—oh, Celestia, Carrot I don’t’ have time to explain it all! Do we have anything we can use?”

Carrot held up a brown postmarked box. “I’ve got a hatchet and a shiny new hoe. That help?”

He grabbed the cutting tool and swung it dimly. “You haven’t tried chopping the tower down, have you?”

“It’ll just drag her down with it!”

Day sighed. Carrot was right, of course. Looping the hatchet’s thong onto his belt, he took hold of the hoe. He could see no immediate reason that a hoe would be of any use in this situation, but he forced himself to think. He was an engineer! This was his job! To think of something! Now it finally mattered, and this was what he was supposed to be good at!

With enough motivating force, the cogs began to turn. Images started to come together in Day’s mind, loose, disconnected, but still places to start. “If you could get up there,” he said, gesturing with a hoe, “you could at least hang onto a wire using this.”

“I won’t get shocked?”

“Not if you only touch one.” Day ran to the nearest pole, tried to wrap his arms and legs around it, and gave up three splinters into a pathetic attempt to shimmy up.

He jogged back. “But I don’t know how to get you up there!”

Carrot Top glared at the power lines while Day stood tapping the hoe against his hand, mentally squirming in agony at the act of helplessly standing and watching Derpy.

“Right,” said Carrot. She trotted around Day and took a stance facing away from the lines. “Haven’t done this in a while. If you break my back, Day, it’s your fault for eating too many of my carrot cakes.”

Day scowled without looking down from the problem he was trying to solve. “Carrot, this stuff is dangerous. Derpy can survive touching those wires but you can’t. You don’t understand how they work, so just shut up for a second so I can figure out how to fix this.”

“Day,” Carrot whinnied, “get over her and put your head against my tail.”

Day’s face went red. He looked down. “What? Carrot, this is no time...”

“Now!” Her voice brooked no argument whatsoever. Day, almost trembling at the force, obediently backed up to her hindquarters and sat down with his head resting against the base of her tail. Familiar warmth flooded into him from that direction, even more molten than ever. This the wrong time for all of this!

He blinked as orange hairs lashed across his face. Carrot was swinging her tail. “Bite down,” she commanded.

Day wanted to protest. In fact, he wanted to scream at the pony, but instead he closed his eyes shut and bit.

“Now jump. And when I buck you, let go of my tail or so help me, I will try my hoof at being a carnivore.”

When Day’s mouth dropped open he had already pumped his feet obediently against the ground; at the top of the arc, he froze in shock. “What–”

Then the mare bucked him in the back.

Day was held up on her hind legs at the moment of the kick, pressed against the earth mare’s hooves. Because she pushed instead of kicking him outright, the impact didn’t break him. Instead, it sent Day rocketing into the air like he’d been shot out of a cannon.

Day couldn’t even scream. He could only squeak helplessly as he watched the plane of his vision skim over the top of the power lines. His entire body felt surreal, like jelly, but the hoe in his hands acted on survival instincts without instruction from the brain, and latched onto the wire which practically came rushing into Day’s face.

The section of power lines were bowed by the weight of the pegasus hanging in the middle. Day felt himself slide along the line on his make shift hook, until the head of the hoe bumped into a grey hoof entwined three times in the electrified cord. Hyperventilating as if trying to catch a breath which was eternally two steps ahead of him, he twirled there in space, staring in disbelief at the distance to the ground.

“Don’t look down!” Carrot Top shouted. “Cut her free!”

Day managed to fumble for the axe after a minute of increasingly fiery exhortations from below dragged him kicking and screaming out of shock. The adrenaline pulsing through his head made it hard to believe that he was really hanging here, and three times that difficult to take even one of his two hands off the garden hoe. But despite the fact that his thoughts seemed no more coherent than a rushing slurry of electrons, his training still stayed his hand before he swung out blindly with the hatchet.

He couldn’t cut Derpy down. The second the tool in his hands touched another cable he’d complete a circuit. Briefly he considered sacrificing himself to save Derpy Hooves, but no—he’d be lucky to saw through a single wire before falling back to ground, a crisp piece of humanoid remains.

He could hear Derpy moaning next to him—and smell her. She smelled rank with sweat, and scorched–the burnt aroma was coming from her coat, along her forelegs near the places where she touched the wire. The pegasus heaved for breath, taking in quick gasps of air and making increasingly futile attempts to struggle against her bonds in between the extended periods of time she withdrew into a still, struggling ball, quivering silently with the effort of keeping her electrical resistance up.

An off-track train of thought marveled at what Day considered a natural miracle on display in front of him, and made a note to investigate the pegasi’s ability to resist lightning strikes in the future.

But what if neither of them made it out of this? Day would have traded his legs for a pair of rubber gloves. Even one glove. But all the way up here, there was still nothing he could do to save her. He checked his pockets, hoping against hope there would be something inside he could use as an insulator. To have the hatchet and not be able to use it! If he just had enough rubber to hold onto the handle by a thumb and forefinger…

Suddenly, another cog spun into action. Day nearly let go of the hatchet as he gasped. “I have an insulator,” he choked. “I have a pegasus!” Looping the hatchet back into his belt with a manic giggle, he reached out to Derpy and kissed her fiercely on the nose. “I have you!”

His face tingled from the contact. Ignoring the sting, Day unceremoniously shoved the handle of the hatchet into her mouth. “Cut yourself loose!”

The first thing she did was to nearly cut Day’s arm off as she flailed. Day whimpered, drawing his legs into a ball and squeezing his eyes shut as the power cables jumped all around him, like the stingers of a deadly jellyfish. If Day touched even one he’d be playing Russian roulette with a half-loaded gun, so he made himself as small as possible while he wobbled.

Once Derpy managed to strike the first cord, purely out of luck, her neck was given a couple degrees of freedom and she could direct her swings with some imitation of accuracy. One by one, the bonds electrocuting her fell away, terrifying Day with every jolt and shift of the wires.

He was so preoccupied with trying not to get electrocuted that he didn’t even think about falling until Derpy cut the line that was holding up his hook. Yelping as he felt gravity beginning to take him, he dropped the hoe and seized onto the nearest piece of Derpy that he could reach. Since he was no longer touching any of the lines, he didn’t form a circuit on the other side of the pony, and no electricity touched him. There was, however, the matter of the ground whose dizzying height reasserted itself below.

There were only a pair of cables left, both of them wrapped around a single hind hoof. Day squinted up into the sun and watched them begin to slip towards the lump of her fetlock, feeling his weight pull the pegasus towards the critical moment when they would give up their hold on her sweat-slicked leg.

“I…don’t…like…this,” Derpy moaned nauseously around the hatchet in her mouth.

“Yeah, well…” Day looked down. “Neither do I.”

Carrot scrambled back and forth across the road. She could see that Day and Derpy were going to fall several seconds before it happened. Unfortunately, there was no trampoline and no Pinkie Pie nearby to provide one. The biggest thing she had was a partially-crushed postal box.

Right before Day began his plummet, Carrot tried scraping together a pile of letters in desperation. But there was no help there, none anywhere. She looked in every direction, and had just enough time to arrive at the dismal conclusion that she was the softest thing nearby.

The impact made everything turn black, though Carrot Top couldn’t tell if that was because of the knock on her head, or because Derpy’s flank was smushed over her face. Carrot Top lay sprawled in the road until both of the moaning bodies on top of her rolled pitifully away.

It felt best just to lay there, waiting for herself to un-squish like a flattened piece of foam, but Carrot Top forced herself up. The world stopped spinning just enough for her to find Day with his legs tucked in, and to drape her upper body onto his shoulders and give him a hug. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s over. You did it.”

Day let loose a warm sheet of breath, burying his head in his hands. Carrot stayed propped against him for balance and murmured whatever verses came to mind into his ear. They stayed that way until the ambulance arrived.

Somepony had heard the power cords snapping—and, no doubt, at least some of Ponyville had noticed when all of its flickering electrical appliances shut off. By the time Nurse Redheart arrived on the scene, a regular crowd had gathered, crowding the three ponies and the human who were bundled up for medical inspection right there on the spot.

Day came alive again to watch, along with dozens of other hushed ponies, when Nurse Redheart began looking over the limp grey form draped on a wheeling table. Her frown depend in weathered lines as she prodded and lifted Derpy’s wings, running a hoof along her side and applying thick bandages whenever the pegasus winced in response to the touch.

All onlookers were quiet for a solemn period. Nurse Redheart scowled even further when she began inspecting Derpy’s chest, sounding her way through the inspection with ominous humming grunts.

“Is she going to be okay?” Carrot dared to ask first.

Redheart glanced up. “She’ll be fine. I just wish pegasi watched where they were going once in a while. They dragged me out from my coffee break saying somepony was dying. If I could find an excuse to amputate wings…”

The sheet fell aside as a frizzled blonde head popped up. "Amper-taken?" Derpy mumbled. "Aww. Derpy doesn't want any more amperes..."

Day nudged Carrot Top in the ribs. “See?” he said. “I told you I had everything under control.”

For some reason, Carrot Top found that horribly funny. The pair of them were still snickering when Lyra Heartstrings skidded onto the scene at a full gallop, nearly knocking aside Featherweight just as the spindly foal was snapping a photograph of Derpy sitting up with a woozy smile.

“Ooooh, no. What did you do this time?” Lyra, trotting in place, bounced to Carrot Top’s side. “I came as soon as I heard! Are you okay? Oh, that’s a stupid question, but at least you’re alive!” She leaned onto the mobile hospital beds, causing Carrot Top and Day to lean back. “I’m not too late, am I? Is there anything I can do?”

With a quick glance at Day, Carrot reached out and lightly place a hoof on Lyra’s shoulder. “Lyra…” She moaned in a suddenly raspy voice. She threw in a cough. “There is…something I need you to do for me.”

“Anything!” The unicorn bent down, the better to listen. “What is it? How can I help?”

“In my house…” Carrot pointed feebly at her farmhouse a short walk down the way. “In the back of my kitchen…”

“Yes, what’s in the back of the kitchen?”

“Could you get the rest of the leftover apple pie for me? I feel like I deserve some dessert after all that.”

Lyra reared back and her eyes glazed over, but she galloped away and came back five minutes later. Her hooves were empty. “Carrot Top,” she said, “your fridge is empty! What pie are you talking about?”

“The pie right on the bottom shelf?” Carrot said in a normal voice. She scratched at her head. “What do you mean, empty? I had a whole sack of turnips in there too.” Her eyes narrowed. “Lyra, are you sure you didn’t go into the wrong house?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Oh!” a bubbly voice interjected.

They turned to look at Derpy; eyes rolling in freeform circles, the pegasus burped and covered her mouth. “Sorry. That was me.”

Day and Carrot Top couldn’t hold their laughter in any longer.

“Does anypony have any pie?” Lyra called around the crowd of bystanders. “We have ponies who want some pie over here!”

Carrot Top would have tried to stop her, but the streamers and confetti exploded from nowhere before she had the chance to speak. Allie had been hanging around Pinkie Pie during the last couple weeks, and the results had been….Pinkie-er than normal. The pair had pies going all around the crowd in no time, while Day and Carrot Top jogged a few circles around Lyra to reassure her that they really were okay. The mischief duo set up a picnic, tables and everything included, through some exploit involving billiard cues, Apple Bloom, and a flotilla of empty Apple family cider barrels, which Carrot Top couldn’t have recounted if she tried.

That was how it had come to be around Allie once Pinkie Pie got into her. Before anypony really knew what was happening, the nervous smile of relief at Derpy’s rescue had inflated into a full-fledged block party. Not that most ponies needed a very strong excuse to celebrate.

When she found Allie, the girl was at a grill mixing up apple and leek pancakes. Carrot Top took a dozen back to Day and they raced each other to the bottom of the stack. Rainbow Dash spun swirls around the party, a pickup game of hoofball from earlier in the day resumed, and in the middle of it all, Day and Carrot Top sat side by side on a hill near the riverside, letting the sunset burn its way to late evening.

The pony-watched, and they poked each other. They talked about life, and a little bit about death, and about whatever came to their minds, including love. Carrot Top didn’t try to prove anything. Day didn’t try to deny anything. They night was wrapped in some queer sort of spell which Carrot, afraid to break it, didn’t poke too closely at.

Carrot had never sat and talked with Day for hours before. It felt good in a whole new way. They talked about things they had never mentioned to each other before, from recipes all the way to crazy news from the outside world.

“Did you hear the rumor in the Equestria Daily yesterday?” Day said. “There’s this colt in Manehatten who claims to have acquired a taste for meat.”

Carrot Top wrinkled her muzzle—half in disgust, and half knowing that Day’s eyes flitted to her face whenever she did that. “I can’t imagine. The smell alone is enough to make me want to throw up.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking. Some ponies are saying he just enjoys the shock value of it. Whenever he walks into a foreigner’s restaurant and orders a steak, you know, he gets a big reaction out of it. And he did get his name in the papers.”

Carrot Top stuck out her tongue as the mental image intensified. “Well, I’ve heard some bad reasons to go on a crazy diet, but that takes the cake.”

“On the contrary, my dear zealot.” Day sat up, puffing out his chest until it made Carrot Top laugh. “Clearly,” he declared in a hilariously pompous voice, “It must be perfectly acceptable. After all, he hasn't injured anypony, and therefore no matter how ridiculous it sounds, it’s a perfectly good idea.”

“Oh, oh!” Carrot scrambled up and tried to puff out her own chest, striking what she thought to be a very affected air. “But it’s not the right way for ponies to live,” she said in a voice echoing Day's. “It might be fine for humans, but when a pony does it, it’s completely different. In fact, it’s just wrong, and it’s wrong because it’s wrong and for no other reason, so really it’s proven already.”

Day doubled over, clutching his stomach and clapping hands over his mouth. “Are you sure we shouldn’t all try it, just to be sure?” he said, quavering on the edge of losing his fake accent to mirth. “Maybe I could subsist exclusively on hay and thistle for a week, and you could take up Burger King and Slim Jims.”

Carrot shook her head, waving with a demure hoof. “Obviously he must have deep-seated emotional issues,” she drawled in her nasal tone. “Perhaps this is a cry for help.”

Day suddenly stood straight up, raising one finger. “Aha! But if so, it’s all just because he didn’t have enough lovers!”

Carrot shrieked with laughter, threw herself on her back, and pedaled her legs helplessly in the air. She was just barely aware of Day looking down at her and smiling.

Ponies began to dwindle when the food did. When earth ponies with a cherry-picker equipment stopped in to look at the damaged lines, Allie and Pinkie worked some magic to clear any party-related detritus from the road. The grill was folded up. A few late-comers hung around the banks of the river, telling stories with Granny smith around a fire kindled on the banks. A couple entreaties were made from Applejack to fetch her guitar, but she declined in favor of kicking back with her hat tipped over her head.

Carrot Top and Day were still on the bank, chatting about nothing. When suddenly struck by a peculiar beauty in the murmur of the river around its reeds, and the warm night air, Carrot Top sat. “Hey, Day. Do you want to go for a swim?”

He shrugged, glancing at the water. “Do you want to?”

She took a look at the dirt caking her hooves, and much of the rest of the body. “We could both use a bath.” She grinned devilishly. “Race ya’!”

Carrot Top darted into the water, forcing Day to follow. The water wasn’t quite so cold as it had been earlier, and she entered slowly, savoring the sensation of the wet lapping up the hair of her coat until it inched up over the top of her tail and left her submerged in the fresh, gently tugging flow.

Day followed, tearing off his shirt as he stumbled loudly into the river. They splashed a little ways downstream, waving and calling out at the ponies around the fire who called back at them.

Carrot half-walked, half-waded around Day, splashing him whenever his back was turned and prompting him to spin back in annoyance, running his hand over the surface of the stream to skim water in his face. When Carrot pointed down towards the river and raised her eyebrow, he crouched, lowering his body into the river and pressing his open hands together to race her.

She puckered her lips and sounded off an imitated gunshot, half-whispered—as loud as she dared this late. Day took off and outdistanced her quickly, but as Carrot Top floundered after him he slowed enough for her to catch up. Then they swam together, making no effort to chase after an imaginary fishing line. The lagged onward until leaving the bonfire behind, stroke after stroke in tandem, Carrot’s legs churning the river beneath her and Day’s arms rising and falling like the arms of a waterwheel, splish, splash. Splish, splash.

They kept going and going, and the Candywine carried them around Ponyville and then away from it. They floated into meadows that were silent now save for bullfrogs, owls, and crickets. Carrot Top kept no track of where all the other ponies had gone, or where they were. In this light she couldn’t even tell where she was. They must have followed the river half a mile downstream.

She didn’t care. She just kept swimming, just kept at Day’s side. Not a word passed between them, only the breath billowing from her nostrils and Day’s gasps every time his face came up out of the water and he looked sideways towards her while taking a breath. They passed under willows, and high banks of flowers, under bridges and past low banks filled with toadstools. Whenever they came to a narrow or shallow behind, they clasped themselves together into one floating mass and treaded water. When the current sped up, they let their limbs slack and floated along, content to follow the earth at the Candywine’s pace.

The moon rose and turned the water into gurgling quicksilver, and still they swam, quiet, through the singularly peaceful nighttime of rural Equestria. Carrot thought about saying something every now and then. She thought about a lot of things, watching Day rise and fall, his shoulders flash in even cadence beside her. But every time, she decided it was better not to break the night’s spell.

Eventually—she wasn’t sure how long—they stopped. They had to, when they ran into a waterfall. Carrot nipped at Day’s arm to direct him to her side of the river. On her bank was a broad semicircle of grass cut out from the trees and thick growth, capped with a single green-speckled rock. They pulled themselves out and lay flat as pancakes, letting air flow in and around them, drying and restoring them without saying anything for another long stretch of time.

From here they could look out over the wide plain which spread beneath the falls. They were clearly far from Ponyville. Carrot pulled her legs under her when she felt recovered enough to speak, and looked over at Day. He was still on his back, arms spread as if to embrace the star-studded sky swirling with dizzying nearness overhead.

With five short, hesitant steps, she stood over him so that both her front and hind pairs of legs straddled his body. Bending down her head as if to graze at a particularly fragrant patch of grass, she planted a soft kiss on his check, nuzzling and nibbling at the skin. When his face turned away so that his check pulled away from her lips, she began feeling up and down his arm with a fetlock, careful not to let her hoof press against him.

Day raised the arm and halfheartedly pushed Carrot away so that she had to step backwards.

She snorted and pawed heavily at the grass, tearing up a chunk of soil. “Why?” she said. “Why?”

He leaned his head up, looking at her distantly.

“You let other ponies kiss you on the cheek. Why, I saw Time Turner give you a kiss like that on two separate occasions when you met at the train station!”

Day looked away. It was just a bit too dark for Carrot to tell what color his face was. “That’s different,” he said. “We become good friends at work. That’s normal.”

“And what, I’m not normal?” Carrot ground her teeth; as a pony with only a set of wide, flat molars, they sounded like an avalanche compared to any noise a human could make, and the sound made Day shiver and cover his ears—quite intentionally. “Or am I not your friend? Is that what you were trying to say?”

“It’s different,” he mumbled again.

“Why is it different?” she demanded, pushing forward like a plowhorse against his hand until she could glare into his face.

He wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Because of what it means.”

She stood there for a long time, watching him.

“You’re right,” she sad at length. “It means I love you.” With a sob, she lowered her head and kissed him again, going in hard so that he had to swat her away. She tilted her head just twenty degrees so that her own nose slid beside his. “And I…I really care about you, and yet all that you think of me is that…” She kissed him again, and his second swat was weaker. “Oh, Amadeus! Amadeus! You fool!”

He finally looked into her eyes. “You can’t love me,” he pleaded in a whisper. “You can’t really be in love with me.”

“Why not?” Carrot had no inhibitions against being loud. There might not have been anypony around for a mile. She stamped.

Day clapped a hand over his forehead. “Because then someone will be sad, no matter what.” He fought to continue speaking even though Carrot interrupted him by throwing feverish kisses all over his face. “And I hate it when people are sad. Because then they get angry, and then they argue…I just want everyone to mind their own business so I never have to fight.”

“You stupid, stupid colt.” Carrot Top kissed his chin and his neck and his ears. “Argue is all you do! Come on, kiss me back.” She delved back to his lips, pushing her wide tongue through them and holding him down with a hoof when he tried to force her head away. She ran it over his incisors, the fangs so exotic to her, and exited his mouth when she had memorized their shape. “You have to!” she demanded, barely remembering how to speak. “I kissed you, now you have to kiss me.”

Day glared at her. Then, grudgingly, he sat up just enough to lay a furtive, dry kiss on her cheek.

She waited in the dark for more, and none came. She decided not to call it out for being inadequate. “Now, did that make you upset?”

“No,” he mumbled.

Carrot Top lay down on top of him. She was careful to settle her weight slowly on his chest, to make sure that it wasn’t too much. And she clamped her folded legs against his sides, finding that she fit onto him as perfectly as a glove. His arms were trapped under her forelegs, but he strained and she let one of them go.

Her tail wanted to lift, but that wasn’t what she needed right now. She swept it back and forth in low, unhurried arcs, letting her curls brush over his legs. She could just barely feel the texture of his soaking wet jeans against her hair. And from here, she could feel his breath, and every heartbeat, just the way that she could feel the beats of the earth when she lay down on it.

Day’s face was a grimace, his free hand pushing with no effectuality whatsoever at the top of her leg. “Why do you want to stop it?” Carrot half whispered, half cooed, half sobbed. “You could…” She nuzzled his cheek. “We could have things perfect. I would be so good to you, Day. I would work so hard to make you happy. I’d build a great big house for us. What—whatever bothered you, I would do my best to—to make it work.”

“I know,” he whispered tensely. “Can’t.”

In silent question she nuzzled him again. He moaned and began to mumble.

“Can’t. M’not supposed to have everything. M’not supposed to be that happy. S’not the way things are.”

Carrot Top closed her eyes.

Never believe that the foal which is tomorrow will grow up into the grave that is yesterday. I awakened

when Equestria was only a cold rock, falling without purchase through a void without light. I have

slumbered through eons when the oceans leapt to the sky, and watched over eras when the ground

never ceased to tremble. If you believe that the time is soon coming when every pony can live in perfect

harmony, I promise you, my little ones, it will come. It is not the strangest thing which has come to

pass in this world. (Celestia 52:47)

Day growled. “Admit it.” He pulled his other arm free by writhing until she had to let it go. “You’re not a gentlemare.”

Carrot’s head swung away.

“But you want to be. I know how your mothers raised you. The right word from me, mare, and you’d go trotting home shame-faced with your tail between your legs. If I said you were pushing me too far. Hell!” he spat. “If I said you were trying to–”

“You admit you love me,” she said quickly, bulldozing over his speech, “and I’ll admit I’m not a gentlemare.”

Day sat in shocked silence. Carrot felt his chest press up in slow, deep arcs. His hands, like timid butterflies, crawled up her barrel with delicious slowness until his fingertips rested on the saddle of her back.

“I love you.”

He pulled Carrot down on top of him so that he could press his face into her neck. “Oh, Carrot Top, I love you.” He returned her kisses one by one. “Yes. I want to run my fingers through your mane. I want you to kiss me just like this. I want to watch every sunset in the world with you.” He gushed, lapping at her coat. His nose ran all over her neck. “Your nuzzle! Oh, Carrot, nuzzle me like this. Cover me in your scent so everypony knows who I belong to.”

Carrot Top most happily obliged him. Her gut ignited with a molten song.

She began sliding her belly along Day’s. And the last vestiges of sunset gave way to blindness—the moon timidly showed itself out behind the trees, the last spotlight turned aside, letting everything fade to a deep, deep velvet black.

Chapter 9: The Morning After

And the Ape Fadeth Into the Night

Day’s first thought upon waking was that he must be hungover. He had never experienced a hangover before, but had the idea that it must very strongly resemble the fuzzy sense of drifting that was keeping him from stringing three thoughts together in a row.

There also the fact that he seemed to be lying flat on his back, stark naked, in the middle of nowhere.

But no—he reached up to touch his forehead. That wasn’t it. Day hadn’t had anything to drink last night, had he? There had been a party for something, but he couldn’t remember the taste of hard cider…

He finally accomplished the feat of sitting up. As he did so, something large and fuzzy rolled over, crushing his toes. Day’s memories flowed in like the river winding past the grassy bank.

Carrot Top was curled up on his legs, snoozing gently with a blissful smile across her muzzle. He could see some clothes lying in various directions, so he leaned to grab them without moving his legs and thus disturbing the slumbering mare. While throwing them he, he glanced around the fields to make sure that nopony wandering the wilds had chanced upon them in this state.

Later, he would explain this action by saying that since he had been outside, in clear view of half a mile of gentle hills, getting dressed was ‘the only sensible thing to do’. But the truth was that nopony had come this way recently, and nopony was likely to chance by anytime soon. Even if they had, the sight of a naked human would have caused them to stare for no longer than a second or two before they bid the human good day and went on with their day, utterly un-scandalized.

Perfectly aware of all this, Day burned with shame until he made himself decent enough that he could at least have stepped outside in New York to fetch a morning paper.

He felt that he had just thrown off a set of rusty shackles for a new and vast kind of freedom. It was exhilarating, but terrifying. Both feelings worked in accord to speed the beating of his heart, which was still pounding from all of last night, and his first instinct was to cover himself—to shield himself from the blinding openness he found himself staring into. It was too much. Too much, he thought, too much to take in at once, for someone who had lived their entire life in the shade of a cozy alcove.

Once dressed, he settled himself down to wait. It didn’t seem right to wake the mare. She looked happier than Day had ever seen her before, snoring the sound of a light breeze through dandelions. The images and sounds of last night, which made Day quiver every time he thought of them, were still the last things she remembered.

Day hadn’t thought a human and a pony would be able to make love seamlessly, but….Carrot Top had it down to a fine art, something he wouldn’t have suspected of the quiet pony. It was like she understood the purpose of making love in a way that was a level beyond him.

She stirred once without waking, her hoof finding Day’s leg and curling around it. Day assumed she would get up before too long, but in the meantime he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He watched the river passing by. He thought he would simply drum his fingers on the bank while he waited, but his mind began to drift as he stared into the water.

He saw a twin extra-long mattress decorated by striped bedsheets, scattered papers, and the beleaguered light of Sol, which slowly died over the edge of the bed. There was a girl on a beanbag chair by the edge of the bed, and she looked with a glazed expression over all of these adornments as if trying to decide whether the papers were worth crying over, or indeed looking at in the first place.

Day entered the memory here, through the thin door. “Cass?” he said while knocking and opening simultaneously. “I just came back from the party, no one could tell me where you were…”

He stopped, seeing her hunched over open books. “Something wrong?”

“I made a terrible mistake,” she said. Day gestured urgently for her to go on, and she flung her head against the mattress. “I looked at my grades.”

“I see.” Day stood awkwardly still near the doorway. He was never quite sure what to say in this sort of situation. Or any situation, for that matter.

“I hate calculus,” she said forcefully into her sheets. “I hate actuarial science! I wish I could be a marine biologist and swim with dolphins.” She glared at Day as if he were the source of all affronting math in the universe. “Integrals are so fucking dumb.”

Day’s mouth fell open. By the time of this memory, he knew Alexandra rather well, and the idea of her spending an evening in quiet isolation, rather than in raucous company, deeply offended his sense of rightness with the universe.

And there was a second thing that deeply offended his sense of rightness as well.

“Oh, no.” He squatted by the bed frame. “Integrals are—are beautiful.”

She only stared at him blankly, so he pulled over a simple chair and tore off a piece of notebook paper. “The way I like to look at it, math is like a perfect world—you wake up every morning and you know the sun will still be in the sky. The most fantastic things happen, but when you look closer, you always find that everything works out, like it was always meant to be that way….”

Allie squinted up at Day and scooted little closer to his chair. He scooted a little closer to her and they pored over the paper together as he drew a long, flourishing S in the shape of a violin’s sound hole.

The memory faded from there into a long, blurred thrill of exploration and mutual wonder. Day floated back to Equestria in time to see an orange face looking up at him.

“I sort of get it now, but can you say it again? I like hearing you talk. You make it all sound so interesting.”

The first thing Day was blush and lazily smile. Then he did a double-take at Carrot Top and curled his fingers tightly into the grass.

“What did you say?” he breathed urgently.

Carrot Top giggled and put out a hoof to bop him on the nose. “I said I like hearing you talk. You were talking to yourself. You have a nice voice.”

She tilted her head as if it stretched her little grin into place. “Do you always talk to yourself in the mornings? Not that I mind. I could get used to it.”

Day dumbly shook his head.

Her eyes drifted down his chest, and Day could make out distinctly the fire that sparked behind her irises when last night came back to her. She hugged him until he couldn’t breathe. Then she trotted circles around him, bouncing with excitement as if content to absolutely nothing but celebrate the mere state of her existence.

But that didn’t distract her from Day for too long. Before Day could really make any suggestions, she pulled him onto her back and forded the stream, kicking up a wide spray while forcing through the water that reached to her chest. She broke into a gallop the minute she reached the far bank, leaping through the valleys whose colored folds invited the beholder to do just that.

Day finally got a tour of ‘the Ponyville back ninety’; he saw it all at a pony’s speed. The wind stung his eyes, but the rocking world swung so fluidly around him, he hardly dared blink for fear of missing a breath of the feeling. He could feel the warm muscles on Carrot’s back, flexing against his thighs, and feel the earth plunging easily underhoof. Being carried by her now was totally different than it had ever been before. He held onto a couple curls of mane to stay on, but quickly found a way to keep his balance tight to her back. Then he had a hand free to run fingers lightly over the sensitive corners of her ears.

He could tell that it tickled in the way she laughed breathlessly at every touch, stumbling midstride to catch air for more giggling.

She bolted through foxgloves and lavender, splashing three times across shallow fords of the Candywine and never slowing down until she barreled through the heart of Ponyville. Carrot Top was utterly heedless of the stares, even though a shirtless human was riding her bareback through the village. Day found himself wishing he could disappear. But he bore through it.

He had said, last night, that he wanted everypony to know. They most certainly knew now.

Carrot Top kept up her pace right through the front door of his house, slowing only down when she had no choice but skidding into the carpet to avoid colliding with a couch.

“Allie!” She trotted an anxious circle, with Day growing dizzy on her back, until the girl in question appeared.

“I have the good news!” she squealed the very minute Allie’s face popped in from the hall. The girl, seeing Day on ponyback, appeared to grasp Carrot’s meaning right away. She squealed in return and grabbed Day’s arm to plant a loud kiss on his cheek. Carrot slid Day neatly off her back, onto the couch where he could recover from the ride. Then the pony grabbed Allie, who shrieked once without alarm, and pushed her onto the couch beside him.

Carrot propped herself up on the couch, between Alexandra’s knees. “Now you can kiss me!”

Allie laughed like chimes in the summer breeze, and momentarily covered her outrageous smile with one hand. “You have been waiting for a long time,” she said after regarding the pony studiously. “Okay.”

Carrot Top needed no second urging. She immediately jumped onto Allie’s lap and plunged into a deep kiss, turning her head sideways to meet the human’s mouth. Allie’s eyes shot wide open, and her hands splayed to grip the couch on either side of her. Her cry of shock was muffled by Carrot’s lips.

Day tightened up. Then he relaxed, in sync with Allie; her chest heaved only a few times before her eyes began to flutter closed and she worked one hand around to rest on the flank of the mare atop her.

Then Day blushed and looked away.

None of the furniture in the house was terribly wide. Everything had been bought pony-made in lieu of trying to import it, at much greater expense, through a dimensional Gate. The picture presented by the living room was perfectly symmetrical: Day sat on one side with his hands on his knees, and Allie sat on the other side with Carrot Top on hers. The pony was beginning to moan softly now.

“Guess she was waiting for that,” said Day with a chuckle that sounded like bubbles trying to force their way indecorously through a telephone wire.

He smiled over at the girls. “So, it’s, uh—your turn now, I suppose.” To be honest, he wasn’t sure who he was talking to, because Allie didn’t seem to hear him at his current volume.

Carrot Top was reaching behind Allie’s back now to pull the swell of her chest against the pony’s barrel. The girl’s hand alternately tensed and relaxed against Carrot’s side, letting the pony know what movements were allowed. Because of the tilt of their faces Day had a pretty good view of what was going on between their mouths.

He had never watched a kiss so intently before. It dunked him back into the ice-cold river of memory.

Instead of the thin pony hairs tickling Allie’s nose, Day saw a muddy creek flowing past the silver trunk of a hand-me-down car. Day was sitting on the trunk with a small pile of riverside pebbles the only company sitting next to him. Each time he hurled one into the water, he imagined a face in the stream. Most of them were hopelessly beautiful faces—if not always accurately so—but Day ran out of pebbles before he ran out of faces. When the time came, he couldn’t be bothered to get down from the car and scoop another handful off the ground.

Suddenly, there were more pebbles being thrown into the stream a few yards down. Or rather a hail of pebbles being kicked up by spinning tires. Day looked up—as if somehow he hadn’t heard an engine revving across a horizon-length stretch of dirt road—to see a bright purple truck easing onto the bank beside his car.

“Allie?” he said in disbelief. Day peered suspiciously back at the girl’s bright smile. It seemed impossible to him, at the time, that anyone could have possibly figured out that he would be here, let alone why, and it was even harder to believe that anyone would have driven the miles from campus to join him there. Somehow, she had gathered the necessary variables and made those calculations. It seemed surreal to Day.

She swung up onto the trunk of his car, light like a fairy. Day looked back into the turgid water, hoping illogically that she was only dropping by for a brief hello and would soon be on her way again. The hum of her vehicle, the chatter of her voice, and most of all, her face, interfered entirely with the catharsis he had been performing before she arrived.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said happily, as if this statement ought to make perfect sense. “You totally didn’t give me a chance to say anything before! Like, you really shouldn’t say something like that to a girl and then run away.”

Day sighed. He took without thinking the rock she handed him and plopped it into the river. “You’re very nice,” he said quietly, “but if you don’t mind, I just want to be alone right now.”

“No you don’t,” she said firmly.

Day didn’t know what she was doing for the first few spinning seconds when she reached a hand around his head—utterly confused until she pulled him over to kiss him lightly on the temple.

The brief point of moisture sent a lance through the grubby, crusty shell which loomed a cave around Day’s heart. Air and humidity began to pour in through the breach, and, panicked by the overload of sensation, his heart began to throb like–

–well–

–a heart. Like the way a heart ought to throb.

Day came to and found that his fingers with interlaced with Allie’s, the same way they had become in the memory. Nothing had changed on the couch. Tentatively, he leaned closer to the girls and tried to join in kissing Allie. But Carrot Top’s mane hung over her face like a curtain, and he had to spit out strands of hair to get to Allie’s cheek. When his lips finally did find her skin, he could feel Carrot’s muzzle only inches away, working over Allie’s mouth like a tractor churning a hillside in the spring thaw. Moist exhale from her nostrils gusted across Allie and into Day’s face. He panicked, seized up and pulled away.

He spent a couple stiff moments trying to get his bearings. Day knew intellectually that he was okay with this. That was the important thing. This was what he had signed up for, after all. Why, in no more than a week or two, this would be nothing more than another normal day around the house—himself, Alexandra, and Carrot Top. All three names together, side by side. There would be one more toothbrush in the bathroom, perhaps. One more plate at the table. One more pillow in their room.

This didn’t bother him. There was definitely nothing wrong with seeing Allie, the woman that had made him a man, going at it with this pony. It had been explained to him so clearly, after all. That pony was a part of the bond that flowed between him and Allie now. Carrot Top was included in that love, and surely it could only grow stronger because of that.

He was so certain that this was normal that he decided to open up his laptop and get some work done. After all, he wasn’t busy with anything else at the moment. His fingers hovered over the keys for a few seconds, as he temporarily forgot the password which he typed into the machine a dozen times a day.

The girls came up for air, and Day turned back towards them when Allie reached out one weak arm to pat him on the shoulder. When he looked, Carrot Top was staring at him, with her mouth still half-pressed over Allie’s in an almost comical way.

“You don’t have to watch if it’s weird for you,” said the mare. A flushed Alexandra nodded from underneath her. “After all, we wouldn’t…”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted her, slamming the laptop shut and leaning forward on his elbows. “Whatever I’m comfortable with. I get it.”

“Al-right…” Carrot shied away. She looked between the man and woman for a second, her bouncing curls following the swivel of her head.

After a minute of examining them both in silence, Carrot Top nuzzled Day’s arm and worked his gaze towards her. “Day?” she mewled. “Are you sure everything is fine? If this is all a little too fast, we can slow down.”

Day cracked a determined, blazing smile and reached around the top of Carrot Top’s neck.

“Everything is wonderful,” he said with feeling, and kissed her passionately just to prove the point.

Afterwards, Carrot Top stepped carefully off of Allie’s lap and into the squeeze of space between the two humans on the couch.

“Hey…” She swung herself around so that her hindquarters were perched on the front end of the couch, near their knees. “Can you…I want you to touch my cutie marks. Both of you.” Allie swung liquid eyes to each of them in turn. “Allie, you get this side. Day…just put your hand right here.”

Day shrugged and reached over. His hand hesitated over her flank when it suddenly tensed in response to his hand’s proximity to her cutie mark. “At the same time,” she said after replacing her lost breath, and Day waited until Allie’s hand could—now, very carefully—brush her coat at the same time as his. Inch by inch, he placed his open palm over the precisely colored hairs, the icon of three carrots that identified the mare he had just kissed.

Carrot shuddered and sighed when their hands clamped down, sinking even further into the couch, if that were possible. “I’m with my herd,” she whispered into the backing of the couch, and grew a smile of perfect peace just like the one she’d worn on the riverbank.

Allie cooed with pleasure upon seeing the smile, and combed her fingers a couple times through the pony’s mane. She toyed with the curls that bounced when she pressed on them.

“Hey,” Day heard the mare whisper to Allie. “I have an idea.” She leaned up a bit to reach Allie’s ears, and slowly spoke a stream of words which must have fled straight to Allie’s face, because they colored it bright pink. For a second Day blinked, and almost envisioned Carrot Top as a guy on Allie's lap, kissing her so ardently.

“Oh, wow.” Allie’s grip on Day’s hand tightened. Their fingers were still interlaced even though Carrot Top was sitting on them.

“Okay,” she whispered back at Carrot. “If you want to.”

A fire blazed into life somewhere within Day’s chest. But this wasn’t a fire like last night, or even like he’d felt ever before. It was a wet sort of burning which stung, and it licked up furiously when Carrot Top pawed at Allie’s side. When she made the girl giggle by blowing into her belly button, something Day happened to be fond of doing, the feeling threatened to blacken his entire insides away.

He prevented it from immediately combusting him only by leaning forward–landing on top of Carrot and nearly smothering the pony–to steal a long kiss from Alexandra and pull her attention back to himself.

He leaned back. Carrot went back to kissing at Allie’s stomach—and with a distinctly perceptible spark, the fire in Day began burning again.

Uh oh.

Carrot Top didn’t notice, if any of the fire showed on Day’s face. In fact, she didn’t seem to mind having been made the center of a make-out sandwich.

“Hey,” she said huskily, swinging her head to nuzzle Day. Then she began wriggling between Allie and the back of the couch to push her off of it.

As Allie unfolded her legs to stand and follow, Day’s knuckles ripped over the textured cover of his laptop. He stood sharply. “I have an idea too!”

He held that pose for a moment, then caught himself upon finding that both females were watching and waiting for him to finish. “We should…er…go out to eat!” he forged on. “To—celebrate! After all, we have so much to talk about.”

He glanced hopefully in the direction of Carrot Top. “Right?”

“We do,” Carrot agreed, then put her cheek against Allie. “But…I’m not really that hungry right now. I’m still full from last night.” She looked towards his bedroom with naked longing.

“Same,” Allie shrugged, seemingly oblivious to the strained gestures of the others. “I had breakfast before you came.”

Carrot Top didn’t notice either, though Day faltered and held himself upright by the coffee table. She swished her tail thoughtfully, muttering to herself. “But a little date does sound nice…oy!”

She stood suddenly on the couch. “How about we go get socks?” Enthused by this idea, she poked Allie in the ribs to tickle her again. “I’ve always wanted some, but now I have a reason to use them! Och, I could wait for socks…How about it?”

Day agreed with unusual wholeheartedness, echoing each of Carrot Top’s reassurances to Allie (which were also unprompted) that Rarity the dressmaker could ‘work magic of a dozen kinds’ and would probably take no time at all to knit up a fine set of socks. Day grabbed a shirt, and everyone was out the door into Ponyville in short order, braving both the befuddled stares and the slyly congratulatory ones that followed them on their way.

It being a slow day of the week, Rarity was only too quick to invite them into Carousel Boutiqe. She looked the entire party up and down; Day twiddled his thumbs to avoid meeting the unicorn’s crystal-sharp eyes, Carrot Top stood grinning like a fool next to him, and Allie had somehow gotten into her box of combs and was currently picking out the one that most struck her fancy.

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “My my. This is a big day for you, isn’t it?”

Carrot Top’s smile only grew more helplessly than before.

Rarity promised right away to make Carrot Top the softest socks she’d ever touched, and when Day, feeling rather guilty, tried to chip in for the payment, she scorned the idea. “Absolutely silly,” she declared, “for a favor that won’t take more than a minute.”

She walked Day to a rack of fabrics and unfurled a cloth roll with a glittering chime of magic. With a glance back at the waiting mare, he took his time running a hand over the surface, whistling appreciatively.

“It’s very…soft.”

“Hmm…” Rarity replaced it with a different stretch of material. “Try this one.”

Day was genuinely surprised by the difference. “Oh, this is even nicer.”

“No to cotton, then, yes to cashmere…” Rarity happily pulled an entire roll off the rack and began levitating supplies all about her store, clearing off space on a worktable. Before Day’s very eyes, a preparation that would have taken a human tailor ten minutes flew together in one.

“Ah– ” Day started and lurched in front of Rarity just as she was about to walk to her sewing machine. His physical presence didn’t do much to slow her down.

“B-but,” he said, pushing up on the bridge of his nose, “we should try a few different ones, too! Just to be sure.”

Rarity crossed her eyes at the fabric she held. She looked skeptical. “I place great faith in cashmere,” she said doubtfully, “but…perhaps you’re right. Would you care to arrange a soirée with the silk?”

Day appeared, to an outside observer, to develop a sudden and patient fascination with tailory. While Carrot Top bounced impatiently on her hooves and Allie got into Celestia-knew-what, he monopolized Rarity’s attention by poring over the various qualities of the silk she possessed, and discussing how it compared to silk produced on Earth. She launched only too happily into detailed discussions of each area Day expressed interest in, quickly drifting away from the task at hoof and spending quite a lot of time, under encouragement, lamenting what she referred to as ‘the tragic state of quadruped fashion in the rest of the multiverse’. When Carrot Top brought her attention back around to the promised socks, Day asked to go over the cotton one more time, and the wool and cashmere too, just to be absolutely sure, though he finally settled on the same material Rarity had originally intended to work with.

At that point the unicorn asked Carrot Top over to be consulted about the color, so the earth pony peeled herself away from Allie and used her teeth to pluck out the ribbons which had been woven through her mane. She mostly stood there with Day while the unicorn held up lengths of cashmere and answered her own questions. “Do you think I should try to match her coat, sir? Hmm—I could, but for a tabby like you, Carrot, I think a nice iris shade would flatter those legs much more…” Shapes folded in and out of hovering fabrics. “Green is so very much your color, after all, darling. It just makes your mane—pop! Now as to patterns. Do you like stripes? Of course you do, dears…”

Needles plucked and dove at an impossible speed. The first few bands of a stocking veritably materialized before Day’s eyes.

Carrot occupied Rarity by catching up on gossip, so Day decided he wouldn’t be able to have much effect on the unicorn’s attention without embarrassing himself. He retreated.

Allie was standing by herself now. Day sidled up to her and squeezed her arm in both hands, gripping her so tightly that she arched her eyebrows in surprise before giggling and giving Day a peck on the cheek.

“Hello, there,” she said.

“Hello, beautiful.” He rested his head on her shoulder and pulled her even closer.

“You’re in a good mood today,” she commented, tracing a finger playfully through his hair. “She must have really been something.”

His hands clenched again around her arm. “You’re really something,” he exclaimed forcefully, fervently.

“Aww!” Allie reciprocated his embrace in full. “You are too, honey.” She rested there for a moment. Day could feel energy coursing through her.

“No rush,” he called over her shoulder to Rarity. “Don’t be afraid to take your time. We can wait.”

“Pfft. Speak for yourself.” Carrot hopped over and caught Day’s hand in her mouth, nibbling on various fingers. Day became icy inside, even though it felt amazingly good. He carefully removed his hand, and then forced himself to lean down and give the earth pony a quick embrace.

She moved onto Allie with a playful little skip. Over the next few minutes, Allie kept trying to get her absconded comb into the pony’s mane, but Carrot Top jumped out of reach each time and ran circles around the girl to dodge the implement. When she succeeded in getting close to her while avoiding the comb, she nuzzled Allie from behind. Allie yipped, startled, and Day sent a sharp warning in Carrot’s direction which went utterly unnoticed. He thenceforth determined to look away from the pair, and focused his attention on watching Rarity work.

But while he stared, he didn’t see a white unicorn so much as he saw a slightly younger version of himself, hunched over the steering wheel of a dirty silver car. The back seats—and occasionally the front seats—were crammed with documents, each dislodged one of which had an over-inflated sense of its own importance. Day balanced his attention between calculating the factor by which he could speed without getting pulled over, and trying to keep the sliding documents from rearranging themselves to spite his passive-aggressive contempt for their egoism.

Paid by the hour in those days, he couldn’t afford to waste more than half an hour on his lunch break, which was why he became a rather reckless blur crossing the length of downtown to reach a certain burger bar on the east side. The lunch itself was not a matter of concern to him; Day didn’t like the way grease soaked through the bags there, and he was especially unfond of the sullen way the boy behind the counter took him in whenever he crisply enunciated his order.

But Allie insisted on eating there every day. So, stowing the greasy mess in a hopeless briefcase, he would swing around to the back of the building and set his shoulder against the wall. Often he didn’t even look to see if there was a body two feet to his left, but only reached his hand across the sun-bleached bricks until, in a very particular spot at the seventh row of bricks from ground level, it met another, slender hand.

They would grin tired grins at each other, the sweat of hours clamming their skin together, the occasional car honking at them while making for the drive-through. The hand-holding would only last for a moment, but over three long years of this tradition a noticeable divot would be worn in the brick, in that particular spot, which would stand to this day and perhaps long after.

Some days, falling behind on an overambitious thesis or a project, Day would need physical bearing up, Allie extended her arms to keep him from falling as she reassured him that he would manage to overcome every deadline. More commonly, falling behind on rent or the money for gas to flit between impossible class and work hours, she would simply cradle his head at the ears and promise him, with a firm gaze, to see him through, even if she had to take extra hours.

That meant so much to him because neither of them were doing anything they wanted to do—except for this.

“You aren’t alone,” she would say—it was a tradition—and squeeze his slightly-sore fingers. “You never will be.”

“I’ll spend the rest of eternity trying to be worth that,” Day would say, and gently kiss her ring finger despite the sour taste of a long, unwashed morning. Somehow they wouldn’t even hear the horns, and the acrid smells would disappear until nothing but the pair of them remained.

Something bumped into Day. His mind snapped back to Ponyville, yanked from its pleasant reverie.

It had been Carrot Top who jostled him. She was bouncy as a filly now. The thunderstorm which had begun rumbling outside while Day wasn’t looking might have had something to do with it. So that was why the Boutique was so empty today; one of them should have checked the weather schedule before going out. Where was Day's head today?

Carrot seemed to be running out of patience. The mare was rubbing her snout all over Allie now, and using her mouth to tug the girl across the Boutique by the wrist. They were heading in the direction of the door, but only ever made it a few feet at a time before Allie would manage some clever turn with the comb, or Carrot Top simply dissolved into private giggles.

“Hey, Rare!” she called in an unnecessary stage whisper. “How much longer are these things going to take?”

Two of the four socks were complete now. Rarity appeared to be on the edge of making a very dirty remark, but Carrot didn’t wait to hear it. While Allie was distracted by looking at the unicorn, and by the positively seductive gaskin-high socks, Carrot dropped her nose and plowed her the rest of the distance across the Boutique. Her tail twitched furiously. She wasn’t fit to be out in public much longer. “You know what? It’s okay,” she nickered hurriedly. “Just send Day along with them as soon as they’re done, okay? He’s a good lad.”

Allie found herself sliding out the door. She looked in bewilderment at Day. “Uh, alright. We’ll just see you in like a few minutes at home, okay? Day? That cool?”

Carrot Top turned just once, when she had almost passed out of sight. “Bring socks!” she hissed. Then the door swung shut behind her.

Day had stood in a sort of paralysis while this was going on. He sprang into action the moment they disappeared. Lurching towards the door, abortively, he reached out to the spot they’d occupied half a minute ago and then rushed to the window to watch them dash together through the early sprinkles of the storm.

He looked back and forth between the window, the socks, the roads outside and the garments which suddenly seemed to be taking shape at an agonizing snail’s pace. “Er—Miss Rarity? You said they wouldn’t be long now”

“A little patience, sir,” she said with an abruptly razor look. “I’m sure she’ll keep for half an hour longer.”

Half an hour! Day privately disagreed. Rather than going away last night, the sensation of being about to explode had only grown more unbearable.

Day already couldn’t see Carrot on the road outside the Boutique. By now, she and Allie were probably at Walnut Alley, and in five more minutes they’d be passing the train station. Ten minutes from now they would be crossing the town square, and in fifteen minutes, at Allie’s pace, they’d be up to the human end of Crayonberry Lane.

But what if Carrot Top decided to carry her? Then it might only take them five minutes to get home! With the mood she was in now, not to mention the burgeoning rain, Day couldn’t know that Carrot wouldn’t decide to scoop up his girlfriend at any second.

But he couldn’t catch up and head them off if he didn’t have the socks, could he? What could Carrot Top think if he left without waiting for the socks—no, no. The real question was, what was he even going to do? He was so desperate to catch them, but when he caught them—what? He had no idea.

But whatever it was, his heart told him it wasn’t worth taking chances about. “Now that I think about it,” he said with a loud cough, “I had better go with them. To make sure they don’t get…lost. I’d better go. I can come back and pick them up some time, if it isn’t a bother…” Still muttering explanations in this manner, he pushed at the door and found it, as he hadn’t found any door in six months, to be locked.

He frowned, unable to grasp the concept for a moment, and pushed again. It didn’t open. He couldn’t see any lock. So he pushed again. The door didn’t let him through. But it did give about half a centimeter, resisting with a cloud of pale whitish sparks.

“Come and sit with me for a moment, Day.”

He spun to the sound of the needles slowing, and found Rarity staring at him intently. Her horn was glowing.

Day didn’t move. It occurred to him to jump through one of the windows, showering shards of glass all over the street, but he hesitated when he began to consider the expense of the elegant panes which decorated the front walls of the Boutique.

“Tut-tut, Day. No need for such a hurry. Come here and have a cup of tea with me.” Day’s feet left the ground. Both of them at the same time. He began to pedal his legs with comic ferocity, to no effect whatsoever, as the unicorn simultaneously levitated him and set a table. She quickly arranged an elegant afternoon tea on a round furnishing tucked in the nook of a set of bay windows. Day was kept in midair until it was all properly done up with saucers, cups, a couple scones and a piping hot kettle of what smelled like jasmine tea, whereupon he was plonked firmly down across from Rarity and poured a serving.

Day struggled a bit, but he could tell it was futile; his bottom wouldn’t leave the seat. It felt like it was glued there. As Rarity dropped a couple cubes of sugar into her own drink with tortuous patience and little plonk-plonk sounds, Day reflected that his girlfriend and the mare were probably at Mulberry Boulevard by now.

He thought of asking Rarity what she wanted, but the look in her sapphire eyes said to Day that she would reveal it in her own good time. And, furthermore, that if he interrupted her she would probably start all over again. So Day took a sip of the tea, in the hopes that by appeasing her he could hasten the end. It was in fact delicious, but he burned his tongue and besides didn’t pay enough attention to enjoy the taste.

“So.” Rarity paused for a long, careful sip, took one bite of a scone, and paused to watch the bay windows filling up with droplets. “You’re an item with my friend Carrot Top, are you?”

Day opened his mouth and nodded humbly. “Yes’m.”

“She’s very fond of you. You know that.” Day nodded again. By this point, he was a bit slouched at the table, while the unicorn sat upright with infinite poise; even without overpowering magic, it was possible that her presence alone could have pinned him in place.

Another sip. A flash of lightning outside. “And you intend to treat her with respect, the way a pony deserves to be treated?”

Day nodded furiously, wishing there was a ‘yes to all’ nod he could have given. The corner of Mulberry and Watercress now—that was where Allie and Carrot probably were. But maybe there would be wagons blocking the bridge, like there often were. Yes, that was it. There were wagons at the bridge. They’d have to wait to cross. There was still hope. The worst hadn’t happened yet.

In fact, Allie was not at the bridge, but neither was she yet past the corner of Mulberry and Watercress. She was at a standstill—and trying to figure out if anything in her situation was changed by the nearly-blinding light before which Carrot Top was busy curtseying, blinking rapidly so that she could gaze openly upon the princess contained within.

She wondered how Celestia was here, for starters. There hadn’t been any plans for the princess to visit Ponyville, had there? No, she would have noticed. It was too important to Carrot Top for her to avoid paying attention to that sort of thing. Nor could Allie tell why Celestia was here on a drenched town road, but Carrot Top seemed beyond worrying such trivial questions.

Maybe this was just what Allie needed. After all, she was doing her best to pull this all off, but the more difficult the slope she tried to navigate, the more starkly it stood out that there was only so much one girl could do. How could anyone pass up the opportunity to learn from someone like an immortal princess? She’d give a lot for the wisdom of a thousand years, or the tranquility she felt radiating from the luminous being before her.

Allie quickly tried to remember how to curtsey, and wound up settling for dipping her head and stooping halfway to one knee. Carrot Top seemed to lie down on the ground, and Allie wondered how she could think this was a good time for a nap until she realized that the pony was prostrating herself.

“We thank you and thank the light, oh Celestia, for your presence which deigns to grace our dwelling place. May you think of us ever as your children, and may my heart forever walk in the light of day.”

Celestia’s mouth formed a small O momentarily, until she smiled and stepped closer to her subject, offering a gold-clad hoof to bid Carrot Top rise up. “I haven’t been greeted that way in quite some time,” she mused, in just the tone of voice that suggested it was a pleasant surprise to brighten up a monotonous day. “Is there something weighing on your heart, my little pony?”

Carrot Top, a bit dazed, shook her head emphatically. “No, Princess!” She pointed to Allie. “Actually, I wanted you to meet someone!”

Allie glanced up nervously. She felt her ears burn, Celestia’s attention turning to her.

“They didn’t like you very much at first, I think, but–” Carrot positively beamed in her direction. “Thanks to me, I think that’s all past now! You have two new loyal human subjects, Princess!” She smiled into the breach that was the unimposing but somehow bright face of the Princess, waiting on her every word.

Celestia’s head tilted. She smiled at Allie, and Allie grinned back. It seemed like all the warmth of the sun was contained in the smile.

“I wish Day could be here too.” Carrot poured on words to fill the silence. “He didn’t want to be like us. But don’t worry! I changed his mind for you.”

“My dear child,” said Celestia more gently than Allie even knew how to speak. “Did I ask you to do this for me?”

As Carrot Top’s entire posture trembled, flailing like a foal in a raging sea, Celestia loosely curled one angelic wing around the earth pony. Allie couldn’t hear what transpired on the other side of the alicorn feathers. She settled herself back onto one knee to wait for several minutes, until, with another rush of dry light, the princess was gone.

“Very good.” Rarity took another bite of her scone and pushed the plate aside for the sake of being dainty about it. “I wanted to take a moment to be perfectly clear about that, sir. Carrot Top has been a private mare for quite some time, and I’m happy for her, of course, but you are in every possible position to break her heart right now. And I do look after my friends in these sorts of matters.”

“Don’t you feel a little abashed saying these kinds of things to a stallion?” Day burst out. He had lived long enough in Ponyville by now to have absorbed its social scripts, and to be genuinely struck by something so far out of place.

Rarity raised an eyebrow over her teacup, eyelashes arcing along with it. “And does that mean you shouldn’t be responsible? Carrot Top and I have had our own talks,” she said, and her gaze fell away suddenly to one side, rolling off the table like an upended teacup. “At least…Celestia knows I’ve tried.”

Day surreptitiously wriggled; he could feel the magic glued to his bottom weakening as Rarity’s focus drifted. If the spell slipped from her just a bit more, he thought he could break free.

“Besides, you aren’t quite a stallion, sir,” she reminded him with a droll look up and down. “I’ve heard quite the rowdy stories about your sex from the more in-tune social circles in Manehatten. I do some work there from time to time, you know.”

The soft words struck home, and Day shrank shamefully into his seat, reminded of any number of uncomfortable facts about home. “Surely men aren’t that much trouble?” he muttered miserably.

The wagons which may or may not have been on the bridge could only be long gone now. Allie and Carrot Top would be turning past the market now. Maybe they would be distracted by Beignet…no. No, there was no chance of that. Carrot Top wouldn’t let herself get distracted.

Rarity’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and she forgot her spell a bit more as she leaned towards him. “Oh, don’t fret, please,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I–I’m sure they’re not at all bad on the whole. Why, no doubt there are plenty of simply wonderful herds with humans in them, just like—who was that pony, a cousin of Applejack’s? Braeburn. That was it. Why, I hear he’s in a wonderful relationship with three of your kind.”

Day nodded, folding his hands on the tablecloth.

Rarity poured some more tea. “Only,” she added, “I’ve seen how you look at her.”

“And?”

“And she’s not a toy. You had best remember that.”

Day echoed the words under his breath, replaying them distractedly. “Not a toy. Not a toy. No, she’s not a toy at all,” he repeated.

For a moment they sat rather quietly, Day trying to figure out how far he could wiggle without tipping Rarity off, and the unicorn staring at the torrent which now hammered with ten thousand fingers on the bay windows.

“Miss Rarity?” he said around a magnificent crack of thunder. “Have you ever been in love with somepony?”

Her eyes flew open to their whole lash-batting extent. She almost spilled her tea. But after a demure cough, she carefully set the saucer down and released her magic. “I suppose a little tit-for-tat is fair game,” she replied after a moment. “There was…oh,” she clicked her tongue, “there was this one overgrown colt, but…it seems like ever so long ago now.”

She had quite forgotten Day’s presence a mere sentence into her memories, and she stirred a near-empty glass without even noticing it. “At the time he was very dashing, and I was in love, as all fillies are, but—it was silly of me, I’m afraid. I don’t believe I knew what love was at the time. How very much I’ve grown.”

The panes flickered, white, black, white and rattled a bit, as if shivering with excitement. “Did he love you?” Day asked, leaning onto his elbows.

“Good Celestia, no. If he had anything even resembling love in any bone of his body, he would have been more concerned about how I was faring and less about the number of pearls on my gown. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have minded that my makeup was an utter mess by the end of that evening.”

She lowered her voice, as if to not be overheard by curious raindrops. “I must confess that many ponies here imagine me to be quite the expert on love, but you musn’t start spreading the same mistake. In truth, I’m not at all sure I know what love is anymore. But,” she added firmly, “I do know a thing or two about what love isn’t. I know that much.”

Day exhaled, leaving ripples on his tea. “I think you’re a very perceptive mare.”

She grinned. “Flattery, I’m afraid, will get you very far.”

“So there was only ever just the one? Surely there must have been a few men…a few herds, I mean, which would have wanted attention from you.”

“I suppose,” Rarity said, resting a cheek on her hoof and staring out the window. “But it was never quite what I wanted.”

“And what do you want?” Day whispered.

She looked up and grunted. “Do you know what it’s like to be the center of somepony’s world? I had a fairy tale that I would have given everything to live. I wasted the best of my youth dreaming that I’d find somepony who would be totally in love with me…and only me.” A sigh. “Selfish of me, not to want to share. It’s probably for the best that nopony indulged such a self-centered impulse. I’m starting think that kind of love can’t possibly exist. Not really. Do…you feel that way, sir?”

Day was about to nod, but he caught himself. One of his hands was trembling. To keep the other still, he gripped hard on the table. “No,” he said, beginning to stammer all over.

“I try–” Cutting herself off, Rarity squinted at him. “Why, are you alright?”

Day answered her by pushing himself to his feet in a clatter of serving ware, and hurling himself headlong into the storm.

It couldn’t be anything other than too late now. Day also couldn’t do anything but sprint, even through the muddy patches between cobbles where the paving was bad around the corners of the market. The very few ponies that were outside, and not by desire, called at him to slow down as he passed, lest he slip on his sparse set of legs and give himself a nasty bump.

The thunder was now drumming a regular tattoo overhead. Ponyville was generally a very sunny part of Equestria, but when they did get storms, Rainbow Dash was fond of playing up the lightning. It wasn’t one of the traits that made her popular with the town; aside from pegasi, ponies hated to be outside during a downpour.

Even when late to work, Day had never crossed Ponyville at this speed. But still, he didn’t meet Carrot Top or Allie on the road. He knew he wouldn’t. He pushed himself so hard that when he burst through his door, he had to stop and spend a long minute catching his breath, collapsed against the wall of the den hallway.

He didn’t hear anything inside. He didn’t see much of the room, either. Someone had turned off all of the lights. But his eyes were quickly adjusting, because it wasn’t all that bright outside. The raindrops were drumming on his memories. It wasn’t because of the darkness that the living room wasn’t what he saw.

This is what he saw.

At first, outlined shadows. The shape of an umbrella stand, a mud mat, a lightswitch. All of human proportions. All utterly mundane. Day was leaning against another beige wall, very close to a lightswitch, but instead of simply hitting it and striding inside the Earth-side apartment, he paused in the dark to collapse against the drywall and just breathe.

It was a long, dark pause which Day had had occasion to use several times in his life—a moment, escaped from the demands of the daylight world, when he could try to catch up with it all. Normally Day prided himself on being able to handle the stresses of everyday life, so he only used it on occasions when the act of moving forward seemed a particularly heavy yoke.

On this particular day, he should have been light as a feather, given all he’d accomplished. He had finished his final report for a project which had won him an award from IEEE. It was entirely his own brainchild, an exhaustive and brilliant analysis of certain obscure problems facing the miniaturization of capacitors and other components. It was not necessarily the sort of project which would move the industry forward in great leaps and bounds, but it had been a terrifically thorny problem from a mathematical standpoint, and Day had pursued it mainly for the challenge. The insights required to detail the phenomenon had been very original, and when Day had gotten his first ideas, he’d been quite proud of himself, throwing his days into overtime with a vengeance in order to obtain a small grant for the study. It was a feat, he knew, that only a handful of engineers in his generation could have matched, at least in the amount of time it had taken Day.

And now everything was submitted, timestamped, and more or less wrapped up with a pretty bow. Nothing about today had gone contrary to Day’s expectations—nothing had gone out of the ordinary at all. But then, perhaps that was it. It had been exactly like every other day.

He hadn’t called his mother. It would have been a waste of time even trying to explain what he had done. He hadn’t called his father. He hadn’t bothered calling anyone, in fact. And he hadn’t talked much to his friends today, even the ones he carpooled with. They had gone on about their vacations and the last football game, about normal things which they talked about every day. And there was no reason they shouldn’t have talked about such things today. But Day, though he normally joined in, had stayed quiet and held his award to his chest, underneath his suitcase.

In a sudden fit of oddness he had tried explaining his theories to a homeless man on a bench, but the man had only sneered grittily at him and demanded a dollar, which Day had duly handed over.

As he usually did whenever he found himself losing money to strangers, Day reprimanded himself for being silly. He’d had some vague notion that there would be a commotion when it finally happened—that what happened in the isolation of his office would suddenly be released into the world, like a long kept-secret project in an underground lab taking the world by storm. That there would be a kind of ceremony perhaps, with flashing cameras, like on TV, and that people he knew would be there looking on in awe.

Time had been when he would have at least called mother, and made the effort to talk through it even knowing that the words meant nothing to her. Because even if there was no slap on the back, no one to appreciate a job well done, mother would have tried to say something helpful, like, “It sounds like you’re doing wonderful, dear,” or, “I always knew you would do great things.”

Now he felt guilty just thinking about pestering her. What did anyone care about capacitors, when you got right down to it? After months poring over them—what did he really care about capacitors? After paging through explorer’s journals of a world called Equestria, and after scouring the net for information on the cultures of words beyond the pale of dimensions, he would stand by himself and wonder if all his work wasn’t a waste of time.

These moments, Day realized as his forehead began to sweat into the wall, had been occurring with increasing frequency since First Contact. He was just digging into the mystery of why when suddenly his lights came on.

Day stepped forward into his tiny dining room, looking about in shock. This wasn’t the home he had left this morning. It was as though a natural disaster had passed through. There were paper ribbons thrown over everything, a new tablecloth on the table, and balloons filled with real helium bobbing against the ceiling. There were bottles of soda on the table, next to a cake slathered tastelessly in pink frosting. Over a doorway, a string of cardboard letters had been tacked together to spell ‘Day, World’s Greatest Engineer’ with all the exclamation marks in the bag appended afterwards.

Allie was standing under those letters wearing a conical paper hat. It was eleven o’clock at night. She bounced, clapped and yelled ‘Surprise!’ the vey second he stepped forward.

The cake said ‘Happy Birthday’, which wasn’t really appropriate, but there were only two guests at this party, and both of them voted that it didn’t really matter. It tasted like cardboard, as cake invariably did when Allie picked one out. It was the best thing Day had ever eaten.

There were many such nights buried in Day’s memory—more, in fact, than he had remembered there being. He had to pull himself out of them in order to keep moving forward in the present.

Forcing himself up with two last deep breaths, he muddled his way through the Ponyville home, reaching out to feel his way along the walls. His foot ran into something, and he picked it up. It was a shirt.

Dropping it, he stumbled forward. He ran into a pair of jeans next, with a narrow pink belt that had been undone.

A few feet after that he ran into his couch, too, because even though he could sort of make out what was in front of him, he hadn’t really been paying attention.

He hung there, with his arms dangling over the back, and found himself staring straight at his bedroom door. The door hadn’t been closed this morning, but it was now.

Day scrambled off the couch and barreled through. “Allie,” he cried out, casting about until she found her in the room. He took a step towards her, but stuck there and stumbled as if he had hit something again.

“Please,” he meant to say, but it came out extremely weak, and faded completely before he could even finish the unintelligible word.

Carrot Top stopped what she was doing, though she had been doing it with a great deal of focus, and hopped onto the floor. She came to Day with a look of alarm on her face. Day fell past her, stumbling the final two steps to where Allie lay. He threw his arms out as he fell to the knees so that his hands were touching her side.

“Day!” Allie was just as distraught by his sudden appearance. She repeated his name several times over, scooting awkwardly towards him so that she could wrap her arms around his upper back and lift his fallen head to see what was the matter.

Carrot Top, just as concerned, laid a fetlock on his shoulder from behind.

Day made an effort to pull the quilt over his girlfriend’s shoulders, though most of it was trapped under her legs. “Please…” he said, fading again.

When Allie pulled her legs away from Carrot Top, who had been idly caressing them this entire time, the pony’s face folded into an angry frown.

“What’s with you?” she demanded. “I slept with you last night. And now I can’t even touch your girlfriend?” Air billowed from her nostrils. “What? Because she’s your property or something? She can’t decide for herself?” A stamp. “Day, I love you, but I don’t know how much more of this nonsense I can take. What is wrong with you?”

Day sucked in a deep, body-wracking breath.

“I’m jealous,” he shouted. And then, for a good long while, he sobbed brokenly into the arms of the woman he loved.

He felt—not exactly better, after that moment—but a good deal calmer, the way a ticking time bomb might feel after it has finally exploded into bits.

Day cried for a long, talking about many things Allie couldn’t quite make out. Much of the time she didn’t think he quite made it out either.

Some of his words came through. He spent a lot of time talking about different things they had done together, long ago. It terrified Allie that she couldn’t tell why he was bringing up these memories now.

He also spent a lot of words on praising her, the same way he often did when taking her on a romantic date. Normally his silly, overly poetic flattery made Allie laugh and kiss him, but for once Allie didn’t feel like laughing. She was still terrified. Day had never been quite like this before. He’d been sad before, of course, but it had always been a strong and quiet kind of sorrow, the kind of sorrow where he would sit by himself for a long time and stare at the stars.

She pressed her cheek against the top of his head and whispered fiercely while squeezing the awkward hug she had around him.

“Shh. It’s alright.” Allie didn’t know what else to do. It scared her out of her mind that she might be doing the wrong thing and making an even worse mess of it all. It felt like being blinded with a poker, suddenly being confused by someone as predictable as Day.

“M’sorry,” Day was saying over and over. “I should leave—should leave you two–don’t deserve to be here–”

“I wouldn’t send you away!” Allie tried to quell his trembling by tightening her embrace again, though it was all but suffocating him. “I just wanted you to be happy.”

With that exclamation, she added a splash of tears to the pool herself, but then sniffled and recovered herself.

Allie smiled wanly over the wisps of Day’s hair. “Heh…I’m not being a gentlemare, now, am I?” She bent even more into her boyfriend. “I’d forgive you no matter what,” she whispered. “I want to be with you.”

For a moment she rocked him back and forth, rubbing his back and listening to the sounds he made. All was quiet in the room, and there was little sound of the storm outside.

She gasped and stared skyward. “Oh God…we have to stop.”

Suddenly, her throat hitched; immediately after those words, Allie looked up into the face of Carrot Top. She’d almost forgotten about her. The pony had been standing silently in front of her this whole time, for—how long?—only trying to catch her attention. Only trying to look either of them in the eyes.

Allie’s voice choked entirely. She shifted her grip on Day so that he was moved behind her.

“I mean…” She reached out with one arm taken off of Day’s back, and Carrot Top stepped backwards out of reach. “No, Carrot Top. We can make this work.” She went on desperately, saying everything that came to her to pull Carrot back. “We can talk about this, right? That can make it all better. That’s what a herd is supposed to do.”

The pony’s eyes were still liquid wide. Allie waited for her to come back, but her head only shook in a daze.

Allie gasped in frustration. Her fingers curled against the sheets. “Don’t worry, he really likes you. You—you just went too fast, that’s all. We’ll try again different and it’ll be great.”

But still those alien eyes glimmered like garnets.

“You two obviously have something very special,” Carrot Top managed to say in a strained voice. She swallowed. “And I’m happy for you.”

Here the pony cut herself off abruptly, and instead of saying whatever she had been planning to say, she turned and ran.

Allie lunged for Carrot Top, reacting when she spun towards the bedroom door. She was struck totally off-guard when she actually caught the mare. There was no way for her to match the speed of an earth pony. But nevertheless, a thick length of Carrot’s tail was snagged in between her fingers, more than enough to hold the pony in place long enough for a few more words.

But Allie hadn’t expected to succeed, and she didn’t know what to do at this point. Carrot Top didn’t move because her tail would have hurt like crazy had she tried to tug, but neither did she turn around. She stood there. Waiting.

Slowly, painfully, Allie let go, her fingers letting slip the curling locks of orange. The last one fell away like a skein of saliva, and Carrot’s tail dropped back onto her haunches. Even after the pony had galloped away, Allie hadn’t come up with anything to call after her.

Soundtrack: “In Too Deep” by Genesis

Once beyond the doors of the house, Carrot Top dashed with her head down so nopony would see what her face was like. But in the kind of rain that was bucketing outside, no one could have noticed anyway.

And her farmhouse was clear on the other side of Ponyville. And she was suddenly tired. By the time she made it as far as the town square, she didn’t have the will to gallop headlong anywhere, or even to canter. She walked past the town square, kicking a pebble ahead of her every few steps.

Ponies passed in both directions, on the ground and on the wing. Of those that weren’t weatherponies, most were on their way to shelter of some form or other, and most called out to Carrot by name as they passed, urging her to pick up her hooves and get out of the wet as they flickered by like scenes in a pop-up book.

Carrot Top didn’t pick up her hooves. She shuffled past the train station, and then Watercress Lane. The south bridge turned out to be flooded, because it was a flat footbridge, and while Carrot might have been able to ford it on a normal day, the water was rushing angrily with storm-swell. So she turned around, and one hoofstep at a time went back the way she’d come. She turned right at the town square instead of left, and went the east bridge, which was a sturdy stone arch, and detoured around the outside of town on dirt lanes turned to mud.

There was a large stick lying across the center of the path. It had been knocked down by the wind. So she picked it up in her mouth and dumped to the side.

There was a hill. She walked to the top, and then she walked back down the other side.

She crossed an intersection. She crossed another bridge. She turned off near the old hill with the oak, and towards Sweet Apple Acres. The gate in the road had been swung shut by the wind again, so she kicked at the bottom of it. It swung open.

Princess Celestia once wrote and illustrated a book, entitled The Royal Pony Sisters, when in the course of uniting the three primeval tribes it became the case that too many ponies sought her advice, and too many the valuable records of her memory, for her to see to them all. In her writings, which often turned into musings on the mysteries of life—as those of an ancient mind were wont to—she set several records straight and left as much of her most cherished wisdom to her subjects as possible, so that their lives, though short, could be illuminated by all the light she could give them.

It has been added to here and there by the more meddlesome of scholars over the centuries, and experienced some inevitable corruption when being translated, as it must be, whenever the ever-flowing Equus language leaves it behind. But with just a little supervision from the original author, it has preserved its core intent, and all of the most important passages. Even those ponies who care little for the thoughts of alicorns are exposed in their school years to the famous first chapters of the book, filled with astounding descriptions of Equestria’s beginning, and patriotic promises extoling the virtues of Harmony.

And the Light took pity and begged to come down to the rock, where it took on the form of a mare,

that all might see and know that they were loved. (Celestia 1:2)

But according to Carrot Top’s younger mother, Carrot Grater—who taught her to be a gentlemare always—the most important passage in this book is a small, forgotten set of verses buried deep in the middle. It is a short chapter, unremarkable, and cut entirely from abridged versions. It tells the story of a visit by the Princess to a tiny village, and her brief conversation with a hopefully filly who is paralyzed by the fear of being rejected by the stallion of her dreams.

Go to him—don’t wait until tomorrow. You have so little time. But if he does not return your

affections, don’t cry. Your heart is no less beautiful for it. It is in loving, not in being loved, that you

shine with the splendor of the sun. (Celestia 37:15)

Carrot Top remembered neither of those passages that evening. She was not thinking about books.

Fifteen years from today, on the dirt track between Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres, three teenage ponies frolic down the lane.

Their boundless energy would send them along a mile a minute, but that they keep stopping to jostle each other, bump each other out of the road or stomp all four hooves and belt out a crude joke or a harmless insult. One pony tussles another into a headlock, a third breaks them apart. One jumps up on a fence, high-wire trotting in a vain acrobatic display, and the others pull her down before she can hurt herself.

From behind, it looks as though they are prancing into the sunset, which is wide and burning on this particular evening, melting into the ground as if the road leads straight for the glowing heart of Celestia herself. The foals’ laughter and roughhousing seems energized by this backdrop, as if they have some unconscious sense of the portrait painted by their shadows, on this road, where the hoofbeats of millions of ponies have sounded before them.

The pony on the right, a chestnut-and-strawberry colored filly, will be the one that listens most often to the story of how Amadeus quietly asked to be transferred back to Earth just after dropping out of the Royal Guard military research program, and summarily out of the pages of history. She will be the only daughter who notices something out of place in the frenzied way Carrot Top dotes upon the five stallions she marries, loving and sturdy ponies all who provide her with three healthy foals in quick succession. Their marriage will draw no stares from anypony else—in fact, most of town will look upon the herd with admiration. It will seem a strong and healthy bond, unmarred except by one much-hushed and inexplicable affair with a human in Toronto, during an equally inexplicable trip made by their mother without any warning.

And after her mother’s death, when this filly is finally forced to move out on her own, she will flit from lover to lover, and even from world to world, as if searching for something that she can never quite find.

The middle filly has a cyan coat and navy blue mane, with a single streak of red. The sunset proudly alights upon her cutie mark, an icon in glassblowing which takes after one of her fathers. Her greatest talent, which will make her a craftsmare of the highest echelons in Canterlot, will be a rare capacity to judge how quickly a piece of glass is capable of expanding, and how far it can change shape without breaking.

The pony on the left is a colt with a humble chocolate coat and a blonde mane. He will be the only one of his siblings who learns The Royal Pony Sisters from cover to cover, and we will respond to his late mother’s passing by taking a place in the Royal Canterlot Guard. Unlike his sisters, and the young brothers which he will have by then, he will never marry. But he will be a cornerstone for the tiny community of weathered and lonely stallions which fill his barracks. Over thick mead, these stallions will one day surprise each other by each claiming confidence that he might have asked them to be his beloved, had he been just a bit more willing to seek his own happiness.

But they will never say that this colt seems unhappy; indeed, his infectious good humor will be immortalized in long-remembered fireside toasts ‘to the good lad’.

Carrot Top didn’t make it home until after dark. The storm was over by then, and the sky achingly clear. The bullfrogs were out—content as they always were in the summer, for all they really wanted was a little water and plenty of bugs to catch. The door still squeaked on its hinges, and her left-hind horseshoe still struck to her foot when she tried to pry it off.

She didn’t go into bed. It wasn’t even worth attempting to toss and turn in her frayed sheets. After doing something with herself that she had never done before, because she had always been taught that it was shameful, she went outside and dug her hooves deep into the loam of her vegetable patch.

The loam thrummed under her. Then in beat within her, quaking its way up her hooves and pumping a rhythm through her veins. Carrot Top wriggled her hooves even farther into the soft soil, as deep as she dared. She soaked it in the way the green shoots of a young carrot would soak up rainwater. All of Ponyville was within her senses now, and she could feel each yard of it, warm, embracing, eager to listen as well as speak. She tried to fill herself up with the chanting of dirt and stone, to leave no room for anything else inside her.

It didn’t work, of course. Her restlessness never disappeared, and though she wanted to fall asleep, there was clearly not a hope of it. So might as well take a moment to relax. Carrot leaned on her picket fence and stared up at the sky, where a full moon was tracing an unperturbed arc through the stillness. She sucked in a deep breath of Luna’s night, staring at the cold, untouched white of the moon–

And she held it–

Closing Notes

Let's see, how do I possibly go about summing this up?

It's been fun.

Three, nearly four times over the last couple years of Bronydom, I found equines swirling too much in my head to let me write anything else. Thrice I began to pen literature under that dreaded label--'fanfiction' (insert some spooky noises for full effect)--and thrice I threw it away as garbage.
But as Celestia has hopefully taught us, labels will not get you far in life. Eventually, I said to myself, 'Dawn, you'll never get this out of your system until you buckle down and really do it.'
I am so glad that I did. I'd like to thank every single reader who showed their appreciation, which means, perhaps, more to me than you will ever know. I'd also like to give a shout-out to all of my friends on mlpforums--'Dennis', if you're reading this, Rainbow Dash still loves you <3. Last, but not least, my heartfelt appreciation goes to Lauren Faust for everything she has taught me. Taught us.
I'd start thanking my favorite fan-fic authors too, but we'd be here all day.

I'm not going to discuss the story itself here. I have said exactly what I meant to say over the past 70,000 words. In fact, in the comments I've probably already said too much. I am at great risk for becoming one of those authors who hovers obsessively over every single comment made about their story. It's not my job to explain what I've said any more than I already have.
That's your job.

I have ideas for a sort of spiritual sequel to The Faith of Carrot Top, and--who knows?--someday I may write it. But the truth is, I need to take a little hiatus from Equestria. There's a whole universe out there to explore, and I can't let ponies monopolize my imagination all the time, as fun as that may be. So this is farewell, for now. I have one final thank-you to present: to all of bronydom, for the past two years of life, laughter, and friendship. I dedicate this work to all the poor lads who fancy ponies, and I enjoin upon you the truth of love which lives in every heart.

Och! May the Light shine upon you all of your days.

Author's Note

EDIT: Sequel (actually a prequel) has been written. You can find it here.

Chapter 1: The Gentlemare

Ten Years After First Contact

It began, as do so many things, with something unusual in Ponyville.

It wasn’t that a human stood dead-center on Crayonberry Lane, with his hands in the pocket of a crisp suit. That wasn’t terribly unusual, because Day was not the first human to visit Ponyville. He would have liked to be—he had wasted days and nights dreaming of such things—but those had been silly dreams. Besides, he was here now. Better late than never.

It wasn’t even that he had been still for ten minutes, seemingly content to do nothing but stand and watch the creatures which passed him at sternum height. Ponyvilleans were used to maudlin humans.

The unusual thing was a certain trembling which occasionally flowed in waves to his hands, though he would grab one in the other and wring them to keep them still. He was in the center of a picturesque moment, but there was something which niggled at the edge of his mind—he couldn’t remember what it was.

This might seem like a very small thing, but the denizens of Ponyville were used to their visiting humans being made quite happy by their time here. If anypony passing had been sufficiently studied in human body language to pick up the shadow in Day’s mood, they would have wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with this one.

If asked, Day would have answered that he was having a wonderful evening. But he would have been lying, to keep anyone from feeling obligated to inquire further into his life. His suit, which had seemed like a marvelous idea at the time, was clearly doing nothing to impress anypony, as equines hardly recognized the formalwear on hm. His dark hair was getting a bit on the shaggy side and desperately needed a trim. He felt like a mess, not at all fit to make his first appearance in another dimension.

He’d arrived in Ponyville to find that his purchase of the house hadn’t gone through properly—something to do with the contract being in the wrong format for the wrong bank at the wrong time. The realtor pony had been unbelievably understanding, and had opened the house up for him anyway without even asking for a down payment, but by the time that happened Day had already paid for a week’s time at a hostel, so there went that much money down the drain.

He knew that he should have been the owner of the place exactly a week before the date his Dimension Gate tickets had been booked for. So the afternoon had been spent in expensive, cross-planar long distance calls to his bank back home, trying to sort out the mess.

The end result was that he hadn’t even begun unpacking yet, though the day was almost over. He had to get up tomorrow, too, because there would be an orientation at work in the morning for all the new arrivals. At least, if the passenger rail on this world was as timely as everypony made it out to be, there would be enough time for breakfast.

Day could have gone inside and unpacked before going to bed, trying to recuperate in time for tomorrow. The rooms were still occupied by an invading host of brown boxes slathered in packing tape. But it was Day’s first evening on another world—right here, right now. The sun had ripened into a brassy orb, braising the streets in gold as if Celestia meant to make the most of her last hours with the sky. A crowd of ponies flowed in both directions along the alley, taking care of their business but also taking time to prance occasionally in the sunlight, as if they, too, were conscious of making the most out of what glow remained to drip along the eaves.

Day surprised himself by deciding that it was the perfect time to take a walk—a sort of thing he’d never done before.

Although it did make sense that he should get to know his new home. Ponyville was an unassuming hamlet fifty miles from Canterlot, and Day was only here because it was close to the project headquarters. What with his reading habits, he knew more about Equestria than some humans who had been here before, and yet he’d never even heard of Ponyville until the same day he found himself forwarding his mail to an address there.

Although it seemed to have a few local claims to fame. Day had heard that one of the inventors of the Dimension Gate—some purple unicorn whose name he couldn’t remember—still resided here.

The city proper was small, but the streets had been laid out without any apparent logic. Instead of working to get you where you needed to go, they seemed more interested in taking you on a scenic tour of balcony windows and cobbles roads. It didn’t bother him; he had been in this world for only hours, and there was something new to see around every corner. There were little differences, everywhere, tucked under the guises of familiarity. The ceilings were a little lower, half of the doorways looked like barn stalls, and there was pink on just about everything. Pink on the buildings, pink on the carriages, pink on the ponies. Pink utterly unabashed, and almost regal in its prolific volume. Clearly, the color pink commanded a respect in Equestria which knew nothing of its marginalized status on Earth.

Day kept to himself, speaking to nopony except when necessary. He was an old hand at not drawing attention to himself. There were a few stares thrown at him every now and then, and that was to be expected with the way he towered over the crowd, but by large the residents of Ponyville paid for less attention to Day than he paid to them.

He did keep a sharp lookout for bipeds. In addition to the usual mix of donkeys, cows, and the odd griffon, there were–or so Day had heard–other humans living in this town. Apparently, right around First Contact, there had been a number of number of people who were particularly excited by the arrival of ponies, while most of mankind was still trying to figure out when Equestria would drop the impossible sunshine-and-rainbows charade to begin the abductions and brain-siphoning. Nopony Day questioned ever seemed to remember exactly why. But, apparently, a large number of these trusting humans had packed up and flocked to Ponyville, out of all places in Equestira. It seemed like very odd behavior to Day, but he had to admit that this was a charming little town. Besides, it wasn’t Earth. That was good enough for him at this point. That made it an adventure.

He also made careful note of any amenities he’d need while he lived here. The train station was easy enough to find, since the locomotives here were old-fashioned coal behemoths; a great white column of smoke followed the engine wherever it went. He also found a post office, wedged in between a pair of residences, and done some window shopping for stamps. There were no e-mails in Equestria–at least, there wouldn’t be until Day’s project gave ponies the tools they needed to type them. He suspected he’d have to get used to writing letters by hand again. The place was surprisingly small, for a world without electronic communication; a wall-eyed but surprisingly pleasant mare behind the counter explained to him that most of the mail was delivered by pegasus, and so the majority of the packing floor existed on a cloud city near to Ponyville.

A city of clouds! It sent Day roaming the street for high spots, straining his eyes in all directions until he thought he spotted it behind a mountain.

It was after thoroughly losing himself in this escapade that Day’s stomach began to note the time. When it finally complained loudly enough to risk drawing attention, he forced himself to consider dinner.

Luck would have it that he was at the edge of the open-air market just then, and the instant the smell of food came to mind, his mouth began watering like a switch had been flipped. He couldn’t help but suddenly noticed that he was surrounded by a profusion of vivid, fresh produce, including a giant cart with the largest, juiciest-looking apples Day had ever seen in his life. If that was what they even were—this was a whole new world, after all.

At home, on the counter, was a stack of microwaveable meals which pressed against the ceiling. Each one was packaged with everything short of a legal guarantee of tasteless safety. Work was advising everyone they relocated to take their time acclimating to life in Equestria. Culture shock, allergies to alien microbes, and other such hiccups could put a dent in productivity. When he’d packed the TV dinners, Day had fully expected to live contently off of them for his first few weeks here. But suddenly he had to dig his heels, because his palette turned at the very thought of them.

And, despite all of his better judgments, he found himself throwing a bit of caution to the wind. What the heck? It was a night for exploration.

At first he made a beeline for the apple cart, but by the time he got within ten feet of it, he’d found the line, which extended a good deal farther. Day didn’t want to stand around until dark just to find something to eat, so, with a little reluctance, he tore his eyes away from the full red globes. There had to be plenty of other options here.

There was a stand selling cherries across the way. That looked pretty enticing, until Day realized that the stallion behind the counter was charging by the cherry. He didn’t really feel like making a dinner out of celery stalks or raw asparagus. One booth had piping hot beignets, and that caught his nose’s attention, but Day managed to get in line just as the last one ran out.

Fragrant-smelling hay, sold in a large tent, was priced by the bale and in plentiful supply, but Day wasn’t feeling quite that adventurous.

Finally he stumbled over a small stand near the edge of the market, painted lime green and manned by a single orange pony. There were only two customers in line, and Day caught sight of carrots as he approached.

Normally he didn’t like his vegetables any more than the next human, but Day was partial to carrots. His childhood overflowed with memories of buying them by the bag at school lunch lines, in the hopes that if he consumed enough, he wouldn’t need to wear the glasses that embarrassed him so much at school. Day’s nose was just a little too wide to be attractive, and a little too flat to be practical; any pair of glasses was constantly falling off of his face, and being called ‘four-eyes’ would have been a mercy in his youth.

Alas, he was navigating the streets tonight with contacts. That scheme had finally thrown in the towel at about the age of nine. Still, a nice carrot—it had been a while. That might actually hit the spot.

“Two, please.” He held up fingers, just in case he got the words wrong, but the earth mare behind the counter seemed to understand his Equus. She set about chopping the leafy caps off a pair of carrots.

Day looked intently at the way she held the knife steady with nothing but the cleft of her hoof, terrified that she was going to cut herself until it became clear that she knew what she was doing. It was almost magical. For the first time, it seemed possible to design a keyboard that a being such as this could use.

He also watched intently when she picked up his food in her mouth to move it around. But he was starkly determined to say nothing at all about it. With the advent of tourism and casual travel, sprung up a few years ago after the First Contact fireworks died down, the stereotypical image of the narrow-minded, entitled American had begun spreading to other worlds. And Day knew that he was being overly dramatic whenever he felt like an ambassador for his entire race, but there was something about Equestria’s native race that made him need desperately to put his best foot forward.

His travel advisor said it was perfectly normal, and to ignore it. That was what they said to everyone. Many a human shown about this world, with its wars behind it and its social inequities on the run, a world where children were brought up taught to do what they loved and where kindness was celebrated over wealth—far too many a human fell to their knees and wept the first time. It had quite distressed a number of ponies in First Contact who hadn’t been at all sure what was wrong.

And it was a brash man indeed who could do anything but cover their face in shame whenever a pony, eyes wide with what looked like innocence (though it was really just curiosity), asked what life on Earth was like. Crime, senseless violence, and factory farming loomed heavy like the specters of original sin.

The anthropologists did their best to reassure the rest of the species, insisting that it was all a psychological coincidence, which was a fancy way of saying it was all in one’s head. They explained with reassuringly long words that it wasn’t fair to compare an omnivorous species from a turbulent, tectonic planet to an herbivorous herd species from a small, magically-charged one. Ponies themselves, eager to participate in any act of comforting, further reassured the troubled that they were quite used to dealing with both carnivorous and territorial species. Equestria was full of dragons and griffons, they said. It was quite alright, they said.

Surprisingly few humans took the boon of listening to either. Most seemed almost eager to admit, with a wistful smile, that notwithstanding any number of hard facts or long words, ponies were the betters of men.

Science 0, The Heart 1. The bases of the multiverse were loaded and Day was up to bat.

Meanwhile, the mare rinsed his carrots in a tin pail of water and dried them by towel. Day was fascinated by the mechanics of her movement. He’d seen ponies hundreds of times before, but never so close, and in real life. The way her forelegs joined to her barrel, the way muscles in her flanks bunches as she pivoted on her hooves to turn to one shelf or another, and the adorable way her muzzle wrinkled when she stared cross-eyed at whatever was in her mouth; it was all tinged with something exotic and new.

This particular pony had a tabby orange coat, complimented by a spectacularly curly mane in much the same shade as the vegetables she was currently wrapping in brown paper. As she turned to one side, Day caught sight of a colored icon in the shape of three carrots.

The pony noticed him staring when she turned to give him his food, and just as Day made the series of mental leaps and displacements of perspective necessary to realize what general region of his vendor he was gaping at, and just what that might imply. He straightened and tried to stammer out a red-faced apology, but the words got scrambled, made an abortive takeoff from his tongue and shattered on the cobbles at his feet.

The mare indulged in a little chuckling before waving him a hoof. “It’s alright,” she smirked. “You can look.” She swiveled again so he could see the mark on her other flank. “It’s all good to have a peek at a pony’s cutie mark,” she reassured him. “Just don’t gawk all day and you’ll be grand.”

Exhaling gratefully, Day picked up the parcel she had pushed across the counter. “Is it that obvious that I’m new here?”

“I haven’t been invited to a party in your honor yet, so I’d say yes. Carrot Top, by the way. That’ll be three bits.”

“Amadeus–or Day, if you like, Miss. At your service.” He added a gentlemanly nod in an attempt to regain a scrap his dignity. But it lasted only until his hand, reaching into his back pocket, encountered a wallet full of crumpled bills.

His hand crossed the distance to his face like a slow-burn thunderbolt, eliciting a smack that widened Carrot Top’s green eyes in alarm. His posture came to a Halt and Catch Fire stop.

Bits. How could he have forgotten something so simple? The house had been taken care of, the furniture, directions to the center of Flankstaff…he should have known he’d forget something. But he hadn’t stopped to think, and now, only three hours in a whole new world, he’d managed to screw things up. So much for combating stereotypes about humans. What choice did Day have now but to look like he was begging for special treatment? He felt like scum just having to think about it. The only reason he didn’t consider bolting was that there was clearly nowhere to run.

“I…seem to have forgotten to change my money.” Day pushed up on the bridge of his nose, a nervous habit leftover from days when wire frames were constantly slipping down his face. Carrot was still looking at him—looking rather concerned, actually. “I don’t suppose you take USD?”

One ear folded to the back as Carrot raised the other eyebrow. “Not normally, no.” She took in his face and then smiled as if he was a lost puppy in a cardboard box. “But…”

Her eyes closed now, her voice rising and falling as if she was reciting a poem aloud.

Take this newcomer as a guest into your home; is not every mare your sister? You say you want no

strangers in your town, and indeed, you should have none; so shower each one with friendship until

no one is a stranger any longer. (Celestia 29:197)

Day shuffled his feet. “I…pardon?”

Carrot’s eyes shot open. “Sorry, did I do that again? Old habit.”

“But what was it? If you don’t mind my inquiring.”

“From the writings of Princess Celestia, of c–Oh. I suppose you wouldn’t know much of them, would you?”

“I’m not ignorant!” Day snapped up straight. “I don’t just blunder around. I learned as much about your culture as possible.” Though this, strictly speaking, wasn’t true—he’d picked up more than enough about Equestria in his spare time to be a shoe-in candidate for a position here. Who knew how much information Day could have absorbed if he’d been consciously putting effort into it?

“It’s alright, it’s alright!” Carrot Top looked a little alarmed by his vigorous defense. “You did nothing wrong. Och, half the ponies here don’t know any of her words. I keep forgetting they don’t make the foals memorize chapters anymore. They’re good lads all, but in Ponyville we tend to take the Avatar of the Sun a little…glibly.” A soft-edged shrug. “Anywho, you can go on and pay with whatever you have. I’ll change it with Sand Dollar later.”

“Thank you so much.” Day counted out a couple bills, then froze again. What was the going exchange rate between bits and dollars? Deciding that it would be criminally rude not to make sure he had paid enough, he ended up putting three dollars in front of Carrot Top. She could keep the change. “You’re an angel. Just—I really am so sorry about this, Miss, and I promise on my honor it won’t happen again.”

“It’s no problem.” Carrot Top swished her tail dismissively.

“No, really. The very first thing I’ll do tomorrow is exchange for plenty of bits. I simply can’t thank you enough for being so very understanding, and…”

He reeled off short as Carrot Top hopped off of her forelegs, propping them up on the counter and crossing the limbs over each other in a debonair fashion. “What’s an angel?” she drawled with a wide white smile.

“Oh.” It took Day a moment to drag up the word he’d used without thinking. Now why had that image come to mind? “They’re these mythical creatures, you understand…” He waved a hand through the air. “They have…wings, I suppose...”

Carrot smiled lopsidedly. “I got some friends with wings, lad. But you might be talking to the wrong pony just now.”

“Well, no, it’s a turn of phrase, you see. You might say someone’s an angel if they’re particular kind, or beautiful, or–” he stammered. “But I meant kind!”

Carrot took on a hurt expression and placed a forehoof on her chest, just below the V of her collarbone. “What, you don’t think I’m beautiful? And here I thought you were being sweet.”

Day stammered another few red seconds away before gathering the will to forge on through the conversation, which by this point seemed to him quite dangerously out of control. “You’re very beautiful!” he blurted quickly. “That is, I’m sure you are, as a pony. I’m sure the stallions’ heads all turn when you go by—err, that is, in a…totally non-offensive and socially appropriate manner…I hope.”

Carrot Top emitted a loud braying noise. Day tensed up again before realizing that the pony was laughing. “You’re very sweet for a carnivore,” she said, once she’d recovered herself. “If you really want to make up for it that bad, lemme’ bop you on the nose.”

Day made a noise which, unbeknownst to him, was a very good approximation of the sound made by a juvenile blue whale beached on a bed of nails and strong coffee grounds.

The mare’s expression demanded a bit more clarity.

“Would you care to ask that again?”

Carrot Top hopped on all four legs. “I’ve wanted to a bop a human’s nose forever! Ever since they first came around, but Lyra monopolized them all then because of that stupid cartoon she’s obsessed with, and you haven’t come by Ponyville since! They look so soft and squishy! Oh! Come here, come here.” She gestured towards herself; Day bent over at the waist.

Something like a smooth rock pressed on his nose, flattening it even more than usual. Then Carrot Top’s hoof retreated. The pony was grinning at him and flapping her tail.

She didn’t seem offended, and Day did have the carrots at that point. He thus decided to declare victory and beat a retreat while he was ahead.

The anonymity of the crowded street closed back over him; Day seized onto it like a welcome blanket. It let him enjoy his carrots. They tasted much the same as those he remembered from home, but he relished the taste more than he could recall. Was it just because he hadn’t had one in a while? Or was there something about these? He tried to describe the difference—the crunch, perhaps, the flavor—and could only come up with ‘grown with love’. It sounded silly, but somehow it tasted perfectly accurate. By all accounts, these had been worth three dollars, if not the embarrassment he’d put himself through.

While licking his fingers, Day reflected that he’d just experienced one of the top-three attractions A Hitchhiker’s Guide To: Equestria said all visitors should experience: pony-grown vegetables. The second had been a Wonderbolts airshow, and those were in the capital. Day very much doubted he’d get to one of those tonight. The third item on the list, however…

Day glanced up. The sun was nowhere to be seen, and the sky quickly fading amongst deep blue and purple. The third experience happened to be starting right about now.

For the first time that night Day had a destination in mind. He quickly found what he had spotted earlier that night, a high round hill with an oak tree at the crown. It would have a perfect view of the night sky. A little self-consciously, he turned off the street and climbed about halfway up, patted the grass, and lay back.

It itched a little through the dress shirt, but other than that, it was actually pretty comfy. Day scanned the air above—he knew this world had a moon—and found it, just now peeking onstage to the east. His first sight made him shiver. It was immediately apparent that this was not the heavenly body he knew. The huge white circle was almost entirely without blemish, and this might have accounted for the intense glow which began spilling silver all over Ponyville once the sun was good and buried behind distant mountains.

“What’cha doing?”

Day scrambled to a sitting position and hit his head on a pony. A mint-green unicorn was standing directly over him, examining him with a certain sly smile which Day found familiar but couldn’t quite place.

He pried his mouth open, but the pony didn’t wait for an apology. “It’s just that the last time I saw a human lying so still was after I dropped a piano on him. So I wanted to make sure you were okay. Nopony dropped a piano on you, did they?” She pressed the side of one fetlock on his forehead, considerately using the hairy part of her leg instead of laying her bare hoof on his skin. “Was it Pinkie?” She punctuated with a sharp inhale. “It was that mare–Octavia! It was her, wasn’t it? It’s okay, you can tell Auntie Lyra.”

Day failed at speaking for a couple seconds more, shook his head and lamely pointed up. “I just wanted to watch Luna’s night.”

Lyra’s head tilted to one side. “You wanted to watch the night?”

Day nodded. It hadn’t sounded quite so stupid in the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

She pranced back onto her hind legs and clapped him on the shoulders. “Hah! Aren’t you easy to entertain! And here I thought all humans were obsessed with video games.”

Abruptly, she shouted at the top of her lungs to a pair of passers-by. “Hey! Thunderlane! Flitter! Forget bowling and a flight. You want to come stare at the moon instead?”

Day wilted and tried to hide his face between his knees.

He was beginning to despair of ever going unnoticed again. He’d come fully warned that Ponyville was a small town, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone, and had already known intellectually that ponies were thought to be more social than humans, as a herd species. But until now he hadn’t fully appreciated the idea that it could be impossible for him to avoid talking to others.

The two pegasi across the way looked at each other and then started towards the hill. Laying down on the grass next to Lyra, they struck up a conversation while glancing periodically at the sky.

Day lifted his head, not entirely sure what had just happened.

If this was a joke as his expense, it was very drawn out. Lyra grabbed ponies out of the street several more times in quick succession, including a butter-yellow pegasus who had been busily herding a clutch of rabbits along in front of her. Each time Lyra insisted that they were ‘helping a human look at the moon’, and somehow, most ponies took a look at the gathering and seemed to find this an agreeable idea. Soon the hill had a regular crowd, and more ponies were simply wandering in and out of the group of their own accord. A pink earth mare came around handing out donuts at one point. By some impossible luck Day ended up with one covered in sprinkles.

The ponies were just as interesting to watch as what was going on in the deepening night sky. Like people, they clustered naturally into small groups, but they seemed to have no effective personal space; a pony would walk up to another and nuzzle a quick greeting, then take places pressed together or all but on top of each other.

Nopony invaded Day’s personal space. He didn’t know if it was because they knew and respected his cultural preferences, or simply because he was the outsider. He was a little surprised to discover himself worrying over it so much, and chastised himself over his uncommonly lingering stares at the closely-packed groups. He ought to be very grateful that he had his personal space.

His attention was diverted from the hill for a moment when he noticed that Carrot Top, the mare from the market, across the street from the impromptu moon-watching party. The pony was glancing in the party’s directions and whispering with a silvery-blue pegasus by her side. Day thought nothing of it until, a few minutes later, both ponies approached and took seats on either side of him, sandwiching him firmly in between pony hair and feathers. Body warmth flooded into his sides.

Carrot murmured a greeting he didn’t catch. Day held stock still for a couple moments, determined that he couldn’t shift his seat without telegraphing his alarm, and after a few desperate heartbeats decided that he would do nothing about it. Though ponies had been engaging him all through the evening, he had to admit, looking back, that they’d been nothing but friendly the entire time. He’d had nothing to be afraid of. Had he known that beforehand, he might have even enjoyed talking to strangers. Maybe, Day thought, he could get used to living here.

They all looked up as one. The moon had glided with infinite poise into center stage of the sky, and around it, billions and billions of scintillating backup dancers. Day couldn’t believe he had seen so many stars in all his life before now.

In fact, most of his time on Earth had been spent in places where he’d have been lucky to make out the Big Dipper on any given night. He wondered if the Milky Way had looked something like this before all the light pollution, and found himself profoundly moved by the thought. If his own galaxy wasn’t this beautiful, he felt an almost consuming, yet petty jealousy; if it was, he felt a crushing blow of shame even attempting to imagine why his own race would have given up on such beauty without a fight.

The transient twinkle of lights gave the whole sky an impression of an ever-shifting cloth. A web of points which glittered all at once, for a long moment, caused Day to point and shout. “That constellation looks like a rabbit!” He retracted his hand in the same instant, immediately feeling that he must have sounded childish and hoping nopony had noticed him, though they had.

But they must have been paying attention to the heavens more than to him. Only oohs and ahs followed. A second later, Day lost the constellation as its constituent stars faded into the crowded backdrop; while he was trying in vain to find it again, frustrated at the loss, another pony raised a hoof at a different section of the sky. “That one looks like a slice of cake!”

There was another chorus of appreciative vowels. A few other suddenly-realized pictures were noted, one after the other, between the skylines of Ponyville’s rooftops. Lyra even joined in by boldly jumping to point at a spot near the moon. “That one looks like a human.”

“Oh, stuff a bit and bridle in it,” drawled a voice from the crowd. “You just have humans on the…holy horseapples. You’re right.”

While Day was trying to find it, something batted him on the shoulder. He leaned back to find Lyra smiling down at him, her face almost in his.

“Looks like you got the Night Princess’ attention, two-legs! Great party.”

Thank goodness he resisted the impulse to jump–Day would have wound up kissing her flat on the lips. Pony conversation distance seemed to range between about three and four inches. “Is this my party…?” he blinked.

“Yeah,” the pegasus on his right said huskily, leaning in to give his neck a nuzzle. Day shivered; he could feel the moisture of her nose tracing his skin, and a warm spout of breath fluttering under the collar of his shirt. Carrot Top, for whatever reason, moved quickly to follow suit, and then there were two noses touching his skin. Much of said skin blushed vein-red.

“Hey!” Carrot top snapped. “Don’t go hitting on him already, Cloud. He’s been in Ponyville, like, a day. You’re going to make him uncomfortable.”

The pegasus snorted, but mercifully, broke off what she was doing. “We’re just being friendly.” She crossed her forelegs primly and snorted.

“Yeah.” Lyra narrowed her eyes. “I believe that.”

Day, still light-headed, made a series of extremely awkward ducking motions to wriggle free of Carrot Top’s snout. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to wriggle an inch of personal space between the two mares without letting them notice. He didn’t want anypony to think that he was bothered by their form of hospitality. But his vision of acclimating to the friendly jibes of ponies had just turned back into a pipe dream.

He remembered in full-flooding dread what had been nagging him since his first glimpse of Ponyville. He had been trying with all his might not to think about any of the locals here like…like…like that. And until just now he had been succeeding handily, thank-you-very-much.

He knew that things like—like—that—between humans and ponies—did happen sometimes. It was one of those things you just had to know, and refrain from mentioning in polite company.

But in the early years Day had devoured every journal that came back to Earth from human explorers, scouring the net for words and pictures from beyond. At one point he’d found himself lingering over pictures of Equestria, and discovered in ink-bleeding shock that he was examining the mares with more than scientific curiosity.

He’d been aghast at himself, but it hadn’t been a tragedy. He’d got used to the idea, and then buried it. Day couldn’t go back to the way he’d thought about ponies before he looked at them that way, but he could ignore it, the same way he’d ignore the impulse to gawk at any other woman he shouldn’t. At least, on Earth he could. There were ponies all around him now, flesh and blood. They couldn’t be ignored. They even joked about it. These mares were casually flirting with him as if it were a harmless source of amusement–at least, he hoped it was casual.

Day didn’t know how he’d survive the night. He wasn’t the kind of person that got into these situations. Granted, that may have been less because of personal standards and more because most women on Earth left him alone. But he was growing more nostalgic for that old invisibility with each passing second. Try as he might, he couldn’t help noticing that both of the creatures sandwiching him in were girls.

The pegasus had a silver-blue coat that reminded him of his first car, less shiny and yet sleeker at the same time. Her barrel narrowed towards the haunches, giving her a toned, athletic look. Whenever she caught Day glancing in her direction, she responded with what he could only describe as bedroom eyes, and given the size of those eyes, the effect was quite impressive. She would also nudge something, presumably a hind hoof, alarmingly far under his leg, and make a show of stretching her wings in motions she seemed to think must be very alluring. If she was a car, she was less like his old Ford and more a dragster with a pinstripe decal reading ‘Fully Loaded Sex Machine.’

The earth pony on his left had an unbrushed coat. With her hairs mussed in all directions, she looked scruffy instead of sleek; her mane was curled and frayed, and her figure stockier—though she was a still a pony, and Day, for better or worse had yet to encounter a mare without shapely curves. Every couple minutes she would glance over at him, and quickly turn away again if he caught her.

Day tried to keep himself from checking. The nervous way she feigned interest in the clover at his feet made him surprisingly eager to pretend that he didn’t notice being looked at. Besides, he would rather have not noticed. His only goal at the moment was to survive the rest of the evening.

It would be too rude if he got up, left early—too obvious that he wanted to escape from his present company. No, he would have to wait another hour or so. Then he could go home without offending anypony. An hour couldn’t be too hard to tough out. He let himself snuggle into the warmth for once.

And from anything else, he distracted himself by watching constellations. Different stars were glittering brightest in every fresh moment, as if the famous night princess wished to point out all the uncountable pictures hidden in the night sky. Day was just getting to the point where he could look up without losing his breath in a sigh, and he was about to try his hand at being the first to call out the shapes of new constellations. Hust as he was about to identify a fez-clad alligator, it got up and swam across the sky. Day blinked; he tried to track the points of light. With a silence that fell onto Equestria, stars began to dart around the moon, and giant beasts of the heavens to move.

Day threw his head back, plastered to the ground by his own breath, which was left moaning softly in the back of his throat. To look up was dizzying. He couldn’t look away until the constellations had settled down a bit; immediately he checked for panic in every direction. Ponies were looking up in calm unison.

“It’s not supposed to do that!” Day gasped as loudly as he dared. He would have come across something about this in his readings if it had ever happened before.

Lyra shrugged without looking down at Day. “I won’t tell Celestia if you don’t,” she said tonelessly.

So there was plenty for a mind like Day’s to occupy itself with. Ponies themselves even provided a good source of distraction from other ponies. The rabbits belonging to the yellow pegasus had gotten loose, and a cluster of foals banded together to get them back, scampering energetically while the animals; owner flitted overhead. Near the base of the hill, older ponies stood in a tight circle conversing in low tones. However it had happened, everyone seemed to be enjoying the gathering. Day smiled in spite of himself.

Unfortunately, his immediate surroundings were determined to make themselves noticed. ‘Cloud’ cut across an invisible line when her hoof went just a bit farther than Day had expected it to. With a small yelp he yanked himself away, landing squarely on Carrot Top. The earth mare didn’t seem too bothered by having Day crush her. In fact, if he was to go by her grin, she wasn’t bothered enough. Day panicked and scrambled away from all physical contact until he was on his hands and knees in the grass.

In dread of being asked if he was alright, he forced his mouth open and reached for the first words that came to mind. “What time is it?” he said a little too loudly.

Lyra reared back on her hindlegs and pointed to one bare fetlock with the other leg. “Time not to get a watch!”

The surrounding ponies stared at the unicorn.

“Come on! Do you ponies know how long I’ve been waiting to use that?”

Carrot tapped Day with her muzzle, and ignored his twitch. “There’s a fine clock-tower in the town, but you’ll get used to telling time by looking at the sun.”

“I suppose you’re going to inform me that this isn’t the sort of land where the minute and the hour stand on much importance.” Day looked downcast at the timepiece on his wrist, a skeleton watch which he had been very proud of from the time he purchased it until about a minute ago.

Carrot nodded with a hum. “We have the clock just in case Celestia freezes the sun. Otherwise everypony’s schedule would become a train wreck.”

Day’s eyebrows stitched themselves together. “She…does that?”

“Och, she doesn’t do it often.” Carrot drew herself up, responding defensively to his incredulous tone. “Only if she really has to.”

“But doesn’t anypony say anything?” he said urgently. “Doesn’t anypony stop her?”

The mare looked up at Day with a kind of smile he hadn’t received since the last time he saw his kindergarten teacher. “The Princess is wiser than anypony. You can trust her.”

She snuggled once more, stretching out alongside him and patting his hand. Day, fascinated by her texture, placed his other hand over her leg.

“Speaking of time,” she said in a low voice, “I have plenty on my hooves this time of year. I couldn’t but notice you wandered by my booth half a dozen times. If you like, I could show you around Ponyville. Give you the grand tour. We have some especially darling meadows east of town. Oh, you should see the marigolds before they go out of season.”

“That sounds wonderful!” Day bumped her hoof with a fist. “Why, I was just thinking about how much I wanted to know my way around here. Once work begins I won’t have much time during the week for errands and such. So if somepony who knows the ins and outs could–”

The words ‘meadow’ and ‘darling’ registered with the smack of ice. Day clammed up instantly, then turned the corner of his eyes to Carrot. Her expression was amicable, but he couldn’t read a pony’s face. Not quite well enough. He bit his lip, but the soft lull in her voice…he couldn’t dodge asking.

“I’m-err, I’m, sorry for—that is I’m sure you’re not—but I just have to ask, you see—that is—are you—you aren’t—asking me on a date…are you?”

“Oh, no date in particular,” she said blithely. “I could go whenever you’d like.”

“Not what I meant,” Day muttered from behind crossed arms. “A date, as in just the two of us–”

“Oh,” Cloud piped up from Day’s other side. “I can get some more mares if you want! I don’t think Cloud Chaser and Flitter are doing anything this weekend.” Her wings fluttered in the most fascinating expression of thoughtfulness. “Flitter’s been pining after Caramel lately…eh, but they owe me one ever since I helped them put down a tornado. They’ll come.” She inserted her muzzle indelicately into the space of Day’s face, tapping their noses together and causing him to fall back. “You can’t say no to that! Four mares, a picnic basket from Veggie-Flank, and the Ponyville back ninety. It doesn’t get any better than that.” She nodded towards Carrot. “She’s an amazing cook.”

Cloud made an urgent swirling gesture with her front hoof. Day tracked the motion in confusion for several seconds before realizing who the signal was meant for, and just as he turned to look, Carrot seemed to realize it too. She scooted herself away from Day and then rolled onto her back, coming to rest against his side with all four legs splayed in the air.

A host of uncomfortably warm feelings blossomed in Day’s stomach. Her chest was crested with a tuft of coat hair, and it was all he could do not to reach out and scratch it as though Carrot were a dog. He reminded himself firmly and repeatedly that she was a woman who needed to be respected. While doing so, he took extra care not to look too far down, given what he might find. This woman of respectable social standing didn’t happen to be wearing any clothes.

“It would make my day if you said yes.” Carrot locked him in her luminous green eyes. Day’s lungs constricted—why were a pony’s eyes so very bright? “Please?”

He felt poised on an edge, ready to plummet the vast distance into those enormous irises. He didn’t answer right away—he told himself that it was because he didn’t dare to answer carelessly. After all, he wouldn’t be able to bear it if everypony went away talking about how the human, fresh through the Gates from Earth, was insensitive and cold.

Besides, Carrot’s words reminded him too much of an old version of himself. This was Day’s chance to see if he was a bigger person than the women whose forgotten faces went with many lackluster memories.

“That’s very flattering,” he began, “and you seem like a very nice person. Pony, I mean. Pony.”

Carrot’s smile faltered, sensing something in his hesitation.

It spurred him to stumble on. “But I’m in a committed relationship!” he said quickly. “It has nothing to do with you. So—yeah.”

Impossibly, Carrot Top’s smile righted itself. “Oh, that’s fine! I’m happy to date both of you!”

Day blinked. That wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go.

“What?” Carrot ambled her words onward, tilting her head. His paralysis seemed to perplex her. “You have an old-fashioned kind of gal who doesn’t let you set up dates on your own? That’s okay. I’m a touch old-fashioned myself. Ah–not that I think a mare needs to be in charge!” she added quickly. “I’m not stuffy like that. But if you want to be proper, I don’t mind waiting to ask her. Or him. That’s all I mean. I am a gentlemare, after all.”

While Carrot was stumbling through this proclamation, Day was rubbing frantically at the bridge of his nose, and Cloud was using her wing to nudge him closer to the earth pony. Presumably the pegasus thought she was being subtle.

He’d read about this before. At least, an article in the back the corners of the net had once mentioned that in many parts of Equestria, ponies followed old ‘herding’ traditions rooted in primordial, matriarchal family structures similar to those of wild horses on Earth. It had said they were polygamous—or polyandrous, polyamorous, polypeptide—something like that.

Anyway, it was yet another thing one didn’t talk about in polite company.

“We could just go as friends,” Carrot added tepidly. “If you like.”

He dared another breath. “I…don’t believe you know how we do things where I come from.”

“Sure.” She lifted her head off the ground. “But we aren’t where you come from, are we? We’re where I come from.”

“I still think I should only be with one person at a time,” he said into his shirt collar.

Carrot scrunched up her snout. “That doesn’t sound very convenient,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Do you just have to wait until one special someone leaves before you can see another one? And how do you schedule dates? It would be a nightmare. Besides, it’s more fun if to go out all as a big group. Haven’t you ever been on a big skating date before?”

“Uh…” Day creaked. “I mean…that is, I meant–”

Carrot Top screwed up her face; Day stuttered on for a couple seconds longer before she burst out laughing with Cloud, her legs pedaling with mirth in midair. “Sorry,” she snorted as soon as she could breathe. “Dear me, I couldn’t help it! You should see the look on your face.”

Day didn’t respond. After a moment of cool silence she bounded up on all fours, hovering worriedly around him. “I’m sorry!” she crooned. “I didn’t hurt your feelings, did I? You’re a fine lad.” She brushed the edge of a foreleg against his front bangs, giving him an unaccountably tender smile. “Handsome lad.”

“How–” Day closed his eyes for half a moment as his he felt his hair being brushed across his face, then shook his head. He backed away. “I insist that you explain yourself.” His arms swept down his sides. “That’s the last thing anyone would call me. Even my fiancée admits I’m on the chubby side.”

“Chubby. Chub-bee. Is that bad?” Carrot smiled and poked the flesh Day had been indicating, tickling him. “Och, I don’t know about that. All I see is a nice fellah I’d like to take on a date.”

He frowned skeptically. “You sure?”

“Oy. What do you see?” Carrot spun in a circle for him. “I see you haven’t mentioned my flat flanks yet. Or my hair. Haven’t batted an eye at the bit of swayback I’ve got from falling off the swings as a foal. And not to slight this monogamy bit you’ve got going, fellah, but, um,” she clicked her tongue twice, “You sure didn’t have any complaints about my nose a minute ago.”

Day sank against the hill. “Well…I didn’t notice any of that stuff. I don’t know what ponies are supposed to look like in detail.” His cheeks glowed red. “And I don’t make a habit of browsing pony models or gossiping about mares or anything like that!”

She sat beside him and leaned hard into him, making him sway. “But you think all mares are cute, don’t you? We ponies have a name for that, my little scientist.” She threw a leg over his shoulder and gestured at the million stars. “Anti-selective sexual pattern generalization.”

Day furrowed his brows, clammed his hands together. “I must say I’m surprised you know a term like that.”

“Och, no, I just made it up on the spot. Harpflank called it something-or-other.”

Day didn’t resist as Carrot pushed his shoulders this way and that. “There’s a billion different kinds of life out there,” she breathed dramatically. “We’ve always known that. By odds, a couple species have got to find each other attractive eventually.”

“I never said I…” Day looked into Carrot’s face, and trailed off in response to the eyebrow she lifted.

“But when you find another species pretty, you don’t pick up on the same things you do at home,” she went on. “Sexual attraction is designed to help you find the healthiest partner you can. When you latch onto another race, you’ve bypassed the whole system of instincts. You think all ponies are pretty.” She snuggled closer, grabbing him so he couldn’t scoot away. “And I think you look just grand. Honest. I can’t see whatever you think makes you such a poor catch. It doesn’t matter what you look like in this new age of exploration—anyone can be beautiful.”

“That’s amazing,” Day breathed. “Wait.” He spun and looked Carrot Top up and down, taking in both her smug expression and the sly one that sprouted as she responded to his scrutiny by lifting a foreleg. He pointed. “I thought you were a carrot farmer.”

Carrot chortled. “Ooh, lad, you’re not the only one who knows a thing or two. You like it when I talk clever?” She lifted her chin smugly. “I’ll have to catch up on my reading.”

She must have owned a stack of books about Earth and about Gate travel—just like Day did. He lifted his shirt collar over his face and whispered into it with a small, pained voice. “I still think it’s wrong. I’m sorry. But I belong to someone.”

There was a shadow, a silver flicker, and a rush of wind; Day looked up too slowly to see what had been overhead, but now Cloud was gone, and when he finally found her, she was just a speck halfway over the town sky. Gone like a breath.

Carrot wrapped one foreleg around Day’s arm. “All I want right now is a chance to get to know you better,” the mare said plaintively. “Is that so bad? Just give me a chance, Mister Day. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

Day found that he was shaking his head. He could dream of circuits that would let magical talking horses type on a computer, but he couldn’t stretch his imagination this far.

He drew the arm out of Carrot Top’s grip, slowly, making no secret of his reluctance, as if that would make things better. She squeezed once and then let go. He coughed, brushing blades of grass and beads of dew from his hopeless dress shirt.

“Why, would you look at the moon? Time flies in Ponyville. I had best get to bed. Good night, everyone. Pony.” Carefully stepping over the assorted equines, he retreated from the hill and into the bare streets.

Soundtrack: “Moonlight” by BlackGryph0n and Baasik

For the first few minutes he walked briskly, keeping his mind stiffly on the path ahead of him. Of all the things to happen to him! But the cobbled roads were deserted, and a few minutes of their misty click relaxed him again. There were no ponies out at this hour, and to go with them, no streetlights. It took Day half an hour to find his way home in the dark. But once he made it onto the right stretch of Crayonberry Lane, the rooftop silhouettes gave away the strip of houses with high ceilings, room that had been built to house human engineers.

He went to the only door with a light, reached for his house keys, and promptly panicked upon finding his pockets empty. There followed a brief dance of spinning to check every pocket and wondering where in town he could have lost a key ring. Then he stopped, thought for a moment, and reached out with a single finger to push against the door. It swung open without a sound.

A human girl was waiting for him in the living room, surrounded by half-empty boxes. “Well?” she said in airy English. “Did you have a good time exploring the universe?”

Day pointedly raised his chin, passing by to pour himself a glass of water in the kitchen. “As a matter of fact I did, Alexandra. Did you have a good time organizing your shoes?”

“Oh!” Allie’s mouth fell open. “I do not have that many shoes.”

By this time, Day sported a smile bubbling just beneath the level of open laughter. He cupped a hand to his ear. “Let me hear you say it in Equus then.”

Allie screwed up her face and worked one-by-one through a series of boulder-shaped syllables. The contrast between her words and the sounds from outside was startling. Day knew that he sounded more like her than anything else; ponies must have thought he had a horribly thick accent.

It seemed that training by book could only go so far. Day had been toying with the words of Equus for years, but only today, after hearing it spoken by real ponies, did he understand how it was supposed to sound. Allie had called it an ugly language, and he’d been hard-pressed to deny it. But inflection and the phrasing were all falling together in his head now. The sounds weren’t supposed to be neat; they were meant to tumble and flow over each other, a language like the babbling of a brook as it crashed its way through verdant mountain meadows.

When Allie got hung up on the last word, her helped her through sound by sound, placing his fingers on her cheeks to guide her mouth when she struggled. Then he asked her to repeat the sentence again, and they went through it together, snowballing into a slow, basic conversation.

Day knew she would rather have been out tonight, making a million friends with ponies who would have been only too happy to do the same. But he hadn’t pushed her to come outside. He also knew that she could never be happy using him as an interpreter, that she could only be free talking at breakneck pace with every soul in earshot.

So he kept her at it as long as he could. Despite Allie’s frustration with memorizing things, he knew that she didn’t mind studying when they did it together. It was a blast of nostalgia for days not long gone by. Those days, of course, hadn’t been as much fun as they seemed through the lens of memory—but unlike the college years they’d stumbled through, there was no fear here. The way Day saw it, Allie was confident that if she ever needed anything Day knew, she would be able to learn it from him. That was why she’d left fearlessly to start their life together on a new world, signing the papers at a time when she’d known no more than a dozen words of the language she would have to speak.

He tried to work in a couple of the sounds as he’d heard them outside, thinking that Allie would warm up to Equus a lot more if she discovered how pretty it could sound. Trying to talk like a little horse was taxing on the jaw, though; when she finally got too sore with it, her speech disintegrated into aimless moaning.

“Buuaaaaaah,” she honked, pinching Day’s squashed nose. “Screw it. I’m talking in Seal.” She moaned again. “That’s seal for ‘I love you.’”

Day sighed contentedly, letting his hands drift from Allie’s shoulders to her stomach. “That,” he answered, “I can understand in any language.” She pulled him close for a kiss.

If this mysterious Night Princess had taken an interest in Day, he didn’t know about it. His sleep was dreamless that night.

Carrot Top left without saying goodbye to Lyra. She left when the sky was still ablaze, turning away from town towards a tiny patch of fields set between Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres. The way home was just a sliver of a dirt road around the hill, over which hung the odd shapes of the lone telephone poles in Ponyville, erected a year after First Contact. There was no sound along the dirt track. Nothing save for the earth’s usual whispers, the croaking of bullfrogs and the steady plod of her shoes on beaten ground. Her tail dragged. But she didn’t bother to lift it out of the dirt.

Her one-room house was surrounded on all sides by tilled ground; in the dark, it looked fragile and isolated, a brittle sentinel for rolling hills. Carrot Top didn’t bother to light a lamp. She beat her tail on the welcome mat inside the creaking door, a lazy way to throw the pebbles out. That was as ready for bed as she cared to make herself before flopping into the sack.

She pushed her horseshoes off too, but the last one got stuck, and it was the shoe on her left-hind hoof, with the nail that had been pounded in too close to the sensitive inner wall of her hoof. When she jabbed at it, a blast of pain shot through her leg, and she lay down cringing with the final shoe hanging half-off.

Two minutes passed in silence. Three.

Carrot Top sighed and rolled out of bed. There was nowhere in particular to go. She wandered out the back door, into the yard, and picked her away across the seed beds.

The naked earth felt so good on her bare hooves. Carrot Top gasped, letting her hooves wiggle themselves deeper into the soft dirt, deeper into the thrumming heartbeat of the land, the earthsong which only earth ponies could hear. The pulsing in her head was a pleasant sensation when she didn’t want to think about anything—it made it easy not too.

Every patch of ground had a different melody, and Ponyville was Carrot’s favorite music. The very plot of land where her farmhouse stood was her favorite spot in all Equestria, and she could have listened to the sound of home until she faded into the earth.

But Carrot Top didn’t let herself go that deep, or, indeed, quite deep enough to really forget about the day. The earthsong was the oldest comfort to earth ponies, even older than the comfort of Celestia’s guiding light. Digging herself in up to the fetlocks always made Carrot a bit uncomfortable, even though she’d liked doing it even as a filly. It carried uncomfortable connotations to ancient pagan rituals, to dark old days with earth ponies crying praise to the soil itself and rutting with strangers under wild moonlight. It was an effort to pick up her forelegs and throw them on the pickets of her yard fence. But she had indulged enough.

Carrot Top could see the rest of Ponyville from here, and the moon. The moon was a queer thing to her, far as it was from the earth. It always seemed so calm, despite everything it shone upon.

She inhaled a deep breath of Equestria and held it in her lungs as long as she could. When she let it out, she imagined that her sigh drifted up into the sky, becoming a part of Luna’s cold night.

Author's Note

Welcome, eveypony! I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller. I hope you all enjoy the trip with Amadeus.

I should be uploading about one episode a week, so don't forget to favorite or check back soon!

Chapter 6: Of Hearts and Hooves

And Other Even Beats

Day knew something was different the moment he stepped outside that Thursday morning. Crayonberry Lane was so intimately familiar to him that he could feel the difference even before consciously placing what it was.

Had Celestia finally done something to the sun, as he always feared? Nope; it was still at its usual 7:30 perch on the roof of the Cake’s house, covering Ponyville in just the cheery spring warmth that had been scheduled for today. Were the birds gone? No, that wasn’t it either; as soon as he had the thought he could hear their songs, bright, whimsical, and steadily improving. The local wildlife expert was preparing them for a performance at the upcoming Grand Galloping Gala.

Had another catastrophe followed the Elements of Harmony home to Ponyville? It didn’t seem to be so; the morning crowd of ponies wasn’t screaming or fleeing from anything today.

Wait. It was the pink. It must be breeding. Against all mathematical possibility, there was even more of it than before.

The shutters were decked in pink ribbons, the awnings in pink banners. The cart stalled across the street had pink paper hearts nailed onto it, and some cheeky pegasus, Day discovered as he looked up, had even thrown pink streamers over the roof of his own house.

He mentally checked off the date as he began, hesitantly, walking towards the train station. Today wasn’t any holiday that he knew of—but then he stopped himself. This wasn’t Earth. He only knew of a few Equestrian holidays, the famous Hearth’s-Warming Eve and Summer Sun Celebration he heard mentioned all time.

So he stopped at the wagon and tapped the withers of a muscular red draft pony who had a green apple for a cutie mark. “Excuse me. Is there something special about today?”

The pony gave him a simple, weathered look and chewed a stalk of grass. Day got the distinct feeling that the pony was wondering if he was daft.

“Eeyup,” the stallion declared tacitly.

“Important?” shrieked a voice. “Ah!”

Day pinwheeled for balance as yet another splash of pink, this one animated, accosted him from behind. He looked up, down, and then turned his head upside-down and found a walking Hearts and Hooves Day decoration balanced on the edge of the wagon with her snout in his face.

“It’s hearts and hooves day—Day!” Pinkie Pie giggled uproariously. “The most romantickest, pinkest, chocolatiest holiday of the whole year!”

And then she was gone. A couple seconds later a girlish shriek erupted from Walnut Row on the next block over, accompanied by a crash of crockery and a bout of exploding party poppers.

“Romantic holiday?” Day murmured after the retreating mirage of the resident party animal. He turned to the draft pony, who was still beside him, solid like a rock. “This isn’t anything like Valentine’s Day on Earth, is it?”

The stallion merely shrugged, pulling his shoulders against the squeaky traces attached to them.

Day narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Is it a celebration of love?”

“Eeyup.”

“Lovers expected to give romantic gifts to each other?”

“Eeyup.”

“I’d better get my special someone some flowers so it doesn’t look like I forgot entirely?”

“Eeeeeeyup.”

Day slumped tremendously. He ran back inside to set his briefcase on the counter, and took off for the market in the hopes that Morning Dew was somehow not sold out of bouquets. The odds didn’t seem good, considering how many ponies favored flowers as gifts, but the florist, like most ponies, had a peculiar intensity for his profession and had never let Day down before.

Most of his frustration had nothing to do with the fear of failing to find a gift, or even the fear that he would be late for work by virtue of having to catch the next train. The bare-skinned facts were worse than all of those things put together: It was Valentine’s Day in Ponyville.

Day couldn’t stand Valentine’s Day. He couldn’t even remember a time when he hadn’t felt a cloudy depression at the mere thought of the holiday. And now he discovered, without any warning, that it had followed him to another world? For the love of ponies! He couldn’t even escape Valentine’s Day by moving to another dimension? Then what hope was there?

There were plenty of flowers left. Morning Dew had wisely stocked up extra for his biggest business day of the year. In fact, Day was able to snag a dozen gorgeous roses on the cheap; it was a lucky break for him that ponies didn’t have the same romantic infatuation with a single flower that humans did. He could get roses for no more than a third of what they would have cost on Earth. And, ever since Carrot had showed him the value of small favors, Day took frequent advantage of that fact. Morning Dew and he were on first name terms.

The stallion smiled as he prepared the bouquet for Day, carefully slicing off every thorn with a pocketknife and misting them with a little water from an atomizer. “So, what do you and Alexandra have planned for today?”

“Oh, nothing special.” Day shuffled anxiously, laying his bits on the counter and grabbing the flowers. “No time. I’m already late for work.”

He didn’t take time to think properly about the look of supreme confusion the golden stallion gave him.

So long as the clocktower wasn’t lying, the train Day was meant to be on pulled out of the station just as he made it back to his own front doorstep. Throwing it open, he raced into the living room with a shout. “Allie!”

As Alexandra appeared in the kitchen doorway with a toaster waffle hanging from her mouth, Day dropped to one knee and thrust the flowers towards her. She jumped, clasping her cheeks in delight; tossing aside the food a moment later, she tackled Day and threw her arms around him.

“You remembered!” she squealed, rolling him around the carpet. “Yes, oh, yes!”

Day laughed and freed himself from underneath her so the flowers wouldn’t get squished. “You could have told me, you know. I only learned about this holiday twenty minutes ago.”

“But I was so hoping you’d remember without being reminded, and you did!” She tried to smother him in kisses, but Day pulled away again, much to her frustration.

“Sorry, honey. You knew I was going in today. I’d better call and let someone know what happened.”

He stepped into the kitchen to use the phone. Equestria lacked cell phone towers and most of Earth’s networks, but so long as Day didn’t mind sticking his finger in a wheel to spin out numbers, he could call a limited roster of offices, the project headquarters among them.

Day cleared his throat and gave his name to the colt who picked up the phone. He briefly explained his situation. “I know buying flowers might not be a very good excuse,” he concluded, “but I’m hoping the team will at least understand. There’s a second train for Flankstaff at nine, and so I won’t be more than an hour, maybe two late.”

“Wait.” The voice at the other end sounded confused. “You’re coming here?”

“Well—of course.” Day frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s only Valentine’s—err, Hoof and Mouth—err, Heart’s Day. I don’t need to use up a vacation day for that. We have precious few enough as it is, and we really need to finish the interface project before August–”

The pony at the other end was flipping pages somewhere. Day waited over the static. “Mister,” the cold said eventually, “our record here says that you’re engaged. They’re not expecting you.”

“Are you sure?” Day didn’t want to jeopardize his chances of being part of the breakthrough the team felt was just around the corner. Even Vedalkan engineers had commented once or twice on Day’s blueprints, and so the company found great promise in his ability; if he pushed for another month or two, he could earn a place on an even bigger project after this one was complete. “It’s really not a problem. And I think that Shel’quannath and Shiny Springs wanted me to be there when they tested the next prototype…”

“Shiny Springs? But she’s married!”

“What does that have to do anything?” Day belted into the phone. “Just what are you trying to imply?”

“N-nothing, sir! Just—why would she come here on Hearts and Hooves Day?” The colt’s voice sounded of mild, innocent surprise. Day was genuinely confusing the poor pony.

He held the phone away from his face to stare at it. “Perhaps I should speak to someone in charge. Are you sure she isn’t coming?”

“No, sir, we wouldn’t dream of it. Every herd has the day off on Hearts and Hooves Day.” At this point, the pony on the line sounded downright uncomfortable with Day’s insistence upon working. He made a couple more cursory inquiries to make sure that he really wasn’t expected at headquarters, and then hung up.

Day juggled the phone a couple times. Then he shrugged. Then he went into his bedroom, opened the weekend drawer and changed into a pair of jeans and a bright green T-shirt. He made a quick jog across town to confirm that Allie wasn’t expected at work either. Then, dashing home, he let her finish that kiss she’d started. And after that they stood outside and watched the day pass by. Suddenly, it was thrown wide open to both of them.

It would have been tempting to spend the entire day curled up on the couch with a book, but Day didn’t have any leisure reading at the moment. In fact, his fiction intake had dropped off since moving to Equestria. Accessing the stories of another species was surprisingly hard. In pony novels, he could almost never find a love triangle that wasn’t soon resolved by inviting everypony involved into the all-encompassing love of a herd.

Besides, thanks to the local weather team’s trademark artistry—not to mention that of Princess Celestia—the weather was not merely bright, dry and sunny. It was of the particular variety of sunny weather that was lazy without being languid, relaxed without being slow, and warm without being oppressive. Even in Day’s staunchest computer-obsessed years, he never could have resisted the temptation to go outside on a day like this. At least he hoped not.

During most of Ponyville’s holidays, there were fairs in the town square, with games for the foals and food for everypony else. That made it the perfect time to wander around Ponyville. Allie and Day didn’t even have to go that far to find a special Hearts and Hooves Day attraction. When they took a moment to read the pink sign nailed to the wagon across the street, they discovered that the draft pony’s name was Big Macintosh, and that he was offering hay rides to the meadows on the other side of town.

Day leaned over the reins to ask Big Mac how many bits it would be customary to pay for the ride, since no price had been listed on the sign. The pony simply tossed his mane and replied with a bizarrely uninformative, “Nope.”

Day scratched his head. “No, as in you won’t tell me what the price is? Or you’re not giving rides at this time?”

“Nope.”

“What? You can’t mean that the price is no bits?”

“Eeyup.”

“Doing it just for the heck of it?”

“Eeyup.”

One pleasant surprise seemed to follow another. Saving two bits didn’t matter in a town where Day had a more technically demanding job than ninety percent of the population. But there was something charming and full of good will about the thought of the towering pony pulling others around for the sheer enjoyment of it. As soon as the wagon was reasonably full, Big Mac’s hooves began to drum against the cobbles.

While Allie relaxed under his outstretched arm, Day kept a sharp lookout for moping singles in the windows and alleyways they passed. As a holiday for the celebration of romance, this ‘Hearts and Hooves Day’ was shaping up to be a pretty good parallel to Valentine’s Day so far. That didn’t please Day any, but the explorer buried deep inside him needed to know the whole story. If everything else matched up this far, there ought to be a population of lonely hearts and jaded ex-lovers lurking about somewhere. Did ponies have anything equivalent to Singles Awareness Day? Day could buy a T-shirt for it.

Oddly enough, he didn’t see a single mopey pony during the hay ride, nor among the meadows and glens once they reached the wide uncultivated spaces that served as Ponyville’s park. The ponies on the ride were occupied nuzzling each other all over or staring into each other’s eyes for disgustingly long periods of time. Nor was there was any shortage of honeymoon feelings wherever else in town Day cared to look. Some of the affection got pretty heated before Big Mac could reach the meadows and let them down to gallop off together, so Day managed to get pretty uncomfortable during the last few minutes of the ride. The taboos against public displays of affection weren’t quite as strong in Equestria as in the present-day United States—nor quite as strong as Day would have liked.

He decided it didn’t mean much that he couldn’t see any unhappy ponies on one short ride. Most singles probably weren’t out and about on the town today, anyway. They were probably indoors, especially if they were in a particularly grey mood—Day couldn’t imagine himself willing to face the sight of dozens of ponies making out in the grass, not if he hadn’t had Allie at his side. Besides, he knew that he had seen ponies in aprons walking about Sugarcube Corner, and caught the fleeting silhouettes of weather pegasi overhead. So some ponies were working today, alleged holiday or no. Perhaps those were the lonely hearts.

But the park was full of contented togetherness, to such a degree that Day could feel it like a wave. A fleet of checkered picnic blankets spread out from here to the horizon. The majority of those blankets had couples on them; as Carrot Top had once mentioned, the ‘modern’ sentiments so strong in Canterlot were creeping into Ponyville, and large herds were on the fall here. But from a hillock Day could see plenty of clusters where as many as six ponies sat together, looking just as happy as any of the other groups.

Maybe this meant he would be able to escape Carrot Top today. She was single, and so maybe she wouldn’t come to the meadows. A fear of her had appeared like a crack in the morning’s all-too-perfect harmony, and it had been growing steadily with each paper heart he passed. Of all days, how could the earth mare not have planned some madness to inflict on him today? The more Day thought about it, the more he thought it must be so. This might even be the long-dreaded day that Carrot Top tried to seduce him by appearing in one of the decadent lingerie items he’d once glimpsed in the back of Carousel Boutique. Carrot Top very rarely wore any clothes and had never hinted that such a thing might happen, but Day had long been afraid of it all the same. It was a recurring nightmare with him. In fact–oddly enough–he’d been dreaming about it more and more lately.

Today, he just wanted to spend some time with Allie—and Allie alone. After two hours in the glow of this holiday, he already wanted that. And dearly. He could feel the contentment radiating off of his girlfriend, and it reminded him of bygone days on Earth when he would feel guilty about the amount of time he spent with wires and surprise her with long trips to the lake whenever he booked time off. His surprise dates used to shock her so much that she would break down and cry with joy. He hadn’t done that for a while, and as he counted off the weeks since they’d seen that lake, it saddened him more than he cared to realize. This went a long way towards making up for that. If Allie wanted to go along with everything ponies did on this holiday, it was more than worthwhile to follow along as well, no matter how ridiculous, for something as valuable as her smile.

Allie looped an arm about his waist. “Those picnic blankets are so pretty!”

Day chuckled. “They are picturesque. Maybe we should have brought some food.”

“Don’t worry,” said a slurred voice behind them. “I got sh’you covered, you shneaky little monkey, you!”

“Berry Punch!” Day spun and proffered a hoof bump to the purple earth pony. He was fond of Berry, inasmuch as he would have openly called himself fond of any mare. Berry Punch was easy to get along with. She was one of those ponies that intuitively grasped Day’s need for personal space and never took it as an affront. The slurring cadence of her speech defect led to an endless parade of good-natured jokes about her ‘punch’ consumption, but the truth was that cases of real alcoholism were rare among ponykind.

And Day had never seen Berry pull a cart before, but today she was hitched up to a sweet little rose number on two wheels, loaded with stacks of woven picnic baskets. Each one had a red and white checkered blanket neatly folded on top.

“Just two bit for your own!”

“That’s all?” Day noted Allie’s longing look at the nearest basket. “Well, if you say so, Berry. I’d be more than happy to take you up on that.”

Berry Punch picked up the handle in her mouth, but switched to holding it between her forehooves so that Day could take it without any risk of getting his fingers between her teeth. “Have a good time, you two.” She winked, and was gone towards another crowd of park-goers coming in on the next hay wagon from town.

It was easy to find a spot, despite the apparent presence of half the population of Ponyville out here. Allie picked out a knoll under an ash tree, near the banks of the brook; they spread out their blanket and unpacked the goodies inside the picnic basket one by one.

It couldn’t possibly have been worth only two bits. Day had expected apples, and maybe a few carrots or celery stalks. Even that would have been generous. Instead there were strawberries from Flankstaff, and rolls of almond-studded cheese from the dairy that usually shipped all its products straight to the high-paying markets of Baltimare. Berry Punch had somehow switched out the hay balls that other ponies were eating for a double set of rolls, under which were a pair of chocolates fresh from Bon-Bon’s confectionary. Allie made Day let her bite them out of his fingers.

In response, Day re-doubled his watch against Carrot Top. She could appear at any time. She was an earth pony, after all, and knew her way around a wood or field with a mysterious kind of intimacy he couldn’t match. Perhaps no human could. The presence of other happy lovers wasn’t going to stop her if she had something in store for him, and it probably wouldn’t be hard for her to guess that Day and Allie would be out here eventually.

But the only thing that startled them while they ate was a rainbow being hung on the other side of the river. It was a novelty for them, so they stopped to watch. Once the rainbow was securely set in place, with each of its colored bands fused into the grass, a prismatic pegasus stayed behind and paced the bottom, ears swiveling like radar dishes as if attempting to guard it from something.

The food disappeared in minutes. Day put his hand into the basket to put the chocolate wrappers back, and found that he’d missed something hard wrapped in linen at the bottom. Out came a small glass bottle, cork-topped, filled with dark mauve liquid and labeled by a small pictogram of a strawberry and a bunch of grapes.

Allie latched onto Day’s shoulder and gasped. “She didn’t!”

“I think she did,” Day muttered, half-amused and half-concerned about how Berry Punch could afford to give away so much of her stock if a bottle like this was in every one of those picnic baskets.

“What does it say for the year?” Allie turned the bottle in Day’s hand and whistled low.

Day pried at the cork. “Should I be concerned that I drink at least three times what I used to since moving to this world? I used to hardly ever touch a beer.”

“You didn’t have the good stuff back on Earth.”

They took turns taking sips, and then turns giving each other fruit-tasting pecks on the lips. At the end of their picnic they lay back and watched flocks of puffy clouds cross Ponyville, sculpted as they looked on by zipping weather pegasi. No effort was being spared to make the scenery as beautiful as possible. When Cloudchaser and Flitter got a nice thick cumulous bank to work with, the end result was a breathtaking landscape of sky that framed the sun through a tunnel of glowing, ethereal plains.

The holiday was so mind-bogglingly simple, and yet Day found himself savoring it more and more the simpler it got. Of course, the fact that when he woke up this morning he’d been looking forward to nine hours of tremendous mental stress and eyesore computer screens might have had something to do with it.

They nearly fell asleep right there in the meadow. Allie began to snooze, but Day would sit up sharply every time he was on the verge of falling asleep and make a scan of the daffodils for approaching earth ponies. She might try to ambush him when he least expected it. He didn’t want the mood to be wrecked by any debate or tension he might embroil himself in if she appeared. The other possibility was even worse—while he was in this mood, just barely tipsy from the small but surprisingly powerful bottle of punch, who knew what Carrot Top might be able to get away with?

Eventually he shook his girlfriend awake, and they wandered aimlessly, following their ears to find the wildlife tamer giving an impromptu preview of her songbirds’ Gala performance. Allie loved it, especially the sing-along, when ponies spontaneously filled in lyrics to the birds’ expert harmonization of a familiar folk tune. It was perfectly cheesy, of course, and Day knew before the first note that it was going to be, but when he saw the pegasus performing, he was struck by just how much she put into it. Normally, Day knew, she could barely stand to be in front of a crowd. But something must have been powering her just now. Though her eyes were closed, she was swaying in time with the music and throwing herself into her conducting. She bought the cheesiness through and through, Day realized. And if that was the case…perhaps he didn’t have the right to call it cheesy at all.

He would have said that there was a certain point during the day when he gave in. He surrendered to Hearts and Hooves Day, and retracted his claims of bitterness towards the holiday of love. He and Allie walked through the woods holding hands. They skipped through the meadows—Day skipped. He wasn’t sure he had ever skipped before in his life. They even had a few brief bars of genuine musical between them, swept up in the romance of a moment when butterflies erupted all around them. Just the two of them, without assistance from any ponies; the magic of Equestria had seeped that deeply into their bones by now, and Day let it move him that freely.

They abandoned the forest patches for town later in the afternoon. The picnic basket had been more of a pleasantry than a full meal, and also the only thing Day had eaten since the coffee and toast he took each morning before dashing to the train station.

“Should we head back home and put something together?” Day tapped his girlfriend’s nose; his own was inches away and both hung over fool’s grins. “I can cook if you want. I make a pretty mean linguini.”

Allie bit her cheeks. He knew she enjoyed his gallantry, but they both remembered his last linguini, which had certainly been mean in one sense of the word. “That’s sweet,” she said with a tickle to his chin, “but how about we splurge and go out?”

“Anything you want.” Day looked around the street which they were walking arm in arm, bathed in the sideways grins of the ponies to either side. “How about the Daisy Café? It’s right down the road and Tom keeps recommending it to me.”

They didn’t see Tom very much, despite the fact that he claimed to be Ponyville’s longest resident human, and was their closest neighbor besides the Cake and Berry families across the way. The few times Day had encountered the bronze, broad-shouldered human, he had been in the company of many ponies, and always quiet when Day conversed with him to keep his English sharp. But he seemed nice enough. And what with the ingredient restrictions they had to observe in Equestria—namely hay and alfalfa, although Allie had once made a bad run-in with thistle and clover—another human’s recommendation for a dining establishment was the safest one to go on.

The Daisy Café was furnished in simple, tasteful Equestrian style, with most of its seating at outdoor tables lacking any chairs. In honor of Hearts and Hooves Day, the normal blue-striped umbrellas had been replaced with pink heart-print ordeals; Day calmly waved off the hostess’ repeated offers to find them stools in favor of sitting inside where they wouldn’t inconvenience anypony.

The Café was filled with herds out on their evening date. The busy kitchen was overflowing with smells that had the humans’ stomachs growling almost predatorily in minutes, and they smiled abashed at the other patrons who glanced their way in amusement. Day and Allie hungrily absorbed the smells, commenting whenever a dish looked good, but mostly just holding hands across the table and staring into each other’s eyes. This content state lasted for some length of time, until they were politely interrupted by a pony dropping two menus onto the edge of the table.

“I’ll just come and take your order when you two are ready, okay?”

Day looked up sharply in response to the voice. “I—I didn’t know that you worked here!”

Carrot Top was wearing an apron and carrying a tray with glasses of tomato juice on her back. “Och, yes. Part time. I’m pulling the double shift since it’s Hearts and Hooves Day and I’m single. All the herds are off, don’t you know.”

Day grimaced inwardly as his cynicism flooded in again with a black, dull vengeance. Just fantastic. Here in Equestria, there was yet another reason for singles to be miserable on this stupid holiday. More work so that the already-fortunate ponies could have their fun. And they’d even moved the holiday of love to a warm day of the year, when nopony with magical blood in their veins would want to be inside all day. Confound these diabolical ponies. Did their cruelty know no bounds?

But at the same time, he didn’t want to give up the day he had been sharing with Allie. He stared down into his menu without really looking at it. “Could you get us a couple glasses of water?” he asked quickly, and Carrot Top trotted back into the kitchen. Gone, for another minute at least.

Allie moved her hand up Day’s arm, trying to look into his downcast eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You look nervous all of a sudden.”

Day squeezed her hand to reassure her, but didn’t speak. He was too focused on trying to find a way out of this situation. They couldn’t just make up an excuse to get up and leave without ever ordering their food, and they couldn’t ask for a different waiter. Carrot Top would have unfiltered access to them throughout the whole meal, and whatever she did, there was very little chance Day had any way of stopping her.

And he’d just been starting to enjoy this day for the first time in his life. Well, that was what he got for it. Day sighed and flipped open the menu; suddenly lacking an appetite, he memorized the name of the first item he saw as Carrot Top was returning with two glasses of water.

“So?” the pony said in a perky uptone. “You decided what you’d like yet?”

“What do you recommend?” asked Allie, holding up her menu. “I’ve never been here before.”

Carrot wiggled an ear. “Normally, I’d say the Bouquet Salad with extra daisy petals, but I think you might like the Daisy-Chestnut Soup. Or maybe the Beet and Cheese Cassarole with Daisy-and-Breadcrumb Toppings. We just got fresh breadcrumbs in yesterday.”

Allie giggled and folded her menu, passing it in. “Like daisies much, Carrot?”

“It’s the Daisy Café, hun. Every dish has daisies. It’s our thing.”

“I’ll have the casserole then.”

Carrot used her mouth to slip the menu into a thin saddle-pocket on the sides of her apron. “And for you, Day?”

Day brought his head up as his tense arms braced against the table. “Look,” he exclaimed, “Just for today, could you leave us alone?”

Carrot Top backed off, head tilted. Day realized how loud he’d just been and slumped into his bench, covering his face.

“Sorry,” he said through his fingers. “It’s just that I really wanted to enjoy today with Allie—and only her…”

Carrot Top processed these words for a second. Then she drew herself up, looking down on both of the seated humans. Day removed his fingers from his eyes when they began to burn under the force of her glare.

“Because you haven’t been here for Hearts and Hooves before,” she said sternly, “I’m going to forgive you for that comment. But don’t ever treat me like a cheap mare again.”

Day began to shrink, cold nervousness erupting at the sight of her unshielded ire. “What did I do?”

Carrot stamped on the ground, creating a sharp clack on the tile. “How can accuse me of pestering you on Hearts and Hooves Day! Honestly!” When Day continued to do nothing but stare in blank confusion, she switched to a warm smile and used the side of her fetlock to rustle Allie’s hair.

“This special day is for you two,” she said, “and I’m not dating you—not yet. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything to make it stressful. What kind of a pony do you take me for?”

Day struggled for a moment after he realized that she was expecting an actual answer to that question. He raised his open palms hopelessly. “A…confusing one?”

“Hmm.” Carrot tapped her muzzle. “Confusing. Alright. That’s a bit like ‘mysterious’. I can work with that.”

Day flipped through his menu quickly now, just beginning to relax with the hope that Carrot would stick to this sudden promise of leaving him be. “You’re not bothered by working extra and being alone?”

Carrot tilted her head even more. “Why, how silly would that be? Everypony celebrates Hearts and Hooves Day. If you don’t have a special somepony, you come together to make the day special for those who do.” She pointed in the direction of the town square. “The foals have an especially grand time with it. Which reminds me, don’t forget to pick up your hoofmade cards in the evening. It means a lot to them. They’re putting stickers in them this year. It was chocolate last year, but somepony’s dog scarfed one and got dreadful sick.”

Allie clasped her hands. “How totally cute! So you get to plan out the decorations and play matchmaker?”

Carrot Top chuckled and thumped the menu in her apron. “Or keep town running for the day. Which I’m happy to do. Next week, all the herdmates put in extra time and we get a day off to make up for it.”

Day followed with more than a trace of suspicion. “Drop the charade, Carrot Top. You can’t mean to tell me there’s nopony sitting at home moping today.”

She snorted, furrowing her brows. She didn’t seem to understand the question. “On a day this nice, who would be?”

Day stared in silence. The menu hung forgotten in his hands, and his hands lay forgotten in Allie’s. Carrot Top looked back and forth between them, as if still trying to figure out what was wrong.

“Aww!” said Allie.

Day would have put it a little differently. Though he didn’t dare admit it out loud, Carrot Top’s honest bewilderment was acting as a crystal lens to him. It felt like years of being told that there was something wrong with him if he couldn’t find a partner were melting away. And he felt more than a little foalish for having assumed ponies would give into the same follies.

This, he thought, must be how Valentine’s Day was meant to be celebrated.

He still wasn’t moving, so Carrot Top poked him, and giggled when he startled and rapped out the name of a grilled sandwich near the top of the first page.

“I still have my designs on you,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll give you about two days to enjoy the afterglow. But after that, the truce is over.” She turned, nearly plucking the menu out of his hands. “Enjoy the daisies.” With a wink, and a flick of her tail that was ever-so-slightly too high for a public place, she swayed off through the restaurant.

Day did indeed enjoy the rest of the night with Allie. But his glee was just a little bit more solemn for the rest of that night. He felt something stirring in him, but it wasn’t the same as the feelings he usually experienced when Carrot Top was around. These feelings were cooler, but brighter, like the feeling he experienced when staring at the insides of a circuit board and wondering how such perfect intricacy could exist in such a tiny space.

In the town square, tail-wagging foals lined up with rows of cards made from construction paper and crayon. Day and Allie each picked one out and exchanged them with ritual sincerity. And all throughout, into the evening as soft violin music filled the darkening town, Day was thoughtful. The conclusion he arrived at was that Carrot Top’s words might have done more to crack his carefully constructed walls than any swish of her flanks ever had.