Wonders

The next morning, while my guides were eating their morning meal, I told them about the disharmony.

“The other towns had virtually no disharmony” when I began speaking the ponies listened intently “except when something bad happened. But this one is different, the ponies here are often unhappy, even when there is nothing obvious to be unhappy about.”

Twilight and her friends looked surprised, the quiet mare looked sad.

“The other towns were good” I continued “but this one… this one could almost certainly sustain a great storm, all by itself”

Then Twilight’s group looked slightly alarmed, they traded wide eyed glances, but the quiet mare was not alarmed.

She looked determined, and I sensed some anger in her.

“And everypony has a different problem, it would be impossible to solve all of them”

“No” said the quiet mare, not very quietly “nothing is impossible”

“You are welcome to try solving all of these problems” I said with a cynical laugh “but I don’t believe it can be done”

“Let’s make a bet, shall we? If I solve all these problems you promise not to freeze this town, or any town.”

I shook my head “My job is to punish disharmony; I don’t care how these problems are solved, by ice or otherwise. If there is no more disharmony, I would not even be able to freeze the town.”

The pony was still mad, she stood from the table they were eating at, and headed out of the building, the rest of us followed her.

“Who has a problem?” she said as she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

It was not hard to find somepony, a few feet to our left there was an old mare begging for change.

I pointed at the old one “she is angry”

The determined looking mare walked over to the beggar “why are you angry” she demanded, as if it wasn’t obvious.

The beggar looked at the mare for a second, then said “these ponies, they ignore me, they refuse to even acknowledge my existence, much less give me aid”

“I have acknowledged you, and here, take these bits, now be happy.”

The mare was naïve if she thought a few bits was enough to help this beggar in any meaningful way, but the old one smiled anyway, and her anger faded. She was probably happy that someone seemed to care.

The mare turned back to me “who’s next?”

I pointed to a young couple behind her, they were arguing.

The mare walked up to the couple and started to talk, I don’t know what she said but the ponies soon lost their anger, and began to laugh. I doubt she solved their problem, but she did solve their disharmony, for a while anyway.

The mare returned to me, and I directed her to another pony, we went on like this on the same street for a while, until nopony on the street was disharmonic, and everypony was staring at us.

Then we moved on to the next street, and some of the ponies we had helped followed us, intrigued.

We continued this for hours, going up and down countless streets and gathering a massive crowd of onlookers, it got to the point where ponies would forget about their disharmony and go to see what all the fuss was about, without us even having to raise a hoof.

And then we came to a large pile of rubble, there were worker ponies clearing it out.

I pointed to the one who was obviously the overseer, “he is angry”

The mare walked up to him, and asked what was wrong.

“We just demolished this building” said the worker “we are behind schedule and we need to clear this rubble by the end of the day, but there is not enough time, it’s impossible.”

“nothing is impossible” said the mare, and she began to help them clear away the rubble

For a minute or two the entire crowd just watched them work, and then Twilight and her friends stepped forward and helped as well.

And then the beggar mare pushed her way to the front of the crowd and began helping as well.

And soon the entire crowd was pitching in to get the job done, and it was over within hours.

And as the streetlights came on the determined mare walked up to me and said “who’s next”

And there was only one disharmony left, a small one, buried deep down. I had only been able to detect it when all of the other disharmonies in the area were dispersed.

“There is a mare, with hate in her heart.”

“Where?”

I put my hoof on the determined mare’s chest “there”

And an odd expression came over the mares face, sadness and anger and regret. And she led us west towards the setting sun. We walked for around half an hour and got onto a street where the tall buildings were replaced by houses; the mare walked up the steps of one of these houses and knocked on the door.

The door was answered by a pink mare with a purple mane and buttons on her flank, and as soon as she saw the determined mare she became hateful too.

They talked at the door for a while, then the pink mare allowed the determined mare to step inside and they talked in there for a while, and then they both stepped back outside and said a few final things before parting.

And as the determined mare walked back towards me I saw that she was crying, and I sensed both ponies still had all of their hate.

I guess I was right, it is impossible to solve every problem, without ice.