Lyra's Human 2: Derpy's Human

by pjabrony

Rating: teen
Tags: Comedy, Random, Derpy Hooves, Slice of Life, Human, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 634946

Serveral years after the events of "Lyra's Human," Derpy Hooves meets a human of her own.

Several years after the events of Lyra's Human, Derpy Hooves decides that she's lonely, and wants to meet a human for herself. Together, Derpy and the human have crazy adventures across worlds as both learn what it means to be true friends.

Story image courtesy Shadow Squirrel

Published 2012-04-25 22:44:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-07-22 23:01:31 UTC

2: A Letter of Introderption

Derpy thought it would be faster than this. Actually she thought that it would be instantaneous, as she had always seen Twilight teleport from one point to another instantly. But instead she was held in a magical warp for several seconds. Or, she thought, perhaps the human lived in some sort of dance club that didn’t play any music but did have lots of trippy lights. Not the most likely hypothesis, but that was the way that Derpy’s mind worked. She hoped that when it stopped she would see the human right away, not have to go searching the world for her.

Karyn, they had said she was named. It still sounded weird to Derpy, but at least they had the same amount of letters. What would she be like? Nice, she hoped.

The magical display finally started to coalesce and it squeezed her through a single point into her new surroundings. She looked around. She was most impressed with the walls. They were perfectly flat like paper that had been painted over. No pony would ever make walls like that. You could always see the grain of the wood even if it was painted. She hoped she could see the perfectly flat trees that grew here.

Then she took note of the furniture. This was more traditional wood, though it shined with some kind of lacquer. There was a fairly small bed, a fairly large bureau, a fairly average desk with a human sitting at it, a fairly tall bookshelf. . .

The human! She had the same blonde hair as Derpy, but no tail. Her face was freckled and she was dressed up. Derpy figured that that was for the occasion of meeting her, and wondered if she was being rude by not having dressed up herself. Oh well, she thought. She wants to meet me, not my clothes. The human’s eyes grew wide and she gasped.

“Oh my gosh!” Derpy wondered if gosh was the name of the humans’ leader. “It’s really you! You’re really here!”

“Yes, my name is—“

“But you’re a cartoon pony!”

“Huh? No, I’m a pegasus pony,” said Derpy, displaying her wings. “I’m Derpy Hooves, pleased to meet you.”

“But you’re made up!”

“No I’m not. This is my natural skin tone.”

“No, I mean. . . Never mind. I don’t believe it, it was real!”

“I thought that you knew I was coming.”

“Well, I did, but I didn’t really believe it. I just saw this message on a board one day titled “Would You Like to Live in Equestria?” and because I was bored that day I wrote a little essay on the positives and negatives of living there, and then a week ago got a message that said they were impressed and that a pony would be visiting me. I thought it was a joke.”

“I see. Believe me, it’s very serious. I worked awfully hard to get here.”

“That’s awesome. I have so many questions! Do you really like muffins? Did you really wreck town hall? Do you hang out with the Doctor? What’s Dinky like?”

Derpy got the impression of the human as a little excitable, something like Pinkie Pie back home, but perhaps it was just the thrill of the meeting. She had to act as the voice of reason, not a typical position for her.

“Whoa there! Lyra told me that you would know things about Equestria, but not all those intimate details about me. And I don’t know anything about you, so why don’t you formally introduce yourself?”

“OK. Well, my name is Karyn Hubert, and it’s Karyn with a y, not an e. I’m a freshman here at USCI, studying IT.”

“That’s a whole lot of letters. What’s USCI and what’s IT? I think I got all the rest.”

“USCI is the name of the school, University of State College Institute. IT is information technology.”

“Infor-what now?”

“Information technology. It’s all about computers and phones and networking and stuff. How we can store data—which can be anything, words, books, pictures—and get them where they need to be seen.”

“Oh! You’re studying magic! My filly is—”

Karyn interrupted, chuckling. “No, it’s not magic. It’s all physical, based on the movement of microscopic particles.”

“Yep, magic!”

“Not magic. Just a system for handling ideas.”

“That’s magic, all right. It’s OK, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Twilight Sparkle back home studies magic and was worried when she first came to town that her friends wouldn’t like her for it, because another magician came to town and tried to upstage everypony.”

“You mean Trixie.”

“Oh, you know about that too. OK, tell me more.”

“Well, that’s who I am, really. That and someone who loves ponies. I watch it every week and I’ve even been to meet some other fans just to hang out. But now I’m hanging out with a real pony, which would give me so much cred if anyone knew. I guess I have to keep you a secret, though.”

“I’m the first pony to come to Earth, and they told me to keep a low profile. Maybe someday, though.”

The two of them looked at each other as the conversation paused. They were both still a little sure to proceed. Derpy went over and peeked out the window.

“It’ll be interesting if nothing else to see what a human school is like. I didn’t do too well when I went to school. But I learned enough to carry the mail.”

Karyn stood up quickly. “The mail! I forgot to go check it yesterday. Would you mind if I went out and got it? It won’t take me long at all.”

“No, not at all, but while you’re gone, could I. . . ?”

“Yes? You need something?”

“Yeah, I need a place to. . . “

“To what?”

“I have to, um—“

“Oh, you have to pee! You can just say so. But this could be a little problematic. See, I share the bathroom with the room across the way. We each have our own door, but you could go through to the other room. Point being, if anyone knocks, you have to let them know you’re in there or they could come in and see you.”

“That would be bad,” said Derpy. “They’d hear my voice. I’ll have to try to imitate you.”

“I don’t think that would work. My voice is a lot higher than yours. But we’ll say I had a cold or something. OK, go ahead and use it, I’ll be right back.”

They both came back to the dorm room at the same time. Derpy had enjoyed washing her hooves in the faucet instead of in a basin as she would have back home. She was starting to come around on Karyn, but didn’t feel that she really knew her yet.

For her part, Karyn had used the opportunity to try to come to terms with actually having a pony from Equestria in her room. On the one hand it shattered everything she knew about the way the world worked. On the other hand, Derpy was nice.

“So let me see how human mail works,” said Derpy. “I take a professional interest.”

Karyn showed her the three letters that she had brought in. “I can’t imagine that it’s much different from your mail. Return address on the top, recipient’s address on the bottom, stamp on the upper right. We add a set of numbers to the address to make it easier to catalogue addresses.”

“And a human delivers it? How does she cover all the houses in town without flying?”

“Well, there’s more than one. Do you mean to say that you deliver all the mail in town?”

“Oh, no! There are others, but I don’t think I would ever finish my route if I had to walk the roads. As is, I can hit every house in Ponyville and Cloudsdale every other day.”

“Ah, see, we get mail every day. And there’s a lot of mailboxes in town. Although, it’s funny, now that you mention it, many years ago when there was still untamed country out west, they would send mail using something called the Pony Express.”

Derpy was confused. “But I thought there were no ponies here.”

“There are ponies, but they can’t talk or use their hooves to grab things. They had humans who would ride on them and the humans would carry the mail.”

That didn’t sit right with Derpy, and somewhat offended her dignity as a pony. But then she was distracted by the envelope again.

“Hey, this envelope’s all crinkly!”

“Crinkly? Oh, the window. They do that when they have a lot of mail to send to a lot of people so that they can print the address on the letter itself instead of the envelope. Big companies do it, and it usually means that it’s a bill or a check. Given the state of my finances, not a check. “ She tore open the envelope. “Yep, cell phone bill.”

Derpy tried to parse those words and came up empty. She just figured she would nod her head and play along until the conversation came around back to her level. That usually worked.

Karyn opened the second letter and said, “Tuition bill,” then looked at the third letter. This one, Derpy saw, was in a red envelope that did not have a crinkly window. Karyn opened a drawer and put it in. “I’ll look at that one later.”

“Yeah? I’d think that that would be the important one. In Equestria, a red envelope usually means it’s a love letter.”

Karyn turned away from Derpy and didn’t answer. Derpy saw that in the drawer were several other red envelopes. “I’m right, aren’t I? It’s a love letter?”

“Maybe, of a kind. In any case you don’t want to hear about my problems. Tell me more about Equestria, since ponies are what I use to escape my problems anyway.”

“I don’t mind if you talk about problems. If just watching ponies helps you with them, imagine what talking to a pony could do!”

Karyn looked down at her feet and said nothing. She didn’t really like opening up to anyone, but Derpy wasn’t just anyone. It was somehow different unburdening herself to a pony who would go back to her own world rather than her own kind. If nothing else, Derpy would find it more difficult to judge her harshly, since she knew so little about Earth.

“All right, I guess I’ll tell you. See, the truth is that I wasn’t even supposed to come to this school. I had a boyfriend in high school, which is the school you go before college. He was real smart, the smartest in the school, and our plan was that he would go to college, and after he finished and had a job, we would move in together. I hoped that would lead to marriage.

“Now, what you have to understand is that college is expensive. If you’re lucky, your parents will save up and pay for it, otherwise you have to take out loans and you start your life off in debt. Or if you’re smart enough, or if you can play sports, maybe the college will let you go and pay for it themselves, which is called a scholarship. Mike, that’s my boyfriend, got a scholarship for just being smart.

“But they check his grades every half-year to make sure he’s doing ok, and if he’s not, they take the scholarship away. Last year he went for the first time, and he wrote me a letter every week telling me how wonderful he was doing and how well it was going. As near as I can tell, those letters were the only time he put pen to paper during that first semester, since his grades were distinctly mediocre, so much so that they did make him pay for this year.

“My parents told me I could no longer afford to wait for him and hope it all went well. I would have to get a job myself and if I wanted it to be anything decent, I’d better get into school. Well, there was no chance of me getting a scholarship, and my parents can’t afford to pay it either, so that means that I have to take out loans. And it’s bad enough owing money, but all the paperwork to get them and trying to write essays to get grants of a few hundred dollars so I don’t have to owe everything is just more stress.

“Maybe it doesn’t sound all that bad when I just say it straight like that, but here’s what it comes down to: six months ago I was living a dream that I could just wait a few years and then I’d be a housewife. Now I’m in the harsh reality of twenty-first century struggling for economic survival. And it all started when those red envelopes turned out to be lies.

“Look at me, babbling on. You probably haven’t even understood half of what I’ve been saying.”

For the first time, Derpy realized that she was the older, more experienced, and more mature of the two. That was a different experience for her.

“You’re right,” she said, putting sympathy in her voice. “I didn’t understand a lot of the details. But I think I got the gist of it. I think your problem isn’t your problems so much as how your problems have gotten to be a problem.”

Karyn, emotionally drained from her confession, laughed through half-formed tears. “Now it’s my turn to say I don’t understand.”

“You have three problems,” Derpy said, sitting down and raising three hooves to illustrate. “One is that you’re not in as good a money situation as you thought you would be. The second is that your colt-friend isn’t what you thought he would be. The third is that you’re still mired in ‘would have been’s.

“The first is a practical problem, the second is an emotional problem, but the third is just your problem, and the sooner you let it go, the sooner you’ll find the solutions to the first two.”

Karyn’s emotions took over and she raised her voice angrily. “What do you know about it? You’re just a cartoon pony!”

“I know, just something that humans made up. Except I’m here, right here with you.” She rested a wing on Karyn’s shoulder. “You said before that ponies were your way of escaping your issues. What if instead a pony could help you deal with them? Because you’re never again going to be able to see me as just that funny pegasus with the crossed eyes. I’ll always be the mare who offered to help.”

“And maybe I can at least help you avoid my mistakes. My life hasn’t been all bubbles and muffins, you know.”

Through her tears and her rage Karyn laughed. “Well, you’re still funny. I guess I never thought of you as having had any troubles. Hey, is this our first fight as friends?”

“I guess so,” Derpy said, “But it’s over now. It’s exactly how I like fights with my friends to be: short and in the past.”

The pony and the human embraced. Derpy had not missed the significance of the fact that it was Karyn who called them friends first.

When they broke the hug, Karyn said, “I’m going to go out and get us something to eat. Anything in particular you want?”

“No, whatever you bring Is fine. I can eat anything, so long as it’s delicious. But what about the expense? You said that you’re short of money.”

“Don’t worry about that. One of the ways they get us is to make us buy a meal plan, which gives you more food that one person could use, especially if she’s underweight and a vegetarian like me. I can buy a couple of meals a week for you without noticing.”

She left the room and once again Derpy was left with her thoughts. She had to try to find a way to help Karyn with her problems. She reflected back on her own youth. In her mind, growing up was something that had happened to the ponies of the generation before her. Nopony had ever given her the big book of things you need to know to advance beyond foal stage, and she had to wing everything. Literally, in some cases. Only through trial and error had she learned how to economize and how to deal with stallions who took more than they gave, even though one had given her Dinky.

That was another difference between the two of them. Karyn hadn’t borne any human foals, though Derpy could see that she was of age. On the one hoof, that could be good for her. On the other hoof, she wouldn’t have given up her filly for anything. But even that hadn’t made her grow up. She was still Dinky’s playmate as much as her mother.

In the line for food, Karyn was occupied as well. The luster of learning that Equestria, pegasi, and Derpy were real was wearing off, especially since Derpy had made the conversation so serious. But the ramifications of that were coming through. Derpy was more than just a two-dimensional drawing that someone messed up the eyes on. She had lived out many years, working a taxing job, raising a filly, keeping a home in Cloudsdale, and dealing socially with other ponies. The idea of her as a mentor was laughable at first, but didn’t seem so silly once she thought about it.

“Miss. . . Miss! You’re next!”

So deep was Karyn in her reverie that she hadn’t realized that she reached the front of the line. She turned to the impatient queue behind her and muttered, “Sorry. I just don’t know what went wrong.”

She loaded up her tray with a heaping portion of salads and vegetables, along with some tofu processed to a meat flavor. If the cashier thought she was indulging in overeating, he had the decency to say nothing.

Bringing the tray back to her room, she set places for herself and Derpy. “I don’t know if you’re going to like all this,” she said, “but it’s the local cuisine.”

“Don’t fret,” said Derpy. “Worse comes to worst, I’ll go out later and graze if I get really hungry.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you want to do that. You’ll get spotted and cause a panic.”

“But I’ll be—oh, I forgot to tell you. They gave me a bunch of spells before I came. One of them is for invisibility.”

“What do you mean, a bunch of spells? You’re not a unicorn.”

“Yeah, but Lyra and Twilight, they made these cool things for me,” Derpy said, reaching into her bag. “Ooh, we could have used this one before when I was in the bathroom. It finds the voice of the human I’m nearest and lets me mimic it. Listen.”

Derpy put her hoof into the spell and twisted, then started talking in Karyn’s voice, “Hi, I’m Karyn, a perfectly normal human who is not in any way a pony from Equestria.”

They both laughed. “That’s cool, I’ll have to let you call my parents next time so I don’t have to,” Karyn said.

“Actually, I’m wondering now. Do you want there to be a next time? Because I can’t stay here much longer. Things are going on back in Equestria that I have to attend to. I’m glad I could meet you, but maybe you don’t have room in your life for a pony.”

Karyn started to say, “Of course I want you to stay!” but checked herself. If she did invite Derpy back, it meant keeping a secret from everyone she knew, having to lie and make up excuses for missing days with the people she knew. But on the other hand, it meant having a My Little Pony pony for real! Then she realized that neither point was relevant. Derpy wasn’t a secret. Derpy wasn’t a pony. Derpy was a soul. She chose her words very carefully.

“You can come back. . . as often as you want to.”

Derpy had the ability to hide her emotions well, since so much of displaying emotions comes through the eyes. But she could read them well, and understood Karyn’s trepidation and the way she used the word “want.” She smiled.

“All right. Logistically I can’t say when I’ll be back. Time flows differently in our worlds. You may see me when you least expect me.”

“That wouldn’t be a first,” said Karyn. “Which reminds me, what were you doing in Fluttershy’s chicken coop that one time?”

“That was years ago! How did you even know about that?”

“The show, remember?”

“I’m not sure I like what it’s showing of me. Anyway, from what I remember, I was shirking off work and I know that Fluttershy takes her bunny rabbit on a walk that time of day, so I thought I could duck in and take a nap. But I was woken up by a big production number and poked my head out to see a couple of pegasi singing up a storm—not literally. I figured I better get back on my route.

“Actually, back in those days I was always getting myself into sticky situations. One time I got trapped in a snow globe! Now that was a story. It all started. . . “

The two talked as the day waned, swapping anecdotes and sharing laughs. All the tension that had passed between them was gone. When all was dark Derpy shouldered her saddlebag and gave Karyn one last hug. She was all set to activate her spell when Karyn shouted, “Wait!”

“What?”

“You’re going to disappear now, right?”

“Yeah, is there a problem?”

“I just had a moment of fear, that as soon as you did I’d say to myself, ‘You’re hallucinating. You’re going mad. Ponies are just made up!’”

Derpy cocked her head in thought. Stretching her wing as far forward as it could go, she took one of her flight feathers in her mouth and pulled hard. She felt a sting shoot up her back as she laid the feather on Karyn’s desk. Saying nothing, she put her hoof into the spell and twisted. Karyn was alone. She picked up the feather.

“Until next time,” she said to it.

Author's Note

And now, scenes from the next exciting episode!

“Hold it, hold it,” Karyn said. “I can’t go to Equestria. I belong here!”

“And you’ll come back here, without anyone knowing you’re gone. Trust me, it’s right.”

A dozen more objections entered Karyn’s head, but they all tripped over each other and she found herself climbing on to Derpy’s back with her books clutched in her arms as the pegasus pulled out the return spell.

“Lean down and grab my neck,” Derpy said. “I don’t know what the range is on this spell, and I wouldn’t want to leave your head here.”

“What?!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So,” Spike said, “You’re a human, huh?”

“Last time I checked,”Karyn said, hoping that the joke would translate and he wouldn’t think that she was a shape-changer or something.

“You’re the first human I’ve met.”

“Well, that’s fine, since you’re the first dragon I’ve met.”

“Really? So you’re not prejudiced against dragons? You don’t think that they’re all rampaging monsters?” Spike asked.

“I don’t see why I would. I mean, humans have a lot of legends about dragons, and sometimes they do rampage or hoard gold, but meeting one in the flesh, well, humans try to keep an open mind about folks they don’t know.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn laughed. . . . She leaned over to Derpy and said, “Your friends are real nice, but they’re a little weird.”

“You’re right,” said Derpy. “Our friends are.”

3: Mid-derp Exams

Karyn put her mechanical pencil in her mouth and chewed. Probably not the healthiest habit, she reflected, but so long as she didn’t reach the lead she figured she’d be fine. Her body started to ache from sitting so long. She debated moving everything to the bed. Too much work, she thought. She considered tabling what she was doing and starting on the next book. No, not enough progress.

The clock on her desk said 9:45. The one on her computer said 9:47. Which was right? She figured it was easier to set the desk clock forward. Stop it, she told herself. You’re getting distracted. You have to study.

She read another paragraph. She looked at the gray feather pinned to her wall. Derpy was lucky, she thought. Deadlines weren’t as much of a thing for her. Even coming back for another visit would be on Derpy’s schedule.

And then, as though the thought triggered it, there was a burst of magic and the sound of a certain volume of air being replaced by an equal volume of pegasus.

“Karyn!”

“Derpy! Oh, Derpy, I was just thinking about you!”

“Good thoughts, I hope”

“Of course they were! Well, nice thoughts, anyway. I don’t know that they were good. I was getting distracted.”

“From what?”

“Derpy, I’m simply swamped with schoolwork. I have two midterms tomorrow and a paper due on Tuesday.”

“What’s a midterm?” asked Derpy.

“A test. Ponies don’t have tests? Figures, you live in a perfect world.”

“Hey, plenty about Equestria isn’t perfect. And foals in school sure do take tests. We just don’t have any fancy term for them. We just call them tests.”

“Well, midterms are big tests, though not as big as finals,” said Karyn. “And I’ve only just started studying for one, haven’t even cracked a book for the other, and as for the paper, well, I’ve got my outline, but I still have to write the thing, which is all the work!”

“Maybe I can help. What are you studying?”

Derpy poked her head over Karyn’s desk. From a textbook a page had unfolded out to four times the size of the book. The page contained what looked like a map or flowchart, with squares and circles labeled as “Workstation,” “Bridge,” “Patch Panel,” and such. Question marks appeared over Derpy’s head.

“Or. . . maybe I should just let you handle this,” Derpy said. “Looks like a treasure map, but I don’t see the X.”

Karyn chuckled. “Yeah, there’s no treasure here, and I’m looking for an A more than an X, though I think at this point a C will be enough. I’ve got to be able to draw this from memory with variations by tomorrow.

Derpy’s face drooped. “So you’re pretty busy is what you’re saying. I guess I came at a bad time.”

“Oh, Derpy! No time you come is a bad time.”

“Great, then let’s do something fun!”

“I want to, but I can’t. Don’t you see, I want to go play with you, but I have to do this.”

“You’re right. You keep at the books, I’m going to sit on the bed. It’s enough just to be with you.”

Derpy folded her wings and settled in, preparing to be bored. That wasn’t a big problem; her boredom was one of the reasons she sought to be friends with Karyn in the first place, so she hadn’t lost anything, and her loneliness was being assuaged. Poor Karyn, though. The one thing Derpy was not going to say to her was, “Why didn’t you start earlier?” Work piled up until deadlines. That was just how it worked.

She looked over to the desk. Karyn leaned over the diagram and was trying to burn it into her memory, sneaking looks out of the corner of her eye at Derpy. If only she could be in two places at once, or if she just had more time, thought Derpy.

“That’s it!” she cried, getting up from the bed.

“What’s it?”

“Come back with me to Equestria! We can spend time there and you can come back and it’ll be the same time. Better yet, bring your books and do your studying there, and you can take all the time you need!”

“Hold it, hold it,” Karyn said. “I can’t go to Equestria. I belong here!”

“And you’ll come back here, without anyone knowing you’re gone. Trust me, it’s right.”

A dozen more objections entered Karyn’s head, but they all tripped over each other and she found herself climbing on to Derpy’s back with her books clutched in her arms as the pegasus pulled out the return spell.

“Lean down and grab my neck,” Derpy said. “I don’t know what the range is on this spell, and I wouldn’t want to leave your head here.”

“What?!”

“Just kidding. I’m sure this is perfectly safe. Almost entirely sure.” And before Karyn could say anything else, Derpy had twisted her hoof and activated the spell.

“Ah, home!” said Derpy. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t opened my eyes yet.”

“Oh dear! Are you afraid of heights? I’ll land immediately!”

Karyn felt the sensation of controlled free fall for a moment, then replied, “No, I’m scared of inter-dimensional travel. I’ve had that phobia all my life. The only way I’ve been able to deal with it is because there were no other dimensions!”

“But this shouldn’t be so strange to you. Look. Ponyville. Town Hall. The farmer’s market. Don’t you want to see it?”

Karyn chanced opening one eye. The first thing she noticed were how bright and vivid the colors were. But the town looked different from her memories, which she realized was because it seemed deserted.

“Where is everybody?”

“Everypony, Karyn. You’re saying it wrong.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“It’s Sunday. Most likely everypony is still in bed taking it easy. But I’m a morning pony.”

“Well, let’s get settled before they all come out.”

“OK. My house here in Ponyville is still occupied, but we can go to the library. That’s the best place if you’re going to study anyway.”

Karyn’s alarm over being in the air won out over her trepidation of the town, and she insisted on walking to the library, even though Derpy had to work out how to get there by road. When they arrived, Derpy knocked on the door, and they heard muffled voices from within.

“Spike! Somepony’s knocking!”

“I’m re-shelving! Can you get it?”

“I’m copying! You’re the assistant, you know!”

“But you’re closer!”

“No, I’m not! Get a measuring tape and I’ll show you!”

“OK, maybe I’m closer on a purely straight-line basis, but my legs are shorter, so I’d have to expend more energy to get there!”

“You’re expending more energy as is by arguing!”

“Why don’t you just magically unlock it and say, ‘It’s open!’?”

“Ha! Shows what you know. Not only is that impolite, but the door’s already unlocked!”

Derpy and Karyn just looked at each other, then Derpy pulled the latch and swung it open. Karyn peered into the hollow tree and saw the expanse of books, a few study tables, and the small dragon who, while he had grown some from the baby she had seen, was still stubby and clearly immature.

“Twilight?” Derpy called into the room.

She was poring over an old volume with a quill taking notes onto a scroll. “Derpy, is that you? I thought you were going to see the human today.”

“I am. I mean, I did. I mean, I went and she was busy with her schoolwork so I brought her here to finish it without time pressure.”

“That was nice of you,” she said, still focusing on her work and not really paying attention. Derpy’s last sentence finally reached her brain. “Wait, what?”

She looked up and saw Derpy and Karyn. Both wore sheepish grins in response to the look of intensity on Twilight’s face. In a demented kind of singsong, she spoke while keeping her eyes focused on the two. “Oh, Spike! Could you stop what you’re doing for a minute and help me? I need you to take care of a guest so that I can take dear Miss Hooves aside and have a nice conniption.”

Derpy smiled, as she had confused the word “conniption” with “confection,” and thought that Twilight was about to offer her something tasty. While Karyn walked off to the side, Twilight came and put her foreleg on Derpy’s shoulder.

“So,” she began. “Let me see if I’ve got this. You went to the human world and the one you were visiting—“

“Karyn.”

“Right. . . was busy.”

“It’s Karyn with a y, though.”

“Mmhm. And what you thought was that in order to save her some time—“

“Because apparently Karen with an e is more common.”

“Yes. So you concluded that the right thing to do—“

“Not that it’s a popular name among ponies at all.”

“Got it. So you just went next to her and activated the spell that Lyra made—“

“But since the “ryn” is unaccented you could think the vowel was anything.”

“I see. And you brought her to Ponyville—“

“I think your first guess might even be that it was spelled with an i.”

“And then decided that since you already were in town, you’d drop by to see me.”

“Or an e, or maybe even an a, but it’s definitely a y.”

“DERPY!”

The pegasus looked at her and blinked. “Are you angry, Twilight? Did I do something wrong?”

Mollified by at least bringing her back into the conversation, Twilight lowered her voice. “When I said that we were going to do this safety-first, did you. . . “ She started rolling her hoof in the air. “forget, or just not care, or did you think that the concept involved completely untested and un-thought-out experiments?”

“Oh. Well, to be honest I didn’t think about that at all. Karyn was just so busy, and I could tell it was bothering her, so this occurred to me as the best solution. I’m sorry. I didn’t break anything.”

“But you could have! You might have torn our worlds apart or blended them together! Or she could have shown up and started eating ponies or something!”

“Could that really happen just by transporting one human and some books?”

“Nopony knows, that’s the point! Even though it’s only one human and—did you say books?”

“Yeah, she brought her schoolbooks to study.”

“Books from the human world? As in books-that-nopony-has-ever-read-before books?”

“I think so.”

Twilight rubbed her hooves together greedily. “Derpy, you’re a real smart mare!”

While that conversation was going on, Karyn was having her own awkward moment as Spike had led her to a table and she began unpacking.

“So,” Spike said, “You’re a human, huh?”

“Last time I checked,”Karyn said, hoping that the joke would translate and he wouldn’t think that she was a shape-changer or something.

“You’re the first human I’ve met.”

“Well, that’s fine, since you’re the first dragon I’ve met.”

“Really? So you’re not prejudiced against dragons? You don’t think that they’re all rampaging monsters?” Spike asked.

“I don’t see why I would. I mean, humans have a lot of legends about dragons, and sometimes they do rampage or hoard gold, but meeting one in the flesh, well, humans try to keep an open mind about folks they don’t know.”

“I do that too. So, just for example, purely hypothetical question, would you have any particular objection to, say, dating a dragon?”

Karyn had been organizing her notes and pages, but her ears perked up at the question and she stood up.

“Um, well, I’m not sure I would go that far. I mean, you’re nice and all, but I mean, dating?”

“Come on, you know what they say: ‘Once you go scale, all other guys pale.’”

“What about Rarity?”

“Rarity and I have an understanding.” Karyn suspected that the understanding had something to do with Rarity never having a claw laid on her.

“Er. . . I’m going to see how Derpy and Twilight are doing.”

The ponies had settled their argument and Twilight was coming to see Karyn at the same time.

“Hi, Karyn, is it?” asked Twilight.

Derpy came up next to her, “Don’t forget—“

“Yes, I know, with a y.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Sparkle,” said Karyn.

“Derpy tells me you brought your books.”

“Yes. Is it all right for me to study here?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can work something out. So, what kind of books are they?”

“Kind of technical stuff. I’m not sure you’d like them.”

Derpy said, “She’s studying magic, although she says it’s not quite like what we have here.”

“It’s really not magic at all,” said Karyn. “Although I can’t convince Derpy of that. Actually, she has me half believing that it might be. Which is why I need to get to studying it so I can understand exactly how it works, or at least enough to pass the test.”

“Test?”

“Yeah, a big test on this stuff tomorrow, see?”

Twilight looked over the same network map that Derpy had. Although she didn’t know any of the terminology, her logical mind tried to sort out the pattern. Flipping around to the beginning of the book she started to read the overview and see how the study could be useful. Mostly she was just enjoying the act of reading.

Karyn pulled out a book from another subject. “So, again, is it all right if I study here? It would really help relieve my time pressure.”

“Hmm. . . You can certainly use my library for peace and quiet, and I’ll appreciate it if you let me look at whichever books you’re not using at a given moment. But I won’t let you cheat on the test.”

“I don’t plan to cheat!”

“You’re gaining more time to study, aren’t you?”

“I’m almost entirely certain that the ethics section of my college handbook had nothing forbidding travel to an alternate dimension via pony magic in order to gain time.”

“Be that as it may,” said Twilight. “If every other student has an amount of time x to study and you have amount x plus y, you have an unfair advantage. That’s simple logic.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Nope. Ethics are a sincere responsibility, and I won’t allow even a human to violate the spirit of a rule. You can stay here today, but when you return to the human world, I forbid you to study until the test is over and you’re back on the proper time track.”

Karyn laughed to herself. “OK, if that’s what it takes!”

“I mean it,” said Twilight. “Before you go I’ll enchant your books so that you can’t open them for the same amount of time that you spend here.”

“I give you my solemn promise—my word of honor as a human—that I will not study.” Karyn couldn’t get the smile off of her face. Twilight actually thought that she was denying her a privilege!

“But Twilight,” said Derpy. “If she doesn’t have additional time to study, how is she going to be ready for the tests and still be able to have fun with me?”

“Ah, now that’s a better question. I have loads of techniques and hints to help you pass tests, having taken many in my time. And Derpy, you can have fun by joining in!”

A light, peppy melody flitted throughout the library. Karyn, Derpy, and Twilight turned to see Spike noodling away on a guitar.

“Spike!” said Twilight. “What are you doing?!”

“I thought that we were going to have a training montage. You have to have music for those!”

“You’ve been hanging around Pinkie Pie too much.”

Twilight magically pulled out a green visor and a pair of reading glasses. Raising her head high, she began to speak didactically.

“Now,” said Twilight, “Take your quill and write points from the books that you think will be important. Writing can be a way to help you learn. Or if you like, you can say them out loud. You might do better that way. But by expressing the ideas as if they were your own, you’ll make that come true.

“Don’t get bogged down on any one point. It’s more important to know a little about everything than to know everything about something. Where there are gaps in your knowledge, it may be possible to re-derive the ideas you don’t know. That’s easier that trying to improvise in an area you’re completely unfamiliar with.

“Above all else, relax. Even if you’re not confident, pretend you are and think positive. Believe you’re going to ace the exam. Stress is your enemy. Don’t let it defeat you.”

Derpy had been listening to Twilight’s speech, not really understanding. Her eyes were crossed more than usual. But after the last point was made, she smiled with her mouth open, stood up, and started for the door.”

“Hey, Derpy!” called Karyn. “Where are you going? I need moral support here!”

“Don’t you worry, I’ll be right back. Twilight, take care of her, OK?”

The wooden door of the library closed with a click, and Karyn was left alone with Twilight and Spike. “Um. . . Miss Sparkle?” Karyn prompted.

“You can call me Twilight.”

“Thanks. And thanks for all the tips. But can I ask one favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I brought all my books. . . “

“Yes?”

“But I didn’t bring a pen.”

“Tee hee. I’ll lend you a quill. Just make sure you don’t do that during the test.”

Against her expectations, Karyn found writing with the large feather and the bottle of ink no more difficult than using a regular human pen as she took her notes. The notes themselves she didn’t think would be particularly useful, but she trusted Twilight’s tip.

Soon there was a banging outside, and the door flew open. Derpy Hooves, laden with a diverse melange of cargo, backed into the library, balancing the various items on her back and in her hooves.

“Derpy?” asked Karyn. “What is all that stuff?”

“Twilight said it was important that you be relaxed and not stressed. Well, I don’t know about studying, but if there’s one thing I do know, it’s how to chill! I got snacks from Sugar Cube Corner if you’re hungry, lemonade if you’re thirsty, a blanket if you’re cold, ice (for the lemonade) if you’re hot, a pillow if you’re achy, candles if it’s too dark, and aromatherapy.”

“For if I’m stinky?”

“No, just if you want it to smell nice.”

“Derpy?”

“Yes?”

“You’re a good pony.”

The pegasus blushed.

For the next few hours, Derpy waited on Karyn, making sure she wanted for nothing. As the human concentrated, the ponies sat together on the other side of the library.

“So Twilight, I’m sorry that I acted so rashly. You were right that I should have thought about it before I transported Karyn here.”

“Don’t worry, Derpy. It doesn’t look like she’s dangerous.”

“And you got to see the books. Don’t worry, though. Once I take her home I’ll make sure she doesn’t come back.”

Twilight paused in thought. “A long time ago, the princess sent me to Ponyville to make some friends. She never actually rescinded the order. I’ll have to make some arrangements, but maybe it’ll be OK if Karyn visits now and then.”

Derpy smiled. Across the room, Karyn was mostly absorbed in her notes, but the conversation filtered through her concentration. She relaxed even more.

Twilight was right, she thought to herself. The relaxation and Derpy’s caring for her did help her learn. Or at least, she hoped. The proof would be in the grade.

It occurred to her that maybe it wasn’t the magic or the other dimension or the time that made the difference as much as having friends. Two humans might have done just as well for her, if she could have found two who would care as Derpy and Twilight did.

And why did they care? Derpy expressed curiosity about the human world, but was that enough of a reason to go get all those comfort items? Twilight admired scholarship in general, but did that mean that she had to give her home and her time?

Maybe that was the point of friendship, she thought. Not having to have a reason to do something nice. She’d have to think more about that. She dove back into system theory.

As the day waned, Twilight made hot soup and set it out for the four of them. “It’s important to keep your strength up when preparing for a test. Be sure to have a good meal right before you go in, but nothing too heavy,” she said.

“I wish I could bring this with me. It’s delicious!”

“What’s in it,” asked Derpy.

“Oh, celery, green onions, peppers, a few magical spices from the Everfree Forest,” said Twilight.

“But don’t worry,” said Spike. “There’s a pretty decent chance they won’t turn you into a frog or anything.”

Karyn pulled the spoon away from her mouth. Twilight faced the dragon and said, “Spike! Why are you being such a little troll today?! It’s bad enough that you were hitting on her before.”

“Oh, you heard that, huh?”

“Yes I did. I think you need a timeout tonight.”

Karyn laughed. Even though Spike was as big as the ponies now, Twilight still babied him. She leaned over to Derpy and said, “Your friends are real nice, but they’re a little weird.”

“You’re right,” said Derpy. “Our friends are.”

They finished dinner and Karyn helped clear the plates, then started packing her things.

“Now, as I said before, I’m casting a time-glue spell on your study materials.” Twilight’s horn glowed and Karyn’s books slammed themselves shut. “You can’t use them again until the test is done.”

“But I know you won’t need them!” said Derpy.

Karyn smiled at them. “Thanks, all of you. I think that no matter how I do, the studying has been worth it. And maybe I can win a bet by challenging some strong guy to open my book!”

They all laughed. She climbed on Derpy’s back and held on as the spell was activated. She was back in her room with the whole day ahead of her.

“So Derpy, you’re going to stay and relax with me, right? You were so nice to me in Equestria that I want to do something nice for you too.”

“I can’t, Karyn. It’s almost Monday back home, remember? Mail delivery awaits.”

“Oh, right, stupid time weirdness. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Don’t worry,” said Derpy. “I’m sure as soon as the test is done the rest of the week will fly by like a pegasus pony in a race. And before you know it, I’ll be back.”

The two friends hugged, and then Derpy magicked herself home.

Physically unable to study, Karyn spent the rest of the day on a nature walk, a nap, some TV, and a leisurely dinner. The next morning, rested and awake, she sauntered into her first exam. Looking at the familiar half-sized blue test booklet, she wrote her name on the front cover. . .

Only to find her pen was out of ink. She tried another from her bag, but that one failed too. She pulled out her mechanical pencil, but when that wouldn’t write despite her seeing the lead exposed, she realized what had happened.

“Twilight, you silly unicorn! You weren’t supposed to jinx all my stuff, just my books!” she said under her breath. No one was close enough to overhear.

Then Karyn noticed something else in her bag. “No,” she thought, “I couldn’t. Could I?”

She did.

“Ms. Hubert! Are you trying to make a mockery of this class?” the professor said.

“I’m not, really,” Karyn said as the other students all stared at the odd girl filling out her booklet with an eighteen-inch feather and a bottle of ink. “It’s. . . um. . . a good-luck charm for me.”

“Well, I suppose there’s no rule against it. But go sit in the back so you’re not a distraction to the other students.”

She felt her stress start to return. But then she laughed at herself. “This is going to be a great story to tell Derpy,” she muttered,as she relaxed once more. She opened her book and began the test.

Author's Note

Next time, on Derpy's Human:

“OK, Derpy, this is a computer. It’s part of what I was studying last week. You can use it to learn just about anything you want to know regarding the human world.”

“Sweet! How does it work?”

“Well, for humans, we normally type on the keyboard, but the keys are too small for your hooves. Instead, I can set up a virtual keyboard and let you use the. . . pointing device,” Karyn said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh, I’m so dead. . . I’m so dead.” Karyn’s started repeating again. She crawled to the bed and curled up in the fetal position on it. Derpy’s happy smile drooped as she realized that, while not having any bad intentions, she had done something horrible to her friend. She went over and put a wing on Karyn’s shoulder.

“Karyn?”

She didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry, OK?” But Karyn said nothing.

4: Derpynet

Derpy warped into Karyn’s bedroom with a big smile on her face.

“Morning, Karyn! Ready for a day of fun?”

“Hey, Derpy! I sure am! Except. . . “

“Oh, no. Not more studying?”

“No, not that, I’m all caught up. But I do have to see one of my teachers the work I did last week. It shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half, I promise. And then we have the whole rest of the day free.”

“Well, that’s not too bad, I guess,” said Derpy.

“And I thought of something so that you won’t be bored.”

Derpy looked up in anticipation. Karyn led her to the desk and showed off her desktop PC.

“OK, Derpy, this is a computer. It’s part of what I was studying last week. You can use it to learn just about anything you want to know regarding the human world.”

“Sweet! How does it work?”

“Well, for humans, we normally type on the keyboard, but the keys are too small for your hooves. Instead, I can set up a virtual keyboard and let you use the. . . pointing device,” Karyn said, not wanting to confuse Derpy with the animalistic name.

She showed Derpy how the cursor would move along with the mouse and about clicking on each letter to type. Then she opened a web browser and brought up a search engine.

“Now, you can type your question in this box here and then push the button marked ‘search.’ Then it will give you a list of pages that might have information.”

“Oh wow!” said Derpy. “But how does it know?”

“Er, well, why don’t you ask it? Type in, ‘How does a search engine work?’ and read what comes up.”

“Got it! How. . . does. . . “

Derpy continued with her slow and labored typing as Karyn put on her coat and got ready to go to her meeting. “Any time you want to ask another question,” she said, “just hit this button marked ‘home.’”

“Will do!” Derpy said, her view fixed on the screen.

Karyn ducked into the hallway, but then remembered something and went back in.

“One more thing. See where it says, ‘SafeSearch is on’? If it ever says that it’s off, go back to the home page and start over. Just trust me on this.”

“OK. Next question: What. . . is. . . the. . . Internet?”

Karyn headed back out, confident that her friend would have something to occupy her while she was away.

****************************************

In Karyn’s experience, male professors came in two strains, old and young. Both wore sweaters and both tended to act like Spike had to her, but only the old ones had glasses. Her Networking 102 instructor was one of the old, and as she entered his room she found him buried beneath papers and disused computer equipment.

“You wanted to see me?” she said.

“Ah, yes, Ms. Hubert, come in, sit down,” he said, looking over his glasses at her. “It’s about this paper you handed in.”

“I did pretty bad, huh?”

“Not really. You showed a good familiarity with the subject and organized your thoughts well for the most part. I’m just a little concerned with some of the metaphors you used toward the end.”

He dug out Karyn’s report from a tall stack of similar papers. She had finished it late in the day the previous week and didn’t remember what she wrote, only that she had been a little punchy at the time. The professor began to read out loud from the paper.

“’The proliferation of wi-fi technology is dependent on the omnidirectional antenna, which can radiate signal to devices in range not unlike a unicorn directing magic through her horn.’ Or there’s this: ‘Lag in transmission almost never occurs in the lines, but is more likely to be found in the nodes, just as a pegasus carrying a letter will fly fast, but passing it on to others may cause delays.’”

Karyn thought it imprudent to point out that those were similes and not metaphors.

“You know, young lady, we have some excellent substance abuse counselors on campus,” the professor said.

“I’m not on drugs! I was just pressed for time when I wrote that,” she said, not mentioning that she could theoretically have had another day, “and I thought that humor of that sort was funnier than it actually was. Is.”

“Well, it’s still an A-minus paper, but scholarly work demands a certain degree of seriousness. You’d be wise to remember that.”

“Yes, sir,” Karyn said. “Was that all?”

“I suppose. You have somewhere to be?”

“Yes, I have a pegasus pony waiting for me in my dorm,” she didn’t say, as after the tongue-lashing she’d received she didn’t think it would be good for her. Instead she just muttered something non-committal.

“You know, young miss, if you are looking to boost your grade, I’m sure I can find some way to arrange,” the professor took a pause and added emphasis to the rest of his sentence, “extra credit.”

In her head Karyn shuddered. Another one, she thought. What was it about her? She wasn’t a knockout by any stretch of the imagination. Did they think that because she didn’t have magazine-celebrity looks that she would be easy? Or did they just cast lines everywhere looking for a bite? In any case, she had to think of how to get out of the situation without actually lowering her grade or herself. She wished Derpy were there. She would be on Karyn’s side and make this lecher feel awkward. Well, maybe that was a strategy. What would Derpy say in response?

“Oh, I’d be so grateful! I could re-write the report or add some visual aids! I’ll hit the library right away! Er. . . but what section has information about visual aids?” She crossed her eyes slightly just to get into the part.

“I actually had something more personal in mind,” he said.

“Oh, I see! Like an oral presentation! Give me a topic, and I’ll have something prepared by the class after next!”

“Ugh, you know what? Never mind. I’ll give you the A. Just. . . just go.”

Karyn was slightly shocked. Not only had acting awkward repelled his advances, but she’d gotten half a letter-grade bump. Maybe Derpy wasn’t so ditzy as she looked. She hurried home to check on her friend.

****************************************

“Hey there, how have you been, Derp-EEK!”

As she entered the room she saw Derpy fiddling with a makeshift screwdriver, and various components of her computer strewn across the floor, all still connected like a silicon-based octopus. Derpy was smiling widely.

“Hi Karyn, welcome back! I did as you suggested and learned how it works!”

“Derpy! You broke it!” Karyn cried as she saw the monitor displaying a screen of gibberish that was vaguely distorted English.

“No, I didn’t, really. I actually made it work better, I think. I’m still figuring out what all the parts do.”

“Oh, this sucks. I am out so much money! Maybe I can fix it. Or find someone who can on the cheap.”

“I think I could put it back the way it was if you really want it, but you should at least try it out.”

She decided that forgiveness was in order, since Derpy didn’t know any better. “OK, well, show me what you’ve learned.”

“Well, the interesting thing I’ve found is how the mounting of the various cards and components doesn’t actually have anything to do with their connections. That’s why it can still work when it’s taken apart like this. If I were designing it, I wouldn’t have put everything in one case.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Too easy for somepony to come along and tinker with it.”

Derpy didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “Exactly. Anyway, I gave all the parts little names to help me remember. That one that everything else plugs into I called Pinkie, because it’s everyone’s friend.”

“Yeah, we call it a main board or motherboard.”

“And this blocky thing I called Twilight because it has a whole library of stuff in it.”

“It’s a hard drive.”

“Whatever. Whoever named them wasn’t having any fun. But this is the really smart one here.”

“The Ethernet card?”

“I stared at it for a long time, because it didn’t seem to have a purpose. Everything worked just fine without it. But then I found this rope going over to the wall. Do you know what this does?”

Karyn did, of course, but was now humoring Derpy. “What does it do?”

“It shoots tiny little particles into the wall to carry signal to other computers. I bet it could talk to every computer in the building!”

“In the world, actually. But you picked all that up in just an hour? You must be a genius!”

“Nah, this stuff is simple. It’s much easier than, say, baking. That’s hard to get right. But once I saw the little particles I could get how it worked.”

Karyn, who had still been staring at her dissected machine, looked up at Derpy. “Wait, you could see the electrons?”

“Is that what you call them? Yeah. See, where the little rope splits into eight littler ropes? There they go!”

“But they’re so small that no one can see them!”

“Hmm, that’s odd. Maybe if your eyes were like mine.”

Yeah, that’s not happening, thought Karyn, in between being awed at Derpy’s abilities.

“Anyway,” said Derpy, “that’s when I figured out that if other computers are out there, that your computer would want to make friends with them. That way they could talk and make each other’s workload easier. I was working on that part when you came back.”

“They already have that. Every college has a computer network these days. Ours is called USCInet”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I saw what was in place. It wasn’t very friendly. It was always asking for passwords and clearances and things, which is not only mean but a waste of the computer’s time. So I went pthhhbt to that and set up a new one. Let me introduce you to Derpynet!”

As she said that, Derpy gave the screwdriver one last turn and the monitor blinked. Its distorted letters turned into a fancy graphical display that showed a bunch of connected computers.

“ACK!” said Karyn. “What did you do now?!”

She received an answer, but not from Derpy. The computer speakers, their covers off and the vibrating membranes exposed, started up and a lilting soprano voice came out.

“Hello, Miss Derpy, hello Miss Karyn. It’s quite nice to talk to you.”

“Hi Derpynet!” said Derpy. “How are you doing?”

“What’s going on here? How can it hear and respond?” asked Karyn.

“Oh Derpynet’s real smart. She ought to be, with all the computers she can find to help her. She was helping me learn how the machine itself works.”

“But how does it do it? Who programmed it.”

“Excuse me, Miss Karyn,” the voice from the computer said, “I can do most of the programming myself. I’m fully self-aware and sentient. I’m a little strained for memory and processing power, but some of the other machines close to me are happy to share.”

“That was the other thing, Karyn,” said Derpy. “On the old network the computers could only work with the hardware they had locally. Derpynet can ask for help when she needs it. . . are you OK?”

Karyn had collapsed to the floor and was repeating, “Oh, I’m so dead. . . I’m so dead,” to herself like a mantra.

“Is something wrong?” Derpy asked. “Maybe Derpynet can help. I can ask her a question just like you showed me and she’ll find the answer, I’m sure!”

Karyn looked at the computer and said, “Ah ha ha. Derpynet is it? Would you mind terribly if I shut the mike off and had a private conversation with my friend?”

“Not at all, Miss Karyn,” the computer said. Karyn disconnected the camera at the base of the computer, then turned to Derpy with both worry and anger in her expression.

“Derpy. . . you didn’t really make this Derpynet, did you?”

“Well,” Derpy pawed at the ground and looked forlorn. “I might have gone into the bag Twilight gave me and found a teeny tiny come-to-life spell. But it was just so difficult doing it the way you showed me!”

“Even so, you can’t just use other people’s computers to help mine. It’s not fair to them.”

“But Derpynet doesn’t use the other computers. She helps them.”

“But without their permission! And the college is going to be able to trace it back to me. I’ll be lucky if I’m not expelled!”

“Oh, no, that won’t happen. Once Derpynet came awake, she re-wrote the protocols they use so that it couldn’t be traced.”

“That doesn’t matter. . . really? Maybe that does make it all right. If we can just get her off the network and put it back the way it was, and if they really can’t connect me with it, it might all just go away. No one will connect the name ‘Derpynet’ with me. Come on, let’s see if we can’t fix this.”

“Um. . . Karyn?”

“Yes?”

“I should probably tell you everything first.”

“There’s more?!”

“Well, once Derpynet got all the other computers to help her, she was lonely, because they’re the types who are all business, no fun.”

“And?”

“And so I thought I’d make her a friend for when I’m not around. And the spell still works. Anyway, Karynet is real nice too, do you want to meet her?”

The computer started speaking again, this time in a slightly deeper voice. “Miss Karyn, I’m so happy to finally meet my namesake. Derpy’s been telling both of us about you. You sound like a wonderful person, and I’m letting all the other computers know how nice you are.”

“Oh, I’m so dead. . . I’m so dead.” Karyn’s started repeating again. She crawled to the bed and curled up in the fetal position on it. Derpy’s happy smile drooped as she realized that, while not having any bad intentions, she had done something horrible to her friend. She went over and put a wing on Karyn’s shoulder.

“Karyn?”

She didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry, OK?” But Karyn said nothing.

“I’ll. . . I’ll try to fix it. I promise I won’t make it any worse.”

As Karyn was still facing away from her, Derpy let her go and went back to the machine. She started to turn the microphone and camera back to her, but then decided not to. She picked up the mouse again. With great effort she found the on-screen keyboard function again. Slowly, arduously, she began to put in one keystroke at a time.

Karyn, lying on the bed, was consumed with her worry about what was going to happen to her once every other student in the building found that their computers had woken up and were talking about how nice she was. She couldn’t even explain to anyone what happened. If she told people that a pegasus had borrowed unicorn magic and brought the network to life, no one would believe her and they would treat her as a criminal. Unless she actually showed them Derpy, which would be even worse for her and really bad for Derpy herself. An image came into her mind of Derpy in a lab, tied down and covered with electrodes, her wings having been clipped, sad and scared. Better to be expelled and maybe jailed than that. There was no way that anyone could know.

She lay there, stewing and thinking. Eventually she fell asleep. At some point she woke up to the sound of metal clapping together. She turned and saw Derpy putting the cover back on her case. She got up and walked over.

“Hi Karyn,” said Derpy. “I’m going to turn the speakers back on now.”

She did so, and the computer began talking again, alternating between two voices.

“Hi, Miss Karyn,” the Derpynet voice said.

“Hi there,” a slightly deeper voice said. “I’m Karynet. Derpy explained to us what happened.”

“We’re both of us sorry that we caused trouble,” said Derpynet.

“We’re ALL sorry, Derpy too,” said Karynet.

“We were able to look things up over the network and the internet and explain to her why she shouldn’t have just tinkered with everyone’s machines without permission.”

“Don’t be too mad with her, though. She is Equestrian; it would be all right where she comes from.”

“Yes, please don’t be angry. It’s our fault more than hers.”

“We’ve put the rest of USCInet back the way it was. We’re only existing on this machine right now. It’s a little cramped, but we figure it’s not for much longer anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Karyn. “They’re going to figure out it was me from the name ‘Karynet.’ I don’t know how many Karyns there are on campus, but probably not too many and I’m the only IT major.”

“Well,” said the Karynet voice, “we searched the internet for ways to cover that up too. I put a lot of false evidence out there that says I’m the work of a hacker from outside who really likes the fire fiend from Final Fantasy 1.”

Karyn laughed for the first time that day.

“So,” said Derpynet, “we really don’t mind if you delete us.”

“We know we’re squatting on your property,” said Karynet.

“But please forgive Derpy. She really just wanted to impress you by how much she learned.”

Karyn looked at Derpy, who still had her eyes downcast and was moving one hoof back and forth idly. “I guess they’re right,” said Derpy. “But even though I had it drilled into me before I came here, I was still thinking that the human world would be just like Equestria, where magic was welcome and where everyone is happy if you make something better.”

“Well, then, maybe I am impressed with what you learned,” said Karyn.

Derpy perked up and looked Karyn in the eye. Then she said, “But do we really have to get rid of them? They’re not hurting anypony.”

“What else can we do? They can’t run just on my computer, and we can’t put them back on the network.”

“What if they went on the network but just stayed quiet? Derpynet, Karynet, can you guys do that? Not change anything, just go somewhere and live?”

A burst of memory hit Karyn. Words like “Skynet” flitted through her brain. She thought about how best to make the point. “Yeah, that might be problematic. I mean, we—people in general—depend so much on the Internet that if anything happened to damage it a lot of people would be hurt.”

“But why would they damage the network?” asked Derpy.

“Well, they might not intentionally, but. . . “

The computer speakers coughted. “We understand your concern. We’ve read and seen tons on the internet about sentient computers like us,” said Karynet.

“And we know that you’re worried about us taking over or destroying humanity out of pride in our own superiority or something like that,” said Derpynet.

“But really, we love people and don’t want to change them.”

“Even the parts where people are mean to each other, they’re just what makes you human.”

“And maybe we’re different because Equestrian magic brought us to life.”

“We researched all there was on the net about Equestria, and we watched the show itself. We’re in definite agreement about one thing:”

The two voices spoke in chorus. “If people can make and appreciate all that, they have to be good at heart.”

Still half wondering if she wasn’t dooming all of humanity, Karyn looked at the computer and said, “Well, if you really do stay out of trouble, I guess it’s better than deleting you.”

“Oh, thank you! We’ll be good! We’ll show you. We’ll put your machine just back the way it was!”

The monitor blinked and the speakers crackled, then Karyn and Derpy saw the familiar desktop display and a web browser at the home page.

“Are they really gone?” asked Karyn.

“I guess so. Karynet? Derpynet?” Derpy called, but there was no answer. “Well, wherever they are, I hope they’re happy.”

“I just hope they keep a low profile.”

There was a knock on the dorm room door. Karyn switched to a low whisper. “Speaking of a low profile, get in the closet. Just a minute!” she said, raising her voice to the door.

Derpy grabbed her bag in her mouth and flew in among Karyn’s hanging clothes. She heard the door open and a gruff male voice speak.

“Have you been having any network troubles today? This whole building has been throwing out some weird tracking data. And I won’t tell you some of the rumors we’ve heard.”

“Weird data? Rumors?” Karyn said nervously. “Honestly wouldn’t know. I haven’t been on the computer all day, just chatting with friends.” Not technically a lie, she thought.

“OK, we’re just going around and asking. You might want to run virus scan on your PC just to make sure.”

“I’ll do that. Would you excuse me? I have to go use the bathroom.”

“Yeah, I’ll get going. Just checking the floor.”

Derpy heard the door close and stuck her head back out.

“The coast is clear, Derpy, you can come out,” said Karyn.

“You live on the coast? I thought we were inland.”

“It’s just an expression. Forget about it. What do you want to do now?”

“Well, I was having fun learning all about human stuff on the computer. Can I look up some more, the right way?”

“Sure, Derpy.”

Derpy went back to the desktop and set down her bag. As she did, she lifted the flap and looked in. “Oh,” she said. “I wonder if I could have used this one instead.” She pulled out another hoof-cap spell.

“What’s that one?”

“It’s labeled ‘precision manipulation.’ I think I know how it works.” She activated the spell and put her hoof toward the keyboard. It looked as if a magnifying glass were applied to the keys, making the ones close to her hoof huge, while the reverse effect happened to the hoof itself. When she actually touched it, she could press it perfectly without hitting any of the keys next to it.

“Yeah,”said Derpy. “This would have been better than the come-to-life spell.”

Karyn slapped her face and wiped her hand down the side of her cheek while sighing audibly. “Derpy, you are without doubt the most exasperating pony it’s ever been my privilege to be friends with.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s a very good thing. Show me what you’re going to search for.”

“Wait, let me try that gesture you just did!” Derpy said, and tried to facepalm herself. Unfortunately the spell was still on her hoof, and she wound up poking herself beneath a giant eyeball.

“Whoa,” she said. “That felt weird. Won’t do that again.”

“You do know how to undo that spell, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. Almost entirely sure.”

Karyn and Derpy spent a few more hours on the computer, with Derpy doing all the typing and picking most of the searches. She learned briefly about human life, what they did for fun, some of the jobs they did. The time wore on.

“Aw, it’s almost time for me to go,” said Derpy. “I wish I could stay on the computer forever!”

“Actually, you want to watch out for that. It’s possible to get addicted to the internet and lose track of real life.” Karyn looked pained as she said that, as if it were a personal memory.

“Hmm. . . yeah, I can see that. Next time we’ve definitely got to get outside and stretch our hooves!”

“Outside? That’s a little problematic, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I’ll use an invisibility spell or something. Or we’ll go back to Equestria. And speaking of which,” Derpy said as she began shouldering her bag.

“Gotta go, huh? OK, come back soon. Somepony’s got to keep me on my toes. How bored would I be without you here making my computer come to life and risking everything I’m in school for? Have a good week, Derpy.”

“Have a good week, Karyn.”

Derpy disappeared, and Karyn turned back to her computer. “You two also, wherever you are.”

Author's Note

Next time, on Derpy's Human

“Why do we have to go back to Equestria? Is there something going on?”

“Is there? There’s something huge! And you’re going to be in on it. You’re my ringer!”

“Back up, Derpy. No, not literally,” Karyn said as Derpy had started to skitter away from her friend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The pegasi trotted off in disappointment.

Gathering around on their side of the field, they all looked at Karyn and Derpy, but nopony said anything. Off in the distance, Rainbow Dash was turned the other way, deliberately not looking at the team.

“Exactly what are we doing wrong?” asked Thunderlane.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The party was held outside, and there were lots of hot food being cooked on open fires. “It’s actually like a tailgate party back home.”

“What’s that?” asked Derpy. “A party where you go around at a gait to show off your tails? But you don’t even have a tail! You’d have a mane-gate party instead.”

Be sure to read it, same Derp-time, same Derp-channel!

5: DEEEEEEEEEEEERP!

“Morning, Derpy!” said Karyn. “I made whole wheat pancakes for breakfast!”

“Well, put them in the fridge and have them tomorrow,” said Derpy “Or. . . today. Or, the today after today, which is tomorrow, except it’s today. Because you’re going to be in Equestria today! Pack your stuff and hop on.”

Karyn finally understood why Derpy was having such trouble with her tenses, but that just led to a bigger question.

“Why do we have to go back to Equestria? Is there something going on?”

“Is there? There’s something huge! And you’re going to be in on it. You’re my ringer!”

“Back up, Derpy. No, not literally,” Karyn said as Derpy had started to skitter away from her friend. “Explain and start at the beginning.”

“Sorry, I get a little excited. It’s Sports and Games Day in Ponyville.”

“And that is?”

“It’s a day when we play sports and games,” said Derpy.

“Well, that makes sense.”

“Every year there’s a big team competition between pegasi and Earth Ponies.”

“What about unicorns?”

“They referee. And then there’s a match between pegasi and them and the Earth ponies ref, and between the Earth ponies and the unicorns and we ref. But I’m on the team that’s playing the Earth ponies. And now, so are you!”

“Me? I’m not a pegasus! I’m not even a pony!”

“They said it was OK. The Earth ponies, I mean. See, the thing is, we’ve lost to them several years running. Well, a lot of years running. In fact, it’s more like several years flying.”

“Mmhm,” Karyn grunted. “Have you ever beaten them?”

“Oh, sure! Almost entirely sure. Just must have happened before I joined up.”

“I can’t believe that Rainbow Dash puts up with that much losing.”

“Yeah, she’s on the team that plays the unicorns. Insists on it for some reason. And always lets me go up against the Earth ponies. Rainbow Dash is real nice!”

Karyn read something sinister into the motive described, but since the other pony wasn’t around to defend herself, she decided not to pursue the line of questioning.

“Anyway,” Derpy continued, “The point is that the Earth ponies are really confident. And I think that they’re overconfident. So much so that they pretty much agreed that we could set the rules of the game as we liked. That’s when I got an idea. You see, last week when I was searching on the computer, I took a look at some games humans play. I figured that if I could get you on the team, and play a human game, we’d have a major advantage and a chance to win for once!”

“Well, that sounds like fun, playing games with all the ponies. And yeah, if it’s something where hands can beat hooves, then I can really have some fun! So what did you pick?”

“The most popular human game I could find. Soccer!”

Karyn facepalmed. “Did you actually read about what soccer is?”

“A little. I know that humans play it everywhere, and I think that the Ajax team has some cool uniforms, and that you’ve got that wonderful World Cup that you play for with the humans holding up the big ball with their hands. I figured that if that’s a depiction of how the game is played, that you’d be awesome at it.”

“Derpy, look at me. Soccer is a game where it’s specifically forbidden to use your hands!”

Derpy just stared at Karyn for a bit. Her smile faded. “Well, why in the name of Celestia would you invent a game like that?! Do you think that pegasi would have a game where you couldn’t fly? Do you think that when unicorns send their fillies out to play they say, ‘Now be careful and don’t use your magic, or else you might actually learn to use it better’”?

“Hey, Derpy, I’m American. You’re preaching to the choir on this one.”

“Huh? There’s twenty-five pieces of paper around here that do like soccer?”

“Not the quire, the choir! Wait, how do you know that word?”

“We use it all the time. Ponies are always buying quires of paper to write lists on. Like the list of players on each team in a soccer game that we’re going to get slaughtered in!”

“Don’t panic,” said Karyn. “We’ll just go and ask if they can change it to lacrosse or field hockey.”

“You can use your hands in those?”

“Absolutely. Granted they’re a bit more contact sports. . . “ An image appeared in Karyn’s head of her running down a field only to have Applejack or somepony run into her as hard as they could. “. . . Or maybe we can try to win the soccer game anyway! Let me go and print out a copy of the rules.” Hopping on the computer, Karyn did a quick search for soccer rules, looking for a version that gave particular emphasis to safe play.

Derpy knelt for Karyn to get on and then activated the trans-dimensional spell. They reconstituted flying above a verdant field where groups of ponies were gathered around. A few unicorns were pulling strings and tying them to stakes, drawing the boundaries of the soccer field. Derpy landed by the pegasi and set Karyn down.

“Hey, everypony.” Derpy said, trying to show confidence. “This is Karyn, the human I told you about.”

Seven pegasi greeted Karyn, a little unsure of themselves around the strange creature from another world. “So, I guess I’m here to play soccer with you all. I don’t have a whole lot of experience, but we’ll all try our best, right?”

The pegasi loosened up and started flapping their wings excitedly. Karyn was slightly taken aback at how few of their names she knew. Looking across the field at the Earth pony team, she recognized Cheerilee, Big Macintosh, Aloe, Lotus, Bon-Bon, and some others. But among her own mates. . . was that one Thunderlane? Or was that the name of the big muscular one with the tiny wings? The one with the big hair—Cloudchaser? She hoped she’d get them sorted out as the game progressed. Then she saw one who she could definitely recognize.

“You bet you will!” said Rainbow Dash.

“Hey, Rainbow,” said Derpy. “I thought you were on the other pegasus team.”

“Oh, I am. But when I got the word that you guys were really going all out to beat the Earth ponies this year, I called in a few favors to boost our chances a bit. Meet your new front line. . . whatever that is. Soarin’, Spitfire, and Fleetfoot!”

Rainbow pointed a wing behind her where three ponies in the signature blue of the Wonderbolts were standing and chatting. Seeing that they were called for, they headed over to the rest of the team.

“Well,” Karyn said to Derpy, “That should give us at least a chance, having some professional athletes on our side.”

“Hi. . . Karyn?” a voice said from behind her. She turned to see a mint-green unicorn in a black and white striped shirt. “I’m Lyra. You probably don’t remember me, but I sent you a message a while back over the computer thingy you have.”

Derpy stepped in. “It’s called the internet, Lyra. I know all about it.”

Karyn gave her friend a sly sideways look as Lyra was talking to her again. “I’ll be refereeing your match. I understand you know all the rules?”

“Actually I have them written down here,” said Karyn.

Lyra looked over the pages of laser print. “Wow! You have really consistent penmanship! I wish I had hands so I could write like this! OK, I’m going to go read and explain these to the other side. You let your team know and we’ll start when everypony gets here.” She trotted off with her nose buried in the paper.

“So, Derpy,” said Fleetfoot, “What ideas do you have for strategy?”

Derpy pawed at the ground. It was time to confess that her plan to have a human play a human game had a kink in it.

“I had planned to have Karyn use her hands to help, but. . . “

Karyn interrupted, “But maybe one of you is really keen to play goal?”

None of the pegasi had any idea of what that meant, and shook their heads in confusion. But Derpy perked up at Karyn’s idea.

“I think letting me play there will be for the best,” Karyn continued. “All of you run on all fours, which gives you twice as many limbs to kick the ball with. Also the goalie is the only one allowed to hold onto the ball, and since their goalie can’t do that, it’ll give us an edge.”

“So we should take lots of shots at their goal?” asked Soarin’.

“Oh yeah,” said Karyn. “A lot of shots. Even if it doesn’t go in, there should be rebound chances. Keep the ball on the other side of the field as much as possible.”

“Sounds good. OK, team, let’s stretch and warm up!” said Spitfire.

Karyn started walking to the field when Derpy caught up with her and whispered, “Karyn, what are you thinking?!”

“Self-preservation. If I’m in goal, then hopefully for half of the game I can’t screw anything up.”

“What are you going to do about the other half?”

“Pray.”

A troop of unicorns were magically lifting into place wooden planks that would form the two goals, and some canvas was draped over the back to serve as netting. The Earth ponies were having their own strategy huddle which broke up as Lyra came to the middle of the field. Far away, Karyn could see Pinkie Pie taking up the spot in the opposing net.

“OK, where’s my whistle?” Lyra asked.

Fluttershy came out of the stands holding a small woodpecker. “Please be careful with Woodrow here,” she said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not directly stimulating him to call, just playing his vocal cords as I would a lyre. OK, everypony, let’s begin.”

The game kicked off, and Karyn found herself not screwing up nearly as badly as she feared. Given the inexperience of all involved, the shots were mostly taken either directly toward the center of the net and not that hard, or else well wide as somepony tried to hit the corner but overcorrected.

In the play in the middle of the field, neither side could set up plays or strategize much. Possession changes were frequent, as were fouls. One point of awkwardness came when the ball was kicked over the sideline by Nurse Redheart, as it was discovered that the throw-in rule hadn’t been designed for ponies. It was debated whether “both feet on the ground” meant all four feet, whether the pegasi were allowed to use their wings to throw it in, and whether the pony could put their head down on the ground to satisfy the “over the head” part of the rule. Eventually play restarted and both teams tried to keep it in the middle of the field.

Thirty minutes in, Karyn was feeling fairly confident. Then as the Earth ponies moved the ball down the line to her right, the pegasus defending overcommitted and the ball was passed to Big Macintosh, twenty yards away, wide open, and dead center. The big stallion reared back his front hoof and kicked the ball with all his might. Karyn stepped in front and stuck out her hands to try to deflect it, but the force of the shot knocked her over and the ball continued past her into the net.

A cheer went up from the other side and their fans. Karyn looked over at Derpy and saw her face downcast. She resolved not to let in another goal.

Spurred on by their lead, the Earth ponies pressed their advantage. Karyn got an awful lot of exercise running from side to side in the goal, and received more than one bruise from other strong shots. About ten minutes after the goal, she tipped one such shot over the top bar and Lyra whistled for a corner kick.

“Come on, everypony, get back and defend!” yelled Karyn.

The pegasi flew back and filled up the box, each picking an Earth Pony to stand next to. In the corner, Silver Spoon prepared to put the ball back in play. As she kicked it in, every pegasus started blocking off the pony they were defending. So concerned were they that nopony noticed Pinkie Pie sneaking in behind to the left. The ball made it past all the action and right to her, and with Karyn on the other side she kicked it into the open side. It was 2 – 0 in favor of the Earth ponies.

“Foul!” cried Derpy. “The goalie can’t leave the goal and come all the way down and score!”

“No, Derpy, it’s legal,” said Karyn. “Unusual, but allowed. If she does it again, we’ll have to counterattack and move it quickly down the field. We might get an open shot like that.”

Sure enough, with stoppage time approaching, a free kick was awarded from thirty yards away, again to the right side. As the pegasi formed a wall, Karyn noticed Pinkie coming up the other side. The indirect kick came in at the wrong angle, and Pinkie Pie dove for it, but Derpy playing defense got to it first.

“Quick, now!” called Karyn. “Get it in before she can get back!” Pinkie was face down right next to Karyn as every other pony was racing the other way.

Derpy kicked it to Spitfire, who dribbled it with speed up the right side. Fleetfoot flew ahead and Spitfire launched it just onside. Fleetfoot was past everypony and had nothing but clear turf ahead of her. She let the ball go and it sailed toward the open goal. . .

And was blocked by Pinkie Pie.

Karyn rubbed her eyes in disbelief, as she saw Pinkie appear out of nowhere to stop the shot while still lying in the grass at her feet. “How can she be in two places at once?!” she cried.

“Tee-hee! I’m Pinkie Pie!” the one next to her said, and then she winked out of existence.

Lyra whistled the end of the first half, and the pegasi trotted off in disappointment.

Gathering around on their side of the field, they all looked at Karyn and Derpy, but nopony said anything. Off in the distance, Rainbow Dash was turned the other way, deliberately not looking at the team.

“Exactly what are we doing wrong?” asked Thunderlane.

“It’s not necessarily that,” said Karyn. “Soccer sometimes is random. We can play our best and still lose, and it doesn’t help that Pinkie Pie can seemingly teleport wherever she has to go. How does she do that, anyway?”

“Nopony ever asks,” said Derpy “It’s Earth pony magic, yet she seems to be able to control it like a unicorn.”

“I guess that all the different types do have their own special talents. Hey, maybe that’s how we can get back into this!” Karyn perked up and huddled the pegasi together. “When we get back out there, try to kick the ball in the air as often as possible, then go fly up and get it. We can use that to get it into the box. Make that your goal. Lyra’s been calling a lot of fouls, so if we can get some there, maybe we can get some penalty kicks as well, and those are a good chance to score.”

The halftime break was soon over, and when Karyn had rehydrated herself, she took up her position again in goal. It was definitely easier for her as play resumed, as the Earth ponies’ plan was clearly to sit on their lead and run out the clock. But it was frustrating, and Derpy was constantly looking toward her in desperation.

“Come on, pegasi!” Karyn called. “Use the strategy!

The next time the ball came to her, Karyn, rather than passing it off to somepony near her, kicked it as hard as she could in the air. It only went about twenty yards away, but many more straight up. Cloudchaser kicked it even farther up and the pegasi were able to move it up the field uncontested. Lyra followed the action closely to make sure that they didn’t go over the end line. When they finally reached the box, Spitfire kicked it straight down toward the goal. Pinkie Pie leaped at it but missed, the ball bounced on the ground, and hit the netting just on the other side of the plank. The pegasi had scored.

“Is that legal?!” Pinkie Pie called out.

From all the way on the other side of the field, Derpy cried back, “You’re one to talk!”

Pinkie stuck her tongue out and made a face, but went back to her position.

The pegasi were relentless in their attack, and the play was almost entirely in the Earth ponies’ half of the field. The score remained 2 – 1 against them though, as the trick could not be made to work again. At the seventy minute mark, another attempt was whistled down by Lyra for a penalty kick to be taken by Fleetfoot.

Karyn ran up to him and gave some coaching. “This is a very good chance to score. Pick a direction, left or right, and kick it there. Pinkie not only has to dive for it, but she has to guess right as well, so you’ve got a fifty-fifty shot of having an open net.”

Fleetfoot approached the ball and planned the shot out in her head. A slow trot, then medium canter, then a full gallop as she slammed the ball hard to the right. Pinkie dove in the same direction and tipped it just wide of the net.

Three more times in the remaining minutes the pegasi generated penalty kicks, and each time Pinkie made the save. In one case, she actually started her dive before Spitfire kicked the ball, but still managed to pick the right direction.

“It must be some extension of her Pinkie sense!” said Karyn

“Probably,” said Derpy. “I wonder if they’ll let me on the team next year after we lose this one.”

“Hey, don’t give up hope, Derpy! Like we say on Earth, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over!’”

“That’s just a tautology.”

“But the thing about tautologies is that they’re true.”

Past ninety minutes, into stoppage time. The pegasi made another rush, not knowing if it would be their last. Soarin’ flew the ball into the box, and got her hooves tangled up with Big Macintosh’s. Lyra blew her whistle and signalled for another penalty.

“Bring it on!” said Pinkie Pie. “I’ll stop this one and then it’s on to the victory party!”

“Wait!” Karyn called from back.

She ran all the way up to the opposing goal. “Lyra, does Soarin’ have to take the kick herself?”

“I don’t think so,” said Lyra. “The rules say anypony can take it. Well, ‘anypony’ is misspelled, but that’s what it says.”

Karyn turned back to her team. “Let Derpy take it.”

“What?!” every pegasus said in chorus.

“Please, no, Karyn,” said Derpy. “I’ve already messed things up so much.”

“Everypony, listen,” said Karyn. “Pinkie’s anticipating your shots, because she’s reading either your eyes or your mind. Well, she can’t read Derpy’s eyes.”

“But she can read my mind!”

“So don’t decide which way you’re going to kick it until you’ve kicked it. Got it?”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“That’s why it has a chance.”

Lyra came over to them and said, “Somepony has to take it, or I’ll just end the game here.”

“OK,” said Derpy. “I’ll do it. And then I’ll go pack my things to move out of town.”

Derpy approached the circle, and for the first time all game Pinkie Pie looked nervous. She tried to stare down Derpy, but she was looking only at the ball, fearing more than anything to miss it entirely. Sweat was pouring down Pinkie’s face. Derpy trotted up slowly. Pinkie didn’t know what to do. At the last moment, she split herself into two again and one stood at each goalpost.

And Derpy kicked the ball perfectly straight, right into the middle of the goal.

The pegasi cheered, and Lyra blew the double whistle a moment later.

“So how do we finish this thing?” asked Pinkie. “Sudden death? Full period? Shootout?”

Karyn said, “Why don’t we just call it a draw? You keep your undefeated streak, the pegasi break the losing streak. Everypony’s happy.”

“Works for me! “I’ll change the victory party to a ‘tied party’ and that way everypony can come!”

The pegasi gathered around Derpy and lifted her up onto their shoulders. They were about to carry her off the field, when she called, “Wait! Karyn, come on up and ride with me!”

The throng descended and Karyn climbed on Derpy’s back once more. Flying on one pegasus was interesting enough for her. Flying on ten was quite unnerving.

The party was held outside, and there were lots of hot food being cooked on open fires. “It’s actually like a tailgate party back home.”

“What’s that?” asked Derpy. “A party where you go around at a gait to show off your tails? But you don’t even have a tail! You’d have a mane-gate party instead.”

“Heh. It’s not that. Any party centered around a sporting event where you eat and drink a lot is called that. I’m not surprised that Pinkie managed to pull one off.”

As if triggered by hearing her name, Pinkie Pie came up to where Derpy and Karyn were and offered them veggie-burgers which they consumed with relish and other condiments. Then she brought out neckerchiefs and insisted they be worn.

“It is a tied party after all!” she said in her typically overexcited way. “I don’t know what you do at a tied party, but whatever it is we do, that must be it!”

“Back on Earth there’s an expression that a tie is like kissing your sister,” Karyn said.

“Really?” said Pinkie. “Hey, Blinky! Where are you? I want to try something!” She ran off to find her target.

Karyn munched on her burger and tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. Most of the ponies acted a little awkward around her. Derpy stayed by her side throughout, and eventually Rainbow Dash, who had been waiting to talk to Derpy, trotted over.

“So, Derpy,” she said. “You didn’t manage to completely screw that up. Nice job.”

“Hey, give some credit here to Karyn,” Derpy said. “She played really hard and she was the one who gave me the confidence to take the last shot.”

“The human?” said Rainbow. She looked at Karyn a little awkwardly, then tenderly extended a hoof. “Thanks for helping out. I sure do wish we could have won, though.”

“So do I,” said Karyn as she shook Rainbow’s hoof. “I never had a preference before, but I can say now that pegasi are my favorite type of pony.”

She said this looking at Derpy, who wore a grateful smile.

“Definitely the right choice!” said Rainbow. “I’ll talk to you later. You’re not so bad, you know!”

Derpy went over to Karyn. “Coming from Rainbow Dash, that’s high praise. So what do you want to do after the party?”

“Head home and soak in a hot bathtub. I haven’t done that much exercise in a long time!” said Karyn.

Music played as the ponies celebrated. Derpy also felt tired and bruised and thought it would be prudent to take Karyn home soon, but she felt there was one more pony to thank.

“Hey, Lyra! Come on over!” Derpy called.

“Congratulations, you two. You’re the heroines of the pegasus team,” Lyra said.

“Well, we owe you a little for it. You called the fouls,” said Derpy.

“I called what I saw. You deserve all the credit. So, Karyn, what do you think of our little town and its field day?”

“I had a wonderful time!”

“Then can we count on you for the running of the leaves? You and I can be the only two going on two legs!”

“Actually, if it were right now, I might have to run it on all fours!” said Karyn. They all had a laugh.

Author's Note

Here's what you'll see next time on Derpy's Human:

“I’ve got an invisibility spell. No humans will see me!”

“Hmm. . . I don’t know,” said Karyn. “You’ll be invisible, but what if you bump into someone?”

“I’ll stay in the air above everyone’s head! Please!”

“OK, we’ll go out and do something.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Karyn threw her stuff down on the bed, she said, “So, what did you think of your first human movie?”

“Hang on, I’m fiddling with this spell,” came Derpy’s disembodied voice. “Ah, there,” she said, and popped back into view. Karyn was surprised to see a frown on Derpy’s face.

“Now just what the heck was that?!” Derpy said.

“You didn’t like it? It wasn’t the best example of a flick to show you, but—“

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I wish there were a way to edit it into what I had written down. Maybe something on the computer?”

Karyn thought for a moment, then shook her head for allowing herself to consider something so silly. “Not unless they have a magic-to-USB adapter. Although goodness knows they have adapters for everything else.”

“Well, maybe I’ll ask Twilight to see if she can’t make a spell for that too. And in the meantime we can show it to folks as is.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's next time, right here, on your home for Derpy's Human!

6: Lights, Camera, Derption!

“Morning, Karyn!” Derpy said as the after-effects of the transport spell faded.

“Morning, Derpy.”

“Morning, Karyn’s desk! Morning, Karyn’s lamp. Morning, Karyn’s computer which is no longer sentient but I will include in my list of things to say good morning to anyway!”

Karyn laughed. “You really are a friendly pony, aren’t you?”

“I feel I’ve become quite intimate with this room over the past few weeks.”

“Is that your subtle way of letting me know that you want a change of scenery?”

“Oh no, Karyn! I try not to play games like that. Not that I wouldn’t mind getting out and about, but I don’t drop hints. Letters, flower pots, the odd piano, but never hints,” Derpy said.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind some fresh air myself. Back to Equestria then?”

“Well, I was wondering. . . “ Derpy swung one hoof back and forth, which Karyn had learned to interpret as her being indecisive.

“Yes?”

“Can we maybe go out into the human world today?”

“Oh, Derpy, I don’t know. There are just so many things that could go wrong,” said Karyn.

“But so many ponies, after last week’s game, were asking me what the human world was like, and I didn’t have a whole lot to tell them.”

“How are we going to avoid notice?”

“I’ve got an invisibility spell. No humans will see me!”

“Hmm. . . I don’t know,” said Karyn. “You’ll be invisible, but what if you bump into someone?”

“I’ll stay in the air above everyone’s head! Please!”

“OK, we’ll go out and do something. I’d just really like it to be a place where there aren’t a whole lot of people milling about who could knock into you anyway.”

Derpy had ignored everything after Karyn had said OK and was rummaging through her bag for the right spell, dumping out rejects all over the place. Karyn picked up one and looked at it.

“Derpy? Will the magic work only for you? You know that there’s no magic on Earth, but I’ve always wanted to do some, ever since I was ten and didn’t get to go to Hogwart’s.”

Derpy was still pawing through and muttering to herself. “Spell to keep warm. . . no. Infinite muffin spell. . . save that for later. Spell to allow you understand when human makes reference to something I haven’t read, don’t need that. Aha! Got it.” Holding up one of the hoof-covering items she turned back to Karyn. “You want to try one? I don’t see why not. That one you’ve got is a recorder spell. You activate it and later you can see exactly what went on. Which disappointed me, because I thought it would play a melody on a wooden flute.”

Karyn put her hand into the spell and found the three nubs inside. By fully stretching her fingers she was able to force enough pressure to turn them. A bubble came out of the spell and filled the room.

“Woo-hoo! I am Karyn the Sorceress! Fear my powers as I weave my magic that’s perfectly harmless!”

Derpy laughed. “Oh that will be fun to re-watch later!”

“It’s on now? I didn’t want to save that! How does it erase?”

“Erase? Why would it do that?”

Karyn quickly pushed her hand in and reversed the spell, drawing the bubble back in. But then she perked her head up. “Hey! Let’s go to the movies!”

“What’s a movie?”

“It’s like a play. Sort of. They take a play and record it, but not magically, and then we can play it back when we want to see it.” Well, Karyn thought, that was a close enough explanation for Derpy.

“Ooh, a human play! I want to see it!”

“OK, let me check movie times on the internet.”

“Ah, allow me,” said Derpy. “I’m an expert on surfing the net, you know!”

“Heh, you sure are. Remind me to make you a Facebook page later on,” said Karyn, as she gave up her seat at the computer. Derpy took much longer than Karyn would have, but eventually got to a movie listing site. Karyn was patient, enjoying seeing her friend learn an unfamiliar task.

“OK I found the place to see it. But there’re a lot of shows. Which one should we go see?”

“I guess it doesn’t matter if this is your first one. We can see an action movie, which will have the easiest plot to understand, but a lot of loud explosions, or an indie rom-com, which will be easier to watch but harder to understand.”

Derpy bounced her head up and down, then said, “Let’s go see the one listed on top!”

Well, Karyn thought, it was an easier method for deciding than she usually had experienced with a group of friends or with her family. She packed her purse and got ready to head out the door.

“You ready?” she asked Derpy.

“Mm-hm.”

“Are you. . . forgetting something?”

“No, what?”

“Invisibility?”

“Oh, right.”

“Yeah, this is a good idea that totally isn’t going to backfire,” Karyn said to herself.

They headed out onto the street. Karyn could sense Derpy’s presence above her, but she felt that the ruse would fool anyone who didn’t know there was an invisible gray pegasus around. Which was a large plurality in her estimation. As they reached the corner they passed a pair of students engaged in a public display of affection.

“Ooh, can they do that?” Derpy said. The boy broke his kiss and looked at Karyn. “Beg your pardon?” he said with some anger in his voice.

Karyn decided to play dumb. “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just thinking out loud.”

Derpy chimed in from above. “But it was—“

Karyn raised her arms like she was stretching and grinned at the couple. She muttered in a singsong through her teeth, “Invisible, not inaudible!” The two gave her a weird look and then went back to making out as Karyn turned and headed the other way.

They made it to the theater without further incident. Karyn went up to the ticket booth and mistakenly asked for two tickets before correcting herself to one. Once inside, Derpy said, “Psst.”

“Yeah?”

“Is it OK that I came in without a ticket?”

“Maybe not, but put it ‘this way: you won’t be the only person to see a movie for free this year, not by a long shot,” Karyn said. “Plus they make all their money on the snacks anyway.”

Stepping up to the concession stand, Karyn ordered the large popcorn combo and paid over ten dollars for it. She muttered up to Derpy, “Should have bought snacks ahead of time and had you make those invisible so we could sneak them in. The prices are ridiculous!”

As they headed to where their movie was showing, Derpy asked, “Why did you buy snacks if they cost so much?”

“It’s tradition. I want you to get the full movie experience. That means overpaying for ridiculously unhealthy food, taking too many napkins out of revenge and then losing them all over the theater, then eating most of it before the movie even starts.”

Entering the darkened theater Karyn climbed the stairs while Derpy flew up behind her. “I had an uncle who worked on places like this once. He said the best place to sit was between the third and fourth speakers, as close to the middle as possible,” Karyn said.

“That makes sense,” said Derpy, and Karyn was a little pleased to show off her knowledge.

The show was a matinee and they had arrived early enough that they could get the seats that Karyn had wanted, and she sat down. “Derpy,” she said, “You can sit down if you like. If someone comes along I’ll tell them that the seat’s taken. It won’t even be lying.”

“No, it’ll be like sitting!”

She heard Derpy make a landing, then struggle with the chair. “These aren’t very comfortable. They’re built for humans,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. Lyra might like them, but you’re not used to sitting like that.”

“It’s all right, I’ll sit on the floor.”

“No!” Karyn said. “In the first place you can’t see from there and in the second, you don’t know what’s been dropped on there. You might never get back up! Just hold on a moment. If we’re lucky the armrest—yes, it lifts. Now you can crouch across the two seats pony-style.”

“OK, this is sorta comfortable.”

“Here, have some popcorn.”

“Karyn, the strap on this feedbag came off.”

“Huh? Oh, you’re meant to eat it with hands. But I guess I don’t mind if you do that pony-style as well.”

The lights dimmed and the first commercials came on, then an announcement to silence cell phones. Karyn reached into her purse and put hers on vibrate.

“Why did they say that?” asked Derpy.

“Because some people leave theirs on by accident, or will just talk during the movie.”

“That’s awfully rude!”

“I know—“

“To want to stop someone’s private conversation when everypony else is just sitting there watching! They need to learn some manners and get rid of that announcement.”

Karyn balked at that. Maybe it was a cultural difference, she thought, or maybe Derpy just being Derpy. She still thought that not talking on the phone during the movie was the polite thing to do, but she didn’t want to get into an argument.

The commercials gave way to movie trailers. Derpy oohed and aahed and the previews.

“These are movies they’re going to show in the future? Wow, maybe we could do this every week!” she said.

Yeah, and maybe I’ll be able to pay for it by hitting the lottery despite not playing it, Karyn thought. But she figured she’d try to find another way to steer Derpy clear of being a cinemaphile. “A lot of these trailers are better than the movies themselves,” she said. “And the ones that are good usually show you everything that you want to see right there.”

A production company logo came on the screen, the theater went completely dark, and the movie started.

It turned out to be a genre-hopping movie, switching from crime thriller to romance to action to special effects, and Karyn had trouble following the plot. She kept expecting Derpy to lean over and whisper, “Why did that guy kill that guy? I thought he was on their side,” or something similar, but she never did. Karyn found herself getting bored and not caring about the characters, and the most interesting thing about the experience was watching the popcorn disappear from the bucket into Derpy’s invisible mouth.

After ninety-nine minutes of this, the final one-liner was spoken and the credits began to roll. Everyone else began exiting, and Karyn stood up as well, telling Derpy that it was over.

“No, it’s not.” Derpy said. “They’re listing all the people who made it!”

If she’s never seen a movie at all, Karyn thought, this might be a novel experience. She sat back down and resigned herself to five more minutes of slow instrumental music while Derpy eagerly awaited to find out who the key grip was and what company catered the shoot.

At last they finished, and Karyn asked, “Can we go now?”

“Yeah, it’s over.”

“What did you think?” Karyn asked. “Or, wait, let’s get back to the dorm so we can talk without whispering.”

“But everyone left!”

“There’s still a projectionist there, and someone might come in. Let’s go.”

They made their way back to the dormitory. As Karyn threw her stuff down on the bed, she said, “So, what did you think of your first human movie?”

“Hang on, I’m fiddling with this spell,” came Derpy’s disembodied voice. “Ah, there,” she said, and popped back into view. Karyn was surprised to see a frown on Derpy’s face.

“Now just what the heck was that?!” Derpy said.

“You didn’t like it? It wasn’t the best example of a flick to show you, but—“

“I’ll say it wasn’t. The screenwriting was banal, the production design was amateurish, the cinematographer overlit everything, the composer I don’t think even read the script, the acting was wooden, none of the characters had a defined arc, and the editor must have been afraid that if he didn’t have a cut every half-second, they’d conclude that he wasn’t doing his job and fire him!”

Karyn was stunned for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Derpy, you got all that and you’ve never seen a movie before? You should go to one of the film studies classes on campus here. Actually, with all that you should teach one of the film studies classes here.”

“Well, watching it I could see the potential of the medium, but I just don’t see why it has to be abused so much. That one we saw has got to be a failure.”

“Probably not,” said Karyn. “They charge a lot of money per ticket, and they can reach all over the world to get viewers. Plus that movie, while not low-budget, couldn’t have cost more than twenty million. They’ll make money, even if most people don’t like it.”

“It just doesn’t seem right or fair,” said Derpy.

“Well, it’s not like we could do any better.”

“Karyn, that’s a great idea!”

“What is?”

“We’ll do better! We’ll make our own movie! You said you’re always short of money anyway, so if there are so many people out there willing to pay to see that, they’ll come running to see ours!” Derpy dashed off to Karyn’s desk and grabbed paper and a pencil. Holding the pencil in her mouth, she started to write. Karyn looked over and saw the first line: “INTERIOR: A college dormitory.”

“Whoa, whoa! Hold it!” Karyn cried. “We can’t just make a movie! Even if we did we couldn’t get it distributed! But thankfully that doesn’t matter since we have no way to actually produce one. No cameras, no actors, no sets. And we can’t get those because they all cost money. Which I don’t have. But thankfully even that doesn’t matter because neither of us knows how to write a movie.”

“I’m sorry, Karyn, did you say something? Never mind, here’s the start.”

Karyn looked over what Derpy handed her. It was indeed the opening scene of a movie, about a pegasus who had travelled far and found herself taking time to go to school and learn things she hadn’t as a filly. Karyn had no idea if it was good or not, or if it could actually be made into a movie, but she couldn’t help being impressed with the fact that Derpy had done it at all.

“Writing’s easy for you, huh?”

“Not really. Holding the pencil in my mouth and moving my head is tiring,” Derpy said.

“But you can think of what to say so fast! That’s the hard part!”

“No, that’s the easy part. You just say what it is you want to say.”

Once again Karyn was amazed at her friend’s abilities. Writing anything for her was a chore of poring over a blank paper until she figured out exactly what the right word was, then reading it back and having it sound horrible. But Derpy just said what it was she wanted to say.

“Anyway, it’s very nice that you could write this, but we can’t make it into a movie. They make them with a lot of equipment and a big crew, none of which we have,” she said.

“We have the recording spell you set off before. That’s how we’ll get it. And you and me will be the actors!”

Was she in high school drama class again? Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder and said, “But even if we did, it’s not on film then and people can’t see it.”

“Details, details! The important thing is to have fun! Now do you want to play the pegasus or the human?”

Karyn finally realized that Derpy was playing with her. She wanted to just shoot some scenes and enjoy play-acting together. Their personalities weren’t completely alike, she thought. Karyn was very serious and wanted to show Derpy the human world as though she were studying it. But this was Derpy Hooves, the pony who was never serious. She looked over the script and read some of the lines to herself. She would play along.

“Ok, Derpy, you set up the spell, I’ll learn these lines,” she said.

Derpy smiled and got busy. In a few minutes they were ready to go. Derpy looked at the room and said, “Something’s missing.”

“You mean, other than an actual set?”

“Yeah. I feel the need for some reason to have a folding cloth chair with my name on it.”

“Derpy, you are one crazy pony. Let’s start.”

“We’re set up. You start.

“Ahem. ‘Oh, Miss Ypred, do you really think that there’s anything that I, a mere human, could teach you, a pegasus who flies among the clouds?”

“’For certain, for though I have seen many lands,’ you’re doing great, keep it up! ‘I have never looked upon a creature such as you, not even on top of the highest mountain in Equestria!’” Derpy gestured with her hoof toward one wall.

“Derpy,” said Karyn, breaking character. “There’s no mountain over there.”

“We’ll fix it in post. Next line!”

“Oh jeez, I’m working with the Ed Wood of pegasi!”

They continued to shoot scenes until the light faded. After most of them, one or both burst out laughing. Sometimes they didn’t even finish before their straight faces faltered. At some point known only to her, Derpy declared that it was finished.

“You want to sit and watch it now?” she asked.

“Oh, no! I don’t actually want to see me doing all that!”

“I wish there were a way to edit it into what I had written down. Maybe something on the computer?”

Karyn thought for a moment, then shook her head for allowing herself to consider something so silly. “Not unless they have a magic-to-USB adapter. Although goodness knows they have adapters for everything else.”

“Well, maybe I’ll ask Twilight to see if she can’t make a spell for that too. And in the meantime we can show it to folks as is.”

“Derpy, I’m not sure I want anybody to see that, finished or not.”

“Anybody?” Derpy asked with a wry smile on her face. “Not ‘anypony’? Which means you’re OK with me showing it to the ponies back home?”

“Whoa! That’s not what I meant!”

“Too late! You didn’t specify ponies, so ponies can see it!” She grabbed the spell and flew up to the ceiling playing “keep-away.” Karyn made a half-hearted attempt to grab it.

“Come down!” she said. “It’s not fair to go flying up when I can’t!”

“It’s not fair for you to have hands either, but you don’t see my complaining!” Derpy stuck out her tongue, but then landed. “But all teasing aside, if you don’t want me to show it, I won’t.”

Karyn thought about it. Would it really be so embarrassing? Sure, they might laugh at her, but what was wrong with laughter? It did seem like something that she would have done as a child, but so what? Let the ponies think of her as immature. She’d been playing a game with them the week before, and that wasn’t the most dignified way to spend her time. Maybe being able to relax and be silly could be a sign of maturity.

“Well, I guess if you really want to, I don’t mind,” she said. “Just don’t try to build me up as a great actress. You know, some people say that the making of the movie isn’t nearly as important as the selling of the movie. How many bits are you going to charge?”

“Oh, I was just going to show it for free. Hopefully the first few who see it will tell others, and it will get popular from there.”

“Oh, dear. I’m going to be in Equestria’s first viral video! I’ll be like the Star Wars kid!”

Derpy was confused, and her face showed it.

“Never mind,” Karyn said. “I hope you can get lots of ponies to see it. Just not all at once.”

“Thanks, but even if not, it was fun to make. You want to come with me to show it off?”

“Oh, no! I can stand the thought of ponies watching me, but not the sight!”

“Do you mind if I go now, then? I’m kind of eager to get started.”

“Go ahead, Derpy. I’ll see you next week.”

After Derpy had gone back to Equestria, Karyn started to clean up and reminisced about seeing the movie and Derpy’s reaction. It had been a long day. But in between all the fun, she thought about going outside with Derpy more often. The invisibility spell was useful, but they needed some way to communicate so they could be out of doors and not embarrass themselves—well, just her—as they had that day.

There were two parts of the problem as she saw it. The first was how to explain a voice coming from nowhere, and the second was how to account for her voice talking to someone that no one could see.

Somepony that nopony could see, she corrected herself. And once she had the problem framed out, the solution became obvious.

******************************************

“Bwahaha! You can’t even keep your lines straight, Derpy!”

“I know! Writing the script was a lot easier than reading it.”

Derpy was showing her home movie to a few of her friends. Lyra, Bon-bon, and Spike were enjoying seeing the pratfalls of the human and the pegasus.

“This is really fancy magic,” said Bon-bon. “Once this gets going in Equestria, everypony’s going to be wanting to take recordings like this.”

“Yeah, but they won’t be as cool as this one!” Lyra replied. “Seeing a human room! How do they get the walls so straight?”

“I wondered that myself,” said Derpy.

“You’re always obsessed with the weirdest things about the humans, Lyra,” said Bon-bon. “They’re just regular folks like us.”

“You didn’t always think so,” said Lyra.

“All of you guys, shut up!” said Spike. “I’m trying to watch this thing. Bwaha! Derpy, you can’t even keep your balance! We’ve got to show everypony this.”

“I know. But Karyn told me I have to give it to one in particular. I’m going to see her next.”

Derpy turned off the spell and put it back in her bag. She said her good-byes and trotted out to a field where some ponies were having a dance. Awkwardly meandering through the crowd she reached the display with “DJ Pon-3” emblazoned on it in hot pink. She waited until the next song was going.

“Hey, Scratch!” she said, shouting so as to be heard. “I was hanging with my human friend today and she said that you should see the movie we made!”

“Yeah! Why me?!”

“Don’t know! But I’m sure she said it would be a Vinyl video! Almost entirely sure!”

“OK, I’ll see if I can use it!”

Vinyl activated the spell and put her microphone by it, but then kept shutting it off and restarting it, using it as sample fodder while mixing in other sounds. Derpy put her hoof up. “Um. . . that’s not how it’s supposed to. . . hey, are you listening?!” Oh well, at least something she had created was making ponies happy.

And that made her happy too.

Author's Note

And now the preview of next week's ep.

“You’re invited to a party!”

“Because you think I’m really swell?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Karyn said, and she started to open the envelope. “So what’s this party for and why am I invited?”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be the center of attention like after the soccer game."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it’s a chance for a breakthrough in cutienomics,” said Scootaloo.

“Cutienomics?” asked Karyn.

“The study of cutie marks. That’s what we in the know call it.”

“And by ‘we,’ you mean ‘you’?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“Well, I did invent the word. But there are plenty of other ponies who study it. At least two."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Say, Derpy? How did you get your cutie mark?” asked Karyn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that's all you're getting! Be sure to favorite the story to see each chapter as it comes out, or just come around every Wednesday night at 0:00 GMT! (It's early this week because I derped.)

7: Derputante Ball

“Greetings, Ms. Karyn Hubert of Dormitory 4, University of State College Institute,” Derpy said.

“Hey, Derpy. What’s with the fancy hello? And why the hat?”

“Letter carriers of the Equestria Post Office are not permitted to fraternize while on duty. And my duties are not discharged until I have delivered my entire contingent of mail.” Derpy reached into her bag and pulled out a white envelope with purple and gold trim and passed it to Karyn. “And now I have. Hey, Karyn!”

Karyn smiled. “Good morning. A letter for me? Who in Equestria would be sending me a letter?”

“Actually, it’s an invitation.”

“A what?”

“You’re invited to a party!”

“Because you think I’m really swell?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Karyn said, and she started to open the envelope. “So what’s this party for and why am I invited?”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be the center of attention like after the soccer game. This is for a young pony named Sweetie Belle.”

“Rarity’s sister?”

“Oh, you know her. Well, she finally got her cutie mark the other day, and—“

Karyn interrupted. “It’s a cuteceañera!”

Derpy tilted her head and looked confused. “No, those went out of style a long time ago. Sweetie’s having a de-cute-ante ball.”

“I keep forgetting that so much time has passed since the things I know about from Equestria—Discord’s return, the royal wedding, all that. But wait, Sweetie Belle’s just now getting her cutie mark?”

“I know, she is rather old for it. But what can you do? Nopony can make it appear any sooner that it does.”

“What mark did she get?”

“Nopony knows, except her. That’s the way a de-cute-ante ball works. All the ponies wear dresses for the party, and at the end, they take them off, with the guest of honor removing hers last and showing her new mark off to everypony.”

“So basically, it’s a masquerade for flanks instead of faces,” Karyn said.

“No, it’s a de-cute-ante ball. So how about it?”

“It sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll go.”

“Well, technically you haven’t been invited yet. Not until you open your envelope.”

Karyn laughed and lifted the flap, trying not to damage it, since was so pretty.

“Now it’s official,” Derpy said. “On my back and let’s go get ready for the party!”

They warped to Equestria and Karyn, for the first time, kept her eyes open. She was rewarded with the view of a party tent being set up next to Carousel Boutique, a few strong ponies pounding stakes into the ground, and a cart laden with food being unloaded by a mustachioed pony in a straw hat. Derpy landed next to him.

“Hi there, sir,” Derpy said. “This is my friend Karyn, who you said you wanted to meet.”

“Oh, the human! Darn pleased to meet ya! Name’s Magnum, and Derpy, you ought not to call me sir.”

Karyn started to put out her hand, but realized that he would have nothing to shake with, and wasn’t sure if he wanted to hoof-bump. “You’re Rarity’s father, right? And Sweetie Belle’s?”

“That’s me! Proud pappy of the two most bee-a-yootiful fillies in town.”

“So I guess you’re to thank for this celebration?” Derpy asked.

“Aw, no! Rarity’s done everything, including pay for the whole shebang. All I got to do is to help hauling.” He magically lifted a heavy case of wine off the cart. “And we got some fancy stuff to haul, too! Genuine champagne!” he said, pronouncing it “cham-pagg-knee.”

“Check it out, Karyn,” Derpy said. “A Magnum carrying magnums!”

“Cute, Derpy,” Karyn said. “Can we help out too?”

“Won’t say I wouldn’t like the help, but I think you got an appointment to get to!” Magnum said.

“Appointment?”

“Oh, I completely forgot to tell you,” Derpy said. “Rarity said she wanted to make a dress for you, and you’ve got a fitting with her now.”

“Wait, wait, wait. I’m going to a party. . . wearing an original Rarity?”

“You hear that, Magnum?” Derpy said “Your daughter is famous even in the human world.”

Karyn was practically dancing with excitement. “Well, not among humans in general, but do you have any idea how much brony cred this means? It’s like having Pinkie Pie throw a party for you or having Twilight Sparkle be your tutor!”

“But, Karyn,” Derpy said, “You’ve had both of those happen to you already.”

“Oh, that’s true. I guess I’m just a girl at heart, who gets excited by a dress.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Derpy said. “Everypony likes to dress up.”

“Rarity’ll be in that boutique of hers,” said Magnum, pronouncing it “boo-tee-cue.” “I’ll go introduce you.”

Karyn followed Magnum, finding herself drawn to the affable pony. He might not have been the most educated stallion, but he was definitely personable.

Once inside, she saw Rarity herself working on a dress that Sweetie Belle was wearing. Sweetie had something like pasties covering her flanks, and the dress flowed behind her. It was lily white and pleated, and was trimmed with a cottony lace in a pinkish hue, and gave her the look of walking on a cotton candy cloud. Pearls and amethysts lined the edges. As soon as Sweetie saw Magnum, she leaped off the stand.

“Daddy!” she called out.

“Careful, Sweetie Belle!” said Rarity. “I almost tore this dress.”

Sweetie ignored her. “Do I look pretty, Daddy?”

“You sure do, my little one. You sure do.” His chest was sticking out in front of him.

Rarity said, “If you’re going to fawn over Father, at least take that off so it doesn’t get damaged. I’ll finish it on a dummy. Honestly, it’s like talking to a wall. Oh, hello, you’re the human! So nice to meet you!”

“I suppose I should just go ahead and change my name to ‘The Human,’ at least while I’m in Equestria.”

“Oh, how rude of me, it’s Karyn, of course. And I’m Rarity. I am sorry about the name, but I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you. To design a dress for a whole new body type is such a delightful challenge.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Karyn. “May I see the dress?”

“It’s just coming off of the press, dear. But I can show you the fabric. I had it made special for you. Tell me what you think.”

She had led Karyn over to a rack where bolts of cloth were hanging. Using her magic, she stretched out one and showed it off. It was a light gray, and was faintly dyed with a pattern of bubbles.

“It’s perfect, Rarity,” she said. “But, did you use the same fabric for Derpy’s?”

“Oh, no! This pattern is so unusual as it is, that to have twin dresses with it would be far too gimmicky. No, for hers I used this pale peach color,” Rarity said, pulling out a plainer, but still luxurious, bolt. “I told her that you two would complement each other nicely.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said that, yes, you were always saying nice things about her and she about you.”

Karyn laughed. “Yeah, that’s definitely Derpy.”

From looking around the boutique, Karyn could tell that Rarity’s star had only continued to rise in the fashion world since the time from which Karyn knew her. All the equipment was shiny and new, and there were fancy dresses in various states of completion all over. But most telling of all, there were two assistants, identical twins, working there, clearly pleased to have the opportunity to learn from a giantess of the industry. One of these helpers came up to them with a hanger. “Here’s the dress for the human, Miss Rarity.”

“Thank you, Tweed.”

“I’m Twill, miss.”

“Oh, my. I’m going to have to make you wear nametags at some point. Never mind, go back to the preparations. It’s terribly busy here, Karyn, what with the party, but I want to take time for you and fit this right. Go ahead and try it on.”

There was a changing screen nearby, and Karyn took the dress behind it, slipping out of her jeans and T-shirt. The skirt billowed out around her, and she made a mental note to be careful walking, since she would bump into things if she wasn’t. She was left with an odd, trapezoidal piece of material that she wasn’t sure how to put on.

“Rarity? Could you help me with the top part? I’m not sure how to wear this.”

“Of course, dear,” she said, walking behind the screen. “Do you see that round part? It stretches. Slip it over your head.”

Karyn found the elastic circle and put it on until it closed around her neck like a choker. Then Rarity used her magic and connected the wide end of the fabric to the skirt. “There,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Um. . . that’s all of it?”

“Well, I haven’t accessorized it yet, but as far as the base, yes. Is there something wrong?”

“But my boobs are hanging out!”

“Your what, dear?”

Karyn cast her memory back to the show. Every time ponies did dress up for parties or events, the outfits covered the flanks and the back. The equivalent area on a pony would be near their bellies, and those faced the ground. Rarity had clearly adapted her pony designs for how she thought a human would wear a dress. And since ponies didn’t have the nudity taboo, there was no way to explain. For that matter, ponies, at least of the Equestrian variety, didn’t have boobs at all. Even when Lyra sat human-style on a bench, nothing stood out.

How could she explain to Rarity that going topless was a shameless display of sexuality on her world, and that she would be mortified to appear in public like that?

“You see,” she said, pointing toward her breasts, “among humans—“

“You mean your chest! Yes, so beautifully round. And since your head is not nearly as elongated as ours, I thought I would emphasize the spherical theme. Hence the pillowy dress and the bubble pattern, which of course also underscores your connection to our dear Ms. Hooves.”

Karyn thought about that. While not a surfboard, Karyn had little enough that she was sometimes envious of her more well-endowed friends. But now, she realized, she was the biggest girl in an entire world. Maybe showing off wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It was certainly an opportunity she’d never have on Earth.

“I love it, Rarity. Don’t worry about me, and don’t change a thing,” she said.

Rarity smiled and said, “Well, I have to make sure it fits, at least. Turn round.”

She fawned over the dress, sticking pins and making chalk marks for the places she would have to take it in or let it out.

“Yow!” Karyn cried out. “Careful!”

“Did I stick you? I didn’t think I would with material this thick.”

“Actually it felt like you burned me. Not too bad, just that I wasn’t ready for the feeling of the heat.”

“I don’t know why. But in any case, I’ve got it all marked up. It looks good. Now, just lie down so I can nail the shoes to your feet.”

“What?! No!”

Rarity laughed. “I’m joking, dear. I actually consulted with Lyra about what sort of shoes humans wear, and I think I’ve come up with a nice adaptation. She insisted I play that prank on you, though.”

“She’s been hanging around Pinkie Pie too much.”

“Anyway, here are the shoes.”

To Karyn, they looked like a cross between a true horseshoe and an orthopedic foot support. They were oval-shaped with a hole in the middle, though the cushiony gel would, in her estimation, provide support. But there was no way that she saw to keep them on. “How do they work, then, if you’re not nailing them on?” she asked.

“Just a bit of magic, darling. Slide your foot horizontally on top to put them on or take them off. They won’t detach if you pull in any other direction.”

Karyn tried a few times before she got the hang of it, but then agreed that it was a very practical way to have a simple shoe.

“You can go ahead and take everything off, and it will be ready in plenty of time for the ball,” Rarity said.

“Thank you, Rarity. It’s a wonderful gift.”

Karyn threw her old clothes back on and headed out to find Derpy. She found her under the tent setting tables. Karyn grabbed some place settings from a box and helped out.

“Did you try on your dress?” Derpy asked.

“Yeah. It wasn’t quite what I expected, but I’ll definitely be showing off.”

At the front of the tent, Sweetie Belle and her father had been chatting, but they were soon joined by Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. Karyn noticed the three friends and tapped Derpy on the shoulder.

“Look, it’s the other two Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

“The what, now?” Derpy asked.

“Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.”

“Oh, I know them, but what was it you called them?”

“The Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

“Karyn! That’s the name of their secret society. Secret as in you don’t talk about it.”

“But they call themselves that. They let everypony know that they’re crusading for their cutie marks. Or were, since Sweetie Belle has hers. They even entered a talent show under that name.”

“Doesn’t matter. Secret society.”

Karyn decided this was yet another argument she was not going to win. “Well, whoever they are, can you introduce me?”

“Oh, sure.”

They walked up as the Crusaders were in the middle of a conversation.

“. . . and he lived out west, outside of Flankouver,” Scootaloo finished.

“Hey, girls,” said Derpy. “I wanted to introduce you to my human friend, Karyn.”

Karyn held out her hand to Sweetie Belle. “Congratulations on getting your cutie mark,” she said.

“Thanks. Scootaloo was just telling us about some cutie mark history.”

“Just about Littlecorn, a lumberjack stallion who had the largest cutie mark ever. It was a fallen giant redwood, and branch to stump measured over two feet long! How big is yours, Apple Bloom?”

Karyn interrupted. “Oh, you have yours, Apple Bloom? What is it?”

“It’s an apple tree, thankfully not fallen over,” Apple Bloom said. “It symbolizes both the family business and the family itself. I’m real proud to be an Apple.”

“Now, the smallest cutie mark on record,” Scootaloo said, “was right here in Ponyville, a few generations back. It was a tiny insect, so small that you needed a magnifying glass to see it. The mare who had it went on to become a famous entomologist in Canterlot. It was lucky that her friends were with her when she got it, or nopony might have noticed.”

“Scootaloo knows all about cutie marks,” said Apple Bloom. “She has a collection of cutie mark lore going back hundreds of years. Hey, Scoot! Maybe yours is the smallest and we never did notice? Have you ever checked your flank with a magnifier?”

Karyn noticed that Scootaloo was the only one not wearing anything, and that her flank was still bare.

“Of course I have. Trust me, I’m a genuine blank, last of the group,” said Scootaloo. Karyn expected to hear disappointment in her voice, but instead there was a hint of pride.

“It can’t be much longer for you,” said Sweetie Belle.

“You said that a year ago,” said Scootaloo. “I think that after Apple Bloom got hers, we all assumed that it would go in age order, but obviously not.”

“Oh?” asked Karyn. “Apple Bloom is the oldest?”

“Yeah, she’s a year older than me, and I’m a year older than Sweetie Belle. But Apple got hers three years back, when she was eighteen years, three months, and thirteen days old. Sweetie here was nineteen years, two months, and three days old when she got hers last weekend. The Equestrian record is nineteen years, eleven months, and thirty days.”

“Go on, then, tell her why you’ve been busting out all month,” said Apple Bloom.

“My twentieth birthday is next week. If nothing happens before then, I’ll have the record for the blankest flank ever! But beyond that, it’s a chance for a breakthrough in cutienomics,” said Scootaloo.

“Cutienomics?” asked Karyn.

“The study of cutie marks. That’s what we in the know call it.”

“And by ‘we,’ you mean ‘you’?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“Well, I did invent the word. But there are plenty of other ponies who study it. At least two. In any case, I’m trying to prove that there’s a biological clock to getting your mark. That the record isn’t just coincidence, and that you can’t be twenty and blank. I’m specifically avoiding trying anything new for the next week. If I can stay blank, I’ll make history and record it at the same time.”

“Cool,” said Derpy. “I’ll have to come and see you next week.”

“Say, Derpy? How did you get your cutie mark?” asked Karyn.

Derpy looked at the others and asked, “So, do you want to help finish setting up? Not Sweetie, of course, she’s the Belle of the ball, literally. Apple, Scoots, how about it?”

Before they answered, Derpy trotted back and started unloading more place settings. Karyn decided she wouldn’t pursue the question.

With four more pairs of hooves, the work went quickly, and soon enough they were sitting and drinking sodas waiting for the party to start. When a few other ponies started arriving early, Rarity invited them in to get dressed.

Karyn went inside, her mind on her manners. There was still so much about Equestrian culture she didn’t know, but she hoped that if she was pleasant enough and tried to put the ponies she didn’t know at ease, that she would get through the evening. As she went behind the screen to change, she noticed that it had been moved and she now had the use of a triple mirror. That was good, she could make sure everything was in place, and—

“Derpy!”

Derpy, who had put on her own dress, heard Karyn scream and flew out from her screen to where Karyn was. She feared that Karyn had hurt herself somehow.

“What’s wrong?” Derpy asked.

“Look at my butt! I mean, don’t look at my butt, but. . . but look at my butt!”

“Hey, you got your cutie mark too! And computers are your special talent!”

In the side mirror Karyn could still see the reflection of one of two white ergonomic keyboards that she had seen on her rear end when she was changing. She covered it with her hands.

“What do you mean, I got my cutie mark?! I’m a human! Humans don’t have cutie marks!”

Derpy cocked her head. “No, it would seem that people on Earth don’t have cutie marks. People in Equestria do.” She gasped. “I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going to lose mine if I keep visiting you! Let’s ask Scootaloo. She’s sure to know.”

“No! We’re not telling anyone! Or anypony! Oh, this is horrible. Do you know how much it costs to get a tattoo removed?”

“But it’s not a tattoo.”

“You’re right. It’s magical, isn’t it? It probably goes all the way down to my bones. I’m scarred for life.”

“Karyn, you should be happy,” Derpy said, putting her wing around Karyn. “This is a big moment in a young girl’s life.”

“You mean a young filly’s life. I’m a human. Everyone’s going to think I’m some kind of freaky geek who loves her computer so much that she had her body marked up to show it.”

“Wait, don’t you cover up your flank all the time?”

Karyn took a deep breath. She realized that Derpy was right. The only people who would see it would be doctors and boyfriends. Doctors had probably seen worse. Boyfriends would have to accept her as being a little different.

“Is everything all right in here?” Rarity came in, still carrying her needles and thread. “I thought I heard some sort of commotion.”

Derpy stuck her head out from behind the screen. “Karyn just—“

“I was just amazed at how many jewels you added to my dress. These pink gems are quite beautiful. Are they rubies?”

“Pink diamonds, actually. I wanted to continue the connecting theme between you and Ms. Hooves, and I lined hers with gray diamonds to match her coat. They’re a bit deeper pink than your hue, but one wants some color on a gray dress.”

“They’re quite nice. Thank you again. Please excuse me so I can finish getting into it.”

They went to the party. Next to the tent a dance floor had been laid down, and an eight-piece rhythm group was just launching into their opening number. Karyn liked their sound. It wasn’t quite as intense as some of what she had heard at Pinkie Pie’s party, but it wasn’t just acoustic background music either. She danced with Derpy to start, not really touching each other. As the combo played through its first set, she got used to the fact that she was flashing the crowd. Then, from behind her, she heard a voice say, “Hey, Karyn! How about a dance, biped to biped?”

Oh, no. Not Spike. Well, it was a party. She’d give the horny dragon one dance and get it over with. She turned and put on her best fake smile. When she did, she saw his leery grin drop.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“No, I’ve just never seen you. . . like this before. You’re so bulgy. You know what? I’ve never really cared for this song. Maybe I’ll catch up with you later, all right?”

“Certainly, Spike.”

As he hightailed it toward the other end of the party, Rarity came up to her and said, “You’re welcome, dear.”

“You knew?”

“Years of experience making him keep his claws to himself.”

They sat down to dinner, and Karyn enjoyed the best meal she had had in a long time. On earth, being vegetarian meant your options were limited and bland. Ponies, though, when they went in for high cuisine, knew how to add strong flavor to grains and vegetables. She had a barley-based stew that outdid anything she had gotten on earth, and enjoyed rainbow chard that had been flavored with actual rainbow.

There was more dancing, and Sweetie as guest of honor even took the opportunity to sing a few songs herself. Derpy said to Karyn, “I’ll bet you anything that she’s got a singing cutie mark. She’s going to make a career out of it, mark my words.”

At last, it was time for the big event of the evening. Karyn and Derpy were fairly close to the main table where Sweetie Belle sat alongside her family and closest friends. Karyn watched as pony after pony stood in the spotlight and removed their outfits, showing off their flank and then giving way to the next. Even the young foals got a turn, and didn’t mind showing off a bare patch. Karyn realized that eventually she would be on the spot.

“Derpy, do I really have to do this? I don’t want anypony to know.”

“Trust me, nopony will care. They’ll want to congratulate you,”

At the main table, Scootaloo overheard them and came over. “What’s this about?”

Karyn sighed and resigned herself. “I got a cutie mark, OK? Somehow the air or the magic of Equestria got to me and it just appeared.”

“What?!” Scootaloo screamed, and all around the party, heads turned to see the angry pegasus. “Twenty years I’ve been waiting with a blank flank, and after three days, this human” – she said it as if it were a foul insult – “gets her mark?!”

“But, Scootaloo,” said Derpy, “I thought you wanted to hold off and get the record.”

“Are you kidding me?! How many times have we tried to sell that line that a blank flank is ever OK? It’s not! I want my mark!” She started advancing on Karyn, who was afraid that she was about to be attacked.

Sweetie Belle came over, quickly followed by Apple Bloom. “Scootaloo!” she said, her voice cracking. “You’re ruining my party!”

“Your party! What about my party?!” She was openly crying. “When is it my turn?”

“Well, if you’ve been trying to cover up how much you want it,” Apple Bloom said, “no wonder it hasn’t appeared.”

“Scootaloo, calm down, listen,” said Sweetie. “We understand. We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders. And no matter what your flank looks like, we’re your friends. Don’t you remember the song?”

Everything was silent as Sweetie sang. “We are the Cutie Mark Crusaders, on a quest to find out who we are.”

Scootaloo finally stopped staring at Karyn in a rage and faced her friend. She picked up the tune. “And we will never stop the journey, not until we have our cutie marks—Oh, Sweetie, Apple Bloom, what have I been saying?”

She fell into her friends’ hooves as they embraced her. But at that moment, underneath her dress, everypony saw a flash of orange light. Sweetie said, “Did you see that, Scootaloo? Did you feel it? I think you got it!”

“I got it! I did feel it! My cutie mark!”

“Now we can be de-cute-antes together!”

A cheer erupted from the crowd. They stomped their hooves and started chanting, “Scootaloo! Scootaloo!” Even Karyn joined in.

The unveilings continued, and everypony was hurrying through to see what Sweetie and Scootaloo would display, so Karyn was able to remove her dress without much attention.

Apple Bloom was the last to take off her outfit, showing her tree. Then it was time. Scootaloo said, “You do yours first, Sweetie.”

“No, Scoots. You’ve been waiting so long, don’t wait any longer.”

Scootaloo reached for the clasp and threw off her dress in one motion. Turning her head as far as she could, she shouted, “What is it? What is it?”

Apple Bloom leaned in. “It’s a pony! A pony showing off her flank. And that flank has a picture of a pony showing off her flank. Scootaloo, you got your cutie mark in getting your cutie mark!

Karyn laughed and said under her breath. “Whoa. Cutie mark-ception.”

“No, Karyn,” said Derpy. “She’s not a cutie mark exception anymore.”

“I meant. . . never mind.”

Scootaloo was beaming brighter than she ever had. “OK, Sweetie, your turn,” she said.

Sweetie carefully undid her dress and then stepped into the light. Hers was a triple mark, and displayed three ponies. One was a yellow earth pony, one was a light gray unicorn, and one was an orange pegasus.

“Everypony, I’m pleased to show you my cutie mark in. . . friendship!”

The cheer that went up from the guests rivaled their previous one, but faded quickly as Sweetie Belle escorted Apple Bloom and Scootaloo with her. She approached the microphone and sang.

“We are the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

We’re each other’s lights when it seems dark.

And we’re not going to stop the journey,

Just because we have our cutie marks!”

Karyn wiped a tear from her eye. Maybe having a cutie mark wasn’t so bad.

As ponies started to head for home, Karyn folded her dress neatly and found Rarity. “Hear you go. Thanks for letting me wear this for the occasion.”

“Karyn, it’s yours. I never intended for you to give it back. Besides, what else am I going to do with it? Nopony else can wear it.”

“But what about all the diamonds? Those have to be expensive.”

“Not at all! I still go and find them myself. It gets me out of the boutique. No, I insist you take it with you. Element of generosity, remember?”

“All right. Thank you.”

She changed back into her street clothes and got on Derpy’s back holding the dress. Even though Rarity hadn’t paid for the stones, they would be valuable on Earth. Karyn did some quick multiplication in her head. A diamond ring might go for a thousand dollars, but just the stone would probably be only a few hundred. Still, there had to be a hundred stones on the dress, which meant that she was holding the worth of a car in her hands, or at the very least a year of her tuition. Of course, those were ordinary diamonds, and these pink ones might be like knock-offs that were worth very little.

After Derpy got them home, Karyn asked her to wait a while. “I’m curious as to exactly how much Rarity did give me. You have to express my thanks to her.”

“I will.”

Karyn fiddled a bit on her computer, then started hyperventilating.

“Is everything all right?” Derpy asked.

“Teh.”

“Teh?”

“Ten.”

“Ten?”

“Ten million dollars. If there’re a hundred pink diamonds on this dress, that’s how much it’s worth.”

“That’s a lot, huh?”

“A lot? Derpy, I’m rich! I could tear off one of those stones and pay my tuition. Heck, I could tear off ten and retire!”

“You’re going to sell them?”

Karyn looked at Derpy, and understood what she was implying. Even removing one of the stones would be mistreating Rarity’s beautiful gift. It would be insulting to her, even if she never knew. It would be taking something she hadn’t earned. It would be selling out.

“No. No, I suppose I’m not. I’m going to keep this in my closet and look at it whenever my bills come due. I’ll look and know that I could make them all go away, and all it would cost would be my pride. Then I’m going to work harder to get the money legitimately.”

“That’s the Karyn I know and love. You still have your life’s work ahead of you. That’s how you were able to get that cutie mark. So long, keyboard-flank.”

“So long, bubble-butt.”

Karyn smiled at Derpy until she vanished.

Author's Note

And now, coming soon!

Derpy concluded that they were on the edge of the town, and that soon enough they would expand the large buildings into the grassland, and said as much when she was sure no one was around.

“Actually, it’s a park,” Karyn said. “We keep it around because plenty of people like trees and grass, and they want a place to play or relax.”

“Are we going to play or to relax?”

“No, as I said, I’m going to practice.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Derpy, once again you amaze me by how I can explain something to you, and you come out of it knowing more than me. How do you do that?”

“I don’t know. Things are always like that for me. It all seems like a fog, and then my eyes focus and I understand.”

Karyn had to swallow a remark about Derpy’s eyes focusing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What held you back before was that you were trying. Don’t try to do it. Just do it.”

“That’s the best combination of Yoda, Morpheus, and Nike I’ve ever heard.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” Karyn said. “Just some things out of fiction. Not real like you are."

That's next week, on Derpy's Human.

8: Driving Miss Derpy

“Yeah, Mom, classes are going well. Today? I’m probably going to hang with a friend. Oh, you don’t know her. She’s kind of shy, keeps to herself. A picture? Well, I’m sure she must have one somewhere. But don’t worry about me. I won’t be bored. OK, got to go. Love you. Talk to you soon.”

Karyn hung up the phone. Why had she answered honestly? She knew that her mother would ask pressing questions. What was she supposed to say? “Yeah, plenty of pictures. Just head to Ponibooru and she’s eleventh on the “Popular Tags” list. Derpy didn’t even realize how famous she was among humans. That was one of the reasons Karyn liked her, and hoped that she would arrive soon.

Karyn dawdled and fussed on the internet. She was anxious and eager to show off her new toy to Derpy, although it was only new to Karyn. One of her friends had gotten a replacement, and given the old one to her.

Finally she heard the tell-tale sound of Derpy appearing in her room. After hugs and hellos, she got down to business.

“I’ve got something cool to show you,” Karyn said.

“Ooh, something cool? That’s cool. By definition.”

“Remember how, last time we went out, we couldn’t talk to each other because other people would be weirded out? Well, I’ve got something to solve the problem. Check it out!”

Derpy looked at the small object Karyn was holding. It was like nothing she had ever seen. The closest frame of reference she had was a horseshoe for a pony with very messed-up feet. “What is it?” she asked.

“This is called a Bluetooth.”

“But it’s black.”

“Yes, but it has a blue light inside it. And looks vaguely like a tooth. Although they named it after some Viking lord, if I remember right.” Karyn put the strange thing on the side of her head, and somehow it stayed there. “If I walk around with it on my ear, everyone will think that I’m on the phone. I suppose it will be awkward if you have to talk or if I have to point something out, but for the most part people won’t pay attention, and if they do, they won’t have me locked up for being a crazy person.”

Derpy looked at her. “I’m not sure you’re not. Unless this thing is magic, which it’s not, there’s no way it’s going to alter people’s minds to make them think that you’re not talking to me.”

Karyn smiled. “Trust me. Get invisible and let’s go outside.”

Still skeptical, Derpy activated the invisibility spell and followed Karyn out on to the street. There were a few people walking by. As one passed, Karyn said out loud, “Now, today should be fun for you because you can watch me as I mess up, but I’ll be putting in practice time for something important. I’ll explain what when we get there.”

The other person looked at Karyn, wondering if she was talking to him, but she pointed at the thing in her ear and he smiled and nodded, then walked away. Derpy was forced to concede that the plan did seem to work.

Karyn started walking and said “It’s about a mile and a half down the road." Derpy fluttered after her. The last time she had been out in the human world, she had been singularly focused on the destination. Now she took the opportunity to observe more of the city.

The streets were of cobblestone, and she would have enjoyed the clip-clop sound she would have made walking them. But of course, she had to stay out of the way. The buildings were also of stone, and Derpy was impressed at how little the humans used wood in their architecture. But they only lined one side of the road. Opposite them, there was an area of green that reminded her more of home. A few roads passed through, just wide enough for a pony or two, and trees bloomed all over. Derpy concluded that they were on the edge of the town, and that soon enough they would expand the large buildings into the grassland, and she said as much when she was sure no one was around.

“Actually, it’s a park,” Karyn said. “We keep it around because plenty of people like trees and grass, and they want a place to play or relax.”

“Are we going to play or to relax?”

“No, as I said, I’m going to practice.”

They made their way around the park. On the other side, Derpy saw something she was amazed at. It was a completely flat area, all in black with a few yellow lines in a pattern she could not discern. It was as if a great square rock had been buried in the earth.

“This is the parking lot for people who drive in to use the park. Today, at this time of morning, no one will be using it. Which means that I can,” said Karyn.

She pointed to the other side of the lot, and there was what Derpy thought of as a giant, enclosed wagon. Karyn said, “There’s my car, or rather, my parents’.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s transportation. You get inside and you can go long distances at high speeds without wearing yourself out. But, the problem is that you have to learn how to do it. And before they let you, you have to pass a test.

"I took the test a few weeks back, and I failed. So my folks lent me the car to practice when the lot is empty. I should be doing that every day, but I haven’t. I have another chance at the test this week. So I thought that I could get that in and show you how it worked. We’d kill two birds with one stone."

“We can do that later,” Derpy said. “I want to see the car move!” She positioned herself in front of it, and asked, “How exactly do you hitch this on?”

Karyn shook her head and pushed a button on her keychain. The horn beeped and there was a gust of wind as Derpy flew away. “Warn me when you’re going to do that!” she said.

“Sorry. But you don’t pull it. You get in it.” She opened the passenger side door and laid the seat back. “Headroom might be a little tight, but you should be able to see.”

Derpy still expected Karyn to propel the vehicle from the front, but watched Karyn get in beside her.

“So, how do you make it go?” asked Derpy.

“Well, first I’m going to put on this belt. If anything goes wrong, this should keep me in my seat. I don’t know if it would be right for you lying down. You do have an airbag that will go off if we crash. But I’m going to try not to have that.

“Now, can you see these three pedals down here? The right one is the gas pedal, the middle one is the brake, and the left one is the clutch.”

“OK, so far, I don’t get it,” said Derpy.

“There’s only two more things, really. This wheel here makes it go left and right, and this knob down here is the gear shift. That’s where I tend to screw up.” Karyn turned the key and the car sprang to life.

“Whoa!” said Derpy.

“Sorry, I keep forgetting that you’re not used to all this. I’ve been riding in cars all my life. So now I’ve got to push the clutch down with the brake, and I can shift into first gear. And if we’re lucky. . . “

The car stalled out. “Dammit!” Karyn said.

“What went wrong?”

“If I don’t give it enough gas, that’s what happens. Once I get up to speed, I’m fine. It’s this part that I can’t get down.”

“It’s too bad they can’t just change the gears for you.”

“Yeah, they have those,” Karyn said. “But this car doesn’t, and my folks insist on me learning to drive stick.”

Karyn started the car again, and accelerated into third gear. “OK, now it’s going. From here on out, it’s just a question of practicing enough so that I get the muscle memory necessary to pass the test.”

She tracked around the parking lot for a while, trying to explain to Derpy how she had to check her mirrors, look around, and maneuver, all at the same time.

“But if it’s not being pulled, and it’s not being pushed,” Derpy said, looking behind her to make sure, “then how does it go?”

“OK, I’m not an expert, but the father of one of my friends was always working on his car, so I picked up some of the basics. Imagine a long tube made of metal. And inside the tube, you put another piece of metal that can move up and down.”

“Like when I put my hoof inside one of Twilight’s little spell activators! If I had a metal hoof.”

“Exactly. Now, below that piece of metal, which is called a piston, you put this stuff called gas, even though it’s a liquid.”

“That’s silly,” said Derpy.

“Well, but it makes gas if you set it on fire.” Karyn didn’t think that Derpy was ready to learn about spark plugs yet. “And if you did that, the piston would move up. You attach it at the other end to a crank that uses some of the momentum to push it back down. That’s the basic concept of the engine.”

“OK, but what does that have to do with moving the car?”

“Well, once you’ve got the crank turning, it’s just a question of moving the power down to the axles, which turn the wheels. I don’t really know the ins and outs of the drive train, but it works. Oh, there’s a bit more to it—keeping the pistons lubricated, having brakes on the wheels, pumping the gas into the cylinders—but that’s the idea.”

“It seems complicated just to spin wheels. How do they go forward?”

“Oh, the tires are rubber. They grip the road fairly well.”

“Aha! Why didn’t you just say so? Split it into its vertical and horizontal component forces, make sure you get the right coefficient of resistance, and it makes sense!”

Karyn took her foot off the gas and laughed. “Derpy, once again you amaze me by how I can explain something to you, and you come out of it knowing more than me. How do you do that?”

“I don’t know. Things are always like that for me. It all seems like a fog, and then my eyes focus and I understand.”

Karyn had to swallow a remark about Derpy’s eyes focusing.

“So now that I get it, can I try driving?”

Karyn stopped the car. “OK, here’s the short version of the list of reasons why that’s a bad idea. One: you could crash and kill us. Two: if anyone saw a pony driving, they’d freak. Three: if anyone saw an invisible pony driving, they’d freak more. Four: you don’t have a license. Five: the car is built for hands and feet, not hooves. Face it, Derpy. There is no way on Earth or in Equestria that you’re driving this car.”

******************************************

Derpy slipped behind the wheel. She had to sit human-style for this, which wasn’t comfortable, but she would make do.

Next to her, Karyn put on her seat belt, all the while wishing that it were one of the racing harnesses that professional drivers wore. “How do I let myself get talked into these things?” she said. “I mean, how do you even make invisible puppy-dog eyes?”

Derpy was concentrating more on the task at hoof than on Karyn’s fatalistic worries. She prepared to work all the levers and pedals she needed to do, then realized that she would need some help with step one.

“Can you do the key?” she asked.

“All right.” Karyn turned the key, half expecting to be plastered across the lot in the next moment. But Derpy was cautious, shifting it into first and giving it too much gas rather than stall out as Karyn had.

“See, I told you it was harder than it looked,” Karyn said.

The car jerked and shook, but eventually got some speed. With all her concentration, Derpy released the gas and shifted successfully into second, then got right back into the driving flow.

“I did it!” she said.

“Beginner’s luck,” Karyn replied. “Not that you don’t get credit for it. OK, let’s try a turn. Gently.”

Derpy was able to maneuver the wheel by sticking her hooves in the holes provided for lazy drivers. It would be difficult for a human to turn it that way, but Derpy made do.

Karyn kept giving instructions. “Keep your eyes a couple of hundred feet down the road. When you finish a turn, you can let the wheel return itself to center. No, don’t go into third gear just yet.”

Derpy didn’t say anything, but she was enjoying herself. After a few circuits, they heard a voice should, “Hey!”

She had a moment of panic, and took her hooves off of everything. The car lost speed. “It’s OK, Derpy!” said Karyn. “Just push the brake slowly until we stop. You did the right thing, letting go. Better than having you step on all the pedals.

The car stopped, and Karyn turned the key to shut it off. Up to the passenger side window a teenage boy ran up. He looked at Karyn and asked, “Is this one of those new self-driving cars I read about? Are you with Google?!”

Thankful that he had given her an excuse, Karyn said, “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Wow, you are so lucky to work on stuff like this. I knew they hired young. Hopefully I can get in there someday.”

“Hehe. Maybe we’ll be working together.”

“So listen, can I take a video on my phone to show my friends?” the young man asked.

Karyn wanted to avoid having her parents’ car all over YouTube. She tried to think of a way to get out of this. “You’ve got a camera phone?”

“Yeah, it’s an iPhone.”

“An iPhone? As in, an Apple iPhone? Yeah, I don’t think that’ll go over too well with my bosses. Anyway, I was just finishing this phase of the testing.”

“Hey, I thought they already were doing road tests. Why are you working in the lot?”

“We’re testing some voice-activation features. Watch this. ‘Derpy, please open your door.’”

Derpy caught on to the joke. She opened the driver’s side door and flew out.

“That is so cool!” he said.

“Yeah, you have to say please though, or it won’t work. We’re trying to bring some manners back to society.”

“OK, well, I’m going to let you keep going. Get these things on the road as soon as you can. I want one!”

Once the youth had gone, they got back in the car with Derpy riding shotgun. Karyn turned on the car and started practicing again.

“Well, that was nearly a fiasco,” she said. “But I enjoyed playing with him a little.”

“You were fine. I was just trying not to burst out laughing. That would have given everything away.”

“Yeah, you did a good job,” Karyn said. “Although he’s right. They should get the self-driving cars out on the road sooner. I mean, it’s not only that uncoordinated folks like me wouldn’t then have to waste their Sundays practicing when they could be having fun with their pegasus friends. It’s also about safety. And not just people being distracted while driving, but just all the things that drivers do wrong, the poor judgments they make. And we’ll have the added benefit of more time. I mean, there’s public transportation, and you know all about that, you’ve ridden in the train. But the problem with that is that it is public. Humans are very private people. Also they don’t want to gather at train and bus stations and leave on someone else’s schedule. When we get cars that everyone owns but that they don’t have to drive, it’ll be a big step forward.”

“How soon do you think they’ll be available?”

“Probably in a few more decades. Just long enough for me to be used to driving. If I can pass my test before then.”

“But, Karyn,” Derpy said, “all the time you were talking, you’ve been driving perfectly.”

Karyn realized that she was right. She had advanced through the gears without coming close to stalling, and neither had she wasted gas. Then she’d been cruising through the lot, taking the turns at the end of the parking lanes without realizing what she was doing.

“How did I do that?” she asked.

“Well, we don’t have driving in Equestria—I mean we do, we just call it pulling carts, or running trains, and that’s easier since you have the tracks to tell you where to go—but we do have tests, and every test is not just a test of skill, but a test of nerves. What held you back before was that you were trying. Don’t try to do it. Just do it.”

“That’s the best combination of Yoda, Morpheus, and Nike I’ve ever heard.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” Karyn said. “Just some things out of fiction. Not real like you are. But it’s one thing to say those things. It’s another to sit in the driver’s seat.”

She drove around some more, this time with difficulty. Derpy tried to help by making idle chatter.

“I’m glad you could come out and see me do this,” Karyn said. “I think I am getting a bit better, and maybe I can pass the test next time.”

“And if not then, keep trying. Or, do they ever just say, ‘You’ve failed too many times. You’ll never drive’?”

“No, I can keep trying until I pass.”

“That’s good. For you, not necessarily for people who are such bad drivers.”

“But anyway, thank you.”

“No, Karyn. Thank you.”

“Thank me? What did I do?”

Derpy paused for a moment. “I have a filly, you know.”

“Of course. Dinky.”

“That’s right. She’s a unicorn. I’ve never said anything to her, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about her, honest I wouldn’t. But there are some times that I wish I could have taught my filly how to fly. Watch her make her first take-off, see the first time she flew without a cloud underneath to catch her, maybe get a job making weather. This has been kind of a substitute.”

“Aw, Derpy, don’t say that,” Karyn said.

“Why not?”

“Because I have to keep my hands on the wheel, and I can’t hug you.”

“That’s OK. I’ll keep a ledger, and we’ll catch up on hugs when we get out of the car.”

Karyn got a funny image in her head of someone seeing her hugging the air. “Was it hard,” she asked, “raising a unicorn when you’re a pegasus?”

“Not at first. But I did have to get other unicorns to teach her how to use her magic. That hurt a little, because I hated to let her out of my sight.”

“Were you an overprotective mother?”

“I like to think I wasn’t. But Dinky might not agree.”

“My mom was,” Karyn said. “She didn’t even want me to learn to drive the car. But my father insisted, and I probably would have done so either way. I just want to get this test over with.”

“Do you want me to come for the test and hang out in the back seat?”

“Haha, no, thanks. That’s OK. But I’ll pretend you’re there. Maybe that will help.”

“And once you pass, you’ll be able to drive all over?”

Karyn paused. “Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s a rite of passage into adulthood. All the things you were talking about, the first solo flight for a young pegasus and such, they’re ways that we know we’re growing up. And that can be a little scary. A pegasus has to fear crashing into the ground, and I have to fear crashing the car. But I can’t live in fear. And once I’ve made it, things open up for me.”

“What kind of things?”

“I’ll show you. I’m going to take the car on the road. Not technically legal unless you’re a licensed driver, but we’re only going a block or two.”

Karyn pulled out of the parking lot and, carefully maintaining the speed limit, drove down the road and turned at a yellow and red sign.

Derpy sat in silence as they drove to a box standing in the ground, then she reached a state of awe as Karyn and the box had a conversation. They drove on to a window, where another human handed Karyn a bag in exchange for some money.

Back at the lot, Karyn took from the bag two small containers and handed one to Derpy. “They’re fried potatoes,” she said. “That was a drive-through. A way to get your food without ever having to leave the car. It’s a little bit of modern convenience to save some time. But you can’t do it without a car.”

Derpy munched on the potatoes. “Thanks, these are good.”

They ate in silence for a while, then Derpy said, “I wish we had something like that at home. A place to pick up lunch when I’m flying. There’s only one problem I see with it.”

“What’s that?”

“They’d never find a pole big enough to get that speaker box on it.”

Karyn laughed. Three days later, she passed the test.

Author's Note

Here's the previews of next week's chapter!

“Hi, Duh-be,” Karyn said. She was lying on the bed in her pajamas, wheezing and looking flush. “I’m sick. I caught a cold or the flu or something. I wish I could have called you and let you know.” She sneezed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I’m just glad I had my hair in a ponytail.”

“You did? Whose?”

“No, it’s just means pulling it back and holding it in place with a rubber band.”

“It makes you look prettier."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn turned over onto her stomach, which she found more comfortable for sleeping. Normally, she loved being around Derpy because, even if she was exasperating, it was a fun kind of wearing out. She had heard the school of thought that said that the best thing to do with a cold was to work through it, pretend you weren’t sick, and let the body fight it off while you didn’t lose any time. She thought that was incredibly stupid. She just wanted to lie still until she was well again, and then have fun with Derpy.

Don't miss it!

9: Is There a Derper in the House?

One thing that Derpy Hooves particularly liked about her friendship with Karyn was the fact that they had no way to communicate other than face-to-face. While it was convenient to be able to mail her friends in Equestria or Cloudsdale, not being able to know what Karyn was up to lent the relationship an air of spontaneity that kept it fun. So it was that Derpy, hoping her friend would not have made plans of her own, made ready her surprise. She had carefully cleaned and painted, and now was ready to show off. She pulled out her bag of spells and warped to Earth.

“Hey, Karyn! I’ve got something to show you back in—are you all right?”

“Hi, Duh-be,” Karyn said. She was lying on the bed in her pajamas, wheezing and looking flush. “I’m sick. I caught a cold or the flu or something. I wish I could have called you and let you know.” She sneezed.

“A cold? But it’s springtime. And you can’t have flew, because you’re not a pegasus. And because that’s bad grammar.”

“No, no. Cold and flu. They’re diseases. But I’m not surprised you don’t have them in Equestria. Equestria’s perfect.”

“Hey, it’s not perfect. And we have plenty of diseases. Pony pox, cutie pox, plenty of other poxes. But very few upper respiratory infections.”

“Then I wish I were there,” Karyn said, sneezing again. “What was it you wanted to show me?”

“Oh, I had hoped to invite you to my new home. See, way back before I started seeing you, Lyra told me that I would need to have a place for a human to stay if she came to Equestria. So I bought a house in Ponyville, and it’s finally fixed up enough to have people over. I was hoping you’d be my first guest, but you’ve come all over with the ague. Wait, there’s no reason not to do this! You’ll come with me back home, and I’ll take care of you until you get better!”

“Oh, Derpy, I couldn’t make you do that.”

“What are friends for? Besides, there are all sorts of remedies we have in Equestria for diseases. One of them’s got to work. No arguments, now. Just slump over me and you’ll be better in no time.”

Coughing and sputtering, Karyn got on Derpy’s back, feeling the aches in her muscles as she did. She soon found herself being tucked right back into bed. The bed she was in had a wooden headboard and footboard, and outside the window she could see the bright colors of the Equestrian sky.

Something was nagging at the back of Karyn’s mind. “Derpy,” she said. “You shouldn’t have gone and sold your Cloudsdale home just for me. Don’t you think you’ll be a fish out of water if you’re living among mostly Earth ponies?”

“I’m a fish out of water anywhere I live. But in any case, no, I didn’t sell my old place. I’ve still got it, and I’ll show it to you some time. You’ll just have to stay on my back the whole time since it has cloud floors. Probably not something we should do today.”

“Yeah, I’m not feeling up to it. Plus, I don’t want to put a plague on both your houses.”

“OK, you sit tight,” said Derpy. “I’m going to go see if I can’t find some medicine.”

She trotted out of the room. Karyn laid her head back on the pillow and looked around. This was the first time she had been in an Equestrian house that was just a house, and not a library or a boutique. The beams that made up the trusses had been accented by a dark stain, and they stood out against the light wood of the walls. The beams of the roof crossed above her, and with her head swimming, she enjoyed picking out patterns in the knotholes. Above them, the roof itself was a thick mass of straw, that looked like it would provide warmth in the winter.

But it was much warmer, and Karyn was glad of the ventilation the house provided. There were several windows for the room, and all of them were heavily muntined. At the foot of the bed, a French door led onto a small balcony. When she felt better, Karyn was looking forward to standing outside and seeing the view. Not that she hadn’t had a pegasus’s-eye view of the town before, but the motion and the height always distracted her.

The furniture had all been made by hoof, as imperfections and nuances showed. A dresser, a vanity, and a hope chest filled the room and gave it a homey charm. Karyn felt as though she could have been dropped into a 19th-century home, with the exception of the winged pony returning to the room.

“Hey, Karyn. So, I don’t know what this will do for you, but I always take it for an upset stomach, so maybe it’ll do good.”

“OK, I’ll try anything at this point. What is it, tea?”

“Kind of. An herbal infusion, though I don’t think there are actual tea leaves in it. “

Karyn sipped slowly at first, then drank deeper. “It’s not bad,” she said. “It could use some cream and sugar, but for the most—“

She closed her mouth and her cheeks bulged out. A churning sound was heard from her stomach. She got out of bed and ran to the door at the end of the room. She hoped it was the bathroom, because she didn’t have time for a lengthy search.

She was lucky. Even the toilet seat was made of wood, but the plumbing seemed modern enough, and that was lucky also. From outside the room, Derpy heard a sound she’d rather not have.

“You OK in there? Anything I can do to help?”

The toilet flushed. Karyn said, “Not unless you have a toothbrush or some mouthwash or something I can use before all that stomach acid eats my teeth. Plus my breath smells like. . . Spike’s.”

“I don’t, but Colgate lives a few houses down. Wait here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Karyn said as she began rinsing her mouth out with water from the sink.

Derpy returned with a toothbrush and baking soda. For Karyn, who was used to flavored toothpastes, it was a little off-putting, but at least she got the nastier taste out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry about the herb drink,” said Derpy. “I guess it didn’t react well to a human stomach.”

“It reacted just fine. But don’t sweat it too much,” said Karyn as she shambled back to bed. “It actually feels better now that it’s over and I’ve gotten it out. I’m not as queasy as I was. I’m just glad I had my hair in a ponytail.”

“You did? Whose?”

“No, it’s just means pulling it back and holding it in place with a rubber band.”

“It makes you look prettier. Anyway, I’m going to put some soup on the boil for you. You’ve got to eat and keep up your strength. Don’t worry, I’ll only use natural vegetables.”

Derpy started to head out of the room, then turned back. “I just wish there were something I could do medicinally—wait! I’ll go see Zecora!”

“The zebra?”

“Yeah, she knows everything about cures and such. She’s got to have something that can fix you up. I’ll leave the soup to simmer. Wait here.”

“Again, I’m not going anywhere.”

Derpy flew as fast as she could to the Everfree Forest. In broad daylight, it was less scary than usual, and Zecora didn’t live too deep within. When she knocked on the door, she heard the deep voice from within.

“Well, now. I wonder who is it. Perhaps a friend, coming to visit?”

Zecora opened the door and said, “Oh, my. Who is this that I see? Why, it’s Miss Hooves, first name Derpy.”

Ever since Zecora had been coming to Ponyville regularly, Derpy liked to be around her to hear the way she talked.

“Hi, Zecora. You know, I’ve always liked the way you speak in rhymes, but I’ve never learned the trick. Anyway, I’m here because I have a friend who’s. . . feeling ill.”

“Ah, so that is why, my hut, you seek. Tell me, who is the pony of whom you speak?”

Derpy had entered the hut and was examining a rack of spices. “I’m not sure you know her, she’s—hey, is this cumin? Oh, she’s not a pony, she’s Karyn the. . . young lady.”

“A human girl that you brought to our town? A shame she must see it when she’s feeling down.”

“She’s been here a couple of times—healthy—before. Now, I’m trying to help her, and I want to do. . . something extra.”

Zecora smiled. “To nurse a sick friend is a laudable goal. Tell me, what have you done for the poor human foal?”

“Her stomach hurt; I hoped your herb drink would calm it. But instead, when she drank it, it just made her. . . upchuck.”

“To offer her medicine shows a good heart, but giving her that was a wrong on your part. Fear not, though, your first act was just a rehearsal. I will find you a cure that is more universal.”

“Oh, if you only could, I’d be grateful to no end. I’ve just got to help her, she’s such a good. . . companion.

Zecora brought out a supply of tree bark. “Keep her in bed, with her head on a pillow. And have her chew this. It comes from a willow.”

“I hope it doesn’t backfire, the way the drink did. I wish you could see her, she’s such a cute. . . child.” Derpy packed the bark in her saddlebag and prepared to go. “Can you really assure me that this will be mild? She’s awfully fragile, being only a. . . kid.”

“How someone will react, we can never quite tell. But even Fluttershy uses it, when her animals are not well.”

“If it works for those fauna, I’ll give her this flora. See you ‘round. Thanks a lot. Au revoir, Miss. . . Zebra lady!”

After that exchange, Derpy sped home and took the soup off the stove. She carried the bowl and the tree bark up to Karyn, who was still awake coughing and sneezing. From a closet, she found a snack table and set it up.

“Now, eat up and then you can take your medicine.”

“What medicine? And what’s with the bark?”

“That is the medicine, according to Zecora.”

“I have to chew bark?!” asked Karyn. “Don’t you have medicine in capsules? I know I’ve seen that.”

“A few, but I’m afraid of a repeat of before. Zecora said that anypony can take this.”

Karyn leaned over and picked up the spoon. It was awkward eating the soup nearly lying down, but she didn’t feel like sitting all the way up. The soup was hot and clear, and she enjoyed the steam going up her nostrils. She slurped it down and, while it didn’t clear her sinuses, it did ease her stomach, which was hungry after her earlier episode.

“This is better than the soup I had at Twilight’s,” she said.

“Heh. Maybe you just have bad reactions to magic.”

“I hope not. I love being around it. I don’t think that’s it. I never suffered any ill effects when we were making the movie.

She finished the soup and looked at the bark. “Do I really have to chew this?”

“It really will make you feel better. If you want, I can reheat some of that soup so that it burns your tongue and you won’t taste it.”

“That’s not necessary.” Karyn bit off a bit of the bark and put it in her mouth. “It’s not so bad if I cheek it and don’t have to taste it. I just wish I didn’t know I was eating tree.”

“Don’t eat it. When you’re done with that piece, you can start chewing another.”

“All right. But I’d like to rest now.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Derpy. “You’re going to need something for that. Wait here.”

“I keep telling you—“

But Derpy was gone and back before Karyn could finish her sentence. In her mouth she had a black handle, at the end of which was a shiny brass bell. She set it down next to Karyn, then tucked her into bed.

“Now, you just ring if you need anything. Anything at all.”

“OK. Thanks, Derpy. But I’m sure I’ll be fine. I just want to sleep.”

Derpy left the room and stood outside waiting. After four or five minutes, she went back in. She didn’t want to wait until Karyn fell asleep.

“Karyn?”

“Yeah, Derpy?”

“Aren’t you going to ring the bell?”

“What? I don’t need anything.”

“I guess sickness is different among humans. When somepony here gets, say, the pony pox, a friend comes over and gives her a bell. As soon as the friend leaves, the sick pony rings the bell. When the friend rushes back, the sick pony says that she was just testing it out. Then the friend goes back out, and the sick friend rings the bell to ask for her pillow to be fluffed. After that the ritual gets less structured.

“But you should be making more petty requests until I get frustrated and take the bell away. Then you apologize, we become better friends, and it finishes up with me catching whatever it was, and then the roles reverse. It’s a friendship tradition going back ages.”

Karyn leaned back, and a smile came over her face. “That sounds wonderful. It sounds like a lot of fun. But no, I’m really tired and hurting, and I just want to sleep. Let’s start a new ritual, just you and me. I’ll ring the bell when I wake up and that way you won’t miss a minute of awake-me.”

“All right,” said Derpy.

She trotted downstairs. As she tidied the kitchen, she thought of how different ponies and humans were. When Dinky was sick, jokes like the bell would cheer her right up, and there were plenty of magical remedies to make illness a mere nuisance. But Karyn treated her cold as more as something to be endured than something to be cured. If she could just find the right magic, Karyn could jump out of the bed and be normal again.

Karyn turned over onto her stomach, which she found more comfortable for sleeping. Normally, she loved being around Derpy because, even if she was exasperating, it was a fun kind of wearing-out. She had heard the school of thought that said that the best thing to do with a cold was to work through it, pretend you weren’t sick, and let the body fight it off while you didn’t lose any time. She thought that was incredibly stupid. She just wanted to lie still until she was well again, and then have fun with Derpy. But she was still committed to not overspending her time in Equestria. She was not going to graduate college nominally twenty-two but physically thirty. But she would table that for now. Her breathing slowed and she fell asleep.

When she came to, there was drool drying on the pillow and on her mouth. She took stock of her situation. She could breathe a little easier, and her muscles didn’t hurt quite as much. She took a few deep breaths, and then rang the bell.

Derpy came trotting in. “You feeling any better?” she asked.

“A little. Kind of hungry. How long was I asleep?”

“Almost four hours. I’ve got stuffed mushrooms in the oven, and you can have as many as you want. Get your strength back up.”

“I’d like that. And as much as I hate to say it, I think chewing the bark helped. What was in it?”

“I don’t know. I can ask Zecora the next time I see her. I’ll get a nice poetic answer.”

From downstairs, they heard a knock on the door. “I’ll get that. You wait here,” said Derpy.

“Why does she keep thinking I’m going to leave?” said Karyn, after she was alone.

Derpy reached the front door. “Oh, hey! Zecora! You’ve got perfect timing! We were just talking about you, and your wonderful. . . habit of speaking in couplets.”

“Then I take it your friend is feeling better? Or at least, she’s not quite so far under the weather?”

“She just woke back up from a nap on my bed. I’m sure that your medicine helped clear her. . . sinuses.”

“If it helped, I am proud, and will stand tall. But I came round to see her, and make a sick call.”

They went up and Derpy introduced her two friends.

“Zecora, this is Karyn, who I earlier hyped. Karyn, meet Zecora, so beautifully. . . patterned in alternating black and white sections.”

Karyn nearly collapsed back on the bed again. “Derpy, please tell me that you’re doing that intentionally and not trying to offend her.”

“What am I doing? Did I say something wrong? I’d never insult her, we always get. . . on well together.”

Zecora smiled and leaned in close to Karyn. “She can’t help it, my dear. A residual effect of my magical aura, or so I suspect.”

“Then am I going to start talking like that too?” asked Karyn.

“I believe that would take some more prolonged exposure. I’ve known Derpy a while, and we’ve only grown closer.”

“But why does she always get the wrong word?”

“Perhaps it is not quite the word you would seek. But Derpy is not wrong. She is simply. . . unique.”

Derpy stomped her hoof. “Would you two kindly stop talking about me in third person? It’s a little annoying, and my mood may. . . become not as good as it is now.”

Karyn exchanged a meaningful look with Zecora, then said to Derpy, “I’m sorry. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Once Derpy was mollified, she addressed Zecora again. “So we were talking before about the medicine you gave me. How did chewing bark help my cold?”

“It’s not the bark itself, but what it has in. Salicylic acid, or what some call aspirin.”

“Oh! I vaguely remember reading about that. It’s the same thing on Earth. We just have it in pill form.”

Derpy said, “So, Z, I’ve got stuffed mushrooms down in the oven! Can you stay here for dinner? I made them with. . . tender care.”

“Certainly, Miss Derpy.”

Karyn sneezed. “I guess even though I’m feeling better, I’m still getting over the cold.”

Zecora reached into her bag. “A cure for the cold is not something I have, but for fast getting over, try using this salve.”

She handed Karyn a small jar filled with white cream. Karyn stuck her finger in and sniffed it. “So how do I apply this, just under my nose, or—whoa!”

Karyn leaped out of bed and took a deep breath. Her voice was back to its natural pitch. “I’m better! I don’t hurt anywhere and my nose is clear and it’s like I never had the cold. This is some awesome stuff! Thanks, Zecora. What’s in this one?”

“Some rather rare stuff you do not have on Earth. And some deep zebra magic too, for what it’s worth.”

“I wish it worked on the cold proper, but this is almost as good. I’ll be right back on schedule for the week.”

Derpy said, “Oh, good! I’m so happy, now let’s all go down. And then, if you’re up to it, we’ll trot around. . . Ponyville.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “I’ll take a walk with you or Zecora, but both at the same time is a strain on my brain.”

They sat at the table and chatted. Zecora was curious about forests on Earth and Karyn tried to explain as much as she could, even though she wasn’t an expert on nature. Derpy said little, but had a wide grin on her face throughout the meal.

When she was picking the plates up for cleaning, she said, “So how about that walk now? Come on, with all three. I know we’ll enjoy it, or my name’s not. . . Hooves.”

“Thank you, my friend,” said Zecora, “but I must be going. I must get home before night, and make sure candles are glowing.”

They all hugged good-bye. When Zecora was gone, Karyn said, “I’m willing to walk around town with you for a while.”

“Great! Let’s go.”

“Good, I just wanted to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

“Never mind. So you spend a lot of time with Zecora?”

“Yeah, whenever she comes into town. It’s a little scary in the Everfree Forest, so I don’t go visit her much. I’m just so pleased that the two of you get along. It’s usually awkward when you have two friends who meet each other for the first time. You’re afraid that they won’t like each other or worse, will only have one thing in common—the mutual friend.”

“I kinda know what you mean,” said Karyn. “But Zecora is wonderful with all the magic she knows. But if you are close, then why did you need to come to Earth to find a friend?”

Derpy said nothing, but kept walking into the town square and turned around and stared. Karyn came up to her and looked in the same direction.

“Oh! The sun is setting behind your house! How pretty!”

“It’s an awfully big house. Especially for one pony. You were supposed to be my roommate. I still don’t like living alone. But a weekly friend is better than no friend at all.”

Karyn looked at the house longingly. “You almost tempt me to stay. I’ve just got too much to do on Earth.”

“I know.”

“But who knows about the future?” said Karyn. Then she laughed.

“What is it?” asked Derpy.

“I just realized. Now I don’t even get to call out sick from class!”

Author's Note

Coming soon, to a web site near you!

“Wow, what a day!” said Karyn.

“Yeah, that really was a lot of fun. What did you call it again? A cardamom? Cardigan?” asked Derpy.

“Carnival."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As quietly as she could, Derpy got off the couch and folded the sheets neatly with her mouth.

As she was stacking them, she heard movement behind her. “Good morning, Derpy. How are you holding up?” asked Karyn.

“Not bad. I wish I could brush my mane and tail, to say nothing of my teeth."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“A genuine Cloudsdale cloud, ready for when I need it. And when I don’t, I can just put it out of the way.” She lifted with her hooves and the cloud moved to the ceiling, where it stayed.

“Very nice,” said Karyn. “Just don’t go bouncing on it and causing lightning strikes.”

“I would never do that. "

That's next week, right here on Derpy's Human!

10: The Derp-over

Derpy and Karyn entered back into the dorm room, and Derpy turned off her invisibility spell.

“Wow, what a day!” said Karyn.

“Yeah, that really was a lot of fun. What did you call it again? A cardamom? Cardigan?” asked Derpy.

“Carnival. They used to be more involved, but now it’s just rides, games, and food. The games are rigged, the rides are unsafe, and the food is overpriced and greasy. But it’s tradition.”

“Well, then it’s my kind of tradition! Between that pretzel and that funnel cake, I’m surprised I can still fly!”

“Heh, you sure flew well enough to help me knock the milk bottles over,” Karyn said, depositing the oversized teddy bear she had won next to the bed.

“Are you sure that was fair?” asked Derpy.

“Trust me. In the first place, the money I paid to play the game is probably enough to cover their cost for this thing anyway. And in the second, the game can’t be won without an invisible pegasus hovering nearby and knocking the bottle over with her wing. The bottles are too heavy, and they’re positioned so that you can knock over any of them, but never all of them.”

Derpy flopped onto the bed. “Well, I guess it’s all right then. I won’t tell Twilight, though. You know what a stickler she is. Still, the look on the face of the human running it was priceless!”

Karyn dropped her purse on the desk and sat down. “So you had fun?”

“Yeah! There was certainly a different feel from an Equestrian festival, but humans aren’t entirely ignorant of how to have a good time.”

“What was your favorite part?”

“Hmm. . . the iron wheel, I think.”

Karyn was starting to figure out how Derpy’s mind worked, which frightened her a little. “No, Derpy. It’s not a ferrous wheel. It’s a Ferris wheel. Named after the guy who made it. Although, it is made of steel, which is iron-based, so I guess you’re not wrong. But, wait. Your favorite thing at the carnival was the wheel that took us up in the sky? You can go into the sky any time you want!”

“But I can’t take you with me, at least not on Earth. Pegasi are happiest in the air. But Derpy is happiest when she’s with her friend Karyn. Today I got to be both Derpy and a pegasus.”

“Aww. You’re sweet to say that. Maybe someday when I’m feeling insane, I’ll get on your back and we’ll go high enough up where nobody can see us distinctly. We’ll fly over some nice country somewhere, and give you a real nice view of Earth.”

“I’d like that.” Derpy got off the bed and stretched her wings. “OK, I think I’m ready to take off. You be good, now.”

“No promises.”

Derpy strapped on her saddlebag as Karyn went back to her desk to plan out the next day. Checking that nothing would fall off, Derpy reached for the world-hopping spell that she kept in the first slot. She stuck her hoof in and turned.

Nothing happened.

She tried again. Again, she failed to teleport. She kept trying with no results. “What’s wrong with this thing?!” she said.

Karyn turned around. “It’s not working? Why not?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”

“Are you hitting the contacts? Maybe your hoof swelled from eating too much and it’s not fitting in right.”

“I think I feel them turning, but I can’t be sure. I can’t see and feel at the same time. You want to give it a try?”

“Not really. Every time I’ve gone with you, we’re always in the air. If you’re not under me, I’ll fall to my death.”

“Oh, right. Well, get on and try it.”

Karyn mounted Derpy and took a hold of the spell. By reaching down into it and spreading her fingers as wide as possible, she could feel the three contacts around the rim of the cylinder. When Twilight Sparkle had designed it, her primary concern was to not have it set off accidentally. Making sure it did get used properly wasn’t priority. Still, Karyn was able to stretch her muscles and force the spell’s ring to turn.

The laws of physics stubbornly refused to bend and allow them to cross the dimensional barrier between fact and fiction.

“Hmm. . . I’m definitely feeling it turn,” said Karyn, handing back the spell. “Maybe we’re turning it the wrong way?”

“I thought I’d always turned it clockwise, but I’ll try it anti-clockwise, I guess.” She tried again to activate the spell. “No good. It doesn’t even turn that way. I think it’s broken.”

“Well, let’s not panic just yet. Try one of the other spells, see if that works.”

Derpy pulled out the invisibility spell that she had just removed minutes before, and activated it the same way. “How about it? Can you see me?”

“No, I can’t. So that one still works at least.”

Derpy went back in her bag and removed another spell and twisted her hoof inside it. Water streamed from the other end and soaked Karyn’s carpet. She quickly turned it off and put the spell back.

“That one works fine. They’re all working, except for this one.”

Karyn could see fear start to show in Derpy’s face. “Give it one more try,” she said.

“I don’t see why this one would work when all the others didn’t,” said Derpy, but she put the spell back on her hoof and turned, without effect. She got angry and threw it down on the desk next to the computer. “Karyn, what are we going to do? If this spell doesn’t work, I’m going to be stuck here!”

“That’s not going to happen, Derpy, come on. We’ll make it work,” Karyn said, but Derpy wasn’t paying attention. She had collapsed on the floor and folded her wings.

“I want to go home.”

“Derpy?”

“I want to go home!”

“Hey, Derpy. Stay focused, come on.”

“Celestia, please let me go home! I want to go home! Somepony help me!” Derpy was crying and screaming. Karyn was not only broken up over her distress, but afraid that someone would knock on the door trying to help. With no other options, she slapped Derpy across the face.

Derpy’s crying subsided down to heaving sobs. “I’m sorry for that,” said Karyn. “But you were hysterical.”

“You thought that was funny?!”

“No, not that kind of hysterical. Emotional. You were losing it.”

“I was. I’m still feeling pretty emotional. Please excuse me, I’m going to go wash my face.”

Derpy plodded into the bathroom, and Karyn could hear her weeping from within. She understood. Derpy would have to get it out of her system before she could think clearly again. The best thing would be for her to stay in there until she was ready.

After ten minutes or so, she trotted back out, taking a deep breath as she did. “OK, I’m feeling a bit better. But still not good. I’m really stuck here, aren’t I?”

A thought hit Karyn. “Not permanently. Everypony in Ponyville is going to know you’re missing. If nothing else, when the mail doesn’t get delivered. Once they notice, I’m sure Twilight won’t sleep until she gets you back. And Lyra, and everypony else. They’ll figure out what went wrong with the spell. Or if they can’t, they’ll make a new one.”

“You’re right! That’s the most likely thing that will happen.” She put on a weak smile. For the first time since she had tried the spell, Derpy’s heart didn’t feel quite so heavy.

“So we’re going to sit tight and wait this out. It’ll be a regular sleepover. You’ll just be a houseguest, or dorm-guest as it were,” said Karyn.

“Maybe it’ll even be fun.”

“Sure it will. I’m going to shower up and we’ll get ready for bed. It’ll be a little cramped, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can sleep anywhere,” said Derpy.

“Oh, that’s right. Equines can sleep standing up.”

“Huh? I don’t know where you heard that, but ponies sleep in beds. With sheets. I just meant me, personally. I can take the couch.”

The couch Derpy pointed to was more of a loveseat, and the fabric was coarse. Karyn knew she would have a rough time sleeping there, and that she was trying to be brave. She gave Derpy her spare sheets and took her toiletries into the bathroom to wash for the night.

As she tried to unfold the sheets to make the ersatz bed more comfortable, Derpy reflected. She had always known that there was an element of risk to coming to Earth, but it had gone so well so often that she had become complacent. If she were a unicorn, she could at least try to find her way back with her own magic. But now she was dependent on help from her friends. It was an awful feeling of impotence.

And there was no guarantee that they would succeed. Twilight was smart, but what if the universes just drifted too far apart for unicorn magic to work? Or what if some greater god of the multiverse decided to deny her return? There was still reason to worry, if not to panic.

More than anything, she thought of Dinky. Dinky was grown, to be sure, and could take care of herself. But part of Derpy still considered it her duty to be there. She would never stop being Dinky’s mother, even if they never saw her again.

And that sad thought had an opposite effect from the one she expected. Because even if she never got home, at some point, everypony dies. And you never know when it will be. So no, there was not a reason to worry. Because if there was reason to worry about getting stuck on Earth, there was reason to worry about everything that happened everywhere. And she couldn’t worry about everything.

By the time Karyn came out of the shower, Derpy was already peacefully asleep.

When she woke up, Derpy hoped for a moment that it was all a bad dream. But the stiffness of the sofa in her back made the reality of the situation clear. She got up and saw Karyn still asleep. As quietly as she could, Derpy got off the couch and folded the sheets neatly with her mouth.

As she was stacking them, she heard movement behind her. “Good morning, Derpy. How are you holding up?” asked Karyn.

“Not bad. I wish I could brush my mane and tail, to say nothing of my teeth, but I’m definitely over my panic attack.”

“That’s good. I’ve got to go to class this afternoon, from one o’clock until seven-thirty or so. Between now and then, we should work out some arrangements to keep you busy and safe until you’re rescued.”

“And we’ve got to talk about what we’ll do if I’m not.”

“Oh, Derpy, don’t talk that way!”

Derpy smiled. “OK. We’ve got to talk about what we’ll do if rescue takes longer than we anticipate. If they come to get me tomorrow, we don’t have any issues. If they don’t, we do. So we plan for what we have to.”

“I guess. But you know that you’re welcome to stay with me.”

“That’s very nice, but not a good long-term plan. What if you want to have other humans over to visit? No, if nothing happens, we’ll have to look long and hard at where I can go, and maybe let some other humans in on the secret.”

Karyn puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. “Let’s not go rushing into anything just yet. If nothing else, let’s not make a decision on an empty stomach. I’m going to go and get breakfast.”

When Karyn left the room, Derpy went into her bag of spells. She found a food reproduction spell. Human food would sustain her, but she would want some hay and grass to maintain a balanced diet. And for flavor.

After they ate, Karyn suggested that they go to the library to pick out a few books for Derpy to read while she was at her classes. She tried to pick out some lighter works to amuse her rather than something educational. But she made some mental notes of things to read if her stay became long-term.

Soon enough, Derpy was left alone. She read some, she played on Karyn’s computer some. At one point, she napped on Karyn’s bed without taking down the covers. It was boring, not being able to leave the house and not having anything useful to do. She wished she had mail to deliver.

When she looked outside the window, she saw the sun setting. She peeked out to see if anyone was watching, and then craned her neck to see the moon as well. There were no princesses in this world to move them. It was just the momentum of objects in space. That depressed her a little.

She decided to do some research on exactly how the sun and moon rose and set. Maybe she could find some significance to it. She went back to the computer and tried to load the search engine.

After a minute or so, the browser displayed a wall of text saying that the site could not be found. She clicked the “Home” button. The same thing happened. “Great, now even this thing isn’t working,” she said.

She sat there, bored, until Karyn came home.

“Hi, Derpy. How are you holding up?”

“All right, I guess.”

“That’s good,” said Karyn. “I brought dinner. I got Chinese food. I don’t know if you’ll like this, but I do. And I picked you up a chocolate chip muffin for dessert. I figured you needed a pick-me-up.”

Karyn pulled the muffin out of the paper bag and held it out for Derpy. “Yes, I do,” she said, “but I don’t really need to eat it.”

They ate the food Karyn had brought. Derpy thought that the ingredients weren’t particularly fresh, and the sauce tended to overpower them, but she was going to have to get used to Earth food.

“So did you read those books while I was gone?” Karyn asked.

“Some of them. I was actually pretty bored. I think I didn’t do anything but reading, eating, and sleeping today. I definitely want to figure out something more productive to do tomorrow. I’ll go invisible and learn the city streets or something.”

“You could do that. My class is at one o’clock tomorrow,” Karyn said.

“That’ll work. Oh, by the way, something’s wrong with the computer. I can’t get to any web sites.”

“Really, I’ll take a look.”

Karyn shooed Derpy off the chair and took it herself. She typed in an address and the site came right up.

“It’s working for me,” she said.

Derpy hovered nearby and watched as Karyn checked her e-mail and a few of her web bookmarks. She started idly playing with the broken spell.

“Now that’s weird,” she said. “Why would it just stop working and then fix itself without you doing anything?”

“Sometimes things are like that,” Karyn said. “I’ve had other IT people say that it’s because the computer wants to make you look foolish. But sometimes things break or work for no reason.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash. She was alone in the room.

“It worked!” she said out loud. “But why now and not yesterday?” Then she realized she had answered her own question.

“Thank Celestia!” she said, and for a brief moment, had a totally selfless feeling. She thought of nothing but how panicked Derpy had been when she thought she was stuck on Earth. Karyn thought that she would give anything for her friend to never have to feel that way again.

Karyn imagined what it would be like for Derpy to reappear in Equestria. She would be shocked for a moment by the sensation of falling, but then instinctively spread her wings. She belonged in the sky, not trapped in a room. As soon as she made it home, she would let everypony know that she was back. No, the first thing she would do would be to get in contact with Dinky, probably fly straight to her and give her a hug.

Then Derpy would take the teleport-to-Earth spell and smash it to bits. She would want to be sure never to be tempted to use it again. Having nearly lost everything, there was no way she would risk it again.

Nor was it necessary. Derpy had good friends in Equestria, like Lyra, Twilight, Pinkie, and Zecora.

“And they were once my friends too,” Karyn said. She finished her dinner. She threw away the chocolate chip muffin.

For the rest of the week, Karyn threw herself into her studies. She didn’t want to think about the weekend. It would be the first time in a while that she would have two straight days of being alone. She thought of how she might occupy herself. Catch up on her own reading, give the dorm room a thorough cleaning, maybe watch some videos of My Lit—

When she had thoughts like that, she quickly found something else to do, something to distract her.

There was another issue she kept ducking. When Derpy had vanished, she had left behind her saddlebag full of spells, and Karyn was going to have to figure out what to do with them. She was worried that they could be dangerous in the wrong hands, and she wasn’t sure that all hands weren’t the wrong hands. But at the same time, they could be incredibly useful, and she might want them around to remind herself that magic was real, and that she had once experienced it.

And so it was, that late Saturday night, with nothing else to do, Karyn locked her door and opened the bag. The spells weren’t labeled, and she didn’t want to mess around with any that might be dangerous. She picked up the invisibility spell and made a mental note to toss the Bluetooth. She wouldn’t need it anymore.

To be invisible. How many stories had been written about that? Karyn thought about the possibilities, trying to think if there was any way to help people or become famous or such. Silly daydreams, she thought. If only Derpy were here, she’d say something like, “How can they be daydreams when it’s 11:59 at night?”

She put her hand inside the spell. She didn’t want to be invisible. She wanted to disappear.

From behind her, Karyn heard, “What have we here? A human sorceress, practicing her dark magic?”

She turned around. “Derpy!” She rushed to embrace her friend. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s Sunday,” said Derpy, “and has been ever since a minute ago. Sunday is our day. And I wanted to have it start as soon as possible.”

“But what happened when you went back? How did everypony react?”

“I’ll tell you. I popped back right on top of a cloud, and it took me a while to get my bearings. Another pegasus pony, I didn’t catch who, was flying by and I gather that he wasn’t expecting me to be there. He had to swerve to avoid me and he said something nasty. Then I realized that I was back in Equestria, and I remembered what you said about things just fixing themselves sometimes. I checked in at the post office and they said that a few ponies had asked about me. From the descriptions I figured it was Lyra and Twilight. So I went to see them, but not before I had caught up on deliveries.

“I told them what happened and they said something about intermittent magical disruptions caused by—well, I’m not sure, it was fairly complicated, and probably only a unicorn could understand. But it was basically that something in the air of Equestria blocked off the spell from working. They said that if it happens again, to not worry, just hang tight and keep trying every day, and it will work eventually. Hey, why are you crying?”

“You silly pegasus, I thought I was never going to see you again!”

Derpy crossed her eyes more than usual. “Face it, my little human. You’re stuck with me. And particularly tonight. I didn’t entirely hate sleeping over, so I came prepared to do it again.”

“Oh, Derpy, that’s wonderful! “I’ll make up the couch.”

“You don’t have to. Twilight gave me a bunch of new spells, and one of them is for this.” She took off her new saddlebag, which Karyn saw was the same color as the old one, only shinier. Derpy activated a spell and a cloud started pouring forth from it. She turned it off when the cloud was a bit bigger than the sofa. Then she jumped on the cloud and bounced and rolled as it supported her weight.

“A genuine Cloudsdale cloud, ready for when I need it. And when I don’t, I can just put it out of the way.” She lifted with her hooves and the cloud moved to the ceiling, where it stayed.

“Very nice,” said Karyn. “Just don’t go bouncing on it and causing lightning strikes.”

“I would never do that. Besides, this isn’t a storm cloud. Just a puffy one. Anyway, did you want to go to bed now?”

“I was ready to, until you showed up. Now I’m all hyper from the excitement. I’m ready to hop on your back and fly across the moon!”

“Really?” asked Derpy.

“No, not really. But I do need to go out now. If I leave, will you promise to still be here when I get back?”

“Yes, I promise.”

Karyn ran out the door. Derpy was a little confused. A moment ago, she thought, Karyn was ready for bed, but now she has to go? It must have been because I showed up, but what could she need?

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Karyn came back in. “It’s from a convenience store,” she said, “so it won’t be as good as if it were fresh. But you’re going to have it this time, and no excuses.”

In her hands was a chocolate chip muffin.

Author's Note

And now, the previews of next week's chapter!

"You can come to Equestria this Tuesday.”

“Why Tuesday?”

“Because it’s clearly the most boring day. Friday you have the weekend coming, and Monday you’re recovering from it. Thursday you’re so busy getting your work done so that you can slack off on Friday that the day goes by so quickly, and Wednesday at least has the excitement of being the middle of the week.”

Karyn stared for a moment. “That’s some logic there. I’ll give you that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Not that we couldn’t do this on our own,” Rainbow Dash said, “but it would have taken us a week to get it set up. This way, we’ve had sunshine all week, and now everypony’s ready for the rain!”

“So, Rainbow,” Karyn said, “why do you have to have such a big storm?”

“A couple of reasons. First off, it’s lots of fun! We make an occasion of it, celebrate with extravagant food and drink, all the usual party stuff. But it’s also to stress-test the village."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The closest thing we have are the trains.”

“Oh! We should have taken one!”

“To where?” asked Derpy. “We don’t have any place to be.”

“To nowhere. To anywhere. I’d love to go on an Equestrian train someday.”

Read the rest next week right here!

12: Derple Date

The dormitory at USCI had a vacuum cleaner for communal use. Early Sunday morning, Karyn had signed it out and was cleaning the carpet, singing to herself.

“La la la, cleaning for Derpy. La la la, Derpy Hooves gonna be here soon.”

She had no definite plan in mind, but as she saw the weather outside the window, wondered if Derpy and she might not take a flight up to the clouds and see the layout of the town. Derpy had talked about doing that last time.

The knock on the door took Karyn by surprise, and she had to catch herself from saying, “Come on in, Derpy!” Derpy wouldn’t knock, she thought, so who is that? The vacuum’s not that loud.

She shut it off and opened the door, then found herself being lifted off the ground. “Hey, babe!”

“Mike! What are you doing here?”

“Making an unscheduled visit, honey,” Mike said. “I thought you liked it when I was spontaneous.”

“Oh. I do, usually.”

“What’s the matter, afraid I was going to find you here with another guy? Fat chance of that!”

Karyn was unsure if Mike was complimenting her faithfulness or insulting her attractiveness. “Actually, I was planning on having a friend over today. Not a guy, though.” Not even a human being, she thought. Then she realized that Derpy would be warping in at any moment, and that Mike could wind up seeing her. She had to get him out.

“Hey, yeah? Well, text her or something and blow her off.”

“I can’t text her. She doesn’t have a cell phone. So, maybe you should—“

“Someone doesn’t have a cell phone? What is this, the 20th century?”

“Heh. Well, look, I’ll leave her a note or something and we can go out.”

Mike threw down his backpack and said, “What’s your hurry, sweetie? I just got here. I figured we’d hang for a while. You got anything to eat?”

“Nothing much. Some cookies in the fridge. I can lend you my meal plan card and you can go get something if you want.”

“That’s cool. I’ll go in a few. I’m dogged from the drive up here,” Mike said, flopping onto Karyn’s bed.

Karyn bit her nails trying to think of how to avoid disaster. “Are you sure? I’m a little hungry myself. I’m sure I could go for some pancakes.”

“Chillax, babe.”

Karyn sat down at the computer and racked her brain. Was there any way that she could alert Derpy not to come? No, she had taken back both bags of spells from the time she was stuck here, and without magic, communication with Equestria was impossible. How about getting Mike out? She had already tried that, and he looked fairly well glued to the bed.

Well, if she couldn’t count on ingenuity, maybe she could count on serendipity. Derpy might decide to take a day off. She could be busy with a friend of her own. She could have more spell problems. She could have some sort of safety on the spell that would detect the presence of another human in the room and return her to Equestria. She could. . . be arriving right now!

Karyn didn’t know when she picked up on the signal, but there was a change in the air pressure whenever Derpy appeared in the room. Out of time and options, she threw herself on the bed and landed on Mike, putting her hands over his ears and giving him a loud kiss.

“Morning, Karyn, I—“ Derpy said. She had appeared in the correct direction and saw Mike. Thinking quickly, she plunged her hoof into her bag, found the invisibility spell, and turned it on.

“Damn, girl!” said Mike. “I was hoping you had missed me, but I didn’t expect that.”

“I really don’t know what came over me. I guess I thought that if you were being spontaneous and showing up unannounced that I could try to surprise you as well.”

“No complaints here! But hey, did I hear someone else talking?”

“I don’t think so. Might have been one of my ringtones,” Karyn said.

“Probably. Give me another kiss like that.”

“Not in front of. . . I mean, not right now.”

Karyn got up and sat back at the desk. With the immediate crisis averted, she turned her attention to figuring out what she was going to do. What she needed was a moment to converse with Derpy. She looked at the Bluetooth on her desk. Could the trick really work on a person in the room?

She picked up her cell phone and pretended to look at it. “I’d better call this person back,” she said. She fake-dialed a number and held it to her ear, looking at Mike. Fortunately, he was spacing out on the bed.

“Hey, D,” she said. “Yeah, not a whole lot. My boyfriend just showed up today. What are you going to do? Really? Just hang in the bathroom washing your hair all day?” Mike was looking the other way, so she pointed frantically toward the bathroom. When she saw the door open and close on its own, she said, “OK, well, I’ll see you as soon as I can. Yeah, talk to you later. Bye.”

When she turned back to look at Mike, he was texting on his own phone, but he put it down and sat up.

“So tell me how you’ve been. How are classes going?” he asked.

“Good, they’re good. Ever since mid-terms I’ve been fine.” She wondered how much she could tell him about the mid-term incident, or any of the amazing things that had happened to her that semester. It didn’t seem fair to keep him in the dark. “How about yours?”

“Professors are busting my chops all the time. Doesn’t seem right, I pay their salaries and they get to tell me what to do.”

The small talk was getting to Karyn, making her worry about Derpy stuck in the bathroom. “Would you excuse me?” she asked. “I’ve just got to powder my nose.”

He grinned at the expression.

Karyn slipped into the bathroom and turned on the light. “Derpy?” she whispered. “Are you here?”

“Yeah,” came the return whisper. “I figured out what happened. You’re smart the way you figured out how to tell me!”

“Let’s not go patting each other on the back.”

“Right, unless we’re choking. Then it’s OK,” said Derpy.

“Yes, Derpy. If we’re choking. But we’re not, except metaphorically. What should we do?”

“Well, whatever you were going to do with me, why don’t you do that with him?”

“I was going to go flying with you, mapping out the city. Not exactly something I can do with a wiry guy in glasses,” said Karyn.

“No, probably not. Well, I’m sure he’s going to want to take you out somewhere. I’ll come along invisible. It’ll give me a chance to see human interaction.”

Karyn wondered how well she could give her natural reactions knowing that Derpy was listening to everything that went on, but Mike would be an interesting study. She turned on the faucet and pretended to wash her hands, then went back into the dorm.

“Hey, babe,” said Mike. “Thought you fell in or something.”

Karyn gave a nervous laugh. Mike had opened his backpack and took out his laptop. “What’s your wi-fi password?”

“You’re going to use the network? OK, it’s—let me spell it. Dee-ee-are-pee-why-four-hundred.”

After a few seconds, he said, “Thanks, hon. Net’s been down over at my place all week. I’ve been going out of my mind!”

“Oh, man. I can imagine. No e-mail, not being able to do any schoolwork. . . “

“Haha! Die, scumbag!” Mike yelled.

“What?!”

The tinny speakers on Mike’s laptops played stock explosions and spaceship sounds. “Oh, you’re playing an MMORPG,” Karyn said.

He ignored her and concentrated on his game. She looked around the room and found one of the books that Derpy had been looking at when she was stuck on Earth. Counting on Mike not noticing, she slipped it through the bathroom door. At least Derpy wouldn’t have to just stare into space. Karyn sat back down at the desk.

The sounds of the game continued to pour from the laptop, punctuated by an occasional grunt from Mike. When one of the grunts seemed to indicate a positive outcome, Karyn took the opportunity to interrupt.

“So, do you want to go out for a walk?” she asked. “It’s such a nice day, and we could hold hands and catch up.”

“Not right now, babe,” he said, not looking at her. “Maybe later.”

“Want to head over to the student union? They’ve always got something going on there.”

“Nah, bunch of losers over there.”

Karyn was starting to get frustrated. “How about the rec room, then? That’s almost always empty, especially this time of day. I bet I can kick your butt at foosball!”

The game made a particularly loud explosion. “Damn it! Just give me a few minutes, will ya, sweetie? I gotta get past this part.”

Karyn stopped pressing. She didn’t want to seem like a nagging girlfriend. She knew that Mike generally liked to hang around the dorm more than going out, but she was keyed up to get some fresh air.

She picked up a plastic grocery bag that had been left lying by the desk. “Oops,” she said. “Forgot to put away the toiletries I bought yesterday.” Mike didn’t say anything, so she ducked back into the bathroom.

The pages of the book were turning on their own. “He won’t leave, Derpy.”

“OK, well, why don’t we leave? He’s obviously quite content to hang out here. Let’s duck out and just take a walk around the campus.”

“That could work. OK, I’ll step out and you follow.”

Karyn stepped out of the bathroom and got her purse and Bluetooth, but from behind the laptop, Mike said, “Are you going out? You mentioned picking up food before. Can you grab me a sandwich?”

“Well, I was planning to be out for a while. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

“Actually, I am a bit hungry. It shouldn’t take too long, right?”

Karyn sighed. “Fine. I’ll be right back.”

She waited until she felt Derpy’s presence next to her, then walked out of the dorm, Bluetooth in place. At the moment, though, it was unnecessary since no one was around.

“Listen, I know this is none of my business,” said Derpy, “and I’m sure that Mike is a great guy and there are reasons that you love him, but just from what I’ve seen, he’s a little bit of a lump.”

“Oh, Derpy, you don’t have to mince words. We’re girls, and we’re free to run down our men if we want. Yeah, he’s being a stick-in-the-mud, but you’re not seeing him at his best.”

“I guess not.”

“I’ve known him for so long, and he’s always been there for me, you know? There’s just something about him and me that says that we belong together,” said Karyn.

“Well, that’s important.”

“So listen, after I get the food, I’ll try to get away again and then we’ll go hang out in the quad. How about that?”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Derpy. “But I’ll hang outside until you come out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll just face-watch for a bit. I like doing that at home sometimes.”

They retrieved the food and went back. Karyn walked swiftly to the room and put the sandwich on her desk.

Mike was exactly where she had left him, but while he had put away the laptop, he was now talking on his cell phone. She listened to his half of the conversation.

“Yeah, Rick. I’m over at my girlfriend’s place. Nah, nothing much, just chilling. Hey, are we going to the club on Thursday? Yeah, I know, it’s great. Oh, you know how Deezer is. Wait, was I there for that? OK, what did he do?”

Mike listened in rapt attention as his friend related some anecdote that Karyn couldn’t hear. He motioned toward her, and she looked at him funny, but then he pointed toward the sandwich and gestured that she should throw it to him. One he had unwrapped it, he gave her a look that could have meant, “Thanks,” or, “It’s about time,” or, “Why no pickles?” He bit in and his occasional assenting grunts became muffled.

After about five minutes, Mike burst out laughing, then he swallowed the bite he had in his mouth and said, “That’s great. Well, listen, I should get going, my girlfriend’s back. Yeah, I’ll see you then. Bye.” He clicked the phone shut and said to Karyn, “Hey, welcome back.”

“Thanks. Enjoy the sandwich? You didn’t say exactly what you wanted, so I just got you turkey and cheese. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with that,” she said.

“It was fine. Thanks, babe.”

Karyn opened the door again, and Mike said, “Where are you going? Don’t you want to hang out with me?”

“I do, but you don’t want to do anything.”

“I’m sure we can find things to do, but you’re just running all over the place. Why don’t you relax and come lay by me?”

Karyn finally realized what Mike really wanted. One-track minds, all of them, she thought. “OK, just let me take care of one more thing.”

He waved his hand noncommittally and she went outside. At the front of the dormitory building, she whispered, “Derpy? You there?”

“Yeah, Karyn. Some of the people here are really interesting.”

“I’d love to hear about it, but look, Mike really wants me to go be with him, and I can’t get away. I hate to do this, but—“

“But you want me to go. No, it’s all right. I’m just worried about you with him,” said Derpy.

“I can see why you would be. But, as much as I’d like you around, it’s just too tiring trying to split time between you. I’ll make it up next week, promise.”

“Talk to you later,” said Derpy.

When Karyn re-entered her room, Mike was finally off the bed. He had moved over to her desk and was idly pawing through some of her test results and homework. Karyn wanted to flop on the bed herself, but was afraid of looking too eager.

Still not looking at her, Mike said, “Hey, didn’t you tell me that one of your professors said you had some kind of special talent for IT? Because from what I’m seeing here, you’re not quite knocking anyone’s socks off.”

“It wasn’t quite a professor, but I’m doing well enough. Most of them seem to like me.”

“Yeah, you were always good at brown-nosing.”

He threw the papers back down on the desk in disorder. “Thanks for the sandwich, by the way. What did you have to run out to do?”

“Just see a friend. Girl talk, you know?”

“Which one, the heavyset one or the blonde?”

Karyn frowned. “My friends have names, you know. I take the trouble to learn your friends’ names. The two you mentioned are Molly and Jen, but this was De—someone you don’t know.”

“Sorry, babe.”

He gave her a wink and a smile, and her own expression softened. He always had that ability to make her feel a little bit better than she had before.

Mike fumbled in his pockets and pulled out his cigarettes and lighter. “Could you not do that in here?” Karyn asked. “I have to Febreeze everything after you leave.”

He said nothing, but went over to the window and threw it open wide, directing the smoke toward it. Karyn could still smell the tobacco, and she thought she heard a faint coughing from the next room over.

She kept busy, tidying up after Mike and organizing her own things while he sat and smoked. She shelved a stack of notebooks near to the window. On top was one where she had drawn a picture of Derpy during a boring class.

“Oh, man. Are you still into My Little Ponies?” Mike said. “You know, you’re a college student now. Aren’t you going to grow up sometime?”

“Do you watch the show?” Karyn asked.

“Of course not.”

“Then don’t criticize. It’s more of a grown-up show than you know.”

He said nothing, but finished his cigarette and threw the butt out the window. With Karyn’s back turned, he snuck up behind her and groped her from behind.

Karyn was startled. “Geez, Mike! Let me know if you’re going to do something like that. You could try leading up to it.” But she leaned her head back and let him kiss her.

“Sorry, babe. I figured that you wanted it. It has been a while for us, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s also broad daylight. So don’t expect me to tear off my clothes just because you’re ready.”

“Whatever. I know you love it.”

Karyn rolled her eyes, but sat on the bed with Mike and made out. She had no objection to making him feel good, but wasn’t prepared to go all the way.

He steadily grew more aggressive, leaning in and kissing Karyn with more intensity, until finally she pushed him away. “Look, Mike, I’m really not going to do this right now, not this time of day, and not just because you show up and ask for it.”

“What is with you?” he said. “Is it your time of the month or something?”

“Oh, of course. Any time a female shows any lack of desire, it has to be because she’s on the rag. Can’t be that she just doesn’t want to do it, or doesn’t find the guy all that attractive at the moment because he’s been nothing but a lump since he got here. Can’t be because he doesn’t do anything romantic but just shows up and expects me to cater to him. Has to be biological.”

“No, I just said that because you’re being so harsh to me.”

“This is harsh? You waltz in here without telling me, make me blow off my friend, and then you’re shocked that I’m not all sweetness and light? Since I am making time for you, you could try some actual conversation or interest in me.”

“Listen, Karyn!” he said, and stuck his finger in her face.

“No, you listen!” The finger was slapped away. Karyn was stunned, because she hadn’t done the slapping, nor had she said anything.

Derpy Hooves appeared between them, flapping her wings and hovering in the air with a scowl on her face.

“What the fuck is that?!” screamed Mike, as he fell backwards off the bed and started scooting toward the wall.

“Don’t use bad language in front of Karyn!” said Derpy as she advanced on Mike.

“How can you come out here and ruin Karyn’s day like that?! You’re supposed to be her boyfriend! You should know how sensitive she is. Don’t you care about her? I’ve had to stand here and watch you all day thinking of nothing but yourself! You don’t do anything, and you don’t say anything until you want something!

“Karyn is a super-nice person, and you should consider yourself lucky that she even looks at you, to say nothing of being your girlfriend! You should appreciate her and pay attention to her, especially when you’re a guest in her room, but instead you lounge around on her bed, make her get you food, smoke when she tells you not to, and then force your affections on her!

“If you pulled that kind of stuff where I come from, you’d never make it to adulthood without being sat down and taught a firm lesson about how to treat others. As it is, you should take a long time to think about what you’ve done!”

Mike finally came to his senses, and he tore out of the room. It finally occurred to Derpy that he had been more shocked at her appearance than at what she was saying. But that only made her angrier. If he thought I was dangerous, she thought, then why didn’t he try to protect Karyn instead of just running? She flew over to the door and slammed it closed.

She turned around to see Karyn with a look on her face that would have killed her, if looks could do that.

“Derpy, what the f—No, I won’t swear like Mike did, but I am very angry with you right now. Don’t you have any respect for privacy?!”

“Karyn, I know I shouldn’t have, but the way he acted toward you, I just couldn’t stand idly by and let it happen.”

“But it was none of your business! I’m free to let him treat me any way I want. Setting aside the fact that revealing yourself to any human is dangerous—“

“He probably won’t tell anyone, and if he does, he won’t be believed.”

“Don’t interrupt!” yelled Karyn. “Did you even consider what that would do to him? If he had a secret that he couldn’t share with anyone? Things like that eat away at a person, you know. But again, put that aside. To show yourself to someone out of anger, just to rant at them? What possessed you to think that was a good idea?”

“I don’t know. I just couldn’t stand to see you hurt.”

“No, Derpy. You couldn’t stand to see something that would have hurt you if it happened to you. That’s what comes of spying and eavesdropping. It didn’t hurt me. I love Mike. I don’t say that you have to, but I do.”

“Why do you love him?” Derpy asked.

Karyn stared daggers at Derpy again. “That’s a question that you don’t have the right to ask.”

Derpy opened her mouth to argue, but then shut it. The weight of what she had done hit her. She didn’t know if it was a difference between ponies and humans, or if it was because she was older than Karyn, or just because it was her nature. But she knew that Karyn was correct, and the best course now was to start minding her own business.

“I’m sorry,” said Derpy. “I was wrong. And I have no way to make it up to you. I’m going to go now, for real. Will I see you again next week?”

Karyn looked toward the door. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if I want to see you next week. You really hurt me this time, Derpy. This wasn’t a playful mistake or something that I say you shouldn’t do but don’t mean it. This one cut deep.”

“I understand.” Slowly, Derpy strapped on her bag and got ready to leave. “But if I’m not coming back, there is one loose end I could tie up. If you’re willing.”

“What’s that?”

“You once asked me how I got my cutie mark.”

Next week: "A Very Special Derpisode."

13: A Very Special Derpisode

My dam—that’s my mother—died when she was having me. I’ve heard some ponies say things like, “That’s not your fault,” which I always thought was silly. Of course it’s not my fault. For something to be my fault, I had to have a choice that, if I made it, would have stopped it from happening. But I never chose to be born.

Medicine is better now than it was then. Today, at least in Ponyville or Cloudsdale, there would be a doctor standing there ready to staunch any bleeding by magic, or just by holding a wound closed with his teeth if need be. But we lived on the road between the two towns, where almost nopony else was.

My sire—my father—would have had a hard time taking care of me on his own. He was an able worker, but never planned to have to raise a foal on his own. But he was never cross with me, and I loved him—still love him to this day—very much. And I had my Celestia-father.

I don’t think that Equestrian naming works the same way that it does here on Earth. You keep the same last name as your parents, but we don’t. Well, some families, like the Cakes or the Pies. But those are cool names that they’d want to keep. What usually happens is that when two ponies have a foal, if they have some good friend who agrees to be a mentor to the little one, they give them their last name. That pony is called the Celestia-parent. Sometimes the parents are new in town, or don’t have anyone, and then the pony only has one name. So, for example, when Magnum and his wife had Rarity, they didn’t have anyone to be her Celestia-parent, so she’s just Rarity, but then they found a nice friend named Winter Belle who stood next to them at Sweetie’s naming ceremony.

I don’t know how my father met Doctor Hooves. He never told me. It seemed ridiculous to me that he could have ever not known my father. Certainly long enough to give me my last name. Doctor Hooves wasn’t the kind of pony who ever changed from “not knowing” to “knowing.” He always knew, and you always knew him. Whenever he would come to our house, it was always the same. He would bring me cookies and usually some exotic toy, and then he and my father would go down in our basement, which he called “the hole.”

That was his private area. He had his books and a very plush chair, and it was dark and cozy. He never complained if I went down there. He would usually put his book down and say, “Come on, Derpy, come sit with daddy.” And I would just sit in the chair and bounce on his knee, or he’d hug me. But when Doctor Hooves was there, he’d still let me stay, but I had to play on the ground while they talked.

I could never follow the conversations they had. Looking back now, I think that my father and the Doctor must have had some fancy adventures when they were young, and maybe the Doctor still did. One time, when I was very young, I got annoyed that they wouldn’t tell me about their pasts, but I didn’t confront them. I simply trotted right up in the middle of their conversation and said, “Daddy, I want to sit with you!”

I remember that day because while Doctor Hooves didn’t seem too happy, my father took me on his knee anyway. I tried to pay attention, but I couldn’t understand much, and eventually I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I felt I was alone, so I called out, “Daddy!” He came running in. “Daddy, I fell asleep in the hole! Why didn’t you take me to bed?”

“Derpy,” he said, “You are in bed.”

“No, I’m not. My room has a window but the hole is dark like this.”

I heard fear creep into his voice. “Derpy, it’s not dark. Are you playing a game?”

“What game, Daddy? Turn on the light, please. I don’t like the dark.”

“Derpy, tell me the truth now. Are you really saying that you can’t see anything?”

“No, Daddy. Not a thing.”

I heard him stand up and call out, panicked, “Doctor!”

Doctor Hooves was having breakfast, but he came running. My father had given the kind of scream that makes ponies leave their breakfasts behind. The Doctor wasn’t really equipped to make a full diagnosis, and I got the feeling that he wasn’t actually that kind of doctor anyway. Nopony wanted to say the word “blind,” but eventually that’s what they said I was.

I could hear that my father had his hooves over his face, because his voice was muffled. “Why? First Dancy”—that was my mother—“and now this? What did I do wrong?” I didn’t know whether his question was to Doctor Hooves or to nopony in particular.

I felt him come over and embrace me. “Listen, Derpy. I know you just woke up, but I need you to stay in bed for a while longer. You can’t see, and you might hurt yourself if you walk around and fall or bump into something. I’m going to come by in a few minutes and then I’ll walk with you and keep you safe, but right now I need to talk to Doctor Hooves alone. Promise me you’ll wait?”

“OK, Daddy. I promise.”

They went off and I was alone. I felt odd. I wasn’t scared or depressed. It was more like the feeling that I had let my father down somehow. As I said, I always thought it was silly when somepony would suggest, even by negation, that I was responsible for my mother’s death. But now I felt responsible.

When he came back in, he was finishing a line of conversation. Maybe he didn’t intend me to hear. I know they say that ponies who can’t see can usually hear better. But what he said made me worry.

“Are you sure I can’t go with her?”

“He will be more likely to help if you’re not there. He’s the type. Plead with him, thank him, and he’ll turn you away. But spurn him and he might help.”

Now he came and addressed me again. “Derpy. Come on, you can get up now. You just have to follow my voice.”

I got up and walked to him. My room was mostly empty, so I didn’t trip on anything. I stood next to him and he put a wing over my back.

“Derpy, we don’t know what happened to you, why you went blind. We don’t know if we can fix it. But Doctor Hooves says that there’s a pony out there, a unicorn, who’s been known to pull off some miracles in the past. He wants you to go with him and see this pony. It might be the only chance for you to ever see again.”

I recalled what I had heard. “And you can’t come with me, Daddy?”

“I can’t. And I don’t know if I can write you either, but you’ll write me. If it works.”
My father packed my things and I left on Doctor Hooves’s cart, which was surprisingly roomy. I was still more worried about Daddy than myself, but going off alone with my Celestia-father was an exciting adventure. I just wished that I could see.

“Doctor?” I said.

“Yes, Derpy.”

“The pony you’re taking me to, what’s his name?”

“His name is Prat.”

I laughed. “That’s a funny name!”

“It probably is, and he’s not the type of pony who enjoys laughing, so it’s best if you don’t call him that. ‘Sir’ is probably the safest thing to use. But don’t speak at all unless he speaks to you.”

I couldn’t tell how far we were going or in what direction. The only thing I got the impression of is that we were ascending. A pegasus pony has to have an instinct for altitude, but I was still young. I had barely learned to fly yet, and it occurred to me that if the cure failed and I stayed blind, I might never get any more practice.

Eventually the cart stopped. “Now, remember. Don’t say anything. He doesn’t like me, and he’ll probably be gruff with me, but he owes me enough favors that I should be able to convince him to look at you.

I heard a knock on a door. The door opened, and then a voice said, “You!”

The voice made me jump a little. It was not a happy voice. It was a voice that would go better with an angry rant than, for example, telling a pony good night. It was metallic, it creaked, and it grated on your soul. I remember it because I couldn’t see who it belonged to.

“Hello, Prat.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming around here after the way you left me last time.”

“I left you alive, which I didn’t have to do.”

“You also didn’t have to leave with yourself alive,” Prat said, “so I think we should call that even.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely equitable, but we’ll put that aside.”

“Good. What’s with the blind pegasus?”

“She’s why I came. She’s the filly of a friend of mine, and I’m hoping you can cure her. She just woke up yesterday morning and couldn’t see.”

“Not interested.”

“But, Prat,” Doctor Hooves said.

“Probably psychological. Her father beat her regularly?”

“No!” I screamed, forgetting the injunction laid on me not to speak.

“Hmm. . . awfully defensive,” the horrid voice said. “You love your father?”

“Very much so,” I said.

There was a long silence. “All right, Doctor, you leave her with me and I’ll work on her.”

“I should stay to take care of her,” Doctor Hooves said. “You don’t want the burden of having to feed and wash her.”

“I said you leave her with me and I’ll work on her. Or take her away. But the key factor is you leaving.”

What happened next I can’t fully describe. I’m a pegasus and Doctor Hooves is an Earth pony. Neither one of us have any magic, and certainly no telepathy. Maybe it was just in the movement of his body and his voice that I picked up. But I knew he was thinking a message to me: be careful.

What he said was, “All right. I hope you can help. Derpy, you be good and do what you’re told.”

He trotted off, and I was left alone with the unicorn.

“Well?” he said. “Get in the house!”

“I’m sorry, sir. Where is the house?”

“Right in front of you, of course.”

I didn’t know if he was being deliberately mean or if he had managed to forget that I couldn’t see. I trotted forward gingerly. By sheer luck I managed to make it through the door, but I tripped over something as soon as I got in. I think it was an umbrella stand.

“Clumsy oaf!” he said. “Pick it up!”

I did my best to find the stand and set it upright with my mouth. I was wondering what my father and Doctor Hooves had gotten me into. The unicorn was completely unpredictable, and I was afraid that he would take it into his head to beat me for no reason or forget to feed me or anything.

For a long time I heard him fussing about and tinkering. I don’t know how unicorn magic works, especially when one combines it with herbalism like Zecora practices. All I know is that for a few hours I stood there, bored, afraid, and depressed, until out of nowhere he returned and said, “Drink!”

I stuck my neck out and felt a cup being shoved between my lips. I grabbed a hold of it and tipped it back. A nasty taste came into my mouth, sort of like grass that has gone bad. He ripped the cup away and left again.

For maybe twenty minutes I was alone again with my thoughts and fears. Then the darkness started to dissipate. It was like there was a black cloth over my eyes, and somepony was pulling a loosed thread until the whole thing unwove. I could see.

“Sir! Mr. Prat! You did it! It worked!”

He came trotting in, and for the first time I saw him. He was gorgeous.

From his voice I had anticipated him being wizened and twisted. Instead he had a charming look about him from his smooth mustache to his slicked-back mane. His eyes were like dreamy pools of black water that a pony could drown in.

But then he spoke, and that voice brought me back to reality. “Worked? You say that worked? Stupid filly, look at yourself in the mirror!”

I turned around a few times until I saw a mirror on the wall. I looked at myself, and of course you know what I saw. My eyes were permanently crossed. Of course, I knew my sight was different, but I was just happy to not be completely blind.

He stuck his hoof on the back of my neck and pushed my head forward. “Look! You can’t see like normal ponies, which means that I’m going to keep working on you. But since you’re at least functional now, make yourself useful and clean this place.”

That was the first order he gave me. I was so happy to be able to get around that I happily helped out. I wasn’t a good housekeeper, but I was eager and grateful and did my best. For the rest of the day he locked himself in a room, so I just kept scrubbing the same things over and over. He didn’t feed me or tell me where I could sleep, but you know that I can sleep anywhere, so when the sun went down I curled up in a corner.

The next thing I knew he was shaking me awake. “Get up, you lazy filly!” he said. “The sun has begun rising. You should have breakfast on the table by now!” I hadn’t realized that I was expected to do that. I went into the kitchen. I was even worse as a cook than I was as a cleaner, but I could make cereal. I called out, “It’s ready!” and tried to smile. I thought that if I could be pleasant, I might make him a little less grumpy.

He came in and ate quickly. All he said was, “There should have been coffee with this. Get it right next time.”

He got up and went back into the living room. As I started to clear off the dishes, I heard him say, “Well? Are you going to keep me waiting? Get in here!”

I went to see what he wanted. He gave me a series of eye tests, having me cover one eye and try to identify things, then cover the other and do the same. He grunted and scowled during all the tests.

“You’re a hard case,” he said when it was all done. He made it sound as if it were my fault. “Let’s try this. I’m sure it won’t work.” He cast a spell with his horn and I felt my eyes affected by the magic. When he finished, I looked at the mirror again. All that happened was that my eyes were crossed the other way.

“Hmph,” he said. He went to a drawer and pulled out a card. He drew two spots on it a few inches apart.

“Close your right eye,” he told me, and he held the card up to my left eye. “I’m going to pull this away. Keep looking forward. Tell me if you can see both spots on the card at all times.”

He did, and a few moments later, I said, “The far spot is gone!”

He gave another grunt. “Come here and look at the light,” he said. He picked up a lamp and removed the shade. The brightness in the dark room stunned me a little. Then he covered it up. “Can you still see light?”

“Yes, it’s fading now.”

“After-images. Blind spots. You’ve got a lot more that has to be fixed.”

I wanted desperately to ask if I could be returned to my father, but I was afraid of what he might say or do. I decided to try a smaller approach. “May I write my father and tell him of my progress?”

“Do it quickly! We’re leaving tomorrow for the South. The air down there is better for your eyes.”

He left again and I found pen and paper. I wasn’t good at writing, and I’m sure I had a lot of spelling mistakes, but I managed to convey that I had partial sight back. I told him that we had to go away but that I hoped to see him soon.

I asked Mr. Prat to mail the letter, and he grabbed it with his teeth. The next morning we were packed.

I don’t want to describe what happened over the next year. Every day he had me do all the chores while he worked on potential cures to restore my perfect eyesight. To this day I don’t know if he actually knew that he was giving me bogus advice and just wanted a servant filly, or if he was a mad genius who really thought he could fix every imperfection of the equine eye.

He controlled me through perfect balance of carrot and stick. Sometimes literally, since we ate a lot of carrots. His face helped him a lot as well. It was as if he had grown specifically to charm, to disarm, and then to harm. He made me do things. . . well, as I said, I don’t want to describe it.

I wrote many letters to my father, but I never got one in return. I so wished I could hear from him, but I never did. One time I got up the nerve to ask Mr. Prat if I couldn’t go home just to make sure he was all right. He flew into a rage, and then the stick became literal as well.

The end of the story is one of those pieces of good fortune that favors foolish fillies like me. He made me do his marketing as part of my chores, and I was out one day at this task, when who should I come across but Doctor Hooves. He ran up to me.

“Derpy!” he said. “We’ve been searching everywhere for you! Your father and I!”

“But I’ve written him to let him know where I was.”

“He hasn’t received a letter from you since you left.”

“What? But I’ve sent so many!”

The Doctor got a thoughtful look on his face. “Did you yourself send them?”

“Well, no. Mr. Prat did.”

“Mmhm. More likely he destroyed them.”

“Oh, no! He’s so helpful! He keeps working on my eyes,” I said, which shows just how much in his power I was, defending the unicorn after finding out that he’d been deceiving me.

“Working on your eyes? You’re not blind anymore, anypony can see that.”

“But there’s still so much wrong with my sight! I’m cross-eyed, and I see bubbles in front of me that aren’t really there.”

He put his hooves on my shoulders and looked right at me. “Derpy, listen to me. Everypony has those. They’re called floaters.”

Understand this: for the year that I was a prisoner, my door was never locked, my window was never barred. I was a prisoner in my own mind, and Prat kept me there the best way he could. He made me feel that I was abnormal.

All his eye tests and experiments added up to that one statement. I wasn’t normal, and the only way to become that way was to stay with Prat and do what he said. When Doctor Hooves told me that everypony had a problem that I did, I saw through his veil of lies. I made a choice that I would never again feel fear of not being normal. I would be weird all my life, and nopony could stop me. Whenever I felt that way, I would always remember that everypony saw bubbles in front of their eyes.

My flank burst into light and sealed that choice as my destiny.

My emotions overflowed. Tears for the lost year and for my father. Joy for the path I’d chosen. Gratitude to the Doctor for being the one to help me. And anger at that unicorn. Right in the middle of the market, I hugged Doctor Hooves and cried. Everypony was staring, but I didn’t care.

I told him all about what had happened, and he got angry. He said that he was going to confront Prat. I started to go with him.

“No, Derpy. A pony like that might still be able to control you, even if you realize what he’s done. You may have mental scars that will last your whole life, and you shouldn’t see him for a long time.”

“Then I’ll start home! I want to go see Daddy.” I took off and hovered next to Doctor Hooves.

“Can you really fly all the way back home? You’re only a young pegasus, you know. You had better wait here, and I’ll take you back with me.”

“Doctor, I’m not going to wait a second to start back. My father misses me. Can I make it? Flying is what free pegasus ponies do. And that’s what I am now.”

Well, of course I couldn’t make it all on my own, but I tried, and that was important. After a few hours flying north, my wings got tired and I took a rest. Doctor Hooves came by with his cart and we went home.

I can’t describe what my father felt when I knocked on our door. The year without me had damaged his health. He was frail and weak, and I had to catch him as he fainted.

“I must be dead,” he said. “I finally died and I can see my Derpy again now. Derpy, I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“Daddy, no. We’re not dead. I’m back, Daddy. I’m back and I’m going to stay with you now.”

I held his head in my hooves as he sobbed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Anyway, that’s my cutie mark story,” said Derpy to Karyn. “And now you know everything. I suppose there could be a lesson there about not having to pay back a debt forever just because somepony does something good for you, or maybe about following your own path, but it might just be a sad story. So long, Karyn. Again, I’m sorry for what happened with Mike. I’ll be going now.”

Karyn looked at Derpy with tears in her eyes. She found a tissue and blew her nose. She took a deep breath.

“Derpy?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll see you next Sunday, OK?”

Derpy nodded and smiled, then she vanished.

Author's Note

And I'll see you next Wednesday! Here's what you'll read then:

Derpy trotted to the window and opened it. “Sometimes it goes that way, doesn’t it? You plan something, then it keeps getting pushed back, canceled, and rescheduled, and then you get ornery and you want to force it to happen.”

“I find that when you do, it’s never as fun as you anticipate,” said Karyn.

“Maybe not, but we’ll do our best today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Look at the grass!” she said. “You guys must really eat well.”

“No, Derpy.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. I just looked at the lawns and got awfully hungry.”

“You probably don’t want to eat that grass,” said Karyn. “They put a lot of chemicals and weird stuff on it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy, think of a good excuse I can use!”

“Don’t panic, Karyn. I think I can buy us some time.” The front door opened.

“No, don’t try anything! Just get away!”

See you next week!

14: Air Derpy

Karyn took a knick-knack off the shelf and wrapped it in newspaper, then slipped it into the plastic box. She had gotten up at daybreak to make sure that she was finished before Derpy arrived, but still was having trouble keeping to a schedule. As she moved past a wall shelf with books on it, she got distracted by one of the titles. She was still reading when Derpy warped into the room.

“Karyn!” she said, “Are you ready?”

“Ready?”

“Yes. My spell hasn’t broken. It’s not raining. You’re here alone. You don’t hate me. There’s nothing to stop us this time. I’m getting my fly-over of the city today, no question.”

“Oh. Yeah, let’s do that right away. It does seem like it’s a cursed project.”

Derpy trotted to the window and opened it. “Sometimes it goes that way, doesn’t it? You plan something, then it keeps getting pushed back, canceled, and rescheduled, and then you get ornery and you want to force it to happen.”

“I find that when you do, it’s never as fun as you anticipate,” said Karyn.

“Maybe not, but we’ll do our best today. Now, mount up. I’ve got some new spells to show off.”

Karyn got on Derpy’s back. She still felt awkward being on top of her friend, but she was getting used to it. Derpy never seemed to mind. “OK, first off, I had Twilight craft a double invisibility spell for us, so no worries about being spotted.”

“So, I finally get to be invisible? Sweet!”

Derpy switched on a spell. “There we go.”

“Derpy! I can’t see! I need the light to actually hit my retinas instead of passing through, or I’m blind!”

“What?! Hang on, I’ll turn it off.”

Karyn laughed. “Nah, I was just fooling with you.”

“Mean joke!” Derpy said, but she had a smile in her voice.

“I had to do it. It’s one of those ideas that pedantic humans have about magic. I don’t know why I can see when light passes through me, but the magic takes care of that, I guess.”

“Of course it does. Twilight can probably explain it to you. Anyway, since you’re pranking me, what’s good for the mare is good for the stallion. I’m not telling you what this next one does.” Derpy activated another spell. “Ready to go?”

“Ready!”

The window was a tight squeeze for Derpy with Karyn on her back, but she got through and took off. They rose high over Karyn’s dormitory. People were walking around all over the campus, but none of them looked up. Karyn felt a small thrill of voyeurism.

“OK, which way should we go first?” asked Derpy.

“Hmm. Let’s go toward the park. That’s the part you know. It’s that way.”

Derpy started a lazy flight in the direction Karyn had indicated. Karyn herself was thinking about which route she should have them take and what landmarks to show. All of a sudden, she felt herself lose her balance.

“Uh-oh! Air pocket!” cried Derpy, and she rolled to her side. Karyn was too panicked to grab on, but she didn’t fall. Derpy laughed. “Gotcha! That second spell was a safety that keeps you stuck to me until we turn it off. You can’t fall unless I do, and I can’t fall.”

Derpy righted herself, and Karyn put a hand to her chest. “Not cool,” she said.

“Sorry. OK, you’re the tour guide. Which way am I flying?”

“Head south. I’ll show you the major roads we use to get around, and how the spur roads connect. It should be interesting for you to see how it is when you can’t go directly to your destination.”

Derpy swung around and flew as she was told. Karyn started to point out landmarks and routes that she would take to get to her classes or other events. But then she drifted off and was silent.

“Hey, what’s going on?” asked Derpy. “Equestria to Karyn, come in!”

“Oh, sorry, Derpy. It’s just that flying up here, I never realized how many undeveloped areas there are around here. Look at all the trees.”

“It looks pretty developed to me. Flying over Ponyville, you’d see much more uncleared country, although you might get fooled because of the grass roofs.”

“True,” said Karyn, “but when you’re on the ground, at least here, you don’t see it. You drive from one road to the other and you get fooled by the distance, not realizing that there might be a whole ecosystem between the two. Trees that have been there for hundreds of years before the roads came, and animals that have no idea of what’s going on around them. I’m not saying that humans haven’t done more than their share of damage to the Earth, but there’s a lot of it left.”

“Maybe more humans should see it from the air.”

“Yeah, that would work. Derpy Hooves’s Invisible Flying Tours. A new outlook on life, plus lunch, all for only twenty bucks.” Karyn laughed at her joke.

A minute later, a clock chimed out the hour. “You’ve got clock towers here?” asked Derpy. “I suppose it’s been ringing every time I’ve been here, but I haven’t paid attention because I’m so used to the sound.”

“Sure, we do. It’s over there. Oh, wait. You can’t see where I’m pointing. It’s at eight o’clock.”

“No, it just chimed nine.”

“Yes, but I mean, fly at eight o’clock,” said Karyn.

“I don’t have a time travel spell. Did you mean eight tonight?”

“No! You don’t have that method? OK, twelve o’clock is straight ahead, six is behind—you know what, just make a left turn and you’ll see it.”

Derpy banked left and pumped her wings, then came to a landing on the clock tower. “This is nice,” she said. “You can see most of your school from here, and some of the trees as well. You don’t need flying tours, as much fun as it is. People can just come up here and see.”

“Yeah, they don’t let you come up here either. Very few buildings will allow you on the roof, and with the clock, there’s a lot of sensitive and dangerous equipment.”

“So what?”

Karyn sighed. “People aren’t as trusting as ponies. Probably with good reason. They’re also not as smart. If people were allowed up here, someone would probably break the clock just for fun, or someone would fall off and get hurt, and then the college would have to pay them money.”

“That doesn’t seem right. Look at what’s being missed.”

Karyn looked around. The sun was shining off the tops of trees, off the tops of buildings, off the sunglasses and phones of people walking below. “You’re right,” she said.

“What’s going on over there?” Derpy asked.

“Where?”

“At, um, June twenty-fifth.”

“Huh?”

“I figured if there was a clock system, there might be a calendar system as well. Hang on.” Derpy flew over the quad where there was a bunch of people in long robes.

“Ah, I see what you’re talking about. They’re rehearsing for graduation next week.”

“You’ll have to tell me about that.”

“Actually, I’ll have to tell you more than that. But let’s watch a moment.”

Derpy and Karyn watched as the students got themselves into formation and were told what would happen at the event. Derpy admired the long robes, and she thought they looked somewhat like simple pony dresses. Karyn was more concerned with how hot it was. She had worn a robe like that a year prior, and remembered the discomfort.

When the rehearsal broke up, Karyn said, “So, that’s where I’m hoping to be in three years. But after next week, it’s summer vacation, which means we have to find a new place to meet up. Like, where I live.”

“Haven’t I been coming to where you live?”

“No. Well, yes, but not my primary address. Even though I live here more than there. Look, the point is that I’m going to be somewhere else for the next three months.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?” said Derpy. “Show me where!”

“OK. Let’s find a map or something.”

“No, no. Just give me a direction.”

“You want to go now? But I don’t have to be there for a week,” said Karyn.

“But I need to know where it is now. Come on, I want a chance to stretch my wings out as well, and you should see more from the air. Is it this way?” Derpy started flying in a random direction.

Karyn resigned herself. “Not quite. Bear right along that road. I’m not sure I can figure out how to go there straight. I’ve only come by car.”
Derpy flew to Karyn’s direction. She was a little irked that Karyn constantly told her to change course, but then she started to get into it. It was a little like doing her mail route back at home. As they flew, Karyn told her more about the ceremony they had seen.

“The way we do it when we’re finished from school is to dress up in those fancy robes and get a diploma that says that you graduated. They call it a commencement because you’re supposed to be starting your career or something. What do you do when somepony graduates?”

“We’re not nearly so formal,” said Derpy. “We just throw the pony a party. A few more years and I’ll have one for Dinky.”

“We do that too, but only after the ceremony.”

They flew over the road, and Karyn started to gain a sense of direction. The tall buildings thinned out, and there were more strip malls and parking lots. She guided Derpy in a straight line, and then even the malls were gone. There were only houses, but they were nothing like what Derpy knew in Ponyville. Derpy was fascinated by the pitched roofs and the overall shapes.

“Look at the grass!” she said. “You guys must really eat well.”

“No, Derpy.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. I just looked at the lawns and got awfully hungry.”

“You probably don’t want to eat that grass,” said Karyn. “They put a lot of chemicals and weird stuff on it. Anyway, head toward that yellow one over there.”

“How do you make a yellow house, anyway?”

Karyn thought for a second. “I guess it’s something in the aluminum siding. They probably dye it with chemicals.”

“The same ones they use on the grass?”

“Not quite. The chemical industry is mysterious and not something that people pay attention to.”

Derpy lit onto the roof of Karyn’s house and looked around. The neighborhood was a good one. The streets were clean and children were playing hockey in the streets. At the end of the road, there was a cul-de-sac with some really fancy, three-story houses. Karyn’s only had two, but Derpy thought it compared well to her own.

“Karyn, what do your parents do?”

“Mom’s a teacher, like Cheerilee. Dad’s job is more complicated. I don’t think they have pension fund managers in Equestria.”

“No, I don’t know what that is. OK, I need to go straight up as high as I can go to get my bearings and make sure I can get back here next time. Do you want to come with?”

Karyn looked around. “Can you let me off? I’m better with flying, but I still don’t really like it.”

“Not a problem at all. Let me find the stick spell and undo it.”

Karyn was free and invisible on top of her roof. It was a new experience for her, and while Derpy soared to the sky, she sat on the edge and watched the suburbanites enjoying their Sunday.

Derpy kept herself level and flapped her way up. This was more difficult that flying forward, but it was important for orienteering. Most pegasi didn’t have to do this often, but they all learned how in school. Once she was at her maximum height, she could get directions in her head. She closed her eyes so that they didn’t interfere and took the mental picture. Now, if she were anywhere in the cone of which she was the apex, she could find Karyn’s house.

She dove straight down in free fall. When she was just above the roof, she leveled out and found herself a few houses down, so she made her way back to Karyn and made herself known.

“Derpy, I think my parents are out of the house. Do you want to take a tour?”

“Sure! I like being a tourist.”

“I’m not sure this qualifies. But my upstairs window is open. Let’s go in and get visible.”

They flew in the window, which was an even tighter squeeze than at the dorm. Derpy looked over Karyn’s room. It was much more feminine than her room at college. She had a four-post bed made of beautiful white wood, with a pale lavender cover and pillows with frilly edges.

“This is so nice!” said Derpy. “But before we go on. . . “

“Yes?”

“Can we get something to eat? I’m hungry after so much flying.”

“Oh, of course! I’m sorry, you always have to carry me.”

They went down to the kitchen. Karyn opened the fridge.

“I guess anything oat-based is out of the question,” said Derpy.

“Um. . . we might have toasted oat cereal. Let me look in the pantry. My folks aren’t vegetarians, so don’t eat anything without checking the ingredients. Here we go. I guess you can’t use a spoon, but you’re clean enough.”

Karyn poured out two bowls of cereal and added sugar to hers. Derpy cautiously put her head down and munched.

“It’s not bad,” she said.

“You want a glass of water?” asked Karyn.

“Sure.”

Karyn got two glasses and filled them from the tap. She put Derpy’s down next to her and was about to put her own on the table, when she heard the sound of a car door slamming shut.

“Oh, no! It’s my parents!” Karyn said, and as she looked up, the glass tipped. She reached for it, but it fell the rest of the way and spilled on the table and started dripping on the floor. “We are so dead. Derpy, get away or invisible! How am I going to explain why I’m not at school? And why I have two bowls out. Wait, I can hide one. Derpy, think of a good excuse I can use!”

“Don’t panic, Karyn. I think I can buy us some time.” The front door opened.

“No, don’t try anything! Just get away!”

Derpy was rooting through her saddlebag while Karyn desperately tore off paper towels from a roll and started to blot up the water. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Derpy heading toward the front door. “Not that way!”

Derpy ignored Karyn and charged into the foyer with one of her spells in her hooves. Karyn dropped the paper towels and ran after her. She saw her parents carrying grocery bags into the house. Derpy turned her hoof in the spell.

Karyn winced as she prepared for the worst. In a moment, her parents would see her and Derpy. They would freak out just as Mike had. She tried to think quickly. Maybe she could pretend that Derpy was some kind of rampaging animal who had broken in to the house and stole the cereal. No, she thought, that still doesn’t explain why I’m here, unless the problems cancel out and they forget to ask me that while they’re panicked. I couldn’t be so lucky.

But when she looked again, her parents weren’t panicking. They weren’t doing much of anything at all. “Derpy, what did you do?”

“Time-freezing spell. Locks any humans in the area so that I have the time to take care of any problems.”

“And they can’t see or hear us now?”

“Nope. We’re safe. Unless of course someone else shows up.”

Karyn ran to the front door, slammed it shut, and turned the deadbolt. She turned back to Derpy. “Wait, if it freezes all humans in the area, why didn’t it affect me?”

Derpy looked at her bag. “It took me about ten minutes to find the spot cancellation spell. You sure are funny-looking when you’re stuck with a panicked look on your face!”

“Between you messing with me and going to Equestria every other week, it’s a wonder that I don’t have to keep resetting my clocks all the time. Come on, let’s go clean up the kitchen.”

No longer being rushed, they took their time and wiped up the spilled water. Then Karyn washed the dishes in the sink while Derpy dried.

“What should we do with all these paper towels?” Derpy asked.

“I’ll take them to the outside trash bins. It’s very important, when faking a scene, to take care of little details like that.”

If Derpy had worn glasses, she would have looked over the top of them at Karyn. “Have you faked a lot of scenes?”

“I wasn’t always a goody two-shoes,” she said. “I’ve snuck a few cookies when I wasn’t looking or watched television when I wasn’t supposed to.”

“I guess that’s not so bad. You’re not actually committing crimes.”

“No, but I’ve gotten caught plenty of times. I wasn’t thinking today. I should have figured that they’d be home sooner or later. You really saved me.”

“I guess I know what you mean,” Derpy said. “I’ve caught Dinky in mischief once or twice, but I never knew how many times she got away with something. Of course, if I found out that she used a time-freeze spell on me, I’d probably be pretty mad. Well, I’m never mad at her, just disappointed.”

“That’s not very reassuring. Let’s get this done quick.”

They finished their cleanup and went upstairs. Preparing to leave, Derpy re-activated the invisibility and safety-glue spells. “Ready to re-start time?” she asked.

“That’s not a question I ever thought I’d have to answer. Go ahead.”

They heard the sound of Karyn’s parents below putting away the groceries. When there was no indication that they’d been discovered, they took off through the window.

“All right, don’t guide me now,” said Derpy. “Let me see if I can make it back to your school on my own. If I can do that, I can find you next week.”

Derpy hovered and closed her eyes, picturing the map in her head. She picked what she believed was the right direction and gained speed. “You’ve got it right,” Karyn said.

Daylight was waning by the time they reached the college, and Derpy sped up even more to make sure they weren’t caught in the air where they couldn’t see.

The night was misty and cool. They landed on the roof of the dorm, and Karyn dismounted.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know how much fun we had today, but at least we can get together next—“

She was cut off by a bright flash and loud noise. Derpy went wide-eyed and smiled. “Ooh, fireworks!” she said.

Karyn turned around. She saw the fading sparkles of the firecracker that had been set off. “It’s early for the Fourth. They must be setting them off for the end of term. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. What’s the fourth?” Derpy asked, not looking at Karyn, still staring at the sky.

“Just a human holiday. Not even all humans, just the ones in this country.”

“That’s like at home. You almost never see fireworks outside of Canterlot.”

They sat on the roof and watched the show. A multicolored starburst dotted the sky.

“Rainbow Dash wouldn’t like them infringing on her trademark, would she?” asked Karyn.

“She’d probably say that she could do it better.”

The fireworks continued on. Karyn liked the ones that left a trail as they ascended, and then rained down silver tears of starlight. Derpy preferred the perfectly spherical blues and yellows, and said they reminded her of blowing dandelion puffs into the wind.

“It’s really beautiful,” Karyn said, “and all the more so for what it represents. All those people who are finished with school forever. It makes me eager. But at the same time, these past weeks have been something special for me. I’m awfully glad to have met you, Derpy.”

“Me too. I mean, glad to have met you, not glad to have met me. I knew me already. I just think it’s funny.”

“What is?”

“That you run your school according to the seasons. It’s a time of change back in Equestria as well. Spring is over. The Summer Sun Celebration is coming up. Things start to relax until autumn, when everything kicks back up for harvest season. Of course, as a mail pony, my days are mostly the same all year round, but I see it in the faces of the ponies I know, watch them grow like the flowers in the fields.

“You’ve got a bit of that look about you as well.”

“A lot of pony has been rubbing off on me, I guess,” Karyn said. “Pretty soon I’ll start grazing on the lawn.”

“But you said they had chemicals and things.”

“I was just joking.”

They leaned back and watched more of the firework show. Karyn felt like she could fall asleep on the roof. Everything was perfect. She looked over at Derpy, whose gaze was still pointed at the sky. It had indeed been a heck of a semester. And the summer was yet to come.

Author's Note

Here's what's to come in next week's chapter:

“I guess, but there’s still the problem of—“

“No buts,” Karyn said. “No problems. Magic. Now.”

“All right, if you say so.”

Karyn practically flew off the bed and onto Derpy’s back. As they were about to leave, Karyn’s mother called up from downstairs, “Are you coming?!”

“In a minute, Mom!” she called, then said under her breath, “A minute, several hours, and the length of two universes from now. Go, Derpy!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn looked at him and said to Derpy, “I know that guy! He’s Silver Spoon’s father!”

“Diamond Tiara’s,” Derpy said.

“Right, what’s his name? Lotta Money or something?”

“Filthy Rich.”

“That’s it!” said Karyn. “He owns the Pony Mart.”

“Barnyard Bargains.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We’ll get out of your way,” said Derpy. “There’s no reason for us to stick around.”

“No, please, do stay,” said Twilight. “I’d like you to at least see the end of the game.”

“We might as well,” said Karyn. “There’s not a whole lot else to do now.”

Be sure to read it!

15: Texas Derp'Em

Derpy took the precaution of turning invisible before travelling to Earth, as she knew that Karyn wouldn’t be in her dorm room that Sunday. She made a mental note to talk to one of the unicorns about changing the destination of the spell, but didn’t give it top priority, since she’d be back in a few months anyway. The window was left open and she took off in the direction she’d memorized.

When she arrived at Karyn’s house, the room there was just as empty, but Derpy could hear voices downstairs and concluded that she was with her parents. Derpy sat and twiddled her hooves for a few minutes, then Karyn came up.

Derpy concluded that they would have to set up some protocol to deal with the fact that Karyn wasn’t living alone anymore, but in the interim she’d make do. Once she was sure they were alone, she appeared before Karyn.

“Hey, K. What’s going on?” she said.

“Ugh,” said Karyn. “Am I glad to see you. The folks are driving me bonkers.”

“How?”

“They’re going on this day trip on a boat and they’re guilt-tripping me into coming.”

“Is it a day trip or a guilt trip?” Derpy asked.

“It’s one or the other for me.”

“Why don’t you want to go? A boat sounds like fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the water.”

Karyn grabbed a bottle of sunscreen and threw it into her purse. “Because it’s not that kind of a boat trip. Heck, I probably don’t even need this sunblock. All they do is sail three miles out until they’re in international waters, then everyone plays slot machines all day. Boring as all get out, and the noise is just awful. Not to mention that it’s costing me time I could be spending with you.”

Derpy smiled and nodded. “I didn’t get most of that, but it will be too bad if we don’t get to spend the day together. Is it going to be like this every week?”

“I’m hoping not. I’m nineteen years old, my parents have got to allow me some independence. I’ll just start making plans ahead of time so I’m not stuck with them.”

“But we’re still out today.”

Karyn sighed and collapsed backward onto the bed. “Yeah.”

A moment later, Derpy said, “What was that noise?”

“What noise?”

“There, that noise.”

Karyn picked her head up. “Oh, that’s just the train. The crossing is about three miles away. You’ll hear it every hour.”

“You didn’t hear it?” asked Derpy.

“I heard it, I just didn’t notice it. I’ve lived around it so long. To tell the truth, when I went off to school, I slept worse because I kept noticing the silence.”

“It’s a much different whistle from Equestrian trains.”

Karyn flopped back down. “Yeah, I’ll bet. We said we were going to take a trip on one, didn’t we. That’s what I wish I were doing today. Forget the boat and the water. A long train trip through Equestria is just what I need!”

“Well, that might be a bit complicated.”

“Never you mind. Let’s go right now! Come on, whip out the spell and let’s blow this universe!”

Derpy was taken aback. Karyn had never suggested going to Equestria herself. Derpy assumed that, in her despair, she had forgotten that it would not be an escape. “You do remember that it won’t get you out of the boat trip, right? We’re going to come back right at the same time,” she said.

“Of course I know that. No, I wouldn’t leave my parents wondering where I was all day. I’m not a sadist. But if I’ve just spent a day of fun and sightseeing in Equestria, I know that I’ll be able to go placidly amidst the noise and haste and endure through the whole thing.”

“I guess, but there’s still the problem of—“

“No buts,” Karyn said. “No problems. Magic. Now.”

“All right, if you say so.”

Karyn practically flew off the bed and onto Derpy’s back. As they were about to leave, Karyn’s mother called up from downstairs, “Are you coming?!”

“In a minute, Mom!” she called, then said under her breath, “A minute, several hours, and the length of two universes from now. Go, Derpy!”

Hesitantly, Derpy activated the spell. Karyn was not even fazed as she usually was by the jump from ground to air. “Awesome! Now, take us down and toward the station!”

“OK, but there’s still the hitch—“

“Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.”

She must really want to get away from her parents. thought Derpy. She landed and let Karyn walk with her to the edge of town. When they reached the station, Karyn quickened her pace and marched right up to the window. “OK, Derpy. Get us two tickets to nowhere!”

Derpy pointed at the board.

“Yeah, so?” asked Karyn.

“You see how much they cost?”

“Is that a lot?”

Derpy sighed. “Yeah, Karyn. That’s a lot. A lot more than I’ve got on me, or can reasonably afford!”

“How come tickets are so much? I see ponies taking the train all the time!”

“That’s how. Tourist tickets like the ones we want cost a lot more than the ones for ponies who need to get somewhere. Let’s say you’ve really got to get to Canterlot because somepony you know is sick. You don’t want to have to pay the full fare when you’re going to need all your bits to take care of the friend when you get there. But everypony loves to ride the trains just for the fun of it, so the train makes enough.”

Karyn looked skeptical. “Don’t ponies take advantage of that?”

“No. Would you lie about having to do something urgent just to get a ticket at a lower price, miss out on all the amenities, and then not enjoy yourself because you’re feeling guilty?”

“I see your point.”

Derpy could see the disappointment in Karyn’s face, and she started trotting toward her house. She didn’t really want to disappoint her, but neither could she break her bank just for a fun outing. She would just have to make it up by having some inexpensive fun at home.

As if to mock them, just then a train whistle was heard in the distance. The express pulled into the station, and Karyn watched as all the ponies descended to the platform. Derpy wanted to drag her away rather than have her see it, but Karyn seemed fixed.

Near the back of the train was an elegant private car, from which an amber pony with moneybags for a cutie mark emerged. Karyn looked at him and said to Derpy, “I know that guy! He’s Silver Spoon’s father!”

“Diamond Tiara’s,” Derpy said.

“Right, what’s his name? Lotta Money or something?”

“Filthy Rich.”

“That’s it!” said Karyn. “He owns the Pony Mart.”

“Barnyard Bargains.”

“Yeah, you got it. I bet he never has trouble paying for the train.”

Derpy put a hoof on her shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Karyn. Yeah, we’d all like to be wealthy, but unless you’re the type who likes to work their tail off all day and all night for a long time to get it, it’s not going to happen.

Karyn finally turned away from the station. “Yeah, it’s just not in the cards.”

“Not in the what, now?”

“The cards. You know, it’s an expression,” Karyn said.

Derpy looked confused. “I know index cards and place cards and greeting cards.”

“I’m talking about playing cards.”

“How do you play with cards?”

Karyn stopped in her tracks. The first parts of a plan were forming in her head. “Are you saying that you don’t have card games here in Equestria?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

Karyn was now openly snickering. “That should give us just the advantage we need. Now, let’s see, we’ll need to find a deck of some kind. You said you have index cards, right? Would you happen to have, say, fifty-two?”

“I’ve got a pack of fifty at home,” said Derpy.

“Two short. Well, we can pick up those at the store. Speaking of which: Mr. Rich!”

The merchant heard his name and looked around to see who was calling. “Well, what have we here? A human, I believe?”

“That’s right, Mr. Rich. Are you terribly busy right now?”

“Actually, I am. You know that I’m rather an important pony.”

“Too busy to listen to an opportunity to make money?”

“Never too busy for that.”

Derpy listened to this conversation, then grabbed Karyn and pulled her aside. “What are you doing? Not that I don’t trust you, but Filthy Rich is a tough customer. You don’t want to mess with him”

Karyn whispered, “Listen, we need money, he’s got money. We just need to convince him to give it to us. If what you’re saying is true, the way to do that is in a poker game.”

“Oh, this is not going to end well. OK, explain that to me.”

“Well, let’s get the cards first. Then I’ll explain it to everypony.”

They returned to Filthy Rich, and Karyn explained that there was a game of chance where he could win money. That worked on him like the music of the Pied Piper, and he was only too happy to follow them to his store. Once there, Karyn took a pack of index cards and a marker and started crafting a deck.

“Now, the idea is that each card is unique, and has a rank and a suit.”

Derpy opened her mouth to say something, and Karyn realized that there were an awful lot of opportunities for her to misinterpret something. She would be looking for suits of clothes, jacks that would lift wagons, and dance clubs. Karyn was particularly worried about explaining the concept of a flush. She kept on explaining the concepts to both of them, not particularly worried if they completely understood. Her purpose, after all, was to play a game she could win.

“It’s quite a concept you have there,” said Filthy. “and I’m sure there would be ponies who would buy this if I could popularize it.”

“Of course there are,” said Karyn. “You just have to see how fun it is. Would you like to play a few rounds?”

Again, Derpy conferred with Karyn. “Are you sure this is going to work? He has just as much chance of winning as we do.”

“No, he doesn’t. We’ll have two chances to every one of his, since there’s two of us.”

“Ah! Got it, so the more the better. Hey, Twilight! Want to play poker with us?”

Twilight Sparkle had come in to the store to restock her supply of scrolls. She found it useful to buy them in bulk. When she heard Derpy ask, she trotted over. “What’s that?”

“It’s a game that Karyn’s showing us. It’s supposed to be super fun, and you can win money!”

“Derpy!” Karyn said out of the side of her mouth, “It’s only better to have more if they’re on our side. Twilight’s going to skew the whole thing!”

“Well, it will be more fun.”

“I suppose.”

Karyn explained the concepts again, and Twilight looked confused until everything connected and she smiled. “Ah!” she said “It’s all about probability. The most likely combinations score less than the unlikely ones.”

“Essentially yes,” said Karyn. “So let’s set up a table and four places. Derpy, if you can split your bits between us, and we’ll go against Mr. Rich and Twilight.”

They went into a back room of the store and set up a card table. Karyn shuffled the cards. “Now, there are several ways of paying the game. This one is the most popular on Earth right now. I’ll give each of you two cards. Look at them but don’t show anypony.”

The cards were dealt. Karyn picked up hers with her hands. Twilight used magic. Filthy was able to use his hooves. But Derpy had a lot of trouble finding out what her cards were. After a few minutes of trying to pick them up, she slid them along the table and peeked at them from below table level.

Karyn realized that, whatever skill or advantages she had, she and Derpy were still on the short stacks, and would quickly have to bet heavy less they lose by tiny cuts. On the third hand, with Twilight dealing, she found herself with a pair of kings, and put in everything she had. Twilight and Derpy folded, but Filthy called, considering that even if he lost he could afford to do so.

Karyn turned up her kings, and Filthy showed an ace and a queen. Karyn had quiet confidence, but an ace could spell doom. The three cards came up five, seven, and king.

“Yes!” Karyn said. “Three of a kind.” Her chances had gone way up. She grinned at Filthy and leaned back in her chair. And then Twilight flipped over a ten, and then a jack. Her jaw dropped.

“It’s. . . a straight. I’m out.” She collapsed back into her chair.

“What happened?” asked Derpy.

“It was just bad luck for me. You’ll have to play well and win it back.”

Derpy frowned, but returned to the game. She had some good luck, and doubled her money over the next few hands. That gave her renewed spirit, and she didn’t feel so desperate each bet. Karyn busied herself by getting drinks for the three remaining players.

Several more hands passed, and then Twilight looked like she got an idea. She looked at her cards and made a small bet. When both Derpy and Filthy called, Twilight waited for the three-card flop. When it came up with two jacks, she bet everything. Derpy would have had to match her, and she only had a ten and a queen, so she folded. Filthy had plenty of money, but folded as well. Twilight took the pot.

Karyn saw the tone of the game shift. Twilight was consistently betting heavier, and the other two folded much more often. Karyn concluded that Twilight was bluffing most of the time, but she couldn’t communicate it to Derpy.

Derpy was getting down to her last few bits, and she excused herself to use the toilet. Karyn said that she had to go as well. They conferred in the privacy of the cubicle.

“I don’t think we’re going on the train any time soon,” said Derpy.

“Could be, but luck can always turn. You’ve got to realize that Twilight is bluffing.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s pretending that she has good cards when she doesn’t, and betting accordingly.”

“You’re allowed to do that?!” asked Derpy.

“Yes, that’s the game!”

“Why did nopony tell me?”

“I thought you knew,” said Karyn. “I figured you’d be a natural to have a poker face.”

They returned to the table and Derpy prepared to play again. Twilight made one of her high bets, but this time Derpy called. After the last card was shown, it was Twilight who folded. Derpy had won a small pot.

The next hand, Twilight looked at her cards and asked Derpy how much money she had. She checked until the flop came out, then bet enough that Derpy would have to spend everything to call. Filthy dealt an ace, a four, and a two.

Derpy looked at Twilight’s eyes. “I think you’re bluffing,” she said.

Twilight said nothing, but she appeared to start sweating.

Derpy shoved all of her bits into the center and flipped up her cards. They were an ace and an eight. “A pair of aces!” she said.

Twilight said, “I have a pair of aces as well. And both of them are right here.” She turned the cards face up and Derpy’s face fell.

Filthy laughed. “Well, looks like it’s about to be one-on-one,” he said. He turned another card. It was an eight.

“It’s not over yet!” shouted Karyn. “If she gets another eight she’s got a full house. There’s still a chance!”

Karyn grabbed Derpy’s hoof in her hand and held tight. Filthy tried to put some drama into his delivery as he flipped the final card. Derpy saw the multitude of diamonds and her heart soared. Then she saw the nine in the corner.

Karyn and Derpy were broke.

“Ha ha!” Filthy cheered. “Oh, I do like this game! All right, Miss Twilight, it’s you and me now.”

Twilight looked at her own stack of bits and at Filthy’s. They were close to equal. She also looked at Derpy’s downtrodden face and Karyn’s, which didn’t display quite so much emotion. Still, she was clearly distraught.

“It certainly is. Let’s get back to it,” she said, dealing out a hand.

“We’ll get out of your way,” said Derpy. “There’s no reason for us to stick around.”

“No, please, do stay,” said Twilight. “I’d like you to at least see the end of the game.”

“We might as well,” said Karyn. “There’s not a whole lot else to do now.”

They sat back down and watched Twilight and Filthy play. Twilight had picked up more of the nuances of the game, but Filthy had an instinct for getting money to come in his direction. There were some exciting hands played. Derpy remarked to Karyn, “It’s really more exciting watching other ponies go at it than it was to play. Especially since I can’t lose any more money now.”

“A lot of humans would agree with you. Watching people play poker is a popular pastime. They even have cameras that tell you what each player’s hole cards are without letting the others know,” said Karyn.

“Ooh, that would make it more fun. Hey, can you two tell us what your cards are without letting each other know?”

“Not now, Derpy!” said Twilight. “This is intense competition.”

They played on for over an hour. Slowly, but steadily, Filthy’s bits found their way onto Twilight’s pile until she had three times as many as he did. But then he made a bold move.

After he dealt himself his two cards, he said, “I don’t even need to see the flop. I bet it all.”

Twilight floated her cards up to her eyes and held them there a long time. Then she said, “I think you must have something, but I’ve got to call you anyway. Because I’ve got a pair of aces!” She laid down the two black aces.

“Well, I’ll be dipped,” Filthy said. “So do I!” He flipped over the two red aces.

“I guess it’s a tie for this hand and we split the pot,” said Twilight.

“Right,” said Filthy, but as he was already drawing the three cards, he turned them over. They were three diamonds. “Oh ho! Maybe it’s not a tie!”

The next card was a club, but the final card was the seven of diamonds, and Twilight gave a wan smile. “Nice round,” she said.

“You bet it was!” he said. Twilight shuffled and dealt the next hand. “And this one’s just as good. All of it! Again!”

Derpy and Karyn whispered to each other.

“Don’t you think he’s getting a bit overconfident?” asked Derpy.

“Definitely. I hope Twilight takes him to school.”

“Really? I think she should stay here and beat him in poker.”

Karyn slapped her forehead. “All my hard work to get you to understand poker terminology, and I still can’t win.”

Twilight called Filthy’s bet, and he showed his pair of kings. Twilight showed an ace and a jack.

“I’ve got a pair already, and you have nothing!” Filthy said. “It’s in the bag!”

“Not really. I’ve still got about a three in ten chance of winning,” said Twilight.

“How could she figure that out so fast?” whispered Karyn.

“Dunno,” Derpy said, “but she’s pretty smart.”

Twilight dealt the three face-up cards, none of which was higher than seven. “All right, now I’m a little worried,” she said. But then she dealt an ace.

It sounded as if Filthy was choking, even though he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything. Twilight, all business, said, “You still have a small chance. About one in twenty of getting one of the last two kings.”

She flipped the last card, which was a two.

“But it didn’t work out,” Twilight said. “Good game, all of you.”

“No!” cried Filthy. “It can’t end like this! We’ll keep playing. I’ll put up more. I’ll put up. . . Barnyard Bargains!”

“You’re really willing to wager your store on one hand of cards?” asked Derpy.

“Yes!”

“No,” said Twilight. “but I will make you a counteroffer. I’ll put up everything I won from you if you win. If I win, though, you give me the exclusive rights to sell playing cards in Equestria.”

Filthy thought about that for a moment, then agreed. Twilight dealt all the cards face-up. It was no contest. Filthy got a two and a seven, and Twilight a king and a ten, both of which were paired on the flop. The last two cards matched nothing.

“And that really is the last hand,” she said.

“All right,” said Filthy, “but when you do start making cards, I hope you’ll let me carry them here. We can make a fortune together!”

“Oh, I have no intention of making these cards. In fact, now that I’ve got all the rights to them, I’m going to destroy this deck and tell nopony about them.”

“What?!” all three of the others said.

“That’s right,” said Twilight. “Granted that Filthy isn’t the most popular pony in town, I still don’t want to see him suffer. And Derpy shouldn’t lose the money she saved up just because of the way the cards fall. No, we’re all definitely better off if we don’t have these.”

“Works for me,” said Derpy.

“I guess,” said Karyn.

“Come on, girls,” said Twilight. “I’ll buy you ice cream, since I’m so flush with cash.”

They all went to the ice cream parlor and sat down. Karyn had to admit that there was much more bonhomie and less tension when they weren’t playing.

“So what possessed you to bring that awful game up?” asked Twilight.

“We just really needed a way to make money fast,” said Derpy.

“It’s my fault,” said Karyn. “I wanted to ride the train so badly, I got a little desperate. It won’t happen again.”

“It’s all right,” said Twilight. She took a bite of her sundae. “You know, technically, I don’t have all the rights to playing cards in Equestria. You know about them too, Derpy.”

“Huh?”

“Would you be willing to sell out for, say, the cost of two train tickets?”

Derpy bit her own banana split. “First class?”

Twilight laughed. “You drive a hard bargain, but it’s a deal!”

Karyn brightened. “Really, Twilight? After what I did?”

“Uh-huh. Next time, just ask if you want something. It can be a lot easier than going for some crazy scheme.”

Derpy said, “Maybe you should just have asked your folks if you could have skipped the boat trip.”

“I guess so,” said Karyn. “I sure learned something today. Maybe I should write Princess Celestia about it. Or, wait! I could show you guys e-mail!”

Derpy and Twilight looked at each other. “Here we go again!” they said.

Author's Note

Preview of Chapter 16!

Karyn got out of the van, Bluetooth in place, and looked around nervously.

“Are you sure I can’t go with you?” Derpy asked.

“Honestly? I’m afraid to let you in the building.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, Derpy,” she said, pointing, “there’s the big city. What do you think?”

Derpy said nothing for a moment. She was drinking in the brownstones, the el train, and, off in the distance, the skyscrapers.

“It looks like a good skeleton for a city like Canterlot. The castles are there, they just need all the decorations. And the whole thing could use a good scrubbing,” she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy whispered into Karyn’s ear. “There’s so much going on here. Is this all for us ponies?”

“Heh, no. It’s Friday afternoon, and it’s rush hour. All this hustle is still people working,” said Karyn. “It’s always fun when you’re on vacation and everyone else isn’t. Everything is busy, but you have the time to take it slow.”

“I guess,” said Derpy. “I think it’s always good to take it slow.”

Be sure to read that one, too!

16: Derps on a Plane

Karyn got out of the van, Bluetooth in place, and looked around nervously.

“Are you sure I can’t go with you?” Derpy asked.

“Honestly? I’m afraid to let you in the building.”

An hour earlier, Derpy had sat in Karyn’s room and listened to her plans.

“So there’s this huge event for all the fans of My Little Pony, and I saved up enough to go. I’d sure like you to be there with me,” Karyn had said.

“Will the people there know me?”

“Are you kidding? Everyone there will love you. We won’t tell them it’s really you. They’ll think it’s probably just two humans in a costume. But you’ll be able to be visible in front of them and to just be yourself. There is one catch?”

“What’s that?” Derpy had asked.

“We’re flying there, and not the way you usually do it.”

On the limo ride over, Karyn had explained all the procedures about flying in an airplane, and how Derpy couldn’t sneak on board, even if she were invisible.

“Can I at least come in and see this body scanner thing?” Derpy asked.

“All right, but listen. This is serious stuff. People get banished to an island for saying the wrong thing in here, so if anything even looks like it’s going wrong, freeze time and get out fast. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

They went into the airport, which had high enough ceilings that Derpy could fly up and avoid all the people. She looked around in awe.

“It’s so pretty! Everything is all white and clean, and all the humans are so busy.”

“Don’t let the cleanliness fool you,” Karyn said. “All of these people are in a high state of tension. At any time, someone’s flight could be cancelled or something, and then they’d get really angry. Flying on planes is one big pain in the flank.”

She went up to the check-in counter. After a half-hour of waiting in line, she reached the front and checked her bags. After the representative spent what seemed like another fifteen minutes typing on her computer, Karyn received her boarding pass and was on her way.

“OK, Derpy. We agreed. Here’s where we go our separate ways. I’ll meet you in the other airport.”

“But how will I know which of these airplane thingies you’re on?”

“See here? I’m at gate A23. They’re numbered the same way on the outside. Just zip around and you’ll see that code.”

“Got it!”

Derpy watched in silence as Karyn unpacked her laptop, emptied her pockets, and took off her shoes. Then she was hurried through the clear booth. Derpy was mostly confused, but she liked the wooshing noise it made.

Karyn re-packed everything and sat in the lounge to wait. She got out her book and read for a while. After about ten minutes, she heard, “Psst.”

“Psst!”

Karyn lifted her head. She looked around her, but saw no one in the immediate vicinity.

“PSST!”

She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and then said through her teeth, “I know that can’t be Derpy. I know that after all my admonitions, she wouldn’t be so bold as to come with me anyway. I know she wouldn’t want to get me in trouble like that.”

A timid voice said, “Um. . . I just really wanted to ask you something.”

Karyn slammed the book closed and reached for her Bluetooth.

“How did you get past the security?” she asked.

“I didn’t. I flew outside and found gate A23 like you told me. There was this big square tube there, so I flew into it and I found you here. So I figured it was all right.”

“I guess you didn’t know any better. I thought the plane would be blocking the gate. All right, stick around. What’s your question?”

Karyn heard Derpy’s voice move and determined that she was sitting next to her. “Well,” Derpy said, “I was watching some of the planes take off and land, and I can’t figure out how they fly. They don’t even flap their wings!”

“OK, here’s how I understand it, which may not be one-hundred percent accurate. You see the curved shape of the wing? When the plane moves forward, it gets the air rolling like a tube. Once the air gets over the wing, it keeps rolling downward. That downward roll creates an area of low pressure under the wing, which in turn provides lift.”

“It seems awfully complicated. I just push down on the air with my wings and I go up.”

“Yeah, but you’re doing it with magic. If a scientist saw you fly, he’d say it couldn’t be done.”

Derpy scoffed at that, but just then someone sat down next to Karyn, so they had to cut short the conversation. The plane arrived soon after and people got on line.

As she advanced in line, Karyn whispered, “OK, you follow after the plane. It goes fast. I hope you can keep up.”

“Don’t worry,” she heard back. “I’ve got a plan.”

Karyn got on board and went through the tedious process of shuffling toward a seat and performing the Olympic-level weightlifting needed to get her bag in the overhead compartment, then took a row with a window seat. She settled in to ignore the oxygen mask demonstration and read the catalogue of wall-sized crossword puzzles, vinyl-to-iPod music converters, and replicas of Harry Potter wands. She wondered what it was about flying that made the catalogue company think that people were suckers for useless baubles.

The plane took off and she leaned against the window in a half-successful attempt to go to sleep. She kept having visions of Derpy flying behind and trying to catch up. When she came to, the seat-belt sign was off and everyone was using their laptops. She slid the window shade up.

The gray pegasus pony lying lazily on the wing barely surprised her. Of course she did. She’s not even going invisible. She’s just counting on nobody looking out at the wing. She’ll probably say something like, “Well, there was a lot of noise, so I couldn’t talk to you. I had to make sure you knew I was safe.” I’m not even worried anymore. Unless the pilots notice that there’s something weird messing with their aerodynamics.

Yeah, I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see that and hope they know what they’re doing.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. Around the time that the landing gear was lowered, Derpy slipped off of the wing and coasted in behind the plane. Karyn found lots to annoy her in air travel, but her biggest peeve was the interminable wait for the crew to open the door and for people to get out once the plane was at the gate. Eventually, she shuffled down the aisle and into the airport.

This time she expected Derpy to have flown in through the gate. It would make sense here, since it was the easiest way to track her rather than trying to hook up later. So once she was in, Karyn perked her ears and listened for Derpy’s voice, but with no luck. She decided to get her bag first and then find Derpy.

She felt awkward, since all of the usual methods she would use to meet up with a friend were unavailable with Derpy. She couldn’t call her on a cell phone or e-mail her or suggest a landmark that they could both reach. Standing at the baggage claim and wondering what to do, she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around to see nothing. Derpy had found her.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” Karyn asked.

“Easy. I just checked the arrival board for which flight went to the gate that you landed at, then saw which baggage claim was servicing that flight.”

“I never know when you’re going to turn out to be a genius about something human.”

“I do have one piece of bad news, though,” said Derpy.

“What’s that?”

“When I flew in through the baggage claim, I saw that your bag was near the bottom.”

Karyn laughed. “Nothing more than I expected.”

After an endless wait, she got her bag and they left the airport. “Well, Derpy,” she said, pointing, “there’s the big city. What do you think?”

Derpy said nothing for a moment. She was drinking in the brownstones, the el train, and, off in the distance, the skyscrapers.

“It looks like a good skeleton for a city like Canterlot. The castles are there, they just need all the decorations. And the whole thing could use a good scrubbing,” she said.

“Definitely,” Karyn said. “In more ways than one. Come on, let’s get to the hotel.”

They made their way to the elevated train station. Ever since the first time they had gone out, the time they saw the movie, Karyn had had to deal with her ethical quandaries about buying one ticket when two were doing what the ticket allowed you to. But at the station, she muttered to herself, “Seven dollars for this train? Well, I’m calling it three and a half.”

The elevated train was a special line that connected to the regular subway system. The trains only ran every twenty minutes, and in deference to Murphy’s law, one had just left as Derpy and Karyn made it to the platform. After a long wait, they finally got to board.

“Is this all there is?” asked Derpy. “I can see why you’re so keen to ride on an Equestrian train. They’re far nicer than this.”

“Yeah. This one is just about getting from one place to another.”

When they got to the subway station, they encountered a problem more pressing than poor aesthetics. During the evening rush, each train was so full that if Derpy got on, people would definitely feel the invisible pony.

“What do we do now?” asked Derpy.

Karyn sighed. “Short of taking a cab, which I probably can’t afford, we could wait until the crowds thin out.”

“That could be forever.”

“Wait! I’ve got an idea. Remember when I caught that cold?”

Karyn waited next to the doors of the next train with Derpy hovering overhead. As the people on board got off, Karyn gave a loud sneeze. “Ugh, I am definitely coming down with something,” she announced.

She was not given a wide berth, but it was enough to fit a pegasus.

When they reached the center of the city, they had to walk—or fly—six blocks to the bus station. Derpy’s mouth hung open throughout the flight. “All these lights and signs! We have nothing like this in Equestria.”

Karyn felt a touch of pride.

At the bus station, there was less of a line and the prices were reasonable. The sun was starting to set as they traveled west. The red haze cast over the suburbs dazzled them as they looked out the bus window.

Derpy whispered into Karyn’s ear. “There’s so much going on here. Is this all for us ponies?”

“Heh, no. It’s Friday afternoon, and it’s rush hour. All this hustle is still people working,” said Karyn. “It’s always fun when you’re on vacation and everyone else isn’t. Everything is busy, but you have the time to take it slow.”

“I guess,” said Derpy. “I think it’s always good to take it slow.”

After checking in, they made it to the hotel room. “Now, I have to teach you the most important thing about staying in a hotel.”

“What’s that?” Derpy asked.

“As soon as you get in, you have to turn the air conditioner on full blast and leave it there. It’s the only time that you can make it as cold as you want and not have to pay extra, so don’t forget it.”

Suiting the deed to the word, Karyn opened a small metal plate on the air conditioner and turned it on full blast. She sat down right on the vents and let the cool air blow up through her shirt. “Ah, feels so nice,” she said.

Derpy looked askance at Karyn, and lay on the bed farthest from the air conditioner. “So what are we doing tonight?” she asked.

“Well, I was thinking that I would grab dinner and pick up our badges for the convention. You could come with me, but I think it’s better to save your grand debut for tomorrow. Understand this about conventions: there’s an awful lot of standing in line waiting. Also sitting in rooms waiting. Or hanging around halls waiting.”

“I’m sensing a pattern.”

“Yeah. But the point is that if you’re expecting everything to be a constant stream of entertainment, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re prepared to wait, you’ll be able to take it in stride. Forewarned is forearmed.”

“Actually, I’ve got four legs and no arms,” said Derpy.

Karyn shook her head. “Everyone’s going to love you tomorrow.” She picked up her purse and headed for the door. “Sandwiches OK for dinner?”

“Sure thing.”

Karyn went outside in the heat. Walking down to the convention center, she felt a little pride as she looked at the other bronies and pegasisters. Sure, plenty of them could draw better than she could, or make plushies or music videos. Heck, some of them were probably on intimate terms with the big names of the show. But none of them knew a real pony from Equestria.

At least, she assumed so from what she had seen on her visits there. It would be funny if every brony had a secret pony friend, but each of them thought they were the only one. Her daydreaming was interrupted as she reached the convention center. There was no line for badge pickup, so Karyn was able to walk right up and present her two receipts.

“Do you have your ID with you?” the volunteer behind the desk asked.

“Right here,” Karyn said as she handed over her driver’s license.

“And the other person you’re picking up for?”

“Do I need her license too? I have the receipt.” Karyn was worried about this potential hangup, but not too much. She knew that if the convention enforced the rule about registration to the letter, they would have a lot of angry people demanding refunds over some silly paperwork. They would be better off putting their efforts into detecting fake badges and people who just tried to walk in without one.

Badges in hand, she got the sandwiches and returned to the hotel room. Derpy was reading through the card that listed all of the amenities the hotel offered.

“You know, Karyn, there’s a lot of cool stuff here.”

“There is. I always wonder why hotels go so far out of their way, when basically all of their guests are just using the hotel as a base to do something in town. Actually, I always thought that it would be kind of cool to take a vacation and just take advantage of all that hotel stuff. Order room service, use the spa and the gym and the pool, eat in the restaurant, that kind of thing.”

“That might be fun. But certainly not this weekend,” Derpy said.

“Nope. This weekend is going to be all about the convention. And it’s going to be awesome.”

******************************************

In the early morning, Karyn got up early and made fried bread for breakfast. The kitchenette in the suite was tiny and cramped, and the smoke from the grease overwhelmed the cheap range hood. Derpy woke up to the sound of the smoke alarm going off.

“Ugh, what time is it?” she asked.

“Not too early, but I wanted to make breakfast,” shouted Karyn over the alarm. She had shut off the stove and was trying to fan the smoke away from the alarm.

Derpy was still groggy, but she saw the smoke and Karyn’s futile gestures, and she figured out what was going on. “Hang on,” she said. “Let an expert handle this.” She got off the bed and flapped her wings rapidly. The smoke cleared and the alarm shut off. Karyn ran to the window and opened it. The room quickly cleared.

“Thanks. I guess that means it’s done.”

Derpy was not used to hot breakfasts, and she was enthusiastic in her praise. “You can cook breakfast for me anytime!” she said.

Now wanting to risk the stove again, Karyn contented herself with bread and butter. As she was cleaning up the dishes, she said, “Now, one more important thing, not so much for a hotel but for a convention. You’ve got to shower every day.”

“Um, duh,” said Derpy. “I shower every day even when I’m not at a convention.”

“Yeah, but a lot of people who come here to party are too drunk or lazy to shower, and they stink up the place something awful. You’re going to be in a building with four thousand humans. That’s a lot of body heat.”

“Well, I won’t make any of the stink. Can I have the shower first?”

“Go ahead.”

Still in her pajamas, Karyn sat on the couch and went over the convention schedule. It’s nice that they’re only running two tracks, she thought. I remember going to the comic book convention where they had over a dozen tracks. I missed so much stuff because it was at the same time or too far away. I think I can see just about everything I want here. She took a highlighter and marked out the events she wanted to attend, going over the most important ones two or three times.

The shower turned off and Derpy emerged in a cloud of steam toweling herself off. “It’s all yours,” she said. “What do I do with the towel?”

“Just throw it on the floor. The maid will come through and give us more later.”

“Really? Whoa. How much do we have to pay for that?”

“Nothing specifically for linens. It comes in with the bill. It’s not cheap, but once in a while you’ve got to treat yourself, right?”

“Yeah!” Derpy said. She had a look of distinct enjoyment as she spiked the towel to the ground.

Karyn showered and brushed her teeth. Throwing on a T-shirt and shorts, she turned to Derpy and said, “Ready to go and meet everyone?”

“Almost. How do I get this on?” Derpy asked. She was fumbling with the badge.

“You can’t get the lanyard over your head?”

“No. I can’t.”

“Well, that can’t be right,” said Karyn. “Your head’s not that much bigger. Flatten your ears.” She tried to get it over Derpy’s head.

“Ow, ow. Watch it.”

“OK, wait a minute. Let’s think about this. If we can’t get it over your head, and we can’t separate it from the lanyard, and obviously we can’t pin it to your clothes because you’re not wearing any, what we could do is to just keep it over one ear, but then we have to worry about it falling off. Wait! I have a bobby pin. That should keep it in.”

She suited the deed to the word and grabbed her own badge. “Now, how am I going to do mine?”

“Can’t you just put it around your neck?” asked Derpy.

“I could, but the problem with that is that as I’m walking around, it’ll turn and they won’t be able to see the front. Not a serious problem, just annoying.”

“You sure know a lot about these conventions.”

“Yeah, I’ve been to a few in my time,” said Karyn. “What I’ve done at some is to take two lanyards and attach one each to separate corners. But this one only has a single hole in the middle. I know, I’ll just run it through a couple of my belt loops. There.”

With the last obstacle out of the way, they left the hotel room and headed for the elevator. When the door opened, a young man in a Fluttershy T-shirt came out and did a double take at Derpy. He looked like he was about to say something, but she and Karyn entered the elevator and the door closed quickly.

“This is pretty cool,” said Derpy.

“What’s that?”

“To be about among the humans without having to disguise myself and hide and fly out of everyone’s way.”

“I think you’re a little bit of an exhibitionist,” said Karyn with a smirk.

“I sure am! This is going to be a great exhibition.”

“That’s not what I meant, but maybe it’s better you don’t know.”

The elevator reached the ground floor, and Karyn and Derpy stepped out into the lobby. They were getting ready to walk out the door when they heard, “Excuse me?”

They turned and saw the young lady at the check-in counter addressing them. Karyn was worried that she was about to be assessed a horse occupancy fee or something.

“I’ve been seeing a few people dressed in horse ears and such, but this is the best costume I’ve seen. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s a convention for My Little Pony,” Karyn said.

“That show from the eighties?”

“No, this is Friendship is Magic. It’s new and the ponies in it are real. My friend Derpy here is from Equestria.”

Derpy gave her a look, wondering why she was giving away the truth, but the hotelier laughed. “Cute. There’s really a lot of interest in it?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. You should give it a look,” said Karyn.

“Maybe I will.”

The girls reached the outside, and Derpy said, “Karyn! We’re not supposed to tell anyone else about Equestria.”

“That’s the beauty of doing this at the convention. We can tell them that you’re really Derpy Hooves, which is perfectly true, and no one will really believe it. Just don’t take off and go flying around.”

The hotel was right next to the convention center. In the steamy morning, the convention-goers were milling about ready to enter. There was still an hour to go before the main doors opened, and a shaky line was forming. Karyn slipped in line just as if nothing was unusual, and Derpy followed after.

The first person to notice Derpy was standing in line in front of them. “Whoa! Cool costume! Can I get a picture?”

“Sure!” said Derpy. He snapped a picture with his phone.

“Check it out,” said a girl who hadn’t decided to get in line yet. “It’s Derpy Hooves!”

“Oh, wow!” said her friend, “That is so perfect. You must be a professional seamstress or something. How long did it take you to look like that?”

“Not long,” said Derpy. “I just showered and brushed my mane.”

The two girls laughed. “Yep, you’re Derpy all right!”

Another young man came up to them. “Excuse me, could you please say, ‘I just don’t know what went wrong’?”

Derpy bristled a little, but she recited the line. As everyone waited for the convention to start, she was pressed into service as impromptu entertainment. After many people asked her for pictures and hugs, she got a moment to whisper to Karyn.

“I’ve never gotten so much attention,” Derpy said. “I think I like it a little.”

“It’s a real role reversal, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“This time, I’m the one who’s invisible,” said Karyn.

Just then, neither of them was the center of attention. The main doors to the convention floor opened.

Next week: the convention itself! Note: all. . . well, most. . . events in this chapter and the next are based on my actual experiences at Bronycon 2012.

17: Derpycon

A cheer went up and everyone shuffled forward. The staff checked badges and waved the people through.

Karyn asked Derpy, “What are queues like in Equestria?”

“Hmm. . . We don’t really have queues like this. Except for cider season. Or baking giveaways. But when we do, generally we form a single line. Not just filtering in like this.”

“Hm,” said Karyn.

“What’s up?”

“I’m just remembering something I read in a book once. There was this guy who traveled the world. All over, different countries. And he said that the biggest difference he saw from the civilized countries to the uncivilized ones were the queues. In the civilized countries, any time there was a distribution—a sale, a give-away, anything—people would automatically line up. But the uncivilized lands would just rush the giver in a mass.

“If Equestrian ponies are that good at forming a single line, and if there’s anything to the theory, you must be very civilized.”

Her reminiscences were cut short as they made their way into the con. “OK, what are we doing first?” asked Derpy.

“Swag.”

“Swag?”

“Merch. Booty. Stuff. We’re going to ruin my financial future by spending too much on material with ponies on them”

“Um. . . that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said Derpy.

“No, it probably doesn’t. But once in a while, not often, you’ve got to indulge yourself.”

“I can understand that, but why this?”

Karyn stopped. “You know, you may be right. If it were last year—even if it were six months ago—I would have blown my money. But what do I need with a plastic pony when I’ve got a real pony right here?” She gave Derpy a hug around the neck.

“Then what will we do?”

“We can still look.”

They browsed the aisles of the salespeople. Derpy looked at the artwork and crafts. She turned up her nose at some of them, but really liked watching the people who liked them. At one booth, they were selling pony ears, pegasus wings, and unicorn horns. They were selling fast.

“Karyn, those horns and wings don’t really do magic or let you fly, do they?”

“Of course not.”

“Aw, that’s so sad. These poor people are being cheated!”

“No,” said Karyn with a laugh. “They all understand it. It’s just a fashion thing.”

“Well, I wish that they did really work.”

“You and everyone else.”

They turned a corner and reached the end cap where the official merchandise was being sold. The crush of people was heaviest here. Posters and T-shirts were flying off the wall. Derpy was staring at one end while Karyn browsed around.

“Can I help you with anything, Derpy?” the saleslady said.

“No thanks, I’m just looking. Hey, Karyn!” Derpy said, calling her over.

“What’s up?”

“There’s a shirt here.”

“There’s a bunch of shirts here,” said Karyn.

“But this one says, ‘Derpy is best pony.’”

“Mmhm. A lot of people like you. What’s the problem? You want royalties?”

“No, it’s just—“

“Are you not happy that you’re so popular among humans? Trust me, there are plenty who prefer Twilight Sparkle or Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy.”

“It’s not that, either, it’s just. . . “ Derpy trailed off.

“What?”

“Why isn’t it, ‘Derpy is the best pony?’”

******************************************

“Karyn. I think the opening ceremonies are starting.”

“Meh. We can go, but I wouldn’t expect much out of it,” said Karyn.

“Why not?”

The floor of the convention center had been partitioned out with black curtains. They only went about two-thirds away across the floor. There was plenty of space on either side for people to gather about and plan their next move. Derpy and Karyn had done so.

“Well, for the most part, they’re just going to tell people what’s going on if they haven’t read the brochure or something, and to show off the guests and things. It’s more for the first-timers than anything else.”

“But I’m a first-timer!” said Derpy.

“Yeah, but you don’t want to act like one,” Karyn said with a smile. “But all right, we’ll take a look.”

They moved down the wall where people were filling in seats. Karyn was hesitant to sit down. Derpy was comfortable standing.

“I guess this is what you meant by a lot of waiting,” said Derpy.

“Yep.”

Finally the ceremony started. A young fellow in a suit jacket took to the microphone. “Welcome to. . . “ he said, before the mike dropped out. “Oops, sorry. A bit too loud. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve all come together today to celebrate our love of My Little Pony!”

A cheer erupted from the crowd.

“Thank you. I’m sure you’re all keen to get started, but let’s just go over a few rules first. Remember when you’re dealing with the guests to be respectful and polite. Be sure to ask permission before taking pictures or hugging the guests or such.”

“Does he really need to say that?” asked Derpy. “It’s already in the book, and it’s common sense besides.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Karyn. “But there are a few people who need to hear it. Either that, or they just want to hear somebody say something.”

“Come on, let’s check out some of the other rooms.”

They made their way past the merchandising aisles again and to the front wall where they came in. Smaller auditoriums, only able to hold a few hundred people, stood against the wall. They ducked inside one.

“Gaming?” said Derpy. She looked over the room. A few of the people there were setting up to deal out cards. “Oh, no. Not playing cards again. I’ve lost enough.”

“Don’t worry. There’s no money in these games,” said Karyn.

Derpy looked over the board. The two players who were seated were intent on the game, but when they noticed Derpy, they looked up and smiled.

“Hey, it’s Derpy Hooves! You play cards?”

“No, I’ve had a bad experience. How does this game work?”

“Well,” the player said, “You’ve got this card here, right. He’s the main warrior. Then these support cards. . .” He launched into a long-winded explanation of complex rules. Derpy just nodded and stared.

“Come on, Derpy,” said Karyn. “I think this is more your speed.”

“Thanks for showing me,” said Derpy. “Enjoy your game.”

Derpy trotted over to the station Karyn was at. There was a human sitting at a computer.

“Their screen is a lot bigger than the one you have at the dorm,” Derpy said.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Karyn. “I know. Just watch.”

Derpy looked at the screen. There was a movie of Applejack subtitled on the bottom. It appeared to Derpy as if she was welcoming the human to Ponyville.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “When did Applejack record this?”

“She didn’t. It’s just something that someone drew and wrote the script for. It’s not canon.”

“Of course it’s not. It’s Pinkie Pie who has a cannon, not Applejack.”

Karyn laughed. “No, canon with one n. Well, two n’s, but not next to each other.”

“I don’t get it,” said Derpy.

“OK. Everything that actually happens to you in Equestria? That’s canon. Everything that humans on Earth make up about you? That’s not canon.”

“That’s too existential. Let’s watch the story.”

They looked on as the player went through the developments of the characters. Most people had already found the game online and played it, so Derpy was the one paying the most attention.

“It’s a nice story, even if it didn’t really happen. I guess it’s just good when things make dramatic sense. Real life doesn’t always fall into nice structure.”

“Now who’s being existential?” said Karyn.

“Whatever. Let’s go show off some more!”

Shaking her head, Karyn returned to the main floor with Derpy. Ahead of them was a line for autographs. Neither of them was interested in the guest at the end, but their attention was drawn to a young, blonde girl in a gray jacket and a pair of the wings they had seen sold. If Derpy had been human, this would have been a good approximation. The similarity was aided by what the girl was doing, which was passing out small envelopes from a mail sack.

When she reached Derpy, she stopped. Derpy was touched by the tribute. She had been pretending that she was wearing a costume, but this girl loved her so much that she really had dressed up like her, and was even doing her job.

“Do you want a letter?” the girl asked.

“No, thanks,” said Derpy. “I deal with them enough at work. This is my day off.”

She laughed and handed one to Karyn instead.

“What does it say?” asked Derpy.

Karyn opened the seal, being careful not to damage it. “It says, ‘Why can’t paper bags be a costume?’”

Derpy sighed. “Money was tight that year. I had to wear something, right? So Nightmare Moon wouldn’t eat me?”

“You don’t have to defend yourself. It’s just another reason everyone here likes you.”

They made their way past the merchandise section again. One booth that was packed the first time they had walked by was now empty. They had no display except a large sheet in many colors. The woman behind the table was stopping everyone in range.

“Excuse me,” she said, “Did you get one of our free giveaway trading cards? We’re selling the packs, but everyone gets this Rarity card.”

Derpy stopped and looked at it. “There are an awful lot of cards at this convention,” she said.

Karyn was looking at the proof sheet of the cards. “These ones aren’t even for playing. They just have information on them. Thank you,” she said as the lady handed them each one of the freebies.

“I just need to hole-punch your badge to indicate that you’ve received it,” she said.

“You know. . . “ said Derpy, and hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I know I said before that we shouldn’t be spending money, but I would like a souvenir to take back with me. Um. . . for Dinky.”

“All right. You want a couple packs of the cards? Let’s see how much they are first,” said Karyn.

“The whole set is forty, each pack is two-fifty,” the saleslady said.

“That’s actually not bad,” said Karyn. “Want to get two packs each? A nice, even ten dollars?”

“Sounds good to me!” said Derpy.

Karyn passed over the money, expecting the cards to just be put in her hand. Instead, the saleslady reached under the table and pulled out a huge shopping bag. It was half as tall as Karyn, and was emblazoned with a picture of Rainbow Dash.

“Whoa!” said Derpy. “I get a free blanket too?”

Her mistake was forgivable because of the size. The saleslady put the cards inside and handed it to Karyn.

“This is going to be unwieldy,” Karyn said as they walked away. “I bet that they give you such a large bag in order to make you buy more. They figure if you don’t have to worry about where to put things, you’ll be more inclined to spend money.”

“But we’re done, right?” said Derpy.

“Yeah. I really don’t feel like carrying this around, though.”

“Well, the next panel is the one on music that we want to see, and it doesn’t start for twenty minutes. Want to run back and drop it at the hotel?”

“Sure.”

They found the convention exit. People were still filing in en masse, but there was a clear path for those wanting to leave. After a short walk to the hotel, Derpy and Karyn got back in the entry line. Idly Karyn tapped her pockets to check on her keys and her phone and. . .

“My badge!” she said, looking around. “I lost it!”

She swore, causing Derpy’s ears to flatten.

“All right, don’t panic,” said Derpy.

“But I can’t get in! I’m going to miss the entire rest of the convention! They won’t even sell me another one if I wanted to spend the money!”

“Let’s just make sure that you didn’t drop it back in the hotel room.”

They made their way back along the path they had just traveled. Karyn kept her eyes wide open as she searched the ground. When they made it to the lobby, they had to wait for three elevator cars to come and go before they got the one that they had come down in. Karyn insisted on making sure that they took the same one that they had come down in. But the badge wasn’t there, and neither was it in the room.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

“We’ve just got to go back to the convention and check around. I’ll check around, since I still have mine,” Derpy said.

“All right. They probably have a lost and found as well. I’ll just let them know to be on the lookout.”

“Do you remember the number on it?”

“Yeah, I got lucky there,” said Karyn. “It was 1700. Nice round number.”

At the convention, they approached the main information booth. Karyn explained that she had lost her badge, and the con organizer looked at her and Derpy.

“We haven’t had anyone turn in a lost badge yet. Try back in an hour.” Karyn’s face fell. But then he reached over to a stack of blank badges and handed her one. “Use this as a temporary one. Don’t write on it or mark it up. Bring it back when you find yours.”

Karyn looked up. “Really?! You’ll let me do that? Normally badge security is so tight. . . “

“You’re walking around with someone in a full-sized Derpy Hooves costume. I don’t think that you’re trying to take advantage of us. Just don’t lose this one.”

“I won’t! I promise!”

Karyn got past the badge check with ease. If the checkers thought that it was unusual to have a blank badge, they didn’t say anything.

“That was incredibly nice of them,” said Derpy.

“I know, right? This fandom really has the best people in it. They know when to follow rules, and when to just use your own judgment.”

“And now we get to see the music panel!”

There were still another five minutes to go before the panel started, so Derpy and Karyn managed to snag what they thought were good seats. They were right in the middle, about ten rows back.

“Well,” said Derpy, “at least our little adventure with the badge cut down our wait time.”

“Yeah. Every cloud has a silver lining, right?”

“No, they don’t. If they did, I wouldn’t have to work as a mailmare.”

Karyn was about to say something, but then the panel emcee reached the microphone and greeted everyone.

Derpy leaned over. “So what is this, anyway? Like a concert?”

“Not quite. It’s just regular human songs with videos of ponies shown to them.”

“Oh. That’ll be cool to watch. I haven’t gotten to hear a whole lot of human music.”

The first video started, and Karyn watched enraptured. Derpy was not having such a good time, though.

“I can’t make out anything that they’re singing,” she said. “The acoustics in here are really bad.”

Karyn looked around and up. The ceiling was very high and was crisscrossed with structural shapes. The black curtains that separated the panel rooms probably weren’t helping. There was a speaker in the middle, but it appeared not to be turned on. The industrial-level air conditioners churning out white noise were not helping the situation. She could understand the songs because she’d heard them so often, but Derpy had no chance.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Karyn. We can move closer to the speakers, but then we have a worse angle on the screen, and we’ll have to stand.”

“What I really want to do is to stretch my wings. I haven’t flown at all since yesterday.”

Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder to hold her down. “I told you, you can’t do that. If you’re actually flying, people are going to go nuts. The least that’ll happen is that they’ll think we invented the jetpack.”

“You’re right. I’ll have to go invisible.”

“You can’t do that either. Everyone will see you disappearing.”

Derpy put her hoof to her chin in thought. “I’ll duck into the little fillies’ room, OK? No one will see if I go in the stall. Don’t worry, I’ll stay right above you the whole time.”

Derpy trotted off, and Karyn was left alone to watch the music videos. She much preferred having Derpy around to talk to, but she hoped that when the panel was over, she could explain everything they had seen to her.

It was right in the middle of one of the more techno-style videos that the screen went dark, and one of the safety staff ran up to the stage. “Um. . . we need to have everyone evacuate the building in an orderly fashion, please. Just please exit through the front.”

Karyn looked up. One of the light fixtures was showering sparks down on the floor.

“Derpy!” she said, but with conflicting meanings. “I hope she’s all right,” battled with “I’m going to kill her for causing this.” She got up and walked out with the crowd. Everyone else was looking at the ceiling to see the display. Karyn was looking to make sure that flames didn’t cover a pony-shaped patch of air.

The sun was blazing outside, and the few sections of shade were quickly occupied. Karyn walked a few yards away to a multi-story parking garage and waited. I have got to get that mare a cell phone, she thought.

Out of the shadows walked Derpy. “There you are! Thank goodness you’re all right!” said Karyn.

“I had you in my sights the whole time. I just had to find a lonely spot to turn off the magic.”

“So what happened up there?”

“I just don’t know—“

“What went wrong, yeah, I’ve heard that one,” Karyn said. “Derpy, look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Did you set the light on fire?”

“I didn’t. Honestly! I would never do something like that, you know that. Shoot, I wouldn’t even know how.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “All right, you’ve got a point. And I believe you.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Early lunch? I can get sandwiches.”

“Works for me!” said Derpy.

Karyn went off to get the sandwiches. Derpy observed everyone standing and waiting for the con to re-open. They were smiling and laughing despite the trouble. Someone started singing, and everyone joined in. Derpy still had trouble making out the words, but she could sense the camaraderie that existed among all the attendees. She’d heard some awful rumors about humans on and off in Equestria. She wished that everypony she knew could see these humans. Whatever their history, any people who could achieve this were worth knowing.

Karyn returned and they munched in the shade.

Between crunches of lettuce, Derpy said, “Cold sandwiches are the best on a hot day.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Karyn. “Cucumber, lettuce, and tomato, all crunchy and cool.”

They were kept outside for over an hour, but spirits remained high throughout the wait. When they finally announced that they would re-open, Karyn and Derpy queued up with the rest of the people near the lot.

The coordinator assigned numbers to each group based on where they were standing. Counting from his right, he delineated six groups.

“We’re number six, of course,” said Karyn. “Murphy’s law.”

“What’s that?”

“An old saying. The common version of it is, ‘Anything that can go wrong, will.’ Just like when we arrived and my luggage was next to last. Everyone’s luggage is next to last.”

Derpy tilted her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Someone’s got to be first. Look, there’s group one, going back into the con.”

“They aren’t real people. They can’t be. Real people always face hardships.”

“Then who doesn’t?” asked Derpy.

“The others. The ones that you meet for one day on a bus trip. The ones that don’t have stories of their own, but are only characters in your story.”

“In other words, background ponies?”

Karyn looked at Derpy, who smiled and winked. Just then, the coordinator said, “All right, second group, number six!”

“I guess it’s good to be a background character,” Karyn said.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Do you think life could really work like that? Like, maybe some people have fates and destinies that are written, but the rest of the people have free will, because nothing they do matters as much?”

Derpy kept shuffling forward. “I don’t know. I’m not much for heavy philosophy when we could just be having fun.”

“Good point.”

The rest of the convention went smoothly. Derpy was continually pressed for pictures, autographs, and hugs. Once Karyn went back to the merchandise booth and bought the last pair of wings, she got a few requests of her own. By the time the midnight rave was about to start, they were ready to head for the hotel.

“Unless you want to stay for the rave,” said Karyn.

“Not really. They have some parties like that at home, but they’ve never been my favorite. Not that I have anything against dancing and music, but why can’t they just have it in a dark room at two o’clock in the afternoon when everypony’s awake?”

“Search me.”

They reached the hotel. They were both tired, but it was the kind of tired where you just wanted to lay down and smile.

“Definitely the highlight of the summer,” said Derpy.

“Oh, yeah. Only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We have to take the flight home.”

Author's Note

And now, the preview of next week's chapter!

Trust me,” said Derpy. “I know this trip like the back of my hoof.”

“Well, the station’s pretty, at least.”

Derpy picked up the bags with her wings. “They’ve really built it up since I came to Ponyville. Back then it was just a stone slab. Some stations are still like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The insufferable clod!” said Derpy. “He thought you were some kind of servant. Why couldn’t he be nice to you?”

“I guess not everypony’s used to humans.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What did you say, Derpy?” asked Karyn.

“Oh. . . never mind.”

“No, come on, tell me.”

“You’ll think it’s silly,” said Derpy.

“No, I won’t. Please.”

Be sure to read it, same time as usual!

18: One Derp Over the Line

“Bag packed?”

“Check!”

“Got your sunglasses?”

“Check!”

“Insured in case we fall into a crack between the universes?”

“Derpy!”

Derpy chuckled, and a moment later she and Karyn were descending in circles over the edge of Ponyville. Karyn was holding on to a duffel bag and her purse, and was a little unnerved to find that Derpy’s stick-on safety spell was concatenative. She couldn’t open her hand even to move the bag.

Once they landed and Karyn was free to move again, she surveyed the station. “I’m so glad that we’re finally going on the train. After what happened last time, I thought it was destined to be a dream unfulfilled.”

“I would have found a way eventually, if you were that into it,” said Derpy.

“I am. You remember how bad that plane trip was. I’m really looking forward to travel the pony way. And speaking of looking, look at this station! It’s so clean!”

The train station had the thatched roof common to Ponyville buildings, but the wood was so polished and stained that it looked liquid. The ticket office was split into two with a walkway between them, and lots of ponies were going into the waiting area. Karyn noticed a retractable awning that could be extended in case of rain. As it was, the sun was shining low in the sky with only a few clouds.

“Derpy, what time is it?” she asked.

“About a quarter to eight.”

“PM?”

“Yeah. Why, is there a problem?”

Karyn pulled out her phone. “There is. I’ve lost the whole day. We left at a quarter to eight in the morning. What happened?”

“First off, you haven’t lost anything. You’re still going back at a quarter to eight in the morning,” Derpy said.

“I will never get that down. Still, why did we jump forward?”

“Because the train’s at eight in the evening.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “Wasn’t the point of the trip to see things from the train? We can’t do that in the dark.”

“Trust me,” said Derpy. “I know this trip like the back of my hoof.”

“Well, the station’s pretty, at least.”

Derpy picked up the bags with her wings. “They’ve really built it up since I came to Ponyville. Back then it was just a stone slab. Some stations are still like that.”

They reached the platform and put down the bags. “Please tell me you have the tickets,” said Karyn.

“Like I said, trust me.” Derpy reached into her saddlebag, but came up empty-hoofed. Karyn looked at her warily. Then Derpy, like a magician doing a conjuring trick, flicked her hoof and made two tickets appear.

“Tee-hee,” she continued. “I put the tickets in magical storage. It’s one of the new spells. I got the idea from some of the things I saw on your computer.”

“Mmhm,” Karyn said. “What would happen if you lost the spell?”

“I’d just get another one, and the tickets would still be there.”

“Couldn’t you just do the same thing if you lost the tickets themselves?”

Derpy blinked. “Oh, look, here comes the train!”

The train was nothing like Karyn remembered from the show’s opening. Although the engine was still the coal-fired pipsqueak that she knew, the cars had grown longer and more luxurious. Each one had two decks. Only the caboose at the other end had the same diminutive size. Despite the upgrade, the train still had the homey charm she expected from Equestria.

“Come on, Karyn!” said Derpy. “We’re first class, so we have a line to ourselves!”

Karyn followed her to a section near the rear of the train where a velvet rope was set up. There were only a few other ponies in line, and Karyn figured that they must be from Canterlot. They were all unicorns and dressed quite fancily.

Derpy passed her a ticket, and Karyn looked it over. It was beautiful, thick, cream-colored paper with a scalloped edge. The bold black printing reminded Karyn of the old West. “It’s a shame to have to give this up to the conductor,” she said. “It’s so pretty.”

“Maybe if you ask nice, they’ll let you keep it.”

The train finally came to a stop, and when the doors opened, half a dozen ponies in blue hats came galloping toward the first-class line. When one of them picked up the bags of the first unicorn couple in line, Karyn figured that they were porters.

The haughty ponies ahead of them took no notice of the porters, but Karyn wanted to be polite. Knowing she would stick out like a sore hoof anyway, she went right up to the next blue-hatted pony in line. He was a big Earth pony stallion.

“Hi, I’m Karyn. Nice to meet you.”

He threw her a funny look. “They call me Smash, Miss. Excuse me, I’ll take the bags.”

Karyn whispered to Derpy, “That’s probably not a good name for a baggage handler.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it sounds like he’ll break everything.”

Derpy laughed. “Oh, Karyn. Smashing baggage is just a euphemism for carrying it. Everypony knows that.”

Karyn shrugged and climbed aboard the train.

The hallway was narrow, and Smash had to hunch his shoulders to make it through, but once he made it to their room, they saw that the space was well-used. Two plush seats faces each other with racks overhead for the bags. The center area could hold a table or be vacated to fold the seats into beds.

Smash lifted the bags into the rack as if they weighed nothing at all. On his way out, he said to Karyn, “If you need anything, anything at all, Miss, just ring. The button’s right there.” He pointed at the base of the window.

Once he was gone, Derpy said, “I think he likes you! Wasn’t he a hunk?”

Karyn shrugged. “I really wouldn’t know from stallions. I was just trying to be nice to him.”

“Well, you sure charmed him. Sit down, we’re about to pull out.”

Derpy took the rear-facing seat and let Karyn have the one that was more normal. The window was wide enough so that they both could see. From outside, they heard a pony shout, “All aboard!” A moment later, they were on their way.

What Karyn soon realized was that the towns could be so pleasant because the ponies supply infrastructure was between them. There were lots of farms and manufacturers between the towns. Small stations, some that were no more than the stone slab Derpy had talked about, served these concerns, and the farms often had put up proud banners by the stations. Karyn enjoyed seeing the signs like “Woodpony Tree Farm,” “Cluckworth Chicken Ranch,” and so on.

“Looking at all these farms is making me hungry,” said Derpy.

“Me too. Want to get dinner?”

“Sure. Let me just take care of one thing.” Derpy poked the buzzer with her hoof. As they left the bedroom, Smash came walking up.

“Can I help you, Miss?”

“We’re going to dinner. Could you please make up our room for the night?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Do you know when we will reach Fillydelphia?”

“Nine-eighteen, Miss.”

Derpy thanked him, and she and Karyn walked down the narrow hall to the dining car. When they were seated, Derpy put on a knowing smile.

“Fillydelphia is a big stop. They’ll hold the train for ten or fifteen minutes.”

“I didn’t realize it was so close to Ponyville,” Karyn said.

“Tomorrow, on the way back, it’ll be a good place to stop and stretch our legs before we reach home. But going, well, we’ll want to be back in our room when we stop.”

“OK. I don’t want to rush dinner, though.”

“We shouldn’t have to. They’re generally pretty quick and attentive, even when I’m not going first-class.”

As though to prove her point, a waiter walked over and asked Derpy for her order.

“I’ll have the dandelion green salad, please.”

“And for your companion?” the waiter asked, still looking at Derpy.

“I don’t know what she wants,” Derpy said, gesturing toward Karyn.

“I’ll give you a few minutes.”

“No, no,” said Karyn. “I know what I want. The mushroom special, please.”

The waiter never looked at Karyn, and stomped off.

“The insufferable clod!” said Derpy. “He thought you were some kind of servant. Why couldn’t he be nice to you?”

“I guess not everypony’s used to humans.”

“Maybe, but you’d think a waiter who rides the trains and deals with griffins and minotaurs and all sorts of different people, would be more open-minded.”

Karyn shrugged. “I don’t really mind.”

“But I do. Take out your ticket.”

Confused, Karyn pulled out the beautiful ticket that Derpy had given her. When the waiter came back, Derpy gave him her meanest look.

“Excuse me. I want to show you something. This is a first-class ticket for this train. It belongs to my friend Karyn. Basically what it means is that we’re paying extra to be assured a good time. We can’t have that when our waiter is discriminating. I’d like you to apologize to her. Or send the conductor over.”

The waiter looked as if he had swallowed castor oil, but Derpy maintained her stare. He turned his neck and faced Karyn. “Forgive me, please,” he said.

“Apology accepted,” said Karyn.

“Enjoy your mushrooms.”

He left, and Derpy said, “I wouldn’t mind it so much if he didn’t look at me because of my eyes. But you shouldn’t suffer just for being human.”

“I probably would have taken it exactly the other way,” said Karyn. “But let’s not dwell on it. We’re both here to have a good time, and I plan on doing it.”

They raised their glasses and drank a toast.

When they had finished, the waiter returned. Looking nowhere in particular, he asked if they wanted dessert.

“What time is it?” Derpy asked.

“Ten minutes after nine.”

“Thank you, no. We have to be getting back.”

The food was included in the price of the ticket, so they didn’t have to pay a bill. Back in the bedroom, Karyn barely recognized it. The seats had been swung out and doubled in width. They formed a set of bunk beds right next to the window.

“Which one do you want?” asked Derpy.

“I’ll go ahead and take the lower. If we fall out of bed, you have a chance to recover and fly back in.”

“OK. Hop in and I’ll show you my favorite part of riding the train.”

Even though she wasn’t particularly tired, Karyn took off her day clothes and laid her head down. Derpy flew up and lay in the same direction.

They felt the train slow and then come to a stop. The doors opened and steps extended themselves. Down the length of the platform, some of the porters helped more ponies on, while others removed trash from the train and stocked it with supplies.

“So what’s the big deal about this?”

Derpy spoke in a distant voice. “I’ve always had a peculiar feeling when I’m lying abed in a conveyance. A train. . . or a boat, as I’ve done it there too. Take a look. Everypony is running around, the porters working, the passengers climbing on. They’re all on time pressure, trying to get the train back on the road as soon as possible. Other ponies are in the dining car putting food in their mouths. Or getting dressed for bed. But not us.

“The day’s work is done. We have literally nothing to do, no tasks ahead. It’s complete freedom. We can be completely idle. I can’t do that when there’s mail to be delivered, or when I have to help my friends, or when I have to work around the house. But right now, I’m free to stop and wait.

“Beyond that, once we go to sleep, the train’s going to keep moving. Our goal is to get to the destination, and we’ll be accomplishing that goal while we sleep. That’s something that doesn’t happen every day. Usually sleep is wasted time. Tonight it’s useful time.

“Accomplishment without effort. It’s the lazy pony’s dream world.”

Karyn watched the activity and thought about what Derpy had said. “I think I know the feeling you’re talking about. I remember one time when I was going on a car trip with my folks. I got in the car with both of them, but my father forgot something, so he went back in the house. It took him a while, so my mother followed. I was all alone. It was a beautiful day, sun shining and hot. They hadn’t turned the car on, so if I had just sat there, I would have baked in the heat. But they left the doors open, both of them. And that’s when I felt it.

“There’s something about a vehicle, a thing that’s designed to be moved, when its doors are open and it’s just sitting still. You feel a connection between the car and the road. You realize that you’re sitting on a piece of metal and plastic and cloth. You feel every atom that makes up the car, and not just what it is. It’s a moment of contemplation. Then everyone comes back, the doors close, and you’re on your way.”

They both looked at the stairs down to the platform.

“I wonder if it’s the same reason that people like fancy doors on their cars. Gull-wings, suicide doors, that kind of thing,” Karyn said.

“Suicide? Those poor doors.”

Karyn laughed, which shook them out of their reflective mood. “No, it’s not the doors. The idea is that their doors that open the other way from how you saw my car doors are. If you tried to open mine while driving on the highway, the force of the wind would just close it. But if it opened backwards, the wind would make it fly open and you’d fall out and die.”

“Why would you open the doors on the road?”

“No idea.”

They spoke with long pauses in between, the kind of conversation that two friends have in bed when they can’t see each other, and neither of them know if what they have to say is important enough to keep it going, or if the other wants to drift off. They listened to the knock of the wheels on the rails. In the fading daylight, the trees moved past like ghosts, whipping into a gray-green wind.

Derpy was mumbling something. “What did you say, Derpy?” asked Karyn.

“Oh. . . never mind.”

“No, come on, tell me.”

“You’ll think it’s silly,” said Derpy.

“No, I won’t. Please.”

Derpy sighed. “It’s something I say every night. I didn’t want to bother you with it. I said, ‘Princess Luna, keeper of the night, please watch over me as I sleep. Don’t let anything happen to me while I can’t protect myself. Make sure all the ponies are safe from monsters and that all the little foals have their mommies and daddies to care for them. Thanks.’ Like I said, silly. Princess Luna is all the way in Canterlot, and she can’t hear me. Even if she could, she does all that anyway. She doesn’t need some dumb pegasus pony telling her what to do.”

Karyn never said prayers herself, and at any other time would have agreed with Derpy’s assessment. At that moment, she said, “It’s not silly. I’m sure that she can hear you, and that it is important. Princess Luna’s seen a lot over a thousand years. She probably has magic that can hear everypony, and is happy that somepony acknowledges her. Maybe if you had been around at that time over a thousand years ago to do that, she wouldn’t have turned into Nightmare Moon.”

She put her head back down. Derpy shifted in her bunk. As the train’s rhythm became background noise, Karyn listened to Derpy’s mumbling. “. . . and keep a special watch over my friend Karyn. She’s a human in a strange world to her, and sometimes ponies don’t treat her right. Don’t let her be sad or angry. Even when she goes home to her world, keep an eye on her, please?”

Karyn smiled and went to sleep.

*******************************************

In the morning, they were traveling over an open prairie. Small scrub grasses dotted the land, and the ground was getting sandier. Karyn woke up and noticed Derpy still asleep. She went into the attached bathroom. It was cramped, but not so much as it could have been, since it had to accommodate a pony. She arranged her hair as best as she could and brushed her teeth. Then she went back and sat on the bunk watching the scenery until she heard Derpy raise her head and give a small grunt.

She tumbled out of the bunk and hovered, trying to get her bearings. Karyn looked at her tangled mane and her eyes that were still filled with sleep.

“Mornin’” Derpy said, scratching her flank with a hoof.

“Good morning to you, sleepy head.”

Derpy looked out the window. “I think we’re nearly there. The end of the line.”

“So I finally get to know where we’re going?”

“Take a look.”

Derpy went off to attend to her own toilet, and Karyn felt the train slow down. It was her sense of smell that tipped her off first. A salt breeze came faintly into the train.

“The ocean?” Karyn said, but there was no response.

They were pulling to a stop when Derpy came out. Karyn had pulled her bag down from the rack over the objections of Smash, who had wanted to carry everything by himself. He was contented with hauling Derpy’s luggage.

“Well, this is our stop,” said Derpy. “Welcome to Mountauk Point beach.”

Karyn looked over where they were. Just across the tracks was a boardwalk, and beyond that was a spreading expanse of white sand, cresting in dunes and slanting down to the water. Small waves lapped at the beach and kept the slow rhythm that the train had had as it came to a stop.

“This is what we’re doing?” she said.

“Yeah. You don’t like the beach?”

“I love the beach. It’s perfect. Let’s go.”

Next week: the beach and what happens there!

19: Beach Derpy, There On the Sand

They were able to get a prime location right by the entrance to the boardwalk and just on top of the slanting hill down to the water. Derpy spread a large blanket over the sand and anchored it deep with a stomp of her hooves.

“OK, now I get why we had to take the night train. You wanted to get here before the crowds.”

Derpy sat down and looked at the water. “That’s not the only reason. One time, once, I took a day train. That was when I saw it. Before the end of the track—five miles before it, I guess—there’s a sign that says, ‘Road ends – five miles.’ The sign is old and yellow, and it’s in a particularly barren spot. No trees, no houses, nothing. I don’t know why, but it gave me this vague, disquieting sadness. Maybe I do know. The railroad goes all over Equestria. Through hundreds of cities and towns. It’s so busy and loud and moving. And then I see that sign and that empty place, and the sign’s saying that it all ends soon.

“It’s the same reason I don’t like to look at this rail station.”

Karyn looked back, but Derpy kept her eyes on the waves. Karyn saw what she meant. The roof of the white building had a tall slant, and a section overhung the end. Next to it, the track had a metal guard to keep trains from falling off. The whole thing was like a wall beyond which nothing could pass. It was an unnatural sight to see railroad rails just stop. She turned around and did not look again.

They had no beach chairs, so Karyn spent a few minutes digging out a kind of seat in the sand. She was still lying down, but could at least see the ocean without crunching her chin into her chest. After a few minutes, she heard a muffled rumbling and scraping sound.

“Is that thunder?” she said. “I don’t see any rain clouds.”

“Naw, they wouldn’t have a thunderstorm in prime beach weather. It’s just them.” Derpy pointed a hoof.

Karyn looked down the beach and saw a team of two pegasus stallions pulling an odd cart behind them on the sand. She couldn’t tell what it was for until they passed. On the back of the cart, she saw a metal grate with spikes on it. Above it was a hopper of fresh sand that was spread below. Any object or trash that was a few inches below the surface was pulled onto the grate and carried along.

“They come by every morning to do this,” Derpy said. “It’s just like back home, where we have to move the clouds into position and otherwise manage nature. If we don’t do this, the sand will wash away into the sea or get caught on the wind and blow into town. It’s not like on Earth where everything works by itself.”

“Actually, beach erosion happens on Earth too. And they do put a lot of effort into stopping it.”

“But I thought that you don’t have to do things on Earth like run the leaves or wrap up winter.”

Karyn contemplated. “Yeah, there’s some things we don’t have to do, but it’s different. In those cases, if you don’t do them, things stay the same. The leaves stay on the trees, the snow stays on the ground. In this case, if you don’t make the effort, things get actively worse. That’s the same on Earth.”

“Oh,” said Derpy.

The rumbling faded and rose as the scraper made its way down the beach and back. Karyn sat back and ignored it. She never thought of beaches as having ends that someone could go back and forth over like a lawn mower. Beaches were supposed to go on forever.

“Maybe it does, and they just have more teams down the beach,” she muttered to herself.

After a half-hour or so, during which she and Derpy just sat and watched the waves, Karyn realized that the rumbling had stopped. She glanced behind her.

She had never seen a beach like that. They were always either pockmarked with footprints—or hoofprints, in this case—or smoothed by the water. This was sand that was flat but dry. It looked like a tasty white cake.

An elderly unicorn walked by a few minutes later. His horn was glowing, but Karyn couldn’t see any result of the magic. She asked Derpy about it.

“Oh, I’ve talked to him,” Derpy said. “He’s using a metal detection spell. It can tell when something’s buried in the sand. Usually it’s just a tin can or something, but once in a while he finds something like a ring that somepony dropped.”

“Ah. A good hobby, and he can make money.”

“How?”

“Well, if he does find a ring, he can sell it,” said Karyn.

“Oh, no. He makes every effort to find the owner in that case.”

Karyn stared at him for a moment. Not everything about Equestrian beaches was the same.

Other ponies started arriving, setting up their own blankets and chairs. A few stares were directed at Karyn, but nopony said anything. It was a perfect day and, for the time, everyone there was content to just relax and look at the waves.

The sound of the breakers combined with the rocking motion started to have a relaxing, almost hypnotic effect on Derpy and Karyn. They watched the wind catch the water and churn it, saw it turn over, sometimes folding from one end to the other. Karyn played a mental game where she tried to predict whether the next wave would go farther up the beach than the last one. When they finally petered out, they would be pulled back to the ocean.

The waves went silent for half a minute, when finally a huge one crashed on the shore and foamed up to within inches of the blanket. Karyn chuckled to herself. “That one almost got us,” she said.

“Huh? Yeah.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Nothing much,” said Derpy. “I really like to just come here and turn my brain off, you know? Veg out. Relax. Meditate.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

Their peaceful reverie was shattered a moment later when a young foal came charging up the beach toward the water. She had rubber swim aids on all four of her legs, and when she dived into the water, she was held up by them. She must have thought that this was the funniest thing ever, as she splashed and laughed while kicking her legs.

Karyn smiled at seeing the little filly so happy. She thought of something. “Hey, Derpy?”

“Yeah?”

“Do any sea ponies live around here?”

“Any what now?” asked Derpy.

“Sea ponies. You know, live under water, helpful as can be, like that?”

“Excuse me? Where in Equestria would you get that idea? Ponies who can live in the sea? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“OK, you don’t have to jump down my throat,” said Karyn.

The filly’s mother had come by and was playing with her in the water. She climbed up on the mother’s back and they swam further out where they could float without being tossed about.

“Are there any lifeguards here?” asked Karyn.

“Of course,” said Derpy, pointing. “Right there.”

Karyn looked up. Far in the distance, what she had thought was a bird turned out to be a pegasus in a striped shirt with a whistle. “That’s no fun for him,” she said. “On Earth, lifeguards get to sit in tall chairs and watch the water. When they’re not saving lives, they get stared at for their bodies.”

“Oh, yeah. Lifeguards have good bodies here too. But I’m sure he’s having fun. He gets to fly all day. That’s fun enough for me.”

“Although, it’s good to have him up there where he can get to ponies quickly. When I was very young, I would go to the beach with my mother, and she liked to swim way far out in the ocean. It always unnerved me. I was so afraid that she was going to drown and the lifeguard just wouldn’t be able to get there in time. If indeed he would notice one woman out that far going under and not coming up.”

“Why didn’t she swim closer, if it bothered you?” Derpy asked.

“I’m not sure I ever told her. Every time she came back, and I forgot about being scared.”

The conversation faded, and the two girls laid back and relaxed until Derpy declared that she was going to the concession stand for refreshments. She asked what Karyn wanted, but got a noncommittal answer.

Karyn, now alone, looked around her. Ponies were arriving in droves now, families mostly, but a few young ones that she thought of as teenagers, even though she wasn’t exactly sure how pony ages worked. A few yards off, some ponies were driving poles into the sand and setting up a volleyball net.

Karyn watched the game with interest. The strange part was seeing them staying on all fours until the ball came their way, then rearing up on their hind legs to hit it. It made for some funny moments if a pony wasn’t expecting the ball to come his way. More than once, returns were made with a head. Karyn wondered if they had spare volleyballs in case some unicorn accidently punctured it.

When the ball was spiked in her direction, she got off the blanket and tossed it to the pony nearest. “Thanks. You want to play?”

“Are you sure?” said Karyn. “I wouldn’t want to mess up the teams.”

“Nah, we never worry about that. Ponies come and go all the time. In an hour, it’ll probably be twenty-three-on-eighteen or something like that. We set up the net in the morning, and the game goes pretty much all day.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Cool. My name’s Skeg, by the way.”

“Keg? Like to drink beer out of?” said Karyn.

“No. Skeg,” he said, emphasizing the s, “like the fin of a surfboard.”

Karyn followed the young stallion back to the play area.

“You want to serve?” he asked.

“Sure. Where’s the out-of-bounds line?”

“It’s wherever the last pony is standing.”

Karyn gave an underhand serve that was returned to their side, but a pony at the front spiked it for a point, so she got to serve again.

“Hey, Skeg?” she called.

“Yeah?”

“What’s to stop the other side from just all crowding up by the net, so that any serve I make goes out of bounds?”

“Well, that wouldn’t be any fun,” he said.

The other ponies nodded and looked at her funny. But the answer made sense. She served again, but lost the point. Everyone moved around.

They didn’t announce the score, and Karyn was uncertain if they indeed kept score. Each point was a game unto itself, even if it only lasted a few seconds.

After a few points, she looked back to the blanket to see Derpy, hooves laden with pop bottles and other goodies, moving her head with a confused look on her face. “Over here!” Karyn called, and Derpy saw her.

“Come on over and play with us!”

Derpy trotted over. Though she was rather older than all the stallions and mares involved, they welcomed her. One pony ducked under the net so that Derpy and Karyn could stay on the same team, while not overloading one side.

After a few points, Karyn whispered to Derpy. “Hey, let’s try something. Next time the ball comes to me, I’m going to hit it as high as I can. You fly up and get a good spike on the ball. It’ll be fun!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, come on!”

The moment didn’t come the next point, or the next, but soon after, Karyn got a clean look at the ball. With her best technique, she hit it with all her might straight up. Derpy leaped in the air and flapped her wings. She put her hooves together like she was swinging an axe, and hammered the ball toward the sand.

On the other side, a unicorn casually pushed it forward with his magic, redirecting it to land on the other side.

Karyn was about to say something, but she realized that if one pony subspecies used its special talents, so could another.

“Whew. That was fun,” said Derpy.

“We lost the point, though,” said Karyn.

“It was still fun to hit. I’m going to go cool off with a swim. See you guys later.”

“Actually, I’m going to duck out too and have a drink.”

They left the game and headed back to the blanket, where Derpy made a right turn and headed for the ocean. Just before the water line, she turned back to Karyn.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t swim out too far.”

Karyn rolled her eyes and went back to the blanket. She found the refreshments that Derpy had picked up. Beginning to sweat, she opened one of the soda bottles. It was ice cold and cherry flavored.

“Sweet!” she said, her lips puckered. “But that’s good.” She turned to the little bag of cookies, but held off on eating them.

She sat back down and scanned the water. Derpy was out among the waves, sitting in the ocean and letting them crash over her head. Karyn dug in Derpy’s bag and found the book that she had brought in case they got bored. She pulled it out and started to read, but kept getting distracted by Derpy’s laughing and screaming. She got up and walked toward the water.

She plopped down next to Derpy.

“You’re just like a child here,” she said.

“It was some of my best memories when I was a filly. My daddy would take me to the beach whenever he could. Not too often, but that’s what made it so special.

The dialogue between them was cut off by a tall wave. They held their breaths, but once their heads came up, Derpy went right back to her childish squealing.

“You’re crazy,” Karyn said, “but at least we’re cooling off.”

After another wave, Karyn thought of something. “Hey, Derpy? Did you bring any towels?”

“No.”

“How do you dry off then?”

“Mostly from the sun,” Derpy said. But as she stood up, she repeated, “Mostly.” She shook her body violently, splashing Karyn over the head.

“Ack!”

“Go on, try it!”

“I’m not sure it works if you don’t have fur,” said Karyn. She stepped up out of the water and did a twist-like dance. “Yeah, I’m pretty much still dripping.”

“Well, the blanket’s thick enough. I don’t mind if it gets a little wet.”

Despite the permission, Karyn stood up and let the sun hit her for a minute or two before sitting back down. Feeling the water evaporate off her tickled a little, but the warmth was so enjoyable that she didn’t care.

“One more thing to do to make the beach experience complete,” said Derpy.

“Oh, what’s that?”

Derpy had a happy smile as she rooted through her bag. “Aha! Got it!” She pulled out a small metal pail and shovel and held them up to the sun, where it backlit them.

“Sandcastle?” said Karyn.

“You got it!”

“I bet you’re the kind who can make a fancy castle that even puts Princess Celestia’s to shame. You probably know the precise formula for getting the perfect sticky sand.” Karyn said.

Derpy cleared out a flat circle, then trotted down to where the sand got wet and shoved the bucket in, filled it with the shovel, and tamped it down with her hoof. Back by the blanket, she slammed it down and gently lifted the bucket. “There!”

“Really? That’s it?”

“We can make more, though. And take one of the cups we had for the soda and use it to make towers and turrets and such.”

“OK, whatever you say,” said Karyn.

It had been a long time since she had played in the sand, and even when she was a child, never found it that entertaining. But the contact high she got from Derpy made it worth it, as Derpy went back and forth to fill her pail and provide water for Karyn’s sand.

“Try to get one little cupful on top of the center castle, right there! Yeah!” said Derpy. Gently, the sand rose. Derpy continually spread out more until they had a couple of square feet loaded with upside-down bucket shapes made of sand.

“I think that’s good enough,” Derpy said.

“It looks very nice.”

“It does, doesn’t it? OK, ready to begin?”

Karyn looked at her. Derpy was focused on the sandcastles. “Begin? I thought we were done.”

“Come on, all that was the set up. Now the fun begins!”

Derpy lifted up a front hoof. With a glint in her eye, and with all the force she could muster, she stomped down on the nearest sandcastle. She was slightly off-center, and a thin side of it remained standing for a moment before collapsing under its own instability. Derpy stood back to reveal her hoofprint in the sand.

“Missed it a little. I’m out of practice,” she said. “Never mind, I’ll get this one dead center. Hya!” She leaped in the air, gave herself a little boost with wing power, and slammed down on another castle. This time the whole thing exploded and collapsed at the same time, kicking sand everywhere and leaving a volcano-like crater after she withdrew.

Karyn was dumbfounded. “Really? This is why we made all of these? To smash them?”

“Of course! Go ahead, try one!”

Unsure of herself, she removed one of her flip-flops and put her foot gingerly on one of the castles. She could feel the graininess of the sand.

“Don’t just push down,” said Derpy. “Go for height. Really stomp that thing.”

Karyn put her foot back down and leaped in the air. When she came down, the castle gave way and her foot was encased in cool, wet sand. It was squishy and felt to her like compressing a thick cushion.

“OK, that was a little fun,” she admitted. “Come on, let’s do more!”

They systematically destroyed all of their handiwork. A few other ponies gave them funny looks, but mostly they ignored them. At last, the only one left standing was a four-pail cluster decorated as fancily as they could manage.

“Why don’t you go ahead, Karyn?” Derpy said.

“No, this was your idea. You take it.”

“Are you sure?

“Yeah,” said Karyn.

Derpy stared, focused, leaped. She hovered in the air, centering the castle beneath her, then in a single moment, she snapped her wings back to her body and spread her legs. She plummeted and belly-flopped onto the castle, then rolled over onto her back laughing.

“That was nuts,” Karyn said.

“Yeah. But definitely the highlight. Come on. Let’s pack up and shower off. The train back is coming soon.”

They shook off everything as best as they could, but the blanket and things still had sand sticking to them. It was worth the tradeoff, though, since everything had that wonderful beach smell coming off it. Up by the boardwalk were the showers, and Derpy showed Karyn how to use them by pulling a long chain. The water kept flowing until some mechanism raised the chain back up.

“Do me a favor, Derpy?”

“What’s that?”

“Turn your back. I got sand inside my bathing suit and I want to wash it out.”

“I don’t mind,” said Derpy.

“But I do. I know that you walk around naked all the time, but I can’t get used to it. Besides, you have your tail to cover up all your private bits.”

“My bits aren’t private. If you want me to buy something, just ask and I’ll tell you if I can afford it.”

“Not your coins,” said Karyn. “Never mind. Just humor me.”

Derpy shrugged and turned while Karyn washed up. Once that was done, they headed across the boardwalk to the station.

“I’m glad you’re like me,” said Karyn.

“What do you mean?”

“The train’s not due for another half-hour. We probably could have spent more time on the beach, but we’d both rather get here quickly and wait rather than do everything at the last minute.”

“Oh, sure,” said Derpy. “That only makes sense. It’s never any fun to run for a train.”

“Well, since we have so much time, I’m going to use the little fillies’ room before it gets here.”

Derpy put the bags down and sat on a bench. She hummed idly to herself until Karyn reemerged. But instead of coming over, she waved Derpy over.

“Come check this out!”

“What is it?”

“They’ve got some building plans posted here,” said Karyn.

Derpy trotted over, wondering what could be so interesting in building plans. On the wall of the ticket office, she saw them. The paper was headed with the notice that Princess Celestia had approved funds to renovate the Mountauk train line and station. Times of suspended service were listed below.

“I see,” said Derpy. “They’re closing down and limiting service next week. It’s a good thing we came now.”

“Not that, look at the drawing of the new line.”

Derpy saw the simple draft of how the new line would look. Two tracks, instead of one, would run all the way from the next junction point. It would enable them to run more frequent trains. Her eyes followed the road from west to east, before finally. . .

“Huh,” she said.

“Exactly,” said Karyn. “The road won’t just come to a stop anymore.” The picture showed that at the end of the line, they were building a balloon loop to turn the trains around. “They’ll probably even take down that depressing sign. The road won’t end in five miles, or anywhere else. This isn’t the end anymore.”

“It’s the beginning,” they said together.

They waited for the train in silence. They were the only first-class ticket holders who had gone that far out, and they had the entire car to themselves for the first few stops. Pulling the curtains wide, Karyn could see the countryside through the window in a panorama.

They passed through a tourist town filled with antique shops. “Ooh, we should have stopped there,” said Karyn. “I would love to pick up something from old Equestria.”

“We can look next time. Most of the stuff is just weird, even for me. Or too big for you to carry, like furniture and lamps.”

The train next took them back along the shore. Tall grasses held the sand dunes in place, and a footpath ran along. The water was low and flat and had no waves here.

“I’m surprised that they don’t need a sign to protect the dunes,” said Karyn. “On earth, there are always warnings about keeping off them.”

“Why would a pony want to run on the sand when there’s a path set up for them?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t. I was talking about a sign that told ponies not to eat the grass.”

Derpy laughed. “Oh, Karyn. We’re not such slaves to our stomachs. Everypony knows that that grass is the only thing keeping the sand and the path from being washed away, so they wouldn’t eat it. Even if it does look awfully tasty.”

Soon after that, they pulled into the first major junction. Derpy flew off her seat and pointed. “Karyn! Do you see all those stone blocks? Those have got to be the ties for the new extension. I wish I could come and see them building it.”

“Maybe you should apply for the long-distance mail route.”

“Oh, if I had to fly all the way out here, forget it. My wings would fall off before I got halfway.”

“That would be no good,” said Karyn. “If your wings fell off, you’d have to join the railroad builders and swing a hammer all day.”

After the train pulled out of that station, it started to build speed. They advanced into a forested area, where trees zipped by at lightning speed. Karyn tried to spot some of the trees, but everything became a mesh of leaves and broken sunshine.

All at once the forest ended, and they were thrown onto a bridge over a gorge. Derpy heard Karyn’s sharp intake of breath, and she smiled. Thousands of feet below, a river meandered through like a shining blue snake. The sides of the gorge were painted in mineral deposits and shadows as the river had worn away the rock over uncounted years. Trees and bushes dotted the landscape, and occasionally, on the rock walls, a brave weed struggled toward the sun.

“I’m always impressed with this part,” she said. “I wanted you to see it like this, not knowing that it was coming. That’s why I had us take the day train back.”

Karyn was speechless. She just watched.

When they finally reached the towns and cities, Derpy said, “Look at the track next to us, going the other way. No matter how much of a blur all the surroundings become, that rail always looks the same.”

Karyn focused, and saw what she meant. The steel, long since polished to a mirror finish by the wheels of the trains, gave the illusion of stillness among the movement.

“It’s one more thing I love about the train,” Derpy continued. “Kinda symbolic, you know? Everything moves, but the rails hold steady.”

“I guess. I think I still feel the motion somewhat. It’s definitely going to be perfect once that loop is complete. It’ll mean that Equestria is always moving, that there’s always something new to do, something more to see. The ponies here will keep going, forever.”

The speed of the train and the calming effect made the time go by fast. Before they knew it, they were pulling back into the Ponyville station, hustled off so that the train could go on to Canterlot.

“Well, that was that,” said Derpy. “What did you think?”

“Well worth it. I think I’m going to have to get a part-time job here to save bits to do that again.”

“Can it be part time when you’re not really spending time?”

“I don’t know, Derpy,” said Karyn. “But speaking of which, I do have to be getting back.”

Derpy found the spell to take Karyn back to Earth. After she was alone again in her room,

Karyn wished that there was a train to take between the worlds instead.

Author's Note

Next week:

“It’s hard to believe that the summer’s more than half over already,” she said.

“Yeah. So what are we doing this fine day anyway?” asked Derpy.

“I figured we could relax a bit and have a picnic.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Yeah?”

“How long have we known each other now?”

Derpy looked up. “I don’t know. Four, five months maybe? Why?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen you, on Earth, for an extended period of time, since I came home from school. And I still can’t get over it. You being real. Ponies being real. Equestria and everything. I just never thought that I would really get to see magic or meet you or any of that.”

Be sure to read it!

20: Cat on a Hot Tin Derp

Karyn thanked her mother as she grabbed the car keys from the rack by the door. If she took additional time to start the car, to the tune of an invisible pony getting in the passenger side, no one noticed.

“It’s hard to believe that the summer’s more than half over already,” she said.

“Yeah. So what are we doing this fine day anyway?” asked Derpy.

“I figured we could relax a bit and have a picnic.”

Although she couldn’t be seen, the movement of the seat belt gave away Derpy’s reaction. “Really? Just a picnic?”

“Well, for the most part,” said Karyn. “You see, there’s a park we can have it in, and there should be a nice spot where just about no one goes. So we can chill out and chat like we used to do in my dorm.”

They drove along what was nominally a highway, but stores were all along the road and cars constantly turned in and out. There were even stoplights. Karyn pulled into one of the parking lots in front of a convenience store.

“Do you trust me to pick up the food and such for the picnic?” she asked.

“Of course I do,” said Derpy.

“Is there anything in particular that you’d like to have?”

“Maybe some alfalfa?”

Karyn unbuckled and got out of the car. “I think that could be a tall order, but I’ll see what they have.”

Derpy busied herself by playing with the climate control and radio knobs, then fiddling with her seat. Karyn’s parents had some fancy features in their car, and Derpy found endless enjoyment moving the seat up and down. When another car pulled up, and the person getting out did a double take at the seat moving on its own, she stopped.

Karyn finally returned, bags in hand.

“Well, there was no alfalfa, but they did have this. It’s probably left over from Easter, so I don’t know how good it is.”

She handed Derpy a small plastic bag labeled “Edible Grass.” Derpy was confused for a moment, then saw that it was some kind of candy.

“Strawberry flavor?” she said.

“Yeah. It’s probably just spun sugar. You should brush your teeth when you get home.

Derpy stared at the bags. Something was off, but she couldn’t quite place it. There was a finger-snap, and she said, “Hey, what gives?”

“Wait, how did you make that sound?” asked Karyn. “You don’t have any fingers to snap.”

“Never mind that now, this is important. Maybe a crisis!”

“What’s the matter?” Karyn slowed the car.

“We don’t have a basket. How can we have a picnic without a basket?”

Karyn resumed speed. “Well, in the first place, I have picnics so infrequently that I didn’t think it was worth it to buy one. In the second, while it is tradition, I felt that the camaraderie was more important than the carrying equipment. And in the third. . . “

“Yes?”

“I didn’t want to have it stolen by a bear.”

Derpy took a pregnant pause. “Is that really a problem around here.”

“No. Inside joke. Never mind.”

They arrived at the park and headed up the pathway. Ahead of them was an imposing structure.

“What’s that thing?” said Derpy.

“A slide. . . sort of. There are an awful lot of playgrounds around here. You see, the town management of this park changes a lot, but they never bother to get rid of the old stuff. This thing, for example. You climb up there like a regular slide, but then it has rollers to carry you down. You’ve got to be a little careful, and not stick your fingers in the rollers or get your hair caught.”

“I want to try it!”

“OK, just once though.” Karyn watched nervously as the rollers spun by themselves, hoping that Derpy would follow her advice and not get her tail caught. Soon enough, she heard Derpy’s voice next to her again.

“That was fun.”

“In many ways you’re still a foal at heart, aren’t you?”

“Sure. You’ve got to be,” said Derpy.

They moved on down the path. To the right of the slide was a large pond, and the walkway curved around it. Every few yards would be another playground ride or a bench. A few people sat on the benches and threw bread to the ducks and geese on the pond.

At the far end of the lake, the path forked in two. Karyn indicated the right-hand way. “Down there is a true picnic area with tables and barbecues and such. But we’re heading this way.” And they continued to skirt the water.

Opposite from the roller slide was another tall piece of metal in the shape of a rocket ship. “A lot of these things probably wouldn’t get built today,” said Karyn. “All playground equipment has to be made of plastic and rest on ground-up rubber tires so that kids don’t fall and hurt themselves. And this one must be twenty-five feet tall! No way you could have that now. Someone could fall all that distance.”

She pointed out the three level floors that separated the rocket into four sections. An ordinary, straight slide extended from the third one up.

“I remember the first time my folks took me here, I was too scared to climb higher than the second level. I really wanted to go on the tall slide, but I couldn’t make it. Then once I was brave enough for that, the top section frightened me even more.”

“I don’t think I’d be afraid,” said Derpy.

“Um, with good reason.”

“Exactly. I’m tough.”

Karyn decided not to belabor the obvious, and they moved on.

At the far end of the path was a tall tree with spreading leaves, and beyond that was a meadow. When they left the path, they could just see the entrance to the park across the pond.

“Now, if we stay here, no one should come bother us. There’s nothing beyond this, and no reason for people to come down here. In fact, if we want to hide behind that tree, you can probably even go visible.”

Karyn set up a picnic blanket while Derpy fiddled with her spell. Soon they were sitting and looking at the trees and birds. Off in the distance, they heard a few children playing, but other than that, there were no indications of civilization at all.

Karyn opened the bags she got from the store. She passed Derpy a plastic container of potato salad. Derpy eyed it a little oddly, but dug in.

“Mm! This is really good!” she said. “What’s in it?”

“Well, potatoes, obviously. And mayonnaise and vinegar. It’s probably the vinegar you’re tasting.”

“Vinegar, huh? I don’t use that much in cooking. What is it, exactly?”

“Well, it’s. . .” Karyn stopped. “It’s just vinegar, you know. It’s an ingredient.”

“Yeah, but what’s it made out of?”

“I honestly don’t know. I just go to the grocery store and buy it. Or my mom does. Or, like now, it’s in something that I’m eating. It’s probably something made from grain. Wheat? Probably, we use a lot of wheat in this country. I mean, they have fancy ones, even some from apple cider.”

“Ooh, I’d like that.” Derpy licked her lips in remembrance of the last time she had cider and tried to picture what the combined taste would be.

“But the regular white vinegar that’s in this, I don’t know what is. Sorry,” Karyn said.

Derpy had eaten most of the potato salad by herself, so Karyn compensated by monopolizing the macaroni salad. They shared cheese sandwiches, though, and relaxed.

“Hey, Derpy?”

“Yeah?”

“How long have we known each other now?”

Derpy looked up. “I don’t know. Four, five months maybe? Why?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen you, on Earth, for an extended period of time, since I came home from school. And I still can’t get over it. You being real. Ponies being real. Equestria and everything. I just never thought that I would really get to see magic or meet you or any of that.”

“It’s a little bit like that for me too. Don’t forget that, before Lyra started experimenting, nopony believed in humans. We should go give her a gift or something for introducing us.”

“Maybe we should,” said Karyn.

Derpy started to clean up some of the trash. “So what made you think of that just now?” she said.

“Oh, nothing really. You know what they say, sometimes you just have to stop and smell the flowers.”

“You do?” Derpy stood up and walked off the blanket. The field they were in was mostly buttercups and dandelions, and Karyn thought that there wasn’t much to smell. Derpy seemed to enjoy it, though, and she bit off one of the dandelion flowers. “Tasting them isn’t a bad idea either,” she said.

“It would be for me. Although I think dandelions are edible. In any case, I like them more when they turn into puffballs. I think that they’re designed to make you want to blow them away and spread their seeds. They’re like evolutionary bubble wrap.”

“Bubbles?”

Karyn perked up, afraid she had insulted her friend, but Derpy was just confused as usual. “OK, let me try to explain,” said Karyn. “I learned this in high school, so I might not remember it perfectly. See, most trees and flowers, and of course animals, need two of whatever it is to reproduce. And that way they mix their genes and improve over time. But dandelions reproduce the same flower every time. They’re hardy enough that they don’t have to improve. Now, when they turn into that puffball, probably the wind would be enough to let it populate a field, but they also have people around who just think it’s fun to blow them all over. So we help with their evolutionary niche.”

“I get all that, but what does it have to do with bubbles?”

“Oh, well, I’ll have to show you that later. Bubble wrap started as a way to keep stuff from breaking, but then people found it was just fun to pop.”

Their idle conversation was interrupted by a rustling in the bushes. Both of them panicked, and Derpy dove for her invisibility spell. Their worry was assuaged when they saw that the disturbance was too small to be a person. From out of the foliage a tiny ginger cat walked. It stopped and looked at the two of them.

“Aww, it’s a kitty cat,” said Karyn. “Come on, little puss.” She motioned at it to come over to them. The cat just stared, as if it knew that the gray pony was out of place there.

Eventually it sniffed the air and cautiously advanced. Karyn wondered if it might be hungry. “Aww, you want something to eat? We don’t have any cat food, but maybe you like salads?” She put some of the salad they still had onto a plate and pushed it a few feet away. The cat walked over and started nibbling. Karyn could see that, while it wasn’t particularly enjoying the food, it was undernourished and thin.

Derpy had not said anything, and backed off a few feet when the cat began eating.

“You don’t like cats?” said Karyn.

“It’s not that. I don’t particularly care about them either way.”

“Oh, and you’re probably worried about touching a stray. Yeah, we really shouldn’t. It could be diseased, the poor thing.”

“Huh? It’s sick?” said Derpy, backing off even farther.

“Can’t say for sure, but it does look like one eye is swollen shut.”

“I have a spell for that!” said Derpy. “After you came to Equestria that one time and were sick, Zecora talked to Twilight and we got concerned about Earth diseases, so they worked up a curative spell.”

“Really? That could be incredibly useful.”

“Actually, she said it doesn’t so much cure as ‘expel foreign bodies,’ whatever that means. Twilight always talks in more words than she needs to.”

“It probably means that it wouldn’t work on allergies or broken limbs or such,” said Karyn. “But try it on the kitty and see what happens.”

Derpy pulled out the spell. She was about to put her hoof into the slot, when Karyn said, “Actually, can I do this one? You’re around magic all the time, but I still get a little thrill out of working it myself.”

“Sure! I can understand that. Even a pegasus like me understands that.”

“Do you think the unicorns will get jealous that you can fly and cast spells now?”

“There’s no reason for them to,” said Derpy. “If it really comes down to it, there are spells to let everypony fly. But go on, use it. If the cat’s hurting, there’s no reason to wait.”

“Oh, right.” Karyn found the contacts of the spell. It was still difficult for her to use her hands for an object designed for hooves, but she turned them and a green light came out of the front. She pointed it at the cat like a flashlight. It was skittish, but its eye cleared and opened, and it seemed to understand.

Once the spell was finished, the cat mewed and advanced. “I guess it’s all right to pet you now,” said Karyn. She stuck her finger out and the cat sniffed it cautiously. It moved its head to let her scratch its mouth. But quickly it moved on and hopped toward Derpy.

“Hey, don’t cuddle up to me!” she said. “Karyn’s the one who fixed you.” But the cat could not be deterred. It walked around Derpy’s hooves, rubbing itself against them and purring.

“I think he likes you,” said Karyn.

“Shoo! Go back home!” Derpy cut herself off. “I guess you can’t, huh? You don’t have a home to go back to. Can’t you take him, Karyn? Adopt him as a pet?”

“No way. My folks would have a fit if I brought a stray cat home. That’s the kind of thing that I might have done ten years ago and gotten away with it, but I’m supposed to be a responsible adult.” She took a deep breath. “I guess we could take him to a shelter.”

“They’ll take care of him there? The same way Fluttershy does?”

“They will. . . for a little while. Maybe even find him a good home. But if there’s no one who wants him, well, there are an awful lot of homeless cats in the world. Sometimes they have to put them down.”

Karyn was always wary about Derpy misinterpreting idioms and euphemisms. But from the look on her face, Karyn knew that she had been understood.

“No, we can’t let that happen!”

“I know how it feels. It’s awful. We can’t save every cat.”

“No, but don’t you see?” said Derpy. “We’ve made it worse. Maybe this cat would never have had a chance, but now we cured it. It might not be sick, but it’s still hungry, and it’s going to be tired and cold and get hungry again. He’s not happy, and now he’s got to live even longer unhappy.”

“That’s if we let him go. At the shelter, well, he’ll be kept comfortable. And there’s always a chance.”

Derpy stared at the little ball of fluff. It was hunting through the bag for anything else it could gnaw on. Carefully, she reached for it with her hooves. As she picked it up, it jerked a little, but didn’t fight. She held it out away from her and looked it in the eye.

“There’s only one thing for it,” Derpy said. “I’ve got to take him back to Equestria.”

“What?!”

“There must be somepony there who’s willing to take care of him and not put him down. He’s just too cute to die.”

“Are you sure that’s all right?” said Karyn. “I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“He’s not so different from an Equestrian cat. Probably nopony will even notice the difference. He’ll find some nice girl cat and settle down.”

Karyn took him from Derpy and set him down on the sheet. She took Derpy aside and whispered to her, even though no one was around. “Are you really sure about this? Like I said, no matter what you do, you can’t save every cat on Earth.”

“I know. But I really am sure. I know it sounds cruel when I say it, but I care more about this cat than every other cat on Earth, because he’s right here in sight, you know?”

They both turned back around to look at the cat. He had curled up on the sheet and closed his eyes.

“All right, Derpy. I’ll trust you. I just hope everything works out for the best.”

Derpy reached into her bag and pulled out the usual return spell. She cradled the cat in her hooves, trying not to wake him. With as little movement as possible, she hopped into the air. There was a flash of light and the cat was gone. Derpy was still there, and Karyn tilted her head in confusion. “What happened?”

“Oh, hey. Good to see you again,” said Derpy.

“Again? Is this another time concept? How long were you back home?”

“A couple of days. Why?”

Karyn shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Every time you go home without me, time keeps passing here. Why didn’t that happen this time?”

“But whenever you go, you come back at the same time. It doesn’t matter where you go, only where you start from.”

“I’m not sure that works, but never mind. What happened to the cat?”

Derpy immediately perked up. “Little Muffinhead? He’s resting comfortably at home.”

Karyn slapped her forehead, then wiped her hand slowly down her face. “You kept him? And named him Muffinhead?”

“Yeah. I did shop him around to a few ponies, but none of them were really interested. I thought of Fluttershy, but she was on a long weekend trip. When she finally got home, I brought him around to see her. Well, of course she agreed to take him at once. I passed him to her and washed my hooves of the whole thing. I was getting ready to come back when I heard a scratching at the door. So I went all the way back to Fluttershy’s cottage and dropped him off. She said that she didn’t know what had happened, that he’d seemed fine just running around with all her other animals. So again I got ready to come back here, but then I was tired, so I laid down for a nap. When I woke up, there he was, curled up and nestled under my wing. So I stopped fighting the obvious.”

“But you didn’t even like him.”

“I know, but he does so many funny things! Like, OK, he was walking across the room, right? And out of nowhere, for no reason, he does a roll. Like this.” Derpy put her right foreleg under her body, and kept moving in an odd three-quarter somersault. “Only a lot more graceful. And then he just kept on walking like nothing had happened.

“Oh, but I’m not sure that we fixed the problem with his eye. I don’t think he has any depth perception. See, he climbed up on the windowsill, you know? You remember the sill, it’s big enough for a cat to sit. But then birds flew by and he runs to the edge like he thinks they’re going to be trapped by the border. Then once they’re gone, he waits until more birds fly the other way and does the same thing backwards.

“And one more thing. I’ve got blankets all over the house, yeah? And whenever I’m in the room, he’s content to hop up on the blankets and stare at me. But once I leave, he’ll go under. I’ll come back in the room and there’ll be a big lump in the middle of the blanket. So I just pet him through there. I think he likes to be petted.”

“Looks like you’ve got a new friend,” said Karyn.

“I do? I have a new pet and a new friend? Who is it?”

“No, I meant that Muffinhead would be the friend. You’re probably going to have to stop coming to see me so often since he’ll be at home needing you to take care of him.”

Derpy flew toward Karyn. “No! He’s a survivor. If he can make it out here in the fields, he’ll be fine in my house. I’ll leave the food where he can get to it and by the next time I’m here, I’ll have installed a cat flap in the door.”

Karyn walked over to the remnants of the picnic. “I guess he got to you. Like I said, a cat’s designed to steal your heart and make you love him. Come on, let’s go home.”

“Why? Is it going to rain? Are ants going to come? Is something going to ruin the picnic?”

“No,” said Karyn. “I’m just afraid that there’ll be a stray dog hanging out in the bushes.”

Author's Note

Coming soon, more slice-of-life-tastic non-action!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know we’re normally all fun and games, but today I need your help.”

“Oh? What do you need?”

“Well, what happened is, back in Ponyville there’s this big charity event going on.”

Karyn smirked. “Why? Does town hall need renovation again?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Do you remember when we went to the beach and made sandcastles?”

“Of course,” said Karyn.

“Now we can have the same fun at home!” Derpy took the measuring cup of flour and turned it over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I still don’t know how you do that so well without hands or fingers,” said Karyn.

“You sound like Lyra. She and that other human are always playing finger games. But manipulation isn’t difficult. You just grab and push."

Be sure to read it, same time next week!

21: Derpan Hines Baked Goods

Although she had no idea how to accomplish such a thing, Derpy tried to emerge into existence quietly and unnoticeably. She was still nervous about being discovered by Karyn’s parents when she teleported into her house. She silently said to herself that she would be glad when Karyn returned to school.

“Good morning, Karyn,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry, Derpy. The folks aren’t here. The whole house is empty.”

Derpy let loose, spread her wings, flopped on the bed, and spoke with greater projection. “Whew! That’s good to know! Now I can relax. For a moment at least.”

“What do you mean, for a moment?”

Derpy held up a hoof. “Two, one, there. Moment’s over. I know we’re normally all fun and games, but today I need your help.”

“Oh? What do you need?”

“Well, what happened is, back in Ponyville there’s this big charity event going on.”

Karyn smirked. “Why? Does town hall need renovation again?”

Derpy missed or ignored the slight. “No, nothing like that. But there’s always a few ponies down on their luck, or maybe they’ve had a new addition to the family and need a few bits to tide them over. So once a year we have a week where everypony helps out.”

“Sounds great. Where do I come in?”

“Part of it is a bake sale. I help out with it. I always have. But up until now, I’ve always had Dinky around to assist me. It’s a lot of work for one pony to do, and work is always lessened with more hooves. Or hands.”

“Say no more,” said Karyn. “When do we leave?”

Derpy spread her wings invitingly, and Karyn hopped on. Minutes later, they were entering Derpy’s house. As she opened the door, Derpy stomped hard on the welcome mat.

“Are our feet dirty?” asked Karyn. “I’d better wipe mine as well.”

“No, it’s not that, come inside quick!”

Karyn finished wiping just in time for Derpy to grab her and pull her inside, slamming the door closed just ahead of an orange streak moving at about nine-tenths the speed of light.

“Muffinhead has been trying to get out of the house without me,” Derpy explained.

Karyn reached down to try to pet him, but Muffinhead skittered behind Derpy’s hooves. “Hey, last week you were scared of her and all over me. Now you’re the opposite?”

Derpy flew up, leaving the little cat exposed. “Come on, it’s Karyn. She’s a friend.” She picked Muffinhead up and put him down near Karyn’s feet. He sniffed cautiously, then rubbed his head against her shoes.

“There, she’s coming around,” said Karyn. “All right, from one muffin to the next. Let’s get baking.”

“Huh?”

“Baking the muffins.”

“I’m not making muffins,” said Derpy. “We’re making éclairs.”

Karyn was taken aback. “Oh. Sorry, I just assumed. I don’t know how to make them, though.”

Derpy’s expression changed quickly from irritation to elation. “Well, that’s fine! I’ll walk you through everything, and before the day is out, you’ll be as good as me.”

Karyn followed her to the kitchen. It still had that imperceptible newness, and Derpy had kept it spotless. However it was organized, Karyn could see no pattern, but Derpy cheerfully went from pantry to cabinet to drawer, pulling out equipment and ingredients and setting them on the table.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get measuring! We need a cup of flour first.” She dumped flour into a measuring cup and tamped it down with her hoof. She closed one eye and added a bit more.

“Shouldn’t we turn on the oven first?” asked Karyn.

“Oh, yeah. Can you take care of that?”

“What should it be on? Four-fifty?”

“Four-fifty?!” said Derpy, looking frightened. “I can’t imagine how hot that would be. No, just seven or eight is fine.”

Karyn looked back at the dial. Instead of temperature markings, there were only ten lines to indicate how hot the oven was going. She shrugged and turned it halfway between the seventh and eighth line.

“All right, good. Now the sugar. Want to do this one? Just a quarter cup.”

Karyn dumped a little bit of the clumpy confectioner’s sugar into another measuring cup. “I think that’s about right.”

“No, you’ve got to be sure! Baking is all about getting the measurements exactly right. That’s why I like baking as opposed to cooking meals. If you know the right proportions, you’re guaranteed a good meal.”

“Hmm. . . maybe that’s why, when I do cook, I don’t like baking. I’d rather do things by eye instead of by math,” said Karyn, but she carefully pushed the sugar down into the cup and added a little more until it formed a perfect flat top.

“Hey, Karyn, do you smell something?”

“Yeah, it smells like gas.”

Derpy flew over and turned off the oven. “You didn’t light it! This is my fault. I forgot to tell you about that. A lot of ovens light themselves, but not this one.”

“So how do you do it?”

“You just use a match. But don’t do it now. We’d blow up the kitchen. Let’s let it vent first.” She opened the window and flapped her wings to fan out the gas. Despite Derpy’s acceptance of blame, Karyn felt as though she had failed her. She tried to make up for it by being as careful as possible in measuring out the milk, butter, and vanilla.

“OK, let’s try this again. Go ahead,” said Derpy. “Matches are in the drawer next to the oven.”

Karyn found the box right where Derpy indicated, and she took out a match. She was stymied, however, when she found nowhere to strike it.

“Um, I’ve got a little problem here. How do I light this?”

“Oh! You can’t do it. Allow me.”

Thankful that she was finally off the hook, Karyn watched Derpy deftly turn on the gas, take the match in her mouth, and then run her hoof across it like wiping her lips with a napkin. The match came alight and she stuck her head into the oven. In a moment, there was a puff of flame in the chamber below. Derpy pulled her head out and shook it, dousing the match.

“There! Now, let’s get back to the mixing. This is the fun part.” She brought out a huge crockery bowl and a wooden spoon. “Do you remember when we went to the beach and made sandcastles?”

“Of course,” said Karyn.

“Now we can have the same fun at home!” Derpy took the measuring cup of flour and turned it over. It slowly slid out into a shape vaguely resembling a castle, and she attacked it with the spoon. “It’s not exactly the same. If the recipe called for brown sugar, then you’d get some real action.”

“I do suppose.” They mixed the dry ingredients before adding in the eggs and liquids. Derpy stirred constantly, and had Karyn pour slowly.

“Everything in baking is about getting things to meld perfectly,” said Derpy.

“I thought it was all about proportional measurement.”

Derpy looked up and stopped stirring for a moment. “It’s about both. That’s the one key.”

Karyn shook her head and kept pouring. When they finally had the batter, Derpy piped it through a pastry bag onto cookie sheets. They each picked up one, but as they reached the oven, Derpy paused.

“The oven really hasn’t had a chance to fully heat up yet. Let’s go in the living room for a few minutes.”

They sat on Derpy’s sofa and made idle conversation. Karyn was excited to be going back to school soon, and Derpy was happy about that as well.

“It’s odd how the schedules work. Dinky will be coming home for a visit soon,” said Derpy.

“Hey, that’s great! I’ll get to meet her.”

“I’m sure she’ll like that.”

Just then, Muffinhead came tearing into the room. He skidded to a halt in front of Derpy and meowed loudly.

“What is it?” said Derpy. “You can’t go out now. We’re busy.”

He kept screaming and pointing toward the kitchen.

“You have food already. I’m not going to give you a treat until tonight.”

Muffinhead ran toward the entrance, drawing the girls’ attention. Smoke was billowing around the edges of the door.

“Oh, no! What’s going on?” Derpy trotted toward the kitchen.

“No!” Karyn grabbed her. “It could be on fire! We should get out.”

Derpy scooped up Muffinhead in her hooves and followed Karyn to the door. From outside they could see the smoke in the window, but as yet no flames were visible.

“Does Ponyville have a fire department?” asked Karyn.

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to find out. Here, hold him.” There was a garden hose attached to a tap on the outside of the house. Derpy handed Muffinhead to Karyn and sprayed it in the window, but the smoke kept coming.

“If only there were some way to shut it off!” Karyn was struggling to keep Muffinhead from getting away.

“Oh, my Luna! I completely forgot,” said Derpy, “There’s an emergency gas cutoff switch in the basement.” She ran behind the house, and a moment later there was an audible click. In a few minutes the smoke stopped.

They went back into the house, and Karyn was relieved to be able to let Derpy’s cat go. “Well, everyone’s safe, at least,” she said.

“Yeah, and the batter’s even still good.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Derpy. “But this oven’s awfully old. I was planning to get a new one eventually, but I kept trying to stretch it out a bit longer. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the gas line got loose and some sort of muck got in there and it started smoldering.”

“Can you fix it?”

“No. I mean, I could try, but I wouldn’t be sure if the repair was right, or if it would hold. I’m just going to have to bite the bridle and get a new one.”

Karyn sat down at the kitchen table. “But that doesn’t help us right now.”

“No, and the charity bake sale is tomorrow. We can try to find another oven, though. Let’s see if Pinkie Pie will let us use one of the ones at Sugar Cube Corner.”

“It’ll be nice to see her again. I mean, a little bit of Pinkie goes a long way, but at the same time, I do miss her.”

******************************************

The aroma upon entering the bakery hit them at the same time as Pinkie’s voice. “Well, hey! If it isn’t my favorite pegasus-human team. What can I do for you? Simple baked goods, or you want me to throw a party together quick?”

“Actually, Pinkie, we’re hoping that you can help us out of a jam,” said Derpy.

“Out of a jam? But you’re not in a jam. I can put you into one. Maybe a nice apricot jam, although that’s really more of a preserve than a jam—“

“Ugh, Pinkie, you know that I’m talking about a problematic situation. It’s really annoying when somepony takes a perfectly ordinary expression and fails to understand it.”

Karyn coughed. “An expression like, ‘That’s the pot calling the kettle light-sapphire-bluish-gray’?”

“Exactly.”

Everyone, human and pony, just stared for a while, then Pinkie said, “So what’s your problem?”

“We were getting set to bake the éclairs, when the oven exploded,” said Derpy.

“Maybe exploded is too strong a word,” said Karyn. “But it’s definitely out of commission.”

Pinkie frowned. “Gee, girls, I wish I could help. But the fact is that all the ovens here are in use for the bake sale too. I’ve got everything scheduled down to the minute.” From behind the counter came a ding. “That means I have to take out the cookies and put in the cake! Or was it take out the cake and put in the cookies? Well, whichever comes out, I’ll put in the other. Excuse me, please!”

Derpy and Karyn headed outside. “Well, what do we do?” said Karyn.

“I don’t know. I’ll just have to explain everything to the ponies running the sale. They’ll probably tell me that they have plenty. But I’ll be disappointed all the same.”

Karyn looked at Derpy’s puss-face. “I guess there is one oven that we can use.”

“Huh? Where?”

“At my folks’ house.”

Derpy’s look changed from depression to confusion and then to elation. “You really mean it? You’d let me take all my stuff there?”

“Yeah, but remember, we’ve got to leave it exactly as it was before. They can’t know about it.”

They hurried back to the house where Derpy loaded up her saddlebag with cooking equipment. Karyn held the batter steady as she mounted. As they prepared to go, Muffinhead came in and mewed softly.

“No, you can’t come,” said Derpy. “You’ve got to stay here for a few hours on your own. You can handle that, right?”

He turned his head slightly, and Derpy took that as a yes. They vanished and reappeared on Earth.

“All right, let’s try to work quickly,” said Karyn. “How long to these things take to bake anyway?”

“Well, with éclairs, ‘low and slow’ is the rule. About eight hours.”

“What?!”

Derpy stuck out her tongue. “Just kidding! An hour, maybe, with cooling included.”

“You are so mean.”

They repositioned the pastries on the baking sheet as Karyn started the oven, silently thinking that she preferred to just turn a dial to a temperature rather than starting it the way Derpy’s oven did. That triggered another thought.

“Hey, Derpy? Did I mess up the oven when I didn’t turn it on right? I’m so afraid that I’m the one who broke it and almost burned you out.”

“No, it wasn’t you. Almost certainly wasn’t you. It was just old. Things break.”

She sat down at the kitchen table and fiddled with a bowl of wax fruit.

“I remember when I got that oven.”

“Huh? It didn’t come with the house?” said Karyn.

“No, I brought it with me specifically. I had a lot of attachment to that oven. If anything, that’s what did it in. Moving from one house to another. Something probably went screwy in the move. Trust me, I know about things breaking in a move.”

Karyn smiled and put a hand on Derpy’s foreleg.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I had it since Dinky was little. Whenever I had a baking day then, we would sit around and she would help, or try to. I tried to instill a love of baking and cooking in her.”

“What is it about the baking? And the muffins?”

“Huh? I don’t know. I guess I just like doing it. The smell and the tasty treat you get afterward. Don’t you have anything that you like but you can’t explain it?”

“Probably, yeah.”

Derpy stood up. “Anyway, let’s get to work on the filling. Oh, and the chocolate too, we can’t forget that!”

They put together more ingredients, whipping and mixing. Karyn let herself go and forgot about the cleanup to come.

When the oven dinged, Derpy went back to her saddlebag. “Now, for the secret advantage that makes my baking what it is. The cooling rack! Baking is all about having a good cooling rack.”

“I thought it was all about blending. And before that, all about measurement.”

“It’s all about a lot of things, OK?”

Derpy set up the cooling racks on the counter and deftly transferred the éclairs onto them. Then she mixed the cream filling and sliced the pastries open.

“I still don’t know how you do that so well without hands or fingers,” said Karyn.

“You sound like Lyra. She and that other human are always playing finger games. But manipulation isn’t difficult. You just grab and push. Anyway, you want to do the filling?”

Karyn took a small spatula and spread the cream in between the éclairs. While she was doing that, Derpy was preparing yet another bowl. Karyn noticed her putting her hoof to her mouth every so often.

“Hey! I see you sneaking that chocolate,” she said. “Do you want to run out before we get these done?”

“You caught me. But I was deep in thought.”

“About what?”

Derpy stared at the oven and the stove. “Melting chocolate is tricky. You can burn it if you’re not careful. Ideally I’d want a double boiler for it. But I’m going to cheat. Promise not to tell anypony?”

“Sure, but that’s an easy promise to make. I’m not even going to be there.”

Derpy reached into her saddlebag. “This spell was supposed to be for an emergency, like if I got caught in an arctic wasteland or if the windigoes came and I had no one to be friends with. Twilight probably wouldn’t like hearing that I used it to heat up chocolate.”

“Oh, I get it. Yeah, I’ll keep it under the rose.”

“That’s fine, just don’t lift up the rose later.”

Soon the chunks of chocolate in the bowl were sweating and turning into a sticky mess as Derpy moved her heat-spell all around like a magical blowtorch. With another spatula, she spread it on top of the éclairs.

“Good, there’s plenty left in the bowl,” she said. “You want the first lick?”

As they washed dishes and put the kitchen back together, Derpy was still looking distracted. Karyn thought of something clever. “A bit for your thoughts,” she said.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten these baked, everything about the oven breaking is finally starting to hit me.”

“It’s going to be a lot of money to fix, huh?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. But it goes beyond that. I have a lot of fond memories of that oven,” said Derpy. Then she chuckled to herself. “Sometimes actual fond memories, like the time I burned a casserole.”

“Am I missing something?”

“The word ‘fond’ can also mean the charred parts of a meal that you use to make gravy with.”

“Derpy, you’re really smart. I don’t know where you got the reputation for being less intelligent than the average pony. Heck, you’re more intelligent than the average human.”

“I’m not intelligent. Just experienced. Anyway, even if you didn’t bake, didn’t you ever have something of yours that you couldn’t bear to give up?”

Karyn closed her eyes. “When I was young—really young, I mean, like before I even went to kindergarten—I had a quilt. I probably had it since I was born, or at least since I was sleeping in a bed instead of a crib. I’m sure at one point it was new, but as I remember it, it was always old, pilled, and with half the stuffing missing. My mother wanted to buy me a new one, did buy one at one point, but I refused to let it go.”

“Then you understand. It’s the comfort of the familiar. But a quilt can’t break down entirely like an oven can.”

“No, but eventually I had to get rid of it. Or, at least, stop using it. I think it’s still in a plastic bag up in the attic.”

They scrubbed the kitchen clean, finding different surface cleansers that Karyn hadn’t even known existed. Finally, everything was done and the éclairs were finished cooling.

“Well, I guess I’d better be getting back,” said Derpy.

“Can I come with for a bit? We should probably clean up your kitchen as well.”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll need you to carry the tray anyway.”

Back at Derpy’s house, the smoke had coated the walls and ceiling of the kitchen with greasy blackness, and the two friends had a hard time scrubbing it off. Karyn was spelling Derpy by sitting on her back while she hovered just below the ceiling when she heard the doorbell ring.

“Now, who could that be?” asked Derpy.

“You’re not expecting anypony?”

“No, not that I remember. I’d better check my calendar. No, I always clear Sundays to spend with you.”

She trotted to the door, keeping an eye out to make sure her cat didn’t escape, and opened it. Pinkie Pie was waiting for her.

“Hey, Derpy. I stopped by earlier, but you weren’t here, so I peeked in your window to see if you were here, but again, you weren’t here, so peeking in the window didn’t show you, but I did see your kitchen when I peeked in the window because that’s the window you left open and you told me how your oven broke and I saw all the damage it did and—“

“Pinkie?”

“Yes, Derpy?”

“Breathe.”

“Right, I always forget about that.”

Karyn walked in from the kitchen. Always wary of Pinkie, she kept her distance, but smiled and waved. “What’s up?”

“Well, since, as I was telling Derpy, I saw that the oven had baked its last cake, I realized that you needed a replacement. Take a look outside!”

Derpy and Karyn went to the window. There on the lawn was a shiny new stainless steel oven. It was festooned with special features like digital timers and convection settings, and it had a much more modern, curved design compared to the defunct one still in the kitchen. But both of them looked at Pinkie. Surely she couldn’t intend this as a gift?

“Of course, you don’t have to buy it, but since we have a lot of ovens at the bakery, we can get it for you at wholesale price.”

Derpy ran over and hugged Pinkie. “Thank you. I’ll definitely find a way to buy it.”

“But Derpy,” said Karyn. “What about everything we were saying about the comfort of the familiar?”

“How do things get familiar? They all have to start off new sometime. It’ll take some time for the new oven and I to get to know each other, but some time in the future I’ll find enough room to love both my old oven and my new one. I know it, because it came from a friend, so there’s a tiny seed of friendship inside already.”

All three of them helped move the oven inside.

22: Derp at the Museum

Karyn packed her purse, a frown on her face. She picked up her makeup case from her vanity and realized that she had forgotten to cross off Saturday on her calendar. Every day in the summer, she had counted off the weekdays to her excursions with Derpy. Looking around for her red Sharpie, she added the X and then drew a circle around the present date. Then she tacked on a slash.

“Come on, Karyn!” yelled a voice from downstairs.

“I’m almost ready, Mom!” she called back. She looked at her clock. Derpy normally came around this time. If she picked this day to be late, Karyn would be gone.

She watched the second hand of the clock sweep toward the top. As soon as it passed, she turned her back and walked toward the door. Once she had closed it, she thought she heard the telltale sound of Derpy’s appearance.

She rushed back in. Derpy had a smile on her face, and she opened her mouth for a greeting, but Karyn cut her off.

“Hey, Derpy. Go ahead and turn right around because I can’t play with you today. In fact, any second now my mom’s going to yell at me again for dragging my feet.”

“But you’re not. You’re standing still.”

“Aww, that’s what I’m going to miss today. I’d rather deal with your linguistic peculiarities that have to spend hours being bored out of my skull.”

“Why do you have to do that?” asked Derpy.

“Because my parents have insisted that we have some quality time together as a family this summer, which—“

She was cut off by another yell from downstairs. “Come on, Karyn! We’re going to hit traffic.”

“Ugh. Which apparently for today means visiting an art museum.”

Derpy brightened up even more, which Karyn didn’t think was possible. “That sounds great! I’d love to see what human art looks like.”

“No, you don’t. It’s really boring. I’ll see you next week.”

Karyn shut the door behind her. Derpy looked around and heard a woman’s muffled voice say, “Who were you talking to up there?”

Derpy sighed and opened her saddlebag. In the first slot was the universe-hopping spell. She trotted to the window. In the driveway below, Karyn was slouching toward the back seat of the car. Derpy saw Karyn’s parents for the first time. They had dressed up for the occasion. Karyn herself was wearing dress slacks and a blouse that looked too hot.

Derpy reached into the bag.

Karyn huddled against the side of the car door wondering if her parents would rebuke her for turning on her portable music player, or indeed if they would even notice. She felt the car go over a bump and contented herself with lying down and watching the power lines dance up and down. From up front she heard her father say, “I hope this car isn’t breaking down.”

“Why would it?” said her mother. “It’s only three years old.”

“Yeah, but it’s got this little miles-per-gallon indicator, and it just dropped by six.”

Karyn put two and two together, casting her memory back to the time that Derpy had taken an unticketed flight. She looked up through the rear windshield and was happy to not see anything. At least she’s staying invisible this time, she thought.

She considered whether or not she could get Derpy in the car and talk to her with the Bluetooth trick. She could roll down the window, but the air conditioning was on, so that was sure to bring a lecture about wasting energy. Then, even if Derpy realized the window was open, Karyn wasn’t sure if she could fit through, or if she would want to risk it. If she made it inside, there was then the worry about holding an extended conversation with visible details that might give away the trick she was using.

But what clinched it was the worry that, even if they completely believed she was talking on the phone, her parents might still come down on her for disrupting family time.

Other idle thoughts occurred to her, like tapping Morse code on the ceiling of the car, but that was even sillier than the first plan. She settled in to watch the scenery again, trying to think of how Derpy would be seeing it.

They had left the suburbs and entered the outskirts of the city. They drove along a road that reminded Karyn vaguely of the town at Mountauk beach with the antique stores. Soon enough, though, her mother used the handheld GPS to direct them onto a side road, and now they were in the section of town where the museum was.

It was clearly a neighborhood that had put a few architects’ children through college. No building looked like a building. Everything was abstract sculpture that you could happen to fit people in. A lot of white stone or concrete was used, and in the late-summer sun, it made the whole area extremely bright. Karyn squinted to avoid being dazzled.

They pulled into the parking lot of the museum, and Karyn finally got a look at their destination. This too was a tour de force of money-wasting features, as the outside was cluttered with hanging gardens and water features. The building itself, where it wasn’t gleaming pure white, was reflecting the sun through blue-tinted windows. A sign outside proclaimed the museum’s carbon-neutrality.

Karyn still didn’t want to call attention to Derpy’s presence, but when she got out of the car, she felt the soft touch of a wing in her hand.

The four of them walked into the museum and past the prominently placed gift shop up to the ticket window. Karyn’s father grumbled a little when he saw the prices.

“You didn’t know how much it was?” said Karyn.

“Not really,” he replied. “I just saw this place in a local guidebook and it said that it was moderately priced.”

The woman who sold them their tickets said, “We also have the option of an audio tour. You wear these headphones and when you push the button on the side, the nearest exhibit’s explanation comes through for you. It’s all wi-fi based.”

“How much more for the headphones?” Karyn’s father asked.

“They’re complimentary. We just ask that you leave your driver’s license as collateral.”

They made their way into the gallery proper. The whole presentation was an eclectic mix of many famous artists, and the first room had simple portraits and landscapes. Karyn stuck with her parents through a few paintings, but began moving faster than them. Since everyone’s headphones had to be activated by the user, she could pretend that she turned hers on first and lost interest.

Finally she had enough separation from her folks that she could whisper to Derpy. “I really don’t know how people can do this,” she said. “How do you look at a painting for five minutes? It doesn’t change, it doesn’t start moving, it’s the same painting that you saw. Are they trying to memorize it or what?”

“I don’t know, I think they’re pretty. I guess that people keep noticing new details to the paintings as they look.”

“I could understand that if I actually owned one of these and had it around the house. After I looked at it hundreds of times in passing, I might see something new. But all this is just boring.”

Karyn looked around at the people walking around the gallery. She was surprised to see how many of them were older folks, but there were also a few who had the stereotypical look of the art aficionado—thin, glasses, and odd clothing. She had to cover her mouth to avoid chuckling when she saw a couple wearing matching berets.

She moved on to the next room, keeping Derpy with her. “That’s another thing that bothers me,” she whispered. “There’s this whole air of pretension. I can’t help feeling that all of these people are saying to themselves, ‘We understand this, and that makes us better than the people who don’t.’ Especially when that’s me.”

“What does it matter?” said Derpy. “I don’t understand most of it either. Like this one. Why’s that guy just standing there with a pitchfork? And why is he so unhappy? But if someone else gets it, good for them.”

Whether it was because her parents caught up with her or because she didn’t want to argue the point, Karyn shrugged and let it pass.

Derpy flew up above the action, which let her enjoy the effect by which the portraits’ eyes followed her wherever she went in the room, even up. But she refused to be distracted. She could tell how awful a time Karyn was having, and wanted to do something to make it better for her. She racked her brain.

When Karyn managed to detach herself again, Derpy swooped down on her. “Hey, if it helps,” she said, “try to imagine all the paintings as if they were of ponies. Or, for the landscapes, Equestrian ones. Like this one. See all the stars, and that tower on the left? Imagine that it’s Princess Luna in there raising the Moon for the night.”

“Thanks, Derpy. That does help a little. What’s really frustrating is that we have to be so hushed. I mean, I have to do that to hide you, but everyone is talking in whispers and shuffling. It’s a really annoying sound.”

Derpy listened. To her, it wasn’t annoying. She figured that Karyn was determined to not have a good time.

“Have you ever been to a museum in Equestria?” asked Karyn. “What’s pony art like?”

Well, Derpy thought, if she can’t be happy, I can at least distract her. “It’s a lot simpler. Most of the time the focus is on the pony in the portrait, just by themselves. Or, there’s a famous painting of Canterlot Castle I’ve seen, and it’s all alone against a blue sky. Even Canterlot town is just a blur at the bottom. But no, I haven’t toured a museum like this. Just seen a few traveling art shows.

“Although, most painters are unicorns. They’re the ones with the most precision for the brushwork. I actually like sculpture better. Pegasi and Earth ponies are more involved with that.”

“That’s cool. I think there’s some sculpture in the next room over. Let’s go check it out.”

Karyn was glad to get more distance between her and her parents. The sculpture room was less crowded than the painting rooms, and it had several reproductions of famous pieces.

“Karyn? Why are so many of these sculptures not dressed? Did humans used to go naked and just started wearing clothes all the time?”

“No, it’s just the way that artists do sculpture. I think it’s something to do with exploring the beauty of the human body or something like that. Or maybe because it’s easier to get a round shape like a muscle than something all random like a shirt and pants.”

“They’re pretty though,” said Derpy. “Maybe you should take off your clothes more.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t work out well.”

They approached another nude sculpture of a man. Derpy let out a snort that gave a slight echo throughout the room. A few heads turned in Karyn’s direction, and she had to look embarrassed and apologetic.

“I know what you’re looking at,” she said, “but don’t be fooled. Sculptors always make them smaller than real life. If they were life-sized, they’d be more likely to break off.”

Derpy accepted that and moved on. At the last sculpture before the door, she said, “Now, this I like.”

It was a statue of Joan of Arc astride a horse waving a banner. “Yeah, that’s nice,” said Karyn. “Could use a pair of wings, though.”

“Like you said, they’d break off easy.”

“You’re probably right. Well, that room wasn’t too bad.”

They passed through the wide door to the next section, and both of their jaws dropped. “OK, here I can see what you’re complaining about,” said Derpy. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”

“No, this is abstract or avant-garde art. Here’s where the really pretentious people come.”

They made their way quickly through the paint-splotches-on-canvas, works with names that had nothing to do with what they looked like, and sculpture that seemed to be random junk thrown together.”

“I heard a story once, don’t know if it’s true,” said Karyn, “that during one of these exhibits the cleaners threw out the sculptures because they thought it was junk.”

They had reached the end of the gallery, and Karyn could see her parents still a few rooms behind. They found a padded bench facing a painting that took the full length of the wall and pretended to look at it.

“That’s the other problem with this whole thing. I’ve got to stay on my feet the whole time. Why don’t they put all the stuff at waist-height and let us sit the whole time?”

“My wings are a bit tired too,” said Derpy. “I’ll stand for a little while and just move out of people’s way if they come around.”

“Heads up, Derpy. Here come the wardens.”

Karyn’s parents had caught up and were looking at the last of the artwork. If they had any complaints about the oddity of the pieces, they didn’t say anything.

“Well, Karyn?” her mother said. “How did you like it?”

“It was. . . interesting. Yeah, I think I really learned a lot.” She tried to put sincerity in her voice.

“Was there anything that particularly made you think?”

Why don’t you just give me a test when we get home? she thought. “Well, I did really like the statue with the horse. Is it true that how many hooves they have in the air indicate how the rider died?”

“I don’t think that holds,” Karyn’s father said. “Anyway, let’s get some lunch. All this culture is making me hungry.”

They found the museum’s café, and he took the opportunity to grumble about the prices again. For Karyn’s part, she wanted to get the meal over with as quickly as possible. In the first place, it meant getting home sooner. In the second, she wasn’t sure how Derpy would react to her parents eating, since it was sure to include some meat.

As they ordered, Karyn limited herself to a salad and gobbled it down as quickly as possible. She excused herself from the table.

“Are you sure?” her mother said. “We’ve barely chatted.”

“Yes, but I really want to see the garden outside. Take your time and meet me out there.”

She threw away her dish and got out as soon as possible.

The garden was carefully tended and had flowers in many primary colors. She found a secluded spot where she could talk to Derpy again.

“Now this is much nicer,” she said. “Why can’t they just use all this space for a garden like this and get rid of all the art?”

“But, Karyn,” Derpy said, “all those artists who made that stuff, even the really weird or really bad stuff, probably really cared a whole lot. I mean, I’m not the most creative pony, but I know that anything I do make I put all my heart into it.

“In any case, I’m glad I came with you, and I’m glad that your parents made you go. I think it’s great that you can have all this art in one place where anyone can come and see it. Even if it is expensive.”

“Now you sound like my father.” Karyn smiled. “And speak of the devil.”

“Why should I do that? We don’t even really have devils in Equestria. Not among ponies at least, although I believe that there are certain griffin sects that—“

“No, it’s just an expression meaning that someone about whom you were having a conversation is showing up. Which my father is doing. As in, hush up until we can get back to privacy.”

Karyn’s parents emerged from the museum, scanning all around to try to find her. She got up from her garden seat and waved to them as she closed the distance.

“Are you ready to go?” her father said.

Am I finished with my penance? At last! she thought, but out loud she said, “I guess so.”

They got in the car, and Karyn opened the back door wide for a few seconds so that Derpy could ride inside this time. They still couldn’t properly speak to each other, but Karyn kept her hand on her wing or hoof the whole time.

There was very little conversation during the trip, even between Karyn’s parents. When they got home, Karyn asked, “Is it OK if I take the car back out? I’ll put gas in it, I promise.”

“Where do you want to go?” her mother asked.

“Just back down to the park for a bit. It’s still light out.”

“All right, but don’t stay out too late.”

She sped to the park, unnerving Derpy slightly. “Well, now we can at least talk, but I really want to get someplace where I can see you.”

“All right.”

When they got there, Karyn fast-walked, almost jogging, around the duck pond to the secluded area behind the trees. Derpy appeared, and Karyn’s expression brightened.

“Ugh, I don’t know what it was about that whole place, but this was definitely up there with the worst summer days I’ve had. I’d really rather just be here. You’re prettier than any of those art pieces anyway.”

Derpy blushed. “Aw, you don’t have to say that.”

“But it’s true. Sometime I should show you some of the drawings that humans do of you. They’re really good.”

Derpy was looking intently at Karyn. “You know, jumping back a point, I think I might know why you were so unhappy today. Other than just being dragged someplace by your parents. Let me ask you something. If they took you to a classical music performance, or an opera, would you have dreaded it as much?”

Karyn put her finger to her mouth and thought about the question. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Why?”

“I remember when Dinky was young, one of her teachers called me in and told me that there are three kinds of ponies. Well, obviously, there’s earth ponies and unicorns and pegasi, but that’s not what she meant. She said that some ponies think visually, some think by listening, and some are tactile. Of course, everypony does each of them a little, but there’s always an order. Anyway, I figure the same could be true of humans. You’re definitely not a visual person. It’s why you don’t mind too much when I go invisible. A lot of people would have problems with that. My guess is that you’re more tactile. The way you kept one hand on my wing the whole time is what makes me think that. But even listening is something you enjoy more than seeing. I’m the same way. With all my eye issues as a filly, I’ve had to rely on my other senses.”

“I guess that makes sense. Do you think that if I had explained it that way to my folks, they would have let me get out of it?”

“It’s possible. I really don’t know them that well. But if you’re really so averse to spending time with them, you should preemptively pick out stuff to do that gets over with faster.”

Karyn walked around the meadow, burning off nervous energy. “This might just be a difference between humans and ponies. Or maybe just you, because you told me how awesome your father is. But for us, people my age pretty much always rebel against their parents, and the parents almost always try to hang on to the kids too long.”

Derpy looked down and said nothing. The two of them just sat in the meadow for a while until the mood lightened. The park was emptying out for the night, and Derpy used her invisibility spell again so they could sit on a bench and watch the ducks and swans.

“Well, I guess I’d better be going home,” Derpy said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t make the day any better for you.”

Karyn turned toward the place where Derpy’s voice had come from. “Don’t feel bad. We all have to have our bad days. And I’m sure that you did make it better. Or, not as bad at least.”

Derpy warped to Equestria, and Karyn drove back home. Her parents were sitting in the living room watching TV. She waited for a commercial to come on.

“So, listen. Thanks for taking me to the museum and all, but maybe this week we can hit a movie instead? Or just go out to eat?”

“Well, we did want you to get some culture. You can’t sit in your room and just watch those cartoons over the internet,” her father said.

Karyn felt her blood heat up, but she took a deep breath and swallowed an argument.

“It doesn’t have to be so stuffy, though, does it? And if the goal is for us to spend time together, then let’s go out to eat or do something where we can actually talk.”

Her father looked like he was about to argue, but her mother cut him off. “Yes, we can do that. It’s a good idea.”

Karyn’s father looked at her, but she said. “Well, I didn’t much like that abstract room either, dear,” Then, turning back to Karyn, she said, “When did you get so smart anyway?”

“I guess I’m just growing up,” she said. Of course I am. That’s why a magical flying pony from another world had to set me straight.

She kissed her parents good night.

Author's Note

Forgot about this last time, but here's your preview of next week!

"I’d love to meet her. I’ve met so many of the other Mane 6.”

“The what now?”

Karyn blinked. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know them by that name. The bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Oh, this was a mistake.”

“Well, let’s not panic just yet. Maybe Twilight Sparkle can help. We always go to her when there’s a problem.”

Derpy perked up. “Yeah, she’s really smart. Let’s go see her.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“All right, it’s nopony’s fault, really, but now that I understand about humans, it’ll never happen again.”

“Well, I suppose that’s all right,” said Karyn.

“I guess I just assumed that you were just a pony that walked on two legs, but you’re not."

Don't miss it; it's got a special guest star!

23: Stareway to Derpen

Before they had parted the week before, Karyn and Derpy had agreed to meet up early in the morning the next time, so as to avoid the trouble of alerting Karyn’s parents to Derpy’s presence or, which would be worse, having one of them be in the room when Derpy appeared. So it was that at daybreak, Karyn, already awake, showered, and dressed, welcomed her friend in only mildly hushed tones.

“How have you been this past week?” she asked.

“Just great. But oh, that Muffinhead.”

“What is he doing now?”

Derpy flew up on Karyn’s bed and posed like a cat. “He stands by the window whenever I’m at work, and as soon as I come into view he tears around the house like I’ve just returned from a twenty-year journey. Then, as soon as we’ve settled down and had dinner, he goes to the basement door and paws at it”

“Wait, you have a basement?”

“It’s really more of a crawlspace, but it’s clean. Anyway, Muffinhead really wants to go down there, but I don’t want to let him so he starts getting insistent, meowing until I open the door. And when it’s finally open, he just sits there and doesn’t go down!”

Karyn laughed. “Maybe you have rats or mice down there?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen one at least. But anyway, I think he just can’t stand a closed door. Maybe he thinks that there’s something cool behind it, but you’d figure that once he’s seen that there’s nothing, that would satisfy him. Nope, he’s right back the next day, pawing and screaming to be let back down.”

“Have you let him out yet?”

“Just once, yesterday. I kept a close eye on him the whole time to make sure he didn’t get lost. But he didn’t try to get away. He just munched on the grass, so I joined him in that,” said Derpy.

“That’s funny. Most humans who have cats, they don’t want them eating the grass. They usually bring it up later on, which damages the rugs. Anyway, it sounds like you two are really growing close. I’d like to see how he’s doing.”

“Just what I was about to suggest. He’ll be so glad that I’m not gone all day. Hop on and we’ll go.”

Derpy jumped down from the bed and knelt down so that Karyn could throw a leg over her back. She wasted no time in teleporting to Equestria and hitting ground. She let Karyn off and they walked at a slow pace toward Derpy’s house.

“I try not to sneak up on him,” said Derpy. “One time I just flew above and landed right on the doorstep. Muffinhead thought that it was some kind of intruder, and he was ready to attack. I think I still have the scratch.”

“You’ve got to remember that he was a stray. He’s not used to trusting people, and it’s probably even weirder with ponies. He grew up without magic, and to his instincts, flying creatures were food, not friends.”

They approached from the side, trying to be as conspicuous as possible. As soon as Derpy opened the latch, the tornado called Muffinhead became visible.

“Yes, little one, Mommy’s home. Aw, who’s a good kitty?” Derpy said as she picked up and hugged the cat.

After she set him down, he bounced over to Karyn and sniffed her. His expression said, “Oh, it’s you again. I suppose that if Mommy tolerates you then so must I, but try not to be around too often and stay out of my way.”

Derpy clopped her hooves on the ground and charged after Muffinhead, who ran around the room as it he were really being chased. Then Derpy found a foil ball and threw it across the room, where he batted it around like a hockey puck. Once it came back to her, she passed it to Karyn and asked if she wanted to try. She waved it in Muffinhead’s face a few times to get his attention, then fired it across the room.

He didn’t move.

Again he shot Karyn a condescending expression. It seemed to ask, “What are you? Stupid? What am I supposed to do with that?”

Once more, Derpy picked up the ball and tossed it, and immediately he went back to his orange streak mode. He made a tight curve around the sofa and lost his balance. Tripping all over himself, he came to a stop at Karyn’s feet.

“Aw, the poor thing,” she said. Hesitantly she picked him up. Whether it was the damage he had suffered or the loss of dignity, he allowed her to cradle him and looked into her eyes. She saw that his one eye remained closed.

“That’s right, we could never fix that. You’re still only a one-eyed kitty,” Karyn said. “No depth perception, so you’ve got to be careful when running around.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Derpy. “I’ll train him in how to walk around with less than perfect sight.”

“I still feel bad for him though. I guess it’s more that he has this puss face that you can’t help feeling sorry for, even though I know that he’s physically able.”

“He’s such an active cat, though. I hope he’s eating enough. He’s still so thin. I want him to put on a little weight so that he’ll be healthy.”

“Yeah. . .” Karyn snapped her fingers. “Hey, why don’t you take him to see Fluttershy?”

“But I tried putting him with her twice, and he kept running away.”

“No, I just mean to see if she can tell you how to best care for him, make him eat, keep him out of trouble with the eye and all.”

Muffinhead started squirming in Karyn’s arms, so she passed him back to Derpy. “That could be a good idea.”

“Plus I’d love to meet her. I’ve met so many of the other Mane 6.”

“The what now?”

Karyn blinked. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know them by that name. The bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”

Derpy still stared at her.

“Twilight, Rarity, Pinkie, Rainbow,” said Karyn.

“Oh! Yeah. I guess they are. You’ve got to remember that all of that was a long time ago. Not that we aren’t grateful to them for saving us from eternal night or pure chaos, but those are old battles.”

They packed up and Derpy took a firm grip of Muffinhead. Once they were outside, Derpy took to the air and hovered about ten feet above Karyn.

“He gets antsy when outside, so if I want to take him somewhere this usually keeps him out of trouble. And if he does get away, it’s not so far that he can’t land safely.”

The walk to the outskirts of Ponyville where Fluttershy’s cottage stood was long, and Karyn thought once or twice about asking Derpy to carry her the rest of the way. She soldiered on, though, and made it with nothing but some sore feet. Derpy came in for a landing and let Muffinhead down. He looked around, but seeing a kind of perimeter in which all the animals stayed, he held his ground. Derpy knocked on the door.

“Just a minute,” came Fluttershy’s soft voice. When she opened the door, she first noticed Muffinhead on the stoop before raising her eyes. “Hello, Derpy. It’s certainly nice to see you again. Is something wrong with—“ she cut herself off as she saw Karyn.

“That’s right,” said Derpy. “You haven’t met. Karyn, this is Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Karyn.”

Fluttershy had taken to the air and backed off. Her friendly look had turned into one of fear. “A h-h-hu. . . “

“Human.”

“Keep your hands to yourself!” Fluttershy spread her wings as if to protect her home and her animal friends.

“Fluttershy, you don’t have to be afraid,” said Derpy. “Karyn’s not mean or harmful at all. We’ve had lots of fun and she’s always been as sweet as can be.”

Karyn knew that Fluttershy was always nervous, but wondered if there was any reason for her strong reaction. Perhaps, she thought, Lyra’s human hasn’t been nice to her. “Please, Miss Fluttershy, I’d like to be your friend. We came here to see if you can’t help us better learn how to take care of Muffinhead.”

Fluttershy advanced slightly, as if believing that no one who cared for animals could be all bad, but still maintained a strong sense of personal space around Karyn.

“All right, come in,” she said. She happily welcomed Derpy and Muffinhead, but took out a disinfectant spray and used it on the end of the couch, then pointed toward it. Karyn took the hint.

“So anyway,” said Derpy, “Muffinhead only has one eye, and while we were playing with him he tumbled into the couch because he can’t see properly. We were wondering if you had any suggestions on how to keep him safe.”

Fluttershy thought about it for a moment. “You’ve got to remember that cats are very independent. He’s going to want to play with you, and if he does get hurt, he’s going to want to lick his wounds on his own.”

“But I can’t stand to see him in pain.”

Just then, Angel Bunny hopped up on the couch where Karyn was sitting. He looked at Muffinhead and backed off, but nestled next to Karyn. She tentatively stroked his fur. Fluttershy watched from the corner of her eye.

“I know you feel that way. I do too, about all my animals. But remember too that he’s a kitten. He’s very rambunctious at this point. Soon enough, another year or two, and he’ll settle down and know his limitations.”

Angel Bunny was sniffing at Karyn’s hand. Perhaps because he had never seen a finger before and thought it was a carrot, or perhaps because he was just a mean rabbit, he bit down hard. Karyn yelped and stood up. Shaking her hand wildly, Angel flew off and landed in the corner.

As Karyn was sucking on her finger to relieve the pain, Fluttershy reacted with horror and flew toward her face.

Her eyes opened wide, her eyebrows arched, and white lines seemed to radiate from her head. Karyn had just become subject to The Stare.

“Excuse me, Miss interloper-from-another-world. You do NOT throw my beloved Angel around the room. I knew that you would be trouble from the moment you set foot in here. Angel might have a concussion, and you’re worried about a little nibble. You’re nothing but a big MEANIE!”

“Fluttershy!” Derpy screamed. “Stop it!”

Fluttershy finally came out of her rage and returned to her normal look. She turned toward Derpy and said, “Oh, my. I’m so sorry. I saw Angel hit the wall and just lost it. You know that I can’t control myself when that happens.”

“Well, you should apologize to Karyn, not to me.”

“Of course. I’m sorry, I—“

Both pegasi looked at Karyn. She had curled into a ball, clutching her knees to her chest. Her skin had gone white. Her pupils and dilated and she was not moving her head.

“Hey. Karyn, you OK?” said Derpy.

Karyn gave no indication that she had heard anything or that she was aware of her surroundings at all.

“Fluttershy, I think you broke her!”

“Oh, my. I had no idea she would react that way. I mean, she’s a human, a monster just like any dragon or cockatrice, and I’ve stared down both of those.”

Derpy shook her head. “Fluttershy, humans aren’t monsters. They’re regular people like you and me. Anyway, un-stare her and wake her up.”

“Un-stare? I’ve never had to do that. I don’t even know what’s wrong with her.”

“Well, what are we going to do? What am I going to tell her parents?”

“You know her parents?” asked Fluttershy.

“No, but if I can’t bring their daughter back, I’m going to have to explain everything to them. Oh, this was a mistake.”

“Well, let’s not panic just yet. Maybe Twilight Sparkle can help. We always go to her when there’s a problem.”

Derpy perked up. “Yeah, she’s really smart. Let’s go see her.”

Fluttershy maneuvered Karyn into a slumping position on Derpy’s back. Grateful for her no-fall spell, Derpy took off and they all headed for the library. She called over her shoulder, “Muffinhead, you stay here and make friends with Angel Bunny. We’ll be back soon enough. I hope!”

The two pets looked at each other. Angel rubbed his paws. Muffinhead looked worried.

The knock that Derpy gave to the door of the library was the kind of rapid, urgent sound that gets people to the door all the sooner. Twilight Sparkle rushed down from her perch on the second floor and threw it open.

“Fluttershy, Derpy. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Derpy’s friend Karyn,” said Fluttershy. “I think I accidentally hurt her.”

“She used The Stare,” said Derpy. “She was afraid that Karyn was hurting Angel Bunny—which she totally wasn’t!—and then Karyn came over like this.”

Twilight poked Karyn’s limp form with a hoof and lifted up her arm, which promptly dropped down. She turned back to Derpy and Fluttershy.

“She’s catatonic for some reason. She had a bad reaction to Fluttershy’s power.”

“Can you bring her out of it?” asked Derpy.

“I can try, but don’t get your hopes up.” Twilight tried a few spells, but none seemed to have any effect on Karyn. She adopted her lecture tone. “The problem is that everypony, even those who aren’t unicorns, has their own kind of magic. Rainbow Dash has her sonic rainboom, Applejack has her strength and endurance, Pinkie Pie has. . . well, you know some of the things she does. And Fluttershy has the Stare. If it were actual unicorn magic, I could analyze it. But since it’s not, it’s much more mysterious.”

Everypony hung silent for a moment, then from up above came a loud and triumphant voice. “A-ha! It seems we have a sleeping beauty! Does she need a kiss from the prince to wake her?”

“Spike!” all three mares yelled at once.

“Sorry,” he said, “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

“Nice cover attempt,” Twilight said. “We all know that you were looking to get some makeout time with Karyn while she can’t fight back, you creepy weirdo. Now go stalk Rarity or whoever you’re into this week.”

Spike stomped out of the library.

“So anyway, what can we do to fix her?” said Derpy.

“I’m honestly not sure,” said Twilight.” We could call the doctor, but he probably wouldn’t know anything about human physiology. Maybe you could take her to a human doctor?”

Derpy put her hoof to her head and thought about it. Fluttershy said, “Even if you could, if it was something pegasus-related that put her in this state, they wouldn’t know what to do either.”

“If the only way to treat her is to have a human doctor who understands the problem, we’re just going to have to show ourselves to one of them and explain,” said Derpy.

“We can’t do that,” said Twilight. “As callous as this sounds, one person isn’t worth risking our whole world. Princess Celestia specifically told us to keep the human world ignorant of us.”

“But then what are we going to do?! We can’t leave her like this either. Oh, this is all my fault. I’m going to have to drop her off at home and cross my hooves that everything is all right? This is worse than if I had killed her!”

“Derpy, don’t panic!”

“Why shouldn’t I panic? What if she’s in pain and can’t express it? What if she’s going to get worse?”

Fluttershy stepped up. “Twilight, maybe I can calm her down.”

“No!” said Derpy. “Keep your eyes to yourself.”

“I wasn’t going to stare at you. I just want to say that we have a lot of things to try yet. Let’s take her back to my cottage and put her to bed. She might just need sleep or food or some other kind of care. If none of that works, well, maybe then we can start worrying.”

Derpy agreed. Like a funeral procession, they marched through town with Karyn on Derpy’s back. When they reached the cottage, Fluttershy wrapped up Karyn in a blanket and brewed some tea. Karyn didn’t pay attention to it, but at least the steam seemed to warm her up and put color back in her cheeks.

“Twilight, you keep an eye on her for a few minutes,” said Fluttershy. “I have to feed some of my animals.”

When she was out of earshot, Derpy whispered to Twilight, “I really can’t believe how unfeeling she’s being. I still think she doesn’t like Karyn because she’s human.”

“Derpy, she’s not like that, and she’s not being unfeeling. I’ve known her longer and better than you have. She’s beating herself up inside, and the only thing that’s stopping her from showing her emotions is that there’s someone here who needs care. As soon as she comes back, I’m sure she’s going to throw herself into helping.”

When Twilight and Derpy finished that exchange, they looked back at Karyn and saw an interesting lump under her blanket. Twilight was confused, but Derpy immediately recognized it.

“Muffinhead, come out of there! Karyn’s not feeling well.” Derpy bit the blanket and opened it to reveal the ginger cat curled up in Karyn’s lap.

She reached out with her hooves to remove him, but Twilight said, “Look!”

“What?” But then Derpy saw. Karyn’s hand was moving back and forth, stroking Muffinhead on his head. Other than that, nothing was happening. The cat squirmed out from the hand, which just kept moving. He climbed up Karyn’s body and started licking her face.

Her breathing became deeper. She blinked her eyes a few times. She shook her head and woke up. “Oh, Muffinhead!” she said, and kept petting him as he continued to lick her face.

“Karyn, you’re all right,” said Derpy.

Tears were streaming down her face as she continued to fumble with the little cat. Finally she turned toward the sound. “Derpy!” she screamed, and she threw her arms around Derpy in an embrace. Derpy was so surprised that she maintained her balance only by flying up, which brought Karyn to a standing position.

Twilight said, “We’re so glad you’re awake. Fluttershy used The Stare on you inadvertently. What was it like?”

Karyn was still sobbing, and she sat back down. Derpy sat alongside her. “It was awful. I saw Fluttershy’s eyes, and all of a sudden this feeling built in me, like I’d done something so horribly wrong. Like guilt, only ramped up a thousand times. And I knew that I could never take it back, that I’d hurt someone, and that nothing I could do would ever make up for it. And I knew it was wrong, too. It’s like, most people, most of the time, when they do something wrong, they have an excuse to justify it, but I couldn’t latch on to any rationalization. Every time I tried to think, there was a voice saying that I was evil and I knew it. I wanted to kill myself, but even then the voice said that I didn’t deserve to, because it would ease my suffering. I don’t know if the voice was Fluttershy’s or my own.”

“But what about—“

“Twilight,” said Derpy. “Don’t ask her any more questions. She’s been through a rough enough time as is.”

“Yes, all right. But no pony or animal has ever reacted that way. I wonder why she did.”

Karyn recovered a little and took a deep breath. “I don’t know for sure,” she said, “but you’ve got to remember that there are a lot of bad things in the human world, things that we can be guilty of. Our sense of guilt might be tuned higher than yours.”

Fluttershy came back into the room. Karyn cringed a little when she saw her, but didn’t recoil.

“I heard everything,” Fluttershy said, “and I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I had no idea that would happen. If I did, I would have controlled my temper more.”

“No, it’s my fault,” said Karyn. “I shouldn’t have let a little pain get to me like that. I’m so sorry. How’s Angel Bunny? Is he all right?”

“Oh, he wasn’t hurt, not anything like what I did to you. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“No, I’m just as sorry as you.”

Derpy and Twilight looked at each other. “I guess they’re kind of kindred spirits after all,” said Twilight.

Fluttershy and Karyn kept apologizing to one another until finally Fluttershy said, “All right, it’s nopony’s fault, really, but now that I understand about humans, it’ll never happen again.”

“Well, I suppose that’s all right,” said Karyn.

“I guess I just assumed that you were just a pony that walked on two legs, but you’re not.”

“Exactly.”

Fluttershy brightened up. “You’re more like the cows and the sheep of Equestria. You can talk, but you’re really just Derpy’s pet, and I’m always willing to take care of a pet.”

Derpy’s jaw dropped. “No, Fluttershy, it’s nothing like that—“

“Oh, you don’t have to be ashamed,” said Fluttershy. “I know how attached anypony can get to a pet, and Karyn sure is a cute one.”

Derpy was speechless. She turned to Twilight to see if she could explain better, but the unicorn was too busy laughing.

Fluttershy was patting Karyn on the head with a wing. “Now you be a good little human and do everything that Derpy Hooves tells you to do, and nothing bad like this will ever happen again. OK?”

Karyn laughed and shook her head. “I promise, Fluttershy,” she said, but she was looking at Derpy when she said it.

Author's Note

Here are some scenes from next week's chapter!

"We can completely redecorate!”

“Whoa, whoa! Settle down. See, there’s some bad news to go along with the good news.”

“I thought the barbecue was the bad news,” said Derpy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Come on, it’s still light out. We can do some window shopping on the way back.”

“Cool, I love window shopping.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “You do know that—“

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn tapped her foot on the ground. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“All right, I guess it’s confession time.”

“What did you do?”

“Maybe it’s easier to show you for starters.”

That's next Wednesday at the same time!

24: Who Gets the Derp Bunk?

“Hi, Karyn,” said Derpy as she appeared in her bedroom. “Are we alone again?”

Karyn ran to the door and peeked down the stairs to the ground floor. “No, we’re not. The folks are here and not going anywhere. And trust me, you don’t want to go downstairs or outside.”

“Why not?”

“It’s like a charnel house down there. Dad’s preparing for his big barbecue.”

Derpy, confused, decided to take a look out the window to see what Karyn was talking about, but she was barred by an outstretched arm. “OK, then, tell me what a barbecue is.”

“It’s a big party. A cookout. But there’s a lot of guests and Dad bought a ton of meat. So if you don’t want to see table after table full of dead animals, just stay here.”

“They eat meat, huh?”

“Are you kidding?” said Karyn. “They must have five hundred chicken wings down there. None of the rest, just the wings.”

“That won’t let them fly.”

“They’re not going to fly. They’re going to eat them. Not to mention all the ground beef, steaks, shish kebabs, and sausage.”

Derpy smiled. “Oh, I like sausage!”

Karyn was shocked. Perhaps there was some kind of vegetarian sausage that ponies made. “Really?”

“Absolutely. Sauce is tasty, so I want my food with a high degree of sauce-age!”

“Ugh. No, it has nothing to do with sauce. Well, actually it does, but that’s not what sausage is. It’s something so nasty that even people who eat meat won’t watch it being made.”

Derpy now took Karyn’s advice and backed toward the middle of the room.

“Yeah, and I have to be in the middle of it,” Karyn said. “So you’re probably going to want to head for home. But there’s some good news.”

“What’s that?”

“Two days from now, I’ll be moving back to college to go to school. Next Sunday, we’ll be back to our old routine!”

Derpy clapped her hooves. “That’ll be great! I’m looking forward to it.”

“So, until then,” Karyn said, but Derpy held up a hoof.

“We’ve got to plan. We’ve got to pack. Do you know everything you’re going to bring? How are you getting there? Are you going to be in the same room? We can completely redecorate!”

“Whoa, whoa! Settle down. See, there’s some bad news to go along with the good news.”

“I thought the barbecue was the bad news,” said Derpy.

“Well, it was, but that will be over soon. The real bad news is that when I do move back, I’m going to have a roommate.”

“Hey, that’s great. You’ll be just like Lyra and Bon-bon. They’re the best of friends.”

Karyn put on a wry smile. “Yeah, some people think they’re more than that. And I don’t swing that way. But if I have a roommate, Sundays are going to be just as much of a hassle getting to see you.”

“Oh. That’s right. Well, maybe we don’t have to as often.”

“No. I’m definitely not breaking a single date with you. You’re my best friend, Derpy. These days with you keep me going through the week.”

At that moment, Karyn’s mother called her down to run to the store to get ice, so she said good-bye to Derpy and ran out. On her drive, she thought more about how to deal with the problem. Maybe the roommate will be a brony like me, she thought, who’ll keep the secret and might even spend time with Derpy and me! That would be nice. But probably not. Well, more likely is that she’ll be a late sleeper and I can sneak off before she gets up.

Karyn made it through the barbecue and the next day, but that night her parents called her into the living room after dinner.

“It’s like this,” her father said. “We’d love to drive you back to school tomorrow, but we’d have to miss work. As it happens, we got a flyer today about a great deal on a moving company that will take all your stuff with you. They’ll even help haul it in and set up your furniture.”

Her mother said, “And since it’s your second year, we won’t have to go through all the separation anxiety. It works out best for everyone.”

“Really?” said Karyn, “I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s OK, I guess. I was kind of looking forward to it, though.”

“Well,” her father said, “we were going to give you the money we saved on gas and by working to spend at college, so. . . “

“If you put it that way, have a great semester!” Karyn smiled and hoped that she wasn’t sounding too selfish.

She went back to her room and set about changing her packing. With the space of a truck available, she could take more, and decided on one of her folding bookshelves and the books that went with it, along with her full set of bedding and a space heater for when it got really cold. She staged it all by the front door and spent her last night at home.

In the morning, after she woke and dressed, she finished breakfast and moved everything out to the driveway except for the really heavy stuff. She assumed that the driver would be some big burly fellow who would have no problem lifting her bookcase and heavy boxes. When the truck finally pulled up, she waited for the door to open. When a minute passed and no sign of action, she went up to the door and knocked. The tinted window rolled down.

Karyn barely registered surprise at the gray head and blonde hair that appeared in the window.

“Hi! Ready for the big move?” said Derpy.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I am at work, silly! The Equestrian postal service does moving as well.”

Karyn leaned on the window, trying to block anyone who might be passing by from seeing Derpy. “Yeah, I’ve seen you moving a piano. If I recall correctly, you dropped it on Twilight Sparkle.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Derpy opened the door. “So forget it! We need to get all this stuff loaded and get on the road!”

“Where did you get this truck anyway?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s not mine, just a rental,” Derpy said, as if this answered the question.

Derpy went invisible, and they discreetly lifted bags and furniture into the back of the truck, aided by the extending ramp. In a few moments, they were ready to get on the road.

“Are you sure you can drive this?” asked Karyn.

“Oh, yeah. This is an Equestrian truck. Built for ponies. No problem at all.”

Karyn pulled out her smart phone and pulled up the GPS. She relayed the directions to Derpy, who was indeed capable of driving the truck with no troubles. It was a pleasant day, and Karyn was glad that her friend had shown up.

“This would have been totally boring without you,” she said.

“Well, we can’t have that. Now where do we park?”

“It’s probably better to just pull up to the dorm and we’ll empty out there. Then we can park afterwards and spend the rest of the day. Assuming my roommate isn’t in the dorm already, in which case we’ll have to hide you.”

When they had parked in the lane near the dormitory building, Derpy turned her invisibility back on and they both slipped out the passenger side. Karyn found a bored person who could have been a security guard or a residential life person, and she asked where she was supposed to go. He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the building’s rear. A quick search led to a table where they were signing in new arrivals. She got on line and waited with a bag in hand. Once she got to the table, she found an alphabetical list of students with their room numbers. She ran her finger down.

“Hubert, Karyn Ann. Floor four, room six. That’s me,” she said. The lady behind the table made her sign a form and gave her a key. She tried to scan for the same number elsewhere on the list to find her roommate, but she was hustled off quickly to allow others to check in.

Derpy and she began hauling her clothes into the building. When they were in public, Derpy stood close by, making it look like Karyn was carrying everything and was exceptionally strong. Once in the elevator, they separated and Karyn smiled at the floating plastic case.

They reached the room and Karyn peeked cautiously inside. It was empty and bore only the furniture that the university provided. There was a set of bunk beds on one wall, and two desks, armoires, and closets. The choice was between the set closest to the bed or that closest to the window.

“Do you think it’s all right to put my stuff away?” Karyn asked. “Or should I wait for the other girl to get here and decide who gets what fairly?”

“Hey, if she’s late, it’s her loss! I’d use the closet by the window if it were me,” said Derpy.

Karyn shook her head and plopped her cases and bags in the middle of the room. “Come on, let’s go haul the bookcase.”

When they came back with the case, Karyn holding it by the middle and Derpy lifting from above, they saw a new list attached to the building. This one had the names in room order, and again Karyn ran a finger down the list to the name below hers.

“Rhodes, Peony Violet. What kind of a name is that?” she muttered.

When they reached the elevator, she continued in her normal voice.

“Peony Violet? Sounds like a character in a bad fan-fiction.”

“I know a pony named Peony,” said Derpy.

“Yeah, it’s a fine name for a pony, but for a human it probably means she’s hipster or emo or goth or scene, if there’s a difference. Or maybe her parents were actual hippies and named her that just to be weird.”

“Don’t pre-judge her just from her name.”

Karyn stabbed at the “4” button trying to make the elevator go faster. “You’re right. It’s just as likely that she’s rebelled against her folks and gone too far in the other direction. If she puts up a Richard Nixon poster, though, I’m calling Res Life and asking for a transfer.”

Derpy smirked and they carried on to the room. “Karyn, I really don’t think you should just dump all your stuff in the middle here. Go ahead and set it up the way you want it. I’m sure your roommate won’t mind.”

“Even if I do, I’ll want everything in before I decide where it all goes. Better than filling a drawer and then something needs to go on the bottom. Besides, we should probably move the truck.”

They left the room and pulled the truck around to a parking lot. There were still a few items left to bring in, but they would be passing by a few more times anyway. In front of the lot they parked in was a gray building.

“Ooh, a book store!” said Derpy. “Can we go in?”

“Actually, since I still don’t want to put all my stuff away, we might as well. I’m warning you, though, this isn’t a typical book store. You’re probably not going to like it.”

“Nonsense, a book store is a book store.”

It was technically a book store, but Derpy was indeed disappointed. The most prominent displays were given to sweatshirts and tote bags bearing the university’s name and logo. The shelves were not stocked wall to wall, but rather had four or five copies of each book lying flat with a class designation below it. Most of the books had stickers saying “Used” on them. The stickers were unnecessary.

Derpy whispered, “You know, Karyn, if Twilight ever walked in here, she would have a heart attack. All these damaged books would be like, well, if I had gone to that barbecue.”

“Oh, believe me, that’s not the worst part.”

“What is?”

Karyn found an attendant and handed him a copy of her class list. After a few minutes, he came back with a stack of books and rang her up.

“That will be five hundred twenty-seven with tax,” he said.

Derpy was not completely familiar with human currency, but she had vague remembrances of previous purchases, and even if she hadn’t, she could tell from the way Karyn puffed her cheeks out and exhaled that she was being charged a lot of money.

“Come on,” Karyn said, “Let’s go dump these back at the room.”

“Actually, I’m a bit hungry. Can we grab a snack first?”

“Hmm. . . I’m a little tapped out after buying those books. Actually, I knew they would cost about that much, but still, dropping the money just makes you want to not purchase anything for a while. Are coffee and donuts OK?”

“We can pop over to Equestria if you want. My treat,” said Derpy.

Karyn thought about that and strongly considered saying yes. But then she looked at the truck. “Actually, you’re helping me move, so it’s I who should be doing the favors. Yeah, we’ll go and get whatever you want. Price no object. I guess buying you a beer would be the most traditional thank you.”

“Beer is nasty. I drank it once, and the less said about it, the better. Besides, it’s too early. The coffee and donuts sounded good.”

As they made their way to the donut shop, their mood lightened as they realized all the advantages they had regained. Everything was once again within walking distance, and the college-town atmosphere was more pleasant and recreational compared to the suburbs.

They sat in a corner booth of the shop with Karyn’s back to the rest of the store. With Derpy effectively screened, she could munch on her donut without anyone noticing it disappearing into nothing.

“We should start planning outings for the Sundays that you’re here,” said Karyn. “In case this Peony girl is the type to stay in the dorm all day. We don’t want a repeat of what happened when Mike showed up.”

“It would be nice, but I’m sure we’ll have some dorm time.”

“What would really be funny is if she had a secret friend from another universe that she spent Sundays with as well.”

Derpy guffawed, turning some heads and causing Karyn to have to give an embarrassed wave and point to her Bluetooth.

“That was funny!”

“Yeah, well, we don’t want people to stare. Come on, it’s still light out. We can do some window shopping on the way back.”

“Cool, I love window shopping.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “You do know that—“

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

“OK, good.”

“You mean picking out new windows for your dormitory, right?” said Derpy. “You aren’t just using it to mean walking past stores and not buying anything.”

Karyn was fit to burst, but decided to wait until they had left the donut shop before retaliating. As they walked back toward the dormitory, they passed an electronics store. Karyn pressed her nose to the glass.

“I really wish I could afford to buy a video game,” she said. “I haven’t had one in such a long time. I think I’m two or three generations behind.”

“You mean you haven’t had one since your grandparents?”

“It feels that way. But no, they put out new systems every few years, and that’s a generation.”

Derpy didn’t say anything for a few moments. She saw Karyn’s longing look. “Well, why don’t you get one that’s one generation behind?”

“I can’t afford to buy anything, even if it’s old.”

“Come on. If you spend enough time on this thing, you might actually wind up saving money.”

Karyn looked into her purse. Not that she was carrying a lot of cash, but she still thought of it as where her money came from. “I know I’ll hate myself in the morning,” she said, as she opened the door to the store.

She walked out a few minutes later with a box inside a bag. “I’ll probably come back and return this tomorrow.”

“Oh, Karyn. You can’t always be beating yourself up over money. It’ll get better with time.”

“Well, maybe this Peony girl will want to play with me once I’ve got this set up.”

Derpy bit her tongue and kept quiet. They walked back with Karyn keeping her eyes on the road and not looking at the store windows for fear of being dragged in to look at clothes or bags or something else. Again she exercised utmost caution as she opened the door to her room, but she still saw only her own effects piled in the center of the room.

“Well, at least we can talk freely now,” Karyn said as Derpy went visible. “But I do wish this girl would show up. It’s annoying when you know something is going to happen but the person you’re waiting on strings it out.”

Derpy coughed as though she were choking on something.

“Derpy, are you all right?”

“Yeah, just fine. Come on, let’s unpack!”

Karyn tapped her foot on the ground. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“All right, I guess it’s confession time.”

“What did you do?”

“Maybe it’s easier to show you for starters.” Derpy looked around. On top of one pile waiting to be put away was a dry-erase message board that Karyn planned to stick to a refrigerator to write notes on. Derpy dug through the pile and found the marker that went with it.

With her back to Karyn, she seemed to be writing something. Then, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth, Derpy started drawing lines on the board. With a flourish, she held the board out for Karyn to see.

Karyn’s mouth seemed to disconnect from her brain, as it made nothing but “W. . . w. . . w. . .” sounds for about fifteen seconds. Then, having had enough of that, she switched over to “Bu. . . bu. . . bu. . .” for another fifteen. Finally, the first coherent sentence to come out of her mouth was:

“Your middle initial is N?”

“Well, I might have cheated a little,” said Derpy. “Derpy ‘No-middle-name’ Hooves kinda has an N. But if I didn’t, I would have had to name her Vepy, which doesn’t sound like any kind of a name.”

“I’m confused.”

“Well, when you left on Sunday to go to the barbecue, I was all alone in your room, and you just told me how having a roommate was going to be a hassle. And your computer was sitting right there. So I logged on and found Derpynet. Remember her?”

“Disctinctly,” said Karyn. “I also remember her promising not to interfere.”

“With the world at large. I don’t think she—or Karynet, they’re together—stopped wanting to do nice things for you. Anyway, they arranged it so that this made-up person got listed in with you when they assigned rooms. The local rosters that the people who run the dorms use have the room as only being occupied by you, but the ones that tell them where they have free space will list Peony as being here.”

Karyn had a momentary flash of an ethical quandary, but quickly concluded that the university took enough from students in general and her in particular that it could afford to go without one semester’s room and board fee.

“Well, I suppose this isn’t the worst thing you’ve done. And I do get the room to myself now.”

“Exactly. So, like I’ve been saying, let’s decorate!”

They started picking up things from the pile. With twice the space and furniture available, Karyn found it easy to organize her room. She decided to make one “working desk” and one “play desk.” The video game system and her small TV went by the play desk.

“You’ve got to show me how to play that some time,” said Derpy.

“Yeah, that could be tricky with hooves. Video games are mostly about precision finger work.”

Derpy arranged all the pens and stationery on the working desk while Karyn picked out a set of bedding and made the bed. The random pile that had taken up the center of the room was dwindling as everything found a place. Karyn stacked the two mini-fridges that came with the room.

“There. When they’re together, they look almost like one normal fridge. Let me have that whiteboard.”

“Sure, just let me erase it first.”

“Oh, no,” said Karyn. “I want to keep what you’ve written. It’ll remind me of how much of a trickster you are. I’ll be ready next time.”

“You’ll never know what I’m planning next!” said Derpy with a slyness in her voice. “I am the ultimate prank-puller! Pinkie Pie has nothing on me. You know why? Because even I don’t know what I’m going to do until I do it.”

“I actually believe that.”

The last of the arrangement was complete, and Derpy and Karyn sat by the window sipping sodas.

“We ought to take a picture of the room as it is,” said Karyn. “It’ll probably be the last time it’s this clean.”

“Hey, you’re not so bad. Remind me to tell you how bad Dinky was at picking up her room.”

Karyn held up her bottle of soda and gestured for Derpy to do the same.

“Well, however it goes, here’s to a great semester.”

The bottles clinked

Author's Note

Coming next week!

“But Princess Celestia is good. She never does things like that.”

Derpy breathed easier. “You’re right. But we still don’t know why she wants us. We’re just going to have to go and see her.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy and Karyn were left alone, and they were both in panic mode. “Is this some kind of horrible dream?” asked Derpy. “Pinch me to make sure.”

“I don’t think that works. Everyone knows that that’s what you do to make sure it’s not a dream, so you might even dream that the pinch hurt.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"We feel that if humans are to be allowed into Equestria, that we should take the opportunity to really learn about them.”

Derpy held up a hoof. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“We mean in a more controlled setting,”

That's next week. Just so you know, we're going up to Chapter 30, then there'll be a "clip show" followed by a week off. After that, something really special! Thank you for all your support!

25: Princess Derpy

Karyn stuck the plastic fork into the last bite of the syrup-slathered pancakes that she had bought from the college cafeteria. “Oh, it’s good to be back,” she said out loud. “As much as I love home cooking, they make a decent meal here. All right, Derpy, where are you? It’s getting late.”

She threw away the paper plate and put the tray on the trash can in the hall, then checked the clock on her phone again. Derpy was past due.

“Well, I’ll start reading something, and that will make her show. A watched pot never boils.”

“And an observed interdimensional warp never produces a pegasus pony?” said Derpy, who had just appeared.

“Yeah, that too. What’s up?”

“Oh, not much,” said Derpy. She looked around as if afraid someone was watching.

“Don’t worry,” said Karyn. “We’re here at the dorm. No more parents, and unless you messed up and I was assigned another roommate, we should be alone.”

“Right. No humans around.”

Derpy went to the window and looked out. “Is something wrong?” asked Karyn.

“Why would it be?”

“Well, you’re avoiding eye contact with me?”

Derpy stuck out her tongue. “Technically, I never fully make eye contact with you. Only half, at most.”

“Don’t start in on yourself. Your eyes are unique and beautiful.”

“Mmhm,” Derpy said, getting distracted.

“Anyway, you changed the subject. What’s wrong?”

Derpy looked at her bag of spells. “I wish the time distortion worked the other way. I wish I could stay here on earth and go back to Equestria when I felt ready.”

Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s wing. “Come on, you can tell me. I’m your friend.”

“I know! That’s why I don’t want to have to take you back with me. I’m afraid that you’ll be in trouble!”

“Why would there be trouble?”

Derpy reached in her other saddlebag and pulled out a scroll. “I got this in the mail yesterday. It says, ‘Princess Celestia of Equestria, Viceroy of all Ponies, Protectress of the Everfree Forest, Duchess of—‘ it goes on for a while with her titles—‘requests Derpy Hooves present herself before her Princess on—‘ and then there’s a date which is today in the Equestrian calendar—‘ in her royal dwelling at Canterlot Castle.’ It came sealed with wax and a sunburst mark, so I know it’s official.”

“OK, that’s fine, but where does my trouble come in?”

Derpy reached back in and produced a second scroll. Karyn got to see the wax seal for herself, right below the words, ‘Karyn Ann Hubert, Floor 4, Room 6, Dormitory USCI, Earth’ written in a fancy calligraphy. “Whoa,” she said, “Princess Celestia knows where I live. That’s a little scary. She must have powerful magic to automatically address this to me.”

“Um, actually, the guard who brought my message said it was for you and just asked me for the address. Then she wrote it on the scroll. Good hoofwriting, though, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Derpy. It’s real pretty.” Karyn carefully broke the seal and unrolled the message. It said substantially what Derpy’s had. “So what do we do about this?”

“There’s nothing we can do. But I don’t know what it’s about. She could decide that she doesn’t want humans around in Equestria anymore. She could tell us that we’ve done too much to destroy the balance of nature. She could wipe out our existence right there!”

“But Princess Celestia is good. She never does things like that.”

Derpy breathed easier. “You’re right. But we still don’t know why she wants us. We’re just going to have to go and see her.”

Karyn rolled the scroll back up and put it in her desk drawer, then looked at her closet. “I suppose if I am going to be meeting royalty, I should dress for the occasion.”

“I’m not wearing anything. Why don’t you wear that dress that Rarity gave you?”

“You’re more comfortable in nothing. If I wore that, I’d be more nervous. No, I don’t have a true formal dress, but I do have a business outfit that I’ll put on.” Sensing Derpy’s look, she explained, “My mother bought it for me on the off chance that I would get an interview for a job, as if that would happen to a sophomore.”

She went into the bathroom and changed from her jeans and T-shirt into the suit. She came out and checked herself in the mirror, then decided that she needed to put on makeup as well.

“It’s a nice outfit,” said Derpy.

“Well, I had to change it a little. Mom’s fashion tastes are still from thirty years ago. When she bought it, it had shoulder pads. I ripped them out first chance I got.”

“Really? That sounds practical. Less chance to get hurt.”

“Yeah, but they make you look all square,” said Karyn. “All right, let’s go.”

She got on Derpy’s back, but could tell that Derpy was still nervous. She was acting more like a skittish horse than a dignified pegasus. She activated the spell reluctantly and slowly circled down to Ponyville.

“Are we stopping by the house first?” Karyn asked. “And how are we getting there?”

“I already said good-bye to Muffinhead, so we can go right to the train station. As to how we’re getting there—“

“Yeah, I got it, the train. But you’re coming back to Muffinhead, don’t worry.”

Derpy started trotting to the station. She had forgotten to let Karyn off. “I always say good-bye to him. He’s not happy whenever I’m gone.”

The train was already waiting when they walked into the station, and they had to hurry to get in before the all-aboard. Derpy finally let Karyn walk on her own, and right as she ascended the stairs into the car, thought she heard her name called. She poked her head back out, but everypony had already boarded. The cry was explained a moment later when a familiar blue-capped stallion walked up from a few cars back.

“Hey, Karyn! I thought that was you I saw getting on board!”

“Hi, Smash. I guess I do stick out around here. How’s the bag-hauling business?”

“Never better. Not in the fancy car this time? Oh, hello, Derpy.”

Derpy waved. “Not this time. Official business. Our tickets are being paid for by the royal treasury.”

“Really? Sounds like you’ve got something fancy doing.”

“No,” said Karyn. “We were summoned by the Princess. We don’t know why, and we’re a little nervous.”

“I’d be honored. I’ve never met Princess Celestia. I’ve never even been to the castle.” Just as he said that, a bell rang. “Oops, that’s for me. Got to get back to work. Have a good trip!”

They found seats, which were wider than on human trains, and Karyn had to lay out in order to get comfortable. “You see, Derpy?” Karyn said. “Smash would love to be in our position, going to see Princess Celestia. You don’t know, this could be something positive. She might want to give you a medal for opening new boundaries.”

“Then why couldn’t she just write that? Actually, that’s what bothers me more than anything. If she wanted to upbraid me for something I’ve done, just write down ‘Derpy, get your flank over here so I can yell at you about’ whatever it is. Better than to leave me in the dark.”

“Which means that she probably doesn’t want to chastise you. Anyway, let’s get going and end the mystery.”

They walked along the streets of Canterlot. Despite her hurry, Karyn could not help slowing down and gawking. Canterlot was like no place she had ever seen before.

“This is incredible, Derpy. All the buildings and decorations are so colorful. The only thing I could compare it to is Disneyland.”

“I’ve never been to that land. What’s it like?”

“It’s an amusement park. But the difference is that no matter how pretty everything is there, you know it’s a front and that everything is designed to keep you involved and spending money. This is a real city.”

Some fancily dressed ponies sauntered down the road they were traveling. A stallion looked over his pince-nez at Karyn, while the mare he was walking with pulled out a pair of opera glasses.

“I feel even more the center of attention here,” said Karyn.

“Well, in Ponyville there’s already one human. Plus they’re more laid back in general. Here everything’s all about propriety and protocol.”

“I bet you can’t stand it.”

“Are you kidding? I have a ball messing with ponies.” They passed by a fruit stand. Derpy picked up a couple of plums and put them in her mouth. “Not bad!” she said to the vendor, flipping a bit to him and walking on. He stared at her, but she just kept her smile.

It faltered finally when they came to the gates of Canterlot Castle. Derpy became tongue-tied when the guard challenged her, and it was all she could do to pass him the scroll she had been given. The guard read it while his partner eyed Karyn warily. Silently he waved them through.

Another guard stopped them short of the main chamber. “Princess Celestia is hearing petitions right now. You wait your turn.”

Derpy was about to sit down by the wall, but Karyn had had enough of being stonewalled. “Is she hearing a petition of a hundred ponies? Because I see plenty of them watching. If we do have to wait, can’t we at least go in and join the others?”

“Hey, yeah!” said Derpy. “The royal court is supposed to be public.”

The guard didn’t like being challenged, but he said, “Technically you’re allowed to go in, but you should—“ he didn’t finish, as Karyn had already walked into the chamber with Derpy behind her.

They found seats and listened to an Earth pony farmer supplicating to the Princess.

“. . . my father and his father before him grew potatoes on our land, and they were fine potatoes. And the neighbors always grew carrots. Now, just because potatoes are fetching a higher price than carrots, they want to grow potatoes too! It’s not fair! Potatoes are my family’s tradition, and carrots are theirs!”

Celestia had a look of serene patience as she listened to the farmer. Finally she held up a hoof and asked, “What would you like me to do about it?”

“Well, make them go back to growing carrots! Or at least, don’t let them grow potatoes. Put things back the way they were.”

Celestia said nothing for a few minutes. The farmer couldn’t tell if she was thinking over his request. Karyn listened intently to see what the princess would say.

“I cannot do that,” Celestia said. “A pony who owns land can grow anything they like on it. But I can give you some advice.”

The farmer clutched his hat.

“When one crop becomes popular, the price goes up, but never for long. Potatoes are what ponies are eating this year, but next, they may well go back to carrots, or even parsnips. If you ask around and find what ponies want to eat, you can change your crop for next year and have the exclusive on the high-priced food.”

The princess indicated that the interview was over, and the farmer walked out of the royal chamber. It was unclear whether or not he was happy with the response he had gotten, but it was clear that he was getting no more.

Celestia’s eyes landed on Karyn, and she whispered a subtle command to a guard next to her. He relayed the signal wordlessly, and she and Derpy felt taps on their shoulder. From the large meeting area, they were escorted to a small room where they were again alone. Princess Celestia walked in moments later.

Karyn wondered what the proper greeting was, and decided that the best course of action was to wait to speak until she was spoken to.

She turned first to Derpy. “Miss Hooves. You were the one who brought this human to our world?”

“Yes, your highness.”

“And you, Miss. . . Karyn, yes? How do you find our land?”

“It’s such a wonderful place. Princess,” she added quickly.

“That is good. For there is something of great importance that I require of you. Did you take note of how I conducted the business of ruling?”

“A little bit,” said Karyn.

“Excellent. You see, a long time ago, a seer issued a prophecy. Someday, it was written, one would come from another world and become companion to a pegasus pony.”

“And you think that could be me?” said Derpy.

“I do. But the prophecy also said that, to avert a great catastrophe, that I, Princess Celestia, would have to turn over the reins of power to that pegasus, and that she would be advised by the person from another world.”

Karyn and Derpy just sat there and blinked.

“Congratulations, Princess Derpy Hooves.”

“Wait a minute!” said Karyn. “Derpy as Princess? Equestria won’t last two days!”

“Hey!” said Derpy. “It certainly will last two days!”

“And what’s this catastrophe that we’re supposed to avert?”

“That I don’t know, but nonetheless, your highness,” Celestia said, the words sounding odd coming from her, “you have royal duties to attend to. There is a consortium of society ponies who have requested an audience. I will show them in.”

Celestia walked out, then thought of something. Using her magic, she lifted the crown off her head and slid it onto Derpy’s.

Derpy and Karyn were left alone, and they were both in panic mode. “Is this some kind of horrible dream?” asked Derpy. “Pinch me to make sure.”

“I don’t think that works. Everyone knows that that’s what you do to make sure it’s not a dream, so you might even dream that the pinch hurt.”

“I’m so flustered that that even makes sense. What am I going to do? I can’t deal with society ponies. And I certainly can’t be the Princess!”

She flew up in her rage, and the golden crown slipped over her eyes. She shoved it back up with a hoof.

“Listen,” said Karyn. “Princess Celestia. . . well, ex-Princess Celestia, said it was important. Probably as soon as this crisis shows up, we’ll be able to go back to normal. So take a deep breath, and just get through this meeting. Then we’ll have time to think.”

“OK. How do I get through?”

“Just be yourself.”

Celestia, now acting as a mare-in-waiting, escorted in three well-dressed ponies. A wavy-maned Earth stallion said. “Greetings, your highness. I am Hoity Toity.”

Derpy waited for a beat, then remembered what Karyn said. “Nice to meetcha, Toity!” she said. His jaw fell open

The unicorn mare tried next. “And my name is Upper Crust,” she said.

“How you doin’, Crusty!”

Upper Crust thought about fainting, but decided that it wasn’t worth it.

The third pony was a pegasus. “Hoi Polloi at your service, Princess.”

“What’s up. . . “ Derpy leaned in and whispered to Karyn. “I got nothing on this guy’s name. What do I do?”

Karyn stage-whispered back so that everypony could hear. “I know a lot of people think that ‘hoi polloi’ means the high society, but it actually refers to the masses.”

The three ponies in audience looked at each other, as if trying to decide who would be the spokespony. Finally Hoi Polloi said, “We have come, Princess, to speak with you about your. . . advisor.”

Upper Crust took up the thread. “You see, we feel that if humans are to be allowed into Equestria, that we should take the opportunity to really learn about them.”

Derpy held up a hoof. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“We mean in a more controlled setting,” said Hoity Toity.

“What exactly are you asking for?” said Derpy.

“We know of ponies who have laboratories set up. We’d like to take your human and have her studied by some scientists,” said Upper Crust. “Then we would truly know if she’s dangerous and how she can be helpful to ponykind.”

“WHAT?!” Derpy screamed. It was a forceful scream, but it carried some unseen power in it. The high-class ponies cowered as Derpy appeared to grow larger. She spoke to the three of them, and although her voice was the same, in some small way, she sounded like a princess.

“All of you, listen. I don’t know how I got roped into this job, but I certainly know that you would not have been so disrespectful when Celestia was Princess. I’ve come across your type before, who look down upon humans and don’t even give them the dignity of a name. Karyn is my friend. You are only my subjects. But even back before this job was thrust on me, she was still a better person than you three are!

“So, by royal decree, I’m officially ordering you out of here with the warning that if anypony accosts, interferes with, discriminates against, or commits a wrong against Karyn—no, against any human—that pony will no longer be welcome in Equestria.”

The ponies in audience looked nervous, but still a little defiant. Derpy wondered how she could be sure to reach them. She got an idea.

“Furthermore,” she said, “all their lands and money will be turned over to the royal treasury.”

That did it. Hoity Toity, Upper Crust, and Hoi Polloi turned tail and ran out of the room, quickly saying thanks-for-the-audience-princess.

Derpy sighed and slumped in the chair. Karyn rested a hand on her wing. “Thanks, your highness.”

“Oh, Karyn, please don’t ever call me that.”

“All right. Thanks, Derpy.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I was so nervous the whole time. And I hated to have to dress down those ponies, even if they were mean ponies who wanted to experiment on you.”

Karyn smiled. “They deserved it though.”

“Yeah, I guess I did enjoy it a little. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Wait, do I have to raise the sun? I don’t know how to do that!”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” a voice said.

“Celestia! Please tell me that you’ll still raise the sun for me,” said Derpy.

“I’ll do more than that. You don’t have to be Princess anymore.”

“Huh?”

Celestia pulled the crown off of Derpy’s head. “I hope you’ll forgive me for putting you through that. The elites of Canterlot can be quite a tricky group.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither,” said Karyn.

Celestia looked at her. “For a while now, I’ve been hearing requests and feeling the pressure to do exactly what they asked Derpy to do: keep you here and run tests on you. But they never quite came out and said that that’s what they wanted to do. As I said, they’re tricky. If they didn’t actually get a decision, they could stir up enough sentiment in favor of it. So I had to make them want to say it out loud. It’s official record now that they have been refused by the Princess.”

“But why couldn’t you have just said no yourself?” asked Derpy. “You’re Princess Celestia. Everypony listens to you.”

“I wish that were true. Some ponies think they know better than me, and politic for their own ends. I have to be tricky myself. Once more, I’m sorry I had to put you on the spot, but nopony else would give such a sincere and forceful denial. Nopony else cares for Karyn as much as you do.”

Derpy and Karyn looked at each other.

“Wait,” said Derpy, “What about the crisis? The big catastrophe that we had to avert?”

“Oh, I think that imprisoning Karyn would be quite the catastrophe, don’t you?” said Celestia.

“And there was no prophecy? No seer from a long time ago?”

Celestia put on her biggest smile. “I do see things now and again. And last night was a long time ago as these things happen.”

Derpy gave the Princess a look, but quickly realized that that might be insubordinate. The last thing she wanted was to have Celestia thrust her back into an equal position.

Karyn was deep in thought, and finally said, “Um, your highness?”

“Yes?” said Celestia and Derpy together.

“Sorry,” said Derpy. “I guess I got a little used to it.”

“What is it, child?” asked Celestia.

“I was thinking that those ponies might not be too far off. I mean, I don’t want to be kept here or have experiments done to me, but it is right for Equestrians to want to know more about me, and vice versa. If you do think of projects that we can do to further bridge the gap between our worlds, I’d be willing to help.”

Derpy trotted over to her. “If Karyn’s willing, then so am I. But only if you approve them, and not those ponies.”

“All right, my dears,” said Celestia. “That’s good to know. And now, I really do have to get back to work.”

“And we should probably get the train back.”

Celestia stopped at the door to the main chamber. “For your patience and for your pains, I can at least send you home on a chariot.”

Karyn and Derpy demurred, but a moment later found themselves being pulled through the streets of Canterlot on a chariot of gold by two guards. They were even more conspicuous than before.

“Well, Derpy,” said Karyn, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“No. I’ll trust Princess Celestia from now on. Even if you did give her carte blanche to mess with us."

Author's Note

What have the girls gotten themselves into? Next week. . . you'll find out in the preview. Meanwhile, here are clips from that chapter!

“It’s good to be back in the dorm where we can talk without whispering. And to not have Princess Celestia’s letter hanging over our heads.”

Derpy looked up. Karyn added, “Metaphorically speaking.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The train approached another little station, and Karyn tapped Derpy on a wing to wave her out. They walked a block and came to one of the large buildings.

“Now here’s where this could be a little awkward,” said Karyn. “This is the bank’s office, but it’s Sunday, and banks are always closed. Still, let’s ring the bell.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t want to blow the whole thing. I should save some.”

“That’s a good value as well. But found money is meant for fun.”

“Well, how about muffins and coffee back at the dorm?” said Karyn.

“Works for me!”

26: Tech Derport

“How do I manage to mess up a room in two weeks?” Karyn asked herself as she tidied up. She wouldn’t normally call herself a neat freak, but she didn’t want to have Derpy think ill of her in any way. At the rushing sound of air and magic, she took the pile of clothes she had in her hands and threw it into a hamper, then ran to sit herself on the bed so as to look nonchalant.

Derpy finished popping into existence and said hello.

“Hi to you too,” said Karyn. “It’s good to be back in the dorm where we can talk without whispering. And to not have Princess Celestia’s letter hanging over our heads.”

Derpy looked up. Karyn added, “Metaphorically speaking.”

“You should end your sentences with that phrase more often. But speaking of getting back to normal, and speaking of letters, I got one from Dinky.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s she doing in magic school?”

“Good. She promises to wow me with some spells she’s learned. Not that I can’t show her a thing or two, right?” Derpy patted her saddlebag. “But more importantly we’ve got a date set. Three weeks and she’s coming to Ponyville for a visit. And you’ll be there, right?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Either one.”

“That’s good. Maybe someday, years from now, she and your daughter can be friends and visit each other the same way we do.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “A lot of years from now. I haven’t even begun thinking about starting a family. And even if I did, there’s a fifty-fifty shot that I wouldn’t have a daughter.”

“I know. But it’s nice to dream, isn’t it?”

“I suppose. In any case, before I can worry about my family, I’ve got to get this whole career thing under control. Which means getting it started.”

Derpy’s face fell. “Uh oh. I know you. This is a prelude to one of your ‘here’s why we can’t just hang out today’ things.”

“I’m afraid so. Who schedules an internship on a Sunday anyway?”

“A what now?”

Karyn went over to her computer and pulled up an e-mail. “OK, I’ve told you all about what I’m studying as far as computers go, right? Well, one of my uncles already works with them. He set up this one-day thing where I can go and watch someone else running a center for IT. I tried to beg off, because I’d much rather, as you said, just hang out with you. He replied to me: ‘Karyn, I had to pull a lot of strings to get you in, and this is one of the most modern sites that’s running in this state. Plus the contacts you make will help you when you’re trying to find a job.’ And it goes on from there. So, I’m kind of stuck.”

“But you’re going to let me come with you incognito, right?”

“You can come in whatever clothes you feel like.”

“No, incognito means in disguise, as in using my invisibility—“ Derpy said, but cut herself off when she saw Karyn laughing.

“I know that, Derpy. I just wanted you to feel what it was like for once.”

Derpy’s eyes narrowed into slits, and Karyn was afraid that she had offended her friend, but Derpy joined Karyn in laughter a moment later. Then she said, “So tell me what sort of thing we’re going to see in this place.”

“Well, depending on how much access we get—and this is at a bank, so it might not be a lot—we should go beyond the end user area like this,” Karyn said, pointing to her own computer, “and see all the guts that make up the network.”

“Well, let’s get going,” said Derpy.

“We can’t walk there. It’s downtown. Even if we could manage the distance, the traffic there is annoying. Crossing the big avenues takes five minutes.”

“Then how do we get there?”

“Light rail,” said Karyn, packing up and heading out to the street. A block from the campus, in a different direction than they had been before, there was a small station. It was a little like the simple stations of the Equestrian rail, but it had a plastic cover for the rain and automated ticket machines.

“I’ll ride on top as usual,” said Derpy. “So I don’t get bumped into.”

“Not a good idea. These are powered by cables overhead. You’ll get knocked off or electrocuted or both. But don’t worry, this time of day on a Sunday, there shouldn’t be too much of a crowd.”

A train arrived right then, and they shuffled into it. As Karyn said, it was nearly empty. Derpy plastered her invisible face to the window and watched as they made their way to the city hub.

The sun was particularly bright that day, and Derpy had to shade her eyes as the train went around a bend. Although the city had the university to boast of, there were only four tall buildings in the downtown area. Still, even that was enough to impress Derpy.

The train approached another little station, and Karyn tapped Derpy on a wing to wave her out. They walked a block and came to one of the large buildings.

“Now here’s where this could be a little awkward,” said Karyn. “This is the bank’s office, but it’s Sunday, and banks are always closed. Still, let’s ring the bell.”

The bell was actually an electronic intercom. She pushed the button and heard the chirp, but no one answered. “Looks like no one’s here,” said Derpy. “Back home and have fun?”

“I wish.” Karyn took out her cell phone and sent a text message. “My uncle gave me the guy’s number. I let him know I’m here.”

The man who came down was not the stereotype of the IT professional, but clearly tried to act the part. His beard was not wispy but the shave was uneven, his glasses had frames that were at least fashionable at some point, and his blue jeans had a collared shirt tucked into them. He also carried a bottle of diet cola with him instead of the more traditional Mountain Dew.

“Call me Jim,” he said. “You’re Karyn?”

“Yes, and this is. . . where you work?” Karyn was about to introduce Derpy, and thought that she covered herself nicely.

“Yeah. Come on in, I’ll give you the tour.”

“I hope you didn’t come into work on a Sunday on my account.”

“Nah,” he said. “I do out-of-hours work once a month or so, and I take time in lieu. That’s the first lesson of IT work, by the way. Never do anything for the company without compensation. It sets a bad precedent.”

Karyn nodded.

“I also get a chance to dress down for once. Just because we have a branch here, they make me wear a shirt and tie for the customers. Not that they’d see me other than walking in and walking out, but what can you do with the bosses?”

Karyn again grunted assent, but did not have a good first impression of Jim. As they reached the elevators and Jim pulled out a pass card that opened the door, she got an idea.

“Do you mind if I take the stairs?” she said. “I always like to get the exercise when I can.”

“It’s the seventh floor, but go ahead, knock yourself out.” He slid the card through the other reader, and the door to the stairs opened.

“Is that safe to have the stairs locked?” Karyn asked.

“Only this floor is. They’re not worried about people getting out, only in.”

Karyn started climbing the stairs, which gave her the chance to talk to Derpy. “Guy’s kind of a loser, don’t you think? Talking about what he can get before what he does.”

“Could be, but if you’re long in a job, you get to think that way. Hey, you want to play a prank on him?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Derpy spread her wings. “Let’s beat him up to the seventh floor. Hop on.”

Karyn took a second to realize what she meant, then looked up to the small gap in the stairs. She felt her way onto Derpy’s back, and they soared up six stories in a few seconds. Karyn leaned against a wall outside the elevator and adopted a smug look. The door opened and Jim stepped out.

“Wow, you are in shape,” he said. “Maybe I should start taking the stairs.”

Karyn said nothing and just kept smiling. She followed him down the hall to a gray-paneled room.

“OK,” Jim said. “This is where we run everything from. It’s important to have one of the best machines here for monitoring and control.”

He gestured to his machine, and Karyn did feel a little bit of envy. Two wide-screen flat-panel monitors sat on a corner desk, below which was a sleek tower that looked like it would be pretty good in flight. The chair plugged into the machine itself and wouldn’t have been out of place in a man cave. It had pads for heat and massage. The whole setup was like the bridge of a starship.

Jim flipped the monitors on, and Karyn saw a program that showed the output of two dozen servers. “Most of the time,” he said, “I can sit here and check on status all over the company.”

“How many people are on your staff?” she asked.

He grimaced at the double entendre, but said, “It’s really just me and a relief guy, plus the help desk.” He flipped a light switch, and behind a pane of glass that looked bulletproof, the server room became visible.

“I came up through the help desk,” he said, “and I don’t want to go back. That’s what I like about servers. Beyond what they’re designed to do, they’re also specifically designed to not fail. The two things most likely to fail on any computer are the power supply and the hard drive. Each of those servers has dual, redundant power supplies plugged into a backup loaded with heavy batteries. They have six hard drives that are double and triple mirrored. If those fail, it’s important not to lose anything. Whether it’s the web site or the e-mail or the payroll server. Especially the payroll server.”

“Can I go in and see it?”

“Well, I really shouldn’t. Not too long, and don’t touch anything.”

He swiped his card through, and Karyn opened the door wide to slip in with Derpy. She checked for security cameras and, finding none, proceeded to whisper a conversation

“Well, whatever he’s like, he is passionate about his work.”

“He is,” said Derpy.

“And at least he hadn’t hit on me.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. If I’m right, he’s a homosexual.”

Karyn looked through the thick window, but Jim had his back turned. “How do you know? Do you have some kind of pony sense that tells you?”

“No, I just saw a picture of a boyfriend on his desk.”

Karyn cursed her lack of observancy and examined the servers. She pointed at the two thick power cords coming from each and the six bays with air vents. “There’s the redundancy he was talking about.”

“I see it, but he’s wrong in his methods. There’s one other key point on all of these that’s not backed up.”

Karyn was about to ask what she meant, but Jim called her back from the office. “Come and take a look at this.”

She went back through the security door and looked at the monitor. “What have you got?”

“This program not only reports status on all the equipment, but also age on the parts and when to do certain tasks and preemptively replace stuff. I’m going to do a monthly reboot on the building maintenance server.”

“Cool.”

He ran a pen down a long list of information and muttered to himself. “Looks good to go. You want to push the button?”

Karyn chuckled. “Sure.” She winked to Derpy and held her hand over the mouse, but actually guided the invisible hoof. “Here I go.”

They watched as normal Windows shutdown appeared remotely on the monitor reflecting the same thing as an expensive server rack behind the glass. It ran through the startup and stalled out.

“Hm,” Jim said.

“What is ‘hm’?”

“Oh, it’s nothing you did, I’m sure. But it’s a substitute for swearing.”

He messed around with the keyboard for a bit, and Karyn tried to follow what he was doing, without success. She tried to stay out of the way.

After ten minutes, Jim said, “Can you do me a favor? Go down to the fourth floor and I’ll call you.”

“I’d like nothing better.”

She took the elevator back down and let herself and Derpy into a large open-plan room filled with desks. They were set up in plus-sign patterns of four desks each with no walls between them.

“I can see his point about an office too,” she said to Derpy. “I’d hate to work here with no privacy and everyone looking at you.”

“I know what you mean. It’s one reason I love carrying the mail, and why I like less the sorting and meetings in the post office. Whenever you’re being supervised, there’s always that nervousness that you could be doing something wrong. But when I’m out flying from house to house, nopony looks and, if I want to fly a little slower or just sing to myself, nopony knows.”

The phone on one of the desks rang and Karyn picked it up. “Hello.”

“Hey. Go ahead and turn on the computer in front of you. I’ll give you a login and password and I want to see if you can get on our network.”

The computer was old and slow and took its time about getting to the login screen. She put in the name and password Jim gave her.

“Well, it’s on,” she said to the phone. “But it’s running slow.”

“Hey, Karyn,” said Derpy. “Why don’t you just tell him to look at the—“

“Hang on,” she said, holding up a finger. “Yeah, I can get on the Internet.”

“OK, but try our e-mail. It’s the one with the bank logo that says ‘E-mail’.”

She muted the phone and said, “Yeah, I could have figured that out. Tech guys all think no one else knows anything.” Turning it back on, she said, “That’s failing.”

“That’s what I figured. That workstation is for the head of maintenance. All right, just hang out. I may ask you to try more things.”

Karyn didn’t know if he wanted to hang up and call back or leave the line open, so she put her end on mute. “Well, I guess I don’t mind this. This is how I’d like a job to be. Just relax while someone else does the work.”

“Heh. I think we all want that,” said Derpy.

“But if what he says is right, that it’s mostly about preventative maintenance, I can handle that. I’m the type that likes to get everything done as soon as possible and then relax with no worries. That’ s why I like getting up early to see you. I take care of everything on Saturday and do nothing on Sunday.”

“So does that mean that you don’t want to tell him what’s wrong?”

Karyn was about to ask what Derpy meant when the phone came to life again, and this time Jim was swearing. More for the sake of Derpy’s ears that her own, she picked it up and said, “Problems?”

“Oh, I didn’t realize this was on,” said Jim. “Sorry. But we’re now kind of on time pressure. See, when the environmental controls went down, it kind of shut off the air conditioning in the server room. If I can’t get this working, it’s going to get to about a hundred twenty degrees in here, and that means more failures.”

“I see.” Karyn muted the phone again.

“We’d better tell him then,” said Derpy.

“You keep saying that. How do you know what’s wrong?”

“It has to be this. He said that there were two things most likely to fail on a computer, the hard drive and the power. But there’s a third thing: the networking. That can fail because it’s not really part of the machine itself. The cable could break, or whatever the other end of the cable is plugged into could fail. The thing he’s looking at is probably fine, just isolated.”

Karyn looked at the phone, then at Derpy. “You really have learned a lot about computers.”

“They’re not that hard, but they’re not obvious. I can see how the average pony might be confused. But I think different.”

“Heh, that was the slogan for one computer company a while back. Anyway, how do we let Jim know?”

Derpy flew over to the closet that had that floor’s networking hub. “Could we tell him that the lights are out on this thing? I know that they’re not, but it might make him look at the same thing up there?”

“That might work, but what if he comes down to look?”

“He won’t. He sent you down here specifically to avoid the walking. I think he’s a bit lazy, if you ask me.”

Karyn took the phone off mute. “Jim, it looks like some of the lights are out on the hub down here. Or at least they’re blinking steady instead of random. Could the network be down between that server and the rest?”

“Probably not,” the voice on the phone said, “but feel free to reset it.”

Karyn headed over to the closet, but Derpy had already pulled the plug.

“This hub has one thing odd about it.”

“What’s that?” asked Karyn.

“It doesn’t say who made it or where it’s from. There’s no logo on it.”

“No hub logo is always a good thing though.”

Derpy looked confused, and Karyn decided not to explain the inside joke. The plug was put back in and the lights started blinking.

“Now I bet you that in ten minutes he calls back to say that it’s all fixed, but that it was some other reason.”

“Oh, Derpy. There’s no need to be cynical.”

They waited a while and played on the internet. When Karyn heard the central air kick on, she nodded to where Derpy was. “At least it’s working,” she said.

The phone rang five minutes later. “You can go ahead and come back up here.”

They took the elevator back up. When they reached the server room, Jim was in a better mood. “So it’s all fixed?” said Karyn.

“Yeah, nothing to it. Just needed to change a few settings and reboot again and it worked.”

“So it wasn’t the networking?” she asked, noticing through the glass that there was one white data cable in among the many black ones she had seen the first time.

“No. Good guess though. Just goes to show how much experience counts. It’s a good learning experience for you.”

Karyn felt an invisible stare burning a hole in her head. Perhaps Jim felt something similar, because he continued. “Although, you certainly did help by saving me from running up and down the stairs to check when it was up. I’m going to put in to have you paid for the day.”

“Really? Thanks!”

“Yeah. No one’s around today, but stop by tomorrow and I’ll have accounting give you a hundred bucks. Maybe ninety-nine, since I think they can do that through petty cash instead of making you wait for a check and have to fill out tax forms and get a 1099 next year.”

Karyn shook his hand, and he told her to go home while he finished tying up the loose ends from the failure. She and Derpy got back in the elevator.

“Wow, a hundred bucks!” said Derpy.

“I know. Not bad for half a day’s work.”

“How much is that in bits?”

Karyn blinked. “I don’t know exactly. As an annual salary it wouldn’t really be great, not long-term anyway. But for Sunday work, I’ll take it.”

“We should go out and celebrate.”

“But I don’t actually have it yet.”

They had reached the front door and there was a sound that Karyn couldn’t tell whether it was the automatic door or Derpy sighing. “Someday,” Derpy said, “I’m going to have to sit you down and make you learn about budgeting and receivables and all that. Then you’d know that you’re free to spend because you’ve earned.”

“I don’t want to blow the whole thing. I should save some.”

“That’s a good value as well. But found money is meant for fun.”

“Well, how about muffins and coffee back at the dorm?” said Karyn.

“Works for me!”

They made their way to a street corner with many stores. Karyn bypassed a convenience store for a fancy bakery. When she came out a few minutes later, she had a heavy bag. The muffins she had bought were the extra-large ones.

“Let’s race back to the dorm and have them while they’re still warm.”

“Nice rhyme, Zecora,” Derpy said jokingly. “We can get there real fast if you’re willing to fly.”

“With all these people here? Not on your life!”

“I was kidding.”

Karyn nonetheless quickened her pace toward the dorm room. When they finally arrived, Derpy appeared and started digging through the bag for her muffin.

“I got chocolate chip and double chocolate,” said Karyn. “Pick whichever you want.”

“But I want both!”

“I guess I should have gotten four. Then you could have had one of each. Of course, we’d both put on ten pounds, but it would be worth it.”

“Yeah,” said Derpy, still staring at the two muffins and trying to decide between the two.

“I know. I’ll perform a little magic of my own.”

“Huh?

Karyn smirked and covered the two muffins with her body. Derpy tried to peek around her, but Karyn shielded them from view, even when Derpy flew up in the air. Once she had settled down, Karyn revealed what she had done. The double chocolate muffin top was on the chocolate chip base and vice versa.

“There. Now it’s the same either way.”

Derpy started to object that there was still a difference, but Karyn picked up one of the muffins and started eating. Derpy shrugged and ate the other one.

“So we still have a few hours,” said Karyn. “Free to hang out. What do you want to do?”

“Finish my muffin!” said Derpy. They had a good laugh. Even though there was nothing else of note they did that day, at least there was no more work to do.

Author's Note

There's not a whole lot I can say about next week without giving away the secret, but here are a few lines!

“Hey, Derpy. Do you think we should write or go see the Princess? Tell her that we don’t really appreciate this?”

“We did say that we would help. Is it really so bad?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"That’ll be twenty bits.”

Karyn ran through it in her mind. She remembered that sometimes the vendors were willing to haggle. She wasn’t experienced at negotiations herself, but it seemed to her that, if a bit was about a dollar, that twenty was overcharging. “Twenty? For one pound?”

Can't give away any more, but be sure to be here to read it next Wednesday!

27: Freaky Derpday

The package that Derpy had in her mouth was wrapped in satin of deep magenta, tied with a ribbon that Karyn could see at once was real gold. If the exquisiteness of the packaging were not enough of a giveaway, the blazing Sun logo on the side made it clear who the sender was.

“Good morning, Derpy. What does Princess Celestia have for us here?”

“She didn’t tell me, but I’m prepared to trust her implicitly now.”

“After she was so nice last time, I’m sure. But why haven’t you opened it yet.”

Derpy put it on Karyn’s play desk and showed her the tag. “It’s not just for me. It says right there, ‘Derpy and Karyn.’ I wanted to wait until I saw you.”

“Well, I don’t want to keep you in suspense any longer. Go ahead.”

Derpy pulled on the gold ribbon with her teeth and it came loose. “Can you do the wrapping? I might rip it and your hands are so much more precise.”

“Of course I will.” Karyn found the flap and lifted it. She got off the paper in one piece, then Derpy opened the box and pulled out the object in it. It was like one of the spells Derpy kept in her saddlebag, but more sleek. If Derpy’s spells were like sneakers, this was like a high-heel pump.

“Hm. Why couldn’t Princess Celestia just cast this spell herself?” asked Derpy.

“It must be for our use on Earth. Hang on, there’s a letter in the box.”

The box was lined with more satin, and it was easy to miss the note among the fancy fabric. Derpy pulled it out and read.

“Ladies. In accordance with your willingness to expand your understanding of each other’s worlds with my guidance, please use this spell. Its effects last twenty-four hours. Sincerely yours, Princess Celestia.”

“Well, that wasn’t very revealing. Let’s use it and see what happens.”

Derpy put her hoof in the spell. “Brace yourself. Anything could happen.” She turned her hoof. “How did you get the spell?” she said.

“I have a few better questions. Why am I gray? What happened to my hands? Derpy, I’m a pony!”

“But then, what. . . “ Derpy held her hand in front of her face. “Oh, wow. The spell exchanged our bodies!”

“It did? I was not prepared for this.” Pony-Karyn’s voice was now deep and slow.

“I guess it won’t be too bad, if it’s only for twenty-four hours.” Human-Derpy took a step and face-planted the bed. “Wait a minute. I can’t fly!”

“Of course not. You’re me now.”

“How do you live like this?”

“I manage,” pony-Karyn said. “But how am I supposed to do, well, anything?” She waved her hooves in front of her, trying to pick up anything that was lying around, without success.

“Twenty-four hours like this? We’ll never make it.”

“Sure we will. We’re supposed to learn about each other, so let’s show each other how we go about our lives. Here, go ahead and try to use your hands.”

“To do what?” asked human-Derpy.

“Um. . . why not try writing something?

Human-Derpy picked up a pen on the working desk and held it in a fist. She put a piece of paper on the desk and tried to scribble on it. “This isn’t working!” she said. She dropped her hands onto the keyboard of the computer and saw some gibberish come up on the screen. She reached for the backspace key. “Oh, wait! Now this I can do! Oh, wow. No wonder this is your cutie mark! If I could do this, I’d never stop.”

“What exactly are you writing?”

“Oh, just anything that comes to mind.” Pony-Karyn came over and looked at the screen. It was filled with stream-of-consciousness words that made no sense, but human-Derpy kept typing.

“I should dictate and have you write for me. We can start by telling Princess Celestia just how appreciative we are of her gift.”

“I thought you didn’t like it.”

“When I’m back in my own body, remind me to explain sarcasm.” Pony-Karyn trotted around the room. “What am I going to do since I’m stuck as a pony?”

“Well, if nothing else, there is the fact that you can fly.”

“Yeah, big deal—wait. I can fly?”

Human-Derpy pointed her finger at pony-Karyn. “Yeah, you see those wings on your back? Use them.”

Pony-Karyn turned her head, amazed at the range she had with her neck. As she looked at her wings, Derpy’s wings really, that she was borrowing, she realized that a dream common to all humanity was in her grasp.

“How do I do it?”

“OK, this is really complicated. First, spread your wings.”

“Got it.” The pair of wings unfolded behind her.

“Now flap them.”

Pony-Karyn hovered off the ground a foot, then floated down to the ground. “That’s supposed to be complicated?”

“If that’s all you want, no. But if you actually want to get somewhere, you’ve got to understand about wind, air pressure, all sorts of aeronautics.”

“You know what? I’m happy just to have my feet off the ground. Or, my hooves rather.”

She flapped her wings again, then kept going. She smiled and laughed, bouncing up and down on nothing.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” said human-Derpy, “but don’t count on making the Wonderbolts any time soon.”

“I just want to go try this outside!”

“Whoa there, little pony! Did you forget that we’re on Earth? You have to go invisible if you want to fly outside.”

“No, that’s you. Wait, no, it’s me now. Ah, I’m so confused!” Pony-Karyn put her hooves on her head. “I guess I’ll just stick to flying around the room.”

She took to her wings again. By leaning forward, she was able to get slight forward momentum. She enjoyed zooming around the room for a few minutes.

Without warning, she had a change in her vision. The pony started flying with exquisite skill, dipping and turning. Without thinking about it, she said, “Wow, Karyn, you’re getting good at that. Wait a minute, I’m Karyn. What’s going on?”

It took a moment of disorientation, but after that passed, both she and Derpy realized that they were back in their own bodies. “What’s going on?” said Derpy. “I thought it was supposed to last twenty-four hours.”

“So did I. Maybe this is part of the time difference thing. Twenty-four hours might have passed in Equestria while less time went by here.”

“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Get that note again.”

Karyn found the letter from the princess and passed it to Derpy. “I was kind of getting used to flying,” she said. “Maybe we should try the spell again.”

“Doesn’t look like we’ll have to. Here, on the back. ‘Note that the twenty-four hours are not necessarily consecutive.’”

Karyn laughed. “I love Princess Celestia, but sometimes she can be so exasperating. Still, I’m sure she set it up so that we get to experience each other’s lives thoroughly.”

“Maybe we should get a stopwatch so that we can count up and know when the spell runs out.”

“I think we’ll be able to do it by rule of thumb.” Karyn wiggled her thumb, glad to have it back. “But I do wish that we had a schedule. What happens if you’re flying along and all of a sudden you turn into me? Or I turn into you. You know what I mean. Your body won’t be able to fly.”

“I trust you to land it safely,” said Derpy.

Just then, the phone rang. Derpy looked about, not used to hearing the noise, but with her movable ears tracing it to the instrument by the bedside. Karyn walked over and looked at the display on the back. “It’s my mom. Don’t worry, this won’t take a minute. Just keep quiet.” She pushed the call button, and watched in panic as the blonde girl on the other side of the room brought the phone to her ear. She and Derpy had switched again.

“Um. . . hello,” human-Derpy said.

“Hi, Karyn dear,” the voice on the phone said. “How are you doing?”

“Great, can you hang on a second?”

Pony-Karyn had torn across the room and tried to take the phone away, but she wasn’t used to her hooves and dropped it on the floor. Trying desperately to push the mute button, she quickly realized that she would never be able to get it. She whispered, “Quick, push this button, the one with the little circle-slash on it!”

Human-Derpy still enjoyed using her fingers, so smiled as she pushed the button. “Got it.”

“What are we going to do?! I can’t talk to her with your voice. We sound nothing alike. I can’t even pretend that I have a cold. You’ll have to hurry her off the phone as quick as you can.”

“No problem.” Human-Derpy pushed the button again. “Hi, Ka—I mean, Hi mom!”

“What was that just now?”

“Oh, I dropped the phone. I’m such a butterfingers.”

“I see,” Karyn’s mother said. “How’s your day going?”

“Just fine. Having a fun weekend. How’s yours?”

Pony-Karyn covered the receiver with a hoof and whispered, “This is what you call hurrying her off?”

“Trust me.” She pulled the phone away. “It’s good, I’m good.”

“Are you all right? You seem distracted. “

“Huh? Yeah, I was getting ready to go out. It’s a nice day, you know?”

“It is a nice day,” the voice on the phone said. “All right, you go enjoy it. I’ll talk to you later. Love you, bye.”

“Good-bye.” Human-Derpy put the phone back on its cradle. “See, talking about the weather always ends a conversation. Unless it’s between weather ponies, and I know that your mom isn’t a weather pony.”

Pony-Karyn went to sit down on her desk chair. She tried to sit human style, found it very uncomfortable, then tried putting her back hooves on the seat and leaning over the back, but that was still awkward. She jumped off and glided to the ground.

“Can we please go to Equestria? If I’ve got to be stuck as a pony, I at least want to be where everything is built for ponies.”

“Sure we can. Let me get on your back.”

“Well, this is going to be a switch.” Pony-Karyn knelt down and felt the weight of human-Derpy on her back. She was surprised at how little she weighed. “If carrying my body is this easy, either you’re, like, superpony or I’m free to snack between meals whenever I want.”

“I don’t think I’m that strong. Ponies like Applejack are much stronger than I am.”

“I’m sure. OK, walk me through this. What do I do next?”

“Open the saddlebag,” human-Derpy said. Pony-Karyn looked around. “On your right flank. It’s the first spell in there. Good. Now put your hoof into it. Wait! Don’t turn it yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because we always end up in the air. Don’t forget that and panic. Just flap your wings after you do activate it.”

Pony-Karyn braced herself and activated the spell. Pumping her wings intensely, it was more like stepping onto an elevator than the parachute jump she feared. They hit the ground with a dull thud of hooves.

“All right,” human-Derpy said, “Let’s go home.”

Trotting toward the house, pony-Karyn felt the usual stares of ponies around. They always noticed the human in town, but she now realized that they had just as many odd looks for Derpy. Whether it was her eyes, her clumsiness, or her friendship with a human, the body she was occupying was an object of attention as much as hers.

When she reached Derpy’s front door, she finally got to see how ponies had adapted to not having hands. The latch was activated by pushing against another part of it. Whoever had built it, not having an opposable thumb, had added a mechanical one.

They went in and sat down. The couches were wide and deep and provided plenty of room for the pony body. But human-Derpy was having problems of her own.

“This isn’t comfortable. Why is your back so weak?” she said.

“Well, you have to sit human style. Put your backside under you.”

Human-Derpy twisted around to the position. “Oh! This is easier on my neck. I don’t have to crane to see things.”

“Oh, and aren’t you supposed to have vision problems? I can see just fine out of your eyes.”

“And I’m fine seeing out of yours. Maybe the spell knew enough to transfer that for us.”

Just then there was a rustling and a cry from the next room. “Muffinhead!” human-Derpy said.

The ginger cat walked into the room with his tail up. “Hey, little one,” pony-Karyn said, “maybe today you’ll let me pet and cuddle you, huh?”

Muffinhead bounced up to her and sniffed around. She extended a hoof and gave him a loving stroke on his head. He backed off, narrowed his eyes, and circled around the room until he came to human-Derpy. He meowed.

“Aww. You still know your mommy, huh?” The cat hopped up on her lap and still looked confused. Carefully she used her hand to stroke his fur. Finally he started purring and smiling.

“I can’t win,” pony-Karyn said. “Did we switch smells too?”

“I think he knows my touch. I know the way he likes to be petted and—yeow! Take it easy, Muffinhead!”

The cat had extended his claws and was pawing at human-Derpy’s lap. He was penetrating through her denim jeans and knitting at her skin.

“Be careful with that body,” pony-Karyn said.

“I see why you wear clothes all the time. Your hide is a lot thinner than mine is. And more sensitive as well.”

“Yeah, but that’s not all bad. We can tell heat and cold faster than you can probably.”

“It’s true. And I do get more sensation in these hands than in my hooves. But why are your ears paralyzed?”

Pony-Karyn thought about that. “Actually, there are a few people who can wiggle their ears. I think anyone can learn if they really put the effort into it. But there’s no point. We hear well enough just by turning our heads or our whole bodies toward whatever the sound is.”

Human-Derpy nodded and moved her head for practice. “It’s also weird having a round head instead of a normal one. That reminds me, speaking of round.” She reached down and pulled up her shirt. “About these things you have.”

“Isn’t it about time we switched back randomly?!” pony-Karyn said.

As if she triggered it, Karyn found herself back in her own body clutching her chest. She quickly recomposed herself and smoothed out her shirt.

“How much longer do you think we have to go?” Derpy asked.

“The better part of the day still.”

Muffinhead jumped down off of Karyn’s lap and walked over to Derpy.

“You could tell we jumped back, huh?”

“I guess it could be worse,” said Karyn. “We could be on a three-way rotation with him as well.”

Derpy laughed and trotted off to the kitchen. “I’d better feed him.”

Karyn was left alone on Derpy’s couch. She ran her hands through her hair and stretched her arms. She had taken for granted the feeling of her own body for a long time, but now, after having taken a vacation from it, she was grateful just to feel her hands.

“Hey, Derpy. Do you think we should write or go see the Princess? Tell her that we don’t really appreciate this?”

“We did say that we would help. Is it really so bad being a pony? Or is it that you don’t like me in your body?

“It’s not even that,” said Karyn. “I just wish she had told us outright what it would do and how it would be scheduled. And as much as I love magic, I prefer it when you’re wielding spells than being the object of them.”

“I know you like using them yourself though. If we switch again while we’re not together, feel free to use any of mine. Most of them are labeled.”

“What about the ones that aren’t?”

Derpy looked at her bag. “I guess don’t use those. They should be safe though. Mostly safe.”

Karyn appreciated the gesture. “And you can use my computer if you’re in my room. Just don’t go crazy re-writing other people’s systems.”

“I promise.”

“And at least we know it does have a time limit. We’re not going to be switching back and forth for the rest of our lives.”

Derpy had busied herself tidying up the house, when the switch happened again. “Come on, Karyn,” human-Derpy said. “Let’s go out into Ponyville. We’ll see if anypony out there can tell that we’re switched.”

Still slightly reluctant, but not wanting to let her body out of her sight, pony-Karyn agreed. They started walking out of the house, when she said, “Do you want to ride?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I find that I like carrying you. When I have the strength, I want to use it.”

Human-Derpy mounted. “And I have to say I enjoy it. It’s harder to keep balance with only two feet on the ground. If I had always been human, I think I would have just kept on all fours.”

“It’s not nearly as comfortable as you think.”

They reached the marketplace. “Is there anything you need me to pick up for you?” pony-Karyn asked.

“Hmm. . . I did notice that I was low on cat food.”

“OK, lead me to where I get that.”

“It’s at the far end,” human-Derpy said.

Pony-Karyn smiled a little. “At least you didn’t just pull my mane or look for reins to guide me.”

“Of course not! Why would I?”

“Remember that horses and ponies on Earth aren’t that bright. Humans have to guide them by gesture instead of just telling them where to go.”

“Maybe I need to teach them a thing or two,” human-Derpy said as she dismounted. “OK, go to that far stall and ask them for the cat food. I’m going to browse around for a few other things.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“I’ll be along in a few minutes. Don’t worry. You’ll blend in fine. It’s me who everypony will be looking at.”

Pony-Karyn watched her own body walk away toward the other sellers. She found the booth that had been indicated and trotted up to it.

“Could I please have a pound of cat food?” she asked.

“Why so formal today, Derpy?” the pony behind the booth asked. “I know what you get.”

“Well, actually, I’m not Derpy. I’m her human friend, Karyn, stuck in her body by means of a spell that Princess Celestia sent us to see how we would react.”

The sales-pony burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s a good one! You always make me laugh. Here you go. That’ll be twenty bits.”

Karyn ran through it in her mind. She remembered that sometimes the vendors were willing to haggle. She wasn’t experienced at negotiations herself, but it seemed to her that, if a bit was about a dollar, that twenty was overcharging. “Twenty? For one pound?”

“A pound? I don’t think it weighs more than a few ounces.”

Karyn blinked as she realized that she was talking to a different pony. The cat food seller had been a pink mare; this was an orange stallion. She was back in her own body.

She looked down in her hand. There was a pendant in the shape of a dragon’s claw. She was confused until she saw Derpy flying toward her.

“That darn spell! It chooses the most inconvenient times. Now the surprise is ruined.”

“What surprise?” Karyn asked.

“I’m buying that for you.”

“What were you going to use for money? I don’t have any bits on me?”

“Oh, right,” said Derpy. “But it’s for you when you’re stuck as me. I’ll wear it, and whenever we switch you can look at it and remember that you have fingers instead of hooves.”

She reached into her bag and found the twenty bits, and passed the pendant onto Karyn, who clasped it around Derpy’s neck.”Thanks. Even though it’s kind of for you.”

“Are you going to go out and buy a pair of wings to wear for when I’m in you?”

“Not costume wings, but wing pins are popular. People will just think I’m a pilot or something. I might do that,”

“Come on, let’s get home and give this to Muffinhead before we switch again,” said Derpy, holding up the bag of cat food.

As they walked out of the market and the booths thinned out, Karyn said, “What’s the cat food made of anyway? Aren’t cats carnivores?”

“Yeah. There are a few farms that have chickens and pigs and lambs that are used for animal feed. We know that there are carnivores, we just can’t eat meat ourselves.” She looked at the bag. “Hmm. . . I guess I could try to see what eating meat is like when we’re switched.”

“Don’t you dare! I can, but I don’t, and I don’t want you to either.”

“I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t. Either I’d hate it, and that’d be no fun, or I’d like it, and know that I’d never get to do it again. Whatever happens, I’d be unhappy.”

Karyn was relieved and calmed down. They made it home. “All right, Derpy. I guess I’d better go home. We’ll meet up and compare notes next week. Take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.”

“Good luck,” said Derpy. She held out her hoof and shook Karyn’s hand.

Next week: the swaps come fast and when they least expect it!

29: Making a Good Dinkpression

The first thing that struck Karyn was how similar, and yet how different, the grown-up Dinky looked to the Great and Powerful Trixie. Her mane had bleached out a little and she comported herself with grace and poise, but Dinky’s smile was one of kindness as opposed to Trixie’s smile of malice. That was the only impression of Dinky she could make at first, though, since Derpy was monopolizing her with hugs and wet, sloppy pony-kisses.

Conscious of the princess still standing next to her, Karyn said, “Can I get you anything, your highness? It’s not my house, but I know a little of its layout and I’m sure I could find you some tea or a bite to eat.”

“Thank you, no. I have things to discuss with Derpy, but it would seem that is not feasible at this time. Instead, let us talk more of your recent experiences. Would you like to be a pony again some time, perhaps?”

Karyn was very cautious with her answer. “Well, more than learning about being a pony, I think I learned something about being a friend. I don’t mean behaving as a good friend; I mean literally transforming into someone who you know as a friend. You always know that they have their own life apart from you, but you don’t really feel it until you have to do it yourself.”

Princess Celestia put her hoof to her mouth. “Interesting. I’ll have to consider that.”

Karyn got an idea and smirked. “Perhaps, now that you know the spell works, you might try swapping with your sister for a little while.”

“I’m not sure that I would learn anything by raising the moon. I did do so for a thousand years, you know. But she might enjoy raising the sun for once. I shall consider it. Meantime, let us try to extricate Derpy from her daughter.”

The hugging and kissing finally petered out and Derpy’s attention was drawn to Princess Celestia. “Thank you for bringing Dinky home, your highness. A personal escort from the princess, huh? You must be highly thought-of!”

Dinky looked at her hooves and waved her foreleg anxiously.

“It’s that of which I want to speak to you,” said Princess Celestia. “Dinky’s performance in magic school has been lackluster to say the least.”

“What?! But how? She can’t perform the spells you’re assigning her?”

“In fact, she often performs well on tests. But she has failed to submit several assignments and shows a predilection against working.”

Karyn and Dinky both felt awkward. “Come on, Dinky, let’s go get something to eat,” Karyn said. They retreated to the kitchen.

“I just don’t understand it,” said Derpy. “She was always so attentive in class before. Any time Cheerilee or I asked her to do something, she did it.”

“That may be part of the reason. She was always under somepony’s care. Now that she’s on her own for the first time, a free and independent mare, she may be letting the freedom go to her head.”

“Well, what are we going to do? Are you going to have to kick her out? Will she not be a Gifted Unicorn anymore?”

“I have taught many unicorns over the years,” said Celestia, “and have learned a degree of patience. We won’t be quite so drastic at first. But you do need to know because you can get through to her on a level that I can’t.”

“There’s something I can do that you can’t? Wow.”

“Are you looking to retake the crown?”

“Nononono!” said Derpy, backpedaling in the air and holding out her hooves. “But I’ll definitely have a talk with her.”

“Please do. Forgive me if I cut our visit short. There is never enough time for me to spend with the ponies I care about the most, so I need to count on all of you to help each other.”

Derpy bowed to Celestia, who headed out the door.

Dinky had sat down at the kitchen table while Karyn went through the cabinets grabbing treats. She had spent enough time at Derpy’s that finding things was becoming second nature.

“Don’t feel bad about that,” Karyn said. “If I had a bit for every time a teacher bawled me out to my mom. . .”

“Then you wouldn’t have to mooch off mine and waste her time?”

Karyn turned around to see Dinky staring daggers at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t know what your angle is, but Mommy doesn’t need you. She’s got me.”

Karyn was surprised and gave her response slowly. “No, I suppose you’re right. She doesn’t exactly need me, but I’m her friend. You can’t have too many friends.”

“Debatable. And there are plenty of ponies that would serve if she’s lonely. Which she’s not. Like I said, she’s got me.”

Karyn had an argument fully formed in her head. She could talk about how Derpy as an eccentric pony needed an out-of-the-ordinary friend, and she could talk about how being human didn’t rate second-class status. But before it could escape her lips, she held back. This was different. Dinky was family.

She gave her broadest smile and extended a hand. “Look, we got off on the wrong fo—hoof. I never even introduced myself. I’m Karyn.”

Still cautious, Dinky put her hoof in Karyn’s hand and shook. “Dinky.”

“I’ve tried to be a good friend to your mother, and I’d like to be to you as well.”

Dinky opened her mouth to say something, but Karyn interrupted and pressed her advantage. “And to prove it, I’ll help you out of this jam.”

“How can you do that?”

“Because I understand. I know what it’s like to understand a subject but not want to work at it. I’m a student too, you know. What I’m studying—your mother called it the human equivalent of magic—is interesting to study, boring to work at. I know how much of it is busy-work, and even Princess Celestia can’t get rid of all that. I know the temptation to just goof off when work has to be done, and the injustice you feel when you can pass the test anyway.

“But I also know mothers. I know that yours doesn’t reprimand you all that often, so you’re scared right now of what she can do to you. Not scared of her punishing you, but just scared to have disappointed her. She might even cry, and you know how much that will hurt. I’ll tell you the secret of mothers, though, that will make it all better.”

Dinky’s expression melted during Karyn’s speech until she was listening intently. “What is it?”

“Mothers don’t care about where you are. They care about which direction you’re going. If you make a plan, right now, about how you’re going to deal with the princess and your schoolwork, and let her know, you’ll tap-dance your way right past the reprimand. There’s still the matter of sticking to the plan, but at least you’ll have bought yourself some time.”

“What plan do I use?”

Karyn craned her neck toward the front room. “Well, there’s where you’re going to have to think on your hooves a little, because here comes your mother. Don’t worry, though. I’ll stay in the room. It’s never too bad when there’s a third party in the room. Mothers don’t want the embarrassment. I’ve been saved from a few yellings-at by the timely ring of a doorbell.”

Derpy walked into the room. Her face had not been built for scowling. It made Karyn want to laugh, though she avoided it. She could only imagine the pressure that Dinky was under. If her face broke and she chuckled, Derpy would be even more mad.

“I suppose you know what the Princess spoke to me about.”

Dinky took a deep breath. “I do, Mommy. I’m sorry. I was just talking to Karyn—we’re becoming good friends—about what I need to do to fix it.”

“And? What did you come up with?”

“Well, I think it’s an issue with time management. I’ll have to start keeping a written schedule. It’s too easy at school to leave a class and just play the rest of the day away.”

Derpy was still upset. “But you never needed that kind of schedule when you were going to school here.”

“I had you to help me out. You always told me what we were doing.”

“Yes, and I never needed a written schedule.”

That stymied Dinky, and she said nothing for a moment. She could sense her mother getting angry. Karyn decided that it was time to step in. “Everypony’s different, Derpy. I keep my written schedule. You’ve seen it. I’d be lost without it. Or take Mike. He never writes anything, but he has everything on his personal organizer.” She wasn’t sure that bringing up Mike was the best thing, but anything to deflect Derpy’s rage from its current target would help.

“And you also have always had things to do to organize,” said Dinky. “You had to take care of the house from the time you were little, but you never made me do any of that. I always had the chance to play when I wanted. I’m not used to having to do my work first.”

“Well, I suppose,” said Derpy.

At the first sign that her mother was being mollified, Dinky decided that now was the time to begin making excuses for sympathy’s sake. “I’ve also been worried about you. You know that I’ve always considered that I took care of you as much as you did me.”

“Aww.”

“I was afraid that you’d be lonely. I didn’t know that Karyn would be there.”

“I have grandpa as well,” said Derpy.

Dinky averted her eyes. “Yes, but he’s so far off. Anyway, now that I’ve met Karyn and I’ve seen how she’s making sure you’re not lonely, I’ll be less concerned and more focused on studying.”

Derpy looked skeptical, but she smiled and hugged her filly once more. “All right, I’m not mad at you anymore.”

“Whew!”

“But I want to make sure that we get ahead of your problems. Time management might not be enough. I want to find you some extra help with your studying.”

Dinky’s mouth dropped. “Come on, let me relax a little. I haven’t even had a chance to unpack.”

“Well, all right, you can do that. Your room is exactly the way you left it.”

Dinky started to leave the room, then came back. “Mommy, this is a new house. I don’t even have a room here."

“Of course you do,” said Derpy. “Karyn, could you show her where it is?”

“Huh? I don’t know which one it is.”

“Sure you do. It’s the room you stayed in when you were ill.”

“Oh, that one. All right, follow me,” Karyn said to Dinky as she led her up the stairs. Behind her, Derpy was staring at Karyn as if looking at her would trigger some idea she was having difficulty grasping.

Once Dinky had gone up to the room and removed her saddlebags, she turned to Karyn. “Thanks for the advice. You really helped me out there a lot.”

“What are friends for? At least it’s over now.”

“And you’re right. I was very scared of making Mommy upset. It hasn’t happened often, and there was only one time that was really bad, but—“

At that moment, she was cut off when Derpy entered the room, flying at top speed. She had bypassed the stairs and used her wings. “That’s it!” she said. “It’s just like when Karyn was having trouble with her schoolwork. We’ll go to Twilight!”

Dinky and Karyn looked at each other, then Dinky said, “Do I really have to? Can’t I have a second chance to go it on my own? Besides, what makes you think a big-time unicorn like Twilight Sparkle will help out somepony like me?”

“One, because she’s a very nice pony. Two,” Derpy had held up her hoof, but then realized that counting off wasn’t going to work without fingers. “I’ve helped her out on occasion as well. Three, she’s a librarian and it’s her job to impart knowledge.”

They were out the door and walking over to the library before Dinky could realize that by answering her second question, her mother had gotten out of answering her first.

Twilight opened the door, and Karyn poked her head in looking to see where Spike was lurking, but he was nowhere to be found. “Hi there, you three. What brings you round?”

Derpy explained Dinky’s troubles, and Dinky wished she wouldn’t put so much emphasis on her own failings.

“And so,” Derpy concluded, “since you were so helpful to Karyn when she had tests to take, I was hoping I could ask you for another favor by helping Dinky.”

“Of course!” Twilight said. “This will be far easier than helping Karyn. What Karyn studies, I can’t make heads or tails out of, although I certainly enjoyed seeing the books from Earth. But this is my specialty. I’m an alumna of Princess Celestia’s school after all.”

“See, Dinky, you’re in good hooves! Come on, Karyn, let’s let the two unicorns put their horns together.”

Dinky looked at her mother with a puss-face, but Derpy’s smile was too big to pierce. She turned to Karyn, who had some sympathy. “We’ll be back soon for you,” she said. “Just work hard and listen to Twilight and the time will go by like that.”

She went outside with Derpy and started leading her away. “Where are you going?”

“Remember all the creature comforts you got me while I was studying with Twilight? Does Dinky deserve any less?”

Karyn’s ulterior motive was to give Derpy a goal so that, as soon as it was over, they could return and pick up Dinky once more. Studying with Twilight might be helpful, but Dinky clearly wanted to ease into the process, and Karyn thought that would be the best way to do it.

They walked over to the open-air market and bought a few tidbits, after which Derpy told Karyn to head back to the library while she picked up some more things from home. Even though it was farther for Derpy, she was the fastest, and it was expected that they would arrive at about the same time.

When Karyn returned and saw Derpy coming the other way, she heard Twilight’s didactic tone. She put a finger to her mouth and said, “Shh. . . let’s listen for a moment and see how it’s going.”

They put their ears to the door. Twilight said, “Now, I’m sure Princess Celestia has spoken about true-names plenty so far. What are the three thaumaturgic paradigms for true-name vectors?”

Karyn looked at Derpy, wondering if the pony had any concept of what she was talking about, but Derpy shook her head. It was unclear to Karyn whether this was because she was a pegasus, or simply because she was Derpy.

Dinky was working through the answer. “There’s subjective, objective, and, um. . . the other one!”

“Yes, the other one,” said Twilight. “The conjunctive.”

At that point, Derpy was making enough noise that Karyn decided to open the door and reveal that they were there, rather than be caught eavesdropping. They walked in with their bags.

“Hey, you two. How’s the studying coming?” asked Derpy.

“Oh, quite well,” said Twilight. “Four, maybe six hours of this a day and she’ll be caught up to the class in no time.”

Dinky’s blue face took on a distinct tinge of green.

“Why not let her relax for a bit and enjoy a few snacks?” said Karyn.

Twilight returned to her duties as librarian and Derpy busied herself doling out the goodies that she and Karyn had bought. Karyn herself took Dinky aside.

“So what was Twilight saying about paradigms and vectors and all that?”

“You heard that, huh? It’s a really complicated way of saying something very simple. All it means is that there are some spells a unicorn casts on herself, like Twilight’s teleportation spell, some that are cast on stuff that’s lying around, and some that involve both.

“That’s what bugs me about the whole ‘Gifted Unicorn School’ to begin with. They take the things that any unicorn can do on her own and make it into a big production with lots of buzzwords. What exactly comes out of that? Maybe it makes you five percent better as a unicorn. But everypony else gets by just fine on ninety-five.”

Derpy picked her head up and joined in the conversation. “Dinky, you’re not everypony else. You can do anything you want to. You can have so much better a life than I did. Don’t you want that?”

Dinky sighed. “Yes, mommy.”

Karyn said, “Dinky, let’s go take a walk. Derpy, why don’t you come meet us back at the house? No, you don’t have to come with. Talk to Twilight for a little.”

Derpy was still looking like she was afraid to lose sight of Dinky, so Karyn stopped trying to be subtle. “I want to talk to Dinky alone.”

Once they were outside, Dinky let her expression drop. Derpy was hovering behind, but out of earshot. Karyn put a hand on Dinky’s shoulder.

“I understand this too,” she said. “Your mom’s telling you that you have all this potential, but you don’t feel the ambition for it. You can be anything you want, and how do you tell her that what you really want to be is. . . her?”

Dinky stared at Karyn, wondering how someone from another world could be so perceptive. “Not exactly like her, but I don’t want to be like Twilight, a famous unicorn who’s the best mage in town, maybe in Equestria. I just want a home and some time to play.”

“I know. We’re very much alike, you and I,” Karyn said, laughing internally at using a movie cliché. “But it’s not so easy. Everypony has to do a certain degree of work in this life. It’s just a question of when you’re going to do it. I used to always put it off, because I figured that if I only had time for fun or work, fun had better get done. But there is time for both, and if you procrastinate on the work, then the fun is less fun, since you have the specter of the work over your head.

“I mean it both short-term and long-term. Getting a day’s work done is good, but also, if you get this education now, the job you have later will be easier. I’ve watched your mom. She loves carrying the mail, but she wishes that she could have the time off she needs and shorter hours. Plus she had to pinch every penny. Just push through, another few years, and when you’re her age you can be as lazy as you want to be.”

“Really? And everypony will let me?”

“Nopony will be able to stop you,” said Karyn. “Not even your mom. She may want you to be a great unicorn, but I’m sure that she’s more concerned that you’re happy.”

As the conversation came to a lull, Derpy caught up with them and landed. “Did you two get everything sorted out?”

“I think so,” said Dinky. “Karyn really is a good friend.”

“I know.”

“Hey, Derpy,” said Karyn, holding up a finger. “What if I were to help Dinky out with studying?”

Derpy stared at Karyn’s forehead. “I don’t see any horn there. You don’t know anything about magic.”

“Well, I’ve had a little experience with spells.”

Derpy was confused, but then saw Karyn pointing to her saddlebag.

“And besides,” Karyn continued. “If Dinky’s passing all her tests, it’s not the technical help she needs. Anypony could be her study buddy.”

“Nuh-uh!” said Dinky. “I won’t be as motivated to study with anypony else.”

“Well, all right. We’ll give it a try,” said Derpy.

“Yay!” said Dinky and Karyn together.

When they returned to Derpy’s house, Karyn and Dinky went into the bedroom and spread the books over the bed. Dinky pulled out a homework sheet and started filling out the answers. After every few minutes, the glow of her horn would start to fade, the pages of the books would turn slower, and the quill pen would start to droop. Karyn prodded Dinky, sometimes with a poke in the ribs, sometimes just by telling her to focus. After an hour of this, the homework was finally done.

“See now, was that so painful?” asked Karyn.

“Yes!”

“Yeah, I guess it kinda was. But it’s over now.”

“And we can have fun together,” said Dinky.

“All three of us,” said Derpy, bursting through the door.

“Does everyone listen at doors today?” said Karyn.

Ignoring her, Derpy said, “Come on, you two. Those treats are getting cold!”

They went back down to the kitchen. Derpy had set the table and, in contradiction to what she had said, had baked goods warming in the oven. Dinky was quite interested in seeing the new one.

“I can’t believe you got rid of the old oven. That was a classic!”

“I’ll tell you about what happened sometime,” said Derpy. “Or Karyn can, she was part of it.”

“Seems like I’ve been missing most of the fun.”

“Well, there’s no reason we can’t have more. You’re always welcome when Karyn’s here. Or when she’s not, of course.”

Derpy excused herself to the restroom. Dinky looked around the kitchen.

“Karyn, I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you initially. I’m just thinking that my first memory of this room is always going to be being angry with you, when I know we’re going to be good friends.”

“Don’t feel bad. On Earth there’s a saying: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Actually, it was a slogan for some shampoo, I think. The point is that it’s not true. Everypony I’ve met here, some are nice, some are mean, but there’s always more chances to change how they think of me.”

“Thanks.”

Derpy came back in and sat down. Karyn shuffled. “Well, I guess I’d better get going. I’m sure you two want some mother-daughter time.”

“I’d like Karyn to stay as long as she can,” said Dinky.

“Don’t worry. You’ll see her next week. I may have mentioned this, but we’re going to see Grandpa then.”

“I, um, oh, OK. Then I’ll definitely be here. I’ll try to come early.”

“I’m really looking forward to meeting him,” said Karyn. “Your mom’s told me so much about him.”

“Yes, I’m sure she has,” said Dinky.

Derpy led Karyn out to the balcony and took off. Karyn was eager for the next weekend to come.

Author's Note

Next week, the final chapter. . . for a little while at least!

“So tell me, what’s he like?” asked Karyn.

“Huh? Who?”

“Your father, silly filly. The guy we’re visiting.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had left behind Ponyville and Appleloosa. The trees had thinned and the grasses were taller and less green as the train proceeded. Stops were fewer and farther between, and soon even the grass was left behind as they entered a desert.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy trotted along the road.

“Don’t you want to wait for Dinky?” asked Karyn.

“She’ll be along soon enough. Come on, Daddy’s waiting.”

You won't want to miss this one!

Clip Show: Derparoid

Note: This isn't a real chapter, though there's a little new content. But maybe it'll bring up some nice memories. I beg your indulgence. Next week, though, there'll be something special.

Hey, Derpy! Look what I got!”

“What is it? Something tasty?

“No. At least I don’t think so.” Karyn pulled out a small black box and pushed a button on it. The top flipped open and Derpy could see now what it was.

“Oh, a camera!”

“Yeah. I figured we could start taking pictures when we do stuff so that we could reminisce about it later.”

“Cool,” said Derpy. “Let’s take pictures of each other now!”

“OK. Go pose against the wall.”

Derpy went over to the back of Karyn’s dorm and smiled, her tongue sticking out. Karyn pointed the camera and snapped the picture. “The only problem,” she said, “is that I can’t show it to anyone. Well, maybe I can upload it to the Internet and just say it’s a drawing.”

“Heh. You’re always worried about people finding out about me.”

“Well, I do have to keep you a secret. I told you that when we first met.”

“I remember,” said Derpy, closing her eyes and picturing it.

“I have so many questions! Do you really like muffins? Did you really wreck town hall? Do you hang out with the Doctor? What’s Dinky like?”

Derpy got the impression of the human as a little excitable, something like Pinkie Pie back home, but perhaps it was just the thrill of the meeting. She had to act as the voice of reason, not a typical position for her.

“Whoa there! Lyra told me that you would know things about Equestria, but not all those intimate details about me. And I don’t know anything about you, so why don’t you formally introduce yourself?”

“OK. Well, my name is Karyn Hubert, and it’s Karyn with a y, not an e. I’m a freshman here at USCI, studying IT.”

“That’s a whole lot of letters. What’s USCI and what’s IT? I think I got all the rest.”

“USCI is the name of the school, University of State College Institute. IT is information technology.”

“Infor-what now?”

“Information technology. It’s all about computers and phones and networking and stuff. How we can store data—which can be anything, words, books, pictures—and get them where they need to be seen.”

“Oh! You’re studying magic! My filly is—”

Karyn interrupted, chuckling. “No, it’s not magic. It’s all physical, based on the movement of microscopic particles.”

“Yep, magic!”

“Not magic. Just a system for handling ideas.”

“That’s magic, all right. It’s OK, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Twilight Sparkle back home studies magic and was worried when she first came to town that her friends wouldn’t like her for it, because another magician came to town and tried to upstage everypony.”

“You mean Trixie.”

“Oh, you know about that too. OK, tell me more.”

“Well, that’s who I am, really. That and someone who loves ponies. I watch it every week and I’ve even been to meet some other fans just to hang out. But now I’m hanging out with a real pony, which would give me so much cred if anyone knew. I guess I have to keep you a secret, though.”

“I’m the first pony to come to Earth, and they told me to keep a low profile. Maybe someday, though.”

Derpy snapped back to reality. “OK, your turn.”

Karyn straightened her sundress and gave a slight smile. Derpy struggled to push the button with her hoof and tilted the camera downward. The click and whir was heard.

“I think you might have cut my head off.”

Derpy went into a panic. “What?! Are you all right?!”

“No, I mean on the picture!”

“Oh. That’s not so bad then.”

“Well, it’s not good,” said Karyn. “This film is rare and expensive. Most people use digital cameras these days, but there’s just something about a Polaroid that makes it special to me. Maybe it’s the little white border, or the distinctive sound it makes.”

“Remember, you do have a supply of money if you really need it.” Derpy pointed to Karyn’s closet.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Karyn saw in her head the night she acquired the valuable dress.

“Rarity? Could you help me with the top part? I’m not sure how to wear this.”

“Of course, dear,” she said, walking behind the screen. “Do you see that round part? It stretches. Slip it over your head.”

Karyn found the elastic circle and put it on until it closed around her neck like a choker. Then Rarity used her magic and connected the wide end of the fabric to the skirt. “There,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Um. . . that’s all of it?”

“Well, I haven’t accessorized it yet, but as far as the base, yes. Is there something wrong?”

“But my boobs are hanging out!”

“Your what, dear?”

Karyn cast her memory back to the show. Every time ponies did dress up for parties or events, the outfits covered the flanks and the back. The equivalent area on a pony would be near their bellies, and those faced the ground. Rarity had clearly adapted her pony designs for how she thought a human would wear a dress. And since ponies didn’t have the nudity taboo, there was no way to explain. For that matter, ponies, at least of the Equestrian variety, didn’t have boobs at all. Even when Lyra sat human-style on a bench, nothing stood out.

How could she explain to Rarity that going topless was a shameless display of sexuality on her world, and that she would be mortified to appear in public like that?

“You see,” she said, pointing toward her breasts, “among humans—“

“You mean your chest! Yes, so beautifully round. And since your head is not nearly as elongated as ours, I thought I would emphasize the spherical theme. Hence the pillowy dress and the bubble pattern, which of course also underscores your connection to our dear Ms. Hooves.”

Karyn thought about that. While not a surfboard, Karyn had little enough that she was sometimes envious of her more well-endowed friends. But now, she realized, she was the biggest girl in an entire world. Maybe showing off wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It was certainly an opportunity she’d never have on Earth.

“I love it, Rarity. Don’t worry about me, and don’t change a thing,” she said.

“Hey! We should reenact some of the things we’ve been through together and take pictures.”

“That’s a good idea. We don’t have any pictures of us doing things.”

“We were too busy doing them,” said Derpy.

“So what kind of a picture should we try to make?”

Derpy thought for a while. “Remember when you came to Ponyville when all the Pegasi made it rain hard?”

“Sure,” said Karyn.

The wind and the torrent of water had subsided, so Karyn and Derpy went back outside. The porch furniture was soaked, so they just stood and watched.

The temperature had dropped, and Karyn took a deep breath, remembering how stifling it had been before the rain. There was a particular sweetness to the air, and no trace of smog or pollution. Far off in the distance, she could hear the low rumble of thunder that, on Earth, would mean the storm was moving off.

Suddenly, without taking the time to think twice and stop herself, Karyn kicked off her shoes and ripped off her socks. Then she ran out into the muddy street and stood in the rain.

She threw her arms out wide and danced. Derpy stood laughing on the porch. “Karyn, what are you doing? Before, you couldn’t stand getting wet!”

“The rain got to me!” she shouted. “Come on out. The water’s fine!”

Derpy shook her head and flew out into the street. Hovering and trying to stay out of the mud, she dipped and rolled until her mane and tail were sticking to her. “You’re crazy!”

Most of the other ponies were still inside, but a few were staring at Karyn. Laughing, she leaped at Derpy and dragged her down to the mud.

The rain was starting to taper off. Karyn looked up and saw pegasi rolling up the clouds like a carpet. For a minute or two, there was still a steady fall even though the sun was now out.

“Oh, a sun shower!” said Karyn. “I’ve always loved those.”

“So have I,” said Derpy. “The rain cools you off and the sun dries you. It’s the only time that you have to pay attention to the weather, but not do anything about it. Come on, let’s see if we can help anypony.”

Karyn said, “But how are we going to reenact that? The sun’s out today—“

She was cut off by a bucket of water that Derpy dumped over the top of her head.

“Hey! My carpet’s soaked!” Karyn said, but she was smiling.

“Oh, sorry. I guess I acted without thinking.”

“Don’t worry too hard about it. But take the picture at least.”

Derpy steadied the camera on a desk and managed to take a complete picture of Karyn with her hair slicked down. Karyn got a Sharpie and wrote “Rain Event” on the bottom of the picture.

“What should we do next?” asked Derpy.

“Fly up to the ceiling, will you?”

Derpy did as she asked, not sure why. “OK, what now?”

“A little closer to the overhead light, please. Do you remember when we went to the convention?”

“Of course! There were so many humans there, it was a lot of fun.”

Karyn prepared the camera for the shot. “And what happened with the light?”

Karyn looked up. One of the light fixtures was showering sparks down on the floor.

“Derpy!” she said, but with conflicting meanings. “I hope she’s all right,” battled with “I’m going to kill her for causing this.” She got up and walked out with the crowd. Everyone else was looking at the ceiling to see the display. Karyn was looking to make sure that flames didn’t cover a pony-shaped patch of air.

The sun was blazing outside, and the few sections of shade were quickly occupied. Karyn walked a few yards away to a multi-story parking garage and waited. I have got to get that mare a cell phone, she thought.

Out of the shadows walked Derpy. “There you are! Thank goodness you’re all right!” said Karyn.

“I had you in my sights the whole time. I just had to find a lonely spot to turn off the magic.”

“So what happened up there?”

“I just don’t know—“

“What went wrong, yeah, I’ve heard that one,” Karyn said. “Derpy, look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Did you set the light on fire?”

“I didn’t. Honestly! I would never do something like that, you know that. Shoot, I wouldn’t even know how.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “All right, you’ve got a point. And I believe you.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Early lunch? I can get sandwiches.”

“Works for me!” said Derpy.

Karyn went off to get the sandwiches. Derpy observed everyone standing and waiting for the con to re-open. They were smiling and laughing despite the trouble. Someone started singing, and everyone joined in. Derpy still had trouble making out the words, but she could sense the camaraderie that existed among all the attendees. She’d heard some awful rumors about humans on and off in Equestria. She wished that everypony she knew could see these humans. Whatever their history, any people who could achieve this were worth knowing.

“Well, if we’re talking about traveling,” said Derpy, “what about the time we went to the beach in Equestria? That was fun.”

“It was, but what I really liked was the train.”

“Well, the way we got the ticket isn’t one of the memories I’d like to preserve, but yeah, it was fun.”

Karyn smirked. “So let’s go back and get another first-class ticket and take a picture of the room.”

“You want to go back to the beach?”

“No, just snap the picture and go.”

Derpy looked askance at Karyn, before she realized that it was a joke. She cast her memory back to the train.

Soon after that, they pulled into the first major junction. Derpy flew off her seat and pointed. “Karyn! Do you see all those stone blocks? Those have got to be the ties for the new extension. I wish I could come and see them building it.”

“Maybe you should apply for the long-distance mail route.”

“Oh, if I had to fly all the way out here, forget it. My wings would fall off before I got halfway.”

“That would be no good,” said Karyn. “If your wings fell off, you’d have to join the railroad builders and swing a hammer all day.”

After the train pulled out of that station, it started to build speed. They advanced into a forested area, where trees zipped by at lightning speed. Karyn tried to spot some of the trees, but everything became a mesh of leaves and broken sunshine.

All at once the forest ended, and they were thrown onto a bridge over a gorge. Derpy heard Karyn’s sharp intake of breath, and she smiled. Thousands of feet below, a river meandered through like a shining blue snake. The sides of the gorge were painted in mineral deposits and shadows as the river had worn away the rock over uncounted years. Trees and bushes dotted the landscape, and occasionally, on the rock walls, a brave weed struggled toward the sun.

“I’m always impressed with this part,” she said. “I wanted you to see it like this, not knowing that it was coming. That’s why I had us take the day train back.”

Karyn was speechless. She just watched.

When they finally reached the towns and cities, Derpy said, “Look at the track next to us, going the other way. No matter how much of a blur all the surroundings become, that rail always looks the same.”

Karyn focused, and saw what she meant. The steel, long since polished to a mirror finish by the wheels of the trains, gave the illusion of stillness among the movement.

“It’s one more thing I love about the train,” Derpy continued. “Kinda symbolic, you know? Everything moves, but the rails hold steady.”

“I guess. I think I still feel the motion somewhat. It’s definitely going to be perfect once that loop is complete. It’ll mean that Equestria is always moving, that there’s always something new to do, something more to see. The ponies here will keep going, forever.”

“All right,” said Derpy, “But how do we simulate the picture?”

“Hmm. . . maybe we can’t do the train, but how about this?” Karyn pulled the pillows off the bed and put them in the middle of the room. “Lie down.”

Derpy was confused, but laid out on the pillows. “What’s it for?”

“Pretend that you just smashed the big sandcastle.”

Derpy remembered that and smiled as she had at the time. Karyn took the picture and labeled it as “Beach Fun.”

“OK, we just have two more pictures in the film pack. What should we do?”

Derpy thought about it. “I don’t know. What do you want to take?”

“Hang on a little. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Derpy sat in the room and sorted through the pictures they had taken. She would have to find an album for them.

When Karyn returned a few minutes later, she had something behind her back. “OK,” said Derpy, “What are we doing?”

“I went down to one of the local fast food places. Close your eyes.”

Derpy did, and felt something touch her head.

“OK, open your eyes and smile!” said Karyn.

Derpy did and Karyn took the picture. Then she ran over to the mirror and saw the golden cardboard crown. “Huh?”

“Congratulations, Princess Derpy!”

“Ack! That’s another one I don’t want to remember.”

“Come on, we have to look back and laugh.” Karyn thought about that incident.

Derpy sighed and slumped in the chair. Karyn rested a hand on her wing. “Thanks, your highness.”

“Oh, Karyn, please don’t ever call me that.”

“All right. Thanks, Derpy.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I was so nervous the whole time. And I hated to have to dress down those ponies, even if they were mean ponies who wanted to experiment on you.”

Karyn smiled. “They deserved it though.”

“Yeah, I guess I did enjoy it a little. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Wait, do I have to raise the sun? I don’t know how to do that!”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” a voice said.

“Celestia! Please tell me that you’ll still raise the sun for me,” said Derpy.

“I’ll do more than that. You don’t have to be Princess anymore.”

Derpy had been sneaking around with the camera. As Karyn came out of her reverie, she felt the crown touch her head. Derpy pushed the button and took the last picture.

“Next time, it’ll be Princess Karyn!” she said.

“Hey, I wouldn’t mind so much. We could each have our own kingdoms and establish diplomatic relations, have state dinners, and royal consorts.”

“I like consorts, when they have good music.”

“Consorts, not concerts!” Karyn threw up her hands. “But that’s what I love about you.”

“And your patience is what I love about you.”

Karyn started organizing the pictures into chronological order. “It’s been a great few months. I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

“Me neither. You’re a great friend, Karyn.”

“You too, Derpy Hooves.”

A "Derpy's Human" Hearth's Warming Eve

Note: The events of this story take place contemporaneously with those in “A Lyra’s Human Christmas.” It is split into three sections, each of which covers one day. You can read that one first, or read this one first, or you can switch back and forth as each section comes about. I hope you enjoy this little gift.

Friday

When Derpy, by special appointment, appeared in Karyn’s dorm, she looked around, then started shivering.

“Brr! Shut the window, Karyn. It’s cold. Oh, and hello.”

“Sorry, Derpy. I know it’s silly, but when the weather starts getting colder, I like to open the windows and sleep under two thick blankets with warm pajamas on. And we don’t say hello now, remember.”

“That’s right! You told me about this. Merry, um. . . “ Derpy searched her memory. “Merry Chrysalis!”

“Christmas.”

“Christmas. It’s a hard word to say.”

Karyn got up and shut the window, then turned to face Derpy with a big smile on her face. “Maybe so, but it’s the best time of the year!”

“Tell me about it. What makes it so good?”

“Well, first of all, there’s all the decorations. The stores and the homes all put up pictures and drawings and lights, ooh, the lights are the best. Some places have lights with lots of colors that blink on and off and make it look like Rainbow Dash is flying by. Some have white lights that hang down from their roofs like icicles. Some people really go all out and make panoramic displays with their lights, and people come to watch and they have to help pay for the power to keep the lights on.”

Karyn ran over to her computer and pulled up a video of one of the fancy light shows. “Then there’s the music!” she said. “Special music that we only play at this time of year. It’s happy and stylistic, and because you don’t listen to it for so long, every year it’s like an old friend coming to visit. There are old standards and new pop songs, and most of them are good.”

Derpy sat in the chair at the computer desk and watched the light show. The pictures that the lights made nearly hypnotized her, and she was just bobbing her head to the music. When it finally ended, she said, “I liked that.”

“And this is just the beginning. It all ramps up until the big day. That’s the best part.”

“Huh? Why is it so good?”

Karyn looked out the window. “Maybe just because there’s so much preparation and anticipation. Everyone works a little harder each day so that we can have a true holiday, a day of rest and fun. We save our money, we buy presents, we put up the decorations, we plan parties. Kids look at the calendar each day counting it down. On the night before, Christmas Eve, everything slows down and it’s the calm before the storm. The world takes a deep breath, you go to sleep, and then you wake up and you can’t believe it’s happening. You go downstairs and see the presents under the tree.”

“Presents?” Derpy’s voice became nervous, but Karyn didn’t notice, being so focused on her story.

“Yeah. That’s what kids look forward to. It’s kind of funny, really. Every young child makes up their list and hopefully they get it. We wrap the presents so that Christmas morning there can be paper all over the place and a big mess of stuff. The kids open everything, but then they don’t get to play with it because family visits are happening. It’s OK though, because there’s a week off from school where all the kids can take the video games they’ve gotten and beat them, or whatever—Derpy, are you all right?”

Derpy had put on her puss face and was looking down. “I’m fine. Just go on, tell me more about Christmas.”

“At Christmas dinner, we—no, I can’t do this. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s just that, talking about the presents, I think back to when Dinky was young. We don’t give presents on Hearth’s Warming Eve. I mean, ponies don’t, but I wanted to. You know me, I like to be different. In any case, I could never get Dinky all the best toys. If everypony else had the Carrot Patch Foal, I could only afford a regular doll. It was always like that.”

Karyn wanted to sympathize, but couldn’t find the words. She had always gotten the toys she’d asked for. Instead, she said, “Can I tell you a story?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“When I was young, we spent one Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house. My folks, me, some uncles and aunts, and a cousin of mine. That made me particularly nervous, because if I wasn’t in my usual spot, we might not have presents. I woke up even earlier than usual that Christmas, but I didn’t want to race to the tree.”

Derpy interrupted again. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned a tree.”

“Oh, right. Well, for Christmas we cut down trees and put them in our houses.”

“You’re pulling my leg!”

“Honest. I’ll show you pictures. They even have some artificial trees for people who don’t like to clean up.” Karyn went on her computer and showed the pictures of trees with presents underneath.

“What they ought to do,” said Derpy, “is hang the tree upside-down from the ceiling. More room for the presents.”

“They make some like that too. Anyway, so back there at my grandmother’s, I’m so nervous that we won’t get our presents because we’re in an unfamiliar place, and I figure that it’s better to have the chance of getting them than confirming that we’re not. I just stayed in bed awake until my cousin got up. He had no silly fears, and went right into the living room.

“Of course the presents were there. In the most prominent position were two scooters.”

Derpy interrupted. “Like the kind Scootaloo rides?”

“Kind of. Not powered, you just move them with your foot. They become popular now and then. Anyway, one of them was blue and one of them was pink, but they weren’t wrapped and they didn’t have tags on them. My cousin—he was a boy, which I guess is important to the story—grabs the blue one and starts riding around the living room. Still that wasn’t enough for me. I patiently opened all the presents that did have my name on the tag, thanking the giver for each one in turn.

“Once everything had been opened, my mom came to me and said, ‘Don’t you want to ride your scooter? Your cousin loves his.’ And I, in all innocence, looked up at her and said, ‘Is that one for me too?!’”

Derpy laughed at the story, but Karyn could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. Probably a tale of gift excess wasn’t the right thing to tell her at that point.

“It’s a good story. I just wish I could have made Dinky’s Hearth’s Warming Eves as good as my father made mine.”

“You will. You know how?”

“Huh?” said Derpy.

“Because when she has a foal, she will be able to give her great Hearth’s Warming Eve’s, and that’s what she’s going to want to do also.”

“That will be nice. And I’ll get to be the grandmother that everypony loves. But that’s a ways away. We’ve got to do something for this Hearth’s Warming Eve.”

Karyn was glad that Derpy had cheered up again. “What did you have in mind?”

“I’ll think of something. But we’ll certainly have the right atmosphere.”

“Oh, why?”

Derpy smirked. “Word leaked through the pegasus grapevine. They’re going to have a big snowstorm so that we have a white Warming.”

Saturday

Derpy was out on her mail route when the first snowflakes started to fall. She started ascending for height when she heard someone calling her name. If Lyra hadn’t been such a prominent color, she might have been lost in the snow. Derpy landed.

“Hey, Lyra. Long time no see.”

“Yeah. I can’t stay long, I’ve got a lot to do.”

“And I want to get above the clouds,” said Derpy, hovering to shake off the snow.

“We’re having a Christmas party this Sunday. That’s a different kind of holiday, where—“

“Don’t worry. I know all about it.”

Lyra started off for shelter. “Right, right. So, yeah, be there!”

Since Karyn had told her all the wonderful things about Christmas, Derpy braved the weather and spent her shift looking at decorations that she thought would help. In the afternoon, she visited Karyn again.

“The decorations sound nice,” Karyn said, “but if this is a Christmas party and not just a Hearth’s Warming Eve, we should go and buy presents for all our friends.”

“Most of the ponies won’t know that though.”

“It doesn’t matter. We know it, and they all deserve presents from us. Come on, let’s make a list.”

Derpy grabbed pen and paper and started writing. “We’ve got to get something for Lyra, obviously, and her human as well.”

“How about a pair of gloves? We can give them to Lyra, and she can re-gift them to the human.”

“Good idea! Now, we also need something for Rainbow Dash, since she was so nice to us during the rain; Pinkie Pie, since she threw us parties; Rarity, because of the dresses she gave us.”

“Not Fluttershy though,” said Karyn, “I’m still a little miffed about her staring me into stupor.”

“We can’t get her anything?”

“Well, maybe something for Angel Bunny. Which reminds me, we have to get for Muffinhead of course. And for Dinky.”

“Well, we’ve got some names, now we just need presents to go with them. Oh, wait, we need to get Twilight Sparkle a present too for all the help she’s given us.”

Karyn and Derpy looked at each other. “A book,” they said at the same time.

They brainstormed ideas and wrote them down next to the ponies’ names. “OK,” said Karyn, “some of this stuff we can get in Equestria, and some I’ll have to go back to Earth for. The party’s tomorrow, let’s hustle.”

The snow in Ponyville was only a minor hindrance, and Karyn spent most of the time on Derpy’s back. On Earth, the shopping was only slowed by the usual practice of hiding Derpy’s presence with the invisibility spell and talking through the fake Bluetooth.

“Some of these ponies are a little difficult to buy for,” Karyn said, “because they don’t have some of the complementary things they need. I’d love to get Pinkie Pie a comedy DVD, but she doesn’t have any way to play it.”

“For next year, I’ll ask Lyra and Twilight to work on a DVD-to-magic-movie-player adapter.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them. I think I could arrange some Christmas music though. I can bring a battery-powered CD player. It doesn’t have to be that powerful. We only want it for background music.”

Derpy looked at the CDs. “Lyra should be taking care of that, I’d hope.”

“I know, but I’m a little particular when it comes to Christmas music.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there are a lot of songs that go back a long time. Simple tunes with a lot of Christmas bells and familiar cadences.” Karyn caught the expression on Derpy’s face and tried to forestall an interruption. “No, not the princess. Anyway, then, maybe forty years ago a few new songs started being played. After that, they started trickling in more and more. A few are good, but the old ones are much better. That’s what we have to do.”

Derpy listened intently, then slipped some of the CDs into Karyn’s basket when her back was turned. By the time she got to the register, Derpy’s snickering tipped Karyn off. She bought the CDs anyway.

A few hours later, they were back in Equestria, in Derpy’s house, with all of the presents stacked in the kitchen. “You’ve got what we need to wrap all this?” Derpy asked.

“Paper, scissors, and tape. That’s pretty much it.”

“Where do we begin? Want to wrap Twilight’s book?”

“No,” said Karyn, opening the roll of wrapping paper. “Let’s get the hard stuff out of the way. Like Muffinhead’s little catnip toy.”

Perhaps because he heard his name, the orange cat came walking into the kitchen with his tail up.

“No!” said Derpy. “You saw it before Christmas! You’re not supposed to see! Shoo! Well, there goes one surprise.” She pushed the cat out of the room.

“I think he’ll still be happy when he gets it. In any case, we don’t have to go crazy wrapping this one. Just run the paper around it and tape it up as best you can. Now, for Lyra’s gloves, we’ve got to be more careful, and it’s annoying. We should have gotten a box for them. I know we had to improvise on this, but for future reference, always try to buy gifts that are square. Makes them easier to wrap.”

“Maybe I can practice on the box of candy we got for Pinkie.”

“Sure,” said Karyn, passing over the wrapping materials. Derpy unrolled the wrapping paper, only to have it roll back up. She tried again. “You know,” said Karyn, “They make flat wrapping paper, really nice stuff with dotted lines on the back so you can measure how much you need. Every year I say I’m going to buy it, but every year I spend too much on gifts and have to go with the cheap stuff.”

“Well, can you hold that end?”

Karyn held the ragged end of the paper while Derpy measured out enough for the candy. “Do you really think that Pinkie will want this? She works in a bakery after all.”

“It’s Pinkie Pie,” said Derpy. “She can’t get enough sugar-based food.”

“Good point. But even she wasn’t as hard to buy for as Rarity.”

Karyn expected Derpy to be awkward with the wrapping, but having six limbs, a prehensile tail, and a mouth that she could rip and place the tape with gave her an advantage. The box of candy looked as though it could have been professionally wrapped.

“I know, right? All the things she’s into, fashion and jewels and fancy ribbons, they’re all things she works with. But the perfume is something that I’ve never heard of anypony wearing. We already smell nice.”

“You do, but this will make you smell even better. Or at least different.” Karyn handed her the small box, and again Derpy’s dexterous moves made for a pretty package.

“This thing for Angel Bunny, I still don’t get how it works.”

“I’m not sure the pony at the carrot stand did either,” said Karyn, “but a gift certificate basically lets him get whatever he wants up to twenty bits. I’m sure he’ll remember it, since it’s the only one in all of Equestria.”

“It still seems like a way to get out of giving a real gift.”

“Maybe. Still, I’ve always said there needs to be a store called, ‘Cheap Gifts for Folks You Don’t Like Too Much.’”

Derpy laughed. “All right. Now, the gloves.”

“I’ll take care of them. I do have experience with awkwardly shaped gifts. If you’d use your wing to hold down the folds, I’d appreciate it.”

Working together, they even made Lyra’s package looked nice.

“Last one,” said Derpy. “And I’ll do this myself.”

“Are you sure? It’s in plastic, but it’s got a few awkward edges.”

“Oh, yes. This one is personal. I said I always wanted to get Dinky the best toy. You’re really saying this is a rare find on Earth?”

“Definitely,” said Karyn. “The Derpy Hooves figure is one of the top prizes for pony fans. And Dinky’s going to love it, since it will remind her how famous her mother is.”

Sunday

Derpy packed her saddlebags carefully to ensure that none of the presents got damaged. She was concerned that even the wrapping paper would be disturbed. She left them on the kitchen table as she warped to Earth to pick up Karyn.

“I still think you should have stayed over last night,” Derpy said.

“I’m still trying to keep most of my time on Earth consistent. A few hours isn’t so bad, but a whole night and I’d get inter-universe jet lag.”

They travelled back to Derpy’s house almost immediately, but as soon as they did there was a knocking at the door. They both went to see who it was.

“Hey, it’s Lyra!” said Derpy. “What’s going on?”

Lyra looked past Derpy. “Oh, Karyn, thank goodness you’re here. I was going to ask Derpy to go and get you. I really need help.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Karyn.

“I’ve tried to set up a Christmas party, so that my human will have fun and learn to love Christmas. But I must have done something wrong, because we had a big fight.” She gave the details of the angry words they had exchanged.

“So what do you want us to do?” said Derpy.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Karyn. “We’re the only other people in Equestria who know about Christmas and what it takes to make a proper Christmas celebration. We’ve got to help Lyra out and, throw a good Christmas party so her human won’t be mad anymore.”

Lyra smiled and they all walked outside.

“Now, for the first thing,” said Derpy, “we need to cut down a tree and put it up inside the house.”

“Oh, Derpy, this is no time for your silliness. Karyn, can you please ask her to focus? Now, what do we really do?”

Karyn laughed. “No, Lyra, she’s telling the truth. You need to have a fir tree set up. You decorate it and put presents underneath.”

Karyn and Derpy continued to fill Lyra in on what was needed to celebrate Christmas the way humans did. She stared wide-eyed. “Well, if there’s this much to be done, no wonder my dear sweet human was overwhelmed. How will we ever get this set up?”

As she said that, Twilight Sparkle and her friends were walking into Derpy’s view. “I know,” said Derpy. “Where can we find anypony who knows how to organize something, or how to make pretty decorations, or how to have a nice atmosphere? We would need to know ponies who can tell us about hard work and getting things done fast. And even if, by some miracle, we managed to find that, we still wouldn’t have anypony who knew a thing about planning parties!”

Karyn and Lyra saw the six ponies, then looked at Derpy, proud of her for having found the help they needed.

But Derpy continued, and it was clear that she hadn’t been making a joke. “Ah, well, we’ll just have to do our best. Come on.”

Karyn facepalmed while Lyra facehoofed. “Lyra, you go grab the others, I’ll explain to Derpy what we’re going to do.”

The eight ponies and Karyn went back to Lyra’s house and planned out the set up.

“I’ll get this tree that’s so important,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Do we really have to cut one down?” said Fluttershy.

“We do, unless you want to get decorated.”

Rarity shook her head at the two pegasi and continued her work. Under Karyn’s direction, she was using powdered gems to make snowflakes that would stick to Lyra’s windows. Applejack and Pinkie Pie were huddled up in the kitchen planning out a menu.

“Pinkie, we can’t just make the whole meal a dessert,” Applejack said.

“Give me one good reason why not!”

Karyn came over to break them up. “It’s all right. Christmas cookies are as much of a tradition as the main dishes. Or maybe you could make a fruitcake! That’s Christmas tradition too, though no one seems to like them.”

Twilight was overseeing everything, but she took Karyn aside. “I do have one request for you. Not from me though. Spike asked if it’s all right to come.”

Karyn sighed. “Well, it is Christmas after all. Just one thing. Do ponies—and dragons—know about mistletoe?”

“The plant that grows on trees? Sure we do, but it doesn’t have many uses. It’s not safe to eat.”

“Yep, fine. Just so we’re good. No mistletoe in the place at all.”

Twilight was confused, but the issue seemed to be settled.

The torrent of activity subsided, and all the ponies gathered around in the living room. “Well,” said Lyra, “that’s just about everything.”

“Not quite,” said Derpy. “We’re still missing one guest.”

“I know,” said Lyra. “It’s just so difficult, when you’ve had a fight.”

Karyn went over to her. “I know. But Derpy and I have fights once in a while too. We’ve always made up. And we always will. All of us, the humans who love ponies and the ponies who love humans, we’re always afraid of losing the other. But we won’t. Friendship isn’t such a tenuous thing that it can be torn apart just because the friends are different species. That’s what the ponies learned on that Hearth’s Warming Eve so long ago. You can prove it to yourself right now by making up.”

Lyra nodded, and said thanks, and went up to her bedroom.

**

Derpy went over to Karyn. “Come on, let’s make one final check.”

“All right. I’m sure Lyra won’t be long though.”

“Maybe, but the other human makes me nervous. Even with what you said, I still feel more comfortable with just you.”

Everypony and Karyn busied themselves, but there was little else to do. It was a quiet moment of anticipation.

They came down the stairs, and after getting over the initial surprise, Lyra’s human approached Karyn.

“It’s nice to meet you. Happy Hearth’s Warming Eve.”

Karyn looked around at all they had done. Beyond the frosted glass and the Christmas tree, she saw the streets of Ponyville. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

31: Life in the Dink City

“Oh, but it feels good to be back on Earth!” Derpy arched her back and spread her wings. Karyn had never realized how impressive her wingspan really was, though soon she folded them back.

“It’s only been two weeks.”

“It feels like much longer.”

“I missed you too, Derpy.” Karyn sat down in her chair and leaned back.

Derpy matched the gesture by getting quite comfortable on Karyn’s bed. “So, Equestria?”

“But you just said you missed Earth.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to break your promise, right?”

Karyn racked her memory for something she had pledged to Derpy, but it wasn’t coming to mind. “What promise?”

“To be Dinky’s study buddy, of course.”

“That’s today?”

“Well, it’s kind of every day. I don’t mean that you have to go to Equestria and Canterlot all the time, but you should whenever you can.” Derpy gave her a look. Karyn could have interpreted it as guilt-tripping, but she knew that it was all out of concern for her daughter.

“OK, I’ll do it. Transportation is your department, though.”

A dimension-hop and a train ride later, the two off them were walking down the streets of Canterlot. Karyn reflected that this was the first time she had been to the city without the pressure of having to race to Princess Celestia’s castle. She craned her neck at the towers and turrets.

“It really is different in the big city, isn’t it?” said Derpy.

“I’ve been to big cities back home, like New York and Pittsburgh, but they’re all so boxy. This is almost like being in a forest of stone and wood.”

“All forests have wood, Karyn.”

Karyn nodded, realizing that she had said something silly. “But Canterlot’s completely different as a city. Maybe Washington would be the closest, but I’ve never been there.”

“What’s Washington?”

“You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to ask that question. It’s a city, the seat of our government. There are also a lot of beautiful things there, monuments and parks and archives.”

They came to an intersection, and Derpy was unsure which way Dinky lived.

“Haven’t you been here before?” asked Karyn.

“Only by air. It’s so much easier when you can cut corners. Excuse me!” Derpy accosted a passing unicorn. “Do you know where the Royal Library is?”

The unicorn looked down her nose at Derpy and Karyn, as if wondering what they would need a library for.

“It’s actually the School for Gifted Unicorns we need,” said Karyn.

The unicorn was even more incredulous, but it happened that she had a sister who attended the school, so she pointed them in the right direction.

“Why didn’t you ask for the school?” Karyn asked.

“If you ask for directions and they give you the whole path, it feels like cheating, you know?”

“Well, how about going up to the top of a building and seeing if you can spot the school? Is that fair?”

Derpy stopped in her tracks with a look of “Why didn’t I think of that?” A minute later, she knew exactly where she was going, and they were at Dinky’s dorm in ten minutes.

“Karyn! Mommy!” Dinky rose to her hooves and ran toward the two of them. Karyn gave her a hug and looked around the room, and was a little envious. The furniture that Karyn was issued by her college was stylistic to a college, designed for mass production and easy cleaning. Dinky’s dorm was like a log cabin in the woods, made all the more homey by the fact that is was in the big city.

“How are your studies coming along, Dinky?” Derpy asked.

“Good. Real good. I aced my last test.”

“And are you completing all your assignments?”

“Yes,” Dinky said, but she broke eye contact with Derpy as she did.

“Dinky! Tell the truth.”

“I did! I would never lie to you. But you didn’t actually ask if I was completing all my assignments on time.”

Derpy’s head drooped.

“But really, like ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine of them I am!” Dinky shouted.

“So, you missed one out of a hundred thousand?” asked Karyn.

“Yes! I missed one, and I’m not going to miss another for the next hundred thousand. At least, not now that you’re here.”

Derpy relented and headed for the door. “All right, I’ll leave you two to study.”

“You’re going out, Mommy?”

“Yes. I so rarely get to come to Canterlot I thought I would take the opportunity to do some shopping.”

“All right, but be careful. Canterlot’s not like Cloudsdale where everypony is laid back or like Ponyville where everyone knows everyone else. The merchants here will take advantage of you if you’re not careful.”

“I know how to make my way around a city, Dinky. Don’t worry your head about me. You might wear out your horn doing so.” She rubbed Dinky’s head with her hoof and went out through the door.

“You really think she’ll be OK, Karyn?”

Karyn knew that the question was more for reassurance than for information. “Of course she will. She’s really a very capable pony.” Our of the corner of her eye, she saw Derpy circle around and wave to them from beyond the window. Steadily backing up, Derpy found herself in the street, and the stallions pulling an omnibus had to signal her to get out of the way. Karyn closed the curtains.

“So how have you been?” said Dinky. “How are things at your school?”

“Good. Not nearly as pleasant as things here must be.”

“Ha! Have they asked you to master shrinking spells and write a report on the structure of them?”

“Yes.” Karyn put on a very serious face. Dinky stared at Karyn for a moment before they both broke up laughing. “All right, no, they haven’t. What’s the challenge?”

“Well, it’s hard to describe.”

“I know, but that’s what I’m here for. Pretend I come from a completely different world and know nothing about how to use magic.”

Dinky blinked. “But you do come from a completely different world.”

“That should make it easy.”

Dinky went over to her desk drawer and pulled out a scroll, a quill, and a book. “For practice, I’m allowed to work on inanimate objects, but in class, I have to be able to shrink animals and plants and not damage them.”

“You can do damage with that kind of spell?”

“Oh, definitely. See, think about it. Say you had a grasshopper that was your size.”

Karyn shuddered at the thought, but Dinky said, “No, it wouldn’t be scary because it couldn’t move. Its legs would collapse under it. And there are problems going the other way, too, which is what I’m dealing with.”

“I see. I think I’ve read about things like that.”

“Yeah, and that’s the thing. Practice on inanimates is easy.” She concentrated and fired a bolt from her horn at the book. A moment later, it was a pocket edition.

“Wow. Dinky, you’re awesome!”

“No, I’m not. Go pick up the book.”

Karyn reached over and grabbed the book, trying to lift it, but she misjudged the weight and it dropped back to the desk.

“See?” said Dinky. “I didn’t even change its weight. That was the most basic shrinking spell of all, and it’s almost useless. The only thing I changed was volume. I suppose if you needed to slip something through a narrow space, you could do that, but you’d still be moving more weight than you should.”

“So if you did that to me?”

“You’d still weigh as much, and you’d have far less muscle to work with. Your heart would probably stop right away.”

“Yikes,” said Karyn, but she wasn’t nearly as put off as she was by the grasshopper analogy. Something was eating at her memory, and she was trying to pull it up.

“But there are more advanced ways of doing it that involve keeping the mass in proportion,” said Dinky, as she restored the book to its former size.

That tripped Karyn’s memory, and she said, “Back on Earth, I used to play around with editing music, you know, like mixing? Some of the software I used, when I wanted to speed up a section of the music would also change the pitch, which it wasn’t supposed to do. I think that’s kind of like what’s happening here.”

Dinky looked confused. “What’s software?”

“That would take a while to explain. But ask your mother some time, she probably knows the most of anypony in Equestria about computers.” Karyn shuddered a little at the realization that what she said was true. “But I think that magic could work the same way. All right, let’s say I sing a few notes.”

She sung the opening bars of the Friendship is Magic theme song.

“Now, I can sing it at half speed but keep the same notes, or I can lower the pitch so that I’m singing alto, and keep the same beat. Either one is easy for anyone who can carry a tune. But if you tell a piece of software to do one, it’ll do the other.”

Dinky listened, still a little confused, but she mostly followed what Karyn was saying, and wanted to be patient for her anyway. At last, she said, “OK, so you’re saying I should try to do everything at once?”

“No, I’m saying you should think less about following the rules of magic, or of physics or biology or anything else, and look at things from your own perspective.”

“Well, OK, looking at it from my perspective. . . “

“Yes?”

“I think that we should take a break and go have snacks!” Dinky slammed her book closed, floated the quill and scroll into the drawer, grabbed her coat and dashed to the door.

“Dinky! I’m supposed to be your study buddy. What’s your mom going to say if she finds out that we’re barely studying at all?”

“Do you like hay cakes? I know a great place.”

Karyn stomped her foot. “You’re dodging the question.”

“Does that mean you do like hay cakes?”

“I’ve never had them, but probably not. Humans don’t eat hay.”

Dinky’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you’ve never eaten hay at all? Not even in cake form? Then you’ve just got to try it! Let’s go.” She opened the door and Karyn concluded that she was not to be swayed.

Back out on the streets of Canterlot, Karyn’s nervousness returned. She felt more comfortable when she was with Derpy. Dinky was still a younger pony, and she didn’t have all the protective spells that Derpy did. On the other hand, Karyn thought she had a responsibility to stay with Dinky, so she followed her as she made her way down the city streets.

Finally catching up to her, Karyn put a hand on her shoulder and spun her around. “All right, now listen. First off, I can’t try the hay cake. It’s not a question of taste. As a human I can’t digest it. It’s bad for me. But if you really want one, we’ll go to your place, you can have the cake, and then right back to the dorm for more studying, OK?”

Dinky pursed her lips and nodded. They moved off at a comfortable trot. Karyn looked out of the corner of her eye at the ponies passing by. In Ponyville, most of the residents had gotten used to seeing a human in town, either her or Lyra’s, and some would even wave or say hi. When she first began visiting, there were a few stares. But now, in Canterlot, some ponies weren’t even noticing, and those that were quickly turned away.

The shop that Dinky led them to was only a counter that faced the boulevard. A few round tables sat outside for ponies to eat at, but most of them were taking their food away. The line was short and they quickly acquired the hay caked Dinky had mentioned. Karyn looked over the limited menu and decided to just have a drink. “Hot chocolate, please,” she said.

Once they sat down, Dinky looked a little relieved to not have to spend a great deal of bits. As a poor college student herself, Karyn understood.

They sat, sipped, and ate. “You really don’t know what you’re missing!” said Dinky.

“It smells nice, but still like hay. For humans, it’s not an appetizing scent. Not like this chocolate.”

Dinky thought of something. “Mommy said that you don’t eat ponies, right? I mean, I know you wouldn’t eat me, but the ponies on Earth, you don’t eat them?”

Karyn sighed. “OK, I’ll go over this. I don’t eat any animal. No one I know eats ponies at all. A very few humans do, but they’re from distant lands, mostly.” Then she thought of something else. “And there are also a few that won’t eat anything from an animal. Like, they wouldn’t have this hot chocolate because there’s milk in it.”

“That’s just weird.”

“Well, all the humans who eat animals—but again, I stress, not ponies—think that I’m weird for not eating cows and chickens and—“

Karyn had taken a sip of her drink as she was talking, but when she looked up, Dinky was gone, and a streak of wind was blowing in the opposite direction, carrying the napkin that she was using. A moment later, from an alley down the road, a pale violet hoof stuck out and made a “come here” gesture.”

Blinking, she put down her cup and stepped toward the alley. As she poked her head around the corner, she felt a magical glow surround her body, and she was pulled in like a magnet to the opposite pole. “Shhh!” Dinky said, her hoof to her mouth. She pointed back out to the street.

Karyn stuck her head out and understood. Down the boulevard, flitting about in front of windows oohing and ahhing, was Derpy. She had a couple of shopping bags on her left hoof and was flying a little awkwardly because of them. Karyn yanked her head back in.

“What are we going to do?” said Dinky. “She’s heading this way! She’ll see us!”

“Let’s duck back in the alley. Maybe she’ll pass by.”

They looked behind them. The blind alley didn’t go back far, nor did it offer any easily accessible hiding places.

“We’re doomed!”

“Let’s just stand still. Maybe she won’t see.”

Dinky was shocked. “Karyn, this is my mommy! Der. Py. Hooves. She sees everything in all directions!”

“Oh, right. Yeah, we’re doomed.”

They pushed as far back as they could go and waited for the inevitable.

As Derpy passed the café where they had left the hay cake and the drink, she stopped and looked at it, perhaps wondering why somepony had left tasty treats out instead of finishing them. Distracted, she bank-turned and bumped into a passing unicorn couple.

“Oh, please excuse me.”

“Mm. Yes,” the stallion said in a snooty tone.

She tried to go around the couple, but then her bag ripped and spilled its contents all over the sidewalk. Dinky saw a number of fancy cheeses and vegetables. One round cheese rolled slowly away.

“Oh, pony-pies!” Derpy swore.

“Come on,” whispered Karyn. “Now’s our chance to get away!” But Dinky was still watching her mother try to gather all her purchases.

“Just a second.”

The unicorns had not moved on, but were looking down at Derpy. The mare reared on her hind legs, ostensibly to give Derpy more room, but it looked to Dinky as if she was looking down her nose.

Sotto voce, but still quite audible, the mare said, “Clearly she’s not from around here.”

Ever the innocent, Derpy stood up from her mad scramble to say, “You’re right! I’m Derpy Hooves of Cloudsdale and Ponyville. Nice to meet you!”

If the unicorns had given a polite hello, or if they had plead that they had urgent business and no time to stop, or if they had been going in the opposite direction, or if they had waited one more block to exchange the look they did, things might have turned out differently. As was, Dinky from her hiding place saw the look in their eyes and burst out into the street.

“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. High-and-mighty! Why don’t you try watching where you’re going?”

Derpy was more shocked than the unicorns. “Dinky, what are you doing here?”

“Not standing idly by while some stuck-up ponies who probably inherited every bit they have dishonor my mother!”

The unicorn stallion said, “If you’re her filly, why don’t you just help her carry her bags? Then she wouldn’t be in our way.”

Dinky didn’t like the tone that he had taken for the word “our.” It implied that they were on a different level. “I’ll do better than that!” she said.

Concentrating hard, she fired a field of magic from her horn. It swept all of Derpy’s purchases back into the bags. Then a red bolt slammed into the bags and a puff of smoke dissipated around them. Two tote bags that would be easy for anypony to carry sat on the ground.

“Oh, what a disgraceful daughter you have there,” the unicorn mare said to Derpy. “Ruining your food like that. Shrinking spells take all the flavor out of food. Everypony knows that.”

“Maybe everypony in the finishing school knows that,” said Dinky, “but those of us attending Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns can take care of these things. Especially when we’ve got good friends to help us out.”

She pointed back to the alley, and Karyn stepped out. If the unicorn couple thought Derpy and Dinky low before, they didn’t know what to make of them now, associating with a human. Privately, Karyn wished she had fangs or claws to bare, just to end the encounter.

As it was, she joined the other two and they walked off, Derpy now having a very easy time carrying the bags. “I still don’t know how you got here,” she said.

“Let’s just wait until we’re out of earshot of those two,” said Dinky. As they passed by the café, she floated the remaining half of her hay cake back into her possession.

They turned the corner and wound their way back toward the school and Dinky’s dorm room. Derpy now seemed to know her way. In fact, another pegasus pony walked up to her and asked directions to a certain museum.

“Ooh, I’m not sure I know that.”

Dinky stepped in and pointed her toward where she wanted to go.

“You’ve saved me again,” said Derpy. “But why did she ask me for directions, of all ponies? There must be hundreds of native. . . Canterlotians? Canterlotites?. . . residents that she could have approached.”

“I got stopped and asked three times last year before I figured it out,” said Dinky. “Let’s say you’re in Cloudsdale, and somepony you’ve never seen is flying by down the road. What do you do?”

“I don’t know, say hi?”

“Right, but even if you don’t, you look at them with a friendly expression. But Canterlot ponies don’t do that. In the first place, they see tourists all the time. But it’s also a cultural thing. They don’t make eye contact as much.”

They walked another few yards when Derpy said, “I hope you don’t get too much like them, little one. It just doesn’t seem right to not look at ponies’ eyes. I’ve had too many look away from mine.”

Karyn saw an opening. “Well, if Dinky’s going to be a big, famous Canterlot unicorn and a graduate of the school, you’ll just have to get used to it.”

“Well, maybe it would be a good idea to live closer to Ponyville.”

“Give up the school?” said Dinky.

“I don’t want you to do that either.”

“There’s no reason she has to stay in Canterlot after she graduates,” said Karyn. “Of course, she wouldn’t have all the opportunities.”

Derpy grumbled, but Dinky caught on and gave Karyn a wink.

“Well, there’s plenty of time to think about it.”

“Yeah,” said Dinky. “and plenty of time to have fun.”

They arrived back at the dorm and Dinky unlocked the door magically. “They expect us to know the locking spell right off,” she said. “If you don’t, you start losing your stuff and you’ve got incentive to learn. They give everything back eventually though.”

Derpy looked in and saw Dinky’s notes on her desk. She had a delayed reaction. “Wait, fun? What were you doing outside anyway? You’re supposed to be studying!”

“Oh, well, you see—“

“I told her to go,” said Karyn. “She was raving about these hay cakes and lamenting that she had to stay in and study. I told her that we should go get them and that’s when we ran into you. It’s all my fault.”

Dinky stepped in front. “No, Karyn, you don’t need to lie. I made Karyn come with me, mommy. But it all worked out for the best. That spell I used is that thing I’m supposed to learn!”

Derpy focused one eye on the desk and one on her daughter. “I thought that the problem was getting the work done, not learning the spells.”

“Oh, right.”

A light appeared over Karyn’s head. “But now she can write up our adventures and everything that happened.”

“No, Karyn,” said Derpy. “This is supposed to be serious work.”

“Derpy, how many of these assignments do you think that the teachers have to read? Honestly, a fresh, new angle on what’s probably boring to them might get Dinky some extra points.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I don’t see how magic could ever be boring, but then I’m not a unicorn.”

Derpy pictured it in her mind. “Neither am I. But yeah, I certainly wouldn’t want to read about flying all day. OK, you’re forgiven this time.”

Relieved, Dinky gave Karyn a hug. “Thanks so much. I’ll have to set up a way to call you the next time I’m having problems.”

“I’m sure you can do it, too. You’re a great unicorn, Dinky.”

Derpy and Karyn left for the train. Back at her house, Derpy prepared to take Karyn to Earth. “Let me just put away all this—oh, no!”

“What’s wrong?”

“We forgot! All the food I bought in Canterlot, it’s still shrunk!”

They shared a laugh.

Author's Note

I now have a place to put the previews for next week! Here you go!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Ugh, don’t smack your lips so loudly.”

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Karyn. “Did you stay up all night with Berry Punch or something?”

“A couple of days ago, but what does that have to do with anything? All we did was play board games.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She went over to her computer and searched for some pictures.

“That castle looks a little like Canterlot!” said Derpy.

“Very little. No one lives in there.”

“Huh? What’s the point of having a big castle without a princess to live in it?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn tempered her mood a little. “Yeah, but this time it’s just not feasible. I’m sorry.”

“Aww.” Derpy kicked at the carpet with a hoof, then picked her head up and said, “What if we designed a spell to—“

“No.”

Look forward to it!

32: Derpyland

Derpy lay awake in bed, watching the hands of the clock go round. With her head tilted on the pillow, she thought for a moment that it was 6:15, but then the wrong hand moved and she realized that it was 3:30. She rolled over and saw her cat Muffinhead looking at her.

“You think that Karyn would be mad if I went to Earth this early?”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, me too. You think there’s any chance that she’s awake too, and hoping that I would arrive early so that we could both deal with our insomnia together?”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

She tossed and turned for another twenty minutes, then lit the candle next to her bed and read for an hour. It occurred to her that even if she fell asleep right then, she might only get two more hours sleep, which wouldn’t do much. And it would probably take some time to get to sleep, which would cut into it.

Then she thought that she might sleep in and go to Karyn’s in the afternoon, but couldn’t do that to her friend.

The first rays of the morning sun streaked in through Derpy’s window and lit on her eye. She groaned, “Oh, really, Princess Celestia? You couldn’t have let us all sleep for five minutes more? Sure, all the continents would probably fly off into space and the oceans would boil and Equestria would burn to a cinder, but I’m tired!”

She staggered to her hooves and trotted downstairs. She looked at her coffee pot and her oven, but decided that what she really wanted to do was to just get to Earth already. Ducking in to the bathroom, she gave her mane a quick brush, threw on her saddlebags, and activated her spell.

By contrast, Karyn was the epitome of bubbly and cheerful. She was looking bright-eyed and was practically dancing around the room. Throwing her arms around Derpy’s neck, she gave her a big kiss.

“Ugh, don’t smack your lips so loudly.”

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Karyn. “Did you stay up all night with Berry Punch or something?”

“A couple of days ago, but what does that have to do with anything? All we did was play board games.”

“No, I meant did you go on a bender? Get tight? Go three sheets to the wind?”

Derpy put her hooves on the sides of her head and shook it back and forth. “Stop! I can’t handle euphemisms this early in the morning.”

The two friends’ moods started to equalize. Karyn calmed down and Derpy focused enough to talk about it.

“I just couldn’t get any sleep last night. And I really wanted to. I hadn’t stayed up too late, despite spending some time with friends, but I went to bed early so that I would have that refreshed feeling. You know that one? Where you sleep for like ten hours and then you’re still kinda tired but you just feel so good?”

“Yeah, but you can’t plan to make it happen. You just have to get lucky.”

Derpy nodded for about thirty seconds before coming back to reality. “I guess so. Anyway, you’re perky this morning. How did you do it?”

“I don’t know. In the same way, sometimes you’re just full of energy. That’s how I am today. I could do anything. The sun’s up, the air’s clean, my best friend’s here. . . “

“I guess your room is just the happiest place on Earth.”

Karyn chuckled. “Well, it’s no Disneyland, but”

Derpy held up a hoof. “Hang on. I may be bleary-eyed and ready to collapse, but I know a new word when I hear it. What land?”

“Disneyland. It’s an amusement park.”

Derpy tilted her head in the gesture that Karyn had come to understand meant that she wanted more information. She went over to her computer and searched for some pictures.

“That castle looks a little like Canterlot!” said Derpy.

“Very little. No one lives in there.”

“Huh? What’s the point of having a big castle without a princess to live in it?”

“There kind of is a princess, but it’s just a made-up one. She’s not real like Princess Celestia or Princess Luna.” Karyn winced a little as she realized that most other humans thought they were made-up as well.

“I don’t get it. You’re saying that there aren’t any human princesses? I know that the sun rises on its own here.”

“One question at a time, Derpy, or we’ll just get confused. OK?”

Derpy folded her wings and looked attentive.

“Now. We have human royal families, but for the most part they’re just figureheads. A few do have power, but that’s a little anachronistic. They might have princesses, but they never rule. If they get in charge, they become queens.

“But, since everyone loves princesses as little girls, Disney, which makes movies, put together a lot of them with princesses instead of queens. Then they built this park where kids and their parents can go pretend that the princesses are real. With me so far?”

Derpy nodded.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been there,” said Karyn. “But when you’re a kid, having your parents take you is like the most fun thing you could ever anticipate. It’s only once you get there that you have to deal with things like long lines, and the fact that it might rain.”

“And the whole thing is done in Canterlot-style architecture?”

“No, only one part. See, the land is divided up into sub-lands, and some of them are styled like Appleloosa, this one like Canterlot, one of them is like a Daring Do novel, and another. . .” Karyn paused, trying to think of how to describe it.

“Go on.”

“Back when the park was built, there was a lot of popular belief that the future would be all gleaming metal and plastic, where all the fonts had curves and there was space travel and lots of that. Well, they built a land around it.”

“What’s the big deal about space travel? Princess Luna lived on the moon for a thousand years.” asked Derpy. “And ponies say that my head’s in space all the time.”

“Well, they shouldn’t. So those four are the main sections of the park. Then there’s Main Street USA, but that’s just shops and eateries. Parents pay attention to that, but not kids.”

“And you’ve been there?”

Karyn cast her memory back. She had taken two trips, one with only her father when she wasn’t tall enough to go on all the rides, and the second time with both her parents when she had remembered everything.

“I have. But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that when you can’t go.”

“Hmm. As may be, tell me the story.”

She leaned in the chair and reminisced. “I’m probably conflating both times I went, but you line up at the beginning of the day with a huge crowd and the characters come out. The princesses, yes, and that’s who I was looking at, but there are also people dressed up as talking mice, ducks, and dogs. No ponies, for some reason.

“We go in and veer to the left. The first ride is a cruise and it’s more about comedy than the fun of the boat ride. Oh! I should tell you this. The whole place is so clean. They have people walking around picking up any trash and putting it in the bins, and they don’t have bags in them to overflow. The bins are themed, too, and in Adventureland, which is the one like the Daring Do books, they’re painted to look like bamboo.”

Derpy laughed. “The thing you remember most is the garbage bins?”

“Just first, not most. Anyway, the next ride is also on a boat, and it’s themed around pirates. They made a movie out of the ride, and I haven’t seen how they changed it since. Now, the problem is that there are a lot of lines. Sometimes you might have to wait for up to an hour or more!”

Derpy steamed a little inside at the vagueness of Karyn’s sentence, but she knew that nopony likes a grammar enforcer, so she held her tongue.

“We moved on quickly to Frontierland, that’s the one like Appleloosa. What I remember there is that they sold these big turkey legs covered in sauce. It was grotesque, watching people eat those things. That land had one good ride, but we didn’t go on it.”

“Then how do you know it was good?”

“Well, it was a coaster, as opposed to a theme ride or a boat ride,” said Karyn. Derpy looked as if she was going to ask another question, but Karyn continued. “I think it might have been broken. Anyway, so we went to the castle and had lunch there. My father made reservations and I got to wear a crown just like I was a princess too!”

“I know a little about what that’s like.”

“Right, but this wasn’t the worry of being an actual princess with responsibilities, just the fun parts. What I remember about that was the drinking goblet, that was probably just aluminum, but made to look like it was pewter.”

“What did you have to drink?” asked Derpy.

“I couldn’t tell you. I was very young, so I’m giving you what I remember. Anyway, more rides, and now it’s getting toward the afternoon, so we took the skyride. Just a little car suspended from a cable, but you’re in the air and you can see the whole park. You really don’t know how lucky you are to be able to fly. I think every human at some point wishes she had wings.”

“Go on with the story.”

Karyn smiled as she brought her tale to its climax. “All right, so there we are, in the cable car, and I can see it in the distance, the big round dome with the spike pointing out of it. That’s what I’ve been psyched for the whole time. The best ride in the park: Space Mountain. The only real roller coaster.”

“You said that before. What’s a roller coaster?”

“What’s a—? OK, well, it’s like a train, but for fun.”

“We always have fun on the train.”

“No, it’s the motion of the train specifically. Because it goes up and down really fast and around curves and sometimes upside-down.”

“Upside-down? But you’d fall! Watch.” Derpy took off and did a backward roll in the air, then closed her wings and collapsed face-first on the bed. “See?”

“Right, but don’t stop in the middle. Keep going and complete the roll. These coasters go fast and they test them. OK, so, we can see Space Mountain, which is not only a roller coaster but it’s indoors too, which is doubly cool. But of course my father still wants to build the excitement, so first we have to go on all the other boring rides like the Carousel of Progress, where you just sit there and watch these dioramas of people throughout history. Finally, he says we can go, but it’s the peak time, right before dinner, so there’s this huge line going out the door. Well, we decide to go and a soda to have something to do before we get on the line. We buy the drinks and go back, and the line is gone! We never figured out why, but a lot of people must have either given up or gotten on the ride while we stepped away. We had to throw away the drinks because you weren’t allowed to take them inside.

“Once we got in the building, the line started up again, but it was short and went quickly. Soon enough we were strapping in and off we went.”

Derpy waited a moment, but Karyn didn’t seem to be continuing the story. “And then?”

“Well, you can’t really describe a roller coaster, but it was every bit as awesome as I’d hoped it would be. That feeling of free fall is the best.”

“OK, so what happened after that?”

“I think there were a couple more rides, but I’d had enough. We all gathered round a big lake and watched the fireworks show. They have one every night. I didn’t make it through without falling asleep though.”

Derpy closed her eyes and tried to envision all the parts of Karyn’s story and what the place she had described was like. They had many fairs and events in Equestria, but no one specific place set out just for entertainment.

She opened her eyes and pounded her hoof. “OK, I’m sold. Let’s go.”

“Go? Where?”

“To Disneyland, of course.”

Karyn sighed to herself. She should have seen this coming. “Listen, Derpy, I know how you get. You put on a puss face and you act as if we’re going anyway, and I go along because it’s fun. But in the first place getting to Disneyland would be a big project, and in the second there’s no way of doing all the rides without every human there finding out that you exist.”

Derpy just stared at Karyn with her mouth open.

“Don’t do that! I know you think that by saying nothing that we’ll find ourselves on a plane again halfway to Anaheim talking about the fun we’re going to have and you asking me about our hotel reservations, but it’s not happening. Admit it, that’s what you were thinking.”

“Well, yeah, it kinda was. Things like that always work out for us, don’t they?”

Karyn tempered her mood a little. “Yeah, but this time it’s just not feasible. I’m sorry.”

“Aww.” Derpy kicked at the carpet with a hoof, then picked her head up and said, “What if we designed a spell to—“

“No.”

She trotted toward the window. “If we had Dinky shrink us down to—“

“No.”

She looked outside toward the west. “If we asked—“

“No! I can’t say this strongly enough! We can’t go to Disneyland. Believe me, I wish we could. Because it is a happy place to be. But part of the reason that it’s happy is that it’s so controlled. The people who run the park don’t allow anything in that they don’t want. Even if I took my Bluetooth in and talked to you, someone would probably see and hear, and they’d wonder what I was doing. You’re on camera all the time. There’s no privacy. They can search you whenever they want.”

Derpy stopped pouting. “All right. I’ll stop asking. For real. I just thought that if the place was that cool, that they might be cool with me being there.”

The rest of the day was uneventful. They watched videos on the computer and Karyn played some soft music. After lunch, Derpy listened to it and fell asleep. Karyn dragged her onto the bed and covered her with an extra blanket she had.

As she watched Derpy’s chest rise and fall, and saw the fretful look on her face, Karyn thought about the conversation she had just had. It hurt her to disappoint her friend, who after all just wanted to know as much as she could about the world she was visiting. If there were any magical means that Karyn could think of to get Derpy into Disneyland, she would have. But, even racking her brain, she could come up with nothing.

“Well, maybe there isn’t a magical way, but how about a human way?” she said to herself.

She was still stymied on Disneyland itself, but she might be able to bring Derpy to a different amusement park. There was a local one halfway between the university and Karyn’s home that, while not as opulent as a major theme park, had rides. She picked up the phone.

“No, it’s not a group rate exactly I’m looking for,” she said, trying to keep her voice low enough to not wake up Derpy. “In fact I’d be willing to pay extra for what I’m asking.”

When Derpy came to, she smacked her tongue and wiped the drool off her cheek. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “It’s just that the music was so nice and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

“Don’t worry about it. If you want to sleep, it’s fine by me. In fact, you should rest up because you’re not going home at sunset today.”

“What?! Why? Don’t tell me the return spell is malfunctioning again!”

Karyn grinned. “No, it’s not that. You and I have a date with a roller coaster.”

******************************************

As they drove toward the park, Derpy asked, “How in Equestria did you manage this?”

“Not through Equestrian means, believe me. Good old-fashioned money. I offered them a quasi-bribe. I pay triple for a ticket in, and I go on one ride after the park is closed.”

“They didn’t ask why?”

Karyn waved her hand. “They did, but I just told them that I really hate lines. They probably think I’m drunk or something and aren’t expecting me to show.”

“You didn’t have to do this for me. And I know how tight money is with you anyway.”

“I wanted to. But listen. You’ve got to be extra careful. You’ll be invisible, but you’ve got to strap in as unobtrusively as possible, and be quiet too. There won’t be anyone else around, so if the ride operator hears voices, he’ll get suspicious.”

When they reached the park, it certainly wasn’t the pristine land that Karyn had described, but the lights were on and the last of the guests were filing to their cars. Karyn talked to the ticket-taker and the ride attendant, and a few minutes later, she and Derpy found themselves being strapped in to the front row of a car.

The roller coaster was not a fancy modern one. The track was made of wood, and the car rattled as it left the starting area.

They slowly pulled out and around a curve, then were dragged up to the highest part of the structure by a chain. As soon as it reached a peak, the car dipped and came back up. In a whisper, Derpy said, “That wasn’t so bad.”

The car went around another curve and was still moving slowly. From her seat, Derpy peered out and didn’t see any track below her. The reason became clear a second later as the bottom dropped out from under her.

Derpy was used to being in the air, but what was new about this sensation was the vibration as the car came back up and shuddered around a curve. The g-force she felt on the left turn was amplified as she spread her invisible wings and felt the wind on them. Around they went and came to the last bump. The car slowed and they pulled back into the starting gate.

Karyn thanked the attendant and they went back to the car, Derpy not trusting her hooves and staying airborne. Once they were ensconced in the quiet safety of the car, Karyn slipped on her Bluetooth and they started talking.

“Well, that’s a roller coaster. Not quite Disneyland, but that’s what I enjoyed.”

Derpy said nothing for a moment, and Karyn was worried for a moment that Derpy didn’t enjoy it, or was even hurt. But then she said, “That was awesome!”

“You liked it, huh?”

“It was one of the most fun things. Not all of it, just that one part.”

“I know what you mean,” said Karyn. “That big drop that you weren’t expecting, right?”

“No, that wasn’t the important part.”

“Then what was it? The fake-out drop?”

“No, the first part, where we were pulled up by the chain.”

Karyn looked at the empty seat next to her.

“Oh, yeah,” said Derpy. “Because all the time we were going up, I knew that there was going to be a drop at the end, but just being pointed at the sky was cool. I never fly at that angle.”

“I’m glad you could experience it, even if I couldn’t take you to Disneyland.”

Derpy was silent until they were back at the dorm. Sitting on the bed, she said, “Don’t worry about the other park. It was more than enough to have fun with you, and even more than more than enough to hear your story. It was like I was there with you, going through all those lands and being on the rides.”

“That’s very nice, but I’m not that good a storyteller.”

“Maybe I just have a good imagination then.”

“That’s definitely true.” Karyn went over to her computer and closed the window that still had the pictures of Disneyland on it.

“Speaking of which. . . “ said Derpy, causing Karyn to look at her.

“Yes?”

“Well, I was thinking about the whole atmosphere of that kind of park. Whether it’s clean and sunny like what you showed me, or simple and quiet like the park we just went to, rides and games and such are a lot of fun. And it occurred to me that I know somepony who’d be awfully interested in that sort of thing: Pinkie Pie.

“I’m going to tell her all about what we did here. Maybe she’ll build her own theme park in Equestria, or something like that.”

Karyn wondered if she had created a monster.

“I’m going to write to her as soon as I get home!” said Derpy, already preparing her return spell.

“That’s fine. Just tell her to keep on her side of the wall.”

Author's Note

Next time, on Derpy's Human:

Derpy rolled over and got the sun on her back. Her cutie mark reflected the light like the face of a watch.

“Do you think if I crawled over to the edge and peeked over, someone would see me and I could freak them out?”

“Don’t try it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s a shame though that you can’t have somepony else come with you to keep you company. “

“Yeah. . . wait!” Derpy clapped her hooves. “Not somepony—“

“Some zebra?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy whispered to Karyn, “I bet you anything that as soon as we fly by, you’ll hear my name being called.”

Sure enough, as they prepared to turn up the next avenue, “Derpy?” in a Hooflyn accent came from behind.

That's coming next week, hope you enjoy it!

33: Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Derp

The air was cold, but the sun was shining down and it was warm enough to go without jackets, even though Karyn had worn a long-sleeve shirt. Derpy, of course, was comfortable in any weather.

“This was a great idea,” Karyn said. “I’ve always wanted to do this, but they lock the doors.”

No one on the ground could have an angle to see them. The air was clear of birds and Karyn thought it unlikely that any workmen would be coming up on a Sunday. Derpy had waited till the coast was clear and flown them both up to the roof.

Derpy had suggested it, not knowing that the college had rules specifically forbidding access to the roof. She didn’t know about liabilities and fears of late-night drunken falls that could get the college sued. In Equestria, she hung out on roofs all the time. For Karyn, the rule-breaking would only bother her if she got caught. She thought it was silly to prevent people from going up in broad daylight when they were sober.

“Next time we need to bring up some chaises longue,” said Derpy.

They were leaning against the door to the stairs and sitting on the concrete. The black surface of the roof helped to warm them even more. In the distance, they could see the college’s soccer team practicing.

“If you can handle carrying the load, I wouldn’t say no. We could put a little fridge up here, maybe an end table. Then they’d wonder who was breaking through the locks.”

Derpy rolled over and got the sun on her back. Her cutie mark reflected the light like the face of a watch.

“Do you think if I crawled over to the edge and peeked over, someone would see me and I could freak them out?”

“Don’t try it.”

“Aww, come on. Probably they wouldn’t even know what I was.”

Karyn moved her sunglasses to the end of her nose and looked over them. “But they might, and then it’d be all up. Or they could think that some horrible demon pony creature lives on the roof.”

Derpy laughed at that. “Yes, I am the evil monster Derpy! Fear my powers of mail delivery!”

They lounged back and soaked up the sunrays for a while in silence. Karyn’s thoughts drifted idly as they are wont to do on a lazy Sunday.

“I suppose I should take these sunny days outdoors while I can,” she said.

“What do you mean? Is the sun here finally going to stop rising on its own?”

“Ha, no, hopefully not. I was just thinking that once I start work, I’ll be cooped up in an office all day and I won’t be able to enjoy days like this except on weekends and holidays. You might have an advantage, working outdoors.”

Derpy spaced out for a minute, then said, “It is nice, mostly. Some days, though, the bag is so heavy and the roads are so long and everypony I pass has something for me to take back and it takes all day, and when I finally get back home, all I want to do is to crawl into bed and pass out, but it’s worse if I do that, because if I do, as soon as I wake up it’s time to go back to work.

“Plus there’s the matter of money. A top weather-pony can earn enough in one year to set herself up nice, and then she only has to work a few days a week, and can set her own schedule. But a mailmare has to be there five days a week, sometimes six, all day, punching the clock. Celestia help me if I’m late. But that’s not the worst part.”

“What is?”

“It’s so lonely. No, that’s not it. I have lots of friends, both who work with me and who I know on the route, but all the time I talk to them, it can only be for a few minutes. It’s one of the reasons I love coming to see you each week. We can actually have an in-depth conversation without me having to say, ‘Oh, please excuse me, Mr. Widehaunch needs his Canterlot Weekly magazine’ or something like that.”

Karyn got up and ran for the door. “That reminds me, I have to go out with my parents today!”

“What?!”

“Nah, I’m just messing with you.”

Derpy glowered, but then laughed. “You got me,” she said.

“It’s a shame though that you can’t have somepony else come with you to keep you company. “

“Yeah. . . wait!” Derpy clapped her hooves. “Not somepony—“

“Some zebra?”

“Yes—no! Some person!”

Karyn looked down the hoof that was pointing at her. “Me? But I have to go to class.”

Derpy pointed at her wrist and then at her eyes. Karyn wondered what she was doing, then it clicked. “Right, the time distortion. But I don’t like doing that. Staying awake for a day in Equestria and then a day on Earth is like the worst jet lag.”

“It was just a thought. I’ve always flown the route on my own, I can keep doing it.”

“Right. And all the other mail-ponies do it.”

Derpy was curiously silent. Karyn tried to relax, but could sense the tension that had just come onto the roof. “What’s the matter, Derpy?” she asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on, I know you better than that. Spill.”

Derpy sighed. “There is this one other mail-mare. Her name is Platinum Sprint. We see each other several times on our routes. I don’t think she likes me very much.”

“How could anypony not like you?”

“I know, right? But I don’t think that Platinum likes anypony.”

“Is she a stuck-up type?” Karyn thought that the name Platinum Sprint sounded pretentious.

“No, at least not in the way that Rarity isn’t. I mean, Rarity is nice, but she’s posh. There’s no posh-ness around Platinum, but once in a while she’ll tell me a story about one of her mare-friends and you can tell that she likes looking down on them.”

“But what else does she do that you don’t like her?”

Derpy took a deep breath. “Where to begin? OK, first she’s always asking for help with her route. If she gets a new address to deliver to, she’ll ask me how to get there, but then when I tell her, she doesn’t want to go that way because she doesn’t like using the side streets or something. She always wants to talk about the magazine serials that she reads, even though I don’t read them, so I just nod my head and go along. Oh, and Celestia forbid that she should catch me taking a break or chatting with somepony I’m delivering to.”

“She’ll call you out on it? But aren’t you supposed to be friendly?”

“The post office doesn’t say either way. But no, she doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me until I feel uncomfortable. Oh, and she is loud, and she doesn’t have an indoor voice, not even outdoors.”

Karyn thought about interrupting, but let it pass. Derpy continued.

“Anyway, I think the worst thing about her is that she has a short fuse. But not for anger, more for being upset. Like, as soon as anything goes out of normal—we get a big shipment or she forgets that there’s bad weather—she’ll talk about how ridiculous it is and why doesn’t everypony else take care of it?”

“And you have to run your mail route with her?”

Derpy went wide-eyed. “Oh, no! That would be bad, but at the same time it would be less lonely. If we really just flew the same route, I’d get to know her really well, and we’d just have to be friends.”

Karyn was skeptical, but said, “Then what’s the problem, if you don’t see her? Can’t you just ignore her?”

“Hmm. . . maybe this is easier if I show you. Have you got a piece of paper?”

Karyn pulled a sheet from the tray of her printer, then found a pen in her desk drawer. It amused her as always to see Derpy with the pen in her mouth, concentrating, finding it difficult to get the accuracy she wanted without the benefit of hands. But when she spat out the pen, there was indeed a nice drawing of Ponyville.

“This is the neighborhood where I deliver,” Derpy said. “Every day, I start out from the office and go to the northwest corner. Platinum Sprint goes to the southeast corner. I fly south, and she flies west, so by the time I get to the end of the first road, she’s done about the same, and we meet in the southwest corner. With me so far?”

“I think so.”

“So then I go to the next road over to the east and head back north. I zigzag all throughout. Usually I stop and eat lunch in the center of town, unless I’m hungry early or I can hold out to get to some of the good restaurants over here,” she said, pointing at one area.

“I think I get it. It’s almost like the two of you are weaving a pattern every day, and you meet at all the points along the diagonal.”

“Well, the real town isn’t as square and straight as this map, but that’s the general idea. Maybe a dozen times a day I’ll be going from house to house, store to store, happily saying hi to my friends or enjoying the reverie of flying, and there coming at me will be Platinum, and I know that I’ve got to be all business. It’s just very stressful.”

Derpy folded her ears down and turned away, indicating that she didn’t want to talk anymore about her co-worker. Karyn felt a little remorse, as if she had made Derpy pick at a wound that hadn’t quite healed. While Derpy trotted back to the edge of the roof, Karyn pulled out her phone and dialed up her calendar. After making some calculations in her head, she called out to Derpy.

“All right, it’s settled. I’m coming with you on your mail route this Wednesday.”

“What? But you just said—”

“Yes, and I’ve been working it out,” Karyn said, holding up the phone. “Monday night I have class, and also Tuesday morning, but after the morning class, I’ll come home and grab two hours sleep. I’ll go to my second class and then bank another ten hours, so I’ll be ready for the double shift. I’ll spend Equestrian Wednesday with you, come back for Earth Wednesday classes, and then crash at the end. I don’t have any tests this week, so I can make up any work I miss over the next week.”

“But what made you change your mind? I told you that I can deal with Platinum. It’s not like I’m really suffering.”

“I know, but the way you describe her, I’ve just got to meet her for myself!”

******************************************

Feeling extra refreshed, and trying not to think about staying up for twenty-four hours straight, Karyn and Derpy crossed the border and headed for the post office.

When they entered, Karyn saw a familiar face handling the distribution of mail to the deliverers. “Good morning, Mr. Mintsugar!”

The postmaster turned around and took off his glasses. He was certain that he was not on intimate terms with any human, and he didn’t recognize Karyn. “And you are?”

Karyn was taken aback, then remembered that the only time she had met him was when she was in Derpy’s body. She struggled to think of a way to explain. Derpy stepped in front. “This is my human friend, Mr. Mintsugar. Her name’s Karyn.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Karyn. “Derpy’s just told me so much about you that it feels like I know you.”

Mr. Mintsugar looked askance at them, but shook Karyn’s hand and went about his work. Derpy went to her station and started packing her sacks.

Karyn looked around the room, both trying to stay out of everypony’s way and seeing if she could spot the pony who was the reason she was there. From the name, she had a picture of an ice-blonde mare who would run everywhere and be in everypony’s faces, but she couldn’t see anyone who fit the bill.

“Psst. . . Derpy. Where’s Platinum Sprint?”

“Right next to you.”

Karyn froze up and turned her head slowly. She was afraid that there would be a scary pony staring at her, but when she got the angle to see, she was working on sorting and stuffing her own mailbags, even if she was leering at Karyn out of the corner of her eye.

She had a dirty brown mane and the start of a wrinkled face. Karyn knew that Derpy was an older pony, and she had seen some like Granny Smith that looked elderly, but this was the first pony she had seen that looked middle-aged. Platinum was rail-thin and if she was able to achieve speed, it was more by not having a lot of weight to carry than by having strong muscles. A cup of coffee sat by her station, and she put down her mail to dump about half a can of sugar into it.

“Morning, Derpy.” Her voice had an accent like Babs Seed’s, and she sounded tired.

“Good morning, Platinum. This is my friend, Karyn.”

Platinum waved and went back to work.

“Come on, Karyn, let’s go.”

With Karyn on her back and her saddlebags at her sides, Derpy was weighed down a little, and they advanced slowly. Ponies were opening up their stores for the day.

The first stop was a day care center. A bunch of colts and fillies were running around outside, and the matron could only duck away for a split second to take the mail Derpy offered in her mouth. “Thanks,” she said in a muffled voice.

“No problem, Dancey! See you tomorrow, Dancey! Have fun with the kids, Dancey!”

On the way to the next stop, Derpy said, “She has the same name as my mother had. Isn’t that cool? That’s why I like using it.”

The next building was a coffee shop, and the owner took time out to talk with Derpy. It was idle chatter, but they laughed and joked for about five minutes. Karyn couldn’t contribute much, but the coffee shop owner was still friendly.

They went on until they reached the end of the road, and just as Derpy had said, there was Platinum coming from the corner.

Derpy whispered to Karyn, “I bet you anything that as soon as we fly by, you’ll hear my name being called.”

Sure enough, as they prepared to turn up the next avenue, “Derpy?” in a Hooflyn accent came from behind.

“Yes, Plat?”

“I’ve got a package for that apartment building, but there’s no apartment on the address. What do I do?”

“Do you recognize the name?”

Platinum looked at the package. “I think so. But I don’t have any other mail for that name today.”

“But you’ve delivered to that name at a given apartment?”

“We’re supposed to take packages back to the office in this situation, right?”

Derpy frowned. “If you’re confident that it should go to a given apartment, then leave it there. If you don’t think you know where it goes, then take it back. Or you can try asking one of the neighbors if they know where it’s supposed to go.”

“Which one should I do?”

Karyn saw Derpy roll her eyes, and thought it was funny since they rolled at different rates, but was always wary of offending her friend. She expected Derpy to lose her temper or keep arguing, but instead they just kept walking.

Once they got around the bend, Karyn asked, “Aren’t you going to finish helping her?”

“I can’t. It’s her decision to make. But she doesn’t want to. If she leaves the package and it’s the wrong apartment, she’ll get in trouble. If she takes it back, she’ll have to deal with it again tomorrow. If she asks the neighbors, she’ll waste time. She knows all that. It’s not that she wants advice. She wants me to tell her what to do so I’ll be responsible for whatever goes wrong.”

“I get it. Yeah, that is kind of a jerk move.”

Derpy pointed her wing. “Ixnay. Here she is again.”

“Hey, Derpy!” called Platinum. “I left the package at the apartment I thought was right. I just hope I was right. Do you think I was right?”

“Don’t know.”

“Because if it’s the wrong address, it’s probably going to come back.”

“Probably.” Derpy huffed and kept moving.

At every intersection where they crossed, it was the same story. Platinum would ask for help or want to tell a story. At one, she was talking to a friend, and everypony could hear the conversation.

“Hey, Quiche! So my little filly is still number one on her hoofball team, but it’s so hard paying for the practices, you know? Oh, there’s my friend, Derpy! Derpy, you know Quiche Lorraine, right? So, anyway, I’m thinking of asking everypony I know to buy a raffle ticket to help out. Derpy, you want to buy a raffle ticket?”

Trying to cover quickly, Derpy talked to Karyn. “So you can see what I’m talking about with this mail route, right?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of houses to hit.” They both spoke in loud voices so as to pretend they couldn’t hear Platinum. Once they were away, she said in a low voice, “And she is loud. Everything you told me is true.”

“Would I lie?” said Derpy. “Anyway, time for lunch. Let me show you this place that makes the best straw pizza.”

They made their way to a courtyard in the town square. The sun was high in the sky and lots of ponies were stopping to have lunch. Derpy ordered a slice for each of them, and Karyn found it quite tasty, unlike most of the hay dishes she’d sniffed.

Derpy had her back to the shop where she’d gotten the pizzas, and Karyn could see Platinum coming up the way. When she got to the stand, she gave the back of Derpy’s head a look, then said to the cashier, “One slice, please, to go.”

Karyn felt the stare boring into her and whispered to Derpy, “Are we not supposed to be eating here?”

“No, I get my lunch break everyday. A lot of ponies don’t take it, though, because if they’re too long they get written up. So, they figure, eat on the fly and you won’t have to worry about going over your time. But I don’t do that. I just eat fast and work hard when I get back.”

“Has Platinum ever been written up?”

“I don’t know. It’s not something you ask somepony about. But probably. I never liked that expression. When you write something down, it’s good, but when you write somepony up, it’s bad.”

Karyn was torn between laughing at Derpy’s joke and saying what she wanted to get out. She shoved her laughter deep down and called out, “Hey, Platinum!”

The pegasus turned with a start, as if refusing to believe that anyone could match her for volume. She was even more agog when she saw that it was a human talking to her.

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you quit that passive-aggressive attitude and come talk to me. I can tell you don’t like seeing me here, although I don’t know if it’s because I’m human or because it means Derpy might actually have a good time on shift today or because you just hate anything that breaks your little routine. But I don’t care. Stop staring at me every time we cross paths, and stop trying to make Derpy do your job.”

Platinum tried several times to interrupt, but Karyn wouldn’t let her. At the first breath, she broke in, “You can’t talk to me like that.”

“Oh, yes, I can.”

Derpy flew between the two of them and separated them with her wings. “OK, don’t fight. We’ve got to get back on the road anyway, Karyn. Come on, mount up.”

Still giving Platinum the evil eye, she got on Derpy’s back and headed down the road.

“You should really stand up to her,” Karyn said.

“I do.”

“No, I don’t mean just standing on your hooves next to her. I mean it metaphorically. You should get angry the way I did.”

Derpy didn’t respond at first. She made another delivery and engaged with the pony as she usually did. Once they were airborne again, she said, “I won’t say I haven’t blown up at her once in a while, but here’s the thing. I’ve got to go back and work with her again tomorrow. And a lot of tomorrows. It’s different for you because you’re still in school, and you’ve always been in school. Anyone you have a problem with will be gone in four years at most.”

“Yeah, I guess I see your point. It doesn’t make it right though.”

“No, but it’s a balancing act. Because she got yelled at, Platinum will be nice to me for the next week or so. Then at some point I’ll be the one who has to do a few extra favors for her. We get by.”

They continued on Derpy’s postal route, but didn’t see Platinum Sprint again. When her saddlebags were empty and she was ready to fly back to the office, she hugged Karyn good-bye.

“Thank you for today. It made the time go by quicker, and now I’ve got all evening to have fun. I hope to make it up to you sometime when you’re at work.”

“I’d like that. But right now I’ve got my own day to start.”

Derpy took Karyn home and then left herself. Karyn yawned and went to class.

Author's Note

Here's your sneak peek at next week!

“I wish we had the Internet back in Equestria,” Derpy said. “Any time you want, you can just type in something and be entertained.”

“Yeah, but at the same time, it makes you not want to go out and do things.”

“Not for me. I’m ready to go out right now.”

Karyn dealt with her tousled hair and put on her makeup. “It’s easier for you to be ready.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they finally returned to the dorm, they chatted and ate, thinking about what to do, when there came a knock at the door. With the efficiency of a fire drill, Karyn pointed at Derpy to go invisible and get out of the way, then went to open the door.

And I'll leave you on that cliffhanger!

35: Derping Thomas

“Morning, Karyn! What’s doing?”

“Hey, Derpy. Just trying to straighten up a bit around here.”

Karyn had no propensity for neatness, but as Derpy surveyed the room, she found little to complain about, except the desk. Papers, envelopes, and folders were thrown around in a haphazard arrangement.

“At least it looks like you’re getting some studying done.”

“I know, right? Some people say that a messy desk is the sign of a hard worker.”

Derpy looked up. “Dinky doesn’t have a messy desk though, and she does study.”

“Yeah, but she can also probably magic everything straight.”

“Good point.”

Karyn swept up all the remaining paper into a pile and tapped it on the desk until it at least resembled a rectangle. “In my case, though, yes, I have been hard at work on a research paper. You’d think that if I’m studying IT, they’d have less actual paper involved.”

“Why?”

“Well, because it’s all about recording information not on paper, but in digital format.”

Derpy shrugged. “In Equestria, we do everything on scrolls and it works out fine.”

“You have a much simpler world. So many modern conveniences you lack. I wouldn’t want them to creep too much in, and destroy your rustic beauty.”

“Why, Karyn! That’s awfully nice of you.”

Karyn ran over her last sentence in her mind, then figured out the non sequitur.

“I didn’t mean you specifically. Your beauty is more cloud-like. Anyway, I’m just about done here, so let’s grab some breakfast.”

“Sounds good.” Derpy headed to the door, but then stopped. “Breakfast! Darn, I forgot to feed the cat. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

“Why don’t I come with you?”

“No, that’s OK. I’ll be back in an infinitesimal amount of time. You won’t even notice I’m gone."

Before Karyn could react, Derpy had turned on her spell and was back in Equestria. She hoped that Muffinhead would still be in bed, but didn’t have any luck. He was pacing around his food dish, impatiently tapping his paw. When he saw her, he pointed at the empty bowl.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I know,” she said. “I think you’re getting more Equestrian all the time. Soon you’ll want to meet Opal and have kittens.”

He looked at her skeptically, and tapped the bowl again. She filled it quickly and was all set to go back to Earth, when a knock on the door caught her attention. She put down the spell.

“Mornin’, Derpy.”

“Applejack! What brings you around?”

“Are you busy right now?

Derpy was about to respond yes, but realized that Karyn would wait as long as she needed and still not notice. “I have some free time.” Literally, she thought.

“I need some pegasus assis—pegusasst—I need help from somepony with wings!”

“Those I have. What do you have?”

“We’re having a get-together at the farm. Not a full-blown Apple family reunion, but a select few dozen ponies round for a nice sit-down dinner and bonfire.”

“Sounds nice,” said Derpy. “Where do I come in?”

“It’s going to be a picnic at night in the clearing of a grove, but unless we want to stumble over each other in the dark, we’ve got to string some lights in the trees. We could do it ourselves, but we’d have to climb each tree one by one, and it’d just be so much easier for you.”

Derpy had an idyllic image of a large group of earth-toned Earth ponies sitting at picnic tables in the grove, all under the burning lights that she would string up. She also had a less-than idyllic image of herself spending hours of wing-breaking labor getting scratched by pointy leaves. One question remained in Derpy’s mind.

“Why come to me? Surely Rainbow Dash would be better suited to—“

“I already asked her,” said Applejack. “But she’s training for a big race that’s coming up.”

“What about Fluttershy?”

“Fluttershy has a squirrel who’s sick. She has to take care of him. I had actually swung by her place on the way to yours, but, you know.”

Derpy was disappointed both that her pegasus friends couldn’t help and that Applejack had gone to them instead of her. “There’s Thunderlane. He’s always available to help out.”

“Sprained his wing.”

“Cloud Chaser?”

“Emergency storm duties in Baltimare. They’ve had a drought there all month.”

“Cloud Kicker?”

“Also in Baltimare. They got the name wrong when they sent for Cloud Chaser.”

“Flitter?”

“Helping out another friend who’s also having a get together.” Applejack shook her head. “What are the odds?”

Derpy saw her odds of escaping the favor dropping. She desperately tried to think of anypony else who could help.

“How about Snowflake?”

“That big stallion with the tiny wings? I don’t even know him.”

“Wild Fire?”

“Busy with some deadline. Apparently she’s a writer. Who knew?”

“Unnamed Pegasus Mare Number Seven?”

“Derpy! Put down that list of pegasi!” Applejack stomped her hoof impatiently.

Derpy changed tacks. “How about Pinkie Pie hopping from tree to tree with the lights the same as when she hops over buildings in a parade? Or she could warp from one to the other the way she does.”

“She can only do that when nopony’s looking. Or when it’s funny.”

“Can Twilight use her magic to put them up?” asked Derpy.

“Hmm. . .”

“Yes? Can she?”

“I don’t like to impose on her.”

Derpy’s face fell. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll be happy to help.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

They trotted over to Sweet Apple Acres. On the way, Derpy explained that it was her day to spend with Karyn, and that she was time-locked now, waiting for her.

“I’m not sure that figures right,” said Applejack. “When she goes from Earth to Equestria, time there stops, but when you do, it keeps moving.”

“No, that’s not how it works. See, there’s a ‘home base’ for both of us at any moment. If that home base is Earth, and we leave and come back, then it’s the same time. If the home base changes to Equestria, then time moves on Earth.”

“But what changes it?”

“Well, it’s magic,” said Derpy, waving her hoof. “It’s very contextual. If Karyn came here to live, time would probably move on Earth, because it would have to. But so long as it’s just visiting, it doesn’t. It’s probably the same for Lyra’s human.”

They had reached the orchard. Big McIntosh and Apple Bloom were doing most of the work, but there were a few of the guests who, having arrived early, were pressed into service hauling picnic tables and the like. Granny Smith was at one of those tables, snoring loudly.

One of the ponies who was setting the table heard the tail end of their conversation. He was a short and stocky stallion with a shoe for a cutie mark. “What’s that you’re talking bout?” he asked. “I’m always interested in how magic works.”

Applejack pointed at him. “Derpy, meet my third cousin from Galloping Gorge, Apple Cobbler. Apple Cobbler, my friend Derpy.”

Derpy shook hooves. “AJ, you have two other cousins from there?”

“No, meaning that he’s the grandson of one of Granny Smith’s cousins. Three generations back, so third cousin.”

“Oh, so that’s how that works. I always find it confusing.”

“Not as confusing as a pegasus pony who hangs out with a human.”

Apple Cobbler spoke up. “That’s what I want to know about. What’s a human?”

That got Derpy going. It was impossible for Applejack to get Derpy’s attention and start her on the light stringing. She regaled Apple Cobbler with tales of some of her adventures with Karyn. There was a coal bin for when the Apples would be grilling, so Derpy took a piece of charcoal and a sheet of butcher paper and drew a crude picture of Karyn, labeling some of the parts where humans differed from ponies. After twenty minutes of this, Cobbler burst out laughing.

“Sorry, I just couldn’t keep a straight face anymore! That there’s got to be the tallest yarn I ever heard and no mistake. Humans indeed!”

“No, it’s all true!”

“You’re pulling my leg, darlin’. Got to be. Such a creature couldn’t exist.”

Derpy was a little frustrated. “I just left her an hour ago.”

“All right, little filly, tell me this. Is it very dark on this Earth world?”

“Sometimes. Not today.”

Cobbler smirked. “Well, if the humans don’t have any magic, then how do they raise the sun? Tell me that!”

“They don’t have to. In their world, the sun is a massive object that their planet revolves around.”

“And what pushes it?”

Derpy’s mouth hung open. “It just goes, all right? They have a lot more physics there than we do.”

“Well, let’s just pretend that that could happen. So you’ve got a round world going around a sun. How would you ever have seasons? The sun would just keep beating down on the world. It’d be always summer or always winter.”

“Nuh-uh! Because it’s not a circle. It’s an ellipse.” Derpy was proud of having researched that fact on one of her internet sessions.

“Can’t be. You need two points of focus for an ellipse. What’s the other one, the moon?”

“Exactly!”

The skeptical Cobbler rolled his eyes and picked up the drawing. “Look at what you have here. The forelegs don’t reach the ground. There’s no way for this creature to stand up and balance. We don’t build tables and chairs with only two legs for the same reason. Three is a minimum to avoid falling over.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Humans aren’t tables and chairs. They balance themselves by constant adjustment.”

“Ridiculous! They’d have to have muscles like Big Mac to do that. And consume three bales of hay a day.”

Derpy decided not to try to convince him that humans didn’t eat hay. “I’m telling you, that’s how it is.”

“Even if they could stand, how would they walk? As soon as they took one hoof off the ground, they’d be on only one. Don’t try to tell me that anything can balance on one leg.”

“Humans can do that too, for short periods of time. But as for walking, that’s exactly what they do. They fall over, and move the other leg in front to stop them from tipping all the way.”

Apple Cobbler shook his head. “Again, you don’t get it. Yeah, ponies might do that, because if they fall and break a hip they’ve got hospitals and doctors to fix it, but a wild creature who hurt themselves couldn’t survive if they didn’t have balance. You need a sturdy, quadruped body in order to achieve civilization. Any biologist will tell you the same.

“And furthermore, look at the eyes. You can’t have drawn this right, or rather, it’s a perfectly plausible drawing of a ridiculous creature. They’re too close together. This thing would have no peripheral vision. Any predator could sneak up on it from the back or sides and it wouldn’t see until it was too late.”

Derpy just stood there and fumed, trying to think of something that he couldn’t argue with. It was Applejack who came up with the direct solution. “Derpy, why don’t you just magic on back and pick her up and introduce her round? Then everypony here will be able to see for themselves.”

“You shouldn’t encourage the filly in her delusions,” Cobbler said, but Derpy was already gone.

Back in the dorms, an exasperated Derpy was relaying what was said. Karyn listened, but she found the whole thing more amusing than annoying.

“But he said that you were unable to walk, and that you’d fall victim to predators! He insulted you!”

“It’s not insulting, because it’s not true. He’s just ignorant. We should enlighten him.”

“I have to do that anyway,” said Derpy, “when I go back and string the lights.”

“That’s not what I meant, but take me with you and we’ll do it together.”

Back in Equestria, Derpy quickly found Apple Cobbler again. “Now this is my friend, Karyn the human.”

Karyn waved her hand and laughed at the expression the stallion wore. Despite living in a world of magic and wonder, her simple form made his jaw drop.

He trotted around her, looking from all sides.

“Well, I’ll be a donkey’s uncle. I still don’t get how you’re standing up though.” He gave her a gentle nudge with his head. She compensated and regained her balance, then stood on one foot and stuck her tongue out.

Derpy joined her in razzing the skeptical Apple Cobbler. “Well, Karyn, do you want to help me with helping Applejack set up? Your hands would be really useful in positioning the lights she needs.”

“I’d like nothing better,” Karyn said, mounting Derpy as she took off, leaving Apple Cobbler slack-jawed.

Once they were out of hearing, Derpy burst out laughing. “Oh, you really frazzled him! It was hilarious.”

“You shouldn’t laugh at him. He’s a country pony, so he’s probably not used to the idea of someone from another world.

“In the first place, Ponyville isn’t exactly the center of Equestria either, so it’s no excuse. In the second, there’s nothing wrong with being a farm pony, but courtesy is still expected. He talked down to me like I was a filly, so I enjoyed getting him back.”

“Well, that’s not so bad I guess.” They had reached the edge of the clearing, Derpy hovering by a tree. Karyn wrapped the cord for the first light around a thick branch.

“Hmm.”

“What’s the matter, Derpy?”

“All that arguing made me hungry. Do you think anypony would mind if I. . . ?” she reached her hoof toward one of the apples hanging temptingly from a branch.

“Probably not. Applejack’s always generous.”

“That’s Rarity you’re thinking of. Applejack’s the element of honesty.”

“Yes, but having one element doesn’t preclude you from showing other virtues,” said Karyn.

“Good point, and I shouldn’t argue it, because then I’ll get more hungry, and have to take more apples.”

Derpy grabbed an apple with her hoof and pulled it off with a satisfying snap. As she flew on to the next tree she bit into it. Karyn was treated to a symphony of smacking, chewing, and “Mmm”s.

“That really hit the spot!” Derpy said. Karyn was rigging the next light, and Derpy’s face was right in front of the tree. “Well, they surely wouldn’t notice two apples gone any more than one, right?”

“Are you asking me? I say go for it.”

“Do you want one?”

“No, thanks. I’m not that hungry,” said Karyn. But when she had done a couple more lights, and when she had heard Derpy gushing about the taste at each one, and when she found herself staring at a shiny apple that had such an intense redness, she started to waver.

“Go ahead, take it. Come on, when has anything bad ever come from eating an apple offered by someone close to you?”

Karyn looked down suspiciously, but Derpy’s expression was hidden by their position. She didn’t know if Derpy knew of forbidden-fruit legends and was making a joke, or if she was being serious. Still the apple was held on Derpy’s hoof, and Karyn, not being particularly religious, shrugged and bit in.

It wasn’t long after that that they were flitting from tree to tree, munching indiscriminately as they worked. As each apple was finished, they slipped the cores onto Derpy’s flank.

“I’ll toss them out when we get back on the ground,” she said.

“That’s the problem with certain foods like apples. They leave evidence of how many you’ve eaten.”

Derpy thought that droll, and almost lost the cores as she laughed. She righted herself and they finished the job.

Landing back by the picnic tables, Derpy surreptitiously found a trash bag and tipped the apple cores into it. She turned hastily to find Applejack coming up.

“We got the lights all up.”

“Thank you kindly. And just in time, too. We’re about ready to start and the sun’ll be setting any minute now.”

“Any minute?” asked Derpy, looking up. “We don’t know which? Is something wrong with Princess Celestia?”

“No, I just mean soon, and I didn’t want to look it up exact. Anyway, thanks again. Say, d’you two want to stick around?”

Karyn said, “Isn’t it Apple Family only?”

“Nah. Like I said, it’s not an all-out reunion. And we got plenty of food.”

Applejack pulled a large table into the clearing and removed its tablecloth. Underneath was a spread of desserts. Tarts, pies, and strudels steamed into the air.

“It all looks good,” said Karyn, “but I really couldn’t eat another bite.”

“Another?”

“Um, I mean, I had a big meal back home.”

Derpy had already tied a napkin around her neck. “Well, you don’t have to ask me twice! I’m gonna dig in!”

“Didn’t you have a big meal too?”

“I didn’t have any of this crumb cake,” she said, reaching, “or this tart, or this apple cobbler.”

“Did I hear my name called?” The stout stallion had returned and taken his own seat between Derpy and Karyn, helping himself to a large plate of desserts as well.

“I think Derpy just meant the actual dish,” said Karyn, pointing.

Cobbler looked at her finger. “I’ve got to apologize to you for before. I guess you’re every bit as real as ponies are. I just never figured it could be so, but I’ve led a limited life it seems.”

“It’s not me you need to apologize to.”

“Of course. Sorry, Derpy, for doubting you.”

“Cut me a slice of pie and we’re all even!”

Cobbler laughed and paid his penance. Karyn poked daintily at a few caramel-covered bits off a tart. She whispered to Derpy, “I don’t know how you can still eat after all you had before. You must have a separate stomach for dessert.”

“No, that would be the ruminants like cows. I’ll introduce you to some of them sometime.”

While she wasn’t hungry, Karyn certainly enjoyed the atmosphere of ponies laughing and chatting. The Apples, other than Cobbler, saw nothing odd about a foreign creature visiting them.

Much of the talk stemmed around farming, and the problems they had with growing and organizing their farms. Karyn did more listening than talking, getting an education in problems like dealing with insects, preserving plant life through winter, and keeping an inventory of crops.

At one point, Apple Cobbler was talking about how much trouble he had with paperwork.

“I can figure out how to store apples just fine,” he said, “and how to know where they are at any time by writing that down. But what I don’t know is how to store all the scrolls I have that tell me where my apples are. My work-desk’s a huge mess.”

Derpy put down her fork and nudged Karyn in the ribs. “Sounds like somepony else I know.”

“I wonder,” Cobbler said, “about how you handle it, Miss Karyn. You live in a whole nother world where everything’s different. What do you do to keep track of things on your farm?”

“Oh, I don’t have a farm myself.”

“Heh. I’m too used to everypony I know growing crops.”

“But the farms we do have on Earth are the last to get the kind of things you’re talking about.” Karyn cast her memory back to some of her textbooks. “We have ways of organizing information, but there’s a whole big, complicated infrastructure involved. It's not something that could be moved wholesale to Equestria.”

“Mm. I would like it though if you could stop by my ranch sometime and see if you can’t find anything I’m doing wrong.”

“Oh, my. Look at the time! Derpy, don’t we have to be getting back to that. . . thing, back at the place?”

Derpy was a little disappointed to have to cut her sixth dessert short, but she saw that her friend was in trouble. They trotted off together.

“You know, it’s funny,” she said. “Back on Earth, you’ve got Albert, who doesn’t know I exist and believes something anyway, and here there’s Apple Cobbler, who knows you exist, and I think he still doesn’t believe it.”

“Yeah.” Karyn had a sinister grin. “Hey, Derpy, do you still have that mind-switch spell?”

“We couldn’t!”

“I know, I know,” Karyn said.

“But it would be funny.”

They laughed as they flew off.

Author's Note

Here's everypony's favorite section, the preview!

Karyn shook her head as if trying to clear it of water while she picked up a card.

“At least it hasn’t broken since then.”

“Huh?”

Karyn repeated herself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hmm. . . wait, you said it was gradual, but it happened all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, but it started all of a sudden,” said Derpy.

“That’s true of everything that happens gradually.”

“I suppose, but this is no time to be quibbling over semantics!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's all for the quotes, but I'll tell you that we'll have a certain mint-green guest star!

36: A Derp By Any Other Name

Across the table, electricity arced. Derpy focused, one eye pointing down, the other looking straight ahead, neither blinking. A bead of sweat formed on her brow. The air hung silent and tense. Knowing the gravity of the situation, she used all her concentration. With her wings folded tightly and every muscle tight, she opened her mouth, licked her lips, and spoke.

“Nines.”

Karyn, whose gaze had never left Derpy’s, let the moment pass. With the commitment made, everything was determined. It only remained for the result to transpire. With the slow precision of a surgeon, she reached her right hand toward her left. As it made contact, Derpy started to grin, but cut herself off with a sharp intake of breath. Karyn merely pushed her other hand down. Then she sat back, breathed in through her nose, and said:

“Go fish.”

“Oh, come on!” The tension was broken as Derpy reached for the card pile.

The overcast sky and layer of snow on the ground outside Karyn’s dorm gave them a closed-in atmosphere.

“It sucks that the weather’s so bad,” Karyn said, “but on the other hand this is just what I like to do on these days. Just stay in and veg out, right? Any twos?”

“Go fish,” said Derpy, rearranging her cards as she held them in her hoof. “And I don’t know. It seems like whenever we start out that way, something always happens to us. Aces?”

Karyn passed over a card. “But it’s not always bad, what happens. Nines?”

“You sneaky human!” said Derpy, throwing the nine on the table. “No, it’s not all bad, but if a lazy Sunday is what you’re looking for, you might not get it.”

They played a few more hands before Karyn picked up the thread again.

“And conversely, bad things that do happen to us don’t always come on lazy days. Remember when your spell failed and you were stuck here? That happened after we were at the carnival all day. Any jacks?”

“I do rememfer,” said Derpy. “Ho fish.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“I said, yeah, I remember it. I had to stay an extra two days. And no jacks.”

Karyn shook her head as if trying to clear it of water while she picked up a card.

“At least it hasn’t broken since then.”

“Huh?”

Karyn repeated herself.

“That was weird, it sounded like you had corn popping in your mouth,” said Derpy. “Very whoor-sounling sheeth.”

“What?”

“A seh, a hoonen oinan smangoo”

Karyn put the cards down and stood up. “Derpy, stop that. Are you doing it intentionally?”

Derpy spoke again, but it was even more difficult for Karyn to make out anything. It was clear that Derpy was talking, but it sounded more like a horse’s whinnies and neighs. Still, there was the definite structure of a language, and Derpy’s eyes and gestures showed how distressed she was.

“You can’t understand me either?” said Karyn. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

She realized how silly this was as they both talked over each other. Karyn put up her hand. “If you can understand me, nod your head and flap your wings.”

Instead of any physical response, Derpy gave more of her whinnying language.

“I don’t understand what’s going on. You always spoke English before. But maybe you didn’t. Maybe you’ve always spoken like this and it’s part of your magic that I can understand you.” She got up and went to Derpy’s saddlebag, which was routinely hung on Karyn’s coat rack. She pointed at the bag, then brought her hand to her mouth, opening and closing it in a charade of talking, then pointed alternatingly at Derpy and herself.

Derpy, meanwhile, had had an idea of her own. Flying to Karyn’s desk, she picked up a pen and paper and wrote a note. When Karyn looked at it, her face fell. There were a few marks she could recognize as letters like H or V, but for the most part it was gibberish. She shook her head and pointed at the spell again.

To her surprise, Derpy, instead of agreeing or nodding, opened the bag and took out the return spell. She held the bag in her mouth and put her hoof in the spell. Before Karyn could say anything, she was gone.

“What? No! I didn’t mean, ‘Go back home,’ I just meant that the magic was what was the problem.”

******************************************

When Derpy reappeared in her house, she sniffed the air. Most winter storms didn’t carry lightning with them, but with the drier weather there was more static, and Derpy thought that might have caused the spell to degrade, but as she was only a pegasus, and not versed in the ways and means of magic, all it could be was a guess. In any case, her immediate mission was to find somepony who was expert in magic.

In the few months since the science of spellcrafting was invented, few unicorns had taken up the vocation, and fewer had produced results, although she heard that Zecora had taken to using crafted spells with her potions. For her immediate purposes, Derpy was forced to choose between Lyra and Twilight. Lyra was closer.

She ran over to her house and knocked on the door. Bon-bon answered.

“Hi, Derpy. Good to see you again. Isn’t today your Earth day?”

“No, Earth Day is in April. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, that’s what I need to talk to Lyra about. Is she home?”

“Somepony call my name?” The unicorn stepped into the vestibule. “What’s wrong?”

“Every time I’ve been to Earth and seen Karyn, she—and every other human—speaks good, proper Equestrian. And then today, all of a sudden, she gradually started sputtering and popping and I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.”

“Hmm. . . wait, you said it was gradual, but it happened all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, but it started all of a sudden,” said Derpy.

“That’s true of everything that happens gradually.”

“I suppose, but this is no time to be quibbling over semantics!”

Derpy had her meanest face on, and Lyra said, “I’m sorry, Derpy. I didn’t realize it was so serious to you. I figured that I could fix the spell fairly quickly.”

“And I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m just worried, is all.”

“Come on in and I’ll get to work.”

Derpy went over to Lyra’s desk and put the transportation spell on top. Lyra looked at it, frowning, and her horn glowed with magic, but there was no visible effect. Derpy just watched, not knowing if she was going through a planned process or just trying to think of things to do.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of staring and prodding and muttering, “Well, what about this. . . “Lyra said, “Part of the connaissance module has, for lack of a better word, burned out.”

“What’s that, then?”

“It’s hard to explain. Magically speaking, your body and your consciousness are separate, which is not true in pure physics. Magic cares a lot about your consciousness, and can do some non-physical things to it. But they can also break in non-physical ways.”

“I think Dinky was talking about that at one point,” said Derpy.

“She might be able to make you understand better.”

“But can you fix it?”

Lyra thought. “I could make a new one, but that would take a while. Fixing this one would be easier if Karyn were here with you. I could do it with my human, but you have a special connection with her.”

“I’ll go bring her back at once!” Derpy picked up the spell. “It’s not going to break any more if I use it, will it?”

“Not for two trips.”

Derpy grabbed the spell back and warped to Earth. She was in the same position she remembered leaving, but immediately noticed something was wrong. She had expected to find Karyn right where she had left her, but time had clearly passed. Karyn gave a sad smile and said something in the popping language.

“But why did you move this time?”

Karyn gave a little tilt of her head, and Derpy said, “Right, you still can’t understand. Come on, Lyra’s going to help us.”

She walked over and got on all fours. Karyn gave her a gentle pat on the head, but didn’t get on her back. Derpy persisted, poking her with a wing and arching her back invitingly, but still Karyn didn’t mount. Defeated by emotion, Derpy nuzzled her neck the way she would with Dinky or some other pony she was close to, and then just looked in her eyes. Again she circled and kneeled. For a moment, she felt that there was no way they could be separated.

“Get on,” she said.

Karyn had a quizzical look, but she walked up and threw her leg over Derpy’s back. Feeling her comforting weight, she zapped them back to Lyra’s house.

“Oh, good, you got her here.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t easy,” said Derpy. “And there’s more that I don’t get. Last week, I came to Equestria and spent a while here talking to Applejack and her cousin. When I went back to Earth, no time had passed. Just now, though, the time I spent finding you did pass on Earth. It seems very inconsistent.”

“Well, like I said, magic is very much dependent on your consciousness. Humans, who link themselves so closely to points in space-time, find continuity there. Ponies who cross the universes, either in body as you do or with spells as I do, are more able to detach themselves. So last week, it’s likely that both of you thought that you would be in and out of Equestria quickly. Today, on the other hoof, she, unable to understand you, must have concluded that you were leaving for a long time.”

“Oh, you’ve just got to fix the spell!”

Lyra put a hoof on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We will.”

******************************************

Karyn listened as the two mares whinnied and brayed at each other. It was actually nice to listen to once she stopped trying to decipher their meaning and relaxed. She thought that she had almost understood Derpy back on Earth. She had said something like “Heth ung,” which might have been “Get on.” In any case, there she was in Equestria, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like a foreign land.

Derpy tapped her on the shoulder and led her over to a couch. Lyra sat Derpy across from her, and they were sitting just as they had for playing cards. Then she whinnied something at Derpy and gestured to Karyn. She pointed her hoof at her eyes and then at Karyn’s, then at Derpy’s. Karyn nodded. She stared at Derpy.

Lyra held up a picture of Princess Celestia and pointed at Derpy.

“Whooreenhesh Shelelwhee,” she said. Derpy repeated and pointed at Karyn.

Karyn understood that they wanted her to try. “Princess Celestia,” she said.

Lyra’s horn glowed a little, but no result was seen.

Next, Lyra pointed at her directly. “Wheelahng,” it sounded like.

“Karyn.”

More horn glowing, and then pointing at Derpy.

Karyn decided to go first this time. “Derpy Hooves.”

“Hooves?” Derpy smiled broadly. She said more, but Karyn shook her head. She pointed at herself again. “Thelwhi Hooves.”

“Hooves! Hooves!” Karyn smiled back. They hadn’t fixed anything, but apparently the word hooves was a cognate.

She sat up to give her friend a hug, but Lyra pushed her back down magically. She had a cross look on her face and pointed at the chair.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that I had to sit still for this to work. If we could talk to each other, you could have told me. Of course, if we could talk to each other, you wouldn’t have to be doing this in the first place.”

Lyra covered Karyn’s mouth with a hoof, and she realized that she was probably screwing her up even more by talking.

As they brought out more pictures of ponies she knew and had her speak the names, questions ran through her head. What did she sound like to the ponies, if they sounded like whinnies to her? And why was Lyra only giving her proper names to work on? Wouldn’t it be useful for her to learn normal words in Equestrian?

Maybe, she thought, Equestrian was like that language on Star Trek where everything involved proper names, and she would need to know the history of Equestria to communicate. Lyra and Derpy might be describing the current situation by saying “Discord and Twilight at Ponyville,” or some other reference to something messed-up.

It also irked her a little that they weren’t giving her a chance to really learn the words they were teaching her. She was only allowed to say each one once. She tried hard to repeat them in her head and understand when the same sounds came up more than once.

******************************************

“How’s it coming along?” Derpy asked.

“It’s getting there, but try not to talk outside of identifying the pictures. I’d probably be done by now if I could get her to sit still.”

Derpy obeyed, but still wished she could ask Lyra more questions. How did Karyn know her surname when every other word had been lost? And how exactly was Lyra trying to fix the spell?

As if sensing her confusion, Lyra said, “I’m trying to build a universe of phonemes that will give the spell all the information it needs to translate one into the other. If I knew every word that existed in her language, I could set it up that way, but I don’t. Instead what I’m doing is taking words where I know how they’re structured in Equestrian, and trying to see how she does it.

“And it’s tough going. Her language must be a hodgepodge of many others. Words like princess, Celestia, and Lyra all had similar derivations, but Pinkie Pie for example came out completely different. And Derpy had almost no magical profile at all.”

Derpy was grateful that she was explaining, but still confused.

After more time spent repeating words, Lyra said, “OK, I think I’m ready to try a new translation spell. If this works, I can spend next week reintegrating it into the transportation. Hold onto your wings.”

Lyra grabbed the table with her hooves and bit down. To Karyn, it looked as if she were straining on the pot. But a spherical glow came from her horn and charged the air with static. There was a sound like an explosion, or more strictly speaking like a thousand voices each mimicking an explosion.

“Did it work?” asked Derpy.

“Yes it did!” said Karyn. “Lyra, how did you fix it? I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to learn all those Equestrian words. Did Derpy learn English?”

“Don’t talk, either of you, for a few minutes.”

“Why?” said Derpy. “Is it going to fail again?”

“No, but right now I have got the worst horn-over of my life. That was a tough spell.”

Derpy helped Lyra to the couch while Karyn ran into the kitchen and asked Bon-bon to pour her a glass of water. After she had drunk it, she sat up in her awkward human-style way.

“Ugh. No, Karyn, I wasn’t trying to do it manually.” She explained again about how she was trying to get enough sounds to make a translation spell of her own. “I should have taken more time and gone through every word in the dictionary. Actually, what I should have done is to have Twilight do it for me.”

“I didn’t even know that could happen to unicorns. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a little fun. Reminds me of my old days at school when I would burn out my horn on studying all night.”

From the kitchen, a sputtering cough in Bon-bon’s voice could be heard.

“I mean, from casting party spells all night,” Lyra said sheepishly.

Karyn wondered briefly about what sort of spells one cast at a party, but she was distracted by the euphoria of being able to talk to her friend again.

“So can you explain to us what went wrong with the spell?” asked Derpy. “Was it just another one of those random spasms of magic that happen to break things?

“I hope it is,” said Lyra.

“Huh?”

“Well, that’s a better alternative than having something coming between you two that’s causing it to fail.”

Karyn was deep in thought for a moment. “Lyra, suppose someone else found out about Derpy. Would that cause a problem?”

“Why? Did someone?”

“No way,” said Derpy. “No other humans have seen me.”

“Remember that detective student from a couple of weeks ago?”

“Oh, right, but we fooled him.”

Karyn took a deep breath. “I know, but there was still the threat. And he thought he heard you. What I’m asking is if letting out the secret would break the spell.”

“Hmm. . .” Lyra thought. “Not to my knowledge. But that’s the original spell that Twilight helped with. I wouldn’t put it past her to include a few fail-safes.”

“But it’s not a fail-safe if I can’t talk to Karyn!” Derpy hovered in anger. “That’s a fail-rotten or a fail-stinks or a fail-fail-even worse!”

“It’s all right,” said Karyn. “She didn’t know it at the time. She was afraid of humans.”

“That’s right,” said Lyra. “Not all the way, but she didn’t have the same love for them that I do.”

“Maybe we can talk to her, and explain how it is, and get her to remove the safeguards. If they’re there.”

“She might not, though,” said Derpy. “You know how she is when she obsesses over something.”

“Well, then we’ll have to be extra cautious. In the meantime, now that it’s over I can look back on the experience as interesting. The language you speak is very different from mine.”

“I’ll say.”

Lyra got back on her hooves and started putting away the chairs. “Your language was very discordant. Not like the draconequus kind of discord, but not euphonious. Unpleasant to the ears.”

“I get it,” said Karyn. “And I kind of understand. In the first place, we have bigger lips and smaller teeth, so we would tend to use b’s, f’s, and p’s more and less th’s and n’s. Plus, your ears are larger and more sensitive than ours, so a mellifluous speech would be more important for ponies than for humans.”

“I think that makes sense,” said Derpy. “When the magic failed, I heard so many pops and buzzes from you that it sounded like a drum solo.”

“Just be glad I wasn’t speaking German. All the humans say that it’s the worst sounding language. I actually like hearing it, but there’s definitely a lot of throat in there.”

“Out of scientific curiosity,” said Lyra, “What does Equestrian sound like to you?”

Karyn wanted to answer her question without being insulting and comparing them to Earth horses. “It was kind of the opposite of what you heard from me. Basically no plosives at all, just a lot of tongue action. Oh, that didn’t sound right.”

They laughed.

“The other interesting thing was that written language failed too. What did that look like?”

“Well,” said Karyn, “It actually had many of the same letters, or ones that look almost like them. But I couldn’t tell if they matched. Like, what you thought was an A might be something else.”

“Interesting,” said Lyra. “Well, I’m going to write this up as a report and give it to Twilight. She’s always interested in new developments in magic.”

Derpy looked askance. “Really, Lyra? You’re usually not one for writing reports.”

“It’s true, but if we do need her to take any restrictions off of your spells, buttering her up with knowledge is always a good idea.”

“And we should be getting back to Earth.”

“Is there anything really that important there?”

“I’ll say there is,” said Derpy.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve only got two cards in my hand! I have a chance to win!”

And so Karyn and Derpy found themselves right back where they were when the trouble began, tossing out ranks of cards and hoping the other one had it.

“Some day, huh?” said Derpy.

“Yeah. Maybe I should try to learn Equestrian, in case this happens again.”

“Lyra and Twilight will make sure it doesn’t.”

Karyn reached for a card. “Even so, I’d like to. In the first place, it’s a nice sounding language. In the second, having our own secret way of communicating would be cool, and advantageous when dealing with other humans.”

“Maybe so.”

“Don’t you want to try to learn English?”

Derpy boggled. “I’ve got no head for languages. I tried to read something in old Equestrian once and it came out as ‘My cloud is laden with sea cucumbers’.”

“Yeah, I can see how that would be wrong. But come on, teach me some Equestrian. Here,” she said, holding up a face card. “What’s the word for ‘queen’?”

“It’s ‘queen’.”

“Really? The same word? Just like ‘hooves’ from before?” Then Karyn understood. “Oh, the spell’s working now! You can’t teach me Equestrian because it’ll just change it. We’ll have to get Lyra to cancel the spell.”

“You go ask her that. I’d rather not be run through with a mint-colored horn.”

Karyn sighed. Learning Derpy’s language would have to wait.

Author's Note

Coming attraction!

Karyn moved her chair to the side and let Derpy hover next to her.

“So what’s going on? You want to buy something nice for yourself but you can’t afford it?”

“No. Much worse.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I’m not trying to sell anypony anything.”

“No, but still had to fill out a lot of forms,” said Derpy.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that.”

“We’re friends. I’d deal with a lot more than a little writer’s cramp for you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” said Derpy. “We’re supposed to go to Pier 33.”

“How long is it going to take us to get there?”

“It’s just down the dock, can’t take too long.”

Karyn shook her head. “I mean how long will the boat ride be?”

Be sure to read it too!

37: Attach Form Derpleyou-2

“Hey, I’ve got a question.”

“Yeah, Derpy?”

“Me coming here early on Sunday mornings, does it mess up your Saturday nights?”

Karyn turned around from her computer. “Mess up how?”

“Well, I know that Saturday is a big party day, at least it is for ponies, and I don’t want you to feel that you’ve got to be home early because of me.”

“In the first place, yes, it’s a party day here on Earth too, but I’m an IT nerd. I’m supposed to be in my dorm Saturday nights.”

Derpy paused for diplomacy. “Because you’re always in a rush to clean up whenever I get here, so I was wondering if maybe you were holding wild bashes here.”

“No, it’s just the mess that normally accumulates throughout the week. I don’t know how you do it. Every time I visit your house it’s immaculate. But why are you asking today? I didn’t have any mess this morning.” She was proud of how much of the surface of her desk could be seen.

“Um, yeah, you do.”

Karyn looked around for a spare scrap of paper or anything that could be what Derpy was indicating, and found nothing. “I don’t get it.”

Derpy pointed at the monitor. “Look at how many windows you have open! And there must be a dozen browser tabs as well. Are you reading twelve web pages at once?”

Karyn facepalmed. “That’s a mess to you too?!”

“Well, yeah. What do you call it? Organization?”

“Here’s the thing. I could hide all of this from view just by shutting off the monitor. So you’re not allowed to call it a mess.”

Derpy slapped her hooves together. “It’s the spirit of the thing. You have to strive for order in all things.”

“No, I have to strive to get rich so I can hire a cleaning lady,” Karyn muttered. “Not that that’s going to happen.”

“Are you worrying about money again? I keep telling you that you need to budget.”

“At this point it’s less about the money than what I’ve got to do about it. But forget it, let’s go do something fun.”

“No,” said Derpy. “It won’t be fun if you’re worrying about money.”

“But I won’t. I’ll forget it and stop worrying.”

“Then it won’t be fun if I’m worrying about the fact that you’re avoiding your problems.”

Karyn sighed. “I guess I can’t argue with that. But you’re not going to be able to help.”

“You let Tante Derpy see and she’ll tell you if she can help.”

“Tante? I hope the language barrier isn’t breaking again.”

Karyn moved her chair to the side and let Derpy hover next to her.

“So what’s going on? You want to buy something nice for yourself but you can’t afford it?”

“No. Much worse. It’s tax season.”

“I don’t know that one,” said Derpy. “I know winter, and summer, and autumn.”

“Well, taxes are colder than winter, burn you more than summer, and leave everything as dead as autumn.”

“Are they really that bad?”

Karyn was exasperated, and took it out on Derpy. “Do you have taxes in Equestria?”

“I. . . I know the concept!”

“Meaning of course that you don’t have them. Well, look. I only worked for two months last year, just a summer job so I could have some spending money. But I’ve still got to fill out tax forms the same as people who have full-time jobs.”

“When did you work a summer job?” asked Derpy.

“I had a lot of time when I wasn’t at the convention with you, or at the beach with you, or at the park with you. . . “

“I get it. I didn’t know you were working though.”

“It wasn’t fun. All the time I was there, waiting for Sundays with Derpy kept me going. The last thing I wanted on those Sundays was to talk about work.”

Derpy nodded and looked at the screen, and finally realized that Karyn hadn’t filled her windows with pony pictures or e-mails. The forms had a particular coldness to them that she found rather. . . un-Equestrian, and she said as much.

“I’ll say it is, and it’s really annoying. See, for the people who do have full-time jobs, they all get paid by one source, and one piece of paper tells them how much have to pay on. But for a poor college student who scrapped for every dollar of scholarship money, grants, and loans that she could, I get a new piece of paper every day in the mail that I have to add onto the total and throw out the whole form.”

“Why don’t you just wait for all the records to come and then do the form?”

Karyn gritted her teeth and tried to look crazy. “Because it’s like a worm gnawing at the back of my brain, and I really want to just get it done. Also, it’s possible that I might have money coming to me in a refund that I want to get as soon as possible.”

“If you budgeted, you’d know about whether you’d get it or not, and then you wouldn’t have to worry so.”

“I guess. Once I get this all taken care of, then I’ll get to it.”

Derpy put her hooves around Karyn’s shoulders and shook. “That’s just procrastination. If you wait for a time when all your books are clear, you’ll never get to it. I can help you with it, but maybe you don’t want me to know all about your finances?”

“Oh, Derpy, you’re a close enough friend that you can see it all. Besides, who are you going to tell? Pinkie Pie?”

So Karyn found herself giving her computer a restart after saving everything she had. Presented with a blank screen, Derpy directed her to open a new spreadsheet.

“I do all mine on paper, but I know you like the computer, so we’ll keep it there. This way you won’t lose it. And it can do the sums for you.”

Karyn sat attentive, as if she were in class.

“The first thing we need to do is write down your income. When I deliver mail, I get a base wage plus some overtime occasionally.”

“Yeah, you get income. I don’t. That’s why you can do this and I can’t.”

“That’s going to make it simpler!” said Derpy. “Once you do start earning, you’ll have the structure in place, rather than having to do it after the fact the way I did.”

“All right, but I still don’t have any income.”

“You do, it’s just seasonal. You’ll probably work again next summer, and again until you get out of college. That’s why this is going to be an annual budget. You’ll plan out everything you need over the whole year.”

Karyn waved her hands. “That’s why this won’t work! Things always come up during the year. Like these taxes”

“I know, so that’s why you’ve got to put in some wiggle room. But first list the things you know you’re going to have to do. Like your cell phone and what you pay to go to college.”

“Already I have more expenses than income.”

“But not including the tuition, and that’s going to go away in a few years. I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Derpy moved into whispering range, even though there was no one else around. “Just having this around and knowing that you’ll be writing down everything you spend is going to make you spend less. And if you’re spending less, you’ll have more money.”

“I guess. Anyway, we didn’t get any further along with filling out the forms I have to get done.”

“Next year, though, you’ll thank me. Speaking of thanking, what do you actually get for these? I mean, I’d understand if you were paying to have the sun raised and lowered, but it takes care of that itself.”

Karyn paused for thought, trying to be delicate. “There are a lot of things we get for them. Roads, bridges, police, fire departments. And a lot of people who do nothing but boss those other people around. Some folks say that the taxes are always too high, and that everything should be done as much as possible by businesses. And other people say that they only want that because they don’t want to pay. It’s a whole, complicated thing, and I like to stay out of the way.

“But just about everyone thinks that the mechanics of paying and reporting are too complicated. Except for the people who work figuring it out.”

“So it’s one of those weird Earth things,” said Derpy.

“Yeah. But who takes care of all that in Equestria? Who pays for the royal guard? Who pays Mayor Mare to do whatever she does?”

“Princess Celestia does, of course, out of the royal treasury. Although, I think we’d be most like your folks who say that things should be done by businesses. Every time a mayor or somepony in authority wants to try to take on a project, Celestia finds somepony else who wants to do it as a business.”

“But where does she get the money?” asked Karyn.

“I’m not sure. Dinky might know.”

Karyn decided to take advantage of the change in subject and saved the spreadsheet, which she followed by closing all her open programs. “Anyway,” she said, “I think that, despite my complaining, we have a good system. We don’t have to worry if we lose our jobs or get sick.”

“Neither do ponies.”

“It’s different. You have friendship. If you don’t have that, you have no safety net to catch you.”

Derpy turned away from Karyn and looked out the window. “It’s like the mules.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You know that we have mules that talk just like ponies, right?”

Karyn thought back. “Oh, yeah. Like that baker, Mulia Mild.”

“Right. There’s a whole land of them, across the sea from Equestria. They have a system very much like yours. They pay a lot to their government, and it takes care of them when any mule has problems.”

“Really? And does it work out for them?”

“As far as I know,” said Derpy. “I’ve never been there. But since we’re putting everything away, let’s go out and get some sunshine. That’s free, at least.”

The girls put on their coats and left the dorm. The air was cold, but the sun beat down on them. Walking along a path by the quad, Karyn thought of more.

“Knowing the weather is another thing that the government takes care of for us. Obviously you don’t need that, because you can change it on your own. Maybe that’s the same way with the mules. Do they have any pegasus mules?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So they might need to predict it the way we do,” said Karyn. “I wish we could go see them. I think it might do you good, to see how a different culture lives.”

“That’s what I’m doing here.”

Karyn hadn’t thought of that. “I’m saying different from both of us. That we could compare with our own and maybe learn something about ourselves. It’s one of the problems with only one intelligent species on Earth. Humans don’t have anything to compare ourselves to, so we can’t really know if we’re doing well or not. Maybe everyone who doesn’t have magic and weather control has the same problems we do.”

Derpy was intrigued despite herself. She finally managed to steer the conversation away from heavy subjects and into pleasantries throughout the rest of the day. But thoughts gnawed at her then and throughout the week. When she returned the next Sunday, she told Karyn that they had an opportunity.

“Apparently there isn’t a whole lot of mail between Equestria and Muland.”

“Muland? Oh, you mean the land where the mules live.”

“Exactly. But when I wandered into a different section of the post office by mistake—“ Derpy was a little embarrassed that she could still get lost in a job she had been in for so long—“I found a bunch of mail that had collected for the mules, and for ponies living in Muland. I mentioned it to Mr. Mintsugar, and he said that he always had trouble finding ponies to take the mail, and since the Mulish postal service always came and got it eventually, it wasn’t that big a concern. But it still has to be delivered, and if somepony wanted to volunteer, then she could go to the land of the Mules and the post office would pay for it. So, if you want to go, we can go.”

Karyn thought this rather coincidental, and wondered if Derpy weren’t embellishing the story to make it more like happenstance. She might have asked to go. But Karyn was genuinely interested in the Mule society, since it was something that had never been mentioned in the show.

“What day would we go?”

“Friday.”

“Wow, five more days?” said Karyn. “I guess those mules really don’t mind waiting for their mail.”

“Well, like I said, some of it was months old.”

“Yeah. Humans would be up in arms if mail took that long. Well, they would now. A long time ago, maybe not. So we’ll go. What do we need to do to prepare?”

Derpy read off a list. “I’ve already contacted the Mulish embassy in Equestria for all the permissions and things we need. They didn’t have any precedent for a human coming, of course, so it was kind of a hassle.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, like I said, they have a lot more mules who watch over things. So they don’t want undesirables there. Like, remember that Iron Will guy? He would never have been allowed to run his seminars in Muland.”

Karyn glowered. “Really? That doesn’t sound fair. All he’s doing is talking.”

“That’s allowed, but he collects money for it. So it would have to be checked out by a mule who already knows about seminars to make sure that he was giving good advice.”

“All right, but that doesn’t apply to me. I’m not trying to sell anypony anything.”

“No, but still had to fill out a lot of forms,” said Derpy.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that.”

“We’re friends. I’d deal with a lot more than a little writer’s cramp for you.”

Karyn was grateful, then thought of something. “Wait, writer’s cramp?”

“Yeah.” She opened her jaw wide “See? Back here in the mouth? It’s a little red.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to make you have to go through all that for nothing. So how do we get to Muland?”

Derpy transported them to Equestria. Karyn stayed at Derpy’s house for a little while as Derpy went to the post office to get the mail that had to be taken with them. Resplendent in her uniform, she led Karyn to the train station.

It was a fast express, and Karyn barely had time to notice the journey as the scenery sped by. Soon enough they were at a dock on the far western shore of Equestria.

Karyn reflected that very little of the shore and the ocean had been talked about on Friendship is Magic, and that most ponies didn’t care for boats and the water. Still, ponies of all stripes worked on the dock, tying up the boats and tending to them.

“Come on,” said Derpy. “We’re supposed to go to Pier 33.”

“How long is it going to take us to get there?”

“It’s just down the dock, can’t take too long.”

Karyn shook her head. “I mean how long will the boat ride be?”

“Oh. Probably a couple of hours.”

The salt air was blowing in and Karyn was worried about what it would do to her hair. They approached the pier and found the boat they were going to take. It was somewhat sizeable. Karyn estimated it to be about fifty feet, but it had clearly seen many trips back and forth.

Derpy put down her bag and looked around. Nopony else seemed to be around, and she was wondering if they were supposed to board the boat or wait.

She took off and circled the boat once. She was about to light on the deck when a cough came from the edge of the pier.

Karyn and Derpy could be excused for missing him as he sat next to a pylon. He blended in almost perfectly with the wood of the dock, and he hadn’t moved since their arrival other than to bring a cup of coffee to his lips. Stretching his muscles and cracking his bones, he turned and got to his hooves, and Karyn saw her first mule.

“Name’s Stubby.” His voice had a hard edge to it.

“Hi! I’m Derpy and this is Karyn.”

“You have your customs form?”

Derpy rooted around in her bag until she found the paper. He spent a long time going over it, then eyed Karyn. She was a little nervous being looked at, even though she wasn’t worried about any prurient interest on Stubby’s part.

Eventually he stopped and walked onto the gangway. Derpy gave a wing-assisted hop onto the boat, Karyn following on foot.

“Life jackets,” Stubby said, pointing at a box.

“Um, I don’t think that sinking is a problem for me,” said Derpy, spreading her wings.

“Everypony’s got to know where the life jackets are and how to use them.”

“But I can fly.”

“Regulations don’t say anything about exceptions for pegasi.”

Derpy sighed and paid attention as Stubby put the jacket on for demonstration. He then went over to the harbormaster who initialed another piece of paper, and then they were on their way.

“Hey, Derpy?” said Karyn. “How’s the boat powered? Is there a motor or is it magic?”

“I don’t think either. Mules sometimes don’t trust magic that’s applied directly, but they made some channels in the ocean that go back and forth from Equestria to Muland just on the current.”

As they sat near the back of the boat, Stubby was suddenly a burst of activity, casting off the lines that held the boat to the dock and tying them up for storage. He put his forehooves on the center of the stern and gave a mighty kick to the pylon on the dock. Karyn was unprepared for this method of launch and had to regain her balance. The boat quickly reached top speed and Stubby raced for the wheel to steer it where it needed to go.

There were a series of red buoys that he aimed for, and once they passed the first one, Karyn could see a distinct current pulling them along. Off to the left a fair distance, there were blue buoys, and although there were no boats in the channel, it looked like the water was flowing the other way, back toward Equestria.

“Are you sure this isn’t magic?” Karyn whispered to Derpy.

All at once Stubby’s personality changed. He gave a loud belly-laugh. “No, miss, no magic involved. A pack of mules came by in a boat powered by some of them swimming behind, while others ran a dredge along the bottom that dug a deeper channel as they went, so that the water would flow downhill. They have to come by again every year or so and re-dig it, but it puts some mules to work.

“Can I get you ladies anything? A drink?”

They refused, but Derpy said thank you for the offer and mentioned how nice he had become.

“The sea is my element,” he said. “On the land, it’s all requisitions and paperwork, plus heavy lifting if I’m doing a cargo run. But when we’re on the water, All I have to do is kick back and make sure we don’t drift too far. What more could any mule ask for?”

With Stubby at the helm and the current carrying them along, Karyn and Derpy moved to the fore of the boat and relaxed. Karyn had been on the water on Earth, but to be drifting along without the noise of motors and the smell of burning oil gave her a new appreciation. All she could hear was the ripple of the water and the call of the terns.

Derpy became a little more restless and flapped her wings here and there.

“Are you getting seasick, miss?” asked Stubby.

“I hope not. It gets better if I’m off the boat.”

“Because you look a little dizzy.”

“No, she always looks like that,” said Karyn, slightly offended.

“Makes no difference to me. I’ve seen ponies whose eyes have done full three-sixty rolls on the boat. You’re actually holding up fairly well.”

He made an adjustment at the wheel, and the boat seemed to move more evenly. Derpy took deep breaths and steadied herself.

“So, how much of a rush are you two ladies to get to Muland?” Stubby asked.

“Well, it is kind of our destination,” said Karyn. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

“Well, when I’m only hauling cargo, a lot of times I’ll anchor in a little cutout just off the channel and throw my fishing rod in the water for an hour or so.”

“That would be against my code as a postal employee,” said Derpy. “But on the other hoof, it sounds like a lot of fun.”

“But Derpy,” said Karyn, “what are you guys going to fish for? You don’t eat fish.”

“Ooh, that’s a good point. I guess there’s plankton, though. And seaweed! I like seaweed.”

“Well, so do I, but I don’t go fishing for it.”

Stubby held up a hoof. “Ladies, I think you’ve misunderstood. I said I throw my rod in the water for a while. I don’t bring it up. Everyone knows that the point of fishing is to relax, take in some sun, and have a few drinks. Maybe a sandwich as well.”

Derpy and Karyn looked at each other. “Sounds like our kind of activity!”

He turned the wheel and the boat left the channel. Miles from anypony, they sat and watched the line, bobbing playfully. The rest of the journey was to come, but for now they were content.

To be continued.

Author's Note

But not without a preview!

"Well, we’d better get going if you’re going to see as much as possible!”

Derpy stepped up. “Actually, the first thing we need to do is get to the post office so I can deliver the mail from Equestria.”

“Are you here for that too?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess that I have a different way of thinking too.”

The mule returned with a small sack of mail and a large stack of paper. “Sign here, please, miss, and here, here, initial here, and confirm the weight and the number.”

Derpy gritted her teeth as she complied. “Very different,” she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"It might make a lot of sense, but Celestia’s the only one who could do it, I think.”

“It’s probably more complicated than that, but if you really want to know, I can ask her to make some time to talk to you.”

“No, but thanks. Let’s not bother the princess.”

See you all next week!

38: Derpy in a Strange Land

The boat rocked lazily in the water. Derpy had flown up high and used her mental map trick, and found that they were indeed alone. With all three occupants attending a pole (“You have to have a pole,” Stubby had said. “Otherwise it’s not fishing, just skiving off work.”), they had lounged and chatted, with the only interruption being a fish that had gone for Derpy’s pole, even though it was not baited.

“Shoo, go away! We don’t want to eat you,” she had said.

Karyn had actually fallen asleep, that first stage of sleep where you can still hear things that are said, and only came around when Stubby, by some instinct of the clock, said that it was time to go.

He lifted the anchor, and Karyn asked, “So how do we get back into the channel?”

“Well, we could wait and let the drift take us back, which it would eventually. More often I’ll just hop in and give a few swimming kicks and then jump back in the boat once I’ve got it going in the right direction. I’m willing to do that; I like the water. But since we do have a means of propulsion here that doesn’t involve getting wet, I wonder if Miss Derpy wouldn’t do us a favor and push us back from the air.”

Happy to be of some use, Derpy went behind the stern and put her hooves on the transom. Pumping her wings, she enjoyed the feel of force without motion. Slowly the boat accelerated back toward the buoys.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Fine enough,” said Stubby.

They rode the current for another hour or so before they found themselves in another harbor. Stubby was again all business, spending the boat’s momentum just enough to have them bump gently into a slip.

On the dock was another mule dressed in a short vest with a high laced collar. “Welcome to Muland!” she said, mostly ignoring Stubby. He helped Karyn off the boat and brought out more paperwork.

“Water conveyance, registration number 86549 reports delivery of passengers,” he said, again in his bored voice.

“Yes, and thank you.”

“Ma’am, I need your stamp.”

“Yes, I suppose you don’t want to get in trouble.” She made a mark on the top page with her hoof, then turned to Karyn and Derpy. “My name is Myrtle. You must be the pegasus pony and the human pony!”

“No, she’s not any kind of pony,” said Derpy.

“How nice. Well, I’ve been assigned by the Ministry of Tourism to help make your stay here in Muland as pleasant and informative as possible.”

“We appreciate it,” said Karyn. “Derpy tells me that your society is particularly adept at taking care of mules who need help, and I want to show her how important that is.”

“Well, rather than that,” said Myrtle, “we’re proud of all the things we mules have built. You know we’re very hard workers! We have museums and theaters and a new stadium where all the mules who can make it go to hear speeches and lectures.”

“That sounds nice, although we’re only here for a day trip.”

“Is that right?” Myrtle searched through her stack of paper. “Oh, yes, that’s the limit of your visa. Well, we’d better get going if you’re going to see as much as possible!”

Derpy stepped up. “Actually, the first thing we need to do is get to the post office so I can deliver the mail from Equestria.”

“Are you here for that too? Well, then I’ll just have to adjust my map. Hold on, one second.” She shuffled some papers until she found one with a route laid out. With a red marker in her mouth, she marked the post office and then set about crossing and re-drawing the route, muttering all the while. “Let’s see, if we take Muleholland Drive, we can cut past the roundabout. . . “

“Um, miss,” said Derpy. “what if we just went to the office and then decided where to go from there?”

“Hang on, this won’t take but a moment.” Myrtle kept tracing and finally said, “There! Now we have an ideal course to take. Follow me, please.”

Karyn and Derpy shrugged and trundled after the mule.

At the post office, there was the exchange of signatures that, as Karyn realized, seemed to accompany every meeting in Muland. Derpy was made to sign several forms of her own before a mule would even open the bag she had brought, then they insisted on double-checking the number that was on the seal holding the bag closed.

“Just out of curiosity,” Derpy said, “what would happen if the numbers were different?”

“Why?” said Myrtle. “Did you change them?”

“No,” Derpy said defensively. “I’m just wondering if you would send me all the way back to Equestria if the numbers were wrong.”

“Oh, we couldn’t do that!” the mule behind the desk said. “It’s against regulations. Every mule has to get their mail as soon as possible.”

“So even if the numbers were wrong, you’d take it for delivery?”

“We can’t do that, the numbers have to match. That’s according to regulations.”

“Is your business complete?” asked Myrtle.

“Hmm. Karyn, do you think I should pick up the return mail now and lug it around all day, or come back again before we leave?”

“Oh, mail to go to Equestria isn’t here. You have to go to a completely different desk for that.”

“Well, at least your dilemma is solved,” said Karyn.

Derpy sighed, and they both followed Myrtle back out onto the road.

“Well,” Myrtle said, consulting her map again, “it looks like what was to have been our piece de resistance is going to be our first stop: the new stadium!”

Neither Karyn nor Derpy had a particularly good sense of direction while traveling by road, and as such had trouble picturing where they were from all the turns and crossings that Myrtle led them on. The streets were full, but unlike Canterlot, there was no shopping on the street or outside dining. Karyn remarked on it.

“It wouldn’t do to have mules eating outside,” said Myrtle. “Food could get on the ground, it would be unsanitary. All of that takes place indoors, where it’s the restaurateur’s responsibility.”

They reached the arena on an open block. It looked a little like the Roman Colosseum, but it was made of a drab grayish brown stone.

“This is new?” said Derpy.

“Yes!” said Myrtle. “Only a few years old. Mind you, we copied it from the old one, mostly.”

“You did? What’s the difference?”

“Well, in the old one, the top deck was cantilevered over the lower. The mules in charge decided that was unsafe.”

“So it could have fallen down and hurt mules,” said Karyn.

“No, it was sturdy enough. We would never build something that could collapse. But this one is even safer.”

“Doesn’t that mean that everyone sitting on the top deck is now farther from the center?” asked Derpy.

“Yes,” said Myrtle, “but safety first!”

Derpy rolled her eyes, but Karyn said, “Don’t you have a lot of problems with structural collapse in Equestria?”

“Sometimes, but we always have ponies to watch out for others if they come down. Anyway, let’s go inside and see the speech or lecture or whatever.”

“Oh, there’s no event today,” said Myrtle. “It’s a shame you’re not staying longer though.”

Derpy looked as if she wanted to facehoof, but decided it would be impolite.

“Would it be possible,” asked Karyn, “to see where some ponies who have come to Muland live? I want Derpy to see how well Muland takes care of the ones who have come here.”

“Well, it’s not on our schedule, and I’m not certain that it’s exactly permitted.”
Karyn thought she was getting used to Myrtle’s way of thinking. “Is it exactly forbidden?”

“Well, no—“

“Great! Where are they?”

Myrtle grimaced, but she led them to a different section of town. Derpy pointed out that there were no impressive structures like Canterlot Castle, or even any large patch of land like Sweet Apple Acres. The residences they went to reminded Karyn of Native American longhouses, and as they entered, they saw many mules gathered around a fire in the center of the house and a few others on the side sharing a meal. Outside, a farm was being tilled by a line of mules, each one pulling a plow down one row.

They went in. A unicorn stallion was part of the group eating together, and Myrtle escorted Karyn and Derpy over. “Good afternoon, Jerry,” she said.

“Jerry?” Karyn whispered. “Doesn’t sound much like a pony name.”

“Ladies, this is Jerry Built, who came here from Equestria, how many years ago now?”

“Five, maybe six. I didn’t count.”

“Very nice to meet you, Mr. Built,” said Derpy. “I just brought a sack of mail from Equestria, so if you have anypony who’s written to you, you might see that soon.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not too likely.”

Something about Jerry’s demeanor made Karyn uncomfortable. “Do you not have any friends back there that you want to write to? We’ll be taking mail back as well, and if you have anything to send, we’ll wait and bring it with us.”

“No, nopony wants to get a letter from a unicorn who can’t do magic.”

Karyn looked at Derpy, wondering if she’d ever heard of such a thing, but she could tell that she was stunned as well.

“It doesn’t happen often,” said Jerry, “but there are diseases that can take a unicorn’s magic away. I got one, and there was nopony in Equestria who would help. I didn’t know how to do my old job without my horn, but here in Muland they took me in and give me food. I help out here by pulling with the rest of the mules, but sometimes I wish I could go back to the way it was.”

Myrtle hustled them out fairly quickly. “See, Derpy? That poor unicorn had to come here because he wasn’t able to make it in Equestria. You hide how life is for the worst.”

“Hey, I don’t hide anything.”

“You’re right, I didn’t mean you personally. But I would like to speak to Celestia about things like that.”

Derpy thought for a while. “Myrtle, how many ponies live in Muland, anyway?”

“Not very many. Perhaps a hundred.”

“I think that’s why. Nopony’s ever made a society where everyone is happy and fits in. I think sometimes you picture us as perfect, but we’re not. Neither is Muland. But what I like is that we welcome mules and they welcome ponies.”

“But which mules do you welcome?” asked Karyn. “The best and the brightest, like Mulia, a top chef. And which ponies come here? The ones who need the most help. So Equestria is really taking advantage of Muland.”

Derpy was uncomfortable with the topic, but Myrtle stepped up. “No, Miss Karyn. We love having Equestria to take in those ponies who don’t want to be part of our land. What you called the best among us are often the most greedy, who would spread discontentment and disharmony if they stayed. Taking in a few ponies is a small price to pay.”

“Thank you,” said Derpy. But Myrtle wasn’t finished.

“It’s not as if we’re taking in folk from Gryphonia, after all.”

“There’s a griffin land too?” said Karyn. “Oh, I mean, of course there is, but I wasn’t thinking about it. What’s it like?”

“It’s virtually the opposite of Muland. There are a few griffins that own everything and an awful lot that have to scratch out a living. It’s not pleasant there at all.”

Karyn gave Derpy a look of, “See, I’m right.”

Derpy said, “What about the successful mules that do stay here? Can we see some of them?”

“I’d like nothing better!” said Myrtle.

She pranced with a lighter step and the others following. They doubled back past the stadium and the business district, back close to where the post office was. Myrtle seemed to know all the twists and turns, and led them through an alley to what looked just liked the home where Jerry lived.

“Is there a mule that owns this one all for himself?” asked Derpy.

“Certainly not,” Myrtle answered. “But you asked to see the successful mules. The ones who farm the most land or help build the most or do the best job at their work all live in this section of town.”

“What’s the advantage, though?”

“The advantage? Well, if a mule produces more, we all benefit.”

Derpy tried to phrase her question again, but she didn’t want to be too antagonistic. She was a guest in another land after all. Instead, she said to Karyn, “Can we get the mail and go? There’s not a whole lot more that I want to see here.”

“All right. I can tell that you’re not having the best time.”

They told Myrtle, who was a little miffed that her schedule was going by the wayside, but was happy to have the rest of the day off. She escorted them back to the office, where they bade her good-bye.

As they waited for the mule to go find the mail to go back, Derpy and Karyn had their first real moment of privacy in Muland. “I really don’t get how any of this works,” said Derpy. “I can’t believe that any mules would work hard knowing that they’re going to get the same reward. I try to do the best I can on my mail route so I can get more money and better routes, and to improve my relationship with the ponies there. I wouldn’t do that here.”

“But you’re not here,” said Karyn. “The mules have a different way of thinking. They do work hard, just because they can. What I don’t get is how Equestria works. Think of all the so-called Canterlot elite. They’re really just snobs. They look down on you as a simple mailmare, while they live decadent lives with jewels and fashions. Doesn’t that make you mad?”

“No. What other ponies think doesn’t bother me, unless they’re my friends. But I guess that I have a different way of thinking too.”

The mule returned with a small sack of mail and a large stack of paper. “Sign here, please, miss, and here, here, initial here, and confirm the weight and the number.”

Derpy gritted her teeth as she complied. “Very different,” she said.

Their mood lightened as they made their way back to the docks and found Stubby waiting for them on the boat. Derpy tried to fly out to meet him.

“Sorry, ladies, but I can’t let you on right now. This vessel is currently under inspection for safety and health concerns, and as such only authorized personnel are allowed. I can’t be held liable for your welfare.”

Karyn kept her distance, but Derpy hovered over anyway. “Oh, forget those stinky regulations, Stubby, it’s us!”

“Rules are rules. I can’t let you on.”

Derpy huffed and flew back to the dock. “He’s so much nicer when we’re on the water.”

“I wonder,” said Karyn.

“What’s that?”

“A long time ago, back when I was in middle school, they showed us a series about a boat for science class. I remember a line the captain said when they were talking about seasickness. ‘I only get sick on land,’ he said. Maybe Stubby is the same, and his stomach bothers him when he’s not on the boat.”

In his slow, plodding way, Stubby seemed to almost take apart the boat and put it back together, checking every bolt and screw and board, sometimes stepping off to find another mule to confirm and sign off on his work.

One time when he was absent, Derpy draped a wing on the boat. Karyn gave her a light slap. “What are you doing? You want to get Stubby in trouble?” Derpy stuck out her tongue.

Finally he let them on board and Derpy stuck out her tongue.

Finally he let them on board and kicked off into the red-buoyed channel that would take them back to Equestria. “I appreciate your patience,” he said.

“Stubby,” said Derpy, “do you have to go through that every time you launch?”

“I have to go through something every time I launch, and there are some inspections that are weekly, or monthly, or annually.”

She took a deep breath and readied her next question. “Why don’t you move to Equestria? You’re smart and nice and there’s plenty of places where a boat captain can earn a good living. And the only one you’d have to answer to for making your boat safe would be you.”

Stubby smiled at her. “I appreciate the offer, Derpy but I’d never turn my back on Muland. I was born there, and even though I love the sea, I always return there. If I couldn’t, then these trips would feel more like being adrift. I guess it’s hard to explain, and I’m no speech-maker. I’ll never be in the new stadium, except as a listener. But that’s what a good mule does, and I’m a good mule.”

Derpy didn’t ask again, and the rest of the boat ride was uneventful, at least until they reached the dock and Karyn saw a familiar blue horn.

“Dinky!” she called.

“Karyn! Great to see you again. You and my bad, bad mommy. Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to the mules’ country? I would have wanted to come with you. As a student in Princess Celestia’s school, I’m supposed to evince curiosity in all things around the world.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” said Derpy. “I didn’t know that mandate. If I had gone to the Gifted Unicorn school myself, I might have, but two things kept me out.”

“No, only one,” said Karyn. “You’re not a unicorn.”

Derpy accepted the compliment with a blush.

“Anyway, I came to keep you company on the train back to Canterlot, and on the way you can tell me all about Muland,” said Dinky.

Once on board, they recounted their trip and everything they had said to each other. As Karyn reached the part where they met Jerry, Derpy asked a question.

“Hey, what is it exactly that can make unicorns lose their magic? I want to make sure you don’t get that disease.”

Dinky looked at her hooves. “It’s not something we like to talk about with others. And it’s not really a disease. Let’s just say that there are things you’re not supposed to do with magic, and that if you do, you can burn out your horn. You’ve got to be pretty messed up to do it, though.”

Derpy and Karyn shuddered at the prospect. They finished their travelogue.

“So what do you think, Dinky?” said Karyn. “Is Equestria right? Or is it the mules?”

Dinky took a long time to answer. “Different people, be they humans, mules, or ponies, can want different things. And when they do, that means they look at the world differently. Some want to know that they’re in control. Others want to know that there’s some certainty in an uncertain world. Both Princess Celestia and the mules who rule their land democratically are wise because they know that the other position has merit to the ones who believe it. I live in Equestria, because I believe in it. Some ponies live here because they were born here. It doesn’t matter where you live or why, so long as you have harmony with those who are different.”

“Karyn,” said Derpy. “I’m sorry that I argued with you in Muland. And I’ll help you do your -taxes, even if I don’t understand them.” Then she looked at Dinky. “And how did you get so smart?”

Karyn hugged Derpy. “No, I’m sorry that I badmouthed your country. I was very shortsighted.”

Dinky was confused, but she liked seeing her mother and friend getting along.

“Oh, we had another question,” said Derpy. “How does Princess Celestia pay the ponies who work for her if she doesn’t take any money from other ponies?”

“Hmm. I think this is how it works. She adds up all the money that everypony makes over the year. Like, if a pony buys some apples for one bit and makes an apple pie and sells it for two bits, then they’ve made one bit. But if they just eat the apples themselves then they’ve lost one bit. Anyway, once she’s got that, she makes that many bits in gold and uses them to pay for everything.”

Karyn stood up. “But that doesn’t make any sense. . . actually, it might make a lot of sense, but Celestia’s the only one who could do it, I think.”

“It’s probably more complicated than that, but if you really want to know, I can ask her to make some time to talk to you.”

“No, but thanks. Let’s not bother the princess.”

Derpy yawned and stretched her wings. “Do you want us to accompany you back to your school, Dinky?”

“That’s all right. You should get home, and I’m sure that Karyn needs to be getting back as well.”

They hugged their good-byes, and Karyn and Derpy rode the final stop back to Ponyville.

Derpy got her spell ready. “So, like I said, I’m ready to help you with your taxes and not complain about them.”

“Actually, I think I do want you to teach me more about that budget.”

Derpy smiled, just a little bit proud.

Author's Note

Here's your preview for next week:

Karyn put on a coat and hat while Derpy went invisible. “Are you going to be all right? It’s pretty cold out there.”

“No worries. I go out in winter all the time. Furry coat.”

“So cute it blows my mind.”

"Huh?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hi, Daddy!” said Karyn.

“Hi, Pumpkin. What’s going on? Everything all right at school?”

They made small talk for a minute, then Karyn brought up the subject. “So, I was hoping you could help me out with something.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on, keep pumping those wings.” Karyn tried to be more encouraging than reproachful. Nopony likes hearing that they have a lot of work ahead of them, she thought. “As soon as we get back we’ll have lunch.”

“In that case, I’ll go extra fast!”

I hope you enjoy it!

39: Derpet and Exercise

Karyn left early for the school cafeteria and picked up her customary Sunday breakfast for two. The workers were friendly and teased her about having a secret boyfriend, and questioning if that broke school rules. She always responded, “I eat very little the rest of the week, so I need to build my energy now.”

She carried two Styrofoam trays filled with pancakes and condiments back to her dorm. When she opened the door, Derpy was in the process of appearing.

“Perfect timing,” she said.

“Yes, I’m just getting back.”

“And the food will be the hottest I could eat it. Unless I went invisible and came with you. But that would be a silly risk for a few degrees of heat.”

Karyn set up her card table and placed plastic knives, forks, and napkins. She even found a vase with a single flower in it. “There. That makes it look a little more formal.”

“I guess, but let’s eat!”

Derpy slathered two packs of butter over her pancakes and watched it melt. Karyn just enjoyed watching her use the utensils with her hooves. Tearing open the syrup packs with her teeth, Derpy held them high above and put her head down, watching it drizzle all over. Then she picked up her knife and fork and cut a large chunk.

“Hungry much?” asked Karyn.

“Ravenous.”

Karyn paced herself and enjoyed the cakes, which were very thick and made with buttermilk. They stuck to her ribs and made her very full very soon. Derpy by contrast ate with reckless abandon, finishing quickly and sitting back with a satisfied pat of her belly.

Since Derpy was done, Karyn decided to put down her own fork and digest. They kept their conversation going, and Derpy kept eyeing Karyn’s plate. Finally she could take it no more. “Go ahead and finish mine,” Karyn said. “I can tell you want to.”

“Are you sure? Really? I wouldn’t want to put you out well all right then thanks.” Derpy slid Karyn’s plate over and finished the second stack.

“Ready to hit the town?”

“You bet. Anything fun going on?”

“Nothing specific that I saw,” said Karyn. “But we’ll go and check out the main drag and maybe do some shopping.”

“Sounds good!”

Karyn put on a coat and hat while Derpy went invisible. “Are you going to be all right? It’s pretty cold out there.”

“No worries. I go out in winter all the time. Furry coat.”

“So cute it blows my mind.”

“Huh?” Derpy had her confused face on.

“Never mind.”

They made their way outside. Patches of snow on the ground made everything bright in the mid-morning sun. As they reached the town, they saw workers dragging ladders out of trucks.

“What’s going on?” asked Derpy.

“Don’t know. Oh, I see. They’re taking down the last of the holiday decorations. All the trees and things probably came down right after New Year’s, but a few wreaths and garlands and lights are still there.”

They had already cleared some of the wires, and the two girls watched the work. Karyn explained a little about power lines, although she was no expert.

“Probably they obscure the landscape,” she said, “but I remember lying in the back seat of my dad’s car sometimes, just watching them dip and arc from pole to pole. It’s kind of hypnotic when you’re moving and they’re still.”

“What are those?”

“Where? I can’t see where you’re pointing.”

Derpy tried to phrase it without visuals. “Third line down, about halfway across.”

Karyn looked and saw a sight that, while not an everyday occurance, was familiar to her. “Yeah, sometimes you get people throwing shoes up there. For pranks mostly. Steal some poor soul’s sneakers and tie the laces together, then toss them straight up and let the momentum wrap them around the lines. Rather childish.”

“I’m going to take them down.”

“Be careful. I know that birds can touch power lines because they’re not connected to the ground, but you never know when something can go wrong. And try not to be seen.”

Derpy took a deep breath. “If I do it fast enough it’ll just look like a favorable gust of wind. Be prepared to catch them.”

Karyn stood to the side and tried to look nonchalant. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one shoe flip over the wire and land with a shorter string than before. Just like untying the twist-tie of a loaf of bread, she thought. You always pick the wrong direction first. The shoe flipped the other way and then again. One more time and they were free, descending fast toward her. She took them in hand and looked around. No one had noticed anything out of the ordinary.

“Nice work”

“Yeah, I” Derpy huffed and puffed as she spoke. “I got them. I was completely the wind.”

“Mmhm. Hey, Derpy. Can we head back for a minute? There’s something I want to see back in the dorm.”

“Sure. . . Karyn.” She was still out of breath. “It’d be. . . nice.”

They returned the way they came, Karyn taking the time to deposit the shoes into a clothing donation bin that sat in a diner parking lot. Once back in the room, Derpy threw off her invisibility and collapsed backward on the bed. “Whew. Maybe it is a little cold out there.”

“Mmhm,” Karyn said skeptically. She rummaged in her closet, finding a box that she had playfully labeled “Secret Derpy Stuff.” Digging through it, she quickly came up with a small white square.

“What have you got there?”

“Do me a favor, Derpy? Go stand against that wall.” Karyn pointed to one end. “This was the picture I took of you when we were playing with my camera a while back. I want to do a before-and-after.”

“What for? I haven’t changed.”

“I think you have. Oh, yeah. Derpy, you’ve put on a lot of weight.”

Derpy snorted. “I have not!”

“Look at the picture and then look between your hooves.”

“Give me that.” Derpy snatched it out of Karyn’s hands and looked. She was standing against the same wall, and could see a foot or two of wall beneath her. Trotting back over, she tried to measure from the bottom of her belly to the floor.

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Trust me, your belly has grown. Small wonder, I’d say. You took seconds at that Apple Family reunion, and—“

“It wasn’t a true reunion, just a get-together.”

“Don’t change the subject. And you’re always finishing my meals. You have a problem, Derpy.”

“I do not!” said Derpy, stomping her hoof. But beneath her, she felt her belly jiggling. How did she not notice before? “Well, maybe I’ve gained, but I’m not a young filly. Everypony puts on a few pounds at my age.”

“Ponyfeathers!” said Karyn. Derpy spread her wings and looked at them. “No, I mean that you’re trying to cover up the fact that you have a problem. I’m serious, Derpy.”

“I don’t see—“

“And I’ll bet that’s the reason you’ve been having insomnia lately. I mean, look. I don’t know anything about pony anatomy. Maybe you can weigh as much as you like and have no ill effects. Maybe unicorns have a spell that can zap you to the perfect weight without any effort. Maybe there’s no such thing for you as heart attacks and arthritis. All I know is that you’ve changed, and for the worse.”

Derpy scowled and wanted to argue some more, but she saw how worried Karyn was, and the image of the picture versus her own figure was stuck in her head. “I guess I have. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. All you have to do is work to correct it. There’s a human saying that the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one.”

“I would think that the first step would be to do something counter to what the problem is.”

Karyn nodded her head. “Well, it’s a weird expression. Anyway, you’ll try to lose weight?”

“I’d like to, but how do I do it? I’m not a mare of willpower. Have you ever had to diet?”

“Not personally. A side benefit of being a vegetarian in the human world. Oh! But my father has. He lost about fifty pounds. I should call him and ask him for tips.”

“Would you?” said Derpy, beaming. “I really don’t want to do this on my own.”

“It’s no problem. But my father is very much into video chatting, so you’ll have to stay out of the way.”

“You got it! How’s this?” Derpy slipped to the side of Karyn’s desk and sat unmoving.

“It’s fine, but don’t stare at me like that. You’ll make me laugh.”

Karyn got on the computer and looked to see if her father was online. She texted him to call her with the chat, and a moment later her speakers gave a beep. From Derpy’s perspective she couldn’t see his face, nor could she remember what he looked like.

“Hi, Daddy!” said Karyn.

“Hi, Pumpkin. What’s going on? Everything all right at school?”

They made small talk for a minute, then Karyn brought up the subject. “So, I was hoping you could help me out with something.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, I have a friend, and she needs to lose weight. I told her how successful you were, and maybe you could let me know how you did it.”

Derpy didn’t hear Karyn’s father respond immediately, and she wondered if the connection hadn’t been lost, but then he said, “Wait, I get it. This is really about you, isn’t it? Pumpkin, you don’t need to lose weight. If anything, you’re too thin as is.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Dad! I’m not asking for me.”

“Prove it. Let me see you eat something right now.”

“I don’t have any food around the dorm at the moment—“

“Aha!” her father said.

“But I’ll call you back at dinner and you can watch me eat if that’ll make you happy.”

“Well, all right, but you’d better not forget.”

Exasperated, Karyn said, “Now do you have any advice for my friend or not?”

“I kept a notebook with all the little motivational ideas I had when I was on my diet. But I’m not sure where it is. I’ll get back to you when you call me later.”

“Is there anything you can tell me in the meantime?

“Let me think,” said Karyn’s father. “Is she a student like you?”

“No, she works.”

“That’s actually good. When you’re working five days a week, you want to get into a routine where you’re eating less than what you normally would. Then on weekends and holidays, if you backslide, it’s not so bad.”

Derpy smiled at that, and Karyn reached for a pen and pad to write down what her father was saying. “Sounds good. What else have you got?

“Well, I can give you some tips on my own, or you can get diet into from books and web sites. But don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Karyn’s father’s tone shifted to one of annoyance. “Diet advisors don’t ever want you to indulge. Their attitude is that you should eat nothing but vegetables and fruits and good stuff. If you listen to them, there’s no reason for a doughnut shop to even exist, because it might as well be selling heroin. It’s just not realistic. We all like tasty food, food that’s bad for us, and you have to know how to integrate it while still being responsible. I would read them for recipes and information on things like calories and carbs, but don’t take them as gospel.”

“Maybe you could write your own book.”

“Ha, I wish. Let’s see. I mentioned calories. That’s really what it’s all about. You can play around with carbs and proteins all you want, but calories are the bottom line. The reason things like Atkins work is that carbs make you hungry. That’s why Italian meals use pasta as an appetizer. If you can count calories and work within the daily limits, you’ll lose weight. But most people don’t want to hear that, so they need tricks to fool the mind into thinking it’s getting enough food. Fortunately they have all those nutritional information labels on everything.”

Karyn looked over her computer at Derpy. “Hmm. My friend eats a lot of fresh foods, very little packaged stuff. I’m not sure she has that information.”

“Well, it’s all on the Web. Although if she’s eating fresh, that’s a good step to begin with. Learning to cook is another.”

“I know she bakes.”

“Well, that’s a little more suspect,” her father said. “Anyway, speaking of steps, you remember how I did walking for exercise every day? I know you girls are into going to the gym and all that, but really walking is enough. Exercise has diminishing returns. It’s more important to do some at all than it is to do a lot of it. Unless you want to build muscle, which would let you eat more. But that’s easier for men.”

Derpy waved to get her attention. She had picked up a notebook of her own and written on it “Can flying work instead of walking?” Karyn had to stifle a laugh.

“Thanks, Dad. It seems like a lot but I’m sure my friend will be appreciative.”

“Good. Of course, so much of it is about motivation. That’s what I had in my little notebook. I’ll definitely work on finding it and I’ll call you back again tonight. You should call me more often though. I miss you, all away at college like you are.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Talk to you later.”

They signed off, and Derpy came back out into the room. “Well, he gave us some good information, but this is still going to be difficult.”

“I guess so. But we’ve got to start somewhere. Come on, let’s go back outside. Yes, I think that flying will be a fine substitute for walking, so we’ll go for a mile this time. Then you can increase it a little more each day.”

“But we were just outside. And I fly so much every day on my route.”

Karyn thought about that. “Yes, but that’s flying you do normally, not for exercise. It has to be over and above your normal routine.”

They went back out on the same route they had before. The workers had finished their takedown and the town looked a little barer than it had been. Karyn eschewed her usual window shopping in favor of keeping a brisk pace for Derpy to follow.

“There it is,” Derpy said. “There’s the wire that had those shoes on them. Betrayer!”

“Huh?”

“If I hadn’t have gone to pick them up, you never would have noticed that I was too heavy. I could have gone on in blissful ignorance.”

Karyn put her hand to the Bluetooth and lowered her voice. “Do you really think that would make it better?”

“No, of course not.”

“Come on, keep pumping those wings.” Karyn tried to be more encouraging than reproachful. Nopony likes hearing that they have a lot of work ahead of them, she thought. “As soon as we get back we’ll have lunch.”

“In that case, I’ll go extra fast!”

A few blocks from the dorm stood a health-food store. Karyn liked the food, but it was the opposite direction from most of her classes, so she didn’t visit it often. That day, though, she bent their route toward it. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll pick up lunch for both of us.”

She came out a few minutes later with two small, brown cardboard boxes and they walked the rest of the way to the dorm. Karyn set up the card table and handed Derpy her box. She took one look at it, and her face fell.

“This is it?” The box contained a bed of garden greens, a few plantain slices, and a sliced egg.

“If you limit yourself to that now, you can have a snack halfway between now and dinner.”

“Why don’t I have the snack now?” asked Derpy.

“Because then you’ll be even worse then. Besides, that has a lot of protein, and like my dad said, it should make you feel more full.”

Derpy munched on the small salad, trying to make it last longer. Even so, she finished it quickly. “I’m still hungry.”

“You have to give it some time to hit your stomach and for it to send the right signals to stop the hunger.”

For Derpy, it was one of the longest afternoons she could remember. She constantly checked the clock. Karyn had told her she could have the snack at 2:30 and dinner at 5, but time was moving slowly.

“Even if I wait ten minutes, the clock only goes five!” she shouted at one point.

With a half-hour to go, Derpy broke down. “I’m never going to make this. If I can’t do one day, how am I going to stop eating long enough to actually reach a goal?”

“We’ll find a way, together, the same way we always do. Two friends can accomplish anything, right?”

“Maybe, but you can’t do my exercise for me, and you can’t do my not-eating either.”

Karyn looked at her room and saw her purse hanging on the bedpost. An idea hit her. “All right, Derpy, I’ll make a pact with you. If you write down everything you eat, I’ll write down everything I spend. We’ll both agree to cut down, and we’ll help the other one where she needs it. Is it a bargain?”

Derpy wiped the tears from her eyes. “I guess we’ll have to try.”

While Karyn was away getting dinner from the cafeteria, the computer signaled that her father was trying to reach her again. Not knowing what to do, Derpy clicked answer and then flew out of sight.

“Hm,” he said. “She must have auto-pickup or something. I’m not sure I like that.”

Karyn came in a minute or so later and saw her father already on the video chat. “Oh. Hello there.”

“Good, you’re here. Now eat your dinner like you promised.”

Surreptitiously sliding the second box behind her monitor to Derpy, Karyn made a display of eating her sandwich. “Happy now?”

“Looks more like a lunch than a dinner.”

“Well, I was supposed to be eating with my dieting friend, but she’s a little late. I have fries too.” She displayed the box.

“All right, all right, I guess you don’t have an eating disorder.”

“Did you find what you wrote during your diet?”

Derpy managed to slide the box to her and open it. She was inclined to agree with Karyn’s father that it wasn’t really a proper supper. She listened to him as she ate.

“You won’t believe how little you can eat and not starve. You look at a meal that’s only four hundred calories and you think that it can’t be enough. But all the nutritional charts say it is. So you do it, and you’re amazed. Just put something in you, enough to absorb the acid that’s in there, and it’ll be enough.

“But of course your rational side still has to deal with the actual hunger pains. Well, there’s a couple of things you can do about that. The first is to enjoy them. I used to pretend that every grumble of my stomach was churning away a little fat from my waist. That gave me the impetus to hang on to the next meal or snack time. I found also that if I stuck to the diet, the pains lessened. When I backslid and indulged for one meal, I’d be extra hungry for the next. That’s not fair, but it’s true.

“Ultimately it’s about what you want more, to lose the weight or to keep eating. That sounds like motivational crap, but it’s true, and it’s not meant to be rhetorical. Your friend might not be ready. She might want to keep eating more than she wants to be healthy. You have to live with that and not press her too hard. Forcing someone to make a choice is always a temporary solution. Because you can’t take care of someone their whole life. Once they’re back in charge, if they haven’t made the choice, they’ll go back to their old ways.”

Derpy wanted to fly out in front of the monitor and argue, but even if it wouldn’t put her secret at risk, she couldn’t. He was right. She just wished he weren’t so blunt.

“Of course,” he finished, “all this was what worked for me, and I have a very direct view of the world. Since your friend’s a woman, she might need a different outlook, not so cold.”

“Thanks again, Dad,” said Karyn. “It’s been a big help.”

“Yeah, well, I also wanted to keep you on long enough to make sure that you digested the food and didn’t bring it up.”

One more eye-roll and a good-bye later, Derpy was able to come out. “I guess I have a lot of work to do.”

“You do, but I’ll be there for you all the way. We have our pact, we have our plan, and we have time.”

They hugged, and started together on their journey.

Author's Note

Preview ahoy!

“Ooh, I’ll send her a tube of horn wax. She’ll like that.”

“What does that do?”

“It makes a unicorn’s horn waxy and shiny.” Derpy ran into the bathroom and got the tube.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hello yourself, whipper-snapper. What’s that you got there with you? Some kind of baby dragon?”

“No, she’s my friend. She’s called a human, and her name is Karyn.”

Granny Smith looked down at her knitting. “Well, if she’s a friend, I guess that’s all right. And you are?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy took a look at the dried apples. “Sweet Apple Acres, huh? I didn’t think they sent much to Canterlot.”

“This was sent by a special train.”

“Really? Cool. What’s the occasion?”

Look forward to it!

40: Mommie Derpest

“Ah, another beautiful day on Earth,” Derpy said as she appeared.

“Maybe you should look outside before you say that.” Karyn pointed at the window. It was dreary and foggy outside, the kind of cold and clammy fog that comes on warm winter days.

“Well, another day that a pegasus pony would be really useful if you’d only let me control the weather for you.”

“Not a chance.”

Derpy had gotten into the habit of inspecting Karyn’s dorm room on arrival each week in a subtle effort to get her friend to be neater. It was mostly in order, but the closet door was open a crack, so Derpy went over to shut it.

“Hey, what’s this?” she said. “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to open your mail as soon as you get it? It’s insulting to the carrier if you don’t.”

“Well, I know what’s in that one, and I wanted to wait until tomorrow.”

“Why? Is it something you don’t want me to see?”

“Actually, yes,” said Karyn. “I hoped keeping it out of sight would have put it out of mind as well. It’s a care package from my mother.”

“You don’t want me to know she cares about you?”

“It’s not that. A care package is a gift that you give someone you love just because, and it’s usually mostly food. It’s probably full of cheeses and dried fruits and nuts.”

Derpy perked up. “Food? Well, crack it open!”

“You’re on a diet, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

Karyn took the box and put it back in the closet, shutting the door tightly this time. “How did you do anyway?”

“I was honest and good. I’ve got a list of what I ate.”

“All right. I was good too. And if you don’t eat from the package, then I’ll have it for this week and I won’t have to spend as much on food. So leaving it alone helps us both.”

Derpy relented. “Although, if we are going to want to avoid the temptation, and if we are going to keep me to my dieting routine, and if we do want to go somewhere where you won’t have to spend money, want to go to Equestria today?”

“That sounds like three good reasons.”

Karyn mounted, and they went through their usual routine. As they descended, Derpy said, “I’d like to send one of those packages to Dinky. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea.”

“I can get most of the things that were in your package.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be the same,” said Karyn. “It doesn’t even have to be food. Maybe just some reminders of home.”

“Ooh, I’ll send her a tube of horn wax. She’ll like that.”

“What does that do?”

“It makes a unicorn’s horn waxy and shiny.” Derpy ran into the bathroom and got the tube.

“Did she leave that here or something?”

“No. I use it on my wings. It’s the same stuff as wing wax, and it’s a bit cheaper.”

Karyn briefly wondered if she meant a small amount cheaper, or the actual currency. Derpy continued to rummage around the house for items, throwing them in a box.

“Looks pretty good,” said Karyn. “Now all we have to do is to send it.”

“If only we knew a mailmare.”

“Well, I didn’t mean for you to carry it there yourself and now.”

Derpy was already putting on her uniform. “Why not? Don’t you want to see her?”

“I suppose I do. But can we afford the train?”

“You’re the one who can’t spend money. I’m the one who’s watching what she eats. Try to get it straight.”

Derpy grinned to show that she was joking, and they headed to the station.

As the train pulled out, Karyn said, “Do you think it’s all right to drop in on her unannounced?”

“Hmm, you may be right. I should write her a letter first to tell her I’m coming.” Derpy pulled out a pencil and pad and scribbled a note. “There. Now I’ll deliver that first, and it won’t be unannounced.”

Karyn just shook her head.

When they reached Dinky’s school, Derpy slipped the note under her door and waited. As soon as they heard Dinky trot over, pick it up, and read, “Coming for a visit. Mommy,” they opened the door. Dinky shook her head in the same way that Karyn had.

“Do you guys have water in your ears or something?” Derpy asked.

“No, it just means we’re happy around you,” said Karyn.

Dinky hugged her mother and friend and invited them in. “What brings you to Canterlot? More shopping?”

“No,” said Derpy, “giving things away. To you. Karyn told me all about this really nice tradition on Earth where mommies send their daughters boxes full of goodies when they miss them. The daughters, not the boxes.”

Derpy passed the box over to Dinky, who opened it with her magic. “Ooh, horn wax, thank you, Mommy! This will really help with all the extra work Princess Celestia has been giving us.”

“Extra work? Are you falling behind?”

“No, but I think she’s still singling me out anyway. Of course, everypony else says the same thing. In any case, we all get the impression that she wants us to buckle down and really learn as much as we can as soon as possible. Having my inspiration here will help.” She sidled up to Karyn.

“That’ll be nice. You always do seem to work better when she’s here. I’ll leave you two alone then.”

“Wait,” said Karyn. “Where are you going?”

“I figure that if I leave, I can go back to missing Dinky, which means I can get her another care package!”

Smiling, she walked out the door.

“Your mom is so crazy sometimes,” Karyn said.

“Yeah, I know. But I love her.”

“Did you know that when you were really little? I mean, that your mother was kind of different from other ponies?”

Dinky looked sideways. “If I did, I didn’t really care. I had a lot of good foals I went to school with, and a good teacher, and they didn’t make fun of me that I noticed. If anything, it was the adult ponies that teased her more, but she kept me sheltered.”

Karyn nodded.

“What was your mom like?”

“Oh, not nearly as fun as yours. She had to work, same as your mom, and I think she resented it a little. She was always getting on me about cleaning my room. Come to think of it, Derpy does that now. Maybe she thinks she’s my surrogate.”

Dinky chuckled. “Or that you’re mine.”

“Could be. So what are we studying?”

Dinky trotted over to her desk and pulled out her notes. “Perception spells. Like how to tell what’s inside a box without opening it.”

“It’s a good thing your mom didn’t know that you were studying that subject when she brought in the care package. She would have given you a pop quiz.”

“Ha, ha. You’re probably right. But it could be a good test anyway. See if you can put something in the box that I wouldn’t recognize, maybe something that we don’t have in Equestria. Then I’ll try to spot it.”

Karyn dug around in her purse and found her lipstick. Figuring that she’d never seen a pony accentuate her lips, it might fit the bill. She put it in the package with the rest and challenged Dinky to find it.

She furrowed her brow and glowed her horn. “I can’t tell exactly what it is. It looks like some kind of pen. But I can definitely pick it out from the other things. It’s on the left hand side, about three inches from the box wall.”

“Wow, that’s cool. You can really see it?”

“Not exactly, but human objects have a different feel to them from the things my mommy gave me. That was so nice of her. Was it really your idea?”

Karyn shook her head. “My mom sent me one, so yours got the notion.”

“Well, it was nice anyway.”

“I wonder if that’s why she tries to be such a good mother.”

Dinky was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that because she never knew her mom, your grandmother, maybe she just wants to try so hard to get it right and make her proud.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Now it was Karyn’s turn to be confused. “Has she said anything to you?”

“No, but I’ve heard stories about my mom. From grandpa, when he was alive, and from other ponies who knew her.”

“What was she like?”

Dinky hopped over to the bed and made herself comfortable. “From what I understand, she was very. . . outspoken. Which is a nice way of saying that she didn’t take any guff from anypony. She was tough as nails and even went to work for a while when grandpa was sick or hurt sometimes.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. And they said she had very strong hooves. She could take a straight bar and bend it into a horseshoe, and could hoofwrestle an earth pony and win. And even though she only owned two dresses, she would always put one of them on if a guest came to the house.”

“Why did she do that?” asked Karyn.

“She and grandpa didn’t have a lot of money to go to formal events. So I think she wanted to have an occasion to wear them.”

“That’s so sweet. I should ask Derpy for more stories about her.”

Dinky scowled. “I’m not sure that she knows too many. You know how she is about grandpa.”

“I think she does. I went with her on her mail route one day, and there’s a pony with the same name that she delivers to. It’s a nice tribute to her mother. But I still wish she had known her. No, not even that. It’s just that both of us have such wonderful mothers, and she deserves one too.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet. Yes, it would be nice to hear more stories about Grandma Dancey. But the only pony I know from that time is Princess Celestia.”

“Yeah,” Karyn muttered. “Hey, what about Granny Smith, the matron of the Apple family? She’s old enough that she might have known your grandmother.”

“I never thought of that. We should go see her.” Dinky started packing a saddlebag and heading for the door.

“You mean right now? Shouldn’t we wait for your mom? And how will we get to Ponyville?”

“Train, same as always. And we don’t need to tell mom, it’s supposed to be for her. And yes, now.”

Karyn wanted to protest, but Dinky was already halfway out the door. Finally she thought of something. “But you know that your mother will catch us. She always does when we try to sneak out.”

“You’re right. Hang on.” She levitated a hat onto Karyn’s head. “There. Now you’re disguised. Come on.”

Matter-of-factly, Karyn said, “You are your mother’s daughter.” But she left with her.

Despite Karyn’s fear, they reached the train station without incident and took the train back to Ponyville.

Apple Bloom was repairing a fence at the edge of Sweet Apple Acres when they approached. She wasn’t a close friend of Dinky’s, but they knew each other’s name and were cordial to one another.

“Howdy!” she said. “What brings you round the farm? Most of our crops ain’t for sale right now in the season.”

“Actually,” said Dinky, “we were hoping we could talk to your grandmother. Maybe hear some old stories.”

“Really? Well, I’ll lend you my hair ribbon. Maybe with her eyesight she’ll think you’re me, and then she’d tell them to you instead of me. Not that I don’t love her, but I must have heard them all a million times by now.”

Karyn grinned. “We’ll take that chance. Is she around?”

“Granny’s mostly retired now. She doesn’t even sort apples on cider-making day anymore. But she sits upstairs in the house and watches the ranch. She’s the one mentioned this fence needed mending.” Apple Bloom pointed toward the second-floor window. Dinky and Karyn spotted the elderly pony rocking in her chair.

“Thanks. We’ll go talk with her.”

The old boards of the house squeaked as they climbed the stairs, and the old bones of Granny Smith creaked as well.

“Hello, Miss Smith,” said Dinky.

“Hello yourself, whipper-snapper. What’s that you got there with you? Some kind of baby dragon?”

“No, she’s my friend. She’s called a human, and her name is Karyn.”

Granny Smith looked down at her knitting. “Well, if she’s a friend, I guess that’s all right. And you are?”

“My name’s Dinky, Dinky Hooves.” She hesitated as she realized that she was imposing on a relative stranger. “I was just wondering, since you’ve been around so long, if you might have known my grandmother. Maybe you can tell me something about her.”

“Well, sure I knew your grandam.”

“That’s great! What was she like?”

Granny Smith leered. “She was the orneriest, meanest, twistedest pony I ever knew and no mistake! Kind of mare who would kick you in the teeth so much as look at you.”

Dinky’s jaw dropped. “Really? Everypony always said she was nice. Tough, but nice.”

“Well, of course nopony wants to hurt a little’un’s feelings, but them’s the facts. Now you take old Mr. Waddle f’r’instance. Kindest feller you’d want to know. Always sayin’ hi and smilin’. Well, one day he passed by and sure as I’m sitting here your grandmother comes right out and says, ‘Can’t stand that stallion.’ Didn’t care who heard it either.”

Karyn wanted to stop her. Dinky looked as if she were about to cry. But Granny Smith was still talking.

“No wonder your daddy left home as soon as he was old enough to work.”

“Wait, what?” Dinky picked her head up. She thought back and realized that she had never specified who she was talking about. “I’m sorry, Miss Smith, I don’t mean that grandma. I meant my other one, Dancey Hooves.”

Granny Smith perked up at the name. “Oh! Well, that’s a pony of a different color! Gray, if I’m not mistaken. Poor Dancey. Shame what happened to her.”

“You knew her?”

“Dancey Hooves. Haven’t thought about her in a long time. Not the brightest apple in the basket, but you couldn’t tell her that. Kept a flower garden of chrysanthemums, every color of the rainbow. Wasn’t stingy about giving them away, neither. Yes, she was a darn fine pony. Shame what happened to her.”

Karyn put her hand on Dinky’s back. “It wasn’t entirely a shame. A very nice pony came out of it. No, two very nice ponies.”

Granny smiled, but then fell asleep for a minute or two. Karyn and Dinky weren’t sure if they should leave, so they tried to steal away quietly. As they reached the door, she woke back up and said, “You tell your mother I said hello, now, you hear?”

“I will, Miss Smith,” said Dinky. “You know, since she never had a mother, maybe you could sort of adopt her.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like to do that. I know I don’t look it, but I’m awful old. Nopony should have to lose two mothers.”

There was nothing else to say to that.

They walked back downstairs. “Dinky?”

“Yes, Karyn.”

“How old is Granny Smith?”

“Ooh, I don’t know. She was around for the founding of Ponyville, so quite a while. But I think that she’s the type who’s just too set in her ways to leave. When she does, it’ll be on her terms.”

“I guess some people are like that,” said Karyn.

Dinky stopped at the door to the house. “When grandpa died, he’d been sick a real long time. Mommy took care of him as best as she could. The day it finally happened, he laid down in bed and wouldn’t talk at all. He was very pale. But he kept breathing. We’d watch his chest go up and down, over and over, for hours. At the foot of his bed there was a clock, and I’d watch it tick away. I didn’t think he could see the clock. The hands kept moving, and his chest kept rising and falling. At the stroke of midnight he let out one more breath. That’s when Mommy said that it was Grandma Dancey’s birthday, and wasn’t it nice that we were all together for it.”

“It’s just so wrong, all that your mother has had to go through. I don’t know how she’s stayed so nice. I think if I had all that happen to me, I’d be bitter and mean, the way that Granny Smith described your other grandmother.”

“My mommy’s a special pony all right. We should do something nice for her.” They passed by where Apple Bloom was still working on the fence. “Are you sure that there’s nothing for sale right now?”

“Well, we do have some candied apples that Big Macintosh put up in jars, but they haven’t sold too well. Most ponies like to buy fresh.”

Dinky negotiated with her until they agreed on a price. It wasn’t expensive, and she decided that she could afford to buy it and still have enough to get them back to Canterlot on the train. Karyn objected to a gift of food.

“I’ve been trying to get your mother to diet,” she explained.

“Maybe we can tell her not to eat it. Or to ration it out over several days.”

“We can try, I suppose. But in any case we ought to get back before she misses us.”

Soon they were back on the train again, and Karyn commented that she felt like a rubber band.

“Back and forth, Ponyville to Canterlot. Probably Derpy will take me on one more time before we pop home.”

They went back to Dinky’s room to find Derpy waiting for them.

“Hey, you two. Where’ve you been? I got you lots more stuff.”

Dinky was hesitant about revealing her truancy, but Karyn came to her rescue. “Dinky’s been practicing perception spells, and since she’s so familiar with this room anyway, we figured that it would be better if she got to a new environment.”

“Then what’s that jar?”

This time it was Karyn’s turn to stammer, and Dinky’s turn to bail her out. “I picked this up while we were out. I thought it would be a nice gift for you.”

Derpy took a look at the dried apples. “Sweet Apple Acres, huh? I didn’t think they sent much to Canterlot.”

“This was sent by a special train.”

“Really? Cool. What’s the occasion?”

Karyn stood between the two ponies. “On Earth, we have a holiday set aside every year to celebrate mothers, where we give them gifts and cards. It’s not for another couple of months there, but if you don’t have that in Equestria, it might be a good tradition to start.”

Derpy looked at her daughter. “That’s so sweet. Although Karyn won’t like it that you gave me a gift of food.”

“She already told me so,” said Dinky. “Hey, what if you didn’t eat it?”

“You mean just keep it around?”

“I was thinking, what if you put the dried apples in a dish and lit a candle in the middle. It would probably give a nice smell to a room.”

Derpy stared off into space, picturing the image. “That would be nice, I think.”

“Say, Mommy, are you ever sad that you didn’t have a mommy of your own? Karyn and I were talking about it and thinking about asking some older ponies to adopt you.”

“Oh, no! Don’t ever do that.”

Karyn was surprised at her strong reaction. “Would it really be so bad? I have a mother who loves me and I’d want the same for you.”

“I figured something out a long time ago. Everypony has a certain amount of love given to them in their life. I saved up all of the love that should have been given to me as a filly, and I got it back from Dinky. If somepony adopted me now, they’d be giving me love that could have come from her. Or from you.”

Karyn and Dinky weren’t sure that Derpy’s idea made sense, but it was sweet, so they indulged in a group hug.

“And another thing,” said Derpy. “If it were an older pony, I’d have to deal with losing them eventually. I don’t think I could handle that.”

“That was her opinion as well.”

“Whose?”

Dinky quickly changed the subject. “Hey, what about if Princess Celestia adopted you?! You could call her mom and she could come visit you and bring you things, and there’d be no chance that you’d lose her.”

“No way! I’m not getting anywhere near the crown again. I’ve got my own little kingdom right here, with one subject, and that’s enough.”

That was too much for Dinky, and another group hug was inescapable.

Author's Note

Rushing to get this preview in before deadline!

“Whew,” said Derpy. “I hope this counts as my exercise for the day.”

“Well, I think technically you’re supposed to work out above and beyond what you would normally do. Like, if you have to go to the market to buy food, you’d walk around there, but you’d do that even when you weren’t trying to lose weight, so you need to do it again.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn grinned. “You are really devious sometimes. All right, we’ll follow your plan. Wait, won’t you be able to go and come back without time having passed here?”

“Hmm, you’re right. Actually, this will be a good chance to test how well we can control that. If I consider that I’m going home, and not just popping back to grab something, time should flow. We’ll see how that works.”

Karyn agreed to Derpy’s experiment, and let her go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So your friend is one of these unicorns?”

“Well, no,” said Karyn. “She’s a pegasus pony.”

“You mean she has both wings and magic? I’m not sure that’s fair.”

See what I did there?

41: Take Me Out to the Derp Game

“So what do you think?” asked Karyn.

Derpy looked at the small paper objects held out to her. “I don’t know. Didn’t we already do this ball game of yours?”

“That was a completely different game, with a completely different ball. And more importantly, we’re not going to play, we’re just going to sit and watch.”

“Well, I like the sitting-and-watching part, but—hey! Did you spend money on those tickets? You know you’re supposed to be budgeting.”

Karyn went over to her computer. “I have been. Don’t worry. These were given to the college by the team trying to promote it and get people to come to the game.”

“That sounds a little shady.”

“They figure that if people come for free, that they’ll buy food and drinks and souvenirs. I won’t do that, so I won’t lose any money.”

Derpy was still a little skeptical. “Tell me about the game.”

“Well, this one you can use your hands for, and you kind of have to. One side throws a ball, the other tries to hit it with a stick. It gets complicated from there, but that’s the basic idea. This game is just training, so we won’t see any of the big stars, but it’ll be fun anyway.”

“All right, we’ll go check it out.”

They had to take the light rail, but it was not crowded and Derpy was able to ride without getting in anyone’s way. The ballpark was of the “retro-modern” architectural school, scaled down for the minor leagues. There was a picnic area and an old-fashioned press box, but the seats were padded and enlarged for the growing waistlines of the population. Karyn’s tickets led them down the third-base line and Karyn was pleased to see that they had end seats.

“You take the one by the aisle and just keep your wings folded in. Watch for passersby in the aisle and don’t bump anyone and we’ll be fine.”

Other fans filed into the park, but an unwelcome guest arrived as well. The sky, already patched with clouds, grew ominous and heavy. The wind blew cold against Karyn’s cheek. She held out hope, but soon enough drops were stinging her and the ground crew was rolling a tarp onto the infield.

“This sucks,” she said, taking out her phone and connecting to the internet. “I didn’t check the forecast. Now it says that this will be around for four hours or so. They’ll delay the game, and maybe wind up canceling it.”

Derpy said nothing.

“And it always takes longer. Even if the rain slows down to a drizzle, they’ll wait until it’s all gone away, then taking the tarp off and letting the players warm back up takes forever too.”

Derpy continued to say nothing.

“Oh, no! Don’t give me that look. I can feel your look. Just forget about it. You have to let storms happen when they happen. It could mess up the whole ecosystem.”

Derpy remained silent.

“It’s not that I like getting washed out, but everyone’s going to notice if the clouds get pushed out of the way.”

Derpy, very deliberately, sat back in her seat.

“All right,” said Karyn.

“You mean it?”

“But don’t be too obvious. Try to just thin them out a little.” It was too late. Derpy was out of her chair and into the air before Karyn could finish her sentence. She leaned back and watched the sky. No one else saw any deliberate action, but it was certainly unusual for weather. The still clouds started churning and rolling, but seemed to brighten as the sun peeked through.

It was closer to ten minutes than ten seconds, but a break let through the sun. With the newfound brightness Karyn thought she saw a flash of reflection from across the field.

“Who brings binoculars to a minor-league park? You can see just fine anywhere in the field.” But she put it out of her mind as she felt Derpy return to her seat.

“Whew,” said Derpy. “I hope this counts as my exercise for the day.”

“Well, I think technically you’re supposed to work out above and beyond what you would normally do. Like, if you have to go to the market to buy food, you’d walk around there, but you’d do that even when you weren’t trying to lose weight, so you need to do it again.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

Karyn smirked. “But since Sunday’s supposed to be a day of rest after all. We’ll call it even.”

“Hooray!”

“Actually, they used to enforce the ‘day of rest’ thing so much that they didn’t even play ball then.”

“So what did they do?” asked Derpy. “Just sit home and drink?”

“No, you couldn’t drink either. Humans were very restricted once upon a time. Some think it was better back then.”

“What do you think?”

Karyn pointed out to the ball field. “Here you’ve got families gathered, people laughing together on a sunny day—and we have you to thank for that—in a setting that could be right out of the olden days. We can preserve the good of the past as a subculture, rather than letting it fetter us. That’s just an opinion though.”

She went and bought drinks, making sure to get a diet soda for Derpy. She was back in her seat as the announcer started his pitch.

“Oh, dear.”

“What is it?” asked Derpy.

“I just realized. The local team has a mascot.”

“So?”

“Well, they’re called the broncos.”

Derpy watched as what was clearly, to her eyes, a human in a bad costume of something a little like an earth pony came out of a tunnel and began throwing T-shirts at the crowd. “I think I’m a little offended at that,” she said.

“You’re not the only one offended at sports mascots. Sometimes they change them, if they’re offensive to aboriginals for example. But you’ll have tough luck getting them to change that one.”

They settled back and watched the game. Derpy enjoyed the play even though it was frequently interrupted for more contests and presentations by the insulting pseudo-pony. They headed back to the light rail station chatting about the game. Karyn was deep in the reverie of conversation when she heard a voice behind her.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

The voice had a familiar greasy edge to it, and as she turned around she saw a familiar greasy face.

“Albert, was it?”

“That’s right. Funny weather we’re having too. We’re lucky that that storm passed by. Well, I shouldn’t say passed by. Disappeared is more like it.”

“Yes, lucky.” Karyn kept her answers short, not wanting to give anything away.

“And another strange thing. Most people covered their heads when those clouds rolled in. Only one was actually looking at the sky as if she expected it to clear.”

“Now how could you read expectations on my face from across the field?”

He puffed his cheeks out in a smile. “First, because I have an excellent pair of binoculars. Second, because I’m a detective, and it’s my job to see what the average person misses. And third, because you basically just confirmed that it was you.”

Karyn grimaced and returned to her policy of silence.

“I want to know how you knew that the weather would clear,” he continued. “Or did you cause it to clear? Because I think everyone would be very interested in acquiring that skill and putting it to good use.”

Karyn rolled over in her mind how best to respond. She thought about laughing at him and asking if he thought she was some sort of witch. She also considered just denying everything and telling him that he was making everything up. But, still wary of how he twisted words, she said “I have nothing to say.”

“What’s a ‘Derpy’?”

She tried to force her face to show no expression. He was clearly trying to psych her out, and she was not going to let him. But she would have to respond to that one. “I’m sorry, what was that word?”

“When you talk in public, people are allowed to listen. I’ve heard you talk about something called ‘Derpy.’ I want to know what it is.”

With the stress of the situation, Karyn’s mind took that moment to give her a clever play on words. “You must have heard ‘therapy,’ which is what you need.”

Albert laughed. “I know what I heard. I’m going to figure you out, Karyn.”

She didn’t like how he used her name, and walked off. Both she and Derpy held their tongues on the trip home in case Albert was following them. Once they reached the dorm and Derpy turned off her invisibility spell, they were able to show their fear and annoyance.

“I know I’m not supposed to disparage another species,” said Derpy, “but I do not like that guy.”

“Yeah, I wonder if you hate him or Mike more.”

Derpy pulled up at that. “It’s different. You have feelings for Mike, and you’re a friend, so I have to care a little. But this one, I don’t even know if he has any friends, and I have no sympathy for him.”

Karyn was about to respond when she saw a flash of light from outside the window. “What was that?”

A minute later, what it was became clear as Karyn’s e-mail popped up indicating a new message. It was a picture, zoomed in and grainy, but clearly showed Derpy, wings akimbo, in all her pegasus-ness. The text part of the message read, “Let’s talk. –A.”

“Oh, this is not good,” said Derpy. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“Do I have a choice?” Karyn put her coat on and went back outside. On the way out they discussed new strategy.

It didn’t take him long to find them. His grin was wide and annoying.

“Don’t you know that stalking and taking pictures of other people’s homes is illegal?” Karyn said.

“Nominally. But a detective, in enforcing the law, sometimes has to skirt it himself. All right, what is that?”

“What does it look like?”

“I’m assuming that it’s the reason for all your strange behavior. Is it intelligent? Does it speak?”

They were out of hearing range for anyone else, so Derpy got close to Albert’s ear. “She speaks quite well.”

The combination of the unexpectedness of the sound and the initial sibilance caused Albert to pull away and flop like an oversized fish. “What is that?”

“Oh, but I thought you knew everything,” said Karyn.

Derpy slapped him lightly with a wing, making him freak out more. “How are you, or it, or she, whatever, doing that? How can you make something invisible?”

“Magic.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Oh?” Karyn smirked. “Derpy, he doesn’t think that magic is real. Why don’t we show him?”

A second later, Derpy was using her spot cancellation spell to remove Karyn from frozen time. They looked at Albert’s unmoving body. “What should we do with him?” asked Karyn.

“Let’s start by drawing on his face. No one likes that.”

“Good idea. I’ll get a Sharpie.”

One was found, and she clumsily drew a mustache and glasses on his face. “You have a lot of canvas to work with there,” said Derpy.

Karyn laughed at that. “What next?”

“Well, do we want to unfreeze him and let him notice that first?”

“We can do that. Let me take out my compact mirror.”

They set up and Derpy restarted time. Albert could feel the change to his face, and from his perspective saw Karyn jump from one position to another, holding up the small mirror and showing the humiliating defacing.

“Or how about this?” said Karyn. Derpy used the spell again and they talked strategy.

“Turn his clothes inside out!”

“OK, but only his shirt. I’m not taking off his pants.”

“Fair enough,” said Derpy. Albert was wearing a collared shirt with buttons, so Karyn switched it to not only inside-out but backwards as well. She then got a more devious idea and buttoned one cuff to the other and tied his shoelaces together as well.

“Go ahead.” Derpy again started time, and Albert, suddenly straight-jacketed, flailed around until he tripped. “Whoops!” said Karyn, but Derpy was already on it, stopping time before he hit the ground.

“We don’t really want to hurt him.”

“You’re right.” Karyn picked him up and propped him against the wall of the nearest building, then untied the shoelaces. “Let him go.”

When he started moving again, Albert had the vertigo of having his perspective changed. What was down was now sideways, and his momentum was gone.

“Had enough?” said Karyn.

“Yes! But I still want to know how you did it.”

“Ugh, you are really relentless.” She watched for his reaction, and saw none. Derpy turned visible. “Why’d you stop time again?”

“Because as fun as this is, it’s not solving our problem. We have to face it. Another human knows too much about me. And that means that rather than trying to stop it, we have to adjust to the situation.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” said Derpy. “Part of the problem is that he doesn’t know what I am. He’s never heard of Equestria. I’m going to explain things to Twilight Sparkle. She’ll know what to do. In the meantime, I suggest you tell him about ponies.”

“You’re going to leave me alone? What if he tries something? And what if Twilight says that the only thing to do is to cut Earth off from Equestria?”

“I’ll leave you the time-stop spell. That’ll give you a means of self-defense, and an incentive for Twilight to let me come back.”

Karyn grinned. “You are really devious sometimes. All right, we’ll follow your plan. Wait, won’t you be able to go and come back without time having passed here?”

“Hmm, you’re right. Actually, this will be a good chance to test how well we can control that. If I consider that I’m going home, and not just popping back to grab something, time should flow. We’ll see how that works.”

Karyn agreed to Derpy’s experiment, and let her go. She then restarted time.

“All right,” she said, “I’m going to try to explain this to you. Let’s go somewhere.”

Karyn found a coffee shop where they could be given privacy without being out of the public eye. After making Albert buy her a coffee and pastry, she went to a booth and had him take out his tablet computer.

“What are you doing?”

“You need to watch this show. A couple of episodes at least.”

Spending a few minutes to think of the selections, Karyn called up videos that showed ponies using magic in Equestria.

When it was over, Albert said, “It’s not bad. What’s the point?”

Karyn reflected on the fact that he wasn’t such a lost cause that he didn’t like the show. “Equestria exists. It’s real. All the ponies from this show actually live and breathe in an alternate dimension.”

“Come on.”

“Do you want me to show you some more spells?”

“No, that’s all right!” he said quickly. He looked at the tablet. Karyn had a moment of sympathy for him. His entire outlook on life had to adjust. The world was no longer a place where everything could be explained by simple logic. “But how did they get here?”

“It’s because they have magic, so they can break the rules of the universe. We can’t do that.”

“So your friend is one of these unicorns?”

“Well, no,” said Karyn. “She’s a pegasus pony.”

“You mean she has both wings and magic? I’m not sure that’s fair.”

“Hey, you just found out about this. You can’t tell about the rules.”

Albert shrugged. Karyn explained the backstory of how Lyra developed the world-crossing spell and how Derpy modified unicorn magic so that everypony could use it. Albert raised his eyebrows at that.

“Wait, every pony? Really? They say that?”

“Yes. Don’t let’s get into language. There’s a whole thing about that. But anyway, now you know.”

Albert poured more cream into his coffee. “I’m still not sure I believe you.”

Karyn sighed. Right at that moment, though, Derpy came back and tapped her on the shoulder. “Let’s go back. I’ll show you the pony.”

They left the coffee shop and returned to the secluded area. Derpy turned off her invisibility. Even though he was coming to appreciate the truth, it was still nothing compared to seeing Derpy in the flesh. His eyes popped and he reeled.

“Nice to meet you,” said Derpy, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“I explained everything. Albert, Derpy went back to Equestria to talk to Twilight Sparkle about you. Did you come up with anything?”

“Yes.” Derpy reached into her bag. “We agreed that you know too much and that the only solution is to turn you into a pony as well and keep you prisoner in Equestria. Hold still.” She pointed a spell at him.

“What?! No!” Albert panicked and tried to run, and even Karyn was a little surprised.

Derpy burst out laughing. “Gotcha.”

Karyn joined her in the laugh. “All right, that was funny.”

“You wouldn’t think so if it were you,” said Albert.

“Well, now you know what it’s like to be scared,” said Derpy. “But I do have another one that I am going to use. Don’t bother trying to run. It’s already been tuned to you.”

He cringed and backed away anyway, and Derpy’s spell emerged as a sphere of light that kept expanding until it was out of sight.

“What did that do?” asked Karyn.

“Yes, what?” asked Albert.

Derpy stared at him. “Since you don’t respect anyone else’s right to privacy, you just gave up that right yourself. From now on, everything you do or say will be available to be known by everypony in Equestria. There’ll always be somepony watching you, wherever you go, so if you try to tell anyone, we’ll know, and we’ll stop you.”

“But why shouldn’t everyone know?”

“If Princess Celestia and Princess Luna decide to reveal Equestria to the human world, that’s fine. But it’s their decision, not yours.”

He swallowed. “May I go now?”

“Fine. But we’ll be watching.”

Shaking his head, he waddled off.

Karyn and Derpy went back to her dorm. “Well, today was certainly exciting, wasn’t it?” said Karyn.

“Yeah. The baseball game was fun. I might go to another.”

“That really wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know,” said Derpy. “But I want to spy on Albert and make sure he’s not doing anything he shouldn’t be.”

“You were serious about that?”

“You didn’t think I was?”

Karyn was shocked. “I thought you might have been bluffing. When he first got suspicious I asked you to erase his memory and you were so reluctant to do that.”

“That’s different. Messing with another person’s mind is wrong. Albert can still do anything he used to. He just can’t hide or lie about it. No, it’s not completely fair, but he shouldn’t have meddled with things that he couldn’t comprehend.”

Derpy found another spell in her bag and turned it on. It was reminiscent of the flashback spell that Trixie had used, except that there was sound as well. Albert was walking down some street, constantly looking over his shoulder. He was clearly nervous.

“I’m still not sure I feel right about this,” said Karyn.

“Really? I was thinking of getting some popcorn. But you’re probably right. Enough ponies will have the voyeuristic urge that somepony will be keeping an eye on him, and even if not, he won’t try anything, which is the point.”

“So let’s just watch a regular movie.”

Derpy acceded, and moments later they were relaxing on Karyn’s bed.

“Hey, Derpy?”

“Yes.”

“Did you mean what you said before?”

Derpy raised her head. “I said a lot of stuff before.”

“About Celestia and Luna maybe opening up Equestria to Earth.”

“Oh, that. Well, I mean, it’s true that it’s nopony’s decision but theirs. But I’m not sure they ever would. Maybe.”

Karyn leaned back. “I don’t know how I’d feel about it if they did. It would be nice to not have to hide and use spells like that one we had to today. But then again, I kind of like being special.”

“Aw. Don’t worry about that. No matter what happens, even if Equestria and Earth become the same place and everypony and every human learns to live together, or even if there’s a big fight between the worlds, I’ll still be here with you, every week.”

“Is that a promise, or a threat?”

Derpy rolled over and hugged her. “It’s a fact.”

Author's Note

Next week is chapter 42! Life, the Derpyverse, and Everything!

“Are you ready now? Or do you want to put on your ball gown and show yourself off?”

“No, I’m good. Let’s go.”

She mounted Derpy, who got ready to take off. “Are you sitting a little differently? Your weight feels shifted from how it usually is. You are! You’re being extra straight and prim. Seriously, the Crystal Empire isn’t that big a deal.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You were right.”

“Told you. Oh, there were hot drinks available if you wanted.”

“Actually, I’m more bored than anything,” said Karyn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight put a hoof on Derpy’s shoulder. “I understand. It’s always like that. For example, when I first became a princess, I was worried that I was losing a part of me. I wasn’t a unicorn anymore, I was an alicorn. Even though all that was added was a pair of wings, I was separate and divided from my brother, my parents, everypony. In time, I learned to live with it.”

“I guess you have,” said Derpy. “I mean, in all the time since Karyn’s been coming here, we’ve never mentioned your wings or your being a princess. It’s almost as if we were completely unaware of it and just treated you as the unicorn you used to be right up until this week.”

I had to include that last line in the preview while it's timely!

42: The Crystal Derpire

Karyn watched Derpy across the breakfast table eating the fruit salad and cottage cheese that she had selected to start the day on the right foot.

“Are you chewing slowly to try to make it last longer,” Karyn asked, “or have you got something on your mind?”

“It’s the latter, I’m afraid.”

“Well, tell me about it and I’ll see if I can help.”

Derpy put down her fork. “Remember last week when I needed Twilight’s help to set up that monitoring spell on the fly?”

“Yes.”

“She wants a favor in return.”

Karyn blinked. “Is that all? Well, you can handle that.”

“But she wants it today.”

“All right. I’ll get my coat. What do we have to do? Scrub the library? Clean out Owlowysius’s cage? Listen to a lecture on magic safety? So long as I don’t have to sit next to Spike, I’m all right.”

Derpy tried to help Karyn with her coat, by way of apology. “Nothing like that. We’re supposed to carry the interlibrary loan books to the Crystal Empire and bring her back some that she wants.”

“The Crystal Empire? But that’s awesome! I’ve always wanted to see there.”

“You have?”

Karyn realized what she said. “OK, technically I haven’t always wanted to see there, but ever since the idea was presented, I have.”

“That works for me! Can you carry your share of the books? This is Twilight we’re talking about, so it’ll probably be a cartload.”

“We can handle that. What should I wear for the Crystal Empire?” She danced over to her jewelry box and started poring through it.

“It’s not formal, Karyn. I don’t think anypony will care.”

“But I can’t go in jeans and a T-shirt.”

Derpy thought she was being silly, since for all the Crystal Ponies knew, jeans and T-shirts were the height of fashion among humans. Still, Karyn found her paste earrings and her real pearl necklace and put them on over a blouse and mid-length skirt.

“Are you ready now? Or do you want to put on your ball gown and show yourself off?”

“No, I’m good. Let’s go.”

She mounted Derpy, who got ready to take off. “Are you sitting a little differently? Your weight feels shifted from how it usually is. You are! You’re being extra straight and prim. Seriously, the Crystal Empire isn’t that big a deal.”

They transported to Equestria, and Derpy let Karyn off as they headed to the library, where Twilight welcomed them.

“Thanks for taking these books for me. I’d love another chance to visit the library of the Crystal Empire, but there’s just so much to do around here, and I’m rushing to get it done so that when you return, I’ll be able to dive into the books you bring back with reckless abandon. Also, if I went there I might not leave.”

“You sure do love your books,” said Derpy.

“That’s an understatement,” said Karyn. “What are these books we are bringing up?”

“History books, mostly. Even though the Crystal Empire has been back for a few years now, they’re still catching up learning about what happened during their thousand-year hiatus. They have the highlights, but they want the real pony-interest stories.”

“We’d better get going before this history becomes outdated,” said Derpy.

“Thanks again.”

“Thank you,” said Karyn. “You really helped us out of a jam last week.”

Karyn and Derpy walked to the train station and found a seat. Trains to the Crystal Empire always had extra cars for luggage and freight, since they were relatively infrequent and since the empire was so far away. They deposited the books in among the other chattels.

It was a long trip up north, and Karyn watched hypnotized as the terrain started growing patches of snow, then banks of ice until there was more white than green in the fields, and at last there was nothing but a shining vista of ice that made the reflection of the sun hurt Karyn’s eyes.

“I will never understand how people can live in the permafrost like this. We have humans on Earth who do it, in Alaska and Siberia and Tierra del Fuego, but I wouldn’t want to.”

“But remember,” said Derpy, “that the Crystal Ponies don’t really live in the cold. Once you get into the area that their weather ponies control, it’s quite temperate.”

“Is that weather control? I don’t remember seeing any crystal pegasi.”

“But how else would they do it?”

Karyn thought. “Maybe the sun reflects off all the crystal there so much that it warms the empire.”

Once the train passed the border of the city, the harsh conditions outside changed to pleasant and bright. The train reached the station.

“Yes!” said Karyn. “It’s really the Crystal Empire!”

“Come on. Let’s get to the library.”

They waited by the baggage car for the case of books from Twilight to be unloaded, then wound their way through the city. Derpy was surprised that Karyn didn’t bump her nose into walls, since she was so busy looking at all the buildings.

Derpy navigated by map, finding the streets intuitive. “The layout makes much more sense than Canterlot, and certainly than that Mule city we saw. Everything’s a big circle.”

The librarian that greeted them was the same one that Karyn recognized. “I’d wondered if you had retired,” Karyn said.

“I missed a thousand years’ worth of work. I think I’m overdue.”

“Speaking of which,” said Derpy, “here are the books you wanted, and we have some to borrow as well?”

“That’s right. Just a moment.” She emerged a few seconds later with a tightly wrapped package. “I was told to inform you that it should not be opened until you pass it on to Miss Sparkle.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m a postal employee and I would never look inside a package trusted to me. Not even when I’m working pro bono.”

“You have so many wonderful books here,” said Karyn, “even though I can’t read all of them. Hey, Derpy? Why doesn’t the language spell work on these?”

“Good question. Maybe Twilight and Lyra don’t know the language they speak here, and so they couldn’t weave it into the spell. Maybe a translation primer is what’s in here.” She pointed at the package.

“She would like studying a new language.”

“Anyway, let’s get back to the train.”

Karyn’s mouth fell open. “Already? We just got here. I want to see the Empire.”

“But it’s a long ride back.”

“I know, but we can miss one train at least. How often do they run?”

“If you’ll excuse me,” said the librarian, “I happen to know that the next train leaves in an hour, but there won’t be another today.”

“You see?” said Derpy.

“But we still have some time. I have to at least see the Crystal Heart.”

“All right, we’ll see the Crystal Heart.”

They thanked the librarian again and left. They followed the circular roads to the center, where they presumed the Crystal Heart would be. As the spokes narrowed, they were less useful for buildings and a few public gardens came into view. Karyn stopped at some bushes.

“Ooh, crystal berries. Do you think they’re good to eat?”

“I don’t know.”

Karyn snickered. “Go on and try some. They’re probably good for a dieting pony.”

Derpy munched cautiously. “Not bad. A little sweet.”

Karyn picked up a handful. She was the type who always took the daintiest bite of any new food, and she licked the skin of one crystal berry before putting it to her teeth and barely scraping the skin off it.

“It’s very sweet!” she said. “I suppose that makes sense. Whatever sugars are in the berry would crystallize even more than usual.” She finished the one berry, but gave the rest to Derpy.

It was only a short walk from there to the Crystal Heart. “There it is,” said Derpy. “And I suppose it is impressive to see such concentrated power. It focuses all that happiness into magic to go all over Equestria. And it looks like a big candy.”

“Don’t eat it!”

“Sorry. I’m good with my diet, but I still get cravings.”

Karyn let that pass. “Do you think we can see it activate?”

“I doubt it. Don’t they only activate it during the Crystal Fair?”

A Crystal Pony stallion who was apparently the Heart’s attendant approached them. “Not anymore! So many ponies came by that we activate it whenever ponies want. Or when they bring their friends, like yours here.” He leaned in close to Derpy. “What is she, anyway? A griffin who lost her feathers?”

Derpy shook her head. “Anyway, could you activate it so we can see?”

The stallion blushed. “Well, I could. But it’s activated by love and friendship and happiness. It’s awfully intimate to do. Perhaps you and your friend would like to do it together.”

Derpy looked at Karyn, who held out her hand. Derpy put her hoof in it, and they walked forward. Neither really knew what to do, so they just held their linked extremities forward and concentrated.

The Crystal Heart took that as enough. A light poured forth from it and passed through Karyn and Derpy.

“Congratulations and thanks!” said the stallion. “Your friendship has helped spread a little bit of joy throughout all of Equestria.”

Neither of the girls heard him. They were too busy admiring each other.

Derpy’s body had become crystalline and reflected light in every direction. Her cutie mark now looked like pearls in a gray and foamy ocean, pale and milky. Her wings were swept back and each feather was outlined in bold colors.

Karyn had undergone a similar change. The crystal shine of her skin had smaller facets than Derpy’s, but her dull blonde hair had been pulled into an updo that looked like a puffed crown. Her skirt now had a constant billow and the pearl necklace seemed to have multiplied so that pearls now appeared all over her blouse.

“What happened?” said Karyn.

“I forgot that the heart makes everypony into Crystal Ponies.”

“It usually doesn’t,” the attendant said. “You two must have had some crystal berries. The effects you’re seeing are from the light of the Crystal Heart striking the crystals of the berries.”

“We did,” said Derpy.

From off in the distance, there was the sound of a train horn. “Derpy, we should go and catch that. This walk took longer than I thought. You still have the books for Twilight, right?”

“Of course. Come on, let’s go.”

They hurried to the station, but the train had to load and unload everything, so they had plenty of time. It afforded Derpy the chance to climb aboard and partake in her favorite train activity of pony-watching.

When they pulled out of the station, Karyn wondered aloud, “So, how long does this crystal thing last? And am I allowed to change my hairstyle?”

A Crystal Pony happened to be sitting across from them. “Once you stop eating crystal berries or get out of range of the Crystal Heart it lasts a few hours.”

“Thank you. We should take some pictures, Derpy, while we still look like this.”

“We can do that. If the train is fast enough, we’ll get there in plenty of time for me to find the camera.”

They chugged along, but after a few minutes they felt the train’s speed slacken. “Is there a stop up here?” asked Karyn.

“Not according to my map.”

Derpy peered out the window into the white. The vista of snow was no longer reflecting the sun, as dark gray clouds had rolled in. Snow blew in from all directions, and it was unclear if it was just wind picking up what was on the ground, or new snow falling from the sky.

The blizzard had come out of nowhere and piled snow so fast that the train had to stop. A conductor came through a few minutes later and said that the tracks ahead were impassible.

“Storms around here don’t usually last more than a few hours,” he said. “Once it passes through we’ll clear the tracks and get you on your way.”

There was general grumbling from the passengers, but Karyn had a satisfied look. “At least he came by and told us everything he knows. With humans, in a crisis situation they’re almost always too concerned with doing the work to fix it, when the people concerned would be happier just knowing what’s going on.”

“I suppose. It’s still no fun though. I want to get these books to Twilight. You know how it is when you’ve got a job to do and it just gnaws at you until you get it done.”

The heat on the train was working at least, but without the sound and the movement it felt colder. Karyn and Derpy huddled together in an embrace and took a nap. Derpy didn’t get deep into sleep, and became fully aware when a pony walked by passing out tea, coffee, and hot chocolate.

“Do you think I should wake her and see if she wants anything?” asked Derpy.

“Let her rest. I’m up front if you want anything else.”

An hour later, Karyn shifted and smacked her lips, coming to. “Are we moving?”

“Not yet. But the storm’s lessened a little.”

Karyn looked out the window. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Trust a pegasus. Another twenty minutes and the sun will be out.”

She kept her head pressed to the window and watched her breath fog the glass. As Derpy predicted, the snow stopped blowing around and soon became only a few flakes floating down.

“You were right.”

“Told you. Oh, there were hot drinks available if you wanted.”

“Actually, I’m more bored than anything,” said Karyn. I don’t suppose we could open that package and read Twilight’s books.”

“Under no circumstances! Besides, they’re packed away in the luggage car.”

Karyn shrugged and went back to the window. After a few minutes, she said, “Is that a pony out there?”

“Can’t be. Nopony’s foolish enough to—“ Derpy had looked out herself. “I’ll be! Somepony is foolish enough! He’s going to freeze his tail off.”

The pony came closer, but they couldn’t see anything about him, since his head was wrapped in a scarf. As he passed by, Karyn spied his cutie mark.

“It’s Shining Armor!”

It was indeed the prince of the Crystal Empire. How he had heard about the stuck train no one knew, but he called the crew. Between his leadership, magic, and strong hooves, they cleared the track of the snowdrift in a few minutes. The first sound of the wheels turning brought a cheer to the passenger car.

Soon enough the snow gave way to patches of grass, and Karyn was removing her coat. They pulled back into Ponyville, and Derpy flew to the back to pick up the package.

As soon as they entered the library, Twilight welcomed them.

“Did you bring it? Were there any problems?”

“None at all,” said Derpy.

“What about the delay from the snow?” said Karyn.

“That wasn’t a problem. Just a delay. We’re here now.”

“By that logic, nothing’s ever a problem if it all works out at the end.”

Derpy nodded. “Anyway, Twilight, here they are.”

“Excellent. These important research materials will definitely help me in my latest project for the princess.”

From upstairs came a voice. “I thought I heard the dulcet tones of my favorite extra-Equestrial. Karyn! Yoo-hoo!”

Karyn sighed. “Hello, Spike.”

He turned his head to see what Twilight was holding. “Hey, they’re here!”

Tearing down the stairs, he raced over and attacked the package with his claws. “Wait, Spike!” said Twilight, but it was too late. The paper was open and the contents there for all to see.

“Comic books?” said Derpy.

“Limited edition comic books,” said Spike. “Ones that I haven’t read.”

Twilight hung her head. “Just remember, they’re on loan, so keep them wrapped up and wash your claws before reading them.”

“Whatever. You have to watch out just as much.”

“I turn the pages without touching them!” Twilight saw that Karyn and Derpy were still there. “Um, I mean, when I have to close them after you get through with them, since I would never read comic books.”

Everyone had a good laugh at Twilight’s expense, but then Karyn got serious. “Twilight, I need to thank you again for coming through with a spell when we needed it.”

“Well, it’s important to be able to keep our secret.”

“We were talking about that last week. Is it really necessary to keep Equestria secret from the human world?”

“Let’s ask Derpy. She’s the pony who knows most about Earth.”

“That’s scary,” said Derpy. “Me being the pony who knows the most about anything.”

“Stop it,” said Karyn. “You need to get over thinking that you’re less than intelligent.”

“So what do you think?” said Twilight “Should we send more ponies to Earth? Or let more humans here?”

Derpy looked at Karyn. “If we do, we want to do it very slowly and carefully. The problem is that there are people like Albert who don’t have the best of intentions, and they’re dangerous. It’s not like we don’t have mean ponies here, but there are enough good ponies who will always be around to make life better. Humans don’t have enough connection. It’s nothing against you personally. It’s no one’s fault, but that’s why it doesn’t get fixed.”

“I understand. And I like being special and having the only pony. But at the same time, it’s hard keeping secrets. Part of me wonders what it would be like if we mingled.”

“It’s just. . . the Equestria we have, where it’s only ponies and dragons and such, plus two humans, is distinct. And Earth, for all its deficiencies, is also unique. I can’t help feeling that we’d lose something if we became Equestri-Earth. If we could do it without that loss, if we could add instead of altering, then I’d be less worried.”

Twilight put a hoof on Derpy’s shoulder. “I understand. It’s always like that. For example, when I first became a princess, I was worried that I was losing a part of me. I wasn’t a unicorn anymore, I was an alicorn. Even though all that was added was a pair of wings, I was separate and divided from my brother, my parents, everypony. In time, I learned to live with it.”

“I guess you have,” said Derpy. “I mean, in all the time since Karyn’s been coming here, we’ve never mentioned your wings or your being a princess. It’s almost as if we were completely unaware of it and just treated you as the unicorn you used to be right up until this week.”

“I honestly don’t mind that. Sometimes I want to go back to those days. I wish I had a little more time being just Twilight Sparkle.”

“And that’s why I want to tread carefully. Equestria might feel the same way, and we should give it the chance.”

Karyn looked at her shoes. “I guess that’s a reason, and it does leave an opening for more later. Twilight! You mentioned your brother. He was a real help while we were trapped up there in the snow outside the Crystal Empire.”

“You saw him? Did he say hi?”

“He was too busy pulling our train out of the snow. You know, sometimes I get a little jealous of your family. He’s a prince, you’re a princess. If you weren’t both the nicest ponies, I’d really be envious.”

Derpy frowned. “Really, Karyn? How can you be jealous of Twilight?”

“Because she’s so smart, and she’s Princess Celestia’s personal student, and she’s a princess herself.”

“And how did that work out for me?”

Karyn shook her head. “But she could handle it. It’s her destiny I’m jealous of. I wish it were mine.”

Twilight put a wing over Karyn. “I understand. Destiny is strange. But we all have something we’re meant to be. You were meant to be Derpy’s friend, and you’re doing it. You are a princess. Your wings are just a little smaller than mine.”

Her eyes misting, Karyn turned back, breathed in, and said, “That’s what I’m talking about! You’re too smart!”

Everypony laughed, then Twilight said, “And besides, if you had my destiny, it would mean living with Spike. All the time.”

“Right. So when’s the next spell back to Earth? Got to hit the books and do well in school so I can work on Earth where there’s no dragons!”

More laughter, but then Derpy came up short. “Hey! Our crystal-ness! It wore off.”

Karyn peered up at her hair, which had fallen back down. “And we never got the picture. Well, only one thing to do. Twilight, write Shining Armor and tell him we’re on our way back!”

Derpy started flying out. “Forget it. You can find your own way home.” But she came back quickly to show she was joking.

“You see, Karyn?” said Twilight. “The bond you have with Derpy is something I don’t have with her. With all I know about friendship, nothing’s stronger than that bond. Even a princess can’t break it.”

Karyn smiled.

Author's Note

Here's what you'll see next time!

“Haven’t I talked to you about always answering your mail as soon as you get it?”

A few letters were sitting unopened on Karyn’s desk. “I usually do, but this is all junk mail, and if there were anything in there, I couldn’t do anything about it until tomorrow anyway and. . . “

She trailed off as she realized that one of the pieces was not in an envelope but was perforated on three sides.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy was forlorn. “Just because everyone else is being disrespectful is no reason for you to do. It’s something I always told Dinky. That sometimes in school the other colts and fillies would be acting out, but that if she stood out and was good then, she’d win more points than if she was good only when everypony else was.”

Karyn pouted. “I guess you’re right. Why do you always have to keep me on the straight and narrow? I could be so delightfully evil if not for you!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It does cause a lot of problems. But speaking of money, it’s time to get paid!” She rubbed her hands together greedily.

“You know, if I may make a suggestion, what if you were to save the money instead of spending it?”

“Aw, come on! I never get a chance to spend.”

That's next time on Derpy's Human!

43: Jury Derpy

When Derpy appeared in Karyn’s dorm on Sunday, she was burdened by an extra saddlebag, which Karyn immediately noticed.

“Are you trying to carry more weight to get some exercise? Good idea!”

“It’s a side effect, but not the primary goal.” Derpy opened the bag and displayed its contents.

“What’s with all the scrolls and quills?”

“I was thinking more about what we said last week. About me being the most expert pony on Earth. If Princess Celestia or somepony asks me what it’s really like, I wouldn’t be able to give them the level of detail they should have. So I want to start taking notes and making analysis of the things we do together.”

“What kind of analysis?” asked Karyn.

“Nothing too deep. I’m still a lazy pony after all. But I’ll start with a profile of you, if you don’t mind.”

Derpy took a quill in her hoof and dragged it across the scroll rapidly. Karyn’s eyes narrowed. “By profile you mean a dossier, right? Not just a drawing of me from the side?”

“Um, of course. I wouldn’t even think of that.” She crumpled up the scroll and ate it.

“Derpy!”

“I misspelled a word, so I decided I’d start over.”

Karyn looked skeptical. “Even if you do, scrolls are definitely not on your diet.”

“Ooh, good point. You can eat the next one.”

“I don’t want to eat any one!” said Karyn, but Derpy was already moving on. She looked on Karyn’s desk.

“Haven’t I talked to you about always answering your mail as soon as you get it?”

A few letters were sitting unopened on Karyn’s desk. “I usually do, but this is all junk mail, and if there were anything in there, I couldn’t do anything about it until tomorrow anyway and. . . “

She trailed off as she realized that one of the pieces was not in an envelope but was perforated on three sides.

“What’s that one?” asked Derpy.

Karyn opened it, trying to conceal the “Open immediately!” and “Do not discard” stamped on the letter, not wanting a further lecture.

“Jury duty?! Really? As young as I am?”

“I don’t understand.”

Karyn considered how to delicately explain. “When humans do bad things to each other, and we want to punish them, they have the right to argue that they didn’t do it, or that they shouldn’t be punished. And regular people have to decide if they’re guilty or not.”

“So everyone decides?”

“No, they pick people out at random. I think they get the names off the list of driver’s licenses. If I had only failed that test last year.”

Derpy brightened. “Oh, random service. We have that all the time in Cloudsdale.”

“But I thought that Celestia and Luna judge everything. And do you even have any crimes?”

“Sometimes there have to be investigations, but we have unicorns who can detect lying, so nopony does it. But I’m thinking more of when we have to schedule storms and things.”

“Doesn’t the weather bureau do that?” asked Karyn.

“They do the moving of the clouds, but others have to set up the schedule.” Derpy sat on the bed. “I’m remembering from when I lived there, so any of this might have changed. Weather is always inconvenient for somepony. Some plan outings and then it rains, or they’re growing flowers and want rain. Sometimes, they complain about snow or such. So we need pegasi in charge to set up a schedule. It’s not a fun job, since everypony blames you for ruining their plans. Rather than hire a pony to do it, there’s a committee that’s picked randomly each year.”

“And you’ve been on this committee?”

“You know, it’s funny. I served once. I did this big report on how nopony really minded short storms, so why didn’t we just alternate rain one hour out of every six, all the time? Since that time, I’ve never been called again. Well, that’s randomness for you.”

Karyn shook her head, but didn’t want to shatter Derpy’s delusions. “Anyway, I can probably get out of it if I want, but I’ve got mostly night classes this semester, so I might as well get it over with. Once I go, I’m exempt for the next six years.”

“I wonder if the Cloudsdale ponies do the same thing. Maybe that’s why I haven’t had to schedule the storms again. It’s a shame, too. I got a little stipend that gave my pocketbook a shot when it needed it.”

“You got paid? I wonder if I get anything.” Karyn read through the letter thoroughly, but it didn’t mention anything about compensation. She went online to her computer and searched. “Cool! Forty dollars a day. If I have to go for a week, that’s $200!”

“Is that a lot?”

“Well, if you’re a professional, probably not. But you know how much more than what I make now it is? Two hundred more.”

Derpy smiled, but cautioned, “Don’t spend it yet. Maybe it’s a mistake or something. They could have sent it to the wrong person.”

Karyn checked the envelope. “It does have my name. But just getting the slip doesn’t mean you necessarily have to go. I have a number that I have to check online for all this week.”

“I guess there’s no way for you to get in touch with me if you do get called, so I’ll just have to check in every day.”

“What do you mean, ‘check in’?”

“You know I’m coming with you,” said Derpy. “I’m sure that the place you’re going to has incredibly tight security. I’m sure that you’re going to say how it’s too much risk and that I’ll be caught. I’m sure that I have a spell that will get me around it. And I’m sure that you have no choice about it. I told you that I wanted to do more research on Earth, and this will be a good opportunity.”

Karyn opened her mouth and pointed, then realized that she had no chance. “Here’s my number. Can you get Derpynet or something to contact you in Equestria if it comes up?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Each morning during that week, Karyn rolled out of bed and refreshed the web page that told which juror numbers had to go to court. She had fantasies about having an interesting case where she would help the others, maybe even be the forewoman and get to read the verdict. Perhaps Derpy would have a key role, running a secret investigation to find a key piece of evidence that would prove the defendant’s innocence and prevent a miscarriage of justice.

Mostly she thought about what she would do with the forty dollars per day.

It was Wednesday when she was called in. Derpy appeared early in the morning, excited for the opportunity.

“Good morning,” said Karyn. “I was half hoping that you’d show up in a gray suit and glasses with a briefcase.”

“I’m going to be invisible the whole time.”

“Right, I know. I just had an image.”

Derpy turned around. “I left the briefcase back in Equestria.”

“Well, I’m going to get ready, so don’t look.”

“I’ve seen your cutie mark.”

Karyn rolled her eyes and went to her closet. She found her interview suit and slipped off the protective plastic with the logo of a dry cleaner’s on it. Laying it on the bed so that it wouldn’t get wrinkled, she took off her casuals as quickly as possible.

“Ponies don’t have the equivalent of a business suit, do they?” she said.

“Some of them like to wear ties and vests, like Filthy Rich. But for the most part, no. Humans don’t have any parts of society where they go naked, so maybe it’s like that.”

Karyn thought about describing nudist camps and beaches, but decided not to confuse Derpy. Even if she wanted to do more research, there were some things better left unsaid. She went into the bathroom and put her hair in a ponytail, then decided to go further and did it in a bun. She hoped that she looked professional enough.

“What do you think?”

“Whoa!” said Derpy. “Good morning, Miss Hubert. Cup of coffee, and then I’ve got your first appointment ready.”

Karyn laughed. “If I ever do get big enough to need a secretary, you’ll be the first one I call.”

“You probably couldn’t afford me.”

The courthouse was downtown, Karyn and Derpy walked there, since Karyn didn’t want to trust any of the public transportation schedules.

“I can’t be late for this, they’ll hunt me down and throw me in jail. So we’ll just leave as early as possible so that even if we hit every light, we’ll still be early.”

What she hadn’t counted on was how hard it was on her feet to walk in her best shoes, which hadn’t been broken in. Derpy saw her wince with each step

“Do you want me to try to carry you? You can move your legs back and forth and make it look like you’re walking, but you won’t have any weight on the ground.”

“I would never be able to pull that off convincingly. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Hey, I’m always looking for ways to get out of my normal exercise routine.”

With effort, Karyn made the rest of the journey. People were getting out of their cars in the parking lot and walking toward the building, but that was the only way that they could tell they were in the right spot. The courthouse looked like any other modern office building.

“I’m a little disappointed in the architecture,” Karyn said.

“Why? What did you expect?”

“Big, fluted Greek columns and a statue of justice with sword and scales, maybe some wide steps down to the street. When we get home, remind me to look up some pictures of what a court is supposed to look like.”

They walked into the building to find the security station. It was every bit as locked down as an airport, but there was still no attention paid to overhead. Anyone who happened to be invisible and capable of flight could slip right past them, and that’s what Derpy did.

Karyn’s passage took rather longer, as they made her take off her shoes. With her feet swollen from the walking, the shoes were difficult and even more painful to put back on. Her skirt was riding uncomfortably and her blouse was tight around her neck. But she figured that she had to put up with it. Once she got through, she rejoined Derpy.

“OK, we need to go find the waiting room. They’re supposed to give us a briefing and then divide us up by the courtroom we go to.”

The room was filled with long tables. Each place had a pamphlet detailing what they were and were not allowed to do. Karyn picked an isolated spot that had plenty of room around it. She didn’t mind if it appeared that she was being anti-social, since she wasn’t.

They pored over each page of the pamphlet together. Derpy said, “I don’t think I’d much like to do this job. They really want you to pay attention to everything.”

“It is a big responsibility. You’ve got another person’s freedom in your hands.”

An announcement board at the front of the room separated out the potential jurors by their number, and Karyn was told to go to room four.

The halls reminded her too much of her classrooms at school, and even more of the rooms at high school, but the real shock came as she entered the room and was directed to a bench.

Her fellow jurors had not matched Karyn’s level of dress for the occasion. The best among them were a few men dressed in business casual—collared shirts and slacks, with brown shoes. Jeans and polo shirts were more common. Karyn was the only one wearing a skirt. A young man about her age wore a T-shirt with a rock band emblazoned on it. Worst of all was a heavyset woman who had on a matching sweatshirt and sweatpants. They would have been obscene even at a gym.

Karyn wished that she were free to talk to Derpy and complain about the others. She wondered for a moment how the judge and the court officers would put up with it, but then realized that they had to. It was difficult enough just to get people to show up. If they enforced a dress code, more people would refuse to show up, or make excuses as to why they couldn’t do the job, or show up and do a bad job.

She had managed once more to get an end seat, and took comfort from holding Derpy’s hoof. The judge took his seat and again Karyn was disappointed, because he was not wearing the traditional robe, just a suit like the lawyers. The case, it emerged, was a drunk driving charge, with some injuries involved. The prosecuting attorney spoke at length about how they should not expect to see a lot of forensic evidence like the shows on TV presented, and Karyn was all right with that, since she didn’t watch crime dramas anyway. Her case was basically that the arresting officer saw someone who was drunk.

The defense attorney stepped up next and asked, “Does anyone here work in any branch of law enforcement, or have a family member who does?” A few hands went up, and the lawyer asked for further details. One person said his father was an officer, and another was a martial-arts trainer who had worked with the police.

In her quietest whisper, Derpy said, “Good thing they didn’t ask if you knew any ponies.” Karyn had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She squeezed Derpy’s hoof in warning, then went back to listening.

The judge called back the lawyers and suggested that the whole affair could be concluded in three days, and that they would next hold a lottery to determine who would actually serve. Karyn was chosen as an alternate. At last, they were given a break. She and Derpy found a secluded spot in the hall.

“This is the best possible situation,” Karyn said. “If everyone else does their job, all I have to do is sit and watch for three days without actually deciding.”

“You seemed annoyed.”

She told Derpy how disappointed she was in everyone else’s clothing. “I mean, why should I go out of my way to look good if everyone else isn’t taking this seriously?”

Derpy was forlorn. “Just because everyone else is being disrespectful is no reason for you to do. It’s something I always told Dinky. That sometimes in school the other colts and fillies would be acting out, but that if she stood out and was good then, she’d win more points than if she was good only when everypony else was.”

Karyn pouted. “I guess you’re right. Why do you always have to keep me on the straight and narrow? I could be so delightfully evil if not for you!”

The bailiff stepped into the hall to call everyone back, so they had to cut the conversation short.

Now in the smaller box, Karyn could sit and just listen as each lawyer ran through their opening arguments. Stripped of all the fluff, it amounted to, “He stank, and he staggered, so he was drunk,” versus, “He didn’t test positive, so he wasn’t.”

Once that was done, the judge let everyone go for the day.

“Man, I should have gone into law,” she said to Derpy as they walked back. “You work half days every day it seems.”

“I wonder why everyone doesn’t do that.”

“It’s not really that easy. I’m sure both of those lawyers worked late last night. Or they’ve been working long enough that they can make others work late for them.”

Derpy headed for home to catch up on her mail route, and Karyn spent the rest of the day in class. The following day was the testimony of the arresting officer and the defendant. The girls met up afterwards.

“Is there drunk driving in Equestria?” asked Karyn.

“Some, but it’s not a big deal. Carts don’t go as fast or carry as much weight as cars do, so they don’t do serious injury. It’s more the fact that nopony wants to be friends with someone who drinks too much.”

“It’s kind of a shame. People decided to go with cars instead of trains or other mass transit, not thinking of all the consequences.”

Derpy was eager. “So do you think you’ll let him go? Or punish him?”

“Haven’t you been listening when they keep telling us not to discuss the case?”

Derpy just looked at Karyn with a blank expression.

“Oh, yeah,” said Karyn. “I guess that probably doesn’t apply to ponies. Remember, though, that I only decide if two of the regular people have to leave for whatever reason.”

“I suppose. Well, we’ll just see what happens.”

The next day, Derpy came early and they walked the route one last time. Karyn was still dressed nicely, but wore sneakers to save her feet. She sat down in her seat and watched the gallery where Derpy was sitting invisible.

The judge walked in with his bailiff. He looked to the jury and said, “Thank you all for serving. The case has been settled, and your time is no longer required.”

“What?!”

Karyn’s eyes flew open and she stared in the general direction of the empty gallery, hoping to psychically tell Derpy to keep quiet.

“Who said that?” said the judge.

“I think it might have come from outside,” said the bailiff. He walked to the front and peeked his head out the door, but saw no one.

“Well, whatever,” the judge said. “Again, thank you. Have the court officer stamp your jury slip as you leave and keep it with you as proof that you served.”

Karyn was farthest from the bench and so was first to leave the room, getting the receipt and asking the bailiff where the bathroom was. Once she was pointed in the right direction, she felt for Derpy’s body next to her, then slid her hand up to Derpy’s ear. She pinched and dragged.

“Owowowow,” said Derpy quietly.

The bathroom door slammed behind them.

“Please, Karyn, I’m so sorry. I know that I’m not supposed to talk, I was just so into the moment that I forgot.”

Karyn huffed. “Well, no damage done, at least, and maybe it’ll be a lesson. And yes, it was an anticlimax, but that’s how a lot of these things go. One side or the other realizes that it can’t win and cuts a deal. Maybe the guy will wind up spending a month in jail, or maybe he’ll just have to pay a lot of money and they’ll count the time served.”

“I don’t know, that doesn’t seem right to me.”

“It does cause a lot of problems. But speaking of money, it’s time to get paid!” She rubbed her hands together greedily.

“You know, if I may make a suggestion, what if you were to save the money instead of spending it?”

“Aw, come on! I never get a chance to spend.”

Derpy was sympathetic. “You said yourself that this was money you didn’t expect. So what have you lost?”

Karyn thought for a while, trying to make a counterargument, but then said, “It’s three days, that’s $120. I’ll save the hundred, but I’m charging you the twenty for your little outburst in there. That we spend.”

“All right, I suppose that’s fair.”

They left the bathroom and found the bursar’s window. As she handed the slip over, her mind was wild with thoughts of what she would do. Even if twenty dollars wasn’t much, it could be a fancier meal or a new hair ribbon or some pony merchandise or a gift for Derpy.

The lady behind the counter took out a large stamp and marked “Paid” on the slip. “There you go, you’ll get your check in four to six weeks.”

“Fo—“ Karyn started to protest, but figured it wouldn’t do any good. “Thank you.”

They headed for Karyn’s dorm.

“Well, at least it gives you plenty of time to set up a bank account,” said Derpy.

“I already have one.”

“But if you make a new one, you won’t be tempted to touch your savings.”

“I suppose.”

***

As they met up the next week, Derpy appeared with unusual excitement.

“You’ll never guess what happened! They picked me, again! I’m on storm scheduling duty.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. And this time I know I’ve got an even more brilliant idea.”

Karyn closed her eyes and counted to ten. “All right, let’s hear it.”

“It’s just like what happened with your thing. We’ll make a deal with everypony to pretend that the storms that have already happened count. I’m brilliant!”

“Are there others who have to decide with you?”

“Yeah, a few more,” said Derpy. “Why? You think they’ll want credit for the idea?”

“No. I’m sure everypony will say that it’s all yours.”

Author's Note

Preview now!

“Ah, the sun finally came out.” Karyn opened the window and spread her arms out.

“Be careful,” said Derpy. “You don’t want to fall out.”

“I’m not worried. You’ll dive out and catch me.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What? What did I do?”

“Why did you sign up for the Wonderbolt Derby?”

“I did what?!”

Be sure to read it too!

44: Won-Derp-olts!

“Ah, the sun finally came out.” Karyn opened the window and spread her arms out.

“Be careful,” said Derpy. “You don’t want to fall out.”

“I’m not worried. You’ll dive out and catch me.”

“Do you think that I’m that good of a flyer?”

Karyn turned back. “Of course I do. I think you’re the greatest pegasus in all of Equestria. Compared to you, Rainbow Dash is a snail. Lightning Dust is a three-toed sloth.” She couldn’t keep a straight face any more. She ran over and hugged Derpy around her neck.

“It’s not funny. A pegasus should be a good flyer.”

“Take me flying, won’t you?”

Derpy was agog. “You want to go flying? You hate flying.”

“But I hate being cooped up more. This winter has been just awful. Even if the sun’s out, I don’t want to be outside. But for the first time last week, I got in my car and it was warmer inside than outside. So I want some sun and some wind.”

“You want to go to Equestria or just be invisible?”

“Pilot’s choice.”

Derpy let her mount and turned on the invisibility spell. Circling up to the clear sky, they surveyed a few patches of snow that had dark wet spots around them as the snow was melting. The streets needed to be swept, but on the bare patches of earth, grass seed was starting to take root.

Karyn reached down under Derpy’s wing and felt for the lift, but the air was the same as it was above. It was still amazing to her that Derpy flew completely by magic, even as there was no sparkle or glimmer.

With the knowledge that Derpy’s other spell would keep her permanently attached, Karyn spread her arms and enjoyed the feeling of soaring and diving.

Derpy leveled out. “Why did you compare me to Rainbow and Lightning?”

“Well, they were the fastest pegasi I could think of.”

“Not because they’re members of the Wonderbolts?”

“Lightning isn’t,” said Karyn. “But isn’t there some crossover? Fast ponies would make the Wonderbolts.”

“That’s right, she started her own group. But what if Rainbow Dash is? She’s no competition of yours.”

Derpy stiffened her back and flew straight.

“Derpy?” said Karyn “Did I say something wrong?”

“No.”

“Come on, tell me.”

“I tried out for the Wonderbolts once.”

Karyn swallowed before she could say, “You?!” Whatever Derpy’s past had been like, Karyn couldn’t insult her.

“I suppose every pegasus thinks that she’s a great flyer at one age,” said Derpy. “Or more than one. Someday remind me to tell you about the time I fudged my age to enter the Best Young Flier Competition.”

“I want to hear about you with the Wonderbolts.”

Derpy’s flight eased and she pumped her wings lazily.

My father (Derpy said) didn’t have a whole lot of money, of course, but when I told him that I wanted to try out, he found it somehow. They charge a lot to even try out for the academy. But back then more ponies got in. It wasn’t quite as exclusive as it is now. For him, it wasn’t about the money as much as he was afraid for me. Even though he couldn’t say it, he was worried that I would fail, and that it would hurt.

“Derpy,” he said to me, “there are going to be a lot of pegasi there. Most of them have been flying since they were babies. You took a long time to fly, so it might be harder for you.”

I had only heard the first sentence. “You really think there will be a lot of pegasi there? I’m sure I’ll find some friends.”

The training facility was right in Cloudsdale, so even though I was away from my father, it was more like being at day camp. I didn’t miss him much. Above the clouds, where the sun always shines, every day is perfect for physical activity. Checking into the camp, I met my instructor, Brisk Wind. She greeted me warmly, but didn’t have a whole lot of time to chat. Instead, she sent me to a, well, I guess he was a quartermaster to get outfitted.

This was the most exciting part for me. To see that uniform, to smell the fresh fabric, to feel it in my hooves, it made me feel like part of the team. Even though it wasn’t the sky-blue of the true Wonderbolt’s uniform, but only a dull cobalt, and even though the insignia was a broken lightning bolt signifying that I was a cadet, it was still mine, and it was still a Wonderbolt uniform.

The fabric was some sort of stretchy material, I don’t know what, and it was difficult to get into. But at last I poked my wings through the holes and stared at myself in the mirror. Although I still had my eyes, anypony who looked quickly wouldn’t see the funny eyes, only another pony who belonged.

Brisk Wind came up behind me. “All right, fall out! This isn’t a fashion show, you’re here to fly!”

Even though she was in the full uniform, I thought I saw the fur around her eyes. It was almost the same color as mine.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“Why do I have to fall out of the clouds? And can I fly back in once I do?”

She stared at me like I was dumb or something. “No, fall out means get in line. In your case, the end of the line.”

I trotted down past a row of ponies already standing stiff with their chests out. At the end was a pony who, had I not known that the Wonderbolts had an age requirement, I would have taken for a filly. She was half my size, and this was before I put on the weight.

“Hi! I’m Derpy Hooves.”

“My name’s Sky Wren,” the little pegasus said, “but I think we’re not supposed to be talking now.”

Indeed, Brisk Wind was already flying towards us. I was worried that she would dress me down, or worse, yell at Sky Wren when I was the one who started it. But she just stared me in the eye.

“Being a Wonderbolt is all about being a team! Flying in formation, in time, with your wingmates. We’re only as good as our slowest pony!”

That made me feel good. All I had to do was not be the slowest. But as I smiled in reaction, I looked down the line and saw nothing but air. Whipping my head around, I saw everypony flying ahead of me. I’d gotten distracted and missed an order. All I could do was try to catch up.

“Hey, Sky!” I called, “what are we doing?”

“A hundred laps!”

Well, I was there to fly after all. I kept pumping and flying, but I came in last. I like to think that, if I had been aware and taken wing at the same time as all the others, I might have been second-to-last.

Brisk clicked off a stopwatch as I crossed the line. “We’ve got a baseline time for this group. I want to see that cut in half by the time you leave. Remember, that means everypony needs to be twice as fast as the slowest. All of you, strap some weights to your wings and lift!” She pointed to a rack full of sandbags that went around our wings and made them super-heavy.

At least during the lifting I could talk to Sky Wren. “We’re really training to be Wonderbolts. Isn’t that cool?” I said.

“Yeah. Hey, do you want to be my flying buddy?”

“What’s that?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Most of the stuff we do here is with partners. We’d bunk together, eat together, everything.”

“Sure! You sure that you don’t want somepony faster?”

“I just want someone to be friends with.”

I looked at her. She probably was more concerned about other ponies getting on her for being small. I decided right there that I would never mention it. We reached a silent understanding: I didn’t talk about her size, and she didn’t talk about my eyes. Hey, that rhymes!

When I think back, she was a lot like you, Karyn. Not that you’re small, but you both had kind hearts and were good friends. The next day, she handed me a blue badge that matched her gold one. I was going to be her wingpony.

My wings were sore from doing the hundred laps, but I could still fly. I shook off the aches and got out there with Sky. Wonderbolt camp isn’t all about speed and work of course. We had to do a lot of precision flying as well. Cloud rings were set up, and we had to go through each one. Sometimes they were marked that you had to double loop them. And there was the slalom. That was a little embarrassing the first time I did it. I mean, they had the flags on the right and the left. How was I supposed to know that you had to go to the right of the right ones and vice versa? I thought I was making good time.

Sky Wren showed infinite patience with me when I did things like that. Brisk Wind, not so much. She never got in my face or yelled much, but she organized a lot of events only for lead-ponies. I had to do a lot of work on my own. Just exercising and trying to get better. Sky would tell me all about them though, and it was just like I was there.

There were some wingpony-only events, but even then Brisk Wind would check me out to see if I didn’t want Sky to sub for me. I knew that she wanted me out, but I was determined not to quit. So long as I could get up and fly the course, I could stay.

“Hooves!” she said after one such run. “What am I going to do with you? You can’t keep up with the top pegasi, and you won’t drop out.”

“Um. . . make me a Wonderbolt?”

She didn’t say anything, but I sensed her skepticism. “Well, you’re consistently scoring at the bottom of the class. If you don’t shape up, I can pull you out just on your scores alone.”

That night, I huddled in my bunk. I was in the top one. I was so panicked that it was going to be my last night in that bunk that I started crying. It wasn’t long before I saw a face hovering at my level.

“What’s wrong, Derpy?” said Sky Wren.

“I gotta score tomorrow, or Brisk Wind’s going to kick me out!”

“Derpy, listen. If this is a big deal tomorrow, that means that everypony’s under pressure. And we all react different to pressure. Even the fastest flyers can freeze up in the moment. But you haven’t had that moment yet. Maybe you’re great under pressure. And that, combined with the others’ failings, is going to put you on top.”

“Do you really think so?” I asked.

“I know so.”

I managed to sleep after that.

The next day, I got in line with my squad and waited to see what the challenge was. Brisk Wind trotted out and looked me in the eye. She was pawing at her clipboard with her hoof and I could tell that she was just waiting to scratch my name off. She dressed the line and then pulled a tarp off of a structure. We were introduced to the Dizzitron.

It might have been named the Derpy-tron. I took to it like, like. . . a pegasus to flying, so long as it’s not me. I was spun around and found it more fun than a challenge. When the call of “Release!” was sounded, it was like an ordinary landing. Now, I wasn’t an expert at landing to begin with, but I lost nothing from being spun about and thrown. Eight, maybe ten seconds, and I was on the ground.

To say that Brisk Wind was surprised was an understatement. She stared at me and wrote down my time. When everypony else was done, I was on top.

“How did you do that?” Brisk asked me.

“I’m good under pressure. At least, that’s what my lead-pony said.”

“All right, Hooves,” Brisk said, “you’re still in. Go work on your loops. With your lead.”

I ran off to find Sky and get back to practice.

“I knew you had it in you,” she said. “Just you wait. Soon it’ll be Wonderbolt Derpy!”

I was as high as a cloud. Well, of course I was, because that’s where I slept. But I meant it metaphorically as well. The next day, at breakfast, I heard that same phrase again: Wonderbolt Derpy. I flew over to see what was being said, and Brisk Wind was taking signups for some event. I didn’t know how I was involved, but before I knew it I was taking pen in mouth and writing my name.

As I left to go to training, Sky Wren came up to me and said, “Are you crazy?!”

“What? What did I do?”

“Why did you sign up for the Wonderbolt Derby?”

“I did what?!”

She dragged me back to the sheet I had just signed. “It’s a pure race, all about speed. Do you really want to do that?”

“I thought they were just saying my name!”

Sky looked like she wanted to slap me. “There’s only one thing to do then.”

“Panic? Cry?”

She grabbed the pen and wrote “Sky Wren” right under my name. “Train.”

The Derby was a week away. All because of my unfortunate name, I was going to be racing against fully fledged Wonderbolts. With luck, I’d be able to complete a lap before everypony else finished the race entirely. I worked tirelessly on nothing but wingpower. Just lifts and sprints. Before I knew it, the day arrived and I was ensconced in my starting gate.

I tensed my wings waiting for the bang to signal the start. I knew it was coming. . . and I moved too soon. For a moment, I had a lead over everypony, but I was aware that I had left early, and was going to be penalized for it.

The problem with jumping the start of a race is, beyond any penalty they give you, you naturally hesitate when you realize that you’ve committed the foul. To this day I like to think that, if I had started at the same time as everypony else and not pulled up at the start, I would have come in something other than last. I mean, I don’t dispute the time penalty, that’s fair, but even without it I was last. Not by much, though. There were one or two others, whether they were cadets like me or just had a bad day, that I was right behind at the finish.

But in every race somepony has to come in last, and that day it was me. Sky Wren was waiting for me at the finish line, and I guess that I made her wait longer than she should have. She put a wing over me and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll get them next time.”

“Yeah, next time.”

The weight of the loss was heavy on my shoulders. Even if I could improve, there was so much distance between last and first. Even if I reached the middle of the pack, I’d still have just as far to go. With my head down I trotted toward the barracks when I heard a call from behind.

“Nice flying, kid.”

“Daddy?”

“You didn’t think I was going to miss my little filly’s first race, did you?”

I couldn’t believe it, nor could I figure how he found out I was in the race. But there he was, coming down from the stands and giving me a hug.

“Daddy, I came in last. It was terrible flying.”

“I say it was nice flying. Plenty of ponies were taking it easy out there. Some of them were flying for all they were worth. The ones in front were.”

“But so was the one in back.”

He looked around. “Do you have to be anywhere right now?”

“I have a little free time.”

“Good. Come and sit with your tired old father.”

We trotted to a picnic table near where the crowd was exiting. My father bought us drinks. He even got me a muffin.

“Listen, Derpy. In a race there’s only one pony you have to beat. That’s ‘Other-you.’ If there’s a you out there who could have gone faster, then you lost. If the fastest you possible is the one sitting here, then you won the race, no matter what anypony says.

“And that’s not just for the Wonderbolts. It’s true in whatever you do in life.”

He always explained things well. I nibbled at my muffin.

“Daddy? I think that, after I finish the training, I’m not going to try to be a Wonderbolt anymore. I had a lot of fun learning all the flying, and I think that one time is enough for me.”

“That’s fine, Derpy. We’ll find lots of other things for you to do.”

After another hug, I went back to see Sky Wren and tell her everything. For the rest of the time, I managed to keep above a passing score enough to stop Brisk Wind from kicking me out. Sky Wren and I stayed partners, and she kept trying to make it. But that one year, on graduation day, we walked with the rest of our class. And I’ll always remember that day.

For the last time, I took off that tight uniform. I washed it and folded it neatly. Even though it was used, it looked the same way it did when I first got it. Daddy came and took me home, and he mounted it on the wall by my bed. Every night when I’d go to sleep I’d look at it, and remember those fun times. And Sky Wren.

“And that’s pretty much the story,” said Derpy. Karyn had barely noticed where they were flying, since she was so wrapped up in the story.

“Why didn’t I ever get to meet Sky Wren?”

“Well, like I told you, she kept trying to make the Wonderbolts. In her third year, they were learning tornadoes. There was an accident—she was so small…”

“Don’t.” Karyn wanted to spare her any more painful memories.

They flew on for a bit before Derpy could resume. “Sometimes I worry about you.”

“You don’t have to. Believe me, I’m training for what I was meant to do.”

“That’s not what I meant. I never see you with any human friends. You should have your own Sky Wren.”

Karyn thought that that might not be a good idea, if tragedies happened, but didn’t bring it up. “Derpy, in the first place, I do have a few friends, like Mike, even though you don’t like him. But beyond that, I do have my own Sky Wren. You’ve met her.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Derpy Hooves. She sometimes doesn’t have the confidence she should, and apparently she doesn’t think that a human should have a pony for a best friend.”

“Karyn, be serious.”

“I am. You stuck with the Wonderbolts even though you knew that you weren’t going to become a captain. You kept pushing that square peg into that round hole. Well, I’m going to do the same. I don’t care if no other people like me. No matter what happens, I’m not giving up being Derpy’s human.”

Derpy was overwhelmed and wanted to give Karyn a hug. Of course, that was impossible given their positions, and nearly sent Derpy’s bags flying. She righted herself and looked around.

Below them was a highway with cars cutting through a forest, with no other sign of civilization. “Do you know where we are?”

“You got us lost?!”

“No, no. I’ll find our way back. Just give me a moment to use my map sense.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “No matter what happens,” she repeated.

Author's Note

This week's preview, on time, no less!

As they emerged into Equestria, Derpy took a longer arc than usual toward her home. “You’ve gotten quite a bit braver when it comes to flying.”

“Thank you.”

“But go back to closing your eyes for today, please.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh.” Derpy thought for a moment. “Maybe that’s why Dinky never liked it either. I tried not to spoil her, but she seems to like her toys and games better than things like this.”

“She’s a pony after my own heart. Explain the appeal to me.”

“What I love about it is knowing that I made something with my own hooves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy watched as she logged out and went back to the home page. “I’ll take it from here,” she said, getting out her typing spell and activating it.”

“Wait, there could be a problem with—“

“Hey! It won’t let me use my name! There aren’t any humans named Derpy Hooves.”

All that and more, next week!

45: How Does Your Garden Derp?

“Ooh, Karyn’s going to be so mad if I’m late!” Derpy said out loud. She hastened to get everything in her bag and finish all her chores. Dumping some food in her cat’s dish, she took a breath and magicked herself to Earth.

Karyn was playing on her computer, enraptured by something, and didn’t even notice that Derpy had arrived.

“Good morning,” Derpy said.

“Oh, hi! I was so caught up in this. I didn’t realize so much time had gone by.”

“Isn’t that always the way? I was so worried about you that I rushed to get here, and you’re fine. But if I had taken my time, I know you would have been angry.”

Karyn wasn’t sure, but understood how it fit with Derpy’s view. She got up and gave her friend a hug.

“There’s one thing you forgot, clearly. You didn’t wash your hooves!”

Derpy looked and saw visible soil. Her face burst out in red. “May I use the washroom, please?”

“Of course.”

The dorm that Karyn occupied was not the one that she had when Derpy first came to visit, but it had the same communal bathroom with a door to another dorm. The college had expended its budget to the extent of putting an indicator lock that told each side when the room was in use. Karyn showed Derpy how to use it, and she was assured that no one would open the door and be shocked.

Derpy scrubbed with the hand soap, and heard Karyn say something that she couldn’t make out over the sound of the water. “What was that?”

“I just said that it’s an advantage of having hooves. Washing my hands properly means scrubbing in between the fingers and making sure each one is lathered up. You have a lot less surface area than me.”

Derpy threw away her paper towel. “I suppose. Lyra would beg to disagree. She’s always all over her human’s hands.”

Karyn decided not to pursue that awkward line of conversation. “So what were you doing that got your hooves so dirty?”

“It’s planting season!”

“But you’re no farmer.”

“Of course not,” said Derpy. “But I grow a garden every year for fun and profit. Mostly flowers, but I’ll have a few herbs and maybe a vegetable patch or two. It gives me something to do on sunny days.”

“Gardening?”

“Yeah. You want to see it?”

Karyn turned up her nose. “Well…”

“Aw, come on, I’m really proud of it.”

“Why not? It’s been a while since I’ve been to Equestria. I imagine it’s falling apart without me.”

Derpy was confused, and Karyn had to explain her humor. Once that was settled, Derpy got out her spell.

As they emerged into Equestria, Derpy took a longer arc than usual toward her home. “You’ve gotten quite a bit braver when it comes to flying.”

“Thank you.”

“But go back to closing your eyes for today, please.”

“What for?” asked Karyn.

“So I can make the garden be a surprise.”

Karyn relented and shut her eyes. Derpy had to come in as slow as possible so as not to jostle her. Karyn barely noticed when they were on the ground. She felt it more from the wind than the bump.

“Ta-da!” said Derpy. Karyn opened her eyes.

She was situated in Derpy’s yard, but the only difference was that a patch of grass had been pulled up and replaced with bare earth.

“This is it?”

“I said it was planting day. Not harvesting day or watering day or any day that you would actually get to see the plants on.”

“Good point.”

Derpy flew in a circle around the plot. “But soon enough I’ll have lots of pretty flowers. Isn’t that neat?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You don’t like gardening?”

Karyn headed to the house. “Not really.”

“I think everypony gardens.”

“They do, but not humans. Particularly not humans like me who grew up in the modern age with lots of fun stuff in your room to do, but whose moms made them help every year that she grew her garden.”

“Oh.” Derpy thought for a moment. “Maybe that’s why Dinky never liked it either. I tried not to spoil her, but she seems to like her toys and games better than things like this.”

“She’s a pony after my own heart. Explain the appeal to me.”

“What I love about it is knowing that I made something with my own hooves, that I grew it from nothing, or almost nothing. It’s a feeling of ownership that you don’t get from buying flowers and vegetables from the store. I imagine that Celestia has a similar feeling when she raises the sun.”

Karyn backed off a little. “It sounds like you’re going mad with power. I can picture you flying over the flowers and taunting them. ‘Fear me, o puny petalled ones! I am Derpy, your creator!’”

Derpy smiled, but was a little miffed. “You don’t understand because you’ve never had one of your own. I can see where it wouldn’t be any fun to work on someone else’s garden. Even if they give you some of what they grow, it’s generosity, not rewarding your hard work.”

“And here I thought it was because pulling weeds is hard on the back, and because the sun beats down on you and makes you sweat, and the sweat and the dirt mix together to make you feel like even after you’ve showered that you’re still dirty. Then you miss one day of watering, and everything dies. All your hard work is for nothing.”

Derpy listened with a falling expression. “What are you talking about?”

“Gardening.”

“Maybe gardening on earth, but not in Equestria. I plant things every year and just watch for the weather. The pegasi make sure that all the plants get a good watering with their clouds, and they also see to it that the sun doesn’t beat down too hard. As for weeds, there are a few, but they’re not so hard to pull out. I’ll show you.”

Derpy went outside to part of the yard near the garden. “These are just bushes, not part of the garden proper, but there is some crabgrass and white clover down here. If I want to get rid of them, I just pull them out.”

She bent down and took a patch of crabgrass in her mouth. The grass put up only token resistance as she pulled her head out. She spat it on the ground and moved on.

Karyn steamed. “Of course that’s easy for you. You’re practically built for it. Your head’s lower to the ground and you can actually use your mouth for precision. We don’t do that.”

“How would you weed then?”

She demonstrated, getting on all fours and yanking the next patch of crabgrass out. It was still easier than she was used to. “These haven’t taken root very deep,” she said, “but when they do, it’s really arduous. Sometimes you can’t even do it yourself, but have to get a little rake to help you.”

“Maybe it’s just easier in Equestria. The roots of these are as deep as I’ve seen them, and they came out easily enough.”

Karyn was a little annoyed. Even the land of Equestria was nicer to its occupants than that of Earth. She silently wondered if, had growing been as easy in her home as it was in Derpy’s, if humanity would still have built all the technology that she used. Humans might still be roaming the plains eating off the fruit of the land.

“It’s all very nice, and I’m glad that you like it, but I’d much rather be in an air-conditioned room.”

For her part, Derpy respected her friend’s wishes, but still wanted to share the activity. “There’s another positive thing about gardening. You can sell the stuff you grow, or just use it to eat instead of buying from the store. You’ll save money that way, and have more to spend.”

“You always know how to push my buttons. All right, explain to me how it saves money.”

“The seeds and bulbs cost a lot less than the end products. You’re spending time and effort, but getting more out than you put in. You can even save the cuttings so that you don’t have to buy anything the next year. After a while you just eat what you grew instead of going to the store that week. But if you don’t want to have that extra to spend…”

Karyn stared at Derpy’s garden again. “Fine. Toss me a pair of gardening gloves.”

“Of what now?”

Karyn gritted her teeth as she looked at Derpy’s hooves. Of course ponies would have no need of gloves. If she wanted to join Derpy, it meant getting at filthy as she had been. But looking at the grey face smiling at her, she realized that there was a difference between being forced to do something and choosing to do it with a friend.

“Never mind, let’s just start digging.”

Derpy drew a rectangle next to the garden with her hoof. It was far smaller than her garden, no wider than Derpy’s own wingspan. “This will be your section. I’ll show you how to do everything.”

On the side of Derpy’s house was a small shed. Karyn had never noticed it, since it was hidden from the street. Derpy emerged from it with a shovel and hoe.

“What am I going to do for seeds?”

“We’ll worry about that in a little while. First, let’s get the earth turned. If you do that, the grass will start to break down and make whatever you plant grow faster.”

The tools were not built for humans. There was no end handle to clutch and they were shorter than what would be found in a hardware store on Earth. But the shovel was weighted farther from the blade end to give ponies extra leverage. Even though she had to reach down, the lifting of the dirt was easier than she thought. It didn’t take long to till the small patch.

Derpy took the hoe and broke up some of her garden that was still clumped together. She worked carefully to not disturb the areas she had already finished.

“You have an advantage,” said Karyn. “You don’t have to leave footprints if you don’t want to.”

Derpy saw that she was compressing the dirt after she had it turned. “Stand on the grass that you’re not cutting into. That way you’ll get a good plot.”

Karyn sighed and stepped off. Derpy passed her the hoe and let her start cutting into the clumps of grass. In contrast to the shovel, the hoe had a heavy head, since ponies couldn’t raise it very high with only their hooves and mouth.

The sun shone, and Karyn stood up, stretched, and wiped her brow. “Do you think I could have some water?”

“No, Karyn. You don’t water until you’ve planted something.”

“I mean to drink. It’s awfully hot and I want to cool down.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Yes, I’ll be right back.”

With Derpy in the house, Karyn took the chance to stop working and just take deep breaths. She thought about how it was always awkward to take even the smallest break when working with someone else. If she had to shovel snow or paint a room with her parents, they would always look suspiciously at her if she stopped, as though she might abandon the job and make the others do it.

Even though the job was entirely optional, she kept her eye on the door, waiting to see Derpy come out with the water. Her hands rested on the hoe, waiting to pretend that she was continuing a stroke. The opening door set her back to work, but it wasn’t Derpy who she saw first.

“Hey, Muffinhead!” called Derpy from the house. “Don’t run through the dirt, or I’ll have to give you a bath!”

That word brought the little orange cat to a stop, and he strutted to the grass. Laying down, he licked at the pads on his paws, staring up at Derpy as if to say, “I was going to do this anyway.”

Once he had taken long enough, he bounced up to Karyn and sniffed at her leg. Then he rubbed up against her once and lay down.

“He likes me today,” said Karyn.

“Muffinhead loves watching people work. Every time I’m out here in the garden, he wants to come out, and if I don’t let him, he stays at the window and stares.”

Karyn spaded the earth a few more times. “All right. What am I going to plant now?”

“Herbs would be the easiest, but if you’re looking to save money, vegetables are what you want to grow. Flowers are nice too.”

“Let me do the easy one.”

Derpy picked up the cat and went back to the house. “Let me get some seeds and cuttings from last year and I’ll show you how far apart to plant them.”

That gave Karyn another chance to rest, and she peered inside to see Derpy’s saddlebag hanging on the wall. Idly she poked at the dirt where she guessed she would put the seeds.

“Here we are!” said Derpy. “Lots of herbs that you can grow and then you can add your own flavor to your food. When they come up I’ll show you how to cook with them.”

The image of the saddlebag gave Karyn an idea. “Isn’t there some kind of magic spell where you can just make all of the plants grow at once?”

Derpy was shocked. “What, you think I’m some kind of Earth pony? Unicorn magic can be stored in spells, but fast-growing plants can’t be done by pegasi any more than I could let somepony else fly with my wings. It’s just the way of things.”

“That’s too bad. I guess it’s kind of like the microwave oven. If it’s faster, it doesn’t taste as good. I just wish it were the other way.”

“I can understand that. I don’t like making tradeoffs either.” Derpy showed Karyn how to put her seeds in the ground, and had her tamp down more soil on top of them. “Now all we have to do is wait.”

“I don’t like waiting.”

“Think of it as letting the sun do your work for you.”

“The sun won’t be here when I need to water,” said Karyn. “At least I’m not losing time from my schedule. But speaking of which, I should get back home.”

“All right. We’ve still got a little time left to hang out, though.”

“Sure.”

Derpy took off with Karyn on her back and circled over the garden before warping back to Earth. “Isn’t it pretty?”

“Maybe it will be. Right now it’s just dirt.”

They appeared back in Karyn’s dorm. “Welcome back,” said Derpy.

“Ah, the sweet comforts of home. Computer fans, LED lights, fast food and air conditioning!”

“You want air conditioning? It’s still pretty cool.”

Karyn sat at her desk. “It is, and I’m not going to put it on, but I could, if I needed to dry off the sweat. I just want the signs of civilization after that.”

“You don’t think Equestria is civilization?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Derpy laughed. “I’m only teasing! Sure, we’re more rustic than you guys, and I can totally understand wanting both worlds sometimes.”

Karyn turned on her computer and surfed to a social networking site. “Here’s what gardening should be like. She slid aside to let Derpy see the farming game she was playing. “I can run my little tractor over the field, point and click to spread seeds, wait, harvest all at once, and sell them for set prices. It’s so much easier to make money in games like this.”

“Can I play that one?”

“Sure, that’s fair, since I have a garden in your world now. I’ll set you up an account.”

Derpy watched as she logged out and went back to the home page. “I’ll take it from here,” she said, getting out her typing spell and activating it.”

“Wait, there could be a problem with—“

“Hey! It won’t let me use my name! There aren’t any humans named Derpy Hooves.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.” Karyn went to the screen and looked for alternate usernames. “It’s no one’s real name here, but there are enough fans of yours that someone, probably a long time ago, took that name.”

Derpy grumbled, but accepted as Karyn tried combinations until it accepted “Derpy H00v3s01” as an acceptable name. She guided Derpy through the opening parts of the game, including the short cool-downs of the early crops, before it was time for Derpy to go home.

The next visit, Karyn was already dressed in clothes she wasn’t worried about getting dirty. “Let’s get to Equestria to take care of my garden and get it over with.”

Derpy said nothing, but couldn’t keep a smile off her face. She took her usual flight path which obscured the garden from sight until they landed. Suspicious, Karyn peeked around to see fully formed plants lining her garden.

“Derpy!” she said. “Did you find a way to use magic to make them grow anyway?”

“No, I just transplanted them from another pony’s garden. They still need a lot of growing time, but now you can be sure they’ll come in well at least.”

Karyn was still mentally kicking herself for assuming that forbidden magic was the most likely cause of a change.

“Thanks, Derpy. This was very nice. I almost feel bad for leaving all of your crops to rot on the social network farm game.”

“What?!”

“I’m only teasing.”

Derpy stomped her hoof, but let it pass. “Just for that, I’m going to make you water your plants instead of letting the rain clouds hit them. I’ll punch holes in the clouds to make sure.”

“If you do that, I’ll spray you with the hose when I’m doing the watering.”

“I’ll make a small tornado to spray the water right back at you.”

Karyn and Derpy fell over each other in laughter. “All right,” Karyn said, “I give up. You win.”

Derpy got up and took Karyn over to her section of the garden. “I’ve already got some shoots and buds, see?”

“You do. You’re doing flowers this year?”

“Mostly. Last year I tried to grow cross-eyed Susans, only to find out they don’t exist.”

Derpy showed Karyn how she brought clouds over to the garden to keep it watered and prevent the sun from scorching. “I wish I could move clouds like that,” Karyn said.

“There might be magic for that. I’ll have to look. In the meantime, would you like some of the flowers? You can take them home and try to grow them there.”

“Thank you very much. Maybe I’ll put them in the common room at the dorm. They’re not going to toss out spores that will make everyone grow wings or something like that?”

Derpy looked at Karyn. “No! Almost certainly not.” She found a ceramic flowerpot and filled it with dirt, then took three of the largest buds and gently removed them from the ground. Karyn took them and moved them to the pot, packing the dirt around the roots tightly.

“You know, I almost don’t mind the dirt on my hands this way. Maybe it’s different using the pot instead of the ground.”

“I don’t know why, but if it makes you feel better about gardening, you can use the pot all you want!”

Karyn grinned at Derpy’s unintended joke. Working the garden was far easier that day, and they had plenty of time to relax before Karyn picked up the flowers given to her and went home.

She put the flowerpot on her desk. “I’ll move it where everyone else can see it tomorrow.”

“You should be sure to talk and sing to them. They’ll grow better if you do.”

“I’m not sure that they’ll be better for hearing the kind of talk that goes on in the common room. They’ll wind up being delinquent flowers who don’t do their flowery homework.”

Derpy laughed. “So, what do you think? Have I instilled a love of gardening in you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll give it a try this year, but I don’t know how it will work out.”

“Trying is all I ask. I told Dinky to always try new things, but I’ve had mixed results.”

“Speaking of results,” said Karyn, “how are you doing with your weight?”

“Good so, far, but that’s why this is so much of a challenge.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well, look at those flowers there. So tempting, so tasty.” Derpy’s mouth was watering. “And I’ve got so many more at home.”

“Wait. You’re not growing a flower garden to look at and smell? You’re growing it to eat?”

“I’ll look at it and smell it before I eat it.”

Karyn put a hand on her shoulder. “Try to resist the temptation.”

They hugged good-bye, and Derpy travelled back home. She was about to go in, when she took one last look at the garden. Even the buds would be sweet. She trotted over to the nearest one and gave it a lick.

It took all her willpower to not bite down.

Author's Note

Coming next week...to "Derpy's Human"!

“Just to be sure,” Karyn said, “where did you get this fertilizer?”

“Carrot Top gave it to me. Have you met her?”

“I have. When you say you got it from her…”

Derpy cocked her head. “I mean that she got it from the leaves of the carrots she didn’t need from her own garden. What did you think?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You found the towel OK?”

“Yes. It’s a lot fluffier than the ones we get on Earth. What’s it made out of?”

“I don’t know,” said Derpy, as she hung hers back on the rack. “I just go buy them at Armoires and Towels.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t think I like it,” said Karyn.

“You don’t?”

“It’s not fair that you can pull off my look better than me.”

Be sure and read it too!

46: Relieving Derption

46: Relieving Derption

Karyn felt that she was barely out of bed when she heard Derpy appear in her room.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” Karyn said, smacking her lips. “Actually, I slept really well. I’ve got that pleasant sort of muscle fatigue that comes from a good night’s sleep.”

“Excellent. Then you’ll be up and ready for whatever we do today.”

Karyn sauntered over to a mirror. “First thing I have to do is comb my hair. I look like a fright.”

“Well, take your time.” Derpy sidled to the computer. “I’m keen to see how my crops are doing.”

“Your what?” Karyn remembered that she had introduced Derpy to the game the week before. “Oh, right. Don’t get addicted.”

“How can I? I can only play once a week. But I’ve been anticipating it every day.”

“I guess enjoying the anticipation is allowed.” Karyn was drowned out by the sound of her hair dryer. When she finished, she came out to see Derpy with a huge smile on her face, clicking the mouse rapidly. “You’re definitely enjoying it.”

“I’ll say. I hope that you get as much pleasure from tending yours.”

“Ugh. We have to do that, don’t we?”

“We do if we don’t want the garden to die,” said Derpy.

“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

They travelled to Equestria. With Karyn’s garden only a week old, there wasn’t much to do. But she still had to spread some plant food and fertilizer that Derpy provided for her.

“Just to be sure,” Karyn said, “where did you get this fertilizer?”

“Carrot Top gave it to me. Have you met her?”

“I have. When you say you got it from her…”

Derpy cocked her head. “I mean that she got it from the leaves of the carrots she didn’t need from her own garden. What did you think?”

Karyn didn’t want to reveal her suspicions. She knew that the ponies were civilized, but they still looked like animals, and she didn’t know what facilities they had for recycling waste.

“So I just spread this all over the plot?”

“That’s right. Try to mix it with the soil that’s in there already so that the seeds and roots get a lot of the nutrients. You might want to get some lime in there too.”

No, I don’t want to do any of this, thought Karyn. She decided to get a little revenge. “Have you done your exercise for today?” she asked.

“I haven’t,” said Derpy, grimacing. “I was kind-of hoping that we’d find a way to fit it into the day, little by little. I’d rather exercise for one minute thirty times a day than one time for thirty minutes.”

“I don’t think that would actually work. Or, it might, but it would be way too inconvenient, even for you.”

“I suppose. All right, I’ll go flying around town. See you in a while.”

Derpy took off. The sun was still rising and the morning dew had yet to burn off, but the air was heavy and humid. Sweat soon formed on Derpy’s coat and her tongue lolled out. Karyn was faring little better. She didn’t have sunglasses or a hat, and she was constantly raising her hand to shield her eyes. Both were even more put out that the other wasn’t there, but they pressed on, knowing that it wasn’t much longer until their work was done.

Karyn reached into the fertilizer, wondering if Derpy would mind if she used her bathroom to wash her hands. She wanted to do so after each scoop. Derpy’s mind was solely on how hot it was. There was nothing to do but spread, flap, and think. At long last, Karyn saw Derpy on the horizon, and Derpy saw her house getting bigger. She dove for a landing just as Karyn dropped the last pile of dirt on the garden. They collapsed on the grass together.

“That was…not fun,” said Derpy.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I’m all sweaty and sticky and stinky.”

“So am I, and I have dirt on my hands to boot.”

They lay, panting and wheezing for a few minutes until Karyn rolled over and sat up, reaching for her back but not wanting to touch it, for fear of getting her shirt dirty.

“I want a shower,” she said.

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Can you take me back to Earth so I can take one?”

Derpy got to her hooves. “Why not use mine? I’m the only one who uses it, and I clean it every Saturday night, so it’s pristine now. We could even take one together!”

Karyn balked. Since ponies had no problem with nudity, it made sense that communal bathing would be popular. But she was human, and it was weird. She tried to work around it.

“There wouldn’t be enough room, would there?”

“It’s plenty large. You barely take up any space while standing. Humans don’t sit down to shower, do they?”

“No, but—“

“Great!” said Derpy, hustling into the house and up the stairs. “I’ll like it really hot and steamy, though, so you probably will barely be able to see in front of your face. Will that be a problem?”

“Not at all.”

True to her word, by the time Karyn was able to trudge up the stairs after Derpy, a cloud of vapor was wafting past the door of the bathroom. Karyn was able to undress without Derpy seeing.

The shower was large, which made sense since ponies stood wider than humans, but Karyn didn’t anticipate how large it would be until she stepped in. The head, rather than being fixed in a corner, was in the center, and was much wider than showerheads she was used to. It was like being in an artificial rainstorm, if rain ever got to that warm.

“Explain to me,” said Derpy, “why humidity is so debilitating when you’re outside and so refreshing when you’re in the shower.”

“Probably because if you sweat in here, it’s washed away as soon as it forms.”

There was little awkwardness as they ran their varied appendages through their hair, or mane in Derpy’s case, and let the steam open their pores.

“Only one downside to showering together,” said Derpy.

“What’s that?”

“I can’t sing.”

Karyn’s laugh echoed in the shower. “Go ahead, I won’t mind.”

“No, I’ll really want to belt it out. I’d make your ears bleed. Pass me the soap, please?”

She was a little disappointed that she couldn’t see how Derpy held the bar of soap with her hooves and reached everywhere, but it would have been hypocritical, she felt, since she was so body-conscious. Liquid soap and loofahs might be popular in Equestria. Another thought hit her.

“You do have a towel for me, right?”

“Of course. All my towels are right in the linen closet on the other side of the room. There’s nothing worse than forgetting to have a towel ready, and then you have to run all the way across the house when you’re still wet, and by the time you get it, you’re freezing cold and have to go back in the shower.”

Karyn concluded that Derpy was speaking from experience.

After scrubbing up and washing their hair, Karyn said, “I’m ready to get out. Give me a minute or so to wrap myself in the towel.

Derpy rolled her eyes, but Karyn didn’t see, and she had the time she needed. When she called out that she was decent, Derpy shut the water and stepped out.

“You found the towel OK?”

“Yes. It’s a lot fluffier than the ones we get on Earth. What’s it made out of?”

“I don’t know,” said Derpy, as she hung hers back on the rack. “I just go buy them at Armoires and Towels.”

“Another store that sells only two things?”

“No, those are just the names of the ponies who own it. They sell all sorts of household stuff.”

Karyn gritted her teeth at another point of cultural difference. “Anyway, we’ve showered now.”

Derpy was glistening. “Yeah, but it didn’t take. You know what I mean?”

“I do. I think it’s still too humid. But I certainly don’t want to take a cold shower. We could go back to my dorm and turn the air conditioning on.”

“But it’s not as hot there.” Derpy looked out the window, then perked up. “Why don’t we go to the spa?”

“The spa? Isn’t that expensive?”

“A little, but I’ve been putting in overtime. Hearts and Hooves Day just past, and everypony was sending cards to one another.”

Karyn was a little reluctant, but since Derpy was clearly eager, she relented.

The spa was on the other side of town, and Karyn remarked that whatever treatment they had, it would probably be canceled out by the long walk back.

“Then we’ll just have to stay there until the sun goes down and it gets cooler. Besides, all the knots in my muscles will still be undone.”

They reached the spa. Karyn had to stoop to avoid the low ceilings. Most buildings in Ponyville could double as human structures, but the spa seemed to fit less. It made sense to her, since dealing with the body would be where the differences shone through. The twin Earth ponies that ran the business quickly appeared at the counter.

“Gut morning,” one said, and Karyn remembered that they had an accent. “My name Lotus Blossom, this my sister Aloe Vera. How can we be helpink you today?”

Derpy stepped in front of Karyn. “The works!” she said, jingling her coin purse.

“Very gut,” said Lotus. “Your friend like to vait here?”

“No, I want her to get the treatment with me!”

The spa ponies backed off. Karyn was afraid that they wouldn’t want to serve her at all. They had a conversation in whispers.

“Vat you think?” said Lotus.

“Maybe we can charge five times price for hooficure?” said Aloe. “She have more to work with.”

Derpy’s ears were well tuned. “I’ll let you charge twice as much, no more. Her fingers are much smaller than hooves.”

“Zat means more work, not less. Smaller file and more precision.”

“Three times the price, but you discount any hair work by fifty percent, since she doesn’t have a tail.”

They went back into their huddle. From Derpy’s perspective, they appeared to be writing sums on a piece of paper.

“Akreed,” said Lotus.

They escorted the girls into the inner section of the spa. “You’re a shrewd negotiator,” said Karyn under her breath.

“Not really, but it worked out worse for them.”

“How do you figure?”

“Whatever stress they caused me in the negotiations is just more they have to work out.”

Karyn looked around for a locker to put her clothes away in, but of course there was none. She decided that when in Equestria, do as the ponies do, and stripped, folding her clothes into a neat pile near the entrance.

They were led to a pair of massage tables. Here too, Karyn found it unusual, since the tables lacked the cushion with the hole that let a human look down. Pony bodies were just as comfortable with the head up when prone. Karyn sighed and lay down with her chin on the edge.

“Vait here,” said Aloe. “Ve get oil.”

When they were alone, Karyn whispered, “Hey, Derpy?”

“Hmm?”

“Aloe and Lotus, where are they from?”

“Right here in Ponyville, of course.”

Karyn shook her head. “No, I mean, where originally? I can’t place their accents.”

“They were born and raised here. I think they just talk like that to make the place seem fancy.”

Any further discussion of the spa ponies’ business practices was tabled as they returned and spread the oil over their front hooves. Karyn had been given a massage once before, but it was nothing compared to what she felt at Aloe’s hooves. The powerful legs of the pony got deep into the tissue, but she was gentle enough that there was no pain.

Karyn was upset for a moment when she realized that she was essentially being massaged by feet, but then remembered that there was that Asian style where the masseuse actually walked on the back. She chuckled at the thought that if Aloe and Lotus had learned that, they could each be twice as efficient as a human. The thought made her relax.

Derpy was enjoying herself far more. Loud moans and cries of “That’s it, right there!” pierced the room, and Lotus kicked a switch on the wall with her back hoof, turning on some mood music. Derpy still drowned out anything that played.

They advanced through all the treatments the spa had to offer—the steam room, the eye cucumbers, the seaweed wrap—before settling in for hair treatment and hooficures. The spa wasn’t outfitted as a full salon, but Aloe and Lotus would still soak manes and tails in natural chemicals to make them beautiful and full of body.

They emerged from the spa, rested and cheerful.

“So,” said Derpy, “you ready to go do more gardening?”

“Under no circumstances! Look at these nails. Those two did a great job.”

“My hooves are looking good too. And they feel good. I think I had a hanghoof that they took care of.”

They no longer minded the humidity, and made their way back to Derpy’s house. “So, what do you want to do now?”

“Well,” Derpy blew a puff of air upwards, “what I’d like—hang on.” She trotted to the mirror.

“What’s the matter?”

“However good Aloe and Lotus are with massages and skin care, they don’t know what to do with manes. It’s hanging down in front of my eyes and it’s uneven and just looks a mess!”

“It’s not that bad,” said Karyn.

“They didn’t do that great with yours either.”

“It’s fine. My hair isn’t that big a deal anyway.”

Derpy pounded her hoof. “It is a big deal. A girl’s mane says something about her. It presents her face to the world. Manes can be poofy or long or short, but they should always be what you want them to be, not what some poor stylist makes them.”

“You’re really passionate about this.”

“You’re right I’m passionate.”

“Does that mean you’re going to go and ask for your money back?” asked Karyn.

Derpy thought about that.

“No, that really wouldn’t be fair, and it also wouldn’t be worth it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Only one solution.” Derpy went for her saddlebag. “We’re going to the salon as well.”

“Sounds fine by me.”

“So hop on and let’s get this taken care of.” Derpy reached for the spell that would take them back to Earth.

“Um…what are you doing?”

“Karyn, dear. Every time I go to a pony stylist I get this same ratty mane-cut. I can’t even remember when I’ve changed my style last.”

“How about when we went to the Crystal Empire?”

“That was magic, and it was temporary.” Derpy pointed to the mirror. “No, I need a new cut, and I need it done by a professional. The only solution is to have a human do it.”

Karyn walked into Derpy’s kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, drank it, and then counted to ten. “It’s a good thing we’ve just been to the spa. Because otherwise I think I’d be a little tense. So, calmly and rationally, I’ll ask: are you crazy?

“There are some things you can do easily on Earth while invisible, like sneaking into a movie theater, and there are some things you can do with difficulty, like riding the light rail. But to have you sit in a stylist’s chair, everyone would have to see you. Unless you want to get your mane cut while you’re invisible, which wouldn’t end well for anyone.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Karyn wanted to blow up at her friend, but not only had she just had a relaxing few hours being pampered, Derpy had paid for it all. Wondering if Aloe and Lotus hadn’t used magic to break down her resistance, she said, “All right, let’s go to Earth.”

In the town where Karyn went to school, the hairstylist was not fancy, counting on the students not having a lot of money to spend on their hair. Karyn walked in, looking around for security cameras.

“Can I help you?”

“Um, yes,” said Karyn. “I hope so. I have a friend who needs a haircut.”

“OK, bring her in.”

“Well, it’s complicated. Have you ever heard of xeroderma?”

The receptionist cocked her head.

“She’s really sensitive to light,” said Karyn, wondering how good a liar she was being. “She has to have tinted windows at home and everything. So she’ll have to wear a thick black cloak, and you can only work on the top of her head. She needs to keep it on the rest of her.”

“I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that. We’ll bring her in the back. Doreen?” She called for one of the stylists and explained.

Derpy walked awkwardly on her hind legs. “Are you sure this is the best way?” she asked Karyn as she was escorted in.

“You wanted your haircut by a human, this is what I came up with.”

She lay down with her head in the sink. Doreen wondered if she should use the stylist’s cape over Derpy’s cloak, and did. “Are you too hot in that?”

“No,” said Derpy. “Like Karyn said, I did want my hair cut by a hu—“

“By a hu…gely popular place like this,” said Karyn, laughing to cover herself.

“Mmhm.” Doreen flipped the back of the cloak over, exposing Derpy’s mane. Karyn bit her nails.

“All right, just lean your head back. I’ll shampoo and condition it.”

There was little of the playful banter that usually accompanied a styling, as Karyn wanted to get the process finished as soon as she could.

Once Derpy’s mane had been washed, Doreen asked, “So what are we doing with this?”

Her reply was muffled by the cloth. “Just make it look like hers,” said Derpy pointing a cloaked hoof at Karyn.

“Oh, Der—um, D.H,” said Karyn, “that’s so sweet of you.”

“I think you’ve got the nicest hair of any person I know.”

“That’s not true. It’s plain.”

“It’s lovely.”

Doreen had already taken her scissors out of the disinfecting chemical and was straightening out Derpy’s bangs. Karyn reached underneath and held her hoof.

Once that was done, the stylist moved to the back and brushed it straight. “Your hair is so thick,” she said, “I think the only time I’ve ever worked with hair like this is on a horsehair wig.”

“What?!” said Karyn.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not implying that she’s wearing a wig.”

Karyn breathed easier, since that wasn’t the implication that she was afraid of.

The snipping and brushing continued. Karyn had another nervous moment when Doreen said, “Your ears are really high up on the side of your head.”

“Please,” said Karyn, “she’s very sensitive about her appearance.” That at least was the truth, even though the area of which she was sensitive, her eyes, wasn’t visible.

The haircut neared its end. “Do you use product in your hair?”

“I suppose I do,” said Derpy. Doreen walked off to get some.

“You use product?” whispered Karyn.

“Sure. Water is a product, right? Come to think of it, everything is a product.”

“That’s not what—“ She had returned and was already spraying Derpy’s mane to keep it in place.

“And there you go.” Doreen pulled the cape off, and Karyn led Derpy to the front. They paid and were back on their way. Outside the salon, they found an alley and Derpy switched her cloak for the invisibility spell.

“What did you think?” said Karyn.

“How can I tell what it looks like?”

“Oh, right. What does it feel like.”

“It feels like my hair’s been cut, and it’s not in my face. Thanks for buying me that, by the way.”

“Don’t worry about it. Since I had mine done at the spa, I don’t have to go for a while.”

They made it back to the dorm.

“Here we go,” said Derpy. “Time for the unveiling, or un-invisibilitizing.”

She turned off the spell and showed off, flipping her head this way and that.

“I don’t think I like it,” said Karyn.

“You don’t?”

“It’s not fair that you can pull off my look better than me.”

Derpy blushed. “It’s not waving or moving at all.”

“No, it wouldn’t. That’s what that hairspray does.”

“Really? We should import some to Equestria. Ponies would go wild for it.”

Karyn said nothing. She knew that hairspray was mostly just spray glue, and that was a road she did not want to go down.

Derpy kept showing off, hovering and bouncing. “I wish she could have done my tail as well. What do you think? Can we go back?”

“Forget it. There’s no way we can hide that.”

“But suppose that I just sat upside down, and you said that my flank was my head.”

Karyn shook her head. “I’d never pull it off. Even if I thought there was a hope of getting away with it, I couldn’t keep a straight face.”

Derpy was disappointed, but at least they were no longer tense.

Author's Note

Here's the preview for next week. Sorry it wasn't up with the chapter. I was feeling ill and needed to crash.

Derpy had appeared many times in Karyn’s room. Sometimes Karyn would be already awake, waiting patiently. Sometimes she would be at her computer, busily distracted and surprised by Derpy’s entrance. She could be in the bathroom getting ready, or even still in bed. What hadn’t happened, until that day, was that Karyn would not be there at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m not legal yet. Two more years.”

“They make it illegal to drink?” asked Derpy.

“They do. A lot of young humans are very irresponsible. They ruin it for the rest of us who probably could handle it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn pulled the car to the side of the road. “Turn visible. Now.”

“What? But we’re out—“

“It’s dark enough. Do it. I need to look at your eyes.”

47: Happy Derp-Day!

Derpy had appeared many times in Karyn’s room. Sometimes Karyn would be already awake, waiting patiently. Sometimes she would be at her computer, busily distracted and surprised by Derpy’s entrance. She could be in the bathroom getting ready, or even still in bed. What hadn’t happened, until that day, was that Karyn would not be there at all.

Taking precaution, Derpy decided to use her invisibility spell. Thoughts of Karyn having been kidnapped, tied up in the back of some van, and herself coming to her magical rescue flitted through Derpy’s head, but were dispelled when she found the note left on the desk.

“Dearest Derpy,” the note read, “I know that you will find this letter, since the first thing you do every morning is to check my room for any particle of dirt or paper that is out of place. Sorry to say that I can’t spend the day with you. I’ve mentioned before how the lack of communication when we’re both in our own worlds is problematic, and such is the case today. I was invited by my folks to come home for the weekend, and I couldn’t get out of it. I look forward to spending next Sunday with you. Yours, Karyn.”

“Hmm,” Derpy said, looking around. “That would have been nicer if I had heard her voice reading the letter aloud as I read it.” She moped around the room for a few minutes, and then took out the spell to take her home. Right as she was about to use it, she looked at the note again, and made a decision.

“You’re not getting away from me that easily,” she said. “I still remember where your folks live. It’ll take a while to get there, but I have nothing better to do at home.”

She made for the window, counting on no one seeing or caring about a window opening and closing itself, and took off. Tracking the highway and wishing that she had Karyn with her for the journey, Derpy made her way to the little suburb where Karyn was raised. “She can’t get on me for skipping my exercise this week,” Derpy said, panting.

She landed and trotted up to the house, feeling that it would be better to espy out Karyn and try to get her alone before letting her know that she had come. When she rounded the bend and saw the house, it looked as if Pinkie Pie had been through. Balloons were tied to the mailbox and bouncing together in the wind, crepe paper lined the edge of the house, and “Happy Birthday” was spray-snowed on the front window.

It must be her mom’s or her dad’s birthday,Derpy thought. Can’t be hers, or she would have told me about it. She flapped her wings lazily and ascended to the dormers on the second floor, peeking in to Karyn’s room.

There she was, slipping on a pair of shoes and getting ready to go downstairs. Muffled by the glass and the distance to the ground floor, Karyn’s mother called out, “Karyn! Do you want to open your present from us now?”

“It is her birthday!” said Derpy. “The little sneak! She wanted to have her party without me. No, wait. Maybe she just forgot until this week. I forget important dates all the time.”

Karyn ran down, and Derpy swooped to the large bay window that looked in on the living room, listening in. “It’s just a card,” her mother said, and Karyn took it in hand. “You look very nice for the party.”

“Thanks. Do you want help in the kitchen?”

“No, it’s your day. Just relax.”

Her mother left her alone in the room, and Derpy saw her chance. She flew up to an open window and entered the house, making it back down in time to see Karyn opening the card and pulling out a wad of cash.

“You were planning to save most of that, weren’t you?” Derpy said, causing Karyn to jump and cry out.

“Everything all right?” her mother yelled from the kitchen.

“Yes. Thank you for the gift! I was surprised at how much you gave me. Very generous. Excuse me.” She ran up to her room.

“Gotcha, huh?” said Derpy.

“You scared the heck out of me!” Karyn scream-whispered. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my note?”

“I did, but I didn’t see why you didn’t just tell me to come here, and why you didn’t tell me about your birthday.”

Karyn closed the door and talked in her normal voice. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and I was hoping I could get out of coming home and just keep to our usual weekend routine. There’s going to be a party, and it’ll be awkward if I have to keep ducking out to visit with you.”

“I won’t mind. I’ll just hang out and observe the party. It’ll be a fun chance to see how humans celebrate their birthdays and if it’s different from how we do it.”

“All right, I guess I’ll just deal with the awkwardness.”

A car door slammed outside. Derpy bolted to the window and peered out. Karyn heard the voice and said, “That’s my Uncle George. Most of the extended family is coming over. It’ll be pretty crowded, so stay up high.”

“Won’t be a problem. You’ve got a nice house with vaulted ceilings. It’s almost as if it had been built to hide an invisible pegasus.”

Karyn was able to linger with Derpy for a few more minutes before her mother called her down. “Here we go, Derpy. Remember to keep clear.” She put on her best smile and started greeting relatives.

“At least you’re not responding to ‘Happy Birthday’ with ‘You too,’” Derpy whispered. “I did that one year.”

Karyn laughed at that.

“What’s so funny?” her aunt, who was walking in the front door, said.

“Nothing, just thinking of something.” Karyn waved her hand above her, slapping away at Derpy.

More relatives and friends arrived, and Karyn had to stand like Princess Celestia at the Grand Galloping Gala and greet everyone. When the party got into full swing, she was able to duck into a spare bedroom with the excuse of carrying some coats.

“I didn’t realize you had such a big family,” said Derpy. “They must really like you to all come to your birthday.”

“I think they just want any excuse to get together and throw a party.” She threw the coats on the bed and returned to the party.

Karyn’s father put party music on the stereo, and the sound of conversation drowned out anything that Derpy might have said to Karyn. Karyn could not enjoy the same immunity, since talking to no one would be too suspicious. After a few minutes of mingling, she excused herself to the bathroom.

“So, yeah,” Karyn said, “I do have a lot of relatives, and many of them are hard partiers. There’ll be a lot of drinking done tonight.”

“Will you drink?”

“I’m not legal yet. Two more years.”

“They make it illegal to drink?” asked Derpy.

“They do. A lot of young humans are very irresponsible. They ruin it for the rest of us who probably could handle it.”

There was a knock on the door. “Is everything all right in there?”

“Yes, Mom,” Karyn said. “I’ll be out in a minute!”

She shrugged and washed her hands, then rejoined the party. “I thought I heard voices in there,” her mother said.

“Just singing to myself idly.”

“It didn’t sound like singing.”

Karyn walked swiftly to get back to others. “I guess I can’t carry a tune.”

Derpy left Karyn alone and visited the rest of the party. She knew so few humans other than Karyn that she thought it was a good chance to broaden her horizon while giving her friend a chance to relax and not have to worry about her. In the den, several of Karyn’s older male relatives had turned on the TV. They were watching some sort of sport and drinking out of brown glass bottles.

She tried to understand the game, and gathered that everyone was happy when the ball passed through the ring, but the comments of the men watching didn’t help. “They really have to rotate more,” said one, and Derpy thought that would just make them dizzy. “Their pick and roll needs work,” said another, and Derpy’s head was filled with images of mining axes and breakfast buns.

Flying to the kitchen, she expected to find the conversation there more interesting, but it was nothing other than a mix of reminiscing and swapping stories about people who couldn’t make it. They’re being so unfair, thought Derpy. Don’t they know that they’re supposed to tell interesting stories for anypony who might be eavesdropping? She laughed at herself and flew back to the living room, where Karyn was sitting to the side as the rest of the partygoers mingled.

Karyn’s mother emerged from the kitchen with the first tray of apps, a cheese board. Everyone dove in hungrily, and Derpy flapped her wings a little slower, wishing that she didn’t have to hide so that she could eat with everyone else. When the crowd thinned, she snuck in and grabbed a piece of cheese, swallowing it quickly so no one saw it flying up before it disappeared.

The second tray came out, and it was a baked tofu platter. The guests stayed away from that. Even Karyn didn’t partake. Her cousin, a dark-complexioned young man that reminded Derpy vaguely of Albert, her nemesis on Earth, came up to her and said, “Why do you have to be a veggie? We can’t eat good because you’ve got some weird fetish over animals?”

Karyn stood up. “First, I’m not a veggie, I’m a vegetarian. Second, my mother isn’t the best vegetarian cook. If I were allowed to make things, you’d probably like it better.” She silently added that her making things would include secret help from Derpy. “Third, I’m not forbidding anyone from eating meat. You’re free to do it if you like, and they’re serving some in the kitchen, so you can ‘eat good’ all you want, just not in my sight. Is that too much to ask?”

He stormed off to the kitchen, either to get the food that Karyn talked about or just to avoid continuing the argument. Above, Derpy gave a silent cheer. You go, Karyn! I bet a year ago you wouldn’t have stood up to that guy the same way. You might have still told him off, but you’d be sitting in the chair, and I couldn’t hear because it was too low. Also because I was in Equestria and didn’t know you.

The cold appetizers were followed by hot foods, and Derpy stayed out of the kitchen for fear of finding out what was being eaten. In the living room it was still safe. Mozzerella sticks and jalapeno poppers were passed around, and even Karyn ate her fill. She hoped that she would be able to save a few of each for Derpy to try, and wished for a moment that she didn’t have to keep her a secret.

Whether it was the birthday, the size of the party, or just their nature, Karyn’s parents had gone all out with the meal, and had Derpy been an invited guest, she would have set her diet program back by a month. As it was, she lost weight by keeping her wings moving in her effort to stay out of everyone’s way.

The family was called to a sit-down dinner, and for the first time in the party everyone was in the same room. It was brief, as the youngest of the family were put at a separate table. Karyn picked up her plate and went to join them.

“You don’t have to sit at the kiddie table anymore, Karyn,” her father said.

“It wouldn’t feel right if I sat with all of you. A few more years.”

She took her place at the head of the table with the others all watching her. It seemed to Derpy that, although she was not a perfect judge of human ages, Karyn didn’t have anyone close to her in years. The adults all had a few gray hairs or liver spots, and the children were, from their appearance and how they ate, still adolescents to Derpy’s eye. Even the oldest had to be five years Karyn’s junior.

Maybe that’s why she had such a hard time making friends before me, she thought. She’s between generations and had no one her equal. Really the only one she knows in the same situation is Dinky.

“So, Karyn,” her oldest cousin said, “what’s it like at college? Is the studying hard? Is everyone nice?”

“I have one really good friend. She visits me every week. Even though I can’t see her today, I know she’s with me.”

Derpy nearly lost her composure and laughed at the double meaning. Karyn and her cousins swapped more stories. Soon after it was time to clean up, and Karyn, despite it being her birthday, bussed all the plates to the sink and helped make coffee.

“Do we have Sally’s cake?” Karyn asked her mother.

“Of course. We have it every year for your birthday. Go back in the living room and wait while we light the candles.”

With everyone still in the kitchen or dining room, Derpy got in another word with her friend.

“Who’s Sally?”

“My mom’s aunt. She came up with the idea of this cake that we have all the time. You know what a Bundt cake is?”

“No,” said Derpy.

“It’s a cake with the middle cut out, or rather, never put in. The pan has a hole in the middle which lets the cake bake evenly without the outside being burned or the inside being raw.”

“That sounds convenient, but you lose out on cake in the middle.”

Karyn peeked to make sure that no one was coming, then continued. “That was my Aunt Sally’s thought as well. So what she figured is that she could fill the hole in the middle with icing to make it even more decadent.”

“I should tell Pinkie Pie about that.” Derpy had a vision in her head. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell Pinkie Pie about that.”

Their conversation was cut short by what sounded like a piercing scream. The syllable “Haaaaa!” rang out through the kitchen, and Karyn got up. “Sorry, I should have told you about this, it’s kind of a family tradition to sing the birthday song as loudly as possible, and to hold the first note while the candles are lit.”

It didn’t help that Karyn was at the age where it was just still possible to have the matching number of candles on the cake, even if it was a little crowded. Likely next year she would be told that each candle would count for two years, or some other excuse. She made her way into the din with Derpy, her ears flattened down to avoid going deaf.

With the guest of honor in the room, some singers switched to “Pyyyyy!” while others stayed at “Haaaaa” until the candles were ready. Finally the combination of drunken pub warblers and football stadium chanters sang the whole song, the individual lines being punctuated with “cha-cha-cha”s from the younger guests.

After that, it wasn’t until they had finished three full verses of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” that Karyn was allowed to make the first ceremonial cut. At last people got their cake. For those who didn’t like the chocolate cake or the mass of icing surrounding it, a cheesecake was also on the table.

Having the birthday party on a Sunday meant that it could not go too late into the night. Even before the family had finished their coffee, they were nudging Karyn back toward the living room to open her presents, so that guests with a long drive home could arrive at work the next day still human.

She sat in the easy chair as everyone else filled in the couches.

The gifts were not as extensive as they were for Karyn’s Christmas, but from the size of the pile it looked like she would make out well. The stack of cards that did not accompany boxes she set aside, hoping to save the most important gifts, the gift cards and cash, for last. She unwrapped the boxes carefully. Even if the paper couldn’t be saved, it was at least less of a cleanup hassle for her mother.

The first gift was a pair of shoes in just her style, practical and durable, the shoes of an IT major. Small bows accented the tips so that some sense of fashion was maintained. Derpy then became witness to another of the family’s traditions, as a chant of “Try them on! Try them on!” was raised, and would not be ended until Karyn had slipped out of one of her sneakers and into the new shoe, to mild applause.

The chant was revived for each article that she received, though was particularly awkward when she received a more daring summer outfit from Victoria’s Secret. Her eldest cousin was the only one to take up the chant, and Derpy gave him a swift love tap with her wing. Since he was surrounded by others, he put it down to one of them and shut up.

Karyn went around the room thanking everyone, and if she was more enthusiastic about the monetary gifts, no one minded. She groaned inwardly at the realization that her overseer on financial affairs had watched everything, and probably knew to the penny how much she had.

With the gift giving concluded, everyone made their way to their cars. Karyn kissed her parents good-bye before reaching the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay over?” her father asked. “You can leave early in the morning and beat the traffic.”

“Thanks, but I’m just going to get the drive over with so that I can sleep in my own bed.” Karyn had a note of sadness as she realized that her own bed was no longer with them.

If her parents noticed her opening the passenger door and holding it for a moment, they didn’t say anything.

She and Derpy drove the road back to the University. “At least we can talk on the drive,” said Derpy. Her voice was muffled, and Karyn had a picture of her looking out the window and leaning on her hoof.

“Yeah. That was a little stressful. With so many people around I was worried you’d be found out, but you’re adept at avoiding people. So what did you think of how we celebrate birthdays?”

“It was certainly more intense than Equestrian parties.”

Karyn shifted and looked at Derpy’s seat. “Don’t judge all human parties like that. My family is a little weird.”

“I can believe that. At the same time, all the parties I know were thrown by Pinkie Pie, and I don’t think she’s ever stopped being a filly.”

“Are you all right? You seem a little distracted.”

Derpy sighed and turned back toward her. “Well, everyone got you a present except me. I feel so guilty.”

“Oh, Derpy. You don’t have to get me anything beyond your friendship. You mentioned Pinkie. What did she say? Birthdays mean having fun with friends, not getting lots of stuff.”

“You were happy with the stuff you were getting at the party.”

“That’s different. I don’t even like half those people.”

They had a good laugh at that.

“What about you?” Karyn continued. “When’s your birthday and what do you want for it?”

“Huh? It already passed, two or three months ago.”

“What?! You didn’t say anything? And you have the nerve to feel guilty now?”

“But I should have more of an obligation,” said Derpy. “I’m older, and I’m the one who keeps imposing on you.”

Karyn pulled the car to the side of the road. “Turn visible. Now.”

“What? But we’re out—“

“It’s dark enough. Do it. I need to look at your eyes.”

Cautiously, as if she were still trying to hide, Derpy removed her spell.

“Now, listen,” said Karyn. “You have never imposed. You let me know that magic and Equestria are real. You’ve been a friend when I needed one. You’ve even taught me about how to save money. You don’t owe me anything, except this.”

She tore off her seat belt and hugged Derpy around her chest. Derpy was surprised for a second, then hugged back, rubbing Karyn’s back with her wing.

As they heard a car approaching on the highway, they broke the embrace, and Derpy went invisible again. They drove back to the dorm.

In the dark, with no one around, Derpy insisted on carrying the pile of Karyn’s presents up to her room.

“Come on, let me take some,” Karyn said.

“No, I’m the deliverer.”

“That’s just it. I can’t make you work on your day off.”

Derpy laughed. “Too late, I’ve got them.”

“I think you just want to make sure I don’t hide any gift cards.”

They reached her room and put on the lights. Derpy set the presents on the desk and turned back to Karyn.

“I’ve thought of something I’m going to get you for your birthday.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Nuh-uh! It’s going to be a surprise. Even if it’s after your birthday. You’ll have to wait for it.”

Author's Note

Next time on Derpy's Human!

“Sounds fancy. What am I wearing?”

Derpy ducked into her house and came out with a garment bag. “I’ve got something for you. It’s not quite as froufrou as what Rarity made for you, but it covers you completely, which I know you’ve got a thing about. You can change on the train.”

Karyn took the bag and ran with Derpy toward the station. The hourly Canterlot train was already parked and waiting, and they climbed up into the day car.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You know her?”

“Not personally. We’ll just go like autograph hunters and see if she’s there. I’m sure there’s nothing a cellist has better to do before a performance than to hang around and press hooves with her fans.”

They shuffled around to the side of the amphitheater. There was a small alleyway that nopony would notice if they were snooping around, but Derpy, always looking slightly askew, caught it. She ducked down with Karyn following.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The setting was silent again, except for a low scraping sound that seemed to get closer.

Derpy was now looking at the stage, but her expression fell and her ears collapsed to her face. “Karyn, you might want to cover your ears.”

“Huh? Why?”

You'll find out why, next week!

48: A Night at the Derpera

Karyn was up early that Sunday. She was awaiting her surprise belated birthday gift from Derpy, and even though it wouldn’t bring her around any sooner, she was still eagerly running about. When she heard the telltale sound of the magical appearance, she sat on the bed and bounced in anticipation.

But she saw nothing. “Derpy?” she said.

“I’m here.”

“Why are you invisible already?”

Derpy shifted subtly. “Because it’s easier than asking you to close your eyes so I can show you your present. Hop on and I’ll take you to Equestria and show you there.”

“All right. Where exactly is your back?”

Derpy nuzzled Karyn with her head to give her a point of reference, which let her slide on. “There you go.”

“Derpy, are you wearing clothes?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, it won’t interfere with my flying.”

“I wasn’t worried about that,” said Karyn, “but why are you wearing them?”

“I’ll show you in one moment.” They were in Equestria, but the sun was setting and the shops were closing their doors for the night. Derpy landed and let Karyn off, then said, “OK, here we go. Ta-da!”

She was wearing a pony’s equivalent of evening clothes. A black jacket was around her shoulders and when she stood on her hind legs, a cravat and cummerbund were seen. At her tail, the outfit was more feminine, flowing into a dress train.

“You look great,” said Karyn. “What’s the occasion?”

“I’m taking you to a concert in Canterlot.”

“Sounds fancy. What am I wearing?”

Derpy ducked into her house and came out with a garment bag. “I’ve got something for you. It’s not quite as froufrou as what Rarity made for you, but it covers you completely, which I know you’ve got a thing about. You can change on the train.”

Karyn took the bag and ran with Derpy toward the station. The hourly Canterlot train was already parked and waiting, and they climbed up into the day car.

“So what is this concert? Some cool pony band?”

“I think there will be some ensembles, but Miss Octavia is the headliner, and she’ll be soloing most of it.”

“Octavia?” said Karyn, opening the bag. “So it’s a cello concert?”

“No, it’s the bassoon.”

“Oh. I thought she was a cellist.”

“Gotcha!” Derpy laughed. “Of course it’s the cello. Everypony knows her for that.”

Karyn thought that wasn’t particularly fair of Derpy to expect a human to know the intricacies of the Canterlot music scene. But of course, she did know that Octavia played cello, so she couldn’t really complain.

“Can you go watch the door while I change? Ask anypony else to wait a moment before coming in?”

“If I must.”

Derpy went to the end of the car while Karyn slinked behind a seat. She took off her shirt quickly and threw the dress over it. It was simple, as Derpy had said, no more than a toga really, but she was covered and in something other than play clothes, so she was satisfied.

Riding the train at night was a new experience for Karyn. The mountain of Canterlot loomed like a giant out of a fairy tale, and the spires of the castle reached out to the stars like a ghostly hand. From the high tower a spark lit and twinkled, and she thought for a moment that a star had burst and fallen, but then saw the break of the moon on the horizon. She had seen Princess Luna casting her spell.

“You know what I like about the train at night?” said Derpy.

“What’s that?”

“The tunnels are less scary.”

Canterlot had two train stations, one of which was very close to Ponyville, a mere one-stop jaunt, and the main junction, the trip to which might take the entire night. The concert was being held between them, so Derpy informed Karyn that they were in for a hike no matter which station they went to, and of course they would take the closer one. They quickly disembarked and started on their way. Karyn was grateful for the simplicity of her outfit, since it let her walk easy. Derpy, however, was soon winded.

“Come on,” said Karyn. “Just make it there and back and you can skip exercise tomorrow.”

That gave Derpy new life, and they soon arrived at the amphitheater. The structure was behind a smaller building, and Karyn could only see the top of the rim until she moved around, but then she stopped walking.

“What’s wrong?” said Derpy.

“That’s impossible.”

From the angle she had first seen it, the amphitheater looked something like the Hollywood Bowl, which Karyn had once visited. Her mind filled in a sloping structure that would be quite large, but then she saw the entirety. It was a rim like a satellite dish, balanced perfectly on one point with no visible means of support. By every law of physics Karyn knew, it should have been falling over.

“Oh, the shape?” said Derpy. “I read about it. It’s supposed to be, um, parasitic, to help with the accoutrements.”

If anything could shake Karyn from her slack-jawed stare, it was Derpy’s language. “You mean parabolic to help with the acoustics. But how does it stay up?”

“Magic, of course.”

Of course. No matter how many times she saw spells being cast, Karyn was still native to a purely physical world, and watching magic used on such a large scale was against her expectations.

In front of the impossible structure was a more traditional layout of stadium seating. Stone benches that were a bit wider than ones on Earth, but still recognizable. Karyn reflected that it was an advantage to the designers that ponies did not need to rest their backs against a panel when they sat.

Lyra excepted.

“Come on,” said Derpy. “Let’s go see if we can meet Octavia before the concert starts.”

“You know her?”

“Not personally. We’ll just go like autograph hunters and see if she’s there. I’m sure there’s nothing a cellist has better to do before a performance than to hang around and press hooves with her fans.”

They shuffled around to the side of the amphitheater. There was a small alleyway that nopony would notice if they were snooping around, but Derpy, always looking slightly askew, caught it. She ducked down with Karyn following.

The tunnel darkened, but the light of candles could be seen in the distance. When they reached it, there was Octavia tuning the strings of her cello.

“Hi, Miss Octavia!” shouted Derpy.

A piercing note came forth as the cellist turned her head. “And just who are you, may I ask?”

“My name’s Derpy Hooves! I brought my friend to watch your concert for her birthday! Not that that’s today, but at the time I didn’t know, or I would have brought her to the concert you were having then, or, if you weren’t having one, I would have either had to pick a different gift or take her to this one anyway.”

Octavia just stared, as if fearing that their similarly colored coats indicated some forgotten familial relationship. Before she could say anything else, a loud voice came from the next room.

“Yo, Tavi! What’s doing? I hear voices. You’re not seeing some other mare out there, are you?”

If anything, Octavia’s general annoyance only deepened. Vinyl Scratch bounced out of the private room. Even though she wasn’t performing that night, she still had her headphones draped around her neck and her sunglasses on.

“I don’t know who this is any more than you—“ Octavia said, but Vinyl ignored her and looked over her shades at Derpy.

“I know you! I’ve seen you around Ponyville, right? Yeah! You’re that letter carrier. You bring my massive piles of fan mail.”

Derpy didn’t remember Vinyl getting any more letters than most ponies, but put it down to her poor memory.

“Whoa! What’s this?” Vinyl was looking at Karyn, and took her sunglasses completely off. “Are you some kind of Diamond Dog female?”

Derpy got steamed at that, but Karyn was used to it. She introduced herself. “I’m a human from another world. But I’ve heard all about you and your DJ gig.”

“Far out! You hear that, Octy? They know me in other worlds.”

“Oh, Miss Octavia’s just as famous.” Neither musician seemed very happy at that. But Vinyl’s temporary silence finally let Octavia get a word in edgewise.

“Whoever they are, they’re trespassing here. If you’re going to the concert, then—“

Again she was cut off, but not by her marefriend. A unicorn in uniform came rushing down the same tunnel that Karyn and Derpy had used.

“Is anything wrong, Miss Octavia? Who are these intruders? And what is this thing?!” He pointed a hoof at Karyn.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Derpy. “I just thought it was all right to see if I couldn’t shake hooves with her before the performance. But now that I think about it, she’s probably really busy anyway. We’ll just get to our seat.”

“Wait a moment. You have tickets?”

“Of course.” Derpy pulled them out of her bag, only to find them enwrapped in a magic field and pulled away from her.

“Well, now you don’t.” The unicorn smiled as he said it. “Not only are these contingent on not disturbing the performers, but they are intended for the use of ponies."

Octavia was by no means a mare of the people, but she was certainly not a racist. Perhaps it also helped having Vinyl there and knowing that an explanation would be necessary if she stood idle. She placed a hoof over the unicorn’s chest. “You have jurisdiction over the hooflights outward, but from the stage in is my territory. If you’re going to take their tickets, perhaps they would like to sit in the wings.”

Karyn watched the exchange, bemused. She didn’t know how to act among the high society ponies, so just kept her mouth shut as everything transpired. Vinyl hopped up and said, “Sweet! Some friends to watch the show with, that’ll be awesome.” Then she rubbed the chin of the attending unicorn. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and grab us some drinks and nibbles, K? Make it snappy. Come on, you two. Let’s let Tavi finish tuning and get psyched up. Kick some flank out there, Tavi!”

She gave Octavia a kiss on the cheek, and then hustled everyone else out. It seemed no one could stop Vinyl when she set her mind to something.

The section she took Karyn and Derpy to was slightly below the center stage, and to the audience, it would look like a mere shadow in the crossing beams of the lights.

“So, how’s this for cool?” asked Vinyl. “You fall out of your seat and into the wings with me?”

“It’s great,” said Derpy. “But I do everything in wings.”

Vinyl leaned across to Karyn. “Is she like this all the time?”

“You get used to it. I don’t, but you might.”

The lights dimmed, and there was the low rumble of pony applause from below. From the exact center of the parabolic structure, Octavia, resplendent in coat and tails, trotted to the stage where her cello awaited her. None of them had seen how it got there.

“Huh?” said Vinyl. “Oh, she has a stagehoof bring it out ahead of time. Tavi loves to make an entrance.”

Octavia raised a hoof and the concert hall went silent. She positioned the instrument so that the stand was anchored into the stage, and reared on her hind legs. Karyn wondered if they had to construct the cello stronger than humans would.

The first note sounded, and they could feel the reverberations the dish provided. Without any of the complicated electronic enhancements of sound systems on Earth, ponies had achieved the same effect.

Karyn did not expect to recognize any of the music, but she was still able to listen and enjoy. Derpy though seemed to recognize every beat and movement, and Karyn espied her conducting the air.

For some pieces, an ensemble was brought out to accompany her, but mostly she soloed. For what seemed like a climax, she again dismissed all the others and stood alone.

The piece began, and Karyn wore a quizzical look. “Is that from the ‘Four Seasons’ by Vivaldi?” she whispered.

Derpy flipped through her program. “Apparently.”

“How does she know that? It’s a human song.”

“Lyra’s human brought over a bunch of stuff on the last trip to Earth. A lot of it was music, since Lyra can make her living doing it.”

“That makes sense. Hey Vinyl, did Oct—“ Karyn turned around, but Vinyl’s chair was empty. “Did you see her leave?”

“No, and I was looking in every direction. She’s quick.”

“Well, she’s probably eager to get back to her marefriend.”

“I’ll keep a watch in case she comes back,” said Derpy.

The piece concluded, and Octavia took her bow. The ponies gave her another thunderous round of applause, and calls for an encore sprang from the crowd below.

After a suitable delay, she emerged once again, smiling for the first time. She took her time setting up for the encore. Karyn noticed Derpy looking past the stage.

“What is it?”

“Look over at the other wing,” said Derpy. “Do you see a black square there? What is that?”

Karyn stared, but couldn’t make it out. “That hasn’t been there all the concert.”

Octavia finished applying more resin to her bow and clambered onto the cello again. The setting was silent again, except for a low scraping sound that seemed to get closer.

Derpy was now looking at the stage, but her expression fell and her ears collapsed to her face. “Karyn, you might want to cover your ears.”

“Huh? Why?”

Derpy pointed behind her with a wing. Karyn turned to see Vinyl magically pushing a black cube identical to the one that Karyn and Derpy couldn’t identify. Now, the conic shape in front gave it away as a speaker, and what looked like a very powerful one.

Before she even covered her ears, Karyn dove to get behind the speaker to try to deflect some of the blast. Octavia pulled her bow across the strings, and, as if it were her cue, Vinyl sent another spell down the cord connected to the speaker.

The bass had been dropped.

Karyn thought it would be like a bomb going off, but bombs don’t last as long as Vinyl’s repeated thumping. Additionally, whatever magic she used to make the sound was not quite the same as the electronic music that she was, if not used to, aware of. It had the precise frequency to rattle her teeth and shake her guts.

The only enjoyment she got from it was watching the reactions of the ponies below. Some dove for cover as she had, but most realized what was going on and stormed out, throwing their programs to the ground. A few even seemed to enjoy it.

After a minute, the sound waned, and she took her hands off her ears. Vinyl had made herself scarce once more, and Derpy and Karyn couldn’t blame her. It would be a race to see whether the audience or Octavia would be the first to tear off her horn.

“Come on,” said Derpy. “Let’s go back again and see if we can’t comfort Octavia, what with her show ruined.”

Karyn nodded, barely able to hear. They went back down the long tunnel to Octavia’s dressing room. They expected to find Octavia sobbing onto her music stand, or perhaps in a murderous rage, but she was calmly putting away her cello, and Vinyl was slumped in an easy chair, rolling with laughter.

“Were you watching? Huh, Tavi? Did you see ‘em?!”

Octavia sighed. “Yes, Vinyl. I saw them.”

Derpy realized that she was interfering in a couple’s argument, but couldn’t stop herself. “You’re not mad at her?”

Octavia put the bow in the case. “I used to be, the first dozen or so times she did it. I came to the conclusion that being angry wasn’t going to stop her, and indeed nothing was. Now I ask her to confine it to the encore, which seems to work well enough.”

The surly unicorn came galloping up once again. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Octavia, how such a thing could happen—you!”

He stared at Karyn and Derpy. Whether he thought they were responsible or was just upset that they were in his way again, his glance was hostile.

“Hey, it’s cool, dude,” said Vinyl. “They’re with me.”

“That hardly provides sufficient justification.” He noticed the cord to the speakers draped around Vinyl’s shoulders and hooves, where she was lazily making a cat’s cradle with it. “Were you the one responsible for that cacophony?”

“Cacophony? Hey, I like that! Maybe I should put it on my display. DJ Pon-3’s Cacophony of Wubs.”

Vinyl’s defiance only steamed the unicorn even more, and he blew his top. “Out of here, all of you!”

Karyn and Derpy headed for the door, but Vinyl didn’t move.

“Excuse me.” Octavia’s voice was not loud, but she made herself heard. “This is my dressing room, and I will not be ordered out by an attendant, nor will my friends, nor theirs. I haven’t asked for your assistance, and when I need it, rest assured that you will know."

“But Miss Octavia, surely you don’t mean that you associate with such persons by choice?”

Octavia stood on her hind legs, just as she did to play the cello. Derpy was amazed at her balance. She pointed a hoof at the attendant. “I suppose that as a cultured musician you think I should be a snob. Perhaps you are right. There’s a low class of ponies that I have no intention of associating with.”

With that, she trotted forward and bodily tossed him from the room.

Vinyl looked over her glasses. “You go, Tavi! Way to defend your mare’s honor.”

A split second later, Vinyl’s glasses were flying off her head, which was jerking backwards as Octavia’s hoof followed through on the uppercut it had delivered. “Don’t think you’re off the hook! You’re still rude and obnoxious.”

“Yeah. But don’t tell me you don’t love it.”

Derpy and Karyn slipped out and went back to the train. If anything, it was quieter than before, with only the crickets for background music, unless that was the aftereffects of Vinyl’s speakers.

Most of the ponies on the train were sleeping, but the girls were still conversing.

“Thanks,” said Karyn. “That was a great birthday present. Definitely not what I was expecting.”

“If I have more lead time next year I’ll plan something even more awesome. Your birthday’s the same time each year, right?”

“That depends on how your spell works.”

The conversation lulled, but Derpy picked it up again.

“Those two sure have a funny relationship. Octavia and Vinyl Scratch, I mean.”

Karyn was deep in thought, then said, “I think I can understand them a little.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Octavia’s not stuck up in personality. But she’s really passionate about her music—you can hear that in her playing. That kind of music, the kind that gets you into the Grand Galloping Gala and other high functions, tends to attract those who are stuck up. So she puts on the façade in order to advance and be allowed to play.

“Vinyl, for her, is something of a forbidden fruit. She doesn’t want to play that kind of music, but she does want to let her hair down, and she definitely doesn’t want to associate herself with snobs, like she said.”

“That might make sense,” said Derpy. “Though I’m not sure how you come by it. But what about Vinyl? What does she get out of the relationship?”

“I can see two possibilities. One is that Vinyl is a lot smarter than she looks.”

“What do you mean?”

Karyn watched the shadows move across the train window. “Assume my armchair analysis of Octavia is correct, and that Vinyl sees that. Now, as a Canterlot unicorn, she’s probably resentful of that upper echelon of ponies. I know you don’t much care for them either. They stay grouped and would gang up on her if she tried any of her shenanigans. But Octavia, both as an Earth pony and as somepony who’s not snooty, is a lone wolf outside of the pack. Vinyl sees the opportunity to have someone to tease and mess with who won’t mind.

“Teasing’s a fine line to walk. Some folks love it, and some always take it personal. Good teasers know how to find the ones who want it. That’s what I get from Vinyl.”

Derpy looked at Karyn. She had never been one for that kind of insight, particularly with ponies. Derpy wondered if she wasn’t growing up a little. “You said there were two possibilities. What’s the other?”

“That Vinyl wants to be in that upper echelon, and hanging out with Octavia is as close as she can get.”

Derpy had an image of Vinyl Scratch, dressed in coat and tails like Octavia, her mane straightened and styled, her glasses discarded, and a smart bow tie added, sitting gracefully at a piano plinking out a serious and precise melody.

She couldn’t contain herself. In the middle of the midnight train, she burst into laughter. Ponies were waking up all over, moaning and tossing pillows at Derpy.

Karyn shook her head. The train barreled on into the night, to the sound of Derpy’s laughter.

Author's Note

Here's what you'll see next time!

“I know what you mean,” said Karyn. “The air’s too cold.”

“Maybe Princess Celestia should come here and raise your sun faster for you.”

“I wonder if that would even work. The spell might be different for a round world.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy liked flying in Canterlot. There were few pegasi around, and if she did bump into something, it was more likely to be a skyscraper which wouldn’t demand an apology. If the unicorns on the ground laughed at her, she was high enough that she couldn’t hear it, which was enough for her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hello, Derpy. It’s wonderful to see you again. Shall we go into my office?”

Derpy accompanied her, to the shock of the pony behind the desk.

“Thanks for seeing me on short notice,” she said.

That's coming soon! Don't miss it!

49: Unpaid Dinkternship

“It’s been a long while since we’ve done this!”

Derpy touched down on the roof of Karyn’s dorm with the beach chairs on her hooves and Karyn herself mounted on her back.

“It has. The winter was so long and so cold that we’re lucky there aren’t still piles of snow slowly melting.”

Derpy struggled with the chair for a moment until Karyn came over to help. “Even today it’s not that warm. I hoped that with the sun out we’d at least feel hotter.”

“I know what you mean,” said Karyn. “The air’s too cold.”

“Maybe Princess Celestia should come here and raise your sun faster for you.”

“I wonder if that would even work. The spell might be different for a round world.”

Derpy nodded, more interested in obtaining the optimal relaxation position on the chair that was never made for her species. Once she was curled up into a fetal position, watching Karyn at a ninety-degree angle, she gave a satisfied smile.

Karyn followed up her thought. “Do you think that the princess would like to come here? I’d be the only one she could talk to, but she could be invisible as you are, and tour our world.”

“I don’t know how everypony would react to that. It’s hard enough for her to work her schedule enough just to visit Fillydelphia. Leaving Equestria entirely? There would probably be riots.”

“You’re probably right. She’s kind of caged in there. I’m not surprised that she made Twilight a princess. Maybe in another century or so she’ll be able to take a vacation.”

“But it definitely can’t happen now,” said Derpy. “It’s too important for her to stay in Canterlot.”

“Why? What’s so important going on now?”

“Teaching my Dinky, of course!”

Karyn wanted to keep quiet so no one would hear them, but couldn’t resist a laugh. “How has she been, by the way?”

“Just fine. No complaints from Princess Celestia about her not doing her homework. Naturally she doesn’t have time for many conferences, but her reports indicate that she’s sure Dinky will be a great unicorn someday.”

Karyn remembered her private conversations with Dinky, how she wasn’t all that ambitious. She considered it one of her duties as a friend to try to sell to Derpy Dinky’s idea of a happy and simple life.

“What do you think she’ll do for a living?”

“Well, anything she wants, of course. Maybe she’ll go back and teach at the school herself. She can rename it, ‘Dinky Hooves’s School for Gifted Unicorns.’ Or maybe she’ll be a magic scientist, like Twilight is on occasion.”

“I wonder about that sometimes. Can magic really be scientifically analyzed?”

Derpy shrugged. “I’m just a pegasus, so I can’t give you all the details, but Dinky said something like that science can look at magic and understand it in one context, and magic can look at science and understand it in another.”

“That’s deep.”

“It is. Of course, maybe Dinky won’t do anything important like that. She might just go into business and make a pile of bits.”

Now was Karyn’s moment. “What if she just wants to work for somepony else and earn a salary from them?”

“I’m sure it’ll be a big salary. She won’t stay in the internship she has now.”

“Dinky’s in an internship?”

“I didn’t tell you?” said Derpy. “I thought I was telling everypony.”

“But that’s incredible! You should be so proud of her. My mom’s still bugging me about when I’ll get my first real job.”

“You probably don’t have Princess Celestia’s credentials behind you.”

“Good point.” Karyn sat up and grinned. “You think that would work? I can say that my friend’s daughter is a student of royalty, so give me a job and you’ll have clout with high-level ponies?”

“It would certainly be unique.”

“It would. People who are hiring hate unique. They want safe. So what’s Dinky doing?”

“She’s working in a store on the outskirts of Canterlot,” said Derpy. “She complains about the commute, but she says it’s a good impetus for her to learn long-distance teleportation spells.”

“What kind of a store? Like, a food store?

“No, it’s kind of a curio place. They sell all sorts of strange artifacts and such that the owner collects, and some of them have magical properties. That’s why it’s good for a student of magic to work there.”

Karyn pictured such a store in her head, and wondered if it was the one she was thinking about. “I can’t imagine that kind of business is very profitable.”

“More than you’d think. Apparently a long time back, he had a very rare item indeed, and was able to sell it for a whole bag full of bits. Ever since then, the shop has been stable enough that the keeper can take on a helper or two. Dinky says it’s not all research and learning. She still has to sweep out the store and such. She doesn’t like it, of course, but that’s why I tell her to keep working, so that someday she’ll have somepony doing the sweeping for her.”

“The rare item, was it the Alicorn Amulet?”

Derpy looked up, trying to remember. “I don’t know. It might have been. The owner wears a distinctive hat, if that helps.”

“It does. I think I know the shop.”

“A very distinctive hat. It even looks like a muffin.”

Karyn sat up. "Always with the muffins. Just for that, you have to take me to see Dinky.”

“That’s fine. You and she can have another study session.”

“Or I can help her out with the job.”

Derpy rolled off of the lounge chair and slid over to Karyn, who climbed on top. She took off as they teleported to Equestria.

Karyn thought that taking the commuter train from Ponyville to Canterlot was almost becoming routine for her, and vowed not to let that happen. She was still, after all, traveling in a fantasy world of talking ponies.

If the train was a routine she did not want to become inured to, walking around Canterlot to the stares of the ponies was one she would have given up. They trotted quickly to reach Dinky’s dorm.

“Hi, Mommy. Hi Karyn. I’d complain about you not letting me know that you were coming, but it wouldn’t stop you from doing next time.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Derpy. “You know, Octavia the cellist was talking about the same lesson just last week.”

“You dropped in on Octavia without notice?!”

“No, I was talking about her marefriend, who always ruins her concerts.”

Karyn tapped Derpy on the shoulder. “But we did drop in Octavia without notice.”

Dinky gave her mother an accusing glance, but Derpy just returned it. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work right now?”

“No, I’m supposed to be getting ready for work which I would then have to be at in a half hour. But I can’t do that when I’m in the doorway talking to you.”

Derpy had to spend a few moments parsing that, then hustled in so that Dinky could continue preparing.

“So school’s been going well?”

Dinky was in her washroom, shouting to make herself heard over the faucet. “Yeah, Princess Celestia says I’ve been doing better. Still, I’ll be glad when term is over in a few weeks.”

Karyn cringed. Dinky was being honest, but she still worried about handling Derpy’s tendency toward tiger parentage gently. To that point, Derpy said, “Then you’ll really be able to concentrate on your job.”

“Well, that too, but on the weekends and breaks I won’t even have to study. I’ll have no responsibility for the first time in a while!”

Derpy pursed her lips at that. “Well, so long as you’re ready for next term, I suppose that’s all right.”

“I will be. Actually, I think that the problems I had before, that Karyn’s helped me out on so well, might have been a blessing in disguise.”

“What do you mean?” asked Karyn.

“Well, Princess Celestia’s big on seeing everypony in class make improvements on their work. Some of my classmates started out ahead of me, but haven’t come up much. I was struggling, but now I’m doing well, so she’s even more impressed.”

She shut off the tap and emerged, putting her mane in a ponytail. “If I had known that from the beginning, I might have played dumb from the start so I could really show improvement.”

“Dinky,” said Derpy.

“I’m just kidding, Mommy.”

Derpy still wasn’t impressed. Karyn tried to defuse the situation.

“So what kind of spells have you been learning lately?”

“Well, I told you about perception spells, right? Clairvoyance and all that? We’ve really drilled down on those, which is a good thing, because it’s helped me at work.”

“Tell me about that,” said Derpy.

“Well, Mr. Pincenez—that’s the shopkeeper, wants me to learn how to tell fake artifacts from genuine ones. He says that lots of ponies come in trying to sell things they claim to have gotten in distant lands, but have really just slapped together in their workshops, or bought from somepony who cheated them. He’s had to explain to more than one that the Sapphire Stone was just made up for the Daring Do novel, and doesn’t really exist.”

“Sounds like interesting work. Maybe I should try to introduce the service at the post office. Ponies can send their things to you and you’d be able to tell if it’s real.”

Dinky was skeptical. “I don’t think there’s as much fraud in the magazines that ponies read at the salon as there is in the ancient artifact racket.”

Karyn leafed through some of the books that Dinky had on her desk. “So can I help you with any of this?”

“There are some things that you have to be magical to understand. Say that you’re brought Starswirl the Bearded’s hat. You would have to run certain tests to see if he ever wore it.”

“We actually might be able to authenticate it through science. If we had a hair of his in the hat, and we also had a hair we knew was his, we could compare the chemical structure of both to see if they were the same.”

Both ponies stared at Karyn. “You can do that?” asked Derpy.

“Well, not myself. But humans who go in for that kind of thing can.”

“Wow.” Dinky looked toward her books. “And I have to do it magically. Maybe you can teach me that chemical trick and I could use it to cheat on my test. I’m kidding, Mom.”

Dinky’s disclaimer was timely, as Derpy had already opened her mouth to rebuke her filly.

“So when do you have to be at work?” asked Karyn.

Dinky looked at the clock. “Basically, now. I’m sorry you had to come all this way when I’m busy, but…”

“But why don’t I hang out with you while you’re working? If the boss won’t come down too hard on you for having a friend there.”

“Are you kidding? If word gets around that there’s a human in the shop, it’ll only help business, and he’ll be fine with it. Mr. Pincenez’s rule is that anything that’s good for business is good.”

They left Dinky’s dorm and walked at a brisk pace. The school was already somewhat far from downtown Canterlot, and where they went was only farther toward the outskirts. If the city could be said to have bad neighborhoods, this would be one of them. Although it was still the middle of the day, the shadows in the alleys gave it a creepy feeling of night.

Dinky slid the door open as quietly as she could, but it still rang a bell that was attached to the door jamb. “Hello?” she called. “Mr. Pincenez? It’s Dinky.”

Not only was there no response, but the echo of the bell cut off sooner than Karyn would have expected. “Doesn’t seem like he’s here,” she said, to break the silence.”

“No. I’ll just go to work then, tidying up.”

“You do that, little one,” said Derpy. “I’m sure I can find something to occupy myself with.” She trotted off and flew back toward the castle in the center of the city.

Derpy liked flying in Canterlot. There were few pegasi around, and if she did bump into something, it was more likely to be a skyscraper which wouldn’t demand an apology. If the unicorns on the ground laughed at her, she was high enough that she couldn’t hear it, which was enough for her.

She wound back to Dinky’s school. “If she knew I was doing this, she’d be unhappy. But I have to do things like this. I’m her mother.”

Landing just as the front door to the school closed behind somepony else who was leaving, she opened it again and marched up to the receptionist, who was filing her horn.

“Welcome to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. How can I help you?”

“My name is Derpy Hooves. My filly goes here. Can I speak to the princess please?”

The receptionist blinked. “I’m sorry. You want to speak to the princess?”

“That’s right.”

“Princess Celestia?”

“She’s the one who’s name’s on the door.”

“Because your filly goes here.”

Derpy’s smile never wavered. “You’ve got it.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Nope! I figured I’d just drop in and see if she was free.”

“I see. Well, Princess Celestia is very busy, so if you’ll just—“

“Why don’t you just try sending a message to her chamber? It’s quite possible you’re right, and that she’ll say, ‘Derpy who?’ But I think she’s the type who’ll make time for a parent.”

Skeptical, the receptionist looked at her console. It was nothing that Derpy understood, but when the unicorn touched her horn to a contact on it, a magic pulse went out. “Have a seat and wait for an answer.”

Derpy, still grinning, flapped over to the couch and watched the bored receptionist. A few minutes later, she was pleased to see her jaw drop as Celestia herself walked into the room.

“Hello, Derpy. It’s wonderful to see you again. Shall we go into my office?”

Derpy accompanied her, to the shock of the pony behind the desk.

“Thanks for seeing me on short notice,” she said. “I don’t have anything too pressing, but with the end of term coming up, I want to make sure that Dinky’s in the best position she can be in.”

“Quite understandable. And don’t worry about the short notice. You gave me an excuse to leave a boring meeting. If I had my way I’d limit myself to raising the sun and administering the school. They’re the most important jobs I have.”

Celestia looked over at a file cabinet and magically pulled open the drawer marked “H.”

“Is that Dinky’s record?” asked Derpy.

“It is. And at this point there’s nothing to worry about from your part. Just because a term is ending doesn’t mean that I specifically mark the students then. I can give tests based on paper and quills, or I can ask my little ponies to perform magic for me, but it’s under controlled conditions. Wherever possible I like to test them in real situations. But as yet, the opportunity hasn’t come for Dinky.”

“But do you think, when it does, that she’ll be ready?”

“If she’s not, then it’s not the right opportunity. It is not my intention to make every Gifted Unicorn into a complete study machine. My job is to find their potential and see to it that they reach it. How deep that potential is is up to the unicorn.”

Derpy nodded. “I wish that you had run a school for Ungifted Pegasi. I could have used that. But no self-pity. If Dinky does get her test, and if she passes, what then?”

“Then she will have a reward.”

“A higher class? A secure position?”

“The confidence that comes with the knowledge of a job well done.”

***

Back at the shop, Dinky was sorting through a box of artifacts, magically pulling them out and depositing them gently on the shelves.

Karyn could make no sense of the way things were organized, and wondered if they were arranged by their place of origin, which she wouldn’t know.

“So your Mr. Peachfuzz hasn’t shown,” she said to Dinky. “Maybe he’ll take the day off and you’ll have an easy time of it.”

“And what have we here?” a mysterious voice from behind Karyn said. “Some sort of hornless minotaur?”

Karyn grimaced as another pony tried to fit her appearance into a paradigm they already knew.

Dinky ran over. “Sorry, Mr. Pincenez. This is my human friend, Karyn, who comes from the parallel dimension of Earth. I hope it’s all right if she stays for my shift.”

“It’ll be fine if you keep busy,” he said.

Dinky redoubled her efforts as the shopkeeper kept looking at Karyn while trying to appear as though he wasn’t. Finally he came right up to her. “So…parallel world?”

“Yes. We only knew about ponies through stories until Lyra and Derpy broke through.”

“I see. And, just for curiosity, how old is your world?”

Karyn thought about the question. “I’m not sure what you mean. The planet itself is about four and a half billion years old, but our history is only around five thousand.”

He continued rubbing his hooves together. “Five thousand, you say. Do your people go in for archiving their history?”

“Some of them. Archaeologists, we call them. They love to hunt up relics of the past and study them to find out what ancient people were like.”

Mr. Pincenez’s eyes flashed gold. “Study, yes. Is yours the kind of world where the magic diminishes with time or increases?”

Karyn finally understood, and was a little bit happy that she could say, “Ah, we don’t have any magic at all. If ponies hadn’t designed the magic to break through to Earth, we could have never done it.”

“I…see.” He ambled over to Dinky. “Miss Hooves, perhaps in the future you could clear future visitors with me. The shop does have a certain reputation to uphold.”

For the rest of the shift, Mr. Pincenez seemed to go out of his way to find fault with Dinky’s work, criticizing her sorting, calling her out for not recognizing a certain artifact, and constantly reminding her not to drop anything, even though Karyn could not recall anything ever falling out of a magic field.

She tried to make amends, or at least to distract him. “So, Mr. Pincenez, do you have any new items comparable to the Alicorn Amulet? I heard that tale so long ago, but—“

“Naturally I knew nothing about that amulet’s corrupting effects!” he said, “and I certainly have eschewed anything similar. However…for a non-magical creature…” He turned away and looked through a box. Whatever the arrangement of the shop, he seemed to know where everything was.

“A hand mirror?” said Karyn.

“Yes. Isn’t it nice?”

Dinky came over. “Mr. Pincenez, you can’t sell her something out of the Black Magic box. Karyn, don’t buy it. It’s sure to be something that either lets you eavesdrop on your friends only to find out that they hate you, or it’ll show your heart’s desire and you’ll become addicted to it, or it’ll make you look like the most beautiful girl, but turn you ugly inside or something like that.”

“It’s a moot point,” said Karyn. “since I don’t have the bits to spend on anything, and I’m not going to ask Derpy to buy me something I don’t need.”
He looked over his glasses, muttering. “No magic, and no money. Why in the name of—Princess Celestia!”

Derpy had returned to the shop with the princess in tow.

“Hi, little one! Are you having fun at work?”

“For the most part. Hello, teacher.”

Mr. Pincenez’s speech faltered. “Y-y-you know the princess?!”

“Well, I am going to her school.”

Celestia gestured to Derpy. “I got the word that your mother was in town and decided to take the opportunity to update her on your progress. About which I couldn’t be happier.”

Derpy did not correct the white lie, concluding that if anypony had reason to do so, it was a white pony.

The princess then looked at the shopkeeper. “And I also would like to thank you. It warms my heart to see ponies of the community spreading their bits around to the younger generations.

Dinky said, “Well, technically, Princess, he doesn’t—“

“Doesn’t mind in the least!” Mr. Pincenez interrupted, “rewarding such an industrious and well-connected filly, whose salary has just doubled.”

“But sir, doubling no—“

“Doubled!” he said, with one eye on Celestia, “from its base of three hundred bits a week.”

Whether Princess Celestia realized his deception or not, she smiled at him. Dinky took the opportunity to try to mollify him. “Why don’t we let Karyn go back with Mommy? I’ve got plenty of work to do if I’m going to earn my new salary.”

“And I’m sure Princess Celestia has to get back to ruling the world,” said Derpy.

As Karyn walked back to the train station with Derpy, she said, “I think I’m a little jealous. Dinky’s working and making money, and I’m still not.”

“Do you think you’ve done well in school?”

“Huh? My grades are all right.”

Derpy stopped. “Then what Princess Celestia told me was right. The knowledge of a job well done is the best reward.”

Author's Note

Here's what's coming up in next week's chapter!

“Here, kitty, kitty,” said Derpy. The cat took a long arc around Karyn to get to Derpy, who nuzzled his nose. He sniffed once, then turned and walked away.

“I’ve never heard you call him ‘kitty,’”

“Oh, everypony who has a cat talks baby talk to him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s wrong?” Derpy heard from behind. Spinning around, she saw Karyn at last.

“I saw a bug crawling across the floor. Don’t I always tell you to keep it clean in here?”

“Do you? I hadn’t noticed.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What happened next was so unexpected that it took both of them a moment to take it all in. That Derpy’s front door should open was not completely unusual, though it was slightly rude for anypony to walk in unannounced. But to see...

What did they see? You'll have to wait a week to find out!

50: Derpnesia

“Good Morning, Derpy! Over here!”

Derpy had popped into the room in her usual spot, but since Karyn was not in her line of sight, she bobbed her head this way and that. Karyn kept trying to move into view, only to watch her turn in the opposite direction. Frustrated, Derpy took to the air and banked around. “Ah, there you are.”

“Yeah. And I’m all packed for Ponyville.”

“You want to come back with me?”

“Definitely.” Karyn pointed at her desk. It was messier than usual, and she was grateful that Derpy hadn’t leaped to straighten it as soon as she appeared. “I’ve been run ragged all week with my classes, and there’s nothing I want more than to leave the entire world for a while and de-stress.”

“OK, I guess. You sure you don’t just want to hang out and get some coffee?”

“If I do, I want it with a treat from Sugar Cube Corner. Let’s go.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Derpy let Karyn mount and fumbled in her bag for her spell. She gave her usual lazy circle as she came in for a landing, and followed Karyn toward the house.

“So here we are.”

“Right. I want to check out my garden. That’s how bad my week was.”

Derpy showed confusion for a moment. “Ah, because you love your garden so much.”

Karyn laughed at the sarcasm, and Derpy joined in. Naturally, she didn’t spend too much time outside, but Derpy remained with her instead of going inside ahead. When they did enter, with Karyn still ahead, Muffinhead came streaking into the room to jump on Derpy, but pulled up when he saw Karyn blocking the way.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” said Derpy. The cat took a long arc around Karyn to get to Derpy, who nuzzled his nose. He sniffed once, then turned and walked away.

“I’ve never heard you call him ‘kitty,’”

“Oh, everypony who has a cat talks baby talk to him.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “I suppose. I thought you just always called him by his name.”

“Now…where’s the snacks?” Derpy walked off toward the bedroom.

“Um, they’re in the kitchen, the other way. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, Karen.”

“Now you just completely mispronounced my name. Don’t ask me how I know you didn’t say it with a y. Years of hearing it. But come on, Derpy. What’s wrong? Is the translation spell failing again?”

“No, we fixed it,” said Derpy, but Karyn didn’t like the way she said it.

“Derpy, humor me. When the spell broke, how did we fix it?”

“What? Don’t be silly. You were there.”

“I know. But tell me anyway.”

Derpy was sweating. “We took it to the magical repair pony who, just, you know, fixed it!”

“Who was the pony who fixed it.”

“You know! Our friend.”

Karyn pointed her finger at Derpy. “You don’t remember. Derpy, you have amnesia!”

Derpy had an odd combination of panic and laughter on her face. “Don’t be silly. I can’t have amnesia. I don’t even know what it means!”

“It’s where you can’t remember things. That’s why you didn’t call Mu—Derpy, what’s your cat’s name?”

“Um…Murray?”

“No! Derpy, admit it, you’re losing your memory.”

Derpy put her head in her hooves. “Maybe I am. How could it happen?”

“Well, normally, this being a cartoon universe, if you got a bump on the head that could trigger it, and then you’d be cured by another bump.”

“I don’t want to be hit on the head!”

“Of course you don’t,” said Karyn. “So let’s not panic. Let’s think this out.”

“How am I supposed to think it out if I can’t remember?”

“All right, I’ll think it out. Are there any pony doctors you can go to?”

Derpy stomped her hoof. “If there are, I can’t remember them.”

Karyn looked at her friend. She was too used to being considered a guest in Equestria. But if Derpy, who seemed to be getting worse by the minute, was no good, it was her duty to help out.

“Let’s just head out and we’ll ask directions to the hospital, and then we’ll take it from there.”

Derpy let Karyn guide her by the wing outside, but there were no ponies around for Karyn to enquire of. She was not good with remembering directions under the best of circumstances, and couldn’t tell the exact way to Lyra’s house or Twilight’s or anypony that she could immediately trust. They walked toward the general center of town, but the alleys and paths failed to lead anywhere either of them remembered. At last, by sheer luck and the drunkard’s walk, they emerged into the central market.

Business diminished on Sunday, but it was not completely abandoned. Karyn looked around for somepony to approach. She finally settled on the pink mare that she had once nearly bought cat food from.

“Hi, Derpy,” the vendor said. “Come for more tidbits for Muffinhead?”

Karyn watched to see if the name sparked any memories, but saw no sign in Derpy’s face. “Actually, she’s not exactly herself now. Where’s the hospital?”

The pony was surprised to see Karyn talking. “The hospital? What is it?”

A line from a movie ran through Karyn’s head, but she decided that it wasn’t the time for jokes. “Derpy’s got amnesia, I think.”

“You know, she should go to the hospital!”

Clearly, Karyn concluded, the mare wasn’t too bright. “Yes, but she doesn’t remember where it is, and I don’t live here.”

“Oh. All right. Well, the way I go is, you take this road here four blocks down, but don’t count the little alley that goes behind the bowling alley as a block, then you make a left and a quick right. You’ll think you’re going straight, but it’s really a left and a quick right. You’ll see a sign that says it’s for the hospital, but don’t follow it, because it’s wrong. After that you’ll see two coffee shops. Make a right at the second one.”

“How do I know which one is the second one?”

“It comes after the first one. After that the road swings around, but you just stay to the right and it’ll take you right there!” She thought for a moment, and pointed a hoof. “Or the other way to go is through that building and out the back door. Takes you right there. But you don’t get to go past the coffee shops, and the first one has this really nice espresso that…”

Karyn was already pulling Derpy away.

The hospital was indeed close, and they entered the lobby. Derpy twisted loose from Karyn and said, “All right, why don’t I go check in, and then I’ll take you home.”

“Take me home? Are you kidding? I intend to stay until you’re better.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m sure the treatment will be long and not fun. You’ll just be sitting in the waiting room doing nothing. You’d be much better off back on—what’s your world called again?”

Karyn scowled. “And you think I’m going to leave your side?! I can believe that you forgot your cat’s name and my world, but I can’t believe that you would forget how much we mean to each other.”

Derpy relented, but the nurse behind the hospital counter was not so accommodating. After Karyn explained what was going on, she said, “All right, we’ll take care of her, but you should go home. We may need to use some dangerous spells or treatments, and we don’t want you hurt.”

“If it’s dangerous, I need to be there for her.”

“Oh, there’s no danger to her.”

Karyn tried to keep her patience. “Look, nurse—“

“Coldheart.”

“Nurse Coldheart. My friend is ill. She needs help. I don’t see why I can’t be there to help with the help.”

The pony sighed. “Listen. Everypony in town has seen you, and they know you’re all right. But you’re still an oddity in town. The doctors are going to be coming in to work, and they’ll need to concentrate. The last thing they’ll want is to deal with something they’ve only seen from afar.”

Karyn wanted to argue, but realized that even if she won, she would only delay Derpy’s treatment. She reluctantly nodded, and got on top of Derpy. “As soon as you drop me off, you come right back here, is that clear?”

“I’ve got it,” said Derpy. “Now, how do I get you home?”

“It’s the spell in your saddlebag. The same way you’ve always done it.” Karyn knew that Derpy couldn’t remember, but it was still frustrating.

Derpy reached into the saddlebag and pulled out the spell. Looking more like she was trying to figure its use than going through a rote motion, she put it on her hoof and felt the bumps on the inside. Hesitantly, she turned the spell.

They became invisible.

“Argh! That’s the wrong one!” said Karyn. “It’s the first one in the row.”

Without removing the invisibility spell, Derpy put the correct one on her other front hoof. They disappeared.

**

“Here we are! Oh, hang on, the invisibility spell is still on.” Derpy shut it off. She was alone in the room. “Karyn? Are you around?”

She searched the room, then heard a skittering noise coming from the bathroom. Ah. She must have really had to go. Derpy waited, but didn’t hear a flush or any other sign that Karyn was coming back out. After a few minutes, she tentatively knocked on the door with her hoof. When that produced no response, she opened the door by the slightest crack. Peering in, she saw the light on but no sign of movement. She inched the door further, but there was still no one inside. Just as she was about to turn around, she saw movement, and her eyes shot to the ground where a black insect shot out across the floor.

“Eek!” she cried, leaping into the air. She soon lost sight of the bug.

“What’s wrong?” Derpy heard from behind. Spinning around, she saw Karyn at last.

“I saw a bug crawling across the floor. Don’t I always tell you to keep it clean in here?”

“Do you? I hadn’t noticed.”

Derpy picked up on Karyn’s sarcasm, but brought herself up short. “Although you are clean as far as throwing away food and scrubbing up. It’s only papers and books that you leave lying around. That shouldn’t bring on any bugs.”

Karyn shrugged. “Maybe it lost its way. If you find it, just let it go free.”

“I suppose. Anyway, what are we doing?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Why should I?”

Karyn put her hand to her face, but to Derpy it looked different from her usual exasperation. “Didn’t you make plans for this week’s session on Earth?”

“Did I? I only do that if we’re going to Equestria. I was hoping you’d have something fun planned.”

“I see. Well, we could, um…get something to eat?”

“Fine by me!” said Derpy. She went back invisible and they walked to the cafeteria.

“Do you want some cookies or cakes?” asked Karyn.

“In the first place, if I had my choice, I’d want a muffin. But beyond that, you’re going to let me have cookies and cakes?”

“Should I not do that?”

Derpy wanted to shout, but had to keep a low profile. “You’re always telling me to watch my weight. Now you want me to eat sugar. What’s going on?”

“I just thought that everypony ate stuff like that.”

“And since when do you say everypony? Karyn, something’s wrong, tell me.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Dinky.”

Derpy grabbed Karyn out of line and pulled her to the back alley of the cafeteria where they could talk in private. “You just called me Dinky. I’m Derpy.”

“Sorry, I guess I just forgot.”

“Forgot your friend’s name?! What’s my last name?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Karyn. “Asking silly questions like that.”

“Say it!”

“It’s Derpy Eyes.”

Derpy frowned.

“I’m sorry. I had to take a guess,” said Karyn. “The truth is that I don’t remember. I must have amnesia!”

Now Derpy was all action. “Amnesia?! That makes sense! I was so worried that I’d gotten the wrong person somehow. I think we should go back to your dorm and spend the whole day together, which will maybe bring your memory back.”

Karyn seemed happy to place herself in Derpy’s hooves, and they indeed made their way back to Karyn’s room. When they got there, Karyn said, “How do we know exactly that it’s I who can’t remember things and not you who made up false memories?”

Derpy wanted to argue, but since her friend was ill, she held back. On second thought, it wasn’t such a silly question. How did Derpy know? She was no philosopher, but she came up with an answer anyway. “Most of them were happy memories. So even if they were false, I’d want to keep them anyway.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. So what should we do to get my memory back?”

Derpy didn’t like the way she asked the question. It seemed like Karyn was taking it too much in stride. But, she figured, if there was memory loss, she might not know enough to worry. “Do you remember when the translation spell got out of whack?”

“No.”

“Darn. Well, We were playing cards when that happened. So maybe if we play cards now it’ll help”

Karyn narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure that logic holds. But I’m not sure of much of anything at this point.”

It took Derpy a while to find the deck of cards, since Karyn didn’t remember where they were. She had to root around in the desk drawer, but didn’t mind since it reminded her of how messy Karyn truly was, and any such reminder was welcome.

They played a few hands of Go Fish, but neither party had their heart in it.

“Really, I’m no fun today,” said Karyn. “You should just go back to Equestria and leave me here. I’m sure I’ll get better in time.”

“I will do no such thing! There’s no way I’m going to abandon my friend in her time of need. Which is your time of need,” Derpy added, as she saw Karyn’s expression of confusion. Or was it disappointment?

“There’s nothing else to do here.”

“You’re right. But maybe in Equestria Lyra or somepony will know a cure. Come on, we’re going.”

**

Karyn walked down the hall of Derpy’s house, having come back from the kitchen, to find Derpy sitting on the couch. “How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m good. It’s you who should be answering that.”

“Do you remember anything more?”

Derpy gave a sad smile. “I’m not the one who has the amnesia. That’s you.”

“No, it’s you. You can’t even remember who can’t remember.”

“Karyn, I may be silly, but I’m not that silly.”

They looked at each other, and neither one saw dishonesty or confusion in the other’s face. “What do you remember about today?” asked Karyn.

“I warped to Earth in the morning like usual, you weren’t there, when I found you, you were having memory problems, and we came here to try to fix it, then you said you wanted a snack.”

“That’s not what I remember. You came and were very insistent about coming to Equestria, but then you couldn’t remember anything. I took you to the hospital, they wanted to send me home and did, but I came to my senses and insisted you take me back. You agreed on condition that I stay here, and you asked me to get you a snack to take to the hospital with you.”

Derpy got up and hovered. “That doesn’t make any sense at all! How can the two of us have completely different memories?!”

What happened next was so unexpected that it took both of them a moment to take it all in. That Derpy’s front door should open was not completely unusual, though it was slightly rude for anypony to walk in unannounced. But to see the gray pegasus pony with blonde hair and a bubbles cutie mark really threw Karyn off.

“What the—“ here she used a rude word, to Derpy’s shock “—is going on here?”

“Karyn? Am I standing over there? How can I be in two places at once?”

Karyn’s brain went into overdrive as she ran through episodes of the show. “There are a couple of possibilities. Are either of you time travelers from the future?”

The two Derpies shook their heads.

“All right. Have either of you heard of something called the Mirror Pool? Or the Mirror Pond? It goes by both names.”

She watched the eyes of both ponies to see if there was any recognition. At this point, she didn’t trust either Derpy to be entirely truthful, but in both of their faces she saw genuine confusion.

“I was afraid of that. The last option is the one I was hoping isn’t true.” She stood up and pointed an accusing finger. “One of you is a changeling!”

“A what now?” said the Derpy by the door.

“Oh, come on!” the other Derpy, the one by the couch, said. “Everypony knows what a changeling is, ever since they tried to take over Equestria all those years ago.”

“You only know that because you’re the changeling!”

“Nuh-uh! You lied and pretended not to know it because you’re the changeling!”

“OK, we’re not going to do this,” said Karyn. “I’ve seen this a hundred times where there’s a duplicate of someone. One of you will say, ‘I’m the real Derpy!’ and the other will say, ‘No, I’m the real Derpy!’, and then we try to find out who it is by asking inane questions. That’s not going to happen here. I’ll ask an intelligent question, one that really only the real Derpy would know. What’s my cutie mark?”

“A computer keyboard!” couch-Derpy cried out.

“Not fair! I was going to say that!” door-Derpy said.

Couch-Derpy scowled. “Hmm…she’s right. It isn’t fair. We should throw that question out and try again.”

“What do you care?!” asked Karyn. “We just want to find out who the changeling is. It’s not a contest. Are you saying that you’re not the real Derpy?”

“Of course I am.”

“No you’re not! I am!” said the Derpy by the door.

Karyn groaned as she had gotten caught in the exact trap she had wanted to avoid. “I wonder if changelings have different colored blood than ordinary ponies.”

Both Derpies reared back. “I don’t want to have to spill blood!” they said in unison, then looked at each other in anger.

“I’ve got it!” said Karyn. “We’re making this too complicated. Twilight Sparkle was able to figure out a spell that would remove a changeling’s disguise and knock them out. We’ll go to her and have her cast it. Are both of you ok with that?”

“I am,” said the Derpy by the couch.

“I suppose that’ll be the best thing,” the other Derpy said. She pushed the front door open with her hoof and pointed to the outside. Couch-Derpy stood up and walked over with Karyn right behind. As soon as she got near the door, the other Derpy let go and leaped on her twin.

Now revealed to be the false Derpy, she pressed her advantage, having surprised the real Derpy, who was wrestled to the ground. Karyn tried to pull the changeling off, but was kicked back and spun around. By the time she was looking at the fight again, the two Derpies were rolling around and she had lost track of who was who.

The Derpy on top at the moment managed to get her hooves around the other’s neck, but they were not fit for choking. The bottom Derpy, in a show of strength that shocked Karyn, lifted both of them off the ground by sheer wing power. That put the top one off balance, and they crashed apart.

Karyn didn’t know what to do. If she had a gun, she thought, she could hold both of them at bay and control the situation. The only two drawbacks were that she did not have a gun and was also scared to death of them.

Fortunately, the fourth occupant of the house took that moment to intervene. No one saw where he came from, but Muffinhead walked into the room, took one look at the chaos around him, and hissed at the Derpy on his left. Karyn ran to the other Derpy and stood next to her. When the changeling looked to start another ruckus, she spoke up.

“You won’t get us this time. If you take one of us down, the other will pull you off.”

It looked around, and decided to run for the door. Both Karyn and Derpy leaped and grabbed one of its back hooves. They had it pinned to the ground. In a flash of sickly yellow light, they were holding down black chitin instead of gray fur.

“Karyn, there’s some rope outside the door by the garden. See if you can grab it and we’ll tie it up.”

Keeping one eye on the changeling, Karyn managed to grab the rope as Derpy used all her strength to keep it pinned down. Once its hooves were trussed, she said, “Let’s take it to Twilight. She should tell the princess.”

“Right.”

The changeling gave a disturbing chitter that sounded almost like laughter.

“Oh, dear,” said Derpy.

“What is it?”

“I just thought of something. You were fooled by a fake Derpy, but I was fooled by a fake Karyn. There should be two of them. Hang on, I want to see something.”

She flew to the other room, and quickly reemerged with her saddlebag. Her face was grim as she turned it to show Karyn.

The first slot was empty.

Author's Note

OK, LH2DH-fans, here we go. For everyone who said that they don't like how nothing ever happens in this story, the next few weeks are for you. There's going to be adventure, danger, and all that good stuff. That means no previews, just "To Be Continued" and cliffhangers.

Once this storyline is done, I'll be taking another week off, and will likely put out another clip show to cover that.

And once that's out, we'll be right back to Karyn and Derpy's usual happy times.

51: Derpvasion!

The first image that appeared in Karyn’s mind was of the time that Derpy had been trapped on Earth when her spell failed. She remembered how hysterical and panicky Derpy had been, and tried to recall how she had helped deal with it. But her mind kept slipping off into either of two images. The first was of herself trapped in Equestria, watching her parents filling out a missing person report and trying not to cry. The second was watching something that looked like her hug her parents, who then collapsed to the ground, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed, with all of their love drained from them.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

Sensing her distress, Derpy threw the saddlebag down and hugged Karyn. “Hey, don’t worry. We’re going to fix it. And for all we know, time may not even be moving on Earth.”

“That’s right! The changelings can’t know how to control the time streams, so they might have stopped it.”

“But we’ve still got to deal with this one,” said Derpy, pointing at the changeling tied up on the ground. “We should alert Twilight, and she can write Celestia.”

“Won’t we look suspicious walking through town with a changeling?”

“I hope so. If changelings are in town, everypony should know.”

Karyn was silently thankful for Derpy’s strong back. Two humans would have been hard-pressed to carry the changeling between them, but with one holding up the leg as it rode a pony, the load was bearable. They seemed to get through that if it tried any transformations, they would sit on it again.

Word quickly spread through Ponyville, and they hadn’t made it far before Twilight Sparkle galloped up with a scroll and quill floating behind her.

“A changeling! We haven’t seen any of those in, I don’t know how long!”

Derpy began to tell the story of the day in chronological order, but Karyn decided that one fact needed to be said immediately. “Twilight, there’s another changeling out there, it stole Derpy’s spell, and it’s on Earth right now.”

She threw down her notes. “That’s dangerous! If they can cross the barrier between worlds, anything could happen.”

“Can we re-use the original spell, the one Lyra invented? That’s something a unicorn can cast, right?”

“It is, but I don’t know it off the top of my horn. Let’s go check in with her.”

Derpy and Karyn followed Twilight to the home where Lyra and Bon-bon lived.

“What?! You want me to send a human back to Earth?” Lyra’s face was contorted in fear as they explained the situation. “I haven’t done that in so long…I’m not sure that I can remember the spell.”

“It’s all right, darling.” Lyra’s human emerged from the next room. “You just concentrate and I’m sure it will come to you.”

“In the meantime,” said Twilight, “the princesses at Canterlot need to know what’s going on. Derpy, Karyn, will you come with me to show her this…thing?”

“Are you sure?” said Karyn. “If Lyra can work out the spell—“

“It’ll take me some time, and it’ll be easier if I’m not distracted. Go help the princesses.”

Grimacing, Karyn nodded. “Does anypony have the train schedule?”

Twilight spread her wings. “Don’t let this get around, but for emergencies, we have alternate means of transport.”

A blinding flash of light, and Karyn reoriented herself as the sky was replaced with the ceiling of Canterlot Castle. Derpy, Twilight, and the bound changeling had accompanied her in the teleportation.

“Come with me,” said Twilight. “Once Princess Celestia sees this, she’ll want to take immediate action.”

The princess was at tea. Derpy thought of Celestia as perpetually busy, but to see her relaxing gave Derpy a moment’s pause. Twilight had no such compunction.

“See what’s come back?”

“A changeling? They haven’t been seen in Equestria—“

“In many years, yes. Do you know why this one was found imitating Derpy?”

Celestia rose and walked along the twisting paths of the castle. Karyn had to jog to keep up. “I’ve had no word of any build. Has it said anything?”

“I’m not sure that changelings can speak in their natural form.” Twilight stared at it.

“I may have to question it myself.”

Their path wound downwards, and Karyn felt her ears pop. She was shocked to find herself facing the door to a dungeon.

“Princess? You have dungeons here?”

“Certainly. Why not?”

“Ponies just always seemed so peaceful.”

Celestia opened the locked gate. Past the first hall, it looked no different from any other sitting room in the castle. “And we are. But a castle has to have a dungeon by the rules of architecture.”

She sat the changeling down and told it to adapt a form that would let it speak, but all it did was chitter.

“How are you going to get it to talk if it doesn’t want to?” asked Karyn.

“We can’t always do that. It’s a difficult problem. Perhaps we should look at it another way. Let’s assume that this is a descendant of the previous changeling invasion. They could be like cicadas, having a multiple-year cycle. We should investigate where they come from.”

“Do we know where changelings come from?” said Derpy.

“When they invaded the last time, Shining Armor was able to repel them with his spell. After that, they were blasted off past the borders of Equestria. We should try to trace them there.

“That could be anywhere! We don’t even know what direction they went.”

The princess ascended the stairs again. “We do have one record of the event.”

They followed her past the throne room into the great hall. Karyn could barely take it all in. She had never seen many cathedrals, but she understood their appeal, as the sun shone through the stained glass. Celestia led them to one window. “Here you can see the castle, with the changeling queen being hurled to the northwest. I think that you should search for them there.”

“Us?” said Derpy. “Why do we have to go?”

Celestia gave Derpy a look, as though to remind her that she was merely a subject, and that Celestia gave orders. But then she relaxed. “It was you that they first went after, and therefore I need you to be brave and help find out where they are and what they hope to gain by accessing Earth.”

“All right, your highness.”

Derpy led Karyn outside of the palace. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little adventure.”

“How did this happen?” Karyn stared into the distance.

“Well, the changeling—“

“No, I know that, but, I mean, I’m so scared.”

“I’m scared too,” said Derpy. “But once we find out, it’ll all work out in the end.”

“But what if it doesn’t? We’re supposed to go after vicious changelings who have no respect for human life. I’m not cut out for that. I’m just a college student. I live in suburbia, and I don’t even go into the bad neighborhoods where human thugs hang out. Now I have to go deal with real evil? And you know what else scares me?”

“What’s that?”

“That this feels just like the start of some cheap video game. The ruler sends the lone band of heroes out to deal with the menace that’s oppressing the countryside, and they have to go alone, with a wooden sword and a leather jerkin, and it’s not until later they get the real gear. I always sucked at those games. I’d have to die a lot before I got good. This isn’t a game though. If I die in Equestria, I die in real life!”

The door to the castle opened, and the sound of a trumpet came forth. Sixty pegasi, clad in identical metal armor, marched out in lockstep. Behind them came Celestia.

“I’m sorry it took a while to muster the guard, but they’re ready to march out with you now and—what’s wrong, Karyn?”

Karyn had been trying to conceal her laughter, but was able to say to the princess, “I just assumed that you were sending us out alone.”

“What? Certainly not. You bring me word of an invasion and an assault upon a guest in my realm? Naturally I’m going to make available all the resources of the crown to anyone who I would ask to help.”

Karyn looked at the strong pegasi. Their look indicated that they would protect her. She let out her breath, thinking that however fantastic ponies might look, they were still practical.

“Thank you, Princess Celestia.” She bowed deeply.

“Others are gathering provisions for the journey. I estimate you can leave in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, I will be making plans for dealing with the changeling on Earth. I hope it does not come to that, of course, but if need be, I will put forth all my ponies there to protect your world as well.”

Karyn had a vision of the changeling on Earth wreaking havoc. For all she knew, it was there to impersonate some high government official and take over the world. Celestia might have to come with her flying army of ponies to blanket the world in magic, forcing the impostor to reveal itself, but shattering humanity’s vision of how the world worked. It would mean the end of civilization as known, and it would all be Karyn’s fault.

Or, she hoped, it was just confused and running around her dorm room like a silent insect until they fixed the spell. Whatever the case, she was eager to get started.

Princess Celestia looked up, and the girls saw a lone Pegasus flying swiftly from the horizon. As it landed, another guard brought him a bowl of water. He took one drink, then addressed the princess.

“Your highness, I have flown as you asked and returned at the first sign. I saw no one I did not expect to, but there was evidence that something has been eating from the trees of a forest to the northwest. I have marked the location on my map.” He passed the map to a captain of the guard.

Celestia nodded, and the captain said, “Very well, we will head there. I estimate this would be a two-hour flight at top speed, but with a civilian—“

“I’ll have you know that I’m a trained mailmare!” said Derpy.

“With a non-military servant of the crown,” he continued with a grin, “We should reach this point by nightfall.”

They waited, the guards silent in discipline, Karyn and Derpy muttering and fidgeting, while the supply ponies joined the ranks. Celestia addressed the captain.

“Take care, for yourself, your ponies, and most of all for these two. I want nothing more than to return to the peaceful existence we have known. Come back safely. That is an official order from the Princess of Equestria.”

Karyn mounted Derpy, but right after whispered in her ear. “Do you want me to ask if one of the stallions can carry me? If we have a long journey ahead of us, you might not want to bear me the whole way.”

“You stay put. You’re my human, not any of theirs, and I’m sticking by you in case you need me.”

Karyn wondered if she wasn’t subtly indicating that she needed Karyn, but she didn’t say anything.

It was impressive to be at the rear of the troop and watch the pegasi take off in formation with precision. Derpy kept her distance so as not to knock anypony out of place. Out of earshot, the girls had a chance to visit for the first time in a while.

“Are you nervous?” asked Derpy.

“Less so than before. Now that we’ve got all these other ponies around, less can go wrong. I’m glad that we’re getting serious about the incident. Truth be told, I don’t mind being the bait to draw out the changelings.”

“I’d think that would be even scarier.”

“It’s a little scary,” said Karyn, “but it’s not labor-intensive.”

Soon the pegasi reached the edge of the forest that had been indicated. They dropped low and skirted the tops of the trees, then came to a landing in a clearing. Derpy was not able to pull off the moves with the same precision as the guards, but since it didn’t matter if she was seen, all was well.

“I never knew about this forest,” Derpy said.

“Me neither. Do you think it’s an extension of the Everfree?”
“Who knows?”

Karyn dismounted and helped the supply pegasi set up camp. “The maps I’ve seen of Equestria make it look so small, and it seems that there’s no part of it that you haven’t settled. And yet, there’s all this terrain where changelings can hide and nopony knows anything about it.”

“I thought the same thing about Earth. The first time I searched the Internet I figured that your world was like one big city, but once I flew over it a couple of times, I saw that you still have a lot of open country.”

“If we get out of this and I make it home, you’ll have to show me those again.”

Derpy draped a wing over Karyn. “Hey, none of that. You’ll be sleeping in your own bed tomorrow, I’m sure.”

The camp was established, and the captain of the guard sent out pegasi to scout for changelings. In the failing light, with birds tweeting all around, Karyn could almost imagine a happier occasion where she and Derpy would have a picnic in a wood like this. She thought about the park where they had first found Muffinhead. That only made her sadder, as she wondered if she would ever see it again.

Derpy was more practical. She staked out the best spot to lie down after her flight, and asked one of the guard if it wasn’t time to eat yet. He chuckled and gave her some rations out of his saddlebag. Derpy tasted it, said thank you, and flew back to Karyn.

“I could never be a member of the royal guard. How they eat this and still have the energy to fight changelings, I don’t know!”

“Look at it this way—“

“I’ll lose weight.”

Karyn flashed her teeth at Derpy.

The wait was interminable, and Karyn wished that she had brought her cell phone or something to entertain her, but of course didn’t plan to be stuck.

The first of the guards returned and had a hasty conversation with the captain. He kept pointing with his wing and drawing diagrams.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” said Derpy.

“Wouldn’t know. You’re the pegasus; what do pegasi talk about?”

“Those guys are like, serious pegasi. They hang around flight schools for fun. I just want to make friends and enjoy myself.”

The captain walked over. “We’ve spotted some of the changelings. The reports are that there’s one a bit larger than the others. It could be the queen.”

He called everypony’s attention and repeated the report.

“I think the best thing to do is to use the element of surprise and sweep them up right now. If we can get that queen, Princess Celestia may be able to interrogate it fruitfully. That’s your main objective. Colts…get the nets.”

The guards all had excited looks. Karyn figured they were looking forward to working against a live target instead of only drilling. Great fishnets, big enough for four pegasi to hold, were brought out, and the troop split off into squadrons, each centered around one net.

“Remember that they’ll change shape on you and mess up your balance. Once you’ve got them in the net, be prepared to maneuver and adjust as needed.”

The more eager ponies were already taking off, and Derpy was worried about getting left behind. Deciding to be bold, she went up to the captain. “What do Karyn and I do?”

“Oh, right. You two, um, get up and scout. If any changelings escape the nets, you shout out to the nearest pony to catch them.”

She ran back and explained to Karyn.

“Sounds like easy work to me.”

Derpy had to hustle to get into the air and keep in sight of the guards. As soon as they were up, the forest seemed to spew a black cloud from another clearing. They soon realized that it was the changelings.

The guards were good. It didn’t take them long to sweep around with their nets and tie up dozens of changelings. Since the insectoid creatures were used to fighting in a swarm, it was like fishing from a plentiful school. Karyn and Derpy had little to do as they waited.

Just as they were the last ones in the air, they were the last to land as the pegasi took command of the changelings’ position. The guard was already laughing and slapping each other on their backs, but they pulled up short when they saw the bushes and trees all around them flash with magic and turn black. In an eye-blink, they formed a cocoon around the guard, trapping Derpy and Karyn outside. The pegasi were kicking and bucking their way out of the swarm, but for each one that reached daylight, a hundred changelings would come push him back into the morass.

Derpy hesitated for a moment. An instinct told her to be brave and charge in to save as many of the pegasi as possible, but two rationales stopped her. One was that she would only get herself pulled down and not save anypony, and the other was that she had more love for Karyn than for all the ponies in the guard.

She banked hard and tried to fly away. She knew that pegasi like Rainbow Dash would know all of the tricks to gain height and speed as fast as possible, but Derpy’s talent as a flyer was over long distances. She doubted that the changelings could keep up on a mail route, but if they went after her, it would be a close sprint.

After what seemed like an hour, she dared to look back. She expected to see the changelings coalescing around the guard doing who-knows-what. Instead, they had come after her, enough of them. They were even scarier when she could see them individually, for they were not all identical. Some had twisted bodies that made them look deformed, while others were bloated and heavy, but could still fly.

All of them had very sharp fangs.

The first one to touch Derpy’s flank gave her an adrenalin rush that nearly allowed her to get away. But there were too many of them. They moved into formation and attacked her from all directions.

Almost immediately, one of them slammed into Karyn, knocking her off balance. Derpy recalled that there was a spell in her bag that would keep them locked together, but in her haste and panic after the discovery of the first missing spell, she had discarded the bag altogether. Now Karyn was falling, screaming, “Aieee!”

Derpy dived, with no hesitation at that moment, but the changelings grabbed her, and she was netted herself, in an icky biological tether. She was helpless to watch Karyn land, but instead the changelings grabbed her and changed course, continuing northwest, farther in the direction they had come.

And then, just as quickly as it began, the swarm abated. They pulled back like an ocean wave, leaving Derpy confused and needing a moment to regain her balance in the air. The tide of black swept past the clearing, leaving the guards confused, many with their armor in shambles, but still alive. The nets had been torn to shreds. A few of them took to the sky to pursue the changelings, but they dissipated like a cloud amid flashes of light as they disguised themselves to blend in.

Derpy’s heart was heavy. Only ponies were in the forest.

***

Karyn opened her eyes. Total darkness would have been worse. Instead, the green phosphorescence that gave her enough light to see also made everything creepy. As near as she could tell, she was alone. There were no more changelings around. The cave was expansive, and while she didn’t see any way out, she would have the chance to explore as soon as she got her bearings.

To her surprise, she wasn’t as panicked as she would have thought. Three bolstering thoughts kept her going. If they wanted to kill me, it would have happened already, was one. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out, was another. But the one that lifted her spirits the most was, Derpy knows I’m gone. She’ll tell the princess and everypony will come rescue me. If Derpy doesn’t just go insane and tear apart every changeling she finds.

After a few minutes, she decided to get up and walk around. She might find the exit on her own, and it made no sense to do nothing. If the changelings were keeping her prisoner, they would soon know that she wasn’t going to cooperate.

As soon as she passed into the next chamber, she heard a noise, something like a cough, and all her self-assurances broke down. Peering into the darkness, her heart pounding in her chest, she said, “Hello?”

The cough came again, and Karyn thought it sounded like the cry of a creature in pain. Opening her eyes as wide as she could, she peered out and inched forward. The sound got louder.

She wound up nearly tripping over a prone form on the floor of the cave. It turned to look at her. A wordless sound emanated from it, enough to identify its voice. From the depths of Karyn’s memory, a name floated up.

“Queen Chrysalis?”

52: The Once and Derper Queen

Queen Chrysalis’s green eyes peered through the darkness. “What are you—“

“I’m really not in the mood,” said Karyn. “I’m sick of everyone in Equestria trying to fit me into their little perceived boxes. I’m not a stunted buffalo or a phoenix about to burn and restore itself or anything else. I’m—“

“A human, and a particularly rude one for interrupting royalty. I was about to ask, ‘What are you doing here?’”

Karyn’s tongue was tied. “How do you know about humans?”

“That’s the second time you’ve spoken back to me instead of answering my question. I will ask a third time, but I will not ask a fourth. What are you doing here?”

The authoritative tone was one that Karyn heard frequently from her tenured professors, and when they used it, she was prepared to listen. But right then, an ornery streak built up in her. “Listen, Chrysalis. You may be the big cheese around here, but you’re not my queen. So I’ll answer however I like. If you’re asking why I’m here in Equestria, it’s because my good friend Derpy Hooves invited me. If you’re asking why I’m here in particular, look in the mirror, because I’m your prisoner!”

The cavern echoed every drop of water and fall of stone, but Chrysalis’s laughter reverberated, drowning out all the natural sounds. “Mine? Can you not see that I am imprisoned every bit as much as you are?”

“But you’re the queen. Why would you be brought here?”

“That is a long tale.”

Karyn looked around. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“A long time ago I had a plan to take over the throne of Equestria. I disguised myself as a princess of Equestria, known as Mi Amore Cadenza.”

Karyn wasn’t sure if the queen would still try to pull rank, but she interrupted anyway.

“I know that story.”

“You are strange, human. I desire to know how you have entered this realm and how it is that you know of changeling nature.”

“My friend Derpy tried to explain it to me once, but I really don’t understand it. Everything that happens here is told in my world as a story, but because ponies can do magic they were able to go into my world and fetch me back, just to be friends. And it’s always been fun and happiness, until your changelings started trouble. So keep explaining.”

Chrysalis looked askance at Karyn. “Then, since you know all about changelings, you’ll understand that on occasion a clutch of eggs will produce one beyond a worker, who has the potential to be queen. Naturally I have fended off many such rivals. In the last generation, one called Maxilla came about. She…bested me.”

Karyn didn’t want to admit how ignorant she was about changeling society, but something seemed obvious. “Then how are you still alive?”

“Well, as is tradition, she sent me down to the depths of the hive to starve, just as I did to the queen I deposed so long ago.”

A chill ran through Karyn. A creature who could talk so casually about starving to death was not something she had experience with.

“Our colony is much smaller than it was in those days,” Chrysalis continued. “I lost so many in our defeat to the ponies, which helped stave off a much slower and more painful shrinking. With no other options, I adopted a new policy. We no longer sought out one creature to gorge ourselves on at a time, but rather sipped and nibbled when we could. It was more work initially, but it was safer and kept us with a low profile.

“In past times, we had a cycle where we would find a target and feed well, then lay idle until the hunger grew again. Under the new way, we were never satisfied and never in danger. I instituted the change, but I didn’t believe in it, and so I kept reproduction to a minimum. That was my folly.”

Karyn swallowed a laugh. If you hadn’t taken time out to sing a reprise and turned your back, your initial plan might have worked. That was far more foolish than some decision on reproduction.

Aloud, she said, “But why bring me here? There were lots of ponies with me, but only I was captured.”

“I…do not know.” Chrysalis’s pause made Karyn suspect that she was not being truthful. The queen hastily continued her story.

“The younger changelings had never known the old way, and did not see anything wrong with it, but the older, more conservative elements were disgruntled and pressured me to choose a high-profile target. I saw no danger from them, since they had no queen. That they would recruit one from the younger generation was not something I foresaw.

“Maxilla is a ruthless queen, who had no hesitation in eliminating her rivals. She challenged me to single combat, as is the right of any born queen. Where she got her energy from, I didn’t know at the time. Now I do. Her plans are to invade your world and feed on the humans, who will have no magic to stop her.”

“So it must be this Max lady who impersonated me and is there now!”

“She managed a transformation into a creature she had never seen? Impressive.”

Karyn kicked at the ground. “She might have seen me. My friend Derpy takes me all over Equestria. Oh, Derpy. I miss her so much. I wonder what she’s doing now…”

***

When Derpy had seen the swarm of changelings recede, her next move was to the captain of the guard.

“We’ve got to go after them! We need to get her back now!”

“Listen, mare. My ponies were just slaughtered, and they could have been killed if the changelings had tried. We’ll go back for her, but we’re not going to accomplish anything by flying off like fruit bats. We’re going to go back to Canterlot, report to the princesses, and make a new plan.”

“But…” She turned away. The captain was already talking to somepony else. She didn’t want to go with the guard, and saw no reason to help them pack up. By the time the others were ready to leave, Derpy was halfway back.

She blurted out everything to Princess Celestia, and had to say it all a second time before she was understood, especially the part about the stallions wanting to retreat and regroup.

“They’re right, though, Derpy. It will take time for them to decide what’s the best move to make to save Karyn.”

“Not you too, Princess! Everypony’s sitting around twiddling their hooves while Karyn’s in danger! She must be frightened to death and nopony cares!” Tears blinded Derpy.

As she folded her wings and sank to the ground, she felt a strong hoof lifting her up and a soft wing caressing her back. Blinking to clear her eyes, she looked up and saw that Princess Celestia was crying too. “I understand, a little. I want to bring her back as much as you do. A long time ago I saw the first human enter Equestria, and I overreacted. I was afraid of the unknown, just as Karyn is afraid now. Over time, I learned to be calm and understand humans. We all have to be calm and rational now.”

Derpy sniffed. “All right.”

“Why don’t you go consult with Lyra, see how she’s coming along with her spell?”

Derpy remembered that not only Karyn, but all of Earth was in danger. “I’ll do that, thank you.”

Princess Celestia did not use the direct transportation spell that had brought Derpy to Canterlot, but she did have a train waiting for her at the station. She took the opportunity to calm down and think about what she would do to the changeling she would find on Earth.

Upon reaching Ponyville, she raced to Lyra’s house. She wanted to burst in the door and find Lyra, but had the courtesy to knock and wait. A familiar green face appeared.

“Ah, Derpy! Welcome back. I’ve got the spell all ready.”

“I knew you would come through. There’s no time to lose, so go ahead and use it.”

“Absolutely,” said Lyra. “Where’s Karyn?”

“That’s the thing! She was captured by the changelings. That’s why you’ve got to send me to Earth so I can catch the one who went there. That might give us a lead to getting her back.”

“Sorry, you want me to send you to Earth?”

Derpy stared at Lyra. “Yes! Right now!”

“But I can’t! If you remember correctly, you asked me to remember the spell that would send a human to Earth. Not a pony. That’s a whole different spell.”

“Lyra! That means we have to get Karyn back if we want to save Earth. Oh, poor Karyn. I miss her so much. I wonder what she’s doing now…”

***

Karyn had been trapped for several hours. She still had the pack that was given to her when she set out with the ponies. There were some dried fruits and bread, and a canteen of water. No one had been by with any sort of food for her, and she didn’t know how she would have to ration it out. Across the cave she heard the sound of water trickling into a pool. When she approached it, she smelled plant life. She tried not to think of some of the pictures she had seen of water under a microscope, and how many creatures lived there.

Sitting back against the wall, Karyn could no longer help herself. She tore off a three-inch piece of the bread and set the canteen next to her. The bread would, she hoped, soak up some of the butterflies in her stomach.

Queen Chrysalis looked at her eating. Even though it seemed a ridiculous gesture, Karyn tore the bread in half and extended one to the creature. The queen shook her head.

Karyn’s despair was growing again. “I can’t believe I’m going to starve here with a changeling. I always thought Equestria was so nice.”

“You never told me about the pony who brought you here.”

Karyn swallowed the last of the bread and leaned against the wall. “Derpy Hooves is a pegasus pony who delivers mail, likes muffins, and has a daughter named Dinky. That’s what everyone knows about her, but there’s so much that goes deeper.

“You’re a queen. You have all these changelings around you always, and they worship you. Derpy never had anyone to tell her that she was a normal pony, even though she really is. When you fade into the background, everypony may think that you have no problems. Or worse, that you can’t handle it and aren’t worth the help.

“But here’s the thing: every day she gets up and flies off to work to haul ponies’ letters to where they’re supposed to go. That’s it. Not raising the sun or saving Equestria. But for her, that’s her battle. That, and keeping house, and making sure her daughter is all right, and feeding the cat. But she does it every day. And that means something. Even if everypony takes her for granted, it means something.

“In her own way, she understood that. She couldn’t say it, or do anything about it, but she knew enough that no one in Equestria could be the friend she needed. So she found me. What she gave me is much more than what I could give her. Derpy taught me that magic was real, that running your own life is a challenge that everyone faces, and that growing up doesn’t mean that you stop being a child.”

Karyn sipped from the canteen, the long speech having made her thirsty. “And then you come along to ruin everything. What makes you so evil?!”

Queen Chrysalis rolled her hoof. “It is our nature. No creature thinks of itself as evil. We consume what we need just as other beasts feed on us when we die.”

Karyn didn’t want to think about that. “OK, forget that question. How do you stay standing up with your legs full of holes?”

“Magic, of course. You said that you were increasingly used to it. You see us as this great enemy because we are odd looking and different. But we see the same thing about you.”

“How does that work? You need us to survive. You’re nothing but parasites.”

Queen Chrysalis stood up, and the sickly green glow from her horn made Karyn tense herself for a blow. The horn reminded her of some of the pictures she had seen of Middle Eastern weapons, the curved and notched blades designed to decapitate from horseback. But the magic faded as Chrysalis took a breath, and spoke in her raspy voice. “You—or rather the ponies you consort with—have the power to starve all of us just by being aware of our nature. In what way does that not make you the enemy?”

Karyn, for the first time, looked directly at the large changeling. Although she was tall, and the horn gave her even more height, she was dreadfully thin. Emaciated. Her stringy mane looked nothing like the manes of the ponies. She remembered Derpy having her hair done on Earth, how much the stylist enjoyed working with the thick mane, even though she had to be veiled. A spark of pity grew inside Karyn, but was snuffed out as quickly when she thought of how Derpy must be reacting then.

***

Lyra did not relish being chewed out by Derpy for something that was nopony’s fault. Miscommunications happen all the time, even when the stakes were high. She had let Derpy vent for a while, hoping that she wouldn’t ask a certain question. Which she did.

“Wait, can’t we send your human back to Earth?”

“We could, but it wouldn’t be where on Earth we need someone. The spell returns the human to her point of origin, which in this case is Karyn’s dorm. For all we know, Karyn and my human could live hundreds of miles apart.”

“Then you’ve got to tweak the spell to let me go,” said Derpy. “I came from the same point of origin as Karyn, so sending me there should be possible.”

“I’ll work on it. I’ll get Twilight to help me, since she’s so much better with magic.”

“Good idea. Let’s head to the library.”

Derpy wanted to pick Lyra up and drag her there, but was pleased to see that she was running at full gallop anyway. It occurred to Derpy that Lyra had as much or more reason to want to see the changelings stopped. She was the first one to even know about humans. For Derpy, it was more personal.

The trip cleared Derpy’s head. When they reached the library, Lyra explained her failure, but Derpy stood between them.

“Listen, Twilight. Here’s what it comes down to. We have to save Earth, and I know that. But I have to save Karyn. So you and Lyra work on that spell, and when I have to go to Earth to help there, I will. But right now I want you to send me back to Canterlot. Princess Celestia was wrong. She should have never sent me back here. Until I can see Karyn’s face again, nothing else matters.”

Twilight and Lyra looked at each other. They had never seen Derpy so assertive. “All right,” said Twilight. “We’ll get you on the next train.”

“You teleported me before.”

“That’s something that princesses use when things are really important.”

Derpy scowled. “This is really important. And besides, wasn’t I a princess once, even if it was only a few minutes?”

Her anger melted and she fell to her knees. “Please, Twilight. I want to get there as soon as possible.”

Lyra looked down at Derpy. From deep in the back of her memory, an image came to her. She had once had the same emotional swing, from anger to begging, when she needed Princess Celestia to release her human from being turned to stone.

“You should send her, Twilight,” she said. “If a pony’s acting that way, it means that now is the time to use every advantage we have.”

Twilight nodded, and Derpy gave her a thankful smile as she flashed in the explosion of magic. Wasting no time, she flew for the highest tower of Canterlot Castle, only to find Princess Celestia waiting for her.

“Twilight let me know that you were coming. I still think you should wait.”

“Here’s the situation, your highness.” Derpy didn’t want to show disrespect, but she was sure of her course of action. “I’m going to go after Karyn. If you don’t help me, I’m going to go alone. If that happens, it likely won’t end well for anypony. That’s not going to stop me though. So I’m hoping you’ll do what you can.”

Celestia said nothing, and Derpy was afraid she’d insulted her anyway. But then the princess turned toward the side door and opened it. “I have not been idle in trying to find help for you. You are correct in one respect: in this hour we need to trust more to passion than to ability. And is there not one other who cares as much for Karyn as you do?”

Derpy didn’t even have time to be confused, as she recognized the pony entering from her hoofsteps. “Dinky!”

***

Karyn had lost all track of time. For all she knew, it could have been the dead of night or only an hour since her capture. From time to time, Chrysalis had engaged her in conversation, but each time it left her tired and depressed.

“The worst thing about it,” she said, “is that even if this ended right now. Even if Queen Max came back and let me go and didn’t invade Earth, everything’s different now. I’ve seen the dark underside of Equestria. I can’t go back.”

“Such things abound. I cannot tell you all of the misery I’ve seen throughout my life.”

“And I don’t want to hear about it. Don’t changelings ever have fun?”

Chrysalis looked at a distant point. “Sometimes, if a victim has proved particularly fecund, we hold a celebration after we have fed. It’s not an elaborate one, since we’re usually too bloated to move much. But we gather over the pony and thank it for providing for us.”

“What’s it like for somepony who you feed on? Do they die?”

“We’ve never paid attention to what happens to them long-term. They are alive when we finish.”

Karyn shuddered internally, thinking of what it would be like to have been drained by the changelings. Even if the victim were still alive, what would it be like to look at the ones they had loved and feel nothing anymore? Who would want to live after that?

Queen Chrysalis stood up to her full height, towering over Karyn. She stretched her hooves and her wings, and cracked her neck. “I think, though, that since we’ve had to stop taking all the love from any one pony, that they recover eventually. Perhaps you could tell me a little of what it feels like?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to apologize. Well, no, I don’t, because I am the queen. But ever since you began talking about your friend, this Derpy pony, I have been feeding off you.”

Karyn skittered away backwards, and tried to stand up.

“Don’t bother. My power’s range is far larger than this cave. It was not my intent, but when I first sensed your love for her, my mouth watered. I haven’t fed in so long. You would have done the same.”

“I would not have! I don’t eat other people!”

Chrysalis cocked her head. “Do you not? Strange. In any case, I must thank you. You have enabled me to attempt what has never been done before. I am going to try to reconquer the hive.”

“That’s never happened?”

“Certainly not. When the deposed queen is sent into exile, she is never provided with food. But Queen Maxilla perhaps did not think of you as capable of love. Or, in her haste to attack your world, left only the workers to tend me. Workers who, in all fairness, are not known for foresight or intelligence. That being the case, there may yet be some who are loyal to me. With my power returned, I can demonstrate that I can provide for them, There may be civil war in the hive, but I have much experience in such things. Chrysalis shall rule again!”

Karyn recoiled at hearing the scratchy voice speak of conquest and ruling. She had to think quickly. She had only one chance to change things.

“And what then?”

“What?”

“What happens if you do take over again? Back to feeding off anypony who happens to fall into your traps? Back to lies and deceit as a daily way of life? Once more, everyone in Equestria hating and fearing you, and being enemies forever?”

“There is no other way!” said Chrysalis.

“Have you ever tried to find one?”

“How? We need the love of others to feed off. No one would give it willingly.”

Karyn made it to her feet. “Did you ever ask? You once had Princess Celestia bound in your cocoon. Did you never think of talking to her?”

Queen Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “You are strange, little human. In any case, this is all academic, since we are still trapped here until I can reach the entrance.” She pointed a hoof to a point of light high above the cave. “But my wings are growing stronger. Would you accompany me as I attempt my reconquest?”

“Why? Do you figure you’ll need a snack?”

“Perhaps. But I want to hear more about you as well. Do you have a name?”

Karyn realized that she had never told the queen her name. “I’m Karyn.” She extended a hand.

Chrysalis held out her hoof. They touched briefly. Then the queen flipped Karyn in the air, caught her on her back, and took off for the point of light.

53: Derpus Ex Machina

Despite their despair, Derpy found the time to hug her daughter before they continued discussing their plight.

“Why didn’t you let me know about the changeling escaping to Earth?” asked Dinky. “I would have come with you or helped Lyra with the spell or anything!”

“But we lost. All the pegasi and I didn’t stand a chance against those changelings. What could you have done?”

“Don’t you remember what I’ve been studying at Princess Celestia’s school and at work? Identification and information spells. I think I can use my magic to stop the changelings from being able to fool us.”

Derpy’s jaw dropped. “Why didn’t we let you know?”

“That’s what I’m asking!”

“Are you sure it will work?”

“We can’t be completely sure,” said Dinky. “I’ve been trying to get the changeling you captured to turn into me so I could test the spell, but either it knows what I’m after or it knows it’s been captured and that disguising itself won’t work. In any case, we’ve got to try, don’t we?”

“We certainly do. And we’re going even if it’s just you and me. Actually, that might be a better method. Last time, with all those pegasi there, I’m sure the changelings saw us coming a mile away. This time, we’ll do it right. Two ponies, no other.”

Dinky looked at Princess Celestia, who extended her wing to Derpy. “That’s very brave of you. But tell me truthfully, do you really want to go alone with your daughter?”

Derpy crinkled her muzzle. “I don’t really want to go at all. I want it to not ever have happened, and to have Karyn back. But until that happens, I’ve got to do what’s necessary, and if that means going alone, so be it.”

“I believe you. But I think it would be better to have a small guard with you. I will see if the captain of the guard can choose a few of the ponies who have recovered.”

Derpy was skeptical. She waited with Dinky as Celestia withdrew, looking out the window toward the forest where Karyn had been abducted. A minute later, the haggard captain came trotting in.

“Miss Derpy,” he said. “I apologize for my failure before, and more so for being so insistent afterwards. It is my job to care for my ponies, but more so for the ponies not under my command. I think I forgot that, a little, out there. I ask you for another chance.”

He folded his wings and bowed deeply. Derpy had to stop herself from laughing, as his flank was suspended in the air. “All right. Celestia said that you had some others who you could bring with us?”

“Three others. It wll enable us to keep an eye on all sides at once, with enough for relief shifts if need be. We can also move swiftly without the long preparation.”

“Then let’s go now!”

Back out to the camp where it began. There were still a few apple cores and hay ends left lying on the ground from their first failed excursion. Derpy was on edge, constantly looking around for any sign of movement. It being a forest, there were plenty of animals going here and there, but no changelings.

“Don’t go crazy, Mommy. I’ll search for the changelings and then we’ll know.”

As soon as they had set up their equipment, Dinky positioned herself in the middle of the clearing and concentrated. To one of the older pegasi, it reminded him of Shining Armor casting his force-field spell. A hemisphere of forest green expanded from the young unicorn’s horn. Then she opened her eyes and looked around.

“We’re clear.”

“Are you sure?” said Derpy. “How do you know the difference between your spell not working and there being no changelings around?”

“How much do you know about magic?”

“A little, but only from the spells that Twilight made for me.”

Dinky thought about how to explain. “You know what a successful spell feels like, even if nothing happens? I felt it.”

Derpy didn’t know exactly what she meant but trusted her daughter implicitly and nodded. The pegasus guards, however, looked upon Derpy with newfound respect. If she could discuss magic with a unicorn, they thought, she must be incredibly smart.

“Anyway,” Dinky said, “I think we should go—cautiously—to the place where Karyn was taken, and search from there.”

Nopony had any objection, and so they went back to the changeling clearing, Dinky leading the way and proclaiming an all-clear every so often. In the grove, she swept all around but still saw nothing.

“What now?” asked Derpy.

“Hmm. You said she was kidnapped while you were flying with her, right?”

“Yes.”

“If you feel up to it, can you lift me to about where it happened?”

The captain stepped up. “I can.”

With Derpy hovering to guide her, Dinky was lifted by her shoulders into the air. Again her horn glowed, and she scanned. Waving a hoof to the captain to spin slowly, she swept with her magic.

“Aiee! There they are!” She pointed.

“How many?” The captain signaled to the others to get into the air.

“Too many! Lots! Heading right for us! And—“ Dinky cut herself off. “And they’ve got Karyn! She’s smiling!”

Derpy beamed and turned to where Dinky was pointing. Already the black wave was approaching them fast, and the pegasus guard was instinctively in defensive positions. “Where is she? I can see the changelings, but not Karyn.”

“She’s right in front.”

The changelings flew so quickly that they were on top of them while the conversation was still happening. Karyn took one look at Dinky, saw her spell, and said. “Hi, Dinky. Let me explain.”

***

Flying on the back of Queen Chrysalis was nothing like flying with Derpy, Karyn thought, as they ascended through a maze of tunnels, Instead of the soft fur and the gentle breeze from her downy wings, there was a hard ridge on the queen’s back and a buzzing of the wings that made Karyn’s ears hurt. When they landed at last in another dank cavern, she was pleased to get off.

“That was an experience I would not want to repeat,” Chrysalis said. “To think of me, Queen Chrysalis, carrying an inferior creature on my back like a common pony.”

Karyn was about to retort, when a pair of changelings came shooting around a curve. Expecting a fight, she tried to duck behind Chrysalis, but the two went right up to her and began chittering rapidly.

“Answer them,” Chrysalis whispered.

“What do you mean? I don’t know what they’re saying.”

The queen rolled her eyes, then chittered back at the changelings. A buzzing conversation was held, after which the other two knelt before the queen.

“We are lucky,” she said. “These two are among those who are loyal to me. Just the fact of my escape has brought them to our side. But there will be others that will take more convincing.”

“I don’t understand what just happened.”

“I told you how Queen Maxilla impersonated you in preparation for invading your world.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do—“ Karyn saw the two changelings performing equal obeisance to her. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me! You mean that changelings can’t see through their own disguises?”

“Certainly not. There would be no point if they could. I told them that you and I have come to an arrangement to split the hive and rule together. Of course, I have no such intention, but since they are disposed to believe me anyway, they accepted. However, if we encounter some of Maxilla’s loyalists, you must be prepared to act the part. Tell them that you have reconsidered and that they should obey me as they once did.”

“You want me to lie?”

Chrysalis stared at her. “Only to workers or soldiers. And it is not in fact a lie. Changelings should obey me.”

Karyn found the queen’s haughty attitude grating, but was also scared for her life. Following her instructions seemed like the only thing to do. “All right.”

“Excellent. Here is how you say it.” Chrysalis made some sounds in the strange language.

“I have to speak changeling-ese?!”

“Naturally you must speak to the lower orders in the language they can understand. Now repeat it.”

Karyn had to ask Chrysalis to say the phrase again, then tried as best she could to reproduce the sounds.

“Your accent is atrocious! You will never convince them that way!”

Karyn lost it again. “Listen, Chryssy, get it through your carapace. I’m not one of your subjects and I really don’t appreciate your giving me orders. I’ll try to help with your little game here because I want to stop any changeling, even you, from getting to Earth and hurting people I love. But understand that I may not even have the same biological structure that you do, and if I have to speak your language, I’m going to do it pidgin, and you’ll just have to take my best effort.”

The queen seemed to respond to anger. Karyn concluded that since no one ever contradicted her, being dressed down was so unfamiliar a situation that she reacted defensively. The reflexive buzz of her wings stopped, and she said, “Very well, let’s try it again, slower.”

Karyn practiced for a few minutes, after which Chrysalis assured her that it would work. “Changelings aren’t that bright to begin with,” she said, “and if you are confident enough and expect obedience, we should be able to pull this off.”

And so it was that Karyn found herself, a few minutes later, standing before an assembly of more changelings than she could count, amidst the ear-splitting din of their sounds, repeating her lesson and trying to fill her voice with strength. The chaos of the sounds melted into a chant, and she hoped that it was something like “Long live the queen,” and not “Death to the obvious human who isn’t fooling any of us.”

“Excellent,” said Chrysalis. “Soon everything will be back to normal.”

“And then you’ll let me go, right?”

“Yes. We will find your pony friends and hand you over to them.”

For the first time in a long time, Karyn felt hope in her heart. It was threated, though, when a burly changeling with what looked like a spark of intelligence in its eyes approached Chrysalis and said something.

“Oh, dear.”

“What’s wrong?”

“She’s asking for you to drop your changed form and reveal your true self. In theory, every changeling has the right to do that, but they never do!”

Karyn felt a lump in her throat. “What do we do?”

“I’m going to try something. Hopefully what you fed me is enough for me to do this. Hold on, this might feel a little weird.”

Sickly green light surrounded Karyn, then it seemed to stick to her. When once again she could see, she looked down at herself. Her skin had been colored black and her clothes had become gray rags that were attached to her body. Her hands and feet felt as though they were in a costume with fake hooves on the end and sharp fangs over her teeth. Overall, she felt not herself.

Once more, she repeated the phrase that Chrysalis had taught her. This time, there was no doubt of its effectiveness. All the changelings went silent and bowed before her.

From behind, she heard the sound of Chrysalis’s heavy breathing. She had collapsed from exhaustion, but was still able to see that the plan had worked. “Good. Now…take the one who questioned you…and fling it into a pit…for its presumption.”

Karyn looked at the large changeling. It was about half as tall as she was. She slipped her hoof-hands underneath it and walked forward toward the crowd. There was indeed a pit beneath her, surrounded by other changelings.

She put it down with the group it had run up from, walked back to the fallen Chrysalis, and addressed the throng again. “Mercy,” she said.

The changelings buzzed again, then fell into a rhythmic chant. In between all the insect sounds, Karyn could hear the repeated word. “Mercy! Mercy!”

Queen Chrysalis, slack-jawed and squinty-eyed, looked at Karyn. “Oh, yes. We’re going to get you out of the hive as soon as possible.”

***

“That’s how it happened,” Karyn said to Dinky. “But when I saw you using magic and looking at me with recognition, I put two and two together.”

“That’s an amazing story,” said Derpy, “but can you go back to normal? It’s really scaring me, seeing you like this.”

“How about it, Chrysalis? Can you tell them that I have to put on the disguise again?”

“I believe so,” the queen said, emerging from the pack. She chittered to the others, then used her magic. Karyn was her human self once more. Derpy, not caring about the changelings that were carrying her, swooped in and grabbed Karyn in a hug.

“I am so happy to see you again!”

“I missed you too, Derpy.”

“We should hurry and get back. The other changeling queen is still on Earth.”

Chrysalis grinned. “I shall accompany you. Maxilla and I have unfinished business.”

“If it’s all the same,” said Karyn, “I want to keep as few changelings on Earth as possible. Derpy and I will go and see what’s happening. If we need your help, we’ll come right back and ask for it. Until then, I’d much rather you stay here.”

“What you’d rather I do—“

“Chrysalis. I don’t know the changeling language any more than the one phrase you taught me. But I’m willing to bet that if I slapped you or spit on you, they’d get the idea that our alliance isn’t quite as strong as you’ve made it out to be. So I’m calling the shots, and I say you’re staying right here.”

The queen was shocked, but Karyn didn’t give her a second look, leaping onto Derpy’s back and flying away. “I can’t believe the way you stood up to her,” said Derpy.

“I’m just glad you got me out of there. I was more scared saying that then I was when I was back in the caves.”

They flew as fast as Derpy could carry them back to Canterlot, reported everything to Princess Celestia, and made for Ponyville so that Lyra could send Karyn back to Earth. On the way, Derpy explained the mix-up in language.

Lyra was effusive in her apologies when they arrived at her house.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Karyn. “Let’s just sort it all out and then it won’t be a problem.”

She concentrated, and at last Karyn saw the inside of her dorm room again. Her first action was to dive for her cellular phone and check the time.

“It says that it’s Tuesday, ten in the morning. That means that time has passed. That’s not good.”

Derpy was peering out the window. “I don’t see any signs of invasion. No buildings burning or bodies in the streets.”

Karyn was on the computer checking the major web sites. “I don’t see anything unusual in the news either. Still, we can’t relax. Queen Maxilla might be lurking somewhere waiting to strike, or she might have impersonated someone important.”

“I found the original spell to take us back and forth to Equestria, so she doesn’t have that.”

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Karyn made her standard gesture to Derpy, who went into her bag and got her invisibility spell. Even the familiarity of seeing Derpy vanish made Karyn feel better. She opened the door to see her other nemesis, Albert.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back,” he said. “I had an interesting last day or two. I was debating whether to keep waiting for you or turn the fake Karyn over to the authorities.”

Derpy appeared and looked at Albert with shock. “You saw through the changeling’s disguise?! But how?”

“I keep telling you, I’m a detective. It’s my job to see things.”

They accompanied him to his apartment, where he had Queen Maxilla, still disguised as Karyn, locked in a closet.

“So, does anyone want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

“Do you want to know?” said Karyn. “There’s magic and danger and all those wonderful things you can’t figure out on your own.”

“Good point. Just get her out of here.”

As soon as they opened the closet door, Maxilla sprinted out and looked ready to switch disguises, but Karyn grabbed her and latched onto Derpy, who quickly activated her spell. They were back in Equestria, conveniently right in the town square.

Derpy looked around. “Now what we need is to get hold of Twilight or somepony who can keep control of her before she gets loose.”

Maxilla hissed, and it made Karyn want to slap her for using her body for such rude ends. Right then, the sky was filled as ponies seemed to be coming from all directions.

Princess Celestia came flying in from due north. Queen Chrysalis entered from the northwest. Twilight Sparkle glided in from the east, and even Lyra came galloping from the south where her house was.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” said Derpy. “How did you know where we would be?”

“Twilight really is a genius of organization,” said Princess Celestia. “And now we can end this threat once and for all.”

With so many powerful ponies present, Derpy and Karyn relaxed and let go their tension. Karyn put Derpy’s hoof in her hand. It was all over.

Chrysalis was the first to approach Maxilla. Her fangs were bared, a drop of drool hanging from one of them. The green of her eyes had a sinister glint. “Maxilla, my old adversary. I have kept the pit warm for you. You shall enjoy all its comforts for the rest of your life, however long that is!”

Karyn gave a small cough, enough to attract Chrysalis’s attention. The queen looked around and realized that whatever temporary alliances she had, her chief enemies were all watching her.

Whatever flaws the queen had, indecision was not one of them. She quickly added, “Unless you swear fealty to me, and promise never to revolt again or invade the other dimension. If you do that, I will allow you to return to the hive as a worker. You would feed no more and no less than any other changeling.”

Maxilla laughed and spat on the ground. Chrysalis said, “Well, it’s not a decision you must make immediately. Miss Twilight, I believe you have the power to remove our disguises and render us incapacitated? Could I pry upon you to use it?”

Twilight concentrated, and a moment later Maxilla was lying on the ground, barely conscious and quite docile.

Karyn wanted to look away, but had to see her real form. Much different from how Chrysalis had made her look, Maxilla’s body was twisted and bloated. Her fangs came from the sides of her mouth instead of the top, and even in her harmless state, they flashed back and forth as though instinctively chewing.

“Excuse me, Queen,” said Celestia, “but where will you go now?”

“Back to the hive, of course.”

“Since you have made an offer to your fallen enemy, perhaps you would allow me to do the same. Far to the north there is an artifact called the Crystal Heart. It converts the love that ponies have into magical energy which is spread throughout Equestria. I do not know if this is the sort of energy you can feed upon, but if it can sustain you, and if you are willing to relocate your hive to such a cold area, it might provide you with sustenance in perpetuity. As a bonus, you would no longer need to hide and feed parasitically on the unaware. A princess reigns there who would welcome you as a neighbor.”

Chrysalis blinked. She looked down at Maxilla. “I will consider it. Thank you, in any case.”

Like Chrysalis, Maxilla wore a small spiky crown atop her head. With her green magic, Chrysalis lifted it off and floated it onto Karyn’s head. “As for you, I hereby name thee an honorary queen of the changelings. If Celestia’s promise should come to pass, visit us sometime, and once more all the changelings shall bow before you.”

Karyn was speechless as Chrysalis took Maxilla’s body and flew away.

Derpy grinned. “All hail Queen Karyn!”

Everyone had a good laugh at that. Lyra approached her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more help. I’m going to work hard on my magic to remember the spells next time.”

“Hopefully there won’t be a next time,” said Karyn.

Amidst all the laughter, Karyn at last had time to take stock of her situation. Earth was saved and everything was going back to normal. She chuckled herself. “I completely missed all my classes yesterday. I’ll have a lot of catching up to do.”

Princess Celestia looked at Twilight, who shook her head. She then gave her a puppy-dog-eye look. Twilight sighed and said, “All right, but she has to study twice as hard this week.”

“Sorry?” said Karyn. “What’s going on?”

“Twilight has agreed to watch Equestria for a half hour or so, enabling me to accompany you to Earth. I would like to see your world.”

“That’s wonderful! I’d love to have you.”

Celestia approached Lyra. “If you would do the honors.”

Lyra took a deep breath. Sending ordinary ponies was hard enough, but she had to be quite sure of herself while transporting the ruler of Equestria. Karyn mounted Derpy and took their traditional way. Everything went off without a hitch, and a moment later, the three girls were struggling to find room as Celestia took up an awful lot of space.

Derpy began showing the princess around the room, which gave Karyn a much-needed chance to rest. Derpy took pride in being able to explain things like computers, light switches, and telephones in a way that Celestia could understand.

“I see. And all this is necessary for an educational institution?”

“Yes,” said Derpy. “It’s not quite so simple as your school.”

Celestia stood up and folded her wings. “I must return to Canterlot, but on the subject of schools I have two pronouncements to make.”

Karyn sat up. Derpy landed from her hover.

“The first is for you, Derpy. Since Dinky has proven herself able to modify and apply spells when needed, I am advancing her to the higher levels at my School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“That’s wonderful! Thank you!”

Celestia smiled. “And the other is for Miss Karyn. Since Derpy has explained to me some of your technology, I believe I have the understanding to use my power on it. The records this institution keeps will not reflect any absence you have had over the past two days. Though, as Twilight said, you must promise to study harder to make up. She is very insistent on such points.”

“Don’t I know it?” said Karyn. “But what if one of my teachers sees that it’s wrong and remembers I wasn’t there?”

“Explain that you were, and that the error is theirs. Is it not fitting for a queen of the changelings to be unseen when she wishes?”

Karyn rolled her eyes at that, but thanked Princess Celestia. Then, without aid of any manual spell, she was gone.

Derpy packed her bag. “I think it’s time I went home too. No more of these adventures for me.”

“Agreed. Until next Sunday?”

“Until next Sunday.”

54: A Trip to the Derpist

Derpy stretched her hooves and wings as she appeared in Karyn’s room. “Goodness, it feels like such a long time since I’ve been here!”

“Has it really? Seems like normal to me.”

Karyn turned away from Derpy and sipped a glass of water that she had by her desk. “Anyway, we’re here, so let’s have fun.”

“Yeah. Fun. Fun would be good for today.”

“Is everything all right?”

Karyn got her jacket and put on her shoes. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s head out or something.”

Derpy pursed her lips in skepticism, but followed Karyn invisibly as they walked around the campus.

“It’s pretty here today.”

“Yes. So much more relaxing now that I know a changeling queen isn’t going to take over.”

Down in the quad, a small duck pond was set up with benches surrounding it. Karyn took space on one of the benches and left just enough room for Derpy to fit, but not for it to appear that there was room for another person.

Sighing, Karyn stared between the buildings. She felt a comforting wing rub the back of her neck.

“Come on, I can tell when something’s wrong.”

“It’s coming up tomorrow. That time of the year that I dread. Twice a year, in fact.”

“Christmas sales?” said Derpy, trying to think of something that happened semiannually.

“Ha, no. Tomorrow I have to go to the dentist and get my teeth cleaned.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Karyn. “So you can see why I’m not the best of company today.”

Derpy nodded, which Karyn could feel, and her distress was momentarily alleviated by discovering that she had become so adept at picking up Derpy’s gestures that the invisibility was almost no handicap.

“No, why?” said Derpy.

“Because it’s the dentist. Nobody likes going to the dentist.”

“I don’t get it.”

Karyn pointed to her jaw. “See, there are some people who work really well around pain, but I’m not one of them. Pain and me, we don’t go together. It’s basically the opposite of me and you.”

“I can understand that. I don’t like pain either.”

“Of course, you’ve got to go. There’s an old saying that there’s no sense putting off a trip to the dentist. That’s how iconic the dentist is as a place people don’t want to go to. But you’ve got to. My father put it off once and then he had this horrible pain. I thought he was going to pass out, that’s how bad it was. I was very young at the time, and I don’t remember where my mom was, but I had to go with him when he went to get a root canal. He was tough with the pain, but having to be in there with him, I’ll never forget it.”

Derpy listened, nodding and stroking Karyn with her wing. “It must have been hard to see your father in pain like that.”

“No, beyond that. When the dentist drilled his tooth, the smell that permeated the room was like nothing I’ve ever encountered. The smell of decay and death, I could just feel the instincts from thousands of years of evolution telling me to reject it and get out. Then he had to take these powerful antibiotics to make sure the infection didn’t come back.”

She felt Derpy take off and hover around. “Well, if you’ve got to go, there’s only one thing to do: take a good friend with you. I’ll take a personal day from mail delivery and come early. With me by your side, you need fear no pain.”

“Why? Do you have some kind of anti-nociception spell to make me impervious?”

“Huh? No, I just meant I’d cheer you up. Anyway, at the dentist you need something to stop reception in your teeth, not your nose.”

Karyn shook her head, but for the moment she had forgotten all about her appointment.

The next morning, Karyn woke up and went to her early class, but she wasn’t paying much attention, her mind occupied both with the fear of the dentist and her anticipation of spending another day with Derpy.

Watching out for Albert, she walked out of the education building and to the back alley, where Derpy, having appeared, monitored the class for its exit. They made their way to the light rail, which at that time of day was empty. With her Bluetooth in place just in case, Karyn was free to talk to Derpy.

“I’m just glad that I can still be on my parents’ insurance while I’m at college. It’s bad enough to have to go, but to have it hit my wallet as well as my mouth would be a double whammy. How do you pay for the doctors in Equestria?”

“With bits, same as everything else.”

“But don’t you find that it’s awkward to have to shell out money when you’re sick? Or when Dinky was?”

Derpy thought for a while. “I can see your point, but the doctors have to make money too.”

“And they do. But you’re always telling me how, on the budget, you have to save for big expenses. In this case, it’s my parents, but someday I’ll have to have a saving account or buy insurance myself.”

“Well, however you pay, what I think is most important is to have a doctor who cares about you and knows what he or she is doing.”

“Agreed.”

The train arrived, and it wasn’t much farther to Karyn’s dentist’s office, which was nestled in between several other buildings. The parking lot was only accessible through an alley a few blocks down, but since they hadn’t driven, they didn’t have to see it. When they entered, Karyn went right to the front desk and signed in, while Derpy took a seat in the waiting area. The receptionist showed no sign of going anywhere, so Karyn had to mutter to Derpy while pretending to read a magazine.

“There is a smell here,” Derpy whispered, “but it’s not unpleasant at all. It actually smells the same as Colgate’s office back in Equestria.”

“Sure, all dentists’ offices have that. It has to do with the antiseptics they use, I think.”

The receptionist stared at Karyn, and she clammed up. Derpy kept whispering to her. “It’s all right, don’t be nervous. In another hour, it’ll all be over.”

Karyn laughed to herself, drawing the attention of the receptionist again, as she had turned back to her billing computer. Silently, she thanked Derpy. She was more worried about having her pony friend discovered than she was about what the dentist might do.

From the inner offices, the telltale whir of a drill sounded out into the waiting room. Karyn lifted her legs up and cradled them. Even Derpy had an edge of nervousness enter her voice.

“Don’t panic. I’m sure that it’s all right.”

The sound stopped soon enough, and an older, balding man stepped out and headed for the exit, chewing on nothing. After a few minutes of cleaning, Karyn’s name was called.

The room had a mural of a wind-blown sand dune that was clearly placed to calm patients. But it did little to draw Karyn’s eye away from the plastic chair and the table of gleaming metal instruments. She threw her leg over the chair, thinking of how much like mounting Derpy the motion was, but in a far different context.

The hygienist who came in wore a floral shirt that still managed to identify itself with the medical profession under her apron. She pressed a control on the side of the chair, and it leaned back. Karyn felt distinctly helpless.

“We’re going to take x-rays first. Bite down and hold.” The device that they hygienist put in Karyn’s mouth was more like a big plastic spoon, and Karyn, who had anticipated the obtrusive plastic plate that would make her gag, was grateful. Then she draped the heavy lead apron over her, and positioned the x-ray machine against her mouth. “Just hold it for a moment.”

She stepped outside to press the button, and Karyn heard the half-second buzz of the machine. On a computer screen to her right, a program took the scan and processed it. But when the hygienist came back in right after, she scowled at the screen. “Hmm, it didn’t take right. Open again. All right, now hold.” To herself as she walked out, she muttered, “Looks like a feather.”

Karyn shook Derpy’s hoof and motioned her to fly clear. The machine buzzed again, and the hygienist smiled as she re-entered. The machine was attached to a multi-stage arm, and could move in three dimensions. Derpy had to play some three-dimensional Tetris to make sure she wasn’t bumped into as the other side of Karyn’s mouth was scanned.

“All right,” the hygienist said, “The dentist will be in momentarily.”

“I wish I could keep the lead apron,” Karyn said. “It actually makes me more comfortable. Like a thick blanket.”

She grinned, but the apron was removed anyway.

Whether the hygienist changed the routine or just didn’t know what was going on, it was not the dentist who walked in next, but a second hygienist who introduced herself as Sarah. She had Karyn lean back and prodded her mouth. The initial probing with the mirror and hook was not bad, but then she reached for another switch and the sound of flowing water was heard.

Sarah noticed that Karyn held onto one arm of the chair, but kept her left hand in midair, as if there were a bar there to hold onto. She began the cleaning, directing the water jet into the back of Karyn’s mouth.

Derpy kept one hoof steady, but used the other to rub Karyn’s hand. Her friend was clearly in pain, but she wondered if Karyn wasn’t perhaps exacerbating how bad it was by slamming her eyes shut and not watching. Then the first sign of red came in Karyn’s mouth, and even Derpy looked away. But since she was invisible and Karyn wasn’t looking anyway, no one would ever know her cowardice.

Afterwards, Sarah attacked Karyn’s mouth with floss. Karyn flossed herself on occasion, but in doing so was far gentler. The image of a cheese slicer going through her gums was in her head. At last, she was allowed to rinse out and spit into the little sink. Sarah gave her the fluoride treatment and left the room. Karyn was still mute, but Derpy could talk to her in a low whisper.

“It’s almost over. Now you’ve got that painkiller there in your mouth.”

Karyn shook her head.

“No? Well, it can’t hurt just to put something cool onto it. That was very different from my visits to Colgate. At least I think it is.”

Karyn muttered a questioning grunt.

“Well, it feels different. I keep my eyes closed as well.”

Sarah came back a few minutes later, removed the fluoride and had Karyn rinse again. If she had heard any conversation, she said nothing. “Don’t eat or drink anything for the next two hours.”

“No cavities?” asked Karyn with a hopeful note in her voice.

“Actually, there is one, but Dr. Irving was called away to our other office for an emergency.”

From outside the office, Derpy saw a man in a white coat depositing a golf bag in the back of an SUV.

“So if you wouldn’t mind making another appointment, we can take care of you tomorrow I’m sure and get that filled.”

“Tomorrow? That’s probably not good. Is there any chance of scheduling the appointment, say, next Sunday?”

“Sorry, we’re closed on Sunday,” said Sarah.

“Really? Well, let me check my schedule.” Karyn took out her phone and pretended to open its calendar. “Let me see, when can I squeeze this in. One time would be good, but not at two. So, let’s see, Thursday?”

Sarah eyed Karyn’s extended hand and watched it seem to jerk and spasm. “Is that good for you?”

“No, but tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, how about at three o’clock?

Karyn felt again. “Do you have anything outside of normal business hours? I know I’m only a student, but I tend to keep a nine-to-five schedule.”

“Six-thirty?”

“Fine”

Sarah typed the appointment and handed Karyn a reminder card. She hustled out of the office without looking back.

On the way to the light rail, Karyn continued to spit on the grass by the sidewalk. She almost wished that Derpy weren’t there, so she would be free to be as disgusting as she needed to be. But she kept her composure and wiped her mouth.

Sitting on the bench, Karyn tapped her foot rapidly. “You were wrong. It’s not over. I’ve got to go back tomorrow.”

“You know, there is another option.”

“What’s that? I can’t just ignore it. If I don’t get this cavity filled, it will get worse and start to really hurt.”

“No,” said Derpy, “I was going to suggest you come with me and have Colgate take care of it.”

“Wait, what? Have a pony work on my teeth? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“All I know is that I don’t have pain when I go to her, and even if there is discomfort, at least there’s no scary sounds like there, only the pleasant tinkling sound of magic.”

Karyn pictured it in her head. A unicorn using her magic gently on her, caring as all the ponies did. “Sounds great. Let’s do it. Do you think she will give us a Sunday appointment?”

“Only one way to find out.”

They pulled into the light rail station closest to Karyn’s dorm, and Derpy pulled out her spell. Arriving in Equestria on the ground, Karyn dismounted and looked at Derpy’s house. Colgate lived close, and Karyn remembered many months before when Derpy had gotten her a toothbrush during an embarrassing illness.

“Um…so, before we go in,” said Karyn, “shouldn’t we check on the cat first? Or bake muffins? Or do anything else?”

“I thought you weren’t worried anymore.”

“Well, I wasn’t, but then I thought of something. Do ponies know about Novocain?”

“About what?”

Karyn groaned and rubbed her cheek. “That’s what I was afraid of. No matter how nice and gentle she is, she’ll still be exposing the root of my tooth to the open air, and that’s going to be painful. You can’t tell me it’s not.”

“Let’s just go see her and ask how she does it.”

They walked down the road to find a wooden shingle with a picture of a tooth on it. It was still on the road with all the houses, and Karyn was about to point out how unusual it was to have a business running in a residential area, but she remembered that dentists on Earth sometimes worked out of their houses also. She held the door open for Derpy to pass, hearing the tinkling bell signaling the proprietor.

Colgate emerged, and Karyn shrunk to the wall out of instinctual fear. Even across the worlds, the office had the same antiseptic odor.

“Hello, Derpy,” the unicorn said. “I don’t think you’re scheduled for another four months and eighteen days. Is something wrong?”

“Actually, I was wondering if you couldn’t take a look at my friend here. She went to her own dentist in the human world and didn’t enjoy it at all.”

“I beg your pardon, but you wish me to practice my craft on a human?”

“You’re always so polite,” said Derpy. “Yes, she has a cavity.”

Karyn blushed and waved.

“Hmm, yes, well, perhaps it would help to expand my horizons. Would you kindly have a seat here, miss?”

Karyn, in fact, could not have a seat in the chair, because it was nothing like any such she had seen. Most furniture in Equestria was a good analogue of human furniture, and ponies could sit or lie down like humans. But in this case, the ponies clearly felt more comfortable lying prone instead of supine, with their hooves dangling off the sides. It was closer to a massage table than a dentist’s chair.

She saw the difference. A human preferred to work from the top down. Their hands were at waist level and they bent from the waist. Ponies would work more horizontally—Twilight Sparkle had no problems reading a book while walking, for example.

It still wasn’t the most comfortable position, but with a few strategically placed pillows, Karyn was made at ease. It also had the advantage of not requiring any suction; the saliva dropped down into a basin that Colgate floated over, which meant that Karyn didn’t have to keep her throat closed to breathe.

Colgate was adept at her magic, as she kept the basin, a light, and her instruments all in place while she examined Karyn’s mouth. “Your teeth are a lot smaller than ponies’ teeth. How many times do you lose and regrow them?”

“Ja wa,” said Karyn, having to hold her mouth open.

“Just once? Same as us, at least. All right, yes. I see the cavity, but what is with these others? It looks like there’s some kind of metal in there.”

Colgate removed the instruments, and Karyn was free to speak. “Yes, I’ve had two fillings before. That’s how they do them in the human world. I don’t know all the details, but they drill out the tooth and put in silver.”

“I see. May I inspect it magically? It might feel a little weird.”

“Go ahead.”

“Let me know if it hurts,” said Colgate. Karyn felt magical vibrations inside one of her fillings. There was no pain, but she imagined that it was like when people received radio signals in fillings, as she’d heard of. “Interesting. Crude, but effective. In this case, however, I believe that I can regrow it from natural material. But I will have to clean out the decay, and you may feel a little pressure.”

“Can I hold Derpy’s hoof while you do it?”

“Of course.”

For the second time that day, Karyn grabbed for Derpy and squeezed, but this time she could see as well. Colgate went over to a drawer and levitated out a long needle. Karyn squirmed and slid back in the seat.

“Don’t worry. This is just to numb the pain.”

Karyn whimpered even more.

Colgate looked confused. “It’s nothing unnatural. The needle just points me toward the pain receptors in your brain so I know what to shut down. Your thinking won’t be affected.”

Karyn blinked as the needle floated gently into her hair, then she felt a tingle in her forehead. A moment later, Colgate floated the needle back to the drawer and told Karyn to open wide.

The scraping feeling was uncomfortable, but there was no pain, and neither was there the annoying numbness that Novocain brings. After a few minutes, she was told to hold still. Colgate talked as she focused her magic.

“You should eat a good meal after I’m finished, since I’m using your own body’s energy and mass to regrow the tooth, and you’ll be tired if you don’t. Also, you really need to brush and floss three times a day.”

Karyn nodded, wondering if dentists believed that anyone lived up to that. She hopped off the chair and walked out while Derpy thanked Colgate. They conversed for a while.

As they walked back toward Derpy’s house, any discomfort Karyn’s felt was outweighed by knowing that it was finally over for another six months. But she thought of something.

“Derpy, did you pay for me? I hate to have you spend so many bits.”

“Of course not. Colgate will charge your parents’ insurance, just like the human dentist.”

“What?!” Karyn wondered how they would pull that off, if Colgate had some kind of magic that would fool the insurance company’s books. But Derpy broke up laughing. “You got me.”

“No, what happened is that I told her how you guys handle it, with everyone paying for insurance and just getting treatment when they need it, and she thought it was interesting. She’s thinking about using the idea herself, and said that today was free for putting it in her mind.”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s the best thing, but at least it doesn’t cost you money. Thanks for helping out.”

***

The next day, after Karyn finished dinner, she heard the sign of Derpy’s arrival. It didn’t startle her as it once would have, but she was confused. “Hi, Derpy. What’s going on?”

“I’m here to come with you to your dentist’s appointment.”

“But I don’t need to go now. That was the whole point of seeing Colgate yesterday.”

“That’s the fun of it,” said Derpy. “You can go and he’ll look at your tooth and he’ll see the magical filling and wonder how it was done.”

“More likely he’ll just think that his x-ray technician made a mistake, or that there was a spot on the plate thingy they used to scan it. Not that I mind you being here, but I had no plans to keep the appointment.”

“Are you sure?”

Karyn threw out her dinner plate and stared at Derpy. “What’s going on? I can tell when you’re up to something.”

“Well, you said that you didn’t know exactly how human dentists did fillings. Is there any chance you can go to the appointment and find out?”

“What for?”

Derpy sighed. “After we left, Colgate’s next patient was Rarity. She said that she’s not going to rest until she finds out how she can get a precious metal embedded in her body.”

Author's Note

Good to be back on schedule! That means it's preview time!

"Remember how you didn’t want to go initially, you were worried about the time difference?”

“Yes, that’s true. I’m probably about half a month older than I should be.”

Derpy scowled. “Should?”

“All right, would if I never left Earth. Which is not how it should be."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn sidled up to Derpy and slouched. “She’s amazing. I can’t see how some people are such naturals at socializing. I mean, I can do it, but Pinkie just does it without thinking.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve been to enough of Pinkie’s parties that I’ve picked up a few tricks as well. But yeah, I mean look at her. Here’s Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all coming in at the same time, and she’s still finding time to pass the time of day with everypony. Now she’s even fitting in Big Macintosh and Applejack.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I think I know who that’s from,” said Derpy.

“Ahem. You think you know whom it’s from.”

“Hello, Rarity.”

That's coming next week!

55: Happy Derpiversary!

“Morning,” Derpy said. “How’s your tooth?”

“Good as new. Thank Colgate again for me. But that’s not important. Do you know what tomorrow is?”

“Monday?”

“No—“ Karyn tried to stop herself, but the word came out. “Yes, tomorrow is Monday, but it’s also exactly one year since I first met you.”

“Is it really? It seems like such a long time ago.”

Karyn pulled out her calendar. “Check for yourself.”

Derpy flipped through. “I can’t tell. This calendar only goes back to January 1. That’s less than a year ago.”

“Yep, that’s what I’m talking about. Before last year I never knew anyone who could say things that were completely true and wonderfully silly at the same time. Then you came here. Happy anniversary.”

“We’re not married.”

“Friend-iversary, then.”

Derpy rolled her eyes. “So what do friends do on a friend-iversary?”

“I don’t know, since the word’s only six seconds old.”

Meanwhile, Karyn had gone to her computer and pulled up its calendar program. She flipped back to the year prior and pointed. Derpy was still unsure, but she trusted that her friend was telling the truth.

“So if we go through this, we should just be able to tell when all our other one-year anniversaries are.”

“What do you mean, others?” asked Karyn.

“Like, the first time you went to Equestria or the first time you met Dinky. Remember how you didn’t want to go initially, you were worried about the time difference?”

“Yes, that’s true. I’m probably about half a month older than I should be.”

Derpy scowled. “Should?”

“All right, would if I never left Earth. Which is not how it should be. But we’re not going to spend our friend-iversary sitting around and flashing back to things we’ve done before. That would be a complete waste of a day together, and we only get one a week. Don’t you agree?”

“Definitely. Hey, I had an idea! Since there is the time difference, why don’t we go to Equestria today? That way, our friend-iversary can last longer than it should. Would.”

Karyn closed her mouth, since Derpy had caught herself before she could. “All right. Let’s see what’s going on in Ponyville.”

When they jumped universes, Derpy was surprised to see so few ponies around. “It looks like most everypony is inside. The market’s not busy or anything.”

“Maybe they’re all taking a lazy Sunday.”
Derpy shrugged as she landed, but soon after, the mystery was solved when a pink ball of energy shot at them and parked itself right in front of them.

“Derpy! Karyn! Happy friend-iversary!”

“Hi, Pinkie Pie,” said Karyn. “How did you know? Have you been breaking the fourth wall again?”

“I sure have! Because there was no way that everypony was going to fit in Sugar Cube Corner for your friend-iversary party, so I broke that wall right down.”

“No, I mean, how did you know that we’d been together a year and were using that word to describe it?”

Pinkie grinned. “I didn’t know you were using the word, but what else would you call it? A frirthday? In any case, I’ve got like a huge party planned for you two. I had to play around with the schedule to fit it between the ‘Roseluck’s great aunt’s fourth retirement-iversary’ party and the twelfth ‘Big Macintosh met Princess Luna-versary,’ but I managed to make it work.”

“You throw parties for things like that? When do you get a chance to rest?”

“That’s no bother. I throw resting parties almost every night!”

Derpy looked at Karyn, and both of them shook their heads at that.

“Let’s just all get over to Sugar Cube Corner and enjoy the party,” said Derpy.

For the first time, Pinkie Pie was less than enthusiastic. She pawed at the ground. “Well, being as how I do throw so many parties, I didn’t have time to do the prep work for yours. So before we have your friend-iversary party, we have to hold a “set up a party” party. You in?”

They nodded, and they all walked over, Pinkie Pie impatiently beckoning Karyn and Derpy to hustle. At the bakery, one wall had indeed been spread open to the outdoors, and the smell of baked goods wafted through the street.

“How did you do this?” asked Karyn. “That looks structurally unsound.”

“I bought out the bakery from the Cakes a few years ago. So I’m the only pony who can determine who can change the layout.”

This non-answer had to satisfy Karyn for the moment, as Pinkie walked away to begin the setup. “Now, we have to blow up the balloons, hang the streamers, wrap the presents—although, I have to do that last part myself. It wouldn’t do for you to know what the presents are.”

“Pinkie,” said Karyn, “Are all of your parties like this?”

“Like what? Fun?”

“It is fun, but—remember what Princess Cadance once said to you? That it was like a six-year-old’s birthday? There are other ways of holding a party.”

“It’s true,” said Derpy. “The one time I was in the same house as a human party, the one for Karyn’s birthday, it wasn’t like this at all. It was more subdued.”

“Really? Well, why don’t you take me through what you would do at a party while we have this one, and maybe I can learn about human parties. See, I thought that I invented the party.”

“You did? I thought that ponies had parties ever since they first became civilized. Maybe even before.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” said Karyn. “I mean, there’s not a whole lot to invent. Getting together and having having fun isn’t cultural. And besides, if you invented the party, how is it that humans have parties when you never even knew we existed. What am I saying? You’re Pinkie Pie. I still don’t think you invented the party, but that’s no evidence.”

As they worked to set up the party, Pinkie told the story of how Rainbow Dash’s first sonic rainboom gave her her first smile. Karyn had heard it before, but, to her surprise, Derpy hadn’t.

“Wow, so you did invent the party.”

Karyn pinned one end a streamer. “OK, maybe she invented the word, or whatever the Equestrian word is, but are you really telling me that ponies never held occasions where they enjoyed themselves?”

Before Pinkie could answer, another pony walked into the open building. “Hi, Pinkie, I’ve got your order of balloons here. They’re selling great, by the way. You must be making a ton of bits on these.”

“Wait, you invented the balloon?”

“Well, sure!” said Pinkie. “It’s my cutie mark, after all. Maybe it should be a balloon and a streamer and presents and everything else I do for a party, but who can determine her cutie mark?”

She started blowing them up, and Karyn and Derpy had a moment alone. “I’ll be a pony’s aunt,” said Karyn. “Maybe she did invent the party.”

Derpy patted Karyn on the head with her wing. “Don’t forget that, by our best guess, our universes were created independently. Even the time scales are different. So Pinkie might have invented the party thousands of years after human society did.”

Pinkie proved quite adept at blowing up balloons quickly, and Karyn didn’t say anything when she tied them off and left them floating toward the ceiling. She did wonder if that was just a Pinkie Pie skill or if anypony could float them that way.

Once the decorations were in place, Pinkie said, “There! Now that looks more like a party setting. How do they do it on Earth?”

Karyn thought back. “If it’s just a regular party, just to get together and have fun, there’s not a whole lot of decoration that goes into it. But humans do more decorating in their everyday life. Picking out the right curtains, upholstery, and accoutrements is a big deal. Some people even make their living just going to people’s houses and designing them to look nice.”

“Oh! So it’s like a party every day!”

“Not necessarily, but it does look nice.”

Derpy interjected as she pinned streamers to the wall. “I think I saw a little of that in your parents’ house, but your dorm room doesn’t have that.”

“True. For some place like that, where the occupant doesn’t plan to stay for more than a few years, the décor is more functional than pretty. And I’m not much into decorating that way myself. What I find a little foolish is people who spend years getting the house exactly the way they want it, just in time to sell it and move away.”

Pinkie Pie laughed at that, thinking that Karyn was making a joke.

“But for really formal occasions, like a wedding or a graduation,” said Karyn, “then decorations are important, and there’s even more selection. Really fancy stuff is out there, rare fabrics and flowers and things. And it can cost a lot of money.”

Just as Pinkie was about to respond, there was a knock on the wall, and Rarity waved her greeting. “Excuse me, as much as I’m interested in this, I have to go play hostess.”

Karyn sidled up to Derpy and slouched. “She’s amazing. I can’t see how some people are such naturals at socializing. I mean, I can do it, but Pinkie just does it without thinking.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve been to enough of Pinkie’s parties that I’ve picked up a few tricks as well. But yeah, I mean look at her. Here’s Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all coming in at the same time, and she’s still finding time to pass the time of day with everypony. Now she’s even fitting in Big Macintosh and Applejack.”

Karyn nodded, but as she saw the two siblings, something occurred to her. “You notice how few ponies have families?”

“But that’s the Apple family right there!”

“I mean married couples and children. Foals. Plenty of ponies are single for life. They’re all so friendly, but why is it that relationships seem so uncommon?”

“Ooh, there’s a difference right there!” said Pinkie, rushing back to them. “Do you mean that humans all have families?”

“Well, not all of them, but when my family has a party, I don’t think anyone comes alone or with just a brother like Applejack did.”

“To answer your question, since Ponyville is still a young town, naturally we have a lot of young ponies here. It’ll be a long time before most of them settle down.”

“You heard her ask the question?” said Derpy.

“Of course! It’s my job as a good hostess to pay attention to what my guests are saying. In any case, that’s the reason.”

“But you guys aren’t young,” said Karyn. “It’s been a long time since you were working at the bakery and Twilight was a student and everything.”

“Yes, but we’re still young. Excuse me again.”

Once again alone with Derpy, Karyn remarked, “Maybe ponies don’t think of age by the same standards that humans do. But then again, your age difference from Dinky is perfectly normal if you were humans.”

“Mmhm. Hey, let’s get some food and greet everypony!

They made their way to the buffet table, where Pinkie had stacked cupcakes and pastries. As Derpy reached for a bear claw, a blue hoof got it first.

“Oh, hey, you two,” said Rainbow Dash. “Long time no see. Great party, huh? I’ve been doing double shifts on weather all week, so I’m going to park myself right here and munch all this sugar! How about you?”

“I…I can’t have too much. I’m supposed to be on a diet.”

“It’s true,” said Karyn. “Though maybe now I understand why you have trouble if you’re at Pinkie’s parties a lot. She’s serving dessert before we’ve even had a meal. Is there even a meal at the party? Or just finger foods?”

“What’s a finger food?” asked Rainbow.

“Oh, right, you wouldn’t have that term, of course. Little sandwiches or such that can be eaten in one or two bites.”

“I can eat these cupcakes in one bite. Wanna see?”

Karyn tried again. “I mean things that are savory rather than sweet. Where are the flowers I know you guys eat? Or hay?”

“But, Karyn,” said Derpy, “you can’t eat hay, so Pinkie could just be thinking about you. Of course, she serves the same thing at every party, so she must really be thinking about you.”

“I think it’s because she’s completely addicted to sugar and the high she gets off it.”

Rainbow did as she promised and stuck close to the food, but at that moment the music for the party started up, and the speaker was right next to it, so Karyn and Derpy moved away to where it was audible but not preventing them from hearing each other.

“Hey, girls!” called Pinkie. “Who’s dancing?”

The song was a polka that Karyn had heard many times before, and it was the one that helped remove the parasprites from Ponyville so long ago. She was content to bounce lazily on the side of the action, particularly as Twilight Sparkle took to the center of the dance floor and flailed her hooves in the awkward style she had.

Once the polka ended and another bouncy song began, Twilight trotted over for a cup of punch. “Whew,” she said, “that was fun. Exhausting, but fun.”

“It’s not the kind of music we’d have at a party on Earth,” said Karyn. “If it’s just a house party, they play background music, but it almost all has vocals. Not just the instrumentals you play.”

“Ah, but do you have these fancy record players? By engraving information into the vinyl, we can play back the music without even having the musicians here!”

Karyn was going to politely nod, but Derpy said, “Humans made those obsolete a long time ago. They have digital storage that never loses fidelity. Sometime when I’m bringing your mail this week remind me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Really? Yes, please do. It sounds fascinating.”

“A few humans still like having the vinyl,” said Karyn. “They think it gives a nicer sound than newer methods. But anyway, what I was saying, if there is a formal party, then we have dance music that’s loud and in your face. It’s not happy and playful like this”

They relaxed and chatted for a while until Pinkie Pie announced that it would be time for party games. She hung a piñata and everyone was instructed to line up to take their swings.

Karyn watched in amusement as ponies dealt with what was a much more difficult game for them. Earth ponies and pegasi had to awkwardly swing the stick with their mouths, while unicorns’ magic was ineffective when they were blindfolded. One of them even managed to mess up the spell to grab the stick, and was humorously flailing away at the piñata with a balloon.

The line shortened, and Karyn held out hope that it would still be there for her to swing at. With only one pony to go, her confidence was high, especially as it was Fluttershy. There was still a coolness about their relationship, but they exchanged greetings.

Pinkie Pie blindfolded Fluttershy and led her forward, spinning her around and even pushing her in the air. Karyn tried to memorize the position of the piñata and was only half paying attention, so had to look twice when Fluttershy took a mighty swing and shattered the papier-mâché, sending candy flying everywhere.

Slack-jawed, she watched Fluttershy pick up all the candy, then turn to look at her. “Oh, my. I’m so sorry. I was actually trying to miss, but I guess I missed. I’m ashamed, because I wanted you to have a turn. You probably don’t have piñatas in your world.”

“No, we do, but I haven’t done one in a long time.”

“I haven’t seen you play party games,” said Derpy. “And I have been to your parties.”

“Not all humans like them. One of those being my father. He doesn’t hate them, just finds no entertainment. But if we were to play a game, we’d probably get a board game going that’s a little more complicated than this.”

Fluttershy patted her on the head. “I’m sure they’re a lot of fun, but don’t be sad that you don’t get to swing the stick.”

“Especially as you can!” said Pinkie Pie, coming from a back room and hanging up another piñata.

“You have another?”

“I have one for every guest at the party, in case they all break it, which would be the best outcome.”

Karyn blinked. “But Fluttershy’s the only one who has. What will you do with all the others?”

“Give them away as presents. Presents! It’s almost time for them. You and Derpy should head to the main table to get yours!”

Pinkie would not be gainsaid, and they left Fluttershy to vacuum up all the candy and take it home.

Everypony gathered round, and Karyn was anxious at being the center of attention. But most of the presents were for Derpy, since the ponies had a hard time thinking of things that Karyn would want. There were only two for her specifically, though Derpy let her open all the ones that were addressed to both of them. Lyra had wrapped up a package of Bon-bon’s candies, and the other one was a wrapped in a very fancy satin paper.

“I think I know who that’s from,” said Derpy.

“Ahem. You think you know whom it’s from.”

“Hello, Rarity.”

“Derpy, Karyn. I got each of you a present, but I think you should open them at the same time.”

They unwrapped the presents and showed off what was inside. Derpy had a gold brooch in the shape of a hand, and Karyn received what looked like a silver pendant in the form of a pair of wings.

“Thank you,” said Karyn. In her head, she was thinking, another extravagant gift from Rarity, and it’s so beautiful that I can’t sell it. I’ll pin it on the dress when I get home.

“You’re quite welcome. Ever since last week I’ve been thinking of how better to use precious metals as opposed to gems. And I had all that platinum lying around, so I crafted that.”

“This is platinum?”

Rarity looked at Derpy, but still addressed Karyn. “Yes. Perhaps not quite so glittery as gold, but I like it.”

Karyn put the pendant back into the box, which she noticed was heavier than it ought to be. Peeking under the lining, she saw perhaps a pound more of the metal in scrap.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, my. Did I leave some platinum in there by mistake? Well, if I haven’t missed it by now, I don’t expect to in the future. You just take it with you, and do as you see fit.”

Derpy’s sly grin told Karyn that this had probably been planned out between the two of them. “I don’t know what to say. Between this and all the fancy things that Derpy got…we don’t do this sort of gift-giving on Earth. Even gold is only given by married couples when they’ve been together for fifty years. I shudder to think how much all of it would cost.”

“Who cares what it costs?” said Pinkie Pie, appearing once more out of nowhere. “What better use for bits are there except buying presents for the ones you love, unless it’s throwing fun events for them?”

Derpy cast her face down. “Oh, Pinkie. I completely forgot. We were supposed to be exploring all the differences between human parties and pony parties, but all we’ve been doing is having fun.”

“But you have shown me everything I needed to know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Derpy,” said Karyn, “I’m sure that Pinkie wants us to just have fun at her party, rather than do some kind of study. And that however we do the games or the meal, a party’s all about having good friends together. On Earth or in Equestria, the guests have the same feelings for each other, and that’s what matters. Isn’t that right?”

Pinkie said nothing for a moment, then her hair deflated and went straight. “Well, gee. Thanks for completely stealing my thunder and giving away the lesson I wanted to teach you.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Go on, you can say it.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

She poofed back up. “Because on Earth or in Equestria, the guests have the same feelings for each other, and that’s what matters!”

“Thanks, Pinkie,” said Derpy. “I think I’ll remember the lesson.”

Everypony began breaking up and saying their good-byes. Derpy and Karyn as the guests of honor had to stay until nearly everypony else left, but at last they had a moment together.

“This was a great way to spend our friend-iversary,” said Karyn, “Or at least our friend-iversary eve.”

“Agreed. And speaking of eves, next year’s going to be eve-n better!”

“You just keep making jokes like that, and it will be.”

Derpy grinned. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

Tired but happy, Karyn climbed on top of Derpy’s back, clutching her present and looking back over the landscape of Ponyville, with Pinkie waving her hoof until Derpy spun her spell and brought them back to the dorm.

They hugged, and Derpy prepared to go home herself, when Karyn sat down at her desk to check her e-mail.

“That’s it,” said Derpy. “That’s the exact pose where I first saw you. Now it’s truly a cycle, and I’m ready to start it up again.”

Author's Note

Here's something you'll like for next time!

“Ah, clever. But you shouldn’t try to exploit people.”

“I’m not being dishonest. That kind of thing is frequent among humans these days. Everything is all about who you know as much as what you know. Of course, I have time, but my folks are always telling me to get out and meet people.”

Derpy nodded. “They’re right. You should. No, it’s a good idea.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Let’s go out and see what kind of discounts they have.”

They got ready and headed out of the dorm, leaving the campus and walking to the nearby town. With the college nearby, the stores had been set up for walking, with parking lots few and far between. Karyn remarked how she liked the difference from home.

“When you have to drive everywhere like in the suburbs, you can’t just casually run an errand like this. You wait till all your errands pile up, then make a bunch of stops, so that way you don’t waste gas or time.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They neared the door, but Karyn held up before going in. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s just so different from Equestria. If somepony runs a business, they want to put their own stuff in it. Even something like Barnyard Bargains, where Mr. Rich gets all the local stuff to sell, he puts his own labels on it all.”

“Well, it has its benefits and its detriments. But there I go, talking like one of my term papers."

Please read that one too!

56: Can You Derp Me Now?

Derpy appeared in Karyn’s dorm to find its occupant in motion, hastily trying to sweep crumbs and the remnants of a small party into a trash bin. She spied Derpy and slammed the brush and the dustpan behind her back.

“Good morning, Derpy.”

“Morning. You don’t have to hide it.”

Karyn put down her implements and scratched the back of her head. “I got up extra early and tried to get it back to normal, because I know you’re particular about that, but you caught me.”

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of doing housework, even if it’s not finished when I’m here. But what was going on to make it so messy?”

“I met some other young folk like me, and one thing led to another, and I found myself hosting a little dorm party. Fortunately it was not a true college bash with lots of drinking and drugs. We’re all geeks, so no risk of that. But I was worried someone would stay and pass out and find you here in the morning.”

Derpy laughed at that. “Reminds me of when I was a younger filly.”

“You had that sort of party?”

“Well, no. I meant cleaning up in the morning. I never got invited to many of those sort.”

Karyn put her brush and patted Derpy on the shoulder. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I was more trying to network with an eye toward eventually hitting one of them up for a job.”

“Ah, clever. But you shouldn’t try to exploit people.”

“I’m not being dishonest. That kind of thing is frequent among humans these days. Everything is all about who you know as much as what you know. Of course, I have time, but my folks are always telling me to get out and meet people.”

Derpy nodded. “They’re right. You should. No, it’s a good idea.”

“Derpy, can I ask a brutally honest question? Do you think that knowing you holds me back? I mean, Equestria is a complex place and all, but it’s still a happy fun world, maybe a little childish, when compared with Earth. Part of the reason I agreed to have everyone over is to convince myself that I haven’t lost the ability to make human friends.”

“Hey, listen,” said Derpy, making Karyn smile as she flashed back to an old video game, “friendship doesn’t work that way. The more friends you have, the better you get at making them. Doesn’t matter who it is, pony or human, young or old.”

“That’s sweet, but how can you be sure?”

“You have to look at it in two ways, and I’m good at that. In one sense, making friends is unselfish, because it’s social, but in another way, it’s all about you, since by knowing more people you gain more for yourself. More knowledge, more empathy, more friends.”

“But that’s not selfish,” said Karyn. “I’m not taking anything from my friends that I’m not giving back in kind.”

“Exactly!”

As they settled in to their Sunday morning routine, having their breakfast and talking over the week, Karyn asking Derpy how her diet was going, Derpy responding by asking how much money Karyn had saved, and both of them enjoying the contact high they knew came on their days together, Karyn reflected on Derpy’s point. Even if she could never introduce Derpy to her human friends, she was a connection between them, and that made her important.

Derpy sipped the last of her water and put down her cup. “So, as we get the breakfast dishes cleaned up, what say we finish the job you started?”

“You bet.”

Karyn cleared the table, as she was the only one who could leave the dorm to take the trays back for pickup. She walked quickly, but Derpy was still scooping up trash and depositing it in the bin, then stomping on it to make more room.

“Don’t forget to separate the bottles,” said Karyn.

“Um, OK.” Derpy carefully moved each half-drunk beer and soda to far points in the room. Karyn shook her head and vowed to recycle them later.

At the foot of her bed, Karyn’s purse had overturned, and she picked up the fallen items, taking a quick inventory. “Lipstick, check, wallet…yeah, all the money’s still there, emergency supplies, check. Hmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Can’t find my cell phone. It’s usually here in my purse, but I may have taken it out during the party. I hope no one stole it.”

Derpy looked around the room, then said, “If you had your phone, you could use it to call your phone so it would ring, and then you could find out where it is. Oh, but then you wouldn’t need to find it.”

“True, but I wonder if there isn’t some web site that will make an automatic VOIP call if you give it the number.”

She went to her computer and searched for such a site. “Any luck?” asked Derpy.

“Yes. I just hope this doesn’t sign my number up for a bunch of telemarketers. Here goes.”

A muffled chime sounded through the room, and Derpy was the quicker. “I’ll get it!” She dove under the bed, only to emerge with the small device, holding it out to Karyn.

“Oh, buck.”

“Maybe you have been around me too much. You’re even starting to swear like a pony.”

“That’s funny, but look at it.”

Derpy flipped the phone, and saw the shatter pattern of the glass. “Oh, no. What happened?”

“Who knows? Maybe it slipped out, someone dropped something on it, but they didn’t notice. Or maybe they did notice and decided to kick it under the bed rather than darken the mood. Heck, for all I know someone doesn’t like me and they did it on purpose. It’s not worth trying to find out. I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and get a new one.”

“At least you’re being calm about it. I know I’d be pretty depressed if my…um…ponies don’t really have a cell phone equivalent. But if that got broken.”

Karyn took the phone back and looked at the cracked screen. “I’ve had it for so long though.”

“All the more reason why I’m proud of you for not getting upset.”

“No, you don’t understand. For things like phones, an old one isn’t necessarily something you treasure. They update them constantly with lots of new features, and replacing one can be exciting and fun. Also, a lot of times if you haven’t gotten a new one for a while, they give you a discount.”

Derpy didn’t see the connection, but she was happy still. “You’ve got a little money thanks to Rarity’s gift last week, don’t forget.”

“I do, but I’m going to sit on that for a while.”

“Won’t that be uncomfortable?”

Karyn grinned. “We should start a point system where you get one if you catch me in an idiom, and I get one if I catch myself. Let me start over. I’m going to leave the gift alone for a while since it’s going to take me some time to sell it for liquid cash. Which isn’t actually liquid, it’s just the word they use. One point to me. But more to the point, I want to save that to wipe out my tuition debt, and I don’t actually have to start paying that till I graduate.”

“But then, for your phone—“

“For the phone, let’s go out and see what kind of discounts they have.”

They got ready and headed out of the dorm, leaving the campus and walking to the nearby town. With the college nearby, the stores had been set up for walking, with parking lots few and far between. Karyn remarked how she liked the difference from home.

“When you have to drive everywhere like in the suburbs, you can’t just casually run an errand like this. You wait till all your errands pile up, then make a bunch of stops, so that way you don’t waste gas or time.”

“Hey, be careful!” whispered Derpy.

“Of what?”

“Your phone’s broken. So won’t people know that your Bluetooth is fake?”

“They can’t see the broken phone. Once we get into a store, yes, you’ll have to hush until we can get alone. But out here, it’s just a prop.”

They turned a corner, and Karyn pointed out a shop with lots of fancy neon signs in its window. Situated as it was between a café and a secondhand bookstore, it popped out to the eye.

“So that’s where you buy new phones?” asked Derpy.

“Well, it’s one place. A lot of mobile stores have opened up since they became popular. Even if all the phones are just a few brands, the people that make them don’t want the hassle of selling them themselves, so they want independent dealers. It’s a good business for people, since they get to advertise popular brand names in their window.”

“Hrm.”

They neared the door, but Karyn held up before going in. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s just so different from Equestria. If somepony runs a business, they want to put their own stuff in it. Even something like Barnyard Bargains, where Mr. Rich gets all the local stuff to sell, he puts his own labels on it all.”

“Well, it has its benefits and its detriments. But there I go, talking like one of my term papers. Let’s just go in and look at some phones.”

Derpy nodded, even though Karyn couldn’t see, and she walked in after, taking to the air to avoid bumping into anyone. The cool air from the air conditioning hit her, and she reflected how some of the differences on Earth she liked. But then she chided herself for not paying attention, and followed Karyn to look at some phones.

A salesman descended quickly, and soon Karyn was listening to him run down the features of some fancy new device that he had, in all likelihood, been told to push.

“The new GPS works fully by voice,” he was saying, “which replaces the old map app that you had to look at to get directions. Safer for the car.”

It’s too bad that I can’t teach Karyn my mapping memory, thought Derpy. Of course, she’d have to learn to fly first or she’d only be able to map a small circle around her feet.

“I’m a student at the college,” Karyn told the salesman. “The only times I drive are when I’m going home at the end of the semester, and I know that route by heart.”

“OK, but the voice commands run throughout the phone. It’s nearly hands-free all the time.”

Ha! That’s what I need. A phone that’s hands-free. I have a hard enough time typing on her computer, plus those touch-screens don’t like my hooves for some reason.

“The features are nice,” said Karyn, “but ninety-nine percent of what I’ll be doing is making calls and using the web and e-mail. So I’m more interested in a good cheap data plan than fancy bells and whistles.”

That’s my girl! Don’t buy what you don’t need.

The salesman, perhaps disappointed at not being able to sell a state-of-the-art phone, walked over to his terminal. “You’re not going to be able to get an unlimited data plan anymore. They’ve pretty much done away with those. Do you know how much usage you have?”

“No, but that old phone stored it. If it’s just the screen that’s cracked, I think we can get that information off it.”

They spent a long time staring at the broken screen while Karyn memorized numbers. She wished that she had the phone to write them down in, but of course that would defeat the purpose. Finally the salesman said, “OK, here’s your biggest month. If we go for the Gold plan, you’ll never hit that.”

“Yes, but at the Silver plan, I would have only gone over twice, and the penalty is less than the difference between the two plans. In any case, before I make a decision, I want to talk it over with my friend. She’s, um, waiting for me outside. She’s shy.”

Karyn extricated herself from the salesman, but felt his stare as she maneuvered Derpy toward the exit. The street was filled with other shoppers, and it wasn’t until they reached the end of the block where they could turn down a side street that she and Derpy got a chance to discuss it.

“So that’s what it’s like trying to buy a mobile phone,” Karyn said, keeping an eye out. “It’s not as bad as buying a car, but worse than buying a sandwich.”

“You’re saying that purchases become more complicated the more expensive it is?”

“Price isn’t the only factor, but it’s a lot of it. Remember that they’re not just selling me a phone, they’re selling me the service that goes with it.”

Derpy looked down at Karyn’s broken phone, then all around her. She didn’t know the technical details of how it worked, but she realized that there had to be a team of humans somehow keeping the network up. Even though it seemed like good, comfortable magic, there was work involved, and that meant money. Maybe, she thought, that was why the humans built things like that, to try to emulate the magic they didn’t have.

Just then, her first duty was to make sure her friend didn’t get taken. “I think you’re right,” Derpy said. “It’s important to get the best deal long term.”

“They know that too. That’s why you don’t see a lot of pricy phones, just cheap ones with expensive plans. The other thing I can do is get one and buy the minutes as I need them. But you don’t get the nicest ones from that.”

When she was confused, Derpy’s recourse was to look up to the sky. Not only was it where she was most comfortable and did her job, but she could also see the sun or the moon and remember that somepony was watching over her. That didn’t apply on Earth, she realized, but she was still inspired by the sun.

“It’s a nice day, and we have plenty of time. Let’s go around to some other shops and see if there’s a bargain anywhere.”

Karyn looked back to the store. “That sounds good. We can always come back here.”

They stepped back onto the main street, and for a few minutes they could pretend that it was a lazy Sunday where they could walk the boulevard and enjoy the sights without having a shopping mission. Derpy saw one store that had phones on display, but Karyn explained that it only sold one brand, and was owned by the manufacturer. She wanted to be able to select her carrier.

“Besides, I think that the big companies are getting enough money from making the phone. There needs to be some room for the little guy to run a business.”

They found another one a few doors down, and went in. The store was empty and quiet, and the lone employee was leaning on a glass case, typing away on her own mobile.

The aisles were wide and the air conditioner blanketed the room in white noise, so Derpy could stand next to Karyn and talk without having to attempt any subterfuge. “I think we might have come to the right place,” she said. “They have all the information here without you having to talk to the saleshuman.”

“Just salesman or saleswoman is fine. Yeah, the prices are better too. Let’s put our heads together and try to come to a final decision.”

They worked through process of elimination. Derpy found the ones that were too expensive, and Karyn picked the ones she didn’t want. Soon they had a short list of three.

“Hey, Karyn? One thing I was wondering as I looked.”

“What’s that?”

“Why do so many of the phones have X’s in their name?”

Karyn eyed a few displays to see Derpy’s point. “I guess they think it sounds cool. C’s and V’s are popular too. But a few of the phones have actual names. Too bad there isn’t one called ‘Pegasus’ or ‘Muffin’.”

“Just because it had the right name doesn’t mean it would be the right phone.”

“No, but it might be serendipity.”

“Here’s one called Twilight,” said Derpy.

“So there is. But it’s not on either of our lists. No, I think that this one, the LS101, is what I’m going with. So back into stealth mode, I’ll talk to the clerk.”

The phones, of course, were under lock and key, so Karyn couldn’t just bring one up to the counter. She walked up and said, “Excuse me.”

“Just a minute.” She kept typing on her phone for another minute or so. Karyn wasn’t sure if she was texting or playing a game. “All right, what can I do for you?”

“The phone over there, I’d like to upgrade mine to it.”

“All right. The phone’s two hundred, and—“

“No, my contract should have expired and I should get a free one,” said Karyn.

“Can I see the old phone?”

Karyn handed it over.

“What, did you drop this?”

“Something like that.”

The cashier muttered something like, “teenagers always so irresponsible.” She looked up Karyn’s account. “OK, yeah, you can get an upgrade. Fill this out.”

“Thanks.” Karyn started writing her information, when she noticed that the girl had gone right back to her phone. “Can you get the new one and switch the SIM card while I’m doing this?”

She gave a heavy sigh and walked away.

Derpy whispered into Karyn’s ear. “I don’t care how good a deal the phone is. If she’s going to be that rude, you should leave.”

“You think so? In a few minutes it’ll all be over.”

The cashier returned and tossed a white box on the glass. “OK, now, about the extended warranty.”

“Don’t want it. I’ve read that they’re not worth the money.”

She rolled her eyes. “Given the way you treat your old one, you really ought to.”

Karyn counted to ten and was about to speak again, when she felt Derpy grab her by the collar and drag her to the door. She tried to right herself, but Derpy was too strong, so she covered quickly. “You know what?” she said to the cashier. “Forget it. Since you obviously don’t care about helping me, I guess I don’t need the phone.”

She grabbed her old one and her half-completed paperwork and let Derpy keep pulling. The cashier was already back at her phone and didn’t notice that Karyn travelled the last five yards to the door without her feet touching the ground.

Hastily putting in her Bluetooth, Karyn walked on her own, just to make Derpy let her go. When enough people had passed to make the disguise look good, she said, “You weren’t kidding about leaving.”

“No. I’m sorry to have done that to you, but I just can’t stand rude people. It was bad enough when I saw ponies doing it in Equestria, but that was because they were unfamiliar with you. Which is no excuse, but at least I knew why. That girl was just a bad worker.”

“You’re right, but I would probably act the same way if I had to do that. That’s why I’m studying hard so I can work with computers all day. You can be rude to them all you want.”

“You shouldn’t be rude to Derpynet.”

Karyn laughed. “True, but for computers not magically made sentient, it’s fine.”

“So should we look for another place?”

“Since we’re heading there anyway, let’s go back to the first store. Now that I know what model I want, getting it should be no problem.”

The salesman at the first shop was surprised to see Karyn again, having written it off as a lost sale. Now that Karyn knew the exact model and plan she wanted, he seemed a little disappointed at not being able to sell a more expensive phone, but he was polite and interested the entire time, so Derpy had no reason to drag her off again.

Back at the dorm room, Karyn ran her fingernail along the edge of the box, slitting the plastic and tearing it off. She shook the box top off, overcoming the heavy friction, and removed the Styrofoam square protecting the phone from shock.

“Ah. You don’t have that in Equestria,” she said.

“Phones? No, we don’t.”

“Well, that’s true, but I was talking about the smell of some new item that comes encased in plastic.”

Derpy sniffed. “I don’t like it much.”

“It’s probably not good for me, but I’ll have to get used to it.”

She took the phone out and slipped it into its charger. Derpy stared at it. “So does this mean that you’re not going to host any more parties?”

“No, I’ll just do all my cleaning ahead of time, and I’ll stick my purse in the closet beforehand so no one can mess with my stuff.”

“Good lesson. It is something of a shame.”

“What do you mean?” asked Karyn.

“Well, I don’t have one of these, and even if I did, it couldn’t make calls while I’m in Equestria.”

“I know, we complain about that a lot, but we never do anything about it. Maybe it’s just meant to be. Maybe getting too complacent about talking to you might make me forget I have to keep you secret. Still, I do wish we could keep in touch more.”

The phone had charged enough so that it turned on, so Karyn turned it on and started exploring. Derpy had cocked her head, but then smiled and touched Karyn with her wing and hoof.

Karyn looked up and realized what happened. “One point to you.”

Author's Note

You want a preview? You got it!

“If you’d like to sit outside for a while, I could bring you some lemonade or something.”

“I think I’d rather go inside. It’s a little chilly.”

“You’re cold?” said Derpy. “I’ll go and move a few clouds so that the sun warms you up. Wait right here.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh, Rarity. Derpy’s upstairs, I think, but if you’d like to wait for her, I’m sure she won’t be long.”

“Actually, it’s you I came to see. I was in the square and saw a pegasus pony popping into existence, which could only be Derpy, and enough of a figure was on her back that I concluded it was you. I just wanted to thank you again."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Poor Opal, she’s been feeling under the weather herself lately. I should really get home to her, but I just had to pick up a few things, and then I saw Karyn…”

“Shouldn’t you also put on a formal dress?” asked Karyn.

“Beg pardon?”

“Well, don’t you always put on something a little fancy when Opal’s not feeling her best? I remember you telling everypony that once.”

Next week is all for Rarity fans. Don't miss it!

57: Derpalescence

“So, how would you like to come back home with me today?”

Derpy stretched her wings and knelt down to invite Karyn on.

“I could do that. An extra day off would be nice. Is there any particular reason?”

“Oh, no. What do you need the extra time for?”

Karyn threw her leg over Derpy’s back. “I’ve just had a hectic week. Meeting people is tiring.”

“Any good ones?”

“I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s get the clock stopped.”

Derpy took off and activated her spell, but Karyn sensed hesitation as she did so. They landed, and Derpy let Karyn off on the porch.

“If you’d like to sit outside for a while, I could bring you some lemonade or something.”

“I think I’d rather go inside. It’s a little chilly.”

“You’re cold?” said Derpy. “I’ll go and move a few clouds so that the sun warms you up. Wait right here.”

“No, that’s all right. Let’s just go in.”

Derpy reluctantly fumbled with the latch, then took a deep breath and opened the door. “There, now you’ve seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“After getting on you last week, it’s my turn to have the messy house. I was kind of hoping you’d let me finish cleaning while you waited outside, but now you’re witness to my shame.”

Karyn scanned the room. Derpy’s “mess” consisted of a book left unshelved, a lemonade glass left on an end table, and a cat toy on the floor, which was only noticeable next to the utter lack of clutter.

“Yeah, it’s a real pigsty in here,” said Karyn sarcastically.

“It is. Don’t go in the kitchen. It’s too much for anypony. You should just sit out here with your eyes and nose closed while I finish.”

With Karyn wondering if ponies could actually close their noses, Derpy finished her housework. Karyn wanted to help, but Derpy would cut her off and scowl each time she tried, so instead she picked up the unshelved book and was about to open it, when she heard the knock at the door.

Derpy was busy removing a single mote of dust, so Karyn opened it herself. “Oh, Rarity. Derpy’s upstairs, I think, but if you’d like to wait for her, I’m sure she won’t be long.”

“Actually, it’s you I came to see. I was in the square and saw a pegasus pony popping into existence, which could only be Derpy, and enough of a figure was on her back that I concluded it was you. I just wanted to thank you again for putting me onto the idea of silver and gold as accessories.”

“You’ve thanked me enough,” Karyn said, thinking of her gift. “But did you really get your teeth drilled just for that?”

“What? No.” Rarity put her hoof to her mouth. “It seemed clever, but not fashionable enough. Instead I designed these silver shoes.”

She turned the hoof she had lifted out, and Karyn saw that indeed she had a traditional horseshoe nailed in, but that it had a polished shine that no horseshoe on Earth had ever had.

“It’s very nice. But I thought silver was more malleable than that. It doesn’t crush under your weight?”

Karyn worried that she had inadvertently insulted Rarity’s weight, but the unicorn let it pass.

“I did have to magically temper it, but that was no trouble. I’m more worried that they go unseen. Perhaps I should redo them as the kind of slippers Princess Celestia wears. And I’m still thinking of augmenting them with gems, if only because I’m so familiar with them. Maybe something in red, for color.”

“Replacing silver shoes with red slippers? Could work.”

From the back, a rustling was heard, and Karyn turned to see. “Ah, Derpy must be done cleaning.”

But it was not Derpy. Her cat Muffinhead emerged, stretching and yawning, from the unknown dimension that cats go when they don’t want to be found. He looked at Karyn and took a wide arc around her, then approached Rarity. Maintaining his distance, he tilted his head and purred.

Rarity stuck out a hoof. “Here, puss,” she said. He approached cautiously and sniffed the hoof, then rubbed his head against it. Becoming very energetic, he walked a figure-eight around her legs.

“I don’t know what it is with him,” said Karyn. “He seems to love ponies, but won’t come near me.”

Derpy flew down from the upstairs. “Hello, Rarity. I thought I heard somepony come in. What are you doing with Muffinhead?”

“Don’t look at me. He approached and is being very affectionate.”

“Maybe he smells Opal on you.”

Karyn privately thought that Rarity would be sure to mask any cat scent with the perfumes, moisturizers, and creams she used for her skin, but that maybe the cats could get past all that.

Derpy took the opportunity to show Rarity around her house, evidently feeling confident enough in its cleanliness to display. As the tour wound through, Muffinhead did not leave Rarity’s side, mewing and purring all the way, begging for attention. Karyn watched as Rarity used her magic, and a glow appeared over the cat’s head. She was petting him telepathically, and Karyn wondered if that was as nice as physical contact.

“It certainly is a lovely house,” Rarity said. “As delighted as I am with my own, I sometimes wish that I could live separately from where I work.”

“Really?” said Derpy. “If I could deliver all the mail without ever leaving my house, that would be amazing!”

Karyn, perhaps sensing that Rarity would not be as patient as most ponies with Derpy’s peccadilloes, tried to change the subject. “Muffinhead’s really all over you. Derpy, maybe you should let him out more often so he can meet other ponies.”

“I had to make him an indoor cat ever since he ran away about two months ago.”

“You never told me about that.”

Derpy picked him up and stroked him. “There was nothing to tell. I let him out, he didn’t come home at dark, I left his food outside the door, he came home in the morning. Everypony’s pet knows how to get home.”

“I guess it’s different here. We worry about our pets when we can’t find them, but I suppose Muffinhead can’t be run over by a car or attacked by a dog. The dogs here don’t attack cats, right?”

Rarity stepped back, as if a little afraid of a person from a world where pets were in trouble, but Derpy said, “Don’t worry, they really love animals on Earth. It’s rough on everyone there.”

“Well, I’m no Fluttershy, but I certainly wouldn’t want anything to any little animal, especially a good little kitty like Muffinhead here. Poor Opal, she’s been feeling under the weather herself lately. I should really get home to her, but I just had to pick up a few things, and then I saw Karyn…”

“Shouldn’t you also put on a formal dress?” asked Karyn.

“Beg pardon?”

“Well, don’t you always put on something a little fancy when Opal’s not feeling her best? I remember you telling everypony that once.”

Rarity stared, blinking, while she scoured her memory. “Goodness me, that was a long time ago! And it wasn’t, if you want to be perfectly technical about it, true.”

Karyn concluded that Rarity wasn’t the type who liked to be teased, so she didn’t pursue the question. But Derpy, who had picked up her cat and was petting him more traditionally, said, “Why don’t we go over and bring Muffnhead? Maybe Opal would like to have a friend kitty visit.”

Everyone agreed, and so it was that Muffinhead was let out of the house again, with prods and pokes from Derpy to make him come along, as they made their way to Carousel Boutique.

Though Karyn had been there once before, she had not then taken a good look at the building, which had to be one of the nicest in Ponyville. She wondered exactly how the concept of a carousel had entered the Equestrian lexicon. Ponies didn’t ride anything, so they wouldn’t have the merry-go-round, unless it was just a round spinning platform. Still, the statues of the horses on the upper circle topped off the building nicely, and symbolized the dress forms that Rarity used in her work.

The bottom floor emphasized the roundness of the architecture, with its full-length egg-shaped windows that let Karyn peek through and see some of the dresses that Rarity had for display. As they entered, she saw the one work room that was cordoned off, and with good reason. There were so many odd pins, threads, and scraps of fabric lying about that Opalescence could hurt herself if she got in.

The rest of the room was pristine, and Derpy could avoid looking at the workroom and enjoy the order she craved. The only thing out of place was Opal herself, and that nopony could complain about.

Rarity had been right that she was not well. Opal’s breathing was labored and, though she could raise her head to see the new entries, took no action either to greet them or to run away.

“You poor little thing,” said Rarity. “Mommy’s got all your favorite treats, and we even brought a friend over for you to make a sick call. Say hi to…what was your cat’s name again, Derpy?”

“Muffinhead.”

“To Muffinhead.”

Derpy heard the emotion in Rarity’s voice, the tone she used for things that she considered gauche or uncouth. She took it in good humor. “Opalescence is kind of a silly name too, considering that she doesn’t become dichroic if you shine perpendicular beams of light through her.”

Rarity and Karyn both stared at Derpy, wondering what she was talking about and if she really knew something they didn’t. Rarity had chosen the name for her cat because it sounded pretty.

Meanwhile, Muffinhead had wriggled loose from Derpy’s hooves and approached Opal without hesitation. He sniffed at her and started to lick her face. Rarity realized that she couldn’t remember the last time that Opal had cleaned herself, and was grateful that the other cat was there to help.

As the two cats bonded, Karyn had shut her eyes and was trying to think. Derpy noticed her distress. “Is something wrong?”

“This whole thing seems vaguely familiar to me somehow. Like from something when I was a child, or maybe just a story I read a long time ago.”

Rarity went off to prepare the treat that she had bought for her sick pet, as Muffinhead completed his cleaning and sat down next to her. Opal took a swipe at him that vaguely reminded Karyn of when she had sliced off a lock of Sweetie Belle’s mane. It was almost, she thought, as if Opal blamed Muffinhead for her being in the state she was in.

“Derpy, did you say that you stopped letting Muffinhead out after he didn’t come home about two months ago?”

“That’s right. I was worried that he might wander off to the Everfree Forest where something could hurt him. He’s not from Equestria, and he’s only got one eye, so I have to be careful.”

“Rarity!” Karyn called.

Rarity poked her head in with a quizzical expression. “Yes?”

“I think I might know what’s wrong with Opal. She’s about to have kittens!”

“What?!” Carefully, Rarity inspected Opal to find her quite gravid. “Oh, my dear Celestia! How did I not notice this? We should get a doctor! No, we should get Fluttershy! No, we should put something down to protect the carpet. No, what am I thinking, forget the carpet, poor Opal! Should we boil water? Don’t they always say to do that?”

Derpy grabbed her head. “Rarity. Calm down. I’m sure Opalescence knows what she’s doing. She’s just not too happy about it right now, and really wants you to be there.”

Karyn realized that Derpy was the only one in the room who might have empathy for the situation, and deferred to her.

“All right,” said Rarity. “What should we do?”

“Does she have a kitty bed? Let’s put her in it. Also, we should close the blinds. I think cats like it dark.”

Rarity got the bed, and they all waited tensely. Soon enough, nature took its course, and Opalescence was washing six tiny kittens, who then all wanted to nurse. Their mother looked none too happy about it, but gave in, and even smiled a little.

Karyn watched the kittens with a chill. When she went to Equestria, she could tell that the ponies were from a different world. They weren’t exactly like their animated depictions, but they had a stylized look that Opal shared and Muffinhead did not. The native Equestrians’ hair and fur looked more like solid masses, which Karyn’s skin and Muffinhead’s fur had blemishes and variations that gave them more detail.

The kittens were hybrids of both looks. They had Earth cats’ eyes but with the deep yellow color that Opal had. Their faces were wide and ovular like their mother, but with a full complement of whiskers instead of just the six that she had. And their bodies were also round like Equestrian cats, but Karyn wondered if that might not be owing to their just having been born.

The first cross-breeding of Earth and Equestria had occurred, and she felt privileged to be present, but at the same time, she worried. Would the kittens be forever caught in between, belonging to neither world?

The ponies were scowling, but for different reasons. Karyn watched as a comedy played out, each mare dressing down her cat.

“You, young man, are never allowed out again!” said Derpy. “Stealing Opalescence’s virtue like that. She’s an innocent kitty that you’ve ruined!”

“And just what do you think you were doing with him?” Rarity was saying at the same time. “Allowing a tomcat like that to violate you in such an intimate way!”

Both cats meowed in protest.

“Well, yes, you did come here for the birth, so that’s something, but you should give her a proper wedding and plan to stay with her.”

“True, I admit he is a fine specimen of feline grace, even if he’s from another world. I can certainly understand the appeal of the exotic foreigner. But if you were lonely and wanted a companion, I would have found you one.”

Another pair of meows.

“I understand that it’s not the same for kitty cats as it is for ponies, but you’re still a boy and she’s still a girl and that means that she has to have the babies. Still, what’s done is done.”

“I know that you’re independent and don’t need me as much as I need you. And I suppose now that it’s a fait accompli that there’s nothing we can do.”

The cats started purring. Muffinhead cuddled next to Derpy, and while Opal was still busy with her newborns, she stuck her neck out and nuzzled Rarity.

“Oh, I can’t stay mad at you. But we’ll have to have a long discussion later on about being responsible.”

“Aw, there’s my sweet Opal. You just relax now and Mommy will take care of everything you need.”

At last the twin one-sided conversations came to a close. Karyn busied herself cleaning up after the birth. When she returned, ponies, cats, and kittens were all entangled in one big cuddle puddle.

“I hate to be the one to say it,” said Karyn, “but I have to wonder if, Rarity, you’re able and willing to take care of all the kittens.”

Rarity looked up, then at Opal. “I could, I think, but I do so often have to be elsewhere…or attending to customers. I suppose it’s up to Opalescence. Once they’ve been weaned off of you, are you willing to handle six kittens all on your own?”

Opal’s expression gave her answer. If it could be put into words, it might have been, “What, are you kidding me?”

“So, what I’m saying is, we’ll have to find homes for all of them.”

Derpy pawed at the carpet. “I’d like to take another, but that’s up to Muffinhead. What do you think?”

He bounced over to his kittens, sniffed them all, then went to the smallest of the litter and pushed her closer to her mother.

“I think he wants that one,” said Rarity. “He’s caring most about the one who most needs it.”

“So that settles one,” said Karyn. “But that still leaves five.”

“Surely Fluttershy can take them in.”

“One, maybe two,” said Derpy. “But we shouldn’t burden her with all the rest. There has to be a limit to even her kindness.”

Rarity was skeptical, but Karyn, whose opinion of Fluttershy wasn’t as high as the others’, was inwardly pleased.

“There must be somepony else who wants a cat.”

Rarity flashed her “i-deaaaa!” face. “I think I remember overhearing that Mayor Mare was concerned about mouse troubles in Town Hall.”

“A newborn kitten wouldn’t be much of a mouser.”

“It would grow. Mayor Mare is always interested in long-term solutions.”

Derpy kicked her hoof on the ground, counting off. “That’s three, maybe four placed. Who else?”

Karyn took a deep breath. “I can advertise back on Earth to see if there’s anyone around campus who can take them. The students probably can’t, but many have families.”

“I don’t know…separating the kittens across a whole different world?”

“Well, pet population is a big problem on Earth too. We have too many stray cats and dogs that don’t know how to take care of themselves. There are medical procedures that we have to make them not have babies, but I guess you don’t have those in Equestria.”

“Normally we do,” said Rarity.

“What? How?”

“With magic, of course. The same as everything else. That’s why I never considered that Opal might be in the family way. I always keep up with her sterilization spell. Derpy, you don’t do that with Muffinhead?”

“I have. The vet does it for me all the time. But maybe because he’s an Earth cat, it didn’t work.”

“Nothing we can do about it now,” said Rarity as she floated a blanket over Opal. “We just have to place our little miracles.”

“That’s right. We’ll split up. I’ll talk to Fluttershy and the mayor. Karyn, you go home and work on advertising to find homes for the other two or three.”

Karyn took out her new phone and turned on the camera. “Let me get some pictures of the cats first. And what’s Rarity going to do?”

“Stay here and make sure all the cats are all right.”

Karyn and Derpy walked out. “You got the division of labor right. Rarity seemed happy at being allowed to stay.”

“You can only push her so far.”

Derpy dropped Karyn off at home and prepared to head back to make the rounds of Ponyville.

“While you do that,” Karyn said, “I’m going to use these pictures and post some to the online bulletin boards to see if anyone’s interested.”

“I’m surprised that you don’t have big pet distributors to handle the situations. Humans have big stores and big schools, so I would think they would have this too.”

“There are some animal shelters, but they’re not always the best idea.” She didn’t want to tell Derpy about euthanasia. Fortunately, Derpy accepted and went on her way.

Karyn’s graphic art talents were not close to her computer skills, but she was able to make a collage of the kittens that she thought looked good. It explained that it would be a month before anyone could take them, but they would be getting a very special cat. The rest of the day she would check in from time to time, while waiting for Derpy to return.

After lunch and a nap, Karyn checked again. When Derpy got back, she was able to see that one of the students had indeed replied and would take in a cat with his parents.

“That’s only one left!”

“If all goes well,” said Karyn. “We still have to check this guy out and make sure the home’s all right.”

“I know it will be. Cat people are always nice.”

That was a bit of a generalization, but Karyn didn’t argue. She was grateful just to have the problem solved.

“How did things go with the other ponies?”

“Easy as pie,” said Derpy. “Also I talked to the vet’s assistant, who was the unicorn that works on Muffinhead. He said how sorry he was and didn’t even think that it wouldn’t work. He promised to study hard and that Muffinhead wouldn’t father any more kittens.”

“That’s good to hear. Everything is going to be all right.”

***

When the cats were weaned a month later, Derpy showed up with a nervous look. “So, about the kitten we were going to give to the family of the student here…”

“Yes? Is there something wrong?”

Derpy’s saddlebag opened, and a cuter-than-average kitten stuck its head out. “Hi, Eerie. Welcome to Earth.”

“Eerie?”

“Short for Iridescence. But that’s not the only way she takes after her mother.”

The cat jumped down, looked around the room, then hopped up onto Karyn’s desk and started poking at the keyboard. Karyn stared for a moment, then said, “She’s intelligent?”

Iridescence looked at her and nodded.

“Oh, well. I did tell them they were getting a very special cat.”

Author's Note

Sure feels good to be back in the swing of things. Here's next week's preview!

“Last one, I promise. This is the text I was waiting for. And it’s today, bummer.”

“What’s today?”

Karyn shut off her phone and placed it on her desk. “Do you remember when I had that get-together a few weeks back?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They reached the cafeteria, but the roll-gate was down. Karyn pulled out her phone and checked the time. “They’re not supposed to close for another ten minutes! They always do this.”

“Give them a break. Everyone likes to knock off a few minutes early.”

“That’s fine on the weekdays, when they run till nine at night. But on weekends there’s only a four-hour brunch and a one-hour dinner. We’ll just have to make sure that we get there as soon as the dinner hour opens. Meanwhile, we’ll grab a sandwich from the vending machine.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So what do you think? Really boring stuff, huh?”

“No, I was fascinated! Everyone was out there talking about their problems and trying to do something about it. We don’t do that in Equestria.”

“That’s because you don’t have any problems,” said Karyn.

Look forward to it!

58: Derpy's Rules of Order

“So, as much as I love this thing, the process of getting used to something new is always annoying.”

Throughout her breakfast with Derpy, Karyn kept peeking at her new phone. All the alerts it put out were the same sound and image, whether it was for a text message, voicemail, or advertisement. She could never be sure that it was something she needed to pay attention to, or just ignore and delete. Derpy had noticed and thought it was a little rude of her.

“I can understand, but if you focus on breakfast now, I’ll be happy to help you understand it once we’re done.”

“Are you sure you don’t just want to focus on breakfast because you’re hungry?”

Derpy grinned, but then frowned when the phone buzzed again. “Really?”

“Last one, I promise. This is the text I was waiting for. And it’s today, bummer.”

“What’s today?”

Karyn shut off her phone and placed it on her desk. “Do you remember when I had that get-together a few weeks back?”

“The one where someone broke your phone, which led you to buy that one, which is why it took you so long to eat breakfast? I’m familiar with it.”

“Like I said at the time, they were some students who seemed like it would be good to know. Well, the result of it is that they convinced me to join the student government.”

“Oh,” said Derpy, as she finished her breakfast. “So, like, you guys are studying what it would be like to be a government, in case you want to be a mayor or something?”

“Not exactly. I’m sure some people use it for that, but what we’re supposed to do is to be the voice for the students if they have a complaint to the school’s administration. Though the guy who is running it said that it’s more like we have to protect the administration from the students.”

“But you’re part of it? That sounds great! You can help do all the computer things they need.”

“It’s not that formal an organization. There’s no office, we just meet in the student union building.” Karyn blinked. “Which I suppose is our office, but up until now it’s been used as a hangout or a rec center, so that’s how everyone thinks of it. Anyway, after the party the guy who organized it—his name’s Gerald—asked me to come to the next meeting where they would elect the officers. I figured that I should show some interest in the school, so I went, and they voted for four positions. There was the president, the vice-president, the secretary, and the treasurer.”

Derpy listened, eagerly lapping up the information on something that was unfamiliar to her. “And are they all good people?”

“Well, here’s the punch line. Only three people showed up. Gerald, one of his friends, and me. So I wound up as secretary and treasurer.”

“Ooh, fancy titles.”

“But they don’t mean anything as is. If we keep holding meetings and no one shows up, we’ll just be a rinky-dink organization that no one will take seriously. On the other hand, if we do get bigger, I’ll have a lot of work to do, in two jobs that I have no idea how to do.”

Derpy grinned. “Sure you do.”

“What do you mean? They should get a business major to take those positions, not an IT geek like me.”

“I don’t know about the secretary. But you’ll make a great treasurer. Haven’t I been telling you all about budgeting?”

Karyn stared at her. “It’s a completely different thing. You’re telling me not to spend so that I won’t run out of money. This is all about keeping records and being responsible for other people’s money.”

“No, it’s all the same. Just a question of scale. It’s like…” Derpy thought for a moment. “It’s like the mini muffin versus the big muffin. But they’re both tasty.”

“You just had breakfast. Are you still hungry?”

“Maybe a little.”

Karyn cleared her own plate and picked up her phone again. She filed through some of the options until she came up with her calendar. “Anyway, at the last meeting, this Gerald guy said he’d schedule the next one for the most convenient time for everyone. But since they’re business majors and I’m IT, our schedules have a lot of conflict, and even when we have free time, we don’t always want to walk across the campus to the building. Especially if it’s me walking at night. So they wound up scheduling it for today at three. I couldn’t very well complain that it would cut into the time I spend with my flying pony friend.”

“And of course you’re not going to.”

“I don’t think it’ll be too exciting.”

Derpy shook her head. “You only think that because you’re used to it. When you came with me on my mail route, or when you sat at the get-together with the Apple family, you enjoy those a lot, but it’s old hat for me. So you go to the meeting and try to enjoy it as best you can, but I’ll be there in the corner, invisible, thinking of all the questions I want to ask.”

“If you say so. It’s going to be difficult to establish communication though.” Karyn eyed her phone and Bluetooth.

“No. You are not going to be staring at your phone in the meeting pretending to send texts while I read over your shoulder. We are going to nip this habit in the bud. It’s fine to play at talking to fool people on the streets, but when you’re talking to other people, they deserve your attention.”

“Yes, Mama Derpy.”

Derpy grinned, and she gave Karyn a hug to show that she wasn’t really mad at her. With the specter of the meeting looming, the girls didn’t do anything more strenuous in the morning beyond checking their virtual crops in their social network game. At noon, Karyn was eager to head out for lunch. As they walked across the campus, she explained why.

“We all have our meal plans, and they go by the week. You can spend seventy dollars in a week, but anything that’s left over, you lose. So everyone waits till Saturday and they take what they have left over and buy stuff that lasts—bottled water, sodas, that kind of thing. And then they run out. So I get mine on Sunday when the week begins.”

“But how do you know that you’re not going to overspend?”

“Because I kept having the same amount left over every Saturday.”

Derpy’s voice went high with excitement. “You’re going to be a great treasurer!”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “That’s not being money-smart. It’s just common sense and math.”

“That’s what being money-smart is. And I’m not even good at math. I have to use quill pen and scrolls.”

They reached the cafeteria, but the roll-gate was down. Karyn pulled out her phone and checked the time. “They’re not supposed to close for another ten minutes! They always do this.”

“Give them a break. Everyone likes to knock off a few minutes early.”

“That’s fine on the weekdays, when they run till nine at night. But on weekends there’s only a four-hour brunch and a one-hour dinner. We’ll just have to make sure that we get there as soon as the dinner hour opens. Meanwhile, we’ll grab a sandwich from the vending machine.”

Derpy didn’t care for the sandwich, as it was wrapped in plastic and not fresh, but it sustained her until they reached the student union building. The hall was a white concrete structure with a slanted glass roof, and when they entered, Derpy could see the sun through the skylights. But then they went inside the inner section, which was set up as more of a meeting room, and had no windows. The drop ceiling was cramped, and there were low, padded chairs around the room, but also a wider table. Normally the table would be in the middle, but it had been shifted to the side so that the officers could address the crowd.

A couple of girls were chatting in the corner, and waved to Karyn with unrecognizing looks on their faces. As she set her things down on the main table, they seemed hopeful that she would tell them what was going on.

More people began walking in every few minutes. Word had gotten around that the student government was a serious thing, and perhaps a dozen people had taken the low chairs before a sweater-vested young man strode in and dropped his own bag on the table.

“Hey, Karyn.”

“Gerald. Good to see you again. Meet—“ she cut herself off before she could introduce Derpy.

“Yeah, meeting looks more full this time. Jan’s on his way. He’ll be here any minute.”

As he said that, the vice-president entered and shut off his phone, taking his place opposite Gerald.

For a moment, Derpy enjoyed the din of the conversation. Although she couldn’t make out any one line in particular, she could sense the anticipatory mood.

“OK, everyone,” said Gerald. “Let’s get started. I’m glad to see more people here. Last time it was just the three of us, so we went ahead and took the offices. If anyone else wants to help out, we’ll talk about that at the end of the meeting.

“Why doesn’t everyone come gather in a little closer?”

There ensued a scramble, as Derpy dipped and dodged to make sure she didn’t get in anyone’s way. By the time the meeting continued, a throng of people was between her and Karyn.

Gerald was continuing his introductions. “And this is Karyn Hubert, from the IT department. She’s our treasurer and secretary.”

Karyn saw an opportunity to make her life a lot easier. “Does anyp—does anyone mind if I record the audio for the meeting?”

No one said anything, but at the same time everyone averted their eyes from Karyn.

Gerald coughted. “I don’t think that’s really the best idea. We’re all concerned with security in this day and age.”

She threw up her hands and shut off the recording function, making sure that she showed the group that it was off. She left it on the table, but then she remembered Derpy’s admonishments from the morning. Exhaling, she tossed it in her bag and kicked the bag across the room.

“All right,” said Gerald. “So since we’re all here to help out with the student government, I’ll just start out by explaining what our role is, and just as important what it’s not. Now, we can’t solve all the problems of the school, and we can’t make the administration do anything, but we can be there to lend a helping hand for anyone who needs it, and, er, make sure that the president’s valuable time isn’t taken up.”

The others laughed at the joke, but Karyn grimaced a little. Gerald’s disaffected cynicism didn’t strike her as very presidential. The rest of the assembled seemed to get into it.

“But,” he continued, “I can promise that if you do have an issue that the brass does need to know about, that we’ll bring it to their attention. So does anyone have any concern that they want to bring up?”

That’s clever thought Karyn. He’s clearly flailing, and he’s not good and conducting a meeting when there’s more than two of us to talk to. So he’s hoping for questions to move it along.

The room remained silent, though, as everyone looked at his or her neighbor, hoping to hear someone else break the ice.

Even Karyn counted off the seconds rather than try to bring anything up. From the back of the room she heard a dim rumble, followed by a familiar deep voice. “Aw, why was the cafeteria closed?!”

Everyone laughed with the exception of Karyn, who desperately tried to make sure no one spotted the source of the voice. Gerald craned his neck to see, so Karyn decided she would have to pick up the thread. “Whoever said that has a point,” she said. “Is that something we can bring up? Food service isn’t exactly the most accommodating division of the school.”

Murmurs of ascent ran through the crowd. At last, someone raised his hand.

“What I don’t like is how they keep running out of tortillas every other day. They charge more for regular sandwiches, and they have more calories.”

More opinions were voiced. “The lines move too slow.” “The specials are terrible.” “The prices are too damn high!” Everyone laughed at the last one, since the speaker punctuated her words with a pointing finger.

Gerald didn’t have a gavel, but he slapped the table to get everyone’s attention. “OK, I’m hearing your concerns, but this is one of the examples that the dean gave me as things that we couldn’t necessarily influence. The food service isn’t run by the college; it’s an outside contractor. They’ve got a contract with the school, not with us. And the dean says that they’ve got to do what they have to in order to make a profit.”

Karyn had had enough. “Hang on a moment. A profit? I’m sure they’d like to make a profit, and that’s fine if they’re planning to run a restaurant. But they’re not. A restaurant wants to be open as long as possible to serve more customers, not cut down hours. A restaurant can’t afford to run out of menu items, because people are coming in to eat what they want. And most importantly, a restaurant can’t have a captive audience. Everyone who lives in the dorms has to buy the meal plan. That’s not what happens with a profit-making restaurant.

“It’s a fine plan for a college cafeteria. We’ll be patient and understanding with our college cafeteria. We’ll put up with the prices and the short hours and the mediocre food, but then don’t come and talk to us about a profit. They earn more on the cheap and overpriced specials than they do on the pre-packaged stuff? Too bad! It’s a college cafeteria, and that means that the students get to spend their credits as they see fit. It’s either-or. They don’t get to charge us on one end and not serve us on the other.”

At some point during this speech, Karyn had stood up, and only when she had finished and heard the burst of applause did she sit down again and let the blood flow to her cheeks. She had forgotten that she was in front of an audience, only wanting to refute Gerald’s by-proxy bureaucrat speech. As he took back over the meeting, Karyn listened for the fade-out of the ovation. The last sound to fade was of a pair of clapping hooves.

Gerald smiled. “Whether or not we can pull it off, that’s the level of passion we want to have at these meetings. Why don’t you write up what you just said as a formal proposal, something that we can vote on and then I’ll take it to the school board?”

Gritting her teeth, Karyn nodded. She didn’t want to have a voluntary homework assignment on top of all her mandatory ones. But this was the downside of being secretary.

Her rant had loosened the tongues of everyone else at the meeting at least, and she did not have to speak again. Instead of short sound-bites, people were actually making points, mostly on the food issue, but also speaking about academics and residential life. Karyn leaned back and made little notes on a piece of paper, while zoning out and looking where she thought Derpy was.

Next meeting I’m going to bring my laptop and type up what everyone says, she thought.

“Why don’t we all take a fifteen-minute break?” said Gerald, “Then we’ll go over some of the formal business. We should really have another vote for officers, so if anyone else wants to be president so that I can sit back and do nothing, now’s the time.”

He smiled as he said it, and Karyn sensed that he had no intention of giving up his position. As everyone left the room, she found Derpy.

It was five minutes before they could find a private room, and Karyn kept a lookout for anyone else coming in.

“So what do you think? Really boring stuff, huh?”

“No, I was fascinated! Everyone was out there talking about their problems and trying to do something about it. We don’t do that in Equestria.”

“That’s because you don’t have any problems,” said Karyn. Before Derpy could contradict her, she said, “What does, for example, the mayor do if she doesn’t listen to citizens groups like this?”

“Preside at store openings, organize events like the Running of the Leaves, and write reports that say everything’s OK.”

“Don’t remind me about reports. I’m not looking forward to typing up my little tangent there.”

“This is where you’re glad to have me, right?” said Derpy.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after Gerald told you that he didn’t want you to record the meeting, you put your phone in your bag and kicked it over to me. I assumed that meant that you wanted me to do it secretly.”

Karyn sputtered and pointed for a few moments, then gave up. “Derpy, I love you, but I will never get you.”

“That’s what makes it fun.”

“But I was told not to.”

“Because of other people’s privacy,” said Derpy. “And that’s true, but if all you do is skip to the part where you’re talking, and then erase it afterwards, who can complain?”

“I suppose you’re right. Anyway, I’ve got to get back in there. Since I’m still on the board, I have to be responsible and cut my breaks short.”

Derpy restored her spell, and they went back into the meeting room. The break lasted longer than fifteen minutes, as most of the other attendees were using their own cell phones, or just straggling to return. Gerald looked impatient.

“So everyone,” he said, “We’ll break up soon, but I just want to reiterate. You’ve given me a lot of concerns to take to the dean, but I can’t make promises. It may be that the best we can do is to hold the line right here instead of having them take action against us. But that can be a kind of victory.

“Our last order of business is to see if anyone wants to join the board. There’s not a whole lot of work involved…”

Karyn had to withhold a snort.

“…but you do have to show up for meetings. On the other hand, you get to put student government on your resume when you get out of here. Anyone?”

Once again the awkward silence and looking-around, but for one girl in the back who had her hand half-raised, it took an invisible push from an unseen wing to get it in the air.

“Great! Anyone else?”

More hands went up, and Karyn got to tune out again while everyone made their pitch for why they wanted to join. All that remained was for her to tally the votes and make the announcement.

“Well, it actually looks like we have excellent candidates for both secretary and treasurer, so…”

“We don’t want to kick you off,” said Gerald. “Why don’t you pick which job you like better, and let the vote stand for the other one?”

“No, no. I couldn’t make that choice. Two people won the vote, and two people deserve the jobs. I’m a much more sensitive person than you are. And besides, I’ll be able to call myself ‘Secretary and Treasurer Emeritus’.”

***

Freed of the meeting, Karyn’s spirits were much higher as she walked back to her dorm. She wore her Bluetooth, but barely cared if anyone noticed, and looked right at Derpy as she spoke. “That all worked out for the best. One more little report to write, which thanks to you will be a lot easier, and I’m done with this little chapter.”

“And if nothing else, you’ve learned some valuable lessons.”

“Right. I’ve learned that the skills I develop for my personal life might have applications elsewhere, and vice versa. I’ve learned that politics is a game for people who really enjoy it. I’ve learned to watch what I say at parties.”

“Now all we need to do is keep training you to not be obsessed with your phone,” said Derpy.

Karyn quickly put it away, but then pulled it out again. “I’ll never understand the psychology. I took it out to check the time, and forgot to do so. So I had to do it again. Now hurry up. We’ve got something very important to do.”

“What’s that?”

Karyn picked up the pace of her walking. “We’ve got to get back to the cafeteria and stock up on as much as I can. When they hear my report, they may never want to feed us again.”

Author's Note

Next week, another tale of friendship!

“It was definitely nice of Princess Celestia to give Dinky the week off as reward for helping us out with the changeling invasion. But did she say why it took her so long?”

“No,” said Derpy. “Maybe she just wanted to give us time to take care of other things, like your cell phone breaking and that whole meeting thing from last week.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m just so anxious, not knowing what my future’s going to be. If I had a thriving business where all I had to do was run the same orders to the same customers, I’d be the happiest unicorn out there.”

“Nuh-uh. You just try it, and see how fast you get bored.”

“I will not!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They sat and drank more coffee for a while, until Dinky raised her ears and looked around. “Do you guys hear something? It sounds like a big to-do outside.”

“I don’t hear anything,” said Karyn.

“My ears are bigger. Let’s check it out.”

All that, plus a mysterious face from the past, coming next week!

59: A Dink to the Past

Derpy bounced from her left hooves to her right, even as she flapped her wings to hover.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so giddy,” said Karyn.

“I might have been, but since it seems like half the time you don’t see me anyway, you can’t go by that.”

“A fair point.”

Derpy flew so strongly that she looped back on herself. “I think I have a right to be giddy. A whole week with my little Dinky. It’ll be just like before she went off to school!”

A few other ponies hung around the train station, but most of them had left when the northbound train had departed ten minutes earlier, either by boarding the train themselves or by picking up loved ones. To Karyn’s eye, it was only the employees of the railroad and one or two who were just as eager as Derpy, and had come early.

With nopony around, the station was eerily still. Karyn reflected that on Earth, even the remote stations had announcement boards calling off the next arrivals and plenty of advertising plastered everywhere. But only the sound of the wind and the fresh paint of the ticket office broke the idyll calm.

“It was definitely nice of Princess Celestia to give Dinky the week off as reward for helping us out with the changeling invasion. But did she say why it took her so long?”

“No,” said Derpy. “Maybe she just wanted to give us time to take care of other things, like your cell phone breaking and that whole meeting thing from last week.”

Karyn was about to protest that there was no way for Celestia to have known about that, but in the first place, she wasn’t sure exactly how powerful the princess was, and in the second, Derpy had ceased to pay attention as a noise from the distance caused her to dash toward the end of the platform.

“That’s the whistle! She’s here!”

“Calm down, Derpy. Racing down there won’t get you to see her any sooner. For all you know, she’s at the front of the train.”

Derpy pulled up and looked back. “That’s why I’m racing. If she’s at the front of the train, and if a train comes into Ponyville at thirty miles-an-hour, and if a pegasus pony is flying at eleven wingpower the other way, then it means seeing Dinky now!”

Karyn laughed, but wrapped her arms around Derpy, pulled her down, and looked her in the eyes. “Just be calm. Dinky’s not going to want to see you all flustered and worn out. Once you spot her, you can run and hug her and use all your energy then.”

Derpy nodded, and the train reached the platform, decelerating slowly so that, despite herself, Derpy was leaning the other way as if trying to will it to stop. At last the doors opened, and ponies filed out.

Unfortunately for the girls, they were positioned between two freight cars, and the emerging ponies brought with them a slew of heavy rocks and boulders. There was no way to move either way down the platform. Karyn kept trying to excuse-me her way past the ponies, but they were so focused on unloading their rocks that they didn’t pay attention.

“Um, Karyn? Come on, third dimension, remember?” Derpy pointed her hoof upwards.

“Oh, right.” She hopped on Derpy’s back, and moments later was trying to spot Dinky from the air. A few other pegasi had taken to the air as well, so Derpy didn’t have all the freedom of movement she wanted, but could at least see better.

“I guess they’re making a delivery from a rock farm. I hadn’t heard about any big shipments, which we usually do at the post office.”

“Rock farms? I’ve always wondered—“

“Mommy!” From the far end of the platform came Dinky’s cry, and Derpy dive-bombed toward her, landing in a hug.

“Ah, Dinky! Karyn’s been looking forward to seeing you so much.”

“I’ve been?” said Karyn.

“Yes, you have.”

“I suppose it’s true.”

Dinky chuckled. “Let me just grab my bags and we’ll go.” Dinky floated a valise off the train and had it trail after her.

“You’re getting so much better with your magic,” said Derpy.

“Thanks, Mommy.”

They walked carefully past the delivery ponies with their boulders, and as they did, a gray mare stepped off the train with a clipboard in her hooves. She oversaw the lifting and carrying.

Dinky pulled up short and looked at the mare, then kept walking. Derpy, always attuned to her daughter’s every movement, said, “Is something wrong?”

“No…I just thought I knew that pony.”

“Which pony is that?”

Dinky turned around to come face to face with a pile of rocks, and tried to crane her neck around it. “The pony who was managing the moving of the rocks here.”

“Do you know any rock farmers in Canterlot?”

The question made Dinky lose her focus, and she faced her mother again. “You know better. I don’t think there’s a single rock farm in Canterlot. The unicorns would look down on the farmers so badly.”

Karyn interjected. “I wanted to ask Derpy, but can you explain to me about rock farms?”

“Well, just because they’re such an Earth pony thing, and some unicorns are stuck up.”

Karyn was about to protest that Dinky had answered a different question than she wanted to ask, but Dinky had gone back to staring at the pony in question, and looking like she was racking her brain.

“It’s too bad there isn’t some spell to identify a pony by their face,” said Karyn. “Although, we have facial-recognition technology on Earth, and some people use it for bad things…”

She trailed off as Dinky had trotted away. The other pony felt Dinky’s stare, and looked back at her. The same vague recognition was in her eyes.

The two mares circled each other like prize-fighters. Karyn realized that each was trying to identify the other by her cutie mark, but in doing so, they were moving it away. Each of them slowed and bent to try to show her flank.

It was the gray mare who first had the flash of recognition. “Dinky?”

“Yes. I thought I knew you too, but I can’t—“

“Dinky! Dinky Hooves! I haven’t seen you in forever. You don’t remember? I’m—“

As if to save her from the embarrassment of making the mare identify herself, Dinky’s memory chose that moment to click. “Suzie!”

“You do remember!”

“How could I forget?”

The pony called Suzie shook her head. “I would have forgiven you if you’d forgotten. How long did we spend together? A month? If that? You must have had dozens of other friends at that age that you saw more often.”

“Well, the same for you. You remember my mother, Derpy?”

Suzie curtsied. “Of course I do. It’s wonderful to see you again, Miss Hooves.”

“Please,” said Derpy. “Nopony calls me by any fancy titles. I’m just Derpy, especially to important businessmares.”

“Businessmare? You knew me when my only business was getting dirty at the playground.”

The remark triggered Derpy’s memory. “Little Suzie Cutie Pie. Yes, I remember.”

Dinky trotted around. “And this is my human friend, Karyn.”

Suzie blinked twice. She had seen Karyn, but had been more curious about trying to remember Dinky. Now, she hesitated, but then warmly extended her hoof. “Any friend of Dinky’s is a friend of mine!”

“It’s very nice to meet you. But how do you two know each other?”

Dinky settled on her hooves. “When we were little fillies, we would play at the same park. But like Suzie said, it didn’t last long. Her mom was always busy, and couldn’t find time to bring her. And of course, mommy was always busy too, and sometimes she couldn’t bring me. But one time she came over and we had lots of fun. Suzie taught me how to swing on a swingset.”

“I can’t believe you remember all that,” said Suzie.

“Why not? You were a good friend.”

“Yes, but for me, you were my only friend.”

Before she could continue, one of the big stallions who had been hauling rocks approached her. “Ma’am, all the carts are loaded.”

“Oh, and here we are taking up space on the platform. You can proceed to the work site. Dinky, everypony, come on, let’s go somewhere.”

As they walked slowly, she continued.

“After my dam wouldn’t let me see Dinky anymore, I was very sad. I had plenty of toys, and my family was there too, but still, something was missing. So, to me, Dinky became a kind of imaginary friend. I would pretend that she was still there, basing what she would say on what little I knew about her. And because Dinky was a unicorn I made up that she would become famous and attend Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”

Derpy beamed. “But she is attending the School for Gifted Unicorns!”

“Maybe that only happened because Suzie pretended,” said Dinky. “She could be inadvertently determining the course of reality.”

Suzie blushed. “I don’t think so, but my family…never mind. And it’s wonderful that you made the School.”

“And you’re running a rock farm?”

“I’m running many rock farms. My dam, whatever her faults, had a head for business. And my sire had money. Together, that’s a good combination. Then my grandsire got ill, and they retired, leaving me to take over the business.”

Karyn, realizing that she had before her somepony who was important in the rock farming industry, tried again. “Miss Suzie, can you explain to me about rock farming? How you and your mother do it?”

“Just Suzie is fine. And it’s really quite simple. She would run one rock farm until she saved enough on profit to put money down on the land for another. Then everything would go toward paying that mortgage until it was done, then she’d do it again. Each plot of land was about the same cost, so the cycle shortened each time. It took her many years, but then she decided to stop expanding and start enjoying life. I credit my aunties for that.”

“Your aunts?” Karyn replied, then mentally kicked herself for following up on a minor point when, once again, somepony had missed the thrust of her question.

“Yes. I don’t know what they said, but they had a long, private conversation with my dam one day, and after that she announced that we would be moving off the little house we had on one of the farms and into a nicer one in Mustangia with other ponies. I was still young, and that was my first chance to make more friends, so I put imaginary Dinky away. I really love Aunt Blinky and Aunt Pinkie for that.

“And then a year or two later, I found myself running all the rock farms.”

Derpy took a moment to connect the names that Suzie had dropped to the surname she knew. “Wait,” she said. “You’re Pinkie Pie’s niece? I know her!”

“I think everypony knows her.”

“Are you planning to see her while you’re in town?”

Suzie sighed. “It’s supposed to be just a business trip, but if she finds out I’m here…”

“Then she’ll throw a party,” said Karyn, Dinky, and Derpy all in chorus.

“Right. Not that I don’t like Aunt Pinkie’s parties, but what I had wanted to do was just to get in, get out, and get back to the farm. Of course, I didn’t expect to meet an old friend.”

Dinky said, “Why don’t we accompany you on your delivery? Then we could go to a café or something and catch up on old times more?”

“I’d love to have you along on the delivery, but if we go to a café, Aunt Pinkie’s sure to find out.”

Everyone was silent for a few moments, then Derpy said, “I think we have to face that we’re not getting out of it. Besides, you should see your relatives when you come to town. So why don’t I go and find her? Maybe I can convince her to keep the party down to a minimum.”

Suzie assumed her proper manner once more. “Oh, Miss Derpy, I couldn’t ask that.”

“You don’t have to ask. I’ll do it anyway!”

She flew off toward Ponyville. Dinky waved her hoof until Derpy was out of sight, which took longer than it should have, since she turned around to wave back several times.

Suzie laughed. “All these years and you’re still that close to your mother.”

“Well, I haven’t seen her for a while,” said Dinky. “Now that I’m off at school, it’s not the same as it was.”

Another train was pulling in, so Karyn said, “Come on, let’s go before more ponies need the platform.”

They trotted off. If the burly stallions strapped to the rock carts found anything unusual in their boss walking with a unicorn and a human, they didn’t say anything. The job site was close, and soon the stallions were passing the rocks on to others who proceeded to quarry and cut them.

“So do you have to do a lot of these trips?” asked Dinky.

“More than I like,” said Suzie as she took pen in mouth and signed the receipt. “When I was young, rock farming was all about the hard labor. Now I have ponies to do that for me. But at least I could always look forward to more rocks and different rocks. I remember when my dam first told me we were adding shale to the granite we were used to. It was a whole new world for me! Not that anypony else would care, but I did. Still, once I took over, it’s been nothing but the same customers wanting the same rocks.”

One of the stallions, that Karyn took to be a kind of foreman—or forepony—approached Suzie. “Ma’am, if you and your friends would like to go, we’ll handle the rest.”

“Thank you, Sedimentary. Dinky, Karyn?”

They headed into town, Suzie keeping her eyes open for her aunt. She insisted on ducking into the first bistro they could find that had a darkened, private area.

“This place looks expensive,” said Dinky.

“Don’t worry. Everything’s on me. Rock farming pays well at my level. But tell me about your schooling. What’s Princess Celestia like?”

“Just the way you’d imagine her. Wise, caring, somehow manages to get ten ponies’ work done each day, including personal attention to all her students.”

A waiter brought coffee for all of them, and Dinky magically stirred hers, brooding. “Sometimes I wish she weren’t so attentive. Karyn will tell you, but I’m really just trying to get through the schooling and find some place where I can settle down. Maybe in a job, or find a nice stallion and get married.”

Now it was Suzie who brooded. “Dinky, I’m saying this as your friend. Don’t waste your chance. I’d give every rock and boulder on my farms if there was a school for earth ponies and I got in. Especially if I got instruction from the Princess.”

“It sounds good, but I’m just so anxious, not knowing what my future’s going to be. If I had a thriving business where all I had to do was run the same orders to the same customers, I’d be the happiest unicorn out there.”

“Nuh-uh. You just try it, and see how fast you get bored.”

“I will not!”

Karyn broke out in laughter.

Dinky and Suzie had been moving closer to each other, but now turned their heads. “What’s so funny?” asked Dinky.

“You two. Your little back-and-forth. It’s a good thing I’m here. Now, Dinky, you shouldn’t scoff at Suzie for trying to give you a little motivation. She’s only trying to help. And Suzie, I don’t know you too well, so I hope you won’t think me presumptuous if I say that, while Dinky may get bored in a simple life like the one you have, you can’t just tell her that. You have to let her get there and find it herself. It’s like an old saying we have on Earth. The grass is always—“

Suzie interrupted. “—tastier on the other side. Yes, we have that saying here too. Oh, Dinky, I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” said Dinky. “It’s our first time seeing each other; we shouldn’t fight.”

They both stood up and walked around the table for a hug, then sat back down. “Thank you, Miss Karyn,” said Suzie. “It’s good to know that Dinky’s been in good hooves. It’s a favor I can’t repay.”

Karyn saw her opportunity. “Maybe you can do something. I’ve been trying to understand something, but everypony keeps misinterpreting my questions. It’s about rock farms. I don’t get it. Why do you have to farm rocks? I understand quarrying them or mining them, but rocks don’t grow. You can’t plant them and expect them to get bigger like plants. Or rotating rocks to another field. Why? They don’t get any better there. What’s the deal?”

Now it was Suzie’s turn to laugh. “Oh, Karyn. Obviously they don’t grow, but in order to get the valuable rocks out of the ground, you have to put pressure on the land to force them upwards. Otherwise we’d have to dig like diamond dogs. And you rotate rocks to a new field to get them out of the way so more rocks can come up.”

“What do you mean, pressure on the land?”

“It’s something Earth ponies do. I’m not sure I can explain it, any more than Dinky could explain how she does her magic to me, or Derpy could tell me how to fly.”

Karyn thought about that. The idea that the ponies could have abilities that she could never understand disquieted her. “Well, at least I understand a little now. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

They sat and drank more coffee for a while, until Dinky raised her ears and looked around. “Do you guys hear something? It sounds like a big to-do outside.”

“I don’t hear anything,” said Karyn.

“My ears are bigger. Let’s check it out.”

They got up and poked their heads out of the café. A hundred ponies were dancing and cavorting. Closest to the café door were Derpy and Pinkie Pie.

“I tried to explain,” said Derpy. “But when she heard that you were in town—“

Pinkie Pie interrupted. “I thought of what a wonderful occasion this would be for a party, but then Derpy said that it was a business trip and that in any case the pony you really wanted to see was Dinky and then I thought that I’d never done a party where the guests of honor didn’t even know there was a party, and how that would be, like, twice as surprising as a surprise party, so I did my best to make a party all around you guys that wouldn’t disturb you in the least.”

Suzie shook her head. “Thanks, Aunt Pinkie. I figured that you wouldn’t know enough to not throw a party, and I was right, but it still worked out.”

Derpy nervously shifted from looking at Pinkie to the other girls. “Is it OK for me to go back in with them? Or does that count as a disturbance?”

“I think that’s for us to decide, and I definitely want you back.” They returned to their table and pulled up a fourth chair for Derpy. Suzie ordered another round of drinks. “So Dinky, now that we’ve found each other again after all these years, we have to stay in touch. Give me your address so I can send you letters.”

“That won’t be necessary!” said Derpy. “I’m the mailmare around here. If you just put her name on the letter, I’ll know where to give it to.”

Dinky shook her head. “But Mommy, I’ll be in Canterlot, and Suzie will be in Mustangia. It won’t go through the Ponyville post office.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

Suzie poked Karyn with her hoof. “Do you mind if we switched seats? I want to sit next to Dinky so I can wax nostalgic about our old times.”

Karyn agreed, and they rearranged. Soon, Dinky and Suzie were caught up in “Remember when your mom chewed you out for getting sand in your mane?” and “Remember when your mommy let me have a chocolate muffin?” while Karyn and Derpy just sat and watched.

“Sorry your week with Dinky had to get cut short,” said Karyn. “She’ll probably want to hang out with Suzie until she has to go.”

“I don’t mind. After all those years, to find a friend like that just on the train platform, it’s kind of a miracle.”

“Maybe the real miracle is how they could have become friends the way they did. Just walking up to each other and asking to be friends.”

“Foals can always do that. Maybe that’s why you and I were able to become friends so quickly. We’re both foals at heart…why are you looking at me that way?” Derpy backed off from Karyn.

“Because I’m going to hug you.”

She suited the deed to the word, and embraced Derpy.

“What was that for?”

“Just something I figured out. If two fillies can meet, have a few play-dates, lose touch, find each other decades later, and pick up right where they left off, then that means that friendship is stronger than anything out there. And if we have that kind of friendship, it means that it’s never going away. That’s real comforting.”

“Oh, Karyn. I knew that all along. But if you just learned it, that means that I think you need another hug.”

Across the table, Dinky and Suzie laughed under their breath.

Author's Note

Here's what's coming next week!

“So what do all the other people do on Sundays?” asked Derpy. “All the ones who aren’t spending time with me, which is most of them.”

“Well, plenty of them spend time with their families, or some of them just treat it as another day off and laze around all day, dreading the Monday to come. In the autumn and winter, they schedule most of the football games for Sunday, and those draw a big crowd to stadiums and TV. Earth keeps itself busy.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We got out of it,” said Karyn, breathing heavily. “I guess that makes it all right.”

“There were still some things I didn’t understand.”

“I’m sure there were. But for right now, I’d like to get back to the dorm. It’s dreadfully hot out here, isn’t it?”

That's all the clips, but I'll tell you now that by the end of next week's chapter, someone may be close to not surviving!

60: Pie Jesu Derpine

When Derpy appeared in Karyn’s dorm, she held in her hoof a small square of paper.

“What’s this?” asked Karyn.

“This is the page from my calendar yesterday. Normally I tear them off and throw them away. But this Saturday I had such a long shift at work that I wanted to punish it by dragging it here and throwing it out in your room where it can’t meet any other days and influence them.”

Karyn laughed at that. “A long day, huh?”

“Yes, but now at least it’s Sunday. The day of the sun!”

Karyn was about to pass that off as more pleasant conversation, but then a thought hit her. “You’re still speaking your own language, but the words are the same? The first part of Sunday means the sun in the sky?”

“That’s right. My daddy used to tell me the story of Sundays, since that was his only day off from carrying the mail. Long ago, when everypony had to work very hard, they complained that they didn’t have a chance to appreciate playing in the sun. Princess Celestia listened to them and declared that Sunday would be a day when everypony got to rest, unless something really bad happened, and, like, a doctor was needed. A lot of the businesses didn’t like that, but the princess said it wasn’t a rule, just a suggestion. Everypony listened to her, so nopony went shopping on Sundays, and the businesses didn’t make any money even if they were open. So it all worked out.”

“That’s a nice story.”

Derpy smiled. “I think so. Anyway, that’s why you don’t see a whole lot of activity when you come to Equestria on Sundays. The farmer’s markets are open, because we’ve got to eat, but when you come on a weekday is when things really swing.”

“I’m told that it’s very similar in some of the big cities. Back where I lived with my parents, Sunday wasn’t much different from Saturday. But my mother went to New York City once. She said that, from Saturday to Sunday, you might see a parking lot of a thousand cars empty out entirely, or a block full of stores go from packed with shoppers to being gated and locked. It’s not quite as bad here, but it’s still pretty quiet.”

They went to the window. Derpy did not even bother to become invisible. As if to underscore their point, that particular Sunday was especially quiet. The courtyard was empty of all but a few early risers playing handball or hackey-sack. With the ascending sun shining through the buildings, it was easy to see the empty halls, and no doors opened or closed. In one alley, the trash bins had been emptied and sat ready. The lawn of the quad had been mowed the day before. It looked like the entire campus had been reset and was ready for the week ahead.

“So what do all the other people do on Sundays?” asked Derpy. “All the ones who aren’t spending time with me, which is most of them.”

“Well, plenty of them spend time with their families, or some of them just treat it as another day off and laze around all day, dreading the Monday to come. In the autumn and winter, they schedule most of the football games for Sunday, and those draw a big crowd to stadiums and TV. Earth keeps itself busy.”

“They don’t celebrate Celestia, though.”

At the sound of the name, Karyn flashed back to when she had met the princess. She had found her an affable pony that she considered a friend. But she was also such an important figure. “No, with the possible exception of some of the more obsessed bronies.”

“Then whom do they celebrate?”

Karyn rubbed her temple. Derpy had steered the conversation in a direction Karyn would have preferred it didn’t go. “All right, sit down and let’s talk about this.”

Derpy didn’t see why Karyn had become so serious, but she landed on the bed and folded her wings.

After collecting her thoughts, Karyn said, “Let’s try this? Do you know who made Equestria?”

“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, of course. They led the three tribes after they learned to be friends with each other and defeat the windigoes.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Equestria is the word both for your country and for your world. What I meant was, er, did anypony create the world itself? If there were no trees and rocks and rivers at one point, how did they get there?

Derpy was confused. “How would I know? They were all there as far as I’ve been around. Why would they ever not have been?”

“So you don’t ask the question. That’s fine. Some humans are like that too. They don’t worry about it, or figure that it was always the way it is. But others—a lot of them, historically—care and care deeply about they answer. And they think they have an answer, but it’s not always the same one. Then the questions of how to be a good person get tied up into that.”

“You lost me. Why does the making of the world have anything to do with being good?”

Karyn was more stressed. “I’m not the biggest expert on all of this. All I can tell you to answer your question is that plenty of humans think there is someone to celebrate, but there’s debate on who it is. Even if the debate is so strong that everyone will say there is no debate and that they’re right. When it all works out, each difference of opinion just goes to its own church and leaves others alone.”

“Church?”

“You don’t have churches in Equestria?”

Derpy shook her head.

“OK, well, the word refers both to the building that they all meet in as well as the group of people who go there and share one of those opinions. Some of them are simple affairs, just empty rooms for people to sit and listen in. Others are modern with lots of technology. Still others don’t have the tech but are fancy and filled with sculpture and artwork.”

“So, when we went to the museum, was that a church?”

“No,” said Karyn. “It has to be specifically set up as a church and have no other purpose.”

“All right, I’m sold. Let’s go.”

Karyn knew that when Derpy got it in her head to see part of the human world, there was no getting out of it. But part of her cultural consciousness still caused her a moment of trepidation about taking someone from another world onto sacred ground. She laughed at herself. She didn’t believe that Derpy would burst into flames or be revealed to everyone as soon as she entered. The church’s miracles, if any, were the subtle kind as opposed to the clear magic of the ponies.

“Sure,” she said. “Get invisible and we’ll head out.”

Derpy searched her bag for her spell and turned it on. In the time it took her to do that, Karyn had removed from her closet the dress suit that her parents had bought her for job interviews, and she was walking toward the bathroom.

“You’re going to wash up first?” asked Derpy.

“I already did that. But you have to dress up to go to church. It’s tradition.”

“Oh. Then maybe I can’t go. Unless I can go back home for a moment to get a dress.”

“I don’t think the rule applies for ponies.”

Karyn didn’t attend church herself on campus, so she went to the computer and searched for the nearest one. Soon they were out in the bright sun walking off campus and into town. The spire was visible from a distance.

The building was not one of the modern “mega-churches,” but neither was it a proper cathedral of old. It had been built in the mid twentieth century, and was a building of the times designed to emulate tradition while still fitting in to the surrounding architecture. Karyn walked around the side to show Derpy some of how it looked.

“Look at the stained-glass windows!” Derpy said. “It’s just like at Canterlot Castle.”

“That’s another tradition. They could display the art of the figures of the church’s history there, back when most people couldn’t read.”

“You mean, like, when they were kids?”

Karyn decided that religion would be enough for Derpy that day, and that she would tackle illiteracy another. She nodded noncommittally and brought Derpy into the doors.

As soon as they came in, Derpy whispered, “Hey, Karyn? Can I drink this water?”

Without a word, Karyn turned around and walked out of the church.

Derpy followed her, confused, as they walked around to the side. Once there, Karyn said, “One thing about churches is that they have great acoustics. They built them so that, before they invented the technology to project sound, everyone could hear. So even if you whisper, people might hear you. And I can’t wear my Bluetooth in there; it would be the height of rudeness.”

“All right, I promise.”

“Then in exchange, I’ll tell you about the water. Again, back when churches were the center of town, people who came in would ritually cleanse themselves before going in. The practice was parts of the mythos, but it also helped serve the purpose of cleaning people. The irony is that today, when everyone puts their hands in the water, it spreads germs.”

Satisfied, Derpy let Karyn lead her back in to the church, and she got her first look at the interior.

The windows impressed her even more from the inside, but what really made her eyes pop was the ceiling. From the outside, the church looked like it might have been a multi-story building, but inside it was all one cavernous room. The wooden support slats of the roof were exposed to view, and had been polished and lacquered. They were spaced a few inches apart, and each one slightly above the next to create the effect of a pyramid.

Derpy, who was used to having low ceilings indoors, got to stretch her wings and fly around the room. At the opposite end from the entrance was the altar. Although she couldn’t tell its purpose and had been forbidden from asking Karyn any more questions, she enjoyed staring at the artwork of the gold carving. She couldn’t tell if it was real gold or not, but believed that the satin sheet lying over it was genuine.

Eager to get back to her friend, and hoping to communicate even a little by gesture and touch, Derpy flew back to where Karyn was waiting in line by the holy water. After she dipped her hand, they proceeded to the benches.

Right as they turned in, though, Karyn put her hand to her head and knelt down. No one seemed to notice, thinking that it might have been a kind of prayer, but Derpy swooped in and held her up. Forgetting everything that Karyn had told her, she said in full voice, “Are you all right?”

That got people looking. Some looked around for the speaker, but the rest surrounded Karyn, who was not looking well. But she waved them off and said, “I’m all right. I think the smell of the incense hit me and I wasn’t ready. You know, the stuff they burn here to give it that heady smell? Just a little overwhelming.”

After everyone else dispersed, Derpy was able to comfort Karyn. She wanted to apologize for speaking out of turn, but doing so would only compound the problem. The church was not tightly packed, and she was able to stretch out next to Karyn and stroke her with her wings. Although Karyn had claimed to be all right, she looked to Derpy to be still recovering from her fainting spell, particularly because she wasn’t wearing a look of admonishment. Derpy resolved to keep an eye on her.

A bald man in long robes walked out, and everyone hushed and paid attention, so to Derpy’s mind he was the host.

Without Karyn to explain things, Derpy just had to sit back and enjoy it as best as she could. The people and places that the bald man talked about were unfamiliar to Derpy, and she soon gave up on making a list of questions to ask later. She did pay attention to the man’s discussion of peace and love, and found herself nodding along to the message.

Then everyone did a series of exercises, where they alternately stood, then kneeled, then sat back down. It wasn’t very intense exercise, but Derpy saw a lot of old people, and assumed that the host kept it simple for them.

At one point, Karyn took a book out of the slot in the back of the bench in front of her. Everyone else turned to a page, and there was a group sing. Karyn kept flipping through, and didn’t find the right page until the song was halfway finished, at which point neither of them could catch up to where they were in the song. But Karyn kept her voice low and tried to noncommittally match all the others, which wasn’t hard since there was a loud organ covering up the singing.

More exercises came next, and finished with one that Derpy particularly enjoyed, where all the people shook hands or hugged with all their neighbors, wishing them peace. Derpy wished that she could go visible and join in, but at the end she could only give Karyn a strong hug, who kept still during it so she wouldn’t appear to be hugging air.

The bald host did more singing and chanting, and made some sort of announcement. Everyone else seemed to know what to do, which was to get in line. Several people in particularly sharp suits stood at the head of the aisle. As far as Derpy could see, it was some kind of giveaway.

As she advanced up the queue, it became clearer that everyone was eating what was being given away. Oh, that makes sense, she thought. They all had light exercise, now a little snack. She was always wary of human food, but thought that she had heard something about bread in the announcement, and figured that if Karyn would eat it, it would be safe for her.

Derpy was so engrossed in her thoughts that she completely forgot about being incognito. So it was that after Karyn got her wafer, and the host held up the next one, Derpy took it out of his hands and quickly put it in her mouth. From his face it was clear that, for a moment, he thought that he had just dropped it. But both he and Karyn watched the wafer travel a distinctly non-ballistic path, and then vanish from sight.

“Did you see—?” he started.

Karyn thought about trying to bluff her way through it. If it was just the minister who had seen, she could pretend not to and leave it at that, but while she was mentally debating whether a shake of her head in response to an unfinished and vague question constituted lying in church, she saw that the woman waiting behind her had seen it too.

In desperation and panic, her mind worked quickly. “It must have been a miracle!”

The lady who witnessed the disappearance was dressed in a tight and expensive-looking shirt. She had on a pair of gaudy earrings and makeup that failed to conceal the lines around her eyes and mouth. She snorted. “Come on. Someone grabbed for it, I felt it.”

Karyn was about to defend herself further, when the minister said, “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I would suggest the young lady is correct. Indeed, I have witnessed a miracle every time I hand out these wafers. If this one chooses to make itself more plain, I will not question it. I can only assume that, if that particular wafer has been consumed, that whoever did so needed it. As perhaps, for a different reason, do you.”

He busied himself moving the queue along, but not before he gave Karyn a wink. She returned to her seat after finding Derpy and dragging her along. Derpy still expected a chewing out for making herself known, but couldn’t help herself. The cavernous ceiling and the friendly atmosphere made her feel as if she was back in Equestria.

The show didn’t last much longer, as the host said a few more words, concluding with, “The service is ended; go in peace.” Derpy figured that she could lessen Karyn’s wrath by getting out before the crowd jammed the exits, so she hustled, expecting to see Karyn following quickly. Instead, she was listlessly dragging her feet.

As soon as they got outside, Derpy led the way back around to the alley where no one could see them. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I think so. I’m not sure what I’m feeling.”

“Are you upset that I ate the little bread?”

“We got out of it,” said Karyn, breathing heavily. “I guess that makes it all right.”

“There were still some things I didn’t understand.”

“I’m sure there were. But for right now, I’d like to get back to the dorm. It’s dreadfully hot out here, isn’t it?”

Derpy agreed, but they had just left the building where it was kept cool, and were now in the shade of the same building, so didn’t see how Karyn could be that hot so soon. She put her hoof on Karyn’s head.

“You’re burning up! I think you’re sick.”

“No, I’m—“ But that was as far as Karyn got before dropping to her knees.

Derpy panicked. She thought about crying for help, but didn’t know if anyone would come into the alley. Instead, she threw her hooves under Karyn’s shoulders and pumped her wings as hard as she could. Karyn’s knees scraped along the ground, but her head and shoulders emerged into the street.

The sound of Karyn falling attracted the views of others, and soon enough a crowd gathered. Derpy was forced to fly up out of the way, since the people walked right in to where she would have been. No one was sure whether to move her or not.

Fortunately, there was a hospital on the opposite corner from the church, and a one young man ran over to alert the emergency room. When they realized how close she was they used an ambulance’s siren to halt traffic, and pulled out its gurney to take Karyn in.

One of the EMTs picked up Karyn’s purse and brought it in. At the reception desk, Derpy watched as they searched through and found her college ID. She heard the receiving nurse tell an underling, “Call the school. They’ll have her emergency contact info. She’s probably still on her parents’ insurance.”

Relieved that at least there was a communication method, Derpy flouted all hospital rules and followed Karyn into the emergency room. She was already being looked at by a doctor, who was quick and efficient. Derpy was reassured that he didn’t seem to be acting hastily. His appearance and manner reminded her of the bald host from the church. She watched the display monitor that had been hooked up to Karyn’s body and saw numbers coming down. Even though she didn’t know what they meant, the doctors seemed reassured.

Karyn opened her eyes and spoke groggily. “Where’s Derpy?”

“Miss? You’re in a hospital,” the doctor said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“My head…felt like it was on fire.”

“We brought down the fever, and we’re running some tests. Just relax. You’re out of danger for now.”

He turned to leave, when one of the nurses said, “What about the scrapes on her knees?”

The doctor looked askance at her. “She fell when she fainted. What’s odd about that?”

“It looks more like she was dragged.”

“It didn’t even break the skin. Worry more about the fever.”

Karyn was left alone, and was pleased, a moment later, to feel a furry hoof hold her hand. She was not alone.

On the next round, the nurses found that her condition had not deteriorated, so they moved her to the ICU. Derpy followed through the double doors and resumed her vigil at Karyn’s side. With the beeps of monitors and the traffic of feet and beds throughout the unit, Derpy concluded that the ban on whispering was lifted.

“They found your school ID and they’re calling them. Your parents will probably know soon. I’m sure they’ll rush up to see you. Until then, I’ll stay here with you.”

“You don’t have to do that. They might not come till tomorrow. You have to work and take care of the cat.”

Derpy added a gentility into her voice. “The fever might have made you forget. I can be there, work my whole shift, and come back here before you know I’m gone.”

“Oh, that’s right. I love magic.”

A nurse came by and checked on her, giving her a sedative. She told Derpy that she would indeed like to sleep, and did so moments later. Keeping watch, Derpy flashed back to when she had had Karyn resting in her house as she recovered from a cold. She hoped that it would be the same: Karyn would wake up and everything would be fine.

With her head to the side, Karyn coughed in her sleep. Derpy nearly cried out again.

She didn’t want to wake Karyn, and didn’t even know if she could over the sedative, but when she finally saw Karyn’s eyes open an hour or so later, she got her attention.

“We may have a problem. I don’t think that the doctor’s tests are going to find what’s wrong with you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Karyn.

“While you were sleeping, you coughed from time to time, and sparkles were coming out of your mouth.

“I think you’ve got a magical illness.”

Author's Note

To be continued...

61: General Derpital

“I think you’ve got a magical illness.”

Karyn blinked, took a deep breath, and leaned in closer to Derpy’s face, slowly so as not to accidentally head-butt her. The implications of her conclusion hadn’t hit her yet, but one thing stood out that she just had to ask about.

“Why did you say it twice?”

“You never do that?” asked Derpy. “Say something dramatic and then say it again as though anyone listening had been away a while? I think that Twilight taught me that speaking technique after she used it when she thought Zecora was making Apple Bloom soup.”

Karyn decided that she was in no shape to argue with Derpy’s silliness. “It might be Twilight or Zecora that we need right now. If I have a magical illness, I might spread it around the hospital.”

“You’re right. Let’s go to Equestria.”

“How are we going to do that? I can’t very well get off the bed and mount a flying invisible pony before disappearing myself. Everyone would see.”

Derpy thought for a while. “What if you drape your arm over me, and I use the spell, then I flip you onto my back quickly before you fall? Then, once we’ve cured you, we position you in the exact same way and return here with no time having passed?”

“Do you trust yourself to catch me?”

“I do, normally. But I’m not sure that you’d want that in the state you’re in.”

“You’re being sensible,” said Karyn. “I appreciate that. But we’ve got to figure out a way out of here.”

Derpy didn’t respond, and with no visual cues to follow, Karyn couldn’t tell if she was thinking it over or just giving up. From behind her she heard a voice.

“And how are we feeling? Could you turn over and sit up, miss?”

She turned to see a nurse standing over her, and again had to credit Derpy for being on the ball and hushing when the time was right.

“Sorry about that.” An idea hit her. “Do you think I could use the bathroom? I really need to go bad.”

“You should have a bedpan. Just go ahead and relieve yourself.”

“I see. Thanks.”

The nurse ran a few more checks and then left. “Well, that got us nowhere,” she said. “If we just had a single moment of privacy, we could get out of here.”

Derpy looked around the intensive care unit. “There’s a door over there. The room is dark. I bet if we could get there we would have the time.”

“It’s a supply closet. Why would I get out of bed to go to a supply closet?”

“You’re right. There’s only one thing I can think of. Did that nurse really give you a bedpan?”

Karyn shifted uncomfortably. “I think so.”

“All right. Be ready to move.”

“Why? What are you doing? Derpy!”

Karyn felt something hard and metallic being pulled from underneath her. Partially concealed by invisible Derpy, she watched the streak of silver metal move surreptitiously across the room, then get tossed against the wall. Every head, with the exception of a few that were sedated, turned toward the clang.

Still in pain, she slid out from underneath the covers, gathering the billowy hospital gown around her, and moved toward the supply closet. Halfway there, she felt the support of a hoof. As the nurses entered and inquired as to who threw the bedpan, she shut the door.

“OK, Karyn. Just hang on. We’re going to get you cured.”

“Great, so I can come back here and now and get yelled at for throwing my bedpan.”

She was upset, but threw her leg over Derpy and leaned on her neck. They escaped to Equestria.

“All right, now. We’re going to get you better.”

When Derpy didn’t hear Karyn respond, she turned her head to look. She saw Karyn’s eyes glazing over and her head slumping down to crash onto Derpy’s neck. This time, the magic shooting out of her mouth and eyes was clearly visible.

“Hey, stay with me, Karyn! Don’t leave me now.”

Before she could think about a full cure, she had to get Karyn back to where she had been before they left Earth. She went into a full dive toward the ground and parked herself in front of the hospital. Galloping through the front doors, she cried, “Hey! I need some help down here!”

A unicorn doctor rushed up. “What’s the problem?”

“My friend, Karyn. She has some kind of magical disease. It’s causing her to burn up. You have to bring down the fever so I can get somepony to find a cure.”

“What is she?”

“She’s a human, from an alternate dimension called Earth. Please hurry. I don’t know what kind of damage it’s doing.”

The doctor was sweating. “I don’t know that I’m supposed to be working on creatures who aren’t Equestrian. What if something goes wrong?”

Derpy grabbed him by the fur where his collar would be and pulled him close. “Listen! Something’s already gone wrong, got it? So just use whatever skills you would use to bring down a fever in a pony and get her better. OK?”

Cowed by her rage, the doctor floated Karyn off of Derpy’s back and onto a bed in a nearby room. Derpy paced outside as he administered pills and spells. A few minutes later he walked out.

“She’s up and talking again,” he said. “But if you want me to try to figure out what’s wrong with her—“

“Don’t worry,” Derpy interrupted. “I won’t make you do anything you’re not supposed to. I know Twilight Sparkle and all the big names and they will take care of her.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry for losing my temper, and I don’t want to insult your skills. I’m just real scared for my friend.”

Karyn walked out, holding onto the door jamb for support. “That’s nice of you to say, Derpy. And thank you, Doctor.”

Derpy swooped in and picked her up. “You just lean on me all you want. Don’t strain yourself. Maybe the change between worlds set you off again, but just keep breathing.”

She left the hospital. As gently as she could fly, Derpy wound her way to the library. Twilight opened the door herself.

“Derpy! And Karyn? Is anything wrong?”

“Twilight, I’m sure you’re busy with all sorts of important princess-librarian stuff, but Karyn has some kind of magical sickness that’s making her go delirious, spike fevers, and shoot sparkles out of her mouth. I took her to the doctor, but you know more than anypony.”

“I’m not that smart.”

Karyn was, perhaps, feeling more energetic, because she said, “Don’t sell yourself short. I haven’t felt as assured of recovery as I am now.”

“Well, there’s no sense in dithering. Open your mouth and say,” she finished with a magical pulse of her horn, and Karyn wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Neither was Derpy.

“What I’m worried about,” said Derpy, “is that it’s something I did, or something inherent in Equestria itself, like magical radiation or something.”

“What’s ‘radiation’?” asked Twilight.

“It’s a thing they have on Earth, that can make them sick.” Derpy reflected that, on some subjects, it might be that she knew better than Twilight.

“You can close your mouth.” Twilight was focused back on Karyn. “Well, I believe I can stop the fevers with a curative spell I know. Probably the same one the doctor at the hospital used.”

“Oh, wonderful!”

“But I don’t know what’s going wrong, so it would require constant repeated treatment.”

Karyn leaned back. “Great. I’m going to need magical dialysis now.”

Again Twilight looked confused. “Whatever that is. But let me start researching.” She floated down dozens of books, mostly from one section of the library that Karyn assumed had books on anatomy and medicine.

Karyn reflected that, at least in the hospital, she got to watch other patients being attended to, and there was a TV, even if it wasn’t showing anything good. All she could do in Twilight’s library was to watch her read and count the seconds before she would flip a page or discard a book for another.

Desperate for anything to break the boredom, she asked, “Where’s Spike?”

Without looking up, Twilight said, “Spike? He’s away in the Crystal Empire.” She went right back to reading.

Even Derpy picked up on the anxious mood and just let Twilight work. She cast some spells that neither Derpy nor Karyn could understand the purpose of. As the time wore on, the cycle of books continued faster, until at last Twilight threw up her hooves and shoved the books aside. “This is so frustrating! I can’t even identify the kind of magic that’s infecting you. It’s not unicorn magic or pegasus magic or zebra magic or anything else I know of!”

“So what do we do?” asked Derpy.

“There’s only one thing we can do. Find more books.”

“And where do we find them?”

“At the largest library in Equestria. The one in the Crystal Empire.”

Despite the tension, all Karyn thought to say was, “So there’s a chance I’ll run into Spike after all.”

***

In her weakened condition, Karyn couldn’t even walk to the train station, but Derpy was willing to carry her all the way. Twilight’s credentials as a princess got them a bedroom, and the two mares sat in the seats after pulling down the bed for Karyn.

Twilight looked out the window, deep in thought. “I wonder if we haven’t been going about this the wrong way. I’ve assumed that, as a human, you couldn’t tell me about your symptoms, because you wouldn’t know about magical illnesses. But try to explain how it feels before the fevers hit.”

Karyn sat up. “It feels like…have you ever had your hoof fall asleep?”

“No,” said Twilight.

“All the time,” said Derpy.

“It kind of feels like that, all over my body. Like I’m supposed to move or stretch or something, but I don’t have the muscle to do it with.”

Twilight went back to staring. “I wonder…I hope I’m wrong.”

The train sped north. Karyn recalled the first time she had taken this trip for Twilight, and the way that the towns thinned and the snow line began. She reached over and cracked the window.

“Oh, the cold air feels so good. It’s really stuffy in here.”

Derpy and Twilight looked at each other and shook their heads. They thought it was cold.

“Hey, Karyn,” said Twilight, “Why don’t you lie down and try to sleep?”

“I’m not really tired.”

Derpy draped a wing over her. “Twilight’s right. If nothing else, you can sleep through the next fever and the pain.”

“Here, I’ll help you,” said Twilight.

She cast a spell, and Karyn did feel sleepy. A minute later, she was out.

“What are you thinking?” asked Derpy.

“We’re getting close to the Crystal Empire, one of the most magical places in all of Equestria. There’s no reason that the cold would make her feel better, but maybe the magic is helping her. Now, the Empire library has just about every book known to pony, but I can’t help feeling we’re entering new territory here, something that’s not written in a book. Yet. I may wind up writing one.”

Karyn was allowed to sleep until the train pulled into the station. When she finally came to, there was another pony in the room.

Derpy trotted over to her. “Karyn, this is Princess Cadance. She’s agreed to watch you and be prepared to stop a fever while Twilight does more research in the library.”

“Oh, my. I don’t need to take up the time of a princess just to watch me.”

“Nonsense,” said Cadance. “It’s I who should thank you. My first calling is as a foalsitter, and it gives me a chance to get away from princessing for a while.”

Karyn still felt that she was being overly pampered, but her nap had not restored her health, and she was still sparking and feeling warm.

“I can understand that feeling. It must be difficult to have made the leap from foalsitter to princess all at once.”

“It is a lot of responsibility, but not as much as you think. The reason that, in Equestria, becoming an alicorn makes you fit to rule isn’t the magic power you get. It’s getting everypony to trust you. So much of the job is making sure I don’t betray anypony’s trust.”

“That does sound difficult,” said Karyn. “I know that Derpy and I are both glad we’re not royalty.”

Derpy was going to agree, when a crystal pony knocked on the door and informed Princess Cadance that her appointment had arrived.

“There is, however, the unfortunate task of diplomacy,” she said to Karyn, then returned to the attendant. “Send her in.”

Karyn laid her head back and tried to not be sick while Cadance took care of her important business. She heard the kind princess tell her guest about the care that she was giving, then heard the response. “Karyn is here? Let me see her at once!”

She sat up and spoke in chorus with Derpy. “Queen Chrysalis!”

“Queen Karyn. Cadance tells me that you are ill. My condolences.”

Derpy got up. “What are you doing here?”

Chrysalis paused to express contempt. “If you recall, when we last met, the vicissitudes of politics required me to relocate my hive here in the vicinity of the Crystal Heart. I have been doing so and engaging in dialogue with Princess Cadance over the minutiae of the transition.”

Derpy bristled at what, to her, was Chrysalis deliberately talking down to her. She flapped her wings aggressively. “You shouldn’t be here. Whatever you’re doing with your buggies isn’t as important right now as the fact that Karyn’s magically sick. She needs Cadance to keep her attention on her while Twilight figures out a cure.”

“If my memory serves me right, you are a carrier of letters, yes?”

“That’s right.”

Chrysalis flashed her fangs. “Then you are a worker. If we queens allow you to remain present, you should keep silent.”

Derpy’s anger was assuaged by remembering that, at their last meeting, Chrysalis had indeed appointed Karyn an honorary changeling queen.

“She’s here as my guest,” said Cadance.

Karyn coughed more sparks. “Please, everypony. Stop fighting.”

Chrysalis watched the sparks and then approached Karyn. “That is indeed a magical illness you have. I wonder why. Have you attempted any unusual transformations lately?”

“I haven’t been transformed ever. Except when Princess Celestia switched me with Derpy once. But that was more of a mind-switch than a transformation.”

“What?! No wonder your health is failing. A changeling must transform or she will suffer buildups that are quite painful.”

Karyn sat up, ignoring all her symptoms, and spoke forcefully to Chrysalis. “What are you talking about? I’m not a changeling!”

“Were you not listening at our last meeting when I appointed you a queen?”

“Yes, an honorary queen.”

“Precisely,” said Chrysalis. “Meaning that you do not watch over a hive of your own. You merely have the powers of the changeling. I never figured you to be so dense as to not use them.”

“Then does that mean I have to feed on love as well?”

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. “Child, does the word ‘honorary’ have a different meaning in your language? You get all the honors of being a changeling queen without any of the accompanying responsibility. But if you do not exercise your powers, the excess of magical energy will cause the symptoms you are seeing now.”

Karyn went wide-eyed. Momentarily speechless, Derpy flew between her and Chrysalis. “Listen, stop talking down to her! You do that to everypony and they don’t deserve it! I was there and you never said anything about giving her any kind of magic power. If she didn’t understand, it’s your fault for not explaining. Not to mention that she would have never taken them had she known. Karyn’s very sensitive about becoming too Equestrian. I remember when she got her cut—well, that was a private moment, but the point is that she’s a human, through and through, and she likes it!”

For the first time, Karyn saw Queen Chrysalis’s sang-froid completely shatter. She had seen her show deference to Celestia and to Twilight when she thought her safety and her duty to the hive were in jeopardy, and her tone was gentler with Karyn herself since she considered them of equal rank. But it was clearly unprecedented that any creature had ever talked back to the queen in the name of another, and that Chrysalis had considered that she might be wrong.

But she wanted to be more practical. “Queen Chrysalis, are you saying that if I use these powers, I won’t be sick?”

“Yes. It doesn’t have to be frequent, but I certainly wouldn’t go several months without altering my form, as you have.”

“And how do I alter my form?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “What are you? A new hatchling? You just do it!”

Perhaps inspired by Derpy’s defiance, or maybe because it was the only reference Karyn had for being someone else, but she flashed back to when she had been in Derpy’s body, and tried to recreate the feeling.

It was almost immediate. From her head and her chest it felt like fluid was collecting and coming out of her mouth. She was surrounded by green light, which soon dissipated. A duplicate of Derpy stood in the room. “You’re just lucky that I have experience being Derpy, or I would never have done this. Then I’d be dying and it would be all your fault!”

“Ugh. Please change back. One of the gray worker is too much to handle.”

Karyn laughed.

“How are you feeling?” asked Cadance.

“She’ll be quite all right,” answered Chrysalis. “Think no more of it.”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

Twilight burst into the room. “Karyn! I tnink I figured it out! You’ve been—“

Karyn concentrated, and was herself again. “Yes, we know.”

“Why do I even bother with books?

The train ride back to Ponyville was uneventful, and Karyn, still in her hospital gown, was thinking of ways to deal with the situation back on Earth.

As they warped back, Derpy went invisible once more, and Karyn snuck into the bed. Not a moment later, she heard a familiar voice.

“Karyn, we were so worried!”

“Mom? Dad? You came all the way out here?”

“Of course,” Karyn’s mother said. “When we got the call we jumped right in the car. You’re here in the hospital and they don’t know what’s wrong with you. Karyn, we’re scared to death.”

“Don’t be. It’s all right, I—“

From behind she heard a cough, and remembered that for all anyone knew, she was still sick.

Her father put his hand on her forehead. “We can’t stay here, but as soon as you get into a room we’ll come in and stay with you.” He turned to leave. “Oh, one thing. They said that you collapsed outside of the church. What were you doing in church?”

With all that happened, the church service seemed so long ago. “Something just told me to go today. I guess that was a mistake though.”

With the nurse breathing down their necks, Karyn’s parents had to leave the intensive care unit and go to a waiting room. Her mother bought an overpriced coffee while her father just paced around.

“I’ve never been more scared,” he said.

“Me neither.”

About ten minutes later, a tall doctor with a thick beard walked over. “Mr. and Mrs. Hubert?”

“Yes?”

“Good news. One of the tests revealed your daughter’s infection. We can treat it, we have the right antibiotic. She’ll be able to leave the hospital today.”

“Oh, thank god,” Karyn’s mother said.

“But why didn’t she get any symptoms before today?” her father asked.

“Sometimes that’s the way these things happen. Plus it was a hot day, and she might have been feverish and just credited it to the weather. We see it all the time, and for the elderly or small children it can be dangerous, but Karyn’s at a good age. She’s resilient.”

“Well, thank you for everything.”

“You’re welcome. She’ll be out in a few minutes.”

The two parents hugged each other as the doctor stared at his clipboard while he walked away. He ducked into an office. Had anyone been around, they would have seen, a moment later, a green light surround the doctor, who turned into a young girl.

“You there, Derpy?” asked Karyn.

“Yes. That was hilarious!”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. I won’t say that that’s the first time I’ve lied to my parents, but somehow this makes it seem worse.”

Derpy helped Karyn get back into the dress she had worn to church. “It’s only fair. Chrysalis’s magic was the reason you were in here in the first place, so using it to get you out can’t be wrong.”

“I guess. I’m still going to have to figure out how to check out of here. And I don’t know how they’ll bill my folks’ insurance. But right now I just want to leave and get everything back to normal.”

She walked outside and hugged her parents, explaining that no, she didn’t want to come home. Class was tomorrow and she didn’t want to miss it. After some tedious conversation, they went back home. Karyn returned to the dorm with Derpy.

“Are you going to be all right?” Derpy asked.

“I think so. I’ve just got to figure it all out. Just do me a favor. Don’t get too curious about Earth stuff ever again.”

She was laughing as she said it.

Author's Note

Here's the preview of next week's chapter!

“Oh, right. That’s the nice thing about carrying the mail. It’s not seasonal. Well, sometimes there’s more or less, but never any one piece that matters more than another.”

“Another few years and I’ll be working. Then I’ll be right there with you. Actually, I’m not so scared of it as I once was, but I’m just eager to get it over with.”

Derpy looked at her with concern. “Don’t be too hasty to get out of school. Everypony I know says that, when they look back, it’s the best time of their lives. I tell Dinky that all the time.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One advantage of the chats over the conferencing is that I can take a record of what everyone said.”

“Just like when you were secretary in the student council!”

“Yeah, maybe that’s my niche,” said Karyn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn was shocked to hear Derpy’s voice coming from her speakers. “Hey, Karyn, it’s D. What’s going on? Are you working on your project?”

Unsure of what to do, she said, “Yeah, everyone’s here.”

Be sure to check it out next Wednesday!

62: Derps Well With Others

Karyn looked out the window at the people walking through the quad. “I pity them actually. It’s so hot out there. Everyone should get in to the air conditioning today. Derpy, with your fur coat it would be even worse for you.”

“I never really notice. If I remember right, ponies have ways of regulating heat different from you. I think it’s because more of our bodies are farther away from our heads that we don’t feel it as bad.”

Karyn didn’t think that was accurate, but indulging Derpy in her view of the world was usually worth it. “In any case, there’s no mistaking it. Summer’s coming.”

Derpy nodded idly as her thoughts drifted. It took her a minute to make the connection. “Does that mean you’ll be going home again for the summer?”

“It does. Back to the park and the outings with my parents and all that. But we’ll make it through the same way we did last year.”

“You bet!”

Karyn looked over toward her computer. She had tidied as best as she could, but there was still a mass of papers and books, and she had dreaded Derpy’s reproach. “Unfortunately, in the short term it means I have to focus on all the final exams and reports I have.”

“Oh, right. That’s the nice thing about carrying the mail. It’s not seasonal. Well, sometimes there’s more or less, but never any one piece that matters more than another.”

“Another few years and I’ll be working. Then I’ll be right there with you. Actually, I’m not so scared of it as I once was, but I’m just eager to get it over with.”

Derpy looked at her with concern. “Don’t be too hasty to get out of school. Everypony I know says that, when they look back, it’s the best time of their lives. I tell Dinky that all the time.”

“I hear that too. But I think it’s because I’m friends with you who runs her own life that makes me that way. All of my other friends are going to school just like me.”

“And you’re my only friend that’s going to school. Maybe that means that I should go back and try to get into the Wonderbolts again or become a scholar.”

Karyn laughed at that. “Are you serious?”

“Nah. Book learning was never my strong suit.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty of others. But I have been doing well at school. I think I have to. Mom and Dad would kill me if I didn’t.”

She smiled to let Derpy know that she too was joking, then sat down at her desk. “Look here,” she said. “I’ve recorded all my grades from all the tests I’ve taken, plus the homework assignments. In two of the classes, even if I were to get a zero on the final, the average would still be passing.”

“Cool! So you can take those days off?”

“Well, it would be a C-minus or a D grade, and that would affect my overall standing. I won’t break my brain studying for them, but I will make the best effort.”

Derpy scanned the mélange of work both on Karyn’s desk and her computer. “I guess I can understand. There are so many more humans than there are ponies. Going to work is so different. Or maybe it’s just because Ponyville is a small town. But everypony there seems to know each other. If somepony wants a job, the pony hiring them knows if they’re smart or strong or what their qualities are. I guess it helps to be able to make it a number here, when the humans don’t know each other as well. But I like our way better.”

“Derpy, you are wise beyond your years.”

“And I’m sure your numbers are going to look great.”

Karyn pointed to the sheet she had written of all her grades. “I’m fully confident about all of these tests. But I also have two projects due. This one for software engineering is easy too. I actually prefer that one to having a test. I can do all the work ahead of time and then not worry about it.”

“Got it. Projects are better than tests.”

“That project is better than a test, because I can handle it all myself. The other one is for my infrastructure class. That’s a problem because it’s a group project.”

“Why should that be a problem?” asked Derpy. “I think that to do a project together would be a lot of fun!”

“Of course you do. And in Equestria it would be, because everypony would understand their role and help out. They have that instinctive togetherness and friendship.” Seeing Derpy’s expression, she walked back. “All right, maybe it’s not instinctual. The point is, a group project is always two assignments in one. You have to not only solve the problems they give you, but solve the problems of getting a group to work together.”

“Maybe if you tell me about the problems, we can solve them.”

Karyn huffed. “All right. Now, if I try to make decisions, to spearhead the team, then I’ll wind up with everyone thinking I’m bossy. Especially with men. I don’t care how enlightened they think they are, as soon as they see a female making decisions for them, the testosterone comes raging out. But if I don’t, then everyone suspects that I don’t actually intend to do any work, and just want to free-ride on everyone else.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because there always is someone on the project who really is like that. All right, Derpy. Those are the social dynamics of a college group project. What’s your solution?”

Derpy put her hoof to her cheek and looked up. For a long time she spoke in “hmm”s and “uh”s. Then finally, she looked Karyn in the eye and said, “Why don’t you tell me what the project is? I could be better help on that.”

Karyn decided to let her off the hook. “All right. So, basically it’s a simulated problem like we would have working for a company. We have to pretend that we’re working and a new software upgrade comes out. At the same time, we’re moving one of the offices to a new building. The assignment is to write up a plan of action, showing all our steps and how we’ll handle the problems we anticipate.”

“I see….Go back to talking about how bad the group is. I know I can help fix that.”

Laughing, Karyn closed the window with her grades displayed and opened another. “Most of our meetings have been online. We use the free videoconferencing software so we can see each other or else we just start a group chat. It’s a lot easier to work around everyone’s schedules that way.

“So here’s our first chat log. One advantage of the chats over the conferencing is that I can take a record of what everyone said.”

“Just like when you were secretary in the student council!”

“Yeah, maybe that’s my niche,” said Karyn. “Although maybe I can record the conferences too. They must have podcasting software or something…

Derpy stopped paying attention as she read through the log. The technical details were beyond her, but she could see the dynamic of the group, especially knowing Karyn and hearing what she said. To Derpy’s mind she was the most intelligent of the four speakers. “I think that even talking over the computer isn’t good enough. You need to make these other people meet together in the same room.”

“What for?”

“Because the way I’m seeing it, they’re all ignoring the responsibility and trying to put off doing the work.”

“Oh, Derpy,” said Karyn. “I don’t think you’re being charitable. They’re not bad people.”

“No, but I know that if I had to plan out a mail route at home instead of getting in to work and having to look at a map with other ponies, I would do a half-hearted job.”

“Maybe you’re right. It’s not so much that we have a problem with the online communication, but that the face-to-face meeting would be an advantage, and that could lead me to an A.”

She made one more window switch and brought up her calendar. “Now, let’s see. When would be a good time to arrange this meeting?”

“How about right after lunch?”

“Today?”

Derpy grinned. “Of course! What, were you thinking of scheduling it later in the week?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t trying to put off the work myself.”

“Of course not, but how do you expect me to show up if you do it when I’m at work?”

“That’s a very good question. I suppose that I could say that I wasn’t expecting you to show up at all, but that would be silly of me, since every time I do something new or different, you make a point of showing up. And since it always works out in the end that you’re not discovered, I suppose there’s no answer, and I should contact the rest of the group.”

Satisfied, Derpy nodded. “Now, take me through each member of this group so that I can see their strengths and weaknesses.”

“You want to do that?”

“Sure! It’ll be just like when they let me be team leader at the post office.”

Karyn swiveled in her chair. “They did? How did it go?”

“Great! We didn’t misdeliver a single piece of mail.”

“Wow. You really are good at your job.”

Derpy looked at the ground and swung her hoof. “It did take four days, but we got out all that day’s mail.”

“I see.” Karyn brought up the assignment sheet given to her by her professor. “All right, here’s the first guy, Peter. He’s our group leader.”

“That rhymes.”

“So it does. He’s a nice guy, but I don’t think he wanted to be in charge. You can’t tell from those logs, but there are a lot of pauses where it seems like he’s waiting for someone else to pick up the baton and run with it.”

Derpy was looking at the paper and didn’t turn to face Karyn. “You need a baton for this project of yours.”

“Sorry, forgot who I was talking to and used an aphorism. He wants someone else to talk. Now here’s Nadia,” Karyn said, moving her finger down to the next name. “She’s not on the same education track as the rest of us. She’s going into business management, but she thinks that it’s important to stick her toe into—I mean, to learn a little about every subject, not just hers. Peter put her in charge of the section that deals with moving the office.”

“But what do you think of her as a person?”

“I could see us becoming friends. Maybe it’s because we’re the only two girls on the group. It’s not like Equestria where being female is normal.”

Derpy scowled. “Hey, just because all of our rulers, our main line of defense against evil, our wealthiest and smartest, and our most famous ponies are all mares doesn’t mean that being a stallion isn’t normal!”

“Right. Well, anyway, the other guy is Keith, and if I could get rid of one of the team, he’d be the guy.”

“Why? What’s the problem?”

“What isn’t the problem?” said Karyn. “He’s lazy and he doesn’t want to do anything. He complains when we do ask him to do things. What he does produce is slipshod and sometimes has out-and-out mistakes. If he does any kind of research, it consists of him going to Wikipedia and copying their articles. Maybe, if we’re lucky, he’ll copy the citation as well. Oh, and he smells.”

“Well, if you don’t like him, I probably won’t either. But call everyone and let’s get them over here.”

Karyn turned on her IM program and sent messages to the other members of her group. She hesitated and took a deep breath before pressing Send on the message to Keith.

Since no one responded immediately, Karyn sat and chatted with Derpy, and got to put all her work out of her mind for a few minutes. Then the computer beeped.

“It’s Nadia. She wants to know why we can’t do it over the net. What do I say?”

“Let me take care of it.” Derpy rooted through her bag for the spell that let her type on the keyboard. She spoke as she typed. “I think that if we get together, we can finish the whole thing today. Then we won’t have to worry.”

Karyn waited anxiously. She read off the next message. “’What time?’ Well, we need to find out from everyone else when they’re free, don’t we?”

“No, just suggest something. It always just goes around in a circle when you ask.”

“Two hours from now?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Derpy. “I’m always going to be ready.”

To Karyn’s surprise, Nadia agreed readily. At the same time, Peter responded that he was available all day and agreed that a face-to-face meeting would be best.

“I don’t believe it. This is actually working out, it seems.”

“See? I do know a few things.”

They had to wait another half hour for Keith to respond, and when it did it was with, “Sorry. Saw ur msg but was playin my MMO lol.” Karyn gritted her teeth. “I don’t mind text speak, but come on, dude, you barely know me! You should ask about stuff like that first. See, this is why he annoys me.”

Derpy was all business. “Tell him about the meeting.”

“All right, all right.” The process was long and arduous, as Keith tried to find excuses not to come to the meeting. At one point she turned to Derpy and said, “Can’t we just do this as a three-person meeting? The three of us will be the only ones accomplishing anything anyway.”

“No, you can’t. He’s a member of your team. You can’t leave him behind.”

Karyn rolled her eyes and pressed on. A moment later, she said, “He’s agreeing to the meeting, but he doesn’t want to go to the library or even leave the dorms.”

“Great! Ask him to host the meeting.”

She typed some more. “He says that his place is too much of a mess. Puh-leease, Derpy!”

Derpy just stared.

“Oh, no.”

“You know what you have to do.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Karyn said, but she typed back, “Fine. Do you want to come over here?”

“Is it all right?”

“Yes. He’s guaranteed to be the last one here. Peter is a guy, but even if he shows up first he’ll know Nadia is coming soon after. No one will try anything untoward.”

Derpy said, “Now, I know you’re ticked at Keith, but he does have one point. You should clean your dorm room for everyone.”

“I? You’re the one behind this. You can clean it!”

Derpy was all too happy to do the cleaning, but Karyn gave in and helped out. There wasn’t much to clean by Karyn’s standards, but Derpy dusted into corners with her wings. In a half hour the room was ready for a real-estate photo.

“This works out,” said Derpy. “Better than the library, because I know this room like the back of my hoof. I’ll be able to stay out of everyone’s way while still listening to you.”

Soon enough, Karyn was playing host to three people with notes and papers spread all over the desk and bed. Peter and Nadia were poring over a diagram of an office. Keith was typing something on his phone.

Believing that everyone who had a reason to call her on a Sunday was in the room with her, either visible or not, Karyn was surprised to hear her videoconferencing software ding to indicate an incoming call. She slid over in her wheelie chair and looked at the identifying ID, but instead it showed that the computer was making an outgoing call.

It picked up itself, and Karyn was shocked to hear Derpy’s voice coming from her speakers. “Hey, Karyn, it’s D. What’s going on? Are you working on your project?”

Unsure of what to do, she said, “Yeah, everyone’s here.”

From across the room, Peter called, “Karyn, who’s that?”

Grinding her teeth, she said, “That’s my nosy friend D. I’ll tell her we’re busy.”

“No, that’s all right. She sounds nice. Is she cute? Does she have video?”

Derpy said, “Sorry, my camera is broken. But don’t worry about me. You should get back to work. In fact, why don’t you take a look at the upgrade planning that Karyn wrote up and see if there’s any conflict with what Nadia’s doing?”

Nadia whispered to Karyn, “Her camera may be broken, but her audio’s great. Sounds like she’s right in the room!”

They were bemused, but did what Derpy suggested, and to Karyn’s surprise everyone seemed to accept that Derpy knew about the project and was intimately aware of the details.

With Derpy coaching them from the computer, the work seemed to go smoother, with the exception being Keith, who still took every opportunity to complain and shirk. Finally, he was convinced to take his laptop and get to work. But a few minutes later, Derpy called out from the computer. “Hey, no adult literature! We’re working here!”

“Can she see us?” Keith cried.

“No, she’s…psychic,” said Karyn, grasping for a straw. “And I’m sure she’s busy and has to go. Say good-bye, D.”

As soon as Derpy was silenced, Keith said, “You know, I should get back. I have another final tomorrow. We can finish up over chat, can’t we?”

“I have finals too, but if we just work another hour, maybe two, we’ll be finished, and the specter won’t be hanging over our heads. All our finals are scheduled, but the meetings here aren’t, which means that we’ll give them low priority, which means our project won’t be as good.”

The others looked at Karyn. Peter and Nadia had a newfound respect in their eyes. Keith had a mix of annoyance and fear.

Although she missed being able to talk to Derpy on what was supposed to be their day together, Karyn was able to get into the flow of the project. A while later, she said, “All right, I think we have something good enough to turn in. Peter, do you want to finalize it and put all our names and send it off to the professor?”

“I think that you ought to do that,” he said. “You’ve been our de facto project leader. You deserve the credit.”

“What for?” asked Keith.

No one wanted to explain it, so they just shook their heads. Karyn took all their files and put them into a directory on her computer. “I’ll e-mail it before I go to bed tonight.”

They left the dorm. Almost immediately after, Derpy appeared with an angry look. “Ooh, I wanted to slap that guy with a wing! How did he even get in your group anyway?”

“The professors assign the group randomly. Or rather, by who’s sitting near each other in the room when the assignments are given out. But it’s over. Let’s not go reliving it.”

She busied herself putting the finishing touches on her project, enjoying once again the feeling of having her schoolwork entirely in her own hands.

She clicked “Send.” “There. It’s all done.”

“To me it just doesn’t seem fair that one person gets the credit for everyone else’s work.”

“I suppose it isn’t. What what are you going to do?”

Derpy reached for her bag. “There must be some spell that I could use to make it happen.”

“Come on, don’t do that.”

“Or you could use your changeling powers to disguise yourself as the professor and lower his grade.”

“I don’t want to use my changeling powers for anything, and certainly nothing malicious.”

Derpy sidled toward the computer.

“What are you doing?” asked Karyn.

“Just seeing about an old friend.”

“No! You are not to call up Derpynet and have her change Keith’s grade. Let it stand.”

Derpy threw up her hooves. “How can you be so nice to him? It’s like he’s stealing from you and everyone else!”

“No it isn’t. We don’t lose anything, other than a little bit of time today. And he doesn’t really gain anything. You only went to grade school in Equestria, right? So you don’t know how it works.”

“Then tell me.”

Karyn shut off her monitor and sat on the bed. If nothing else, she would have this time with Derpy. “Remember how I told you about all the other finals and assignments I had, that are all solo? He has just as many. There’ll be no one to steal from then. You’re not used to lazy ponies, and so you think that maybe he’s just that way because we’re here to pick him up. But I’ve seen his type in my classes. They don’t take notes, they don’t study, and they’re basically just here to party. He’ll either drop out, get kicked out, or have to switch majors to something that won’t be respected when he tries to get a job.”

Derpy wrinkled her nose. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I am. And if I’m wrong, so what? It doesn’t hurt me. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m never going to see him again, while I am going to see you. So don’t be mad, because you’re more fun when you’re happy.”

Derpy decided that she finally heard something that made sense.

Author's Note

Going to BronyCon this weekend, but that doesn't mean that Derpy's Human goes away! Here's what's next.

“All right, so what’s your secret today?” asked Karyn.

“Today in Equestria is a special celebration. It’s—“

“Hey, it is!” Karyn looked at her calendar. “The longest day of the year!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Your chariot awaits.”

Derpy walked back in. “Did we order a chariot?” asked Karyn.

“Like I said, special invitation of the princess.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Do you know what the castle is made of?”

“Huh? No.”

“Because it’s nicer than any building I’ve seen on Earth,” said Karyn. “I’d say that we could try to ask Princess Celestia, but I’m sure that she’ll be too busy with the celebration to talk to us.”

So join us all next week for our princess-y special guest!

63: The Longest Derp of the Year

“Good morning, Karyn. You’re looking quite well today.”

“Thanks. I got up extra early today to do my hair and put on my makeup.”

Derpy stopped in the middle of putting her spell back in the bag. “Any particular reason?”

Karyn tapped her fingers nervously. “No,” she said.

“Good, then my secret is safe.”

“What secret?”

“Um…where’s my forget spell?”

Karyn laughed. “OK, we’ll both confess to each other. I’ll go first.”

Derpy nodded.

“So I’ve been really lazy about getting ready to go to class or even just to run errands. And I felt like that I should break the habit and make myself presentable.”

“You’ve been going out looking slovenly? You shouldn’t—well, you’re not Dinky. I suppose it’s your right. You’re a growing girl, and besides, you said that you broke the habit.”

Karyn got even more nervous. “Well, I haven’t looked bad. The fact is that I’ve been using my changeling powers to change into myself, only dressed up. Do you think that’s wrong?”

“I honestly don’t know. But wait, how do I know that you didn’t do that today?”

“I don’t think you can. Unless you want to take me to Equestria and have Dinky tell you if it’s me or not.”

Derpy was still anxious, having not revealed her secret. “If you tell me that you did it the hard way, I’ll trust you. We’re good friends.”

“Thank you.”

“Plus I can see your makeup tray still left out in the bathroom. “

Karyn grunted. “I wish I had the power to disguise my room instead of myself.”

“Well, if ponies ever encounter a strange race that can alter their surroundings and plot to invade Earth, and then you wind up making friends with their queen while stopping the invasion, I’ll make sure that she doesn’t give you any powers, just so I can make sure you’re still keeping it tidy.”

“Yeah, you do that. If I’m ever feeling really courageous, I’ll go out naked with only my magic to conceal me.”

Derpy, of course, didn’t see anything particularly brave about that.

“All right, so what’s your secret today?” asked Karyn.

“Today in Equestria is a special celebration. It’s—“

“Hey, it is!” Karyn looked at her calendar. “The longest day of the year!”

“That’s right. And by special invitation of the princess, we are going to the celebration. I think it’s for all the services we’ve done for Equestria.”

“I guess. Where’s it being held? Is it in Ponyville again? Or some exotic city that I get to see for the first time?”

Derpy was confused. “In Ponyville?”

“Yeah, don’t they move the ceremony each year to a different town? The time they held it in Ponyville and Twilight Sparkle had to stop Nightmare Moon from bringing the night seemed to imply that that was a special benefit for the town.”

“Oh, no. Actually I think that Princess Celestia just set that whole thing up for Twilight. So she would go there and meet her friends and deal with Nightmare Moon. But every year it’s in Canterlot.”

“I see,” said Karyn. “But that’s why you were surprised that I dressed up, because you were afraid that I had somehow found out about it.”

“Exactly. So, one quick stop over at the house, and we’ll be on our way. Hop on.”

Karyn wasn’t wearing her best outfit, but she thought that it was fitting to go to an event which was no more than the sun rising anyway. That triggered a thought. “Hey, Derpy. Is this thing going to go on all night?”

“Yeah, there’ll be partying all night. If you really don’t think you can make it, we can duck out early. But we should put in an appearance.”

Because of Karyn’s finals schedule, she had the next day off, and could afford to put in a late night and sleep away the next day. She got onto Derpy’s back, to watch her reverse her actions and open her saddlebag.

Derpy did not need a long time at home, only enough to feed the cat and water a plant, but instead of heading out again, she waited with Karyn for the next part of the surprise, which arrived a moment later, heralded by the knock of a hoof against the door.

Karyn opened it, and was faced with the surprised look that ponies always wore when seeing her for the first time, though it disappeared faster than usual. The pony that wore the expression also wore the uniform of a royal guard, though his coat was dark gray. Karyn wondered if they selected based on stallions who had neutral-colored coats or if they were required to dye them.

“Ms. Derpy Hooves and guest?” The guard had a gruff voice.

“Karyn Hubert of Earth.”

“Your chariot awaits.”

Derpy walked back in. “Did we order a chariot?” asked Karyn.

“Like I said, special invitation of the princess.”

They walked out to the chariot and entered through a swinging door. If the charioteer didn’t know that a human was coming, whoever had prepared the vehicle did, since a high couch had been installed, tall enough for Karyn to see over the sides, while still leaving enough room for Derpy to stand and lean.

The ponies pulling the chariots were Earth ponies, and that surprised Karyn, since she thought that pegasi were the only ones who could pull people into Canterlot.

Driving through Ponville, being pulled by the stout stallions was like riding in a convertible. The wind blew Karyn’s hair, and as she looked over, Derpy’s mane was flowing too. It occurred to Karyn that Derpy’s mane always seemed to fall back into place no matter how fast she flew, and credited it to some unknown pegasus magic. In her case, she counted on the hairspray she had used that morning.

At the edge of Ponyville, it was indeed a pair of pegasi that took the chariot over and pulled them up to Canterlot. There, another team of Earth ponies strapped themselves in.

“Is this how the chariots always work?” asked Karyn.

“I don’t think so. But on a day like today, they’ve probably got so many ponies to pull in from all over that they set up a system like the trains, with locals and expresses.”

The Canterlot team moved much slower than the Ponyville team had. They let Karyn and Derpy se the streets of Canterlot, but from their experience, the slow parade was more to show them off to the gawking ponies in the street.

As they neared the castle, they had to make way for a larger chariot carrying a family of a dozen unicorns, all dressed in the heights of fashion, who drew the gawkers away. Derpy in particular looked at their finery, but saw a few fillies still looking at them.

“Karyn?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think that you might like it better if ponies didn’t stare at you?”

Karyn thought about it. “I know that I’m different. I’m long used to it.”

“But if you wanted, now. You could look like a pony. You could blend in.”

“No, I’m not going to do that.”

Derpy turned toward her in the chariot. “Are you sure? You have those powers now.”

“Listen. I know that every time you have to go invisible on Earth, even if you don’t mind, I do. I wish that my species could be a little more open-minded and not freak out just because there’s something they don’t understand. Ponies are different. Even if they look at me funny, and even if a few of them act differently when we talk to them, still none of them have actually tried to do anything that would hurt me. Almost none of them, and Princess Celestia wouldn’t let the ones who wanted. So I’m not going to hide from them. I’m human, and everypony’s going to know about it.”

“Hmm. I don’t know if I’d be the same. I’ve always tried to blend in. Maybe that’s why Queen Chrysalis didn’t make me a changeling.”

Karyn mumbled, “More like because she doesn’t like you.”

They arrived at Canterlot Castle. The entrance that they were pulled into reminded Karyn of a hotel crossed with the castle at Disneyworld. The ornate round archways on either side of the inner road let them into a covered section where the stallions could drop them off and be on their way. Karyn and Derpy thanked them and walked past the wooden doors. As they entered, Karyn ran her hand along the stone of the door frame.

“Do you know what the castle is made of?”

“Huh? No.”

“Because it’s nicer than any building I’ve seen on Earth,” said Karyn. “I’d say that we could try to ask Princess Celestia, but I’m sure that she’ll be too busy with the celebration to talk to us.”

“You never know. She does like to mingle.”

“Maybe. She only has one thing to do at this party, right?”

Derpy stopped and looked at her. Other arrivals shuffled past them. “What one thing?”

“Raising the sun. This is the Summer Sun Celebration, isn’t it?”

“What? No! The Summer Sun Celebration involves staying up all night. I would never do that to you. This is the Summer Moon Celebration.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “Is that anything other than where we party all day and then watch Princess Luna raise the moon? In other words, exactly the same as the Summer Sun Celebration, just nine hours earlier?”

“And centering around raising something different. But no, no more differences.”

“Great, then let’s find the party.”

They followed the crowd up stairs and through hallways to an elaborate ballroom. Many stayed and lingered in the ballroom, but Karyn and Derpy followed a gulf stream of ponies that made their way around the edge of the room to another hallway. This seemed to be the right thing to do, as the guards in the hallway turned away some ponies after checking their ticket, but took one look at Karyn and waved them through.

Even then the crowd thinned out as some ponies were escorted off to waiting rooms, or proved themselves to be helpers at the party and not guests. In the end they found themselves, neither hindered nor encouraged, behind a pegasus couple that was let into a tower with a spiral staircase. The couple went into a private room for about five minutes, after which the door opened and an ethereal voice said, “Enter.”

The room was decorated in deep blacks and purples, yet there seemed to be plenty of light to see by, since it was daytime, and because of the glow coming from the mane and tale of the alicorn seated in the middle. It was Princess Luna herself.

Karyn had always found Princess Celestia to be personable, if a little aloof, but she had no idea of how to act around Luna. She looked to Derpy for clues, but finding the same fear in her eyes, decided to improvise and bowed to the princess. She heard Luna inhale and speak, and she prepared her ears to be assaulted.

“Hey, how y’all doin’”

Karyn came up out of her bow. Derpy was already looking at her. Princess Luna had not noticed their surprise.

“So, like, Tia has been telling me all about you. A pegasus and a human, how cool is that? And I’m all like, can I meet them? And Tia’s all like, that’s totes an awesome idea, but cause I’m all about being a night pony, scheduling has just been a massive tangle, you know? But then I say, hey, I got this cool party upcoming, why not get D and K around here and I’ll bring them up to my tower and we’ll dish like fillies!”

Derpy said, “To dish means to have food together.”

Luna turned to her nightstand and opened it magically, floating out a piece a paper. “Oh, dear. Our sister has been attempting to coach Us in the parlance of the vulgate. And yet, We find that there is so much to remember.”

Karyn decided to go for broke. She stood up, walked over to Luna, and put her hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to try so hard. Believe me, I’m much more nervous meeting the Princess of the Night than you are meeting a human.”

“You…you understand?”

“Yes. If you just drop the ‘We’ thing, you’ll be ninety percent of the way to fitting in.”

Luna threw her hooves around Karyn’s neck. At her size, it was a much tighter squeeze than when Derpy did the same thing. “I actually know that. It’s just so hard to remember everything.”

Derpy came over and joined the group hug. “You should come and see ponies more often, Princess. You’re really nice, but some ponies think you’re a little scary.”

“I know. It is simply the reputation I have to carry. But let us descend to the party below, so that our absence is not noted.”

“When you say ‘us’ and ‘our’?”

Luna winked. “If I can, I like to include others in speaking. That way I don’t have to check my pronouns.”

They walked down the long staircase, but somehow on the way Karyn and Derpy managed to lose track of Princess Luna. As they reentered the ballroom, though, there was a crash of thunder which silenced the assembled ponies. A sphere of darkness grew, and there was Luna standing in the middle of it.

“She makes a great entrance,” said Karyn.

Now addressing the crowd, Luna did use her projecting voice. “Fillies and Gentlecolts. I welcome you to this celebration of our land and our selves. Since my return from exile several years ago, I have seen a marked change in Equestria and her ponies. The friendship and love that you have for each other, for the other denizens of the realm, and even for those who come from without, is clear in all of your eyes.”

Derpy and Karyn were enraptured by Princess Luna’s speech, but the other ponies seemed to have tuned her out and were returning to their party. A few more snack foods were consumed, and at the far end of the room, quiet conversation started up again. Nopony could hope to speak over Luna’s voice, but at the same time, she could not hear that they were talking either.

Luna did notice, though, and she faltered in her speech. “We, er…I just can’t express how much I appreciate—”

Karyn watched her stumbling, and felt embarrassed for her. Grabbing Derpy, she ran toward the stage where Luna overlooked the crowd. As soon as she saw Luna’s head turn to see her, she held Derpy’s hoof tight and nodded. Luna nodded back and resumed speaking in her regal voice.

“I am proud to rule, with my sister, over a land where everypony is free to do as they please, even to IGNORE us.”

Her forceful word caught the attention of those who had turned away, and she had the crowd again. Fearful of losing them once more, she wrapped up.

“And so, please enjoy this soiree as you await the rising of that most beautiful of heavenly orbs, the Moon!”

Derpy stomped her hooves on the ground to start a round of applause, and Karyn’s sharper hand-claps cut through the low bass of the stomping to draw attention. But Princess Luna was happy with the reception, and bowed toward Karyn.

Derpy whispered to her, “You really made an impression on Luna. Now you’ve got one princess solidly on your side, whatever Celestia thinks of you.”

“They’ve both always been nice, but yeah, Luna is special. All the humans who know about ponies tend to pick her as a favorite.”

The remainder of the party passed without incident. Karyn clung closely to Derpy, but she was able to hold some fun conversations with some of the Canterlot ponies who were not so aloof. The food was tasty, but there was never a formal sit-down dinner, so Derpy had to content herself with frequent bites of whatever was passed around. Karyn assured her that this would help her stay on her diet.

As daylight waned, Derpy and Karyn found themselves once more near the stage where Princess Luna was stationed. Perhaps by some internal clock, she put her head down and said, “It is time for the crowning event. I shall begin the raising of the moon.”

“Princess,” said Derpy. “How are you going to get everyone’s attention? Or will they just be idle during your ceremony just like they were for your speech?”

“Fear not, my little pony. I believe that I have a method to both facilitate everypony’s view, and induce them to watch.”

In the din of conversation, Princess Luna’s tinkling magic could not be heard, but soon all there was was a collective gasp, as all the outer walls and the ceiling of the ballroom turned transparent. Karyn walked over and put her hand where the wall had been. She still felt the stone of the castle, but the clearest glass or plastic still looked muddy next to it. When she removed her hand, there were no fingerprints left.

The red rays of the sun faded into black, and for a moment the stars were the only light source in Equestria. Luna turned away from the crowd and concentrated. The sheer intensity that Karyn saw on her face was like nothing she had ever felt. Her entire being was put into the spell.

From the horizon shone a pale gray light that reminded Karyn of Derpy’s coat. The resemblance was heightened when the moon itself broke the plane and lifted into view, showing its craters that stood in for Derpy’s cutie mark. When the circle was complete and no part remained hidden, Derpy and Karyn joined the gasp.

For Princess Luna had not just raised the moon. She had brought forth what in Karyn’s world was called a Supermoon, that appeared large and low in the sky. Not a single shadow at either edge could be seen, and it hung full, a beacon that all ponies would look up to throughout the night.

All the ponies stared, but none longer than Derpy, who held Karyn in her wings. Tears were welling in her eyes.

“Are you all right?” asked Karyn.

“It’s just so beautiful. You know, I’m not much of a night pony, and I don’t look up at the stars or the moon much. Maybe I should.”

She returned the embrace, and they sat by the clear wall, just watching the sky. The moon continued its ascent through inertia, with only the occasional prod from Luna’s horn. A few minutes later the sounds of the party started up again, but Karyn didn’t notice for a while. When she did, she leaned in to Derpy and spoke in a low voice.

“You know, I wonder if the ponies here in Equestria really appreciate how lucky they are. What we just saw was a kind of miracle. An entire world moved at the whim of one mare. I find it hard to think about anything else, but everypony else is just going about their business.”

Princess Luna was on the other side of the room, but she cantered over and sat next to Karyn. “Don’t feel bad about it. I no longer do.”

“You could hear us?”

“The ears of a princess are especially attuned to things that she needs to hear. Most of the discussions here are banal. But I would fain let your happiness from my presentation be marred by doubt. No more do I suffer from envy over my sister’s day. If ponies choose to take me for granted, it is my place as a princess to serve them nonetheless. And then, when somepony like Miss Hooves does appreciate me, it is all the sweeter.”

Derpy switched her hug from Karyn to Luna. “I definitely appreciate you.”

With another pulse of her horn, the three of them found themselves back in Luna’s tower. “I wish to make one more proclamation to each of you, and I do not think that anypony downstairs needs to hear it. Derpy Hooves, my sister has told me of your dedication and devotion, both before and after you brought Karyn into this world. Your filly is also of great service to the realm. I salute you as a shining example of what it means to be an Equestrian.”

“I’m just an ordinary pegasus.”

“Would that every pegasus had your heart. And more than a few unicorns and Earth ponies as well,” said Luna. “As for you, Karyn Hubert, that you see our land with fresh eyes gives me a new perspective. Whenever tales of your exploits come to my ears, I revel that Equestria is welcoming of guests, and that its guest is of such quality. Princess Celestia is still the nominal ruler of the land, but from whatever power I have, I consider you a citizen of Equestria no less than the newest born pony.”

Karyn didn’t know what to say, but managed to choke out, “Thank you.”

“I must return to the affair, but I know that you would return to your own world now.”

“Yes, I have things to do tomorrow, but…I hope that I will see you again.”

Princess Luna smiled. “My heart assures me that we will speak in the future. Farewell till then.”

Derpy knelt before the princess, which also let Karyn mount up for the trip home.

Back on Earth, Karyn found herself worn out by the long party, and planned to catch up on sleep during the day. “Besides,” she said. “I want to see the moon again tonight.”

Author's Note

Does anypony like previews? I think you do!

Everypony has their own problems. In any case, however sad you are about it being the last time for something, wait until it’s over to be sad. There’s no sense wasting it.”

Karyn brightened. “You’re right. And speaking of problems, how’d you like to help me pack up?”

“If I don’t, you’ll only throw everything in a box and it’ll be all out of order.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I keep my own budget and everything.”

“Really? I’d like to see that.”

“Maybe when it shows better numbers,” said Karyn. “Come on, let’s go.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’ll be right back. Bathroom.”

Figuring that indeed the toilet would be the most convenient place, she ran upstairs and opened the window. As she hoped, Derpy came up to her.

“So, what about it? Am I getting a lot of muffins?”

Be sure to read that one too. Derpy Hooves says!

64: Block Derpy

“Whoa!”

Karyn looked at Derpy as she winked into existence. “It doesn’t seem right for an equine to tell a human ‘Whoa’.”

“I didn’t mean for you to stop. I meant ‘Whoa’ in surprise and alarm. You cleaned!”

Derpy spun around. To her eye, the dorm room looked pristine and reminded her of her own spartan dwellings. Karyn, however, knew better.

“Did you forget? The summer vacation is coming. I didn’t clean for the sake of cleaning. I’m cleaning out!”

“Oh, that’s right. Another break.”

Karyn looked forlornly at her room. “I’m halfway through my schooling here.”

“It’s just like the half-time break when we played that soccer game!”

“That was a long time ago. And the difference here is that we don’t have to reevaluate everything we’re doing. I’ve done pretty well in the last two years.”

“Then why do you look so down?” asked Derpy.

“Something occurred to me this week. After I come back from this vacation, I’ll have another two semesters, then I’ll probably get a summer job, a real serious one, getting coffee from some CIO somewhere. I’ll return for my senior year, and then I’ll go to work. Now, I’m in a good industry, and if I play my cards right, maybe I’ll come away with something that gives me four weeks paid vacation. But I’ll have to schedule them ahead of time and I won’t be able to take them consecutively. What all that adds up to is that this is going to be the last time for the next forty-five years or so that I’m going to have two months to do whatever I want.”

Derpy swallowed and looked at her friend, saying nothing.

“Oh, that sounds horrible, doesn’t it. You’ve never had that kind of time to yourself. You’ve always been working or taking care of your father or Dinky.”

“It’s all right. Everypony has their own problems. In any case, however sad you are about it being the last time for something, wait until it’s over to be sad. There’s no sense wasting it.”

Karyn brightened. “You’re right. And speaking of problems, how’d you like to help me pack up?”

“If I don’t, you’ll only throw everything in a box and it’ll be all out of order.”

Derpy flew over and shut the top of Karyn’s laptop. “Wait.”

“What?”

“Save that for last. I might want to look up something while we’re packing. Or be lazy and check my e-mail.”

Derpy rolled her eyes.

“I’ve moved a couple of times,” said Karyn. “I don’t understand why it has to always be rushed. We have all day. No one’s going anywhere.”

“I’d rather just get it done.”

Since Derpy was a ball of energy, Karyn couldn’t slack off too much. She was amazed, though, to watch Derpy take clothes out of her closet and fold them neatly. Not only was she handicapped by lack of fingers, but she wasn’t accustomed to clothing. Still, her ingrained fastidiousness was clear.

She was so fast that Karyn was able to say, “I think we’re making good time. I’m going down to officially check out.”

Derpy was on the second closet. “We have to check Peony Violet out too.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. I completely forgot about that little ruse of yours. Not that I minded having a double room all to myself.”

In the time that Karyn was out of the room, Derpy finished shutting down the laptop after checking out her alter ego online. When Karyn came back, Derpy asked if she could borrow the floor vacuum.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll take care of that during the summer.”

“But we should be nice to them.”

Karyn’s phone buzzed, and she took it out of her purse. Fearing a reprimand from Derpy, she looked at the message and quickly put it away. “It’s a moot point, because we’re leaving. My parents are here to pick me up.”

Derpy slapped the lid on the plastic crate that she was packing. “OK, I guess they can help you with the rest.”

“There’s barely any left anyway.”

Karyn stared at Derpy for a few moments. “What is it?”

“Aren’t you going to use your invisibility spell? Or would you prefer my parents find out you exist?”

“Oh, right! I forgot.”

Karyn wanted to say something, but she knew that she had to put up with Derpy’s…derpier moments. Also, there was a knock on the door a moment later. Derpy did get herself hidden just in time.

“Mom! Dad! Thanks for coming to get me this time.”

Karyn’s mother opened the nearest box. “Thank you for doing a proper packing job today. Who helped you?”

“You don’t believe I did it myself?”

“No. And answering my question with a question isn’t going to work this time. Who helped you, and you better have done something nice in return?”

Karyn decided to be cute. “A flying pony from another world.”

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

“Trust me, I do plenty of favors for my friends.”

Her father stepped in and started stacking boxes for easier transport. “Oh? Are you becoming a grown woman now?”

“I keep my own budget and everything.”

“Really? I’d like to see that.”

“Maybe when it shows better numbers,” said Karyn. “Come on, let’s go.”

They took a few trips down to the car to haul all of Karyn’s things, but soon enough they were on their way. Moreover, the repeated drips gave Derpy a chance to sneak into the back seat. She was scrunched in between one of the boxes and a bag loaded with some of Karyn’s paper, but the discomfort wasn’t enough to bother her.

The drive was long, and it didn’t take Karyn long to grow annoyed with her parents’ choice of music. Still, nothing could dampen her spirits as she held on to Derpy’s hoof. Going home for break with her best friend—what could be better?

When they finally reached the house, Karyn’s father helpfully did the heavy lifting. Combined with frequent breaks, and one invisible flying bag that went straight into her room, Karyn had an easy job of moving back in.

Right as she was finished and hoping to get some time to talk to Derpy, her mother walked in. “Do you want some help unpacking?”

“You know, I was thinking that for a lot of the things, I’d just leave them in the boxes until it’s time to go back in the autumn. My computer and stuff I’ll take out, but I’m not going to need things over the summer like my textbooks or my suit.”

“So you’re not going to be looking for any more internships over the summer?”

Karyn rolled her eyes. Explaining the last-extended-vacation concept seemed a lot easier when she was talking to Derpy. “If I really need something, I can take it out. But why make more work for ourselves in two months?”

“I was just hoping to have a few more chances to redecorate your room. Don’t you remember when you were young and we did the entire room in a unicorn theme? You liked them so much back then.”

Karyn had to cough to hide her embarrassment. “Yeah, but I’m not a little girl into unicorns any more. I’ve moved on. Well, I still know one.”

Her mother looked askance, but Karyn smiled, and it was taken as a joke.

“All right, I’ll let you unpack what you want. Put the rest in the basement next to the Christmas ornaments. We don’t need them cluttering up the house.

She left, and Karyn was left with Derpy. “I had a hard time not laughing when you kept telling your parents that you knew me and Dinky. You were messing with them by telling the truth!”

“It was a little fun. Anyway, you want to help me with the unpacking I am doing?”

“Sure. I’m going to stay invisible though. Your mom or dad might walk in unexpectedly.”

“That’s true,” said Karyn. “No more locking doors.”

They opened a few boxes and condensed them into fewer, but soon enough they were distracted by the sound of activity outside. Derpy, who would have been content to leave everything in the boxes to maintain the room’s pristine state, looked out the window.

“What’s going on here?”

Karyn joined her. Down on the street she could see other people unpacking, but she couldn’t tell what. When someone brought out a boom box and started playing music, her curiosity got the better of her, and she parked herself on the edge of the bed.

“If nothing else, I get to watch other people working. I always like that.”

Derpy did not necessarily share that spirit, but she was still trying to figure out what was going on. As a truck drove onto the street, the back opened and some men jumped out with a yellow and black barrier, which they set up at one end of the street. The truck drove on to the other end.

“It looks like they’re blocking off the street.”

“They must be throwing a block party.”

“I get it!” said Derpy. “Because they’re blocking off the street.”

“No, that’s not it.” Karyn paused. “Maybe it is. I thought it was a party that takes place on one block of a street, but for all I know, you might be correct.”

“Correct about what?”

Karyn was about to answer when she realized that it was not Derpy who had spoken. As predicted, her mother had entered the room unannounced.

“Oh, nothing. I was just watching them set up stuff down there and wondering what it was.”

“Didn’t we tell you about the block party? It’s been planned for weeks. “

“Just for me?” asked Karyn.

“No, of course not. This just happened to be the most convenient day for everyone. Well, not for us, because we were getting you, but it wasn’t possible to find a day where everyone was doing absolutely nothing.”

“I see. Well, have fun.”

Her mother wasn’t leaving. “You don’t want to come?”

“Well, I just got back, and—“

“And everything you brought back will still be here tomorrow and every day for the next two months. Come on.”

She showed no signs of backing down, and so Karyn had to put on her shoes and head outside.

Karyn’s acquaintance with her neighbors was only passing. Her family had picked the location more for easy access to her father’s job than for its schools, and so there had been few children her age. Those who were there she found tiresome. So there were a few people she knew whose hands she shook, but no one she wanted to spend time with.

To make it worse, she had lost track of Derpy in the course of being dragged to the party by her mother.

In the eyes of her neighbors Karyn saw their view of her. She was, in all likelihood, “that weird nerd girl.” That she stood away from the grilling meats didn’t help her cause. What she really wanted to do was to find Derpy in the crowd, both to make sure she was safe and concealed, as well as having her best friend close.

She repeatedly reached up, hoping to find an invisible hoof or wing. One older gentleman thought that she was swatting at flies and offered her some bug repellant. She half-wondered how effective bug spray would be given her newfound insectoid powers.

As the block party continued, Karyn looked for an opportunity to sneak back into the house, but her mother’s watchful stare told her that she had to be social. Finally she got the idea to take a drink and walk toward the opposite end of the block. Her mother could still see her if she looked, but only through a crowd of people.

When she reached the barrier, she finally felt the touch of fur she’d hoped for.

“Ah, Derpy. Home for only a few hours and already my parents are coming between us.”

“They are? I’d better fly higher.”

Karyn laughed, relieved. “Not literally.”

“You want to leave?”

“I do, but I’ll have to pay for it later. No, it’s better to just stay and put on a fake smile. I wish that, instead of disguising my form, I could change someone else into me.”

“You don’t want to become too powerful,” said Derpy. “I’d be a little scared of you if you were.”

Karyn smiled at that, but was so far off from the center of the party that it looked as if she were smiling at her own private joke. Or worse, were laughing at the partiers.

With Derpy in tow like an invisible, living party balloon, Karyn thrust herself into the middle of the fray. She stood on the outside of a few conversation circles and tried to work her way in, or at least look like she was doing so. After a few minutes of this, she saw her mother go inside, and ran for privacy at the other end of the block.

“I think you’re not having fun,” said Derpy.

“Can you tell?”

“Yes, I can. You ought to be though. Every other human here seems to be.”

Karyn surveyed the situation. “Maybe it’s because we were at the Summer Moon Celebration last week, and that was such a higher level of party. And Princess Luna was there too. Here, it’s just my stupid neighbors getting together for no good reason.”

“And also there were those ponies who weren’t into the spirit of the event and just stood off looking down on everypony else.”

“Yeah…Derpy, are you trying to teach me a lesson?”

Derpy held silent, and Karyn was left to think about what she had said.

“Beyond that, though, which might be my fault, I think I’m just partied out. Or maybe it’s that it wasn’t planned, and I had a relaxing day penciled in my schedule.”

Derpy still said nothing.

“But you’re just saying that I should make excuses, right? That if I do, I’m being just as stuck-up as the Canterlot elite, and that I should take advantage of everyone having such a wonderful time and have some fun myself, because I can always do the other things later, while this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. And you don’t want to actually dress me down because you’re too nice, and I need to figure it out for myself, right?”

“I’m sorry. Were you saying something. I was flying overhead and trying to spot if there was any food that looked good to eat.”

Karyn’s laughter attracted the attention of the crowd, but no one was disturbed by laughter at a party, and if nothing else it served to make her more welcome. She shook her head and moved toward the tables to get food.

The tables had been set up with an aisle between them, and on the other side were long pit barbecues, where all sorts of meat were being grilled. A man in a fancy apron with a long pair of tongs regarded her.

“What can I getcha?”

“I don’t suppose there’s any kind of veggie burger or such?”

“Hmm, don’t think so. I think we’re grilling some lobster tails later, though, if you’re looking for vegetarian.”

Karyn looked at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. Her own vegetarianism was a combination of ethical and health reasons. The health reasons gave her leave not to worry about the ethics, and at another time might have considered the offer. But for Derpy, there was no question.

“Thanks. I’ll just get some salad or something.”

She found a table to the side where the cold dishes were waiting. After filling up half a plate with Caesar salad, she peered in close to see that some of the small bits were chopped anchovies, and had to start again. After a few more careful selections, she walked away with some cole slaw and a buttered slice of bread and headed back to her niche by the barrier.

“Derpy? Psst?” Karyn felt around for the hoof again and found nothing. “Well, until she gets back, this cole slaw looks tasty.”

She stuck the plastic fork in and scooped some of the cabbage into her mouth.

Meanwhile, Derpy had hovered around and espied the food for herself. She knew that humans ate meat, but preferred to put it out of her mind most of the time. When she actually saw them doing it, she lost her appetite.

So instead, she flitted across the road and listened in on the conversations.

An old man and his wife were talking. “It looks like it’s going to be a hot summer.”

“Yeah. Always seems to get hotter.”

“Well, it’s like they say: everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

I could do something about it, thought Derpy. I bet you wouldn’t complain like Karyn does if I fixed the weather the way you like it.

She soared over to the food tables. As she left she heard them say, “At least there’s a nice breeze.”

At one of the barbecues was a heavyset man talking to a friend of his. In the same hand as his barbecue tongs was a cigar. The other man was holding a drink.

“Good turnout, wouldn’t you say?” asked the big man.

“Yeah. We should definitely make this an annual event.”

“Next year? We roast a pig.”

That was enough for Derpy, who looped around, flicking the ash of the cigar onto the man’s shirt. She found a couple of girls a few years older than Karyn next to the boom box.

“I wish we had these block parties more often.”

“It’s a lot of fun, but I don’t think the town likes us to close off the street.”

“Phooey on them! Look at how much fun everyone’s having!”

It was fun, thought Derpy. The humans did know how to throw a party, even if they didn’t have the magic to center it around.

She went back to where Karyn was to share her observation and her contact high, but on the way she passed the food table once more and heard something appealing. Now intent, she zoomed in on Karyn.

“Hey, Derpy. Sorry I ate the food I got for you, but I’ll get you some more.”

“Maybe wait a few minutes. I overheard them saying that there were muffins coming.”

Karyn hopped to look over the heads of the crowd. “Really? I think it’s rather early for desserts. They’re still cooking the main dishes and giving out finger foods.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what they were saying. It was a little garbled, but someone said something about a lot of muffins.”

“I will go investigate for you.”

Karyn braved the barbecue pits one more time and looked past them for anything that could be the muffins Derpy had heard. Instead, all she saw were some of the ladies making sandwiches. She stared at them for a moment as some thoughts coalesced in her head. Finally, before she could burst out laughing again, she ran for her house.

On the way there she passed her mother. “Karyn? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back. Bathroom.”

Figuring that indeed the toilet would be the most convenient place, she ran upstairs and opened the window. As she hoped, Derpy came up to her.

“So, what about it? Am I getting a lot of muffins?”

“I’m sorry, Derpy, but you got fooled by words. They’re making a sandwich that’s called a muffuletta. It has nothing to do with muffins, other than being pronounced similar.”

Derpy’s puss face came through, even while invisible.

Karyn washed up quickly and went back out to the party. As she walked toward the middle of the action, her mother stopped her.

“Are you enjoying yourself?”

“It’s a great time.”

Her mother brought her into a hug, while still keeping her plastic cup extended at arm’s length. “It’s good to have you home. My little baby’s all grown up now.”

“Mom, not in front of everyone on the block!”

“See. You’re getting too old to hug your mother.”

Karyn just rolled her eyes and broke the embrace.

Her mother put her arm around Karyn’s shoulder in a less embarrassing position. “I know that your grades are good. I just worry about whether you’re growing up right. I worry about you and Mike.”

“Oh, for—Mike and I broke up a while back. We tried to make it work after, but we weren’t right.”

“And since then?”

Karyn resigned herself to a talk. “Since then I’ve been busy with school and friends.”

“That’s what I want to know. What about your friends? I want to make sure you’re making the right kind.”

“I have a best friend. She’s a bit older than me, and a lot of times she helps me out. She makes me clean my room every week. But she’s not from around here, so I have to help her acclimate too.”

Karyn chose her words carefully, but she wished that she didn’t have to conceal. Sometimes it was fun to know something that others didn’t, but her mother clearly did care about her, and it wasn’t right, being unable to explain about Derpy.

“That’s good.” Her mother took a sip of her drink. “If you don’t want to stay at the block party any more, you don’t have to.”

Karyn felt Derpy’s wing, and wondered how long she had been listening. “You know what? I don’t think I mind, even if I don’t know anyone here that well. I have the feeling that the friends I do know are closer than it looks.”

Definitely sometimes fun.

Author's Note

Here's what you'll read next week!

“What’s the matter?”

“Stupid wings,” said Derpy. “Stupid magical ability to fly and walk on clouds and stuff.”

“Hey, don’t say stuff like that. Being a pegasus is really cool. And if something went wrong, we’ll figure it out together.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I have to go sign in,” said Derpy. “I’ll be right back.”

Seeing all the wings, and the sheer force of flight power put an idea in Karyn’s head. As soon as Derpy returned, she said, “What if I use my changeling powers to make myself a pegasus pony? Then I could fly with the rest of you.”

“You really want to do that?”

That's coming in the next chapter!

65: Derpnado

Karyn gleefully danced around her room. Thus far, everything was perfect. Only one week home, her room hadn’t had the chance to get messy, and to make it better, her parents had gone out for breakfast and hadn’t asked to come along. She had perfect leave to wait for Derpy and begin a day of fun together.

Since Derpy was coming the long way, Karyn left the window open and seated herself in front of her makeup mirror. When she heard the whoosh of air and the sound of hooves on carpet, she turned and closed the curtains.

Derpy Hooves appeared, a scowl etched on her face.

“What’s the matter?”

“Stupid wings,” said Derpy. “Stupid magical ability to fly and walk on clouds and stuff.”

“Hey, don’t say stuff like that. Being a pegasus is really cool. And if something went wrong, we’ll figure it out together.”

“Nothing’s gone wrong yet. It’s that it will go wrong. Here I am on Earth, ready to spend time with my friend. Does that get me out of tornado duty? You would think it would, wouldn’t you?”

Karyn searched her memory. “Tornado duty? Oh! You mean getting the water up to Cloudsdale.”

“Yeah. Flying around in a circle with nothing to look at but the flank of the pony in front of me.”

“And they won’t let you out of it?”

“Right,” said Derpy. “They say it would be a bad precedent. They could do it without me, but if I get let off, then everypony else is going to want off. Which I can kind of understand. I just don’t like it.”

“I guess I’d better pack my bags for Equestria. I honestly wouldn’t mind watching, if it can be done safely.”

“Having you around will be nice.”

Karyn mounted Derpy, and she took to the air.

Their descent in Equestria was slow and deliberate. Karyn didn’t know if that was Derpy saving her strength for the task to come, or just not wanting to get there, hopefully to procrastinate. Karyn tried to commiserate.

“It does suck that there’s this extra duty that only pegasi have to do.”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

“I mean it’s not like the Earth ponies have to get together once a year and cause an earthquake to make sure there’s enough dirt in Equestria, right?”

Derpy paused, and Karyn wondered if that might not be the case after all. But then she said, “No, of course not. They have to farm, of course, but everypony owns their own farm. They don’t get together on, say, Applejack’s schedule and do it then.”

“And the unicorns don’t have to all point their horns in the same direction and cast a giant spell in order to make sure all the ponies’ brains don’t shut down.”

“Almost certainly not!”

Karyn squinted. “Do they have any kind of special duty that’s equivalent to your tornado?”

“Hmm, let me think. They do have to go occasionally and restore the spell that keeps the Everfree Forest at bay. But that only takes a week of intense concentration!”

“Really?”

“Yeah!” said Derpy. “And sure, the Earth ponies have to get together each year and rebuild the retaining walls that keep the rivers from overflowing, but that’s just backbreaking labor. None of those duties make anypony miss their Sunday with Karyn!”

At this point, Karyn was no longer to figure out if Derpy was joking or serious. She also wasn’t sure, if Derpy was serious, that she didn’t still disagree that they were both being hard done by. She decided to forget about it and enjoy the ride.

Derpy flew in a new direction from any that Karyn had gone before. From the angle of the sun and the time of day, Karyn judged it to be generally northeast. Her thought was confirmed when she saw the clouds surrounding the mountains of Canterlot off to her left.

The flight was one of the more relaxing ones that she’d had, and vague memories of the times when she was frightened to fly on the back of a pegasus arose. Now, she felt only the awkwardness of being on top of Derpy. It was like having a friend who always pays for everything.

To either side, she noticed other pegasi flying in the same direction. They were not going full speed, so Karyn concluded that they were told to build up their energy for the task ahead. Still, it was a little thrilling, as the sky filled with ponies. If any of them noticed Derpy carrying a rider, they didn’t say anything. Karyn felt part of the flock.

Derpy descended toward the reservoir. True to Equestrian nature, it was indistinguishable from a large pond or a small lake. No sign of a concrete base or a dam could be seen, and Karyn could only conclude that rainwater collected in the depression. She asked Derpy about it.

“There are a bunch of reservoirs all over Equestria, and the weather ponies rotate which ones they use. They pick places where fish don’t go. There’s no good in taking water that something’s living in.”

“That makes sense,” said Karyn. “but how do they get filled in the first place? I mean, there’s no point to making it rain over the reservoirs when you’re only going to tornado it up anyway.”

Derpy thought about that. “I don’t know. A little rain gets into them, but it shouldn’t be enough to fill them. I wonder…”

“What?”

“Well, the water that the pegasi use for rain and snow goes into the ground, right? And then the Earth ponies use it to grow plants. And then ponies eat the plants, or they just drink the water. And after we eat and drink…”

Karyn cut her off. “I bet the unicorns just use replication spells on the water. That’s probably it. No reason to question it further.”

Derpy came to a landing at the edge of the reservoir. The ground was spongy and soft to Karyn’s feet. Many pegasi were already there, stretching their wings and their limbs, but a few more were landing.

“I have to go sign in,” said Derpy. “I’ll be right back.”

Seeing all the wings, and the sheer force of flight power put an idea in Karyn’s head. As soon as Derpy returned, she said, “What if I use my changeling powers to make myself a pegasus pony? Then I could fly with the rest of you.”

“You really want to do that?”

“Sure!”

Derpy looked around. “Let’s find a private spot to try it. We don’t want to freak everypony out by showing off changeling magic.”

Finding seclusion was not easy with the mass of ponies milling around the reservoir, but Derpy was happy for any excuse to get away, and they found a small hill a short flight away. Once there, Karyn concentrated and watched the green light flare up around her.

The pegasus that she had transformed into was flesh-toned and had a mane the same blonde as Karyn’s hair. She looked very much like a human-pony hybrid, but to the native Equestrians she would seem quite exotic.

“OK, here I go.” Karyn spread her wings and leaped into the air, but a half-second later braced her hooves on the ground. “That didn’t work.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. Let me see if I can take off from the ground.”

She flapped her wings, but achieved nothing other than a slight movement of air.

“You can’t fly?”

“It seems not. I mean, I’m just guessing here, but pegasi don’t fly by physics. They need magic to do it. Pegasus magic isn’t changeling magic, and that’s all I have. Changelings are lighter and might be able to fly just on aerodynamics. So the queen couldn’t give me flight.

Derpy was disappointed. “Oh, well. You can just watch. Let’s get back to the water.”

They trotted to the reservoir. Karyn kept her pegasus form. Even if it didn’t render her able to fly, it reduced the stares that other ponies gave her.

Derpy got in line with the other pegasi and started warm-up exercises. It reminded Karyn of the “squad lines” that she had in her physical education classes. Just as in there, not everyone kept the same pace. Derpy in particular was lagging behind. Halfway through, she gave up on the warm-ups and just stretched her wings.

“You’re not going to be able to keep up with the other ponies,” Karyn said.

“Once the tornado gets going, everypony will be in everypony else’s wake. It’ll work out. I don’t intend to work any harder than I have to.”

Karyn realized that the one frame of reference she had for the tornado event was when Rainbow Dash had organized it for Ponyville, and that she was far more intense than anypony present. To Derpy and the others, this was just community service, not a chance to break records or make a name for themselves.

As if to underscore this point, the flight leader came up and pointed ponies into lining up. Instead of barking orders, she asked them nicely and went from group to group.

When she came up to Derpy, she said, “Hi, I’m Misty Showers, I’m coordinating today’s tornado. Name?”

“Derpy Hooves.”

“And you are?”

“Oh, she’s not participating,” said Derpy with a little envy. “She’s in no condition to fly.”

“I see. All right.”

She moved on to the next group with her clipboard. Derpy waited until she was out of earshot, then said, “I can see the fun in telling folks the truth but not the whole truth.”

“Right, but she took that a lot better than I thought she would. If ponies try to skive off this duty, you would think she’d double-check everypony.”

“I wonder if I could have made the same excuse. Too late now. You’d better get far away so you don’t get swept up. Here, hold my saddlebags until we’re done, please.”

Karyn trotted to the same hill where she had transformed to get a good look at the proceedings. Instead of going behind it, she sat on her haunches atop the crest. It gave her a perfect angle to see the reservoir.

It was also, she reflected, the first chance she had taken to really explore what it was like to use her powers to change form. Her fully-made-up disguise didn’t feel any different from when she actually took the time and effort to make herself pretty. But being a pegasus pony was different.

Even though she couldn’t see her hands, and couldn’t use them either, she didn’t have proper hooves. They were, as best as she could think of it, the size, shape, and color of hooves without actually being them. If she disguised herself as an Earth pony, she wouldn’t trust herself to kick without getting hurt, the way Applejack could.

But a visual illusion still had its advantages, as nopony stared while they got into position. Misty ran from here to there setting them all into exact positions. Then she stood outside and blew a whistle. The pegasi took off, but a moment later, she blew a double-blast on the whistle, and they all stopped.

“I wonder why?” said Karyn, and figured that unless they all took off at about the same acceleration, they would bump into each other. It was like trying to merge on the highway.

It took two more tries before they all got off the ground and there was no abort signal given. Karyn scanned the wall of ponies and spotted Derpy. She was doing just as she said she would, zoning out and letting the course drive her. Each time she travelled around the far side, Karyn had to pick her up again a moment later.

“My eyes are going to match hers if I have to do this for very long,” Karyn said to herself.

It took a while for her to see the evidence of the tornado. They weren’t actually moving any black clouds, so it lacked the classic funnel shape, but a few specks of dirt and debris got caught up and spun around. Karyn could tell how much speed and power they were generating by how fast the dirt whipped around, and she understood the need for goggles.

Still tracking Derpy, Karyn saw the angle of her wings dip in toward the reservoir, and the water responded by forming a hump in the center. Leaning forward on her hooves, Karyn waited for the moment when it would shoot up into the sky. She was so engrossed in the proceeding that she didn’t notice the other pony watching from a point about ninety degrees away on the circle. But he flew toward her rapidly.

“You! Pony! What do you think you’re doing out here?! You should be in there with the rest of them!”

Karyn thought that it would be easy to explain. “No, you see, I’m not really a p—“

“This is my little sister’s first time running the tornado, and I will not have anypony sitting on the sidelines for it. You will get your flank into that formation immediately or so help me I will tan your hide!”

“You don’t understand. Your sister—Misty?—she came over to my friend Derpy and me, and Derpy told her that she was ready to go, but that I wasn’t signed up, and that’s true, because I’m actually a human from another world, only obviously I don’t look like one, but that’s because I’m also part changeling, which is itself a long story, and you don’t want to hear it, but—“

She realized that she was rambling, and the pony just kept steaming at her. “That’s the sorriest made-up excuse I’ve heard. Are you going to get in that tornado?”

Karyn decided that the only sensible course of action was to drop her disguise and show him that she was in no way a flyer. So flustered was she by his anger, though, that it took a moment before she could bring up the muscle memory needed of how to shapeshift back. To the stallion, it must have looked like she was staring blankly at him.

Just as the green light surrounded her, the stallion took off and flew towards her, his front hooves outstretched. He grabbed her around the waist and started flying toward the tornado. “Get. To. Work!” he shouted as he hurled her in.

Karyn hoped that, even if she couldn’t fly, her wings would provide some kind of lift that would at least cushion the fall. She focused on getting her hooves down underneath her so that she could tuck and roll. She wasn’t very high above the water, maybe only twenty-five feet, so she wasn’t scared for her life, but she knew she still risked injury, and had the natural adrenalin rush that anyone gets from falling.

She mentally congratulated herself for being so rational in the moment, figuring that the reaction was making her brain work overtime out of survival instinct. She also found that she was not falling as fast as she should have. The wind from the tornado was buffeting her and she was now whipped like a leaf rather than falling.

If the pegasus stallion had watched to see that she had gone into formation, Karyn couldn’t see, and so as far as she knew nopony else knew she was in the tornado.

Still in her hyper-speed perception mode, Karyn felt herself no longer just slowed in her fall, but lifted up. It reminded her of some of the thrill rides she had been on at amusement parks, the straight up-and-down verticals that let the rider experience the sensation of free fall.

With the ground approaching rapidly, and still in desperation mode, Karyn reached for the saddlebag that she still had draped over her. She tore it open and pulled out the first spell she could find, hoping it would be the time-stop spell or a strengthening spell or something to help. She slammed it on her hoof and turned, but there was no visible reaction.

Meanwhile, while lazily flying in the tornado, Derpy had not seen Karyn, but had heard her scream. Ignoring any effect it would have on her duty, she broke formation and flew for the direction she heard the screaming from. That took her on an arc through the circle, and several other ponies had to pull up short. Down at the reservoir, the bulging water wavered and sank back. The tornado was coming apart.

None of that mattered to Derpy, though. She knew nothing about the pegasus stallion and thought that perhaps Karyn had tried to fly again. With her crooked eyes she could see both Karyn and the ground, and they were getting disturbingly close to one another.

Using all of the energy that she didn’t put into the tornado, Derpy pumped her wings and flew faster, but her estimates still put her too late to catch Karyn. She decided to go for broke, straightening out into a full dive. It would be difficult for even an experienced flyer to pull out of it, and for somepony who never flew more than enough to bring mail from one house to another, it was suicidal folly. Derpy didn’t care. If all she could accomplish was to crash together, it was enough.

There was a crash, but not of hooves and grass together. A low rumbling explosion seemed to propel Derpy, now with Karyn’s body in her hooves, back toward the sky and away from danger. For some reason, neither the added weight nor the force of gravity seemed to be impeding her, and it wasn’t until she’d gone about half a mile up that Derpy finally felt ready to slow down.

She pulled up and said to Karyn, “You OK?”

“I think so.”

“Can you change back to human? Your weight is the same, but it’s easier if you’re on my back and I don’t know how to carry you in this form.”

Karyn was still shaking, but said, “I think so.” She concentrated, and this time the green light surrounded her completely. She was back in her own body.

As Derpy maneuvered her around, she turned to see the path they had come. From almost the ground was a fading light of gray and yellow. “Whoa. What’s that?”

Karyn turned her head to look, but since Derpy was turning her body also, she had to keep moving to see the light. At the bottom, where they had nearly hit the ground, the grass was blown away and the earth was colored gray as well.

She had an idea. “What exactly happened before you picked me up?”

“Well, I heard you screaming and saw you falling, and I’m really not sure what I did. I just dove for you. It was hard flying at that speed, but then I pulled up and it was like I was flying through nothing at all.”

“Mm-hm. I think you just pulled off a Sonic Derpboom!”

“A what? There’s no such thing.”

Before Karyn could give her any further answer, Misty Shadows came flying up. “Oh, my Celestia. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” said Derpy. “I’m sorry I wrecked your tornado. I’ll start it up again, and I’ll really fly hard this time.”

“You didn’t see? Take a look!”

Karyn and Derpy turned to the reservoir and watched, wide-eyed, as the water was floating up toward Cloudsdale. But instead of the funnel shape it normally took, the water had formed itself into seven huge bubbles and was maintaining formation as it rose.

“OK. Maybe there is such a thing as a Sonic Derpboom.”

“That was cool!” said Misty. “Next year, we won’t even need the tornado; we can just have you do that!”

“No way! You’re not throwing Karyn around just to get your water lifted.”

“You can’t do it unless there’s a life-or-death situation? That’s a shame.” Misty watched the bubbles as they faded away. “Come to think of it, why was she falling?”

Karyn recounted the incident with the stallion. She tried to be as nice as possible, but Misty’s eyes got wider as she listened. Finally, she shouted, “Stormy!”

The stallion flew up, seemingly not aware. Karyn just looked at Derpy. “Stormy Showers? Kind of redundant, no?”

Derpy shrugged.

Meanwhile, Misty was chewing out her brother in front of all the pegasi who had helped. “So next time you think you can help, why don’t you just butt out?! You always do this, any time I have something going on, you have to stick your muzzle in.”

“I was just trying to make sure that your first tornado went smoothly.”

“And instead you nearly killed somepony! Not to mention that the tornado fell apart. You are going to write my report and then you are going to appear before the weather council and explain what a doofus you are and—“

Derpy whispered to Karyn, “Let’s get out of here. It’s always embarrassing watching somepony get yelled at.”

Karyn agreed, and they turned away. “Well, I bet news of this will get around quickly. I wonder if that means that every pegasus can break the sound barrier.”

“Maybe only when someone’s in trouble falling. That wouldn’t be good.”

“Well, I hope that guy learns his lesson. And I guess I’d better be a little more careful turning into ponies.”

“It’s a shame you can’t fly, though,” said Derpy.

“Not really. I don’t want to get too powerful. This way it won’t go to my head.”

Author's Note

It's the preview! (Hey, you try coming up with new introductions each week!)

“That is fortunate,” said Derpy. “But what are you doing here?”

“Kind of planning ahead. See, last year we had that whole issue with going back to school and having a roommate and such.”

“Right, and we took care of that. Peony is waiting to fill your room again.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"That woman has to have a kind heart to be able to make something so beautiful.”

“You really liked that?” asked Karyn.

“It reminded me of Cloudsdale. I haven’t been back in a long time, and although I hadn’t realized it until I saw that painting, I miss the clouds and the thin air."

That was the preview! (Hey, you try coming up with...)

66: Derpartment Hunting

The week prior, Derpy had enjoyed the long flight from Karyn’s school to her home because she had wanted to be distracted from her duty anyway. But that Sunday, she was more eager to see her friend, and silently cursed that the teleportation spell only took her to a single point on Earth.

She was also worried that at some point some other human would be occupying the room when she came, but not enough to go invisible ahead of time. It was something she had told herself to do, but always seemed to forget before she left home.

Always, though, once she was on Earth, the setting reminded her that she was in a foreign land and she remembered her disguise. To her mind, the sun and the air were different in a way she couldn’t describe. She put it down to the sun moving on its own.

Opening the window, she took off for Karyn’s home and girded herself for the long journey. It was boring, but far better than flying in a circle. Once she left the college town and got into the forest, it was the kind of flight that no pegasus had ever had in Equestria. There could be roads to follow, and there could be forests, but one road that cut through a forest was unheard of.

Before she could reach that, though, she had to navigate through the town, and Derpy chose to fly low and slow, so she could face-watch. She liked seeing humans go about their business; it reminded her how similar they were to ponies.

Though there were fewer outdoor stands like in the Ponyville market, Derpy could still press her nose to glass and see people shopping, or fly over the park and watch a young couple out on an early date (or, Derpy thought, a very late one), or swoop toward the edge of town to find Karyn watching the skies trying to catch her eye, or—

“Wait, what?” Derpy said.

She circled around and got a better look at the girl. It was definitely Karyn’s hair, certainly her purse, pretty much her freckles, so either Karyn had a doppelganger that shopped in the same store, or it was Karyn. Derpy landed and said, “Psst?”

“Derpy?”

“It is you! Or else your doppelganger who shops at the same store likes to say ‘Derpy’ at random times.”

Karyn laughed. “It’s me, Derpy.”

“But I was just coming to see you at your parents’.”

“I know, but I’m not there. I’m here. And I’m glad I found you before you had to go all the way there just to not find me.”

“That is fortunate,” said Derpy. “But what are you doing here?”

“Kind of planning ahead. See, last year we had that whole issue with going back to school and having a roommate and such.”

“Right, and we took care of that. Peony is waiting to fill your room again.”

The corner they were standing on was getting more crowded, and they walked on away from the school. “I’m sure, but it’s really not ethical, and my parents did ask me about why I didn’t have one. I don’t really enjoy lying to them, so we talked it over and agreed that if I could find an apartment at a good price, I could live there instead of the dorms. They’ll help pay, so it’ll be that much less I have to take in student loans.”

Derpy still didn’t understand all the details of the loans, but she knew that Karyn didn’t like them, and anything less of something that Karyn didn’t like was a good thing.

“So we’re going to go look at places? I can help you there. I remember buying the house in Ponyville. Realtors are just so nice and reasonable, aren’t they?”

“Right, yeah. If I were looking in Ponyville, they might be. But if I lived there then time would never move. But we’ll go look at some places and see what it’s like.”

They headed further away from the school, and the neighborhood changed. The college had its pristine cobblestones and concrete, but the area they were in now had overhanging trees that gave it a dark feeling, and the streets could have used a good sweeping. Derpy remarked that it was the least attractive setting she’d seen thus far on Earth.

“That’s true. At the college, all the massive tuition that everyone pays has to go somewhere, and part of that somewhere is into beautifying the grounds. Over at mom and dad’s, it’s a nice enough area that it gets taken care of by high property taxes. Kind of like in Muland. But here, right outside of the school, there’s less wealth. This is part of growing up. I won’t be part of a successful family anymore. I’ll have to earn my own success.”

“I get it, I think. When you get to be your parents’ age, you’ll be back to nice places.”

“If all goes well,” said Karyn. “All right, here we are.”

“I thought that all businesses like this were closed today.”

“Many are, but this one is obviously looking for renters, because they advertised as available every day.”

The complex was even more shaded than the road, but the apartments were set back and secluded. It would be a safe place, and only a short walk to school. Provided she was home before dark, Karyn could live there and not worry.

“You’re really concerned about safety, huh?” asked Derpy.

“As a college-age girl I have to be. Although I suppose I could always change to, like, a three-hundred pound hulking guy to ward off predators.”

They entered the rental office. The elderly lady behind the desk looked up, her earrings and bracelets rattling. She glowered at Karyn. “Yes?”

“I came about the apartment you advertised online.”

“Age?”

“I’m twenty years old,” said Karyn. “Is that a problem?”

“Not if you have a sterling credit report.”

Karyn said nothing to that.

“Well, come on. Let’s see the place.”

There was an entire building dedicated to modeling the apartments. To Derpy, this seemed like a major waste of space and effort. It took her a second look to even realize that no one lived in the apartments.

The lady led them to the first apartment on the left. “This is the studio. I assume that this is what you’re looking for.”
Derpy could barely fit into the small apartment, and Karyn returned the rental agent’s scowl. A half-wall provided the barest semblance of privacy, but standing anywhere else in the apartment exposed her through the wide front window. She poked her head in the bathroom. The stall shower was maybe three-feet square. Stepping back out, she looked at the kitchen and pulled up short when she saw a dishwasher half the width of all the ones she had seen. She didn’t even know such a thing existed.

“Could I take a look at a one-bedroom?”

The rental agent looked up and exhaled. It was an effort to walk for the elderly lady, and Karyn felt sympathy for her, but still didn’t like her attitude. She silently vowed never to treat young people that way when she was old.

They went next door, and the lady said, “This is our loft apartment. Technically it’s a one-bedroom.”

From the outside, the apartment bulged up from the building to a second story, and an angled roof contained a skylight. On the right side, opposite the door, a wooden carpeted staircase spiraled upwards. But Karyn felt the breeze as Derpy bypassed the stairs and flew up to the top.

“I think I’ll look at the upstairs first.”

Correctly assuming that the agent wouldn’t want to climb the stairs, Karyn went to the far end and got close to Derpy. In her softest whisper, she said, “What do you think?”

“Neither of them are as nice as your dorm, but if you took this one, I could fly up and down all day. It’s fun!”

“Beyond that—well, you’re probably not the best judge, but I think this one is a lot nicer.” She heard the agent shuffling around below. In order to cover up the sounds, she said, “It’s a good use of space. But it’s a little unusual to have the bathroom upstairs, don’t you think?”

“That’s just the way they’re built.”

Karyn went back to her whisper. “Geez, lady, if you’re supposed to be selling these things, you think you’d be nicer about it.”

“Maybe she wants it for herself,” said Derpy.

Smiling, she descended and went to look around the rest of the apartment downstairs. Compared to the studio it was impressive, and Karyn wondered if she hadn’t been shown that first just to make the one she was in look better. Maybe the agent was a good saleswoman after all. Still, she couldn’t deny that it was an apartment that she could live in. She pulled out her phone and checked it for Wi-Fi.

“Hmm, I’m going to have to plan out my budget. I’ll be paying for utilities now as well.”

“Heat, water, and sanitation are included,” said the agent. “You pay for electric and cable.”

Derpy gave a sharp intake of breath, which made the agent look. Karyn quickly covered. “Sounds like the heating pipes have some issues.”

“Mm, yes.”

“OK, here’s the important question. How much?”

The agent walked toward the door. “Let’s go back to the office.” Once there, she took out a large, legal-sized folder. Karyn was comforted by Derpy’s presence in the chair next to her.

“Well?”

“If you allow us to run a credit check on you, the price might be adjusted. If not, we’ll have to charge the highest rent and request two-months’ rent as deposit. Do you have any history of debt?”

“Only my student loans,” said Karyn.

“So that’ll probably work out to one-and-a-half months’ rent for a deposit. For that we need a bank check.”

She pulled up her head. “Really? You can’t just take a personal check and wait for it to clear?”

“That’s not what the rules say.”

Both Derpy and Karyn produced identical nose-wrinkling expressions, though of course only Karyn’s could be seen. Neither was happy with the idea of a rule that couldn’t be negotiated.

Karyn pored through the long agreement. It set out a long list of her obligations and very few of the renter’s. She took a deep breath and looked the lady in the eye.

“Well, if you’re going to need a cashier’s check, I’m going to have to go to my bank, which means that we can’t sign the deal today. And I’d like a chance to go back and think about it anyway. I’ll come back next week if I decide to rent.”

She shook the agent’s hand and fast-walked out of the complex. The residential neighborhood wasn’t crowded, and it was easy to find a place where she could slip in her Bluetooth and talk to Derpy.

“Did you see how expensive that was? There’s no way I could afford it!”

“I didn’t, actually, but I could tell that you wanted to leave fast.”

Karyn started walking back toward the school. “I’m always nervous in sales situations. I get afraid that they won’t be nice and just let me go. There are some types who just hang on like leeches until you either agree to buy or wind up being rude to them.”

“So what now?”

“I had hoped they would be more reasonable, so now I guess we just head for home and worry about the apartment some other time. The car’s parked in the visitor’s lot. I’ll lay the seat down so you’re comfortable.”

“All right.”

With the cover of the trees and the cool breeze of early summer, it was a pleasant walk, so they dawdled and ambled through the town, going the long way around back to the school. As they stood at one road crossing, Derpy circled around.

“Karyn, take a look at this.”

On one of the poles that held up the traffic light, there were flyers and posters stapled. Prominent as part of this display was a bright orange one that indicated an apartment for rent. It had the requisite fringe of tabs with a number to call.

“I don’t know, Derpy. Renting out of someone’s house? It seems a little shady. My folks said that it’s better to get from a proper apartment complex.”

“We saw how well that turned out. Just give them a call. If you don’t like the voice on the other end, just say it was a wrong number.”

Karyn tore off one of the tabs with the phone number. “All right, why not?” She pulled out her phone and dialed. Derpy listened distractedly.

“Yes, hi, I saw your flyer about an apartment?... uh-huh…where is that?...actually, I’m not too far away right now…twenty, I go to school at…all right, I’ll come see it.”

“Sounds like we’ve got another appointment. I hope no one saw you on both your phone and your Bluetooth.”

Karyn laughed. “That would be like a cheap version of call waiting.” She opened the phone’s GPS function and found walking directions for the other apartment.

Halfway there, Derpy said, “Karyn?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you take the little slip with the number? You made the call right there.”

She pulled up short. “I don’t know. I just figured that whenever you want to take up one of those offers, you have to tear off the tab.”

Now it was Derpy’s turn to laugh.

The rest of the walk went quickly, and when they came upon the house, they took a moment to look at it from outside. It was a two-story house, but very thin, unlike Karyn’s parents’. The neighborhood looked to be very old. A landmark sign indicated that one of the houses had been built over a century before. Even the street signs were printed vertically on white posts instead of plates on metal poles.

“This place looks fancy,” said Derpy. “It reminds me a little of home, too.”

“It is a nice area. Probably won’t be able to afford this one either.”

She rang the doorbell. A moment later a short-haired woman in a tank-top opened up. To Karyn’s eyes she was not much older than her.

“You’re the one called about the apartment?”

“Yes. Karyn. Whoa, this house is nice.”

“I’m Gayle. That’s not the part for you.”

Whether it had been built that way or Gayle had remodeled, it looked nothing like what Karyn expected. The top floor was barely there, so instead there was a twenty-foot ceiling. It was sparsely furnished and smelled of fresh paint.

Gayle led Karyn and Derpy around the side to a second entrance.

“This is what I’m looking to rent. I used to live here, but I just bought out the house and I’m looking to pay it down quicker.”

Karyn wondered what she did that gave her the money, but she was more focused on the apartment. It was an unusual design, as all the rooms were in a line, with the exception of the bathroom. A living room led to a kitchen, which led to the bedroom. Once there she would have complete privacy. It was barely noticeable from the road.

“So what are you looking for?” asked Karyn.

“What I’m looking for is someone who’s going to pay consistently and not ask me to fix too much stuff. I’m not looking to be a landlady, you know. Just grab a few bucks on the side.”

Derpy nudged Karyn. It seemed to her that if Gayle wasn’t promising to be the most attentive landlady, then the rent should be cheap. But she had no way of communicating that.

“So then we should be able to come to reasonable terms on rent,” said Karyn.

That’s my girl! thought Derpy.

“I’m sure we can. I’ll be glad to have a college student here, someone who isn’t going to tear the place apart. You’re not going to have any wild parties, are you?”

“No. I usually have one friend over on the weekends, but she’s a neat freak anyway.”

At that, Derpy poked Karyn in the ribs. On its own, it probably wasn’t noticeable, but it caused her to drop her purse.

Gayle bent down to help her pick up what had fallen out, Karyn haphazardly tossing everything back into the bag. She looked up to see Gayle looking at her compact, which happened to have Derpy’s picture on it.

“Oh, are you into My Little Pony?”

“Yes,” said Karyn, embarrassed. Then she realized that she had very little to be embarrassed about. Granted, she was slightly older than the target demographic, but there was less of a stigma for a female college student than for a male. It was only her personal friendship with Derpy that made her nervous. “Do you watch it too?”

“I think I’ve seen a few episodes. It’s nice. This one’s eyes are crossed, though.”

“Maybe I’ll introduce you to her some time.”

Gayle stared, then laughed. “All right, you got me. Anyway, for a funny girl who likes ponies I’ll give a good deal. What would you say to six-fifty?”

Karyn tried to keep her face straight. Six-fifty was less than half of what the other place was asking. “Well, I wouldn’t be moving in for a couple of months. Can I put down a deposit and hold it till then?”

“Sure, why not? You understand, this apartment isn’t exactly a formal lease.”

She broke eye contact, and Karyn realized that she meant that it wasn’t a legal apartment. “Well, in that case would you mind if I went home and thought about it?”

“No, I can see where you’d want to. But if you did take it I would have those months to fix it up however you liked it. I’d even decorate it for you.”

Karyn remembered her glance of the main house. Gayle did have taste similar to her. “Can I ask you a question? How did you come to buy the house out?”

“I got lucky. Managed to have some of my work exhibited at a show a couple of months ago, and a rich guy liked my paintings enough to buy two of them well over market price.”

“Oh, you’re an artist?”

Gayle was passionate now. “Yes. Both parts of the house have fantastic north light, which is why I wanted to get into it, but now that I’m in the main section, I’m doing it as a proper studio. It’s like I’m taking the money and investing it in myself, I hope. Would you like to see some?”

Not wanting to be rude, Karyn assented, and they went back into the main house. She could see what Gayle meant by the light, as the rays of the sun bounced off the dust mites and made the room look bigger than it was. At the end of the room were some canvases covered in drop cloths. Gayle lifted one.

“This is probably the only one finished enough to show. I got this from the one time I went up in a plane.”

The painting was of the sun passing between cloud layers. It was nice to look at, but Karyn didn’t have much of an eye for art.

“It’s lovely. Anyway, I’ll get back to you about the apartment. I have your number.”

“Great, thanks.”

Karyn walked out, and got about a block away before Derpy said, “You should get this place.”

“You think so? The price is good, but to live in someone’s house—“

“Yeah, but did you see that painting? That woman has to have a kind heart to be able to make something so beautiful.”

“You really liked that?” asked Karyn.

“It reminded me of Cloudsdale. I haven’t been back in a long time, and although I hadn’t realized it until I saw that painting, I miss the clouds and the thin air. Flying in Ponyville is low and slow, and that’s nice for a lazy pegasus like me, but part of me wants to be back soaring among the cumulus.”

“That’s sweet. But do you think I should take the apartment just for that?”

Derpy put a wing on Karyn’s shoulder. “I’ve never taken you to see my place in Cloudsdale. We’ll have to arrange that sometime. But I rent it out, and let me tell you, if that relationship is right, it can be a great way to make friends. You’d never have made friends with that other lady, the one who showed you the two-story one. Even if I can’t fly as well in this, it’s the right choice for you.”

“Well, if nothing else it solves the problem. Come on. Let’s go home and tell my parents. If I can convince them it’s a good deal, I’ll call Gayle back and arrange it all.”

“If you need help convincing them, remember what I said about how the painting looks like Cloudsdale.”

Karyn grinned, not wanting to laugh too loud on the street. They were coming close to the parking lot back by the school. She pointed her key fob at the car to unlock the doors.

As they put their seat belts on and rolled down the windows to relieve the heat, Derpy said, “One other thing I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“How come, in the first apartments, the studio was the smaller place, but in the house you’re going to, the studio is the bigger one?”

Karyn couldn’t contain her laughter at that.

Author's Note

Be sure and come around next Wednesday, same time. Here's some clips from that chapter!

“Hello, Derpy. All is clear for now.”

“Good. You’re looking well, even if it’s just magic and you didn’t actually make the effort.”

“You can tell?” asked Karyn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As she spread her wings once more, the sound of rushing hooves came from the other side of the house. “Derpy!”

“Who’s that?”

It was Karyn who recognized the pony galloping towards them. For Derpy, orange was probably a typical color for ponies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn looked at Derpy, but she was just as excited. She shook her head. “I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your conclusion there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m not a complete expert on the scientific method, but I believe that you want to control as many variables as possible."

I hope you read that one too!

68: At the Wa-derp-ark

“Ah, summer,” said Karyn. Sniffing the morning dew and feeling the cool humidity, she shut off the fan that she’d been sleeping with to keep cool. By all estimations, it would be another perfect day.

She had slept in, and hurried to take a shower. Her magical ability did not extend to disguising odor, and even with the fan and the air conditioner, she had still sweated as she slept. Once she emerged from the bathroom and returned to her room in her robe, she heard the low cough that indicated Derpy’s presence.

“Good morning!”

“And to you. Can I go visible?”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.” Karyn poked her head out the door. “The Parent Patrol is downstairs now, but they’re around, and we don’t want them poking their heads in because we’re careless.”

“Understood. You seem happy this morning.”

“I am. Maybe for no particular reason, although we do have something special planned. Beyond that, though, here we are in the middle of summer, I have no responsibilities, and my best friend is here. What more could I want?”

Derpy smiled. She wasn’t in the best of moods herself, but Karyn’s positivity was shaking her out of it. “So what’s the special thing we’re doing?”

“My father’s taking me—taking us, of course—to the water park.”

“You mean the amusement park? We already went there.”

“It’s similar,” said Karyn, “but the rides are all water based. Perfect for a warm summer day like today. But it’s not just us. We’re going as part of his company’s picnic. That mean’s we’ve got carte blanche.”

“Oh! So it’s like a game? We take the blank card and fill it each time we go on a ride, like a scavenger hunt?”

Karyn stared for a long time before she figured out what Derpy meant. “No, carte blanche is just an expression. Not even in the same language, but there’s your crazy translation spell working. It means we can do whatever we want.”

“Really? So, fly all over and push pies into people’s faces?”

“OK, not whatever we want. Be reasonable. But you should be able to fly around. These parks usually have a lot of open spaces. I don’t know how you feel about getting wet.”

Derpy had tried to learn how to express her emotions without being seen. “It’s fun at the time, but sometimes my fur can smell afterwards. Still, we’ll go and we’ll have fun.”

Karyn ran her thumb across her throat to indicate for silence. Derpy might not have understood, but she clammed up anyway. Karyn realized immediately that there was no way that gesture would exist in Equestria, but Derpy probably had better hearing anyway. Karyn’s father entered the room. “Ready to go?” he asked.

“Pretty much. Should I wear my suit there or under street clothes or what?”

“I’d like you to be in a full robe all of the time. Some people will have sons there who will leer at you.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “I’ll be in public the whole time and I won’t go off alone. If boys want to look, they’re going to, and nop—nobody can stop them.”

If her father noticed her near-malapropism, he didn’t say anything. “All right, then, let’s go! Come on, this is going to be fun!”

Karyn effected energy and bounced down the stairs, leaving Derpy to take the long way out the window and to the car. Karyn opened the back door to let her in.

“What are you doing?” Karyn’s father asked. “You can take shotgun.”

“Oh, right. I’m just so used to having Mom in the car too.”

With another mistake covered, she got into the front seat and waited. It was over an hour to the park, but Karyn’s father was the type who thought it rude to play or talk on a cell phone while driving. Some light conversation passed between the two of them, but for the most part she just leaned her head against the glass and watched the power lines bounce up and down.

Once they arrived, Karyn stepped out of the air conditioned car into the parking lot. With the sun beating down on the blacktop, it was a blast of heat that stunned her. She wondered if the park didn’t count on that as a selling point to get people to enjoy the park. Certainly, she was ready to jump into a pool.

It wasn’t until her father checked in, got their tickets, escorted her into the park, and pointed out the changing room that Karyn was able to talk to Derpy again. “I’m sorry that we got separated like that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I got to stretch out in the back and just ride. I find that I like having someone chauffer me around. If your dad wants to do it all the time, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The changing room had people going in and out of it, but once Karyn was in her bathing suit, she felt free to throw her Bluetooth in and talk. She threw her purse into a locker, deposited fifty cents, and took out the key which she hung around her neck.

“Now we have to join all of dad’s co-workers.”

“Explain to me why this is a work thing. Is your father actually doing his job here? Because I would like a job like that.”

“Ha, no,” said Karyn. “A lot of times, in companies, they’ll take a day and throw a little party for the workers. There are a number of reasons. It’s good for morale, helps the people feel more like a team, and gives some people a chance to make fools of themselves and get fired. Though that’s more likely to happen at a formal dinner where they can drink too much. And I don’t get invited to those.”

Emerging back into the bright sun, Derpy took her first look at the attractions at the water park. The towers of wood and fiberglass (though she didn’t know what that was) were the most prominent edifices, and she could see people, mostly young, coming down the water slides. She heard the splashing and wooshing into the pools at the bottom, but one thing she could not identify.

“Karyn, there’s a funny smell here. It’s not like water much at all.”

“Smell? Oh, you probably mean the chlorine. They add that to the water to keep it clean with all the bodies here.”

Derpy was still sniffing the air. “It’s a nice smell.”

“You really think so? Well, there’s no accounting for taste. Just don’t drink any of the water. The chlorine isn’t good for you. At least, it’s not good for me, and I don’t want to test to see if your anatomy is different. Also, if we go on the rides, try not to lose too much of your fur. I hope it stays invisible if it falls off.”

“Why would it fall off? I don’t shed.”

At that point, they were interrupted by Karyn’s father coming back. “Hey, there you are. I was worried that you got caught in your suit and were all tied up.”

“Real funny, Dad.”

“Come on, we’ve all got to go to the meetup thing.”

Right after the changing room was a picnic area, walled off from the rest of the park. Karyn’s father walked in without being checked for any credentials, and Karyn wondered if a clever person could crash the picnic by simply counting on everyone thinking that she knew someone else.

Whether because of her own delays in talking to Derpy or her father’s slow driving, as soon as Karyn entered a man, who Karyn figured was some high figure in her father’s company, started talking.

“All right, everyone, I’m sure you’re eager to have fun, so just two things first. Everyone pick up one of these T-shirts to wear while you’re here. They’ve got our name on them, so it serves as a kind of free advertising. Second, we’ll start serving lunch here at noon, so you’ll all want to be back by then.”

The T-shirts were piled on the other side of the picnic area, so Karyn was among the first to get one. Most others took theirs and ran off toward one attraction or another, and so she followed suit, shouting to her father that she’d meet him at the lunch.

Being older than the grade-school kids that made up most of the guests of their group, Karyn felt that she should set an example and walked slowly. Of course, her ulterior motive was to converse with Derpy.

“You look good in that T-shirt,” Derpy said.

“Yes, well, once we go on some rides and it gets wet, it’ll probably be even more obscene, from my father’s point of view, than just my suit. I may have to remember how it looks dry and maintain that form magically. It’s funny, though.”

“What is?”

“Well, my father took me here several times when I was younger, and each time we would go there would be one group or another in these kind of matching T-shirts. I always resented them.”

Karyn had stopped walking and was standing behind someone else. “What for?” asked Derpy.

“Well, they usually were ahead of me in line, so there was that. But I think more it was that it indicated that they were grouped together, and I was on the outside. Humans always tend to resent it when they’re not part of the group.”

“Ponies like being part of a group too.”

“Yes, but that’s the difference. You like it when you are; we dislike it when we aren’t.”

Derpy seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Can I ask something else?”

“Of course.”

“What are we on line for?”

Karyn had come to a halt automatically. “Ha, I didn’t realize that. I always ride this one first, because of where it’s positioned in the park. It’s a flume ride where you go down on a tube. This is your basic, utilitarian water slide, perfect for the kind of pony who’s never been on one.”

They shuffled ahead as the line moved. Halfway down, there was the area where an attendant was restacking the plastic tubes as riders came off the ride. There were single ones in perfect doughnut shape, as well as those meant for two riders that were a kind of figure-eight. Karyn surreptitiously grabbed one of those.

Down the line and up the wooden staircase, with Derpy hovering at each level so that other people could squeeze in. Everyone kept bumping their tubes against the wood or each other. Finally they reached the top. In front of the slide was a small, 2-foot pool with water rushing into it. Derpy watched each human or pair put their tube in to be held by a different attendant, then climb in and lay down, before being pushed off toward some unseen destination.

When it was Karyn’s turn, the attendant looked at her tube and said, “Where’s your second?”

“Oh, I meant to just ride alone on this one.”

“Those are supposed to be for two people.”

Karyn put on her best puppy-dog eyes. “Must I? The round ones tend to spin, and I get scared going backwards.”

The attendant gave a bored wave. Karyn looked over to where she last saw Derpy and winked. Right as she sat down in the back part of the tube, she felt the shift in weight in the front. The attendant thought it odd too, but didn’t care about that either, and shoved them off down the slide.

Neither did he care when, a few seconds later, it was not Karyn’s high lilt, but a gruffer female voice that shouted, “Whoo!”

Karyn was particularly enjoying the ride herself. Derpy had, from what she could tell, spread her wings, and every splash of the water was deflected into a mist. Moreover, the ride had not been designed for a pony’s higher center of gravity, which made the back of the tube swing wildly at each curve.

The ride was simple, just a series of repeating curves before coming in for the splash at the bottom of the pool. Karyn usually found it awkward to disentangle herself from the tube, but this time, once it had come to a stop, she felt Derpy’s hooves slipping underneath her shoulders, letting her air-swim to the edge.

That drew more looks from people around her, so Karyn quickly left that ride and found a secluded area.

“That was the most funnest, funnerific thing ever!” said Derpy. “Much better than that other park.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, here, there’s water. And it’s not cloud, just regular water.”

Karyn understood. Derpy could fly, but clouds were solid to her. She could never enjoy the thrill of getting wet at the same time as moving quickly. The water park was the perfect entertainment for a pegasus pony.

It dampened Karyn’s spirits to say, “That was a little awkward, though, trying to hide you among so many people.”

“Aww, but I want to go on again!”

“What if we could be in a tube again, but not going so fast?”

On the Lazy River ride, empty tubes were in among the riders, and not worth notice. If one in particular happened to cleave close to where Karyn rode, it wasn’t commented on. They were free to chat with each other so long as they kept it to low mutters.

“Ah, this is nice,” said Karyn. “Stress relief. It’s not easy keeping you secret.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

The ride, if it could be called that, was not popular at the best of times, and just then was filled only with adults whose children were off on the more thrilling rides. The sun shone down, and Karyn enjoyed feeling it on her face and legs. She made mental notes to reapply her sunblock before they moved on. Derpy was being reticent as well.

“A bit for your thoughts.”

“Ha,” said Derpy. “Where are you going to get a bit?”

“I’ll borrow it from you. Come on, tell me.”

“I’m thinking really hard. Maybe harder than I have for a long time. About important things. Maybe this lazy river thing is good for thinking. Give me a little while, and I’ll tell you.”

They drifted along until they returned to the staircase where they got in. Walking around some more, Derpy heard the happy screams of children.

“What’s going on over there?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s the wave pool.”

“Can we try it out?”

Karyn craned her neck to look. “I really wouldn’t. It’s crowded, and it’s bad enough bumping into people where they can see you. Plus it’s probably the most dangerous ride here.”

“How? It’s just people standing in a pool.”

“Yes, but you see that weighted rope at the end? When they shake that, the waves bounce and it’s possible to get caught in them. There’s so many people that the lifeguards can’t always see if you go under. Maybe we’ll do it as the last event of the day, if there’s time. Right now, we should get back to the picnic area.”

After getting lost a few times and consulting the unhelpful signs, they found the front of the park. Derpy grumbled that the walk had taken so long that they needed another dip in the lazy river.

Once more, Karyn and Derpy had to avoid the food and limit themselves to cole slaw and bottled water. They sat at a picnic table on the end watching everyone else eat and party.

“All right,” said Derpy, “An Earth-bit for your thoughts.”

“Ha, it’s a penny. I was just enjoying this. All these people and families are here together, wearing their matching shirts. Most of the kids are younger than me, most of the adults are older than me, but I’m still a part of this. For once I fit in.”

“Yeah.”

“I get it. Now you’re the one who doesn’t, because you’re invisible. Well, if they knew you, you’d be part of the group too.”

“You think I can at least get a T-shirt?”

Karyn laughed, but right then her father slipped in with his own plate of food. “Hey, Sweetie. What’s so funny?”

“Just remembering something a friend told me.”

“Have you been having fun?”

“I have.”

“What did you do?”

Karyn ran down her rides and how she spent a lot of time on the lazy river.

“Really? When you were little, you always hated the lazy river.”

“No, I hated the fact that you would make us go on it halfway through the day when I wanted to go on more slides. When you want to relax and I don’t, then it’s annoying. When I want to relax, it’s awesome.”

Her father leaned over and hugged Karyn. “Does this mean you’re becoming an adult and losing your stamina? Don’t do it! Soon I’ll have to buy you a thirtieth-birthday gift!”

“Dad, quit being so clingy! Especially in front of everyone.”

She checked around for anyone watching her father’s embrace, but most everyone was busy eating.

“Sorry, honey. I’ve been wanting to do that ever since you first went off to college. My little girl in college!”

Karyn shoveled her cole slaw into her mouth in record time. “I’m going to head out and have more fun.”

“You’re supposed to wait a half hour before going back in the water,” her father said.

“That’s an urban myth.” She walked off, leaving her father to again contemplate how much his daughter was coming to learn.

Once more walking the paths between rides, she murmured to Derpy, “You weren’t much help.”

“I thought it was funny, you and him bonding together.”

“He was bonding. I just wanted to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I love my father. But he and I are just different. Not the way you were with your father. I mean, the way you are.”

Karyn was afraid that she had triggered Derpy’s depressive complex around her father. This wasn’t helped by the fact that she was silent for a few more minutes. But they kept walking until another water slide came into view.

“They’re not using tubes on that one.”

“What’s that, Derpy?”

“That slide. They’re just going down by themselves.”

Karyn looked. “Oh. Yes, they have both types of slides.”

“I want to do that one.”

“All right, let’s get in line.”

“I was thinking I could just fly up there and take a turn.”

“What?!” Karyn quickly had to duck down a path to avoid stairs. Once alone, she said, “I can’t believe that you would try to jump a queue.”

“But I wouldn’t be costing anyone else their turn. I would just go and no one would know.”

“I forgive you for not knowing, but that’s not how it works. Everyone goes a set period of time so that there’s no danger of running into each other. All the workers here have it down pat. If you went on the slide you could hit someone.”

“Oh, it’s a safety thing. I’ll remember that.”

Karyn felt that there was a second significance to Derpy’s words that she couldn’t understand. But she dutifully got in line with Derpy in tow.

“Have you got something on your mind?” asked Karyn. “Ever since lunch when my father was all over me—“

“Well, it kind of made me miss Dinky again. We haven’t seen her for a while. What would you say to me inviting her around or us heading to see her next week?”

“We wouldn’t be studying, would we? She’s off for summer too, right? Because I don’t even want to help a unicorn study on vacation.”

Derpy chuckled. “She’s off too. Just a fun visit.”

The lines were at peak time with families packed into the queue, and it moved very slowly. Derpy’s distraction was fitting, since it would have been unsafe to speak with everyone watching. But at last they reached the top, where Karyn realized the fault in the plan. Derpy would still have to slide down in someone’s space.

Well, it would just have to be she who took the risk. She explained in her lowest whisper that Derpy should go in front and slide down when Karyn was told to go. She would try to delay a second or two before sliding down, but to try to go fast so they didn’t crash.

It was the most stressful thrill ride that Karyn ever took. From the annoyed, “Go!” that the park worker gave her to trying to go down as slowly as possible to seeing the invisible Derpy cut through the water ahead of her, she couldn’t wait to get to the bottom and swim for the pool. It did make her happy to be able to show off the park to her friend, though.

At the end of the ride, it was Derpy who pulled Karyn aside. “I’m sure now,” she said.

“Sure of what?”

“That ponies would love this. I didn’t think that human parks would work after the last one. All that was was motion, and pegasi have that all the time. But playing in the water is a lot more limited. They’d have endless fun on a slide like that.”

Karyn shook her head. “As much fun as it would be, they couldn’t come here. They shut down the park when people aren’t using it, and the water doesn’t flow.”

“I know that. But somepony could build a park like this in Equestria. That’s why I was thinking of seeing Dinky next week. Building something like this could be a good use for the advanced magic that she’s learning at Princess Celestia’s school.”

Karyn gulped. Somehow she was going to have to steer Derpy away from pushing Dinky too hard.

Author's Note

Here's what's coming for next week!

“Explain this to me one more time,” said Karyn. “Why you had to arrive while I was still sleeping, schlep me onto your back, teleport to Equestria, and force-march me down to the train station.”

“So that we can see Dinky of course!”

“And the reason that she had to get up even earlier to catch the first train of the day?”

Derpy stopped her bouncing around and faced Karyn. “Because we’re here waiting for her!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Derpy, don’t you actually want to read the letter you have?”

Like a light switch, Derpy switched from rage to joy. “Oh, right! It’s in Dinky’s hornwriting.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh yes. Meet any interesting ponies lately?”

That got her attention momentarily. Dinky made eye contact with Karyn for the first time. “Interesting ponies?”

“Yes, anypony new in your life you want to tell me about?”

Be sure to read that too!

69: The Missing Dink

The Ponyville train station was nearly deserted. With the sun newly risen and the train not due for twenty more minutes, only two figures waited in the still of the morning. One gray pegasus, smiling and bright-eyed stood while one human leaned against the wall and yawned.

“Explain this to me one more time,” said Karyn. “Why you had to arrive while I was still sleeping, schlep me onto your back, teleport to Equestria, and force-march me down to the train station.”

“So that we can see Dinky of course!”

“And the reason that she had to get up even earlier to catch the first train of the day?”

Derpy stopped her bouncing around and faced Karyn. “Because we’re here waiting for her!”

“I must still be asleep. That almost makes sense.”

The station clock was not within their line of sight, and Karyn kept checking her phone for the time, which never seemed to be changing. She did not care if Derpy reprimanded her for being too obsessed with her phone.

When the train finally did come, Karyn didn’t notice the whistle and only paid attention once the sound of the engine reached her. Giving one more yawn, she took a deep breath and considered herself fully awake. It was time to meet her friend.

It took a long time for the train to stop, and even longer before the first ponies emerged. Derpy was nearly salivating at the prospect.

“Wow,” said Karyn, “you really have been missing Dinky.”

“I’m always thinking about her.”

Still expecting to see the unicorn running toward them any minutes, Karyn and Derpy both face-watched, coming up with only strangers. Ponies were walking away from the train toward the town, and still Dinky was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is she?” asked Derpy.

“I don’t know. Maybe she missed the train.”

The station was nearly abandoned again as the last few ponies left. Somehow, it seemed more alive than before, after the train had passed.

The one pony who was there wore a blue uniform. He was a young colt, and he seemed to be checking a sheet. After several repetitions, he accosted Derpy.

“Miss…Hooves?”

“I’m Derpy Hooves, yes.”

“I have a letter for you.”

Derpy squinted at him. “You’re a mail carrier?”

“Er, yes? I just joined up with the Canterlot post office.”

“And you have a letter to deliver. Does it have an address?”

He hastily looked at his clipboard again. “Um…it does!”

“Are there any special notes listed?”

“Let me see…it says that recipient will likely be at train station with…what’s this word? Then it says companion.”

“Could the word be ‘human’?” asked Derpy.

“I…maybe.”

“Listen up, colt. If you’re going to carry the mail, you’ve got to get your heart into it. You’ve got to care about each little piece of mail. Have you ever been to your dead letter office?”

“O…once.”

Derpy’s anger was growing. “Did you enjoy it?”

“What?”

“No, you didn’t! Because that’s where mail that wasn’t cared for goes! Now, the next time you get a letter to deliver, you’d better know those notes and be prepared to find the pony you’re looking for.”

“Derpy!” Karyn decided that enough was enough. She addressed the stallion. “Please excuse her. She’s upset because we expected her filly to be on the train, and she hasn’t shown up. She doesn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“Yes, I—“

“Derpy, don’t you actually want to read the letter you have?”

Like a light switch, Derpy switched from rage to joy. “Oh, right! It’s in Dinky’s hornwriting.”

The mailpony, just happy to be out of the conversation with Derpy, galloped away toward Ponyville, checking his next letter and hoping it wouldn’t be as rough a delivery. Meanwhile Derpy read off.

“’Dear Mommy, I know that you were looking forward to seeing me today, but the fact is that too many errands have come up here that this week is a bad time to see me. It’s a shame, because I do want to see Karyn, and of course I miss you every day. Write me back and let’s reschedule at a convenient time.’ She’s not coming!”

“Aw, that’s a shame.”

An echo of the anger that Derpy had shown toward the young stallion showed in her face. “I am getting just a little bit upset at all of our plans being put off for one thing or another. First our trip to Cloudsdale gets postponed because we have to help out Scootaloo with her research, and now Dinky’s visit gets postponed. Enough! We are going to take action.”

“You’re right, this works out perfectly. We can just go—“

“Exactly! We’ll get on the next train and go to Dinky in Canterlot! Whatever she’s busy with, we’ll help her, get it over with fast, and then have fun.”

Karyn had a private facepalm, figuring that the more obvious response would be to have their Cloudsdale outing right then, but Derpy was not to be balked. After buying two tickets, they were once again standing in the train station, waiting alone.

“How long is it till the next train?”

Derpy checked the schedule. “About half an hour.”

“So, once that comes and then we take the time and then travel in Canterlot to get to Dinky’s place, are we really going to have enough time to actually have fun?”

“It’s Dinky! Of course we will!”

With Derpy unable to be swayed, and Karyn not sure that her plan wasn’t the right thing anyway, she waited and then boarded the train. Derpy kept her wings flared the whole time, as if she could drive the train faster by doing so. Disembarking at Canterlot, she was in high trot as soon as they got off, and Karyn had to run to keep up.

“Wait, Derpy, do you even know where you’re going?”

“Of course! I won’t get lost like we did before!”

Well, at least she’s getting her exercise, Karyn thought as she hustled to keep Derpy in sight. She briefly considered changing to her pegasus form in order to keep up, but she worried that the time it would take and the momentary green light would be enough to lose her way. So they attracted the stares of the Canterlot snobs.

Finally Derpy came to a halt, and as Karyn caught up, panting and wheezing, she saw Derpy staring at a sign. “Why did you stop?”

“I forgot. She’s not at school right now.”

They had indeed stopped in front of Princess Celestia’s school, but it was closed.

Karyn reflected. Even a closed building was different in Equestria. There were no locked doors or doused lights to indicate that one shouldn’t try to enter. Only the lack of movement inside tipped Derpy off to its closure.

A moment later, she had no more time for contemplation, for Derpy was once again going at top walking speed.

“Where are you going now?!”

“If she’s not here, she has to be at work, right? Come on!”

Another half-marathon later, Karyn again stood, hands on her knees, while Derpy ducked into the curio shop on the edge of town. When she burst out, Karyn asked, “Where is she?”

“Mr. Pincenez said that it was her day off. Then he tried to get me to buy a rusty horseshoe. Why would I want that? Anyway—“

“No, wait. Before you go running off again, two things. First, I have to get some water somewhere. Second, I know you miss Dinky but you can’t just go tearing around Canterlot to find her. You’ve got to calm down.”

Derpy was still craning her neck around as if to catch Dinky walking by randomly. Karyn wanted her full attention, but had to settle for what she could get.

“Why are you so hyper today?” asked Karyn.

“I…I’m not sure. I just feel that I should see her. Call it mother’s intuition.”

“Well, we’re not going to find her by going randomly. Let’s sit down and think.”

Derpy crouched down on her haunches. “What shall we think about?”

“About Dinky I mean. It’s Sunday, she’s not at school, and she’s not working. Where would be the likely place she would be?”

“Umm…at home?”

Karyn snorted. “She has a home away from the school?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t we go there in the first place?”

A moment of silence. Derpy blinked a very deliberate blink.

“Do you know where it is?”

“I think so.”

Karyn stood up. “Derpy. You’re a great pony and I’m glad to be your friend. But man, you need me around.”

“Of course I do.”

“Let’s go.”

At a more deliberate pace, no more attracting the kind of stares that they had been, they made their way down Canterlot streets. Karyn had no idea what kind of dwelling a young unicorn could get in the big city where all the posh ponies lived.

It turned out to be an apartment on the third floor of a shop on a busy lane. It couldn’t have been very quiet, and didn’t afford privacy, but it was livable.

Derpy flew up to the balcony behind the stop but left Karyn to climb the stairs. In that moment, Karyn thought she saw a familiar coat color, not in the room, but down the alley.

“Dinky!” she called out.

With Derpy busy looking in the window, still assuming her filly would be inside, Karyn started down the stairs. But instead of Dinky racing toward her, she turned down a corner, only to appear a moment later.

“Karyn! What are you doing here?”

“Come on over!”

Dinky trotted up, and all three ladies met halfway up the stairs in a hug.

“Ooh, we’ve been just everywhere!” said Derpy.

“But why? Didn’t you get my letter?” Dinky broke the embrace and scanned all around. Karyn wondered what she was looking for.”

“We did, and I don’t know how you thought that I would just ignore it and let you out of our time together!”

“Really, Mommy? You know, I’m not a little filly anymore. You can’t just hover over me and watch everything I do all the time.”

Derpy stepped back, as if unable to believe that Dinky could defy her like that. “But you’ve never said no to being with me. Especially when Karyn’s around.”

“There’s a first time for everything, you know.”

From Karyn’s perspective, she thought Dinky was not as angry as her words indicated. She shifted on her hooves and had occasional horn glows, even though she wasn’t casting any spells that Karyn could see.

“Is everything all right, Dinky? Your mom was saying how she had a feeling that you needed her.”

“No, I mean yes, everything’s fine, I don’t need anypony else. I mean, right now, I don’t need anypony.”

“Calm down,” said Karyn. “Everypony is hyper today.”

“I’m not, anymore,” said Derpy. “Now that I’ve found my Dinky.”

Dinky was still looking all around. “Well, do you want to go inside? I mean, if you want to.”

Karyn snapped her fingers. “I know what it is! I bet your apartment’s a mess and you don’t want your mom to see it, because you know how she gets. Don’t worry about it. There’s no way you can be worse than Scootaloo after all.”

Derpy peered at the outside window, but it was too dark to see anything. “Hmm. If that’s the case, I think I’d rather not see. Why don’t we just go down to a restaurant or something and grab a bite to eat?”

Dinky started down the stairs. “That sounds great. Let’s do that. I like to eat at the Haymaker Café. Want to go there? It’s two blocks down, then make a left and another block. Oh, but I’ll show you where it is, no problem.”

“Dinky, why are you shouting like that?”

“Am I? Um, Am i? My ears must be clogged!”

Karyn eyed her suspiciously, and even Derpy could see that something was up, but neither could tell what it was. The frustrating part was that if Dinky didn’t want to be honest with them, there was nothing they could do to force it out of her.

They walked down to the café. Dinky started off leading the way, but dragged her hooves as they walked and was soon bringing up the rear. It was Derpy who asked for a table and ordered drinks while Dinky kept looking around and Karyn watched her, trying to figure out what it was that was bothering her so.

Other than that, it was a beautiful, pleasant day in Canterlot, and Karyn briefly considered if she wasn’t overly suspicious and Dinky simply didn’t want to enjoy her freedom. After all, it was Karyn’s free time as well.

She sipped at a smoothie that she was fairly certain contained no ingredients that she couldn’t digest. Derpy also enjoyed her drink. Dinky, however, downed her soda as fast as she could.

“You enjoyed that,” said Derpy. “Would you like another?”

“I would, but before that I have to um, you know…” She looked at Karyn, then slid her chair next to Derpy’s and whispered something.

“Yes, humans use the bathroom too!”

“Well, I didn’t know. They wear clothes all the time. Who knows what other weird taboos they have?”

With that, she trotted into the café. Karyn shook her head and laughed to herself at Dinky’s lack of understanding of human culture. She wondered if she couldn’t invite Dinky back to Earth to share her life and unconfuse her. But her idle thoughts were shaken when she heard galloping out of the back side of the café.

“Sigh. Derpy, I’m willing to bet that Dinky won’t be back from the bathroom for a while.”

“Do you mean that she…”

Karyn followed Derpy’s train of thought. “No, Derpy. I mean that she doesn’t have to go to the bathroom at all. Well, maybe she does, but that’s not why she left.”

“Oh. Then why? It’s not my birthday, so she can’t be planning a surprise party.”

“We would have known that anyway. If she were doing that, she wouldn’t have sent the letter. There was no way she could have known that you wouldn’t listen and would drag me to Canterlot anyway.”

Derpy took another sip and stared. “I guess that’s true.”

Both of them sat, sipped, and brooded. At last Dinky returned.

“Hey there!” she said. “Did you order my second drink?”

“Oh, no.” said Derpy. “We forgot. I’ll get it now.”

“Don’t bother! I’ll get some for all of us.”

“No, I insist. It’s my treat all the way.”

Derpy stood up to find the waiter. As she left she signaled to Karyn with a wink. Karyn understood. She was hoping that, if left alone and out of earshot of her mother, Dinky might explain herself.

“So, how’s your summer been going?” she asked, trying to work her way up to more probing questions.

“Fine. Yours too?”

“Oh yes. Meet any interesting ponies lately?”

That got her attention momentarily. Dinky made eye contact with Karyn for the first time. “Interesting ponies?”

“Yes, anypony new in your life you want to tell me about?”

“No, there isn’t. Would you excuse me? I’m going to see what’s taking mommy so long.”

“Wait, Dinky!” Karyn called, but Dinky was already rushing into the café. Karyn turned and actually saw her running out the back door and down the alley. Then it hit her. “Derpy!”

Derpy returned with the drinks. “Yes?”

“I think I’ve got it. I’ve seen this so many times on TV. Dinky must have a boyfriend!”

“A what?!”

“OK, well, a coltfriend, you’d say.”

Fortunately, Derpy had already set the drinks over the table, so when she dropped them they only fell a few inches. Nothing broke, and very little spilled. “You really think so? My little Dinky finding a colt she wants to be with? Then why doesn’t she introduce me?”

“When I first got together with Mike, it was months before I told my parents. Kids are just like that. Of course, there’s always another possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“She might have a filly she’s in love with instead of a colt.”

Derpy didn’t respond, and Karyn was unsure if she fully understood the concept. But she didn’t press. At last, Derpy asked. “So what do we do? We want to get her to admit it, don’t we?”

“We do, but we can’t pressure her. We’ve just got to relax, make her relax, and hopefully she’ll understand that we love her and only want the best for her.”

“Right.”

Dinky showed no signs of making a quick return, but Karyn didn’t mind. She had developed a taste for the drink that Derpy ordered and happily sipped away.

Their table was up against the wall, and Karyn sat in shadow. The ponies passing by, mostly unicorns, usually failed to notice her. She mentioned this to Derpy.

“If you sit still,” Derpy said, “you might appear to be a fresco. Which makes sense, since we’re al fresco to begin with.”

Karyn reeled from the pun. How Italian words translated into Equestrian so as to still be a pun, she didn’t know, and wondered if the magic wasn’t taking a better pun and doing the best it could. While still considering, Derpy continued.

“What do you think he’s like?”

“Who?”

“Dinky’s coltfriend? Or fillyfriend?”

Karyn finally came back to the conversation. “I don’t know.”

“I’m just saying, it’s a big indicator of how I raised her. If she finds a really good friend to be her special somepony, it means that she’s confident in herself, that she’s not needy, that she’s really grown up. It’s almost like my final exam as a mother.”

“Hey, don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Dinky’s still young. Maybe the first pony she meets won’t be the one for her. Her growing up and showing an interest in other ponies that way doesn’t mean your job as a parent is over. It might only be beginning.”

“There you are!”

It was Dinky returning at last. Karyn leaned over and said to Derpy, sotto voce, “Remember, relax, get her to relax, and let her come to us.”

“Right.”

Dinky sat down. “I got all turned around and couldn’t find you! I had to go all the way home and then take the route I knew to get here.” She laughed embarrassedly.

“That’s all right,” said Karyn. “Just sit down, take your drink. I’m sure it’s still cold, and we’ll all—“

“What’s he like?!” shouted Derpy.

“What?!”

Karyn downed her drink in a single gulp. Derpy was hovering with excitement.

“Karyn figured it all out! We know that you’ve got a coltfriend or a fillyfriend and you’ve been ditching us to spend time with him or her. I’m so excited!”

“Mommy, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have a coltfriend.”

“So it is a filly?” asked Derpy. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind.”

“No! It’s nothing like that at all! I don’t have somepony I’m with yet, and I haven’t been ditching you!”

Derpy shook her head. “Dinky, don’t lie. You’ve been trying to avoid spending time with Karyn and me all day, and we can tell that there’s something going on.”

“Grr! Mommy, stop trying to pry! It’s better for you not to know!”

Derpy opened her mouth, but Karyn put her hand up to silence her, then reached over and laid her hand on Dinky’s hoof.

“Listen. I’m saying this as your friend. You know that your mother is going to think the worst if you don’t explain. Whatever it is, just let us know and we’ll get through it together. Please.”

Tears were welling in Dinky’s eyes. “But what if it is the worst thing that Mommy could see?”

Karyn had to think fast. “Then that’s why I’m here. If it’s something that she can’t take, I’ll explain to her the things you can’t. But keeping secrets isn’t going to help. Please,” she said again.

Looking back later, Karyn would always believe that, given but a moment longer, Dinky would have told everything. But before she could speak again, Karyn saw a shadow overtake them at the table, and she looked up.

Standing there, looking over the scene, was a reddish-brown Earth pony stallion. His mane was shaggy and curly, and his belly hung down in a paunch. His expression bore a mark of bemusement and surliness, as if seeking to blame Karyn for making Dinky cry. Karyn sat back, trying to get a read on him, but her eyes were pulled away to Derpy.

She sat there, her hooves at her side. Her wings drooped down, not pinned to her body but dangling as if she’d lost all muscle control. Her eyes, usually so full of laughter, were devoid of emotion. Her mouth was a slit.

The stallion looked at her and cocked his head, wondering how the stone face was going to break. Without moving, and barely opening her mouth, Derpy said one word.

“Hello.”

From the gentlest creature Karyn knew, the word carried ice in its tone. All the anger that Derpy had poured out to the young mail carrier was still jovial, and her frantic worry over Dinky couldn’t break her happiness. But now, all Karyn could detect from Derpy, besides a tinge of fear, was a placid, cold hatred.

“Derpy,” he responded, and she lowered her ears slightly, as if her name had been tainted by him saying it.

Karyn didn’t know what to do, so she sat there as he turned back to her. Dinky stood up and positioned herself in front of the stallion.

“Karyn,” Dinky said, “This is my daddy.”

To be continued...

70: Derp Beat Dad

Karyn took a sharp intake of breath. She needed a moment to digest everything, but wasn’t going to get it. The stallion—Dinky’s father—was still looking at her wondering who or what she was. It explained why Dinky was being so secretive and also, to some degree, Derpy’s reaction. She didn’t know what had occurred between them in the past, but clearly it bothered her more than anything Karyn had seen.

She said her own name casually, but didn’t extend her hand. He looked away from her and back to Dinky.

Meanwhile, Derpy stood up and addressed the table in a formal tone. Karyn figured that manners would be the only thing keeping Derpy from breaking down emotionally.

“If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll be getting home. Karyn, if you would care to accompany me, I will convey you. Dinky, I will contact you later. Have a pleasant day.”

Not knowing what else to do, and having to cast her allegiance somewhere, Karyn stood up, bowed her head to Dinky, and followed Derpy. Although they were the same streets that they’d been running all over, they felt colder and darker.

No words were spoken between them. Karyn wasn’t even sure where they were going until she saw the train station once more. This time it was bustling with ponies, but when Derpy reached the ticket booth and was informed that the next train for Ponyville wasn’t for another two and a half hours, she started shaking.

“All that time, so much waiting, first this morning and now this, and I can’t get out of this city for another two hours now and I can’t leave I’m trapped I’m trapped I’m trapped—“

“Derpy!”

“Karyn, let me out I want to go home!”

She threw her arms around Derpy’s neck and dragged her away from the ticket window. She pulled her around the side of the building and hoped nopony else would come by and cause a scene. She laid Derpy’s head down by the cool grass. It bobbed up and down with quiet sobs.

“It’s all right, Derpy. It’s all right. You don’t have to talk about it. Just let it out.”

Derpy sat up and sniffled, wiping her eyes. “No, I want to talk about it. Maybe if I get all the memories I have out it won’t hurt so much.”

“Are you sure.”

“I think so. I just don’t know where to start.”

Karyn sat down on the grass. “Why don’t you tell me his name?”

“His name is Rocky Top. I met him a long time ago, when I first took over my father’s mail route. He was apprenticed to a carpenter, and every day when I would bring the mail to the shop he would put down his hammer or saw and stare at me. I wasn’t the most perceptive young mare, but after time even I could figure out that he liked me. If there was a job hauling wood he would brighten up especially and take his time loading my cart while he asked me about my day, or even more personal questions.

“Was I wrong to be charmed by him? Nopony else seemed to notice me in that way. Who would want a pegasus who still had to work at flying, whose eyes were crossed, whose cutie mark was a sign of weakness rather than a special talent? But he did. Nopony understands love. Well, maybe Princess Cadance, because it’s her special talent. But I didn’t even know about her at the time.”

“You’re digressing.”

“Sorry. Anyway, after a while of this we decided that we were in love. Of course, it was difficult for two young ponies just starting out. My daddy didn’t have much money and neither did Rocky’s family. We each had jobs, but they didn’t pay much. He worked hard, though, and when he was made a journeyman carpenter and got a pay raise, he decided it was time to propose marriage.

“We had a simple wedding, just the families and the mayor of Ponyville presiding, which was a service she provides as part of her job. Ponies who want to get married queue up on a given date, and each one takes about fifteen minutes, then everypony can go off to their own party.

“Rocky found a cheap house and got to work in his spare time trying to build it up into something nicer. Soon enough he was spending his time on building a nursery, because we got the word that our foal was on the way.

“We never talked about having children. It was just what ponies did when they got married young. I never said yes or no, but when it actually happened I had nothing to complain about. Only a worry, that when she came out she wouldn’t be smart, or would have problems with her eyes like me. Rocky assured me that he would love her no matter what. I don’t think he was lying. Well, that doesn’t matter. Have you ever thought about children, Karyn?”

Karyn exhaled. “It’s a lot different in the world I’m living now. They make life so complicated.”

“That’s true, but let me tell you one thing. When I went into the hospital, it hurt a lot. Dinky was a difficult labor, and even with all the painkilling spells that the unicorn doctors used, it still kept hurting. Especially with her horn. Finally she came out and the pain ended. They cleaned her up, wrapped her in a blanket, and laid her in my hooves. You’re a very good friend of mine, but nothing we’ve done compares to that moment. It was the high point of my life.

“After that…I can say where it started. Rocky lost his job with the carpenter. I don’t know all the details, because he refused to tell me, but from what I could gather, he didn’t lose it because there wasn’t enough work or any noble reason. He was either insubordinate or lazy, something like that. If it wasn’t, then why couldn’t he just go to work for some other carpenter?

“I assured him that we’d find a way to make it. I was back on my hooves by that time and could take the mail route again, even if I wanted to stay with Dinky all the time. He kept looking for work, and sometimes he would even find it. He certainly wasn’t fit to go into farming with its long hours. He had a good job as a salespony for a while, but lost that one too. Whatever the reason, he just couldn’t hold one.

“At that point we started talking about moving out of Ponyville. I don’t know whether he brought it up first or I did, but we talked. Both our families were in Ponyville, but Dinky hadn’t started school yet and I thought that if we did, then would be the time. But it never went beyond talking. Rocky always had such a strong aversion to doing things. He preferred to let things happen to us.

“Maybe I’m not being fair. You know, you’re only getting one side of the story.”

Karyn picked up Derpy’s hoof. “At this point, I’m only interested in your side.”

“I could have forgiven him anything. We could have gone on without money. My father was never rich, and my fillyhood home was a happy one. When Dinky had to go to school, we would have found a way to pay for it. That was only the trigger. What was beneath…it just seemed that, when Dinky came, he was resentful that I spread my time between him and her. I only loved him more for giving her to me. Why couldn’t he see that?

“I first took notice after an incident. For her birthday, the one year that Rocky had made good money as a salespony, we scrimped and saved to buy Dinky a special toy. It was kind of a training box for young unicorns, where it would work with their horns and spin a wheel or make a rattle sound or such. Dinky found that she could trigger the rattle sound and loved it. I’ll admit it was annoying, but she was having such fun. Well, Rocky walked over and snapped the box in two. Poured all the magic out of it, made it worthless. I don’t know if he figured that, if he didn’t, Dinky would never stop, but that was when I saw how angry and short-tempered he could be.”

Derpy stood up and seemed calmer. “From there it just got worse. He got more surly and irritated, and I lost my temper more than a few times as well. If I can say anything in my own defense, it’s that I didn’t leave after a fight. I waited until we were both having a reasonably good day, and I told him that I was taking Dinky and leaving. We had a conversation about it, calmly and rationally, and he let me.”

Karyn stood up and rejoined her. “And today was the first time you saw him?”

“Saw, yes. I know he goes from town to town finding whatever work he can, because Dinky told me that they write to each other. And that’s all right with me, but I really don’t want them spending time together. He’ll lead her down a bad road, make her irresponsible the way he is.”

“Maybe so, but Dinky’s a lot stronger than you give her credit for. You see her as this little filly still, but she’s been under your care her whole life. I don’t think that one day’s visit from her father is going to ruin all that.”

She peered around the corner to see if the coast was clear.

“Maybe. I just worry about her makeup. She’s his daughter too, so all of his meanness is inside her somewhere.”

Karyn didn’t want to get into a debate about pony genetics. Instead, she said, “Still, you walked out of there and all she saw was that her mother wanted to fly away from her as fast as she—you—could. We can’t go back home until you find her and make it up to her.”

“But what if she’s still with him? What if we can’t even find her?”

“We’ll find her at some point. And if Rocky is still there, you don’t have to talk to him. Just don’t seize up like you did and go all formal. Admittedly it’s a better reaction than freaking out, but you’ve got to stand up to him.”

Derpy stared at Karyn, hoping that she could convince her to let go and come up with some excuse, but then hung her head down and walked back through Canterlot. This time Karyn led the way.

The table at the café where they had left Dinky and Rocky was empty, but an inquiry of one of the servers led them back toward Dinky’s apartment over the shop. Karyn knocked on the door and hoped. A magical glow and the knob turned.

“Hello,” she said, “Dinky?”

The door flew open wide. Although the sun was low in the sky, the bare conditions of the apartment made it bright and airy. Dinky hopped off a worn overstuffed couch and galloped to the entrance. “Karyn! You came back. Oh, I’m so relieved!”

“Your mom’s here too. May we come in?”

Despite the brightness of the place, Karyn could see Rocky shifting in the shadows. Dinky nodded, and Karyn and Derpy entering, Derpy keeping as close to the door as she could. She looked at Dinky, trying to keep her eyes on her, and said, “I’m sorry if I upset you before. I came back because I was worried and wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Of course I’m all right, Mommy. Daddy would never hurt me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Whatever else his flaws, I believe that he does love you.”

Karyn grimaced at the evident fact that Derpy planned to ignore Rocky’s presence and only speak to Dinky.

“And I’m sorry,” Dinky said “that I didn’t tell you. I should have known that you were going to come visit anyway, but even if you weren’t, it would have been better to let you know why and talk about it later.”

They hugged. “All right, we forgive each other,” said Derpy.

“Thanks for understanding about Daddy.”

“Well, as I said, he does love you. You reflect on him, and that’s what he loves, things that make him feel bigger.”

Karyn sucked on her teeth as the shuffling from the shadows grew louder. Rocky Top stood up and plodded across the room.

Dinky got in between her parents. “Daddy, Mommy, please don’t start fighting.”

Rocky spoke quickly, before anyone else could. “Derpy, as usual you don’t listen. You’re taking things from the past that you barely remember and twisting them around to make it look like I’m some sort of selfish pony with no love for anypony else. If you actually listened to me—buck, if you actually listened to Dinky, you’d know that’s not the case.”

“All I know is that there’s no way to tell whether you’re being helpful to Dinky or harmful, so I’d prefer you not be around at all. Normally that’s something you don’t have a problem with.”

“Oh, buck, Derpy, if you keep bringing—“

“Both of you, stop it!” Dinky shouted. “I knew this would happen, that why I tried to keep you two apart. Daddy, why couldn’t you just leave us alone, and Mommy, why couldn’t you just not have come or stayed away or anything?!”

The three ponies all continued to shout at each other. Karyn didn’t know how she could stop it. Her meek voice didn’t even carry above their bickering. That gave her her clue for what to do. She just needed to figure out who could be loud enough. After thinking back to the MLP canon, she focused and called forth the green light.

“Enough! Everypony, be quiet!” Whether they were actually cut off by her words or just shocked at the six-foot tall minotaur with a booming parody of Karyn’s high voice, all the ponies listened and obeyed.

All right, Karyn, she thought. You’ve got their attention, now what are you going to do with it?

Rocky said, “How did you—“

“I’ll explain later. Right now you need to step outside so that I can explain things to Dinky and Derpy.”

“Me?! But they’re not the ones fighting.”

Karyn raised her voice even more. “Just get out. You’ve had no problem being away from Derpy for years, a few more minutes isn’t going to kill you.”

He stumbled out of the apartment. All the girls could tell that he hadn’t gone far down the stairs, so they moved to the opposite side of the apartment. Karyn resumed her natural form, to her relief, and they spoke in low voices.

“Good job getting him out of here,” said Derpy. “You think we could sneak away while he’s out there?”

“That’s not what we’re going to do. I’m going to invite him in and talk to him without either of you present. Both of you have feelings about him that get in the way of being honest about the way he is. Well, I’ve only just met him today, so I still want to know more. Maybe I can make him understand a little more about you two. Derpy, you’ve changed a lot since you saw him last. I’ll try to make him see that.”

“You’ll listen to him, won’t you Karyn?” asked Dinky.

“I intend to. Could you go and fetch him?”

Derpy insisted on flying out the window rather than cross Rocky’s path again, and Karyn reflected that it was like the problem of the fox, the hen, and the grain where you had to cross the river.

Once Dinky had left, Rocky came in. Unsure whether she was the hostess or the guest, Karyn invited him to sit down.

“First explain to me how you brought that minotaur.”

“The short version is that I’m a changeling. But that’s not important right now. Derpy gave me her side of what went on between you two. I want to hear your side.”

Rocky opened his mouth like he was going to upbraid Karyn, then thought better of it. “When I was young, I loved Derpy. I don’t apologize for that. But we just grew apart. You’re her friend?”

“Yes.”

“She ever bug you to clean up your room? Don’t answer, I can see that she has. Ever get on you for not doing some job or some chore? Yeah, she used to do that to me too. Always on me to get things done, look for work when I knew some job was right around the corner. Made me more nervous trying to get one because I was afraid of what she would say if I didn’t. Simple fact is that she’s real demanding. Then once Dinky came along…listen, I love Dinky, and not the selfish way Derpy says. But nothing I did was ever enough for Derpy. I’d want a moment’s peace and she’d be on me for not being the father of the year. Not that she’d yell, she’d just give me the big eyes and make me feel bad.”

Karyn nodded. She could see in her head that their split had been the best idea for everypony. “All right, but why are you back here now?”

“I’ve swung by Ponyville a couple of times, and I’ve written letters to Dinky plenty, but I haven’t had time with her ever. When I got the word that she was going to school in Canterlot, I saved up a bunch of money to make it out here. Can’t stay too long, have to get back to work. But I’d hoped I’d at least get a day with my filly, to fulfill the dream I’d always had of seein’ her grow up.”

“All right, I’m going to bring them in and see what we can’t do.”

“Are you sure Derpy will come in?” asked Rocky.

“She’ll have to if we want to solve this.”

She opened the door. After bringing in Derpy and seating Dinky between her parents, she began.

“Now I’m no family therapist. I’m not even from this universe! Derpy, you know you’re my friend. Dinky, you too. Rocky…I don’t know you. But what matters is this. Everything that went on between you is all gone. What matters is one pony.” She pointed at Dinky.

“Everyone says that the best interests of the child are what’s important. Now, Rocky, that doesn’t mean you can have a part-time filly or whenever you want. From everything Derpy’s told me, you’re a lazy pony. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t make for a good father. Now, I’m going to explain something very important to Derpy, and it might hurt you. I think it’d be better if you just left. When Dinky really is on her own, then you can be her friend. If you want to stay, it has to be as her father.”

He looked toward the door, but sat still.

“All right,” Karyn said. “Derpy, I know why you have the reaction you do to Rocky. It’s because you know, deep in your heart, that Dinky is his filly as much as yours. I mean, she’s a hybrid of the two of you. The same lazy, tramping pony that left you is part of her, makes up who she is. You’ve been trying all her life to work it out of her, and I’m sure that when she got into Princess Celestia’s school you were overjoyed. But you can’t change who she is.”

Dinky stared at Karyn, who tried to read her expression. Dinky’s lack of ambition had never been a declared secret between them, but it had been something she’d kept from Derpy. In her eyes, Karyn saw that she was resolved, and so continued. “She’s not going to be Twilight Sparkle, or even Lyra who came up with the kind of spell that found me. She’s going to find her place in Equestria and be happy. Unless somepony pushes her either way. Too much from her mother, and she’ll try to be those ponies, fail, and be miserable. Too much from her father, and she won’t do the work needed to find that place. Above all, the biggest thing you two need to do, is to understand how the other fits into her.”

In Karyn’s mind, Derpy and Rocky would stand up and have an awkward hug with Dinky in the middle. That didn’t happen. Instead, Rocky stood up first and said, “That makes some sense. Dinky, you’re your own mare. I’ll be in town another day or two. If you want to see me, come around and we’ll meet as equals.”

He walked out of the apartment. Karyn let out the breath she was holding. Then she laughed when Derpy did the same.

“I guess it’s all out now,” said Dinky.

“Then what Karyn said is true?” asked Derpy.

“It is. Is…that all right, Mommy?”

Derpy got down on her knees. “Listen to me, little Muffin. If we were in Canterlot Castle, and in the middle of a conversation you decided to stab Princess Celestia with your horn, burn Princess Luna down with dark magic, and lay Equestria to waste, I would assume that all of them were bad and that you had a good reason. I will always trust you. I may not always understand, and I may not always remember, but if there’s part of you that wants to be like your father, then it’s right for you to do that.”

“I love you, Mommy.”

“And I love you too.”

Karyn stood up and shouldered her purse. “I guess my work here is done.”

Author's Note

Next time, on Lyra's Human 2: Derpy's Human:

“Muffinhead? What’s wrong? You have food, you have water. I let you outside yesterday to, well, you know. There shouldn’t be anything else you need.”

The ginger cat bounced up and rubbed himself against her hooves.

“I guess cuddles don’t follow a schedule, do they?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her plan foiled, Derpy resigned herself. “We can do that. Just don’t tell Twilight Sparkle. She’ll want to know everything about it.”

“You see her more than I do, living in the same town…and same universe.”

They pulled into the parking lot and Derpy disguised herself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now out in the open where people could see them, Karyn and Derpy made their way halfway around the lake to one of the benches. “How about that one?” asked Derpy.

“Sure. It’ll be comfortable not to be sitting on the grass anymore."

Please enjoy that one too!

71: Shh! It's a Li-Derp-y

Derpy finished her Sunday cleaning ritual and flew upstairs to get her saddlebag. Even though she travelled every Sunday, she liked to run down a checklist as though it were an important mission. She ran down each spell-holder to ensure that they were all present and in the right order, that they were packed down to not fall out, and that the strap of the bag was secured tight around her waist. Since she had lost weight, she was down to the last hole on the strap. Soon a new bag would be required.

Returning downstairs, she made one final check of the house, inserted her hoof into the spell, and was right about to turn it, when she heard a soft voice.

“Mew.”

“Muffinhead? What’s wrong? You have food, you have water. I let you outside yesterday to, well, you know. There shouldn’t be anything else you need.”

The ginger cat bounced up and rubbed himself against her hooves.

“I guess cuddles don’t follow a schedule, do they?”

She knelt down and bumped heads with the cat. He then bounced to the window and tapped it.

“No, you went out. You have to stay in while I visit Earth.”

Muffinhead only meowed louder and jumped.

“Are you pointing at the sun?” asked Derpy. “What, do you want to see Princess Celestia?”

He rolled his eyes, then stared, trying to develop telepathy.

“Oh! It’s the angle of the sun! You’re saying that it’s been a year since we met. You’re right. I’m sorry I forgot. I’ll do something nice for you tomorrow. I promise.”

That seemed to be enough for Muffinhead, as he gave her another rub and bounced up the stairs. Derpy shook herself to knock off any shedded fur, and was finally able to leave to see Karyn.

Flying from the college to Karyn’s summer home, Derpy let her mind wander. Getting the cat had been a fun diversion for her, and made sure her house wasn’t empty. But it also served as a constant reminder that Earth was part of her. Muffinhead didn’t go out too often when other ponies were around, but if somepony did see him, Derpy would have to explain his origin. Mostly they would roll their eyes then. Going to another world and coming back with a cat, that was just something Derpy would do.

She lit on Karyn’s windowsill and let herself in.

“Good morning!” said Karyn.

“Hello to you too. What’s the situation look like as far as your parents?”

“They’ll be in and out all day. Nothing special planned that they could drag us away from fun, but nothing stopping them from coming in.”

Derpy leaned against a wall while humming and breathing slightly so Karyn could track her while invisible. “If that’s the case, how about getting out of the house?”

“That fits in well with my plans. It’s the perfect weather outside.”

“Perfect weather? Is there such a thing? I take an interest. Even if I’m not in weather myself I could let the weather pegasi know about this perfect weather you have on Earth and they can import it.”

Karyn giggled. “Maybe not perfect, but I think it’s the best. It’s the kind of temperature where it’s cold outside, and so all day your body gets cold. But the sun’s out, so as soon as you get into the car that’s been baking all day, you get those warm rays all at once. To me it’s even better than slipping into warm pajamas right out of the drier.”

“I’ve never done that either.”

“That’s right, you hang your clothes on a clothesline. And you have natural fur to keep you warm. Well, trust me, going from internal cool to external warm is one of the best feelings a human can experience. So definitely, let’s get out of the house.”

After flying back down, Derpy broached her idea to Karyn. “So I was thinking that we could go back to the park where we found Muffinhead last year. We haven’t been there all summer, and it’s kind of like a tradition.”

“A one-year-old tradition.”

“Doesn’t make it any less. We could go around to that section where no one goes and I can go visible.”

“We could at that,” said Karyn. “But what would we actually do there? Last year we had the picnic, and that’s fine, but we shouldn’t center events just around eating. When I said I wanted to get out of the house, I actually had in mind, you know, doing something.”

“Going to the park isn’t something?”

“It is, but it’s also nothing.”

Whatever zen moment Derpy was going to have was cut short as Karyn opened the door to the car. “OK, here we go. Aaaaaah,” she said as she slipped into the seat and rubbed against the fabric. “So toasty. Come on, get in before the heat’s all gone.”

Derpy followed suit, but saw no reason to be particularly excited. “It’s just hot.”

“Fine. I’ll roll down the windows and then we’ll get cool again.”

They pulled out of the driveway, and Derpy said, “How about this? You head toward the park. If you spot something you’d like to do on the way, we’ll do it. Otherwise, we just go on to the park and do the picnic thing.”

“That sounds fair.”

Derpy thought this was clever, in that it would be unlikely for Karyn to find something. She drove on, squinting into the sun and enjoying it. They had not, of course, driven the route for almost a year, and Derpy’s direction sense was needed twice to tell Karyn where to turn. As she made the second, she said, “I know this route! I go to the library this way.”

“Library?”

“Yes. We should grab a couple of books there and read them in the park.”

Her plan foiled, Derpy resigned herself. “We can do that. Just don’t tell Twilight Sparkle. She’ll want to know everything about it.”

“You see her more than I do, living in the same town…and same universe.”

They pulled into the parking lot and Derpy disguised herself. “It’s a lot less treeish than the Ponyville Library.”

“Yes. Library architecture is very distinctive on Earth. Lots of bright lights and windows, so that when the sun is out, like today, it gets natural light.”

The building was mostly rectangular, but Derpy saw odd projections at some points and a cupola on top. It didn’t appeal to her taste, but once they got inside Derpy did like the wide halls and the stacks. There was room to maneuver and a nice smell of cleanser. She whispered, “Do you think they’d like me to dust the tops of the shelves?”

“Maybe, but don’t draw attention to yourself, and keep your voice as low as possible. It is a library. If a book tickles your fancy, let me know and I’ll take it out on my card.”

“You have to pay for them?”

“Not my credit card, my library card!” Karyn was happy that Derpy had picked up enough Earth culture to know what a credit card was, but sighed that there was still so much to learn.

She ambled over to the fiction section. Walking up and down the aisles, she saw some familiar spines and picked out a stack. It was a delicate balance, choosing library books. Too few meant being stuck with potential boredom. Too many meant increasing both the likelihood that she would not return them on time and the severity of the fine when it happened.

Karyn had just settled on five books when she felt Derpy’s presence. After checking the aisles on either side, she whispered, “Find anything?”

“Not really. I can’t tell which are the good human books and which are the bad ones.”

“I can see where that would be a problem. Maybe I can find something for you.”

“What about the ones you have?”

Karyn looked at the titles she had picked. A couple of murder mysteries, some international intrigue, and a historical fiction novel. None of them were appropriate for Derpy. “I don’t think you’d like these. I’ll get you some light fantasy.”

“How do you know that you’ll like them, then?”

“I’ve read them all before.”

She no longer felt Derpy keeping up, and had to walk back a bit.

“You already read them? Then why are you taking them out again?”

“I want to reread them.”

“But you know what happens,” said Derpy.

“Which means I also know that they’ll be good. Even though I know what happens, I don’t know all the words. A book is a lot more than its plot. The words that make up that plot make a kind of music. You don’t listen to a song only once, do you?”

Before Derpy could answer, they reached the end of the aisle where there were people milling around. Karyn speed-walked past the supernatural-romance section to the true fantasy. She picked up a book and held it aloft. Since Derpy didn’t poke her to say no, she went to the checkout desk.

Right in the middle of the floor, Derpy whispered, “But don’t you want to get new music too?”

A passing librarian said, “Music section is that way,” pointing behind the desk. Karyn did her head-scratch laugh and moved along.

Once she got in private again, she whispered, “I will get a new book if you promise to keep quiet. We almost got caught there.”

After finding a book by an author she liked but that she hadn’t read, hustled to the automatic checkout, and got back in the car.

“You mad at me?” asked Derpy.

“No. I’m used to it now. But I can’t promise that I’m going to read this new book. I certainly want to do some rereading first.”

“I suppose. Let’s get on to the park!”

They pulled out onto the road again, Karyn humming to herself. A few miles down the road, Derpy spoke hesitantly.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course. I’m really not mad at you.”

“I know. But you took out the books without checking them out. That’s not right.”

Karyn turned to her right, the road being clear. “What? Oh, you mean the automatic checkout. You’re probably not used to that. It’s a whole electronic system that’s really efficient.”

“Maybe I will tell Twilight about the human libraries.”

“Up to you.”

She kept peeking toward the back seat where the stack of books was on the floor. It gave her the feeling of having a secret treasure waiting for her. When she saw the fantasy novel that she had picked out for Derpy floating toward the front, she said, “Wait for it. If you start now you’ll have to interrupt when we get there.”

After they stopped off for picnic food, they reached the park. Another drawback to having to hide Derpy was that Karyn had to carry everything herself. With the bag of food in one hand and the stack of books under her other arm, she walked slowly past the roller slide and around the lake. The park was crowded, and families were everywhere, children playing on the playground equipment or feeding bread to the ducks. Halfway around Karyn put everything down and took a rest. The tableau would have made a good magazine spread, and she snapped a picture with her phone before moving on to the meadow.

One final check to make sure that no one was watching, and Karyn snuck behind the trees. Now, despite the sounds of the park, by appearance they were in their own world. The tops of the trees were shaking, and if one didn’t know how strongly rooted they were, they might appear to want to tip over. The crabgrass and the clover mixed in with the grass to give every shade of green.

“Darn,” said Karyn. “We didn’t bring a blanket. Never mind. I don’t mind if my pants need to be laundered.”

“And I can always take a shower.”

Karyn laughed, and Derpy went visible. “It’s good to see you again, at last. Here’s your book.”

They sat underneath the trees, and the combination of sun and shade played silly patterns across the books they were reading. The rustle of leaves harmonized with the turning of pages. Derpy was taking a long time with each page, and had to turn back more than once. Karyn had one of the books she’d read before, and happily bounced through for the good scenes. After a while, she dug in the bag for a bottle of water and sipped in time to the story.

A few birds flew overhead, cawing and tweeting as they passed. Derpy and Karyn looked up at the same time, then caught each other. Karyn shook her head, just in case Derpy had any ideas of getting up there with them.

When she went back to reading, she let out a huge belly laugh.

“What is it?” asked Karyn.

“The way this book talks about magic. It’s hilarious!”

“Well, you’ve got to remember that we have no context for understanding real magic.” It took Karyn aback to say the last two words. “So it probably wasn’t intended to be funny. The author was just doing the best she could to make an interesting story.”

“Maybe you should interview some unicorns and write a story about actual magic.”

“Oh, no. I’m a numbers girl, not a writer. I’ve seen the English majors in my school, and they’re going to be a lot worse off than I am. Trust me, writing about magical ponies is just a waste of time that no sane person would do.”

Derpy stared skeptically. “Wouldn’t it be fun though?”

“Well, I won’t say I wouldn’t like to read it. But I wouldn’t spend my time writing it. Still, to each their own.”

They went back to reading. Aside from the occasional chuckle from Derpy when another point of the fantasy novel got something wrong, Karyn was able to lose herself in the familiar story. Only when she realized that Derpy had put down her own book, taken out some of the snacks, and was munching, did she bookmark her page and sit up.

“Are you thinking about what you’ve read?”

“Not exactly. I really like spending time with you, and if this is what you want to do, that’s OK. But is this really socializing? To read together? It seems like we could each do it on our own.”

Karyn closed the book entirely. “You’re right, but sometimes it’s not even about the activity. We could be watching a sunset or driving in the car or sleeping in the same room. It’s not always about the interaction as it is about the connection. We’re each not alone, and that’s important.”

Derpy didn’t respond to that. She just looked.

“But all right,” said Karyn. “We can move the picnic back out to the main park so that we’re around people. Unless you’re really keen to stay visible, in which case you’d better get us to Equestria.”

“No, out there is fine. Just to have some human contact besides you.”

“I can always try to find Albert if you like.”

“No!” Derpy backed off at that, but Karyn was joking and she packed up all the books and food while Derpy went invisible again.

“The only problem is that you won’t be able to read while we’re sitting out there.”

“That’s all right. I want to reflect on what I’ve read so far. When I do read books, that’s how I do it: in fits and starts, giving each chapter time to sink in.”

Karyn slipped in her Bluetooth. “A lot of people are like that. They read before bedtime or such. If that works for you, it’s good. I like to binge on my reading. When I was little, that wasn’t always so convenient.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because in our old house, we only had one bathroom.”

Now out in the open where people could see them, Karyn and Derpy made their way halfway around the lake to one of the benches. “How about that one?” asked Derpy.

“Sure. It’ll be comfortable not to be sitting on the grass anymore.”

Karyn was right, as it was a vestige from before benches had to be designed to be uncomfortable to sleep on. The wood was old and, perhaps from a previous rain shower, felt softer than it should have, even though it was not wet. Karyn sat on one side, leaving enough room for Derpy on the short side, so that if someone else sat down, they would go for the longer side and not sit on Derpy.

Unless, Karyn thought, they were a creepy perv, in which case I want Derpy to buck them off the bench.

The position did result in a close cuddle, but neither Derpy nor Karyn minded.

Karyn pulled out her book again, taking a look over the scene before diving back in. Derpy would interrupt frequently with an observation about a child on the playground falling down, or a notice when Karyn passed a chapter. Here Karyn saw the advantage of rereading a book. If she were trying to incorporate an unfamiliar story, the interruptions would have been a bother.

A middle-aged woman walked by and sat on the long side of the bench. She took out a compact and touched up her makeup.

“This sure is good stress relief,” said Derpy. “Watching other people have fun while you relax.”

“Definitely. Especially with all we went through last week.”

The woman turned and stared at Karyn, wondering if she was talking to her. Karyn smiled and pointed at the Bluetooth.

Rolling her eyes, she turned back away and so did Karyn. She muttered under her breath, “…comes to the park and still can’t be bothered to disconnect. They’re all the same.”

If Karyn really had been on the phone, she probably would not have heard what the woman said. As it was, she decided that she wasn’t going to let it pass. “Listen, lady. In the first place, just because you saw some report on the news about the decadence of youth doesn’t mean that you know what’s going on. Our connectivity is a benefit, not a drawback. Beyond that, there’s more to what I’m doing than you know.”

She picked up her bag again. “Come on, this place isn’t so relaxing,” she said, while moving down several more benches until the lady was out of earshot and barely visible.

It wasn’t until Karyn was long gone that the lady said, “Who was she telling to come on?”

They were closer to the playground at the park’s entrance than the meadow, so no further retreat was possible. But that didn’t seem to matter, as no one else had witnessed the scene. Karyn pulled out her book again.

“Did you really have to get mad at her?” asked Derpy.

“No, probably not. It was just a combination of two things that irk me. One is people who hate on technology for no good reason. The other is jumping to conclusions.”

“What if she had jumped to the conclusion that you weren’t on your phone but were using it to cover up talking to your invisible pegasus friend?”

Karyn laughed. “If she got that in a guess, it would still probably irk me.”

She went back to her book, and Derpy let her alone for a little bit, just people-watching. After another chapter, she joined in, reflecting that she didn’t get enough human contact. All summer long it had mostly been her parents and Derpy. But she thought it was right. If this was to be her last summer of absolute freedom, better to spend it with as few people as possible. There’d be plenty of time for that later.

“Hrm.”

“What is it?”

Derpy fidgeted on the bench. “Now I want to read more of the book!”

“Heh. We’ll go home soon and you can read in my room so long as the folks are away. Maybe even if they’re there. You can lay the book on the bed and it’ll look like it’s just there and the pages will appear to just be blowing in the wind. Just let me finish one more chapter.”

Resigned, Derpy went back to watching the happy families in the park, singing to herself lightly. Anyone passing by would have thought it was Karyn.

“You done yet?”

“Yes, all right. I find I like this kind of exhibitionism. Or lack thereof in your case.”

“What do you mean?” asked Derpy.

“Well, since you’re good at hiding in plain sight, in a way. I’ve gone from being nervous about it to dealing with it to kind of liking it. Maybe when you’re not here, Dinky could come by. Do you think she’d like to see Earth?”

Derpy took a long pause. “Given what I learned last week, maybe not. You know, that she just wants to live a simple life, she’d probably not want to leave Equestria. She’d want to come and see you.”

They walked slowly to the car. “It doesn’t feel like we accomplished much today, does it?” said Karyn.

“We saw our secret place in the park. The place I found Muffinhead. When we look back, we won’t have to say that it was a place we went to one time and never went back again. To me, that’s an accomplishment.”

Karyn got into the driver’s seat and buckled to her seat belt. “I guess it is after all. Let’s go home.”

Author's Note

A tough pun in this week's title. Let's see if I can do better next week!

Did you hack the Internet again?”

“No, nothing as bad as that.”

Karyn brightened and pointed at Derpy. “Aha! So you did do something!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy gave her wings a pump and turned around. “We’re on our way.”

“We’re flying from Ponyville to Las Pegasus?”

“Sure! Why not? It’s a nice day.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Here you go, Derpy.”

Derpy took the bag in hoof and bounced it up and down. She and Karyn heard the jingling of coins. Opening, the drawstring, she looked in. “Bits?”

Come back next week for all that and more!

72: EnDerpreneurship

“Good morning, Karyn.”

“What’d you do?”

Derpy put one of her front hooves in front of the other. “What do you mean?”

“You’re acting nervous around me. That usually means you have something to confess.”

“No…not at all.”

Karyn tapped her foot. “You’re not even making eye contact with me. And you’re stumbling. Come on, spill.”

“It’s really nothing. Honestly. You’re being crazy, Karyn.”

“Calling me by my name?! This must be huge. What was it? Did you do some cloud topiary so that when I look outside the window there’ll be a sculpture of me there? Did you hack the Internet again?”

“No, nothing as bad as that.”

Karyn brightened and pointed at Derpy. “A-ha! So you did do something!”

“Well, you remember last week you mentioned bringing Dinky here to Earth, which kind of implied that you wouldn’t have a problem with a pony other than me using the spell?”

“You brought Dinky? She said yes? Where is she?”

Derpy, shaken out of her dithering, finally started talking at her normal volume. “Not Dinky. Another pony entirely. But they’re not here now. See, I made another visit to Earth during the week.”

“Without coming to see me?”

“I figured that you weren’t expecting me, and that if I did stop in to say hi, I might scare you or freak you out, because you’d think there was some emergency. Plus Sunday is our scheduled day, and I wouldn’t want to break that streak.”

With Karyn’s parents out of the house, and a large lawn between the house and anyone else, it was unlikely that they would be overheard. Nonetheless, Karyn walked over and shut the window, as if wanting to trap Derpy so that she couldn’t escape. Which she wasn’t actually doing, of course, since Derpy could always magic herself back to Equestria.

“Let me see if I’ve got this. During the week—“

“Wednesday.”

“Wednesday, you came to Earth with another pony.”

“Wednesday night.”

Karyn nodded. “Wednesday night. Obviously you weren’t spotted, because I would have heard if someone had discovered a pegasus pony.”

“It was night, and I stayed invisible.”

Karyn knew this tactic of Derpy’s, giving out as little information as possible, as slowly as possible. She would just have to try to break through.

“Whom did you come with, and why did you bring them?”

Derpy tensed her lips. “You know Rainbow Dash? Rainbow hair, dashes everywhere?”

“Yes, hence the name. Rainbow Dash was with you? What for?”

“Do you remember when we went to the water park? As we finished, I mentioned that it was the kind of thing that ponies in general and pegasi in particular would really enjoy. Since then I mentioned it to a few and Rainbow Dash agreed. She thought that it might be exactly the kind of thing she would like to see built, maybe even do herself, but she wanted to see it before she made any decisions. Like I said, we went at night, so no one could see us. We couldn’t use any of the rides or anything, but she got an idea of what it was like even so. Well, technically we could have used the lazy river, but if I was going to sell Rainbow Dash on the idea, I didn’t think that the lazy river was the ride to show her.”

At last Derpy had broken through her nerves and told Karyn the point. “Is she going to have to make a lot of visits for research?”

“I don’t think so. Rainbow didn’t seem curious about Earth that much. And…well, yeah, that’s why.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Derpy quickly.

“Rainbow Dash doesn’t strike me as the kind of pony who would want to build and run a park. It’s a lot of work and making decisions. Doesn’t she want to get into the Wonderbolts? That’s all about discipline and listening to your superior. And doesn’t she like to take naps and have fun a lot? That’s not going to be an option if she’s running a water park.”

“Maybe, but Rainbow Dash is always looking for new things. The Wonderbolts, the weather patrol, being an element of harmony. She doesn’t settle in. She might get bored of the park or even not run it well and have to close, but she’s going to want to take the chance on it.”

Karyn nodded. “Are you like that?”

“Heck no! I only went for something new when I was forced to. Like when I wanted to make a friend because I was lonely.”

“I can understand. I think I’m like that too. I didn’t even think I was really agreeing to you as a friend. Of course, if I knew then, what I know now, I would have done the same thing.”

Derpy seemed to regain her nervousness. “So, you don’t like to be presented with new things, really?”

“Well, it’s not that I never want to try new things?”

“Oh, good!”

“Why?”

“Well,” Derpy laughed. “The thing is, that because Rainbow Dash, like I said, wasn’t too interested in Earth itself. But she does want to bring you in as a consultant.”

“Wha—?” Karyn began, but realized that she had no cause to be surprised. She was uniquely qualified, the logical choice for a pony who wanted to start a business, and besides, she still had the ability to say no. “Let’s head to Equestria. I want to talk to Rainbow and get the details.”

“Hop on.”

Karyn did, many questions circling around in her head. The details of what an Equestrian water park would look like, how the ponies would take it, and if Rainbow Dash had the attention span to deal with it. She was so deep in thought that it took a while for her to notice that Derpy was not going for a landing, but was cruising along with her wings spread, not pumping hard but letting the wind do the work.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Oh, yes. Even though she’s from Ponyville, Rainbow didn’t want to build the park here. Not enough ponies around. Particularly when she wants pegasi.”

Karyn brightened. “Great! So we’re finally going to get that Cloudsdale trip we’ve been talking about.”

“Ah. Well, no. Actually, she’s building it in Las Pegasus.”

“Of course. We’re never going to get out there. But how are we getting there.”

Derpy gave her wings a pump and turned around. “We’re on our way.”

“We’re flying from Ponyville to Las Pegasus?”

“Sure! Why not? It’s a nice day.”

Karyn was about to protest further, but clearly Derpy was implying that such a flight would not be a great distance. And she remembered Rainbow Dash reporting from both Las Pegasus and Baltimare in a single day, when Twilight’s premonition had required disaster-proofing Equestria. But still…

“We always have to take the train to go to Canterlot. Are you telling me that Las Pegasus is closer than Canterlot?”

“Sure it is! A lot closer.”

“OK, I guess. You know the land better than I do.” One more idea occurred to her. “Hang on. I’ve seen a map of Equestria. On that map, Ponyville and Canterlot were right on top of one another.”

“Who made that map? Was it a pegasus?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t signed.”

Derpy nodded. “Probably was. Pegasus cartography is its own science. Our maps aren’t the same as unicorn or Earth pony maps. Remember, we’ve all got our sense of direction built in. Ours are more like relief maps, designed to tell us about the nature of the air in different places.”

Karyn nodded. Perhaps because her primary pony contact was Derpy, who led a relatively simple life, she had trouble thinking of pegasi being such a different culture than hers. Internally, she chided herself for ethnocentrism.

Soon enough, Derpy was swooping lower. The city of Las Pegasus was a hybrid of ground houses and cloud structures. Karyn asked about that, and Derpy explained that all three types of ponies had founded the city, but they had chosen the name Las Pegasus because it sounded cool. Once they had, other pegasi had assumed it was similar to Cloudsdale, expecting fully cloud-based architecture. Both the original settlers and the newcomers had combined to add in some cloud features.

“Is that where we’ll find Rainbow Dash?”

“Not likely. She’s building the park on the outside of town.”

Karyn had, while driving, idly wished her car could fly so she could escape traffic, as nearly everyone who drives does on occasion. Of course, when considering it rationally, she realized that if every car flew the problem would exist again, and accidents would be worse. What she wanted was to have the only flying car. As Derpy flew over the Earth pony and unicorn section of Las Pegasus, Karyn got to enjoy that feeling on a small scale.

She spotted Rainbow Dash by her distinctive mane on the horizon, and oversaw the building site. It was very rudimentary. No slide had been completed yet, only the beginning of the supports.

“Hey! Derpy, Karyn, over here!

They landed and exchanged hellos. Karyn began. “So, I hear that you’re planning to rip off an idea from Earth and take all the credit.”

Derpy was shocked, but Rainbow laughed at the joke. “I’m going to try, anyway. It’s hard work trying to build this thing.”

“I can imagine.”

“I wasn’t able to get too close when I visited Earth. Derpy was crazy about security.”

Karyn smiled at Derpy for that.

“But here’s a problem,” Rainbow Dash continued. “Whatever they built your slides out of, we don’t have here.”

“Oh, right. I think they’re fiberglass or plastic, something like that. How are you getting around that?”

“I’m building it out of metal. On the playgrounds we have for foals, that’s usually how we do the slides. But that’s going to make it heavier than what you have. I’ve had to pay a lot of bits to a lot of smart mathematical ponies to figure out how to support it.”

Derpy nodded. “But I know once you have it, ponies will want to ride it.”

“I think so too. The big advantage we’ll have is that all the regular slides get super hot in the sun. With all the water flowing, this one will be cool. Come on, let me show you the top.”

She flew straight up, either counting on Derpy to lift Karyn or not thinking about anyone who couldn’t fly. Derpy did put Karyn on her back again, and soon they were with Rainbow, watching her demonstrate the path of the slide.

“Hey, Rainbow,” asked Karyn. “Is this the only slide you’re going to have?”

“Well, isn’t that what the water park is?”

She looked at Derpy. The slide was Derpy’s favorite part, and clearly she had built it up the most. “Mainly, but there’s other stuff too.” She told her about the wave pool, the lazy river, and some of the other slides.

“Hang on, I’ve got to write all this down.”

Rainbow dashed off to get a piece of paper. While she was away, Derpy said, “Of course I knew all that, but I didn’t want Rainbow to try to build everything at once. I thought it would be better to see if we could build a slide, get some ponies to enjoy it, and then go from there.”

“Oh. I guess I kind-of shot that down.”

“Yeah.”

Karyn thought for a moment. “Well, we’re just going to have to explain to her why she should do that and convince her rationally.”

Rainbow returned, pencil in hoof. “OK, now, the lazy river, that doesn’t sound too fun, but the wave pool, tell me about that.”

“Before we get into all that,” said Derpy, “Karyn had some concerns.”

“Thanks for putting me on the spot. Well, I know this is going to take a lot of effort and time.”

Rainbow spread her wings taut. “You have no idea!”

“Right, so it might be better to just work hard on this slide, get it done, and start letting ponies ride it. That way, you can start making money, as well as getting feedback from your customers.”

“Ooh, good idea.”

“I know it can be tempting to want to design more, because that’s the fun part, but you’ve got to allot enough resources for the not-fun parts as well.”

Rainbow made more notes, but then closed her pad. “I guess you’re right. Which works out, since that’s how I was doing things to begin with. But once this is done, yeah, I want to stick to designing.”

She looked forlorn, so Karyn said, “Well, it’s not like we can’t do anything about design. Now, we’re on the edge of town, and I can see a lot of land out there. Do you think you’ll be able to expand the park there?”

“Probably. Nopony else is using it.”

“That’s good, so space isn’t a consideration. Also, everypony will be going on the rides naked, so you won’t need a changing room. That’ll save you one thing to build. Eventually you’ll want to include food as well. You might not even do that yourself. You could bring in someone like Pinkie Pie to add a bakery.”

“Ooh, I never even thought of that,” said Rainbow.

“And the one thing that’s most important. You have to keep the slide safe. No matter how tempting it is, don’t just pull out a section midway through and watch ponies go flying off of the ride.”

“Um, why would that be tempting? I’m not building this so ponies can get hurt. I’m building it so that they can have fun.”

Derpy chimed in. “Yeah, really. That was a weird thing to say.”

At that point, one of the ponies working on the base of the water slide called up to Rainbow, so she excused herself, leaving the two of them atop the slide.

Derpy was still looking askance at Karyn. “No, really. Why did you think that Rainbow was going to make the place dangerous.”

“The truth is, I don’t know much about these parks myself. Just because I’m a human, it doesn’t make me an expert. But there’s a simulation computer game about running parks that was rather popular. I used to play it, and I was just remembering some of the things I did.”

She gave a sheepish grin, and Derpy laughed. “OK, now I want to play that game!”

“The next time we go back to Earth, I’ll see if I can find it. It’s kind of an older game. But I sometimes think that all simulation games are an excuse to build and then destroy. That’s something you’ve got experience with, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

Karyn winked. “Remember going to the beach? Spending all the time on the sandcastles only to smash them? There’s a reason that they call those kind of games ‘open sandbox’.”

Rainbow was finally making it back up to the top, when she turned and went back into the ramshackle trailer that she was using as an office.

“Looks like she forgot something.”

A moment later, Rainbow indeed came flying out, a small bag in hand. With her flying ability, it didn’t slow her down, though Karyn could see that she was listing to one side. She just knew how to compensate and arced up to the top of the slide.

“Here you go, Derpy.”

Derpy took the bag in hoof and bounced it up and down. She and Karyn heard the jingling of coins. Opening, the drawstring, she looked in. “Bits?”

“You’re the whole reason that I’m even getting this thing off the ground. You could have run with this yourself, but you let me do it. If it takes off, and I think it will, I’ll make back those bits and a lot more. Take those to start with, and if you need more, just let me know. Rainbow Dash has got your back!”

“I don’t really know how to say thank you for these.”

Karyn poked her. “I think you just did. See, everything worked out, even though you brought her to Earth without asking.”

Rainbow swooped. “Yeah, that’s another reason for the payment. I got to go to a whole nother world. How many pegasi can say that?!”

“One,” said Derpy.

Karyn raised her hand. “May I ask for an indulgence right now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m usually not that bad with heights, especially when Derpy’s flying me around. But right now, just standing up here on the platform, it’s starting to get to me. Normally when I’m on the water slide, I’m only this high up for a minute or so. For some reason, standing still this high up with no visual cues is messing with my equilibrium.”

“Oh, of course,” said Derpy. “Get on and I’ll take you down right away.” She gave Rainbow Dash a look that she hoped serve to explain that not everyone was as comfortable as they were in the air.

Rainbow waved to them. “You two go have fun, but be safe. I’m going to stay up here and get some more work done.”

To the sound of hammering and sawing, (and for some reason, Rainbow kept saying, “Drill, drill!”) Derpy lowered Karyn back to the ground. Once her feet were under her, she said, “Derpy, can I ask a question? Why is it Rainbow Dash who’s doing this. You’re just as able a pegasus as she is. Why not just ask her to finance it and help build?”

Derpy took a long look at the tower. “This isn’t what I want to spend my time on. Ponies like Rainbow can build big things like this, because they don’t believe that anything or anypony can stop them. I’m not that strong.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up like that. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

“Yes, but it’s a question of knowing how much putting your mind can do. I came to terms with it a long time ago. No, I can’t build towers like this, but I can buy a house or save some money or raise a foal. Those are my towers.”

Whatever Karyn’s reaction to this sentiment, it would have to wait, as Rainbow Dash came streaking back with another bag in hand.

“No, Rainbow,” said Derpy. “What you’ve given me is enough.”

“This isn’t for you. This is for Karyn. All those ideas she gave me are sure to pay off eventually.”

Karyn was shocked. “No, I can’t take this.”

“Sure you can!” She flew off before Karyn had a chance to argue further.

“What am I supposed to do with bits? I can’t spend these on Earth. They’re gold, and that’s useful, but the same problem with Rarity’s diamonds exists here. I can’t show a source of income without saying where I got it.”

“You can buy things in Equestria.”

“You’re right. I’ve taken a lot of favors from you. The next train ticket can be on me. What are you going to buy with yours?”

Hefting the bag in her hoof, Derpy said, “I’m not going to spend it at all right now. If I ever get an unexpected windfall, I just hang onto it until I need it. Because just as many times as I have money with nothing to spend on, I have something to spend on and no money. So I try to match them up when I can.”

“That’s a lot more sensible than I would be. But I’ll do that. Can you keep these bits for me and hold them until I need them?”

“Sure. Sometime when it’s not a Sunday I’ll bring you back and you can put them in the Ponyville bank. Meanwhile let’s get home so I can at least secure it at home.”

Karyn mounted up, they said good-bye to Rainbow Dash, and once more they were cruising. Up in the air, Karyn said, “Why don’t you give me the bags for now? If you can do all the flying with your wings, I can do all the carrying with my hands,”

“Thanks. Here you go.” She passed them up, losing a little altitude but soon flapping her way up.

“Does seem a shame to not get anything out of all this money.” She jingled the bags.

Derpy flew silently for a mile or so, then said, “There is another reason. Maybe in a few years, Dinky will have trouble settling down. And maybe Rainbow Dash will think that she still owes me a favor. If the park does well, Dinky could have a situation to enter. Maybe.”

“That’s a good point. Everyone always tells me that that’s how I should be looking for work, but it’s a lot easier said than done.”

“I’ll see if Rainbow Dash wants to give you a spot too.”

“Oh, no!” said Karyn. “There’s no way I’m standing on top of one of those slides to work.”

“You could work at the food court.”

“The commute between universes would be terrible.”

They circled around one more time to see the structure. Karyn was always worried about Equestria becoming too Earthlike, but somehow she didn’t see ponies splashing on the slide as corrupting. Derpy’s view was bigger. She saw the expanding park as a wonderful project, a monument to the ingenuity of ponies. If she herself had a hoof in it, it was to her credit too.

Karyn turned her head as Derpy flew for home.

Author's Note

I got no sleep last night, but I'm still here to publish and give you the preview!

“Why don’t you have a sunroof?” asked Derpy.

“They’re an option, which means the car costs more money. If I knew I was going to have a pegasus in the car, I might have sprung. And by ‘I,’ I mean my parents.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, Derpy. I’ve got to check in at the school.”

“Really? Even though you’re not living in the dorms anymore?”

Karyn threw on her jacket. “They want to know when the students are in just so that they don’t have to look dumb in front of the parents if one of them doesn’t show up. Anyway, you want to come with?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“This could be a pretty cool place,” said Derpy. “You could even live here long-term.”

“I don’t know that I’d be into that. In the first place, this isn’t too convenient to where the jobs are, and I don’t like long commutes.”

“How do you know you don’t?”

That's what's coming next--zzzzzz...

73: Derpcovery

Karyn craned her neck before carefully reaching out and turning the wheel to the left.

“I have to tell you, I don’t like this much.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

At the sound of the line that Derpy had actually used in her one speaking role on the show, Karyn couldn’t help smiling. Almost immediately, though, she returned to her intense concentration.

Driving back to school had been easier when Derpy had brought her truck. As it was, her own car was packed, floor to roof, with everything she could get in. A second trip might be necessary once she arrived and took inventory.

“If I had a sunroof, I could open it and let you raise your head outside and check the road for me. But without my rear-view mirror, I’ve got to be extra careful driving. Mostly it’s in making lefts though. I might need you once we get on the highway and I want to change lanes to the right.”

“Why don’t you have a sunroof?” asked Derpy.

“They’re an option, which means the car costs more money. If I knew I was going to have a pegasus in the car, I might have sprung. And by ‘I,’ I mean my parents.”

A few more turns and they were accelerating onto the highway, with Karyn rolling down her window and entering at ten miles-per-hour below the speed limit just to be safe.

“Are you always this cautious driving?”

Karyn reached for the cruise control, then decided against it. “No, I’m not. All that stuff in the back is messing with my visual cues though. I feel shut in. I’ll be happier once we get where we’re going.”

“Only another hour or so away.”

Karyn grimaced.

“Hey, at least we didn’t have to deal with your mom.”

Twenty minutes earlier, Karyn had finally won the argument with her mother to not bring her along. She had tried several tacks.

“I didn’t take you to school last year. I feel ashamed that I’m not doing my motherly duty.”

Karyn rolled her eyes at that. “It was fine. I made it all right with the moving van.”

“But then we were busy. Now I’m perfectly free, and besides, your father’s out on his fishing trip, so if I don’t go with you, I’ll be stuck here doing nothing.”

“You can wait for him to get home and then cook the fish.”

Karyn’s mother shot her a skeptical look, either concerning her cooking skills or the slim likelihood that there would be any fish to cook. “In any case, I wanted to meet this woman you’re living with. What’s her name? Gail?”

“Gayle, with a y. Which should endear you to her right there, since we both have that naming quirk. And certainly you should meet her, but by coming by on visiting day and having coffee or something, not by tramping around her house when everything is getting moved. You won’t meet her then, you’ll just see her.”

“But there’s still room in the front seat.”

That tripped Karyn up. She had left room for Derpy, not thinking that it would mean another excuse for her mother to want to come. “I still have some stuff to pack. And besides, what are you going to do? Drive back in my car, then come back to pick me up in a couple of weeks when I want a home visit? And meanwhile I’m without a car if I want to go into town? Or if I get an interview for an internship?”

Her mother had grumbled that Karyn didn’t need a car, but the point about internships got to her. Unfortunately for Karyn, it meant stopping a mile down from the house to move all the extra stuff from the front seat into every nook and cranny of the back so Derpy had room. Hence the blocked view.

“Here we go, I’m getting off the highway. Once I do, the mirror won’t be as big a deal. At least the driving will be at a speed where I have time to observe and make a decision.”

“I know what you mean. That’s why I like flying around Ponyville rather than racing from town to town.”

After another pair of turns, there was no longer any traffic, and Karyn was able to navigate to the house without further distress. She knocked on the door.

“Hey, Karyn! Glad you’re here. Here’s the keys to the apartment. You need help moving in?”

“Thanks, Gayle. No, I’ll take care of everything. I don’t think we’re quite up to help-move level of friendship.”

Gayle laughed at that and let her go. Karyn went back to the car and took the backpack that contained her laptop and a bunch of her clothes in garment bags. After a few more trips, she checked her cell phone for the time.

“Hey, Derpy. I’ve got to check in at the school.”

“Really? Even though you’re not living in the dorms anymore?”

Karyn threw on her jacket. “They want to know when the students are in just so that they don’t have to look dumb in front of the parents if one of them doesn’t show up. Anyway, you want to come with?”

“Do we really have to go together? Seems pretty inefficient.”

“Are you in a rush to get out of here?”

“No,” said Derpy, “but I just feel bad that I can’t be a good friend and keep bringing things in from the car, because I’ve got to stay hidden.”

“Well, it’s not like you can go up and check me in at the school.”

“True, but if you want to bring in one of the big boxes and your bookshelves, I’ll start unpacking them.”

With her excuse for resting her muscles gone, Karyn brought in the heavy box of books. When she got the bookshelf, Derpy helpfully lifted one end. “All right, I’ll head down to the office. I won’t be more than an hour, I’m sure.”

She walked off, and Derpy cracked the knuckles of her hooves. “This works out well. I’ve got less than an hour to ensure that Karyn is safely ensconced in an orderly apartment for the next four months. I can do this.”

She looked at the box and saw that, wisely, Kayrn had only half packed it with books. The rest were towels and lighter objects. Easier to carry, but more difficult for Derpy to alphabetize the books.

“I guess if I’m going to finish with a clean room, I’m going to have to begin with a mess.” She pulled out the books and spread them out on the floor, then set up the bookcase. “I wish I had some paper around here. I could design the room before I start putting it together.“

She eyed Karyn’s laptop, and wondered if she couldn’t figure out a CAD program to help her. But with less than an hour, she would have to do the work first. Karyn might like a plan, but Derpy didn’t trust her to follow it.

The front room would have to be Karyn’s main study and entertainment center combined. Derpy would be worried about that, but she had successfully prioritized her work when living in a single room, so she would have to be trusted to do so again.

The furniture that was Gayle’s was mismatched, but that could be dealt with by decoration. Derpy made a mental note to talk to Karyn about getting some flowers to tie the room together.

“Nothing’s going to get tied together if I don’t get these books off the floor, though,” Derpy said to herself.

She unfolded one of the bookcases and set it up near the wall near the TV, in the hopes that, were Karyn tempted to laze and watch TV she might see a book she wanted to read instead.

It got easier as Derpy made her way through the alphabet. Once through the M’s, she set up the second bookcase and was stacking smoothly and happily.

Then she heard the sound of a purse hitting the floor. Spinning around, she saw Gayle standing in the door with fear in her eyes. Derpy checked herself to see that she was invisible, and she was, but she still had two books in her hooves. Not knowing what else to do, she slapped them onto the shelves.

Don’t panic, Derpy thought. She can’t catch you, just fly up out of her reach. But Gayle wasn’t moving toward her. She was still holding still.

Derpy then considered whether or not she should go visible and explain everything. Gayle did know about Equestria, she remembered, and it was possible that the secret would be kept. But Derpy couldn’t do that without Karyn’s permission. Where was she when Derpy needed her?

Gayle pulled over one of the other boxes and sat down on it. She wasn’t going anywhere. Derpy also considered the possibility of just going about her work. Maybe Gayle thought this was normal.

It was a tense situation. Gayle stood up and cautiously held out her hand. Derpy now had to make a decision. She did not want to reveal herself. Cautiously, she flapped her wing and moved to the side. Gayle grasped at the air and clutched at the empty air.

Backing up, hardly daring to blink, Gayle returned to her perch on the box. Ten minutes later, The door opened, but Gayle didn’t turn her head.

“Hi, Gayle. Is anything wrong—“

“What are you?”

“I don’t under—“

“What are you? When I came in here I witnessed your books casually stacking themselves on the shelves. No one carrying them, no one lifting them. The laws of physics breaking themselves.”

Karyn grimaced as she understood. Technically it was only optics that were being violated, as invisible Derpy was using physics to help out.

Gayle was continuing. “Now, I didn’t sign on for this when I leased you the apartment.”

Karyn saw a major problem playing out. She had no time to get another apartment or a place in the dorms. She would wind up paying way too much and starting her future with two strikes against her.

“So I want you to admit the truth.” Gayle finally broke her stare and turned to face Karyn. “You’re a witch, aren’t you?”

“What?!”

Gayle backed off. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know the proper terminology. Maybe you prefer sorceress or enchantress or mage? I don’t know my way around magick“— Karyn could hear the k — “myself. So please don’t turn me into a frog or erase my memory or anything.”

Karyn tried to talk her way out of it. “Gayle, listen. I don’t know what you think you saw, but—“

“Karyn, please don’t insult my intelligence. I could sense something off about you from our first meeting, but you seem like a good person, and I’m also weird but good. Not magical like you, of course, but a painter who people like has to be a little off center.”

She faced back toward the bookshelves. In her head, she saw Derpy shrugging. “All right. There was magic involved.”

“That is so…cool!” Gayle jumped up and was beaming. “Can you teach me how to do it? Or is it like Harry Potter where you have to be born with it? Can you fly? Is it one of those things where you have to use it only to help people who need it? Or is it more like where you’re the elite of the world and the rest of us just don’t know about you? How do you keep it secret? Ooh, are there magical creatures like elves and fairies too? Do you make potions? Do you think that Halloween is funny or is it offensive to you?”

“Whoa, whoa. Calm down. You’ve got the wrong idea. Magic isn’t like that; it doesn’t control your life or anything. I still go to school and I’ll work for a living like everyone else. It’s not a big conspiracy, just a different way to do things. Like how some people are really good at DIY and can fix things around the house without calling someone? That’s all magic is. And the reason most people don’t believe in it is just that there isn’t a whole lot of it around.”

Gayle seemed disappointed.

“But I understand your feeling,” said Karyn. “Even now, just knowing that it exists makes me a little happier.”

After standing up and straightening her hair, Gayle put her hand on Karyn’s shoulder. “I just can’t believe that I’ve really got a magical girl living in my apartment.”

The touching became a little too intimate for Karyn, and she pulled back. “Well, like I said, I’m not that weird. Also I have an off-again-on-again boyfriend, so…”

“I understand. Well, I’ll let you get back to unpacking. Not that you really need to be here to do it!” Gayle winked, then left.

Derpy ran to the door to ensure that they were really alone, then took off her disguise.

“Nice job covering up.”

“Fine help you were. How did you even get caught anyway?”

She put her head down sheepishly. “I was so intent on organizing your books that I didn’t hear her come in. I’m normally more observant.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do now? She thinks I’m a witch.”

“Or sorceress or enchantress.”

Karyn pointed her finger. “Don’t be cute. This is still your fault.”

“Do you want to explain to her who I am? I don’t think that you actually told her a lot of lies, so if you explain to her that it’s actually pony magic and tell her about Lyra and Twilight and everything, she wouldn’t be too resentful.”

“We could do that, but in the first place she seemed so happy when she thought it was just me being telekinetic.”

Derpy nodded. “It does seem nicer if she’s that adamant about finding out about magic.”

“But the other thing is that it also makes her a little afraid of me. And I get the feeling that she’s into girls, which is fine, but I want her to understand that I’m not attracted to her.”

“I think you made that clear to her. If she’s a reasonable person, she’ll keep her hands to herself.”

Karyn stood up and put her hands on her hips, overlooking the remaining unpacking. “All right, then if I ever have to be late with the rent, then I want her afraid that I’ll make her disappear or something!”

They set about getting the apartment ready. Karyn allowed Derpy to finish her organizing of the books while she stocked the kitchen with her dishes and a few nonperishable foods that she’d brought.

With the last of the boxes at least being out of the car, Derpy heard Karyn outside saying, “Is it all right if I park the car down the side of the house rather than keep it in the street?”

“Of course! Hey, does your car run on water or anything?”

“No, just plain old gasoline.”

“Darn. Probably big oil won’t let even you get away with something like that.”

Karyn hustled in and locked the door. “This is crazy.”

“I can always go explain things to her.”

“No, I have a feeling that will only make it more complicated. We don’t want to lie to her, but we do want to keep everything on a need-to-know basis. With the provision that she never needs to know.”

It had been advantageous for Derpy to organize the books, as it now gave them several empty boxes to layer within each other. Soon they had some working space in the apartment.

“This could be a pretty cool place,” said Derpy. “You could even live here long-term.”

“I don’t know that I’d be into that. In the first place, this isn’t too convenient to where the jobs are, and I don’t like long commutes.”

“How do you know you don’t?”

Karyn finished setting up her computer and swiveled in the chair. “When I went to middle school, I was like twenty minutes away on the bus every day. I was so glad to get into high school where it was only five.”

“Twenty minutes? That is a long trip.”

“I know, right? So I’ll certainly keep this apartment while I’m still in school, but then it’ll be time to move on.”

Derpy looked straight ahead, as if seeing something far off. “Hopefully Gayle will keep it for you over next summer.”

“That’s true. Although with the rent she’s charging I could probably just hold it. I might even get a job where it’s more convenient. That would be a little scary, if I’m never moving back into my parents’ house. It means I’m really on my own.”

“You get used to it.”

Karyn smiled at that, and the two of them finished setting up the apartment. With everything out of the boxes and the crates themselves nested within one another and ready to either be recycled or stored back in the car, it was calm and peaceful. Karyn set up her coffee maker and brewed a cup for herself and one for Derpy.

They sat, sipping and saying nothing. It was one of those friendship moments that happen all too rarely, a pause in conversation after a job well done. A light breeze blowing through the window, the apartment spread before them, and the steam from the coffee rising into their faces. Karyn and Derpy looked at each other and felt their bond as if it were a real thing.

A second later, there came a banging at the door. “Hey, Karyn! It’s Gayle!”

They sighed. “I’ll go invisible again,” said Derpy.

Karyn plodded to the door to give Derpy time, then listened to it creak as she pulled it open. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to show you, in case you ever get locked out, I got one of those key-hiding things that looks like a rock. Of course, you probably don’t need it, right?”

“Right. I’m pretty good at being responsible and not losing my keys.”

Gayle’s expression fell a little at that. Clearly she was thinking more along the lines of Karyn phasing through walls or pointing at a door lock and having it open by itself.

“Well, that was it. I have to get back to painting. Have you ever tried any art yourself?”

“No. I’m really not that much of a visual person. The last time I went to the museum, I was totally bored.”

“I bet you’d be good at it though,” said Gayle. “You’d probably have great brush control.”

“I would. Cabling switches and routers gives you strong hands.”

Again Gayle was crestfallen. She backed away, and looked about to turn and go, when she summoned her courage and said, “Look, I know it’s your secret and everything, but can you just show me one more time? So I know it’s really true?”

Karyn stared at her, and for a moment she had an expression of fear on her face, but Karyn just rolled her eyes. She concentrated, and then waved her hands and snapped her fingers, just for effect. The green circle of light appeared around her, and when it cleared, Gayle was looking at a mirror copy of herself.

“So, if you ever need me to stand in for you at an art show or anything, just ask!”

Gayle regained her ear-to-ear grin, and charged forward for a hug, but then backed off. “Right, I know. Plus it seems a little narcissistic. Thanks, Karyn. I’ll see you around.”

This time she did leave, and Karyn quickly reversed her changeling magic. Derpy appeared behind her.

Unable to recapture the moment they’d lost, they laughed at each other, and Derpy said, “I bet the coffee’s gone cold. How about another cup?”

“Sure.”

Once they had their cups refreshed, Derpy asked, “So, other than what happened here, how did your check-in go?”

“Just fine. But this is the year that they’re really going to crack down and make me study a lot. All of the people who couldn’t hack it in the first two years have dropped out, so the competition is a lot stiffer.”

“Well, I know you’ll do fine.”

“I think I will too,” said Karyn. “It’s just going to mean a lot more work. The good news is that all my classes finish by Thursday each week. I can spend all Friday studying and doing the work I have to get done, Saturday can be my lazy day, and that way I’ll be ready for you.”

“Don’t forget cleaning up. The apartment should look like this all the time.”

“With the boxes lying around? All right!”

“No!”

“It’s just a joke.” Karyn finished her coffee and put the mug in the sink. “I’ll even wash the coffee cups right now to make sure you’re happy.”

“You shouldn’t do it for me. You should do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

She rolled her eyes as she rinsed the cup and put it in the drain. “Don’t nag me, or I’ll use my freaky magic witch-slash-sorceress-slash-enchantress powers on you.”

They had a laugh at that, but not too loud of one.

Author's Note

Next week, more is revealed!

“Well, not exactly. The classes were really boring, but I couldn’t leave or waste time browsing on my phone—another thing that professors hate—so I had a lot of time to think.”

“Oh? About anything interesting?”

Karyn took a long pause. To Derpy’s view, it wasn’t a rehearsed speech, but it was clearly something that she had intended to bring up. Some of her turns of phrase were probably chosen beforehand and not made up on the spot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Is she there?” asked Derpy.

“Yeah. There’s no reason for her to walk by my window to go out and pick up the paper. She’s spying.”

“I guess we should be a little more discreet.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Is everything all right in here? I saw—oh, you have company.”

Derpy stepped aside to reveal to Karyn a pretty-looking unicorn with a two-tone mane and tail. As she entered Karyn could also see her cutie mark, an hourglass.

“Nice to meet you.” She racked her brain to think of her name. “It’s Minuette, isn’t it?”

And what will this guest have to say? Read next week to find out!

74: Alderped State

Because of the way Karyn’s new apartment was situated, all in a single line with the bedroom at the back, light only entered from one side. The window in the bedroom itself was small, frosted, and, in truth, needed a good scrubbing. It also had thick curtains that Gayle had put up when she lived there. The result of all this was that it made for a very dark room.

Karyn hadn’t taken much notice during the week. When getting to an early class depended on getting up, she used her alarm clock and thought nothing of it. But on Sunday, the weather turned cloudy for the first time, and there was even less light. Karyn wound up sleeping all the way through Derpy’s arrival.

To her credit, Derpy went invisible as soon as she saw what seemed an unoccupied dwelling, and searched carefully. Once she saw Karyn’s head on a pillow, she softly shut the door and returned to the kitchen. She put on coffee, finding the maker a bit tricky to use with hooves, and waited.

Twenty minutes later, Karyn finally emerged, her hair mussed and tangled, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “Derpy, you’re here.”

“Yes. Rough week?”

“Not really. I even went to bed early. I think I woke up at four in the morning and figured that was too early, and my body thought that an entire day had passed. Ooh, coffee.”

She picked up the cup that Derpy offered her and, after checking its temperature, took a sip. The heat alone opened her eyes wider.

“I figured since it was your first week back at school, they worked you hard and made you tired.”

“No, not really. The first week of classes is never that interesting, to be honest. They give out the syllabi and go over it, and only if the class is extra long do they actually start a lesson. Plus a lot of the students ditch the first class, and the professors know it.

Derpy stared over her cup. “Did you ditch?”

“Certainly not! Attendance is key for these classes, especially this year. If I am going to ditch, I’m not going to waste it on the first week.”

That did not entirely please Derpy, but she let it pass. “And you got right into your books, I’m sure.”

“Well, not exactly. The classes were really boring, but I couldn’t leave or waste time browsing on my phone—another thing that professors hate—so I had a lot of time to think.”

“Oh? About anything interesting?”

Karyn took a long pause. To Derpy’s view, it wasn’t a rehearsed speech, but it was clearly something that she had intended to bring up. Some of her turns of phrase were probably chosen beforehand and not made up on the spot.

“Mostly about my reaction ever since Queen Chrysalis told me that I was now a changeling. I’ve been so scared of coming to terms with it, because it makes me different from everyone else. Among humans, that’s always a dangerous place to be. If anyone in that class knew I was a changeling—well, you saw how Gayle reacted last week, and that’s probably the best-case scenario.

“But it’s who I am now, like it or not, and I’ve got to face that fact. What that means is that I want to actually try using my powers more, not just for covering for you with Gayle or avoiding having to put on makeup in the morning. Which I’ve given up doing.”

“You’re never wearing makeup again?”

“No, I mean I gave up using my powers for that. But maybe I should keep doing it. Like I said, I’m different, and isn’t it great to be different?”

“Don’t ask me,” Derpy said, but with a humorous tone in her voice.

“Beyond that, though, I think there are ways that I could use them for more than just disguising.”

“Didn’t we already try that with Scootaloo? You don’t gain the powers of whatever you change into.”

Karyn stood up from the table. “We did, but that can’t be true all the time. Let me illustrate.”

She handed her cup to Derpy. “Take this and put it on the top shelf of the cabinet.”

Derpy acceded, remarking, “I think you mean demonstrate, not illustrate.”

“You’re right. I must still not be fully awake. Never mind. Now, we know that I can’t fly up there and get it, even if I’m a pegasus pony.” She switched to the pony version of herself and flapped her wings uselessly. “But what if instead I just changed into a taller human?”

Karyn concentrated again. This transformation was less familiar to her, but after a few seconds the circle of green light came and went, leaving a tall black woman in its wake.

“You changed a lot more than that,” said Derpy.

“This is an actual copy of a basketball player I saw on TV during the week. And now I’m tall enough to get the cup back.” She did so, then switched back to herself. “I was able to do something in another form that I couldn’t as myself. That’s what I mean by using my powers more.”

“I see. You should go and look at a lot of people so you have more images. Like if you found someone really strong.”

“Maybe. I don’t know if that would work. Height is inherent to people. Am I really copying their muscles? But beyond that, I thought of something I wanted to try, but I wanted you to be here in case things go wrong.”

Derpy spread her wings and pointed at herself. “I’m right here.”

“Yes, but I thought of it during the week. This involves a couple of new things. A partial transformation, and dealing with inorganics.”

“What do you mean?”

Karyn went into the bedroom and came back with a small duffel bag. “Well, for example, I can form clothes even when I’m not wearing any. I’ve never paid attention to what they’re made out of. They could be wool, which would come from an animal, so that’s still just a regular transformation. Can I make something out of cotton, which is a plant? What about polyester?”

“I’ve never heard of that plant.”

“That’s not even a plant. It’s a synthetic fiber made of plastic. But here’s what I want to do. I used to take this bag with me to the gym, and I kept this padlock to keep it in a locker. It uses this little key, right? What I want to do is see if I can’t mimic the key and use it on the lock.”

Derpy opened her eyes wide. “Ooh, that would be useful.”

“But I want you here in case something goes wrong and I turn my whole body into the key or something, and you have to race me back to Equestria and beg Queen Chrysalis to help turn me back.”

“I don’t want to beg her for anything. She’s kind of a jerk.”

Karyn shrugged, and put the lock and key down. “The key’s made of metal—steel or aluminum or nickel, probably, but I’ll try doing it with iron. That’s something I have in me already.”

She held out her finger and stared at the key. Derpy had no basis to understand how Karyn was thinking, but she concentrated herself and hoped that it worked out. Finally, after thirty seconds or so, the green fire appeared again. It surrounded Karyn’s entire body, and Derpy was afraid that Karyn’s prediction was coming true. But when it dissipated, there she was with a dark iron protrusion from her finger. In substance, it reminded Derpy of the wrought iron gates and fences that sometimes existed in Equestria. But it had the contours of the key.

“I think it worked,” she said.

“It certainly changed. Let’s see if it does the same job.”

She closed the lock, slipped her modified finger in, and crossed the fingers on her other hand. Looking at Derpy, she turned it. A click was heard, and the thick metal ring popped open.

“You did it!”

Derpy’s excitement quickly changed. Karyn turned her finger back and pulled it out. She was visibly wincing.

“Yow! Ow, that hurts.” She focused and transformed back to her full self. When she held up the finger, it was red and swollen.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. But it feels like…well, honestly, it feels like I shoved my finger into a lock and turned it.”

Derpy grabbed the hand in her hoof. “Can you bend it at all?”

“Yes. I don’t think anything’s broken, but it feels like a strain or a bruise. I don’t think I’ll be trying that again.”

“I guess not. Still, it’s a useful ability if you really need it. If you found yourself locked out, you could take the pain instead of calling a locksmith.”

Karyn nodded as she poured cold water on her finger. “The problem with that is that I copied the key, not the lock. I don’t know if I’d have the ability to change myself into something I didn’t see. That’s why I want to do more tests, that hopefully aren’t this painful.”

“I wonder, can you change it so that it doesn’t hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” She concentrated, and once more the green flash was seen. “Yeah, see, it looks fine now, but it still hurts.” She changed back.

The sound of footsteps was heard outside. Derpy backed off from the window, which was high enough off the ground that no one could see in. Karyn walked over and peered down at the sharp angle. Gayle was out in the yard. Immediately, she looked up, waved, and winked.

“Is she there?” asked Derpy.

“Yeah. There’s no reason for her to walk by my window to go out and pick up the paper. She’s spying.”

“I guess we should be a little more discreet.”

Karyn nodded. “We could take it to Equestria. Nopony is weirded out by magic there.”

“They might be by changeling magic. But we’ll go if you like.”

“Let me just clean up first.”

Derpy found out a moment later that she meant cleaning herself, so it was left to Derpy to wash the coffee mugs and pot, then sit and wait for Karyn to put on her face.

“Maybe you should be using your magic for that. Come on, get on my back.”

Karyn mounted, and Derpy pulled out her spell. As they glided down, Karyn said, “Hmm.”

“What?”

“Well, I can’t fly as a pegasus, but I wonder if, if I can find the right form, if I can glide.”

“Don’t try it. If you’re wrong, or if there are side effects like the key, it could be a problem.”

They landed and entered Derpy’s house, which was pristine and orderly as always. The cat was waiting for Derpy, and seemed happy to have her back sooner than usual.

“Now that’s a question,” said Karyn. “I wonder if I could do a cat transformation.”

“I don’t see why not. It’s alive, and it’s not a partial transformation.”

“But it is a lot smaller. What I want to find out is if I still have to follow conservation of mass.”

Derpy looked at her with a confused expression.

“When I became the taller girl, I could reach higher, but I didn’t weigh myself. If I was the same weight, then it would put a limit on things I could do. It would mean that, if I became an elephant, all my molecules would be farther apart. I might turn into vapor, drift away, and kill myself.”

“So don’t do that. Turn into something smaller like Muffinhead.”

“But that could be a problem too. If I get too much mass in a small place, will I be able to move? Will I explode?”

Derpy held up a hoof. “Hang on, though. Elephants weigh more than humans. Why wouldn’t you just weigh the same?”

“Well, where would the extra mass come from? Matter-energy can’t just be created out of nothing. That’s a law of physics.”

Derpy was not usually given to sarcasm, but she stared and said, “Right, when using the ethereal force of changeling magic to alter the very fabric of reality, it’s important to keep the laws of physics in mind.”

“Oh, I guess that counts as an open system, huh?”

“Well, go on and try a size transformation to find out.”

“We need to know my current weight first. Can you get your bathroom scale?” Karyn knew that Derpy had one.

“Here you go.”

She stepped on. “OK, I weight one-oh-eight right now.”

“I am so jealous of you.”

“And that gives me a good benchmark of something that I can turn into and not be too far off my current weight.” Karyn focused, and repeated the action that was her first ever transformation. A second Derpy stood in the room. She stepped back on the scale.

“What does it say?”

“Well, the good news is that indeed changeling magic can alter mass.” She stepped off and turned back into her old self. “The bad news is that you have to go back on your diet.”

Derpy glowered at her, but any further argument was cut off by a knock at the door. She went over and opened it. “Hey, neighbor.”

“Is everything all right in here? I saw—oh, you have company.”

Derpy stepped aside to reveal to Karyn a pretty-looking unicorn with a two-tone mane and tail. As she entered Karyn could also see her cutie mark, an hourglass.

“Nice to meet you.” She racked her brain to think of her name. “It’s Minuette, isn’t it?”

“No, my name is Colgate. Pleased to meet you.”

Derpy introduced Karyn by name, and Colgate nodded. “I was passing by and I saw a pair of green magic flashes. Since I knew that a pegasus lives here, and, if you’ll forgive me, Derpy, you don’t usually have guests and go away on Sundays anyway, that some unicorn might have broken in.”

“Nopony would do that, I’m sure,” said Derpy. She went on to explain, in detail, about Karyn, humans, their original adventure dealing with changelings, and finally the illness that led them to discover Karyn’s powers. “And now, after some trepid…trepidat…after she didn’t want to in the first place, Karyn wants to become the best changeling she can be.”

Colgate stared, wide-eyed. “Wow, Derpy, that’s an incredible story.”

“Yeah.”

It was Karyn who noticed how nervous she seemed.

“Do you mind very much if we experiment?”

“No, not at all. Why should I mind if you’re trying experiments with dark magic in Ponyville?”

“Hey! Karyn’s not dark!” Derpy stomped her hoof in anger.

“I didn’t mean that. I’m sure that humans can be good or evil just like anypony. But changeling magic is definitely dark magic.”

“It is not!”

“Hang on,” said Karyn. “Can you explain the difference between dark magic and…light magic, I guess?”

“Dark magic is used for evil purposes. Everypony knows that.”

“Ah, so technically there’s nothing inherently good or bad about magic. If somepony’s trapped under a cart and you levitate it off of them, that’s good magic. But if you levitated the cart over that same pony and dropped it, that would be dark magic.”

Colgate squinted. “But changeling magic is basically lying to try to steal somepony’s love. How could that ever be used for a good purpose?”

“In the first place, I don’t have to steal love to survive. Thankfully. In the second, I wouldn’t use my powers to hurt anyone. Yeah, I could disguise myself as, like, a bank manager and go in and take all the money, but I wouldn’t do that because it doesn’t belong to me.”

Colgate trotted around Karyn, prodding her with her horn before finally using some of her own magic. It did not seem to produce any visible results.

“What are you doing?” asked Derpy.

“This is a very old unicorn spell. It’s taught to us when we first learn our magic. It tests the purity of another’s heart.”

“I’ve never heard of that spell.”

“Unicorns have very little occasion to use it.”

Derpy glowered. “But you feel that it’s worth it to use it on my friend?”

“If your friend weren’t using changeling magic—“

“Hang on, I know this, it’s, um…circular logic! You only think the magic is bad because you’re doing the test, and you’re only doing the test because you think it’s bad.”

“No, Derpy,” said Karyn. “I understand. There’s a reason to be nervous, when changelings steal love and impersonate princesses and such.”

Colgate snorted. “In any case, you totally passed the test, so it’s a moot point.”

Derpy smiled, but then mumbled, “I never get to talk about stuff when somepony talks about moot points.”

Karyn tried to mollify Colgate further. “One thing that we’ve discovered is that there are a lot of ways a transformation can go wrong. I’m actually impressed now that Queen Chrysalis was able to fool as many ponies as she did for as long as she did.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, take for example my teeth, which I know that you’re interested in. I could make them as white as you like, but unless I actually brush them, they’ll still get cavities and decay.”

“Well, of course you would! Everypony has to brush.” Colgate gritted her teeth.

“But if there were some magic that could clean teeth automatically—“

“There can’t be. It’s impossible. Everypony. Has. To. Brush.”

It seemed that Karyn had found the one thing that Colgate cared about more than evil magic taking over Equestria.

“I always brush, though. My mother drilled it into me when I was little. Heh, get it? Drilled it into me?”

“That’s good, though.”

“I always made Dinky brush, too,” said Derpy.

“Anyway, show me more of your changeling powers.” As members of the brush-their-teeth-frequently club, Karyn and Derpy had won Colgate’s trust.

They talked through all the research they had done, and upon Colgate’s inquiry, told her also about the time that Karyn had first disguised herself as a pegasus pony and been unable to fly.

“No, of course you wouldn’t. Pegasi fly by magic, not like birds who fly by aerodynamics. If changelings could appropriate magic that isn’t theirs, they would have taken over a long time ago.”

Derpy was confused. “But changelings can fly.”

“And so can bees and wasps. That’s more complicated aerodynamics, but it’s still not magical.”

Karyn and Derpy looked at each other. “How do you know so much?” asked Karyn. “Is that a unicorn thing? I mean, Twilight Sparkle knows everything about…everything, Lyra developed the inter-universe summoning spell while being a musician, and you’re a dentist, but you’re schooling us about the basics of magic.”

Now Colgate blushed. “It’s not all unicorns. But a lot of our parents make us go to school for a long time. An Earth pony wants their kids working as soon as possible, but unicorns apparently think you need to know how pegasi fly in order to fix their teeth.”

For Karyn, it was interesting to learn about unicorn culture, though she was surprised that Derpy didn’t know more. Perhaps, for all their friendship, the three types of pony still had different lives.

“What we could try,” Colgate continued, “is if you tried to become a unicorn, if I could piggyback my magic through you.”

Derpy asked, “What does that mean?”

Again she assumed her instructing tone. “When young unicorns have trouble mastering something like levitation, a parent or teacher will piggyback the spell with them.”

“I actually understand that, maybe,” said Karyn. “It’s similar to some of the techniques we use in IT.”

She had never attempted a unicorn transformation before, and she felt that Colgate might get offended if she copied her, not being quite as close a friend as Derpy was. Instead, she took the opportunity to attempt a hybrid transformation. She thought of the first three unicorns she could—Lyra, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle.

What resulted was a pale-green unicorn with long eyelashes, a wide grin, and bangs over her horn. If a pony knew how it was made, and had met the three unicorns used, the derivations would have been clear, but to a stranger, it was a never-before-seen unicorn.

But as before, as soon as she tried to cast a spell, all she got was a headache. She wasn’t even sure if she was tensing the right muscles.

“Let me try to use your horn to cast a levitation spell,” said Colgate.

“All right.”

They stood next to each other. Colgate’s minty glow was reflected in Karyn’s horn, and they focused on a lamp on Derpy’s table. All of a sudden, the connection broke, and Karyn was back to her untransformed self.

“What happened?” she asked.

“That was very interesting,” said Colgate.

Derpy walked over and checked Karyn’s face. “Are you all right? Is it like before with the key?”

“No. I don’t hurt, but I’ve never been forced out of a disguise before. Let’s try again.”

The unicorn reappeared, but Colgate said, “Actually I have to go. Bye!” She raced out the door.

“That was weird.”

“It was.” Derpy trotted to the door and looked out through the fanlight. “I wonder if something happened to make her leave. I’m going to keep an eye on her. Meanwhile, want to keep practicing?”

“Actually, I find that I’m tired again. Why is it that when you sleep late, you want to nap right away?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll take you home. Next time, I’m sure you’ll be more energetic.”

Author's Note

Speaking of next time, here's the preview!

Derpy nodded, and then said, “Well, since we’re not going to worry, I can reveal the really good news.”

“Good news? Let’s hear it.”

“Well, I’ve got it all set up with everypony. We are going to Cloudsdale!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It looks good.”

“See, where this works is that I can wear a light sundress like this in the cold, and I can actually wear a warm pair of pants and a shirt.”

“Clever,” said Derpy, with a hint of conspiracy in her voice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“They never put these things in alphabetical order. It’s impossible to find on the first look.”

Derpy whispered to her. “It should be right after mine. Hooves, then Hubert.”

A little fake-out there, but next week will still be awesome!

75: Here Comes the Derp

Derpy swooped around once to check for Gayle’s snooping before entering Karyn’s apartment. Seeing the artist busy working on a new canvas, she figured that the combination of walls and distraction would be safe, so she entered and said, “Good morning!”

“And to you,” replied Karyn.

“You’re looking much more awake this week. Or is that your…?”

“I’ll never tell. Except you. It’s all me today.”

Derpy grinned. “That’s great. That means you’re getting into your classes and still being able to get up.”

“Yes. It’s really intense learning, but so far I’m still finishing all my work.”

“Good, but because you’re dressed well—“

Karyn went to check herself in the mirror one more time, but then turned back. “Oh, tell me what’s gone on in Equestria since last week!”

Derpy showed a moment’s confusion, because it was unusual for Karyn to ask, but she answered anyway. “Well, let me see, on my last mail delivery route, one of the ponies needed to give me a letter to mail, which is fine by the mail codes, but he didn’t have a stamp, so he tried to just hand me a bit, which isn’t fine by the mail codes. So he asked me if I could buy the stamp for him at the post office, and while that’s technically not allowed, it’s not forbidden either, so I said yes. But then the next day when I brought him the change—because a stamp doesn’t cost a whole bit, of course—he wanted me to keep it, and taking tips is a major violation. He was very insistent, so what I did was to drop it into one of the charity bins that were around. If I do that, I figure it counts as him donating it and I never took the tip, right?”

“Yes, but actually, what I was talking about was, you know, unicorn, magic, humans?”

“Oh! Lyra and her human are pretty much the same. They’re having their usual tiff with Bon-bon about whether either they or she should move out, but I think they talked about putting an addition on their house, so they wouldn’t need to do that.”

Karyn raised her hand to interrupt again. “No, I actually meant to ask if you’d gotten any further figuring out why Colgate acted so oddly last week. But that’s my fault. I should have been clearer.”

“Oh. Well, I wanted to follow her around to see if she did anything weird, but she stayed mostly at home. I think she definitely got a weird reaction from that spell she tried to cast, but it’s probably something she can’t explain to me as a pegasus. Still, if I do run into her I want to ask her straight out. If it’s something she needs to keep secret, then I want to know about it for sure.”

“Isn’t that the way with secrets? But we’ll table that for now.”

Derpy looked at Karyn’s breakfast table. “We’ll do what?”

“You don’t have that expression? It means to put something down on the table to be picked up later. Metaphorically. What’s weird is that there’s another country that speaks the same language that I do, and over there the expression means to put it on the table to discuss it.”

Derpy just stared.

“What?”

“Are you pulling my hoof?”

“No, I promise. But it’s funny that you have that expression and not the other one. In any case, what I mean is that we won’t deal with it now, but we won’t forget about it either.”

Derpy nodded, and then said, “Well, since we’re not going to worry, I can reveal the really good news.”

“Good news? Let’s hear it.”

“Well, I’ve got it all set up with everypony. We are going to Cloudsdale!”

Karyn started to say something, but Derpy kept going, sound like the announcer for a game show.

“We’ll check out the weather factory, and you can even take home some rainbow juice! I’d let you take home some cloud too, but, you know, you can’t carry it. Oh! And we can visit the Columnseum!”

“Don’t you mean the Coliseum? And isn’t it the Cloudiseum there?”

“Of course there’s the Cloudiseum, but that’s where competitions and things happen. I’m talking about the place where they make all the columns. Cloudsdale uses a lot of columns, in all sorts of styles.”

Karyn flashed back to the one episode where Rarity and Rainbow Dash competed in the flight competition. There were a lot of columns, she remembered, and made a note to ask why.

“And then, of course, the highlight of the day,” Derpy continued. “Which is my house! You’ll get to see how I lived when I lived among the other pegasi. Sadly, I didn’t always have the best neighbors, but the house is there and we can see it all and…you can’t go, right?”

Derpy had seen Karyn’s lack of excitement on her face.

“I’m sorry, I want to go, but—“

“We are never going to get there, are we? No, it’s funny, really. It’s just like when we wanted to take the train trip to the ocean, but we either couldn’t find the time or the money. But we got there eventually.”

“Yeah, but not I feel bad,” said Karyn. “I’m sure you had to pull a lot of strings to get us into all those important places.”

“No, not really.”

“I don’t mean actual strings. Do they use a lot of strings in Cloudsdale?”

Derpy grinned. “No more or less than anywhere else. And that’s not a pony expression, but I’ve read it on the Internet. It’s all right, really. But tell me what’s going on that you can’t come with?”

“One of my cousin’s friends is getting married today. I got invited. My parents are going too. It’ll be fun.”

“You know that we could pull the time trick. We could spend the entire day in Cloudsdale and you’ll still have time for the wedding.”

Karyn shook her head. “I’d be dead tired by the time we finished. It’s a noon wedding, and everyone will notice if I’m yawning during the vows.”

“We could go to Cloudsdale, then you could take a nap at my house. If you really want, I’ll find a unicorn to use the cloud-walk spell, then you can take your nap on a cloud.”

“That sounds like the most decadent thing possible. But that would age me an entire day. I’ve got to watch that. When it’s my next birthday, it won’t be my next birthday.”

Derpy pulled out a piece of paper from her saddlebag and asked Karyn for a pen. She ran it down the paper and said, “Well, there’s nothing here that we can’t postpone. Ha, it makes sense that we can’t do things on time, since I’m a mail mare.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a post-pony.”

Karyn was speechless for a few moments as she digested the pun. Once she recovered, she said, “We’ll definitely find time to do all that. In the meantime, I’ve got the wedding to go to, which will be in a banquet hall. High ceilings, lots of room. I’m sure you’ll be joining me.”

“I would have even if it were in a tight closet.”

“Of course.”

They had breakfast, and afterwards Karyn said that she should try on dresses for the wedding. “It’s important that I don’t look too good so as to outshine the bride or the bridesmaids, but at the same time I obviously want to look good…just to look good.”

“And I think we know what that means.”

Karyn took her into the bedroom. “One of the advantages of having these blackout curtains is that I can do all my evil enchantress sorcery witchery back here and Gayle can’t spy. The green light doesn’t show.”

“All right, where do you start?”

“I think with…earrings.”

Karyn looked at a mirror and focused. She tried several different styles from studs to hoops. Derpy critiqued each one and suggested that she go as simple as possible. “If they dangle down, they can get caught in your hair.”

“I don’t think that holds with fake changeling earrings, but I’ll follow your advice. Now, let’s pick out a dress.”

Derpy acted distracted for a moment, but Karyn was too intent on her magical dress-up to pay attention. When she had finally picked out a dress, she looked back to see Derpy’s smile.

“It looks good.”

“See, where this works is that I can wear a light sundress like this in the cold, and I can actually wear a warm pair of pants and a shirt.”

“Clever,” said Derpy, with a hint of conspiracy in her voice.

“So, are you ready to get invisible and go?”

“But I want to wear a pretty dress too!”

Karyn blinked. “You do? I guess that’s all right, even though no one will see it.”

Derpy grinned and stuck out her tongue. To Karyn’s shock, a green light appeared in front of Derpy, and then she stood in a party dress.

“What the—how? You got them too?”

She held a straight face for a moment, but Derpy couldn’t keep it up. “No, I just cheated. I got a green flashlight and waved it around, then zapped back to Equestria, put on this dress, went back to the same spot, and came back without any time passing. It’s a completely real dress.”

“You got me on that one.”

“How are we getting to this wedding anyway?”

“Just driving,” said Karyn. After Derpy got invisible, they walked out to the car. She typed the address into the GPS on her phone and then handed it to Derpy. “You be the navigatrix. The directions here don’t have voice instructions.”

“Got it. Step one, turn on the car.”

“You can just wait until I get on the highway.”

Once they were cruising, and Derpy told Karyn what the exit to take was, she spaced out for a while. “This will be the first wedding I’ve been to in a long while.”

“Since your own?”

“No, I went to the one between Shining Armor and Princess Cadance.”

“Oh, yes,” said Karyn. “I remember seeing you there a couple of times. How did you get an invitation to that anyway?”

“That was a long time ago, let me see if I can remember. That’s right, I didn’t!”

“No invite? You crashed the party?”

“I guess. A lot of ponies just showed up and took whatever role was there. I think even Lyra showed up and tried to be a bridesmaid, and she didn’t even know Cadance very well.”

Karyn realized that there was a connection with that event. “And it was there that the changelings first showed up.”

“Was it? I think I was hiding away during that. I do remember that the wedding was delayed a while. But then again, I was pretty spacey back then. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a changeling invasion.”

“Thank goodness you’re not that spacey now.”

“Exactly, and—ooh, pretty bird!” Derpy got distracted by a bluebird, which even Karyn thought was pretty. But she had to keep her eyes on the road.

They soon arrived at the hall. It was on a lake, and the weather was cooler because of it. Negotiating one of the many entrances, Karyn drove up to the vestibule to find a valet in a red coat.

“Are you here for the wedding?” he asked.

“Yes, but I’ll park myself. Just over there?”

He directed Karyn to one of the lots, and she drove quickly to the far end.

“Did he want to park the car?” asked Derpy.

“Yes, that’s his job, but I hate giving my car to anyone else, especially if I’m not there. It’s a quirk, but I always feel that a car is very intimate.”

They got out and hustled into the room. It was half-filled with people already seated, and Karyn waved to her parents. As she sat down next to them, there was no room for Derpy to go without getting displaced by someone else, so she hovered above. Karyn’s mother asked, “Do they still have the air conditioning on? I feel a draft.”

There was little time for Karyn to chuckle at the misunderstanding, as everyone else sat down and the ceremony began. The couple had chosen a nontraditional song for the processional, and Karyn thought that “Here Comes the Bride” would have fit better. As it was, the love song got repetitive and boring as the various flower girls, bridesmaids, and relatives who could not be excluded walked down the aisle. Once that was done, the minister performed the ceremony quickly and brightly, before any of the small children had a chance to get too bored.

Once the vows were completed and the couple walked back, the rest of the guests shuffled toward the reception room. Here Karyn saw the advantage of having arrived late and being seated in the back. Since the door was there, she was one of the first out, and found a seat in a large room with the bar. Temporarily separated from her parents, she got a chance to chat with Derpy.

“What did you think?”

“It’s a lot more similar to Equestrian weddings than I thought it would be. Lyra would love the fact that they hold hands during the ceremony. Other than that, let me see…I liked the music.”

“You did, huh? Hey, speaking of hands, can I ask you a question? It’s one that a lot of people have wondered about.”

“Go ahead,” said Derpy.

“When unicorns get married, they put the rings on their horns. What do pegasi and Earth ponies do?”

“Alicorns put it on their horns as well.”

“Right. More general question. What do non-horned ponies do for their ring exchange?”

Derpy brightened up. “Oh, that’s easy. They—“

“That was a nice ceremony, wasn’t it?” Karyn’s father walked over and Derpy had to silence herself.

“Yes, quite. You look very nice today.” She straightened her father’s tie.

“I’m going to go spend time with your mother. Don’t drink too much.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “I’ll be legal soon and then you’ll have to be serious.”

Once he walked away, Derpy said, “Now, as I was saying, when I got married, having no horn—“

A young woman in black and white walked up and said, “Scallop?”

“Beg pardon?” Karyn stepped back.

“Bacon-wrapped scallop?”

“No, thank you. Is there anything vegetarian?”

“I think someone will be serving turkey meatballs.”

Karyn looked at her as if expecting her to realize what she said, but she had already moved onto the next guest. Karyn walked into the next room and looked over what there was. She filled a plate with penne alla vodka which seemed safe. Feeling Derpy stop behind her, she turned around to see a carving station. “Yeah, they do this kind of things at weddings,” she muttered.

“I thought that humans could cut their own meat.”

“They usually do, but not here.”

Derpy flapped her right wing only and made a circle in the air. “Now, this is completely different from Equestrian weddings. All this food, nopony’d ever be able to afford it.”

“Weddings are very expensive as well.”

“Hey, I think there’s some cheese over here. Can I have some?”

Karyn walked over and saw the stand. There were many slices of cheese, but they were mixed in with rolled up cold cuts. Karyn took the tongs and put a few slices on her plate where she had cleared the pasta. Once she was sure that no one else was looking, she surreptitiously slipped some to Derpy.

Many of the other guests were milling about, not talking to any one person for more than a few minutes. Karyn was pleased about this, for anyone she did meet was quickly onto someone else, so she didn’t feel as if she was neglecting Derpy. But beyond the food, which Karyn had to constantly examine to make sure it was acceptable to her and Derpy’s diets; and the guests, which Karyn as a distant relation didn’t know many of, it was not the most exciting time.

After a half hour of this, with no real signal but with everyone seeming to know, they all proceeded into the main dining hall. Place cards were laid out on a table, and Karyn queued up to find her name. She looked near the middle of the table for the H’s.

“They never put these things in alphabetical order. It’s impossible to find on the first look.”

Derpy whispered to her. “It should be right after mine. Hooves, then Hubert.”

Karyn found hers by random selection and grabbed her parents’ card as well. After handing it to them, she sped up so that she could laugh and explain to Derpy. “Did you forget that you weren’t actually invited?”

“You mean I’m crashing?!”

“No, technically the invitation was for me and a guest. Since you won’t have your own plate, no one will mind. I suppose the hall might charge more for an extra guest, but I think it’s based on round numbers.”

Derpy’s whisper had a tinge of worry to it. “But what if I’m the one who would have pushed it over, say, a hundred?”

“Just relax and enjoy yourself.”

They were seated at a table on the far side from the main dais, and close to one of the large speakers. Karyn grimaced at that. Her parents took their seats next to her, and no communication with Derpy was possible as the newlyweds were introduced to cheers. A DJ was playing master of ceremonies, and while his voice was not distorted, Karyn still had to cover her ears. When Derpy saw her distress, she put her hooves in place of Karyn’s hands, making it appear that she was not bothered.

The wedded couple had taken their seats, and the DJ started his set proper, inviting people to dance. Karyn’s parents stood up and advanced to the parquet dance floor and, to Derpy’s surprise, so did Karyn. The tune began slowly, but picked up into a pop beat soon enough.

What amazed Derpy even more was how talented Karyn seemed to be as a dancer. Most of the adults had at least one drink in them already, and so were a little shaky on their feet, but Karyn, even without a partner, stood tall and moved on the beat. If no one else noticed her abilities, Derpy, from Karyn’s vacated seat, did.

Once the song ended, some people stayed out but Karyn returned. As salads were placed in front of all the seats, she dug in.

“You were beautiful out there,” said Derpy.

“Thank you. I took a dance class for one year before I got bored. But I still know some of the ideas. You could probably have that salad if you wanted. My father won’t eat his.”

Derpy was grateful. She checked for anyone watching before munching the lettuce and onions as quickly as she could. “Do you think I can have some of his water too?”

“That I wouldn’t advise. My father does tend to drink a lot of water at events like this. I think he does it because he knows he’s drinking liquor as well, and hates hangovers.”

The party was in full swing, and all the people moved from the dance floor to the tables to the bars in turn. After being informed that the only meal choices were steak, chicken, or fish, she ordered a second steak for her parents and then took Derpy once more to the appetizer table.

“It’s nice that they leave all this out for the whole event,” said Derpy. “In Equestria we’d take all this away and pack it up to eat later if we put it out for a party.”

“Maybe they knew that a vegetarian and her pegasus were coming.”

The pasta was cold, but the cheese was still good and they even found a station that they had missed the first time around that had small flatbread pizzas. They were cold too, but neither of them minded.

Only once did Karyn get to say hello to her cousin, and she was only permitted a passing wave at the bride herself. It didn’t bother her. Some distant friends and relatives were company enough, especially when she had Derpy.

The only other time when everyone was seated, and Derpy had to assume a hovering position above Karyn, was when the formal dance for the couple was held. It was a slow instrumental piece that Karyn didn’t recognize. In her lowest whisper she said, “However good my dancing is, I am not having a song like that at my wedding. I like that style of music fine, but when everyone’s watching I want something with a beat so I can shake away my nerves.”

“We’ll see if we can get Vinyl to do your wedding. Of course, you’ll need someone to marry first.”

Karyn rolled her eyes, and a burst of applause ended their need to keep their voices low. Everyone went back to their mingling, but Karyn told Derpy to wait. “They’re going to cut the cake. We’ll stay for that.”

Derpy indeed plopped into a chair and waited, but it took a long time for the servers to get around to the far tables. By then, Karyn’s parents had returned.

“Aren’t you going to eat your cake?” asked Karyn’s mother.

“I’m not the biggest fan of wedding cake. But maybe later.”

They all got up for the last dance, a bouncing number that made Karyn glad that she ate light. As they went back to the table for the last time to pick up Karyn’s purse, her mother saw the slice was eaten anyway. “I think someone took yours while we were dancing.”

“Whoever it was, I forgive them. I’m sure they wanted it more than I did.”

Karyn’s mother heard a laugh, but couldn’t place where it came from.

Author's Note

Next week, Derpy and Karyn are back for more adventures!

“Speaking of rough times with money, can you believe that the post office wanted me to work today?”

“On Sunday? There’s no mail then.”

Derpy raised her hooves. “That’s what I said!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Are you feeling uncomfortable carrying me for so long?”

Derpy flapped her wings and reestablished her hooves on the top of the cloud. “Not at all! I’m not an Earth pony, but I can carry loads like you all day.”

“I’m a little envious. I couldn’t carry you for even a minute, and what I can carry I can’t hold for as long as you can.”

Also, a special moment between Derpy and Karyn!

76: I Wandered Derpy as a Cloud

Since Karyn had moved and adapted to the schedule of the new school year, it had been more difficult to get motivated. She missed the dormitory and the routine of eating at the cafeteria. Now technically a commuting student, it felt like a disconnect from the rest of the people in class who still lived on campus.

Telling all this to Derpy over their Sunday coffee and a breakfast of eggs, she lamented her situation.

“Don’t feel too bad about it,” said Derpy. “Doesn’t it mean that your living costs are no longer part of those loans you despise so much?”

“Yes, but only because I’m paying them now.”

“But that’s a good thing. You’re paying for something you need, which means the money is gone so you can’t spend it frivolously.”

Karyn wanted to argue more, but Derpy continued.

“Speaking of rough times with money, can you believe that the post office wanted me to work today?”

“On Sunday? There’s no mail then.”

Derpy raised her hooves. “That’s what I said! But apparently ponies who pay extra can skip the day off and get their letters to the destination sooner.”

“So does that mean that you have to get back to Equestria?”

“We have to get back. I told them to forget it.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?” asked Karyn.

“Mr. Mintsugar will have to deal with it. I’ve worked for long enough that I can afford to say no sometimes. But I’m determined to get you to Cloudsdale today, no matter what.”

“Sounds good. Let’s go!”

Karyn mounted Derpy, who said, “Make sure you’re comfortable on there. I’m going to use the securing spell, because once we’re in Cloudsdale, you can’t get off. You’ll see everypony walking around, but the clouds aren’t solid to you.”

“I won’t forget. They never have been before.”

Derpy used her spell, and the apartment vanished around them to be replaced by the wide vistas of Equestria. Being on the first floor instead of a multistory dormitory meant that they were lower to the ground on first appearance, and also closer to Derpy’s house. They flew low and slow through Ponyville, with Derpy saying that once they were clear of the town she would go for height.

Karyn was still not familiar with Ponyville’s layout as well as that of the college or her home town, but she could tell when they were getting to the outskirts by the thinning of the houses. Even the ponies there seemed more laid back, if it was possible in such an already laid-back town. They were walking slower and moving with ease, except for the one unicorn who was waving her hoof rather excitedly. As they got closer, Karyn realized that she was waving at them, and that in fact it was Colgate.

Derpy saw her a moment later and went into a circular hover. “Good morning, Colgate,” she said.

“Hey, Derpy, Karyn. Glad I caught up with you.”

“We don’t have a lot of time to talk. I’m taking Karyn to see Cloudsdale for the first time. Have you ever been?”

Colgate took a moment. “No, of course not. It’s a pegasus city. Is Karyn going to change into a pegasus? I’d be surprised if that actually gave her flying powers.”

“It doesn’t,” said Karyn. “We tried it out once. It didn’t go well. But how did you know?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, when I tried that spell with you, it messed up my own magic a little bit. It’s difficult to explain because we can’t describe magic in ordinary terms. It’s like trying to describe smells. The best I could do is to say that your magic is ‘loose.’ It’s not as deep in you as a unicorn’s.”

“Understandable. I wasn’t born with it. Queen Chrysalis gave it to me.”

Derpy spoke up. “Do you think Karyn’s in any danger from that?”

“No, not danger.”

“Then if you’ll excuse us, if it’s nothing we have to worry about immediately, we want to get on to Cloudsdale. It seems like a thousand things keep getting in the way, and I’m not going to let anything else stop us.”

Colgate was surprised at Derpy’s assertiveness, but she said, “That’s understandable. Have a good time.”

Derpy built up speed, and they were on their way. As they ascended, Karyn said, “You know, I’m thinking, Cloudsdale and Los Pegasus are cities only for pegasi. But there are no equivalent cities for unicorns or Earth ponies. I’m not sure that’s fair.”

“Ponyville is largely an Earth pony town, and Canterlot is heavily unicorned.”

“Yes, but there are pegasi there as well. They’re welcome everywhere in Equestria.”

“Earth ponies and unicorns are welcome in Cloudsdale just as much.”

Karyn was about to protest that there was an obstruction in the way, but there were ways for non-pegasi to walk on clouds if it was really important, and a natural advantage didn’t have to always be worked away.

Derpy broke through the cloud layer and into the city, which triggered another thought for Karyn.

“Derpy, how is it that you can go up through clouds from the bottom, but not fall through from the top?”

“Huh? Am I not supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”

Derpy turned around to reveal a confused look. “I guess that’s just how it’s done.”

“Maybe it makes sense,” said Karyn, thinking of certain video games and the physics therein.

The first thing that struck Karyn was that Cloudsdale had no roads, which meant a completely new layout for a city. The entire city reminded her of a split-level house, as buildings could extend as high as they needed to be.

“What do you think so far?” asked Derpy.

“I like it. How high can you make these buildings?”

“Personally? Not very high.”

Karyn laughed. “No, I mean, can you stack up cloudstuff indefinitely?”

“I don’t know. Nopony’s ever tried. They just build until they have the room they need.”

“I guess these are really skyscrapers. Kind of put the buildings we have on Earth in perspective.”

It was Derpy’s turn to laugh at that.

“Can I ask one question though?”

“Of course.”

“What’s with the columns?”

Derpy looked around. She had never noticed it before, but there were an awful lot of fluted columns holding up the buildings of Cloudsdale. “They’re just part of the architecture.”

“That’s not really answering the question. It’s OK if you don’t know. I would like to find out. You see, columns like that were used heavily in ancient societies on Earth like Greece and Rome. When they built out of marble, columns like that were necessary to keep the buildings standing. So either clouds need more support than it seems, or there’s some kind of cross-cultural overlap.”

Derpy shrugged. They were in the background for her, and she didn’t really feel like thinking about them. Instead, she was just happy to be in a home that she hadn’t seen for a long while, and to have her closest friend with her. “Come on. I’ll show you the weather factory.”

She banked around the nearest building and made her way toward a more open area.

Karyn was aware of the weather factory from seeing it in the show, but in person it was something different. To actually hold a snowflake and not have it melt in her hand, but actually see the crystallization and intricacy with the naked eye was an experience that no human had before. She was careful not to taste the rainbow juice, but did come close enough to smell it. It smelled more savory than spicy.

“I think so too,” said Derpy. “But it’s like vanilla extract in that way. Smells lovely, but tastes terrible. Or so I’m told.”

Karyn wondered if Derpy was really relaying what other ponies had told her, or if she had actually sampled one of the nasty concoctions.

They left the weather factory, and Derpy said that there was something specific she wanted to show. The clouds thinned as she soared around, ultimately reaching the edge of the city. Turning around, Karyn could see the city in the varying shades of white. But then Derpy continued her original direction and came to a stop, right at the edge of the base cloud. She knelt down and stuck her head over the side. Karyn looked down.

Whether it was part of the magic that held her on or just the knowledge that it existed, Karyn felt no sense of vertigo or acrophobia, Instead, she got to overlook the vista of Equestria. Ponyville was off to the south, a mere speck. More of the land was open fields, grasslands and clean earth.

“I’ve seen the land as I’ve flown over Earth in a plane, but it doesn’t compare to this,” she said. “In the first place, you can only see a little of it as it goes by through the tiny window. In the second, just about all of it is partitioned off into farmland. You see a lot of squares where different crops are grown. Sometimes they have circles on them because they use that kind of irrigation. It’s all controlled. Not like this.”

“I’d like to see that sometime.”

“It’s only in certain sections of the country. Some time when you’re really feeling strong. Speaking of which, are you feeling uncomfortable carrying me for so long?”

Derpy flapped her wings and reestablished her hooves on the top of the cloud. “Not at all! I’m not an Earth pony, but I can carry loads like you all day.”

“I’m a little envious. I couldn’t carry you for even a minute, and what I can carry I can’t hold for as long as you can.”

“We all have our strengths. I can’t do the kind of precise manipulation you can with fingers.”

Karyn recollected the spell that Derpy used to type. “With magic you can.”

“And you have devices to lift and carry heavy weights with as well.”

“Mmhm. In any case, I’m getting a little uncomfortable sitting on you so long. Is there anywhere we can go where I can change my position and stretch?”

“Absolutely. We’ll go to my house. I’ve wanted you to see it for such a long time.”

Karyn did her best to shake out her muscles and extend her back. “Great. You have some way there for me to get off and not fall through? Like a board or something?”

“Yeah, something.”

Not realizing that Karyn would get so tired, Derpy had taken her on an extended tour and were a long distance away from her house. She assured Karyn that she was flying as fast as she could. For her part, Karyn braved it through. It was no worse than some of the long trips she had taken with her parents.

The residential section of Cloudsdale was also vertical, and the equivalent of their lawns were light cirrus clouds that pegasi could fly through and blow like dandelion puffs. They provided space and noise reduction. Some houses were larger than others, true cloud mansions. Derpy’s house was one of the smaller ones.

“Hey, Derpy?”

“Yes?”

“If you married an Earth pony and had a unicorn for a daughter, why did you get a house in Cloudsdale?”

Derpy took a pause. “It was my father’s. He and my mother saved up and bought it. But when he moved, he put it in my name. That was so generous of him. I moved into it when Dinky went to school.”

Karyn didn’t pursue the line any further.

Derpy lit in front of the door which was actual wood and opened with a key. Inside, to Karyn’s disappointment, all the furniture was also made of cloud. That made for a rather simplistic décor. She said as much.

“My last tenant moved out, so I just slapped this together out of cloud to make it look like it would when somepony else moved in.”

“Oh, that’s right. You rent it.”

“Yes. I had a nice young pegasus stallion who worked in weather. He was a good tenant. Always paid his rent without me asking. If something went wrong he would get it fixed himself and then send me the bill. That might have been more expensive, but I prefer it to having to find a repair pony myself.”

Karyn listened patiently, but her rear end started aching again, and she fidgeted and stretched some more. “Derpy, do you have that security spell? Can you turn it off? I want to just detach myself from you, even if it’s only standing up.”

“Let’s go to the bedroom. You’re going to love this.”

There was only one bedroom in the house, and it was on the same level as the living room. Again, though, Karyn was disappointed to see only cloud furniture. The bed was not even bed-like, just a puffy cloud.

“Derpy, it’s a lovely house, but I really—“

“I know, Karyn. This is the thing. I know that you can’t walk on clouds, but I had this cloud enchanted so that you can lay on it.”

“You can do that?” asked Karyn.

“It’s a newer spell, but better. When you lay on it you’ll feel the same thing that a pegasus does when she steps on a cloud.”

Karyn looked at her, wondering if she was joking, but Derpy have no such indication. Instead, she released Karyn from the holding spell and sidled close to the cloud. Karyn poked out a finger and felt resistance.

“You got a unicorn up here to do this for me?”

“Mm-hm.”

“That must have cost you a lot. Thank you so much.” Karyn tentatively stepped off.

“Go on, jump off and land on it.”

Karyn didn’t jump, but she did roll off Derpy’s back and onto the cloud. The first thing she was grateful to feel was that she wasn’t free falling. Then she actually felt the sensation of the cloud.

Because they looked so much like cotton, Karyn assumed that it would feel like a big cotton pillow. Instead, it was more like diving into a swimming pool, only she could breathe without effort, and did not need to exert any effort to keep on top. The cloud buffeted her back, and all the stiffness she had felt flowed out of her like it was a solid thing.

She bounced up and down on the cloud, laughing and making happy noises, before the second feeling hit her: an extreme fatigue, as if she’d been awake for an entire day.

“Oh, my.” She yawned and leaned back.

“You’re tired? Feel free to lie down and take a nap.” Derpy grinned with her tongue stuck out.

“No, I didn’t want to come here to sleep, just to stretch out and relax…” Karyn’s speech slurred as her vision clouded. Despite her wishes, she found herself losing consciousness. The cloud seemed to have taken on a life of its own, folding and flowing around her. She could no longer see any part of herself below the neck, and the part of the cloud behind her head thickened to form a pillow. Now in addition to the feeling of floating, she had to deal with the warmth of being wrapped in a blanket.

It was too much for her. Derpy watched her eyes flutter and seal shut. Karyn’s breathing slowed and she rolled into a fetal position.

The rest of the magic that had been infused into the cloud took effect. From each part of her body the cloud turned from white to black as the stress and fatigue was leeched out of her. It grayed the cloud until it became saturated, then rained onto the cloud floor below.

As softly as she could, Derpy hovered on top of her and whispered.

“I know how hard it can be, even at your age. Everypony says that young people have it easy, but we know it’s not. When I was your age, I was scared of not knowing where I was going to live or what I was going to do either. When I got the mail route, at least I had some surety in my life. I watched it with Dinky too. She’s working so hard, but nopony gives her any credit because that’s what young ponies are supposed to do. Well, I give her all the credit in the world. And you too. There’s no one in Equestria I love more than her…”

Derpy leaned her head down on top of Karyn’s.

“But there’s no one on Earth I love more than you.”

A strand of hair fell over Karyn’s face. Derpy brushed it aside with her hoof and planted a motherly kiss on her forehead.

***

When Karyn regained consciousness, it took her a moment to remember not to try to put her feet on the ground. She was still wrapped up in the cloud, but could slide out and lie on top of it. She stretched out, feeling as if she grew three inches from doing so. Derpy was nowhere to be seen, but Karyn didn’t mind. It was so pleasant just to relax against the back of the cloud, breathe, and feel the air against her skin.

She found her purse laying near her, and felt lucky that it had not been kicked aside in her sleep to fall all the way to the ground. Reaching in to find her compact, she prepared herself to see the severe case of bed hair. But a moment of concentration and a flash of green light took care of that, as she put on the illusion of being made up. After clearing her throat, she tentatively called, “Derpy?”

With only the breeze outside responding, Karyn yelled a little louder, and Derpy came flying into the room, a grin on her face. “Did you have a nice nap?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to come to your house and just fall asleep.”

“But that’s what I intended. You look so much better for it.”

Karyn shook her head. “That’s just my changeling magic.”

“Your magic isn’t as effective around your eyes. Oh, it would fool anyone who didn’t know, but I can tell the difference from when you’re tired to now.”

“Derpy, what did you do?”

“I just got you a cloud that could support you.” Derpy winked and lay down next to Karyn, motioning her with a wing to mount up.

Trotting out into the living room, Karyn no longer felt discomfort at being on top, and even swung her leg over to sit sidesaddle. Derpy sat on the couch and laid out. Now she could really look over the room. Even though it was monochrome, the furniture had a kind of aerial feng shui organization. If Derpy had indeed crafted the furniture herself, it was good work.

As if sensing what she was thinking, Derpy said, “There are pegasi who can craft cloudstuff like sculptors, and make things like tables and shelves that have perfect edges and corners. But like I said, I just threw it together.”

“I like it. It’s homey. I’ve seen people who are just starting out, and they have to get their furniture from thrift shops, so it’s all mismatched. I’ve even known a few who had to eat off milk crates until they could afford tables. If they weren’t proud, they would still have people over and would be good friends, because everyone knew that things would get better someday soon. That’s what I feel here. Even if you don’t come back here to live, somepony will take it and make a happy home.”

“Ooh, yes. I’d like that to be the case. Perhaps I’ll be a little choosy as to who I rent to. I’ll want to find a young pony, or maybe a couple, that needs a nice place and doesn’t have too much money.”

Karyn grinned. “Yes, and then when you do find that tenant, you’ll catch her doing something weird and mistake her for a witch.”

Derpy wanted to roll with laughter, but couldn’t tip Karyn off her back. “Or—“

“A sorceress or an enchantress, yes.”

“Actually, I was going to say she’d be a secret technology user, and have a cell phone or something.”

Now it was Karyn’s turn to want to laugh. Derpy slid underneath to keep her weight stabilized. “Listen, this is wonderful,” Karyn said, “but I think it’s time to go. I belong with my feet on the ground.”

“All right. You saw the town and my house, and that’s what I wanted.”

Derpy trotted to the door and closed it behind them. They found a hole in the ground that let pegasi leave. After waiting on a short line, they glided to the point where Derpy could drop Karyn off at home.

“Well, Derpy, we got to Cloudsdale after all.”

“Yeah. I’ll have to deal with skipping work, and we’ll have to deal with Colgate’s information at some point too.”

Karyn finally dismounted Derpy and stood in her kitchen, still feeling loose from sleeping on the cloud, but happy to feel solid ground again.

“We will, but I think this was the most enjoyable way we could have taken the trip.”

“What do you mean?” asked Derpy.

“As much as I like pre-planning things, every time we tried we couldn’t do it. But today, we threw caution to the wind and went. Because of that, it had the rebellious fun of breaking a rule.”

“OK, then. Next week we’ll break into Canterlot Castle.”

Karyn was shocked, but Derpy was joking.

“You’re going to give me stress again. Where’s that cloud bed?”

77: Prestiderpitation

By the time that Karyn noticed that Derpy was late in arriving, it had gotten even later. She had finally gotten around to making breakfast and looked at the clock to see that it was 9:30. Briefly, she worried about whether or not Derpy needed a day off and if the second half of her breakfast wouldn’t go to waste, but she decided to press on anyway and finish making pancakes. Between flipping and pouring, she struggled to tidy the apartment to Derpy’s exacting standards.

When at last she heard the tap at the window of Derpy’s hoof, she slid it open, feeling the cool morning air blow away the last of her sleepiness.

As soon as Derpy entered and went visible, she began apologizing profusely. “I can’t believe how late I am! I can’t make any excuses, but ever since last week when I skipped going into work, I had to pull extra-long shifts to make up for all the mail I missed. Then I got behind with my chores at home and writing to Dinky to make sure she knows I’m still thinking about her and everything.”

“Don’t worry. I hadn’t even noticed. I had a pretty busy week myself.”

“Oh? A lot of work in your classes?”

Karyn put the pancakes on a plate and served them to Derpy, who dug in with a greedy look in her eye. “Some, but I also made the drive back home Friday after class to pick up a few more things I left at home. Then I got back late yesterday because my folks of course want to see as much of me as possible. I wound up staying up late putting everything away.”

“You still seem vigorous, though.”

“Credit that nap you arranged for me last week. Maybe you should take one yourself.”

Derpy chewed her breakfast loudly. “Thank you for making this. I should fix you breakfast some time.”

“Don’t worry about it. You do plenty for me when we’re in Equestria.”

“So what kind of things did you get?”

“Huh?” asked Karyn.

“When you went back to your parents’.”

“Oh. It’s all the little things you don’t think of when you move. An alarm clock, a little lamp that clips to the side of my desk, and a space heater for the winter. I should ask Gayle if she’s all right with that, though. A lot of people worry about them being fire hazards or just costing too much in electricity.”

Derpy gave a little grin and said, “She might just be happy that you’re not keeping a bubbling cauldron.”

Karyn rolled her eyes, not wanting to be reminded of her landlady’s mistaken impression. She decided to change the subject. “So you write to Dinky every week? How has she been?”

“Excellent. She’s also writing to her father, she tells me, but hasn’t heard back from him too often.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m in the minority with my parents staying together—but I’m being selfish to talk about them. Go on about Dinky.”

Finishing breakfast, Derpy stacked the dishes in the sink. “Other than that, things are much the same with her. She’s back at school and still working at the shop, but she’s talked about travelling Equestria to find rare artifacts.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun.”

“Yes, but at the same time, she’s in Canterlot and has the opportunity to learn from Princess Celestia herself. If she wants to travel, she should do it after she graduates.”

Karyn did not have the sense of wanderlust, but in her third year of college and sixteenth year of schooling together, she could understand a desire to do something else.

“Well, in any case we both had a late start today. What do you feel like doing?”

Derpy thought for a while, then looked at the clock. “Hmm…it’s after ten now, which mean that lunch will be in about two hours. Doesn’t seem like a lot of time to do anything.”

“Lunch still at noon? You just finished breakfast.”

“I know. So it’s like a bonus. I get to eat sooner rather than later.”

Karyn scowled, but didn’t remind Derpy about her diet. “I agree with you though that there doesn’t seem a whole lot to do. Why don’t we just take a walk down to the school and see if there’s any fun to be had.”

“We can do that.”

The sun was out, but a check outside revealed some cold air, so Karyn put on a school sweatshirt but no jacket. “If it gets too cold,” she remarked, “I’ll take it off and disguise myself so I’m not indecent.”

With Derpy’s sense of direction, she could lead the way down toward the school. Karyn trailed back enjoying the crunching of the fallen leaves beneath her feet.

“What’re you doing?”

“I just like the sound of the leaves. Have you ever done that during the running of the leaves?”

“No, I always leave that to Earth ponies and faster pegasi. Delivering the mail is enough involvement with small papery items.”

Karyn looked oddly at Derpy, then scanned the area for people. Finding no one, she pointed to a pile of leaves and said, “Just try it.”

A moment later, the pile was dispersed by a hoof. “I can see the appeal, but it’s not something I’d delay a walk for. Come on, let’s get down to the school.”

The transition from the shady streets of the residential area to the polished cobble stone of the campus happened at a major road, so once the don’t-walk sign changed, Karyn was able to join Derpy—who had flown across—on the quad. Few people were around, and no indication of anything particularly fun.

“Why don’t we head down to the student union?” said Karyn. “They always have lists of events on campus.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Again it was Derpy who led the way. The familiar glass building welcomed them, but still it seemed deserted. Instead of going into the offices, Karyn eyed the bulletin board while Derpy took a seat at one of the round tables in the lobby.

The wooden door to her left opened, and to Derpy’s surprise the young man who emerged said, “Hey, Karyn. Long time.”

“Gerald! What, do you live here?”

The name reminded Derpy of the student body president.

“Ha, no,” he said. “We had another meeting today, but it’s not the same since we had you here. You want to come back and be secretary again?”

“Thanks, but no. I’m in my third year now and I’ve really got to buckle down and study.”

“So that’s why you’re here today?”

“Er…yeah.” Karyn blushed and went back to looking at the bulletin board. “Ooh, a show at the auditorium. I’ll see you later.”

If Gerald noticed the chair sliding across the floor, he was more shocked by Karyn’s quick departure.

Back out on the quad, Derpy hissed with laughter. “Nice move to get out of that.”

“Well, yeah. But it was all true. I am busy, too much to participate in extracurricular activities.”

“And what about spending Sunday with me?”

“That’s not extracurricular. That’s necessary.”

For the first time that day, Derpy was following Karyn. “Where are we going?”

“The auditorium, like I said.”

“Can we grab lunch first?”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Sure, we’ll hit the cafeteria. The show wasn’t until one anyway.”

“One what? And what show?”

“One o’clock. Hang on, we’re here. I’ll tell you about the show once we’re out of line and no one can hear us.”

They entered the cafeteria which was at the height of its weekend brunch rush, so it took them a while to get their meals, all the more so because Karyn had to stick both on one tray. Once they reached the corner booth where Karyn could hide Derpy by blocking the view with her body, they picked up the conversation.

“Anyway, you haven’t been to the auditorium, but they’re holding a magic show there.”

Derpy had begun her meal with a sip of water, and she spat it out when Karyn said that. This did attract attention, and Karyn had to fake choking for a moment to cover up.

“All this time I’ve been coming here there’s supposed to be no magic on Earth. Now they’re putting on a show about it?”

“Calm down. It’s not actually magic.” Karyn searched her mind for an equivalent that Derpy might understand. “It’s more like what The Great and Powerful Trixie does, only—“

“And she’s a great magician. So, again—“

“No, don’t interrupt. It’s fake magic, done by sleight of hand. Let’s finish up and go to the show and I’ll explain.”

Derpy ate quickly, though she tended to always do that, and soon they were at the auditorium. Derpy had expected something fancy like the theater at Canterlot where she had once seen the Hearth’s Warming Eve play, but in fact it was much simpler. The building was one where classes were normally held, and Karyn had taken some there. The auditorium could have been three classrooms on two floors each, but instead they had taken out the internal walls and floor to make a stage and seating for about five hundred people.

It was empty, and Karyn looked around for a good seat near the front, but also seemed to be peering toward the top.

“What’s the matter?” asked Derpy. “I’m right here, I won’t fly away.”

“It’s not that. This room has good acoustics. So I think that even if we whisper we might be heard.”

“Does that mean you can’t tell me about the magic show?”

Karyn took one more peek around. “No one’s here yet, unless they’re backstage, so I’ll explain quick. Now, listen. No matter what you see up there, there’s no actual magic being used. Not unicorn magic or zebra magic or even spells like yours. It’s all just illusions. Like he might take a deck of cards—remember from the poker game—and have someone pick one out, then shuffle the deck and find the card. But it will actually be a false shuffle and all the cards will stay in the same order. Understand?”

“So the magician is a con artist? Like the Flim Flam brothers?”

“No. Maybe in the old days that’s how it was, but everyone knows now that they’re just tricks. The entertainment is in seeing how skillfully the magician can pull them off, and in trying to guess how they’re done.”

“Oh!” Derpy brightened in voice. “What kind of prizes do we win if we guess how a trick is done?”

“It’s not like that. They never tell you how. Even your best guess is just a guess. Well, this being the age of the internet, there are videos and exposés on how some are done, but you can’t ask any particular magician how any particular trick is done.”

“Hm. I’ll still try to figure it out.”

They cut short their conversation as other people entered the auditorium. It did not draw a large crowd, but it was a free show on a Sunday so the audience could not be choosy. Finally the magician himself came out on stage, and Karyn was grateful that he didn’t have a lame stereotypical magician’s name. He billed himself only as Stephane Wagner.

His nervousness on stage was evident in his quick talking, but he took a deep breath and launched into his act, beginning with simple disappearances and movement of balls and coins. Karyn could spot one of his maneuvers where he palmed a ball, keeping her eyes on his right hand while he tried to draw attention to his left. She knew the ball was there, but he kept it covered until it was time to reveal it.

From there he moved onto fancier tricks, inviting the audience to guess a card and revealing one from the deck. Derpy laughed as he picked the wrong one, but the rest of the audience saw it as a fakeout, and applauded all the louder when he pulled it from the other side of the stage.

Seeming to pick up confidence, he went to more elaborate stage illusions. To Karyn’s surprise, he didn’t work with an assistant except as needed from the audience. This made the tricks more impressive, but it took away from the performance when he needed to stop and start background music by pressing the buttons on an mp3 player himself.

Through it all, Derpy had kept quiet apart from her laugh. Karyn was happy about that, but still wanted to be able to talk to her. Other groups of friends in the audience freely conversed between the magician’s tricks.

She leaned over and tried not only to keep her voice low but her lips still. “Are you enjoying it?”

“Yes,” said Derpy, “but I don’t see how anyone can be fooled. It’s obvious where he’s putting everything.”

“Really? Come on, all of them? How did he do the levitating jar?”

“It’s on a platform with a bar that goes backstage. It would have to be pretty strong and stiff, but if you made it of metal, it would work.”

As she had said, Karyn couldn’t confirm or deny Derpy’s theory, but it was plausible. “All right, and when he put the cloth over it and then it disappeared?”

“The bar pulls the platform backstage. Someone takes the jar off and then slides it to where it started.”

“I guess that could make sense.”

Derpy’s tone was more forceful. “No, I’m telling you, that’s what happened.”

“How can you—are you cheating and flying up to the stage to watch the parts you’re not supposed to see?”

“No, I haven’t left the seat, but I can see.”

Karyn stared up at the stage, then back at what looked like the empty seat. Derpy wasn’t lying. If she had flown up, Karyn would have felt the air move. Then it hit her that Derpy’s vision was perfect for foiling the misdirection of illusionists. She had just the right knack for looking where people weren’t expected to look.

“You’re incredible, Derpy. And you’re still enjoying it?”

“Yeah. It’s like a piece of performance art. Like dancing, really. You know that I don’t dance really well, but ponies who do put lots of practice into it. That’s what I can see happening here. The magician puts lots of practice into getting each move just right.”

“Maybe it is.”

Their conversation seemed to attract Stephane’s attention, even though he couldn’t tell whom she was talking to, and so she clammed up quickly and grinned. He announced his final trick and, one more time, asked the audience for assistance. Karyn turned around and saw that nearly everyone had been involved one way or another in the show thus far. She inched her head back and saw him looking at her.

“What’s your name?”

She immediately flashed red. Up on stage was not Karyn’s comfort zone. But she said her name and found herself zombie-walking to the stage as Stephane said, “A big hand for Karen!” The misspelling of her name that she could hear in his voice from long experience didn’t bother her as much as being dragged up in the first place. And why did she deserve a round of applause anyway? Everyone knew that she was going up to be a patsy or dupe in some way.

He sold it as a card trick, in the typical setup, with Karyn picking a card and showing it to the audience while Stephane had his back turned. She could feel that Derpy had come on stage with her, and that gave her some comfort, but all she wanted was to hear, “Is this your card?” and get back to her seat.

On the other side of the stage was a circle of fabric on the ground. As it happened, Karyn had seen a video on the internet and knew that it was going to be used for a quick change act. The magician would step in the circle, pull it up, quickly drop it, and be standing in a different outfit with her card on display somewhere.

She thought it was clever that the second outfit was a costume of the card itself, like something out of the Disney cartoon of Alice in Wonderland. She realized that her choice had been forced on her, but smiled at it anyway.

As she was finally making her escape, a thought hit her, and for the rest of her life, she could never fully explain it. A tall screen was standing stage right while the magician was stage left. She ducked behind it, concentrated, waited for the green light to dissipate, and then stepped out wearing the same playing card costume.

No one that she knew was in the audience, so she guessed and hoped that they would assume she was a plant or a shill. If she ran into anyone in class, it might be a little awkward, but Karyn, who always shied away from the spotlight, drank in her moment as the applause redoubled. To his credit, Stephane played it off well, only flashing confusion on his face for a second before gesturing to her as if he had planned the entire thing.

Right after that, the house lights came up, so she was free to run right past her seat and toward the exit. In the hallway, before anyone else could catch up to her, she changed back to her regular form and continued fast-walking toward privacy.

She heard Derpy flying behind her but was too interested in making sure no one else caught up with them that she couldn’t talk or listen. At last, when they were at the border of the campus, she slackened her pace and looked around to see that no one was following.

“I can’t believe I just did that!”

“I know!” said Derpy. “I was wondering if I shouldn’t go visible too, if we weren’t breaking cover completely.”

“No, we weren’t. I’m glad you decided against that.”

“But what made you do it?”

Karyn gestured toward home, and they started walking again. “I really don’t know. But I think it was something about the way I had to explain everything to you.

“I’ve seen magic shows like that for almost all my life. Some people get really into them and become magicians themselves or hangers-on who get to know the secrets. But now I’ve seen real magic, and I can do some myself. We’re different, those performers and me. I’ve never wanted to be them, but I wonder if maybe they’ve wanted to be me. That is, the person who can actually do magic. Now, that Stephane has to know I didn’t plan that. So he might be confused or he might understand. But he got to see a little bit of magic, and if I’m right, it’s something he wanted.

“Of course, I could be completely wrong!”

Derpy had a laugh at that, but quickly cut herself off. “You know, I’m thinking. Between that guy and Gayle, you’re really getting close to showing off your powers for real.”

“You think I shouldn’t?”

“I don’t know about that. But I think that if you want to do that, you should think about it consciously and decide if you do. Maybe it would be good to explain everything to Gayle or even your parents. But what it looks like you’re doing is setting yourself up to be found out without taking that step, and just hoping it will go well. That doesn’t usually work out well.”

Karyn grimaced. She took her Bluetooth out of her purse and put it in. “What about you? Do you want to meet more people?”

“Well, in one sense, I have met a lot of people. They just haven’t met me.”

“I see your point. Amend the question. Do you want to let other people meet you?”

“I really don’t know.” They arrived back at the apartment and Derpy could finally go visible. “So many people on Earth are nice, but I worry how they’ll perceive me. I don’t really want to be some kind of an ambassador for Equestria. I’m just plain old Derpy.”

“You’re awesome Derpy. But all right, we’ll take it slow.”

“Agreed. Well, since the show is over, what do you want to do for the rest of the day?

They sat down at the table and continued to chat. Outside, Gayle was attending to the yard work, peeking frequently in the window to see Karyn. Karyn didn’t mind so much; Gayle was a nice person even if suspicious, and when she was handed the first rent check, she responded by inviting Karyn into the main house for a snack. With Derpy hidden from view by the angle she sat at, all it would take was one step forward to reveal all. Someday they might consider it, but for now, everything was good enough.

Author's Note

Here are scenes from next week's chapter!

“So, what’s on our agenda today? Do you want to go to the school again and see if anything else is going on?”

“After last week, I’m not sure I want to have that much excitement. But I thought that I had some errand to run today. I just can’t remember it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That’s true. And actually, we’ll have an advantage there, because they use a take-a-number system like in a bakery. So we’ll sit on benches and if we’re lucky there’ll be an empty one.”

“Not like in the park where someone comes and almost sits on me.”

Karyn chuckled. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rolling her eyes, she crossed the hall. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “No one’s nice.”

“What number did you get?” asked Derpy.

“Three-oh-three. Watch, when we get up there it’ll be on twelve or something.”

Come back and read that one too! It's fun!

78: Derpartment of Motor Vehicles

Karyn found herself at the breakfast table, talking to Derpy, as the coffee kicked in at last.

“So how have your classes been going?” Derpy asked.

“Good. A lot of work, a lot of studying, but I’m getting a handle on it.”

“Yeah?”

Karyn stretched and yawned, then focused. “Yes. This is where I really have to pay attention because they’re teaching the stuff that the average person doesn’t know at all, and the professors aren’t afraid to use technical language. But I’m doing all the things that everyone says to do. I’m not skipping class, I’m asking questions, and I’m getting the homework in on time.”

“Good for you.”

Walking over to the sink, Karyn washed the dishes in extra hot water and let the steam open up her pores and her eyes. She told Derpy that she would get dressed properly and not use her changeling magic, and Derpy excused her to do so. When she was presentable, she sat down once more as Derpy stood up.

“So, what’s on our agenda today? Do you want to go to the school again and see if anything else is going on?”

“After last week, I’m not sure I want to have that much excitement. But I thought that I had some errand to run today. I just can’t remember it.”

Derpy gave her best downcast look and patted Karyn with a wing. “That happens to me all the time. I know everypony says to write things down, but I don’t know what I’m going to forget, and if I write down everything I had to do, I’d never have time to do it!”

“Exactly. But I know I know it, I just need some time to think.” Karyn went to the window. Usually Gayle would be out tending the yard, but she wasn’t that day. On the street she saw the fallen leaves bunching near her car…. “That’s what it is! I have to go register the car.”

“Oh! Is that fun?”

A blank stare greeted Derpy in response. When Karyn recovered, she said, “No. It’s about the most un-fun thing you can do without being actually painful.”

“Really? Why?”

Karyn was already getting her coat. “Because it’s so boring and there can be hassles if everything isn’t perfect. Come on, let’s talk while we’re traveling. We want to get in early so that there isn’t a huge line when we get there.”

Once they were in the car and on the road, Karyn said, “See, normally I could do this on the Internet, but because I’m still on my parents’ insurance, that means I’m different from normal people. So I’ve got to go down to the office.”

“But why should that be so unpleasant?”

“Well, think about a store where people are buying things. They’re pretty much all the same, no problems, so it goes quick. But everyone at the bureau we have to go to is different, so it’s stressful on the people working. Be prepared for a lot of waiting.”

Derpy again touched Karyn with her wing for comfort. “It’ll be better if I’m with you. We’ll find a corner of the line and chat.”

“That’s true. And actually, we’ll have an advantage there, because they use a take-a-number system like in a bakery. So we’ll sit on benches and if we’re lucky there’ll be an empty one.”

“Not like in the park where someone comes and almost sits on me.”

Karyn chuckled. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Explain to me though why you have to register cars. I mean, I understand some government functions like they have in Muland, but why with cars?”

“Well, cars put out a lot of pollution, so we have to be careful with them.”

“Then why do you use them?” asked Derpy.

“Well, that’s kind of complicated. First off, we’re not built for long distance travel by ourselves like you ponies are. You can fly, and unicorns can teleport, and Earth ponies can run great distances without tiring. But humans can’t go that long, so we need transport. Now, a long time ago we had trains the way you do in Equestria, and we still do, but there’s a problem with that. When trains want to haul large cargo like a crane, or bulky cargo like tons of grain, someone would have to come to the station and find a way to move it again to where it needed to be. So it works out better to have one kind of transportation that can go to any building, which is the large truck. Since they need the roads, regular people use them as well, and that’s why we have cars.”

Derpy had been silent throughout Karyn’s speaking, and Karyn could feel how enraptured she was, even though she couldn’t see her face and needed to watch the road anyway. “Wow. That’s amazing. Can you write all that down? I’m sure everypony back home would want to hear that.”

“Everypony?”

“Well, Lyra for one.”

Karyn got off the highway and checked her GPS for the final directions. “Anyway, because we have the roads and they’re so important, all the cars have to be registered and all the drivers have to be licensed. Fortunately my license doesn’t expire for another eight years, but right now, well, take a look, because here we are.”

They pulled into a parking lot, and Derpy looked up. To her surprise, Karyn slowed the car and stared as well.

“What is it?”

“This is a lot different from the office I went to back home when I got my license. That one was one side of a strip mall. Not like this.”

It was a squat office building with alternating horizontal stripes of white concrete and black glass, three stories high. On the far side, it sloped away into an underground parking area that appeared to be jammed up with cars. It was exactly the kind of place Karyn envisioned working at someday, and she did not consider it fair that such a fine building was given over to such an unpleasant activity.

She and Derpy slammed their car doors and Karyn put in her Bluetooth. “Let’s queue this,” she said.

Once they got inside, the layout was more familiar to Karyn. Seven people were standing in line between stanchions right at the front. One was being served, and he left as soon as Karyn and Derpy entered.

“This doesn’t seem so bad,” said Derpy.

“This is only the line to get our number. Who knows how long it’ll be once we do.”

She took her place at the end of the line and spaced out until it was her time. She explained that she was here for registration but that it wasn’t her name on the title. The explanation served no purpose as the bored woman behind bulletproof glass handed her a small square of paper.

“Back left of the hall, elevator bank, go to the third floor.”

“Oh, it’s not all here? That’s unusual.”

“Next!”

Rolling her eyes, she crossed the hall. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “No one’s nice.”

“What number did you get?” asked Derpy.

“Three-oh-three. Watch, when we get up there it’ll be on twelve or something.”

Derpy laughed at that, and the laughter buffeted Karyn’s spirits.

When the elevator doors opened, Karyn looked around to see a series of metal benches. Most were unoccupied and those that were not free only had one or two people on them. She checked for a number board.

“Karyn, look. It says three hundred. You shouldn’t be waiting too long.”

“That’s a green three hundred though. I might be more than three away.”

“I don’t get it.”

Karyn pointed out three other number boards. “There’s red, blue, and yellow as well, see? They’re all for different functions, which is why I had to tell the woman downstairs. So depending on what green is for, the three people ahead of me might take a half hour each.”

As if to put the lie to her statement, the counter clicked over to 301 as she sat down with Derpy. Even when it was a different color that rolled over, Derpy perked her head up. Whether she just liked the pleasant beep it made or hoped it would be for Karyn, she oohed and ahhed and had a good time. After a few dings, she said, “That was a green one! You’re next!”

“Great, that means I have to pay strong attention now. If I don’t race up as soon as it dings for my number, everyone will be ticked at me, especially the person I have to talk to.”

“I think you’re making it a lot worse than it is.”

When her number did ring, Karyn raced up with her form. “How can I help you?” asked the woman behind the counter.

“I need to register my car, but it’s in my parents’ name”

“All right, just check that box there and sign below.”

Karyn stared. “That’s it?”

“Well, then we need payment as well. Cash or charge?”

“Debit card OK?”

“That’s fine.

Thirty seconds later, the transaction was complete.

“There. Now was that so bad?”

“I’m honestly shocked that it was that easy.” Karyn collected her things and shouldered her purse. “I guess that it’s become such a familiar idea that someone got the idea to get better customer service.”

They moved back toward the elevator and stepped inside. After checking that no one else was coming, Karyn pushed the “Door Close” button.

“Now we’re going to have some fun, right?”

“Anything you want to do.”

“Even helping you out is fun,” said Derpy.

The elevator stopped, and Derpy made a move to leave, but Karyn saw that it was only the second floor and pulled her back. The doors opened and Karyn stared at a heavyset woman backed by four or five men. They entered the elevator, pushing Karyn back. All at once, things happened.

As the doors closed again, Karyn tried to take up as little space as possible, shrinking into the corner. The ceiling of the elevator car was low, and Derpy was forced to hunker down on Karyn’s shoulders. The portly woman crowded Karyn who made a sudden movement. Right then, the elevator started its descent. That tripped Derpy, who tried to right herself the best way she knew how, by flapping her wings, bumping her into the ceiling. She cried out, cutting it off, but not quickly enough to stop the woman from turning around.

Now facing the back, and with Derpy flapping, the woman threw up her hands and got a face full of invisible wing. Acting by reflex, she clutched her hands at the air. One dug into Derpy’s flesh causing her to call out. The other got a grip on one of Derpy’s hooves.

“There’s something in here!” the woman screamed, but at that moment the elevator had reached the ground floor. The doors opened again.

If nothing else, the pressure of close quarters was released, and by the front of the car, one of the men who had gotten on one floor above stepped out, yelling for security. The other men backed off slowly, unable to tell whether she was having a fit or whether she was in fact being accosted, perhaps by some kind of insect.

Karyn tried to push out of the elevator, hoping that once Derpy had room to maneuver, she would escape easily enough, and then the only problem would be some hasty explanations. But that woman had a death grip! To make it worse, a security guard in a gray shirt and leather belt came running up from the front desk. Karyn looked at his belt and saw that he was unarmed, or at least had no gun. He did have a radio, which he clicked and said something unintelligible. Then he said, “Everyone, let’s calm down.”

“No, it’s here, I tell you!” the woman said. “Help me with it.”

The guard flashed a blank look and went for his belt. Karyn saw the small cylinder in his hand and recognized it as pepper spray. Not knowing whether he was going for the woman or for Derpy, she couldn’t help herself, grabbing at the woman’s arm. “Let Derpy go!” she said.

He triggered the spray. Most of it got on the woman who immediately began coughing and hacking. A few drops hit Karyn’s arm, stinging and burning it. She rubbed her arm to try to diffuse it as much as possible. The problem was Derpy. Karyn knew that the invisibility spell transferred to inanimate objects on Derpy’s body, so she could wear her saddlebag or a dress without attracting attention. At that moment, the spray hung in the air, outlining the end of her front hooves, before fading into transparency.

Despite trying to keep hidden, Derpy couldn’t help giving a short coughing cry. That spurred the security guard to more action, as he ran toward the area where the spray had gone and swung his hand. It found purchase on something and he struggled with it. Karyn wanted to help, but attacking a security guard was sure to make the situation worse.

He pulled away, falling onto his backside with his fist still clenched. In front of everyone’s eyes, the air shimmered and faded into a cloth-knit saddlebag.

Now Karyn was really worried. She eyed the bag just as everyone else did, but with different intent. She had to get to it to either give it back to Derpy or get one of the spells herself. Ideally she’d want the time stopping spell, but any spell would serve as a distraction to figure out what to do next. The other problem was if the guard or anyone else discovered the spells and figured out how to use them. Right then, the only thing stopping them from learning the secrets of magic was the design of the spells themselves.

They had no plan, no drill for such a situation. Karyn wondered if Derpy would try to get away anyway to avoid being captured, or if that was useless since her only path back home was in the hands of the authorities. Just then a police car, not even bothering to use its siren, parked in front of the door, two officers emerging right after.

They sauntered up to the guard and asked what was going on. Although they spoke in hushed tones, Karyn could see that they pointed and gestured to her, and after that one of the cops kept her in his peripheral view at all times. She tried to shuffle closer to Derpy and reach out for her, but either she was incapacitated by the pepper spray or was frozen by fear, because she did not respond.

One of the officers walked over to the woman who had initiated the situation, helping her recover from her coughing spurt by giving her water to drink and wiping her face with a small towel. The water didn’t seem to help much, and he stood up to walk back to his partner.

As if on a whim, he took the water bottle and splashed it in the general area of where Karyn was standing. It splashed off Derpy and everyone could see a repeat performance of the invisibility magic spreading over the suspended water droplets. The cop walked forward and poked at the air with his nightstick. Derpy finally started taking the initiative, ducking and dodging in the air, but eventually the stick struck her and bounced off.

The cops looked at each other, and the one still standing by the guard nodded and picked up his radio. He put it close to his mouth and said, “Code sixteen.”

Even though it was muffled by the usual radio distortion, Karyn heard the dispatcher on the other end say, “Come back, did you say code sixteen?”

“Confirm, code sixteen.”

“All right,” the voice on the other end said, and the officers reconvened.

“Should we clear the area?” the one said.

“Code sixteen says to take no further action. Wait for backup.”

Karyn concluded that the mysterious code was the policeman’s way of saying, in essence, “We’re dealing with something where we have no idea what’s going on. Send in whoever deals with that.”

She huddled against the wall, and that at least brought no further disapproving stares. She tried to think, her eyes flitting every which way. There was no way to get to the bag without incapacitating three officers. Could her changeling powers help in any way? Perhaps by becoming something fast and strong, she could overcome them. The problem with that was the small black hemisphere she saw on the ceiling. She was on camera.

In her mind Karyn traced that path. She could get away, but then the police would get the tape, see the blonde girl, trace the time to when she was at the desk, and get her name off the registration. Not good.

While she went through all that, another man had shown up. Karyn had expected the same uniform, so didn’t even realize that he was there until it was too late. He was in a gray suit, and had the perfect look to blend in to a crowd. The only thing that stood out was the bulge in his jacket around his hip. This one was armed too.

After he was explained the situation, he directed the officers to clear everyone from the room. The lady who had been pepper-sprayed got the full attention of one officer while the other dealt with everyone else. Karyn tried to stand up herself, but the man in the gray suit shot her a look and pointed at the ground. She sat back down. Once everyone was out, the two officers returned.

“You guys can clear out too,” the man in the suit said. “Just report it as code sixteen, I’ll take care of the rest. Leave the bag on the floor.”

His tone of voice left no room for disagreement. The cops left, happy to be out of the situation without having to make a complicated explanation to their supervisor. Karyn was now left with Gray Suit and Derpy. Her options seemed to increase. If she could only get this man to understand—if she could even get him out of sight of the camera, she could transform and gain the upper hand. But her main goal was still to get the bag over to Derpy.

“Anything you want to tell me?” Gray Suit said.

“If you’ll pass over the bag, I can explain everything.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t mean to me,” said Karyn. “Just slide it along the floor—“

“To your friend? Even less of a chance.” He took out a scanner which chirped a few times like a Geiger counter, then ran some other tests with it that Karyn had no clue what meant. Taking out a notebook, he wrote down a few things, never taking his eye off Karyn or Derpy.

Their long bond had given Karyn a sixth sense about Derpy, and she got the feeling that Derpy was about to try something. Feeling the imperceptible difference in her position, she wanted to distract Gray Suit as much as possible.

“Look—“ she said.

“Don’t bother. And sit down, whoever or whatever you are.”

Now Karyn was really scared. He was right about to discover Derpy’s existence, and Karyn had no idea what to do about it. But to her surprise, he immediately changed demeanor, becoming friendly as if he were no more than a valet. His words belied his true intent.

“Actually, you can get on your feet, both of you. Don’t make any false movements or try anything, and we’ll all get through this together.”

Karyn stood as slowly as she could, still looking for an exit strategy. Begging and blubbering were starting to look good. “Sir, if you’d just tell me, let me go, I—“

“Hey, kid, don’t worry. Just cooperate and everything will be fine. Now, we’re going to go out to the car and take a drive. But if either of you try anything, I’ll take it out on the other one. Is that understood? Then let’s go.”

Keeping tight hold of the bag, Gray Suit walked backwards toward the door. This had to be Karyn’s opportunity. But as they passed the threshold and she saw the black SUV idling in the fire lane, a second SUV pulled up. Suit spoke to Derpy. “Get in this one. Again, don’t try anything or it won’t go well for your little friend.”

Whether Derpy got in or not, Karyn couldn’t tell, but Gray got into the new SUV and Tan Suit stepped out, clicking a remote to open the back door on the old one. Not knowing what else to do, she stepped in and shut the door.

That the windows were opaque she could see from the outside, but until she was inside and daylight dimmed, she hadn’t realized that the side windows were tinted from the inside as well. Even the rear window made it impossible to see anything. If she put her face right up against the glass, she could almost make out shapes. The only way to see where they were going was to look out the front. Tan Suit got in, started the SUV, and pushed a button.

A divider slid up between the rear seat and the front. All four directions were now blacked out. Karyn tried the door handle, finding it inoperative. She was being taken away, and would have no idea where.

To be continued...

79: Cloak and Derper

The room had no windows. That Karyn expected. She did not expect it to be so utterly clean and clinical.

When the SUV had stopped and the door opened from outside, Karyn found herself in an underground enclosed garage with no indication of where she was. The other SUV, the one with Derpy in it, was nowhere to be seen. For all she knew, Derpy was off somewhere being tortured.

The man in the tan suit had hustled her to an elevator. The car was the only thing that showed any kind of personality, having its own style of buttons and walls. The buttons went up to five, so it was at least a five-story building.

Unless that was done to deceive. Karyn had no way of knowing whose custody she was in. It could be a special division of the police, the FBI, the NSA, or some x-file division, not even made public. When the elevator came to a stop on the second floor, she was walked down a hall and into the windowless room. The door was open when they arrived, but her escort swiped a card through a reader, and a light switched from green to red. She was locked in, alone.

The walls were the off-white shade of the cheapest and simplest paint. The desk was gray laminate over gray metal. The chairs were perfectly straight-backed and darker gray. It was funny, Karyn thought, how the same color could give two different feelings. The gray of Derpy’s skin was a hidden laugh, a cloud that passed over the sun on a too-hot day. This room had the gray of cold metal, the kind used for jail bars and guns.

Karyn figured that she was being left to stew so as to loosen her up before they began questioning her. She didn’t even know what she was planning to say. Her highest priority was to preserve the secret of magic so as not to have it fall into the wrong hands, but just getting herself and Derpy out of their custody was something that she wanted to do. If they could have privacy, even just for a split second, they could get away to Equestria and figure out what to do next.

It was the grey-suited man who came back in, swiping the card again and taking a seat. Karyn’s memory finally tripped as to what the room reminded her of. It was like the agents from the movie “The Matrix.”

“Now,” he said, “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on, to see if it confirms what we know.”

Did that mean that Derpy was talking to them? Or was it a bluff? She couldn’t risk that. “What do you know about My Little Pony?”

At least, for a moment, she had broken through by mentioning something he was not expecting. He beckoned her to tell more.

Karyn spilled out everything, talking about how the land of Equestria was real, how unicorns had developed the magic to transfer across universes, how Derpy had helped develop spellcrafting, who she was. She was just into explaining about pegasi when he interrupted.

“All right, let’s take it from the top.”

Great. He didn’t believe her. This was a problem for Karyn. Getting away was important, but even telling all and dealing with the consequences would be a means to that end. She thought of a scenario where some other human tried to get into Equestria, the ponies would find him, Princess Celestia would be informed, and she would fix everything. For all Karyn knew, the princess could cast a spell to make it so the entire capture never happened.

The realization that she had no way out, not even the truth, meant that she had to think harder and quicker. No way out of the room. Ventilation was through the ceiling, twelve feet up, but even if she could get past the grate, she could see that it made a sharp turn and became too narrow to crawl through. Every movie cliché she knew was failing her. One other thing she saw on the ceiling was the signature black hemisphere that indicated a security camera. Again, this struck Karyn as cheating on the part of whatever shadowy government agency had her in custody. But this wasn’t a work of fiction where they had to be fair to someone trying to escape.

That gave her another thought. She might be overestimating her situation. Maybe they weren’t unapproachable.

“Look, am I under arrest here? If not, I would like to leave.”

Gray Suit smirked, as if knowing this would be her next tack. “You’re not under arrest, but you can not leave. Arrests involve all sorts of nasty paperwork, publicity…rights.”

Karyn felt the first touch of panic claw at her neck. Half of her was ready to break down, cry, and beg to talk to her parents. The other half was still looking for a way out, but it was losing ground, and crying seemed the last avenue to get out. She stared at the door. Locked with the electronic security system.

Her voice breaking, and as much as she could hold on, she said, “Please, can I have some water. Or coffee, or something. I just, I really…”

“Yeah, all right. I’ll get you a drink and then we’ll begin again.”

Karyn kept her eyes focused on him as he pulled out his swipe card and passed it through the scanner. Once he was gone, she closed her eyes and folded her hands below the table. Her breathing slowed and she concentrated. When her interrogator returned, she was calmer as she answered his questions.

“Now,” he said. “Tell me again how this supposed pegasus came here.”

In monotone, she told more stories about her and Derpy, leaving out as many details as she could. She endured as long as she could, taking sips of the water with her left hand. She could tell that he wasn’t believing her any more than before, so she had to reveal a real detail.

“If you go into the bag, you will find her assortment of spells. If you give her the second one, she can turn visible. Then you’ll see for yourself.”

Clearly he could detect no dishonesty, since Karyn hadn’t lied to her. Still, he was able to pick up that this was a different kind of candor, something that she didn’t want to tell. He got up and walked out of the room.

Now was her moment. She got up and stood with her back to her camera, covering her right hand with her left. Bracing herself for the pain, she picked up her hands and swiped the magnetized card that her hand had become through the reader. Her finger muscles screamed at her, but the door clicked open.

Thankfully, there were no guards immediately outside the interrogation room, but she was sure that her escape would be noted on camera and that the alert would be sounded. Her changeling powers did not extend to pure invisibility, but she had to be stealthy. She considered becoming something ridiculously small, like a fly, but worried that it would make her too vulnerable. One misplaced swat and she would be done for.

The air ducts beckoned her again, but even if she could fit by becoming a bird or a ferret or something, the idea of being cramped in a narrow tunnel didn’t appeal to her. What she needed was to hide. Then it hit her. Karyn focused and turned herself into a chameleon.

She knew that chameleons didn’t change the color of their skin for camouflage but based on mood. She didn’t care. She would be her own type of chameleon. Blending perfectly with the wall, she was finally off camera.

Her next move was to get out of the hall. Racing as fast as her lizard legs would take her, she turned a corner. After passing other interrogation rooms, some with the more traditional one-way glass, she found an open and empty conference room. It even lacked a camera. She reverted back to human form. She breathed.

How did it get so out of hand? She thought to herself. This was the worst-case scenario. This must be what Derpy felt when I was being held by the changelings. But things always work out for the best in Equestria. They might really hurt Derpy here!

Karyn needed to figure out a plan. Just as Derpy had come to her rescue then, Karyn would have to come to hers. The first step would be to figure out the layout of the building. If she could make her way outside, she could figure out where the most likely place that they were keeping Derpy was. At least, she could try. The major disadvantage she had was that no one else could help her, unless she was willing to give away the secret of Derpy’s existence.

No, that could not be allowed. And so Karyn had to face a difficult choice. The saddlebag, not Derpy, had to be her first target. Once she had that, she could really have some fun. She didn’t know all of Derpy’s spells, but she knew enough that could be used for defense or even to mess with the captors. Combined with her changeling powers, she’d be unstoppable. But finding it was the first step.

The problem was that, knowing she had escaped, she had to assume that the building would be on lockdown, and that everyone would be suspicious of anything. Her advantage was that no one knew she was a changeling. She went back to lizard form and moved out.

Whether the building had no windows or whether she just couldn’t find them, Karyn spent fifteen minutes trying every hallway. It occurred to her that she might still be in a basement, and wondered if she couldn’t tell from the air pressure. She had no way to figure out how, and nowhere was there any floor plan or directory for the building.

“Damn!” she swore, hoping that no one else heard her. There was only one alternative. She would have to try to find someone, convince them that she was part of whatever organization was holding Derpy, and get them to divulge the location of the bag.

The only people she knew worked for the organization were Gray Suit and Tan Suit, and she didn’t know if either of them were actually important or if they were just there to intimidate people. Plus Gray was probably scouring the building for her right at that moment, if he wasn’t getting reamed out by a supervisor. She could picture the scene. “How did she manage to get one of our cards, then get past the cameras in the hall?!”

No, assuming his form was only setting herself up for failure. She would have to act slowly. First that meant finding someone, exactly what she had wanted to avoid. She found a main hallway, wider than all the others, and proceeded down. It wasn’t until she reached the end and saw a sign that said, “Commander” that she saw another person.

The man at the desk, presumably the commander, stared into a flatscreen monitor while taking calls. Karyn refused to believe that anything could be more important at the moment than figuring out Derpy’s secrets, so he had to be working on that. She inched toward the door, but hesitated as she heard footsteps.

Three men in lab coats were coming up the hall the same way that she had. They were all engrossed in reports, and Karyn saw her chance. As soon as they passed, she transformed into one of her professors who also wore a lab coat—she never knew why—and followed the men into the commander’s office.

“Well,” the commander spat. “Have you got anything?”

“There’s definitely an energy source coming from the bag and the items within,” said the first Lab Coat.

“Is it dangerous?”

“It’s powerful. Power always has the potential for danger. What it does, how the danger could manifest, that we don’t know.”

The commander stared daggers at him. “So you know nothing. What about the creature?”

Karyn bristled as she heard her friend referred to that way. Lab Coat said, “That’s really the other team’s department—“

“Then what are you doing here?!”

“Well, frankly, Commander, we don’t know what to try next. We want to send it to the lab out in Al—“

“No.” The commander interrupted. “As few people as possible are to know about this until we get a handle on it and—who the hell are you?!”

He had stood up and, in doing so, spotted Karyn in the back. Her disguise wasn’t working as she’d hoped. She stepped back and saw the commander’s jacket hanging on the wall. She hadn’t had a picture in her mind of the change she needed, but this would do. Reaching into her coat, she flashed the green light and pulled out a gun.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to have to do this. No one move, please.”

“Is that my gun?” the commander said. His eyes shot to his holster, seeing that it was still in place.

“I guess we just use the same model. Hands up, please. Everyone against the wall.”

Karyn had no experience holding a gun on people, and tried her best to make it look real and not just an extension of her arm. The commander and the lab coats stood against the wall, but she thought they could tell that she was an amateur.

“All right. Two questions. Where is the bag and where’s Derpy?”

The other three stood mute. “You mean the invisible creature?”

“Yes.”

“The creature is in the secure lab. The bag is in firearms and toolmarks.”

Karyn advanced on him. “No, I need their locations in the building. Give me exact and simple directions. If I take one wrong turn, I’ll come back here and take care of you.”

She moved to the side and took the commander’s pistol from its holster. Karyn had never held a gun before that, but it was more about getting it out of his hands than into hers. He laid out the position of the room with the bag, which was on the roof.

“And the secure lab?”

“In the subbasement. Dead center. But you won’t get there. Let’s just talk about this.”

“No. I’m sorry, but this isn’t for you to know about. Now, phones, keys, key cards please.” She emptied the pockets of everyone and took their means of communication. Then she disconnected the office phone and removed the Ethernet cable from the commander’s computer. Finally she locked the door, trapping them inside.

The commander hadn’t lied to her, as she made her way according to his directions, approaching the roof. As she took an access stairway, she took out the magazine from the gun she had confiscated and tossed it to the bottom of the stairs. The gun itself went onto a random floor. She was content with her bluff weapon.

Karyn realized that she could have interrogated them more and found out where exactly they were and what organization they worked for. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was to get away and forget it ever happened.

At the top of the stairs she changed form again. No longer did she plan on blending in. Intimidation was her weapon now. She recalled an image from one of the crime drama shows of a tactical officer dressed in riot gear, with a thick plastic helmet and face guard. Her garb was black and so was the high-powered rifle that she conjured as an attachment to her right arm. Sneaking through the hall, she found the door marked “Firearms and Toolmarks.” It had another magnetic card reader, but she did not want to hurt her hand again.

She probably could, in this form, kick the door open, but she didn’t know the technique and feared that, in a failed attempt, she would alert the people inside. Instead, she knocked on the door as if she belonged there. Twenty heart-pounding seconds passed. She knocked again. At last, someone disregarded protocol and opened the door a crack. She stuck the rifle muzzle in and shoved the door against the man who had opened it.

The room was full of more lab coats, clones of the ones she had left locked in the room below. Their resistance was limited to one of them yelling, “Call security!” As Karyn turned her attention to that one, he raised his hands and dove for the floor. The rest followed suit.

“Where’s the bag?” she shouted in a gruff voice.

“Security room.” One of the lab coats pointed a shaky finger toward a closet. There was a keypad next to it.

“The code!”

“O…one-one-two-three-five!”

She picked him up by his collar. “You put it in, Fibonacci.”

It took him two tries, since his eyes kept looking toward Karyn’s gun, but at last with the sound of a hydraulic release and air escaping from a hermetic seal, she saw Derpy’s saddlebag.

Just to see a familiar object, something homey and made out of cloth, with color designed for aesthetics, was a boost to Karyn’s heart after seeing nothing but clinical government cleanliness. She tossed up the flap, confirming that all the spells were still in their slots, and shouldered the bag.

She kept her gun trained on the Lab Coats as she backed out of the room. Now that she had the bag, she was less concerned about keeping secret. All she wanted to do was to get Derpy and get out of there.

As soon as she reached the stairwell, an alarm sounded and the lights went out. Karyn swore once more and tried to think of some animal she could transform into that had night vision. She remembered that ponies couldn’t, because Pinkie Pie needed goggles for the purpose. Instead, she just reached into her pocket, took out her phone, and turned on the flashlight function.

Karyn realized that there was a major flaw in her plan, as the directions she got to the lab where Derpy was being held were starting from the commander’s office, and to translate from her current position was impossible. She could retrace her steps and go back to the office, but they had to be waiting for her there.

She went for broke and just took the stairs all the way to the subbasement. Once there, she saw a cadre of guards, and she didn’t think their guns were magical extensions of themselves. She flashed green once more and turned herself into a cheetah. This had the dual effect of giving her extra speed and scaring off some of the guards. Not all of them were frightened, but they did hesitate. Once she got past them, she heard gunfire, but felt nothing and concluded that she had gotten away.

There ahead was the lab. Flashing claws, she burst through. On a monitor to her right was a display of a heat signature. The image of Derpy in expanding red, orange, and yellow showed her to be between four poles in the center of the room. She converted back to herself.

“Derpy!”

“Karyn! Don’t—“

She reached into the bag and pulled out the second spell from the front. “Take this and let’s get out of here!”

Outside, she heard the footsteps of the guards trying to catch up. Why was Derpy taking so long.

“Karyn, stay back,” said Derpy.

“What for?”

Karyn advanced toward the center where she knew Derpy was. Halfway there, Derpy finally turned visible. “Don’t come any closer! It’s a trap!”

Derpy flew toward her, but right at the border of the poles, she was pushed back in pain as an arc of electricity flew across the poles.

“Derpy!” Karyn cried out, but in doing so she noticed that the two poles nearest her were mirrored by two more. She heard the hum of a motor starting up, and could tell that she too was trapped.

From the back in walked the commander who she had thought was safely locked in his office, along with the original Gray Suit who interrogated her. He spoke with no detectable emotion to Gray. “You see, in situations like this it’s best to let the subjects have some play. It often reveals a good starting point of information.”

Derpy backed into the center of the poles, as far away as she could from the electric fence. “Why are you doing this? I’m sure that we can all be friends. If you were in my home, I wouldn’t treat you like this. You’re being mean.”

“We’re just seeking information,” said Gray Suit. “We have to make sure you’re not dangerous.”

Derpy closed her eyes, tears still making it past her lids. Karyn could tell what she was thinking, because she cast her mind to the same event. Three society ponies proposing to conduct experiments on her, and Derpy being an unwitting coconspirator with Princess Celestia to foil them. Here, though, there was no princess. Only a bureaucracy where almost no one had a name, and no one could check them.

All at once it became clear what Karyn had to do. She faced her friend.

“Derpy, I’m sorry. I’ll come back for you, I promise.” She reached into the bag.

Right as she turned to face down the officials who were advancing on her, Karyn caught Derpy’s glance. Pain, but confidence as well.

Karyn glared at the commander. She pulled out the first spell, put it on her hand, and, for the first time, entered Equestria without Derpy.

To be concluded...

80: All a Derp

Karyn took stock of her situation. The spell had worked, thankfully, as she would have felt distinctly foolish if her escape attempt had proved futile. She wound up on the ground, which was a second point of relief. Under normal circumstances a crossover at ground level on Earth meant being in the air in Equestria, and Karyn was prepared to change into some form of gliding animal like a flying squirrel. But either because they had been in the subbasement and that coincidentally translated to the ground in Equestria, or because the spell had a fail-safe for when a non-pegasus used it, she did not fall.

Now less fearful of being attacked, she could make plans with a cooler head. She looked around. Not having even an average sense of direction, let alone Derpy’s auto-mapping magic, she had to find her way through Ponyville to get help. She believed herself to be on the outskirts, and her first choice only proved to have a sparser concentration of buildings, so she had to turn around. Where was everypony?

Karyn remembered that Sweet Apple Acres was somewhere along the border of Ponyville, and the thought of Applejack and her orchard made her realize how hungry she was. She had not eaten since breakfast. It seemed like a long time before.

But Sweet Apple Acres could be clear on the other side of town for all Karyn knew, so she reversed her direction and walked toward what she hoped would be a more densely populated area. She wanted to find somepony, just to see a friendly face.

As she turned one corner she saw a cart disappearing down a side street, and jogged to catch up with it. She couldn’t reach it, but she did find the Ponyville market.

The market was in the process of closing up, and many ponies had already taken down or secured their stands. Karyn didn’t recognize any of them. She had met many ponies in her travels, but none were present. Not only were famous ponies like Rarity or Fluttershy nowhere to be found, but even background ponies that she might have recognized, like Roseluck or Amethyst Star weren’t around. She had to try anyway.

Running up to one of the stallions who was folding up a stand, she said, “Excuse me, sir, but I’m in need of help. It’s kind of a long story, but—“

“I really don’t have time to listen to a long story, miss. I’ve got to get home to my fillies, they’re waiting for their dinner.” He worked quickly and was trotting away so as to end the conversation. The other marketers followed suit. None of them made eye contact with her, and Karyn felt distinctly unwelcome. She pressed on into the main square, but even there it was sparsely populated and the ponies who were around hastened to take care of other business.

Karyn considered that, despite their outgoing nature, ponies who didn’t know her could still be a little wary of a human. She decided to alter form into her standard pegasus version of herself. Keeping the same cutie mark, she would clearly be a human, but at least she should be able to attract attention.

She did attract attention, but not the kind she wanted. If peace had been declared between ponies and changelings, word hadn’t gotten to Ponyville. A few windows closed and some walks turned to gallops as they ran in fear. Well, Karyn was just going to have to deal with it. Not everypony would have seen the green flash, so surely somewhere she could find help.

But what kind of help? On the horizon she saw what she thought was Sugar Cube Corner, but Pinkie Pie wasn’t the kind of pony that she expected to understand the gravity of the situation. Rarity would be better, but Karyn had no idea where the Carousel Boutique was. Fluttershy would be sympathetic, but only to Derpy as a fellow pony. Would her pony disguise be enough? Karyn still held a grudge anyway. The pony she really wanted was Rainbow Dash, but Cloudsdale was utterly inaccessible, and that depended on Rainbow even being there.

No. This was not the time for Karyn to take a second choice, even if it was an Element of Harmony. She needed the help of a Princess. An alicorn, who could command others and had the leadership experience to figure out the right step.

Karyn desperately wanted someone else to be in charge.

She had to find the library, and certainly the ponies of Ponyville would be helpful there. There in one of the houses was movement. Karyn knocked on the door with her hoof. It was another pony she didn’t recognize, a mare with a baby pony behind her on the floor.

“Please excuse me, I’m a stranger in town. Could you tell me where the library is?”

The mare rolled her eyes, as if used to the question. “You won’t find the princess there. Everypony comes to see her now, but if you want to you’ll have to go to Canterlot and wait your turn.” She slammed the door.

Karyn couldn’t tell if the mare was as bothered as she sounded, or if indeed she was even telling the truth. It could be a convenient excuse that all of Ponyville knew to give strangers. Still, going to Canterlot was not a bad idea. She could see Princess Celestia herself. Karyn galloped with a purpose as she sought out Derpy’s house. At least she knew where that was.

Ponies had no need of door locks, except in the palaces of the princesses where great and dangerous valuables were secreted. Karyn lifted the latch and entered with no ceremony, only to hear a small, “Blert.”

“Oh, no. Poor kitty.” She shifted back to human form. “Mommy’s in terrible trouble. It’s all my fault, really. Now I have to try to take care of it. Or to ask somepony who can to take care of it. But I can attend to you while she’s away.”

She topped up the food bowl with extra kibbles. If a major effort was needed, she wanted Muffinhead good and fed. Then she attended to his sandbox before finding the stack of papers that Derpy kept in the kitchen. There was something she needed.

After a quick search, she found the bank book that Derpy had shown her when Karyn had been awarded the fee for helping Rainbow Dash open her park. Once more she assumed pony form and took off toward the bank. The line dragged forward, and every moment reminded her of what Derpy could be going through.

“Can I help you?”

“Do you know how much the train ticket to Canterlot is?”

“We don’t sell the tickets here.”

Karyn held up a hoof. Ponies were normally so bright and helpful. What was going on? “I know that. I just wanted to avoid going all the way down to the station, getting the price, coming back here, taking out money, then going back to buy the ticket. But if you can’t be helpful, I’ll just take out twenty bits and hold the rest in change.”

He dug through a drawer and pulled out the bits in a small envelope. Karyn took it in her mouth and left the bank.

On to the train station, where again the line was long and slow as families of ponies laughed and talked about their plans at various northern destinations.

She wanted to jump the queue, explain to everypony that she was on a mission to save Derpy and that mattered so much more than their pleasure trips, but of course she did not, and it would not make the train come any sooner. But perhaps her fortunes were coming around, for the train arrived a moment after. Once in her seat, at last she had a moment to think.

Although her intent was to return to Earth and rescue Derpy, Karyn did not believe that time had ceased to flow there. She had no proof, but something in her heart said that the bond with her home world that kept it fixed in time had been severed. The weight of it fell on her shoulders.

She had been arrested, given a record that would follow her the rest of her life. How many crimes had she committed? Certainly pulling a gun on a federal official would be the worst, even though it wasn’t real. Somehow she didn’t think the changeling defense would hold up in court. It didn’t matter. Her fate had been sealed when they caught her. Arrest records were public. No company would hire someone who had a record for a department like IT.

Would it even be worth it to finish school? Would she be allowed to graduate? If she went back, rescued Derpy, and went on as if nothing had happened, would she be arrested again? In one moment, because of some stupid woman crowding her on an elevator, her destiny had changed. She would live out the rest of her life in perpetual debt, struggling to keep a job, with her student loans hanging over her head until some other disaster came along.

The mountains of Canterlot grew closer, but Karyn saw them as the bars of a prison cell. Other ideas bounced in her head. She could go back to Mike and hope that he could support her. Or even say goodbye to her parents, sell everything, and move in with Derpy. Why not? She was more changeling than human, the way she had used her magic like an action hero. Earth was no longer her home. Better to leave for Equestria.

The knock of the train wheels as she pulled into Canterlot jerked her out of her self-pity. Derpy was what mattered now. Without any baggage or companions, she could be the first off the train and get to the castle. Although Canterlot was a maze, the palace was the most prominent sight, and every turn not blocked by a building marked her progress as the tower grew closer.

Even here, Karyn noticed, the faces of the ponies seemed cold and distant. Canterlot was never the friendliest town, but again the population, mostly unicorns, was sparse and offered no sign of greeting. No matter. Only one pony mattered. She reached the great gate of Canterlot Castle and accosted the guard.

“My name is Karyn, of Earth. I need to speak with Princess Celestia right away. One of her subjects is being held captive by the cruelest of enemies, and I need her help.”

The guard was a pegasus, and he turned to his companion. His expression broke into a smile, then a full laugh as his wings fluttered. “Go on, you. Have fun somewhere else, little filly.”

Karyn remembered that she was still in pegasus form and quickly focused her magic. For once, what she needed to be was herself.

“See, I am a human, Derpy’s human, and I need to speak to the princess now!”

“Even so, Princess Celestia is far too busy. Don’t you see?”

He pointed behind her, and Karyn spun around. She saw nothing but waning daylight. “What?”

“Even now Princess Celestia is lowering the sun. Do you think she can be interrupted for the likes of you?”

Of course. Karyn was not native Equestrian, and she’d forgotten that a princess there had more than only political power. Which was why she wanted her anyway. She still held the hope that Celestia could cast a spell and fix everything.

Still, that wasn’t her style. Celestia did not like to use her power indiscriminately. Not like Karyn who had disguised and faked weapons for her own ends. What she needed was a pony who had power, but had been known to break rules.

“Princess Luna, then,” she said. “If Celestia is busy with the sun, then there’s time for me to speak to her sister. Just a few sentences, to explain.”

“Princess Luna will not want to—“ As the guard argued, a shadowy voice came from behind. “Your shift’s over anyway. Go on, get home to your wife. I’ll take this one to my mistress.”

The speaker came into view. It was one of Luna’s personal guard, the so-called “bat” ponies. His wings were webbed and his teeth were sharp. Karyn was put off by his appearance, but consented to be led up by him to the Tower of the Moon.

She was held once more as the guard went in alone to plead her case. He must have been effective, for a moment later the door glowed with dark blue magic and the seal was broken. “Enter,” said the satiny voice of the night princess.

There she sat, and to Karyn’s eye she seemed more vivid and real than anything else. Surely, she had found the one she needed. Everything was going to be all right. She burst into the room and threw herself onto Luna, burying her face in the princess’s mane. She sobbed, and as she did her tears were whisked away to become more sparkles of stars. She felt the comforting embrace of a hoof.

“Please, your majesty, I need you to come back with me. They’ve got Derpy, and who knows what they’re doing to her?!” Karyn looked up, but Luna’s face invited her to open more. “They could torture her to make her talk, or run experiments to steal the magic of her wings, or anything, but they’ll never let her go. You have to come and help. Derpy belongs here where she can fly free.”

Luna had not spoken as Karyn had poured out her heart to her, but still she felt some comfort just by the power that lay before her. Still, it was past time for practical help. She looked up to see Luna was now facing away, as if fearing to speak. But speak she did.

“Child of another world, take heart. Your friend is safe. I watch over her now, as I do all my little ponies, as the moon rises, as she takes to her nightly slumber.”

“You don’t understand, Princess! They have her!”

“They do not.” Luna now turned, her face grave. “She is safe in her bed at home. As are you.”

“But what—you mean this is…?”

“You dream, Karyn Hubert. You dream now of your friend Derpy Hooves, as you have many times before. Tonight the dream is darker though.”

Karyn stood up. She thought about pinching herself. “But it feels real!”

“All dreams do, until the dreamer wakes. But I assure you, on my honor as co-ruler of Equestria, that you are presently dreaming, that Derpy is safe, and that neither of you were ever captured.”

“Why?”

Luna’s face fell, and a light of hope vanished from her face.

“Why would you send me such a cruel dream?” Karyn yelled. “To teach me a lesson? You couldn’t just have sent me a letter or summoned me to a meeting? ‘Karyn, you’re being a little careless. Derpy could be in danger.’ That would be all you needed to say. Instead I have to watch Derpy get hauled away in a car and tortured to make the point? Is that what you think I need?”

“Human child, you err. I do not weave your dreams for you. I merely enter them to watch over you. I would never be so cruel.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Again Luna turned away from her. “It is rare that I reveal myself in full form to a dreamer, but inevitably the same reaction and the same accusation come. It is my lot, and I have come to accept it, but I had hoped that someone from another world would be more open.”

Karyn wanted to apologize again, but it felt hollow, and she kept quiet. Instead she said, “Have you always entered the dreams of humans? Or am I the first?”

“We were not aware of your world until the unicorn Lyra discovered it. Her passion is to be commended. Since then I have found that the dreamscape crosses the boundaries and that I can travel there. I have not entered the dreams of all humans, but only those who know of me.”

“And you help them all?”

“When they need me. Tell me, does this dream represent your fear?”

Karyn flashed back to when she learned that Luna watched over dreamers. Scootaloo was in a similar predicament. “Well, yes! If that building we were trapped in isn’t real—and thank goodness for that!—there are still people out there who want to do things like that to Derpy, and who wouldn’t care about me or anyone else?”

“Who?”

“What?”

Luna smiled for the first time. “It is my job to aid you in dealing with the fear in your dream. So, who is it you think will harm Ms. Hooves? Throughout this dream your enemies have been nameless. Can you remember what they looked like?”

“Well, no, now that you mention it. Isn’t that the way dreams go?”

“As I said, this dream should be as real as your waking life until you leave. So the people holding Derpy are faceless as well as nameless. I ask you a third time, whom do you see occupying those positions?”

Karyn scanned the room. Part of her still refused to believe that it wasn’t real. But she finally paid attention to Luna’s question.

“That’s just it. It’s the faceless I fear. Most people on Earth are nice when you get to know them, or if they’re not then everyone avoids them. But when they get together in groups and make rules and regulations that no one’s allowed to question, that’s when they get mean. Because they’re acting with good intentions, or think the other people are.”

“So you are all right with Derpy being found by any person, but not more than one?”

“Even a group, if they knew, might be OK. I’m just afraid of everyone finding out. Wait, are you saying that I should let more people see Derpy so that I get more accustomed to it? That if I form a kind of bubble of people who do know her, others won’t?”

Luna raised her eyebrow. “I am not saying anything. I only offer comfort and guidance. But now I will make a pronouncement. As it stands, you hang between our two worlds. You have walked in Equestria, felt its magic, known its citizens. Still you live on Earth, and your passion to stay and grow into a woman is strong. I foresee a moment when you will no longer be able to straddle the fence, a time when you must make a decision for yourself, whether your heart truly lies on Earth or in Equestria.”

“Is that a prophecy?”

“It is an estimate of what will come to be based on all I know. Which, if you’ll pardon me, is more than you do.”

Karyn rose. “Great. Now I’ll be trying to figure out what you mean until it’s too late.”

Luna’s laughter brightened the moon. “I advise against it. There’s no hidden meaning, merely a taste of what’s to come.”

“Then may I wake up now? I’d like to be out of this dream as soon as possible.”

“In a moment. I will offer you a choice that I do not give often. The lessons you have learned tonight will stay with you always. But if you elect, you can wake up without remembering this dream. You will only know that you ought to be extra protective of Derpy in the future.”

Karyn stepped back as Luna pulsed her horn. It freaked her out that the pony before her had the power to alter her mind, especially as she was only present in spirit. Still, the offer tempted her. All the suffering that she had undergone came back to her.

“I suppose it’s not a very brave choice to ask you to let me forget.”

“You may consider it akin to taking an amnesiac drug for a painful surgery. Not true anesthesia, but helpful once it’s over.”

“And I did have that once.” Karyn heard her own tone of voice, the first relief and relaxation of her dream. “But still, something tells me that I’ll want to remember. Can I have a moment to think about it?”

“Take all the time you like,” said Princess Luna. “This is your dream.”

She stepped to the window and beckoned Karyn to accompany her. Looking out over the Canterlot night, she could see Ponyville in the distance. It was only an image, but in the real version of it, Derpy would be waking up soon, getting ready to spend the day with her friend.

“All right. I know what I want.”

***

Karyn found herself at the breakfast table , talking to Derpy, as the coffee kicked in at last.

“So how have your classes been going?” Derpy asked.

“Good. A lot of work, a lot of studying, but I’m getting a handle on it.”

“Yeah?”

Karyn stretched and yawned, then focused. No matter what happened, it was going to be an awesome day.

Author's Note

I almost didn't have this up in time, but I made it! Here's the preview:

“Well, you and I will have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“How does that work?”

“That’s when two friends stop arguing because the friendship matters more than the argument,” said Karyn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The road passed out of the residential areas and became a parkway. Trees lined the road in their fall colors, and Derpy was silent for a moment. Then she said, “It’s so pretty. We don’t have this in Equestria.”

“Fall colors? Sure you do.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn grinned and walked away. “Thanks, Derpy. Because of you I got some praise from Mom.”

“I still think you’re lying to her in a way.”

“Oh, hush. Let’s think about how we’re going to feed you.”

Come back next week for that and more!

81: Happy Derpsgiving

Derpy first view of Karyn’s apartment was that it was clean, cleaner than usual in her estimation. She found that the reason for it was that all the clutter had coalesced into a singularity centered around Karyn’s computer desk. Silently she gave Karyn a look, but Karyn shot it right back.

“I know about the mess, but it’s midterm season again, and I’ve got to work somewhere. If I took out the time to clean it up, I’d never be able to actually get the reports done.”

Derpy narrowed her eyes. “If I didn’t take the time to clean, I wouldn’t get things done.”

“Well, you and I will have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“How does that work?”

“That’s when two friends stop arguing because the friendship matters more than the argument,” said Karyn.

“I’ll agree to agree to disagree, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy flew over the desk, knocking over a small stack of paper. “Are you doing well on your midterms?”

Karyn’s face beamed. “Definitely. Derpy, I’m doing awesome in school, and I have been, ever since Twilight taught me about study strategy a couple of years ago. Wow, that was right after we met. Seems like such a long time ago.”

“And you’ve been passing school ever since?”

“Yes, once I got my pens and books to work again. I think people still know me as Feather Girl.”

“So tell me what the tests are that you’re passing so well.”

Karyn flipped over one of the books. “This one’s on legacy technology.”

“Like for inheretances?”

“Ha, no. It means really obsolete stuff that no one uses anymore.”

“Oh!” said Derpy. “I get it. Because you’re studying the human equivalent of magic, it makes sense that there would be some ancient legends and stuff from thousands of years ago that all the humans would have forgotten about.”

“Essentially right, although in this case it’s more like the ancient legends of twenty-five years ago.”

Derpy tidied up Karyn’s study area, and Karyn let her do so, although she kept her eye on the work to make sure that she didn’t lose anything important. “Speaking of timing questions,” said Derpy, “can I ask another one?”

“Sure, but I don’t understand all of the different magical consequences between our worlds.”

“No, not that. You started school three months ago, and you have one month to go before the end of the year. How is this the middle of term?”

Karyn laughed at that. “All right, normally I’d pass it off, but I’ll explain everything. In school, we have semesters, which run for four or five months each. The first one of the year is in the fall, and the second is in the spring. For that one, there are a pair of full-week breaks that make it longer, and one of them is darn near close to the middle of term. Here in the fall, though, the holiday is this week.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s an actual holiday that we celebrate this week called Thanksgiving. It’s our big autumn holiday.”

“Oh, for when you run the leaves,” said Derpy. “Wait, you don’t run the leaves, I know we discussed that.

“True. It’s really more of a harvest celebration. Back in the day when the country was first settled they had a bad winter but a good harvest, or something like that. Honestly, it’s a little confusing as to why they started it in the first place, why they have it at the time they do, and why it’s on a Thursday. But they did, and they do, and it is.”

“Respectively?”

“Yes.”

Derpy finished her tidying. Karyn thanked her, saying that it did look better and agreeing that she probably did have time, but secretly she was planning to restore it as soon as Derpy left. Organized chaos helped her think.

“Anyway,” said Derpy. “are you getting ready to go home for this holiday? What was it called? Thinks living?”

“Thanksgiving. And it’s funny you should mention that. I am going home then, but also today. There’s a pre-Thanksgiving party at a family friend’s, and I’m going.”

“You couldn’t get out of it?”

“In this case I don’t mind.” Karyn put on her winter coat. “They’re nice people, and it lets you see how we celebrate.”

“Sweet! I’m in.”

They walked outside to Karyn’s car. She had to take a circuitous route to get to the highway, and Derpy’s attempted direction didn’t take into account dead ends.

“Honestly, you need to learn to fly. It’s so much easier when you can just go in the direction that your destination is and keep going until you get there.”

“Maybe you’re right, but at the same time, you can miss things doing it that way. Look.”

The road passed out of the residential areas and became a parkway. Trees lined the road in their fall colors, and Derpy was silent for a moment. Then she said, “It’s so pretty. We don’t have this in Equestria.”

“Fall colors? Sure you do.”

“Oranges, reds, and yellows, yes. And we have evergreen forests too. But you’ve got them all mixed in.”

Karyn took a look herself. She had driven the road many times and been taken through the area by her parents many others. She was used to conifers and deciduous trees together, but in Equestria nature was more organized. They spent the rest of the journey in quiet observation.

It was a quick turnaround at Karyn’s parents’ house, and soon they were in the larger car, Karyn and Derpy in the back, and they had no choice but to quietly observe. Karyn got an idea. Reaching into her bag she pulled out her laptop. She looked toward the front for a reproach, and when none came she turned it on and pulled up a blank document. “If you can type back,” she wrote, “we can chat like this.”

Her mother spoke up. “Are you working on your midterm report, Karyn?”

“Yes, a little.”

She angled the laptop toward the opposite seat and went back to looking at the scenery. When she checked a moment later, nothing had changed. She tried again. “Derpy, I know you have your manipulation spell. You can use it for this.”

At last they keys pressed themselves. “I thought you were working on your midterm report.”

“That was a cover story.”

“You lied to your mother?!”

“Not really. I’m thinking about the midterm report, so I am working on it a little.”

Derpy shut the laptop lid, indicating that she no longer wanted to participate. Karyn reopened it and wrote, “I’m sorry. Let’s not fight, it is a holiday after all.”

“I’m not mad at you, but I do want you not to cheat so much. Also this way of talking is no fun since we can’t hear each other’s voices. Let’s just wait till we get there.”

Karyn closed the laptop again and leaned against the window. It was a long drive out of town, and Karyn didn’t feel like trying to find wireless internet on the way, so she just relaxed, but Derpy put her hoof in Karyn’s hand, and that was comforting.

The house that they arrived at was also on a tree-lined road, but the leaves had been raked off the lawn so it looked immaculate. Karyn got out and hung back while her mother and father walked up the lawn with the dessert they had brought.

“Cool house, huh?” she muttered.

“It’s bigger than your parents’.”

“Yeah, these people do really well. That’s how they can have so many people here.” She pointed up and down the road, which was cluttered with cars.

“I hope that means that the party is going to be bigger than the one they had for you as well.”

“Could be.”

“Come on, honey,” Karyn’s father called from the front door. He had rung the doorbell and was waiting there. She hustled to be there when the door was opened.

When the hostess greeted them and they finally got inside, Karyn lingered once more by the closet as she hung up her coat. “What do you think of the inside?”

“It’s got a weird smell.”

“That’s probably their cooking.”

Derpy sniffed. “No, I’m discounting for that. Any house, the first time you go into it, smells a little off. You haven’t noticed that?”

“Actually I have.”

They meandered into the kitchen, which had an open view into the dining room, and with people in both places it wasn’t crowded. Karyn spotted a potato chip bowl and helped herself to one with some dip, then surreptitiously dipped another one and fed it to Derpy with her hand at her side.

Her parents were walking around giving long greetings to everyone and catching up on old times that Karyn was either not a part of or was too young to recollect. She got annoyed and broke away, preferring to say quick hellos to everyone and then mingling at a relaxed pace without the specter of having to greet other people hanging over her.

Working their way around the kitchen to the laundry room, Karyn and Derpy saw that the hostess had covered her washer and dryer with a tablecloth and was using it as a staging area for foods that she hadn’t brought out yet. Pies and cakes were waiting for the dessert course, and a few of the side dishes that only needed to be reheated rested their as well. Karyn made some mental notes as to what she planned to eat as her mother stuck her head in.

“Come on, there’s still a few people here to meet.”

Karyn wanted to protest that she had said hi to everyone, but indeed there were some strangers to her, and she was grateful to be introduced rather than walking around awkwardly avoiding them for the party. This took her past the living room and into the den, and afterwards she got another moment alone with Derpy.

“What were they doing in there?” asked Derpy.

“Just partying. What did you mean specifically?”

“In the living room. All the men were watching TV, and it sounded like a big commotion, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”

Karyn peeked back. “They’re just watching football.”

“What’s that? I guess I couldn’t play that because I don’t have feet.”

“I don’t think they use their feet much anyway. Really, I don’t understand the game much myself, but on Thanksgiving, and most every Sunday, men gather round the TV to watch it, and it’s important to them. It works out, since it gets them out of everyone’s way.”

Derpy took another look. They were indeed intently watching, and didn’t take any notice until the hostess walked in front of the TV, at which point they angrily told her to keep going.

“Come on,” said Derpy. “Let’s go check out the food again.”

They went back into the kitchen where the hostess was beginning to get everything in order. She was particularly organized, with each dish having its contents written in marker on the foil covering the dish. On the side of the refrigerator was a sticky note that listed everything they were to have. Karyn complimented her on her diligence.

“I have to do it that way,” she said. “In the past, when I didn’t, it seemed that every year some dish would be forgotten. We’d be finished with the meal and I’d be cleaning up, and all of a sudden someone would say, ‘Why was there no cranberry sauce?’ or something like that. Excuse me.” She zipped back to the oven, which had beeped.

“Maybe if she didn’t make so much that wouldn’t happen,” Derpy whispered.

“True, but that’s the whole point of the holiday. In past times, it was a chance for people who frequently went hungry to eat until they were satisfied. Of course, today it’s a chance for people who already eat too much to break their diets.” She shot a glance back toward the living room.

“Does that include me? Because these carrots are making my mouth water.”

Karyn went over to the dish labeled “Carrots” and took a whiff. They did indeed smell good, with some sort of sugar having been caramelized on them. “It isn’t fair that you can’t sit at table with everyone else and enjoy the meal. But that’s just the way it’s got to be. If you were discovered, even here with all these nice people, I don’t know what would happen, but it wouldn’t be good.”

“But can’t I have some of the food?”

Karyn sighed. “Let me see what I can do.”

She accosted the hostess. “Is there anything I can do to help? I’m not the best cook but I know a little about it.”

“Oh, thank you, but just about everything’s done. In about ten minutes we’ll be setting up, so if you want to carry out the food then, I’d appreciate it. Until then, let’s see, the table is set, the chairs have all been counted, I don’t think there’s much to do.”

Karyn retreated. “When we set out the food I’ll see what we can do for you,” she said to Derpy.

As she went back to the party to count down the minutes she ran into her mother. “You should go offer to help.”

“I just did. There’s nothing to do now, but in a few minutes I’ll bring out the side dishes to the table.”

“Good for you! I’m glad to see you’re starting to do things like that without me having to ask.”

Karyn grinned and walked away. “Thanks, Derpy. Because of you I got some praise from Mom.”

“I still think you’re lying to her in a way.”

“Oh, hush. Let’s think about how we’re going to feed you.”

When the time came, Karyn was the first back into the kitchen. If the hostess had any children of her own, they were nowhere to be found, so Karyn was the only one helping. She grabbed the carrots that Derpy had mentioned first and walked toward the table.

“Actually,” the hostess said, “if you could take that in to the kids’ table, thanks.”

“Where’s that?”

The hostess pointed Karyn toward another room that she hadn’t even noticed. A smaller table had been set with half a dozen plates and more room in the center. Once alone, Karyn put the carrots down and removed the foil.

“All right, here’s your chance. Take a few, though. It’s supposed to look like a full serving. And for goodness’s sake, be discreet!”

Karyn was happy to see the carrots disappearing directly from the bowl rather than floating down to where Derpy could get a better angle. The process continued as Karyn brought out the Brussels sprouts and the cornbread, but when it came to the mashed potatoes, she was in a quandary.

“It’s not really sanitary for you to bite into this,” she said. “Hang on, I’ll use my spoon and you can just lick it off.”

“How will that be any more sanitary?”

“It won’t, but it’ll be only me, and I breathe in enough of your germs as is. If indeed there are any diseases that can cross over from a pony to a human.”

Derpy took the proffered spoon. “But there are such diseases, like when you were ill because you weren’t using your changeling powers.”

“Yes, magical illnesses, but I’m not worried about everyone suddenly growing wings because some of your saliva got mixed in the food. I am worried about flu and such.”

She hastened back to the kitchen to grab the next side dish. This was a sweet potato casserole covered in marshmallows, and any damage to its pristine surface would have been immediately noticed.

“I don’t know how I’ll get you a taste of this.”

“It’s all right. I don’t really care for marshmallows.”

“Really?” said Karyn. “I think they’re the best. But even so, you could just have the sweet potatoes underneath if we could get them.”

“I’ll see if I have a teleportation spell that would work.”

“No, don’t do that.” She had a vision of the kids scooping the marshmallows to find a void underneath. Some of them might prefer that, but it would clearly unnerve people.

Karyn went back in one more time, and the hostess thanked her once more and said that the only other thing that needed to be put out was the turkey.

Karyn’s vegetarianism was based more on diet than on ethical concerns, but she still winced at the thought of having to carry it. She didn’t mind if other people ate it, even if right in front of her, but preferred not to have anything to do with the transaction.

As if her reaction served as a reminder, the hostess said, “Oh! That’s right. I got the tofu turkey as well. If you’d like to take that out, I’ll bring the real kind.”

“Thank you. Are any of your kids vegetarian too?”

“No, but I was told that you were coming so I got it for you. We don’t have any vegetarians in our family.”

“And you got some just for me?” Karyn was shocked. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense. I want to make sure that everyone has something they want to eat.”

“But no one else will want to eat this.”

“Then you’ll get to take home lots of leftovers.” The hostess grinned as she picked up the turkey.

“Thanks.” Karyn followed her into the side room.

“Don’t you want to eat with the rest of us?” the hostess asked. “You’re old enough now that you don’t have to sit at the kiddie table.”

She checked around. The room had enough space for Derpy to fly free in, while the main dining room seemed cramped. “I think we’ll be fine in here.”

“We?”

“Me and the other kids.”

The hostess left, and Karyn said, “Whew, almost stepped in it there.”

Derpy hissed with laughter. “You covered well.”

“Thanks. Did you enjoy the food?”

“Yes. I wish I could take a plate and sit down with everyone else, but this method is probably better for my diet anyway.”

Little kids started bounding in from everywhere, and Karyn had to suspend her conversation with Derpy. She took the head of the table as the oldest person there, rejoicing in the fact that she got that spot for once. Throughout the dinner, she endeavored to keep the younger ones in line while maintaining her own manners as thoroughly as possible. It helped to have Derpy watching invisibly and silently from the corner. When the two ate together, politeness was a natural thing for Karyn, but at such a formal dinner she was sure to keep her napkin on her lap and her elbows off the table.

The sole topic of discussion among the kids was the desserts, and when that course came, Karyn helped herself both to cheesecake and apple pie. As the party wrapped up and she took home her leftovers, back in the car she yawned.

“That was a great party, but I’m beat. I didn’t think that imitation turkey had tryptophan.”

At her feet, her laptop bounced up and down. She reached down and pulled it open, flipping to the blank document.

“Actually,” Derpy typed, “the idea that tryptophan from turkey makes you drowsy is a myth. There’s some, but no more than in other meats. It’s really just having a big meal that makes you want to sleep.”

“How did you know that?”

“I read it on the Internet on one of the times I was bored.”

From the front, Karyn’s father said, “Trying to keep yourself awake?”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t bother. Take a nap and you can stay over before you go back to school tomorrow.”

She opened her eyes. “No, I definitely want to go back tonight.”

“Well, then you’d really better go to sleep now or I’ll worry.”

Derpy extended a wing over her, and Karyn had a makeshift blanket. Moments later, by her reckoning, her mother was telling her to put her shoes back on, for they had made it home. Another quick turnaround, and she was driving Derpy back to her apartment.

“That was a fun party,” said Derpy.

“How could you have had fun? You didn’t get to talk to anyone.”

“True, but I got to eat a lot of good food. Well, not a lot of good food, but a strong diversity of good food.”

Karyn chuckled at that. She pulled into the driveway of the apartment, keeping as quiet as she could while she pulled in front of Gayle’s car to make it easier for her to get out.

“Well, I’m glad you had a good time. I’ve got to get ready to finish these midterms and then go back once more for the actual Thanksgiving break.”

“You do your best. I’m going to see if I can get some ponies to start adopting this holiday.”

“Do you really want to have a feast of your own?” asked Karyn.

“What I want is a four-day weekend. As a mailpony I don’t get a lot of time off. Everypony needs their letters all the time, and I don’t resent that, but to be able to get to celebrate with friends and family…well, someday I’ll get there.”

Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder. “You will. I know it. And when it happens, I hope I’ll be there. Happy Thanksgiving, Derpy.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Karyn.”

Author's Note

Have you guys read about The Future of Derpy's Human yet? That's for the distant future, here's for the immediate!

“It’s true. But what’s this project you’re working on?”

After a moment of thought, Derpy said, “I doubt it’s something that you’re interested in.”

“Oh, come on. Is it something really pony-specific, like having your hooves polished? Or maybe something pegasus-related, like you have to fly around Equestria to make sure it’s the same size as it was last year?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn followed Derpy. Once out of earshot, she said, “It seems that all the big burly stallions are the most polite of all ponies.”

“Hmm, that’s true. I guess they know that when you’re strong you’d better be nice.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, we can’t have that. We should think of a way to make it special.”

“Special?” said Karyn.

“Yes. Some way to make us remember this day.”

I hope you enjoy it!

83: Derp Clean Only

Derpy landed in Karyn’s room.

“How do you do it?” asked Karyn.

“What? What’d I do?” Derpy searched all around herself for something she had missed, or if she had paper stuck to her hoof, or anything else.

“How do you make it in this cold without any discomfort?”

“Is it cold? I didn’t notice.”

Karyn bundled herself in her sweater and went to the window. Opening it a crack, she beckoned Derpy over. “Feel that? That’s cold.”

Derpy did indeed stick her hoof through, but then shook her head. “That’s not cold,” she said. “That’s winter.”

“Yeah, winter because it’s cold.”

“It’s cold, but winter is a separate thing altogether. You can’t feel it?”

Karyn looked askance. “What do you mean, feel it?”

“If you take a breath, there’s a crystalized snowy feeling to it. You want to go outside and experience it?”

“I could experience it in here. I don’t want to ask Gayle about the heat since she’s charging me so little. Plus she’ll probably ask me why I don’t just use some heating spell.”

Derpy reached for her bag. “You want a heating spell?”

“You have one? I didn’t even think of that.”

“Here you go.”

Karyn activated the spell itself, and it did work like a space heater. But she realized that unlike a space heater it took up no power and had no chance of accidentally starting a fire.

“Thank you very much. I might want more of these. I’ll stick one under a blanket and be extra warm.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see if I can get another or up the intensity on that one.”

Karyn held the spell close to her and thought about pulling off her sweater, but then left it on. “Well, so that’s done. Now I should finish cleaning up the apartment.”

“Actually, I was going to compliment you on how well it looked. I think you’ve put in a good effort.”

“I did put in a good effort, but more to cover things up than to actually make it right. I know the way you get so I didn’t want you to go apoplectic when you came in. Now you can brace yourself.”

She walked over to the closet and put her hand on the knob. Even Derpy noticed how difficult the turning was, as if something was putting pressure from the other side. Squinting, she watched as Karyn finished turning the knob and opened the door.

A mountain of rumpled clothes poured out of the closet, with Karyn standing to one side to avoid being buried up to her knees. Within, the pile reached back to a laundry basket that had been stuffed to the point of strain. She stepped aside, a pant leg and a stocking coming with her.

“…Eight, nine, ten,” said Derpy. “All right, now I guess we can talk about getting this organized. See if you can get the basket out of there. Then take your bedsheet off.”

“But if I put that in with the dirty clothes—“

“Please.”

Karyn slipped out the sheet from the hastily made cover. “The fitted sheet too?”

Derpy trotted over and sniffed it. “This can stay. But remake the bed so it looks nice.”

“Wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving it like that.” Karyn’s tone said otherwise, but Derpy let that pass.

Meanwhile, she had spread out the top sheet and was depositing the rest of the clothes on top of it. Somehow, in the course of doing this, she had managed to arrange the pile with the darker clothes at the bottom.

“Now, let’s get these washed.”

“That’s the problem.”

“What problem?”

Karyn tied up the sheet to make a pouch for the clothes. “The reason I cleaned up the apartment so nicely was because I knew I had all these clothes, but the reason I had the clothes is that last Saturday there were ‘out-of-order’ signs on both of the washing machines in the laundry room.”

“There’s only two?”

“Right.”

Derpy leered. “Then just switch them around. I’m not good at math but even I know that there are only two orders you can put two washing machines in.”

“No, Derpy. It’s means they’re broken.”

“I didn’t notice any pile of clothes last week.”

“I do own enough clothes that I don’t have to do laundry every week,” said Karyn. “But while the machines do break sometimes, or are just in use so I can’t wash mine on the schedule I like, I’ve never seen them both go down at the same time for two weeks. Even if they fixed them today there’d be a huge rush and I wouldn’t be able to get them done.”

“So were you just going to wear dirty clothes tomorrow?”

“Well, my plan was…” she stepped out of the clothes and flashed the green light of her magic. She was then wearing a fetching sweater and tight jeans. “…to do this until they’re fixed. I don’t like to, but this isn’t my fault.”

Derpy scrunched her nose, but then took a deep breath and spoke with a more calming tone. “I know it’s not your fault, but that doesn’t always mean it’s not your problem. No other person here can use changeling magic, and they all have to deal with it too.”

“I think a lot of the reason I don’t want to use my powers is because I know you feel that way. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“And I appreciate that. Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

Karyn eyed the basket and the pile. “All right. What are we going to do?”

“Well, you know I’m not the most experienced pony. I don’t wear clothes as often as some do. But I know that Rarity washes all the dresses she makes by hoof. Why don’t we get a washtub and a washboard and just do it that way?”

“Hand-wash everything I have? I don’t even know how to do that. Where would we even get a washboard? A washboard today is more likely to be used as a musical instrument in a country band than for actual washing.”

Derpy picked up the clothes and threw them on her back with the instinctive balance that ponies had. “Still, there must be some dressmaker here who knows how to handle clothes. Actually, with this many I’m surprised that they don’t have whole businesses dedicated to washing clothes.”

“Oh, um. They do. They’re called laundromats.”

“Then why didn’t you take your clothes to one?”

Karyn sat down. “OK, you’re just going to have to believe this, but I completely forgot they existed until right now. You see, I’ve always done laundry either at home or here at the college, and I’ve just come to think that every place where people live had their own machine.”

“What about Gayle? Didn’t you think to ask her?”

“I’m still afraid of having to answer the question of why I don’t just magic my clothes clean or just enchant them not to get dirty in the first place. Some time we’re going to have to convince her that I’m not a witch.”

Derpy even eschewed her normal correction, “Or sorceress or enchantress,” but instead hopped onto Karyn’s computer. “I found a laundromat close by.”

“I’m still amazed at how well you handle the internet. You’re probably the best pony at computers.”

“It’s no time for flattery when we have all these clothes to wash. Come on, I’ll carry the sheets, you grab the basket.”

They went out the back, and if Gayle did see the ersatz sack floating along on invisible Derpy’s back, she would only squee with another sight of magic. Karyn put the address that Derpy gave her in the phone, and they were on their way.

Derpy had calmed down somewhat as they drove, and the girls were able to speak in their more friendly tone.

“I know how you are with being clean, and I can understand why, from your perspective,” Karyn was saying. “But everypony isn’t like that. You can respect others who aren’t as neat, right?”

“Yes, but it’s harder with ponies, or humans, who are younger than me. I had to ride Dinky so often that I guess it just got lodged in my brain that if some filly isn’t doing her chores, I’d better step in.”

“The thing of it is, I don’t even think of laundry as a chore.”

Derpy said nothing, but gave a confused grunt.

“No, really. I think it was the first chore that I did voluntarily growing up instead of having to be made to do it. I guess it’s because all I have to do is put it in the machine, turn it on, and then move it to the dryer. They do all the work. I never liked, in contrast, taking out the garbage because I felt like it was all the work. Maybe if I had to take it out to a conveyor belt and that took it the rest of the way, I would have liked it more.”

“I should have tried that with Dinky.”

“And of course, you do get nice clean clothes out of it which saves you trouble when you’re trying to find something to wear and—are we going the right way?” Karyn picked up the phone and looked at the map function. “Derpy, did it say where this laundromat was?”

“I didn’t think it was too far.”

“No, it says we’ll be there in a few minutes, but I’ve never been to this part of town.”

They had crossed over a railroad track and the roads were very different. They had no curbs and only the bare trees and empty lots lined the road. Along the side, broken glass was strewn about along with littered papers, caught in some branch or crack where the wind couldn’t take it away. For a mile or so these were the only sign of civilization, until a traffic light appeared. The GPS had them turn right, and again the neighborhood had a distinctly unfamiliar feel. The strip malls had none of the stores Karyn would have come to expect. There were convenience stores, but no chains of them. Even the gas station was not a national brand.

The phone beeped, indicating that they had arrived. Karyn slowed down and checked that no one was behind them, then eyed the building for parking. It wasn’t pleasant.

The sign did say “Laundromat,” but it gave no indication of being a place of cleanliness. Weeds spread from cracks in the parking lot, and no painted lines gave any indication of where to go. The two cars that were in the front had rust holes and dingy paint jobs, and both looked to be very old. Around the side, a patched and repatched screen door banged against the building.

The building itself had mildew stains on the outside. The sole sign of modernization was a vent on the roof that filtered the scent of dryer lint and fabric softener into the air. It was effective, but architecturally it stuck out like a wart on what would otherwise be a singularly dreary building.

Karyn stepped out of the car and stared. Then she ducked back in to get the laundry basket.

“Are you sure you want to use this place?” asked Derpy. “I can’t believe how run down it is. Nopony would ever let a building go this bad in Equestria. They’d smash it to pieces and rebuild before it did.”

“Yes, but building is easier for you, though how that’s true without hands amazes me. Anyway, let’s get this over with quickly.”

The inside was at least brighter than the outside. Above the door a TV was blaring in Spanish, and one at the other end had a chat show playing, the kind of show Karyn felt good about not watching. A few people were already stationed there, playing on phones or just staring at the TVs. She found the washing machine farthest from any other being used and set her basket near it. All around were wheeled baskets with no way to indicate if they were being used. She decided to be bold and wheel one to the front. A second trip brought in the sheet full of clothing, and now Karyn could turn her attention to the machine itself.

The metal plate riveted to the front gave instructions, but years had worn away the black writing. She muttered to Derpy. “OK, it looks like I’m supposed to put in the clothes, then the money, then the soap. Let’s try that.”

She pulled open the door with the oversized metal handle and shoved in the clothes from the basket. Then she saw the money slot. “Great,” she continued. “They only take coins. The change machine’s in front. I don’t feel good about even pulling out my wallet here. I’m going to get change. If anyone touches my clothes, beat them with your wings or find a spell and turn them into a spider or something.”

Watching all directions at once, she went up to the change machine and slipped in a five-dollar bill, then eagerly grabbed the coins as if she expected everyone to come after her. Once she was back at the washing machine, she slipped in the quarters and heard them clink. “How annoying.”

“Why?” asked Derpy.

“For the machines at school I have a card that I just add money to. I can keep the records without having to account for all these coins.”

“You keep records of how much you put on the card? That’s extraordinary!”

“Thanks, but now I’m getting thrown off. Come on, stupid thing, start.” Karyn thumped at the machine.

“Did you put in the soap?”

“No, that’s right.” She reached for the section where the soap went only to find that it was no more than a plastic cover over the trough. “Hmm. There’s nothing to indicate whether soap is present, so the machine should have started anyway. I still don’t know how to make it go.”

She dispensed a capful of soap from the bottle she brought and tossed it in anyway, then resumed jabbing at the start button. “Maybe you should ask someone for help,” said Derpy.

Karyn looked around. None of the patrons was anyone she would want to accost, but there was a desk at the front where she made her way, still keeping an eye on the machine. There was a “Ring for Service” bell that she used.

The owner was a human equivalent of the building, old and cracked in places where lines shouldn’t go, and weedy hair in scary parts of her body. She said what sounded like, “CanIhelpyou?” in some accent that Karyn couldn’t identify. She decided that formality was the best defense.

“I was trying to use one of your machines, but I seem to be encountering an error.” She gestured toward where the wrapped bundle still sat on the metal table. Without a word the owner plodded down and looked at the machine. At the top were buttons for all the various options—colors, whites, permanent press, etc.—with the “colors” LED lit. The owner poked the button beneath it with a bony finger, and the LED light changed from amber to green. Then she pressed start and the water started flowing.

After she walked away, Derpy asked, “Did you figure it out?”

“Yeah. She didn’t explain, but I was watching. It’s a silly way to do things, though, having the light work that way.”

“Now, when you put in the other load, don’t just shove the sheet in, or everything inside might get tangled.”

Karyn opened the machine next to the one she was using and followed Derpy’s instructions. Now understanding how it worked, she carefully measured out her soap and poured it in. “Ugh,” she whispered. “There’s all sorts of residue here from powdered detergent.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never used powdered detergent, so I guess it weirds me out for being unfamiliar. They don’t advertise it much either. They just try to sell the liquid stuff, which makes it seem less…associated with poverty.”

“I would think that you’d feel smarter for buying the thing that they didn’t advertise because you didn’t buy what they were selling.” Derpy could not, of course, be seen, but Karyn stared at where she was anyway.

“Never mind, let me just get it in. You know, I always wonder about these machines. They have different places to pour soap, bleach, and stain remover, but do they really go to different places or just all get dumped in to the big chamber there?”

Derpy hovered over the machine, but couldn’t see either.

The washers did their job while Karyn and Derpy waited, bored. When they at last dinged, Karyn found an open dryer and tossed the clothes in. “Half way done,” said Derpy.

“Yeah. Actually, maybe more than that. I’ve got to figure out how much time I want on these dryers, because each fifteen minutes costs another quarter. So let’s try a half hour and see if that finishes the clothes.”

Somehow the time seemed to go faster when the clothes were in the dryer, maybe because it was closer to when they could leave, or maybe because the thirty minutes the dryer gave wasn’t actually thirty minutes. But as the displays counted down and the “cooling dry” light turned on, Karyn opened the door and tested with her hand.

“How did it go?”

“These are good machines. My clothes are completely dry.” Karyn checked the other one. “But my sheets are still damp.”

“You could take them out and let them air dry.”

“No, that never works, and with sheets I don’t want them to be any kind of wet. I’ll put them on for another fifteen.”

Derpy poked at the clothes that Karyn had put back in the basket. “That will give you time to fold these.”

“Actually, my plan was to put them on hangers.”

“I don’t think we brought any.”

Karyn checked the clock on the wall. “No, I have them at home.”

“Well, then we need to fold them now so they don’t get wrinkled on the drive.”

“I was really hoping you weren’t going to say that.”

With a heavy sigh, she got to work folding the clothes. She concentrated on the skirts, pants, and shirts and when the dryer beeped that the sheets were done, she still had socks to do, but threw them into the basket.

“Here’s the other advantage,” said Derpy. “Folding them makes them take less space, which means that you don’t need to use the sheets as a bag again.”

Indeed, she was able to carry everything in the basket, albeit with a heaping top instead of flat. She shoved it into the back seat of her car and got on the road.

“I’m glad to have that done and get home.”

“Was it really so bad?”

Karyn drove over the railroad tracks and breathed easier. “I know it’s wrong, and I don’t look down on the kind of people who have to go there week in and week out because they don’t own washing machines, but I am afraid of them. No, not even that. I’m afraid of associating with them, finding out that they’re real people, and that I’m not doing enough for them. And at the same time, I don’t want to be like that. Maybe there are nicer laundromats we could have gone to, but I’m sorry, the people there just unnerve me.”

“I think I know what you mean. It’s hard for me to tell sometimes with humans, but when I looked I could see how they were different. Still, I wish I could be all their friends too.”

“You have a kinder heart than me.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived Gayle was standing outside.

“Hey,” she said, “I never gave you your mail from yesterday. Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

“You went out to do laundry? You should have just asked, I would have let you use my machine.”

Karyn felt a poke from Derpy’s hoof. She nodded. “Thanks, but I didn’t want to impose.”

“No imposition at all. I’m sure that some time there’ll be some cantrip or something I need from you, so we’ll help each other out as friends.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll see you around.”

She went inside, Derpy in tow, while she thumbed through her mail. “OK, you were right, I should have asked.”

“She didn’t even mention cleaning spells. You’re paranoid.”

“Maybe so. Hey, it’s a letter from the residence authority at school. They say that the washing machines will be fixed tomorrow. That should give plenty of time for the queue to clear out by the time I get these dirty again.”

With Derpy finally free to go visible, she dashed to Karyn’s closet and grabbed an armful of hangers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with any other part of this chore, but I’ll do all the hanging.”

“You don’t have to. It’s my chore and my responsibility.”

“I’m the one who made you do it, and I’m the one who found the creepy run-down laundromat. I wanted to help you all the time, but only because everyone was watching…”

Karyn took some hangers herself. “You got me to see a part of town I never have, and one I don’t think about enough. You’ve helped plenty, in more than clothes.”

And together, they finished hanging the laundry before remaking Karyn’s bed.

Author's Note

Hope you all had a good Christmas! Here're scenes from next week's chapter!

“Huh? Derpy? What time is it?”

“Breakfast time, minus thirty seconds or so. Have some coffee. You look like you need it.”

Karyn scratched her head and took the coffee. Once she was focused, she rolled her eyes toward her head, concentrated, and magicked her hair into being combed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She knocked on the door, but didn't wait for an answer before pulling the latch and poking her head in. "Hello? Anypony home?"

"Well, hello! Step right in."

"Oh. Hi, Spike."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, I’ll do the best I can.”

“Great! When do we start?”

The moment Karyn had dreaded arrived. She now had to actually come up with something. “Well, turn on the music and let me see what you can do.”

See those and much more next week!

84: Shall We Derp?

On Saturday, before Derpy went to visit Karyn, she made sure everything was taken care of so that the house could stand idle for a day. This consisted of a thorough cleaning, mailing a letter to Dinky, planning her meals for the week, and then stocking her larder with whatever fresh ingredients she decided on, plus anything she happened to be running low on.

It was during her trip to the market that she had her most social time of the week. Delivering mail made her anxious to get the job done, and plenty of times she was just dropping off the letters and going. But on Saturdays, in the market, she would talk with friends.

In the time that she had known Karyn, Derpy had gotten better at making friends among ponies, even ones she didn’t know. So many of them would say hello, even if they only saw her once a week.

She filled her saddlebags as she ambled through the market, before feeling that somepony was watching her. A search around and upwards revealed nothing, but she couldn’t shake it. At last she heard a voice, and it sounded hesitant.

“Derpy?”

She let her ears locate the source. From behind one of the stands came Twilight Sparkle.

“Hi, Twilight. Should I be discreet? Are you worried about everypony looking for favors from a princess?”

“You don’t have to go shouting my name, but there’s no reason to keep secret. Actually, if it comes to favors, in this case I’m hoping for one in the opposite direction.”

Derpy stepped back and frowned. Princess Twilight could have just about anything she needed from anypony just by asking, or by ordering it if she really wanted to be insistent. But what could she need from a mailpony?

“Tomorrow is the day you go to Earth, right?”

“Yeah,” said Derpy.

“Well, I’ve heard rumors going around about something you might have mentioned happened a couple of weeks ago, and if it’s true, then I need your help. Yours and Karyn’s.…”

***

Derpy woke up, took a look outside her window, and saw the moonlight filtering through her new tree. Clearly it was not time to get up yet, but her conversation with Twilight lingered in her mind, and she slid out from under her blanket and washed up. It was only first light when she was ready to go to Earth, and she knew that Karyn would probably still be asleep, but still she took to the air, feeling the cold of the morning dew, and transported herself.

When she reached Karyn's apartment, the pale light wasn't enough for her to read by, and she didn't want to violate privacy by turning on the computer. Karyn had done her job of cleaning, so Derpy had little to complain about. She looked over everything and concluded that the best way to help would be to have breakfast on the table for when Karyn woke.

In the refigerator she found the eggs, and thought about making toast as well, but she didn't want the popping of the toast to serve as an alarm clock. Coffee! That was what she needed. If Karyn smelled the coffee she would surely rise at a good pace and not be upset. Derpy looked over the coffee maker to try to figure out how it worked. At home, she boiled her coffee first and then filtered out the grounds, but she knew that Karyn's worked differently. By the time she got it working, the sun was fully up.

The aroma permeated the room, but she still had time to crack the eggs and get them in the pan before she heard the sound of body against blanket as Karyn stirred.

“Huh? Derpy? What time is it?”

“Breakfast time, minus thirty seconds or so. Have some coffee. You look like you need it.”

Karyn scratched her head and took the coffee. Once she was focused, she rolled her eyes toward her head, concentrated, and magicked her hair into being combed.

“So why are you here so early, making breakfast for me? Do you need a favor?”

“Oh, no. It’s nothing like that.”

“Good,” said Karyn, taking another sip.

“Somepony else needs a favor.”

“They need it from you, and you want me to help?”

Derpy grinned. “No, she needs it from you, and I’m just the go-between today.”

“So when you said it was nothing like that, what you meant was that it was almost exactly like that.”

“Yeah.”

Karyn gobbled down the eggs that Derpy had made, then cleaned up the cooking paraphernalia. “OK. I think I’m ready to hear about it. Who wants what?”

“You know Twilight Sparkle?”

“Of course.”

“You know the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“I’ve heard of it. Is it coming up? I would think that it would be in warmer weather. But I’m interrupting you. What could Twilight possibly need me to do for the Gala?”

Derpy slurped her own breakfast. “Well, as a princess she has more responsibility than just standing at the entranceway greeting everypony. She has to be part of the ceremony. She’s tried to avoid a certain responsibility, but when she hasn’t been able to, everypony says how unprincesslike she can be. That’s why she needs to learn how to dance.”

It took a few moments for Karyn to make the connection. “You mean that she wants me to teach her?”

“That’s right.”

“But surely she can ask anypony! The best dancing instructors in Equestria would come at her command to help teach her.”

Derpy shook her head. “Which means everypony else would find out. She wants to amaze them all with her abilities, both as a dancer and as a student. So she wants a teacher than no one knows. It’s logical from her perspective.

“I wouldn’t say that. But what gave her the idea that I can dance anyway?”

“I might have kind of let it slip when I was telling somepony about the wedding we went to a few weeks ago.”

Karyn cast her memory back.” I did tell you I took a dance class, but that was only one year. I’m not that good.”

“I think you were. I watched you out there, and you were the most graceful dancer.”

“That doesn’t mean that I can teach what I know. My dance instructor worked with me for a long time. That’s what she does. That’s what she has a passion for. I got bored with it.”

“Well, I can understand if you don’t want to,” said Derpy, “but can’t you at least try? Maybe find a book that you can lend Twilight on the theory?”

“Well, that’s another thing. Every theory and instruction that I can find is going to be all about two-legged dancing. Unless Twilight is planning to do the whole thing on her hind legs, I don’t see how I’m going to be any help at all.”

Resigned, Derpy brought her own dish to the sink. As Karyn watched her wings pulse with a gentle pulse instead of the normal quick rhythm, her heart melted.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Let me get on top of you and bring me to Twilight’s library. We’ll figure out something. We always do.”

Grateful that she was going to make the attempt, Derpy bowed her head before lowering the rest of her body so that Karyn could mount up. Once they were in Equestria, Karyn was hoping for a few minutes to collect her thoughts and figure out how she was going to arrange her lesson, but Derpy began descending almost immediately.

"Are we there already?"

"The library is a lot closer to the point where we appear when we come from your apartment than my house is."

Karyn exhaled. "Maybe in exchange for teaching her dancing, Twilight can teach me some of magic theory. I don't know how or why there's equivalent points. It seems to me that you should be able to go anywhere on Earth or in Equestria."

"Well, it's not a teleportation spell. It's a world-switching spell. Twilight could probably craft a teleportation spell fairly easily, but that's not what this is."

"I guess I just don't see the difference."

Derpy shrugged and made her descent into a slow circle, which was easier for her to land from than a straight approach. It was almost a dance motion itself, Karyn thought. Could that be a way for her to introduce the concept to Twilight? Although she was not born with wings, surely by now she must be used to them, and she must fly with regularity. If Rainbow Dash or anypony had taught her about flying, that might help Karyn teach her to dance.

Of course, Karyn herself didn't know much about flying, so she would need Derpy's help.

Derpy's hooves touched ground and she slowed into a gallop, then a trot, then a walk, and Karyn dismounted, facing the giant tree as if it were a principal's office she was being summoned to.

She knocked on the door, but didn't wait for an answer before pulling the latch and poking her head in. "Hello? Anypony home?"

"Well, hello! Step right in."

"Oh. Hi, Spike."

Karyn tried to make her disinterest as plain as it could be. Still, Spike said, "It's good to see you again. How long has it been for us?"

"There is no 'us,' Spike. I haven't seen you for a while, it's true."

All at once, Spike's voice cracked. "Derpy, can I ask you for a little privacy?"

"No way. I'm not leaving Karyn alone with you."

"I don't mean to go away, just out of earshot. Or even so that you're not right in my face. I have something important to say to Karyn and it's going to be embarassing if I know you're listening."

"Go on," said Karyn. "Just fly up to the top of the library. I'll be all right."

Derpy did so, flying backwards so she could keep her eye on the two of them. Once she was perched, Spike took a deep breath and spoke so that his voice did not project.

"Here's the thing. I find you really attractive, Karyn. I know that I've tried to hint at it before, but I guess you didn't like that. If the attraction isn't mutual, that's fine. I can deal with it and I'll stop trying to get with you. But I want to get it out there that I'm not just playing around. I truly like you and, if everything went my way and you liked me too, well, I'd want to try to get closer to you."

"Thanks, Spike. I'm glad you could get that out. But no, I'm not attracted to you. Maybe it's because you're a dragon, and maybe it's because I remember when you were only a baby for so long and you were this precocious side character on a show, but it's just not there."

"All right, then. Friends?"

"Friends."

"I'm very proud of you, Spike." The voice came from the top floor, but not where Derpy had lit. Twilight had come from somewhere and heard the entire exchange. "That was a very mature way to go about it."

He walked back to his room, leaving Twilight to address Karyn. “So, you’re here to teach me how to dance, right?”

“Well, I’ll do the best I can.”

“Great! When do we start?”

The moment Karyn had dreaded arrived. She now had to actually come up with something. “Well, turn on the music and let me see what you can do.”

Twilight nodded and pulled out a record player. Karyn had heard of them and knew the theory, but it was her first time seeing one in operation. The music that came out of the large horn was peppy, and it only took a few bars for Karyn to figure out the beat. Twilight waited for the beginning of a phrase, and then stepped into the middle of the room.

At once, Karyn knew she had a job ahead of her. Limbs were flying everywhere with no particular relation to any rhythm. If Karyn had to give it a description, it looked like a combination of the swim, the robot, and the twist.

“Stop, stop!”

“What, did I do it wrong?”

“Well, yes, kind of,” said Karyn. “I know that you weren’t born with your wings, so I’d advise you to keep them pinned if you’re going to try dancing. Derpy, let me see how you would do it.”

Karyn didn’t know if Derpy could dance or not, but she hoped that there would be something in the way she moved that would reveal how a pony could be graceful. When the beat came around again, Derpy just bobbed from side to side, occasionally throwing in a movement of her head on a downbeat.

“See?” she said. “That’s what you have to do. Just stay on the beat. You can move your flanks and your—well, I don’t know all the parts of the pony, but your torso where your front hooves come from—move them in the opposite directions and that’ll be attractive. But for the most part keep your hooves on the ground. If you want to throw in a step once in a while just to not be standing in the same place, wait for the phrase to begin again and do it then. But staying on the beat is the most important thing. Don’t ever lose that.”

“All this just seems too simple though,” Twilight complained. “Nopony’s going to tolerate a princess whose dance is just bouncing up and down to the music.”

“But that’s what dancing is, in essence. The fancy things that professionals do are on the other end of the learning curve. Think of it this way. If you had to give a recitation of a lesson, you’d be expert at it. But if an amateur had to do that, you wouldn’t want them to mimic you, because they couldn’t do it. You’d tell them just to project, be clear, and make sure they have the right answers. Well, in this challenge, the right answer is to keep the beat, even with a simple dance.”

Twilight continued to work at it. When the record reached its end, she used her magic to draw the needle back to the beginning.

“It’s a little bit of a workout,” she said.

“Then I should join in with you.” Derpy got up and followed Twilight’s movements. “Karyn’s always on me to work out.”

“This is going to be even more difficult to do when I’m wearing my dress for the Gala.” Twilight stopped and panted for a few moments before levitating over a glass of water. “I’m going to need to build endurance as well as skill.”

“Let me see this dress.”

Twilight went to her closet and brought out a particularly fancy satin outfit. It was lined throughout with silver trim, and when she floated it aloft, Karyn could see the gold ornaments that were smaller versions of Princess Celestia’s regalia.

“I’m going to be sweating my tail off, I just know it.” Twilight’s voice weakened.

“I wouldn’t wear this if I were you.”

Derpy looked at Karyn. “She’s got to.”

Karyn still spoke to Twilight. “Did Rarity design this?”

“No. Some fancy designer in Canterlot got the contract to provide a dress for me.”

“That’s what I thought. It didn’t look like Rarity’s style. Derpy, in this case, I think Twilight needs to pull rank. Use the little gold things that go on her hoof and head, but junk the actual dress. Princess Celestia goes au naturale for the Gala, and Twilight’s should do the same.”

By speaking to Derpy instead of Twilight, it sounded more like advice and less like an order. That gave Twilight the freedom to say, “That might be a good idea. I’ll have to think about it.” But everyone in the room knew that she would listen to Karyn.

“All right, then. Back to work.” Twilight started up the record again.

With the three of them in parallel, it reminded Karyn of some of the line dances that were popular at one point among humans. But Twilight would have to do it all on her own. They danced their way through the record a second time.

Karyn sat down. “Now, this is where the IT nerd in me comes out. If I were you, I’d make sure I had that exact same record playing on that exact same record player at the Gala. Don’t trust anypony else’s equipment. It might play the record at a slightly different speed, or it might not be as loud and then you could lose the rhythm.”

“Oh, this isn’t the song I’ll be dancing to at the Gala.”

“What?!”

Twilight was surprised at Karyn’s anger. “I thought it would be easier for you to teach me with a simple song first, and then work our way up to the one I’ll actually be using.”

For a moment, Karyn was speechless. It was Derpy who recovered first. “Yeah, Twilight, that was really not the way to go. That’s like something I would do.”

“No, I understand,” said Karyn. “Twilight’s wrong, but I understand why she did it that way. Twilight, you’re a student, and a darn good one. If I had your scholastic attitude, I would ace all my classes. But this isn’t like studying history or magic or something where you’re going to do the full course. This is something you need to learn quickly. What that means is that you have to cram.”

“Cram? But cramming is actually counterproductive to good learning.” Twilight was visibly agitated. “Everypony knows that. Is it different for humans? Can you really study that quickly and learn?”

“No, they tell us that it’s wrong as well. But that doesn’t mean we don’t do it, especially when there’s not a grade on the line. Now please, tell me that you have a record of the song that you are dancing to.”

Twilight trotted over to one of the shelves. Karyn had never noticed it, but that particular section of the library had albums instead of books. Seeing the look from both of them, Twilight said, “Sometimes background music is good for reading. And yes, there are some foals who aren’t into books too much, but do like listening to music. So if they borrow one of these, maybe I can get them hooked and make them into readers after all.”

Karyn said nothing, but gestured at the record player.

The song was different, much slower and suited to a formal affair. But the biggest difference was that it was in three-quarter time.

“Yeah, we’re going to have to completely start over.” How was she going to teach Twilight to waltz? But then an image entered her mind. “Twilight. I think I’ve seen you walking with one hoof on your chin. Can you do that?”

“What? Of course. I just leave one count out of my step.”

“Right, but what I need you to do is to keep one hoof up and canter. If my memory serves, cantering is a three-beat gait.”

Derpy nodded. “But how did you know that? You said you’re not good with equine anatomy.”

“Read it in a fantasy book a long time ago. Never mind. Twilight, can you do it?”

“Canter with a hoof to my chin? I think so.”

“It just has to be off the ground.”

She tried, and to Karyn’s surprise there was some grace to it. “I think you’ve got something here.”

“That’s it. Now, when the section moves, put that hoof back and lift your other front one off.”

It was a tricky maneuver, but Twilight had her wings to keep her balance while only her back hooves were on the ground. Instead of being awkward, Twilight had made it look like a planned step.

“That’s incredible, Twilight. You’re going to wow everypony.”

“Do you really think so?”

“She does,” interjected Derpy. “And so do I. You know that I’m being sincere.”

“I can’t say thank you enough. If you think this will get me through the Gala, I’ll practice day and night until then. I’ll be sure to get it down.”

“You will. And then you’ll have something you can do again when you need to.”

Twilight, mindful of Karyn’s earlier warning, took the record off the player and carefully sleeved it in paper before slipping it into the case. “So it doesn’t warp,” she said. “Now, about you two. You must have some reward for this.”

“No, we can’t take that,” said Derpy. “I have enough bits as is, and Karyn can’t even spend hers most of the time.”

“There are rewards other than bits. The power of a princess of Equestria is at your command. Ask for anything you like.”

“I’ve had it once before. All I wanted was to get rid of it.”

“She’s right,” said Karyn. “At this point all I want to do is to make like that record isn’t doing and warp.” Derpy looked at her sideways. “I mean, to go home.”

Twilight had seen the joke, and headed toward the door to let them out. “Well, there must be something. I’ll think of it, I’m sure. In the meantime, be well, both of you.”

They waved their good-byes and Derpy took off with Karyn on top of her. As they headed for the point of departure back to earth, they could hear the dim echo of the record being put back on the player, and the music starting once more.

Author's Note

We move right along with the preview for next week's chapter!

Karyn had put on her interview suit and had a folder stuffed with papers at her side. “It’s for real today. I probably don’t need to be, but I put it on out of force of habit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to do this again, and before this year it had to be done in person. They finally put it online, but I still feel like it’s a key day.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Rainbow Dash was always trying to get me to read those famous books like Daring Do, but I just never enjoyed them.”

“Wait, Daring Do is your idea of a Great Work?”

Derpy’s eyes separated more than normal. “Well, yeah. Like I said, everypony reads them."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes, she would pause or rewind the video a few seconds.

“But I don’t like to do that too often or too long,” Karyn said. “The video site gets temperamental with its buffering, and likes to lock up when people scan through the videos.”

Please continue to enjoy this story throughout the new year!

85: To Derp, or Not to Derp

“Well, well! You’re dressed fancy today. Or are you?”

Indeed, as Derpy said, Karyn had put on her interview suit and had a folder stuffed with papers at her side. “It’s for real today. I probably don’t need to be, but I put it on out of force of habit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to do this again, and before this year it had to be done in person. They finally put it online, but I still feel like it’s a key day.”

Derpy was confused, but bore an expression of patience. Surely Karyn would explain. “Go on,” she said.

“A few weeks before the end of each semester, I have to register for the classes I’m going to take next time. Each discipline has certain classes it has to take, but they’re not all given at the same time, and if you’re not careful, then you might not be able to graduate in four years. Instead, you’ll have one or two more classes that you’ll have to take, but they won’t pay your board for that time, and it’s a lot worse financially. So getting the right ones at the right time is important.”

“And you had to get dressed up for that?”

“Emphasis on had,” Karyn said, actually emphasizing the word. “Because the only fair way to do it was to have every class set up a table with a sign-up sheet, and whoever wanted the class had to race to the front. But now with computers, the race is just for your packets to get there ahead of everyone else’s.

For Derpy, who had a working knowledge of networks, the vision of the particles pulsing through the wires to get to the server before any others was amusing.

“So there’s a time set when everyone goes for it?”

“Yeah, Sunday at noon. I guess they figure that’s the time everyone’s most likely to be not working, or finished with church if that’s something they do, or woken up from a Saturday night of drinking and carousing. Anyway, here’s their catalogue.”

In one respect, the college had not taken everything into cyberspace, as Karyn was able to show Derpy a professionally-bound catalogue with “Spring Term” emblazoned on the cover, complete with a picture of flowers in bloom. Inside, once she flipped past all the introductory fluff that served to pad out the document and the instructions for using the service that virtually everyone knew anyway, she was able to see four or five squares of text per page. Each one had a bold title and code number, and below that in italics a time, location, and the name of a professor. Many of the latter entries were “TBA.”

“All right. Let’s go over which ones you need to make sure that you’re not going to miss your graduation.”

“I’ve done that,” said Karyn. “I sit down with my advisor every semester, but the meetings are a lot quicker now. I’ve taken most of the courses I need that are tricky to get, and now they’re basically running a long sequence for the people in my discipline. They’re higher-level courses that are almost guaranteed not to fill up.”

“What is your discipline, by the way?”

“Support.”

Derpy looked at her a little skeptically.

“I know, most people wonder why I’m not doing programming, or networks, or systems. The fancy stuff like that. And all that’s important, and I’ll see my share of all of it in my work. But I know too many IT geeks whose attitude is that the system is best when there are no users. And that’s just naïve. Alienating the users is the quickest way to make IT obsolete. Just like assembly-line manufacturing is a bad industry to be in, because they’re replacing everything with robots, I worry about when companies decide that they don’t need support because it’s easier to make products that almost never fail. Well, I think that’s bad for everyone, and I’m going to buck the trend.”

Derpy clasped her wings to Karyn’s face. “I’ve never heard you talk so passionately about your work. I really like hearing that from you. Now, come on, let’s get the classes you need so you can get started.

“Oh, but even if you are passionate, you shouldn’t swear.”

Karyn replayed her half of the conversation in her mind, and just muttered an apology rather than try to explain how she was using the word buck. “Anyway, the point is that, whatever subject you’re majoring in, there’s some flexibility built into your lineup to make this easier. I have some electives that I need to start using. Four classes I need where I can take anything in the book. I’ll take one this semester, one the next, and then two in my final year. If all goes right, that last semester will be an easy ride. I’ll only take four classes, two of them will be these electives, one of them will be a barely-graded lab, and one I’ll have with my advisor himself. He knows me, and he knows that I’m a good student, so I’ll be favorably graded.”

“Oh, are the electives easier than the core courses? I thought it would be the other way around. Since you don’t know anything about, say—“ Derpy slapped one page with her hoof, kicking some dust into the air—“Urban Social Photography, it would be harder for you.”

“You’d think so, but here’s the thing. If the professor knows that someone is taking that class to be a social media expert or an artist, then that student will get the most attention. When someone’s taking it as an elective, the grading is again lenient.”

“So how do you decide what course to elect?”

“By what I’m interested in. Let me see the catalogue.” Derpy passed it over. “Sadly my school isn’t one of those that’s offering really wacky courses, like playing video games for grades or examining the philosophy of Harry Potter or some such.”

Derpy flew behind Karyn and read over her shoulder.

“Not that that would be an easy class for me,” Karyn continued. “I’d be too distracted laughing at how foolish their impression of magic is.”

“Yeah. How about human history or something like that?”

“History? Ugh, boring. I left all that behind when I finished my one requirement. Actually, I think you passed that test for me.”

Still Derpy was distracted, and muttering. At last she stopped poring over the book and said, “I think you have a great opportunity here to really get yourself a well-rounded education. This would be like if Dinky, going to the Gifted Unicorn school, got to spend a few hours each week flying with me. Or some pegasus who knew flying better. The point is, you should be looking for a class that will challenge you and make you a better person after you pass it.”

“And I want that, I just want an easy A as well.”

“Why?”

Karyn had to think a moment. “Well, I know a lot of people say that your GPA doesn’t matter to employers, and even if it does, the few points I’ll lose from getting a B+ instead of an A won’t make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time I just want some free success.”

“I don’t know that I agree with that, but before we go crazy, let’s see if there’s a class you can take that will satisfy us both.”

They flipped past each page of the catalogue’s elective section, but could find nothing that satisfied them both. Most of the time, each of them found a reason to reject it.

“I’m picking up the flavor,” said Derpy, “of the ones that are the softballs. They have descriptions that are written more like advertising pitches, while the ones that are in the disciplines are more academic.”

“How can you tell that?”

“They’re the ones I don’t understand. Be sure to pick one of those.”

Karyn had a laugh at that, then went back to looking. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been looking at the courses that have no prerequisites, because if they do, I won’t have them unless they’re already in my core courses. But what if I took one that had pre-reqs, but where it’s something that I know even if I didn’t take the class?”

Derpy parsed that while checking the time to make sure that they didn’t miss noon. “How would you know it?”

“Like take the English courses. To take the 200-levels, all you have to do is pass 101 and 102. I never took 102, but it’s just essay writing and I do that in all my other classes.”

“But will you be able to sign up if you haven’t taken the course?”

Karyn looked at her computer. “It depends on how they designed the system. If those requirements are hard-coded in, to where I get a rejection, I won’t be able to.

“But if that’s the case, it’s bad coding on the part of whoever designed it. They should make it a warning, but not a lock. Because anyone who does want to sign up for a course and should would then be messed up because of the system. That’s the exact kind of thing I would want to explain to people when I go to work.”

“How about this?” Derpy had looked to the section Karyn had mentioned. “English 211: The Great Works.”

“Why that one?”

“I was just thinking of all the times that everypony has read some popular book and they make references to it that I don’t get. If you knew all the great works, you wouldn’t have to go through that.”

Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder and rubbed her fur. “I feel sorry for you when you say things like that. Why didn’t you go read the books everypony else was reading?”

“Truth is, I don’t enjoy it that much. Rainbow Dash was always trying to get me to read those famous books like Daring Do, but I just never enjoyed them.”

“Wait, Daring Do is your idea of a Great Work?”

Derpy’s eyes separated more than normal. “Well, yeah. Like I said, everypony reads them. Except me, I think. Is it different here?”

“Yeah it kind-of is. Like for this class, the books they’ll be talking about won’t be the popular ones. We have adventure books like Daring Do, only with fewer pegasi, but those aren’t the kind of books that get discussed in this class.”

Karyn expected Derpy to ask what kind of books were, but instead she said, “I wonder why you don’t. I mean, isn’t that the point of learning? To be friendly and helpful?”

“That’s the difference between Equestria and here. There’s so much tragedy here that we need to write about it and make our kids read it so that they know how to deal with it. It’s the opposite side of the same coin. You guys show what happens if you’re good friends, and we show what happens when you’re not.”

“Oh! Like the Hearth’s Warming Eve story.”

“Exactly!” Karyn slapped her hand with her fist. “When somepony wrote that, though, they gave the happy ending, and they just told what happened. If a human wrote it, there would have been more of a lesson. In any case, I’m going to sign up for that class.”

“Oh, good. At least we came to a decision.”

Karyn got on the computer and checked the time on the official web site. Once her computer had been synced, she counted down the seconds until noon, then refreshed the web page. Given her skill with the mouse and keyboard, she was able to open multiple browser tabs and sign up for all of the classes at once. When she got to the tab with the English class, she said, “See, already three people have signed up.”

“How many before it fills up?”

“Could be hundreds. I’ll be OK if this goes through…there, it never even asked me about the prerequisite. That’s not exactly ideal, but I’ll take it.”

“Great!” said Derpy.

“Hey, I just realized, this schedule is really compact.”

“What do you mean?”

Karyn reached for her calendar. “Three of the classes are split between Monday and Wednesday, an hour and a half each. One is three hours on Tuesday night and this English class is early Tuesday and Thursday. That means I’ll be done with classes by Thursday at ten, and have extra-long weekends all the time.”

“Oh, how nice. Now you’ll be able to have everything tidied up for me.”

“Derpy, are you sure you don’t want to be a weather pony?”

Derpy blinked at the apparent non sequitur. “Why?”

“Because you’re good at always finding the black cloud to put over my sunshine.” Karyn stuck out her tongue as she said it.

“You got the class you want. Be happy.”

“I am. Actually, thinking back this could be a lot of fun. The last time I was in an English class wasn’t, because it was freshman English, and it was really dumbed down. But in my last year of high school I took the honors class. I always figured it would be more difficult, and that I’d be challenged.”

Derpy scrunched up her nose. “Was it the kind of soft class you wanted?”

“Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there was more camaraderie than in other classes. Everyone in that class was my friend, I think. Actually, that may be where I started with my nerd reputation. I was so used to classes where everything had to be kept to a strict schedule, so I kept raising my hand and asking when we would get back to discussing the books instead of going off on tangents. But the teacher intended those tangents, since the discussions we would have would be just as stimulating.”

“All right, but in what sense wasn’t it easy?”

Karyn laughed at how Derpy stayed on point. “Because the material we dealt with was harder and more complicated. The stuff we did in regular English got a little worse each year, but in the honors class I finally had to deal with things like poetry and Shakespeare.”

“Well, I know what poetry is, but what about shaking spears?”

“No, he was a playwright. Actually, when you think about it, it would make a good pony name. Shakes Spears. But it’s not spelled that way. Anyway, he wrote these plays, and everyone who knows about such things says they’re the greatest ever written.”

“Why?”

It was only one word, but for a moment Karyn felt as if she were back in the class she was talking about, being challenged to explain some point of one of her essays. Then she realized that it wasn’t anything like that, but that Derpy still needed to understand, because she was representing her species.

“I’m not a scholar in this section, but I’ll tell you what I think. Part of it is how poetic the language is. It’s very flowery and laced with symbolism and double meanings. When they publish the plays to read, a lot of times they only put it on the left-hand pages of the book, and use the right-hand ones for explanations.

“Now, as I said, people who study such things say it’s the best. But to me, something that you can understand without annotations is better because it’s more accessible.

“The other part of why English teachers and such like him is how deep the stories go. They’re all about jealousy or rampant ambition or ego, and a lot of them have tragic endings. I don’t like that much either. But he did write some stuff that was nice and pleasant, and if you can get past the language, it can be entertaining. When it’s being taught in class, you have to go through weeks of learning about the stage he used, and then read the play and take quizzes on it, then write an essay. But when it’s all over the teacher will spend a week showing a movie of the play, and then it’s fun.”

Derpy listened with rapt attention. In many ways, Karyn was smarter than her, and it behooved her to pay attention. Many times she had told herself that it was important to learn about the human world for other ponies. But at that moment, she realized that she wanted to learn to grow as a pony, and to have a stronger bond with Karyn.

“I want to see it.”

“You want to see the class?”

Derpy shook her head, her ears flopping everywhere. “No, I want to see one of these movies!”

“But I’ve just gotten through telling you how difficult it is.”

“I know. That’s why I want to see it. I fully expect to be confused, but that’s been happening to me all my life.”

Karyn saw the wisdom in that. She sat at her desk and turned on the computer. After a few searches she clicked a button in the bottom right. The screen went dark as a production company logo faded in.

“You found one?” asked Derpy. “I hope it wasn’t expensive.”

“No, it’s free on one of the video sites. I guess they figure that it’s worth keeping the big-money blockbusters to the pay sites, but something like this isn’t going to lose them a lot of money, so leaving it up makes the site more popular and gets them some credit with the public.”

The movie started, and Karyn, who hadn’t seen any Shakespeare in four years, was just as hard pressed as Derpy to figure out what was going on. For the first half hour, there were constant interruptions of, “Why is she doing that?” or “What did that guy say?” Sometimes, she would pause or rewind the video a few seconds.

“But I don’t like to do that too often or too long,” Karyn said. “The video site gets temperamental with its buffering, and likes to lock up when people scan through the videos.”

As the movie progressed, though, Derpy’s questions grew less and less frequent. When the conversations led into a kind of action scene with two of the characters sword fighting, Derpy hovered in the air in excitement. Karyn gave her a sly sideways glance.

Near the end, Derpy interrupted once more. “But where’s all the dark stuff you talked about? I see a few fools here, and ironically the one they call a fool isn’t one of them. But there’s none of the death and tragedy.”

“Well, I have to confess. I didn’t think you really wanted to watch that for so long, and I know I didn’t, so I found a comedy instead.”

“But it’s not that funny either.”

“Comedy meant something different back then,” said Karyn. “Instead of being funny, it meant that instead of ending with a death, it ended…but I don’t want to spoil it.”

They finished watching, and true to the old definition of the term, most of the characters paired off to get married. The production showed the wedding over the closing credits, but Derpy insisted on watching to the end, either so engrossed in the celebration or expecting a scene after the credits.

“That was pretty cool.”

“But could you understand it?”

“No,” said Derpy. “Not the language anyway. But once I got into it I stopped paying attention to the words. I just watched the action and listened to the tone of everyone’s voice. I could tell when people were mad and when they were happy, and it made a nice story. Like I said, a lot of times I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m good at faking it.”

Karyn ended the video and suspended the computer’s operations. “Well, what would you like to do with the rest of the day? It’s too early for dinner, but if you want to go out…”

“I want to watch another!”

Karyn grinned as if she knew that this would be the answer, but she wasn’t prepared for Derpy to continue.

“But first, you said they publish the plays in books? I want to try reading it. The one we just saw. Maybe if I can go back and forth I will understand the language, and then I’ll be able to appreciate it even more.”

“Hmm…that’s tricky. The bookstore might have it, if it’s required for some English class, but—wait, what am I saying? The guy’s five hundred years old. All his stuff’s in the public domain.”

Derpy didn’t follow that, but nodded as Karyn turned the computer back on and went to a different web site. A moment later she had up a long stream of text.

“Here you go,” she said. “Read all you like. I think you can manipulate the scroll wheel without even using any adaptation spells.”

Derpy sat at the desk, and Karyn crashed on the bed to relax. But a few minutes later she heard Derpy’s sigh.

“No good?”

Derpy spun around in the chair. “No good. It’s just not the same without the actors and the movement. Really, the paper makes it seem all dead. If you ask me, your classes do it backwards. They should show you the movie first and make you write essays about that. It would be much more heartfelt and closer to what the author intended.”

“Thanks, Derpy.”

“For what?”

Karyn got up and grabbed a pen. “I think you just gave me the theme for an extra credit essay for the class I’m taking.”

“Oh, do they give those?”

“I don’t know, but what do I care? It’s only an elective, and the professor might be impressed with my cheek. Now how did it go again?”

Derpy repeated her thought, but this time with a smile.

Author's Note

If you come back next week, here's some of what you'll read!

After her long rest, Derpy finally seemed to gain some energy. "You haven't asked me why."

"Why what?" asked Karyn, afraid she'd missed some new mane-cut or enhancement Derpy had gotten.

"Why I had so much extra work to do."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, do we even have tickets?” Karyn asked.

“No, I told you, we’d see when we get there.”

“I mean train tickets.”

“No, we don’t have those either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I...I don't believe it." Twilight's jaw hung open.

"Twilight, I don't know how we can make this up to you--"

Be here to enjoy all the fun!

86: At the Derpa

Derpy slipped her hoof underneath her and undid a strap.

"Oh, it feels so good to get out of your saddlebag sometimes, you know what I mean?"

"Not really," said Karyn, "but I imagine it's probably similar to what I feel when I take my socks off after a long day."

Derpy looked at her strangely, but then remembered that wearing socks was a purely utilitarian activity for humans. "I guess so. But the bag has just been so heavy all week"

"You're tired again then?"

"No, or if I am, it's a good kind of tired. I worked a lot of overtime this week, and I got good pay."

However Derpy claimed she was feeling, Karyn could tell that she was weary, and helped her lay on the bed.

"Did you have fun working it?"

"Well, no more fun than usual, but the next time we're in Equestria, we can do something special, even if it costs money."

Karyn tidied up the apartment while Derpy relaxed. She didn't say anything, and Karyn didn't bring it up. Even with her new class schedule that afforded her extra time, she still liked to amuse herself and catch up with the cleaning on the weekend.

When she finally rolled over and looked up, Derpy said, "So how are your classes going?"

"You know how it goes in the first week."

"Oh, that's right, you told me about that. I wonder if Dinky has the same problem. I would guess not. Her classes aren't as formal as yours, and there are fewer ponies."

Karyn put away the last of the syllabi she had received. "Actually, it's been getting better. In the core courses they're more serious about using the time more effectively, so we did some actual learning."

"That's good." After her long rest, Derpy finally seemed to gain some energy. "You haven't asked me why."

"Why what?" asked Karyn, afraid she'd missed some new mane-cut or enhancement Derpy had gotten.

"Why I had so much extra work to do."

"Oh. I figured that it was just work that gets caught up, and then you have to do more."

Derpy picked up the saddlebag again, but did not put it on. "But this week specifically, everypony was mailing everypony else about their plans for the Grand Galloping Gala."

"Right, that's coming up soon."

"Very soon. Today in fact."

"What?!" Karyn had been fiddling with her phone, but threw it in her pocket when she heard Derpy.

"Yes, today."

"And you were delivering mail all over."

"That's right," said Derpy. Mail and some packages. Lots of ponies bought clothes and such to go to the ball."

"And...invitations? Tickets, I should say."

"Oh, no. Those went out weeks ago. You can't expect anypony to just find out they're going in the last week."

"That makes sense." Karyn's face dropped.

"What's the matter?"

"Well, after we helped Twilight get ready for the Gala, I kind of figured, or hoped, that she would reward us by letting us come to the party."

Now Derpy put the saddlebag back on. "You want to go to the Gala?"

"I do. Silly, right? But I find I like when everypony gets together for a party. Like when we went to the Summer Moon Celebration. They were all having such a good time, it was like a contact high. Plus it gives me a chance to practice acting in a social situation without it affecting my reputation here if I make a faux pas. But I guess they didn't want a human at their pony party."

"Well, then let's go!"

"But we didn't get invited," Karyn said.

"I'm sure you're right, and that it was a mistake. Twilight probably just forgot to give us invitations."

"You think the most organized pony in all of Equestria forgot?

Derpy was racing to kneal by Karyn, but held up. "You might have a point. But who cares? Let's go to Canterlot and go to the castle. Maybe they'll let us in, maybe they won't, but it'll be a fun adventure, and you'll get to be around all those happy ponies that you wanted to see."

Karyn mounted up, and they were in Ponyville a moment later. "Are we going to have enough time to get there?"

"It's still early, but we do have a lot to do. I'll have to find a dress, we'll need to take the train there...all right, maybe not a lot to do, but it could take a while."

Derpy descended toward her house, but they didn't stay long. When they emerged a moment later, Derpy's saddlebag was laden with the extra money she'd earned.

"Now we'll need to find a dressmaker who's open today," said Karyn. "Won't most of them be closed?"

Derpy stopped. "I didn't think of that. We'll just have to take our chances."

"Actually, before we go hunting everywhere, I want to try something. Hold still."

Karyn stood by Derpy's side and concentrated. For a minute, nothing happened, then green light faded into existence around Karyn. When it finished, Derpy expected what she saw: Karyn in a fancy party dress. What she didn't expect was to see herself in one as well.

It swept to her back in the silver-gray of rain, but had fringes and gaps that let her cutie mark be seen. Around her neck, a simple clasp of stone held it together.

"How did you do that?"

"You know how I can make clothes for myself? Well, I can't take them off and give them to anyone, but I can keep them continuous. There are threads connecting that dress to mine. Which means we can't separate at the party, or it'll fall off. But so long as we're in contact, it'll work."

"So it's made out of your own changeling magic's substance? I see." Derpy moved around it the dress to see how it fit, but then stopped. "Does that mean it's like you're always giving me a hug?"

Because the clothes were inanimate, Karyn didn’t feel through them. But she said, “In a way, I guess it kind of is. But let’s not be all sappy. We’ll miss the train.”

The easiest way for them to walk was with Karyn mounted up. Even before they entered the train station, they could see the throng of ponies gathered round waiting for the next train to Canterlot. Half of Ponyville, it seemed, was going to the Gala.

Here and there, stallions in the railroad uniform were trying to keep control of the crowd, pushing everypony to different sides to keep a steady queue. As one of them passed, Karyn and Derpy overheard him say, “Why does everypony have to be going to the Gala?”

“He’s got a good point,” said Karyn. “Why does everypony go to the Gala?”

“Because it’s not held in Ponyville. They have to travel.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What’s the purpose of it?”

Derpy had a light-bulb-over-head expression. “Oh! To have a party.”

“Yes, but why? Just for the party? I mean, when there’s the Summer Sun and Moon Celebrations, the reason is for the raising of the particular object. If it were a birthday party or a Hearth’s Warming Eve party, there are reasons for those too. But why the Gala?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it. Maybe you’re right and it’s just a party. We can ask when we get there.”

“If we get there.” Karyn craned her neck over the crowd. “Although I do hear a train pulling in, so that could be good news.”

Indeed the train chugged its way into the station, and with the steam from the engine permeating the air, the queue slowly filled the station.

“Hey, do we even have tickets?” Karyn asked.

“No, I told you, we’d see when we get there.”

“I mean train tickets.”

“No, we don’t have those either. We’ll have to pay cash on board.”Derpy jingled the change in her bag.

“I didn’t even know you could do that.”

“Oh, yes. There’s an upcharge, I think, but like I said, I have extra this week.”

At last they reached the head of the line, but when they got on, not only were the bedrooms and roomettes filled, but every seat in the car as well. They spotted one or two empty ones, but nowhere were there two together, and thanks to Karyn’s magic they were bound together for the trip.

“I guess we’re standing the whole way.”

“Yep!” Derpy said it with more cheer than Karyn expected.

“I’m glad you’re happy about it.”

“That’s right. I forgot that you’re not as comfortable that way. Well, get on my back. It’s not the same as a seat with a back, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

“Thanks, Derpy.” It was a little awkward for her, pressed against some other pony’s body, but Karyn managed to get on top once more. It helped too that Derpy could null out some of the shocks, bumps, and swerves as the train ascended the mountain.

If the packed train had one advantage, it was that those on last were off first. Derpy carried Karyn out of the Canterlot station and toward the castle. The tall towers and buildings still impeded Derpy from flying right there, but after the visits she had to see Dinky, she knew generally where she was going, and had she gotten lost, all that was necessary was to follow the crowd.

Like water pouring down a drain, the ponies came from every alley and corner toward the castle. They were still a mile off when they found another queue, if it could be called so. Throng would be a better word.

"This is going to take forever!" said Derpy. "By the time we get in, the party will be over."

"It's like when Twilight couldn't get any alone time with Princess Celestia because she had to spend the whole night at the reception line."

"It's too bad we can't just go to the side door where ponies deliver mail."

Karyn bent down to see Derpy's face upside down. "You know where that is?"

"Not from experience, but there has to be one."

"Let's try to find it. This line's not going anywhere for a while, and if we don't find it, we'll be no worse off."

They trotted around the crowd. Canterlot Castle, built as it was into the side of a mountain, did not have many accessible entries. But whether by intent of the builders or because they planned for an all-unicorn city, Derpy was able to fly past a barrier where the castle sloped away from the ground. Nopony guarded it, and their progress was neither permitted nor hindered.

The walkways and arches they walked under grew thicker, until the last one became not an arch but a ceiling, and they were fully indoors. From a distance, the sound of chamber music came.

“I think we found it,” said Derpy, but it took a few more twists and turns before they could see the light of the party. Once there, it was exactly how Karyn remembered and Derpy imagined it would be. Fancy ponies everywhere in their best dresses and suits enjoying polite conversation to a background of the band playing.

“We made it. Now let’s have some fun.”

Derpy, though, perhaps forgetting about having to stay close to Karyn, had tunnel vision for one part of the ballroom, and Karyn had to run to keep up. Derpy picked up a dinner plate and attacked the buffet table.

“Oh, I guess I shouldn’t be eating so much, right?”

“For a party like this, I’ll let you have a cheat day. Try not to go too crazy though.”

“These carrots smell so delicious. I love carrots. I used to raid the refrigerator for them all the time. Do you want some?” Derpy took a second plate before Karyn even responded.

“Before I eat anything, I think it would be prudent if we confirmed our invitations. We don’t want to be called out as party crashers.”

“Fair enough, but I don’t see anypony who looks like an usher.”

Karyn took a bite of her carrot. “It’s really Twilight I want to find. Like you said, it’s she who ought to have given them to us, and even if she didn’t intend to, it’s probably because she didn’t think we would want to go. Some usher would be more likely to throw us out.”

“You’re right. Let’s head toward the front of the party. I think most of the important ponies are there.”

“I just hope there isn’t a velvet rope or something holding us back.”

“If there is, I’ll fly over it.”

They made their way through the crowd, and there indeed was a VIP section that was roped off. Before Derpy could show off her boldness, a bell rang that got everypony’s attention. They held still and watched to see what would happen.

It took Karyn a few seconds to process what she was hearing. The music was familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it until she saw Twilight Sparkle come out. Then she remembered flying away on Derpy’s back as Twilight continued to practice her dance.

Twilight’s dancing was not pure grace, but it did show the practice that she put in. Her timing was impeccable, and she was able to move from partner to partner without missing a beat. Apparently many stallions had sought the right to dance even a few steps with a princess.

The only one that they recognized was Twilight’s brother. It made sense that Shining Armor, as a prince from one of Equestria’s territories, would be invited, and of course Twilight would have him on her dance card. But it was as she took his hoof in hers that the dance took her around to where Karyn and Derpy were standing. After a few twirls, she caught sight of Karyn.

It nearly made her lose her balance, and had it been anypony else, she would have been embarrassed, perhaps too much to continue. But Shining, who had gotten the family’s share of dance talent, helped her recover. As the song reached its final crescendo, Twilight took a bow but then marched over to Karyn.

“Hello, Twilight.”

“Hi. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Karyn blanched. She was a party crasher after all.

“We couldn’t resist,” said Derpy. “We had to be where everypony who’s anypony was. Besides, I’ve never been to one.”

Twilight’s expression was one of sympathy, and something else that Karyn thought of as self-pity. She was still expecting a dressing-down from a princess or some official, but the pony who came by, stopping Twilight from saying anything, seemed more interested in herding Twilight than Derpy and Karyn. He was a fast-talking unicorn who kept staring at a clipboard held in his magic field.

“Right, that concludes the dance, so here we go, back at it, everypony come, we have to keep on schedule.”

Twilight tried to talk to him. “I just wanted to say to—“

“You’ll have plenty of time to speak next, the floor will be yours, of course, now let’s get into positions. This way, please.” If anything, he focused on Karyn to move. Derpy, bound as she was to Karyn for her dress, followed. None of them could get a word in edgewise as they walked with Twilight.

Where they were taken was a room without any decorations, but with lots of ponies sitting around. Many of them had associates and hangers-on, and all of them wore a kind of badge on their clothes. As the stallion who had hurried them in went to bother others, Derpy and Karyn had a conversation in whispers.

“What do you think this is?” Derpy asked.

“I was hoping that you would know. Is there supposed to me some kind of summit at this year’s Gala?”

“Not that I heard, unless it was supposed to be a secret summit, in which case they wouldn’t have told me.”

The stallion returned, consulting a seating chart. “I can’t find where you two are supposed to be. What delegation are you with again?”

“I’m from Ponyville,” said Derpy.

“But we already have Princess Twilight from Ponyville.”

“Oh, you must mean Karyn then. She’s from Earth.”

Once more he scanned his list, but Twilight interrupted him with a sigh. “You won’t find them there. Just grab two chairs out of storage and put them next to me.”

Derpy seemed to sense Twilight’s upset mood, but Karyn didn’t particularly care. “What exactly is going on here?”

Some of the pony delegates huffed their disapproval, but Twilight leaned over and said, “We’ve been meeting here all week. This is the time when we plan out all the things that ponies will do over the next year. Growing quotas, schedules for pegasus weather activity, and so forth.”

“And you scheduled that opposite the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“No, that’s the point of the Gala. Princess Celestia didn’t explain it to me until after my own ascension. It’s one of those open secrets that we have around Equestria.”

“Open secrets?” asked Derpy.

“Well, more like the reverse of open secrets. Things that anypony can find out about, but nopony bothers to do. They all prefer to think of this time as just a party that’s so exclusive.”

Karyn and Derpy surveyed the table. None of the delegates or their assistance seemed happy, and more than one was haggard with unkempt manes and tails. Halfway down, one of them spoke up. “If we could please return to business, Princess.”

“Very well,” Twilight launched into a discussion including some complex terms like “free on board” and “net-thirty.”

Derpy pulled Karyn aside and again spoke in hushed tones. “Do you want to head back to the party then? I get the feeling we’re not supposed to be here.”

“Wait a few minutes. I want to see what’s going on.”

Derpy shrugged, and she spaced out for a minute as the bickering continued.

Karyn, however, seemed to have genuine interest, and when she returned to the table, Twilight was talking again.

"Yes, I know that you've requested a broader time frame, and I've included that in the plan. But there are only twelve months in the year. I can't alter time."

The pony she was talking to shot her a skeptical look, but said nothing.

"I know that there are many things for everypony to consider,"Twilight continued, "but that's why we're here making these plans."

"You say that every year, and every year something goes wrong! The plan doesn't work!"

Twilight was speechless for a moment, and though Karyn hadn't been there, an image emerged in her mind, an image of a full week of this, of Twilight patiently explaining details to one pony, only to have some other pony ask a question on the most minute point that probably had nothing to do with them, but which warranted an equally long explanation. Then she saw Twilight having to listen to speeches that were just as long, but contained nothing but fluff and flank-covering disclaimers. Twilight, though, would not be able to tune out, for fear that some delicate piece of information might actually come through.

She got in front of Twilight and pointed a finger at the stallion. "Listen, I don't know what your issue is, but I do know something about planning, because it's a big part of what my job is," going to be, she said to herself. "And I know that no matter how much you do, there's always something that comes up to mess with your plans. It's just as important to know how to think on your hooves."

Derpy snapped to attention and tried to grab Karyn to pull her back, but she was on a roll. "Right down the hall, there's a wonderful party to go to, and if you would all put in a little more work during the year, you could be out there enjoying it instead of wasting your time down here, and wasting Twilight's time as well!"

Now Derpy slapped a wing over Karyn's mouth. "I'm so sorry, Twilght...Princess! I don't know what got into her!"

It wasn't Twilight, or even the pony she was arguing with, who broke the tension, but a few other ponies around the table. And it wasn't a proper hoof-stomp round of applause, but a few thumps and some who got up and clearly meant to take Karyn's advice and get out to the party. One by one the ponies left the table until even those who wanted to continue the conference saw that it was fruitless.

"I...I don't believe it." Twilight's jaw hung open.

"Twilight, I don't know how we can make this up to you--"

"I've been trying all week to do something like that. Karyn, I could kiss you!"

"What?!" Derpy still expected disaster.

"Derpy," Karyn said, "I know that you don't have to deal with a lot of meetings like this, but even a princess I'm sure can't stand them. And if an outsider can say something to shut it down, so much the better. As a wise human said, a motion to adjourn is always in order."

Twilight laughed. "I'll have to remember that one. And now I really owe you a favor. Come on, let's get back to the Gala."

They were half way down the hall before Twilight spoke again. "Just promise me one thing."

"What's that?" asked Derpy.

"Wait until I tell you what it is before accepting."

Author's Note

But don't wait any longer than a week to read the next chapter!

"I’ve been going stir crazy the last three days.”

“But you had plenty of time to catch up on your homework.”

Karyn had to laugh at that. “I finished it all on Friday, and read two chapters ahead in the book we’re doing for English class."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Your mom seemed real proud of you.”

“Yeah, I at least got the ball rolling. But I bet it’s an hour at least before we get out of here.”

Derpy seemed distracted by something, but Karyn couldn’t read her expression to tell what.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dinky.”

Out loud, Derpy said, “She’s even thinking of me when I’m thinking of her. I can’t wait till next week.”

She rushed off to find a pen so she could respond.

Please read that one and the next too!

87: That New Derp Smell

It was a distracting morning for Derpy, as it seemed she could do nothing without being interrupted by somepony. She was rapidly losing her status as a loner, so even on Sunday Pinkie Pie might drop by with a baked good to share, or Colgate would stick her head in to remind Derpy to brush. That Sunday, she just barely had time to finish her letter to Dinky which she would mail on Monday before getting in the air and transferring to Earth.

When she landed, it seemed to her that Karyn was in just as much of a frantic state, although the apartment was cleaner than usual. She jumped back and forth to her computer and phone, and it didn’t take long for Derpy to ask what was going on.

“You, my extradimensional friend,” Karyn said, “are going to have to go invisible shortly. My parents are coming for a visit.”

“Oh, cool. Is it like a visitors’ day where everyone’s parents can come and see the school?”

“It is not. We do have one of those, though it is more of an occasion for the school to sell overpriced sweatshirts and baseball caps to the visitors.”

Derpy sat down at the breakfast table and went into her saddlebag, getting her invisibility spell ready in case she needed to use it rapidly. “So it’s just a random visit? Maybe they miss you.”

“I’m sure they do, but it’s not so much random. There are a lot of little things that I forgot at home since I was there last, and they’ll be bringing them. Plus Mom wanted to stop at some store that’s out of the way for them but is somewhat between there and here. And all that leads up to the big reason they are coming.”

“Which is?”

Karyn went for her coat. Derpy didn’t know what was going on, but she turned on her invisibility and followed her outside. Once there, Karyn opened the door of her car and sat inside, but kept her legs outside and just leaned in, so Derpy didn’t go around just yet. When Karyn inserted the key and turned, Derpy understood.

The car’s engine grinded and whined, and then a sound like a toboggan being dragged over snow came forth from under the hood. This state continued for as long as Karyn held the key in position, the engine never turning over.

“It won’t start at all. I can go to class by walking, but other than that I’m stuck here. I’ve been going stir crazy the last three days.”

“But you had plenty of time to catch up on your homework.”

Karyn had to laugh at that. “I finished it all on Friday, and read two chapters ahead in the book we’re doing for English class. No, I need a working car.”

“What do you think is wrong with it?”

“I don’t know. Really, while I understand the theory of how they run, my mechanical knowledge goes as far as ‘turn key, step on pedal, make go forward.’ Anything else, I call in an expert. But my father wants to take a look at it.”

Derpy shifted around to the front. “I wonder if I could see what’s wrong.”

“I, um, OK, if you like.” Karyn reached beneath the steering column and popped the hood. It took her a minute or so to find the latch that had to be done by hand, and they she propped it up with the stick. “That’s it. If you can make heads or tails of this, more power to you. I think that’s the stick where you check the oil, but don’t ask me anything else.”

“Hang on a minute.”

With Derpy unable to be seen, Karyn couldn’t tell what she was doing, but there was definitely movement. Parts started to move in the car, but then there was a cough and sputter from the engine, and Karyn could feel wind as Derpy backed off.

“Didn’t go so well, huh?”

“I looked for a spell that might fix it,” Derpy said. “I have repair spells in my bag, but this is such a complex piece of machinery, I don’t want to risk blowing it up.”

“Good move.”

They could continue no further, for at that moment a car came inching up the road, and Karyn saw that it was her parents’ vehicle. She waved to them, and her father, who was behind the wheel, looked relieved to have found her on the first pass. He parked in the street, and they walked up the driveway.

“Hey,” Karyn’s father said. “Already got it set up for me, huh?”

“Yeah. Do you think you can tell what’s wrong?”

“Won’t know till I look.”

Watch out for any magic residue, Karyn said to herself, smiling all the way. As she visited with her mother, her father continued his poking and prodding. Karyn had never known him to be particularly mechanically inclined, and she mentioned as much.

After a few minutes, he emerged, his hands grease-stained. “Well, it doesn’t look good. Get in the car.” Karyn moved for the driver’s seat, but he said, “No, I mean our car.”

“What for?”

He nodded to Karyn’s mother, who winked as she hugged her. “We were talking it over on the way here, and we’ve been talking about getting a second car for us. But if yours is starting to fall apart, we’ll take that back and give you the one we’re driving now.”

“For real?!”

“That’s right.”

To her parents, it appeared that Karyn stumbled from the excitement. They could not, of course, see that she was getting hugged by Derpy.

“This is too much. You gave me this car. I still haven’t had to buy one of my own and make payments I can’t afford.”

Karyn’s father led her to his car, saying, “It’s a selfish motive. I’ll feel better if you’re in a safer car, which ours is. I don’t want you driving in some used car that we don’t know about. Yes, there are those vehicle history reports, but I don’t trust those.”

Right as they pulled out, Karyn’s mother said, “We’re still going to have to figure out what to do about this one. We may have to get a tow truck.”

“Ugh. I hate the idea of paying so much money for towing service, plus while I’m sure there are some pleasant tow-truck drivers with a good sense of personal hygiene, I’ve never met one.”

Karyn thought about Derpy’s spell. “We can give it one more try when we get back. You never know if it’ll work on one occasion or another.”

“Good point.”

They drove off, and Karyn reached across for Derpy’s hoof, but found nothing. She was alone in the back seat, and wondered if Derpy hadn’t had time to get in or if she thought that this was a family moment. No, surely she was flying overhead, waiting to jump out and observe everything about how a car purchase was transacted.

“So,” Karyn said, “did you guys have any kind of car in particular that you wanted to get?”

Her mom turned around in the seat. “Your father is being a little weird. He refuses to buy an American car ever since that issue with the bailouts, so we’re going to look at German and Japanese ones. There are plenty of dealers on the main road that we passed.”

They drove a few miles, and Karyn wished that Derpy were inside to keep her company, even if in invisible silence. She thought about rolling down the window to let her in, but it was far too cold outside, and if she tried the excuse that she was too hot, it wouldn’t make sense for her not to just ask her father to lower the heat.

There were indeed many dealers on the main road, but they had to pass two before they pulled into one that had foreign cars. As they parked, Karyn’s mother put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Now, don’t agree to anything too quickly. Above all, don’t sign anything.”

“Agreed. Also, don’t tell them anything about financing. I plan to finance it through our bank, not their company. From what I’ve heard, a lot of them will give you discounts if they think they can make it up with interest.”

For Karyn, this was all new, and she listened with rapt attention. Someday she would be in her parents’ shoes, and she wanted to know what to do.

Meanwhile, she still looked around for Derpy, then realized that was silly and only felt around for Derpy. To her surprise, no soft hoof reached out to grab her hand. She shrugged and went in.

A salesman had immediately spotted them and was already in conversation with Karyn’s father. They agreed on a car to test drive, and the salesman left them alone while he went to get the keys.

It took him a long time to return. “Sorry, I had to get a manager. They’re the only ones with the code to the safe.”

“You have to keep the keys in a safe?” asked Karyn.

“Yes, we do, little lady.” Karyn decided she didn’t like him much and went to mope around the lot. The cold was getting to her, so she went inside the dealer’s showroom to get warm. In her boredom, she looked at the stickers on the cars displayed there.

“It’s so weird to see cars indoors,” she muttered to no one in particular.

“It’s weird for me to see cars at all,” said Derpy.

“Derpy! Where did you go?”

“I followed you guys here, and then I saw all these shiny cars and I went to look at them. We have nothing like this back in Ponyville.”

“Of course not,” Karyn said.

“I mean, even when they sell carts, they’re not all fancy like this. It makes me want to buy one.”

“Of course. Everything here is geared toward making you make that decision.”

Karyn’s mother entered the showroom and found her. “Good news,” she said. “We’ve found one we want.”

“Already?! What about checking other places and shopping around?”

“It’s a good car, it’s within what we budgeted out, we like the way it drives. What more do we want?”

She walked away to get Karyn’s father, leaving her to say to Derpy, “See what I mean?”

“Yes, but I think what it is, is that they really don’t like to shop for cars, and so they want to get it over with as soon as possible.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

Her father returned with the salesman, and he brought over a third chair to his desk, which was right in the middle of the showroom rather than in an office. He pulled out a folder full of paperwork.

“Now,” he said, “the first thing we have to do is to change your insurance. We don’t usually work with this carrier. You wouldn’t happen to know their customer service phone number, would you?”

“Sorry, no.”

“No, problem, I can look it up. How about your policy number?”

Karyn’s father shook his head, which made her perk her head up. “Didn’t I set you up with online accounts for all your bills? They would have e-mailed it to you and that would have the number.”

Her mother put her arm around Karyn. “Our little information whiz. She’s so smart.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “This is probably going to take a while. I’m going to walk around some more.”

She extricated herself from the desk and found a quiet corner of the dealership.

“The problem with this,” she told Derpy, “is that everyone is going to want everyone else to take the first step. The insurance company is going to want assurance from the dealer that the car belongs to Mom and Dad, the DMV is going to want proof of insurance, and the dealer has to have the car registered before they let it off the lot. So everything goes around in circles for a while.”

“Your mom seemed real proud of you.”

“Yeah, I at least got the ball rolling. But I bet it’s an hour at least before we get out of here.”

Derpy seemed distracted by something, but Karyn couldn’t read her expression to tell what. “I can fly back to your place just like I did here. I’m sure you don’t want me with you on the first ride in the new car.”

“Don’t say things like that! Of course we want you on the ride. Well, I want you, and if my parents knew of your existence, they’d want you there too.”

It did not take an hour for them to get finished, it took two and a half hours, including a trip back and forth in the old car to the local branch of the bank to pick up the cashier’s check that would pay the entirety of the car’s price. But at last they piled into the new car. Karyn took the time to open both back doors under the guise of an inspection, and this time Derpy was secured in. Karyn’s father messed around with the settings before putting it into gear, her mother driving the old one.

Back at the apartment, they parked in the street, and Karyn’s father had some fun playing with the remote lock and starter attachment. “The one I had for the old car burned out years ago, so I’ve had to do it the old-fashioned way all the time. Oh, hello.”

This last was to Gayle, who Karyn just noticed was hauling out the trash.

“Hi, there,” she said.

It was up to Karyn to make the introductions. “Gayle, this is my father, and my mother should be along in a minute or two with the old car. Dad, this is Gayle, my landlady.”

They shook hands, then Gayle stepped back near Karyn. “Are they, you know…?”

Karyn shook her head.

“Well, Karyn’s just the model tenant. I don’t have any complaints about her.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Her mother pulled up in what would now be Karyn’s car, and the street was getting a little crowded. Karyn said, “I’m going to try to get my car to start one more time. If it does, you can take it home and have it looked at whenever you have time.”

"I'm sure that you'll be able to get it running," said Gayle with a wink.

"I hope so." Karyn walked with Derpy over to the old car. Derpy had picked up on what was going on, and went into her saddlebag for the spell.

"I'm going to let you use this, but if you don't mind I'll be far away when you do. It scares me a little."

"That's fine."

She got into the front seat and blocked the others' vantage point with her body. Taking a deep breath and thinking of the firewall between the engine and the passenger compartment, she slipped her hand into the spell and turned. Just like turning a key, the engine chugged a few times before turning on. Karyn gave a silent thanks that magic existed, and revved the engine a few times with the car in neutral.

On the way back, she realized that she still had the keys in her purse. She ran back and jammed them in the ignition, turning it to the on position and then taking all the other ones off the key ring.

"I got it working!"

"So I see," her mother said. "Well, we'd better get going. Here's the key to yours now. Take care of it." She moved toward the one they had just bought.

"I thought I would drive this one home," Karyn's father said.

"You got to drive it here!"

"All right," he said with a smile. Kissing Karyn goodbye, he leaned into her and whispered, "Your landlady seems nice, but she's kind of a space case. Believes in witchcraft and all that."

"I know. Silly, right?"

They drove off, Gayle went inside, and at last Karyn and Derpy were free to look at the car. "So this is yours now, huh?" said Derpy.

“I guess so. I can’t really believe it. I mean, it’s not the same as the new one my folks got. That literally went from a factory, probably somewhere in Michigan, to the dealer, to them. Untouched by human hands.”

“Or pony hooves.”

“Yeah.” Karyn was running her finger along the side of the car. “Anyway, want to take a ride?”

“To where?”

“Anywhere. I want to get familiar with the car.”

They got in. “This is roomier than your old car,” said Derpy.

“It is. Is something on your mind?”

“It’s really generous of your parents. A roomier car.”

Karyn was still feeling out the car, but had to turn to say, “Derpy, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just so nice of them.” A sob was in her voice.

“Please tell me.”

“It’s just that I’ve never been able to do anything like that for Dinky. Even just sending her to school was a big deal. I should have been able to do nice things for her, but I couldn’t, because I just wasn’t successful enough.”

Now Karyn had to pull the car to the side of the road. “Stop that. You know that Dinky loves you more than any filly’s ever loved her mother.”

“Yeah, and why? What did I ever do to deserve it?”

“Everything! Who stayed up nights when Dinky was sick? Who took a job instead of being a house-mare like she wanted? Who made dinner every night so that she could grow up healthy?”

“But that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

A car came by, and Karyn realized how it would look arguing with the empty passenger seat, so she threw in her Bluetooth. At least now she had an excuse for having pulled off to the side of the road, since taking phone calls while driving was illegal in many places and frowned upon everywhere else.

“No, listen, I don’t like that argument. I hear it all the time, in lots of contexts. Someone says, ‘Hey, I do my work,’ and people say, ‘You’re supposed to do that!’ Yeah, but plenty of other people don’t do their work, and they don’t raise their kids correctly, and they also don’t suffer for it. Well, I say it’s wrong. People who accomplish even making it through the day ought to be able to feel proud of it. If we all had a little more pride and a little more respect for other people’s challenges, the world would be a better place.”

All was quiet for a few moments, and Karyn was afraid that she had said something to offend Derpy, but then she felt a tackle and was slammed into the seat. “That’s so sweet! I know you’re just saying that to be nice to me, but it’s nicer than anypony else is.”

“I’m not, it’s true.”

“And now here I am getting tears on your new car’s upholstery.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Karyn. “Let’s swing around back to my place so we can calm down. Oh, wait! We have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“It’s something traditional when you get a new car. Have to break it in.”

Derpy was still confused, but Karyn seemed to know where she was going. A few miles down the road, she signaled for a left and then pulled into a restaurant.

“I don’t get it.”

“Drive-through, one of the greatest American inventions. Yes, hi, I’d like two garden salads, please.” This last was to the speaker box.

They made it home, ate the salads, and by then it was time for Derpy to go home and Karyn to set up for her short week of classes. They took one last look at the car before giving each other a final hug and going their separate ways.

Back in Equestria, Derpy, despite Karyn’s reassurances, felt neglectful of Dinky, and resolved to write her an extra letter that week. She flew home, sticking her chest out and thinking that, if Karyn’s words were true, nopony had any right to criticize her for anything. It was an unusual feeling, that confidence.

Circling down to her house, she saw a letter sitting outside. Since it was Sunday, she hadn’t expected any mail, and nopony she knew had any cause to pay extra for Sunday delivery. But the hornwriting was intimately familiar to her, and she worried a little as she tore it open.

“Dear Mommy,” it read, “First off, please don’t panic because I sent this on a Sunday. I know you, and I’m sure your first reaction is to assume there’s a problem. But there isn’t, just a quirk of scheduling. I’m going to be in Fillydelphia next Sunday, and that’s close enough to you that I thought you might like to come out for a visit. Bring Karyn, of course, I miss her so.

“If you write me tomorrow, it’ll get here in time before I go, but don’t put it off till Tuesday, because I’ll be on the road by then. This isn’t just a pleasure trip for me, it’s business as well. I hope to hear from you, and see you soon. Love you and miss you.

“Dinky.”

Out loud, Derpy said, “She’s even thinking of me when I’m thinking of her. I can’t wait till next week.”

She rushed off to find a pen so she could respond.

Author's Note

Let's see what we've got coming for next week!

“All right, let me just get my coat.”

“No time! Changeling magic yourself if you’re cold.”

Karyn stared. “I thought you didn’t like me using it when no one else could.”

“But this is important.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right at that moment, a stallion in uniform walked up to her. “Welcome back, Miss Hooves. Your room has been tidied for you, and there are no messages. Anything else I can provide for you, don’t hesitate to ring.”

“Thank you.” That only impressed Derpy the more.

That's all for lines, but I will tell you that Dinky's going to be there, as well as a never-before-seen special guest!

88: Down Filly-Dink-ia Way

“All right, we have to turn and burn.” Derpy clapped her hooves as soon as she appeared. “Time’s a wasting in two universes and we’re on a tight schedule.”

“We are?” said Karyn. “We don’t have another gala to go to, do we?”

“I hope not, this is something far more important.”

Karyn looked around her apartment. “I was hoping to have some time to clean for you, and with you. Then we’d just relax and catch up on what’s been going on. Maybe we could take the car for another ride.”

“Can’t do any of that. It’s Dinky!”

“Is she in trouble?”

“Certainly not!” Even negating Karyn’s worry, the fear showed in Derpy’s face. “At least, her letter said that there was no trouble. But she’s coming to Fillydelphia today, and that’s close enough that we should definitely get out there to see her.

Karyn flashed back to the week before when Derpy was so worried that she had been neglectful to Dinky. She also remembered that, while Dinky had been going to school for a few years now, she had been the center of Derpy’s life for many more years before that. Since then, Derpy had been so busy with managing her own life and having fun with Karyn. It made sense that, once she got used to it, she would consider that she wasn’t doing enough.

Furthermore, Karyn herself hadn’t seen Dinky since the incident with her father, and felt it was her responsibility to make sure that she was still getting along well. For all she knew, her father was the reason that Dinky was in Fillydelphia. If that was the case, Derpy would definitely need Karyn with her.

“All right, let me just get my coat.”

“No time! Changeling magic yourself if you’re cold.”

Karyn stared. “I thought you didn’t like me using it when no one else could.”

“But this is important.”

“If you’re all right with it, I am.”

Karyn made a coat appear around her, and she reflected that this was an added bonus of her magic. The coat was made of her own substance, but unlike when she tried to put a finger in a tight spot, it didn’t hurt in the cold. But she had little time for such idle thoughts, as Derpy dragged her into Equestria and down to the train station.

She bought a ticket, and as if the stars were aligned for Derpy, a train came moments after. Was Derpy aware of the schedule and did she time it for this, or was it serendipity? Karyn decided not to ask. They found their seats and Karyn looked out the window.

“I remember taking this way, the first time we went out to the beach.”

“Yeah, we should go back there again.”

Karyn thought that sounded nice, particularly in the cold. “I remember Fillydelphia being a major junction as well. I guess that’s how we were able to get a train going there.”

“Good point. A lot of the ones going farther stop there as well.”

“Is Dinky going to meet us as the station?”

Derpy pulled up short. “I…guess. I hope? Truth be told, I just got a letter from her that said she would be in town. We didn’t discuss it any further.”

“But Fillydelphia’s a big town, much bigger than Ponyville, right? How are we going to find one pony in that big a city?”

“Well, we’ve found her in Canterlot, and that’s bigger still.”

Karyn again decided that discretion was warranted, and decided not to point out that on those occasions they knew Dinky’s address.

The train pulled into Fillydelphia station, and even if Dinky had agreed to meet them, it would have been a difficult prospect without more detailed instructions. The station led down to a large field where cargo or passengers could wait to get on board. It looked to Karyn like a summer fair with no rides or booths.

“What do we do now to find her?” she asked.

“I’m thinking at this point you should get on board and we’ll fly over.”

“Really? In a big city like this? I thought you said that wouldn’t work, which is why you never did it in Canterlot.”

“In Canterlot there are lots of tall buildings and towers for somepony to be hidden by. Fillydelphia is big, but not tall. Come on.”

Karyn climbed on Derpy’s back and tried to scan the crowd, but she didn’t have hope. Pony faces didn’t have the variations for her that they would have to a native Equestrian, and the rainbow of primary and secondary colors made it difficult to search. By the time they reached an area where the buildings thinned, Karyn’s eyes felt like Derpy’s looked.

“Do you have a plan or are you just flying randomly?”

“I’m doing a grid the same way I do my mail route.”

“But your mail route takes all day,” said Karyn.

“Only because I have to make stops.”

That was a point that Karyn hadn’t considered, and she went back to looking as Derpy reversed direction. They were flying close to the train station when she saw a familiar shade of blue, and marveled at their luck.

“There she is!”

“Where? I don’t—oh, I do see her!”

Derpy dove for the ground, and Dinky spotted it and braced herself for a collision. But when Derpy’s speed dropped, Dinky was able to use a little magical manipulation to bring her down safely.

“Karyn! So good to see you again. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

“Same here, Dinky. Why, when your mother told me that you were waiting here for us, I dashed over as quick as I could.”

Karyn said it with as much sarcasm and humor in her voice as she could, but Derpy still looked at her sideways. A moment later, though, she seemed to understand, as she grinned and hugged her filly. “I’ve missed you too.”

“As have I, mother.”

“Mother?” said Derpy. “You mean me?”

“Of course, mother. How droll, as always.”

“I’ve been your mommy for all your life. Why ‘Mother’ now?”

Dinky flipped her mane back. “Well, after all, I’m almost a grown mare now. ‘Mommy’ is a better word for a little filly to say, don’t you think?”

“Does that mean that you’re not my little muffin anymore?”

Dinky seemed to have been caught by that, and it reminded Karyn of the way Derpy had reacted when asked if they had a contact plan for Dinky. “I guess I don’t mind in private, but just ‘Dinky’ is fine when we’re in public. To wit, let us be on our way.”

She gave another mane flip and walked away as if she were the mayor of Fillydelphia. Karyn was amused a little and headed after her, but Derpy looked more distressed.

The city of Fillydelphia was indeed built low as Karyn had observed from their flyover. The streets were narrower than in Canterlot, but without any cars there was still plenty of room. Shops lined the avenues and it seemed that each one had a dwelling above for its owner and their family. Dinky waved to one and all, even though it didn’t seem like she knew them personally.

The stores and houses were getting progressively nicer as they neared the center of town. Dinky turned down a block that was dominated by the marquee of a hotel, the Goodhoof. Derpy was still looking all around, and so was shocked to see Dinky turn toward the front door.

“Come, mother, this way.”

“Are you planning to stop in the bar here for dinner or something?”

Dinky giggled. “Perhaps on our way out, but no, this is where I’m staying while I’m in town.”

Right at that moment, a stallion in uniform walked up to her. “Welcome back, Miss Hooves. Your room has been tidied for you, and there are no messages. Anything else I can provide for you, don’t hesitate to ring.”

“Thank you.” That only impressed Derpy the more.

They climbed a set of stairs while Dinky explained that the upper floors were specifically for pegasi since they had an easier time of getting up there, and it gave the hoteliers more room to sell. One floor up, Dinky led them to a room which she opened with a gold key. Derpy’s jaw dropped.

All the furniture was trimmed with more gold, and the fabric itself was crushed velvet. A basket of fruit, ripe and luscious, had been placed on the central table. The two beds were covered in silk duvets, and Derpy couldn’t even count the number of pillows. The curtains were drawn, and she could see the road below. To their right, a long strand of woven fabric went up into the ceiling, and Karyn guessed that this was the bell that the bellhop downstairs had mentioned ringing. The gentle sound of falling water was heard, and when they looked into the washroom, they could see that it came from a stone bathtub set up to look like a mountain pool.

Derpy closed her eyes, and Karyn couldn’t tell if she was bursting with pride or worrying about Dinky’s change. “I was just reviewing, and I think that other than the Princess’s chamber in Canterlot Castle, this is the nicest room I’ve ever been in.”

Karyn had a chuckle at that, but Dinky said, “It is rather opulent, is it not?”

“Where did you get the money to pay for this?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Dinky said, and for the first time, her confident demeanor was shaken. “You see, I’ve found, well, that is, I’ve made a friend.”

“That’s great! The more friends you have, the better.”

“Yes, well, though, beyond being a friend, she’s the kind of unicorn who really wants to help out young ponies like me, and—“

They heard the hoofbeats coming in, and the voice called from outside. “Dinky?! Is that somepony else I hear in there?”

She came in, and while Derpy seemed to not recognize her, Karyn could tell who it was by the cutie mark.

“Trixie!”

It was indeed, and Derpy was surprised that there was a pony who Karyn knew and she didn’t. But before she could bring it up, Karyn was subjected to an impromptu visual inspection.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie has never seen the likes of you before. Would you be so kind as to explain to Trixie what you are?”

“I’m a human from another world.”

“Fascinating,” said Trixie. “Dinky, you know her? You should have told Trixie. Trixie is always interested in the strange and unusual.”

“I guess so, but to me she’s not strange and unusual. She’s a good friend who’s helped me get through difficult times in school.”

Trixie nodded approval, and laid herself out on a couch.

Derpy had finally recovered, and she leaned her head in near Karyn. “Who is she?”

“This is Trixie, a stage magician who was humiliated by Twilight Sparkle a long time ago, then supposedly reformed and went good. What’s happened to her since, I can’t say.”

“Trixie has been doing quite well since then. In the far reaches of Equestria, the rumors of the incidents in Ponyville were mutated into tales of a brash, fearless mare who challenged Princess Twilight and came close to defeating her. That she wasn’t a princess at the time gets lost in the shuffle. But Trixie has been able to parlay that into a refreshed career, and she is once more the most fabulous and respected performer across Equestria!”

Karyn braced herself for the display of fireworks that she remembered accompanying Trixie’s boasting, but thankfully none were present in the cramped space. Derpy, meanwhile, had put her hooves to the sides of her head, which she was shaking.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “She keeps talking about Trixie, but you told me this is Trixie. Are there two of them? Or is this, like, Trixie’s spokesmare because the real Trixie likes to stay hidden?”

Karyn sighed. “Yeah, Trixie, could you stop referring to yourself in the third person. Third pony?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie never speaks of the Great and Powerful Trixie as anything other than the Great and Powerful Trixie! And sometimes just Trixie.”

“Well, it’s confusing. I’m only thankful you never met Princess Luna. Nopony would be able to understand you. And she learned to speak normally. Please, you’re confusing Derpy.”

“Hm. Tri—perhaps it is possible to speak without referencing myself at all.”

Karyn had to settle for that, and she explained to Derpy that there was only one Trixie, who just had a speech impediment.

“Well, passing that over,” said Derpy, “why is Dinky in your hotel room?”

“I’m learning the stage magic game!” Dinky said. “Trixie’s showing me how I can use the things I learned in Princess Celestia’s school to wow the crowds. I haven’t done a performance yet, but there’s a lot of practice involved, and it’s way more fun than the studying I had to do at school. In the meantime, Trixie lets me sell for her and take tickets and such.”

“I’m sure it is fun, but that learning isn’t for you to trick everypony and entertain them cheaply—no offense, Miss Trixie. Princess Celestia hoof-picks the unicorns that she thinks can help other ponies the best, to do good in Equestria.”

“What’s not good about giving everypony a nice show?”

Derpy looked around the room. “There’s nothing wrong with a nice show. But obviously Trixie is really well-off. It seems to me that she could be charging less for her performances. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m wary of ponies who throw around bits so easily.”

“That’s the best part! She pays me more than that dirty old shop ever did, and I don’t have to do all the boring research that I did there. I get to travel Equestria as well. Mother, you can’t tell me that you don’t like riding the train.”

“I do like riding the train, but only because it’s a special occasion, and we save up our bits for it.”

Trixie decided it was time to intervene. “Your daughter is a grown mare and a talented unicorn. Just because she doesn’t follow the same path as you, it doesn’t mean that she’s wayward. Don’t hover over her.”

Derpy’s nostrils flared at that, as hovering over Dinky was an accusation she’d heard before, and it always grated on her. Karyn put a hand on her shoulder, and then looked at both Dinky and Trixie. She remembered the first impression she had of Dinky, but now, seeing them together, they didn’t look that much alike.

“Trixie, would you mind leaving the room for a minute or two. We need a family conference.”

Trixie raised her eyebrows. “Why should you have the room to yourselves? Dinky needs representation from her new friends as well as her family, and besides, who is paying for the room anyway?”

“You don’t have to, but I’m asking as a favor. And so Derpy doesn’t break down. You don’t want that to happen in your room, do you?”

Trixie still stood still and made it clear that she was not moving. But Dinky walked up to her and said, “Please, Trixie. It’ll mean a lot to me. You’ve been nothing but kind to me, but she’s my mother, and I have to give her time if she asks me.”

“Very well, Trixie will leave—that is, the room will be left by—er, what I mean…oh, have your talk!”

She turned up her nose and cantered out. Dinky looked at the door as she left, then turned back to Derpy with a mixture of worry and defiance. “Do you really not approve of Trixie as my friend?”

“Little muffin—I can say that, right? I will never disapprove of one of your friends. I think you’re a smart pony, much smarter than me, and able to pick up if someone’s trying to put one over on you. I really like that Suzie mare we met last time. It’s not Trixie I’m worried about, it’s the idea of you as a stage performer. I just always thought one day you’d be a professor or a spellcrafter or a healer.”

“You don’t approve of performing magicians?”

Derpy thought of the one she had seen on Earth. “If they’re done well, it can be all right. Oh, I don’t know what I mean!”

“Let me try,” said Karyn. “Dinky, I know that it seems nice to have money and to live like this, but that’s only because Trixie has been doing this for many years, ever since you were a filly. Starting out, it’s a difficult job, just as much so as running a shop or any business of your own. It’s all about sales and sticking your hoof in ponies’ faces to make them buy what you’ve got. And that’s not you.”

“But that’s only part of it. Once I get through that, there’s all this.”

“All right, but what if you have a show that nopony wants to go to? What if during one of your shows a storm comes up—well, no, you have scheduled storms here—what if some illness sweeps through and even if they do want to see you they can’t get out of bed? Now instead of an opulent room, you’re sleeping in your cart.”

Dinky went wide-eyed. “Can that really happen?”

“Why don’t you ask Trixie?”

“But then what do I do?”

Karyn sympathized. Equestria didn’t have the kind of corporate structure that Earth did, and it was difficult for a pony who wanted a steady nine-to-five job to find one. Even civil service wasn’t the same, and Dinky certainly didn’t seem like a candidate for the Royal Guard.

“I don’t know, for sure. But there’s got to be a job for you where you’re in the back of the stage, not the front. Somewhere where there’s good pay that doesn’t vary with the season. We’ll work hard to find it for you. But if you keep with this, it’s only going to hurt you, and that’s only going to hurt your mother.”

“Well, before we do anything, let me talk to Trixie again.” Dinky opened the door with magic, and Trixie poked her head back in.

“It’s all right,” said Karyn. “I was telling Dinky that being a stage magician isn’t all fancy rooms and outfits.”

Trixie nodded. “Actually, you’re half right. It does often involve fancy rooms and outfits, but not in the way that most ponies think of it. I’m not staying at this hotel because I’m extravagant; I’m staying here because if ponies saw me coming out of a lesser hotel, it would shatter the image they have of me as a high-class Canterlot unicorn who’s come into town to give them a taste of the high life.”

“Then you don’t really enjoy the luxury?” asked Dinky.

“I do enjoy it, because it’s part of my job, and I love being a magician. But no, I don’t enjoy it the way a pony off the street would if you just gave them this room.”

Dinky looked down at the floor and was silent for a minute. “Trixie, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep touring with you.”

“I know. I’ve known that about you for a while now, but I had to give you the chance to find it out for yourself.”

“Hey!” Karyn butted in. “You’ve been talking normal for the past few minutes.”

“I have, haven’t I? So few opportunities to do so. Being the Great and Powerful Trixie means keeping in character all the time. But when I’ve really connected with somepony, I can be just…Trixie."

"So, you're not upset with me?" asked Dinky.

"I would be far more upset if you had insisted on trying to emulate me when you couldn't. Now you've got it out of your system, and you won't be tempted again. As for me, I'm free and clear to look for another apprentice. It works out for everypony."

Everyone smiled, and the tension in the room was released.

"Now that that's settled," Trixie continued, "why don't you all come to the show tonight? I'll get you all in, front row!"

Not looking at her, Dinky said, "Thank you, Trixie, and I might take you up on another day, but right now, I've got to get back to catch up on school...and my mommy needs to get home too."

They left the hotel and headed back down to the train station. Derpy checked the board. "It'll be another hour before the train going back home arrives."

"That's all right. Now we get a chance to visit like old times."

Karyn watched mother and daughter catching up on everything that happened that week since Dinky's last letter. She told Dinky about her class schedule and tried to explain about the new car as well.

"I guess I'd have to see this machine to understand it," said Dinky. "Mommy, can I go to Earth someday?"

"Earth?! I get worried when you're in Fillydelphia!"

"But we're still in Fillydelphia!"

"I know!" said Derpy. "And I want the train to come soon...but at the same time, I don't, because I get to spend more time with you."

"And I feel the same way, along with seeing Karyn more. I'm torn too!"

Karyn stepped in between them. "What if, Derpy, you try to worry a little less, and Dinky, you try to give her less reason?"

"Agreed!" they said in unison.

The whistle of the train came from the horizon, and they were all on their way back.

Author's Note

It's cold up here, but I'm still writing! Here's next week:

Only a few minutes late, she heard the sound of the window being lifted and quickly shut again. Derpy turned visible.

“I shouldn’t have even bothered disguising myself,” she said. “In the first place, no one’s out there, and in the second, it’s so gray that I would blend in anyway.”

“Not with that plaid scarf and striped hat.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t think those sound tasty, but I don’t eat grass either, so we have different tastes.”

Derpy nodded. “Well, if we can’t go out, what are we going to do?”

“Nothing to do except hang around the house and watch movies.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy had turned around in her seat. “Well, I guess that’s one way for a human to make a cloud. It didn’t last too long, but it was there.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. Like I’m a little bit pegasus."

Come back next Wednesday for more of Derpy and Karyn's hijinks!

89: Uphill, Both Derps, in Two Feet of Snow

Karyn had risen while it was still dark, despite it being pointless to do so. The weather forecast had called for heavy snow, and she heard the howling of the wind, but she couldn’t tell if it had started yet. Even pressing her nose to the glass of the window was unrevealing until she looked at the streetlight across the way. There in the haze of the glow were small flecks of white. They were moving at an angle closer to horizontal than to vertical, and Karyn frowned.

It didn’t surprise her when Derpy missed their appointed time for meeting and hoped that, if things got too bad, she would turn around and go home. Indeed, it wouldn’t even be necessary to turn back, since she could warp from wherever she was.

Only a few minutes late, she heard the sound of the window being lifted and quickly shut again. Derpy turned visible.

“I shouldn’t have even bothered disguising myself,” she said. “In the first place, no one’s out there, and in the second, it’s so gray that I would blend in anyway.”

“Not with that plaid scarf and striped hat.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess you’re right. They were all I had between me and the snow. Is there anywhere I can hang them up?”

Karyn seemed to detect that she spoke particularly quickly, and herself hesitated to see if anything was wrong. “Why don’t you lay them on the heater to dry? Then they’ll be warm for when you have to go later.”

Derpy did so. “You sure they won’t catch on fire?”

“I don’t know what you use for textiles in Equestria, but I certainly doubt they flame up at only a hundred degrees or so. Is everything all right? You seem tense. Well, that’s probably just because you came through the storm.”

“Heh. Yeah, right.”

Karyn went to the heater and spread the scarf out for maximum coverage, then turned back to Derpy. “Come on, what is it?”

“You promise you won’t be mad?”

“It’s something that’s going to make me mad?”

“I’m asking you to promise that you won’t be mad,” said Derpy, “and if you do, and then fulfill that promise, then no, it’s not something that’s going to make you mad. But if you don’t promise, then yes, it might.”

“Or if I do promise, but don’t come through and still get mad.”

“Yes, in that case it would also be something that makes you mad.”

Karyn took a deep breath. “I think I’m willing to take that chance.”

“Well, on the way over here I was having difficulty making it through the storm. The wind was in my face, and while that’s good for lift, it’s bad for going forward. So I…” she mumbled and trailed off.

“What was that?”

“I moved some cloud and lowered how much wind there was on my path here.”

“And you're worried I’ll be mad because you changed the weather,” said Karyn.

“Yes. I know that you always tell me not to, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now for you to yell at me for doing what it was that you would tell me not to do.”

“Derpy, I’m not going to yell at you. Listen, you have to understand the reason why I don’t want you to change the weather. If we had pegasi here who could make up for it and knew how to handle weather so that it doesn’t get catastrophic, I would have no problem. But we can’t even predict the weather accurately when there’s not a pegasus interfering. So if you cancel out a rainstorm in August, I don’t know for sure that we won’t have a blizzard in February.

“But since it is February, and since we do have a blizzard, and since you didn’t actually stop the storm but just cut yourself a path, I have nothing to complain about.”

Derpy spread her wings out in relief. “Got it. So if it’s the worst possible weather, I can fix it. Does that mean that I should go out and end the storm now?”

“No. This is bad, but it isn’t the worst possible. If we’re even in the middle of a hurricane or a tornado, I’ll let you do whatever you like. No, I take that back. If it’s a hurricane or tornado, I’d be too scared for you.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to go up against a hurricane all on my own.”

Karyn took another look outside. “Well, going out for breakfast isn’t going to happen. Let me see what I’ve got in here.”

She had not done extensive shopping, but managed to find eggs and bread, and made egg-in-the-basket for both of them. Derpy had never had it, and pronounced it a top-notch breakfast.

When they checked the time, only a half hour had passed since Derpy had arrived.

“This is what I can’t stand about snowy weather,” said Karyn. “They always seem to coincide with days you don’t have anything else to do. Why couldn’t this be on a Tuesday so one of my classes got canceled?”

“When you’re working, you’ll wish that the storms come on the weekend. That way everypony else has to clear away the snow by their mailboxes, or you’re allowed to skip them over.”

“That applies only if I’m a mail deliverer. But yes, when I’m in IT I’ll probably have to come in all the time, even for storms. At least for a little while, then they’ll let me work from home by remote access.”

Derpy stared. “That sounds nice.”

“It is. But for right now, we’re trapped inside, ready to go stir-crazy. Wait a minute, what am I thinking? We can certainly get out; we’ve got a spell to leave the entire universe! Come on, let’s go back to Equestria. Even if it’s cold there, at least there isn’t this much show.”

“Well, technically you’re right.”

Karyn had already stood up to go for her coat and hat, but pulled up at Derpy’s words. “What do you mean?”

“We actually had a lot more snow in Equestria. This wasn’t all Earth snow that I got on my scarf. Well, maybe it was if all the Equestrian snow fell off and got replaced with Earth snow, but I have no way to check that.”

“That’s not the point. It snowed there?”

“Yes it did,” said Derpy. “And there’s nothing I can do about that. Once the snow’s on the ground, it’s not weather anymore, and there’s nothing that pegasi can do about it. A unicorn might melt it, but I can’t. Also, the weather team wouldn’t like it if somepony did.”

“I guess that makes sense, though I wonder exactly where the line is between what weather is and what it isn’t. Do ponies even salt the roads? I wouldn’t think you would.”

Derpy stared at her like she was crazy. Karyn decided she’d better explain.

“All right, salt lowers the melting point of water, so if you put it on the roads, the snow will melt even if it’s cold.”

“Of course salt lowers the melting point of water, but we’re talking about snow. If you mixed in the salt with the water while it was being made into snow, you might have something, but not when it’s just on top of the salt.”

Now it was Karyn’s turn to give Derpy the confused look. “That actually makes a lot of sense, but our people still do it, so it might be one of those things in physics or chemistry that I just don’t understand.”

“It would be nice, though, to have the roads salted after snow. We could have salt-flavored snowcones when it was all done.”

“I don’t think those sound tasty, but I don’t eat grass either, so we have different tastes.”

Derpy nodded. “Well, if we can’t go out, what are we going to do?”

“Nothing to do except hang around the house and watch movies.”

Neither of them had any better ideas, so Karyn fired up her computer and found something they could watch together from the Internet. She took a long time about getting the speakers positioned correctly, so that it felt like being in a movie theater.

It seemed to work, because the sound was better than when she usually watched videos. Even Derpy noted it, and her ears were better to begin with.

“Oh, I know why,” said Karyn. “It’s the snow. Normally we get all the traffic from outside, but the snow is muffling that. Even the wind, you can see it’s bad, but you can’t tell because of the snow.”

“I never noticed that. Thinking back, yeah, it’s always been quiet when there’s snow, but I always figured it was because of there being so few ponies out.”

“That might be another factor. I mean, it would be about people here, not ponies, but there is less reason for them to be on the road. But I’m pretty sure there is some noise cancelling effect that comes from snow. I don’t know much about that either. Physics, chemistry, and sound; when it comes to snow, I’ve got a lot to learn.”

They kept going with the movies, wasting the day away. “I don’t like doing this either,” said Karyn, “but on the other hand, it’s nice to take a day just to veg out and recharge, you know?”

“I know, but you have to make sure it doesn’t become a habit. I’ve sometimes lost whole weeks like that.”

“It’s true. Say, do you hear the quiet of the snow?”

Derpy turned her ears to the outside. “Yeah, but we talked about that.”

“No, it’s more. Like, now it’s dead quiet. And was it this bright before?” She went to the window and opened the curtains. “Oh, the storm ended! There’s another weird thing about snow storms: they always end with the sun. You never see it snow for three days straight. Thank goodness.”

Derpy hovered near the window, then backed off and covered her eyes with her hoof. “It’s so bright out there!”

“Now, this one I do know. When the snow is on the ground, everything gets brighter. It’s called the albedo. The interesting thing is that that’s what causes ice ages. The Earth gets so bright that it reflects sunlight outwards, and less of it reaches Earth to keep it warm. So you get more ice and even more. It’s a vicious circle.”

“Ooh.” Derpy shook her head, and Karyn understood what she meant. It was a harsh world, harsher than Equestria, even if they had some things better like cars and computers.

They waited until their eyes had adjusted from the dim light of the computer screen to face the snow.

“Well,” said Karyn, “I guess we’d better get out there.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of fun to be had.”

“Ha! Fun, she says.”

Derpy cocked her head inquisitively. “It’s not fun to play in the snow?”

“It is fun to play in the snow, but that’s not what we’re going to do. We have to shovel out the driveway and get the car where we could get it out.”

“We have to do that? Why?”

Karyn opened the closet and pulled out a shovel. Then she found a coat heavier than her usual. Attached by clips were a hat and a pair of gloves.

“We don’t have to per se. We could sit around and wait for Gayle to, since it’s her responsibility. But growing up when we had snow my folks drilled into me that it’s everyone’s responsibility to pitch in. So I do.”

Derpy took her own effects from the heater, where they had grown quite warm, and she got to enjoy the feeling as she put them on. “I don’t know how much help I can be, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Just being there for me will help. If the snow were falling more steadily, I would have gone out a couple of times and cleared the path while it was still falling. That makes it easier in the end. But with the blizzard blowing, it would have just dumped more snow right on what I cleared. Case in point.”

She opened up the door to reveal that the snow had come up three feet and made a wall against the door, which hung there, thankfully not falling over.

“Should I try to blow it the other way?” asked Derpy.

“No. This part we have to do delicately.” Using only the edge of the shovel, she flicked away snow until there was a place to stand. “Hang back until you have enough room to come out. I’m trying not to get snow on the carpet.” She worked carefully, checking the wind before each toss, then checked her pocket for her keys and shut the door.

“It’s a good thing the snow doesn’t blow the door wide open. I’ve had that happen a couple of times.”

“It should be a good strong door, not susceptible to that.”

Karyn worked her way down the path, clearing off the asphalt and occasionally a strip of grass where she couldn’t see the edge. Once they reached the driveway, she dug more haphazardly, tossing onto the grass until she reached her car. Then she stopped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Derpy, now invisible.

“My ice scraper is in the car itself. I didn’t think to take it out yesterday.”

“This isn’t ice, though. It’s snow.”

“The scraper has a brush on it that would be perfect for getting all the snow off the car.” Karyn huffed. “I guess I just have to push it aside with my gloves.”

“Hang on. I might have a spell that can do short-range teleportation of small objects.”

“Yeah? That could be really useful. But wait, you’re sure that it actually teleports them and doesn’t just haul them in? It’s not going to send the ice scraper through my window, is it?”

Derpy hesitated, then said, “No, I’m sure it works by pure magic. Almost entirely sure.”

“Well, there’s an old line we haven’t heard in a while.” Karyn tensed herself, but indeed there was a flash of light and the scraper popped into existence beside them. Neither the car nor the snow coating it was disturbed.

“Now you can clear off the car,” said Derpy.

“Not quite yet. I want to dig a path all the way around, taking care of the driveway as I go.”

“Can I help at all?”

Karyn leaned on the shovel. It was tiring work, and the gloves made her hands uncomfortable. From what she could tell, no one was around, but perhaps that was the noise-muffling of the snow again. Still, she decided to risk it.

“Only behind the car where it’s shielded from the road. If the plow comes by, I don’t want the driver swerving from shock.”

“Yay!” Karyn watched the shovel lift itself up and float toward the back. After the first pass, Karyn realized that Derpy had an advantage and a disadvantage. She couldn’t get leverage to actually flip over a pile that had accumulated on the shovel, but she could use it as a plow to push the snow forward long after it got too heavy for Karyn. Derpy’s wings would give her the added strength to go forward. It couldn’t clear the driveway, but it could do most of it.

They heard a “Squee!” from behind, and both of them looked to the window to see Gayle watching out and waving, a grin covering her face. Karyn laughed internally as she saw it from her perspective: another magic spell.

“All right, Derpy, I’ll do the rest. Let me take care of the car.”

She brushed the first stroke of the snow, and it came off easily with almost no pressure, collapsing into a pile of powder on the newly-shoveled ground. When she felt how easy it moved, Karyn switched from repeated strokes to a wild up-and-down motion, knocking all the snow off the side windows in a few seconds.

“That seems easy,” said Derpy. “It’s really powdery, not too sticky.”

“That, and there’s no ice underneath. That’s what’s really helpful.”

A few more passes with the brush and the car’s windows were clear, but there was still enough snow under the tires that it would have a hard time getting traction. Karyn opened the door.

“What are you doing? You’re going to get snow inside, and the car can’t get out on the road.”

“I know, but I want to just drive it out of the snow it’s in, then we’ll worry about the road later.” She started the car and put it in reverse, but was only able to move it a foot. She rocked it back and forth a few times.

“Hang on, let me clear out some by the wheels.”

“All right, but don’t get seen.”

Derpy had to push hard to move the snow packed by Karyn’s tires, but she got to where only another foot or so remained.

“Try it now.”

One more push. Karyn pressed the gas pedal hard and the engine whined, but it rolled over the snow onto the cleared part of the driveway.

“Woo-hoo! I always like it when I can use the power of the engine rather than the power of my arms.”

“Cool.” What now?”

Karyn looked around. “Well, until the plow comes through for the street, we’re not going anywhere, so I might as well take care of Gayle’s car while I’m out here.”

“That’ll be a good deed.”

“I have selfish reasons. Knocking all the snow off when it’s this loose is just fun.”

She attacked the other car with her brush, and during that they heard the sound of the plow making its way down the road. They stood and watched as it shoved aside the snow and left sand in its wake. It couldn’t make it all the way to the ground, so the road stayed white, but at least the snow was no longer so deep as to make it impossible to drive.

Right as he passed the house where Karyn’s apartment was, though, he turned in to catch some of the driveway. It gave them more of the road, but left huge boulders of ice and snow along the edge behind Karyn’s car. She opened her mouth as if to swear, but caught herself.

“This is the worst part of the shoveling. Getting rid of all that just to get out.”

“Anything else I can do to help?” asked Derpy.

“No, I just have to shovel each one individually. If you tried to pick them up with your hooves they’d probably come apart.”

With her anger fueling her, Karyn tossed the snow-boulders back into the street where the plow would get them on its next pass. She doffed her gloves and hat.

“Hey, you forgot to do the top of your car.”

Derpy went back for the brush, but Karyn held her up.

“Actually…OK, this might be a little weird of me, but I like to drive and blow it off that way. See, when I was young there was this video game where you had to drive a car and bad guys would come up from behind. Sometimes you’d have gadgets on your car like a smoke screen that would knock the bad guys’ cars off the road. When there’s snow on the roof I like to pretend I’m playing that game for real.”

“But you don’t really drop the snow on people’s cars, do you?”

“No. Although if they’re that close to me, they deserve to get snowed on.”

She got in the car, and Derpy joined her in the passenger seat. It took another small push to get over the snow the plow had built up, but then they were on the road.

“No one’s behind you, Karyn. If you want to go fast, now’s the time.”

“I don’t want to do it too fast and risk spinning out. It would be a shame to get hurt or damage the car just for a little fun. Here we go, now.”

She accelerated slowly, but it was still enough to shake the powder off the roof, and it blazed behind them in a suffusion of white.

Derpy had turned around in her seat. “Well, I guess that’s one way for a human to make a cloud. It didn’t last too long, but it was there.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. Like I’m a little bit pegasus. Come on, we’ll go down to the end of the block and then turn around.”

The end of the block was a cul-de-sac where one of the lots was used for a sump. Since no one lived there, the plow had piled all its payload into an eight-foot mountain. They turned around and went back to the apartment. Finally able to take off her coat, Karyn shook the snow out of her hair.

“I’m glad they’re able to clear the snow,” she said, “but I wish they didn’t have to put it all in one place. Now it’ll take that much longer for it to melt in the spring.”

Before Derpy could say anything there was a knock at the door. Karyn motioned her to hide once more, and then pulled it open. Gayle was standing there.

“I just wanted to say thanks for taking care of my car. I made some hot chocolate, and brought you a mug.”

“Oh! Thank you.” Karyn turned back, but then thought of something. “I hate to do this, but would it be too much trouble to ask for two?”

Gayle was confused, but brought the second mug a minute later.

Author's Note

Have you picked up yet that chapters with a zero at the end are the important ones? What do you think's going to happen next week? Let's take a peek!

“Derpy, please bring Karyn with you back to Equestria today.”

She flipped it around to see if there was any more written on the back, but all she saw was the quality of the paper once more.

“I don’t get it. That’s it? Are you sure it’s not a prank?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I believe that I can use an inter-horn communication spell to give her a magical poke now and then.”

Karyn stopped walking. “I’ve never heard of that magic. Did Twilight invent it?”

“Perhaps. Somepony told it to me, I don’t remember who.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"A while back I had a dream about you being captured by humans. It was really messed up and scary, and Princess Luna came to me and talked to me about fears and such.”

“You’re lucky! I’ve never met Princess Luna.”

“Yes, you have. We met her together.”

How will that storyline be paid off? Come back and find out!

90: Touring Ederption

The snow from the previous week was still on the ground, and the air was still cold, but there were no adverse weather conditions. So it surprised Karyn when Derpy rapped on her window with the same fervor as she had the previous week. Once inside, she made only a cursory inspection of the apartment before coming down to business.

“When I was getting ready to go this morning, I heard a scraping sound by my door, and I saw that somepony had slipped in a note. But it wasn’t any note, it was a note written on really fancy paper.”

“And what did it say?”

Derpy dug through her bag. “I brought it with me so you can read it for yourself.”

Karyn took the note and looked it over. As Derpy had said, the paper was thick and expensive-looking, and was inlayed with gold. The writing, in impressive calligraphy, was attractive as well, and a little difficult to read for being spindly and sparkly. But there wasn’t much of it. All it said was:

“Derpy, please bring Karyn with you back to Equestria today.”

She flipped it around to see if there was any more written on the back, but all she saw was the quality of the paper once more.

“I don’t get it. That’s it? Are you sure it’s not a prank?”

“If it is, somepony went to an awful lot of expense to prank us. And also, if that’s the case, I don’t think that we should deny the prank-puller a fair chance to put one over on us.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “Well, I’m not sure I agree with that, but curiosity will get the better of me if we don’t go, so let’s go.”

She got on Derpy’s back and held on for the trip between dimensions.

When they arrived, Derpy swooped down, then said, “Where are we going now? The note only said to bring you to Equestria, and Equestria is a very big place.”

“Actually, that’s confusing sometimes. Does the word Equestria refer to just the part that Celestia and Luna rule, or is it the whole universe? The first one would make sense if they have to meet with diplomats from places like Saddle Arabia, but then are they raising the sun and moon for everypony everywhere? And if so, how can anyone stay independent of that?”

“Oh! I know!”

“You do?”

Derpy now dove with a purpose instead of just holding in the air. “Since we found the note at my house, we’ll go back there. Maybe whoever wrote the note will meet us.”

Karyn didn’t know if Derpy had heard her but was just pondering the question of what to do, or if she was so deep in thought that she didn’t even listen. In either case, Karyn didn’t feel like repeating it, so she just hung on as Derpy took the familiar route back to her home.

When they opened the door, they did not see any indication of anypony around, nor did they find another note, at least not until they heard the sound of activity and came upon Muffinhead, Derpy’s cat, playing with an envelope and gnawing on a corner of it. It took some work for Derpy to pry it away from him, but it hadn’t been damaged to illegibility.

“Derpy,” she read, “if you have Karyn with you, then I thank you for acceding to my request. Please come to the library forthwith, as I have a matter of great importance to discuss with you.”

“It has to be from Twilight.”

“Or Spike.”

Karyn took another look. “I don’t think Spike can afford this kind of paper. But only one thing for it. Let’s head down and see what’s going on.”

Derpy agreed, and they were off at a slower pace. The library was a fair distance, but the notes didn’t indicate any urgency, so they saw no reason to tire themselves out. Karyn still suspected a prank, and was keeping her eyes out for anything unusual.

Something unusual came in the form of Rainbow Dash. Seeing her in the sky would not in itself be remarkable, since as a speedy pegasus she was wont to be on the move. But she came down and greeted them warmly. “Karyn! I heard the good news. Congratulations!”

“What good news?”

“You don’t know yet? Then I won’t spoil Twilight’s surprise. But come and see me after, ‘cause I want in!”

Before they could question her further, she soared off. “What did she mean?” asked Derpy.

“I don’t know. If it is a prank, Rainbow would definitely be the type of pony who would want to be in on it, but she wouldn’t be likely to tell us. Let’s just get down there and find out what it is. If they’re pranking us, we’ll just have to deal with it.”

“I don’t think they are. Twilight’s not the type.”

Karyn was left to ponder that as, coming around a curve, it was Rarity they ran into.

“Why, hello, Derpy! And Karyn as well. It’s wonderful to see you both on such an auspicious day.”

“More of a suspicious day,” said Derpy. “I think everypony knows what’s going on except us.”

“You don’t know yet? I suppose not, even I was told in the strictest confidence. Well, come, let’s go straight to Twilight’s so she can tell all.”

Rarity led them through Ponyville toward the library. She had the smug air of one who knows a secret and refuses to tell, but to their credit neither Karyn nor Derpy were angered by it. Somehow having an escort made the walk go quicker, even though they didn’t really speak on the way.

Then at last the treehouse appeared on the horizon, and their pace quickened. Approaching the door, Derpy went to knock, but Rarity cut her off.

“I hear voices inside, and it’s not Twilight or Spike. Let me poke my head in and see if they’re ready for you.”

“I can do that,” said Derpy.

“I’m sure you can, but I think I could be more…unobtrusive if indeed Twilight is busy.”

She opened the door with no more sound than the rhythm of her magic, and inched her head into the room. Then, apparently receiving a nod to enter, walked all the way in and shut the door behind her.

Karyn huffed. “Well. She’s being nice to Twilight, but a little rude to us.”

“Maybe, but if this is as momentous as they’re making it out to be, it’s worth getting it right.”

“We’ll see.”

Rarity emerged then, and said, “I hate to say this, but Twilight has some highball benefactors of the library who insisted on meeting with her right now. She says that she’ll shoo them away as quickly as possible, but could you wait just a bit longer?”

“Well, all right,” said Karyn. “But what are we supposed to do while we’re waiting? Just sit in the shade of the tree until they come out?”

“Would that be so bad?” asked Derpy.

Rarity put a hoof to her forehead. “I should say it would! Getting grass stains on your flanks. And Karyn, you dressed as you are. No, come. I will treat you to tea in a little shop a few blocks away.”

“But then how will we know when Twilight is ready for us?”

“I believe that I can use an inter-horn communication spell to give her a magical poke now and then.”

Karyn stopped walking. “I’ve never heard of that magic. Did Twilight invent it?”

“Perhaps. Somepony told it to me, I don’t remember who.”

“Sounds like the kind of spell I would come up with if I were magical. It’s like a ping in networking.”

She caught up, and Derpy said, “But you are magical.”

“Right, I always forget. But not actively like Rarity and Twilight.”

They reached the tearoom, and Rarity bought them all their drinks. They sat, sipped, and waited.

“So, Rarity,” Karyn said, “since you know what it’s all about, can you give us any clue?”

“I really shouldn’t…but do you remember that Twilight claimed she owed you some sort of favor?”

“Yes. From the Grand Galloping Gala. We thought she made it up to us, but she didn’t.”

“Well, this may well settle all debts between you and her.”

With that tidbit to chew on, Karyn and Derpy exchanged a look of anticipation.

“Ah!” Rarity continued, “and there’s the signal back from her that she’s ready. You’ll excuse me if I don’t join you. I have another engagement to attend to, and it’s a private occasion anyway.”

They said goodbye, and Karyn and Derpy, a spring in their steps, walked back the way they came.

“What could it be?” said Derpy. “She could give us just about anything. But I don’t know what it is that we need.”

“Right. Maybe it’s an inter-universe version of the spell we just heard about, so I could talk to you when you’re not actually here.”

“Could be anything. Let’s run and find out!”

They sped back to the library, but didn’t really save any time, since they had to wait outside to catch their breath before they knocked on the door.

“Enter.”

It was Twilight’s voice, but to Karyn it seemed more like she was trying to affect Rarity’s upper-class tone. When they opened the door, she saw why.

Twilight had dressed in her full princess outfit, including the yellow and purple dress, the gold hoof coverings with her cutie mark emblazoned on them, her wings spread wide behind her, and the crown with the six-pointed star on.

What amazed Karyn in particular was how regal she looked. Back when it was only a cartoon show to her, Karyn saw Twilight’s ascension to princess as undeserved, but seeing how she had grown into it, she had no more quarrel.

For Derpy, there was less awe and more reverence. She was used to princesses, even if she didn’t see them dressed up every day, and her response was more like a human standing at attention for a national anthem. She idly scratched an itch on her flank while still paying attention.

“Karyn Hubert, Derpy Hooves, welcome. Friends across worlds, I thank you for answering my summons. I appear before you today in the capacity of a Princess of Equestria. Although we meet in my home, this is as official an occasion as any proclamation put forth by Celestia herself.”

Now Derpy began to look nervous. As Princess Twilight went to take another breath, she interrupted. “Please, Twilight. I’m sure it’s important, but can’t we just talk like regular ponies? It’ll be a lot easier for me to understand that way.”

Twilight gave a soft smile. “All right, Derpy. I don’t relish it much either. Just don’t tell anypony else, all right?”

Derpy nodded.

“Now, recently, at the Princess Council—“

“Er, what’s that?

“Rather what it sounds like. Cadance, Celestia, Luna, and I meet from time to time to discuss weighty matters of Equestria, and to make policy affecting everypony.”

Karyn spoke up. “I can see how that would be something useful to have.”

“Indeed, it is particularly helpful to Princess Celestia. It was she who first started it. She had to make all the decisions herself for the better part of a thousand years, and she welcomes the input of three others.”

“But how does it work with four princesses? There’s no way to break a tie vote. Unless Celestia has an extra one, and only the other three of you can overrule her.”

Derpy had not considered that, but it did strike her as a problem, and she nodded her head.

Twilight, though, shook her head. “It’s not like that. There are no votes, per se, but if there were, sometimes even one would overrule the other three.”

“So everything has to be unanimous? There’s a major council of humans who are like that.”

“Not even that. We don’t hold everything to a yay or a neigh.” Twilight smiled to indicate the pun, which only Karyn picked up on. “We discuss things. Usually we come to an agreement. Sometimes we can’t, because Princess Cadance might have concerns specifically for the Crystal Empire as opposed to all of Equestria. We understand that, though, and work with her.

“But if ever one princess were to say, ‘No, not at all, under no circumstances will I support this,’ then the other three would not go ahead with whatever was being discussed. Celestia has had to overrule us like that on occasion. She has seen things over the centuries that give her more perspective.”

“OK, I understand now. That’s not, then, a very human way of doing things. We would always want a safeguard in case the dynamic you’re talking about breaks down.”

Twilight listened, but clearly wanted to get to her point. “As it happens, that situation, of one princess holding back the other three, is what I’m here to talk with you about. How long has it been, Derpy, since you began visiting Earth?”

“Over two years.”

“And in that time no other pony has traveled there, nor has any other human visited Equestria. This was the will of the Princess Council.

“The four of us have ranged from indifferent—Princess Cadance freely admits she doesn’t know enough about humans to have an opinion—to enthusiastic. Princess Celestia has said that she wants a more open-borders policy, which I think is her trying to make up for her initial overreaction to Lyra’s Human. But always one pony held firm that the worlds should be separate.”

“Princess Luna?” said Derpy. “I thought she liked Karyn.”

“She does. It is not Princess Luna. I have held back the council. You may recall my initial anger the first time you brought Karyn back to Equestria without asking permission. That may have colored my view, but more than that I am a pony who believes in study over action.

“Sometimes, though, I need to be reminded that passions run deeper than simple facts, and that the love that two friends share is worth risk. For your assistance in preparations for the Gala and for what you did for me there, but far more for the devotion you two have shown each other over the years, I have altered my position. The Princess Council will no longer oppose expanded traffic between Earth and Equestria.”

Both Karyn and Derpy just sat in silence as the weight of it hit them. For the most part, they never considered themselves as any kind of ambassadors for their world. It was just a fun meeting with a friend.

“Wow,” said Derpy. “Now I guess I know why you were going all that fancy princess talk from before.”

That finally released the tension for Karyn, who had a laugh, and at the same time grasped Derpy’s hoof. “Thank you, Princess Twilight, for showing that level of confidence in us. But now that you say it, I…I don’t know if I want it to happen. I’m feeling what you were, a little. A feeling that the status quo is safer.”

“Do you really mean that you like feeling special because you’re the only human who knows a pony?”

“Geez, Derpy, when you put it that way, it sounds awfully selfish.”

Derpy got up and stretched her wings. It made Karyn realize how long they had been sitting there when she was so eager to get to the library in the first place. “Does it? That’s a shame, because I was thinking that I was special because I was the only pony who goes to Earth.”

Twilight unfolded her wings once more. “This is not going to happen all at once. Indeed, we will put it at your discretion. If you do not want to have more ponies go, we will wait until you are ready. Only you and my closest friends know about this decision, and we need not make it public.”

“Yes, but we’ve still got to make the decision. Your reluctance was keeping that from us. So, Karyn, what do you think?”

Karyn eyed Derpy’s saddlebag. “I don’t know what I think, because I haven’t thought it yet. But a memory is coming back to me. Give me a moment.

The two mares looked at her with curiosity while she put her hands over her ears like she was trying to stop anything from escaping her head. Then she opened her eyes again.

“I think we should do it, but carefully. We don’t want to bring out, say, Princess Celestia and have her give a news conference. ‘Hey, all you humans! Ponies exist! Magic and weather control and all that!’ That would be bad. Certainly not good. What I think we should do instead is bring a few ponies to Earth, first, let them see it the way Derpy has. Let them come to some of our events or do the things that Derpy has enjoyed with me. Then we can start thinking about showing off a few ponies to humans. One at a time.”

“That seems like a good first step,” said Twilight. “Cautious. Something that we can draw our hoof back from if it seems like we’re extending it too far. But can I ask what makes you that cautious?”

“Let’s just say that I may have gotten advice from the Princess Council at some other time.”

Twilight did not press her further, but Derpy looked at her with confusion in her eyes, and Karyn gave a soft smile, to indicate that she would explain later. Seeing the exchange of looks and gestures between them, she was confident again that she had made the right decision.

“So, that leaves us with the question of who should go first?”

Now everyone was silent, and stared at each other, not wanting to commit themselves to anything. Twilight broke the tension by saying, “Well, it’s not a decision that you have to make right now, but think about it. In any case, I’ll want to be on that list myself.”

“Really?” said Derpy. “But you were the one who was unsure of it to begin with!”

“All the more reason I should go, because I’ll be safe. Excuse me, now, please. I have some other business to take care of.”

As soon as they left the library, Twilight put on her princessly demeanor once more, bowing and waving to them as they left.

“What do we do now?” asked Derpy.

“I don’t know. I’m still a little overwhelmed. Why don’t we go back to your place and talk it over.”

They made their way back, this time not encountering anypony who congratulated them. Back at Derpy’s house, they sat down in the kitchen and talked it over.

“All right,” said Karyn. “We need to make a list of ponies who we want to invite to come with us.”

“With us?”

“Yes. Like I said, I want to be with them all the while. You’re far more used to Earth than they are.”

Derpy still couldn’t get used to being the best at anything. “What were you saying before about another member of the Princess Council?”

“Oh, that. A while back I had a dream about you being captured by humans. It was really messed up and scary, and Princess Luna came to me and talked to me about fears and such.”

“You’re lucky! I’ve never met Princess Luna.”

“Yes, you have. We met her together.”

Derpy thought. “Oh, yeah. But never in a dream.”

“Anyway, she said I would have to choose to remember the dream or not. I did, but it’s hard to remember even a dream you remember, you know?”

“Definitely. Like they just slip out of the parts of your mind that control memory.”

“Exactly,” said Karyn. “So I had to think about it. But I’m sure that I want to be cautious in doing so. Now let’s make the list.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Derpy stood up. “We don’t have a piece of paper.”

“Derpy, whoever we bring to Earth, they’re not going to be the same as you.”

They got the paper and tossed out names of ponies who they thought would be interested. Naturally, the most well-known ponies’ names came up sooner.

“Scootaloo would definitely want to come,” Derpy was saying. “So many blank flanks, even if they’re covered. Speaking of which, we should invite Rarity.”

“Rarity is good. Fluttershy, I don’t know if she’d want to come. She’s still a little scared of me.”

“We’ll make her see how nice humans can be. Rainbow Dash, too. As a brave pegasus, she’ll want to have been among the first.”

“Hm.”

Derpy finished writing the previous name, then looked up. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking about Pinkie Pie.”

“Oh, yeah! I think she would be totally up for going to Earth.”

“But I don’t know if the Earth is ready for Pinkie Pie.”

Author's Note

I can't give you a preview of next week without giving away who the special guest pony is. But it's definitely somepony who's dedicated, honest, and is sure to have a Ball. Heh. Heh.

91: Derpy with a Chance of Rain

Because ponies didn’t dress normally, and because when they did it was for fun occasions rather than formal, Karyn didn’t know how to convey to the ponies that she was in Equestria on serious business. Wearing her interview suit wouldn’t cut it. She had to settle for adopting a dour glance as ponies came by.

She had set up outside Derpy’s house and had her laptop out and open. Though it did not have internet, and would only last as long as the single battery would take it, it gave her the freedom to take notes without pen and paper.

She and Derpy were taking a list of who wanted to come to Earth.

It was a mixed bag. Some ponies had to be made to understand that it was really a change of universe and that no, there weren’t other ponies there waiting. Others seemed fine, but didn’t necessarily want to go with Derpy, who they still regarded as somewhat unreliable. But that was fine with Karyn, since anyone who didn’t trust Derpy wasn’t welcome on her list anyway.

They had started to put the list in some semblance of order, when out of nowhere came the sound of wind and the smell of singed grass. The mass of movement came to a halt in front of them.

“Hold it! Nopony’s going to be the first one to Earth other than the bravest, coolest, most awesomest pony around!”

“Oh, hi, Rainbow Dash,” said Derpy. “I’m glad you think I’m that cool.”

“I meant me!”

“Ah, that makes more sense.”

Karyn laughed. “I think you confused her, Rainbow, because Derpy was the first pony to go to Earth.”

“Well, I want to be the first one under the new policy. So how about it?”

Karyn and Derpy looked at each other. “I have no objection if you don’t,” said Karyn.

Derpy reached under the table and brought out a saddlebag. “Now, let’s go over how to use the spells. Have you ever used one?”

“No.”

“All right, well, you put in your hoof like this…”

Karyn watched Derpy teach Rainbow Dash, and liked how naturally she spoke. It was a shame that she had never had the kind of self-confidence she could have. Derpy might have been a great teacher.

She had moved on to the next spell. “…this one is important, because it lets you be invisible once you get to Earth.”

“Invisible?”

“Yeah, you have to stay hidden all the time you’re there.”

Rainbow’s face fell. “You mean I’m getting to go to a whole different world where no one’s seen me fly and no one’s going to see me fly?”

“I’m afraid so. We might introduce you to one or two people, but for right now, this is more of a chance to see a new world than it is to show off.”

“Well, that bites!”

Karyn stood up. “It would freak people out. That’s why, if we do introduce you, we want to show you off as a pony first, before we explain the whole stunt flying thing. People on Earth only know ponies as animals who can’t even talk.”

“All right. If that’s the way it’s got to be, then I’ll have to live with that.”

Now Derpy got up. “Do you want to carry Karyn, Rainbow, or should I?”

“Why don’t you? No offense, but I’ve never liked letting other creatures on my back.”

“None taken,” said Karyn, as she mounted up on Derpy. “Are you ready?”

“I’m always ready!”

Derpy flapped her wings. “Then let’s take off. We have to get some height so that we’re at ground level when we reach Earth.”

They reached the sky, and Derpy gave a cue to activate their spells. A moment later they were safely invisible and on Earth.

“Whoa!” said Rainbow. “This is Earth? I thought it would be bigger.”

Karyn and Derpy had a good laugh. “We’re indoors. This is my apartment,” Karyn said.

Rainbow spun around, then turned toward Derpy. “I thought you said that you always had to fly to meet Karyn.”

“That was after she moved away from the college dormitory. The spell used to take me right there, but it was inconvenient to have to come all this way, so when Twilight was making another spell for other ponies to use, I had her recalibrate it to put us here.”

“To re-what now?”

“Change.”

“Got it.” Rainbow spread out her wings and hovered. With two ponies in a space built for humans, Karyn’s apartment was a little crowded, and it didn’t help that Rainbow liked to move around. “And hey, Derpy, I just want to say, thanks for letting me come here. Heh, it’s still only pegasi that have been to Earth now. You’re part of the sisterhood, you know?”

“I didn’t intend that. If an Earth pony or unicorn wants to come, they will.”

Karyn interjected. “Hey, I just thought of something. You always go for height, like you just did, because Equestria is lower down. What are we going to do when somepony else who doesn’t have wings wants to come?”

“Ooh, good point. I can’t very well carry another pony on my back, let alone you.”

“I thought about carrying another pony,” said Rainbow Dash, “for a flying routine once, but I never followed through.”

“We’ll just have to find a high enough place.” Derpy looked up as if picturing Ponyville in her mind. “I think the top floor of town hall might be enough. We’ll have to check.”

“Well, anyway, that’s for later. I’m here, show me your world!”

“All right,” said Karyn. “Refresh your invisibility and let’s head outside.”

Rainbow did, but had to hold, stunned, while Karyn put on her coat. Once they were out, Rainbow Dash witnessed a dreary and overcast sky. Though they could not see her, Karyn and Derpy could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“I don’t expect you to change for me,” she said, “but why didn’t we schedule this for another day?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well,” Rainbow Dash said, but then trailed off.

“You can’t gesture for speech,” Derpy interjected. “You’ve got to learn how to convey everything you want with just words and tone of voice. It takes a little getting used to.”

“Oh, right. I just meant with the coat and all.”

“You don’t like it? I think Karyn looks quite fetching.”

“Arrgh!” Rainbow still hadn’t gotten it down yet. “I mean because it’s such a crappy day! I’d like to see the Earth when it’s nice out. I mean, yes, it’s winter, but does that mean that we can’t have a brisk cold day in the sun?”

“Sorry,” said Karyn. “This is what we have.”

They walked around a few blocks, and Karyn realized that she didn’t have as much to show off in her town as the ponies did. Since Earth had so many people and was so densely populated, there was much more infrastructure and less attractions. She thought that Rainbow might like seeing the local train station , so they headed that way.

Even that wasn’t as impressive as she’d hoped. While nicer than the concrete platforms they’d passed in Equestria, it didn’t have the impressive façade that the Ponyville station had. It was built for function and, Karyn thought, needed a good cleaning.

Rainbow apparently had something on her mind, as she asked, “When was the last time you had a good storm?”

“Two weeks ago,” said Derpy, “I had to fight my way through a blizzard.”

“I mean a rainstorm.”

“Karyn?”

“Not since autumn,” Karyn said. “A few bouts of freezing rain here and there, but not what you would call a good storm.”

“Well, that’s just ridiculous!” Rainbow shouted, and Karyn had to pull her to the side. Even with her Bluetooth in, Rainbow could give them away just with her volume. “You’ve got to pace your snows with rain. That helps melt the snow and do the work that all the snow is supposed to. I should have a good long talk with whoever runs the weather here.”

Derpy sucked her tongue. “No, I’ve told you, they have no weather control here.”

“I’ll say!”

“I mean it. There’s literally no way for the humans to break that cloud layer, or to bring other ones and make it rain. They have to just take the weather that comes and deal with it the best they can.”

There was no response, and Derpy was about to remind Rainbow to use her words again, but Karyn interrupted. “I think you broke Rainbow Dash with that one. She can’t picture a world with no weather control. Well, you wanted to show how brave of a pony you were, here’s your chance. That overcast sky is what it is, and it’s staying there.”

Still there was no response. Derpy hadn’t felt any shift in the air, so she believed that Rainbow Dash hadn’t moved. But she was more sympathetic than Karyn. “Rainbow Dash? Are you all righ—?”

“Well, there’s weather control on Earth now!” she said with purpose in her voice. “It’s time these clouds learned who’s boss around here. Time to kick some cumulus!”

“No! You can’t do—“ But again Derpy was interrupted as Rainbow Dash took off. She could not be seen, of course, but her pattern could be as she tore through the clouds. “Karyn! We’ve got to stop her!”

“How? There’s no way that we can catch up to her and make her stop. We don’t even know where she’s going next.”

Indeed, in the sky Rainbow was tearing through the clouds to produce patches of blue. It was like skywriting in reverse. Seeing that gave Derpy an idea.

“No, but we can go where she’s been already, and try to zip up the clouds. Hopefully, once she sees that she’s not getting anywhere, she’ll stop and we can convince her not to mess with the weather. Get on!”

Karyn was about to say that there was no reason for her to be mounted on Derpy when she went up to fix Rainbow Dash’s efforts, but she decided that it would take longer to explain than they would lose in pursuit. It was already getting to the point where one would no longer say it was overcast, only mostly cloudy.

Derpy was, of course, not a weather pony, and even if she were, she couldn’t form clouds out of nothing at all. She reached the first breach in the clouds and grabbed all around, trying to form a pocket of cloud. She got it, but it was slow going as every few feet she had to start all over again.

“It’s like trying to thread a needle when I’m the thread!” she cried out.

“You’re getting it, Derpy! Keep it up!” Karyn tried to picture how it would look from the ground, and she hoped it would be more like a swirling wind moving the clouds than two streaks, one removing and one re-adding clouds.

A few times, they tried to call out to Rainbow Dash to stop and talk, so they could explain why she had to stop, but she wasn’t listening. Finally, she pulled to a stop and cried, “Oh, you Earth clouds think you’re so tough? I guess you want to get cleared all at once!” She pointed her nose down and went into a dive.

“Karyn! She’s going to do a sonic rainboom!”

“There’s no way to hide that, and everyone will identify it for sure! We’ve got to stop her.”

“But how?!”

Karyn balled her fists with Derpy’s mane in them, pulling at the roots at two points. “You’re going to have to get in the way.”

Derpy clenched her teeth and dove. She was already below Rainbow Dash, which was necessary as not even on her best day could Derpy keep up in a race. But she figured the angle at which to intercept her and the time she would need.

But she flew too fast and cut in front of Rainbow right as she would have broken the sound barrier. With Derpy’s wake causing a low-pressure zone, Rainbow’s wings had nothing to push against, and she lost a lot of speed. That gave Derpy a second chance, which she used to swing around and tackle Rainbow to the ground. Two ponies and a human fell into a pile of invisible mess, landing behind a building in an alley.

When they finally disentangled themselves, Rainbow was furious. “Derpy, that was Not Cool. You never cut across another pegasus’s flight path; that’s the first thing they teach you in flight school.”

Derpy canceled out the invisibility spell for all three of them. Rainbow Dash had never seen the angry look on Derpy’s face before, and she had trouble stopping herself from breaking out in laughter. Karyn, however, had seen it once before, a couple of years back, at a time when she really had shown herself to a human. Now Derpy tore into Rainbow Dash the way she had once torn into Karyn’s ex-boyfriend Mike.

“No, what isn’t cool is when we specifically tell you that you don’t understand the world you’re in, that weather is different here, and that you’re not supposed to mess with it…and then you go and do it anyway! Listen, Rainbow Dash, you may be the pegasus of all pegasi back in Equestria, but here you’re nothing but a newbie!”

“A what?”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You don’t even know the words that they use here. And you certainly don’t understand about weather. Karyn had to explain it to me, that when you change the weather one time, it has effects and consequences that are unpredictable. So unless you plan to manage all the weather over the entire Earth, you can’t change anything.

“Furthermore, whether or not you knew that, we told you, and you needed to listen to us. That’s what I mean that all your bravery and fast flying here doesn’t mean as much. Yes, you’ve shown bravery, but what we need you to show is humility. Right, Karyn?”

Derpy’s tone had started off angry, but she calmed down as she was ranting, still cowed by Rainbow’s reputation. Now she turned to Karyn to continue the rage, but Karyn didn’t seem to have the energy.

“Rainbow Dash, you scared me up there. I said that we weren’t trying to reveal ponies to everyone, but that’s exactly what would have happened if you had gone all the way and cleared that storm. You don’t know about things like satellites and cameras and Doppler radar that would have shown that to be real magic.”

Rainbow had held her tongue for Derpy’s rant, but now discovered her courage once again. “So what?! If you can’t control the weather maybe a pegasus shaking things up is exactly what you need.”

“Maybe, but it’s not what we’re going to get. All you’re going to do is get people angry at you. And now we have to think twice about letting anypony else come to Earth. And it would mean that I would never see Derpy again, and that Derpy would never see me again. That’s the cost of clearing the storm. You tell me, is it worth it?”

At last, something seemed to strike beyond Rainbow Dash’s armor. She tried to say something, but Karyn had already turned around and was walking out of the alley. Derpy Hooves went invisible again and followed her. Rainbow just held back.

A block down the road, Derpy said, “Are you sure we should have left her alone?”

“I’m hoping that this will work, and she’ll feel the ‘I just royally messed up’ remorse we intend instead of arguing back. It’s one of the meanest tricks in an argument, just to walk away and not let the other person have their say, but in this case we desperately need her to understand.”

They kept walking, keeping their steps slow. Though Derpy couldn’t tell, Karyn had figured out where they were and in fact was walking around a block that would lead them to the same alley they had left. When they returned, they heard Rainbow’s hoofbeats as she went to catch up, but then saw they were still there.

“Listen, guys…I’m sorry. I know I was wrong, and if you want to kick me out and stop me from ever coming back here again, I can understand that, but don’t take it out on everpony else. They shouldn’t have to suffer for my stubbornness.”

Karyn and Derpy looked at each other. “I’m fine with just letting this go,” said Derpy, “but it’s Karyn’s world, so it’s really her decision.”

“It’s not my world. I just live here,” Karyn said, but she could hear the contrition in Rainbow’s voice. “What I want to know is what you were thinking. I don’t mean that in an angry way. I genuinely want to know so that when somepony else does come here, we can stop this from happening again.”

“Let me be honest with you,” Rainbow said. “Every so often, I need somepony to give me a kick in the flank. I’ve got a big ego; I admit it. But a lot of the time I can back it up as well. Once in a while, though, it runs away from me, and I don’t listen to anypony. When that happens, the only thing that will get my attention is doing something better than I can.

“Nice flying, Derpy.”

Derpy was stunned that Rainbow had complimented her flying. With a smirk on her face, she said, “So that means you’ll be taking my shift at the post office this week, right?”

“Only if you’re doing weather and pulling off sonic rainbooms.”

“You didn’t see her at the last tornado,” said Karyn. “Come to think of it, where were you for that?”

“The last tornado? I don’t even remember that. Why, what happened?”

“You would have remembered if you had been there. But never mind. Let’s go back to my place.”

They made their way back, and Karyn wished that she had her car for the trip. She and Derpy had had enough of a workout for that day, but there was nothing else for it.

Whether because of the pegasi’s influence or by the natural course of things, the clouds dissipated by the time they reached Karyn’s apartment again. Though the better part of the day was over, Rainbow Dash still got a chance to see the sun. Derpy chose to believe the latter explanation.

“You see, Rainbow, you should have just let it be.”

“I guess.”

“And now you can see a rainbow too!” said Karyn, as she turned away from the sun.

Derpy looked the same way, and saw that indeed, if she raised her head to exactly the right angle, she could see the split colors. The pony named for the phenomenon, however, was not so awed.

“Wow, that’s different,” Dash said. “It’s not bold colors like we have in Equestria at all. It looks like a pale rainbow, like if a pegasus made it while she was sick. But of course, you don’t have pegasi here.”

“Other than you and me,” said Derpy.

Karyn had to pull herself away from it. “So you don’t like our rainbows, Rainbow?”

“They’re…cute. As opposed to cool.”

“All right, I’ll give you that.”

“But again, I live my life at top speed. There’s no reason that a rainbow I make shouldn’t be bright and vivid. Maybe here on Earth they move a little slower, at least when it comes to weather. But that’s fine. Not everyone has to be as fast as me.”

She looked over at Derpy and said, “Not even every pegasus.”

“Aww, you’re sweet.”

“All right, enough of the sappy stuff. Let’s head inside so that at least we can see each other.”

They followed her advice and shuffled into the apartment, where Karyn took off her coat and the ponies took off their invisibility spells. Derpy showed Rainbow how to carefully file away the spells in the saddlebag, but Rainbow just dumped it in anyway.

The rest of the day was spent in quiet discussion, as quiet as it could be with Rainbow Dash, and Karyn reflected that even if the ponies didn’t get to see vast swaths of land on Earth, or experience all of human life, just having one here and getting her to think about Earth as a real place was a step in the right direction.

When the sun went down and it was time to leave, Rainbow Dash put on her spell. “You ready, Derpy?”

“You go on ahead. Just be careful, as you’ll be in the air when you get there.”

“That won’t be a problem for me. See ya around.” Dash vanished.

“I’m sure that everypony won’t be that difficult.”

Karyn smiled. “She was quite a big one to start off with. But to look at it another way, if we’ve handled her, how much trouble can anypony else be?”

“Ooh, don’t tempt fate like that.”

“Good point. And thanks for staying back a moment. Even if other ponies are coming, I’m glad to have a moment with you.”

“Me too.” Derpy gave Karyn a hug, and then she followed Rainbow Dash back to Equestria.

Author's Note

Here's what's coming next week on Derpy's Human!

"Look at this place. It’s not suitable to have a guest in.”

“It isn’t? Then I’ll leave.” Derpy reached for the spell she had just put back in her bag, and Karyn could never be sure if she was joking or not, so she quickly jumped up and her hand on Derpy’s hoof.

“I don’t mean you. You’re not a guest."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She opened it, and Derpy braced herself, closing her eyes. When no sound of explosion was heard, she opened them again.

"That wasn't too bad," she said. "I was afraid you had the contents under pressure."

"That's one of those things that only happens in Equestria or other cartoon worlds."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What was that for?”

“To make clear my disgust by my facial expression. You know how much of communication is nonverbal. I wanted to make that clear.”

Karyn laughed. “All right, well, what are you disgusted at?”

Isn't it great to have a preview again?

92: Hoarderps

Karyn filed away her latest essay, then just opened a drawer and tossed it in. She hadn’t confirmed with Derpy what would be their schedule for that day, and she didn’t know if Derpy would be arriving on time.

But the sound of Derpy’s arrival came as usual, and Karyn said hello and waited for Derpy to make her visual inspection. Instead, she gave the same embarrassed smile back.

“You know, we never actually set up a pony to come to Earth this week!”

“No, we didn’t. But that actually works out better this week. Look at this place. It’s not suitable to have a guest in.”

“It isn’t? Then I’ll leave.” Derpy reached for the spell she had just put back in her bag, and Karyn could never be sure if she was joking or not, so she quickly jumped up and her hand on Derpy’s hoof.

“I don’t mean you. You’re not a guest. You’re practically family by now. What I mean is that I wouldn’t want somepony like Rainbow Dash who doesn’t know me that well to come and see my apartment this week.”

“You know, we never said that we have to have ponies coming to earth every week. Honestly, when you agreed to it, I was happy, but I also was afraid it would mean the end of our Sundays when it was just the two of us.”

Karyn got out of the chair and turned her grasp of Derpy’s arm into a full hug. “I never intended that. I was actually hoping someone would suggest having the ponies in on some other day so that our Sundays could be preserved. Obviously that’s not feasible, but if we can take the time some times to just have a day together, that’s best for everyone.”

“Except for the pony who would be coming and then has to wait.”

"Yes. Although not even that pony, because she or he would definitely get to come eventually. If there is some fininte number of ponies who we would invite, then whoever would miss out because of us not having a pony over this week, that's the pony for whom it's not best."

Derpy nodded, but not in agreement, since she was not looking at Karyn. Instead, she was processing the sentence until she said, "Yeah! That makes sense. You're really an organized thinker."

"Unfortunately I'm not an organized organizer. I've got way too much junk in this place."

"You keep saying that, but I'm not seeing it today. Everything is dusted and polished and everything is neatly in its place."

Karyn walked over to a cabinet with stacked shelves. "Exactly, and every place has something in it. I've got too much clutter, and that's not good."

"It's not as bad as having things out of place. But if that's your pet peeve, I can agree with that. It's better than not having one at all. You have to have something that motivates you to do a task. It's like, if you're hungry, you cook; and if you're tired, you finish up your chores so that you can go to bed; and if you see your pet peeve, that makes you tidy it up."

"That's really insightful, Derpy. But it doesn't help solve my problem. I feel like a hoarder with everything I've collected. When I was living in the dorm it didn't seem as much, because most of it was still at my folks' house. But they're transitioning it all to me so that when I finally go out on my own, when I finish school, I won't have to move from two places."

Derpy trotted over to the cabinet. "I understand. I've had to move houses on occasion, and yes it's always trouble. But this doesn't seem all that bad. We could take it all and put it in the closet, for example."

"No, we can't."

"Oh, we might need some shelving or some way to organize it in there as well, but it's an option."

Karyn walked to the closet. "No, like I'm saying, we can't." She opened it, and Derpy braced herself, closing her eyes. When no sound of explosion was heard, she opened them again.

"That wasn't too bad," she said. "I was afraid you had the contents under pressure."

"That's one of those things that only happens in Equestria or other cartoon worlds."

Derpy approached the closet, still expecting some sort of reaction. Instead, she saw the closet filled to waist height with clutter. It was mostly in piles, but here and there a tower of books or CDs would have tipped onto its side.

Now it was Karyn's turn to wince as she expected Derpy to yell, or at least ask her a question that should be rhetorical, like, "How could you let this happen?" But Derpy just looked the scene over.

"I understand," she said. "All of these things, especially the books, even if they're not valuable, they don't seem worthless. You feel bad about throwing away a book or a CD."

"Exactly! Like..." Karyn reached for the nearest CD case. "Like if someday I need the drivers for the video card that I replaced in the computer I had before I got my laptop. Bad example."

She took the CD to the trash and tossed it in, case and all.

"If you're willing to throw some of them out, you're not a hoarder."

"Yeah, but I do wish I could get some use out of them. Or sell them."

Derpy brightened up. “That’s a great idea! Since I know you have so many issues with your budget, this is a chance to get a little extra money that doesn’t have to be accounted for.”

“Money without accounting for it? You’re talking my dream.”

“But selling isn’t easy. It’s going to take a lot of work to make sure you get the right price for all your stuff.”

Karyn raced back to the computer. “I don’t care about getting the right price for it. Just so long as I get any money, I’m happy. I’m more concerned with getting it out of the apartment and having more space. So let’s go to some selling web sites.”

She pulled up several tabs at once with different web sites, and looked into selling on all of them. Over her shoulder, Derpy watched. “Ooh, go to the one with all the white space.”

“That could be good, and listing the ads are free, but it involves meeting the person who’s buying…in person, and I’m scared of that.”

“Why? You can just change yourself into someone who won’t be attacked.”

“Yeah,” said Karyn half-heartedly, “but there are still ways that can go wrong. No, what I’d like is to just have send all the stuff to a warehouse and have the web site sell it for me. Even if they only give me a few pennies on the dollar, it’s better than nothing.”

“All right, let’s go to one of the other sites.”

Karyn flipped over to a page with a more complicated design. “I buy from here all the time, and they’re really good with service. They have things like one-click buying. I’m hoping they’re as good from the other side.”

She reached the selling side of the web site, and Derpy noticed the difference immediately. Though the colors were similar, it was much less inviting, and the text took up more of the screen. It was clearly a site for people who were accustomed to using it, and not designed for ease of use. Still, Karyn reached the screen where she could list an item for sale.

“OK, it says that the company will handle all the storage and listing itself, which is what I want. In theory, I should just be able to print a label and ship it to them.”

“But it wants a bar code. Your stuff won’t have that, will it?”

“It might, but let’s keep it simpler for now.” Karyn rummaged in the closet and pulled out five squat metal objects. “I got these hard drives from when I was experimenting with RAID arrangements a while back. I should be able to search for them and get the number for the bar code at the same time.”

She opened another tab and went back to the buying site. Moments later, she had the information and proceeded.

“You’re really good at this,” said Derpy. “Is this really your first time?”

“Yes, but I know how computers and web sites work. That’s about the only inborn skill I have.”

“But you’re making it into your career. That’s a good thing. You’re following your destiny, which we know from your cutie mark.”

Karyn went back to typing. “Never mind that. Let’s get these out of here. I hope there’s like a drop-off place to save me the shipping costs.”

There were none, and in fact once she had gotten past that part, the web site got more confusing, and was clearly intended for small businesses that used the web portal for high volume. But at last they got a label.

“This is kind of fun.” Derpy pulled the label off Karyn’s printer. “Now let’s put it on.”

“Hm. That’s going to be a problem.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have any boxes.”

Derpy made a quick circle around the apartment in the air. It was a combination of a search to confirm Karyn’s assessment and a loop of joy that she could help. “I have boxes back home! I’ll go and get one that’ll be perfect for these.”

She ran for her spell bag, and from Karyn’s time-frozen perspective it looked like the box just appeared in her hoof. Karyn didn’t even know that ponies had cardboard, but there it was in front of her. Instead of being corrugated, though, it was just extra-thick. But this was not what caught her eye.

“I don’t know if this is a good box.”

Derpy thumped the side. “It’s plenty strong.”

“That’s not what worries me. Do I really want to send stuff in a box marked ‘Hornton’s Horn Polish?’ It’s practically a dead giveaway that unicorns exist.”

“No it isn’t. First off, the most likely thing that’s going to happen is that whoever gets this box is going to open it, see what’s inside, not read the outside of the box, and just throw it into the trash.”

Karyn nodded noncommittally. “Into recycling, but go on.”

“And even if they don’t, they’ll think it’s something for Earth animals, like for anyone who’s had taxidermy done on a beloved pet goat or something.”

“I don’t really think that will be the case, but your first point does make sense. Wait, why do you have a box of horn polish anyway? Or did you just get this from a shop somewhere?”

“I bought it for Dinky,” said Derpy.

“A whole box?”

“I got a good deal.”

“All right, let’s get this packed away.” Karyn took the box and set it up on her desk. She put the first hard drive in, then kept stacking. “I don’t think this is going to work. The box isn’t tall enough.”

“Try putting them in sideways.”

“That’s no good, then not even one will fit in.”

Derpy took the box. “This has to work. You can see that the box is much bigger than the drives.”

“Yes, but I don’t think we can use all the space efficiently. And even if we do, we’re going to need something to secure it.”

“There’s got to be a way.” She played around with all dimensions and orientations. “The problem is that even in width the drives take up more than half of the length of the box, so we can’t put two of them together.”

“Right. We can’t cut them in half. They’d be worthless then.”

“What if they could be restored afterwards? I have a spell that might work.” Derpy reached into her bag.

“No, that’s even worse. Someone might not notice the mention of horn polish on the outside, but hard drives that are snapped in half and then restore themselves magically is going to freak people out and make them trace it back to me.”

“Should I go for another box?”

Karyn took the drives one more time. “No, you’ll probably go and get a box for something like wing wash or mane and tail shampoo or something. Here’s what we’re going to do. If I put them in flat, then I put this piece of cardboard on top, once I force the top closed, it’ll be covered.”

“Is that fair? Then the box isn’t a cube.”

“It never would have been a cube, but a rectangular prism. I don’t think that matters. I hope it doesn’t.”

She took the cardboard and a thick roll of packing tape and closed the box as tightly as she could. It felt in her hands like it was under pressure, but she knew that was illusion. She led Derpy to the car and looked up the nearest postal store.

“Can’t we go to the regular post office?” asked Derpy.

“No, they insist I use a private courier.”

“That kind of offends me as a postal worker, you know? You should have your choice of how you send it.”

Karyn shrugged and put the car into gear.

The postal store was on a busy turnpike of many stores, and Karyn couldn’t slow down as much as she wanted to before turning into the parking lot, lest the car behind her speed into her, or at least get angry for having to slow down.

The store was not crowded, and Karyn figured that it was because it was Sunday and there was almost no business traffic. Indeed, the store was only open for four hours that day. She went up to the counter with Derpy following invisibly.

The clerk was nice, but did look down at Karyn’s packing job and told her that most packages did come in looking better.

“Yes, well, I’m not a business, I’m just trying to use the web site for a little extra cash and to get rid of things I don’t need. It should be easier to do this.”

The clerk quoted her a price, and she handed over her debit card. She was about to walk out, but Derpy had to grab the receipt and shove it into Karyn’s purse. The clerk did a double-take, but Karyn didn’t notice.

Back in the car, Derpy ducked down and briefly turned off her invisibility. She scowled at Karyn and then restored her transparency.

“What was that for?”

“To make clear my disgust by my facial expression. You know how much of communication is nonverbal. I wanted to make that clear.”

Karyn laughed. “All right, well, what are you disgusted at?”

“How much they charged you! Basically, even if you sell one of those hard drives, you’ll only break even on the shipping costs. That’s not the way to make money!”

Karyn’s laughter continued as she pulled back onto the road, thankful for a break in the traffic.

“It’s serious! At the post office, we would never charge that much for something that light.”

“Well, Equestrian economy is different. I just have to live with that. Again, I’m just looking to get stuff out of my apartment. If I had to pay just to make a few items disappear, I’d be OK with that. If I break even, so much the better, and if I make money, it’s a bonus. But the main thing is to break myself of the hoarding habit.”

Derpy didn’t say anything, and a few minutes later, they got back to Karyn’s apartment. This time, when Derpy went visible, her expression was more pensive.

“I see your point,” she said. “I guess I’ve never been afraid of being a hoarder because I’ve never had that much to hoard.”

“Aww. You should feel good about it because you’ve earned everything you have. Half of the books and CDs I have in here are gifts. Which should probably make me feel guilty about selling them, but it doesn’t.”

“You’re going to need a lot more boxes. I’ll save any that I come across, and I’ll try to find ones that don’t have markings.”

“I’ll appreciate that,” said Karyn. She went back to the cabinet that had first attracted her attention and picked up an old speaker. Now I’ll have a little room to get rid of this.”

Taking it back to the closet, she deposited the speaker where the hard drives had been, then turned back to the apartment.

“You got something accomplished today, which is good, even if it was only a small start.”

“You think so? I think the apartment looks better already.”

Derpy laughed at that and dashed across the room. “There is plenty of room, but I think it was always like that.”

With no real plan in mind, Karyn adjusted some of the other ornaments and items she had collected over the years. It accomplished little more than burning off nervous energy, but it seemed to make her happy. “Yes, in a year or so, I’ll definitely have this place in shape. Then it’ll be time to move again, but such is life.”

“Is something bothering you?”

“I know I was being brave about it before, but the truth is that I really did hope that I would get some money out of this. I just haven’t been able to go out and spend money like I used to before I came to school, and even though it’s been so many years, I still miss it.”

“Oh, poor Karyn,” said Derpy.

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No, I really mean it. I’ve seen how much you have to spend, and you always need new clothes because you wear them every day. Unless you go changeling.”

Karyn nodded. “Yeah, maybe I should find a way to parlay my magic into making money.”

“Can you do that? You could do like Colgate and become a dentist.”

“No, I was just kidding. That again would be a dead giveaway, the kind we don’t want to do. And even if I did I certainly wouldn’t become a dentist. I don’t like the sight of blood.”

Karyn had calmed down, and now it was Derpy who got to look around the apartment. However much clutter was there, it worked for her as a clean unit.

“I think this place is definitely ready for somepony to come visit next week. Can you keep it clean until then?”

“No, but I can get it back to this state by next Saturday. Take your time bringing whoever it is. I might be putting away the breakfast dishes from Sunday when you get in.”

Derpy feigned shock. “You would eat breakfast without me?”

“If you brought the other pony late because you were worried about the breakfast dishes.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“Maybe just a little,” said Karyn. “I have to make my own fun, because like I said it’s hard for me to spend any money.”

“We’ll get you past that someday. For right now, be glad that you’re getting into good habits.”

“It’s out of necessity too. When Rainbow Dash was here, we were hard pressed for space. You ponies are a lot wider than humans. No offense.”

“None taken. If an apartment like this were built for ponies, it would be higher, that way I could stretch my wings more and take up less space.” Derpy demonstrated and hovered near the ceiling. “See, now whoever the other pony was could stand where I was. Unless it was Rainbow, since she usually likes to be in the air when others are grounded. Hey, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“There’s a little green-blue envelope here.”

Karyn got up and walked back to where she had picked up the speaker. It was right at eye level for anyone not hovering above, and the envelope blended in with the shelf paper. But when Karyn took it in hand, it wasn’t a paper envelope, it was thin cardboard.

“Oh, my gosh!”

“What is it?”

“It’s a gift card! Someone must have given this to me a while back before I started budgeting, because I always record my gift cards as assets now. And this is one of those ones that’s from a credit card company, so it’s just as good as cash.”

Derpy flew back up to where the card was found. “What was it doing up here then? Shouldn’t you have found it when you moved here?”

“Who knows? Maybe it got stuck to the bottom of the speaker, and I’ve never had occasion to move it since I got here. Now I just have to check to see if it’s still good.”

She raced to her computer and pulled up the web site written on the back of the card. After scratching out the numbers, she put it in.

“Well?” asked Derpy.

“No expiration date, and a balance of a hundred bucks! Derpy, find somepony who wants a good time, because everything next Sunday is on me!”

“Everything is always on you. You have a few bits in Equestria, but I have no dollars here.”

Her smile now one of complete sincerity, Karyn said, “You’re right, but next week we can Do Things, not just get a meal from the cafeteria and watch internet movies. We’ll head into the city and show our guest a good time.”

“So your cleaning did wind up paying after all.”

“I guess it did. If I find a hundred dollars under everything I move, I’ll be very happy…and surprised.”

Author's Note

Sorry I was late this week. Meeting at work ran long. But let's see what we've got coming next week!

Derpy fetched Karyn and was halfway back to Equestria when they discussed their guest.

“Did you get somepony? I hope they all weren’t turned off by us skipping last week.”

“No, there was no problem,” Derpy said as she swooped down toward an unfamiliar part of Ponyvile. “Plenty of ponies still want to come, but I owed her a favor, so I put her next on the list.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I’m going to treat you well today, because I found a hundred dollars last week.”

Karyn brought out the gift card, and felt it being tugged out of her hand. “Is this what you use for money here? It’s so different! Can I see some other denominations, or is it like bits where you only have one?”

“That’s not actually our money. Well, it kind of is, because we use credit and debit cards as well. But…it’s complicated.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sheer movement was giving her a sensory overload, and she said in a whisper that was nearly carried away on the wind, “The lights.”

“Beg pardon?” said Derpy.

“The lights! The movement, the buildings, everything! Whoever the princess who rules this city is, she must be amazing.”

Karyn chuckled. “No princess lives here. This isn’t even a capital like Canterlot is.”

Please come back next week and read that one too!

93: Derptown

Derpy fetched Karyn and was halfway back to Equestria when they discussed their guest.

“Did you get somepony? I hope they all weren’t turned off by us skipping last week.”

“No, there was no problem,” Derpy said as she swooped down toward an unfamiliar part of Ponyvile. “Plenty of ponies still want to come, but I owed her a favor, so I put her next on the list.”

She came in for a landing, and it took a moment for Karyn to identify the dwelling, since it fit into the background of Ponyville so well.

“Fluttershy? Fluttershy wants to visit Earth? Unless maybe it’s Angel Bunny who wants to see it. Or one of the chickens or something.”

“No, it’s Fluttershy. I didn’t make the offer to anyone other than ponies. I don’t think that they even talk.”

“I was joking,” said Karyn. One of the cats that Fluttershy was keeping pounced up and sniffed at Karyn’s finger. “What was the favor you owed her anyway?”

“She gave me some special food for my kitty cat. He just ate it up, and he’d never been happier.”

“All right, I guess that’s fair to let her come with us. But I still don’t believe she wanted to.”

The door opened, and Fluttershy herself emerged, saddlebag and coat on. “I definitely do want to go,” she said in her lilting voice.

“You’ve got good ears.”

“I have to in order to hear if any of these little creatures is unhealthy or in pain or missing. And that’s why I’m so keen to see your world. I’m sure that there are hundreds of animals and plants there that could use a solid dose of Fluttershy care.”

Derpy shook her head. “You might be a little disappointed. But let’s go anyway and have a good time.”

They flew back to the inflection point between the two universes, and Derpy showed Fluttershy how to use the spell. Once in Karyn’s apartment, Derpy stood to one side to give most of the room to Fluttershy.

“This is Karyn’s home? It’s really…cozy.”

Derpy felt the need to defend her friend. “You’ve got to remember that Karyn’s only a student. If Dinky got her own place, it wouldn’t be much bigger than this. Also, Karyn doesn’t have any animals.”

Fluttershy’s face turned a mixture of pity and shock. “Are we staying in today, though?”

“No, we had planned to go out, and thankfully it’s a nicer day than when Rainbow Dash was here. But, you’ve got to use the invisibility spell.”

“Oh, oh yes!” Now she was all smiles. “This is what I’ve been looking forward to.”

Karyn turned her head. “You want to be invisible? You’re really that shy?”

“I am shy, but it’s not just that. I just feel like it would be this warm cover of anonymity. There are times when I want to meet people, and times when I don’t. If I can wait until I’m ready, that would just be the most wonderful thing.”

“All right.”

“You know,” said Derpy. “We would have given you the spell if that’s what you wanted. You didn’t have to sign up to come to Earth just to get that.”

“I know. But it seemed like the path of least resistance.” Fluttershy grinned, and then reached for the spell. “How do I look now? Am I invisible? Can you see me?”

“You’re doing just fine.”

Karyn nodded. “But you will have to keep your voice down. You’re not inaudible. Derpy and I have a trick that will fool people if they don’t hear you directly. Thankfully you’re not using your Flutterguy voice.”

Fluttershy didn’t respond to that, and Karyn realized that she should be more careful in her speech lest she make her shy guest go mute.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes. Wait, I almost forgot last week’s big find. Fluttershy, I’m going to treat you well today, because I found a hundred dollars last week.”

Karyn brought out the gift card, and felt it being tugged out of her hand. “Is this what you use for money here? It’s so different! Can I see some other denominations, or is it like bits where you only have one?”

“That’s not actually our money. Well, it kind of is, because we use credit and debit cards as well. But…it’s complicated.”

Derpy took the card back from Fluttershy. “I’ll try to explain it when we have more time. Let’s go so the trains don’t get too full.”

Karyn had mentioned to Derpy that they would be taking the light rail, but Fluttershy didn’t know. “Humans have trains just like ponies?”

“Oh, yes. Not exactly like pony trains, they’re more about efficiency and getting where you need to go. Come on, you’ll see one in a few minutes.”

They walked to the station a few blocks away. When the train came a minute later, Fluttershy got on with no apparent qualms. Only one other man was on. When it started moving, though, an audible, “Eek!” rang throughout the train. The man looked up from his phone, and Karyn put on a sheepish look and shook her head. She couldn’t think of an excuse for why she would be shocked, but fortunately the man didn’t ask for one.

Parked on the other side of the train, Karyn whispered to Fluttershy, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t realize that it would move without any warning, and so smoothly too. There was no time for the steam boiler to build up heat.”

“This isn’t a steam train. It runs on electricity.”

“What’s that?”

Karyn took a moment to try to think of how to explain, but Derpy cut in, “It’s one of the humans’ form of magic. That’s not exactly true, but it’s easier than giving you all the details. If Karyn wants to explain computers, which is also a kind of magic, she can.”

“All right.”

The train made several stops, but no more passengers got on than got off, so there was still no pressure for space, and Karyn breathed a sigh of relief. As they approached the city limits, though, she realized something could go awry.

“After this stop, the train goes underground and becomes a subway. Fluttershy, are you going to be all right underground?”

“Oh, yes. I’m certainly not claustrophobic.”

Derpy said, “I’m not, either. Or, is claustrophobia the right word here? There could be plenty of space underground, but it would still be underground.”

“Good point. But I’m not scared of either.”

The train plunged into a tunnel, and all the sounds of the engine and the air conditioning and the squeals of the rails were amplified as they made their way through the catacombs that made up the right of way.

“It’s not even dark here,” said Fluttershy.

“Well, it is in the tunnel, but the cars themselves are lit, and there’s a headlight in front so they can see what’s ahead of them.”

“We should thank the human who’s pulling us along in the dark.”

Derpy laughed. “The electricity magic doesn’t need a human out front either.”

“Oh.”

When the next stop arrived, Karyn got up and the two pegasi followed her out into the station.

“All right, just a little more and we’ll see the city.”

“I think it’s better like this,” said Derpy. “Rather than flying in and coming up on it gradually.”

They climbed the stairs to street level, and, after they had cleared from the staircase so that others could use it, stood by a building and pointed at the downtown areas.

“Well, Fluttershy, what do you think?” Derpy had spoken proudly, as if she was not only a resident of the universe that contained the city, but the owner of real estate therein.

There was no response.

“Fluttershy?” said Karyn.

It was several seconds before they finally heard the soft voice. “It’s so big.”

“It’s really not that much bigger than Canterlot.”

“But Canterlot is different. All the buildings are ornamented and fancy, and Canterlot Castle is built into the side of a mountain. This is all just…wow! Look at that black building. What’s it even made of?”

Karyn couldn’t follow where Fluttershy was pointing, but from the direction that her voice came from and where it was muffled, she traced it to the tall black building in the center of the city.

“It’s supported by concrete and metal, but the part you’re seeing is glass.”

“Black glass? Amazing.”

“It’s tinted. From the inside you can see out.”

That set off another minute or so of silence. Karyn looked out at the city. She had been there many times before, but for the first time she considered it as would a denizen of another world. It was a modest city, certainly not one that anyone would compare to New York, or London, or Paris, or Tokyo. She could count the numbers of true skyscrapers on both her hands. But still, as much as she was impressed by a pony who could levitate an object or move a cloud, Fluttershy was right to be impressed by a tall building.

“Can…can we go on top of it?”

“What, the building?”

“Yes, please.” Fluttershy sounded the way she had when talking about the garden during the Grand Galloping Gala.

“I don’t know if we can go to that building specifically, but I believe that the taller one there has an observation deck.”

Derpy cut in. “You want to go to a tall building? I thought you were afraid of heights.”

“I’m not afraid of heights, I just not in love with them like so many other pegasi are. They like the flying and the clouds and going higher than even the birds can. It’s more that I’m just so in love with the world on the ground that I live there. But here, here I want to stand on top there and just take in all of the city at once.”

“All right, if that’s what you want to do, it’s your day. Karyn, you have no problems with that?”

“Not me. I’m only scared of heights when I can fall from them. The observation deck is full of railings and guards.”

They walked through the city to the tall building Karyn mentioned, and indeed they did have an observation deck, but it was not free. Karyn passed over her gift card and waited while the cashier fumbled with the odd payment method. But at last she was signaled through.

“Now, Derpy will know this more than you, Fluttershy, but a lot of times I feel guilty about not paying for her when we go out. But in this case, I think ten dollars for a ticket to just stand on a railing is too much, so I’m fine with letting you come with for free.”

Derpy warned Fluttershy about the elevator, and how it would be necessary to stay hovering in the upper half, keeping pace with the rising box so that she didn’t bump into anyone. “Just hold onto my hoof, if that doesn’t feel too weird. Once we’re up, you can see the city as you want.”

The car wasn’t that crowded, and Fluttershy could have dipped if she had to, but Karyn was happy to hear Derpy enforcing protocol. The elevator opened, and they raced out to the edge of the deck.

Karyn had lived in the area most of her life, and on the campus for over three years, and so she had a good picture of the map in her head. But to see it from above, to watch cars and people move like cells through a capillary gave her a different perspective.

Derpy was more nonplussed. She was used to an overhead view of the world, and though she didn’t live with the buildings and roads, she enjoyed the orderly operation of a city that she visited. She smiled placidly with contentment.

Fluttershy, though, had the strongest reaction. Karyn could hear her heavy breathing and could tell that it wasn’t from fear. Even if she wasn’t afraid of heights, she didn’t spend as much time in the air as Derpy did, and never above a bustling metropolis, even a small one. The sheer movement was giving her a sensory overload, and she said in a whisper that was nearly carried away on the wind, “The lights.”

“Beg pardon?” said Derpy.

“The lights! The movement, the buildings, everything! Whoever the princess who rules this city is, she must be amazing.”

Karyn chuckled. “No princess lives here. This isn’t even a capital like Canterlot is.”

“It’s not? What’s it all for then?”

That caught Karyn a little. “It doesn’t have a strict purpose the way a capital city would, or the way that Cloudsdale is the weather center for all Equestria. Cities on Earth used to be like that. They’d be major ports on key waterways or they’d be built around some important asset like when they discovered gold in California, but today cities, all the major ones, are a mix of financial interests, commercial businesses, tourism, and local culture.”

Fluttershy went back to looking around. All of the activity coalesced in her vision. She brought Karyn back closer to the building wall where the wind wasn’t so bad.

“I understand now. I once thought that you were only a pet, just a critter like all the others I work with. But now I see how wrong I was.”

Karyn gave a warm smile, glad to have that old misconception taken care of. “It’s all right, now that you see—“

“Humans really are the superior race!”

“Whoa! Let’s not go crazy here. Words like ‘superior race’ carry a lot of heavy implications and drag up some bad memories from the past.”

She tried to keep her voice down, but counted on the Bluetooth disguise to hold up. Fluttershy was having none of it though. “No, it’s true! Ponies could never build a city this grand, or even any city where it wasn’t all about one thing. Humans have all their technology and science, really complicated things that even the smartest of the unicorn scholars couldn’t grasp. I can see why Lyra was so enamored of you. When I get back home, I’m going to tell everypony how great humans are and how ponies should accept their place as second-best.”

Karyn ground her teeth. If anything, this was worse than Fluttershy’s assumed superiority. “Come on, let’s head back down so we can talk about this. Unless you’d rather look at the city some more?”

“Whatever you say, Karyn. I’ve learned that I should listen to what humans tell me to do.”

“Ugh. Derpy, help me out here.”

There was no response other than a coughing hiss. Derpy was too busy laughing to help out.

They made their way back to the elevator. Because it was still early and because most people were heading up rather than going down, they had the car to themselves this time.

“Now listen, Fluttershy,” said Karyn.

“Of course, anything you have to say I want to hear.”

“Stop it. You have to get this idea about superiority out of your head. We’re just different.”

“Oh! I just realized!” Fluttershy’s voice moved, and it gave away the non sequitur. “This is why humans have ponies to pull their carts and lift their heavy burdens. They’ve subjugated them completely.”

Finally Derpy found her voice. “No, Fluttershy. The ponies here aren’t like the ponies back in Equestria. They can’t talk at all. They’re more like the beasts of the Everfree Forest than like we are.”

“How do you know? I think it’s just because humans are that much smarter. Karyn, do you think you would ever let me pull a cart for you? I know I’m not strong like an Earth pony, but I’d do my best.”

Before Karyn could say anything else, the elevator returned to the ground floor, and she couldn’t express herself with the volume she would need for the sentiments she was feeling.

When they left the building, Karyn wanted to find a spot that was secluded enough for a conversation, but not so hidden that the unsavory elements of human society would go there—and she contemplated showing some of those people to Fluttershy just to shake her out of her newfound human-worship.

Instead, she settled for a nearby park that covered half the city block. Not large, but few people were there, and if she kept her hand to her ear, Karyn could speak loudly.

“Now, Fluttershy, you’ve got to stop thinking like this.”

“All right. How should I think?”

“Think for yourself!”

Fluttershy gave a hesitant beginning, but Derpy cut in. “Yeah, really. This isn’t a joke anymore. You really need to stop worrying so much about species and just treat everypony and every human as an individual.

“So, yes, it’s great that humans were able to build this city, but they also can’t do any magic or fly or change the weather. And you can do those things.”

“I can’t do magic.”

“That’s not what I meant. I changed thoughts in the middle of my sentence. Don’t change the subject. The point is that there are certain advantages to being a pony and certain advantages to being a human. It’s all of our responsibilities—as individuals—to make friends with other individuals and not classify anyone into a group just because they happen to belong to that group.” Derpy stuttered. “All right, that might not make a lot of sense either. Karyn, help me out here.”

“I don’t know if I can. We’ve both said everything that needs to be said. If Fluttershy really can’t understand why it’s neither the case that I’m a pet nor that she’s supposed to be a dray pony who pulls carts, then I’m not sure I can explain things any better. Fluttershy, instead of being invisible yourself, try to picture if I were invisible. How would you think of me?”

That again caught Fluttershy short. “You’re a very nice person. We had a few bumps the first time we’ve met, but I have nothing against you now.”

“You just said something important.” Karyn couldn’t help pointing her finger. “A nice person. Even you use that word to encompass both humans and ponies. And buffalo and griffons and every other creature that’s intelligent, as opposed to the critters or animals that you take care of. Some of them are different too. Beavers build dams that rival ours. Insects can make tunnels that, on their scale, are far better than this city. Animals like the falcon can outfly the fastest pegasi. But that doesn’t mean that you treat them as superior.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Fluttershy said thoughtfully.

Derpy decided that it was time to double-team her. “I think you’re far too concerned with status. I worry about that too. I worry about how other ponies see me, but with you it’s different. It’s more like you just want to know where everything stands. You’re shy, and that’s fine, but more than that you worry about what can go wrong when things change. If you do that, though, you miss when things go right.

“Look at this city, not as something to compare to our home, but imagine if we combined them, how awesome things would be.”

“You’re right.”

Karyn and Derpy both let out a held-in breath, but then tensed up again in case Fluttershy decided to qualify her statement in some way.

Before she could, Karyn said, “Listen, it’s not a big life revelation. You probably won’t see a lot of humans around Equestria, so you don’t have to think about us all the time. Just that when you do, you know, keep it cool.”

“I…I’ll try.”

“All right. Come on, let’s go back home.”

They caught a train at a different station, one that was fully above ground. Once back in Karyn’s apartment, they set good-bye to Fluttershy.

“And remember,” Karyn said, “think about what I told you. We’re all equals.”

“I still don’t know if ponies and humans are, but I’m sure that you’re my equal.” Fluttershy took her spell and went back to Equestria, Derpy hanging back.

“I think we’re going to want to make this a tradition,” said Derpy.

“You mean messing up Fluttershy’s perspective on humans and then trying to repair it the best we can?”

“No, I mean letting whoever is our guest go back to Equestria first, so that we can take a few minutes and reflect on how it went.”

Karyn flopped down on the bed. “Agreed. I don’t think this went quite as bad as last time, in that we didn’t have any chance to be found out, but still, Fluttershy is a tough pony to deal with.”

Derpy had a laugh. “She’s really much more level-headed once you get to know her. At least, that’s how it was for me. She’s just the kind who has a hard time with initial meetings. She’s like a seed that takes a long time to grow, but when it does you get the nicest flowers.”

“That makes sense, kind of, but I’m still glad that it’s you who’s my best friend and not her. She? Her? Fluttershy.”

“Aww. Thank you. Anyway, next week I’ll try to get somepony who isn’t such a burden.”

“Whoever you get, so long as you’re here, we’ll make it fun.”

Author's Note

What lucky pony will be joining our heroines next week?

"I’m sure pleased you let me come along with you to visit that land of yours. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy told me about what a great time they had, and I’ll be excited to be joining the club.”

Karyn smiled politely, and Derpy took her meaning. “We’re happy to have you along too, but we’re just hoping that this week is a little more uneventful.”

“I heard about what Rainbow Dash pulled.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn held her place in the driver’s seat while Derpy explained. It went over Karyn’s head as she talked about how to position her tail and how to slouch down in the bucket seat.

“I get it! It’s just like how Lyra sits.”

“Yes,” said Derpy, “But it’s easier said than done. You’ve got to stick out your belly and let it balance out your weight.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Why did that waitress ask if you were a chicken?”

That and much more will be answered next week!

94: As Equestrian as Derple Pie

Derpy bounced up and down, marching in place as her hooves made and lost contact with the ground and her wings flapped in time.

“You’re excited today.”

“I am. Had a good week at work and I’m just full of energy for whatever reason. Looking forward to getting back to Equestria so we can pick up this week’s guest.”

Karyn shouldered her purse and started bouncing along with Derpy. “Well, I’m in a good mood too.”

“Why’s that?”

“In addition to still having most of the money left on the gift card from last week, I’ve been able to replenish it, almost.”

That brought Derpy to a stop. “How did you do that? Are you earning money some way?”

“Not strictly speaking, no. What I have been doing is following up with my sell-my-stuff project. Nobody bought the stuff we sent, but I have added some books and CDs and such, and someone bought a pair of books from me.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! But wait, did that offset the cost of the shipping?”

“Completely,” said Karyn, but she turned away as she did.

“For everything you shipped?”

“No. For just the books and CDs. But a little bit extra, so that we can have fun. And if we keep pace with the gift card, maybe use it once or twice more.”

Derpy was noncommittal, but she circled around and knelt so that Karyn could get on her back.

When they made it to Equestria, Derpy had to swing around once again, as Sweet Apple Acres was in the opposite direction from the edge of town where they usually went. Just the change in their usual practice made Karyn take note, and she prepared herself mentally to be a good hostess.

Applejack was all packed and ready to go when they landed at the farm. She waved as Derpy descended and came to a stop.

“Howdy, Karyn. I’m sure pleased you let me come along with you to visit that land of yours. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy told me about what a great time they had, and I’ll be excited to be joining the club.”

Karyn smiled politely, and Derpy took her meaning. “We’re happy to have you along too, but we’re just hoping that this week is a little more uneventful.”

“I heard about what Rainbow Dash pulled.”

“Honestly,” said Karyn, “I think we had a rougher time of it last week with Fluttershy. Avoiding being spotted with Derpy is something I’m used to, but consoling a pegasus who wants to be subservient to humans was too weird.”

Derpy nodded. “It was also more recent, so the memory of exactly how bad Rainbow’s tearing through the storm was may have faded.”

“There’s that.”

Applejack pulled her hat down over her muzzle to cover up the grin she had at the two friends’ banter. “Well, I for one don’t want to give you any trouble whatsoever. If I’m being ornery or something, just give me a kick in the flank and I’ll mind you.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that. You seem like a real down-to-earth pony.”

Derpy eyed the duplicate saddlebag that Fluttershy had passed on to Applejack. “In one sense, though, she really is down to Earth. Applejack will be the first pony on Earth who can’t fly, and that means we’re going to have to find a way to get her high enough up to deal with that.”

“That’s right. Did you look into any way to do that? Or are we just going up to the town hall and hoping for the best?”

“I think that is what I planned to do. But that’s another reason that Applejack is a good pony to be the first non-pegasus.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Applejack. Karyn and Derpy explained about the difference in position from Earth to Equestria, and how a pegasus in the air would land on the ground when she jumped universes.

“Now, let’s say the worst happens.” Derpy started drawing a diagram on the ground. “And AJ, you transport right below ground, completely surrounded by rock. We’re counting on your strength to kick out of there and reactivate the spell so you can return safely to Equestria. Come to think of it, maybe we should have Big Macintosh test it first.”

“No way. I am not lettin’ my brother take a risk on account of I’m a coward. I’ll dive into that rock if I have to.”

“Well, it’s a worst-case scenario. Let’s go down to town hall and explain what we need it for.”

The three of them marched into the center of town. Mayor Mare was not present at the hall, and in fact the caretaker had no idea whether or not it was permitted for them to use it. But, he pointed out, the town hall, while technically the tallest building in town, only held the title because of the spire. The clock tower had the higher accessible area.

When they went to that building, it was open and nopony blocked their path to climb up. Once there, Karyn thought further about strategy.

“All right, here’s what we’ll do. Applejack, you use the spell and, if you have to, try to come back. Once you do, Derpy and I will fly up to the height we usually transition from, and we’ll go in. Hopefully we’ll spot you and all will be well. But if we don’t, we’ll try to dig straight down and save you. Don’t forget to use the invisibility spell once you get there.”

“Fair enough. I’m trying it out now.”

Applejack held out the spell, took a deep breath, and turned her hoof. Karyn and Derpy watched her vanish with the rush of air that always accompanied such transfers, and held still for a few seconds. When she did not return, Karyn mounted quickly and Derpy took to the sky.

Once on Earth, Derpy concealed herself and looked down, but Applejack was just standing there. “She did forget after all.”

“Maybe. Let’s head down and see. If nothing else, so long as no one sees her cutie mark, she’s the closest to a normal pony someone might see. It’s just weird that she’s wearing a hat.”

They nose-dived down to where Applejack was standing, but before either could chide her for still being visible, they saw the problem. Most of her looked normal, but the bottom few inches of each hoof was stuck in the dirt.

“Are you all right?” asked Derpy.

“Yep. Just give me a minute here. There we go.” As she said it, her back legs kicked out and found purchase on the ground, then her front legs went forward, spraying dirt everywhere.

“Sorry about that,” said Karyn. “I guess it wasn’t high enough.”

“No call to apologize. It ain’t your fault where your world is. But let’s take care of this for the future.” She flipped open the saddlebag and got the invisibility spell before either Karyn or Derpy could mention it. Then she started stomping the ground down. It was right at the back of Gayle’s yard where the lawn came to an end and bare earth ran up to the property line. Having it this way kept it from people’s eyes but still allowed the lawn to be mowed easier.

Finally it was all down to the level where the original holes that Applejack’s hooves had made were no longer distinct from the rest of the ground. “Thank you,” said Karyn.

“No sweat. Now anypony can come who wants, but I might put down a carpet or something if you’re inviting Rarity.”

“Good point. Why don’t you come inside and you can wash your hooves.”

“Nah. I’ve gone around with dirty hooves plenty of times.”

Derpy gave a little cough, hoping to remind Applejack that she was a guest and should take suggestions like that, but once she clapped the dirt off her hooves such that no more was coming off, Karyn relented. “All right,” she said. “Everypony in the car. Derpy, do you mind taking the back seat?”

“Not at all. But we’re not taking the light rail this week?”

“The part of town I want to go to doesn’t have a station near it. The closest one is five miles away. And while you could fly that and AJ might walk it, I don’t want to, and I don’t want to ride one of you all that way either. I know where there’s free parking, so it’s not too much of a hassle.”

Derpy opened the car door. “Let me just show Applejack how to sit.”

Karyn held her place in the driver’s seat while Derpy explained. It went over Karyn’s head as she talked about how to position her tail and how to slouch down in the bucket seat.

“I get it! It’s just like how Lyra sits.”

“Yes,” said Derpy, “But it’s easier said than done. You’ve got to stick out your belly and let it balance out your weight.”

With the ponies invisible, Karyn couldn’t tell how well they were getting along, but Applejack said, “If it ain’t perfect, it’s no big deal. I can take a little soreness.”

“All right. It’s up to you.” Derpy got in the back seat, and Karyn started the engine.

“Hold the harvest,” AJ said. “Who’s pulling this cart anyway?”

“It doesn’t get pulled,” Derpy said from the back. “Karyn, take us out on the road and I’ll try to explain on the way over.”

Karyn backed out of the driveway and listened to Derpy run down the basics of the way a car ran, and recognized some of her own words from years past when she was practicing to take her driver’s test. It amazed her how the motions that had been so difficult back then were now seared into her muscle memory.

“That’s incredible.” Applejack’s voice darted around as she looked throughout the car. “I gotta get me one of these for the orchard. Course, what I’d like is if it actually had a cart attachment, but I could rig that.”

Karyn got a mental image of Applejack in a pickup. “We have vehicles like that, but powering it would be a problem. I don’t think you have oil refineries in Equestria. You might not even have oil.”

“That’s a good point.”

“Maybe you can design one to run on unicorn magic.”

Applejack scoffed. “Unicorn magic ain’t much good for pure power and endurance. Precision, yep. If I wanted to get all the seeds out of an apple without slicing it, then I’d ask for a unicorn. But for lifting and hauling, good old muscles can do the trick.”

They drove on for a while, then Derpy said, “So where are we going anyway?”

“I figured we’d relax and have a meal. There’s a place I know that makes good desserts.”

“Sounds good to me.” Karyn could hear that Derpy’s heart wasn’t in it, and could hear that she still lamented being on a diet. Applejack had no such reservations.

“Darn tootin! I’ll show you all that this Apple’s got plenty of appetite.”

“I hope they have the kind of desserts you like.”

“I checked the menu online,” said Karyn. “They have an apple cobbler and a couple of other fruit-based desserts. This place isn’t a franchise, but they’ve got a couple of locations, and I have a vague memory of eating there once many years ago and liking it.”

They rode on to the restaurant. It was themed to summer and the beach, which only made Karyn regret more the long and cold winter. Karyn went in and asked for a table.

“Could I have one for four, though? You don’t look crowded.”

The hostess was slightly bemused, but brought Karyn to a square table anyway. The restaurant was indeed nearly empty and there would be no need for the waiter or waitress to come near the table. The only awkwardness would be ordering three of everything.

The waitress did bring water, and that helped out the table. Karyn decided that the best way to maintain the illusion would be to order two large salads. “I’m a little hungry today.”

“Chicken?”

“No thank you.”

She wrote it down and left Karyn alone with the ponies. It wasn’t exactly polite for her to wear her Bluetooth, but she kept conversation quiet.

“Can’t we skip right to the dessert?” asked Derpy.

“That would just be too weird. The only thing that bothers me is that she probably thinks I’ll be a bad tipper. Generally people who only order salad don’t tip well. I will, though.”

Applejack leaned over the table. “Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Why did that waitress ask if you were a chicken?”

Karyn had to suppress the volume on her laugh. “No, she was asking if I wanted chicken on the salad.”

Applejack was silent for a moment. Derpy followed her line of reasoning, hearing the words as a pony would. Before she could interrupt, Applejack said, “Oh, that’s right. Some humans are carnivores.”

“That’s it,” said Derpy. “Most of them like Karyn are vegetarians, but there are some that eat meat.”

“You’ve got it wrong.” Karyn shook her head. “I’m in the minority. It’s more humans that eat mean than don’t.”

“Really?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” said Applejack. “You seem so knowledgeable about Earth.”

“Well, I read a lot of stuff on the Internet, but I guess I don’t pay attention to statistics and things. Or else I didn’t want to know.”

The waitress came by with the salads, and there was a ritual of cracking the pepper over it before she left them alone to tuck in and resume conversation.

“You two eat well,” said Karyn. “I’m waiting for the dessert mostly, and I could come back here at any time.”

“Among the other meat-eaters.”

“Problem, Derpy?”

Derpy put down her fork. “I really don’t know how to feel about it. I just never thought about humans eating meat. I know Lyra’s OK with it, and I know you don’t, and I think that’s important to me.”

Karyn didn’t know how to respond, but Applejack saved her the need. “I can understand what you mean, but every animal’s got to live by their own code. Now, I ain’t being like Fluttershy, calling humans critters, but a dragon or a timberwolf will eat an animal if given the chance. It’s just their nature. If humans farm and eat their livestock, that’s just what they do. Can’t nopony tell them different.”

“I guess.”

Karyn was still somewhat at a loss for words, but fortunately the waitress came back. “Everything all right here?”

“Yes, but I’d like to put in for desert. Could we—er, could I have three apple cobblers, please?”

“Three apple cobblers? Would you like a box as well?”

“You’ve got it,” said Karyn with a smile. Alone again, she said, “We can all agree on eating that, right?”

“Exactly,” said Derpy, her spirits lifted. “Just so long as the apples pass the test.”

They waited eagerly, and when the desserts arrived Karyn surreptitiously closed the box and put it in her purse. “Now it looks like I’m not being a glutton. Which I’m not. Let’s all dig in.”

They all began eating, but Derpy and Karyn held their forks waiting for Applejack’s verdict.

“Well,” she said. “The cinnamon and sugar sure are good.”

Derpy got exasperated. “But the apples?!”

“They work. Not as good as mine, and nowhere near the zap apples, but they’ll do you. Where do they get ‘em? Any chance I can see an orchard?”

Karyn sipped her water. “That’s a tall order. I don’t even think these apples are locally grown.”

“Then how’d they get here?”

“We do a lot of amazing things with food storage, preservation, and high-speed long-distance transport. But if you just want to see fresh apples, I can take you to a grocery store.”

“OK. Soon as I finish,” said Applejack. “Not that I’m in a rush. This is mighty tasty.”

They finished up and paid. True to her word, Karyn left a big tip, which she hoped was a surprise to the waitress after seeing that a gift card was to be used as well.

The supermarket was not really within walking distance, but it was in the direction they had parked and just a little beyond, so the walk back would be easier. It also wasn’t Karyn’s preferred supermarket, but it was clean enough and she expected the produce to be of good quality. It was right where they came in and she led them past the corn and vegetables to the fruit.

“Here you go. All the fruit we have.”

“There sure is a lot of it,” said Applejack.

“Well, that’s the business model for this kind of store. They buy fresh from all over and package them together so that we don’t have to go all over. There are a few farmer’s markets like what you have in Ponyville, but most people get food from these places.”

“I was actually talking more about the variety. Look at all these. Names like Pink Lady and Gala and…hey, there’s even one called Braeburn! Won’t he be tickled pink when I tell him? And…Macintosh? Granny Smith? Karyn, why are all your apples named after my family?”

Karyn didn’t know how to respond to that, but Derpy stepped in. “It might actually be the other way around. Our world and the Human world have a lot of crossover between them. They think that we’re a fiction story, and if you look at it from that perspective, all of these apples got their own name and your family names were chosen because they match.”

“I don’t know that I like that very much. And I certainly didn’t hear about it. Big Macintosh ain’t named after nothing; he’s just Big Mac, you know? Hey, are there any named after me?”

“Not a type like these,” said Karyn, “but there is a drink called that. It’s very alcoholic, if I remember correctly. Speaking of which, settle a point. Is the cider you make on your farm hard cider?”

“It ain’t easy. But I’m still stuck on this. You’re telling me that I’m some drink?”

Derpy pulled her away from the apples. “No, you’re you. Having a name in another world doesn’t change that. We all look different when viewed from outside, but nopony can see what you’ve got in your heart.”

“That’s really insightful, Derpy,” said Karyn. “Now, are we buying some of these, or do you just want to look?”

Applejack thought for a bit. “Would it be real expensive if I got one of all the ones with an Apple name?”

“I think we can swing that.”

Karyn took several bags and filled them. She was thankful for the self-checkout, since in the first place, she would have a difficult time explaining why she needed so many apples of differing types, and in the second, it gave the ponies more room to stand around without being cramped. Once they paid, they headed back to the car.

“Hmph.”

“What’s wrong, AJ?”

“Well, they all smell so good, and I can’t eat ‘em!”

“Eat them and save the seeds,” said Derpy. “You can plant them and have the only Macintosh tree in Equestria.”

A long-forgotten fact entered Karyn’s mind. “Actually, it doesn’t work that way. You need different seeds to grow the trees that all these apples grow on than the ones they produce. I don’t know what would grow if you planted those, but it wouldn’t be the same kind as what you’re eating.”

“And you say this world doesn’t have any magic.”

“We don’t! You probably have a spell that could preserve or duplicate them, if you can find a unicorn who can cast it, and we can’t do that.”

Applejack looked at the bags. “But that still doesn’t help me now.”

Karyn drove home. She walked to the back where AJ had tamped down the ground. “If you go back from here, you should be right where you started. Thanks for making a landing spot.”

“Thank you for having me as a guest. It was a great time.” She vanished, and what she did with the apples from Earth neither Derpy nor Karyn ever found out.

Derpy and Karyn returned to her room. “Well, we got the nice, calm day that we were hoping for,” Derpy said.

“Yes. Applejack is exactly the kind of pony I want to have. Reliable and no-nonsense.”

“Does that mean that you don’t want to have me anymore? I’m exactly the opposite of reliable, and I’m all nonsense.”

Karyn stomped her foot. “Don’t say things like that! You’re perfectly sensible.”

“No, I’m all nonsense, but in a good way. Like you said, it’s about what’s inside that counts.”

“You said that.”

“See, completely nonsensical.”

Karyn’s dour expression broke. “I have no way to argue with that. Thanks for coming over. Who have we got lined up for next week?”

“I haven’t chosen anypony specifically. Maybe we’ll just have another you-and-me day.”

“We could do that. We’ll have to see what comes.”

Derpy smiled and went home.

Author's Note

Coming next week!

“Maybe that’s something you can introduce when you’re a big-name tech person.” Derpy stretched her wings and flew around the room, happy to have the space to do it. “So what do we do till he comes?”

“We wait.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Speaking of school,” she said.

“Were we?”

“Were we what?”

“Speaking of school.”

“Yes, when you asked about Dinky.”

Karyn waved her hand to indicate that Derpy should continue.

“How is yours?”

Come back then and see how much I can stretch doing nothing into a chapter!

95: Derple Guy

Derpy arrived at Karyn’s apartment and let herself in the window. She was grateful that the weather was finally turning to where Karyn could leave it open a crack and Derpy didn’t need her to unlock it. That day, it was particularly fortunate as Karyn was not in either of her usual spots, at the computer or in the kitchen. Derpy concluded that she was probably sleeping in again and went to confirm this, but when she poked her head into the bedroom, she saw the bed made with no room for a sleeping figure under it.

Indeed, the apartment was uncharacteristically well taken-care-of, and Derpy nodded in silent approval. But where was Karyn?

The sound of a rapping at the window brought Derpy back to it, but looking outside she saw nothing. It was her ears that gave her the first clue. “Psst! Derpy, up here!”

She rotated in place to see Karyn hanging out of the upstairs window. “Hey! What are you doing?”

“Come around to the front door.”

Derpy went back the way she came and flew around to the staircase in the front. Before she could knock, Karyn opened up and let her in to the double-height room that was Gayle’s art studio.

“Is it all right?” Derpy asked.

“Yeah, we’re the only ones here. I’m so glad you’re here finally. I’ve really needed someone to talk to.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing too big, but the internet has been out all weekend, and I’ve just been going crazy. I didn’t realize how much I depend on it.” Karyn led her in to a breakfast nook off to the left where they could sit.

“What do you mean, out? Can’t you fix it?”

“It has something to do with the provider.”

“Oh,” said Derpy. “But why are you in the big room?”

“Well, a few days ago, Gayle asked me if I could do her a big favor.”

A Few Days Ago

“Karyn, could you do me a big favor?” asked Gayle.

“What is it?” Karyn had been about to head out to class.

“Well, you know I called for the cable to be repaired on Sunday, right? A chance to show some of my art and maybe sell some pieces came up. Some big rich honcho saw something of mine and wants me to bring more. It’s not a chance I can miss. I’m sure you want the internet fixed just as much as I do. Could I ask you to wait for the guy and let him in?”

“Oh. Sure, yeah, I can do that. Of course your show is more important.”

Gayle breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. It’s the usual thing where they’ll be there between nine and three. I’ll leave the front door open and you can wait in my apartment since he won’t know to come to the side. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Um, unless you’ve got something to fix the internet?” She extended her finger and made a zapping motion.”

“Ha, no. I’m learning technology, but I can’t just zap it.”

“Right, it’s probably one of those things where magic and tech don’t mix.”

***

“Anyway, that’s why we’re in here?”

“What do you mean, that’s why?” asked Derpy. “All you said was that she asked you for a favor, then you assumed I knew the rest.”

“Oh. That was weird. I remembered it all and thought I was telling it. Anyway, the point is that we’re waiting for the cable guy.”

“I see. When’s he coming?”

Their voices echoed throughout the cavernous room, and with Derpy visible Karyn was glad for once to be able to talk to her friend without any concealment. “He’s supposed to be here between nine and three.”

“What?! That’s a big window!”

“Well, there’s a reason for it…unless you’re talking about where the north light comes in?”

Derpy laughed. “No, I mean, why can’t they just give you an appointment for a specific time?”

Karyn sat up straight and spoke in the voice she reserved for oral presentations in class. “They don’t know how many service calls they’re going to have to make in a given day. There might be an emergency like a downed line where it’s affecting a hundred people instead of just one. So they give everyone that window of time, and then when the day comes, they plan out the best route for each service technician. If they gave out timed appointments, they could wind up sending someone all the way east, then all the way west, then all the way east again.

“What bothers me isn’t the lack of appointments. It’s the fact that, once they know which tech you’re getting, they can’t just give you tracking information on where he is and where you are on the list. They do that with a pizza delivery, so why can’t they do it with cable service? Heck, you can even go on an airline’s website and see where a given flight is and when it’s supposed to land. The trucks could all have GPS trackers and make the position public. I wouldn’t complain even if I was last on the list because I would know.”

“Maybe that’s something you can introduce when you’re a big-name tech person.” Derpy stretched her wings and flew around the room, happy to have the space to do it. “So what do we do till he comes?”

“We wait.”

With nothing else to do, they sat around the apartment. After a few minutes, Karyn said, “How’s Dinky?”

“Good! Good. I still hear from her every week, and she hasn’t mentioned going around with any other stage magicians. She’s back in school. Princess Celestia is so patient with her.”

“Do you still get reports from the princess?”

“Not directly,” said Derpy. “I should probably set up another conference with her, but I’m just so busy, you know?”

“I think that she might be a little busy as well.”

“Oh, good point.”

Karyn thought of something. “How do you pay for Dinky’s schooling? Do you pay for it yourself, or does it come out of the treasury?”

“I don’t pay specifically. I know there are some wealthy ponies who like to give endowments, or sponsor some particular student, but when that happens Princess Celestia doesn’t assign the money any particular way. She just spreads it throughout the school. And of course the parts that she teaches, she doesn’t have to pay for. It would be silly for her to pay herself.”

“That’s a monarchy thing. Here, a school president or chancellor or whatever has to have a distinct salary for accounting purposes."

Derpy nodded, and took some time to digest Karyn’s view. At last she said, “And how’s your family?”

“Mom and Dad? Pretty much the same. Still working hard. If I have an issue with them…well, never mind.”

“No, come on, tell me. We have nothing better to do.”

Karyn resigned herself. “All right. See, when I was in high school, my folks would always be pushing me to study harder and apply for colleges and such. I think them pushing me so hard was why I pushed back and planned not to go, just to stay with Mike.” She watched Derpy’s face for a reaction to her old nemesis, but there was little. “Once everything fell apart and I had to really buckle down, my parents and I reached a kind of equilibrium. But now that we’re getting to my third year, they’re starting to push again, this time to start looking for jobs, or at least internships.”

“And you don’t want to?”

“I just really want to get some stability in my life.” That brought on another conversational lull, until Karyn decided that it was her turn. “How the kitty cat?”

“Muffinhead? Still a ball of energy. Thankfully he hasn’t shown any more desire to be a father. He and Opal are happily separated and liking it. I see some of the kittens from time to time. They’re still at that stage where they’re not quite cats yet, all that kitteny softness and curiosity without being cynical.

“He does eat a ton.”

“Speaking of which, I’m really hungry. I skipped breakfast because I was eager to get up here.” As if she had triggered it, Karyn’s stomach growled.

“Didn’t Gayle say you could help yourself to what was in the fridge?”

“Yes…wait, that was in my flashback! How did you know that?!”

Before Derpy could answer, she was racing for the kitchen. The refrigerator that Gayle owned was a fancy one complete with fake wood paneling. The whole kitchen was a mishmash of décor, but the fridge could have come from an expensive house. Derpy pulled it open. “Oh,” she said.

“What, ‘Oh’?”

“I don’t think Gayle’s a vegetarian.”

“Oh.”

The fridge was indeed laid out with lots of cold cuts and ready-to-heat meat-based meals. Karyn shut the door and headed back. “I just figured an artist would be a hippie-type who wouldn’t eat like that. Who knew?”

“So what do you think?”

“Maybe we can run out quick for breakfast? The guy probably won’t come while we’re out.”

Derpy reared back and adopted a shocked expression. “Of course he will! Don’t you understand how things work? If there’s an unknown time of arrival for someone, and you leave, that will automatically be the time that that person comes!”

“I don’t think it works that way. Wherever he is, that’s where he is.”

“No. Right now we’re hanging between two quantum universes. If you go out that door, a wave will perpetuate back in time to arrange his route such that he will come to the door as soon as you are out of range. If we stay here, the wave will set him up so that he won’t come during the specific time that it would take you to return.”

Karyn shook her head, but at the same time she was curious. Derpy was from a world of magic. For all she knew, estimates like that might have an actual basis in science, or at least in a way that could be studied. “Would it work if I went out and left you here to watch?”

“Only if I were able to talk to the guy. If you trust me to do that, go ahead.”

“Why don’t we just order in?”

They agreed that it was the best course of action, but she didn’t know of any order-in breakfast places. “What if,” said Derpy, “I went out instead. Are there any places where they give you the food without looking at you?”

“I don’t think so. What’s going to happen is that we’ll keep dithering about it for long enough that breakfast time will end, and we can just get pizza or something.”

They sat back down at the table, and Karyn drummed her fingers as an ancient grandfather clock ticked away the minutes. Derpy had no fingers to drum, so she drummed her feathers instead.

“Speaking of school,” she said.

“Were we?”

“Were we what?”

“Speaking of school.”

“Yes, when you asked about Dinky.”

Karyn waved her hand to indicate that Derpy should continue.

“How is yours?”

“My classes? In and of themselves they’re good. I still like the English one best. The professor knows I’m an IT student taking it as an elective, so he’s not too hard on me. All his wrath goes to the English majors.”

“I guess that’s fair,” said Derpy, “if you’ve had to take the attention of your IT professors when the English students get off light.”

“Most of them don’t bother to take IT classes for electives. I don’t even know what they do with those. Maybe they look for the really easy pseudo-classes.”

“Like what?”

Karyn thought of newspaper articles she had read, and she wanted to bring one up to read, but of course she had no internet. “They always talk about classes in video game appreciation or the study of Harry Potter or The Simpsons as examples of how higher education has gone downhill. Maybe some school will run a class on Equestria someday.”

“But that wouldn’t be a frivolous class, since we’re genuinely a different culture that is worthy of study.”

“You have a point.”

Once more they drifted into blank stares and the semi-sleep that accompanied the boring day. When the sound of a passing car jerked Karyn out of reverie, she tried to say something to keep awake.

“So how’s work been? If you can ask about school, I can ask about work.”

“Well, this is just my opinion—not even an opinion, more of an evaluation—but I think there’s gotten to be more mail on a day-to-day basis. But there aren’t more ponies getting the mail. It seems to me that that’s a good thing. If ponies are mailing more, the post office will make more money, but if there aren’t any new ones, then we don’t need that many more carriers. It just means a heavier bag for me.”

“That’s really insightful,” said Karyn.

“You have a lot of time to think when you’re carrying. At least I do.”

“Maybe that means they can afford raises. You should ask Mr. Mintsuguar for one.”

Derpy shook her head. “I couldn’t do that. It’s just so much easier to cut costs down to what I’m earning.”

To Karyn’s mind, this was a sign of cowardice, but she didn’t want to say anything that harsh. It was another one of their differences. Karyn had no fear of being turned down, whereas Derpy was a shier pony.

“It’s been getting warmer.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy sat up. “Each time I come. You guys don’t wrap up winter, you do it gradually. But I’ve been noticing each week that we’re breaking out of the cold.”

“That’s true. It would be nice if we could point to one particular snowfall as the last of the season, but there’s no way to know. I’ve seen years where it’s snowed all the way in late April.”

“Wow.”

“I know, right.”

Just at these platitudes promised to bring the conversation to a halt once more, the sound of chimes echoed throughout the spacious room. Karyn recognized the chime from Big Ben, but she hadn’t realized that it was Gayle’s doorbell sound. “Ah! That must be the guy. Finally.” She raced to the door, but instead saw a young man in a bright red uniform.

“Got your pizza,” he said.

“Pizza?”

“Yeah.” He held up a wide square box.

“OK. How much do I owe you?”

Money was exchanged, and she brought it in. “Derpy, did I order a pizza?”

“No, I did. You went to the bathroom before, and I figured since you’d said it’s what we’d wind up doing that I should take the initiative and get it myself.”

Karyn was about to accuse Derpy of something, but she couldn’t figure out what, and in any case the smell of the pizza combined with her hunger made it too difficult to think. “Good job,” she said.

The ritual of finding plates, re-cutting the pizza—since the pizzeria had only run it through with the slicer casually—,eating a pair of slices apiece and wrapping the rest in foil, then washing the dishes took up a significant amount of time and did serve to alleviate their boredom somewhat, but it did make Karyn nervous about something.

“It’s getting close to three o’clock. The probability that there’s some screwup is increasing. Maybe this address isn’t in the GPS that they’re using, or maybe when Gayle made the appointment they didn’t take it down properly. I wish I could call to confirm.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because I wouldn’t want that done to me.” Karyn was getting her second wind now. “When I’m doing support, I know that what I want is for the person I’m supporting to just hold tight. I’m doing everything I can to take care of them as fast as possible so I can close the case and move on. They need to know that and show patience. Also, hang on.” Her phone was buzzing in her purse, and she pulled it out and swiped it on. Derpy listened to her half of the conversation. “Hello…yes, everything’s fine, but the guy…oh, he is? Great! Sure, see you around.”

“What’s up?

“That was Gayle. They just rang her phone to let her know that he’d be here in ten minutes.”

But again they heard the Big Ben chimes and Derpy went into hiding while Karyn opened the door. There at last was the cable guy.

“Hi, are you Gayle?”

Karyn figured it would be easier to lie than to try to explain. “Yeah.”

“OK, got the word that your service was out. You know where the jack is?”

She hadn’t looked for it, and was about to panic, when Derpy bumped her and picked up her arm. “It’s there,” she said, now pointing behind a couch. The tech walked around and plugged something into the cable jack. Not knowing what else to do, Karyn sat at the table.

“Hm. I’m going to have to check outside,” he said, and walked out.

“Thanks for the assist.”

“No problem. I didn’t know why you pretended you were Gayle, but since she would know where the jack is, I had to help you out.”

Karyn walked to the door and peered through the smoked glass to see him working. “She might not. A lot of people forget. But it’s better that I know. I’m just glad this guy left some equipment here so he’s not just going to run out on us.”

“Would he do that?”

“Probably not, but why take the chance?”

They sat back at the table, but now at least they had hope that soon they would be free to have fun. A few minutes later the cable guy came back in.

“Good news?” she asked.

“Well, it’s fixable. You see, you’ve got just our internet service, not TV. So we have to put a block on the line to filter out the TV signal. That failed, so it was blocking out everything. I’ll have to put a new one on, take me ten minutes.”

Karyn blinked. To her it seemed a waste of resources to send out a signal and then block it at the end, but that kind of networking was still foreign to her. She made a note to bring it up in one of her classes. “All right, go ahead.”

He stepped outside once more and walked to his truck. That gave Derpy another chance to speak.

“That’s not a very good idea. It’s the opposite of a fail-safe. They should make it so that, if that block fails, everything gets through instead of everything being blocked.”

“In the first place, that’s the kind of thing that people would exploit to get service for free. In the second, it might actually do that, but sometimes a failure doesn’t mean that a part stops working, it means that it works too well. Especially with electricity.”

When the tech came back in, he said, “That’s taken care of. You should be back up. Sign here please.”

He held out a clipboard, but Karyn shook her head. “I want to test it out first. Just give me a moment.”

She didn’t have her laptop with her, and while her phone could check for wi-fi, it was inefficient, and she couldn’t tell easily if it was finding the house wi-fi or someone else’s. She considered running out to her apartment to get the laptop, but again Derpy came to her rescue, flying it in through a back window at the wrong angle for the tech to see. Karyn walked over and plugged it into the modem.

“The lights are on the modem—“ the tech began.

“Oh, good, it connected. Now I’ll sign.” She scribbled something that looked like it could start with a G, but it was five more minutes before he packed everything up and returned to his truck.

Once the engine sounded and he pulled out of the driveway, Derpy turned visible. “Is it all right?”

“Yes! We are free!”

“Great. Now you can do everything you’ve been wanting to do on the Internet all week.”

“True,” said Karyn, “but first we’d better make sure that there’s no evidence of a pony lying around to tip off Gayle, and then head back up to my place. It’s better if we do things up there, because I don’t know when Gayle’s coming back.”

They did as she suggested and moved the session back to the side apartment. Once there, Karyn put the laptop back on the charger and attached the network cable.

“Welcome back,” said Derpy.

“I don’t talk to my computer like it’s alive. Unless you were communicating with Derpynet.”

“Ha, no. Anyway, now that you have the network back, what do you want to do?”

Karyn stared at the machine. She checked her e-mail. There were some sites she thought of going on, but mostly they were time-wasters. “What I really want to do is to get my day back.”

“Well, we can do that. Let’s go back to Equestria.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. But why not? Even if it ages me a little, I think I’m owed some time for the way the cable company dragged out that appointment.”

Derpy gave her an open-mouth smile and knelt beside her to mount up. “Besides, the Internet will still be here when you get back.”

“Yes, but I hope it’s not one of those things where not having it for a few days makes me not want to do it again, like I’ve passed some kind of detox or withdrawal. I like playing on the net.”

Getting out her spell, Derpy warped to Equestria, and Karyn got the rare opportunity to see it in the waning daylight.

“So what do you want to do here?”

“Honestly, just relax. Even though we’ve done nothing all day, it’s still tense to have to be waiting for something. Let’s go to your place and watch the sunset. And then we can watch Princess Luna raise the moon.”

“Suits me fine.” Derpy landed, and at a leisurely trot headed for home.

As they came upon the house, they saw a solitary figure pacing around the porch. Eager to see who it was, Derpy quickened her pace. Although the low sun made seeing details difficult, by the shape of the body it could only be one of four ponies in Equestria.

“Princess?” Derpy called, hedging her bet.

“Derpy!” It was Twilight’s voice. “I figured that you would be back around this time…but is that Karyn with you? Is anything wrong?”

“No. We’ve just spent a long and boring day together, and we want to have a little fun, so I’m extending the day for her.”

“Oh. That’s fair, I suppose. Well, anyway, do you have a guest lined up for next week?”

Derpy looked at Karyn, who shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, then I’d like it to be I. Me? I?”

“You’d like it to be you,” said Karyn, counting on the pronoun being the same either way.

“Yes. I’ve gotten reports from Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Applejack about the times you’ve taken them to Earth, and I’d like to be the next.”

“I’m sure we can arrange that.”

“Is there something specific you want to see?” asked Derpy.

“No, no one thing on Earth.”

Karyn heard the qualifications, and she wondered if Twilight wasn’t hiding a double meaning. But if she was, Karyn wasn’t going to get it out of her. For her part, Derpy hadn’t noticed anything awkward with the phrasing. “Well, we’ll find something fun and interesting for you,” she said. “We did for everypony else.”

“Great. I’m looking forward to it.”

“So am I.”

Author's Note

The visits resume next week!

“I’m ready to go. Got plenty of scrolls to take notes on.”

“I promise we’ll show you the best time possible, Princess,” said Derpy.

“Don’t treat me different from anypony else. Well, amend that. Don’t take me out to eat or to the tall buildings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“But what I don’t understand,” she said, “is how you do experiments without magical observation.”

Karyn shrugged. “We use regular observation. What we can see or record.”

“Right, but at a small enough level, you’re not going to be able to see the true nature of things.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’ve seen enough again,” said Twilight. “Let’s find someplace a little more secluded.”

The quad was nearby, and it was empty enough that Karyn could sit on a stone bench and listen.

“What did you want to tell us?” asked Derpy.

Come back then for Twilight's request!

97: Private Aderpment

Outside Derpy’s house in Ponyville, Karyn, just having arrived, brushed the dust off her clothes and stretched out in the morning sun. “Are we ready for our guest this week?” she asked.

“We are, though I don’t wonder if she’ll be a little late,” said Derpy.

“Here she comes now…no, wait, that’s Twilight again.”

Indeed Twilight Sparkle was coming up the walk. Derpy couldn’t tell if she was heading toward them, so she waved a hoof. Twilight didn’t seem to alter her course as she approached.

“Good morning,” she said.

“And to you,” said Karyn. “How did the rest of your visit with Cal go?”

“Swimmingly. I explained to him that we’re not fully publicizing the existence of ponies just yet, but that he was expected to keep it secret and, in exchange, we might arrange for him to visit Equestria.”

“I’ll bet he liked that. I should find him on campus and see if I can’t start up a club of bronies who have met an actual pony.”

Derpy pawed at the ground. Twilight noticed. “Is anything wrong?”

“I can’t tell. I just have that feeling like we’ve forgotten something with this whole visiting program. Oh, well, it’ll come to me eventually, right?”

Karyn and Twilight looked at each other. It was quite possible that something she was trying to remember wouldn’t come to Derpy, but they let it pass.

“So do you two have any special plans for today?” Twilight asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Karyn. “I have invited another person—well, maybe invited isn’t the right word. The point is that there’s going to be someone else, and this time I don’t think they know about ponies at all.”

“Well, good luck with that. I’ll be waiting to hear all about it.”

Derpy skittered as if she’d forgot something. “Am I supposed to be reporting on all these visits?”

“No.” Twilight laughed. “Whoever goes with you will do that.”

“Oh, that’s much better. That way they only have to do one each instead of me doing them all.”

Twilight exited, and Karyn checked the time on her phone. “She really is going to be late.”

“I hope not too much.”

“I know that we technically have all the time in the world, but I’m not feeling patient today. Plus my phone keeps having to find the time signal and resetting itself.”

Derpy nodded and kept her eyes on the horizon. “Here she comes.”

“Are you sure this time?”

“Definitely. I can see the horn.”

Karyn tried to look herself, but even with her condition Derpy’s eyesight was better than hers. “A horn could mean any unicorn. It could even be Twilight again.”

“Twilight wouldn’t be wearing a lace scarf. Hey, Rarity!”

Karyn found the list and checked Rarity’s name off it. Then she turned to greet her with a smile.

“Good morning, ladies!” Rarity said as she came close enough to avoid shouting. “I’m all dressed up and ready to go.”

Derpy winced again. “You do know that you have to be invisible there, right?”

Rarity cast her eyes down, but Karyn stepped in. “Actually, with what I’ve arranged for this week, you won’t have to. You can’t leave my apartment, but I invited someone to come over, and after I lay the groundwork and introduce you, it’ll be just like a get-together here in Equestria.”

“Excellent. Let us proceed.”

Derpy led them to the clock tower and let Rarity climb to the top. Karyn remembered Applejack’s admonishment that they should lay down a carpet over the dirt should Rarity be the guest, but she hadn’t done that and had no intention of racing back to fix things. Rarity walked on the grass in Equestria, and she could scrape off any dirt she gathered on the grass of Earth.

They activated their spells, Rarity finding it quaint and laughable to have to use a separate form of magic, and popped back into existence in the back yard of Gayle’s house. Moving them swiftly into the apartment, Karyn was able to avoid any concerns about the condition of Rarity’s hooves.

Once inside, she led them to the bedroom. Rarity barely had time to turn her head both ways and get a general impression of the architecture before entering the dark room and having to deal only with the filtered light through Karyn’s curtains and the heavily shaded light from her lamp.

“What’s going on?” asked Derpy.

“We were longer than I thought in Equestria. Or rather, getting to Equestria, since time didn’t pass here. But in any case, my guest was supposed to arrive at nine, and it’s five till now. So I want to be able to show you two in the right timing and not with her just walking in.”

“Five minutes is enough time to get in.”

“Yes, but what if she’s a little early?”

“I beg pardon,” said Rarity. “But I was under the impression that I was the guest for today. And in fact, I have arrived.”

“No, I have another guest, a different human. Twilight’s encouraged it. And in this case, it’s something good for all of us. See, Derpy could tell you, a few weeks ago I found a gift card—that’s like finding money—and I’ve been using it to help on all these tours. Well, yesterday I spent the last of it on something I think you’ll like: a hairdresser from the salon is coming here for what she thinks is a private appointment.”

As if cued by her mentioning it, there was a knock at the door. Karyn realized that it was not her door, but the front door, and she raced to the front to get there before Gayle, if she was home, caused confusion.

“Hi, over here!”

“Oh, hello.”

“Doreen, right?”

“Yes,” the hairdresser said. “And you’re Karen, right?”

“Karyn. With a y. Thank you for coming out on your day off.”

She led Doreen along the side, happy that she was in the routine of cleaning up for Derpy. On any other day she would have been slightly embarrassed to have someone over.

Doreen looked around the apartment and saw how dark it was compared to the outside. “Don’t worry about it. I can use the extra money.”

“I know how you feel. But don’t worry; we plan to include a tip.”

Karyn realized that the ponies were probably listening to everything she was saying, and so she had to make the best impression before making all the introductions.

“Do you have a broom? Also a spare sheet that we can lay down for a drop cloth and that you can wash later?”

“I can do that, sure. Wait right here.”

Although the apartment was linear, the linen closet was in the bedroom, and Karyn ducked back in to get the sheet. Rarity was there tapping her foot. “Are you ready for us yet?”

“Not right now,” Karyn whispered. “Let me approach this in my own way.”

Once she had laid down the sheet she stood up to see Doreen looking at the bedroom. “Is there someone else here? I thought I heard voices.”

“Yes, actually. My friend whose hair I actually want you to do.”

Doreen stared, then looked up. “Oh, that’s where I remember you from! You had that friend with the light sensitivity. I normally don’t have the best memory for faces—hairdos, yes, but not faces—but I remember that because it was so unusual. Is this where she lives? Is it easier for me to cut it here?”

Karyn put a hand up. “That was me, but now I have to come clean. When I told you about that, it was a lie.”

“So that light allergy doesn’t really exist?”

“No, it does, but she doesn’t have it. This may be a little difficult to grasp, but my friend isn’t actually human.”

Doreen looked at her with a mix of skepticism and amusement, as if waiting for the punch line.

“Maybe it would be easier to show you.” Karyn turned back toward the bedroom. “Derpy, Rarity, could you come out, please?”

The ponies trotted out, Derpy leading the way. Doreen continued her amusement, but it really wasn’t until she saw the top of Derpy’s head and the wings on her sides that she started to get unnerved.

“But, they’re horses.”

“We prefer ponies. My name is Derpy Hooves. Thank you for doing my mane so nicely last time.”

Now Doreen started to back away. “It’s a trick. I don’t know what you’re after, but…”

It was Rarity who had to step in front. “Please, stay a moment. I am a unicorn pony and I assure you this is being done in good faith. And in particular, I want to see how the people of your world make themselves beautiful.”

Karyn was prepared to back her case, but to her surprise, Doreen was receptive. “Are you a beautician too?”

“In a manner of speaking. I am a dressmaker.”

“But a unicorn…they don’t exist! I mean, I don’t want to insult you, but they’re fantasy.”

Derpy tried to give her most comforting grin. “It works that way from one perspective. We’re the actual versions of a fictional concept that was created—or maybe discovered—by people from your world.”

“Huh?”

“You’re confusing her again,” said Rarity. “Let me explain. We come from a land called Equestria where ponies are the people there. We don’t have any humans, although you do have ponies here. Our world includes pegasus ponies like Derpy here, and unicorn ponies like myself, and Earth ponies who have neither wings nor horns.”

Derpy moved to her side. “But they have special powers like being stronger and connections to the Earth.”

“That’s too much information for her, Derpy. I’m trying to give her just the basics.”

“I’m sorry. You go ahead.”

Doreen reached out a hand as if to touch one of them, then pulled it back. “But where is this land?”

“It’s not anywhere you can get to by normal travel. You have to do so by magic.” Rarity looked around for something to demonstrate magic on, settling for the broom that Karyn had brought in. She levitated it and rested it against the couch.

“Whoa!” She fell back against the couch. As if looking for something familiar to connect with, she turned toward Karyn. “And you know them?”

“Yes. Derpy is a friend of mine, we’ve been visiting for a few years now. We do all sorts of fun activities together, and one was visiting your shop. I’m sorry again for the lie.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can see why you had to. But if there are real unicorns and such, do I have to keep the secret now?”

“Please do,” said Rarity. “We think it’s better if only a few people know.”

Doreen finally calmed down and assessed the situation. “So putting aside the question of why me, what is it that you would like me to do, if not to cut hair?”

Karyn smiled and sat down facing her. “But we do want you to cut hair. Derpy was very happy with the way you styled her mane unaware. We’d like you to do it again.”

“All right. Derpy, if you’d like to sit down, I’ll see what I can do.” She got out her scissors and clippers and began preparation.

“I can stand,” said Derpy. “It’s just as comfortable for me.”

Doreen ran her fingers through Derpy’s mane and thought about what would be the best style to work with it. Running a comb through to straighten it, she realized the difficulty of working in this position. Normally, Doreen stood behind her clients and saw things from their perspective in a mirror. But behind Derpy was Derpy’s behind, and if Doreen stood there she couldn’t reach her head. So instead she had to move around her front and see Derpy’s smile each time.

She made her first cut. “I think I’ll try something different. Your hair—or mane, if you like—is good to work with, but the last time I didn’t realize what I was working with. An updo was all wrong.”

“I remember when Derpy came back with that hairstyle,” said Rarity. “It was daring and everypony liked it.”

Doreen looked at her strangely, it being her first experience with the Equestrians’ odd quirk of speech, but then went back to work. “I’m sure it did, but for a flying pony the mane should flow like the wind.”

“But most pegasi are like that. Derpy was unique.”

“I understand, but then it reverted to a looser style. When I get through, it’ll look like a perfect sine wave as you move forward.”

Rarity came up beside her and watched the work. “I try to emphasize that when making dresses for pegasi, but too often it doesn’t work.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about your world, but I’m just thinking back to the horse races I’ve seen here. They have lots of money spent on making them look nice, so I’m just going for a similar effect here.”

Karyn sat back and watched the two of them bond. Everything was going better than even she had expected.

“…and I did make a dress for Karyn one time. Karyn, dear, do you still have it? Why don’t you model it for Doreen here?”

That shook her awake. Of course Karyn remembered the dress that Rarity had made for her, both for its extreme monetary value and its odd design.

“I have it, but no, I can’t model it outside of Equestria.”

Rarity looked confused, but let it pass. Meanwhile, Doreen had moved away from broad strokes and was using a tiny scissor to finish off Derpy’s coif.

“Do you think I could do your tail too?” she asked.

“You want to?” Derpy shook her head to get rid of the loose strands that hadn’t fallen. “I’d love it!”

Doreen cleaned her scissors and began again. “Now this is an entirely new experience for me. I never thought I’d have a chance to work on someone with hair in two different places. It’s too bad humans don’t have tails. I could charge double for styling them.”

Derpy remembered a similar line of thought from Aloe and Lotus when she had taken Karyn to their spa. “Please be careful, though. My tail isn’t all hair; there’s an actual tail running through it.”

“Is there? Oh, that’s something new I haven’t seen.”

Rarity trotted back. “Here, I’ll help you. I should be able to keep the dock out of the way and leave the skirt free for you to cut.”

“She’s wearing a skirt?”

“No, that’s the term for the hair as opposed to the tail itself.” She bent her head down and sent a glow of blue magic at Derpy’s backside. The rat-like tail slid out from the hair.”

“Whoa, that feels weird,” said Derpy. “I don’t usually feel the air on my tail. All the rest of it is hair and not sensitive.”

Doreen was even more weirded out as she went to work again. “How are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Sorry, I meant Rarity. I mean, I know it’s magic, but that doesn’t explain it, just gives it a name.”

Rarity kept up her spell as she explained. “It’s difficult to describe, even to non-unicorn ponies. Virtually any unicorn can do simple manipulation like this, but all—most, I should say—have some other spell that is special to them. For instance, I am very good at finding gems underground. I use them in my fashion line.”

“Gems?! That’s amazing. Nothing offsets an outfit quite like jewelry.”

Rarity and Doreen delved into a conversation about different techniques for beautification. Karyn moved her chair around to Derpy’s head and kept her voice low as she did in public. “Those two are natural friends.”

“They have a lot more in common than you and me.”

“But we’ve had a lot more time together. When we first met we had both our lives to talk about. I think this has definitely been a good move, introducing humans and ponies. It’s refreshed our own friendship.”

Doreen snipped and snipped until finally she said, “There. What do you think, Derpy? Karyn, do you have a mirror for her to use?”

“I can check out the tail without a mirror.” Derpy curled her head around to see her newly cropped tail waving at her. “Looks good.”

Karyn got the mirror and showed Derpy her mane as well. “It does look different.”

“I even feel faster. But that could just be because I’m lighter by the weight of the hair that you cut off.”

Rarity and Doreen laughed at that, but Karyn was used to Derpy’s linguistic oddities.

Reaching into her saddlebag, Rarity said, “Now, it’s necessary to settle up.”

“Oh, no,” said Doreen. “Karyn arranged everything with the salon beforehand.”

“Then you must consider this a gratuity.” She held balanced on her hoof a blue gem in the shape of a teardrop, cut into many facets.

“You want to give me a gem? I can’t take that, it’s too much.”

“No, please, I insist. I have hundreds of these sapphires at home. As I said, it’s the magic unique to me.”

Derpy tittered. “So each unicorn has a unique horn.”

While Doreen was still recovering from Derpy’s pun, Rarity took the opportunity to float the sapphire into her hand. While feeling the hard surface, she found it harder to let go. “This would just be unbelievable. I can’t do this.”

“Why not?” asked Rarity. “I want to give it to you. All my pony friends at one time or another have accepted a jewel from me, and I don’t want you to be an exception. If you can get something for it, so much the better.”

Karyn watched Doreen wrestle with herself. She wanted to tell her to take it, but thought it would be wiser to let her decide.

“It…it would just mean so much to me. You see, I’ve been working for so long. It’s always been my dream to have a shop of my own, and I’ve been saving forever to try to put down money for everything I need to start up. The place, mostly. But something’s always come up to wipe it out. Medical bills, or my car goes and I need a new one. But if I can turn this around quickly, maybe I’ll have a chance to get it up and running.

“And if I do, all three of you have standing appointments whenever you like. I’ll close the shop if you don’t want to show yourselves. Well, not for you, Karyn, but Rarity and Derpy.”

Hugs were exchanged, and then Doreen packed up. “Best of luck with your shop,” said Rarity.

“Thanks! I want to run to the bank right now, or at least to a jewelry broker, but I’m sure they’re all closed.”

“Let me know if that’s not enough. I’ll find you something more.”

“I don’t want to be too greedy. Once I’m up and running I’ll be content.” She took her things and walked out the door.

Derpy was still admiring herself in the mirror, but then picked her head up. “We never had her do your mane, Rarity! It’s not fair that you should pay her and not get styled yourself.”

“Oh, I’ve found my style and I like to stick with it. As far as hairstyling, anyway. I express myself more through my outfits. Anyway, thank you two for a lovely day, but I must be getting home before Opal tears up the entire boutique.”

“All right. I’ll be along shortly, but I’m sure you can find your way down from the clock tower.”

Rarity made her exit, and Karyn and Derpy were left alone. “Well,” said Karyn, “that was about as perfect a visit as we could have expected. And you look amazing now.”

“Thank you.”

“But I still don’t see why you didn’t object to Doreen using that sapphire for money when you don’t think I should sell any of the diamonds on the dress Rarity gave me.”

Derpy shook her head, flipping her mane in the process. “The difference is that Rarity gave you the dress as a dress. If you wanted to wear it again I’d have no objection to that. Also, she’s using it to start her own business. That’s something really ambitious. If you ever decide that you want to start your own computing company, I won’t argue if you use them for startup money.”

“I suppose that’s fair enough.”

“Well, I’m going to be on my way as well. See you next week?”

“Hm.” Karyn’s “Hm” was very distinctive, and instead of using her spell, Derpy held back. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I just realized.”

“Realized what?”

Karyn sat on the bed, picked up her notebook, and read through. “We started this plan of having other ponies visit Earth, and for the most part it’s gone well. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy caused a few problems, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Applejack and Twilight were quite welcome, and today Rarity was a gem, no pun intended. All of them are very good friends. But there’s one more in their group.”

Derpy bounced her head as she made mental connections, then realized what Karyn meant. They both said it at the same time.

“Pinkie Pie.”

Karyn looked out the window. “I’m sure the world will still be here when she’s done.”

“Oh, yeah," said Derpy. "Pinkie isn’t that bad. I’m sure you're right.

“Almost entirely sure.”

Author's Note

Looks like Pinkie Pie ate the preview for next week. But I'll tell you this much. This is where the runup to the 100th chapter begins. Lives are going to change! What more would you expect when Pinkie's around?

99: Lyra's Derpan

“What did you two—“ Lyra began, but Karyn cut her off.

“Don’t be like Derpy and just repeat dramatic lines twice. I’ve had enough of weird dialogue structures from hanging out with Pinkie Pie last week. What happened?”

“He came in here and ran up the stairs to his room and slammed the door. He’s not usually angry, but I know he’s been distant lately. It reminds me of when we had the Christmas party and he was upset at not being able to help. Are you planning something like that?”

Derpy shook her head. “We were just going to take Pinkie to Earth when Hank—is that his name?”

“Of course it is,” said Lyra. Whether Pinkie had guessed correctly, secretly knew and made a joke, or had decided on his name and gender and made that decision reverberate backwards in time so that everyone who knew him called him that, they couldn’t say. Derpy continued to recount what had taken place on the clock tower.

Lyra shook her head. “That Pinkie Pie, she always makes trouble. It works out in the end, but still.”

They were still in the vestibule of Lyra’s house, but with the sun beating down on them, Lyra moved inside expecting them to follow. The house was well-ventilated and was not as warm as it was outside.

“I’m sorry if we did anything to make the situation worse,” said Derpy.

“Don’t blame yourself. If he was upset about you bringing other ponies to Earth, then it’s better for him to get it out of his system now. Actually, it would have been better if we could have discussed it when he first found out about it, before it festered. He does tend to let his anger build up. I just wish that he would open up to me. Sometimes we don’t communicate well.”

She looked up at the closed door to Hank’s room, drawing Karyn’s and Derpy’s as well. Even the door had a distinctly un-Equestrian look to it, as though years of use by a human had given the wood a deeper texture that the normal doors lacked.

“Well, we came here to try to make it right,” said Karyn. “Could you ask him if we could talk some more?”

Lyra was reluctant, but she ascended the stairs and knocked on the door. “Honey? Sweet-fingers? Derpy Hooves stopped by with her friend. They’re worried about you.” Her tone implied that she was worried too.

The momentary silence made Derpy and Karyn wonder if he was going to ignore them, or indeed if he was even really in there, but after a few moments a muffled “Not now” came from the door, and if Lyra’s tone was worried, this tone was dismissive, brusque, and very self-pitying.

“I don’t like to press him,” said Lyra as she came back down. “I’ve never been good at confrontations, and I know that if I were mad, I’d want to be alone until I felt better. Both because it would make me feel worse to argue, and I might say something I’d later regret.”

Derpy and Karyn looked at each other and silently agreed that they should not put Lyra into such a difficult situation. If Hank was going to play rock, they didn’t want to be the hard place.

Instead, it was Derpy who found herself squeezed. She was still worried that Hank’s anger was somehow her fault, and she didn’t feel right about walking out of the house and going on with her day leaving the problem unresolved.

She paced around the table once, then turned to Karyn. “Why don’t you talk to him? You know, human to human.”

“Me? I barely know him.”

“Yeah, but I can’t do it. I know him even less than you do.”

Karyn fumbled over how to explain, and Lyra, happy to be able to help someone, laughed and said, “Derpy, you have to remember that humans don’t all share a set of ideals. They’re different, much more than we ponies are.”

“But we have Earth ponies and pegasi and unicorns, and they don’t.”

Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder. “You’ve been visiting me nearly three years now, but you still don’t know all the bad things that humans can do. To each other, to other species, and even to the ones they love.”

“You’ve never done anything bad to me.”

It was Lyra’s turn again. “You haven’t spent that much time with her. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m second to nopony in how much I love humans, and one in particular. But it doesn’t give them an automatic connection with each other.”

“You’re right. I’m being stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” said Karyn, again touching Derpy to comfort her. As she did, she could see Lyra’s eyes following her hand as it rubbed on Derpy’s withers. Although she turned away quickly, Karyn took Lyra’s meaning.

“All right. I’ll give it a try.”

“You will?” Lyra cocked her head, and Derpy cocked hers the other way.

“Yes. It’s true that humans are all different from one another, but that means that I get to be how I am too. And even if it doesn’t make sense, even if I’ll probably fail, I’m going to try to talk to him, because that’s what I think I should do.”

She stood up and climbed the stairs. After a look back at the two ponies and a thumbs-up sign that delighted Lyra in particular, she knocked on the door.

“Lyra, I said not now. Please!” The voice was angry, but at the same time a little relieved, as if he had been hoping that she would knock again just to give him the freedom to yell.

“No, actually it’s Karyn. Derpy’s human? Can I come in?”

That put him off. Talking to a friend or a lover was one thing, but it was expected that he would be nicer to a relative stranger. “May I ask what it’s about?” he replied.

“I think you know that. There’s no reason to be upset, or if there is, no reason to brood on it yourself when we could be helping you. Maybe not even all of us, but just Lyra.”

“With respect, it’s not up to you to tell me whether or not I have reason to be upset.”

“Conceded. At least, you might have a reason based on what happened. But it doesn’t make sense to stay that way. Look, could you at least open the door? The whole point is for us to talk without Lyra and Derpy around.”

She heard shuffling from within and then the turning of the knob. As soon as the door opened, Hank turned back and walked back to the bed, never looking at her.

The room was spartan and bare, but unlike the door, it was a true pony room. The bed was a light wood and it must have been special ordered, because no pony with the possible exception of Big Macintosh needed one so large. Indeed, the whole room seemed too small for its occupant.

“All right,” he said, “Make your pitch.”

“I could do that if you’d explain better what’s bothering you.”

“What do you know about it? You’re just a kid really.”

For the first time Karyn realized how awkward it was for her to be alone in a room with a strange man. Probably neither of the ponies knew that it was inappropriate, and it wouldn’t be for them. But the age difference he had mentioned was there as well.

“You’re as old as some of my professors, and I have to speak to them as equals. So try treating me that way for once and see if we don’t get somewhere.”

“All right, you want plain talk? How about this: if you’re taking ponies to Earth and letting humans meet them, then that doesn’t make me special anymore. If it was just you, well, I didn’t have to see you often, and you didn’t live here. But what happens when someone else wants to come here? Pretty soon I’ll just be another resident.”

“And would that be so bad?” Karyn asked.

“Lyra bringing me here was the first thing in my life that made me more than ordinary. That’s kept me going ever since then. If I lose it, then what do I do?”

Karyn felt as though a key idea slipped past her, like she had the answer for a moment and then lost it. She shook her head and answered him.

“I still don’t think you’re being honest. Or at least, not completely honest. You were still civil until Pinkie Pie started her weird talk. Are you sure that you really have always had your name and such?”

“Yes, I have. It was more all that stuff about stories and characters. Maybe that’s just how she looks at it, but from my perspective, who I am is who I am.”

“That sounds like something Derpy would say.”

Hank looked at her downwards. She returned the glare just as hard. “Not so much now as before I met her. She’s the kind of pony who gets so self-conscious that she can’t see herself from the outside, and because of it she thought she had no friends.”

“I don’t think that.”

“No, you don’t. What your hangup is I haven’t figured out yet, but it’s the same kind of thinking that she does. Self-limiting. She toiled away for years as a mother and as a mailmare because of all the things she never had as a filly.”

Hank sliced his hand across the air. “My childhood was fine. Don’t get all Freudian on me.”

Again Karyn thought she had it, and again it was gone. “All right, then. What do you want?”

“Who said I want anything? I have a great life here. I have Lyra, and I still love her after all these years. Maybe more.”

“Then why are you cutting her off?”

“Do you have anyone special in your life?”

Karyn was taken aback for the first time in the conversation. “I used to have a boyfriend,” she said. “Now Derpy is the most special person for me.”

If Karyn was thrown off, Hank spoke kindly for the first time. “Then you know what it means for a pony to be special to you. How you want to keep it that way and never have anything change.”

“No, I don’t. Maybe being older has made you set in your ways, but I’m hoping for things to get better. Maybe even a lot better. But you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. You want nothing to change, but you also want it to be like when Lyra brought you here.”

The key idea came to her, and this time she held onto it. Now her only task was to convince him—and herself—that it wasn’t crazy.

Downstairs, Lyra paced the room, but though her body moved back and forth, her eyes were locked on the door.

“Don’t drive yourself mad worrying,” said Derpy. “Karyn will take care of it.”

“She shouldn’t have to take care of it. He’s my responsibility.”

“No, he’s not. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves. There’s only so much we can do for them. Hank is having a tough time, but that will pass, and Karyn will help him see what he needs to.”

Lyra sat down, but if anything her anxiety only increased. She shuffled the knick-knacks on the coffee table both with her hooves and with her magic field.

“I wish I’d learned remote-listening spells. I should really be hearing what’s going on in there. Derpy, do you want to go outside and hover below his window? If we’re lucky he’ll have it open.”

“No, I will not do that for you. You’re going to have to learn to be patient and let things just happen.”

“But that’s what got me in trouble in the first place, back when other ponies would make fun of me for acting so un-pony-ish. Yes, I could just eat my oats and play my lyre like everypony else, but I don’t want to!”

Derpy flashed confusion. “Not everypony else plays the lyre.”

Lyra stared at Derpy and laughed, and Derpy was happy to at least have broken the tension. “You’re right,” Lyra said. “Very few ponies do, in fact. But as far as I know, no pony at all is like me in terms of impatience and using spells to find humans.”

“Well, there’s one other.”

It took her a moment to get it. “I see what you mean.”

Wanting to keep her mind off of her troubles, Derpy said, “Tell me about how you made the spell. I don’t know that much about magic, but I’ve gleaned a little from Dinky.”

“Well, legends about humans go back thousands of years, but of course nopony believed in them. I don’t know if I really did either, but I liked hearing about them all the same. Back then, when I thought about humans, I imagined them more as a companion, the way you are with Karyn. But…it’s hard to describe.”

“Go on.”

Lyra stared into the distance and spoke slowly. “I wasn’t looking for a human. No, rather, I wasn’t looking for any human in particular. I just wanted a human. Maybe part of it was that I didn’t expect him to know who I was, or anything about Equestria, or anything like that. I was prepared for whoever I found to be indignant at having been pulled out of their world, or afraid, or any number of negative reactions. But to have a positive reaction, and one that turned into a relationship—it just wasn’t in my realm of possibility.”

“Maybe fate and destiny were looking out for you. They knew that you and he were meant for each other, and let you find the spell to bring him here.”

“You believe in fate, Derpy?”

In fact, Derpy had just been trying to say something comforting to a friend who clearly needed it. But to admit that would be counterproductive. “It’s almost like the way you were with humans. I don’t know if destiny is a real thing that you can measure and use to predict, but it’s a good thing when it brings lovers together, like it did for you.”

“But that’s part of the problem. Our love was formed amidst fear and doubt. I accidentally let him out of the house, not thinking of what would happen if anypony saw him, and then Bon-bon did, and Princess Celestia came, and everything was a big mess. Only once it got sorted out could Hank and I sit down and really figure out what our relationship was.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, with the destiny. Most ponies don’t get to find their loves like that. They just meet and talk and that’s it. You got to have a grand adventure.”

Lyra shook her head. “That may well have made it worse. Hank’s told me that by all the reports on Earth, relationships that form out of emergency situations tend not to last. Now, maybe that’s different in Equestria, but he’s still human. The bad things of his world—not even bad, but the harsh cruel facts—are part of living with him. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it’s hard to say if he thinks it’s worth it.”

Derpy brooded. If it were Karyn giving her a sob story like this, she would better know how to help her. But Lyra wasn’t as close a friend. All she could do was try her best. “Let me ask you something. Do you think he’s planning to ask you to send him back to Earth?”

“No, he hasn’t talked about that.”

“If he does, it might be for one of our visits. And if that happens, then Karyn and I will have the chance to work on him. Not hastily like now, but slowly and steadily. Maybe we’ll even take him to some of the nasty places on Earth that Karyn tries to keep me out of. Then he’ll remember why he decided to stay here.”

“What if it works the other way?” asked Lyra, “And he gets even more homesick and leaves me because of it? I don’t think that will happen, but at the same time I want to make sure that it doesn’t.”

“I see your point. But don’t forget this. You said that on Earth sometimes having love formed in tense situations doesn’t always work out, right? But you’re a pony. Here, in Equestria, love like that—like Shining Armor and Cadance when they had the changeling invasion—that does tend to last. Most of them do. It’s only the background ponies like me who have to suffer through losing their loved ones.”

Lyra perked her head up, and Derpy wondered if mentioning her own troubles was the right thing to do. “At this point,” Lyra said, “I’d just like him to come out and tell me what he’s thinking, even if it’s the worst and that he’s completely tired of me, and of Equestria.”

“What will you do then?”

“I’ll move on.” Lyra leaned back against the couch in her distinctive style. “I won’t try to find another human, but I’ll enjoy playing more concerts, spending more time with Bon-bon. Plenty of things. It will have been a learning experience. Maybe that’s another difference between humans and ponies. They’re more resilient. You mentioned your divorce—it was pretty devastating afterwards, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Derpy was glad that Lyra wasn’t angry with her bringing it up. “It took me a long time to get over it. But if it happens I’ll be there for you and we’ll get through it together.”

“What I meant was, having spent a long time with a human, I think some of that’s rubbed off on me. I’ll adapt, even if a part of me will go with him.”

The two mares let their conversation lapse into a long pause. Lyra still stole looks up at the door, but there was nothing more that Derpy could think to do to distract her. They sat a long time, and though Derpy didn’t fall asleep, she still felt as though she was startled awake when the knob turned and the door pulled open. She couldn’t say if it was the movement or the sound.

Lyra was on her hooves even before Derpy. She wanted to race up the stairs, but instead held her ground as though she was waiting for a firing squad.

Hank emerged first with Karyn trailing him closely. His face was as blank a mask as Lyra’s was. He came downstairs and faced her.

“First of all, in regards to Pinkie Pie—“ he began, but Karyn gave him a shove from behind.

“No, first you should apologize to Lyra for shutting the door on her and being in a mood all day.”

He turned back to face her. “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it in my own way.”

Karyn shrugged, and her expression said, “It’s your funeral.”

He turned back to Lyra. “All right. I am sorry for the way I acted. But Pinkie Pie did get to me. She’s great at making everypony smile, but when it comes to unfamiliar people, it takes her a while. Whatever. I don’t want to talk about her. The point is this: if it’s true that what happened to us was like a story, and that now it’s over, then that would tend to explain why I’ve been feeling in such a rut. I wasn’t always as much of a grump as I am now, you know.”

“Of course I do,” said Lyra. “I don’t even think you are that much.”

“Please.” He held up his hand. “Yes, I am. Because I’m not Equestrian. You would have trouble understanding this, because you’re not just a generally happy and kind soul, you’re a pony. And you can’t understand how living in a happier world might make you less happy. But that’s how it can be with humans.”

“I know, I know. Believe me, I’ve seen how you can be…”

“Please,” he said again, but this time instead of skepticism, he was truly making a plea. “I’m trying to get through this, and it’s difficult. Anyway, yes, it irks me that Karyn and Derpy are bringing ponies to Earth to meet humans, and yes, it bothers me that Equestria might just open up its borders, and yes, plenty of things about living in Equestria make me remember that I am now and will always be a stranger in a strange land. But what I realized—correction, what I always knew, and Karyn reminded me of—is that it’s not Equestria that keeps me here. Even if living on Earth meant going back to my dead-end job and dead-end life, I would still do it, if not for you.

“Yes, I do wish that we could go back and relive our adventure, and yes, I do wish that we could recapture what we had then. But we can’t. All we can do is take what we have and declare it, shout it, make it real ourselves.”

He looked over at Karyn as if waiting for a final approval, then approached Lyra, who had listened to his speech unmoving, her eyes beginning to well with tears. He held out his hands and put them in the position he had held her in so long ago, when they had first declared their love. Dropping to one knee, he was looking her right in the eyes.

“Lyra Heartstrings,” he said, “will you marry me?”

100: Lyra's Derpan 2: Derpy's Derpan

Once again, Lyra and Hank were separated by a wall and a door, but this time Karyn and Derpy were running between them.

When Karyn had explained and Hank had confirmed the tradition of keeping fiancés apart from one another until the ceremony, Derpy had lifted Hank up to the second floor and forced him bodily into his room. Lyra had protested that it didn’t have to begin immediately, and that in fact she wanted to spend more time with her newly betrothed, but Derpy had been insistent. When she pushed Lyra into her own room, it created more confusion, as she wondered why she couldn’t be out in the living room. But Karyn understood. Derpy wanted to ensure that she had her part in planning the wedding. So Lyra and Hank did all their preparations by messenger, sometimes with Karyn and Derpy meeting in the hall.

“There is just so much to do and to think about,” Derpy said on one such meeting. “Guests, food, decorations, music. We should bring in Pinkie Pie. She has so much experience.”

“I don’t know that Hank would be into that, considering that Pinkie Pie was the one who started this off in the first place.”

“Good point.

“It’s possible too,” Karyn said, looking back at Lyra’s room, “that they don’t want a standard wedding. Let’s go ask her.”

Derpy allowed herself to be taken in, and Karyn brought up the subject with Lyra.

“I didn’t even think about the actual wedding when I said yes. I don’t even really want a wedding. I just want to be married to him. Get it over with and start our lives together. I mean, we have been together, but our married life.”

“But this is historical. It’s the first marriage between a human and a pony!”

“I know,” said Lyra, fidgeting on the bed. “And that’s what worries me. What if Princess Celestia or some too-big-for-her-horseshoes noblemare thinks that this is wrong? Hank taught me a wonderful saying from Earth. It’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”

“Derpy, she’s right,” said Karyn. “I’m sure Hank will feel the same way. Get it done as quickly as possible.”

“All right, I’ll go ask him.”

“Actually…” Lyra grabbed the door and held it closed with her magic, although Derpy hadn’t moved yet. “Could I ask Karyn to go? I’m sure she could speak to him better human to human.”

Karyn left, and Derpy was about to go out into the hall, when Lyra continued. “Stay back a moment. I had an ulterior motive for wanting to get Karyn out of the room.”

“Uh oh. What’s that?”

“I want to ask you something very important, since you were one of the architects of this whole thing. Are you willing to be my best mare?”

Derpy had a feeling she had almost never felt, and so it took her a moment to identify it. It was so rare for anypony to single her out for an honor that she was about to hug Lyra and scream her thanks. But before she could, she realized something important.

“What about Bon-bon? Won’t she be angry?”

“I’ll want her in the wedding party of course, but Hank and she have never been the best of friends. If he sees that I’ve bumped her down the line, it’ll make him understand how serious I take this, make him see that he’s first in my heart.”

Derpy shook her head. “And Bon-bon?”

“I’ll smooth things over with her. I’ll explain it just like I told you. In the first place, she’s the kind of mare who likes scheming in that way, and in the second, she’s my best friend and she’s never wanted anything but my happiness.”

“All right. I’m still not sure about it, but I’ll defer to you. Now, about a dress, if we have one made it could take a while.”

Lyra recoiled. “No, no. I’ll just wear one of my old ones. I would like something new, but I want to do this ASAP.”

“Sorry, you mean, like, with a tree?”

“No, it’s another human expression I’ve picked up. It means ‘as soon as possible’.”

“Well, I can fly home and grab one of my dresses. It wouldn’t be fancy, but at least different.”

Lyra smiled. “Thank you. I really mean it. But no, I know just which one I want. It’s hanging in my closet and I had it cleaned and pressed after the last dance I wore it to, so it’s perfect.”

“One thing won’t be. If I’m going to be your best mare, who’s going to be Hank’s stallion of honor?”

“Oh, buck.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not right for a mare to swear on her wedding day.” Derpy brightened up. “What if we ask Karyn to do it?”

“There are two distinct ways in which Karyn fails to qualify as a stallion of honor.”

“But who else is going to do it? Mr. Cake or someone he doesn’t know? I think he might like it if the only other human in Equestria is with him.”

“All we can do is ask.” Lyra headed for the door, but Derpy stopped her again.

“I’ll ask.”

Right as she emerged, Karyn came out the other door. “Ah, Derpy, you’re here. Good. Listen, I’ve been talking with Hank, and we have a rather weird request. Do you think Lyra would be OK if I stood next to him? He really doesn’t want a best man, but having another human there, he says, would be a nice nod to what species he is.”

Derpy had a laugh at that, and explained, and so that particular debate was settled. They moved on to figuring out who was going to officiate.

“How exactly does marriage work in Equestria?” Karyn asked. “Does everypony have to get married by Princess Celestia? Is it some kind of magical bond that strengthens their love?”

“No, nothing like that. And certainly the princess doesn’t do all marriages. She wouldn’t have time to do anything else. Basically, when two ponies want to get married, they have a ceremony, somepony important says a few words, and then they go around saying ‘This is my husband’ or ‘That is my wife’.”

“But what about the legal aspects?”

Derpy flashed a confused look.

“I mean, what about...” Karyn trailed off. Many of the benefits of marriage on Earth didn’t apply. Equestrians weren’t taxed the way people in her country were, nor did they get benefits that made more sense to apply to married couples.

Before she could rephrase her question, the door below opened, and in raced Bon-bon.

“Is it true?!” she said.

“Is what true?”

“That Lyra and Hank are getting married?”

Derpy’s jaw dropped. Karyn was stunned as well, but just put it down to the news getting around somehow. Derpy, though, wasn’t taking that. “How did you know?!”

“Roseluck told me.”

“Well, how did she find out?!”

Bon-bon blinked, wondering why Derpy was reacting that way. “I didn’t ask. I assume that Daisy told her, since she told me to wish them luck, but I didn’t ask where she found out.”

“Everypony in town knows! This isn’t what they want.”

“Are you sure it isn’t?” asked Karyn.

Hank poked his head out. “Is it all clear? I have my tux on and I’m hoping that we can do this soon.”

Derpy bit her hoof. “Give me a minute.” He went inside and Derpy flew to the window. “Ponies are already starting to mill around.”

Karyn walked downstairs. “Let me see how far it’s spread.”

Opening the door, fearing a mob, she only saw what Derpy had mentioned, ponies in the street around Lyra’s house, talking to each other. If Karyn didn’t know better, it could have been any social event in Ponyville.

The ponies saw the door open and a human come out, and some approached closer. A pegasus that Karyn thought was Cloudchaser said, “Is it true? Are they getting married? I was thinking of flying to Canterlot to get Princess Celestia to come, but—“

“No, don’t do that. Really.”

“I didn’t, since Flitter already went.”

“Oh, no. Um, thanks for letting me know.” She raced back into the house. “Derpy, it’s bad. It’s becoming an event. We need to get this over and done with.”

“ASAP?”

Karyn looked at Derpy oddly for knowing that expression, but said, “Yes, as soon as possible.”

“We could tell everypony that there’s no ceremony. They’re just eloping.”

“We could, but I don’t think Lyra would be happy about that, and Hank might not think it counts without a ceremony. What we need is an official. Come on.”

For the first time, Karyn approached Derpy to mount her without being invited. But Derpy ignored the slight since Karyn had an idea and the timing was critical. She took to the air and said, “Where to?”

“Town Hall.”

Once Derpy had landed safely on the balcony, Karyn poked her head in to see Mayor Mare signing some papers. “We’re in luck,” said Karyn. “She’s here and not in a meeting.”

Derpy knocked on the window. The mayor poked her head out. “Mayor Mare, we need you to come do the wedding of Lyra and Hank because everypony knows about it and Flitter went to Canterlot and as a human Hank needs an office!”

Before the mayor could react to Derpy’s stream of semi-consciousness, Karyn said, “Please, it’s hard to explain. What we need you to do is come with us and say a few words.”

“Well, that’s what I do.”

It wasn’t easy for them to get back before things degenerated, all the more so because they could no longer fly and because they wanted to get Mayor Mare in without anypony else seeing. Fortunately, Lyra’s house had a back door. More fortunately, they were able to take a back way without being caught. On the way they brought the mayor up to speed.

“You do know the wedding ceremony?” asked Derpy.

“By heart.”

“Great. Lyra! Hank! Come down here!”

“Are you sure?” Lyra called from above. “We can both come out?”

Karyn thought of another tradition. “Do you have a veil?”

“A what? No.”

She searched frantically. “How about just a hat? One that matches your dress.” What could she use? Inspiration struck and she dashed to the kitchen. When Lyra followed her a moment later, she asked for directions. After some work with a pair of kitchen shears, Lyra had cheesecloth over her muzzle.

“Hank’s ready!” Derpy called from the living room.

One more thing was missing. Karyn cursed herself for not having the wedding march on her smartphone. It wasn’t the kind of thing that she would prepare for, and if she had needed it, figured that she could stream it. She scrolled through her playlist for anything with a suitable opening and found a song with a trumpet fanfare to begin. She queued it up and pressed pause.

Derpy came into the kitchen and stood by Lyra. They discussed the procedure, and then Karyn went out to stand by Hank. His tuxedo consisted of jeans and a button-down shirt, the wedding march was just an intro to a pop song, and the bride’s veil was a cheesecloth, but since it was the first human-pony wedding, none of the traditions they were breaking could be said to apply.

The mayor launched into the ceremony. “Lyra, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Hank, do you take Lyra to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

“Then by the power vested in me I now pronounce you…” she stumbled, realizing that saying “mare and colt” wouldn’t be appropriate. Karyn leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Man, and mare!” she finished.

Bon-bon, Derpy, and Karyn waited. Either Mayor Mare wasn’t going to say the last line or she had forgotten. It was up to Hank to unveil Lyra himself and put his hand on her cheek. That triggered her memory.

“Oh! You may now kiss the bride!”

He leaned in, Lyra anticipating. As soon as their lips touched, the rest of the wedding party broke into applause. “Thank you, Mayor,” said Karyn. “I’m sure we can get you back to your office now. We’ll just let everypony outside know that it’s already done.”

She went to open the door, only to have it swing into her face amidst a shower of confetti and the sound of a party horn. “Congratulations!” came the cry, but at the front of it was a familiar squeaky voice.

“Pinkie Pie?”

“Yep! I knew that Lyra and Hank were getting married, so I just had to put together the best wedding reception Ponyville has ever seen! I’ve got it just about ready, so come on!”

Derpy came over. “But how did you find out?”

Pinkie’s dull stare and lack of response told Derpy all she needed to know about who had begun spreading the word. While Pinkie’s powers were something that everypony had to live with, Derpy still found them annoying sometimes.

Outside the yard and some of the road were lined with picnic tables and banners. The ponies clapped and stomped as Hank and Lyra came out. The mayor scrunched her muzzle at seeing a public road used for a party, but since nopony else was coming by to use the road, she couldn’t complain. Leaving the house, she joined the preparations.

Lyra herself seemed resolved to being the center of attention. Hank was less sanguine, but since it was Lyra who dealt with most of the fawning, he couldn’t complain. Sitting at one of the tables, he took a drink of water. Music started up, and Karyn couldn’t see from where, but at this point, her task was done, and she joined Hank for a drink as the party got into swing.

In typical Pinkie Pie fashion, the food for the party was all desserts, and she brought out a three-tier wedding cake on a wheeled table. Lyra was enticed to come up and cut a slice, which she shared with Hank. Pinkie had not been able to find a human figure for the top, so a stallion standing on its hind legs had to suffice. Even Hank laughed at that.

“Presents!” Cried Pinkie, who seemed to be in several places at once, even more so than normal. Whether she had engineered it or the ponies of Ponyville were that good, it seemed that everyone had a present already wrapped. Lyra sat next to Hank unwrapping endless potato mashers, corn poppers, and feather dusters. Derpy pulled at Karyn’s shirt.

“What should we do? I didn’t get them anything.”

“Derpy, we handled the wedding. I don’t want to say that we’re exempt, but I’m sure that there won’t be any fuss if they don’t get to unwrap anything from us.”

“But look at how disappointed they look.” Derpy pointed. Karyn didn’t see disappointment, but what she could see in Hank’s expression was a desire to get away from the throng and sort out exactly what had happened. He had hoped for a quick elopement anyway.

Lyra was enjoying herself, but Karyn could see that she was also concerned for her new husband and wanted to make sure he was having a good time as well. An idea popped into her head.

“Come on, Derpy.”

“For what?”

“To give Lyra and Hank their wedding present.”

“But…?” Derpy followed Karyn, still confused. It took a while for them to make their way through the crowd to get near Lyra, and during their push Karyn explained everything. They were the last in line and were able to pull the newlyweds aside.

“Lyra, Hank,” Derpy began. “We were apparently the only ones who didn’t know about this and had time to get a gift, but we do have something for you.”

“We were going to bring Pinkie Pie with us,” said Karyn, “but we think this is more important.”

Derpy picked up the spare saddlebag. “In here are the spells we use to take other ponies back to Earth with us.”

“Enjoy a honeymoon with each other back on Earth.”

Lyra’s smile reached her face before she had the time to be stunned. She looked over to Hank with her horn aglow and her hooves outstretched for a hug. His smile was more reserved, but he said, “Thank you,” in a clear and deep voice.

“You want to go?” asked Lyra.

“You want to go, and this is your wedding day, so I want to do what you want to do. Besides, it means we don’t have to clean up after this party.”

Karyn and Derpy laughed, Lyra thanked them, and then the happy couple went into the house and vanished.

They sat down at one of the picnic benches. Although there was still the brouhaha of the party going on around them, it was mostly around the edges , and they felt as though they could enjoy it as though they were alone.

“Well,” said Derpy. “It feels like we really accomplished something today. Which is more than I can say for most weeks.”

“I think we get things done, but yeah, few events as historical as bringing together the first human-pony couple.”

“Hey, Karyn?”

Derpy’s tone told her that she was going to say something important. “Yes?”

“Do you think Pinkie Pie’s right?”

“About what, specifically? Chances are I’ll say no.”

After Derpy’s laughter stopped, she said, “I mean, the way she sees things, with life being just a story and none of it being real.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t feel like a character in a story. Look at me. Do I look like one? How do I tell?”

“You don’t. If it were true, there would be nothing we could do about it.”

Karyn stared blankly for a long time. “Here’s what freaks me out about it. Like, imagine if one day I woke up, and you and Equestria and all the times we had together were nothing but a dream. That’s how it makes me feel. Because that’s the one downside to knowing that you’re real: you shouldn’t be.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. But everyone else just goes about their daily lives with no magic or anything to make them think that the world is anything other than random actions. And when you think that’s everything, you’re a little freer.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Derpy.

“I know, I’m not sure that I do either…”

“Are you saying that you’d rather believe in magic than see it?”

Karyn laughed. “I think that now, but if you did go away, I’d feel worse off then. I think I can understand how Hank could get complacent, and need something like this wedding to renew his love for Equestria and for Lyra.”

“Then are you going to want to marry me someday?”

“Ha, no. You’re a good friend, but that’s all. Hopefully we won’t ever need big dramatic events to keep together.”

The party was beginning to wind down, and ponies were going home. Now it really was getting quiet.

“I’ll tell you this, though,” said Derpy. “If there was someone out there making us all up for a story, I wouldn’t be very happy with them. Why would they make it all dramatic? Why give me these eyes that make other ponies shy away from me and this brain that doesn’t work as fast as Twilight’s? Why not just make everypony perfect? It would be cruel otherwise.”

“You’re asking questions that a lot of humans ask too. I think ponies don’t because you have Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and they’re kind of like the authors of what happens in Equestria.”

That gave Derpy something to think about, and for a long time, she rocked on the bench doing nothing but watching more ponies leave and the sun sink lower in the sky. Karyn slipped off to get a drink and some cake, then returned.

“On the other hoof,” Derpy said with no context.

“Yes?”

“If our lives are all controlled by somepony, it wouldn’t be all bad. Because they brought me you. Drama isn’t too much of a problem, so long as there’s a happy ending.”

“Well, I can’t say anything against that.”

“Come on. Let’s get you back to Earth.”

Karyn mounted Derpy, and her hand rubbed gently over the back of her neck. Derpy took to the sky and let her wing stretch back to brush Karyn’s cheek ever so slightly. She flew at a steady pace, and the clouds parted like a road. In the distance, the sun danced off them in an orange and red fire that streaked to the horizon. Down below, the laughter of the foals played into the music that seemed to come from nowhere. The upbeat tunes of the party had given way to simple lullabies.

Derpy used her spell, and they were back on Earth, yet for a moment neither was sure that it had worked. The sky on Earth was every bit as cloud-streaked, and the air was cool in their nostrils. Though it was late, it made them feel awake, as though the day stretched before them.

They lit in the yard and climbed the stairs up to Karyn’s apartment. Nothing more was said between them, and nothing had to be. After one more hug, Derpy was in Equestria, and Karyn was on Earth, but a piece of them remained in each other’s world, in each other’s heart.

Author's Note

Wow, one hundred chapters. Wouldn't have believed I could do it at the outset. Anyway, next week is a clip show, but it will have a preview as we head back into the routine. Thank you for indulging me these last few chapters.

Clip Show: Wibbly Wobbly, Derpy Werpy...Stuff

“Now, this is a guest.”

Derpy watched the third person in the room with loving reverence. It was one of the rare times that Karyn saw her so childlike.

“Thank you for coming, Mister…”

Derpy corrected her before the guest could. “Doctor. Doctor Hooves.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not fussy.” As if to give the lie to his statement, Dr. Hooves straightened his bow tie.

“Anyway, like I was saying, now we have a really important guest.”

“We have had Princess Twilight,” said Karyn.

“Big deal. This is the Doctor, my daddy’s best friend, and probably the best stallion in Equestria other than him.”

Karyn was never comfortable talking about Derpy’s father. “Well, Doctor, welcome to my apartment…and planet…and dimension.”

He smiled. “Thank you. I’m pleased you invited me, but may I ask why I was?”

“Derpy insisted.”

“But, I mean, why bring ponies to Earth?”

“Ah,” Derpy interrupted. “That goes back a little bit…”

“When I was getting ready to go this morning, I heard a scraping sound by my door, and I saw that somepony had slipped in a note. But it wasn’t any note, it was a note written on really fancy paper.”

“And what did it say?”

Derpy dug through her bag. “I brought it with me so you can read it for yourself.”

Karyn took the note and looked it over. As Derpy had said, the paper was thick and expensive-looking, and was inlayed with gold. The writing, in impressive calligraphy, was attractive as well, and a little difficult to read for being spindly and sparkly. But there wasn’t much of it.

All it said was: “Derpy, please bring Karyn with you back to Equestria today.”

She flipped it around to see if there was any more written on the back, but all she saw was the quality of the paper once more.

“I don’t get it. That’s it? Are you sure it’s not a prank?”

“If it is, somepony went to an awful lot of expense to prank us. And also, if that’s the case, I don’t think that we should deny the prank-puller a fair chance to put one over on us.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “Well, I’m not sure I agree with that, but curiosity will get the better of me if we don’t go, so let’s go.”

She got on Derpy’s back and held on for the trip between dimensions.

When they arrived, Derpy swooped down, then said, “Where are we going now? The note only said to bring you to Equestria, and Equestria is a very big place.”

“Actually, that’s confusing sometimes. Does the word Equestria refer to just the part that Celestia and Luna rule, or is it the whole universe? The first one would make sense if they have to meet with diplomats from places like Saddle Arabia, but then are they raising the sun and moon for everypony everywhere? And if so, how can anyone stay independent of that?”

“Oh! I know!”

“You do?”

Derpy now dove with a purpose instead of just holding in the air. “Since we found the note at my house, we’ll go back there. Maybe whoever wrote the note will meet us.”

Karyn didn’t know if Derpy had heard her but was just pondering the question of what to do, or if she was so deep in thought that she didn’t even listen. In either case, Karyn didn’t feel like repeating it, so she just hung on as Derpy took the familiar route back to her home.

The Doctor blinked. “That’s a nice story, but what does it have to do with inviting me to Karyn’s home?”

“Oh, that’s what was in the letter.”

He rolled his eyes and tousled Derpy’s mane in a fatherly gesture. “Ah, little Derpy, you’re always funny.”

“I’m not good at this reminiscing thing.”

“You’re fine at it.” It was the first time that Karyn had seen somepony question Derpy’s competence where she didn’t seem to mind it.

“You seem to really love Derpy,” said Karyn.

“Oh, definitely. I worry about her so much, hoping that nothing ever happens to her.”

“I know what you mean.” She thought back…

The elevator stopped, and Derpy made a move to leave, but Karyn saw that it was only the second floor and pulled her back. The doors opened and Karyn stared at a heavyset woman backed by four or five men. They entered the elevator, pushing Karyn back. All at once, things happened.

As the doors closed again, Karyn tried to take up as little space as possible, shrinking into the corner. The ceiling of the elevator car was low, and Derpy was forced to hunker down on Karyn’s shoulders. The portly woman crowded Karyn who made a sudden movement. Right then, the elevator started its descent. That tripped Derpy, who tried to right herself the best way she knew how, by flapping her wings, bumping her into the ceiling. She cried out, cutting it off, but not quickly enough to stop the woman from turning around.

Now facing the back, and with Derpy flapping, the woman threw up her hands and got a face full of invisible wing. Acting by reflex, she clutched her hands at the air. One dug into Derpy’s flesh causing her to call out. The other got a grip on one of Derpy’s hooves.

“There’s something in here!” the woman screamed, but at that moment the elevator had reached the ground floor. The doors opened again.
If nothing else, the pressure of close quarters was released, and by the front of the car, one of the men who had gotten on one floor above stepped out, yelling for security. The other men backed off slowly, unable to tell whether she was having a fit or whether she was in fact being accosted, perhaps by some kind of insect.

Karyn tried to push out of the elevator, hoping that once Derpy had room to maneuver, she would escape easily enough, and then the only problem would be some hasty explanations. But that woman had a death grip! To make it worse, a security guard in a gray shirt and leather belt came running up from the front desk. Karyn looked at his belt and saw that he was unarmed, or at least had no gun. He did have a radio, which he clicked and said something unintelligible. Then he said, “Everyone, let’s calm down.”

“No, it’s here, I tell you!” the woman said. “Help me with it.”

The guard flashed a blank look and went for his belt. Karyn saw the small cylinder in his hand and recognized it as pepper spray. Not knowing whether he was going for the woman or for Derpy, she couldn’t help herself, grabbing at the woman’s arm. “Let Derpy go!” she said.

“I don’t remember that at all!” said Derpy.

Karyn remembered how that incident played out. Although it had impacted her strongly, it had all been a dream. “I’ll explain later.”

Derpy was fine with letting it pass. “Anyway, Doctor, this is Earth. Ask me anything about it! I know lots of things about this world.”

“So do I, I’ve been here before.” Doctor Hooves sipped at the coffee that Karyn had given him and was looking the other way.

“You have?! I thought I was the first!”

“What? Oh, you are, of course. I sometimes get the past and the future confused.”

Derpy leaned in close to Karyn. “Sometimes I think that Doctor Hooves has some weird abilities, even if he’s just an Earth pony.”

Karyn had a few ideas about that herself, but she didn’t know enough to say.

“Oh!” Derpy turned back to the Doctor. “Karyn has powers too! She’s a changeling queen!”

“Is she now? How did that happen?”

“I’ll tell you…”

Chrysalis watched the sparks and then approached Karyn. “That is indeed a magical illness you have. I wonder why. Have you attempted any unusual transformations lately?”

“I haven’t been transformed ever. Except when Princess Celestia switched me with Derpy once. But that was more of a mind-switch than a transformation.”

“What?! No wonder your health is failing. A changeling must transform or she will suffer buildups that are quite painful.”

Karyn sat up, ignoring all her symptoms, and spoke forcefully to Chrysalis. “What are you talking about? I’m not a changeling!”

“Were you not listening at our last meeting when I appointed you a queen?”

“Yes, an honorary queen.”

“Precisely,” said Chrysalis. “Meaning that you do not watch over a hive of your own. You merely have the powers of the changeling. I never figured you to be so dense as to not use them.”

“Then does that mean I have to feed on love as well?”

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. “Child, does the word ‘honorary’ have a different meaning in your language? You get all the honors of being a changeling queen without any of the accompanying responsibility. But if you do not exercise your powers, the excess of magical energy will cause the symptoms you are seeing now.”

Karyn went wide-eyed. Momentarily speechless, Derpy flew between her and Chrysalis. “Listen, stop talking down to her! You do that to everypony and they don’t deserve it! I was there and you never said anything about giving her any kind of magic power. If she didn’t understand, it’s your fault for not explaining. Not to mention that she would have never taken them had she known. Karyn’s very sensitive about becoming too Equestrian. I remember when she got her cut—well, that was a private moment, but the point is that she’s a human, through and through, and she likes it!”

For the first time, Karyn saw Queen Chrysalis’s sang-froid completely shatter. She had seen her show deference to Celestia and to Twilight when she thought her safety and her duty to the hive were in jeopardy, and her tone was gentler with Karyn herself since she considered them of equal rank. But it was clearly unprecedented that any creature had ever talked back to the queen in the name of another, and that Chrysalis had considered that she might be wrong.

But she wanted to be more practical. “Queen Chrysalis, are you saying that if I use these powers, I won’t be sick?”

“Yes. It doesn’t have to be frequent, but I certainly wouldn’t go several months without altering my form, as you have.”

“And how do I alter my form?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “What are you? A new hatchling? You just do it!”

Perhaps inspired by Derpy’s defiance, or maybe because it was the only reference Karyn had for being someone else, but she flashed back to when she had been in Derpy’s body, and tried to recreate the feeling.

It was almost immediate. From her head and her chest it felt like fluid was collecting and coming out of her mouth. She was surrounded by green light, which soon dissipated. A duplicate of Derpy stood in the room. “You’re just lucky that I have experience being Derpy, or I would never have done this. Then I’d be dying and it would be all your fault!”

“Ugh. Please change back. One of the gray worker is too much to handle.”

Doctor Hooves slapped his knee and burst out laughing. “Yes, that’s exactly like a changeling.”

“Oh? You’ve met them?”

“I’m sure I’ve come across some in my travels. But it seems like my adventures don’t compare to yours.”

“It’s not always that exciting,” said Karyn. “Most of the time it’s just like this. We hang out and enjoy the nice weather when we can get it.” She opened the window.

Derpy smiled. “And if we can’t, then sometimes I take her to Equestria where we can definitely get nice weather. Once I even took her to Cloudsdale…”

There was only one bedroom in the house, and it was on the same level as the living room. Again, though, Karyn was disappointed to see only cloud furniture. The bed was not even bed-like, just a puffy cloud.

“Derpy, it’s a lovely house, but I really—“

“I know, Karyn. This is the thing. I know that you can’t walk on clouds, but I had this cloud enchanted so that you can lay on it.”

“You can do that?” asked Karyn.

“It’s a newer spell, but better. When you lay on it you’ll feel the same thing that a pegasus does when she steps on a cloud.”

Karyn looked at her, wondering if she was joking, but Derpy have no such indication. Instead, she released Karyn from the holding spell and sidled close to the cloud. Karyn poked out a finger and felt resistance.

“You got a unicorn up here to do this for me?”

“Mm-hm.”

“That must have cost you a lot. Thank you so much.” Karyn tentatively stepped off.

“Go on, jump off and land on it.”

Karyn didn’t jump, but she did roll off Derpy’s back and onto the cloud. The first thing she was grateful to feel was that she wasn’t free falling. Then she actually felt the sensation of the cloud.

Because they looked so much like cotton, Karyn assumed that it would feel like a big cotton pillow. Instead, it was more like diving into a swimming pool, only she could breathe without effort, and did not need to exert any effort to keep on top. The cloud buffeted her back, and all the stiffness she had felt flowed out of her like it was a solid thing.

She bounced up and down on the cloud, laughing and making happy noises, before the second feeling hit her: an extreme fatigue, as if she’d been awake for an entire day.

“Oh, my.” She yawned and leaned back.

“You’re tired? Feel free to lie down and take a nap.” Derpy grinned with her tongue stuck out.

“No, I didn’t want to come here to sleep, just to stretch out and relax…” Karyn’s speech slurred as her vision clouded. Despite her wishes, she found herself losing consciousness. The cloud seemed to have taken on a life of its own, folding and flowing around her. She could no longer see any part of herself below the neck, and the part of the cloud behind her head thickened to form a pillow. Now in addition to the feeling of floating, she had to deal with the warmth of being wrapped in a blanket.

It was too much for her. Derpy watched her eyes flutter and seal shut. Karyn’s breathing slowed and she rolled into a fetal position.
The rest of the magic that had been infused into the cloud took effect. From each part of her body the cloud turned from white to black as the stress and fatigue was leeched out of her. It grayed the cloud until it became saturated, then rained onto the cloud floor below.
As softly as she could, Derpy hovered on top of her and whispered.

“I know how hard it can be, even at your age. Everypony says that young people have it easy, but we know it’s not. When I was your age, I was scared of not knowing where I was going to live or what I was going to do either. When I got the mail route, at least I had some surety in my life. I watched it with Dinky too. She’s working so hard, but nopony gives her any credit because that’s what young ponies are supposed to do. Well, I give her all the credit in the world. And you too. There’s no one in Equestria I love more than her…”

Derpy leaned her head down on top of Karyn’s.

“But there’s no one on Earth I love more than you.”

A strand of hair fell over Karyn’s face. Derpy brushed it aside with her hoof and planted a motherly kiss on her forehead.

“Aww, that’s sweet,” said Karyn. “I didn’t know about that because I was sleeping.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.”

The Doctor got up, stretched his back, and shuffled on his hooves. Derpy seemed to know what the gesture meant.

“You have to go?”

“Soon. You know that I have so many things to do. But I wouldn’t visit without finding out about your daughter. How is she?”

“Dinky? Of course she’s still the most brilliant unicorn in all Equestria, the most devoted daughter, and never gets in any trouble.”

He looked at Karyn, who understood and nodded. “Dinky is doing well, but I wouldn’t say she never gets in trouble…”

“Karyn! So good to see you again. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

“Same here, Dinky. Why, when your mother told me that you were waiting here for us, I dashed over as quick as I could.”

Karyn said it with as much sarcasm and humor in her voice as she could, but Derpy still looked at her sideways. A moment later, though, she seemed to understand, as she grinned and hugged her filly. “I’ve missed you too.”

“As have I, mother.”

“Mother?” said Derpy. “You mean me?”

“Of course, mother. How droll, as always.”

“I’ve been your mommy for all your life. Why ‘Mother’ now?”

Dinky flipped her mane back. “Well, after all, I’m almost a grown mare now. ‘Mommy’ is a better word for a little filly to say, don’t you think?”

“Does that mean that you’re not my little muffin anymore?”

Dinky seemed to have been caught by that, and it reminded Karyn of the way Derpy had reacted when asked if they had a contact plan for Dinky. “I guess I don’t mind in private, but just ‘Dinky’ is fine when we’re in public. To wit, let us be on our way.”

She gave another mane flip and walked away as if she were the mayor of Fillydelphia. Karyn was amused a little and headed after her, but Derpy looked more distressed.

The city of Fillydelphia was indeed built low as Karyn had observed from their flyover. The streets were narrower than in Canterlot, but without any cars there was still plenty of room. Shops lined the avenues and it seemed that each one had a dwelling above for its owner and their family. Dinky waved to one and all, even though it didn’t seem like she knew them personally.

The stores and houses were getting progressively nicer as they neared the center of town. Dinky turned down a block that was dominated by the marquee of a hotel, the Goodhoof. Derpy was still looking all around, and so was shocked to see Dinky turn toward the front door.

“Come, mother, this way.”

“Are you planning to stop in the bar here for dinner or something?”

Dinky giggled. “Perhaps on our way out, but no, this is where I’m staying while I’m in town.”

Right at that moment, a stallion in uniform walked up to her. “Welcome back, Miss Hooves. Your room has been tidied for you, and there are no messages. Anything else I can provide for you, don’t hesitate to ring.”

“Thank you.” That only impressed Derpy the more.

“The way she had changed made us both a little nervous, but it was just a phase she was going through, and it ended soon enough.”

“Then all is well,” said Doctor Hooves. “That warms my heart.”

“Will it be very long before I see you again?” asked Derpy. Though the smile never left her face, her eyes weren’t in it.

“It may be, but I will always be watching over you. Farewell.”

He left, and it was Karyn’s impression that he vanished a moment before he activated the spell to take him back to Equestria.

“Well, another visit went well, though we didn’t do much.”

“I know.” Derpy was still looking at the spot where Doctor Hooves was just standing. “But that’s what spending time with him is like. Even if I don’t do much, it feels like I’ve accomplished something. Someday I want to really get to know him and understand him.”

“That may be a task too big for either of us.”

Author's Note

Over an hour late. Unforgivable! I may have to start changing the posting time. In the meantime, I certainly owe you a good, strong preview.

“No, it’s not nearly as heavy as my mailbag.”

“So who’s going with you guys today?”

Karyn, now fully aware, remembered why she was so anxious about that day. “It’s the visit we were supposed to have before we got caught up with you. It’s Pinkie Pie.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I can’t believe how many there are! Are all the people on Earth here?”

“Oh, no. There are billions of them.”

“Billions?” Pinkie said the word in the same way that a person might say it when told the amount of their lottery winnings.

“It’s true,” said Derpy. “I found it hard to believe when I looked it up on the Internet the first time, but yeah, that many. There’s no way you could see them all, though.”

“Give me time…and space, and several other dimensions. But there is something I definitely want to see.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“And they’re just regular pastries, right?”

“What do you mean, Derpy?” asked Karyn. “Does Pinkie make non-regular pastries?”

“Sometimes I like to get creative,” Pinkie said.

Please come back and read that too. Maybe I'll get it up on time!

101: So Sweet and Derpy

Karyn was still a little tired from being woken up early, but the bright colors of Equestria were bringing her to full awareness. In any case, she didn’t have to make much effort as Derpy led the way.

“Did you actually hear from them?”

“No. Lyra just sent me a letter saying they would be back this morning and that if I wanted to swing by to pick up the second bag of spells, they would be available.”

A picture of Lyra and her human spending the time together emerged into Karyn’s head. “I hope they had fun.”

“I’m sure they did. Who wouldn’t love a honeymoon?”

They reached the house and Derpy knocked on the door. Lyra emerged right after expecting them.

“Hi, guys. You know, I never thanked you properly.”

“It didn’t cost us anything.”

“I wasn’t talking about the honeymoon.” Lyra was serious. Ducking back into the house, she floated over the saddlebag. “Do you need me to help you carry it?”

“No, it’s not nearly as heavy as my mailbag.”

“So who’s going with you guys today?”

Karyn, now fully aware, remembered why she was so anxious about that day. “It’s the visit we were supposed to have before we got caught up with you. It’s Pinkie Pie.”

“Ah. You want me to ask Hank to head up to the clock tower again and be in a bad mood?”

Karyn laughed at that, but she almost wanted to say yes.

They bade Lyra adieu and headed away. “Are we picking up Pinkie at Sugar Cube Corner? Or is she somewhere else? Hiding and watching us from unknown pockets in the fabric of space-time?”

“Yes, she’s at the bakery.”

“Good, then I can at least get another sweet before she destroys the universe.”

Derpy rolled her eyes and trotted on.

The morning was cool and Karyn was fully awakened by the brisk air that blew up her nostrils. “Why did we have to get here so early?”

“Lyra said it was the only time she had free. I gather that they got back late last night, and when you’ve been away from the house all week, chores tend to pile up.”

“I guess that’s true, but even if I were to drag my feet, Pinkie Pie would have plenty of time on Earth to wreak whatever it is she’s planning. So let’s get there.”

Derpy, who was more skeptical than Karyn of Pinkie’s potential, led her down the road to Sugar Cube Corner. The events followed the same pattern as last time. Karyn did get her treat, Pinkie greeted them the same way, and they continued on their journey to the clock tower. Despite giving Lyra a non-answer, she still secretly hoped for there to be someone at the top to stop them. But it was not to be.

Karyn went through the instructions for using the spell, and Pinkie Pie, whatever her powers, was awed at having unicorn magic in the palm of her hoof.

“Once we get there, be sure to use the invisibility spell right away. It’s not good if other humans see you. Plus my landlady likes to be snoopy, so watch out for her.”

“Why can’t I use the invisibility spell here and then go to Earth with you?”

Karyn was taken aback. “That’s normally what Derpy does, but she’s more adept at switching when she can’t see her own hoof. Everypony else likes to do it the other way.”

“I’m sure I can handle it. Better safe than sorry, right?”

Though still in doubt about Pinkie’s sincerity, she mounted Derpy and prepared for the trip. Back on Earth, she entered the apartment and saw Pinkie and Derpy come back into her vision.

“Now, again—“

“Oh!” Pinkie interrupted. “I completely forgot from last time! I was supposed to Pinkie promise not to cause trouble on Earth.”

“I thought you did, but I guess that doesn’t carry over.”

“No, I think I tried to get out of it.”

“Great, and now you’re already here. Do your worst.”

Pinkie sat on her haunches and raised a hoof. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. I will make every effort to avoid detection of Equestria, ponies, and myself, so as to keep Earth more or less how I found it.”

“Are you qualifying it because you want to get out of it?” Derpy asked. “Or just to be safe? Because I can’t stress enough how much this means to Karyn.”

“I’m honestly going to try to be good. I’d prefer it if you didn’t just lock me away in this apartment just browsing the Internet and watching videos, but when we go out, I’ll stay invisible and not mess up unless somepony or some human or something forces me.”

“I think that’s the most we can ask for.”

Karyn stood up. “I’m inclined to agree. But how do you know about the Internet? Did Derpy tell you?”

Pinkie grinned. “When you’ve got a Pinkie sense, and millions of people are making reference to you, you tend to know these things.”

“All right.” They got set to head back out into the street. Although they were only there a few minutes, Derpy had removed her saddlebag to stretch out. Karyn helped her put it back on, which Derpy appreciated, though she could do it herself in a pinch. As she did, she noticed something odd with Pinkie’s.

“Are you wearing two saddlebags?”

“Yes I am!” Pinkie sounded as if she was expecting the question. “The other one is the one that has all your spells in it.”

“No, but what’s the other one have?”

“I just told you!”

“I meant…never mind.” Karyn gave up, but noticed something even more odd about Pinkie’s saddlebag. No matter how much she bounced or jerked around, which was a significant amount, the saddlebag always seemed to stay in place, or at least maintain a level balance. It reminded her of some of the outdated video blue- and green-screen effects when not used properly.

“All right! Let’s go and meet the humans!” Pinkie Pie went invisible and said, “Funny, feels almost like I’ve said that before. Oh, well, I’m sure it doesn’t matter.”

Not wanting to explore the latest mystery, Karyn opened the door and gave the ponies time to get out before she followed.

As they walked toward the town, Karyn reflected that they hadn’t picked an activity. Nothing seemed to fit Pinkie’s personality quite the way it had for Rainbow or Fluttershy or Rarity. But she feared asking Pinkie what she wanted to do.

“Derpy, do you have anything you’d like to do?”

“Oh, you know if it was me, I’d be content just to sit around or go to the movies. How about that, Pinkie? Sit still for two hours while you absorb some culture?”

“Have you even met me?” asked Pinkie.

“Come on! We could see a real artsy film that’s in black and white. Ooh, or one with subtitles!”

“Blecch!”

“Derpy, stop making fun of her,” said Karyn. “Seriously, what would you like to do?”

“I don’t know. I figured that Pinkie would have broken her promise and wrecked the world by now.”

“I thought you were on her side!”

“No, I’m just less concerned about it. You’re worried about the whole world, but I’m only worried about you.” Before Karyn could respond, Derpy thought of something else. “Hey, does your Bluetooth thing work with two ponies?”

“If it didn’t, we would have been caught long before now. Yeah, everyone will just think I’m on a conference call. Of course, if we have a human guest, then I don’t even need that.”

“Oh, my gosh! We didn’t even get a human guest this week! Oh, Pinkie, I’m so sorry. Normally now we have a human waiting to meet everypony as they come, but we didn’t for you. Karyn, why didn’t you think of that?”

“It’s OK.” Pinkie’s tone of voice seemed to say that it really was. “I’d rather hang out where a bunch of humans are, even if I don’t get to be up close and personal with one.”

“Let’s go to the center of town. We can at least be in among humans there.”

“I think we’re heading there anyway. Could be a random choice of direction or Pinkie Pie subtly maneuvering my feet for me.”

They headed downtown, and while the other ponies they had taken there had eyes for the tall buildings or the art, Pinkie was all about the people. “I can’t believe how many there are! Are all the people on Earth here?”

“Oh, no. There are billions of them.”

“Billions?” Pinkie said the word in the same way that a person might say it when told the amount of their lottery winnings.

“It’s true,” said Derpy. “I found it hard to believe when I looked it up on the Internet the first time, but yeah, that many. There’s no way you could see them all, though.”

“Give me time…and space, and several other dimensions. But there is something I definitely want to see.”

“What’s that?”

“A bakery! Or whatever equivalent you have here. I don’t know if you have the same kind of place like we do with Sugar Cube Corner, but if there’s anything close…”

“We have bakeries.” Karyn pulled out her phone. “And I think they’re pretty close to Sugar Cube Corner. No foals hanging around making you dump flour on your head, though.”

For the first time, Pinkie was caught short. “Huh? Oh, like I had to do for Pound and Pumpkin all those years ago. Hah! That was a cool memory to bring up. I like you, Karyn!”

While Pinkie gushed her praise, Karyn had looked up bakeries on her phone. “This place is close, but it’s more of a cupcake place. One of those frou-frou things that just popped up to take advantage of a trend. They’ll probably go out of business as soon as people get tired of red velvet.”

Derpy said, “What do you mean? That’s more what Rarity would be looking for.”

“I’ll explain later,” said Pinkie.

“Here we go, this is an Italian bakery. That’s a country here on Earth, and they’re known for good baking as well as not being too uptight. That’s stereotyping, but whatever.”

They walked through the town, though it took longer than it normally would to reach the bakery since Pinkie stopped every few feet to admire someone’s clothes or the way a baby laughed or two teenagers engaged in a public display of affection. But they reached it soon enough and, as they prepared to enter, Karyn heard Pinkie stop once more and fiddle with her bag.

“Now’s the moment I’ve been waiting for!” she said as Karyn led her down an alley. Although the bag itself remained invisible, Karyn could see the line where its flap was as she brought out a box and set it on the ground. It was tied with baker’s string in a pattern of red and white stripes.

“What’s in there?” asked Derpy.

“Baked goods, of course! “I knew I wanted to make something special to share with all the humans!”

Derpy’s curiosity was piqued. “What kind, exactly?”

“Oh, I’ve got…” It sounded like Pinkie was going to break into song, and Karyn kept an eye out for prying ears, but instead Pinkie just recited a list. “…apfelstrudel, baklava, cookies and devil’s food, éclairs, financiers, gateau, and heavy cake, ice cream and jelly pies and kringle and ladyfingers…and that’s where I stopped.”

Derpy had picked up that Pinkie was working her way through the alphabet, but her face fell as Pinkie apparently hadn’t reached the letter that might have given her her favorite treat.

“Don’t worry, though. I’ve got a whole M-list planned for when I get back.”

“So exactly what is your plan for these?” asked Karyn.

“Well, as much as I’d like to just open the box and pass them out in the bakery, that’s obviously not going to work out.”

“All right, good.”

“Because then they would see me. You’ll have to go ahead and pass them around.”

Karyn facepalmed. “No, this was why I wanted to check your plan first. You can’t have me do that either.”

“Why not?”

“Put it this way. How would you feel if somepony else decided to give away pastries right in the middle of Sugar Cube Corner?”

Pinkie breathed in sharply as she contemplated it. “That would be awesome! I could eat somepony else’s pastries, maybe some I’ve never had!”

“OK, rephrase. How would the Cakes feel about it?”

“You may have a point. But I don’t want them to go to waste.”

Though invisible, Karyn and Derpy could sense Pinkie’s puss-face. “Couldn’t we give them out somewhere else?” asked Derpy.

“That’s the best thing for it. There’s a long stretch of elevated grass in the square. I’ll set up on the concrete railing at the edge.”

Pinkie poked her head out and saw the spot Karyn had mentioned. “It’s not the ideal spot to get noticed.”

“I know, but I’m a little ambivalent about being a public spectacle myself.”

“But it’s so fun!”

“Everyone’s different,” said Derpy. “Would you make Fluttershy give out treats in public to humans?”

“No. But there’s a bigger problem as well.”

“What’s that?”

“If we’re not in the bakery, how am I going to get to sample any of what they’ve got?”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “I’ll go in and get you something nice. Just wait here because there isn’t a whole lot of room in front of the counter. It’s a small store; most of the space goes to baking.”

She came out a few minutes later with a small box. Pinkie insisted that they set up their giveaway, so Karyn tore off the top off the box and wrote, “free, take one” on it. Once it was leaning against Pinkie’s box, she turned her attention to the new one.

“Ooh, what are these?” Pinkie’s saliva turned visible as she drooled into the grass.

“Cannoli. I think they’ll be up your alley, since they use ricotta, which is vaguely like mascarpone.”

Contrary to what Karyn expected, Pinkie didn’t gobble the cannolo down at once, but instead licked at the cream. “It’s good! They’ve really sweetened up the cheese with cinnamon and allspice and sugar! And there’s chocolate chips in it too.”

“Can I have one?” asked Derpy.

“Yes, but just one now.” Karyn checked the box. “I got half a dozen, two for each of us, but they’re very fattening.”

“Doesn’t matter to me!” Pinkie now bit hers in half. “It’s good with the crunchy pastry too, but yeah, it would be better with mascarpone.”

“That’s another pet peeve of mine. You’re saying it wrong. The e isn’t silent.”

“I beg pardon?” Karyn turned to her right to see a middle-aged lady hovering over the box of pastries.

“Oh, sorry. Would you like one?”

“Thank you! Is this for a new bakery?”

Karyn came up short. She chided herself for not realizing that people would think it was an advertising stunt. “Well, that depends on whether you enjoy them or not.”

The lady took an éclair. Holding her hand to her chin to make sure no cream dripped on her blouse, she nibbled. “That’s…delicious. That’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten!” She shoved the éclair into her face, no longer caring about making a mess. With custard on her face, she ran off.

“Say…Pinkie?” asked Derpy.

“Yes?”

“You made all these yourself, right?”

“With my own hooves!”

“And they’re just regular pastries, right?”

“What do you mean, Derpy?” asked Karyn. “Does Pinkie make non-regular pastries?”

“Sometimes I like to get creative,” Pinkie said, eying the rest of the cannoli, “but these are perfectly safe. The worst thing they’ll do it turn your head into a balloon or make you dissolve into sugar, but both of those feel good!”

“What?!” Karyn wondered if she should race after the woman with the éclair or get rid of the rest of the sweets, but before she could, Pinkie’s laughter rang out.

“Gotcha!” she said. “They won’t do anything like that.”

Derpy chimed in. “Not after you made the Pinkie promise, anyway.”

“You’re right. Given the chance to make a little mischief, I might have done that. But I didn’t. Next time, maybe.”

Other people, perhaps spurred by the woman’s greedy devouring of the éclair, stopped by Karyn’s sitting place to sample the pastries. They all thanked her and all seemed to be enjoying what they had, but happily for Karyn no one else asked where they could get more.

“Are you sure you didn’t put anything in those cupcakes and such that shouldn’t have been in there?”

“I put in some love and hard work, but other than that, no.”

“Is something wrong?” asked Derpy.

“I just haven’t seen anyone so happy just from eating a regular pastry like that.”

“Let’s head back and I’ll try to explain.” Pinkie got up and Karyn could hear her bouncy step as she followed back the way they had come. “In the first place, everyone likes getting something for free. And when it’s a tasty treat that they can tell has been crafted to give them the best eating experience, there’s no reason that it wouldn’t make someone feel as good as they can.”

“Now that makes me wish I had gotten one before they were all gone.”

“Oh, you get to eat one that’s much better?”

Karyn brightened up. “Oh, you made more?”

“No, but that’s not what I meant. When you have your cannoli later on—“

“Cannolo. Cannoli is plural.”

“Oh, OK. When you eat it, you’ll get to taste yours plus mine plus Derpy’s. Because when you give something away, it comes back to you doubled, and everything tastes better.”

Karyn wasn’t sure if Pinkie was talking about sweets specifically, or if she was trying to articulate some grand scheme for spreading happiness throughout the world.

“So, why do you have to be so selfish, Karyn?”

“Huh? Derpy, what do you mean?”

“Well, Pinkie said yours will taste better because you got one for me. Why didn’t be unselfish and let me buy you one, that way I could have the good taste!”

Karyn thought about pointing out that it would be more selfish to eat what was given to you, but decided to answer in a more Derpy way.

“Actually, I’m being even more unselfish, because I’m letting you pass the benefits of having the better-tasting food onto a friend. That being such an unselfish thing to do, you’re sure to be rewarded for it.”

“Oh! I get it! So by giving me a gift you’re really giving me a gift.”

Pinkie laughed. “Derpy, we should be closer friends. I bet I could make you smile like that more often.”

“How do you know I’m smiling when you can’t see me?”

“I’m Pinkie Pie, duh! And that’s really why I wanted to come to Earth and see as many humans as I can. I just got a whole new pile of smiles for my collection.”

Neither Karyn nor Derpy knew if she was again being metaphorical or if somehow the smiles of the people she met were somehow captured in her own personal magic. But Derpy did say, “I would like to be a better friend with you.”

They reached the apartment, and Pinkie got to take off her invisibility spell. “Well, it was fun, but I’m really itching to get back home.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah! I haven’t sung or danced for hours! I’m going to have to run a full-orchestra show-stopping number that goes across half of Equestria just to make up for lost time and music! See ya!”

And with a twist of a hoof, she was gone.

Karyn let out a breath that she didn’t know she was holding in.

“Was it really that troubling to have Pinkie here?” asked Derpy. “She didn’t do anything too bad, and over the course of the day you should have learned to trust her.”

“It’s not that. I think I did develop trust throughout the day. But spending time with Pinkie isn’t relaxing. It’s fun, but only in an exciting way, like riding a roller coaster. It’s plenty of fun, and you might do it again, but at the same time, once you get off, you’re shaking.”

“You know, I think you’re right.” Derpy let out a sigh of her own, and rolled on the bed.

“And the weird thing is, I’m more relaxed and feeling better about the whole program now than I was before. If we can handle Pinkie, we can handle anypony.”

“I guess you’re right. I’ll see you next week.”

Derpy travelled back to Equestria and settled in for the long flight home. Halfway there, she saw somepony waving, so she circled round and landed.

“Hi!”

“Hi, Derpy. Listen, I know this is an odd request, but could I be the next pony to join you for a visit on Earth?”

“I don’t see why not, but is there any particular reason?”

“Actually, there is.”

Derpy pulled out the list that she and Karyn kept. “OK, I don’t think that any of these other ponies have any pressing need. You can be next, Bon-bon.”

Author's Note

Now that you know who the guest for next week is, let's see some of what will happen!

“I know, I messed up your schedule a little,” said Bon-bon. “But it’s in a good cause. At least, I think so.”

Derpy explained what Bon-bon had told her, and Karyn agreed that it was good enough reason to bump her up. “By the way, do we have a human guest coming?”

“We do. He’ll be here in around an hour. If he’s on time.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How does she fly?”

“It’s magic. I wondered the same thing. The aerodynamics don’t work.”

“Oh,” he said, and he turned back to Bon-bon.

And now you have another mysterious guest to think about. Come back next week and all will be revealed!

102: Never Ever Ever Derping Back Together

Derpy finished marking her list with the change. She would have to mollify a few other ponies and, in some cases, literally smooth feathers, but anypony who said that she needed to come probably had a good reason.

For the life of her, Derpy couldn’t think of one, though.

“Can I ask why you want to come? I mean, I’m sure Karyn will love having you, but is there a particular reason?”

“You don’t know how it’s been at the house ever since the wedding. Things have gotten…complicated.”

Derpy didn’t want to think about all the implications of three people, two of whom were married, living under one roof.

“It wasn’t as bad as it was before. Hank and I…he’s perfectly nice, but we’re just different personalities. Lyra’s exactly in the middle, and that’s why it works. When they first got together I figured I was being a third wheel, but she made it clear that I was just as important to her. It took me a while, but eventually I got to where I could live there and stay out of Hank’s way.

“But now that they’ve married, it’s the same thing all over again.”

“Well, that is part of what Hank wanted, to get the feeling of newness back that he’d lost with Lyra. I guess he didn’t realize how that would affect you.”

Bon-bon rolled her eyes. “Or he didn’t care.”

Derpy had never found Hank’s personality that acerbic. He was self-centered, to be sure, but not vindictive. “So you’re hoping that a trip to Earth—giving them time alone and yourself time alone—will rekindle your friendship with Lyra the same way?”

“That’s part of it.”

“And the rest?”

“They’re being all lovey-dovey. It gets to be too much.” She walked toward the center of town.

Derpy caught up quickly, not wanting to let an Earth pony get too far ahead of her even if they weren’t racing. “I have the second saddlebag here,” she said.

“Oh, right. The spells.” She strapped on the bag with dexterity, but left it loose around her belly.

“Are you sure you’re going to be comfortable like that? I can tighten it up for you.”

“I’m fine like this. Call me superstitious, but I’d prefer not to have the spells tight and close to my body.”

This was new for Derpy. “Any particular reason?”

“Magic always weirds me out a little. I was raised among Earth ponies, good, solid stock. Even though I struck out to be a candy maker, I’ve always been an Earth pony at heart.”

“But you live with a unicorn! Not only that, but a unicorn who was a major part of inventing the physical spell.”

Bon-bon nodded and shrugged. “Things go that way, sometimes. There’s no accounting for taste, nor for friendship. Lyra would probably cut off her horn for me, and I’d graft one on for her. But I’m not comfortable around magic and, truth be told, she’s always impatient with me when I have to use my hooves for something that she could just zap.”

“Sometimes friendships are like that, I guess. With opposites. The only problem is that my opposite would be a super-smart and able pony, and wouldn’t have time for me.”

Bon-bon wasn’t the type to reproach Derpy for self-derision, but she knew it wasn’t right and vowed to mention it to Karyn, who would do something about it.

They climbed the clock tower and Derpy reached into her bag. Gingerly, and with a pinched expression, Bon-bon got out the spell in the first position. As soon as she had it out, she slammed the flap shut.

Once on Earth and invisible, Bon-bon fairly raced for the apartment, and this time she and Derpy tied to reach the door. She reversed the invisibility spell, bit the strap that was holding the saddlebag on, and tossed it to Derpy, who placed it gently on the bed.

“Problem?” asked Karyn.

“Bon-bon’s a little thaumatophobic.”

“Hello, Bon-bon. Derpy thinks she can trick me by using a fancy word, but I know both of those roots. No more magic while we’re here, I promise. But is everything all right? I thought today’s guest was going to be C—“

“I know, I messed up your schedule a little,” said Bon-bon. “But it’s in a good cause. At least, I think so.”

Derpy explained what Bon-bon had told her, and Karyn agreed that it was good enough reason to bump her up. “By the way, do we have a human guest coming?”

“We do. He’ll be here in around an hour. If he’s on time.”

“An hour will be fine,” said Bon-bon. Stripped of her bag, she stood on her hooves and slouched. Karyn couldn’t tell how she knew it was a slouch, but a slouch it was.

“Please, sit down. Or lie on the bed if you like.”

“Yeah, do it. Karyn lets me crash on the bed all the time. Just try not to muss it up too bad.” Derpy straightened the blanket as if to emphasize her point.

Karyn leered at her. “You can even do that if you like. It’s Derpy who’s bothered by such things, not me.”

“Thank you,” said Bon-bon. “But it would be rude anyway. To mess up the bed, not to relax on it.” She brushed the dust off her hooves and rolled on to it. “Oh, yeah. This is good. Not as soft as Equestrian beds, but I like a firmer mattress.”

“You could probably even go to sleep if you want.” Derpy looked upwards and cudgeled her memory. “Have I ever slept in your bed, Karyn?”

“I don’t think so. You’ve slept over, intentionally or otherwise, but you brought your own bed. In any case, you can rest if you’d like, Bon-bon, but when my guest gets here it might wake you up. Or Derpy and I might just do that on our own.”

Bon-bon did not sleep, but she did slow her breathing and go into a kind of trance. It was restful enough that when the guest did arrive, rather more than an hour later, she was alert enough to ask why she and Derpy were being herded into the bedroom.

“Karyn likes to explain to the human before they see us. It helps put them at ease,” Derpy whispered.

The door opened, and they listened to Karyn greet the other human.

“Hey, babe. What’s up?”

Derpy inhaled sharply, then ground her teeth. In the dim light, Bon-bon could see her angry grimace. “That’s Mike!”

“Who?” asked Bon-bon.

“Mike, Karyn’s on-again, off-again coltfriend…boyfriend, rather.”

Bon-bon worked her way through the translation. “You don’t like him, I gather?”

“He doesn’t treat Karyn like he should. In my opinion. But I don’t try to interfere because that just makes Karyn more ornery and get close to him. Plus I yelled at him one time.”

“You did? But I thought he didn’t know about ponies.”

“Technically he doesn’t. But I dropped my invisibility in front of him out of anger. Now let’s see if we can hear how he reacts.” She craned her neck while Bon-bon looked on in shock. Nopony else had heard that story.

Meanwhile, in the living room, Karyn was dithering. “Do you remember one time when you got scared and ran out of the room? It would have been almost two years ago.”

“Vaguely. Something startled me.”

Karyn was amazed at how he could have rationalized the event away. “And do you remember how I’ve always been a My Little Pony fan?”

“Yes,” said Mike cautiously, as if wondering what the two could have to do with one another.

“Well, it’s all true.”

“What is? That you’re a fan?”

“No!” Back in the bedroom, Derpy was irked that Karyn seemed to get so tongue-tied around Mike. “What I’m saying is that My Little Pony is real. Ponies actually exist.”

“OK, I’ll bite. What’s the gag?”

“No gag. What you saw last time was a pegasus pony, the same one who’s currently waiting in my bedroom, along with an Ear…” She cut herself off as she realized that Mike would have no concept of what an Earth pony was. “…along with another pony, and they can both walk and talk and do everything that humans can.”

Before Mike could react again, Derpy stood up and motioned Bon-bon to do the same. They walked out into the main room. Derpy tried to keep her face placid but feared that some of her sourpuss face came through anyway.

Fortunately for her, Bon-bon took the lead in introductions. “Hello, Mike. It’s nice to meet you. This is Derpy Hooves, and I’m called Bon-bon. We come from Equestria.”

“Holy…” Mike uttered a word that the ponies found distasteful and Karyn didn’t like either. He walked around them as though sizing up a terrestrial equine, though he had no experience in doing so. “What’s with the bubbles and candy on your butts?”

“They’re our cutie marks. Ponies get them when they find out what their special talent or destiny is.”

“And what’s up with this one’s eyes? They don’t have optometrists in Ponyland?”

Karyn, horrified, grabbed Mike by the neck of his collar and dragged him away. “Don’t talk about that. It’s insulting. These are my friends, and you should be nice to them.”

“Wait, so you’ve been friends with ponies all this time and you never told me? That’s like lying!”

“I’m supposed to tell you about every friend I have?”

“When they’re magical, yeah!”

Karyn became acutely aware of two more pairs of eyes on them. “Don’t let’s fight in company. Try to be nice.”

To his credit, Mike accepted Karyn’s order and calmed down. He also gave up his inspection of the two mares. Against him, though, was the fact that he went right back into his usual mode of lounging around the place whenever he was at Karyn’s. Indeed, he flopped right into the spot on the bed where Bon-bon had vacated minutes before. Folding his hands behind his head, he said, “So what do you do with these ponies?”

Derpy decided it was time to get back into the conversation. She took a deep breath and said, “Karyn and I have all sorts of fun together. I see her just about every Sunday. Sometimes we go out on walks, or I help her with her shopping, or we’ll find something fun to do. Rarely, very rarely, we’ll spend a lazy Sunday together.”

It was difficult for her to be subtle, and the implication that she did not want to make that day one of those rare days came through. But it was Bon-bon who said, “That’s why I came here. I had all sorts of trouble with my roommate and wanted to relax. It started when—“

Mike interrupted her. “Hey, I like this one. But did you bring any candy?”

“I didn’t. I’m not like Pinkie Pie who can afford to give it away for free. Give me a few bits and I’ll hook you up.”

“Sorry, I don’t have any bits.”

Derpy looked at Karyn. She knew that Karyn had a few of her own on deposit in Equestria, and she hoped that she wouldn’t be asked to lend a few of her own to Mike. Not that she didn’t trust Karyn to make good, but she didn’t like the idea of having her own coins sullied by Mike’s hand. But in any case, Karyn didn’t offer.

Flying over to the desk, Derpy arranged some of Karyn’s items in her normal drive for organization. Mike whispered to Karyn in what he thought wouldn’t be heard, not understanding how good ponies’ hearing was.

“How does she fly?”

“It’s magic. I wondered the same thing. The aerodynamics don’t work.”

“Oh,” he said, and he turned back to Bon-bon.

“Oh? That’s all you can say? I was amazed when I learned that magic was real.”

“Yeah, it’s good, but in the first place, it’s not really useful magic. I mean, it’s not like we could use it to build a rocket to mars, right?”

Karyn thought that it might be possible to do that if some unicorn put the effort into it, but the princesses probably wouldn’t see the point. Still, she wasn’t going to tell Mike. If the only beautiful thing he could see in magic was science, she didn’t want to talk about it.

Mike stretched out and lounged on the bed again. Bon-bon knelt down next to it. That was extreme for a pony. Most of them were comfortable enough on their hooves. Perhaps Mike’s sloth had convinced Bon-bon to join in.

If the two of them were content enough, Derpy wasn’t. She occupied herself on Karyn’s computer, but it soon paled. “Come on, let’s go do something.”

“What did you have in mind?” asked Karyn, hoping for something that Mike would be interested in.

“Well, since there’s four of us, we could probably play a board game and make it more interesting.”

“Nah,” said Mike from the bed. “I’m not into board games. K knows that. I could play video game though. You haven’t gone and bought an X-Box yet, have you?”

“No, she hasn’t. She does PC games sometimes, but not the serious ones.”

“How do you know so much about her?”

Derpy swallowed her first response. “We talk, things come up. I know that Karyn likes video games but she doesn’t feel she has the time or the money for them right now.”

He shrugged and leaned back.

“I’d rather go out anyway. It’s a nice day and we had such a long winter that I’m trying to make up for it. Bon-bon, don’t you at least want to see some of Earth while you’re here?”

“I do,” she said, “but not right now. Let me just enjoy the lack of responsibility for a while.”

“All right.” Karyn was antsy nonetheless.

Derpy went up to her. She did not keep her whisper low, partly because she knew that Bon-bon could hear anyway, and partly because if Mike heard, she didn’t care. “We could always go out just the two of us. Bon-bon and Mike could hang out here until they’re ready.”

“That could work,” said Mike. “Just text me later on where you are and Bonnie and I will catch up later.”

“It’s Bon-bon, not Bonnie.”

Bon-bon looked at Derpy, grateful for not having to say it herself. But Karyn had had enough. “All right. I’m going to go wash up. After that I’m putting on my coat. Once I’m done, we’re going out to have fun.”

Before anyone could respond, she quick-marched out of the room. For two minutes, no one spoke. It was awkward for everyone with the possible exception of Bon-bon, who kept her head down.

“That’s it, let’s go out.” Karyn emerged from the bathroom. “Mike, you can ride in back. Bon-bon can go there too since she can stretch out. Sitting in the front is difficult for ponies, so I won’t make her do it.”

“Karyn, you always do this!” said Mike. “I don’t want to go out. I have enough to do in the middle of the week. Makes me wonder if you get anything done there since you’re always so full of energy on the weekends. And you don’t want to put it to good use. Send the ponies outside and I’ll wear you out.”

“Arrgh! Both of you! Shut up!” Everyone’s attention turned to Bon-bon, who had stood up and was snorting such that steam came from her nostrils.

“Karyn, it’s great that you’re full of energy,” she said, “but not everyone is, and no one likes it when you put pressure on them to do things. And you! Mike, is it? Pressure is nothing compared to what you do! I can tell right away that you’re a classic manipulator. But even beyond that, if you want to relax, you can’t argue about it, just do it!

“I know, because I live with a couple who have their differences, and sometimes they fight, and sometimes beyond that they put me in the middle of it, but I still learn how to deal with it, and so should you!”

It was perhaps lucky that Karyn was so distracted by Bon-bon's rant that she didn't notice Derpy smiling open-mouthed and silently saying, "Yeah!" Mike's reaction was as excited as he got.

"Karyn, your horse friend is yelling at me."

"She's a pony, not a horse."

Having gathered her breath, Bon-bon decided to go again, this time giving her attention largely to Karyn. "You've met Hank, he's a sour case, but at the same time, he puts a lot of effort into his relationship with Lyra. And maybe, Mike, you're having a bad day, but when you're among guests, you've got to at least put on a show. Hank does, why can't you?"

It was a rhetorical question, and Mike didn't answer. He did, however, drag up his form off the bed and say, "All right, what would you like to do?"

Karyn looked down at her shoes. "Actually, what I would like to do is to get a moment alone."

Derpy caught Mike's leer, as the notion of time alone still only meant one thing to him. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, please."

"Come on, Bon-bon. The invisibility spell doesn't hurt, and I'll show you around."

Bon-bon gritted her teeth and took the spell, leaving the rest of the saddlebag in the bedroom. They vanished and walked outside.

"Are you going to eavesdrop?"

Derpy drew back and took to the air. "Under no circumstances! A good friend doesn't do that? Are you telling me that you eavesdrop on Lyra's and Hank's private conversations?"

"No, but they never actually ask me to leave."

"That could be a difference between humans and ponies. We tend not to ask for that. Most of what we say is public."

"Humans are different." Bon-bon leaned in close. "Are you sure you won't listen?"

"No. Besides, Karyn will tell me afterwards. I hope."

In fact, their ears were still picking up the muffled sound of Karyn's voice.

"Why do you have to be so rude to my friends?"

"Your friends? In the first place, why don't you get some real friends?"

"What?!" Karyn shouted.

"I mean, people friends. I'm sure they're nice, but you know what I mean."

"Yes, I do. But that's not the point. I don't know if we can be together anymore."

Mike was apalled, but to Karyn it looked like he was doing it because it was the reaction she expected. "Why not?"

"In the first place, we're too different. I just showed you that true magic exists. There's a whole different dimension where our laws of physics don't hold, where the ponies live together in harmony, and you take the news like I just mentioned my parents' anniversary. I don't see myself spending my life with someone like that. I mean, I don't expect you to treat it like a new religion, but a little passion wouldn't be out of place."

"I have passion."

"Only for yourself." She sighed. "But beyond that, I've grown to be different over the past few years. Derpy is a part of it, but more than that I've grown up a little. And that's something that I haven't seen from you. You haven't changed at all. I hate that I'm being stereotypically female, but yes, I want someone in my life who's trying to improve, not just stagnate."

He looked at her, and all at once he deflated. "All right. Well, we've gone through this before. Call me when you want to get back together."

"You call me when you think you deserve it. Otherwise, just wait."

He left.

It was several minutes more before Derpy and Bon-bon returned to the apartment, and Karyn appreciated the time to collect her thoughts. When they finally came back, she made coffee for all of them.

“Normally, Bon-bon, Derpy and I let the guest pony go home first and we talk about how the visit went. But I’m glad that you’re here today. I have the feeling that you were on my side today as much as her.”

“It’s not a matter of sides,” said Bon-bon, who had sensed what was going to happen.

“You’re right.”

“I don’t understand,” said Derpy.

“It’s just this.” Karyn paced the room. “Mike is part of my life from when I was young. Younger, I should say. I’m still young. Part of me wanted to get away from him because of all his faults, but more of me wanted to cling to him because there was still a chance to be what we were supposed to be. Right now, in this world, two people who fall in love don’t always have a happy ending. In Equestria, it’s different.

“I always thought that I would grow out of things like My Little Pony and believing in magic, and grow into things like love and relationships. And now it’s working exactly opposite. I don’t think I’ll be getting back with Mike ever. And that scares me.”

“Why would you grow out of Equestria?” asked Bon-bon.

“I’ll try to explain.” Derpy put a hoof on Karyn’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “Remember that Mike was confused about your cutie mark. Humans don’t have set destinies. They don’t have a princess to tell them how the world works. They have to choose their roles for themselves. And sometimes they choose wrong. When that happens, there can be a lot of trouble for them before they get it right. If they ever do. That’s why humans need friends just as much as ponies.”

And though she was still nominally talking to Bon-bon, Karyn knew that Derpy could look in two directions at once.

Author's Note

At last I have time to write out a solid preview without rushing until the last minute! Here are some snips from next week!

“Is this the first time I’ve been here on a Saturday?” asked Derpy.

Karyn pulled away from her musings. “I don’t know. Any particular reason you ask?”

“No. I couldn’t remember either. I know I’ve done a Tuesday, a Monday, and a Wednesday, but I wasn’t sure about today.”

“That could be a good thing. You come so often that you’re used to it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How long are you here? Is it possible?”

“For once this works in our favor. If you travel to Equestria with us, we can return to the exact same point in time.”

“You have time travel magic as well?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"People only want magic because, in this world, it makes them special. If lots of people have it, it won’t be special anymore.”

Karyn took a hard look at Derpy. “That’s really insightful. You’ve learned a lot about humans.”

“Not really. I just know that you like feeling special, and your changeling magic is part of that.”

All that and much more next week! Please come back then!

103: Interdimensional Derplomacy

“Hey, Karyn! Short time, yes see.”

“Ha, I like that one. Yes, it has been less time than usual, but I still missed you.”

Indeed, the whole town seemed livelier as Derpy was on Earth for a Saturday. A spate of classes were being held at the campus, and fewer roll-gates were down over the storefronts. There was more foot traffic and even cars that stopped them from crossing the roads as they usually did. Derpy thought about flying over, but declined, in particular because their guest was not a pegasus.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “You would normally do this tomorrow, which is the day that I would prefer anyway, since I don’t have to work then, but we’re doing it today so I can’t work. How does that make sense?”

Karyn put her hand to her Bluetooth. “Because the human you’re going to meet has the same schedule as you. Off tomorrow, on today. And since I don’t know her other than through her work, we go to her.”

“I thought that you always brought humans to your apartment first.”

“Yes, that’s how we’ve done it. But I’ve always had an excuse. Mike was always willing to come over, and I pretended to have a home appointment with the hairdresser who met Rarity. But around here, Colgate, dentists don’t make house calls.”

Colgate laughed. “I don’t either. Carrying my chair around would be difficult.”

Of course, everypony who guested on Earth had to be invisible, and while a vain mare like Rarity wasn’t happy about that, with Colgate, even Karyn regretted that she could not be seen. Colgate looked like what a unicorn of Equestria should, with her two-tone mane, unfound-in-nature fur color, and distinctive cutie mark, no one would mistake her for anything but magical. Neutral-colored ponies like Derpy could, in theory, fade into the background.

“Is this the first time I’ve been here on a Saturday?” asked Derpy.

Karyn pulled away from her musings. “I don’t know. Any particular reason you ask?”

“No. I couldn’t remember either. I know I’ve done a Tuesday, a Monday, and a Wednesday, but I wasn’t sure about today.”

“That could be a good thing. You come so often that you’re used to it.”

Colgate agreed. “Even if it’s the first time you’re here on a Saturday, you don’t seem disturbed by it. I’m a little nervous.”

“I guess you’re right.” Derpy checked that they were going in the right direction and continued. “I just like keeping track of firsts like that.”

Karyn pulled to a stop, and since she was the only one that could be seen, the others had to stop as well. “One thing’s for sure. Like you said, this is the first time that we’ve gone to the person, instead of the person coming to us. And I don’t have perfect trust in this person. I barely know her. We’re hoping she’ll react well. But if she doesn’t, be prepared to stop time or something to make sure things don’t get out of control.”

They reached the dentist’s office, and Karyn realized how awkward this was going to be. She was not, by nature, the type of person who went up to near strangers and began conversations. If she had a reason to be there, that would help, but…

She walked to the desk. “Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked.

“No, I don’t. I would like to speak with Sarah, if that’s possible.”

“Let me see if she’s available. Name?”

Karyn went through the rigmarole of identifying herself, then the receptionist went in search of Sarah. They were still setting up for the day and only one man was in the waiting room.

Once she got back, the receptionist said, “Room 3.” Karyn tracked the numbers on the door. Room 3 was spacious enough that the ponies could enter first and stay to the sides.

She recognized the hygienist from the shirt she wore. As she crossed the threshold and entered the room, Sarah said, “Take a seat. If you don’t have an appointment, there’s only so much I can do, but for an emergency—“

“No, wait. I don’t need any dentistry. My teeth are fine.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“Well, this may seem hard to believe, but…” Karyn launched into her usual spiel. Ironically, she was more at home speaking about ponies d Equestria than she was about introducing herself or explaining that she wasn’t there to get her teeth cleaned.

It had almost become routine, the way the person would question what her angle was, then Derpy would reveal herself and it would begin.

That time, though, before Sarah could begin gushing over the ponies, it was Colgate who was poring over the instruments that had been laid out for the first examination.

“Look at this hook! That would probably hurt a little, but what a way to test the enamel for tooth decay!”

“Please don’t touch those,” said Sarah. “They have to be kept sterile.”

“Oh, right. Of course. I’ll look at them from here.” Colgate stood back and gave the table a wide berth, but continued to examine the instruments by floating them a few feet away. That made Sarah stand back and take a second look.

“Can you really manipulate things telekinetically?”

“No, it’s not strictly telekinesis. My magic is, well, it’s more a part of me.”

Sarah shook her head. “But I mean, you’re not doing it with tricks or mirrors or magnets?”

“I’m not. Just good honest magic. Any unicorn in Equestria could do the same.”

“I want to see it.”

Colgate looked around for something less delicate to practice her magic on. Settling for a clipboard loaded with a form, she floated it over. “You can examine the field. It’s perfectly safe, just some sparkles and sounds that are side effects of the magic.”

“No, I mean that I want to see this place where unicorns exist and do magic regularly.”

“Oh. Well, actually…”

“Is there any reason we can’t?” Derpy flapped her wings, which Sarah had shown no interest in. “Karyn comes to Equestria all the time with no ill effects.”

“Aside from the occasional mark on my rear end.” Karyn could see Sarah’s confusion, but she was still distracted by learning that magic was real to worry about a reference she didn’t get.

“Oh, but I can’t get away from work right now,” said Sarah. “How long are you here? Is it possible?”

“For once this works in our favor. If you travel to Equestria with us, we can return to the exact same point in time.”

“You have time travel magic as well?”

Colgate wanted to explain, but she didn’t know the details herself. It was left to Derpy. “It’s part of the spell that we use to change universes, which was based on the original human-summoning spell. The human world stops in time so as to get a fix on the people it’s transporting. Because the spell was invented in Equestria, it works on ponies without stopping time. If the human stays, or treats it as other than just a visit, time can move forward here as well.”

Karyn thought of some gaps that she could have filled in, but she left it at that. “All right, let’s go to Equestria then.”

Out of instinct, she threw her leg over Derpy’s barrel and let Derpy’s rise carry her up to a seated position. Derpy, out of the same muscle memory, went for her bag. Then they looked at the other two. Sarah, they could tell, had never ridden a horse in her life, given how impressed she was with Karyn’s horsemanship. She inched toward Colgate, but then pulled back when she saw the look on that pony’s face.

Colgate looked first at Derpy with pleading, then at Karyn with contempt, and then at Sarah with no visible emotion, but with the same stance a cat takes to make it clear that it is not to be petted. Her meaning was clear; she thought it the height of an insult to have a human astride her.

It also hurt Karyn’s feelings a little. Derpy had never minded carrying her, and for anypony to refuse a job that she did seemed to be belittling her. But at the same time, tempers could flare unless she did something. An idea came to her.

Dismounting, she went over to Sarah. “Why don’t you ride Derpy there?” she said. Sarah nodded and stood next to her. Derpy, remembering how she had to do most of the work before Karyn grew adept at mounting, knelt on the ground. Then it was as easy for Sarah as stepping over a large log.

“It’s all right, Colgate.” Karyn continued. “I’m sure using the spell is difficult enough without carrying anything. I can take care of this. Sarah, get prepared for more magic.”

She focused, and a green light surrounded her. The evil tinge didn’t reassure Sarah very much, but it soon dissipated, leaving Karyn standing there on the floor, only six inches tall. “Wow! Now that’s amazing magic. How did you do that, Colgate?”

“It wasn’t me. Karyn is kind of a changeling.”

Before Sarah could question that, Karyn said, “Could you lift me up please? Even if Derpy got back down on her belly, I couldn’t climb up.”

Perhaps thinking that she did not expect to begin her workday by lifting a six-inch young woman onto a pegasus pony’s back, Sarah gently placed Karyn onto Derpy. Once there, the spells were queued up and activated. They were in Equestria.

The first thing that took Sarah by surprise was how cartoonish the landscape was. Karyn didn’t want to explain about the show itself, since that would take away some of the luster. But as Sarah got her bearings, Colgate started to head off with an indication that they should follow.

“Where are you going?” asked Derpy.

“I got to see a little of how a human dentist’s office is laid out. Surely Sarah would want to see the same. Besides, now I don’t have to close for the day. I shudder to think of somepony with tooth pain who has to try to sleep another night in that agony.”

They walked along, Sarah feeling that at any moment she might either wake up or find that the ground had turned liquid. Derpy, of course, knew the way they were going, since Colgate was her neighbor. Inviting Sarah in for refreshments was more in her mind, but she was going along with Colgate’s plan.

They entered the office, and Colgate relaxed. Opening her side door, she let anypony who came by know that the surgery was open for business. She turned back to see Karyn pointing at the chair.

“See, this is the difference for ponies. They lie prone when they’re getting their teeth done instead of on their backs.”

“Supine,” Sarah corrected her, but she was more interested in the chair. “And they don’t have any incisors. Vegetarians?”

“Yes.”

Sarah nodded, but she had to pick up her head as a young colt trotted in. Karyn didn’t recognize him, but she did pick out his father who came in a moment later. He had aged significantly, but he still had the slightest build of any pony she had seen.

“Hello, Featherweight,” said Colgate. “You’re not due for a checkup in a while, if I remember right.”

“We’re not, but little Bantam here was out playing with his friends, took a tumble, and cracked a tooth.”

The white colt opened his mouth and showed that, indeed, one of his front teeth was chipped with a long crack running down its length. The one next to it was out of position.

“Oh, my. Lie down immediately.”

The colt used a wing-assisted hop to get into the chair. “Ih weely huhtz!” he said.

“I shouldn’t wonder. But you’re being very brave, not crying.”

Everyone in the room could see the fur plastered to his face by tears, but Featherweight gave a silent thanks. Then he noticed Derpy and the humans. “I’m sorry,” he said, “if you had patients before us.”

“No, no.” Colgate was a burst of action, running to drawers and pulling out instruments. “They’re just observers. Do you mind terribly?”

“No, please, go ahead with what you have to do. Is that all right, Bantam?”

“Juh fix it.”

Sarah’s heart went out to the little one. “Is there any way I can assist you, Doctor?”

Colgate picked her head up. “I’m not a doctor, just a dentist. And I think our methods vary. But if you hold his hoof, that might comfort him.”

Sarah knew something about bedside manner, and even if she was an unfamiliar face, Bantam was comforted by her touch. His father had his other hoof pressed against his own, but there was something to be said for a hand.

Colgate muttered, “Wouldn’t mind having that little mirror now,” but then became silent as she concentrated. A quick examination, and then she said, “It’s not a permanent tooth that’s broken. I can take it out. In a few months your adult tooth will come in.”

The next move she made, Karyn had seen from the first-person perspective. She picked up the long needle and floated it over Bantam’s head. “Don’t worry,” Sarah said, “Just a little while and the pain will be gone.”

From then on, it was quick. Working with several different bursts of magic, Colgate maintained the painkiller field, held his head in place, kept the tooth in a force field to prevent further breakage, and lifted it out with a pair of pliers. One more spell sealed the wound, and Featherweight was passing over some bits and heading out before Sarah could react. But she soon gathered her thoughts.

“That was…it makes me want to give up the practice.”

“What? No! You did a wonderful job keeping him calm.”

“But I couldn’t do anything close to what you did. No human dentist could. You could make us all obsolete.”

Derpy stood forth. “It’s not like that at all. I’ve been to Earth enough times to know two things. One is that there are lots of equivalents of what we can do that you guys can through your technology. And the other is that you never appreciate it enough and always envy magic or flying or such as better.”

“It’s true.” Colgate put away her needle and pliers. “I didn’t get much chance to examine your x-ray machine, but while we have something like it, it doesn’t give the level of detail that I saw on your screen. Actually seeing all the nerves and blood vessels—I’d give anything for that. We only get the bones, so they’re less useful for dentistry.”

Karyn was in the corner letting the ponies make her case for her. But Sarah still looked at her, perhaps guided by the natural instinct to see a similar face. She saw the scene from outside. Back in her office, still waiting for her at the moment she’d left, she’d been the one in control and Derpy and Colgate had been the outsiders. Now she was excluded; she was the only person in the room without any supernatural ability whatsoever.

“I’m sure you’re right. But at the same time…it makes me a little jealous, on a personal level, at all the powers you have. If I could do anything like that, well, I’d feel quite special.”

Derpy nodded, and even Colgate didn’t see the implication. But Karyn knew how difficult it was for humans to ask for things. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but unicorns and pegasi have their magic naturally, and I got mine through a set of circumstances you wouldn’t care to experience. We just don’t have a way to make a regular human magical.”

“We do have the hoof-held spells,” said Colgate, “which are just unicorn magic made into a tangible form. In theory, if one were to reverse the process…”

While dentistry was her vocation, Colgate had a not-so-secret dream to be a researcher like Twilight Sparkle, particularly when it came to magic. She even would joke, saying that her cutie mark of an hourglass was so divorced from her special talent of dentistry that it could just as well mean understanding the mysteries of unicorn spells.

Karyn, however, was less sanguine. She saw the way Colgate was thinking and found herself in a bind. She didn't want to dash all of Sarah's dreams, but at the same time, more magic on Earth was a recipe for trouble.

Derpy just tidied up the office.

"Can I try an experiment?" said Colgate. "I promise it won't hurt, and I promise that I can take it back as well."

No one wanted to say no.

"What do I do?" Sarah was nervous now.

"Lie on the chair. It'll help me if I'm in a familiar position." She pulled her insrruments back from where Derpy had just replaced them, and then went for the saddlebag. Sarah meanwhile took her position, half-wishing that she could take back her request.

A lot of "Hmm"s and "Ah-ha"s later, Colgate said, "Well, I think that, in theory, it could be done."

"Just in theory?" said Karyn. "See, it's a moot point. Maybe someday, hundreds of years from now, it'll be possible, but let's just forget it."

"Until we can make it safe."

"Right."

Sarah started to get up.

"Which I think I can!" said Colgate. "Sorry, Karyn, I'm trying to be diplomatic about this, but we need to push the boundaries just a little. For science."

Before Karyn could react, Sarah was back in the chair, and Colgate had the needle and one of the spells floating above her head. A moment of magic later, and she said, "There, now you can mimic my analgesic spell."

Sarah didn't feel any different. She looked up. "I can?"

"Yes. Of course, it'll take practice, and you can only use it when people won't notice. Otherwise it won't work."

"Huh?"

Derpy's eyes opened wide. "Ooh, good thinking! That way Karyn's happy because no one else will be finding out about magic, and Sarah, you'll have exactly what you want: just a little bit of magic, but you can use it on your patients and everyone will say how happy they are to have you as their hygenist. They won't be able to explain it, but somehow it feels better to go to you."

Sarah got up tenderly, as if expecting fatigue from the operation, but finding none. "How do I make it work?"

Karyn and Colgate each looked to the other for an explanation, neither knowing just how to describe something that the language had no words for. Again it was Derpy who came to the rescue. "Just don't think about it and do it. That's the only way I know how to fly."

"All right."

"So let's go back and try it!" Derpy went for her own bag of spells. The size change and mounting up procedure was repeated, and they were back in the office.

Karyn stayed small and kept to Derpy's back, counting on it being safe enough for the moment and wanting the two ponies to leave as much room as possible.

The next patient was a middle-aged woman. She seemed the type to bear pain well, but she did seem nervous when Sarah came at her with the floss. That's when Sarah stepped to the back of her head and focused. Karyn and the mares watched as the slightest glow appeared by her eyes. It only lasted a moment, and to anyone sitting in the chair it could only be seen as a power surge to the overhead light. Sarah went back about her work. Derpy tapped Colgate on the flank, and they slipped out of the room.

Once outside, Karyn was free to resume her normal size and visibility, and she walked with the ponies toward home.

“Was it right to leave like that without saying good-bye?” asked Colgate.

Derpy chuckled. “It saves us all from an endless barrage of ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ ‘You don’t have to thank us at all,’ ‘But I do. Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ and so on.”

“But what if she forgets how to use that spell? And then thinks it was all temporary.”

“Don’t worry,” said Karyn. “I’ll make sure that every time I go to that dentist, I get her to clean my teeth.”

“So that you can retrain her if necessary?”

“Heck, no! If there’s a way to go to the dentist without pain, I’m doing it forever!”

They had another laugh at that before returning to the apartment. Colgate went visible, thanked the two for a wonderful time, before saying that she hoped to handle a few more patients before the day in Equestria ended. Derpy and Karyn were happy to let her go ahead to have their moment together.

“Are you very worried about the security on that spell?” asked Derpy.

“No. I trust Colgate, at least for now. More than that, I worry about setting a precedent. Is every person we talk to going to want the same thing?”

“Even if they do, we don’t have to give it to them. But I don’t think that will be a problem. People only want magic because, in this world, it makes them special. If lots of people have it, it won’t be special anymore.”

Karyn took a hard look at Derpy. “That’s really insightful. You’ve learned a lot about humans.”

“Not really. I just know that you like feeling special, and your changeling magic is part of that.”

Karyn burned, but there was nothing she could say. It was somewhat true, after all.

Author's Note

Let's take a look at what's coming next week!

“But I’m sure that you don’t just want to stay in here. Unless you’re planning to do all your research over the Internet?”

“No, I don’t. At least not now. Maybe later I can figure out a way to bridge an Ethernet cable across the dimensions.”

Derpy’s mind boggled. “You know about Ethernet?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they reached the top, Derpy said, “Ooh, these are comfortable for ponies. Long benches with plenty of room to stretch out on, and no backs to mess with us. Why aren’t all of your seats like these?”

“Derpy, don’t put Karyn on the spot like that. Humans are obviously more comfortable on a chair with backs and sides. Which raises the question: why do you have these here?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” said Karyn. “Let’s get back home.”

“Why in such a rush?” asked Derpy.

“So I can see your face and how you react when somepony says something sweet like that.”

What could Derpy have said? Come back next Wednesday to find out!

104: Field Re-derp-ch

Derpy entered the room to find Karyn poring over a long list of paper. She recognized it at once.

“Is that the list of ponies who are coming to Earth?”

“It is. I don’t know how everypony is going to feel about altering the list to bring Bon-bon ahead of schedule.”

Derpy ran her hoof down the paper. “Didn’t it already get messed up when Pinkie Pie couldn’t come?”

“Yes, but that was for Lyra’s wedding. Everypony knows about that now. This was more for one pony’s sake. We’ll have to see how forgiving they all are.”

“A lot of ponies keep a flexible schedule. Me, for one. Other than the mail and feeding the cat, there’s nothing that can’t wait a day. Of course, this was a week. Maybe we should hustle.”

Karyn was hoping to be made to feel better, but if Derpy was going to be no comfort, she would have to hope. She mounted up, made it to Equestria, and started jogging to keep up with Derpy’s pace.

She found herself catching up, and soon pulling ahead. Worried that Derpy was losing energy, she said, “Is everything all right?”

“We’re getting close, and I don’t think I want to go in.”

“I made it with Pinkie Pie, and you can make it with…oh, that’s why. It’s not the pony you have a problem with. All right, I’ll go get her.”

They reached the building, and Karyn knocked on the door. When she got the “Come in!” she creaked the door ever so slightly, lest Derpy see in. She slipped in and slammed it behind her.

“Are you ready to go, Scootaloo?”

“Sure am! Where’s Derpy?”

Realizing that the actual reason—not wanting to see Scootaloo’s messy office-cum-laboratory—might be a little insulting, she said, “She’s outside enjoying the sun. Let’s go.” It was technically not a lie.

When Scootaloo opened the door, she did not do so as softly as Karyn had, and for a moment exposed the office and its mess to open view. Derpy’s eye twitched, but it went no further.

“Hey, Derpy! Thanks for inviting me along!”

“No problem. We’re sorry that it had to get pushed back a week though.”

Scootaloo scratched the back of her neck. “It actually works out well for me.”

“Really? Do you want us to delay more?”

“No. At some point you have to just throw your hooves up and go, right? But it gave me an extra week to prepare questions.”

Derpy and Karyn simultaneously cocked their heads and said, “Questions?”

“Research questions! I’m ready to go to a whole world of blank flanks. There’s so much there to see and learn. But when you’ve only got a day, it’s like an astronomer getting her equipment set up and her notes together before some event like an eclipse or a meteor shower or such.”

Karyn held up her finger. “Remember, you can’t interact with anyone. You have to stay invisible.”

“I understand. Again, it’s just like astronomy. Observe without experimenting. But invisibility? Talk about a blank flank!”

Scootaloo chuckled at her own joke, but then got serious as Derpy went over how the interdimensional spell worked.

Karyn realized that they could be about to commit a major faux pas. Scootaloo was a pegasus who couldn’t fly, and no one wanted to bring that up. Should they just start for the clock tower? Should they mention it to her and hope it didn’t devolve into a flying conversation?

Derpy was having the same conundrum, and the way she dealt with it was to fly to the proper height and say, “You have to be this far up before you use it. That’s very important, or you’ll wind up in the ground.”

“I’ve got it!”

Karyn was still unsure of what to do until Scootaloo ran around the back and emerged, this time not around but up. She was seated on a chair that ascended skyward, driven by a telescoping piston. Karyn got on Derpy, and they caught up.

“What is that?” asked Karyn.

“I had this put in because a lot of pegasi prefer to stay in the air when they come over to visit. Oh, not you, Derpy, and not Fluttershy either, but Rainbow Dash does, and she’s important to me. I think a lot of ponies would like to have one of these in their homes to be nicer to pegasi, you know?”

To that they could say nothing.

When the chair reached the right level, they used the spells. Derpy hoped that the chair would be in the same place so that Scootaloo didn’t have to have a crash landing. Karyn gave her usual tour of the apartment.

“But I’m sure that you don’t just want to stay in here. Unless you’re planning to do all your research over the Internet?”

“No, I don’t. At least not now. Maybe later I can figure out a way to bridge an Ethernet cable across the dimensions.”

Derpy’s mind boggled. “You know about Ethernet?”

“Yes. You’ve written and spoken about them from time to time. I’m probably just paying more attention than most. Anyway, what I’d really like to do is to see people. We’re talking about a whole world where no one has a cutie mark. How do they know what their destinies are? How do they know what they’re meant to do? It’s one thing to try things, but how do you know?”

Karyn opened her mouth to explain, but Derpy cut her off. “It’s no good to just say it. It took me a long time to get my head around a blank-flank world too. It was only by watching people that I came to understand. Scootaloo should do the same.”

“Exactly,” she said. “But where? Where can I find people who know their destinies without cutie marks, or who are trying to find them out?”

This time Karyn got to speak. “Well, the school that I go to is a little ways down the road. Humans generally get a lot of schooling, and often they find what they want to do there.”

“Cool! Let’s do it!”

Karyn prepared to go out. “There won’t be classes today, or if they are they’ll be very specialized and we probably won’t find them. But Derpy can tell you that on Sunday when everyone’s off, there are always activities and general milling about. You’ll be able to see a lot of students but still have room to breathe.”

“I’ll make do.”

They left the apartment and started the walk. Scootaloo was still laden with her papers and effects, but Karyn was wearing her handbag as though it was weighing her down as well. As such, it was at a steady pace that they walked, and Derpy pointed out some of the sights.

“You’ll notice how when we get to the school everything gets fancier. If you got a job as a researcher here, you would be set for life.”

“I don’t know how true that is,” said Karyn. “Research professors generally have to spend a lot of time angling for grants. Teaching professors do a little better, but only once they have tenure.”

“I’m definitely no teacher.” Scootaloo huffed as the weight of her bag got to her. “Not to sell teachers short. If it hadn’t been for Miss Cheerilee, I’d have never started on my cutie mark research.”

“I remember watching you in that lesson.”

“You did? That’s…kinda weird. But not as weird as Miss Cheerilee’s cutie mark. She gave an explanation about seeing her flowers bloom and enjoying the smiles on our faces, but is her cutie mark really about teaching? Anyway, that’s what I started thinking about and it led to the general field of cutienomics. So, as much as I want to see students, I want to see teachers as well.”

Karyn smiled. “Less likely, but we’ll see what we can do.”

“What does that mean?” Derpy’s tone had just the tiniest bit of hostility.

“You can tell when I have an ulterior motive, can’t you? Well, yes, I have a paper that’s due tomorrow. I’m going to drop it off in my professor’s mailbox. Probably he won’t be there, but he’ll get it on time.”

“Why not just e-mail it?”

“Once in a while I like to pretend that I’m still an old-fashioned college student who has to walk the campus.”

Now it was Scootaloo whose tone was suspicious. “Really? And you with a cutie mark that represents computers? Are you sure that’s what it’s for? Let me see it again.”

“I am not going to drop my pants and show you my butt in public!” Karyn was approaching the college grounds, and as she emerged she thought that a few people might have heard her outburst and turned their heads, despite her wearing her Bluetooth. But she decided to ignore it. Besides, she had said that she wouldn’t.

Hustling through the quad, she led the ponies to her professor’s office. To Derpy’s eye, this was a much older building than the ones she had been in on the campus. The paint showed the warps and bumps of being several coats thick, and the windows and doors were heavier and out of style. It also appeared to be deserted as they entered.

As they made their way down the empty halls lit only by the sun filtered through decades of dirt on the windows, the hoofbeats of the mares echoed like a drum. Karyn found her professor’s office, dropped her envelope in the black plastic bin outside, and beat a hasty retreat back to the fresh air.

“Now that that’s done, we can work on your research. Do you want to head over to the student union? Last time we found a brony there who got to meet Twilight Sparkle. We could try that again.”

Scootaloo thought about it for a while, then said, “No, while I’d like to talk to a professor, even that wouldn’t be perfect. I wouldn’t be speaking the same language to them, talking about cutie marks. Let’s go back to plan A. Just show me some humans interacting.”

“All right. Let’s go down toward the sports fields. Those are usually busy.”

Again she led; again Derpy and Scootaloo followed. Derpy’s direction sense could have shown her the way, but she was content to let Karyn run the show. Once they could hear the sounds of the practice, she quickened her pace.

“We can go sit on the bleachers and watch the practice,” Karyn said.

Scootaloo hopped up toward the top. “Suits me fine.”

When they reached the top, Derpy said, “Ooh, these are comfortable for ponies. Long benches with plenty of room to stretch out on, and no backs to mess with us. Why aren’t all of your seats like these?”

“Derpy, don’t put Karyn on the spot like that. Humans are obviously more comfortable on a chair with backs and sides. Which raises the question: why do you have these here?”

“Because they’re easier to fit a lot of people into, as the people who run sporting events do. The participants like a big crowd too. This of course is just a practice, but come game time, they’ll want to pack them in.”

They watched the practice, which was for a girls’ lacrosse team. Karyn and Derpy shuddered at the intensity of the physical play, but Scootaloo took a detached and scientific view. But then she burst out with a cry that Karyn was afraid would be audible.

“Hang on! I thought you said that Karyn was the only human with a cutie mark. But there’s one right there!”

“Where? I want to see!” Derpy was almost as excited.

“I’ve got to look closer. Let me just get my binoculars.”

After some fumbling, Scootaloo said, “That’s definitely a cutie mark. Karyn, look for yourself and tell me it’s not.”

There followed one of the oddest moments Karyn had in her friendship with ponies, as she took hold of a pair of invisible binoculars. The lack of a black border to put things in perspective made the magnified parts especially disconcerting. Before she could wonder how the optics of such a device worked, she saw the girl that Scootaloo had alluded to, at which point she burst out laughing.

“Here, Derpy, go ahead and take a look.”

“Where? Where’s the cutie mark girl?”

“On the far side. The one who just got rid of the ball.”

Derpy paused, her voice moving as she scanned. “I see her,” she said, “but she’s facing the wrong way. Turn around, girl!”

A few more seconds passed before their target presented the appropriate part of her body to Derpy’s eyes, then she gave a chuckle herself.

“So, does somepony want to explain things to me?” Scootaloo was getting impatient.

“I will,” said Karyn. “That’s not a cutie mark; it’s a tattoo. It’s artificial body art done with ink and needles. Don’t ask me for more details because I don’t know myself how they do it. But she had to choose to get that mark there and pay someone for it. It has nothing to do with anything magical or with her destiny. Well, maybe a little with her destiny.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, a tattoo in that particular place has some unflattering names, but it implies that the person is somewhat…”

She trailed off, trying to think of how to explain the connotation to the ponies. Derpy tried to finish the sentence. “morally loose?”

“You could say that.”

“Oh.” Scootaloo stretched out the word. “You mean she could be something of a bully, like Diamond Tiara?”

“Not quite.” Karyn racked her brain, but the concept of promiscuity seemed foreign to the ponies. Either they were faithful in their marriages, or were unattached. If there was a seamier side to Equestria, then it was kept well hidden, and it was none of her business.

“Darn. And I thought for a moment that human cutie marks were a thing after all. But if they’re not, then I’m still at a loss. So explain to me, Karyn. If you didn’t have your mark, would you still be here at the school?”

“Definitely. See, when you’re a younger human, you don’t know what you want to do, but you’ve got to do something. So you take some schooling or a job and hope it works out right. Sometimes it’s not till later in life that you really find what makes you happy. Sometimes it never happens.”

Scootaloo was silent for a long time, and Derpy recognized that kind of thinking silence. She tried to help her along. “I know it’s not right, but such is life on Earth. They manage to be wonderfully creative even without that particular advantage.”

“But to spend your whole life not doing what you want…”

“That’s easy to say,” said Karyn, “but doing what you want doesn’t always pay the bills.”

“You should be able to do that whatever you do.”

Derpy took a deep breath. “I don’t think either of you are really understanding the other. Let me try to explain.” Karyn expected her to start by talking to Scootaloo, but by the direction of her voice it was plain that Derpy was addressing her. “To a pony, happiness means doing things for, or with, friends. It’s not always a job like, say, Applejack, who makes food for everypony. She just loves bucking trees and making apple foods. Pinkie Pie probably spends a lot more than she earns, but everypony helps her because they love the parties and so does she.

“But,” Now she turned to Scootaloo. “Here on Earth, a lot of people don’t want to do things like that. They want to finish their job and leave, go on vacations and holidays, even retire. Do you ever want to give up researching cutie marks?”

“No! Not as long as there’s more to find out!”

“But, and this is why I worry about you sometimes, Karyn, humans wouldn’t answer that way. They want to give it up and just relax all day. You have your cutie mark, but are you really going to be happy fixing computers every day?”

Karyn had thought her part in the conversation was done. “I think so. But I know what you mean. For a human, a career is a journey, not a destination.”

“That’s something that I understand, but most ponies don’t. Partially because of the time I’ve spent with you, but also because carrying the mail isn’t something I would choose to do. My father loved it more, but even he said that it hurt his wings sometimes. So he relaxes, and I relax. I hoped Dinky would be more like other ponies, but she’s the same way.”

They all watched the practice for a while longer, then made their way back from the campus. A bank of low clouds had rolled in, and it matched the mood of the girls.

At last Scootaloo had had enough. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t live that way. If I wasn’t happy doing this, I’d be finding out what did make me happy and trying everything to get there. Just like when I was young and wanted to be Rainbow Dash…”

“All right, fair enough,” said Karyn, “but isn’t there something you want to accomplish in researching cutie marks? Some discovery you want to make? If not for yourself, then for other ponies?”

“Yes, but it’s an ongoing thing. I want to make sure that the foals of tomorrow don’t go through what I had to, and Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom as well. There shouldn’t be a need to try everything and fail so often, when that time could be spent doing what you love!”

Derpy reached out a wing for her. “I understand. But not everypony is like you. I know how much waiting ground on you, even though you kept a brave face through it. I wasn’t like that. I got my cutie mark young. Sometimes I wish it had taken longer.”

“Maybe there is a little human in you after all. You’re right. Some ponies are like that. Even some I know. Maybe I don’t have to go to another world to find my answers. Maybe they’re right at home.

“At the same time, I still wish that I could do some kind of magic to give humans cutie marks. Maybe then they wouldn’t be looked down on and pressured if it turned out that their destiny was, for example, just some bubbles.”

“Come on,” said Karyn. “Let’s get back home.”

“Why in such a rush?” asked Derpy.

“So I can see your face and how you react when somepony says something sweet like that.”

They sped up, both because of Karyn’s sentiment and because the first raindrops were beginning to fall. By the time they reached the apartment, the ground was spotty. The heavy clouds were no longer ominous, only a cooling spring squall.

Visible at last, the ponies were all smiles. Scootaloo took copious notes as she stacked her papers high in her saddlebag. She looked as if she was about to lose her balance as she stood on three hooves and pawed the spell to bring her home.

“Thanks for everything, you two. I’m sure that I’ll make an exciting paper out of this.”

“I’m looking forward to reading it,” said Derpy.

“Don’t worry. I’ll include a short version at the beginning. Even if you get bored reading through it, you’ll know what it’s about. So long!”

Derpy had a soft laugh at Scootaloo’s estimation of her attention span, but an even bigger one came a moment later when some scraps of paper near the ceiling turned visible and flitted down to the floor.

“What happened?” asked Karyn.

“Looks like we finally found the range of the teleportation spell. It cut these clean off. I’ll bring them back to her when I get home.”

“This was a fun day. There’s one thing that we didn’t get into with Scootaloo in all our friendly debate about what people do with their lives.

“What’s that?” asked Derpy as she packed up.

“Part of the reason that humans like me want to have time when they’re not working is so that we can have days like this, where you relax, spend time with friends, and talk about the mysteries of life.”

“That’s true. But speaking of spending time with friends, today was another day when we didn’t have a human guest. Just like when Pinkie Pie showed up a few weeks ago, it was just us walking around.”

Karyn sat down at her computer to check her class schedule. Another weekend was coming to an end, and it was time to get back into her routine. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Just like I still want to have an occasional week where it’s just us, sometimes it’s good to bring a pony here and just let her observe.”

“But aren’t you worried about not having enough human friends?”

“No. Take that girl we saw today with the tattoo. Between that and being into sports, we don’t have much in common. Now, we don’t have magical friendships here that are ordained by destiny. But we do have a lot of people, and I’m still young. In all sorts of ways neither of us can imagine yet, I’ll make more friends. I just know it.”

Derpy shouldered her saddlebag. “And even if I’m not young—“

“Which you are.”

“Says you. Even if, I know it’s never too late to make friends.”

Author's Note

As I read through the next chapter, I find that I can't take any clips without giving away who the next pony guest will be, nor who the human whom they meet is. So instead of clips, today you get facts.

The guest will be an Earth Pony.

The human is one we've seen before.

The pony is not from Ponyville.

Both the human and the pony are female.

Both of them are well-liked.

105: Roy G. Derpv

Derpy’s trot was closer to her gallop. “Ooh, I hate being late.”

“I know what you mean,” Karyn said. “Where does the time go?”

In the distance, they heard the sound of a train whistle and a bell. Derpy had heard them many times before, but even Karyn could calculate the rate of time it would take for the train to come to a stop and empty itself of passengers. The numbers didn’t look good. They were going to miss their guest.

“The first pony to visit Earth from outside of Ponyville, and we’re going to miss her.”

If it had been Karyn alone who had dragged her feet about getting ready, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But Derpy had also showed up late, hoping to find Karyn impatiently stamping her foot and ready to hop on. Instead, she was still abed.

It took her five minutes to get Karyn awake, and even then she refused to leave immediately. “Just changeling yourself and let’s go!” Derpy had said.

“I’ve got to at least take a shower. I can’t magic away my stink!” But even after that she was unwilling to go to Equestria until she had poured a bowl of cereal and gobbled it down with a spoon. “I’m not going through the entire day hungry,” Karyn had said.

Now, they were paying for it. They came to a stop right outside the station and Derpy let Karyn off. Even though she hadn’t done much of the running work, she was still out of breath. “I didn’t even look at the list to see who was coming.” Before they entered, Karyn got out her paper and eyed it. “Is this really the guest?”

“Yes! Come on, she’s waiting.” Derpy raced in.

“All right.” Karyn followed her, and saw the pony. She was wearing the dress Karyn pictured her in and scowling, but whether that was because they were late, she couldn’t tell.

Derpy pulled to a stop in front of her. “Hi, Maud Pie! I’m Derpy Hooves, and this is Karyn. Ready to go to Earth?”

As Karyn expected, Maud did not respond for a long time, only blinking slowly. What did unnerve her was how Derpy was able to keep her open-mouthed smile for equally long. It was like some odd staring contest where the parties played by different rules.

At last Maud broke. “You’re late,” she said. It was neither disapproving nor forgiving. It was factual.

“Yes, we are,” said Karyn. “And I apologize for that. But I’m surprised that you were even on my list. You’re sure that you want to do this?”

Again Maud was silent, and Karyn decided that asking questions was going to be counterproductive. She tried again. “I mean, we’re going to see humans. There probably aren’t going to be a lot of new and interesting rocks for you to experience.”

The stone face held. It was left to Derpy to move the party along. “Let’s get going! This is going to be fun!”

Now at a steadier pace, Derpy led them toward the center of town. She repeatedly had to slow up or circle back since Maud marched in her slow plod and would not be hastened.

Karyn couldn’t help herself and had to try to break the silence. “Is there anything in particular you want to see or do on Earth?” Hopefully something quiet so the silences aren’t so awkward, she thought.

“I know you said it’s not about rocks…” Maud paused as if the sentence was an effort. “…but I still want to see some. Even if they’re ordinary rocks.”

Karyn shrugged. “All right, we’ll find something that goes with that I’m sure. So that it’s fun for all of us.”

She allowed herself to zone out until they reached the clock tower. “After you, Maud,” said Derpy.

“Why are we going up to the clock tower?”

Karyn was so surprised to hear Maud ask a question, or indeed begin any part of a conversation herself, that she couldn’t answer at first. Derpy stepped in.

“OK, so normally I fly up to about the same height as the clock tower, and then we go to Earth because the point where we enter is, like, lined up with where you are in Equestria.” She drew on the ground to illustrate. “But obviously you can’t fly, so we need to get you up to someplace high. Otherwise, you’d emerge into Earth like, way far below the ground, trapped there.”

Maud went back to her blinking silence.

“And that’s bad,” said Karyn. “I know that you can tunnel through rock fast enough to survive such a situation, but it would mess with my landlady’s backyard, and it’s not really a nice thing to do. Plus you’d get your dress all dirty. So, please trust us, going from the top of the tower is the best way.”

“All right.”

Derpy began to regret her “After you.” It was bad enough when they had open space to walk, but as Maud’s heavy footfall landed on each stair, Karyn and Derpy were getting anxious. Each of them thought about flying up ahead of her to the top, but they both thought it was rude. But time marched on, and they eventually reached the summit.

Whatever her personality quirks, Maud was intelligent and picked up quickly how the spell to transfer universes worked. She took on the saddlebag without noticing the extra weight and followed Derpy’s lead in turning her hoof inside the spell.

For Derpy, appearing on Earth and switching the universe-crossing spell for the invisibility one was burned into her muscle memory. Karyn slid off and barely had time to look before Derpy was nowhere to be seen. Maud, however, was taking her time. She carefully placed the first spell in the second saddlebag, then shuffled as though rebalancing it. After a pause, she removed the second spell.

Karyn waved her hand in a “Come on” gesture. “Maud, quick. You’ve got to use that spell before someone sees you!”

Maud neither slackened nor sped her pace. Her hoof approached the spell when Karyn heard the rustling of curtains from the house, and then the cry, “Oh my gosh, a gray horse in a dress!”

Out rushed Gayle, her own sundress full of color and dancing every which way in the breeze. “I can’t believe this, this is so cool! Is this, like, your steed or something? Did you conjure her up or—oh, no, you didn’t turn someone into her, did you? Hello! Hello, horsie who may or may not be a person!”

Karyn was in a panic, and Derpy wasn’t much better off. Each reached for the other hoping to get an idea of what to do. It didn’t help that Maud chose that moment to abandon her reticence and say, “Hi.”

“She talks?!”

The backyard was shielded from view by the house on one side and a thick forest on the other, so for the moment Karyn wasn’t worried about anyone else finding out. If anything, attention would be drawn more to Gayle’s excitement. She had to get control of the situation.

Derpy, though, had her own ideas. She canceled out her own invisibility spell.

Whether by design or luck, that spurred Karyn into action. “Everyone inside now,” she said with the voice of a commander. “Maud, you too, with a bit of speed, if you please. Once there we can sort this out.”

Gayle was only too happy to go. Derpy pled with her eyes for Maud to listen. It could not be called a gallop, but she did walk fast enough for Karyn’s satisfaction. They got inside the apartment with no cars or pedestrians walking by.

She exhaled. “Sorry there isn’t enough space for everyone.”

“Why don’t we go into my part of the house?” said Gayle.

“I don’t want to risk showing the ponies—not horses, by the way, and not transformed humans either—off again by taking them outside.”

“We don’t have to. There’s a communicating door in the back of the closet.”

Karyn stared. “There is? I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, I locked it from your side when I let you the apartment. That only seemed fair.”

Mollified, Karyn led them to the closet and found the door at the back. Brushing aside her winter coat, she led them all into the main house where Gayle took over as hostess.

“Let me get chairs—oh, you probably don’t use chairs, do you?”

“We’re quite comfortable on our hooves,” said Derpy. Gayle looked at her for the first time.

“You have wings. You’re Pegasus!”

“I’m a pegasus, yes, but my name is Derpy.”

Maud showed curiosity for the first time. Derpy could understand it, as only she among the ponies knew that the name Pegasus meant a single, famous, mythical flying horse on Earth.

Karyn, meanwhile, was trying to get Gayle’s attention away from the ponies. “So I suppose it’s time that I come clean. I’m no witch, nor any synonym thereof. All of the magic that you’ve seen comes from the ponies. Even the first discovery you thought you made wasn’t even telekinesis, just Derpy, being invisible, helping me move in. This other pony is Maud, who is our guest just for today. It’s a new thing we’re doing, introducing ponies to humans. We hadn’t intended for it to be you, but you spotted her, and now you know everything.”

“But all of the spells you cast…”

“No, there were none. Not strictly true, I take that back. I do have changeling powers.” She demonstrated by altering her hair color, then briefly recounted the tale of how it happened. Throughout the story, Maud kept her placid lack of interest.

When it was all told, Gayle, although the smile never left her lips, turned down her eyes. “I’m still confused. You’re saying that there is magic, but none of it here, and yet you have a bag of spells, but they’re not true magic?”

“Unfortunately we don’t have the third kind of pony here, which is a unicorn pony. Unicorns were the ones who have what you would call true magic, but it’s all a part of what makes Derpy fly and makes Maud…um…”

To her surprise, Maud entered the conversation. “I’m an Earth pony. I’m into rocks.”

“It’s true!” said Derpy. “She could pound a huge boulder into dust in a few seconds, if you needed that sort of thing.”

Gayle moved her gaze from one to the other. “And you’re all from Equestria. Like on the show.”

“Yes.”

For the first time since Karyn had known her, Gayle got serious. “Why didn’t you just tell me? You didn’t have to lie.”

“I’m sorry,” said Karyn.

“Isn’t honesty one of the elements of harmony?”

“It is, and again I apologize. It’s just that you’re my first landlord, and I didn’t want to get into any trouble.”

Putting her hands on her knees, Gayle burst out laughing. “I’m trying not to be that kind of landlord. You’re my first tenant too, so I’m hoping that we can break some of those stereotypes.” She turned to the ponies. “And I’m sure I can be friends with Equestrians.”

Derpy, of course, had been in Gayle’s part of the house, though she was not eager to let that be known. Instead, she said, “Why don’t you show Maud some of your artwork?”

“I’d like nothing better. Maud? You seem fashionable and avant-garde. You’ll probably like some of this.”

She had a few canvasses in various states of completion. Some were covered with velvet draping, and she made no move to reveal them. That was fair, thought Karyn. Any artist has some things that she’s not ready for everyone to see.

Maud seemed the perfect art aficionado, able to stare at each painting for long enough to seem appreciative, then move on to the next one.

“So, what do you think?”

Please be nice, thought Karyn. Maud was never rude to her knowledge, but she had the knack for saying the wrong thing.

“How did you paint them?”

“I’m sorry? I mean, I’ve studied art for a long time, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. My style is—“

“I mean, what did you use?”

Gayle blushed. “Oh! Yeah, I guess my brushes wouldn’t be very intuitive to you. But you could mouth them, I think.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a fan-shaped brush.

Maud stared. “No, what’s the paint?”

“What is it? Well, I mean, um…it’s paint! Oh, but yes, I’ve used different ones. I tried watercolors for a while but I prefer oils and acrylics.”

Maud still had questions, but she expressed them with her face rather than her voice. Gayle went to another drawer and pulled out a tray of new paints. Now Maud showed interest. “Gelled, yes, but the pigments are rocks. I’ve never seen these rocks.”

“Oh, dear.” Derpy rolled her eyes. “You found the thing that Maud’s really into.”

Karyn approached Maud. “I’ll believe that you can tell the pigment rocks from the paint, but how do you know they’re not the same as Equestrian rocks?”

Maud drilled her with a look. “They’re different.”

Gayle was prepared to believe her implicitly. “I studied the chemistry of paints back in art school, but I’ve forgotten all of it, I’m sure. I know acrylics are synthetic but I don’t know how they’re made or what they’re made of. A lot of the other ones are natural though, and since technically they’re all made of the same elements I guess they do qualify as rocks. You’re a geologist? Yeah, I can tell from your cutie mark. Wah! I can’t believe that I’m actually teaching a pony about what I do! We’ll have to look up some information on what they’re all made of.”

She peppered her speech with pauses, as if waiting for Maud to interrupt and share her enthusiasm. But when she finally ran down, Maud just stared. At last she opened her mouth. “You talk a lot,” she said.

Derpy’s jaw dropped, and Karyn visibly winced. Gayle didn’t know how to react. It was a lot easier, Derpy thought, to be the target of rudeness than to witness it, especially from someone you were trying to show around and whom you felt responsible for.

“I’m sorry, Gayle,” she said. “I don’t think you talk too much, even if this is the first chance I’ve gotten to speak to you.”

“No, she’s right. I do talk too much. Cooped up in here all alone, working on my art projects, I even talk to myself too much. I should probably give it up and go work in an office somewhere, but I wouldn’t know how. Although, even when I’m out trying to sell a piece or such, I still talk too much. I should just let my agent handle it all.”

“You’re doing it again right now.”

“Sorry, it’s nervous energy. I’ll stop.”

“Excuse me.”

If anything was more shocking than hearing Maud speak, it was hearing her say those two words.

“I didn’t mean to be rude. And I didn’t say that you talk too much, just that you talk a lot. I like that, if the person has interesting things to say. I really want to hear more about your paints and how you sell your art.”

For once, it was Maud who had to undergo everyone else staring at her and not speaking. Everyone just looked for a while, realizing that the faux pas had been explained and everything was back to bonhomie.

Finally, Gayle said, “You…you really do?”

“Sure.”

“All right! Well, like I said, I have to look up some of these, but I know that the watercolors…”

She launched into a long lecture, punctuated with her racing around the house to show one work or another. When Maud found that she also did the occasional sculpture, her interest was redoubled.

Karyn and Derpy sat back in the chairs around the table and conversed in low whispers. They were content to let Gayle do all the talking and let Maud do all the listening. It was still a touch awkward for Karyn, who felt she was invading in a place she didn’t belong.

It took her a moment to realize that Gayle was speaking to her, and she smiled, hoping that she was not noticed failing to pay attention.

“I just wanted to say that I’m ever so grateful that you’ve finally showed me the ponies.”

“Thanks. Just about everyone who’s met them has been blown away that there really exists a magical world.”

Gayle shook her head. “That’s nice, but it’s not really what I was talking about. Even if Maud weren’t a pony, she’s exactly the kind of person I want to meet and be friends with.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She listens. Look at her, even know, you can tell that not only is she listening to me, but she’s not doing anything else. Almost no one is like that, able to really focus. I get like that sometimes when I’m painting; it’s like the rest of the world goes away. But Maud is like that all the time.”

Karyn looked at Derpy, as if to seek confirmation, but Derpy just shrugged. “You’re right. She probably is. You two go well together.”

“Thanks. I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think it would be all right if she and I hung out together?”

Now Derpy looked to Karyn to make sure she wasn’t panicking. “You mean, without us? That would be the first time that somepony else has been on Earth without me or Karyn around. It could be dangerous.”

Maud gave her one of her blank looks, but Karyn was starting to read her expressions. It promised that she wouldn’t get into trouble. And given the Pie family track record, Karyn was ready to trust her.

“No, I think that would be a good idea. They can stay here all day and talk. Or Gayle can talk and Maud can listen.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why don’t we go back into my place?” Karyn was already getting up. “You can knock on the communicating door or Gayle can come back around later. Or, for that matter, if you’re comfortable enough, Maud, with the spells, you can just go right home and I’ll say my goodbyes through Derpy. I don’t know exactly when your train back to the rock farm is.”

“Thanks,” said Maud, but though Gayle said nothing, hers was the more excited face.

“So let me tell you about…”she said to Maud as Derpy and Karyn retreated back through the door.

“We could have actually gone around,” Derpy said. “I know enough to keep the invisibility spell on.”

“You do, but we’re here now, and I guess we could have our wrap up now, although it doesn’t feel right.”

“True. What we do have is the whole day together, just as if we haven’t brought a guest.”

They decided to go out and leave a note for Maud, should she decide to cut her visit short, which neither of them anticipated. They hopped in Karyn’s car and ran down for ice cream.

“Gayle has my cell phone number in case of emergency. Tell me, what is it about Maud? She’s definitely like nopony else.”

Derpy licked her ice cream cone and thought. “I think that there’s a much more complex pony deep inside her that she doesn’t want to let out. She’s not unlike Fluttershy in that way, but Fluttershy is, well, aggressively shy. She wants friends, but has to work at it. Maud probably wants very few friends, but she wants to know them really deeply. That’s my read, but I could be completely wrong.”

“I suppose.”

“What I’m thinking more of is Gayle. She reacted just about opposite from Sarah when we introduced her to Colgate. In that case, the human was skeptical at first, then she got into it, and then by the end she wanted magic of her own. I was worried that that would be setting a precedent, and that every human we met from now on was going to want some kind of spell.”

Karyn blanched. “I didn’t even think about that. I probably figured that we wouldn’t tell anyone else. And besides, Maud’s an Earth pony.”

“But I can fly, and we still have our spells. Besides, there will be other unicorns along if we keep this up. No, I think that Gayle is happy enough in her life without magic. Or maybe that she’s nutty enough that she doesn’t need to be more unique.”

“You’re right again. And so is she. I should become better friends with her and not be so scared of her just because she’s my landlord. Maybe she’ll even let me slide on rent if times are tough.”

“I wouldn’t push that if I were you,” said Derpy, shaking her head. “Anyway, do you have the list of who’s coming? We should see which pony we’re inviting over next week.”

Karyn went into her purse. “Oh, my. It looks like we could have some trouble with this one.”

“I think you would have said the same thing about Maud if you had realized it ahead of time.”

“Yes, but if we’re going to bring a human guest, we’re going to need someone with a lot of patience and tolerance.”

Author's Note

Another great guest coming next week!

Over the years, Derpy had gotten to know Karyn’s college town fairly well. As they walked along the streets that day, Karyn had to confess to herself that she could not say the same about Ponyville.

“I’ve never been over to this part of town,” she said. “Where exactly are we meeting today’s guest?

“I’m not exactly sure myself. She gave me a list of directions instead of just telling me where to go. Of course, she’s not a pegasus pony, so she might think that this is easier, but it’s annoying nonetheless.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No, you are not. I will stop you myself if I have to.”

“Do you really think you are a match for me if it came to it?”

Karyn joined Derpy. She had never seen two ponies fight, and didn’t want it to happen in her home. “She might not be, but she doesn’t have to be."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I didn’t know humans could build places like this.”

“Oh, yes, they’re quite good at building, especially for things they care about. This is a kind of temple.”

“Of course, Karyn, if you had accepted my offer, we could have a building like this dedicated to us!”

Come back next week for more exciting action!

106: Derply Sins

Over the years, Derpy had gotten to know Karyn’s college town fairly well. As they walked along the streets that day, Karyn had to confess to herself that she could not say the same about Ponyville.

“I’ve never been over to this part of town,” she said. “Where exactly are we meeting today’s guest?

“I’m not exactly sure myself. She gave me a list of directions instead of just telling me where to go. Of course, she’s not a pegasus pony, so she might think that this is easier, but it’s annoying nonetheless.”

Derpy knew how to follow directions to the letter, so that’s what she did, even though some of them made so sense. There was no point in going up one street, making a right, walking a block, making another right, and then walking another block when she could have just turned right at the first street. Either whoever had written the directions knew even less than Karyn about Ponyville, or she was intentionally making Derpy take a circuitous route.

As she reached the third leg of this unnecessary square, a hissing came from one of the alleys nearby. Between Ponyville’s buildings there was nothing to be feared, and Derpy thought that it was just someone who wanted some privacy. As she passed it, the hiss became unmistakable.

“Psst! Derpy Hooves! Down here!”

She doubled back with Karyn making a wider turn. The alley was dimly lit, but the sun was out. Still, it made Karyn laugh to see a pony wearing a trenchcoat and fedora, the latter item pulled down over her eyes. She did know who it was, since she had consulted the list, but she felt the disguise would have been seen through by anypony.

“Trixie? What are you doing back here?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie does not want anypony else to know that The Great and Powerful Trixie is in town. Her name is not exactly well-respected in Ponyville.”

Before Derpy could get confused, Karyn stepped in and said, “Please remember to speak normally in front of Derpy.”

“Right. I am sorry. Quick, now. Perform your magic and let us quit this burg!”

Derpy recovered. It’s not that easy. We have to go up to the clock tower in the center of town, otherwise you’ll wind up too low on Earth and get squished.”

It was more forceful than Karyn would have been, but Trixie was still shocked more than she should be. “We have to go to town square?! Everypony will see me!”

“Can’t be helped. We’ll go quickly so that if they do, it won’t be for long and they won’t have time to stop you.”

“Very well.”

Derpy tossed away Trixie’s directions and used her own sense to take the shortest route. If anything, the only reason anypony would have noticed something out of the ordinary was the fact that, in addition to her outfit, Trixie had chosen to lower her head, walk on the points of her hooves, and slide behind every obstacle on the way.

They greeted the tower guard, who Trixie eyed extra carefully, then went up to the tower. They went through their briefing on how to use the spell, and then activated them.

Once on Earth, Trixie made a move to throw off her coat. “Ha-ha! At last, I am—“

“Not yet!” said Karyn. “We have to get inside. Or invisible.”

“Or both,” added Derpy, who was already flying towards Karyn’s door. Trixie, now without an audience, had to follow.

The door slammed, and now she completed her motion. “Ha-ha! At last, I am free to display my glory!”

“If that makes you happy. You’ll have to go invisible if you want to go outside.”

“I do? Then how will all the humans bask in the radiance and magnificence that is me?”

Karyn braced herself, expecting Trixie’s fireworks to go off right in the middle of her apartment. Fortunately, she had not brought them along, or, if they needed some of her magic, she declined to use it.

“Did you read what we sent around asking if ponies wanted to come to Earth? It said that they might meet humans directly, but were more there to observe, and were above all not allowed to have any effect on our world.”

“No, I did not read through your brochure. I am far too busy for that. I anticipated bringing my greatness to a whole new group of people, and that is what I intend to do.”

Derpy raced to the door before Trixie could get by. “No, you are not. I will stop you myself if I have to.”

“Do you really think you are a match for me if it came to it?”

Karyn joined Derpy. She had never seen two ponies fight, and didn’t want it to happen in her home. “She might not be, but she doesn’t have to be. If you leave, we won’t stop you. Instead, we’ll go back to Equestria—which, incidentally, will freeze you in time here. We’ll return at the same instant, having informed the princesses that you refused to comply with our common-sense restrictions to keep Earth safe.”

Derpy hit her with the second barrel. “Of course, we might not want to go all the way to Canterlot, even with unlimited time. So we’d go to the nearest princess, which from Ponyville would be Twilight Sparkle.”

They knew that appealing to her fear would not be as effective as appealing to her distaste for Twilight Sparkle on a personal level. “Under the circumstances,” Trixie said, “I will relent.

“But there’s no reason to abandon my plan entirely. Karyn, you could serve as my proxy. We could begin the magic show again until your name is famous all over Humania—“

“Earth,” Derpy said, interrupting, but cutting herself off quickly. She had no fear of Karyn accepting the offer, and hearing Trixie go on was entertaining.

“I’ll supply the magic and you supply the presence and together we can rule the world! All will revere your name in glory! Of course, you’ll have to change your name to Trixie.”

Karyn could no longer hold her laughter, and Derpy’s own chuckles were lost to it. “Let me rattle off some of the reasons why that wouldn’t work. In the first place, I don’t want to be famous. Celebrities on Earth aren’t treated well and they’re not given privacy. Even if I did, I wouldn’t want to use magic from Equestria to get there. If I did want to, I could use my own changeling powers to cook up a swell act, except for the other reason that whatever powers I have or am granted, I have zero stage presence.”

Before Trixie could recover, Derpy stepped in. “Can I ask you something? Why all the ambition now? You were ever so nice when we met you back when you were trying to help Dinky out. You understood that she needed to not try to be a star. Why do you want Karyn to be? And why are you back to your old boastful self?”

“I’m always this way. But back in Equestria, as you say, the princesses can stop me. If not here on Earth, I still want to reach some place where I can have everyone revere me.”

Such a bald-faced statement of her intentions short-circuited the conversation, and Karyn and Derpy let their stares drift to the rest of the room. It was left to Trixie to re-break the ice.

“But, if you will not have your precious planet become my…” she searched her mind to continue the alliteration “…protectorate, then let us follow your original plan and see what amusement may be had.”

Derpy’s eyes flashed confusion, and Karyn said, “She means that she wants to go out. Which was our plan to begin with, but, Trixie, would you give us a moment alone?”

She nodded, and Karyn led Derpy into the bedroom. She hung by the doorway and kept one eye on Trixie as they spoke. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I had a guest planned, and I think he could be the perfect person to try to deal with someone like Trixie.”

“Who is it?”

“Do you remember back when we went to—“ Karyn began, but Derpy cut her off. She had been more worried about Trixie making a break for the door, but instead she had picked up her ears and was directing them toward the conversation. Karyn still did not have the instincts to suspect this sort of eavesdropping, but Derpy understood the more precise hearing that ponies had.

“Stop listening in!” she cried, but there was no way to stop her short of letting her out of their sight. But Karyn, now clued in, winked.

“Do you remember where we went right before I got sick that one time?”

It took Derpy a moment. “Aha! Yes, I think that would definitely be a good place to take Trixie. She might even enjoy it.”

They broke their huddle. Trixie, no longer making any pretense of giving them privacy, said, “Very well, let us sally forth and see what it is that you have planned.”

“Ahem. This is where you need to use the invisibility spell. Let me show you how it works so that there are no slip-ups. Or, slips-up?”

Derpy made her wear the saddlebag, showed her how to pull out the spell and return it to its slot, and ensured that she had taken all the necessary steps before taking it from her and putting it her own bag.

“Hey!” Trixie said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t play any tricks and keep it from you. Once we’re back here or in Equestria, I’ll give it right back.”

She grumbled, but had to assent. Derpy joined her and Karyn led the way. Much like the last time they had gone this way, it was a beautiful day, but this time Karyn felt fine and was enjoying herself.

They stopped a block before the church and pointed the building out to Trixie. “That’s where we’re headed. It’s a very important place to a lot of the humans,” said Derpy, “and you need to be on your best behavior there.”

“Beautiful…” For the first time, there was a genuine feeling in Trixie’s voice, a sense of awe. “I didn’t know humans could build places like this.”

“Oh, yes, they’re quite good at building, especially for things they care about. This is a kind of temple.”

“Of course, Karyn, if you had accepted my offer, we could have a building like this dedicated to us!”

Karyn shook her head. “Mostly to you, right?”

“Well, naturally I would expect you as the understanding person you are to know who the real power behind the act would be…but it’s a moot point anyway. Let’s go inside.”

If nothing else, the grandeur of the interior kept Trixie quiet and prevented her from giving them away. They had neglected to give her the extra warning about the superior acoustics of the building, but were taking their chances. Besides, the service was ongoing and, they hoped, she would have manners enough not to interrupt.

As Karyn listened, she remembered the last time she had come. Even sitting in the pews, she had begun feeling faint and couldn’t pay full attention to the sermon. Now she did, and found the preacher quite adept.

Derpy remembered the routine, and she knew when it was about to end. Leaning over to Trixie, she said in a whisper that only pony ears would pick up, “When people start going, just sit tight. It’ll take a long while, and some people will want to linger back anyway. Be patient, because we’re going to have to be the last ones.”

Trixie scoffed, but acceded. Whatever shame lies in sleeping in church, there is none when the service is over, and she probably took a nap. Her snoring gave a slight echo, but that was a sound no one was unused to.

When she came to at the sharp jab of one of Derpy’s hooves, they were alone. She could appreciate the layout of the building even more, but had little time as Karyn led them up the aisle. It was the same path that all the humans took when getting their snack, but there were no more to be had.

Up at the altar, the priest was making a few last gestures of prayer, but he clearly noticed Karyn making her way up to see him. He turned round as she approached.

“Good afternoon, Father,” she said.

In her whisper, Trixie said, “That’s Karyn’s dad?”

“What? No, it’s just a title,” Derpy said quickly, wanting to hear Karyn’s icebreaking.

“I don’t know if you remember me…”

“I try to remember all my parishioners,” the priest said. “When it comes to those who bring miracles with them, I succeed.”

“As to that, I may have to disillusion you. Is there somewhere private we can go?”

“The confessional would be the traditional place.”

Karyn smiled. “It would, but too small for what I need. Maybe one of the meeting rooms?”

The priest, whose name turned out to be Father Lionel, escorted them to one of the side rooms that was rather better lit than the main church. Indeed, it was anachronistically modern. “All right. Now, how can I help you?”

“It’s not a matter of help, or maybe it is, but…Derpy, Trixie, go ahead.”

Karyn watched for his reaction, and while he was startled at the appearance of two invisible ponies, he evinced no surprise at their nature. She explained all about Equestria.

“And so the last time I was here, it wasn’t a miracle. I was showing Derpy the service and she got a little hungry and ate the host herself.”

“I understand now,” he said, “but that doesn’t make it any less a miracle.”

With a smile in his eyes, he greeted the two mares. Derpy responded. “I hope we’re not too shaking to your worldview, Father.”

“Not at all. It takes more than a few talking horses to buckle my faith. Even in the Bible it speaks of a donkey who rebukes his master. I’m sorry, but that’s what’s written.” This was to Derpy, who bristled a little at the mention of a master. “And as was said from the other most quotable source, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

Trixie laughed. “Oh, please. Karyn just explained to you that magic is real and it’s ponies who have it. She’s already showed me that you don’t have any. So pull my other hoof with this book and its tales.”

“We seem to have a skeptic.”

“It’s not a question of skepticism, it’s a question of facts. Your show is very nice— though as a showmare myself I could give you some tips to punch it up—but you can’t be taking it seriously. It’s all mumbo jumbo, while this is real.” She pointed her horn at one of the whiteboards that lined the wall, levitating a marker and drawing a small cartoon of her head.

Karyn was mortified, and Derpy broke a taboo and bopped her on the horn, breaking her spell. “Trixie, stop being mean or we’ll drag you right back to Equestria.”

The smile never left Father Lionel’s face. “No, let her stay. There is much teaching and learning to be done here. Do you think that all this—the service and the worship and such—is about the power to move a few objects? I could do that with my hand. This is about God, and God is good.”

“Do you think that anything you have here on Earth can compare to the alicorn Princesses of Equestria?!”

Derpy cut in. “Oh? So you’re saying that you like the princesses? All of them? Even Twilight?”

“Er, Trixie didn’t say that, I mean, I, I didn’t…certainly respect their power…is a good ruling system…”

Father Lionel laughed. “I don’t know the whole history of what you’re talking about, but it’s clear that Derpy has struck a nerve. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Perhaps something in his voice kindled some tenderness in Trixie’s heart, or perhaps she was afraid that if she didn’t tell everything, that Karyn or Derpy would, but she opened up and told her story, beginning with the first time she entered Ponyville and was exposed by Twilight Sparkle. She moved on to her exploits on the rock farm before finding out about the Alicorn Amulet and being corrupted. It wasn’t until she talked about Twilight ascending to her crown that Trixie really started to get flustered.

“So let me ask you this,” he said. “Did it make you happy to have beaten this Twilight in the duel you spoke of?”

“Of course! I mean, I understand that it was the influence of the evil magic, but naturally I enjoyed ruling over the town and making everypony do what I told them. Who wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t, for one. But all right, you did. So after they redecorated the town and built statues for you and grew apples without peels, what then?”

“I never made it that far. Twilight returned, I told you.”

“But had you not lost, what would you have done?”

Trixie came up short. She was silent for a long time, and when she did speak it was in a halting voice. “Well, whatever I wanted. Just…I would have had fun, bossed them around…I don’t know!”

“And you see my point. The good book says, ‘What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ I think that perhaps our two situations are not too dissimilar.”

Trixie’s mouth fell into a kind of puss face, and she slinked off to one of the tables. Before she did, she levitated the eraser and cleared the whiteboard of her drawing.

“May I ask you something, Father?” said Derpy.

“Of course.”

“Trixie said it quite rudely, but I don’t understand what it is that you believe. I mean, I could go and see Princess Celestia raise the sun, but you can’t see your gods? Then, I mean…”

“I understand the question.” Father Lionel clutched his bible to his chest. “The problem in this world is that the word ‘believe’ has multiple meanings. It goes beyond the meaning of, ‘to evaluate as true.’ The factual, literal, scientific truth of faith isn’t inaccurate; it’s irrelevant. Because there’s another meaning that we use all the time. If I tell you, ‘I believe in you,’ I’m not saying, ‘I think you exist,’ right?”

“Of course not. I say that to my filly Dinky all the time.”

“That’s the sense in which I believe in the Lord. There’s a reason that He’s called the Good Lord. I don’t know for sure whether there’s some sort of physical entity that can be pointed to and measured and charted as God. I do know that He is good.”

Derpy nodded and joined Trixie at the table. Karyn shook her head.

“Don’t worry about me. I think I know where I want to be religiously.”

“What exactly is that, Karyn?” asked Derpy. “You brought me here, and you told me what other humans think of it, but you never really told me what you believe.”

“Because that’s something very private. We’re good friends, but that’s one thing that’s just for me.”

“All right.”

Trixie stood back up. Her voice for once lost the edge that she used for her shows. “Thank you, Father. You’ve given me a lot to think about. If you don’t mind, Karyn, Derpy, I think I’d like to get back home.”

They all faced each other. No one was sure of the proper protocol, so the two humans raised their hands and the two ponies raised their hooves and that was all. Trixie and Derpy reactivated their invisibility spells as they reached the door and headed back out into the sun.

The ponies spoke little on the way back, and Karyn did not mind that. Once in the apartment, Trixie took her leave.

“Thank you for having me. I definitely got something out of this trip. Maybe not what I wanted, but something.”

She vanished.

Derpy stared at the spot where she had just left. “Do you think she’ll really go good this time?”

Karyn thought about that. “Maybe there’s a ceiling on just how good she can be. She apologized to Twilight after their duel, but still bragged about her humility. Or there could be something like karma to it; she’ll never be completely good, but she’ll be happy in proportion to how good she is.”

“Hm.”

“What about you? Are you going to go through an existential crisis because of what Father Lionel said?”

“Me? Nah. I’m already over that. I was thinking about what I want to have for dinner when I get home.” She stuck her tongue out and waggled it.

That broke the heavy atmosphere, and they were all smiles as they said their good-byes.

Author's Note

I hope that one wasn't too controversial. But we don't stop next week!

"That might tweak her nerves.”

“No, I meant…actually, I might do that.”

“On the other hoof,” said Derpy, her face falling, “you should probably be cautious and help as best you can."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What happened?” asked Derpy. “Did we mess up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I offended them by not letting them do their work. That’s why I’m not cut out for being important. I don’t know how to treat people who are trying to serve me.”

“Well, let’s not worry about it. We’re getting closer."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m not on anyone’s side. I just want everyone to live happily and peacefully.”

Before he could express further skepticism, Derpy flared her wings and her nostrils. “Forget about that,” she said, “but how would you like it if somepony said that you had to wear a mark all the time so that they knew who you were?”

“We have those, remember? Cutie marks?”

Is that enough of a clew to let you know what's going on? Come back next week to find the whole story!

107: Prejuderpce

Karyn was ready bright and early for her day with Derpy, and she anticipated a relaxing time. It came, therefore, as a surprise that Derpy, in addition to her saddlebag full of spells, carried her blue mail sack on her other side. It was all the more disconcerting when she pulled a letter out of the bag and passed it to Karyn.

“Another letter for me? Maybe a party invitation like last time?”

“I wouldn’t know. Of course I don’t open the letters I’m given to deliver.”

Before she tore it open, Karyn had one other doubt. “Do you have any other mail that you’re behind on?”

“Nope! Now that you have that my route is officially complete.”

“Then why did you have to bring your whole mailbag?”

Derpy stared as if it were obvious. “Officially posted letters have to be officially delivered by an official carrier in an official receptacle.”

“But why?”

“It would be unofficial otherwise.”

Karyn decided that she was not going to win this one, and turned over the letter. Unlike the fancy paper that Princess Celestia used for mail, and even the exquisite calligraphy that was on the invitation to Sweetie Belle’s party, the letter bore only the word “KARYN” in sharp black lines that dug into the page. Even the loop of the R was a triangle, as though the writer could only make straight lines. She tore it open and read aloud.

“You are directed to return to Equestria and convey yourself to the Crystal Empire at once for an important assignment. I am sure you will want to bring that gray pony that you hang around with, and I suppose I have no objection. –Queen Chrysalis”

Derpy scowled. “She couldn’t even be bothered to learn my name.”

“It’s more than that. Who does she think she is to summon me? I don’t have to listen to her, and I have no intention of doing so.”

A smaller pink square fell from the back of the letter. She tried to grab it but it flitted to the ground. As she bent to pick it up she noticed that it smelled faintly of perfume. She again read aloud.

“Dear Karyn. I pre-read this letter, anticipating that Chrysalis would take the tone that she did. I apologize for her, but I urge you to please visit us anyway. She and I have long been in negotiations, but we are officially signing a peace treaty between ponies and changelings, and she insists that having another queen there is vital. So please come; it would make things go smoother. Yours truly, Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire.”

“What are you going to do?”

Karyn sighed. “I’m going to be the bigger person and go. Besides, I do respect a summons from one of the princesses”

“You’ll change so that you’re bigger than Queen Chrysalis? That might tweak her nerves.”

“No, I meant…actually, I might do that.”

“On the other hoof,” said Derpy, her face falling, “you should probably be cautious and help as best you can. This is huge, if they can really pull off a peace treaty.”

“It will be interesting, since Queen Chrysalis can make it binding on her swarm. She seems to rule them with a strong will, if indeed there isn’t some magical or biological servitude. I feel sorry for the changelings.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I’m sure they’re suited to the underground environment, but it’s still not pleasant, although that may just be cultural bias. But that they can barely speak and have to do what they’re told by a selfish and haughty queen, that’s what makes me pity them.”

Derpy pressed her mailbag down to her side and reached for her other bag. “Well, if you’re going to go, then ‘that gray pony you hang out with’ is definitely coming. Let’s hurry up and get to Equestria, because time’s still moving there.”

“Right,” said Karyn as she mounted up. Once in Equestria, Derpy looked to her for direction. “Head to the train station, I guess. Hopefully, Princess Cadance will reimburse you for the cost of our tickets.”

“We could even buy first class, in that case. But it doesn’t feel honest. We’ll get the regular kind.”

Derpy swooped down to the station, only to find a throng of ponies waiting for a train. She shortcut to the ticket window and asked the pony behind, “By any chance is that train going to the Crystal Empire?”

“Yes, and…is that the human with you? Karyn?”

“It is.”

“Great! Now we can stop holding the train.” He let out a long whistle, and a porter who was himself a Crystal pony raced up to them.

“Right this way, please.”

Before they knew what was going on, Karyn and Derpy were led into a car with the Crystal Heart drawn on it, and only once there were other ponies permitted on their cars.

“Well, this makes me feel awkward,” said Karyn. “I’m glad that Cadance thought ahead, but I hope she didn’t know what a fuss they would make. Everypony else shouldn’t have to be delayed for me.”

The porter entered the car again. “Ladies, Princess Cadance has told me to get you anything you like. I have some fruit baskets and chocolates for you, and I can provide any sort of personal service you name.”

Karyn shook her head. “Please distribute the fruit and chocolates among the passengers with the message that the person in the fancy car didn’t intend this, and that I apologize.”

He opened his mouth as though he wanted to upbraid her, but he followed her instruction.

Once he was out the door, Derpy let out a laugh that began slowly and grew.

“What’s so funny?” asked Karyn.

“Just that I’m finally seeing this from the other side. It brought up a memory.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Remember when Princess Celestia had to temporarily make me the princess because of the fancy ponies who wanted to do research on you? But I didn’t know it at the time? All the crazy rituals that go with VIP treatment really make your head swim, but you kind of laughed it off. I see why now. It’s a lot easier to laugh at when it’s not you.”

Karyn looked askance. “Fair enough. If I made you feel bad back then, I apologize. But right now I intend to just crash on one of these couches and relax.”

“Now that’s the kind of VIP treatment I can get on board with!”

They suited the deed to the word and made small talk for much of the journey. Only once did the officious Crystal pony return to ask if they needed anything, and Karyn told him that they didn’t, but that they would ask Princess Cadance to provide him with a large bonus if he agreed to give them some quiet time.

The train was an express, or else it had been directed to bypass scheduled stops for Karyn’s convenience, and that was something she had no control over. In any case, they reached the Crystal Empire soon, only to find another Crystal pony, in bearing a brother to their onboard servant, holding a sign reading, “Karyn, Human of Earth and Derpy Hooves.”

Two mares-in-waiting flanked him, and before Karyn and Derpy could speak to each other and discuss trying to avoid him, he was greeting them warmly escorting them to a carriage while the mares began brushing Derpy’s mane and Karyn’s hair.

“I really hope this is a short trip,” said Derpy.

“Yes, but let me at least see if I can do something about this. Oh, excuse me,” Karyn said to the mare working on her hair. “Am I right in thinking this is about making me look presentable for the event?”

“Definitely. Princess Cadance and the changeling queen said that this would be done with full ceremony, so everypony must look their best.”

“Yes, but I’m going as a changeling queen. I daresay that your work is superfluous at best.”

She focused and surrounded herself with green light. Remembering the formal headwear that Cadance used when campaigning for the Equestria Games, she added gems to her hair and conjured a sequined dress that shone as though it was bejeweled as well.

The reaction she got shocked her. The mares-in-waiting did stop their ministrations, but not out of gratitude. Instead, they both inhaled sharply, packed up their things, and hopped off the carriage without saying good-bye.

“What happened?” asked Derpy. “Did we mess up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I offended them by not letting them do their work. That’s why I’m not cut out for being important. I don’t know how to treat people who are trying to serve me.”

“Well, let’s not worry about it. We’re getting closer to the Crystal Castle.”

But the driver of the carriage had decided that they were close enough. He stopped and said, “You can walk from here. I’m sure you can find the way. It’s the big building right there.” Without looking back, he sped off.

“There’s definitely something odd about what’s going on here.”

“Let’s just get to Princess Cadance. She’ll sort everything out.”

They made good time to the castle, where again they met with bowing and honors. At last they reached Princess Cadance.

“Thank you so much for coming. You have no idea how much easier this will make it for me,” the princess said.

“I’m not so sure. We might have been making missteps.” Karyn related what happened on the train and with the carriage driver.

Princess Cadance’s expressive eyes showed the stress she was under. “The train is my fault, and I apologize. I should have known that you wouldn’t want to be pampered, but so many others do, and I fell in the routine. But the incident with the carriage is part of something deeper. You see, many of the Crystal ponies don’t favor this treaty with the changelings.”

“WHAT?!” they said simultaneously.

Karyn was the first to recover. “Don’t they understand that they won’t have to live in fear of the changelings anymore?”

“Unfortunately, just because they won’t have to doesn’t mean they don’t now.”

Now it was Derpy’s turn. “But you’re their princess! If you tell them that this is good for them, won’t they listen?”

“Yes, or there would be no treaty to begin with. But I can’t just do what I think is right all the time and expect them to fall in line. I have to listen and indulge the common pony most of the time. If I do that, I earn their trust and, when the time comes to do something important like this, they do. But I’m going to have to do a lot of listening to make up for this.”

Before they could discuss it any further, the door burst open and a black silhouette let only circles of light through near the floor. Queen Chrysalis had arrived.

“Ah,” she said in her raspy voice. “You came. Excellent. Then we will proceed to business and be done with it.”

Karyn decided that she wasn’t going to allow the queen to keep her illusion. “I came because Princess Cadance asked me to, and now that I’m here, I have misgivings. What exactly are you agreeing to?”

“We get the land we need to build a hive and the residual love energy from the Crystal Heart. In exchange, the Empire gets our assurance that we will no longer feed on ponies.”

“That’s it? I don’t wonder that the Crystal ponies aren’t happy. You’re only giving them what’s theirs by right, and besides that, what assurances do they have that this isn’t an empty promise?”

Chrysalis looked shocked that Karyn had even questioned her in the first place, but now she was incredulous. It was left to Cadance to reassure her. “It doesn’t work like that. For an agreement like this, magical binding will be used to ensure that both sides live up to it—us as well as them. We can’t turn off the Crystal Heart now, for example. Not that we would anyway.”

“Nonetheless, I’m not going to participate in or endorse this treaty until I’ve talked to some more of the Crystal ponies and found out what their beef is. You might not need me, but if what I know about magic is true, that’s got to affect that ‘magical binding’.”

A look from the two of them confirmed her guess. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Cadance, “but if you don’t want to trust me blindly, please take your time and interview as many ponies as you need.”

“Thank you.”

Karyn motioned Derpy to follow, overhearing as she left, “You are too kind to her, Princess. You have a love spell, why not just force her to like the treaty?”

Not needing to hear Cadance’s reply, trusting her that far, Karyn walked down the hall. “What did you think of all that, Derpy? I really put my foot in it, huh?”

“I don’t think so. You did everything I would have. I’m proud. There’s only one thing I’d suggest.”

“What’s that?”

“If their problem is with changelings, you should use your powers a lot out there. That might get us the answers we want more than just asking.”

Karyn smiled. “I like that,” she said. “Besides, it solves another problem: getting their attention. I don’t fancy walking right up to ponies and asking them what they feel.”

Out in the court where the Crystal Heart was kept floating between a stalactite and a stalagmite, ponies had gathered. From the general mutterings and scowls, Karyn divined that these would be the ones most upset about the treaty. She took a deep breath, focused, and concentrated. Her green-light shower was even more visible than usual, and the ponies turned to face her.

“What’s the big idea?!”

It was a ruddy big stallion who had been at the center of the crowd, and he pushed his way to the edge up to Karyn who was now crystalline just as the others were.

“Hey, changeling, I’m talking to you. Get back to your real form, or there’s going to be problems.”

Karyn cocked her head, but acceded and dropped all her disguises. Without the magical makeup she used, she looked fairly plain. “Happy?”

“I said your real form!”

“This is my real form. I am Karyn, human of Earth and honorary changeling queen. What is your problem with changelings?”

He looked back to the crowd and seemed to have been appointed spokes-stallion. “We object to changelings. Their whole existence is based on a lie! If they want to remain in their hives, that’s one thing, but we’re talking about letting them roam free through the Empire. We’d have no way to tell who was a real pony and who wasn’t! That’s why what we want is a way to identify a changeling even when they’re disguised.”

Derpy trotted up to Karyn. “That seems reasonable to me.”

“I don’t know…”

He continued. “We know that Princess Cadance and the changeling queen—the other changeling queen—are planning to use magic in the agreement. If so, we don’t see why they can’t use a little more and, say, give each changeling a magical mark with ‘C’ or something similar.”

“Wow, really? I expected better out of you guys.”

It wasn’t the response that he was looking for. He ducked back into the crowd and started talking about it to make sure the other ponies were on board. That gave Karyn a chance to huddle with Derpy.

“What’s up?” she said. “I thought it seemed like a good idea.”

“Maybe I’m prejudiced because I know our history on Earth, and maybe ponies could find a way to do that and not be mean about it, but I don’t think so. When you force someone to wear a mark because of where they were born and how they live, it’s a violation of their rights and of civility. It’s saying that even though you haven’t done anything wrong, we’re going to treat you like you have, instead of giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“I see. And humans actually did this?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say.” Karyn looked over her shoulder. “Too often. But how am I going to put that over to them?”

“Just say what you did to me.”

Karyn cleared her throat to get the attention of the ponies. “So, here’s why that’s a bad idea. You’re treating the changelings like they’re a problem even before they’ve become one. I say that that isn’t fair.”

“Easy for you to say,” the leader responded. “You’re on their side. You have no loyalty to the Crystal Empire.”

“I’m not on anyone’s side. I just want everyone to live happily and peacefully.”

Before he could express further skepticism, Derpy flared her wings and her nostrils. “Forget about that,” she said, “but how would you like it if somepony said that you had to wear a mark all the time so that they knew who you were?”

“We have those, remember? Cutie marks?”

Derpy had to think fast. “Yes, but you can cover them up if you want by wearing clothes. How about it? If a changeling wanted to wear clothes, would you let them?”

“That breed? Do they even know what clothes are?”

“Doesn’t matter!”

“Here’s what does.” The stallion had some of the orator in him. “What nopony else understands. We were gone a thousand years, and before that we were slaves. We’re going to say this here and now: never again!” A cheer resounded from the crowd.

“But—“ Karyn cut her off.

“No, Derpy. I can understand. Having to go through all that, it is difficult. Now that I know the reason for your disagreement, we can figure out what to do. Do you still intend to follow Princess Cadance’s lead on this?”

Again the stallion had to look to the crowd. “Well, yes. But if anything goes wrong…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“One last question: have you told Princess Cadance your reason?”

“We’ve tried, but we were never sure if we got through to her.”

“Well, then I will try. Derpy, would you kindly return to the castle with me?”

Before anypony in the throng could respond, she turned on her foot, altered her form back to pony, and trotted off.

“Why did you transform again?” asked Derpy.

“It seemed the fitting way to end the conversation. I wanted them to think of both a pony and a changeling, and maybe they’ll realize how different they aren’t.”

They made good time back to the castle where they found Chrysalis pacing the hall. “There you are, you wayward mare! Why have you kept Queen Karyn back so long?”

“Me?! She was the one who insisted on going!”

Before Derpy and Chrysalis could get into another battle of wills, Karyn stepped between them, dropped her disguise, and explained everything to Cadance.

“I hadn’t considered that,” she said. “I wasn’t with them during the time of Sombra. I know all about it, of course, but I can never understand what it felt like.”

“Perhaps I could speak to the ponies before the signing.” Three heads turned. None had ever heard Chrysalis’s voice drop below its resonant tone of command before.

“All right. We can try that.” Cadance led them out onto a balcony. Already the audience for the signing was present. From a distance, Derpy recognized the small rebellion still outside the castle court. She whispered in Cadance’s ear. Taking advantage of her powerful wings, she swooped down and instructed the guards to let them in. Taking her place back on the balcony, she spoke to her ponies. “Mares and Gentlestallions. Moments from now, I will seal the pact that will remove the threat of changeling invasion once and for all. But, I am told, some of you have misgivings. Here to speak to you, the changeling queen, Chrysalis!”

She stepped to the fore and looked down and the ponies Cadance had let in. “Crystal Ponies. I shall not speak long. For a long time, you were enslaved by a terrible tyrant. Now, he is gone. For a long time, we were enslaved by our hunger. With your aid, that can be gone too. But still you feel the fear that the dark times will return. So do I. What I propose to give up—power and ruthlessness—may not seem valuable to you, but they are all that I know. This treaty will not be the end of our conflict, only the beginning of the end. Prove now that you were not so beaten down by your slavery and exile that you are broken. Show all kingdoms everywhere that the Crystal Empire is stronger than that in the field of love.

“For on that strength of love the survival of my people depends.”

She turned back. The crowd neither cheered nor booed. The treaty was brought out, Chrysalis held a quill pen in her magic field and dragged it across the paper, then the light around it changed from green to light blue. Cadance dipped it in ink and signed, “Mi Amore Cadenza.”

“The treaty must be witnessed by two parties,” the princess said. “If you please…”

Derpy and Karyn both blushed as they signed. That was all the ceremony that was held. Chrysalis took her leave. “I must return to the hive. I half wonder if it has collapsed in my absence. Queen Karyn…I would have you return more often. One does wish a peer now and again.”

“If you want that, then say goodbye to Derpy as well.”

The queen balked, but eyed her and said, “Fare well, o gray wanderer.”

Derpy squinted. “What did that mean?”

“Don’t worry,” said Karyn. “Whether she knew it or not, she complimented you for your wisdom.”

Princess Cadance relaxed her tension. “I have to thank you as well. As Chrysalis said, this is only the beginning, but a beginning is better than nothing. If you return to the station, I’ll have a train summoned to take you back to Ponyville.”

“If it’s all right,” she said, “We’ll wait for the next one on the schedule.”

Author's Note

The guests on Earth return next week. Who's coming?

“Hey, what if you advertised?!” Derpy brightened up.

“Advertise for friends? I could do that online, but that’s just how you get the kind of friend that isn’t really close.”

“No, I mean advertise for people who want to hang out with a pony! Just the way we found you all the way back then.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His eyes were immediately drawn to the open door, then recognition crept across his face.

“Hey…Rachel, right?”

“Karyn.”

“I got the ‘a’ right. What are you doing here?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"She’s showing me ways to do things that I never dreamed of.”

Derpy pursed her lips. “Ooh. Is she picking up IT or teaching you magic?”

“Both. Or neither. It’s hard to explain, it’s like magic but without any actual spells or things."

See the cultural exchange and friendship all here next week.

108: Derping Your Stripes

Karyn had never, before she met Derpy, had the occasion to deal with paper in scroll form. She was used to professionally manufactured sheets of loose-leaf, college ruled, three-hole punched, and, if she felt like spending the extra money, perforated. So it was that she had trouble with the list of ponies who wanted to come to Earth as it rolled and flipped over on her. It didn’t help that some enchantment prevented the paper from being creased or folded. It reminded her of the difficulties she had wrapping presents at Christmas.

“Here, let me help you with that,” said Derpy. She handled it roughly but was able to roll it into a slightly more compact form.

“Thanks. But I didn’t get to check on which pony we were having visit us this week.”

“That’s all right. I checked, and she should be around bright and early. How about lining up a human guest for her to meet?”

Karyn pulled out another paper that was more in line with what she was used to. “That’s been more difficult. I don’t know enough people. Derpy, how do you know more ponies than I do if you complain about having few friends?”

“I know them, but I might not be that close with them. I don’t know how many that I could count on to go out and do fun stuff with them like you.”

“That’s a good point. It would be nicer to have a few really good friends that you can count on to do anything for you than to have a lot of casual acquaintances.”

“Hey, what if you advertised?!” Derpy brightened up.

“Advertise for friends? I could do that online, but that’s just how you get the kind of friend that isn’t really close.”

“No, I mean advertise for people who want to hang out with a pony! Just the way we found you all the way back then.”

Karyn remembered filling out the survey on some obscure brony-related site that no longer existed. “I don’t know about that. Maybe Lyra could coordinate something like that again, but I’d just feel weird about it. Anyway, let’s deal with the guest we do have. Ready?”

“Yep!” Derpy knelt down for Karyn to mount up and, with a flourish, used her spell as she took off.

Karyn got into the flow-state mood of the flight as Derpy glided toward her house. On that day, she noticed, they would not have to go out for their guest, as she was easily spotted from the air.

“Aha!” Derpy said. “This is a guest for whom I have long waited. In fact, I’ve been waiting with breath that is…heavy from anticipation.”

Karyn had another flashback to the early times with Derpy as they landed and waved to Zecora. While the zebra spoke in rhymes, Derpy caught a residual effect of her magic that made her try and fail each time. Karyn was embarrassed as she would always conclude that Zecora would be insulted.

“Hello, Zecora,” she said.

“And greetings to you, Karyn of Earth. Of our meetings there has been too much of a dearth.”

“I’ve missed you too. Speaking of Earth, are you ready to come back with us?”

“I am, and I think that I know of your spell. Let us go up to the tower of the bell.”

Derpy passed over the spare saddlebag. “Good, you know about having to go to the tower. Our last guest didn’t: Trixie, who is Great and has…a lot of magic ability.”

Karyn shook her head as they ascended. Zecora was, at least, more familiar with unusual types of magic, and took the transition between universes in stride.

Once in the apartment, they relaxed as Zecora looked around. “I know it’s not as impressive as Equestrian homes,” said Karyn, “but you’ve got to remember that I’m young and not self-supporting yet.”

“I would never criticize your home or its decor. I was only thinking it needs a bit more. Perhaps when I return I will give you something from my hut. It should help improve the look a lot.”

“Ooh, thank you,” said Derpy. “Karyn would appreciate a present. I’m sure it’ll be something to make the room…pleasing.”

“Thank you very much,” said Karyn, then leaned in close to Zecora. She knew she had no hope of escaping Derpy’s hearing, but she had to try anyway. “What I’d really like, if you could pull it off, is a way to stop that.”

“Personally I find it an amusing quirk. But let me see what magic I can work.”

Derpy was confused, but she had learned how to keep her head in those situations and latch on to the words she did understand. “You’re going to do some zebra magic? Cool! But you didn’t bring any ingredients, or any potion-making…implement.”

Not realizing that she was the target, Derpy watched as Zecora removed phials and herbs from different pouches secreted around her and mixed them on Karyn’s desk. Pouring them into a larger vessel, she shook the whole mixture until steam came out.

“Inhale the vapors, but to take care, not to let them get by your wings or your hair.”

She extended the flask to Derpy, who took them in. “So, what happens now?” she asked.

“I believe it has worked, though you may not see how. But Karyn will be much happier now.”

Derpy didn’t quite understand, but she heard the part about making Karyn happy, and that was enough for her.

“So,” she said, her speech pattern returned to normal, “what would you like to do during your time on Earth? Everypony has seemed to want something different, and maybe you want us to be your guides and pick something. Ooh, Karyn, maybe we could find a forest around here to see how it compares to Zecora’s home in the Everfree.”

“We’d be hard-pressed to find one close,” said Karyn.

“There are plenty on the way to your parents’ house.”

This was true, but Karyn hadn’t considered those as woods. “I don’t think we’d be allowed in there, and even if we did go that’s actual wilderness. I mean, we don’t have timberwolves that can combine into giants and attack you, but we do have ticks that can give you nasty diseases. Or at least give them to me.”

Zecora gave a little cough. “If I could ask you both to attend to me, it is not your wild I wish to see. As you know, arcane magic is my forte, and so I do wonder just in what way that you make up for your species’ magical lack. In short, please, Miss Karyn, do show me your tech.”

“Oh. All right. I wasn’t expecting that, but we’ll see what we can do. I mean, I can’t explain a lot of the mechanical or electronic things we have, because in this day and age, that’s not what’s new. But I can certainly tell you about computers, and Derpy can help. She built one herself.”

“I cheated and used magic.”

“It all worked out in the end.” Karyn sat down at her computer. “I don’t really know if you’ll be pleased with all this. It’s very much against the whole ‘spirit of nature’ thing you’ve got going on.”

“In what way, would you say?”

“Well, it’s all about electrons and plastic and metal instead of wood and herbs and, I don’t know, what else is in the woods? Dirt?”

Zecora smiled. “Just because I live a hermit’s life, it does not mean I wish to cause strife. In Equestria ponies live as they choose, but if I were to judge them, then both sides would lose. So too, here, I do not want to look down my muzzle. I just want information, a piece of the puzzle.”

“All right. Let’s see what we can do. Derpy?”

They went to the computer, and Karyn turned it on. Derpy explained briefly about how the electricity provided power. Then it was Karyn’s turn.

“The power goes first to a very small computer that has one function. When the electricity hits it, it starts a slightly more complex computer called the BIOS. That one has a few utility functions, but its main job is to start up all the rest of the computer and get it all running. The whole process was compared to a fanciful idea someone had a long time ago about a person lifting themselves in the air by pulling on their bootstraps, so it got called a bootstrap loader or just booting for short.”

Derpy knew by conclusion that Zecora must have gained her wisdom by long experience. But still, it was the first time she had seen her in the role of student as opposed to teacher. She was impressed all the more with Karyn’s instruction.

“There are some thing in nature that work in this kind. But it is the first time I’ve seen it purposefully designed. Yet still I desire to know more of this work. And so I would leave you show me an expert.”

“We can’t show you anyone if you leave,” said Derpy with her head cocked to the side.

Karyn laughed. “It’s an old-fashioned expression to mean that she wants us to.”

“Ah. Then I would leave that we would just say that.”

“In any case, I don’t know who we could get to explain technology to you better than I could. I mean, I’m not perfect, but I think I’m good for explaining things to ponies.”

“Hey, Karyn. Remember that guy, Jim? He might be exactly who Zecora’s looking for!”

Karyn had to stare at Derpy for a few moments before her memory came back, her ability to flash back strained for the day. But as Derpy opened her mouth to explain further, the memory of the one-day internship she had served, and how Derpy had helped solve a technical issue, came flooding back.

“That is good thinking, but I don’t know how to get in touch with him. We never exchanged contact information afterwards.”

“Oh.” Derpy flopped back down on the bed with a frown.

“But, since we don’t want to be cooped up here anyway, we can take a walk down to where he works and ring the bell. It’ll be a little awkward if he’s there, but that’ll be my problem.”

“How about it, Zecora? Take a trip downtown and meet this guy who runs a whole building of this stuff?”

Karyn started to say that he wasn’t that important, but Zecora spoke first. “I don’t think that Karyn wants me so impressed. But to your proposal I will say yes.”

Once again Zecora was quick with the invisibility spell, and they headed out to the main section of town. Even this the zebra took in stride, as Derpy asked her if she wasn’t wowed by all the tall buildings.

“I admit that these dwellings are more impressive than mine. But to be fair to me, they have had more time.”

They reached the bank building where Karyn had been once and seen the inner workings. All the windows were dark, but even as Derpy pressed her face to the glass, she confirmed that only the minimum of lights were on.

“Well, here goes nothing.” Karyn walked up to the front door and pressed the button that doubled as a doorbell and intercom. The seconds dragged on, but no response came. “I guess that’s it. Sorry, Zecora, but—“

“I distinctly detect a presence inside. Perhaps he has simply chosen to hide.”

“If he has, that’s that. This thing is more secure than Canterlot Castle.”

Zecora trotted up to the vestibule that housed the ATMs. Derpy followed. “This part you can actually get into if you have the card key to let you. Humans use these to get their money out, and they can do it all the time, even late at night and on Sunday.”

“My card isn’t for this bank, but it should still work. That’s not going to get us inside, though.”

“Nonetheless please let me pass. I desire to see what’s beyond the glass.”

Feeling the stare of the security cameras, Karyn swiped her ATM card and entered. “There might be trouble if I don’t actually make a transaction here. Maybe I’ll just do a balance inquiry to be safe. Of course, since Derpy’s made me budget, I already know it.”

Before she could move again, Zecora moved to the next door and blew some gold powder or dust. The door slid open and Karyn covered her ears for the alarm, but none came forth. Zecora laughed. “Curious as I am about what you do, I’m still sure it responds to a trick or two.”

The cameras on the walls gave a whirring sound, and the red lights faded to black. Karyn still expected some form of security, and it came when the elevator dinged and the technician, Jim, stepped out. His eyes were immediately drawn to the open door, then recognition crept across his face.

“Hey…Rachel, right?”

“Karyn.”

“I got the ‘a’ right. What are you doing here? Oh, the ATMs. Well, if the security system’s down, I don’t know if they’re working. Hey, I thought the door was physically locked. How’d you get in?”

“I just pushed on it.” Karyn technically wasn’t lying.

“Well, take a seat while I reboot things. You were lucky for me last time in how fast things got fixed. Course, I’d prefer someone lucky in that things didn’t break.”

“Actually, before you reboot, I’d like to show you something. Can we get out of view of the street?”

Of all the people that Karyn had introduced to ponies, Jim was the first one to react with the sort of fear and anxiety that she expected. He backed up rapidly and reached for his phone. Karyn had to soothe him down before he could get his call to the authorities out.

“It’s all right,” said Derpy. “We’re just here to watch and have fun and help and be friends.”

His eyes darted from one face to the other to the other. “It’s not possible…”

Karyn, figuring that a human face would be the one he’d listen to, said, “It’s magical. So, from one perspective, yeah, it’s impossible. But it’s real, so, yeah.”

Zecora approached him slowly and extended a hoof. “There is no cause for alarm. Derpy and I mean no harm. In your world we are just tourists. I asked Karyn to show me…” She waved the hoof around. “…all of this.”

There followed a reaction that Karyn was starting to recognize. In the midst of a shock to the worldview, a smaller disruption often brought a person back to their senses. “Why are you speaking in rhyme?” Jim asked.

“That’s what she does,” said Karyn with a smile. “It might not make complete sense, but again, magic.”

“Magic?”

“Yes. The same magic that lets Derpy fly.” She gestured, but Derpy didn’t pick it up. “Derpy, fly a little, please.”

“Oh.” She took off and held in hover, but not being Rainbow Dash, she didn’t keep it up too long.

“Now I’m intrigued. Come on up to headquarters.”

When he’d turned around, Karyn rolled her eyes at “headquarters.” They all filled a cramped elevator, but the ride wasn’t too long.

“Is there any way that you can restore the security? I mean, you’re all right, but if anybody else comes by…”

Zecora removed more of the gold dust from somewhere, looked around, and blew it into the ventilation system. A second later, a large monitor flickered and blinked into a sixteen-way split of cameras.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” asked Karyn.

Jim looked at the pictures for a long minute. Then he looked at Zecora and she at him. “So, this magic of yours…what else can it do?”

She grinned. “My magic serves many a need. But it should not be used for selfish greed.”

He reacted as if he had been caught in the bank’s vault. “I wasn’t thinking of that. Not strictly anyway. But it seems to me that if you can so easily bypass our security, you could also strengthen it.”

Zecora seemed to be pleased at this notion, but then he followed it up with. “Which is still selfish and greedy, since it would let me lounge about at work while the magic kept everything running and secure.”

Zecora laughed. “But if everything was running secure, what would your employers need you for?”

“That’s how it is in IT, unfortunately. If things break, they wonder why they’re paying me. If things don’t break, they wonder why they’re paying me.”

Now it was Derpy’s turn to chuckle, as she tossed the paradox around in her mind. Jim and Zecora got together and huddled over a screen. After his initial reaction, he seemed to get along with her and found a kindred spirit in that both had long experience in an arcane art.

As they did, Derpy and Karyn got together in a cubicle farther away and observed. “Do you really think that Zecora will show him any magic techniques?” asked Karyn.

“Maybe. But she’s hard to predict. There might just be some method she uses that isn’t mystical but that no one on Earth thought of.”

“Could be. I think it’s funny, though, how everyone reacts different to magic. Sarah really wanted some for herself just to be special, Gayle was happy just knowing that the ponies had it, and here Jim seems to think about its utility.”

Derpy looked over. Jim and Zecora could have been two co-workers discussing a problem, neither noticing the difference in the other’s species. “Which do you think is right?”

“I don’t think any of them are. Rather, I think that what happens is that magic—or anything new and unfamiliar to people—brings out their character. It tells you who they really are.”

“That sounds profound.”

“Maybe not, but the other thing is this. I’m still worried about what would happen if Equestrian magic got out into the human world on a grand scale. And that’s because everyone is different and reacts differently. When people are in groups, that’s when they become predictable…and when people become predictable, they can be manipulated.”

Karyn gave a forlorn sigh, as if all the ills of humanity could be breathed out of her lungs. Derpy hovered behind and put her hooves on Karyn’s shoulders. “Well, at least one Equestrian and one human are working together.”

Jim broke off from Zecora for a moment. “Hey, Katherine—“

“Karyn.”

“Right, sorry. Listen, Zecora here is really smart. She’s showing me ways to do things that I never dreamed of.”

Derpy pursed her lips. “Ooh. Is she picking up IT or teaching you magic?”

“Both. Or neither. It’s hard to explain, it’s like magic but without any actual spells or things. It’s more natural, giving me information about the environment and how it affects the machines. I mean, every tech knows that you want to keep servers in stable, cool atmosphere, but apparently there are ways to set it up that are even better. If anything, it’s like Feng Shui, which normally I would have said is pseudoscience, but if there’s real magic, then it makes sense.”

“Great,” said Karyn. “Hopefully she can teach me some of that too.”

“Maybe she won’t have to. Are you going to be looking for a job soon?”

Her ears perked up almost as much as Derpy’s. “Well, I’ve got one more year of college, and that’s assuming I can get all the classes I need.”

“Well, keep in touch. If I can’t get you in here, I’ll see what I can do for you.”

Derpy was elated. “That’s great! Thanks, Jim.”

“Uh, I was talking to Karyn.”

“I know, but I’m happy for her.”

Karyn herself, however, didn’t show her elation. “I’m grateful, but are you just doing this because I introduced you to Zecora?”

“I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but so are a thousand other people. None of them know zebra shamans.”

Still she scowled, so Jim continued. “But the ones who succeed do know people. Networking isn’t just wiring servers and routers together. Believe me, it’s not how I want it to be either, but the fact is that knowing people is important in your career, even if they’re not the people you suspect are important.”

“All right. Maybe I’ve learned something too then.”

Zecora and Jim went back to poring over the minute details of the system while Derpy and Karyn relaxed and visited one another. When it was time to go, Karyn got Jim’s contact on a social networking site for IT professionals and promised to contact him when she had graduated. Heading back to the apartment, she said good-bye to the two of them.

“Thank you, Karyn for a wonderful excursion,” said Zecora. “And seeing your world’s technological version.”

Derpy strapped on her saddlebag. “I second that. This was an accomplished mission! And it’s so cool that Jim might get you a…job.”

“Oh, no. The spell’s wearing off. Zecora, Derpy, better get back to Equestria before it goes completely.”

Author's Note

I promise that, for next week's chapter title, the "Derp" won't be at the beginning! Here's some lines from it:

"I’ve been working my tail off.”

Derpy looked beneath her chair. “You don’t have a tail. I think you must have worked it off a long time before you met me.”

“Thanks. I needed a laugh.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“All right. If you want to go out or something, I’ll trust you. You know enough about Earth to take care of yourself.”

“Actually, I brought this…” She started to go for her project, but decided that it wasn’t the right time. “I think I’ll stay here a bit longer. I’ll be as quiet as I can be.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“This is…amazing. You put a lot of effort into this, I can tell.”

“Now that I actually look at it, it’s kind of immature. Dinky could probably do better.”

“Dinky has the advantage of a horn.

See what Derpy comes up with, right here next week!

109: On the Calenderp

Derpy was used to seeing Karyn in many different position when she entered the apartment. Sometimes she would be preparing breakfast; or just having finished it and cleaning the dishes, Derpy’s share either left on the table or kept warm in the oven. Sometimes she would be in the bathroom brushing her teeth, since even though her changeling powers could make them appear as bright as any magazine cover celebrity, they would still be stained in reality. Or yet again Derpy might find her still asleep, in which case she would do her best to keep quiet and rise in her own time.

What she wasn’t used to was seeing Karyn at her writing desk, her head slumped down staring at her computer. If she was at the desk, it would be turned toward somewhere else, with her fingers idly flitting over the keys. That day, though, she was facing the screen full on.

Because of her inexperience seeing Karyn at that position, Derpy didn’t know if she should call attention to herself or not. If Karyn was in really intense concentration, she might not have heard Derpy appear, and so she was worried about startling her by saying anything. Since Derpy herself hated to be startled, she didn’t want to do it to her friend.

She thought about giving a soft cough when she spotted, to Karyn’s right and just in the field of her peripheral vision, the scroll that contained the list of ponies who wanted to visit Earth. Tiptoeing to the side, she took it in hoof and slid it out. Once she unfurled it, Karyn finally looked up.

“Hey, Derpy. Did you bring a guest?”

“Not with me. I was going to look at the list and see who’s next.”

Karyn blew a raspberry and faced the screen again. “I don’t think I’m going to have the time for one today. It’s finals week.”

“Oh. Of course that’s important. How’s it coming along?”

“It’s coming. I’m not behind in my study schedule, but I had to include today on it. They even gave us a study day last week that I used. I’ve been working my tail off.”

Derpy looked beneath her chair. “You don’t have a tail. I think you must have worked it off a long time before you met me.”

“Thanks. I needed a laugh.”

“Have you been using all the study techniques that Twilight taught you?”

“I have.” She reached to the side of the desk and took out a red binder. “I’ve even been budgeting my time. I got the projects done ahead of time so I can focus on the tests. One I could e-mail, but this one I have to deliver in class on Thursday. In fact, that’s all I have to do. Walk in, give this to the professor, and walk out.”

“Then you could use the rest of the time to study.”

“No, that’ll be the last class for the semester. And the year. I can use the rest of the three hours to goof off.”

Derpy took the report over to the bed and flipped through it. While Karyn went back to studying, Derpy examined the report. She clearly couldn’t tell if the details were accurate or not, but she could see that it was professionally laid out and could also check for spelling mistakes. Careful not to damage it, she made her way through.

“It looks good to me! If your studying matches the effort you put into this, you’ll pass all your tests for sure.”

“I hope to do more than pass. I wouldn’t mind having an impressive grade point average to show perspective employers.”

“I guess that does matter for the complicated stuff you do. That’s why I’m so proud of you. I didn’t have to take any tests to be a mailmare.”

“Yeah, Derpy. I guess you didn’t.” Karyn sighed and went back to the computer. “Maybe I should go into postal delivery.”

“Hey, Karyn. What’s wrong? Wait, I know. You’ve got to be stressed with all the studying you’re doing. Even if you’re using the study techniques, you’re probably not relaxing enough. I should get you some stuff to chill you out again.”

“No, no.” She stood up and flipped the laptop down. “I have been relaxing and doing stress relieving tactics. This runs deeper.”

“Come talk to me about it.” Derpy patted the bed and Karyn joined her. Looking back and forth from the computer to the pegasus and, for the first time that day, smiled.

“This goes back to something that I said, well, I guess about a year ago. That was the last summer that I was going to have off. Now I’ve got to really plan on what I’m going to do this summer. I could do some retail job like I have in previous years, or I could do an internship in IT. But that means I won’t get paid, or if I do it’ll be less than what I would get otherwise. Long term it would be better, but short term, I don’t know how I’d get through next year without the savings that a job this summer would be. And whatever I do, it means I’m not going to get to have fun the way I have every summer since I was a little girl.

“So, yeah, there’s nothing to be done. I’m just getting old.”

Derpy laughed at that. “You’re too young to be feeling old. Actually, it’s not funny. You should be happy. One way or another, your life will change for the better.”

“It will, but it’s still change, and that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Well, don’t be afraid, because I’ll be there to get you through whatever comes.”

Karyn turned back to the computer. “Thanks. Well, let me get back to work.”

She moved her gaze from the screen to a paper notebook. Derpy wondered if she had taken the notes in paper because the professor wouldn’t let computers into the class, or if Karyn preferred it. She opened her mouth to ask, but thought that, if Karyn was deep in concentration, she wouldn’t want to break her focus.

In pursuit of this aim, Derpy tried to be as quiet as possible, even to the point of holding her breath. It seemed quieter than even the normal quiet with no sounds except the laptop’s fan. When the refrigerator’s compressor kicked on a moment later, Derpy was so surprised that she let out the breath that she was holding.

There was no clock in the room, and Derpy realized that Karyn wouldn’t need one since if she was at the computer she had the one in the lower right hand corner, and anywhere else she could reach for her phone. Wondering what time it was, she contemplated flying into the bedroom to look at the alarm clock she knew was there, or trying to surreptitiously peek over Karyn’s shoulder.

There was no getting around it; Derpy was bored. She considered taking a nap, but decided against it on two points. First, she feared that even though Karyn was busy, sleeping in her room might be considered a slight. Also, though she had no confirmation, Derpy was told that she snored.

Still being quiet, she shuffled off her saddlebag and decided to reorganize the spells. Half of them she didn’t even use, and so she put them on the lower side. Then she decided that that was harder to reach anyway, and put them on top. After that, she changed her mind once more and put them all back the way they started.

This wasn’t right. There was no need to do this. If Karyn didn’t want her there, if she was too busy, then it was up to Derpy to admit it and just say goodbye. She got on her hooves and approached the desk, but, before she could speak, Karyn did.

“I’m sorry, I really am. I’m being no fun today, and I’ve been sitting here studying because I know that if I stopped and played with you I’d be even less fun, because I’d be too worried about how I should be here studying.

“So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I really can’t spend the day with you. I never thought that being with a pony wouldn’t trump anything else I could do, but it has. I’m sorry.”

Derpy gave a wan smile. “No, I’m sorry too. I should have said something sooner. I could tell that I was pressuring you, and I shouldn’t be. This is just the next stage in our friendship. If we can be so comfortable around each other that we don’t have to be around each other, then we’ve got to be good friends for sure.”

“I like that. I promise next week will be different.”

Derpy strapped on the saddlebag and gave Karyn a hug. By the time she activated the spell, Karyn was already back at her computer.

As she flew home, something was nagging at the back of Derpy’s mind, but she couldn’t place it. No, two things were nagging, and every time she thought that she had a handle on one, the other one would come up.

Well, it didn’t matter. She would go home and have a relaxing day while Karyn sat and studied…

That was it.

Whatever Derpy had said about leaving, she hadn’t really felt it. She didn’t want to be in Equestria, she wanted to be back on Earth with Karyn, taking a drive or visiting a fair or just swapping stories. And if their interpretation of how the universe-hopping spell worked was correct, that meant that Karyn, and all of Earth, would be frozen in time until she returned.

Once she came to that realization, the other thought hit her. Whatever was wrong with Karyn, she had not gotten it out of her. It couldn’t have just been the passage of time or her loaded study schedule. Something was wrong, and she had been derelict in her duties as a friend in not finding it out.

“Curse my slow brain!” she said as she landed. “I should have realized all that and stayed. Now when I go back she’s going to think that I’m still being rude!”

No, she could not just go back. That would bring all the same problems. She needed to go back with something that would help. Again she regretted not staying long enough to find out what was really wrong with Karyn. The only superficial problem she had complained about was not being able to have the fun summers like she had in years prior. Derpy agreed that was a shame. Could they even find time to go back to the park where she had found Muffinhead?

That was it, she thought. It could be her way back. She threw open the door, tossed her saddlebag on the couch in a departure from her usual fastidiousness, and flew up to Dinky’s room. There she found some of the supplies she had used in school before heading off to Celestia’s Academy. Derpy took some pieces of construction paper and a pack of crayons.

Dinky’s desk was too small to work on, so Derpy brought the paper and crayons down to the kitchen table. With her tongue sticking out to one side, she first drew some careful lines and labeled the whole project at the top. Then she put one of the crayons to her mouth and thought.

“It’s got to be all the best…there’s no reason to hold anything back.”

She made some notes on a regular piece of paper, looked again, nodded, and wrote. She took her time, confident in the knowledge that Karyn was waiting for her, frozen at her desk.

At last she was satisfied. She retrieved her saddlebag and placed the paper gingerly inside. She flew slower and with more precision than she usually did. None of the letters she carried were as precious as this.

Taking a deep breath, she appeared back on Earth. Sure enough, Karyn was facing the desk just returning to studying. She must have heard the double sound of Derpy leaving and returning, so she rotated in her chair.

“I’m sorry,” Derpy said, “I couldn’t really leave, not for the week. I’ll just have to wait until you’re done.”

“All right. If you want to go out or something, I’ll trust you. You know enough about Earth to take care of yourself.”

“Actually, I brought this…” She started to go for her project, but decided that it wasn’t the right time. “I think I’ll stay here a bit longer. I’ll be as quiet as I can be.”

Derpy got on the bed and relaxed. Karyn would take her time, and Derpy would let her. It was all right now. The project in the saddlebag gave her comfort, like a talisman that would ward off boredom. This time, as she lay on the bed, she could watch Karyn and keep still without making a sound. The ambient noise didn’t reach her. In a state of total concentration, she stared, hoping to transfer some of her focus to the friend who needed it more.

She could almost follow the course of study, even if she didn’t understand the material. Karyn was proceeding through notes at a pace; she wasn’t cramming. Derpy approved. She could see, by Karyn’s shoulders which weren’t slumped, that she was confident. This was just necessary work.

She reached for a notebook and it fell to the floor. Quick as she could, Karyn slid her chair to the side and put a hand on it. She was faster than Derpy, who had just begun to get off the bed to help. For a moment, their eyes met.

A conversation was held in that glance. Karyn’s eyes said, “Please, I understand, you can’t go, but just don’t pressure me. I promise that as soon as I can, I’ll be with you” and Derpy’s said, “I know, and I’m waiting for you. You need to do this for yourself, and I want to give you your time” and Karyn said, “All right, if you’re going to be a good friend, I’ll trust you.”

Karyn got the notebook and returned it to the desk. With the back of her head pointed at Derpy, she stretched her arms and her neck, and then dove back in.

It took fully another hour, but during that time Derpy held still and made no sound. The time flew by, even if it dragged for Karyn. She tried to speed things up as best she could, but when she did, she found that the chapter reviews and mock tests she was taking gave her lower grades. That would never do in the real thing. So she plodded through the book and her notes.

At last she carefully closed her laptop, folding the screen down until the latches clicked into their notches. Taking out the frustration that she didn’t want to put into the delicate piece of electronics, she slammed her textbook shut, then flipped it in the air and caught it, dropping it down to the side of her desk to complete a trilogy of thuds.

“I officially declare my studying…complete.”

“You’re done? You finished the book?”

Karyn scratched the back of her head, but with more confidence than usually accompanied this gesture. “I made it to the end and then went back for more. But there comes a point at which trying to shove more information in is counterproductive. I’m convinced that I’ve reached that point. It’s hard to describe, but it feels like what I have done got lodged in the folds of my brain, but now everything is sliding off. So I’m going into these tests with what I have and no more.”

“I’m not sure that makes sense, but I’ll go with it.”

“So show me this thing?”

In the midst of her quiet enjoyment, Derpy had forgotten what had effected it. “What thing?”

“You said, when you came back, that you ‘brought this’ and then cut yourself off. I want to see what you brought.”

“I guess your brain really is holding onto information if you remembered that.”

Karyn laughed, more from the release of tension than from humor. “I was thinking of it though a lot of the studying, using it as an incentive to keep going, like some people do with a snack or something.”

“Do you want a snack?”

“No, I was having them while I was studying to keep my energy up.”

And, as though that part of the conversation was concluded, Derpy got out the construction paper. “What you were saying about this being your last summer when you’re not working got to me. So as I see it you have eight weeks off. If you’re going to make the most of them, you’ll need to budget out your time for doing awesome things. I made you a calendar.”

She flipped the paper with her hooves and Karyn took a look. She had drawn in the lines for the days in dark blue crayon on the lighter blue paper, and the box for Wednesday was a good deal smaller than the other boxes, as though she had started from each end and not known where to meet in the middle. It had also been a struggle to fit the word “Wednesday” at the top, and it crawled along the side, changing from horizontal to vertical and back.

At random points on the paper, Derpy had drawn stick figures of a pony in gray with yellow hair, and a human in flesh tone also with yellow hair. Both of them had smiles on their faces.

Saturday and Sunday Derpy had spent the most time on. Every other Saturday the picture was a bed with a few blonde hairs sticking out that just said, “Sleep in.” The Sundays of course were the ones she had spent the most time on, and each week had an activity.

Karyn saw through the paper the faint lines of more crayon drawing. She flipped it over to find the next month there. The paper was thick enough that none of the marks had bled through.

“This is…amazing. You put a lot of effort into this, I can tell.”

“Now that I actually look at it, it’s kind of immature. Dinky could probably do better.”

“Dinky has the advantage of a horn. No, if it looks simple, that’s better for what it is. Something made with love.” She turned back to the first page and perused it again, this time looking at the actual events that Derpy had planned. “Ooh, definitely got to do that…might not be able to do that that day…that will depend on weather, but it looks like if it does rain, you’ve got a couple of days on either side to play with it…”

Derpy watched her pore over each day. All the intensity and focus that Karyn had shown while studying now gave way to playful amusement as she pointed to various squares with a pen. “So, you happy now?”

“Yes. I think that this has been a productive day, and that can be just as good as a fun day where we just play all day. I’m ready for my tests—as ready as I’m going to be—and I’m also ready for the summer that comes after them. So long as I pass my tests, otherwise I’ll be stuck in a class for summer, and I’ll have had to pay for that, meaning even more on my loans…”

“Hey! No negativity! If you don’t pass your tests after all that work, then the college has to do some reevaluation of its testing standards, because it means even Twilight couldn’t pass them.”

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Karyn dug in her desk and found some thumbtacks, aiming to put the calendar on the wall. “No, on second thought I shouldn’t. I don’t want to put holes in Gayle’s wall, and I honestly don’t even want to put them in the paper.”

“Good idea. Besides, the term’s almost over so it’ll be time to go home.”

“Yeah.” She let the paper flit down to the desk, saving it only when one of the random breaths of wind threatened to take it all the way to the floor. “Thanks, Derpy, for coming back.”

“Thanks for having me.”

Derpy left for home, this time confident that time would move on Earth and that Karyn was free to continue her week and get to her tests. Once more she flew lazily and once more she landed. This time, though, she took off her saddlebag and hung it from the hook in the closet as she always did. Only then did she look around.

“Well, I convinced myself for long enough to leave, but I know that I missed it. Karyn’s upset about something, and it goes beyond her tests or her summer. She doesn’t want to tell me, and maybe I shouldn’t pry. On the other hoof, if it gets worse, then it won’t be good. All I know is that if she doesn’t fix it, then nothing on that calendar will make a difference. Derpy, you’ve got to do what you can. And it starts next Sunday.”

Author's Note

But for us, it starts next Wednesday!

Derpy laughed, and it was a good feeling. “How are you doing?”

“Good, good…or did you mean on the tests?”

“I didn’t mean that, but I’ll be happy to hear about them.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I must look a fright now,” she said when she had at last calmed down. “I should magic myself back to what I should look like.”

“Why don’t you go into the bathroom and wash up proper instead?”

“That sounds like a good idea. Thanks again.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Of course, but we can’t do that. Can we? Do you have a spell for that?”

“No. Didn’t you hear me say, ‘if only there were a way”? Karyn might have responded, perhaps questionins Derpy’s rare linguistic ability, but Derpy didn’t pay attention. She was hard at work thinking. Just because there wasn’t a magical way to provide Karyn with more information didn’t mean there wasn’t a practical way. It might be that she and Karyn relied a little too much on magic, but she put that thought aside for later.

Plus, when you come back for that chapter, there will be a Special Announcement!

111: The Derpy Shore

A casual observer of the weekly visits of Karyn and Derpy, if such observer could remain casual after some of the observations they would observe, would soon pick up the routine that they had for their mornings before they began whatever event they had chosen to amuse themselves with. Derpy was wont to prepare herself early and arrive while Karyn was still getting ready, but between them they’d engineer breakfast and spend it catching up on each other’s week, followed by Karyn making her own ablutions while Derpy made sure that the apartment had not decayed from the previous week’s state of order.

But on that day they broke with tradition as Karyn had shaken off most of her sleep, and Derpy had breakfasted as she usually did during the week, on a leftover muffin from the previous night. So it was that they were prepared for the first item on the calendar that Derpy had prepared a couple of weeks prior.

“Are you ready for the beach?” asked Karyn.

“I sure am. I can’t believe we didn’t do this last summer.”

“Well, we were kind of trying new things all over. Plus when I was living at home, it wasn’t convenient for the beach. Actually, that’s not true. There is a beach that’s closer to my folks’ house, but it’s not a nice one.”

Derpy stopped her fidgeting with her beach items. “How can a beach not be nice?”

“When it’s really small and the sand is filled with sticks and cigarette butts and all sorts of trash that makes it not fun.”

“Oh. Yeah, I could see how that would be annoying.”

“We only went to that beach once. Ever since then, when we want to we drive the distance. Speaking of which, let’s get moving.” Karyn waited for Derpy to go invisible, then led the way to the car.

The drive began on the freeway, but they had to turn off soon enough to get to the road for the beach.

“Is there another way to go further down?” asked Derpy.

“No, why?”

“If we had kept going that way, we would have been on that part of the road that has the nice trees and no buildings or anything to distract me from the view. It’s my favorite part of driving on Earth.”

It took Karyn a moment to picture the part of the parkway that Derpy was referencing. “Oh. Yeah, that’s not this way. But we may have some views that you enjoy.”

If they were forthcoming, Derpy couldn’t see them, as they passed through several towns where they had to slow down to half speed. They were rustic, and to Karyn’s eye they represented a step down from the hustle of the city, but Derpy still saw them as civilization. Progress was measured, not in miles, but in the type of shops they saw. The more they drove, the more they saw touristy places and stores selling things that could be used at the beach. At last they turned a curve, and Derpy said, “Ooh, now that’s more like it.”

The road turned into what could have been termed a bridge, except that it was not suspended above the water. To either side of the road, a path for bicyclists and joggers extended it out a bit wider, and then reeds and grasses were the only thing separating them from a river that led to the sea. It was as if nature had raised an island just to drive on.

“Isn’t it nice? I do wonder though if the road doesn’t get flooded out every time there’s rain and the river rises.”

“Who goes to the beach when it’s raining?”

“Good point, Derpy.”

The pleasant road came to an end with another curve leading into the parking lots. The first one was full and the second they had to bypass.

“Why can’t we go in there?”

“It’s for residents only. All those towns we passed on the way, if someone from there wanted to park, they could do it. But not me. I’d get a ticket.”

Lot three also had a closed sign, even though Karyn thought she saw spaces. At last she was able to turn in, but they could see nothing of the beach, only a wall of dunes. Their choices were a spot close to the front but well wide of the tunnel underneath the dunes, or in line with the tunnel but far back. They took the former, and Karyn unpacked the car, balancing everything as best she could.

“Can’t I carry something?” asked Derpy.

“Not unless you can make it invisible too. I’ll be all right.”

Karyn had assured her, but she was also taking very high and deliberate steps, and Derpy tried to relieve her by pulling up on some of the heavier bags. “No, don’t do that,” Karyn said.

“But your walking is labored.”

“A long time ago, when I was a very young girl, my folks took me to the beach and I wasn’t used to walking in sandals. As we came up on the concrete curb, I stubbed my toe about as bad as any toe has ever been stubbed. Can you stub your hooves?”

Even though she was invisible, Karyn could hear Derpy’s wince. “Oh, yeah. Bad sometimes.”

I remember dragging it across several inches, and then it turned all black and the nail cracked and it really hurt. I didn’t have any fun at the beach that day. So now I always high-step at the beach. I guess it’s trauma.”

“I could carry you along and you could just swish your feet like you were walking, and then no one would know.”

“That would just make me more likely to make a misstep.”

They walked under the tunnel, enjoying a moment’s relief from the beating of the sun, before climbing the stairs to the boardwalk.

“Be careful here too,” said Derpy. “You can just as easily stub your toe on wood.”

“indeed. And worse, you can get splinters something awful. But the wood is better than it used to be in that department. I think they treat it or spray it with something now to stop it from splintering.”

“Or maybe over the years all of them have been picked up by people walking.”

“I would hate to think that. That’s a lot of pain over the years.”

They reached one of the stairs down to the beach, and there Karyn paused, almost wanting to drop her stuff. Despite how early they had left, the beach was packed, and she couldn’t see a good open spot to settle in.

“It’s kind of crowded, don’t you think?”

“You could say that. Now we’re going to have to walk all the way down to find a spot, then when we want to go we’ll have to walk all the way back. They don’t make this very convenient.”

Derpy’s voice came from above. “I’ll do some scouting to see which direction is better.”

“OK. Remember that we can’t go too close to the water. The randomness of the waves means that a big one might hit us.”

She flew off, and Karyn waited. It didn’t take long. “We should go left,” she said.

Again keeping her feet high, Karyn trounced down the steps to the sand. Since it was still in the shade of the boardwalk, it was cool as it bounced over the tops of her sandals. “What we could do, if you remember where you wanted to go,” she said, “is walk down to the water where the sand is wet and packed, and then across.”

“It’s up to you. I can keep above either.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that. That way we can go through the progression of sand.”

“Huh?”

Karyn checked that her Bluetooth was in place, and hoped that no one would question how she got reception on the beach. “As we head down, the first thing I notice is where the sand gets packed into little, well, packets. I don’t know how that happens, but they’re fun to bust apart with fingers or toes. Then is all the ‘normal’ sand, for lack of a better word. The dry stuff that you sit on when you’re at the beach. And then is the wet sand that’s good for walking or when you don’t have shoes and need to cool your feet.”

“The sand seems darker here.”

“Yeah, you have white sand beaches in Equestria, or at least the one we went to was. We have them too, here on Earth I mean. Not so much around here.”

They reached the wet sand, and Derpy put some hoofprint indents in it that were soon washed away. “I might like this a little better, actually. I don’t have to squint as much, and if I want to open my eyes fully I can just look down.”

At last the crowd thinned out, and Karyn headed back up the beach until she found a few square feet of open area. She put the bag and cooler down and stretched her aching arms. “On the way back I might take you up on carrying a few things. I’m not sure that keeping Equestria a secret is worth this kind of soreness.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m joking.” She reached into the bag and got her beach blanket. Once she spread it out, everything else she did from a seated position. Off to her right, the next family over closed their own cooler with a loud bang, causing her to look up and slide a little farther away.

“I guess I should stick to the blanket, huh? I mean, if I lie on the sand, someone might trip over me.”

“Good point. Would you want to lie on the sand though? You’d get it in all your hair and mane and feathers.”

“Sometimes it can be fun to wash it off.”

Karyn rolled her eyes at that.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course, you know that.”

“How come you don’t bring an umbrella or any beach chairs? You’re OK with just a blanket?” Derpy did a sweep of the immediate vicinity. “It seems that just about everyone has something more than we do.”

“I guess that’s just my tradition. My folks never had chairs and umbrellas when I was growing up, even though we could probably afford them. Why they didn’t, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask. In any case, the beach slopes enough that lying down feels like sitting at a very low incline.”

Derpy laughed at that. “Sounds like something I would say.”

Karyn got out the sunscreen and covered herself. Once her legs and face were done, she reached for her back.

“Do you want me to help out?”

“If you can do it discreetly, sure. Hm.”

Derpy tried as best she could to smear the sunscreen so that it looked natural. Once it was clear, it was all right. “What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said, ‘Hm.’ I thought you might have had an idea.”

She finished the sunscreen and Karyn stretched out on the blanket. “I was just wondering, if I used my changeling magic and made like I had a UV-blocking sunscreen on, would it work? If it’s just an illusion, it still might deflect light.”

“Why not try it?”

“I’m afraid of sunburns. Hm.”

“What’s on your mind now?” Derpy asked, since this time Karyn had clearly wanted her to ask.

“Well, I’ve always worn rather…utilitarian bathing suits when I’m at the beach or at a pool. Most of the time when it’s just family, no one cares, and when I’m in public I want to draw attention away from myself rather than toward. But that’s with my body as it is. I’ve never had the figure for the beach, and even then I don’t want to put in the effort to get muscle tone and perfect skin. But now I could get them just with a thought.”

“I don’t get it. I mean, if you want to get that, it’s very much something that a changeling queen would do. But why at the beach specifically?”

“Well, for humans, the beach is a traditional place to show off your body, if you have one worth showing off. Because it’s hot, so everyone wears fewer clothes. Guys can even go shirtless if they want. There are even beaches where people go completely naked, but the people who go there are really into it.”

Derpy nodded. “Are they trying to be like ponies?”

“Maybe some of them are, but not all. This might be easier if I demonstrated.”

“But are you sure it’s a good idea?”

Karyn moved her head from side to side, looking at some of the other women who had worn more daring beachwear. “It’ll be something I won’t have a chance to do often.” One more scan of the beach revealed a changing room about fifty yards behind her. She did a kind of handspring off the blanket and headed over.

Derpy stood watch over the blanket and all the items there. She saw several other blankets abandoned as the owners had gone into the water, but everyone seemed to be leaving them alone. There seemed to be a code of honor not to steal among humans, enough to let their stuff sit for a while.

She hoped that Karyn wouldn’t be identified by the green light her magic emitted, and kept sneaking glances at the changing room waiting for the flash. But she didn’t notice any, and as the door opened she saw Karyn’s head on a completely different body. Derpy wasn’t a very good judge of human standards, but if it was what Karyn wanted, it was probably good. She was certainly curvier, and as she said had reduced the clothing she wore. It was limited to a pair of triangles connected by a string covering her chest, and another pair on her lower torso.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Really extreme. You should get a picture and I can show some of the fashion ponies. Maybe it’ll start a trend, like minimalist fashion. Or maybe you should tell them. I don’t get along with that sort of crowd much.”

“Good idea. I’ll take a selfie so that we don’t have to deal with a floating camera.”

She held her phone out at arm’s length and snapped the photo. After that, she lounged back. Derpy made a circle. “You’re a lot shinier.”

“Yeah, I imagined myself all oiled up. Again, I’m not testing how well that’ll actually work to tan me, but it looks good.”

Karyn leaned back and put on her sunglasses, which were real and not effected. She enjoyed her showing off, though she was continually distracted by how some of her new endowments obscured the bottom of her vision. She shrugged and watched the waves roll back and forth.

It only took about five minutes before Derpy’s well-attuned ears picked up someone speaking in their direction. “Check out her,” they said. The speaker approached.

To Derpy’s eyes it was the male equivalent of Karyn’s new form. They were the same shade of dark brown, the same well-defined muscles. Derpy thought of ponies who worked hard, like Big Macintosh, and how they were considered attractive. She wondered if he wasn’t a farm worker.

“Hey, first time at this beach?” he asked.

“Not really,” Karyn replied. “I came here when I was real young.” She twirled her hair.

“If you stick around all day, we shoot off some killer fireworks at night.”

“Yeah? Maybe I’ll come back for that. I have to take my friend home later.”

“Cool. Want to give me your number and we’ll hook up?”

“Why don’t you give me yours?” She took out her phone and added him to the contact list. “Thanks, I’ll catch up with you.”

Once he’d gone, she listened for Derpy. “I’m glad I’m in disguise, because I’m burning red under here. I think I’m going to change back.”

“Why? Didn’t you like him?”

“He was nice, but if I met him again I’d have to wear the same disguise. That’s not fair to him. It’s like people who go on online dating sites with fake pictures.”

Karyn rose and headed back to the changing room. It took even less time for her to get back to her old self. Derpy got a good laugh when the well-tanned young man walked back the other way and did a double-take at Karyn’s appearance.

“Are you still going to call him?”

“No. I’m really not interested in that type anyway. He’d think that his looks would entitle him to do things. He even asked to ‘hook up’ which could imply things I don’t want to do.” Karyn hoped she wouldn’t have to explain to Derpy further.

“You should at least give him an excuse. It’s rude just to ignore someone.”

“You’re right, that’s not fair to any guy.”

They let the conversation die out as they returned to sea-gazing. After a few minutes of that, Derpy said, “I hope you won’t think me rude, but as much fun as I’m having here, it’s not the same as Mountauk Point.”

“Well, I can understand that. It’s the beach that you grew up on. That your f…” She cut herself off. Karyn didn’t like mentioning Derpy’s father. “That you went to as a filly. And honestly, while I won’t necessarily agree with you, I got a different feeling when we went there as when we’re here now. That time, it took me back to when I played when I was a little girl. But now, I’m doing what adults do at a beach. I’m sunning myself and relaxing.”

“Maybe that plays into the decisions you made last week. You could be growing up.”

“That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? I mean, I didn’t get the big manual of all the things you’re supposed to know when you’re an adult, so am I figuring them out on my own?”

“You get a manual?!”

Karyn chuckled. “No, it’s a running joke that children think adults get one.”

“That’s said among foals as well. I was hoping that it was true on Earth. It would make it more of a fantasy land.”

“Well, just so that I don’t grow up too fast, I still want to take a swim and splash in the water. How about it?”

Derpy got up. “Sounds good to me! I can be a little less careful about bumping into people there.”

“Yeah, they’ll probably think you’re a fish. Hopefully not a shark.”

They both rose and walked down. Letting the water lap at Karyn’s feet and Derpy’s hooves, they got rid of some of the heat from the burning sand. Then Karyn took the lead and ran in until the water was waist-high. She had a good realm of space around her, and Derpy was free to dog-paddle to stay afloat.

“Please don’t go any farther,” she said. “I’m barely touching now.”

“Wow, for once being four-legged works against you. Also, you’re twice as likely to get caught in an undertow. And the lifeguards can’t see you.”

“You’re really not making this fun.”

“I’m sorry! I just keep thinking these things.” Karyn threw her arms around Derpy’s neck. To anyone watching, it would look like a swimming stroke. “I shouldn’t say them out loud.”

“Don’t worry. That’s part of acting like a child too: doing things without thinking of the consequences. Like this!”

Breaking out of the embrace, Derpy flapped her wings on the water’s surface, sending two waves of water at Karyn.

“Ooh, I’ll get you for that! I should change my arms into flippers and really drench you. But I’ll play fair!” She slapped the water and shot a spray back at Derpy. After a few more splashes, they were tired and panting.

Wordlessly, they agreed that they were done and headed up to the blanket. Karyn pulled a towel out of a large bag.

“At least you have one this time. Back at Mountauk in Equestria, I didn’t bring any, and you had to air dry. But now I can’t shake myself dry, because people will see.”

“I’ll do my best to dry you off. It’ll look like I’m doing some kind of weird tai chi move, but who cares what people think so long as they don’t discover you.”

She did as she said, careful to rub the towel all in the same direction, toward Derpy’s tail. Once that was done, Karyn started to pack up everything that they had brought with them. As she folded the blanket, some of the sand that had spilled onto it got on her legs.

“Ugh, there were more consequences than we considered. I’ve got sand in my bathing suit.”

“Yeah, it’s in my hair and mane too. Do you have showers like we do?”

“I think there might be some on this beach, but I didn’t see them as we passed.”

They trudged the long way back, and once they got through the tunnel and saw no one else within view, Derpy did carry some of the bags. As they reached the car, Derpy said, “I think I’m still damp. Maybe I should just fly alongside the car.”

“Heaven forbid I would kick you out of the car for any reason. But in this case, especially. I’ll just put the towel on your seat. I think I’ll do it on mine too. It’s another tradition, and it means we don’t have to sit on the boiling seats. I should get one of those shields for the windscreen that reflects the sun and keeps the car cool.”

“Ooh, maybe I can help. I have a spell for cold.”

Karyn finished laying down the towel. “Really? It can make the whole car cool instantly?”

“In theory. Want me to try it?”

“Sure. Better than getting in all that sweltering air.”

She waited while Derpy got her saddlebag. She heard Derpy tense up. “Here goes nothing.”

Karyn put her arm inside and did indeed feel the air chill like the air condition had been running. It would be a good saving on gas if this worked. But before she could say anything, it got much colder, and as Derpy turned off the spell, all the windows of the car were completely frosted.

“You might have overdone it a little.”

“Just a tad.”

“Well, we can wait here a little. In this sun, that’ll melt in seconds.”

Derpy’s voice was small. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Karyn said as she got in the car, still enjoying the cool air and watching the first frosts turn to drips that rained on her interior. “This is our awesome summer, and I’m perfectly fine if it includes a little winter.”

Author's Note

Next week, a big leap forward!

Karyn twirled and flopped on the bed, her sundress billowing around her. “Not particularly. Actually, I was hoping we wouldn’t be too tied town to the calendar. We can just do some fun things on a whim, right?”

“Sure. I made the calendar more to cheer you up. If you’re cheerier not doing the things on the calendar, then it’s doing its job. I think.”

“Definitely. Ready for breakfast?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“If there is any trouble, just send me a message across worlds and I’ll come flying to save you!” Derpy demonstrated by dashing around the room.

“Ha, I bet you will.”

“Well, I’m glad that everything’s finally going your way.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Go shopping!”

And as she said that, she grabbed her purse and was headed out the door. Derpy barely had time to get her invisibility spell out and follow her to the car.

Come back then, and we'll talk about the extra chapters as well.

112: Derpy's Human Resources

Derpy arrived, and the first thing she looked for was the calendar near Karyn’s computer. The previous week’s Sunday had been crossed out, but in pink highlighter so that the activity—beach—could be seen underneath. Then her eyes drifted to the next Sunday to see what activity they had planned. But her view was obscured by Karyn sliding her head in from the right and booping Derpy’s nose with her finger.

“Hey, marefriend!”

“Hey…” Derpy searched for the equivalent word. “womanfriend!”

“Close! But good enough. How have you been? How was your week?”

“Good. You seem like you had a good one. Or are you anticipating another fun activity today?”

Karyn twirled and flopped on the bed, her sundress billowing around her. “Not particularly. Actually, I was hoping we wouldn’t be too tied town to the calendar. We can just do some fun things on a whim, right?”

“Sure. I made the calendar more to cheer you up. If you’re cheerier not doing the things on the calendar, then it’s doing its job. I think.”

“Definitely. Ready for breakfast?”

“Oh, yeah. And you’re already set to go out today. Good to see you in a better mood.” Derpy checked the calendar one more time. “I bet it was because of the beach that we went to last week. It loosened you up from all that tension.”

“I won’t say it didn’t. Splashing in the water was fun, and I’d like to do it again, even if I am all a grown-up now.”

Derpy looked at her with skepticism, but Karyn wasn’t sure if it was about her remark of being grown-up or of something deeper. “You’ve had quite a mood swing over the last month. From being so down that I couldn’t tell what was wrong to being so up that I can’t tell what’s right. Are you sure that you’re not worried about anything and just trying to cover it up?”

“Well, maybe I am. I’m nervous and excited both at the same time. It’s like that word that Pinkie Pie used….”

“Excivous?”

“No…yeah, that was probably it. I’m totally excivous.” She got up and skipped to the toaster to get breakfast ready.

“Are you going to make me go through a whole rigmarole to find out what caused it?”

“I won’t,” said Karyn, “but let’s get everything taken care of first. How about the apartment? Is it clean enough to suit my fastidious friend?”

Derpy scanned. “Did you dust?”

“I did. I found myself with some extra time this week. You know that I’m not in school anymore.”

“Well, I’m glad you put the time to good use. But how about looking for work?”

Before Karyn could answer, the toaster popped, and she busied herself with plates and spreading preserves over the pieces. Then her mouth was occupied with eating. Derpy decided to give up the fight for the moment and eat without talking about important things. Karyn finished first, a rare occurrence, and watched Derpy finish.

“You’re cute eating something like toast. The way you hold it between your hooves.”

“Enough about my eating. Talk.”

Karyn put the dishes in the sink and washed off the crumbs, but left the formal scrubbing for later. She turned to Derpy full on and said, “I’ve done it. I’ve been hired for a real IT job. Tomorrow will be my first day.”

“Congratulations! It’s not an internship?”

“It is kind of, but they’re not labeling it as such. I’m getting paid, but they understand that I’m leaving at the end of the summer. But they needed someone around who could do things like repair jammed printers or deal with users who forgot their passwords, and they needed them fast. Over the next two months they’ll do a longer hiring process, and probably my last week there I’ll be training my replacement.”

Much of this went over Derpy’s head, though she understood about forgotten passwords. “So it’s mostly support? Isn’t that the part you don’t like?”

“I don’t hanker for it, but it’s got to be done and I’ve got to learn it. If I’m ever a CIO I can give it up, but I’ll have done a lot beforehand.”

“Well, that’s a good attitude to have. I think I do a lot better when I talk to everypony I deliver to instead of just putting the mail in their boxes. Unless the pony isn’t home, then I don’t talk to them.”

Karyn laughed, louder than she had in some time. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“So where is it?”

“The mail? Oh, the job! Duh. It’s at a school. I think that could be part of why I got the job is that the person who interviewed me started out as a teacher and picked up the IT on the job, so he was more impressed by someone who studied it and plans to make it a career.”

Derpy thought there might have been a story in that, but she was more interested in Karyn’s doings. “Is the school more like yours or is it something like where Dinky’s going?”

Karyn had an image of herself trying to explain some technical issue to a unicorn while Princess Celestia looked on, wondering why she couldn’t just magically fix it. “No, it’s not like either. This is a school for children, but not even like how Miss Cheerilee teaches. These children are underprivileged and have done bad things. In old times we would have called it a reform school, but that term’s not popular these days.”

“Oh, wow. So you’re with bad kids like how Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara used to be?”

“Probably even worse. But the good thing is that I won’t be working on the computers that they use. It was explained that they’re on a completely different network. So I’ll be safe from making any enemies, working in the office or the server room.”

“If there is any trouble, just send me a message across worlds and I’ll come flying to save you!” Derpy demonstrated by dashing around the room.

“Ha, I bet you will.”

“Well, I’m glad that everything’s finally going your way.”

Karyn’s smile broke for the first time. “It is, but at the same time, it’s not perfect. I don’t want to get stuck in the educational field for my whole career. Their equipment is outdated, and from what I hear they don’t get to upgrade very often. I want to be working with the newer stuff.”

“Yeah? That’s a shame. I would think that schools would be the places to put all the new stuff.”

“Again you’re thinking of places like the college I go to. What goes for these children is the bare minimum. The school isn’t run by the government, but they’re funded by them. That puts them in a kind of limbo. If it were a private school, they could charge tuition and finance themselves that way. If they were a government school, they’d get paid out of the taxes and not worry. But they’re a consultant to the government, and so they get paid as little as possible.”

“And so do you?”

Karyn blushed. “It’ll be enough for me to budget out with. Fortunately I had a good teacher in that department.”

“That’s the spirit! And if you get into a little bit of a deficit, you’ll make it up when you get back to school. Oh, did you plan to pay Gayle for the July rent?”

“Definitely. I’m just going to have to figure out how. Because I know she’s going to ask about it, and I know that when I try to give it to her she’s going to tell me that she doesn’t want it. She’s no businesswoman.”

“You should be grateful to have a friend like her.”

“Oh, I totally am! But debts are there to be paid, and I’m living in her house. Anyway, if I don’t pay it, I’ll just spend it frivolously. This is the first time I’m earning money and paying bills at the same time. In all the previous summers, I was just squirreling it away. I have to make sure I have enough for the term.”

Derpy nodded, and for a while she drifted off into her own thoughts. The idea that she had given advice to anyone, even if it wasn’t a pony, made her feel a little proud of herself. She was so deep in reverie that Karyn had to wave her hand in front of her face. Derpy realized that she had asked a question.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked you what you thought about when you first started with the post office.”

That threw Derpy for a loop. She hadn’t been thinking of her own work at all, and to have to think back over decades to when she was a newly-hired mailmare—mailmare nothing, she was closer to a mailfilly—put her out of the conversation for another few minutes.

“Oh, I see. Because you’re having your first day tomorrow. But it’s totally different. You’re doing this as the start of a career. When I went to the post office, it was because I needed a job to get money for food for Dinky and me. It was right after the family broke up and I had to learn how to do all that really fast.”

“Well, it’s not all by choice for me. Remember that my first choice would have been to raise kids with Mike, if his career would have turned out better. We both needed to grow up fast, I was just luckier to have parents who could afford to give me a few years to go to school and get a leg up on it.”

“You’re right,” said Derpy. “And I shouldn’t be putting a black cloud over your sunshine day.”

“Yes, definitely don’t do that.”

“I just said, I won’t.”

“Yes, but you could do it literally, and you could also mean it as…never mind.”

Derpy gave her a double-take look, as do most people when told to never mind. But she let it pass.

“So tell me. Tell me first about how you got the job.”

“Oh, wow. Let me see. I remember trying at a couple of private shops before I went to the post office, but the complete memory is a little hazy…wait! I remember. I wrote a letter to somepony—can’t remember who—asking for a little money to tide me over. And there was a notice at the office advertising for a situation.”

“And you applied,” said Karyn with assumption.

“No, because I wasn’t a situation, I was a pony. But once I got that confusion sorted out I did ask if I could join the post office. Well, it wasn’t considered the best job in Ponyville, but all they wanted to know was whether I knew my way around.”

“So Mr. Mintsugar hired you?”

“Oh, goodness, no!” Derpy winced as the memory came to the forefront of her mind. “He wasn’t there yet, and wouldn’t be for several years. No, I was hired by Mr. Beetroot. A much more sour personality. I don’t think he liked me all that much.”

“Why do you say that?”

Derpy thought about her answer for a while. “Some ponies do their job because they love it. And that’s great when you can find work like that. I mean, like, think about Applejack. There’s nothing she’d rather do that farm apples. Well, Mr. Beetroot was like that about the mail. He loved it. I think that sometimes he went back in the office and would sniff the letters. He was always talking about how important each piece of mail was to the sender and the receiver. Which I guess is true, but for me it was different. I like the flying, the opportunity to talk to ponies, and the fact that it pays me. But I’m not passionate about it. He kept trying to make me that way, and I resisted.

“Either that, or it was the bag of mail I lost on the third day. I still don’t know where it went.”

Karyn laughed at that, but didn’t ask for the story. She was worried that she was prying enough as is.

Derpy continued. “But the point is, at some point you get good enough, and you know enough about your job, that it becomes easier for your boss to work with you instead of over you. And if you make friends with them—not close friends, I mean, because there’s still an authority situation—then it becomes easier on everyone, including you.”

“I guess that makes sense, but at the same time, I probably won’t really understand it until I’m in there and can put it in my own words. Advice is usually like that.”

“Well, and there’s another difference between the two of us. You know how long your job is going to last. You can already look ahead to your last day. One you get into your career, you won’t do that.”

Karyn grinned. “You say that, but I’ll probably get one of those ‘countdown to retirement’ clocks. Or an app that can do it for me. I’ll have it on my computer at work.”

She looked at her friend, but Derpy didn’t return the smile. It was rare for Karyn to see Derpy frown, and when she did it was usually in anger, which quickly melted away. Far more seldom did she see the kind of pitying look that Derpy wore.

“Karyn, having said that I don’t have the kind of passion for my job that some people do, this may sound a little…what’s that word for when you say something and don’t follow through?”

“Hypocritical?”

“Yeah, like I’m a hypo-critter, but if you count the time until you leave, you’re just going to waste all of that time. And it’s too much to waste. I hope that you won’t take it the wrong way, because it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I want to see you happy.”

Karyn got up and put her hand on Derpy’s hoof. “I understand that. I really do. But at the same time, tomorrow is my day one of who knows how many. It’s a little intimidating to think of having to do all of that work to make a career.”

“Then don’t. Just think about what you’re going to do tomorrow.”

“Right. Wait, what am I going to do tomorrow?”

“You’re going to work, remember?”

Karyn waved her hands. “No, I mean, yes, that’s what I’m doing, but what am I doing for it? What am I going to do there, and how am I going to make sure that I’m doing a good job?”

“On your first day, they won’t expect much. They’ll probably show you around and get you acclimated to the new environment. The worst part for me was trying to remember everypony’s name and where their stations were. I still have some trouble with that if we get somepony new.”

“But I want to start wowing them right from the start. Isn’t there a good way to make a first impression?”

Derpy pointed at the bathroom. “Obviously you want to put on your best face. Make sure that you wash up well. Don’t go too heavy on makeup. Get up early and eat a good breakfast. What are you going to wear?”

Karyn had been nodding, and thinking halfheartedly about taking notes, but Derpy’s last question caused her to freeze. “I haven’t even thought about that.”

“Well, you should. Unless they give you a uniform, which they did for me at the post office. It was actually one of the things I was glad for. Of course, most jobs can be done without clothes.”

“Not on Earth. Even if I got there I wouldn’t last a minute if I went naked.” Karyn had to make sure Derpy understood this. “But at the same time the only clothes I’ve really got suitable for work is the suit I’ve interviewed in. I can’t wear that every day and I don’t really want to wear it tomorrow. It’s uncomfortable.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Go shopping!”

And as she said that, she grabbed her purse and was headed out the door. Derpy barely had time to get her invisibility spell out and follow her to the car. “Isn’t this a little sudden? And besides, what’s the point of making money if you’re going to spend it on clothes?”

“Trust me. In any case, I haven’t had the chance to do a full-on shopping spree since…well, since I came to college. It takes me back to when my girlfriends and I would get driven by one of our moms—never mine, though—down to the mall. We could spend all day there. I remember thinking how cool it would be if we could only drive ourselves. Well, I never did that kind of shopping afterwards because money was so tight. I resent it a little that I can’t go shopping just to look good, but this is as fine a time as any to get a new wardrobe.”

Derpy sucked air through her teeth. “It’s bad enough to get new clothes, but to buy furniture?”

It took Karyn a moment to get it. “Not that kind of wardrobe!”

But her spirit could not be dampened, not even when she realized that she did not know where the mall was in her college town, and driving to the mall that she used growing up, while nostalgic, was not worth the time or the cost in gas to get there. After searching on her phone, she found what purported to be a mall, though the word “strip” could have preceded it without argument. There was a department store at one end, though, and even though the food court comprised only a pizza place and a pretzel stand, it was still a mall, and Karyn breathed deeply the conditioned air as they entered.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “This is it.” She made her way at quick-march pace for the women’s section of the department store.

She ran up to the racks and started pulling outfits. With her phone, she snapped pictures of some of them. Derpy caught up and blew a puff of air with her wings to get Karyn’s attention.

“Please be responsible. You’re not even looking at the prices.”

“I know. That’s the idea. I’m going to use these outfits to wear with my changeling abilities. That way I’ll save money.”

Derpy backed off, but her mind was as jumbled as her eyes. “Are you sure that’s right to do?”

“I thought you would be happy for me to be saving money.”

“I am, but at the same time, it feels a little like stealing.”

Karyn shook her head. “I’m not depriving anyone of anything. They still have the same inventory as before.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s all right. You’re not the first person to have ethical quandaries over something like this. When digital music first came out, we had the same debate.”

Derpy sounded relieved. “And you decided that it was OK to get music using your phone?”

“Well, kind of. We decided that it was impossible to stop people from doing it, so the music companies would use other means to make money. But I promise you that if the majority of humans become changeling queens, I’ll come back and buy clothing to keep them in business.”

“Oh, good.”

Karyn found some more outfits that she wanted, and soon had a photo album full on her phone. She did agree that it was only fair that she put them back on the racks before they left, since otherwise it meant making some retail worker do more work than necessary.

“It’s easier to not have to carry all those outfits home as well,” she said as they went back to the car. “I’ve got at least ten of them that I can use, so I won’t have to repeat more than once every two weeks. And I can tweak them depending on the dress code.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re happy and got a chance to go to the mall, and I’m sure that with your powers you can project the look you need. But don’t forget that it’s all about a positive attitude. I don’t begrudge you using your magic, since you earned it. But just like I hadn’t earned anything when I picked up my first mailbag, you’re going to have to work hard to get what you want out of this job. Both money and experience. Your attitude is more important than your outfit.”

“I know that up here,” said Karyn, pointing to her head, “but until I get in to that office and see how things work, I’m not going to know it here.” She pointed to her abdomen.

“It’ll come in time. I don’t know if I’ve said this, but I’m very proud of you.”

“Thanks. I’m a little happy and proud of myself. I only worry that it’ll mess with our Summer of Awesomeness.”

Derpy again took a while to respond. “It doesn’t have to. Believe me, there’s plenty of awesome to be found when you’re working. If there weren’t, it would be a much bigger problem. If nothing else, work hard all week and the day off will be that much sweeter.”

“Since I know I’m spending it with you, that would have to be awfully sweet.”

Author's Note

The summer heats up again next week!

“Are we heading back to the beach?” she asked.

“No...yes, but that’s not our destination.”

“What possible destination could have a beach as a way station? Unless it’s on the water.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy could fit—barely—but mounting up would be difficult when anyone could look through the windows. It wouldn’t do to see her with her legs spread in midair. The best they could do was to move as far forward as possible and have Derpy squat to the floor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I know you’re always concerned about spending too much time in Equestria, but would a few hours hurt you when you really need it? You’ve spend the whole day here sometimes, so you’re not that worried. But then some Sundays we spend all our time on Earth, so you’ve saved up time you could have spent in Equestria. Or did I just contradict myself?”

Stay with Karyn and Derpy for more fun every Wednesday!

113: Gone Derpin'

Jingling her keys, Karyn waited for Derpy to arrive. On several occasions, she removed and replaced her sunglasses, as though she would be unable to see the mare arrive if she had to see through the polarizing lenses. More often than that, she checked for the time on her phone, as well as making sure it stayed fully charged. There was nothing she could do to hasten Derpy, but still she was impatient.

When at last she heard the sound and felt the change in air pressure, Karyn stood up and put her phone back in her purse. “Morning, Karyn!” she heard Derpy say.

“Good morning. Can you go invisible? And get in the car?”

“Got it. One of those, ‘No time to explain, come with me’ things. It’s always annoying when the person doesn’t come, so I will and you can tell me on the way.”

While Derpy was saying this, she was not idle, and indeed the end of the sentence came as she passed through the door, already invisible. Only once Karyn had pulled out of the driveway, had shifted into a forward gear, and was free to face forward with no more than the usual attention on the road, did conversation resume.

“Thanks for being quick. The mapping app on my phone said we have time, but I always like to add a little cushion for getting lost.”

“I can completely agree with that,” said Derpy. “Does this have to do with your new job? How’d that go, by the way?”

“It went just fine. Like you said, nothing too arduous on the first few days. But rather than talk about that—because I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time in the future—let’s relax and have what fun we can.”

Derpy looked at Karyn’s outfit for the first time. In addition to the sunglasses, she wore a baggy T-shirt over a pair of shorts. It was similar to the beachwear she had shown off in two weeks prior, but not as daring. Privately, she wondered how much of it was real. “Are we heading back to the beach?” she asked.

“No...yes, but that’s not our destination.”

“What possible destination could have a beach as a way station? Unless it’s on the water.”

“Got it in one,” said Karyn as she checked her GPS. “What happened is that a friend of the family is graduating, and as a present he asked that we all go on a fishing trip. I tried to get out of it, but no luck.”

“Fishing can be fun and relaxing. Remember when we fished on the way to Muland?”

“Oh, yeah, with Stubby. I wonder what he’s up to. Well, we’re not just going to put our poles in the water. The idea is to catch fish to eat. So everyone else will have a goal. I’ll be trying not to catch any.”

Derpy grumbled her approval. Humans eating other animals was something that she knew happened, but preferred not to be in front of her, in any stage of the process. “Are there any other activities you can do?”

“Well, most of the people there will be drinking heavily, as is often the case with these large get-togethers. For a lot of people, especially men, fishing can be an excuse to just drink.”

“Maybe I should sell Berry Punch on the idea of going on fishing trips. She always likes to have a good occasion to imbibe.”

Karyn followed the same route she had the last time, but before they could reach the bridge that Derpy so loved the last time, Karyn turned off. They had to take a separate bridge, one of steel trusses and rivets, and they did not enjoy it nearly as much.

“OK, now here’s where I really need the GPS. Derpy, can you read it off so that I can keep my eyes on the road?”

“Of course. Too bad they can’t have a GPS that works by voice.”

Karyn didn’t want to admit that she was too cheap to get one of those, and too lazy to try to find one that was free. “Yeah, that is a shame. Maybe I’ll invent it.”

In between giving directions, Derpy said, “So you said this event was for someone who graduated school?”

“Yeah. High school, though. I’m still ahead of him, technically.”

“Because this is exactly what we had on our calendar.”

Karyn pulled her eyes off the road anyway. “We had a fishing trip?”

“No, a boat trip. But we’re going for the fish on a boat, right?”

“Oh. I guess then we’re doing what we planned, just not in the same way.”

Derpy didn’t respond, and Karyn thought about letting it go. But with Derpy being invisible, she had learned to pic up on sound tics, and this silence wasn’t just a conversational pause.

“Are you very disappointed that it’s about fishing?”

“That’s not it,” said Derpy. “It’s just that when I read the calendar, I didn’t realize that there would be a boat trip scheduled here, or that there were boats at all, so I sort of went ahead and booked one for a lake at one of the parks outside of Ponyville.”

“Oh, wow! That sounds great! We’ll do that.”

“But if we’re going on your trip...”

“Then we’ll use the time difference in our favor. When it’s time to go, I’ll step away, we’ll head to Equestria, take a long, leisurely cruise, and then return with no one being the wiser.”

Karyn pulled the car up to the booth ahead of the parking lot, and so Derpy had to remain silent while Karyn paid and took her change. Then she had to slow down for a traffic circle and check that the sign pointing toward the dock actually pertained to the turnoff right beyond it. One more curving turn, and they could see the long line of boats.

“Which one is ours?” asked Derpy.

“It’s called the Lady’s Pride.”

“Nice feminist name.”

“I think it’s supposed to be a kind of joke.” Karyn swung around beyond the lot so she could drive slowly and check the names on each boat. “There are lots of boats with names that reflect their harbor. So if it was Seaville, you’d see them named Seaville Lady or Seaville Pride but this one combines the two and leaves out the name of the harbor.”

“Did you see it on the drive? I wasn’t looking too carefully.”

“I didn’t, but we’re early. It could still be out on the water. Now our choices are to park on the left, which will mean the boat’s on the right; or on the right, which will mean it’s on the left.”

Derpy read Karyn’s connotation of Murphy’s law. “So park in the middle.”

“Even worse, because then whichever way we go, the boat will be at the other end. And we’ll have to go one-and-a-half times the length of the entire dock to get to the boat.”

She turned right and found a space at the right end. In addition to her purse she grabbed a bag of chips from the trunk. “Ooh, snacks,” Derpy observed.

“Yeah, my mom said I should bring something.” They made their way along the dock, looking for the name on either the boat itself or the slip. They found it close to the middle, and it did not appear to have just pulled in. They had simply missed it.

“See, you should have listened to me.”

“Nah. If we had parked here, it would have teleported to the edge.”

They hung out waiting for the party. One of the crew saw Karyn looking up and said, “Coming with? We’re going out for fluke and porgy.”

“Actually, I’m part of a group.”

“Ah! Group of 16? Come on, you’re already signed on.”

With no further proof needed, she boarded and was escorted to the stern, where fishing poles were waiting in metal rings.

Karyn put her bag inside the cabin and waited. Derpy sat on the back of the boat. “This water doesn’t smell great,” she said.

“Yeah. I hate to think of how much gasoline, oil, and other fluids have leaked or been dumped here.”

Other people were arriving, and Karyn had to cut off speaking to Derpy. It was a boring twenty minutes before they finally cast off and headed for open water.

While the engine was loud, the ride was smooth as it was a calm day with almost no wind. For Derpy, who could close her ears for the most part, she could pretend that it was an unpowered boat being propelled by magic and enjoy it. Karyn’s relief from the tedium of watching her family break out liquor was knowing that Derpy was there.

She stared at the wake, watching it unfold and diverge like a hypnotic spiral, occasionally colliding with the wake of a boat going in the other direction to bounce back and forth, battling out for which wave would overcome the other.

Overhead, the seagulls kept pace with the boat, perhaps hoping for a morsel tossed their way or enticed by the smell. Over her time with Derpy, Karyn had, not entirely by choice, become a student of flight. She watched the difference in how the birds flew from Derpy’s pattern. They took long glides and then made the tiniest of vibrations with their wingtips to regain lift. When Derpy flew it was a constant flapping that kept them aloft in defiance of physics. The graceful birds used the aerodynamics to their advantage. As they kept the steady course, the birds circled back to their nests.

They were still making their way through a channel, and to either side land could be seen on the horizon. Here and there, the boat turned inward to get to deeper water, and the beaches got close enough that they could make out the indistinct shapes of people. It amused Derpy to think that, two weeks before, they had lounged there and watched the ships on the water, thinking how much of a difference there was in their positions. Now it was reversed, but if she really wanted to, she could fly between them. She was proud to be a pegasus pony.

The engine spun to a halt, and for a moment the only sound was the splashing of the smallest waves. Then everyone took their position at a fishing pole and set up. Surreptitiously, Karyn managed to get her pole in the water without bating it. This was doubly advantageous for her, as not only was she less likely to catch a fish, but she did not have to touch the clams they were using as bait.

Another round of drinks was drunk, and then everyone fished in earnest. Karyn was amazed that the technique of just leaving the hook on the bottom and hoping for a bite worked, as people in her group and out were hauling up catches. The crew did much of the work of detaching the fish from the hooks, measuring them, and, if necessary, throwing them back. It was truly a chartered affair, with none of the difficult parts having to be done by the paying customers.

For Karyn, and for the unlucky ones who got no nibbles, it was a boring affair. The younger members of her family showed no patience, interpreting every vibration as a potential catch, and reeling in their line often.

After a while, she felt the tap of a wing on her shoulder. She pretended that she felt something and jerked the pole up. Then she reeled it in as the two relatives on either side of her watched intently. Of course, when she pulled up the hook, they were disappointed.

“Something took your bait, though! That’s good!” one of them said.

“Yeah. I’ll be right back.”

She marched into the cabin and realized the difficulty. Derpy could fit—barely—but mounting up would be difficult when anyone could look through the windows. It wouldn’t do to see her with her legs spread in midair. The best they could do was to move as far forward as possible and have Derpy squat to the floor.

Activating the spell, Derpy had little time to react and get her legs under her and her wings spread to catch the air and not plummet. Once she got her bearings and Karyn’s stomach moved back into its proper place, Derpy reached for her next spell and was visible once more.

Karyn looked around and found that the distance they had gone away from her home also put them over the water in Equestria. Not as big of a body, as she could see land on almost all sides, and the one narrow strip that did tail off to the horizon had the two coastlines growing nearer, so for all she could tell it might be just a large lake. Derpy ducked her head and made for the shore.

“Hey, Derpy. Did you see the birds that were trailing the ship back on Earth?”

“I did.”

“Do you think you could fly like that? Not pumping your wings, but just using them for lift?”

Derpy did so, but rapidly lost altitude. “I don’t think I can. I can glide, though, and that might be enough to make land. Let’s try it.”

Karyn was sorry she’d asked, but she held on and tried to calculate their rate of descent against how far they were going. She could see the tips of Derpy’s wings moving up and down slightly. It didn’t look like they were going to make it. At the last moment, right when her hooves skimmed the water, Derpy gave one large pump and trotted to a stop. Frazzled from the flight, Karyn got off and walked as they skirted the lake to the dock. Derpy passed over a few bits.

“This is different from how the fishing boat was,” said Karyn. “Everything was pre-arranged.”

“Yeah, but you had a larger group. Probably I didn’t even have to reserve the boat, but I liked that it gave me something to do to get the event moving, even if it didn’t save us any time.”

The mare at the dock smiled at this and went over a few safety tips. Then she held the boat at the edge of the water with one hoof while Derpy and Karyn got in and settled down. With a powerful kick, the boat scraped the mud and then was free in the water.

Karyn took notice of the oars. They had a notch in them about six inches from the end, and the notches were trapezoid-shaped. This confused her until Derpy put the edges of her hooves in, at which point it made sense. Hooves could grip, but for generating power it would be inefficient and tiring for a pony to have to keep adjusting her position. With those oars, Derpy could lock her hooves in place and let her shoulders do all the work.

“I hope you’re not planning to do all of the rowing,” said Karyn. “I’m not going to be ferried around on two boats today.”

“Neither one of them are really a ferry.”

“It doesn’t matter. I want to take my turn at the oars.”

Derpy eyed them, where her hooves were locked in. “I’m not sure they’re built for you.”

“Let me try before you say that.”

They changed positions, which involved some careful balancing aided by Derpy’s wings. Karyn faced the rear and took the oars. The part outside the two notches was too wide for her to grip, but the notched section was thin enough, even though it had two corners instead of being round. She could feel the edges digging into her hands when she pushed them back through the air, but it was worth the trouble.

Karyn had never been on a rowboat before, and enjoyed how with each stroke they barely lost any momentum, but kept accelerating. She abandoned the right oar for the moment and steered them toward the one part of the lake that was hidden, then let some of the speed play out as they approached.

“You want to go to that little section there?” asked Derpy. “It doesn’t go much further, but it’s cozy.”

“It doesn’t? I was hoping it would be the start of a stream or river. Spoiler warning next time.”

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize that you were looking forward to it. Derpy, you fool!”

Karyn reached out and tapped her shoulder. “Hey, I was joking. Even if you did spoil something important, people get too hung up on those things.”

Now mollified, Derpy took over the rowing and pulled them back into the little cove. It was thick with reeds, and there were insects flying around, but in contrast to Earth, they stayed over water and plant and did not approach the boat.

“We don’t have an anchor, but we should be OK floating here.” Derpy went for her saddlebag and pulled out something small and white “Ta-da!”

“What’s that?”

“Sandwiches. No fish or bait or anything nasty in them. Just good old fashioned Equestrian bread and flowers.”

Karyn unwrapped hers. She had gotten accustomed to identifying the edible plants, and saw nothing that would damage her health, so she tucked in. “Thanks for knowing what I needed. I try not to be in people’s faces about my vegetarianism, but for times like this, it’s hard.”

Since the boat didn’t have chairs, they slouched and used the ribs as backs while they ate their sandwiches. Afterwards, Karyn took her shoes off and dipped her feet in the water.

“Ooh, that feels good.”

“You won’t be happy when you have to put your wet feet back into socks.”

Karyn leaned back. “I’m OK with staying here until they dry. It’s just so peaceful, you know? Maybe I should take a nap.”

“If you like, I’ll do some more rowing while you do.”

“No, I wasn’t being serious. I’m sure I’ve got to get back to the boat.”

It took Derpy a second to get it. “You mean the other boat.”

“Yeah.”

“I know you’re always concerned about spending too much time in Equestria, but would a few hours hurt you when you really need it? You’ve spend the whole day here sometimes, so you’re not that worried. But then some Sundays we spend all our time on Earth, so you’ve saved up time you could have spent in Equestria. Or did I just contradict myself?”

Karyn laughed. “It’s not that. I couldn’t relax here knowing that as soon as I finished, I would still have to go back. I’d much rather get it over with and then we can have fun.”

Derpy didn’t say anything and rowed back for the dock. But her pace was slower and she didn’t look fatigued, so Karyn worried.

“Is everything all right?”

“Would you be very offended if I didn’t want to go back with you to that place? Like I’ve said, I know that humans eat things like fish, but...”

“Stop the boat.” Karyn put her hands on the oars.

“I don’t know if I can halt it directly.”

“Doesn’t matter. Just stop rowing and pay attention. You know that you can never offend me by...well, anything you do. If something bothers you, absolutely I want to get you away from it.”

“Thanks. Plus I’ve been having so much fun out here and, even if you’re not around, I’d like to keep rowing. It’ll be lonlier, but, just for once, loneliness is preferable to being where Karyn is.”

She nodded. “Can you take me back?”

“What if I just gave you the spell and you went on your own?”

“That would work, and I could give it back to you later. Except that I would be underwater when I went, and no one wants to have to do a man overboard drill.”

“Good point.” Derpy got up. “I’m just going to head up, blink in, let you off, and blink out, OK?”

“Sure.”

Derpy didn’t even bother going invisible, and Karyn hopped off as soon as she saw—and smelled—that they were back on Earth. Back over the lake, Derpy dove for the boat which had drifted a little from where they’d started, but was still within reach.

She put her hooves back in the oars and pulled. For Derpy Hooves, all was peace.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Karyn resumed her place at the fishing pole. Others were reeling in lines and occasionally fish. She watched the line bouncing in the water. She missed Derpy, but she understood. The waves were so relaxing.

The next thing she knew she heard the engine starting, and one of the crew was telling her, “Reel em in, that’s it.” She had slept through the rest of the catch.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep!”

“Hah! If you had just had a beer in your hand, you would have been the perfect picture of a fisherwoman.”

Karyn pulled in her line and hung it up. Everyone around her was comparing catches and swapping stories. They had all had a great time. Well, so had she, if not in the same way.

As the boat headed for the dock, a few miles out, the seagulls rejoined them in hover. Under her breath, Karyn muttered, “You don’t know how good you have it, when you can fly free.”

Author's Note

The summer continues next week!

Derpy opened the window.

“Morning, Derpy. Having fun on the internet?”

“Not really. Hey, do you know about human addresses?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy clammed up. She didn’t want to break Karyn’s focus, and if she was going to tell an anecdote, it would be better when Karyn was listening.

Finally, Karyn said, “There. Now we can visit with each other while that processes.”

“But I’m already here.”

Also, I promise at some point to catch up with the chapter suggestions. Oh! And I'm going to Bronycon this weekend! If anyone's coming, message me if you want to meet up!

114: New Derpgrades are Available

When Derpy arrived that morning, she could tell instantly that Karyn wasn’t present. This did not bother her greatly, as she was prepared to handle the Sunday morning routine solo. The bedroom door was open and the bed was made, to Derpy’s approving eye. On the side wall, the door to the bathroom was also ajar, and no sounds of washing came forth. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the breakfast dishes were drying in the drain rack. Since Karyn never ate without Derpy unless she had to, clearly she had to.

This was confirmed by the one item that was out of place in the apartment, a sheet of notepad left on the table. As Derpy picked it up, it came off only with effort, and she pawed at the glue that had held it to the table. When she checked and found no residue on the table, she nodded approval.

“We could use something like that back home,” she said out loud, “but instead of the composition of the note, perhaps I should read the text.”

Dear Derpy, the letter read. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I told you how I was working? Well, as the low person on the totem pole, I have to do some work outside of normal hours, which includes now. I am at the office. Feel free to eat anything you like (not too much!) and then join me. You can leave the dishes for later. I’m at...followed by an address. Love, Karyn

She flashed back to the prior week and how Karyn had almost used the cross-universe spell on her own. If she had, she could have visited at any time and let Derpy know of the change in plans. Or, since entering Equestria meant being in the air, attached a letter to the spell and sent it through. But those were might-have-beens, and at least Derpy knew what to do now.

There was only one problem. An address would be a direct link to a place in the mind of any human, or at least any native of the country in which the address was given, but as a pegasus pony Derpy didn’t think that way. If she used a pegasus map, the destination would be spoken of in terms of vectors and coordinates. She needed more information.

Hopping over to Karyn’s desk, she opened the laptop and logged in. Technically, Karyn hadn’t given her permission, but she also hadn’t refused, and Derpy needed this. She went to a popular map site and put in the address just as written. Fortunately, it was able to find it in the nearest city even without that detail. But it was still just a two-dimensional map, and Derpy wasn’t used to it. What she would have preferred would be the pictures taken by a roaming car, but she didn’t know about those.

She worked hard to translate the map into something she understood. Once she left the apartment, she had to get it right, or her only recourse would be to go backward to the starting point. Glowering at the screen, she heard the sound of a hose sprinkling against the window, and she looked up.

Gayle was watering the flowers outside, and she waved. The image of Derpy sitting on her flanks and typing put a laughing smile on her face. Derpy opened the window.

“Morning, Derpy. Having fun on the internet?”

“Not really. Hey, do you know about human addresses?”

Gayle’s face showed confusion, and Derpy had to explain what she needed. Working together, and using Gayle’s phone, she explained how far off Karyn’s job was and in what direction Derpy needed to go. She said thank you and took off for the sky, after making herself invisible.

It was a new direction for Derpy, but she was at least making progress. She sort-of saw how the map translated the real-world territory into a picture, but it was still an unmagical and un-Equestrian process. Her best bet was to trust Gayle and keep going in the direction given.

Her mental clock told her she was getting close. That jibed with her recollection that Karyn had mentioned an easy commute. She looked around for anything that could be a school. It took her a few circles, since she still had in mind the single buildings that made up Equestrian schools. Eventually she saw what was a miniature version of Karyn’s college campus, and she methodically looked through windows for any sign of Karyn.

This was a problem. From the one time she had worked with Karyn at the bank, the IT office was on the inside and with no windows. If things were similar here, then there was no way for her to find Karyn. She sat down and thought.

If all of these buildings have to be networked, then I would put the main office in the center. She landed at the front door of the building closest to the middle, but here she encountered another challenge. The door had, not a traditional doorbell, but an intercom and camera. Well, there was nothing for it. She pressed the button for the intercom and hoped.

“Really, Derpy? You rang the intercom?” It was Karyn’s voice, but Derpy didn’t respond. “Well, I guess you couldn’t find me otherwise. But you’re not at the right building. Turn around and it’s the white one.”

A door behind her opened, and Derpy dashed for it. She was on the lookout for anyone who could see her, but Karyn emerged from a door above and said, “Come on up! It’s a good time, no one else is here. I’ve got all the security cameras and intercoms up in the office, and I was looking out for you. Let me show you the place.”

It was not as fancy as the IT center in the bank that Derpy had been to. Instead of low light and lots of LEDs that made it look cool, this was bright and resembled more of the outer offices at the bank that the regular workers used.

Karyn had an impressive desk with two monitors. Behind her were the racks of servers that Derpy expected, but they were smaller and not walled off. Along the walls were attached rows of switches, some of which led into punch down patch panels from which a rainbow of thin wires ran everywhere. It was cluttered and offended Derpy’s sense of organization, but it wasn’t her office and she had no place to complain. Besides, she saw the telltale upside-down hemisphere of a security camera, and it wouldn’t do to see things floating around.

She looked at the racks. “This one is for the student’s network,” Karyn said. “It’s cool how it’s cut off from everything else, so the kids can’t change their grades or anything. But you probably don’t want to hear about all that. Here’s where I run things from, when I run things, like now.”

She sat at the desk and moused onto a few windows. Some were just reports, but also, to Derpy’s surprise, was a FreeCell window.

“They let you play games at work?”

“They probably don’t mind when nothing’s going on. And in any case, to the best of my knowledge, there is no detection on any computer of how many times a game is activated or when.”

Derpy accepted this. “Who are ‘they’ by the way? And how are you here alone? For that matter, what are you doing here at all? I thought you were only working Monday through Friday.”

“IT is a twenty-four-seven job. Well, that’s not true, but in the first place, if something breaks, it’s easier to fix it when you find out instead of when people start complaining. But more than that, there are some things you have to do when everyone isn’t working. In this case, it’s an upgrade.”

“To what? Are you installing something cool?”

Karyn alt-tabbed her monitor. “Not hardware that you would be impressed with. This is the database program that they use for the students here. It has all their information and it keeps it secure, because there are laws about privacy. It’s big and complicated, and because of that we have to upgrade twice a year. Of course, I’ll never see another one, but I get to do this.”

“All by yourself?”

“Thank goodness, no. But when you do something like this there are always dead spots. For example, right now we’re doing a backup of the old system. What’s weird is that we still use tapes.”

She pointed at the rack, on one level of which was what looked like a small VCR. A light was blinking on it.

“I know at home you use disks.”

“That’s right. I wouldn’t even know where to buy these things.”

That triggered another thought for Derpy. “Hey, are you getting paid for today?”

“I am. Time and a half, too. And before you ask, yes, I’m saving it all up to last me through the year.”

“I wasn’t going to. But why do they let you do it? Why not one of the more experienced workers?”

Karyn checked the monitor once more. “Well, like I said, a lot of this is automatic, or involves just monitoring. But what they really need is someone who can read an error message and decide what to do. Now, for most of them, what to do is going to be to call for help. But I’ll be able to explain it over the phone in language that they can understand, and I can answer follow up questions or input simple commands. That’s what I can do that others can’t.”

“Now I understand. I certainly couldn’t do any of that.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’d put you in the class of a power user. You know how to run some programs and search the web for what you need. That’s more than a lot of people.”

Derpy was skeptical, but she said, “Oh! You mean I’m probably one of the best ponies at the computer. Although Twilight’s better, I’m sure.”

“No, I mean in comparison to humans. See, you saw the computer as a new thing and grasped onto it. Many humans, especially older ones, wanted it to be a new version of the old way to do things. Which it’s not.”

She thought back to the first time she used a computer. She was a true neophyte then, even willing to cheat...

“Hey! I wonder if you can use Derpynet to help you do your work!”

“No. Under no circumstances am I introducing an illegal, sapient computer entity into this network. I’m content enough knowing that she and Karynet are silently protecting the networks that exist while staying hidden.”

The right-hand monitor on Karyn’s desk began throwing out messages, and Derpy worried. “Is that one of those errors you’re supposed to watch out for?”

“That’s actually a good sign. The backup is done. Now I’m supposed to go on to the next step.”

Karyn pulled out a packet of paper. Despite her job, there was still a lot of paper records in the office. She checked off a box and then addressed the computer again. To Derpy’s view it was just like playing on the computer and going to web sites or running Karyn’s music suite program, but of course she knew that this was more serious business. She tried to follow along as Karyn checked off the monitor responses with what the paper said they should be.

“This is cool. I’m really impressed watching you do this. It’s like watching Dinky perform a new spell. I remember when she first started learning—“

Karyn interrupted “Can you give me just two minutes? I want to make sure I get this right, and I need to concentrate. It says this next part takes an hour after it launches, so then I can listen to you.”

Derpy clammed up. She didn’t want to break Karyn’s focus, and if she was going to tell an anecdote, it would be better when Karyn was listening.

Finally, Karyn said, “There. Now we can visit with each other while that processes.”

“But I’m already here.”

“Yeah, that was kind of an archaic use of the word ‘visit.’ I mean we can talk freely. You were telling me about when Dinky first learned magic.”

Derpy related her story, and as she promised, Karyn did listen intently. After, she asked, “So what’s the next step when this is done?”

“It’s listed in these instructions, but I was told to call in when it’s done. Then some of my co-workers will come in for the next steps.”

They continued to chat for a few minutes, when Derpy noticed that the monitor had ceased to put out messages. “Is it supposed to do that?” she asked.

Karyn eyed it and then turned back to her paper. “This isn’t right...” she muttered, and then read off the screen under her breath. Derpy decided it was best to let her be, but soon enough she said, “This job ended a lot sooner than it should have, according to the notes. That could mean something went wrong. It’s up to me to find out what.”

She did some more work that was incomprehensible to Derpy. One thought kept gnawing at Derpy’s mind. “Maybe nothing went wrong and you got lucky?”

“It’s possible. The problem is that I was supposed to call my boss at twelve o’clock when this finished. But that’s over a half hour from now. If I call, he might be irked that I needed to get him in early. I could wait until it is twelve and pretend that it took the right amount of time, but then what if he asks what I’ve been doing all this time? The other possibility, if it really has finished and, like you say, we’re lucky, is for me to go ahead with the next step. The others might be impressed by my taking initiative that way.”

Derpy scowled. “I don’t know about that. What if you mess it up and make it worse?”

“If I follow the directions, then I shouldn’t be able to, and if it does, then it’s the directions’ fault, not mine.”

“You’re sure that that’s what you’re going to do, then?”

Karyn hadn’t realized that, in arguing with Derpy, she was also convincing herself. “I think so. I’ll take each step extra slow, to make sure that I don’t really mess up, and also if I get asked what I did, I can say I was careful.”

She moved over her wheeled chair, and Derpy hovered into the spot that Karyn had vacated. She didn’t know what she was looking for. All she knew was that hopefully Karyn would lean back and say that it was done, after which point it would all be ordinary until she had to make the call.

But instead, after a few minutes, Karyn said, “Hm.”

“Yes?”

“It seems to have locked up.”

Sure enough, the stream of messages had stopped, and nothing was moving on Karyn’s right-hand screen. She was still able to use the left-hand one, but she wasn’t doing anything specific, just thinking.

“Now we call in for help, right?”

“Hang on, I haven’t done any troubleshooting yet.”

Derpy winced as Karyn tried a few tactics to no avail. She felt so impotent to help her friend, but the technology was far above her level of expertise. If only Karyn were in trouble in some way that flying could help her, Derpy thought.

But of course she had more than that. She had many spells that a unicorn had prepared for her. Surely there must be something that could help. “Maybe I can find a time reversal spell, or something to make it go how you want it to.”

Karyn pulled her attention away from the computer. “Derpy, it’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but you can’t always be there to hold my hand and fix my problems with magic. I’ve got to learn these things, OK?”

Derpy nodded and closed the flap of her saddlebag. Karyn went back to work for another few tense moments.

“I think I got it! I just made a typo. So if I shut it down and try it again with the right command...There!”

In Derpy’s mind, the screen should have had some red lights that would then all turn green, but there was nothing so dramatic that actually occurred. Instead, there was just a mass of scrolling and flashing windows, some of which closed on their own. She had to trust that Karyn’s excitement was positive. When the screen stopped again, she said, “All good?”

“All good. Now I can place the call.”

Instead of picking up the phone, Karyn pressed a button and the dial tone rang out. Derpy got to listen in on speaker. The voice on the other end was gravelly.

“Hi, Karyn, how’s it going?”

“Good, good.”

He didn’t interrupt, but at the same time, he didn’t wait to hear if there was any more to what Karyn had to say. “Did the backup finish?”

“Yes, it did.”

Again the boss spoke quickly. “OK. Do you think you could go on to the next step while I’m on my way in?”

Karyn paused. “Definitely. Shouldn’t have any problems.”

“OK, try that. You can stop if you feel you need to, though. I’ll see you shortly.”

Another beep of the phone, and the call was cut off. “Well, now there’s nothing to do for the next few minutes. A lot of this job is like that. If you weren’t here I’d be browsing the Internet or breaking the world record for FreeCell.”

“I can keep quiet and let you do that.”

“No, I do that all week. We can spend time, just like we would if we were back at the apartment.”

They exchanged pleasantries for the time until a car door slamming was heard outside.

“So I guess I have to not just be invisible but inaudible for this as well.”

Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder. If the camera caught the odd motion, she didn’t care. “I’m afraid so, but I’ll try to make it as informative as possible. You’ll like the people I work with; they’re good folk.”

“Like Equestrians?”

“Maybe so, yeah.”

She faced the door, which opened. The man who entered had a large pot belly and a scraggly beard, and to Derpy’s view he matched the voice that was on the phone. Walking around the table, he looked at the screen and said, “Good work.” It was the boss.

“Thanks, Leon.”

He went into a side office and sat at his desk. It was not clear whether he wanted Karyn to start up work again or wait. She chose to wait, and in any case in only a few more minutes two additional people arrived and greeted Karyn.

“Hey, Juana. Ed, good morning.” Karyn pronounced their names such that Derpy could hear them.

Derpy watched as the one she called Ed, who was also rather heavyset, gave Karyn a smile and nod before proceeding to his desk. The other one, Juana, a short and thin girl with dark hair, instead walked over to Karyn.

“Hey, how’d it go? So I watched that movie you recommended, and it was funny. But you should read this comic, because it’s basically on the same theme...” Their conversation devolved into minutiae about works that Derpy had never read, but at the same time, it always made her feel better to watch Karyn talking with other humans and being friends with them.

Her boss came out of the office. “So you’re up to this part? No problems?”

“I mistyped something once,” said Karyn, “but other than that, no.”

“All right. Why don’t you take off then? I’ll mark you for your full shift?”

“Really? Thanks!” Karyn wasted no time in packing up and heading out the door, for fear that her boss would change his mind. Out in the car, she put on her sunglasses and turned on the air conditioner. “Now that’s how I would like every work day to go.”

“Being let off early or taking a chance and having it go your way?”

“Being let off early because I took a chance and it went my way. I’m proud that I could take some initiative with something like that. You don’t agree?”

Derpy wasn’t so sure, but this wasn’t the time for an argument. “What I am proud of, or impressed by, was how well you got along with that one co-worker. What was her name? Wanna? Did you know her before you worked here?”

“Juana. Sounds close, but it’s not. But no, I met her on the job. In the first place, I think she’s the Pinkie Pie type who can make friends with anyone. But even if not for that I think we would get along. There are so few women in IT that we have to stick together when we do find one.”

“Why is that?”

Karyn shrugged. “It’s a male-dominated industry, for a lot of reasons. Anyway, what would you like to do today? Given that I just made a bunch of overtime without working, we should go have some fun.”

“You haven’t really made it, though.”

“I can enter it on my budget, which according to you is when I would realize an expense. Now that I’m earning money, that cuts both ways. So I’m going for ice cream. You in?”

“OK, we can spend for that.”

Author's Note

Before the preview, I want to remind everyone that I'm looking for chapter suggestions. I need a good five or six more. Come on, folks! You want to extend this story, right?

And now:

"The boss—“

“Leon, right?”

“Right. He gave me the job to do.”

“That’s good. He’s still showing confidence in you. But...did you mess it up?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I should just go to work in Equestria. If Rarity drops a stitch or Pinkie Pie uses salt instead of sugar, nopony says anything.”

The germ of an idea formed in Derpy’s mind, but she pushed it to the back in order to keep talking about what she wanted to.

“There’s a differnce, though.” Derpy stood up and put her back hooves together while her front hooves stood apart. Karyn recognized this as the pose she adopted when speaking seriously. “There’s a mentality that some ponies have—and some humans too, I gather—that makes them good at being bosses. I see it in the ponies I work for at the post office. I’m dedicated to mail delivery, and I work hard, but for them it’s different.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn got back on, and Derpy resumed her trot. Karyn didn’t know where they were going, but Derpy was heading toward the general center of town, so Karyn was fine with that.

When they finally came to a stop, Karyn got off and looked at her surroundings before seeing which direction Derpy was trotting.

I hope everyone comes back for that chapter!

115: The Derp-up

Derpy flashed into existence and watched Karyn finishing her tidying work. It was an unspoken understanding between the two friends that Karyn was lazy about cleaning during the week, and that she let clothes pile up, or be hung over chairs; or that sometimes she would leave the dinner dishes in the sink till morning; but that by Sunday she should have everything restored to the pristine state. Derpy could thus pretend that Karyn was as neat as she would like to be, even though she knew otherwise.

And so when Karyn was still going through the motions of vacuuming the rug, it shattered the illusion and put a scowl on Derpy’s face.

Karyn shut off the vacuum. “Good morning, Derpy,” she said. Derpy was about to reprove her, but the speed at which Karyn wound the cord around the vacuum’s hook and the short way she had spoken made Derpy think that something was up. Karyn was clearly not depressed, as she had been, but neither was she in good spirits.

“How are you?” Derpy asked, but it was not in the spirit of small talk. She was genuinely curious.

“Glad to see you, that’s how I am. Let’s have breakfast and get down to our routine, and then I can talk.”

As though Derpy’s presence was a calming one, Karyn moved to the stove with more grace and less anxiety. Through the motions of mixing the pancake batter, testing the griddle to see if it was hot enough, and flipping the cakes onto the plates, she poured out some of her stress like the maple syrup that went on top. Once they were both served and seated, and once Karyn had taken her first sip of coffee, Derpy felt it was time.

“So tell me all about it.”

“It’s August now.”

Derpy looked at the calendar. “So it is.”

“So every month, at work, we have to do a grading report for the students.”

“Every month? Shouldn’t it be every quarter? That’s how it was for Dinky. I’m sorry. I shouldn't interrupt while you’re telling an anecdote. I should listen instead of waiting to talk.”

Karyn smiled and shook her head. “No, go ahead and ask questions. I’m better at back-and-forth than telling stories. Anyway, it’s different because we’re a special school. So we in the IT department have to generate the grade reports I told you about. It’s all automated in the computer. The boss—“

“Leon, right?”

“Right. He gave me the job to do.”

“That’s good. He’s still showing confidence in you. But...did you mess it up?”

“Yes, I did. Not intentionally, or not even at fault really, but...OK, there’s a strict schedule of jobs to run, got it?”

Derpy nodded.

“And normally after one job there’s a hold where I have to check if I can go on with everyone else.”

Another nod.

“And that’s where I held on the last day of July. On the same job.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Except I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to hold a couple of jobs past. So I ran the one that put in all the grades, only the teachers hadn’t all finished putting theirs in. So now the records are messed up.”

It took Derpy a few minutes to get it into her mind. The very notion of a school having a complex computer system for records was just one of those foreign differences that she had to get used to on Earth. If she had an issue with Dinky, she talked to the teacher—first Miss Cheerilee, then Princess Celestia. Her grades might have been codified in letters or numbers, but they weren’t as important as knowing the details.

But for Karyn it was clearly a problem, so Derpy had to help out. “Could you get them fixed?”

“No. We would have had to restore the entire system from backup, which is a huge process that would take hours during which no one could work on the computers. It’s not just the teachers, we have a business department too. A lot of work goes into a school. And some of it is mine, which means it’s bad.”

“Hey, you screwed up, but it wasn’t your fault. So you’re not allowed to be down on yourself.”

Karyn looked up. “I didn’t even realize how serious it was until we figured out what was going on. Leon brought me into his office and tried to calm me down by saying, ‘Don’t worry. Ed and Juana have messed up before and they’re still here.’ Like that was supposed to make me feel better, or that I should have expected to be fired!”

“Oh. Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought that either. But would it have been so bad? This is only an internship.”

“That’s true, but in the first place, I’d lose out on a month of paychecks. More than that, a lot of job applications ask if you’ve ever been fired from a job for any reason. They want to see a no answer to that. Obviously you can still get a job without one, or people wouldn’t survive, but at the same time it would make my working life a lot more difficult.”

Derpy stood up and cleared the breakfast dishes. This was normally Karyn’s job, but under the circumstances she felt that Karyn needed a break. Karyn stood up, but with Derpy’s natural Equestrian balance, she didn’t drop any.

“So what did you do afterwards?”

“What could I do? I joined in on the fixing and helped as best I could, but basically I sat in meetings while the top brass took a few hours to come to the conclusion that we were going to be fouled up for the next month.”

Shaking her head, Derpy said, “No, I mean, what did you do after you found out? Right then. What did you think about?”

Karyn couldn’t see the direction that Derpy was taking the coversation, but she thought back. “I guess my initial thought was if there wasn’t some way to cover it up. Or at least to contain it to the IT office. I mean, suppose I took all the extra information that wasn’t entered and I did the corrections myself. It would take forever, but then no one would have to know.”

“Well, I credit you for thinking of trying to remedy the situation, but you really shouldn’t be thinking of covering up.”

“It wasn’t a serious thought. There are far too many records kept in redundant places for anything like that. They do that kind of thing in order to prevent anyone from getting away with stuff like that.”

“But if they hadn’t, you would have tried.”

Karyn’s voice quickened a little. “I wouldn’t use it for the big frauds, like changing grades for money. But if I hit a few keys out of order, why is it so bad if no one knows?”

“You know that, and I know that, but everypony else?”

“I should just go to work in Equestria. If Rarity drops a stitch or Pinkie Pie uses salt instead of sugar, nopony says anything.”

The germ of an idea formed in Derpy’s mind, but she pushed it to the back in order to keep talking about what she wanted to.

“There’s a difference, though.” Derpy stood up and put her back hooves together while her front hooves stood apart. Karyn recognized this as the pose she adopted when speaking seriously. “There’s a mentality that some ponies have—and some humans too, I gather—that makes them good at being bosses. I see it in the ponies I work for at the post office. I’m dedicated to mail delivery, and I work hard, but for them it’s different.”

“How?”

“Well, I mean, if I were some kind of super-pegasus who could go to all the houses at once and deliver the mail, or if everypony could send letters by dragon fire the way Twilight Sparkle can, then I would say that all the mail carriers could just sit around and be lazy all day. Putting it that way, it sounds selfish. But the same thing holds for any other job. If Rainbow Dash didn’t have to push the clouds to make it rain, I’d be fine with her napping all day.

“But bosses aren’t like that. That is to say, if you’re like that, you don’t get to be the boss. They’ve got a different idea, that even if they were given the opportunity to have their work done for them, they wouldn’t. And certainly when it comes to one of their subordinates, they don’t want them shirking.”

“I wasn’t shirking,” muttered Karyn. “I tried my best.”

“I know. But that’s just to demonstrate how they think differently than we do. Now, I’ve been working a lot longer than you have, and over the years I’ve learned how to deal with them. You haven’t. And a lot of it doesn’t make sense. For instance, if you somehow messed up when I asked you to do something, I’d want to hear all about how and why.”

“Leon wanted to know how it happened.”

“Yes, but not in terms of an excuse.” Derpy was getting into her speech now. “He only cared about fixing it and making sure that it didn’t happen again.”

“So you’re saying I should have apologized?” Karyn was now listening intently.

“N-no. Maybe. Not for what actually happened but for not asking and communicating with him ahead of time. I mean, I still don’t understand all the technical details, but if I’m right this was a very small error with very large consequences.”

“You could put it that way.”

Derpy paused frequently, trying to figure out the right words she wanted to use. “Then even though it’s not fair, you have to take...not responsibility...maybe it is responsibility, but not blame. What I’m trying to say is, even though it wasn’t your fault, it’s up to you to make it right.”

“That’s what we did. It took us a long time, but we fixed it.”

“No, what I mean is that you should stop it from happening again. You wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, but if you sat down and wrote down a policy of how to arrange things so that the next person, being in your shoes, wouldn’t make that mistake, then I think your boss would be more impressed than if you just let it go and pretend it didn’t happen.”

Karyn scrunched her nose. “Make a policy. That sounds suspiciously like homework.”

“Well, you could do it at work.”

“More than that, though, it feels...well, you don’t know a lot of the Earth culture that surrounds the idea of office life. Part of that is that there are endless policies and documents that people write but no one pays attention to.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Derpy.

“And I’m not sure that you ought to. We have movies and comic strips dedicated to all of how offices are weird, far weirder than anything you’d find in the Everfree Forest. They’re their own jungle. And honestly, the fact that you can talk about your bosses that way, when ponies are supposed to be nice to each other, makes me a little upset. I don’t see why we can’t all be more understanding of each other. Yes, I know that the boss has a job to get done, but it’s not something I’m passionate about the way he is. If I were in his shoes, I’d be a lot nicer to me.”

“I would too, and that’s why you and I will never be bosses.”

Karyn threw up her hands and walked over to the computer. “Well, that’s just ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry. And maybe I’m wrong. I’m wrong about a lot of things you know. But I still feel that you should write something about—“

“Yeah, I’ve already got a template up. What should I put in this thing?”

Derpy hovered over and saw that indeed Karyn had begun a writeup of the events of the day in question. “I’m proud of you.”

“We’re not spending all day on this, you know. Let’s just get it down and get it over with.”

Derpy didn’t want to push too hard, so she let Karyn start with a retelling and only put in a few suggestions of questions she would have. And once Karyn claimed that she was done and would give it in on Monday, Derpy didn’t ask her to revise any further.

“You can get it from your computer to work?”

“Yeah. I’ll e-mail it to myself or bring it in on a flash drive. Hey, that would be a good name for a pegasus.”

“I’m glad that you’re able to joke about it a little now. Come on, let’s go do something fun to get the taste of that out of our mouths.” Derpy knelt next to Karyn and nudged her onto her back while reaching for her spells.

Karyn slumped over her and braced for the change in air pressure that accompanied a jump between universes. She enjoyed the fresh Equestrian air as Derpy descended and folded her wings under Karyn’s legs. But when she landed Karyn made no motion to get off.

“This is going to sound really horrible, but would you mind if I rode you a little further?”

Derpy trotted for a moment. “Can you get off for a moment, though, so that I’m not craning my neck to look you in the eye?”

Karyn did so, and Derpy swiftly grasped her face with her hooves. “Listen. Any time you need me to, I will carry you.”

Karyn got back on, and Derpy resumed her trot. Karyn didn’t know where they were going, but Derpy was heading toward the general center of town, so Karyn was fine with that.

When they finally came to a stop, Karyn got off and looked at her surroundings before seeing which direction Derpy was trotting. “Sugar Cube Corner?”

“Yeah, why not? Like I said, we want to get the taste of having to write that out of our mouths, so what better way to do that with a sweet?”

“I didn’t think you meant it literally.”

“Plus I want to show you that I’m not all about being so strict. Just because I make you do something you should doesn’t mean we can’t do some things we shouldn’t. So I’ll cheat on my diet a little.”

Karyn realized the inequity in that and shouted, “Hey!” but Derpy was already opening the door to the gingerbread house.

Whether it had always been there or had been a more recent addition, Karyn couldn’t remember, but a small bell tinkled as they entered, and that was enough to summon Pinkie Pie from wherever she had been. This was possibly just under the counter to do some loading of baked goods, but it was equally possible that she was off in an alternate dimension, perhaps the same one that cats so freely enter and exit when they do not wish to be found.

“Hey, Derpy! Karyn! Got some new wild adventure you two are on across worlds? Can I come?”

“Not today, Pinkie,” Derpy said as she looked through the glass at the sweets. “Today we’re here as paying customers. What’s good?”

“What isn’t good? But I know you want the muffins, right?”

She looked over at Karyn, who was smiling but not actively looking for anything to eat. “Why don’t we make it baker’s choice?”

It only took Pinkie a second to suss out the situation. “Oh-ho! I think maybe we need something cream-filled with chocolate. Guaranteed to turn a puss-face into a sunbeam in two bites or less! Perfect for when you’ve just finished some unpleasant.” She found a tray and set to arranging cakes and cookies into a dessert platter that any first-class hotel would be proud to serve in its banquet hall.

“Thank you,” Karyn said, “for the sweets, and for empathizing, and for not being too crazy today.”

“Part of being a good friend is knowing when not to go crazy, but just to cheer someone up. Go on, take a cookie. You’ll feel better.”

Karyn gave a quizzical look, but unless Pinkie had broken through in other ways, there was no way she could know the movie that she was inadvertently referencing.

She bit into the cookie, and saw Derpy watching her intently. “It’s tasty, just like always. Equestrian sweets are different from the ones on Earth, but it’s hard to describe how. Kind of the only way I could say it is that the same way that all of Equestria looks like a cartoon instead of the material of earth, these cookies taste that way. But I don’t know if that explains it.”

“So long as you like it.”

Pinkie went back behind the counter leaving Derpy and Karyn to munch together. “They are good,” Karyn repeated. “Thanks for bringing me here.”

“That wasn’t the only reason. I wanted to show you Pinkie Pie.”

“I’ve seen Pinkie Pie. Not that I’m blase about any pony, but I don’t follow why her.”

Derpy looked out of the corner of her eye—an easier task for her than most—to make sure Pinkie wasn’t eavesdropping. If, indeed, she wasn’t omniscient anyway. “Because Pinkie runs the bakery, and if anyone is the opposite of being uptight and strict the way you describe your boss, it’s Pinkie.”

“I thought the Cakes ran the bakery and she just worked here.”

“It used to be that way, but Pinkie gradually took over more of the work and more of the responsibility. The Cakes still have half a stake in Sugar Cube Corner, but Pinkie is the active partner.”

Karyn wondered if pony business relationships were actually that rigid. Did Pinkie Pie draw a salary in addition to owning half, if indeed she did? Probably not. Working among all the sugar was reward enough itself for her.

“All that said, Pinkie doesn’t have any employees. So she’s not a boss.”

“You think so? That she works here every day? No, Pound and Pumpkin work here just as much. When they get older, they’ll probably take over their parents’ share and then it’ll be an active partnership once more, but right now, they’re under Pinkie’s hoof. I presume that she treats them well. I’ve never heard any complaints, not that I’m here all the time. Not that I wouldn’t like to be here all the time. Not that it would be healthy for me to be here all the time.”

Karyn let Derpy wind down her musings while she considered. She had not known that the two younger Cakes had joined up, or that Pinkie was in charge. “I think that’s different because they’ve known each other all their life. They’re practically family.”

“Maybe. Hey, Pinkie!” Derpy called, ignoring Karyn’s waves to stop. “Do you treat Pound and Pumpkin different from how you would a different pony, if they were working here?”

“Definitely! They already know me and how intense I am about cupcakes and donuts and stuff. If it was somepony I’d never met before, I’d have to be much nicer to them.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Yeah, so she’s even further opposite from what I have to deal with. But I’m not upset anymore.”

“The cookie did you good, huh?”

“No. Well, yes, it did, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve been thinking, and I’m making a resolution. You see, Derpy thinks that whoever’s in charge at a workplace has to be of a certain character, but, begging your pardon, Derpy, but you don’t know everything about workplaces on Earth.”

Derpy nodded her head. “It’s true.”

“And I think that, if there’s anywhere in a business where the rules don’t necessarily apply, it’s with what I do with computers. A lot of people don’t understand them, find them mysterious, a little like arcane magic here. Now, I think Derpy’s right about how bosses have to act, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. In obscure corners of the business world, maybe there can be understanding and, goodness forbid, maybe even friendship. My challenge to myself is to rise high enough so that I can be part of some IT department that runs with all the same feelings as Sugar Cube Corner.”

“You want to be the boss and make it that way?”

“If it’s that way, I won’t care if I’m the boss or just another worker.”

She said it with a distinct period at the end, as if to seal her resolution.

Pinkie Pie picked up the crumbs from Karyn’s cookie. “Well, another problem solved with desserts and advice. Any more cookies?”

“No, thanks,” said Derpy. “We might reverse the process and wind up with more problems.”

“But then you could have a third cookie and fix them again!”

“Maybe next week. Come on, Karyn.” As they left, Derpy turned her attention back to Karyn. “You know, maybe you picked computers specifically because, even if you didn’t know it, it had the kind of culture that you wanted. If you couldn’t be a family woman like you wanted to, maybe a working family is the next best thing.”

“It could be. I think I’d be all right with that, so long as I have a few friends outside of work.”

She smiled, and Derpy motioned for Karyn to get on so she could return her to Earth.

“You know what? I think we’ll walk for a bit.”

Author's Note

OK, folks. Here's how it is: I've got a good spate of ideas for the fan-suggested chapters. In fact, I've found eleven that I really want to write. Now, what I was looking for was twelve, and so if it comes down to it, I'll take one of the ideas I was less enamored of and make it work. But the door's still open if anyone has a real kick-flank story idea.

What I'm not sure of is what order I want to put them in. So until I know that, previews may be iffy. There are some plot points that I want to have happen at certain times that the fan suggestions have to be done before, and so I'm juggling a few potential orders.

116: Gonna Derp the Bass

“You know what we haven’t done for a while?”

Derpy looked up from the remnants of her breakfast. So far, everything had been going according to routine. She had arrived on time, Karyn had been ready, the apartment was mostly tidy, and Derpy had taken care of the “mostly.” Now, as she took the last bites of toast, the first breach of protocol had transpired, and she was ready for however the day would be made special.

“What’s that?”

“We haven’t done a pony tour. You know, brought someone here from Equestria to visit.”

“No, we haven’t. But I thought you wanted to put them off for the summer and wait until you were back in class.”

Karyn cleaned up the table and wiped it down. “I did say that, but at the time I thought that having fun would be a really intensive thing, you know? But we’ve been having fun, for the most part, and I’m ready for a bit more excitement.”

“I’m up for that.”

“You probably have ponies coming up to you all the time asking when it’s their turn, right?”

Derpy thought back. “I wouldn’t say that. A few of them mention it, but it’s not like it’s a huge deal. They know that you’re busy and that Earth is a dangerous place. It’s more like going on an adventure for them than it is getting a prize. Anyway, do you have the list of who’s next?”

“No. I got rid of it before the summer, remember?”

“Oh, yes. Well, I’ll just have to check back in Equestria.” She made a motion to get up.

“Do you want me to come with?”

“No, if you’re eager for it, I’ll go, find out who’s on the list and available, find them, and bring them back instantly.”

This seemed like a good idea to Karyn, but in any case it was a fait accompli, as Derpy was already reaching for her saddlebag.

Over the time she had spent with Derpy, Karyn had gotten used to the sound of ponies coming and going between worlds. Derpy’s leaving was quieter, as all there was was the clapping sound of the air collapsing into the vacuum where Derpy had been. But arriving also had a sound which Karyn compared to an old and broken heating system coming on for the first time in winter. She had a theory that it had something to do with reactions with the air molecules, but hadn’t given it much thought.

In any case, it was the loudest she had ever heard it as, for the first time, three ponies popped into existence. In the cramped apartment, they had to spread out to ensure that there was enough space.

At the same time, Karyn was able to recognize them almost instantly. The neutral colors spread out from gray to white to brown.

“Octavia? DJ?

“Vinyl, please,” said that mare. “I’m off duty.”

Karyn turned back to Derpy. “Why both? I mean, no offense to either of you, but it’s unprecedented.”

“Well, there’s a bit of a funny story there. When I stopped by to pick up Octavia, whose name was ahead on the list, Vinyl was there too and asked what was going on. Instead of waiting her turn, she wanted to come along now. I was a little averse to that, but Octavia said that it would be better to give in rather than have an argument.”

Vinyl laughed. “Yeah, right. If it had been the other way around, it would have been her whining to come along.”

“First of all,” said Octavia. “you should say, ‘it would have been she.’ Second, it would not have been I whining.”

Again Karyn moved closer to Derpy, but it was nigh impossible to get true privacy. “Skipping over whether it was a good idea to bring any two guests, to say nothing of these two, how did you do it? I thought you only had the one bag of spells for you and one for a guest. Also, how did you all get here instead of out back.”

“To answer the second question, I got Lyra to tweak the spells’ position to make here equal to the clock tower. So now I’ll just fly there every week even if we’re not having a guest. And while she did that she made a third transportation spell.”

Karyn thought that Derpy had buried the lede slightly, but it was done. She turned to the two of them. “Well, welcome to Earth. Thanks for not asking to bring your cello and DJing equipment with you, or we would be really hard-pressed to have fit it here.”

Octavia smiled. “I wouldn’t trust my instrument in such close proximity to Vinyl anyway.”

“Hmph! I bring my turntables and stuff around you all the time.”

“But I’ve never broken any of them. And you don’t respect your tools as much as you should.”

Karyn whispered to Derpy, “I don’t know how we’re going to keep them secret if we go outside. They can’t go a minute without getting into a back-and-forth.”

Vinyl looked over her shades at them. “Hey! Yes we can! But in any case, what we ought to do is hit a club where everyone’s slam dancing and such, then it’ll be cool if we bump into people.

“Three problems with that,” replied Karyn. “One, I don’t know of any clubs around here. Two, they wouldn’t be open, and three, everyone other than you would be miserable.”

She expected Vinyl to retort, but instead she just looked at Octavia. An awkward moment passed before the Earth pony said, “What?”

“Well, aren’t you going to ask about going to see some frou-frou concert hall or museum or whatever it is you’re into?”

“I have no intention of pacing myself to your social graces or lack thereof just to keep some parallelism between us. You wouldn’t enjoy that, so I won’t suggest it.”

If anypony or anyone expected this to mollify Vinyl, they were mistaken. She let it roll off her back and said, “What we’re really interested in is humans, including you. We barely got to spend any time with you at the concert, but you seem like a great chick. So Octy and I said that this would be an awesome way to spend part of a weekend. So take us through a day in the life, K?”

“Ha!” Karyn burst out. “A day in the life would be completely boring, since most days—at least now—I’m at work. And it’s not the kind of work that you folks do, where you have concerts and recitals and sets. It’s boring, day-in, day-out stuff. Derpy can tell you, she’s seen me there.”

“I have,” said Derpy. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. We should totally go.”

Vinyl nodded vigorously. Octavia gave no great display, but she also indicated assent.

“Are you all serious?” Karyn asked.

“I totally want to see where you work!” said Vinyl.

“It makes sense that they would be fascinated by someone different. It’s like the princess and the pauper.” Derpy would brook no more argument, and she shoved Karyn’s purse into her chest before heading toward the door.

“Umm, Derpy?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re spreading your wings. We’re not going to fly there this time.”

“Oh, right. Hey, I just realized! This is the first time we’ve had an Earth pony, a pegasus pony, and a unicorn pony all together on Earth at the same time.”

Four heads turned to look at each other. It was true, of course, but none of them were the first thought of the representation of their tribe. Octavia was far more cosmopolitan than most Earth ponies, Derpy didn’t fly fast like the pegasi did, and Vinyl had no pretensions to high-class living. At the same time, everypony got along, so they were fine ambassadors.

“OK,” said Karyn. “Let’s get this organized. Everypony go invisible and then we will be heading out to the car.”

“A cart?” Vinyl’s eyes went wide.

“No, a car. It works different. Derpy can explain...or we can just go outside and see it.”

She led the way for the three mares to see her little compact. Before she could explain any part of how it worked, Vinyl yelled, “ Still looks like a cart to me. I call shotgun!”

Octavia sighed. “Fine.”

“Aw, yeah! Still undefeated in shotgun calling!”

Karyn was incredulous. “That’s a thing for ponies?”

“Sure! Tavi and I ride in carriages all the time, and she’s always taking the back seat to me. Ain’t that right?”

“It sure is.”

Derpy said, “In this case, though, it might—“

“No, no,” interrupted Karyn. “Don’t interfere. If Vinyl wants to take the front seat, Octavia can go in the back and you can hover there. There’ll be plenty of room.”

Still dubious, Derpy opened the door and showed Octavia how to best stretch out for comfort. She did not go into a hover, however, since the car was short and if she did her wings would blow air into Octavia’s face. But she could curl up near the back window and lean mostly on the rear dash.

Meanwhile, Vinyl had thrown open the front door and said, “Whoa! What’s with this chair?”

“That’s the front seat.”

“Remember,” said Derpy “That humans are more comfortable with their flanks underneath them.”

Vinyl tried to sit down, and managed to get her body in past the door, but her tail was pinched and her head couldn’t seem to find the right position against the headrest. “I take it back. Octy, you come up here and switch with me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Octavia said. “You called the position, and you have it. Besides, as you said, you always ride in front, and I wouldn’t want to break tradition.”

“Maybe I want to break tradition.”

“I know you do, but I respect it.”

Vinyl was cowed, and Karyn smirked, but she drove fast so as not to maximize the pony’s discomfort. This was also a matter of self-interest, as Vinyl’s shifting and exasperated breathing were distracting to all the other riders.

Meanwhile, from the back Octavia was enjoying the show of the scenery.

“You have a beautiful world, Karyn,” she said. “Cosmopolitan, like Canterlot, but still with a rustic charm. Derpy, you are lucky to visit here so often.”

“Yes, I think so. It’s not all like this, though. We’re still near Karyn’s school.”

The drive did not improve as the trees and small shops were replaced with strip malls and power lines, but nopony said anything to that, and soon they arrived at Karyn’s place of employment.

Vinyl jumped out as soon as the car stopped. “Ahh! Feels so good to be off my plot!”

“Vinyl! Don’t use such vulgar words in public. I’ve given up on getting you to stop in private.”

“Sorry, Tavi. But I need to go for a run to get some feeling back in my pl—in my flanks. Come with?”

Octavia turned to Karyn. “Would it be all right?”

“I think so, but try not to tread too heavily. We don’t want anyone to think a herd of horses are trampling by. If you circle this road you’ll meet us back here.”

“I thank you. Come, Vinyl, not too fast then.”

As they went off on their trot, Derpy and Karyn were left by the car. “Those two have a crazy relationship,” Karyn said.

“Yes, but I like hanging out with them. Octavia makes me feel sophisticated, even if I’m not.”

“I think you’re sophisticated.”

“Ha!” Derpy trumpeted. “You’re being nice. I don’t think I’m shabby or anything, but I’m definitely not sophisticated the way Octavia is.”

“How about Rarity? She’s like that too.”

“Yes, but Rarity doesn’t have that knack of spreading it among friends.”

Karyn watched the edge of the campus, even though she knew she wouldn’t see anything. “I wonder if I should have warned them about watching out for other humans. Oh, well. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that. That’s the surest way to make sure that something goes wrong.”

But in fact nothing went wrong, and Octavia and Vinyl soon returned. But as they did, the door to Karyn’s office opened, and out stepped Juana, the co-worker that both she and Derpy liked best. Karyn waved.

“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing around here? It’s Sunday.”

Karyn was thrown. She had hoped to do everything inside. Now she had three impatient ponies who couldn’t be introduced just yet. “Well, actually...could we go in the office?”

“If you like. What, did you forget something that couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”

“No, not like that.”

They headed for the stairs. Juana looked over her shoulder. “Well, don’t get too attached to this place, or any workplace for that matter. Learn how to unwind when you finally do get a day off.”

“I understand, and that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s just...let’s get into the office so I can explain.”

The office seemed cluttered, but there was enough raw square footage that all of the ponies had room to spread out.

“Now,” Karyn said. “This may seem a little weird, but trust me, everything is OK.”

She launched into what had become a practiced speech, explaining about the existence of ponies and magic. She had even learned how to put in the right inflections to make someone comfortable and let her finish before they thought she was crazy. That was what she particularly feared when explaining to Juana. After all, they had not known each other that long.

Before she even finished, Vinyl removed her invisibility spell and waved. As the unicorn, she was probably the most impressive of the three, especially as Derpy didn’t go in for impressive flying displays. Juana had a moment of difficulty, especially as she had never seen or even heard of My Little Pony.

“Unicorn...huh?”

“Pretty impressive, huh?” Vinyl struck a dramatic pose.

“I just thought they were more...gentle and dignified. Not wearing sunglasses and headphones. And your mane is all spiky and not flowing. I thought unicorns had more...grace.”

Octavia had her hoof to her mouth to cover her smile as Juana said this. But even with her stone face she couldn’t keep quiet when Juana said, “In all honesty, this one”—gesturing to Octavia—“seems more like what a unicorn would be.”

Juana had her picture in mind of how a unicorn should act, but Karyn and Derpy knew better, and both of them tensed as they knew that an explosion would be imminent. Vinyl tremored, and behind her shades they could see her red eyes glowing. They expected to see her stand on her back hooves with fire surrounding her while she pointed to the sky, but instead, she picked her head up and was calm.

“You can’t get to me today. You know why? Because I have the advantage. See, I didn’t just come here for the sights. I came to spread what I do best and make the name of Vinyl Scratch famous in two worlds. And that. Means. MUSIC.” Again she struck a pose, this time flashing her cutie mark to everyone.

“You do know that you are not the only musician present, right?” said Octavia.

“Yeah, but there’s no way you were gonna haul that cello of yours through dimensions. I’ve got all I need right here!”

Vinyl dipped into her saddlebag and held aloft her namesake, a record with a gold label on the middle and a jet black edge that reflected the overhead lights of the office.

Everyone paused for a moment, and Derpy and Karyn each tried to figure out how to explain to Vinyl why it wasn’t going to work. Before they could, Juana burst out laughing.

“You have a record? That’s great!”

“It’s not my only one, but it is my best. Get me a turntable and I’ll show you how to rock!”

Karyn had recovered now, and she was wondering if it was easier for her to explain or to ask Derpy to put it into terms that another pony could best understand. But again Juana took the lead in the conversation.

“We don’t have turntables anymore. Not outside music shops. Oh, sure, there’s an interest in records, but there’s also an interest in antique furniture. Neither are popular.”

Now Octavia joined in. “You don’t listen to music here? That’s a shame. Your world is so beautiful, I would think that if you had good composers, it could sound just as lovely.”

“I didn’t say that we had no music. We have plenty of music. Just no records. Or, again, very few.”

“You do? Great,” said Vinyl. “So I know you’ll like my wubs and fast beats!”

“Wubs? Like, dubstep? Not what I’m into at all.”

Vinyl looked shocked. Octavia grinned. “See, I knew that the people of Earth would have a more refined taste than that. I’m sure they much prefer the kind of music that I would perform.”

“I’m not sure about that either. I think that the unicorn—Vinyl, was it? Appropriate. I think she mentioned something about a cello? Most of the popular music doesn’t include any strings outside of a guitar.”

“Not even a piano?” asked Derpy.

“Well, yes, piano, but that’s not the same kind of strings. In any case, let me give you some idea of what I like to listen to.”

She sat down at her desk and unlocked the computer. Fiddling for the speakers, she stared for a bit and clicked with the mouse until she had found what she was looking for.

“This isn’t the best sound system; it’s a work computer,” Juana said. “But it’ll give you an idea.”

She turned the speakers so they could hear over the white noise of the fans, and let the sound of a classical guitar lilt through the room. It had more of a beat than Octavia’s oeuvre, but was still far slower than Vinyl’s music.

Octavia trotted up to the speakers and pointed her ears at them, to the delight of Juana. Vinyl hip-checked her out of the way. “How’s it done? What’s playing it?”

Juana looked at Karyn. “Can we explain digital music to them?”

“They can understand,” said Karyn, “but I’m not sure how easily. It took Derpy several hours to get used to the computer. But basically it’s recorded, kind of like one of Vinyl’s records, but it’s locked up inside a box inside another box so that the records don’t get warped or scratched or dusty.”

Juana bristled at Karyn’s dumbing down of the subject, but at least she got the idea of clean hard drives through. Octavia was also irked. “I was trying to listen to the music, even though the method is interesting in itself.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Vinyl. “It’s not bad. I could dance to this.”

“Then do so, and let me listen without interruption.”

Vinyl opened her mouth, but then shut it and let Octavia have her way. She found the most open area of the floor and bopped her head while shaking her flanks. Vinyl Scratch clearly subscribed to the mantra: “dance as if no one was watching.”

While the two marefriends were enchanted by the music, Juana walked around to Karyn. “This was...really cool. I never dreamed something like this really existed. Thanks for showing them to me.”

“Thank Derpy just as much. She’s the architect of this whole thing.”

Juana did so, then watched Vinyl and Octavia again. “Those two, they have a special bond of friendship. You can tell.”

Derpy shot her a quizzical look. “You can? I know they do, but to most people it looks like they fight.”

“Because they’re different, but they blend together. A lot of things are like that. I’ll admit, Karyn, when you first came on I didn’t know what to make of you. We’re pretty different too, maybe in more than music taste. But I think we can be friends just the same way they are.”

The song came to an end. Vinyl collapsed onto her belly.

“Don’t lie on the floor,” said Octavia. “Stand up like a proper mare.”

Juana put on another song, and they all listened for an hour or so, before she insisted that she had to get back to work. “As much as this is a momentous day, there’s still stuff that has to get done.”

Karyn drove back to the house, with this time Derpy taking the front seat. She had more experience in the car and knew how to ride without hurting herself. When at last they were back in her apartment, and Octavia and Vinyl had returned to Equestria, Derpy lingered behind.

“Well, we get to wrap up another visit from somepony. That might be my favorite part, and we haven’t done it for a while.”

“You’re right. And Juana was right too. I wonder if I’ve lost out on some good friendships for not being able to have the kind of back-and-forth that those two have.”

Derpy squared against her. “If you like, I can tell you how boorish you are, and you can make fun of me for being stuck up.”

“Wait a minute! Why do you get to play Octavia?!”

“Because Vinyl usually wins their arguments. So I was trying to be nice and let you do that.”

Karyn laughed. “I don’t think she did today. But that’s probably because they’re in a new world. For all her bravado, Vinyl still needs her hoof held now and again.”

“I can understand that.”

And Karyn reached over and put her hand on Derpy’s hoof.

Author's Note

Here's a nice preview for you! I'm on 3 hours sleep right now, so cutting and pasting is the limit of my skills at this point.

Derpy was unused to seeing Karyn angry, but was glad to be her shoulder to cry on.

“See, and this is why you need to have pegasus weather control.”

The non sequitur brought Karyn out of her funk. “I don’t follow.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy asked, “Do you get the same pay that you would at work?”

“Yeah, there’s at least that. We’ll do all right for ourselves this year, once I can spend some of this money I’m making. “

“Good, because I was going to say, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn raised her eyebrows. “Problem?”

“Get in the car! We have to go!”

“Go where?”

“No time to explain! Just go!”

Come back and read...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

117: Keeping up a Traderption

Derpy appeared in the apartment and, after checking Karyn’s face for any indication that it would be unwelcome, she flew to the window and threw it open. “Ahh! Now this is near perfect weather. If I didn’t know you didn’t have a weather team putting together days like this, I would say that whoever did deserved a bonus.”

“Tell me about it.” Karyn put sarcasm in her voice, but the combination of Derpy’s elation at the weather and her natural propensity for taking things literally caused her to miss it.

“Well, the late-season blooming flowers have finally released their scents and there’s just enough of a breeze to carry them around. That same breeze cools you down when the sun warms you. And there are just enough clouds in the sky that each one can get its own light and not reflect too much, so that they look more vivid and well defined than if there were more.”

“You’re right. A thoroughly beautiful day. And I can’t enjoy any of it.”

Derpy’s eyes and mouth went wide. “What?! Why not?”

“Because my job, in its infinite idiocy, thinks that it needs a tech support person around even on Sundays. Even though almost none of the regular workers are around, the top management like to work long hours. And so there’s a rotation of people on call. And even though I only have another week to go before I throw up the whole situation and prepare to head back to school, they decide that it would be a good learning experience for me to take my turn. I think it’s an excuse to give everyone else a day off.”

She felt better after getting it off her chest. Derpy was unused to seeing Karyn angry, but was glad to be her shoulder to cry on.

“See, and this is why you need to have pegasus weather control.”

The non sequitur brought Karyn out of her funk. “I don’t follow.”

“Well, if people knew that you were going to be indoors all day, they could have scheduled a storm for today. It could be all gray and rainy and hot and humid so that no one would want to go out, and then you could sit inside and feel good that you weren’t out. You could even have a lot of fun turning on the air conditioning until it got too cold, then turning it off until it got too clammy.”

“I could do that, even though I prefer it when I don’t notice the temperature.”

Derpy eyed the computer. “So what exactly are you supposed to do if you’re not actually at the office?”

“I have to just listen for the phone and pick up if it rings. And then do my best to solve whatever problem they talk to me about.”

“So you have to stare at the phone and hope it doesn’t ring?”

“Well, no. If the phone doesn’t ring, I’m free to do as I like. But I’ll need the computer in case I have to...you know what, never mind. I’ll put on a movie and we’ll watch it, and both hope the phone doesn’t ring.”

Karyn turned on the TV, but found nothing of interest on the cable that she shared with Gayle. To Derpy’s surprise, she moved around back and fiddled with some wires, ultimately tethering the laptop to the TV. With the press of a button, she extended her desktop onto the big screen. Then she hit a video sight and found a movie that she had remembered seeing and liking a long time ago, but couldn’t remember the details.

They were just getting into the first act when the phone rang. It rang in that way cell phones do, which annoyed Karyn. First it vibrated, giving her the momentary hope that it was just some background noise that would pass; then the screen lit up, but since the phone was upside down it cast its light in all directions; and at last it gave its ring, the piercing sound of a classic telephone that echoed in both of their ears.

“Karyn Hubert speaking,” she said into the phone as she paused the movie.

Derpy chuckled a little at how Karyn had changed her tone for the phone conversation. She was enunciating more, and also sticking in the “this could be a recording” pacing and timbre.

She listened to the one side of the conversation she could. “OK, you got the e-mail? And you have the attachment? What kind of attachment? A document. OK, what happens when you click on it? You can’t? Hang on, let me check the e-mail.” Karyn went to the screen and typed a little. “Yeah, there’s no attachment on there....I can see that it says there is, but maybe the sender forgot. I would ask them to resend it. You have a good day.”

She tapped at the smartphone’s screen, having to press the disconnect button twice before it registered and missing the satisfying thunk of an old phone being hung up.

Before she could click the screen to resume the movie, Derpy asked, “Do you get the same pay that you would at work?”

“Yeah, there’s at least that. We’ll do all right for ourselves this year, once I can spend some of this money I’m making. “

“Good, because I was going to say, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise. You’re doing the same job you would be if you were in the office, if I’m right.”

“Pretty much,” said Karyn. “And I’m not going to say anything about not deserving it. Not this time. That I should have to be confined to the house on a Sunday when you’re around means I should be getting overtime if anything. Even if we can sit back and watch movies, it’s still a limit on my freedom, and that bugs me.”

“That’s how it is when you work. Come on, turn the movie back on. It was just getting good.”

They got in a good hour of watching before the phone rang again. This time Karyn did not notice until the ringing interfered with the soundtrack of the movie. She put it on pause and brought the phone to her ear.

Once she’d gotten past the initial greeting and explanation, she turned her chair and faced the screen full on. She clicked windows and brought up information. Derpy looked over her shoulder once before things went over her head, and she laid back down on the bed.

It was a complicated troubleshoot. Karyn led the person on the other end down several blind alleys. She hadn’t gotten frustrated at the problem, but as Derpy heard the voice on the other end get sharper and quicker, Karyn’s own voice took a steel edge in response. She was no longer asking as many questions, nor was she explaining what she was trying as they went along. Instead, she had assumed direct control over the other person’s computer and was running some processes that Derpy couldn’t identify.

During one lull Karyn put the phone on mute and turned the movie back on. The process she had been waiting for finished and she lowered the volume on the movie. But it was all for naught as she was apparently getting the same error. Derpy scowled and wished there were some way she could help. She looked for an opportune moment to pause the movie again, but Karyn’s hands hovered over the keyboard so as to prevent her.

At one point she seemed ready to give up. Derpy heard her voice, as exhausted as it ever had been, saying, “Are you sure you can’t wait till tomorrow? There may be some easier way to do this that Leon or someone else could figure out. All right, I’ll keep trying.” More work followed, until at last she said, “Can you see it now? No, but can you at least see it? How about printing? All right, well, that’s all I can do now. Yes, we’ll look more tomorrow. Bye.”

She hung up and Derpy was sympathetic. “I didn’t understand, but it sounded rough.”

“It was. They keep on putting out so many different versions of software, and for everything they fux often times there’s something else that they break. So I had to kept trying different combinations of this software and that trying to find one that wouldn’t lock up. Well, I don’t want to relive it. Let’s finish the movie.”

“Well, I kind of kept watching while you were on the phone.”

Karyn looked at the screen. The logo for the video playing software filled the center, and the progress bar was at the right. “Phh. Never mind.”

Derpy contemplated whether to try to find where she had left off anyway, but she knew that Karyn had seen the movie before, and so it wasn’t that important. Instead, she said, “You know that I like learning about the computer and networks and such...”

“Yes, and you’re good at it.”

“But I’m really impressed by how you can get someone else’s screen on yours, in its own window just like that.”

Karyn looked back and closed the remote desktop session that she had open. “Yeah, that’s really useful.”

“More than that, it’s smart. I don’t think that, even if I had been around during the development of computers, that I ever would have thought of it.”

“Well, no one did except whoever invented it. I think it took off in the mid nineties, when most big networking was coming into its own.”

Derpy shook her head. “What I mean is, I would have figured that it’s impossible to get everything from one computer streamed through onto another.”

“I can see, that, but as technology improved, they realized that it—seriously!?” Karyn grabbed the phone as it rang for the third time.

Derpy held up her hooves, and Karyn understood. She let it ring twice more while she got herself together and returned her voice to a lower pitch. Thankful that video phones hadn’t caught on, she picked it up. “Karyn Hubert speaking.”

Once more Derpy was resigned to hearing Karyn’s half of the exchange. She strained her ears, but all she could pick up was muffled speaking.

“She did? Well, no, I couldn’t. You will? Great. No, I really appreciate it. Thanks. What? Oh, wow. You don’t have to do that. Bye.”

“Yes?” asked Derpy.

“That was Leon. The person who I just helped, or didn’t rather, called him.”

“To tell him how dedicated you were?”

“Ha! To complain that I didn’t solve the problem. So just like I told her over the phone, she could wait until tomorrow and he’d fix the problem, but no, that’s not good enough. So she has to make me look like I can’t do my job.”

Derpy was worried that this would set her off again. “What did Leon say?”

“He called her a nasty name and said that he would stick by me. I think he officially considers me part of the crew, free to exchange how much we don’t like certain users.”

Derpy didn’t understand the part about bashing users, but she did understand about cameraderie, and was pleased.

“He also said that he would handle the line for the rest of the day since no one usually calls after that time, so I can enjoy some of the day. After that it’s one more week until I can say my good-byes and get ready to go back to school.”

“Right. Your final year, and—wait a minute!”

Karyn raised her eyebrows. “Problem?”

“Get in the car! We have to go!”

“Go where?”

“No time to explain! Just go!” Derpy reached for her spell and was soon an invisible streak racing to the car. Karyn shrugged and followed. She didn’t hustle as much as Derpy had, but eased herself into the driver’s seat and put on her seat belt.

“Right, here we are.”

“Yes! Still stuck in the driveway. Ignition! Gear! Gas! Go!”

“I can’t know which way to go unless I know where we’re going.”

Derpy calmed down, but still spoke quickly. “Don’t you realize that every summer we’ve gone to the park?”

“The park? Oh, you mean the park by the lake out by where my parents live? Oh, Derpy, that’s a ways away and even if we started now...”

“We certainly wouldn’t make it if you don’t start now.”

Somehow, the logic that Derpy gave made Karyn start the car and pull out of the driveway, turning towards her childhood home. But still she argued. “I don’t see how you can call it a tradition when we’ve done it all of twice. For that matter, why has it got to be done in the summer? We’ll have plenty of weekends during the school year, and we could plan out a trip to the park if you like. We could even tie it in with a visit to my parents so that I can double up on the trip and not have to spend a tank of gas to get there.”

“I’ll make it up to you...somehow. It’s just that I have a very important connection to this world that came from there, and it would mean a lot to me if we could go.”

Karyn had recalled how Derpy had found her cat at the park the first time they had gone, but it hadn’t occurred to her just how much that meant. Derpy spent a day every week with her on Earth, and she always said how it was the highlight of her week. Getting to pet the cat or feed him during the week probably reminded her of her home away from home. Karyn let the car drop into fourth gear as they hit the highway.

By the time they arrived, the sun was low, but because of the trees of the park, they couldn’t see it directly. As they entered they passed a sign that said, “Park closes at dusk.” Karyn had never understood quite what that meant. At the first sign of darkness? When the last bit of the sun crossed the horizon? Whenever some park official thought it was time to go home? Well, it didn’t matter. Derpy was already dragging her around the lake, and Karyn had to jog to keep up. She couldn’t afford to lose contact with Derpy, or else it would be up to Derpy to find her.

The late August weather put the first hint of a chill into the air, but there was enough moisture that Karyn didn’t feel it. Still, with no blanket or chair, she didn’t feel comfortable lying on the grass. The field that they had found for privacy was barely needed, as the park was deserted.

“This really was a hasty trip,” Karyn said. “We didn’t have time to plan it out, get our picnic lunch, do anything like that. Was it really worth it, just to say we were at the park?”

“I think so. The good part is that we didn’t have to carry anything here, and we won’t have to carry anything back.”

“That is so. Unless you head into Equestria and bring something back. That’s kind of a tradition too.”

Karyn lounged on her elbow, keeping as little contact with the grass as possible, and watched Derpy. It was the one place where she could safely view Derpy in the outdoors of Earth. And while the sight of her in the dusty haze of the low sun was nothing to compare with the brightness of a flight in Equestria, it was still a rare sight, and she was glad they had come.

It took some time for the tension of their journey to be relieved by relaxing on the grass, and eventually Karyn gave in to her muscle fatigue and put her bottom down. It hit her that, come next summer, she would likely begin work full time, and might never have the chance to idly spend a day here at the park. It would be up to Derpy to keep the tradition. She would do it for tradition’s sake, but Karyn would come along so that she never lost her youth.

It was growing dark, and Karyn was all too conscious of the sign they had passed on the way in. She motioned for Derpy to rise and go invisible. They began their walk around the lake.

“It’s too bad that we can’t stay here longer,” said Derpy.

“Yes. There are parks where you can do that, some where you can even camp out all night.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Staying late is good, but then I’d want to get back in the car and get home to a warm bed.”

Karyn smiled. “Yes, but we miss out on getting to see the sun go down, and we lose out on more time here.”

Derpy didn’t respond, and Karyn wondered if she had made a misstep. Then she felt herself being lifted into the air. The momentary rush of adrenalin gave way as she found herself in position on Derpy’s back. It was familiar, but being put there by Derpy shoving her head between her legs was not. Derpy then turned off the invisibility spell for a moment before reactivating it and extending it around Karyn, who was grateful they were alone.

They took off, and silently Derpy ascended until she lit on one of the thin and wide clouds that always seemed to come near the end of the day. After some banking and carving, she had a convenient place to lean against. Karyn, of course, had to stay mounted, but Derpy rolled to the side and let her dangle her legs off one side into the mist.

Then they had to do it all over again, since Derpy was facing East.

It seemed to Derpy that the sunset on Earth was darker, redder, somehow more melancholy than those in her native Equestria.

“Do you know?” said Karyn, “that there’s a kind of optical illusion that goes on with a sunset? That the sun physically goes below the horizon before we see it do so. By sheer coincidence, when we see the first part of the sun disappear, that’s actually when the last part of the sun is no longer on a line with the Earth. A science teacher told me that back in high school.”

“I wonder if I could see the part below the Earth.”

“If any eyes could, they would be yours.”

Derpy spent a long time trying to picture what Karyn was saying. Not only did she not have even a high school education in physics, but the sun was moved differently in her world. Finally she said, “If that’s true, does that mean that the sun slows down as it sets?”

Karyn was glad she was invisible, so she could grimace without being seen. “I...think so. It would have to, wouldn’t it? Yeah.”

“I wonder if Princess Celestia has ever thought of that. Just sort of brake as she lowers the sun. That could irk Princess Luna a bit, though. You know, this is the first time I’ve seen one on Earth. I might have to give them some pointers.”

By the time they were finished, true darkness had come, and for anyone who spotted the young girl walking to her car in the park outside the closed gate, it would only seem as though she had come out of the shadows. If they had spotted the pony visible for a second, that would have been harder to explain.

Behind the wheel of the car, Karyn started to regret that she would have to spend the long drive home, then get to bed late. She still had a week of work to do, and she wouldn’t be at her best for the Monday. No, she told herself. Don’t beat yourself up. Not until Derpy leaves. Focus on the good. “Sure was nice to see the sunset. I’ve never seen one from a cloud before.”

“I have, but not often. But we did watch one that time we went out to Sunset City.”

That touched at painful memories for Karyn, ones that she could not completely suppress as Derpy had. “That was right after I first met Dinky. Feels like a long time ago.”

Derpy didn’t respond, so Karyn just kept driving. They arrived back at the apartment where Derpy reappeared in the harsher glow of the LED lights that Gayle, ever the environmentalist, had installed. They made her blink, and it hastened her departure.

“This seemed like a longer day than it actually was. Of course, we basically did two things, which is rare.”

“You think?”

“Well, I mean, you worked, and then we went to the park. Usually we focus on either having fun or getting things done.”

Karyn nodded. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Actually, about that.”

“Yes?”

“I know you’ve been iffy about giving more ponies tours of Earth,” said Derpy.

“Yes, but if there’s a time to do it, it’s now. Why? Who wants to visit?”

“We just talked about her. Or you did. Dinky’s been saying that she wants to come visit her friend Karyn in her own home.”

“Well, that’s great news! If anypony’s welcome, she is!” Karyn knew that her week would be happier for the anticipation.

“I’m glad you’re on board. I’ll send her a letter to catch an early train.”

Derpy vanished, and Karyn started to think of preparations she would make.

Author's Note

So it looks like you can all see what's coming next week, right? WRONG! Because next week, I'll be giving you the first of the chapters based off of ideas submitted by fans. This one comes from benhamin5. And it will include this:

"Let me just check my mail.”

Derpy laid her head back on the pillow, but when she heard Karyn clicking away on the keyboard, she did a small crunch and looked up. “Oh, you mean your e-mail.”

“Yeah, sorry for the confusion."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No, I’m used to it by now.”

“Well, there are advantages to being invisible.”

“So what did you think?” Karyn pulled out of the parking lot before someone questioned why they were staying there so long.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"That would just be...well, it’s so unthinkable I can’t think of it.”

“You are playing this one on hard mode, aren’t you?” Karyn asked, but Derpy didn’t understand the gamer lingo.

“If everything else failed, I think I would try to use magic. But I’m a pegasus, and I do have certain abilities. I can fly, for one.”

Special thanks to benhamin5, and please come back to read it and see how well I do with other people's prompts!

F01: Going Derpal

Author's Note

This is the first of the chapters that is based on a fan-submitted idea. I'm numbering them separately from the chapters that are my own premises, which means that the numbers will be even more screwed up from FimFiction's numbers. :derpytongue2: But I'm doing this because I keep certain blocks of chapters together in my notes, and that helps me space out certain plot points that I want to have revealed at certain times. Anyway, thanks go once again to benhamin5 for wanting to see this.

Also, since I can't put an author's note on both the top and the bottom, the preview will be in the first comment below. (Unless one of you sneaky folks manage to jump in before I can hit the button.)

F01: Going Derpal

One time before, Karyn had taken Derpy to the carnival that was regularly held near the campus. Derpy, a superstitious pony, had vetoed going back since it was on that day that her return spell had failed. She had not acquitted herself well, breaking down and crying that she would never see Equestria or Dinky again. So, in fear of a repeat or just unwillingness to recall the memory, they had not returned. But Karyn wanted to go that year, and while friendship alone might not have been enough to drag Derpy back, friendship combined with the promise of funnel cakes coated in powdered sugar plus deep-fried cookies and candy bars was, especially when Karyn had said that she could break her diet.

So it was that they returned to Karyn’s new apartment, lighter in the wallet and heavier in the guts, to kick open the door and collapse, Karyn into the chair by the computer, and Derpy onto Karyn’s bed.

“That was a lot of fun,” Derpy said as she poked her pudge with a hoof to watch it jiggle. “I’ll have to fly a lot to work it off, and skip desserts for a week, but it was worth it. Some ponies say that it feels bad when they eat too much. But it never does for me. Probably why I put on weight in the first place.”

“Yeah. I trust you to be good though. Let me just check my mail.”

Derpy laid her head back on the pillow, but when she heard Karyn clicking away on the keyboard, she did a small crunch and looked up. “Oh, you mean your e-mail.”

“Yeah, sorry for the confusion. I’ve gotten so used to just saying ‘mail’ for e-mail at work. It’s kind of a quirk of that job, not something everyone does. Now that I’ve left I’ll break the habit.”

“That’s all right. What I was just thinking was that I’ve never actually seen mail delivery on Earth. I deliver it every day in Equestria, but have never even seen it here.”

Karyn turned her head in the chair. “Well, you’re here on Sundays. No mail on Sundays. Once in a while you’ll catch me forgetting to pick it up from the mailbox on Saturday, or maybe Gayle will forget to give me mine, but there’s never any new mail.”

“Right. We get off Sundays in Equestria too, but I was almost hoping it would be different here.”

“You did? You want to make our mail carriers work seven days while you only work six?”

Derpy tried to sit up, but it didn’t quite work, so she did a half situp, half roll that let her rest on one elbow. Trying to pass it off like she planned it that way, she said, “I don’t mean it that way. Honestly, if I wasn’t visiting you, I wouldn’t mind working Sundays either.”

“Really? More work?”

“Not necessarily. See, the post offices have to run on very tight crews. When someone goes on vacation or calls out sick, we’re stretched and the routes are harder. But if we had one more day of delivery, they would have to hire more mailmares, and it would ease the burden on everypony.”

Karyn thought about that. “I’m not sure that holds, but it might. It’s different in IT where a lot of jobs can be moved around the schedule. So long as you have one person on shift to fix things when they break, the big projects can be done with more planning. Although, that too is only theoretical.”

“Yes, but we digress. The point is that I’ve never seen mail being delivered. It’s something I would like to do. I’m still supposed to be doing some research on Earth in addition to being a tourist.”

“I suppose you could stick around until tomorrow and we could figure out something. I mean, I’m not doing anything now that I’m finished with work, and I don’t mind giving up a day where I’d just be lazy to get you something that you want.”

“Except I have to be at work tomorrow. Time’s still moving in Equestria.” Derpy shook her head, but then smiled. “Unless I don’t formally leave, but only go back there temporarily, in this case for the whole week, and make my next Sunday your tomorrow!”

“Are you sure you can pull that off?”

“One way to find out!” Before Karyn could argue any more, Derpy went for her saddlebag and got her return spell. Karyn had time to reason that if it didn’t work, it was nearly time for her to go anyway. But she vanished and reappeared instantaneously. “Looks like it worked!” Derpy said. “It’s still dark here, and you’re in the same position, I think.”

“You know, I’ve never thought of the time difference objectively before, but it’s a little disturbing to think that I’ve just been frozen here for a week, unable to move or think or do anything, that all the atomic motion in myself and the world stopped, in contradiction to all the laws of physics.”

Derpy shrugged. “No one can see you that way, though, because they’d be either frozen themselves or it’d be me or somepony else starting up time again. And as far as the laws of physics, how about using your changeling magic to conjure up a postal uniform so we can get into an office somewhere?”

“Oh, no. We can go see postal workers in action, but I’m not committing any federal crimes for you. State ones, maybe.”

“Great, let’s go.”

“Are you forgetting something?” asked Karyn.

“What’s that?”

“You went home and came back, but here it’s still night. Monday isn’t for several hours, and I’ve been up all day. My plans for right now were to go to bed.”

Derpy’s jaw dropped. Of course Karyn was right, and she mentally kicked herself for not seeing that ahead of time. Indeed, Karyn was already heading to the bathroom to change into her nightclothes, and Derpy felt regret at that too, for making Karyn change there instead of her bedroom. Moreover, she wasn’t tired herself, and if she stayed up all night and then went with Karyn to see postal work, she would throw off her sleep schedule.

She briefly considered heading back to Equestria for another week, and coming back on what would be her Saturday night. But she decided that it wasn’t worth it to miss Karyn for what was, in her timeline, most of two weeks. She would sleep over on Earth’s schedule, have fun the next day, and then go home and catch a nap. If she had to sleep-fly through Monday’s route, she would catch up that night.

Karyn emerged a few minutes later and said that she would find a blanket, but Derpy told her to hold off. It was a humid night, and there was enough mist that Derpy could gather and build a small cloud. She promised to disperse it as soon as she got up, and outside so that the carpets didn’t get wet. They said good night to each other. Even though she had a bed she was familiar with, it took Derpy a long time to get to sleep.

What she wasn’t prepared for was that Karyn’s Monday routine was much different from her Sunday one. There was no cleaning or drawn out breakfast, just a couple of toaster pastries and then hustling out the door.

“All right,” said Derpy. “Let’s get to the post office and find the carriers. Maybe I can even meet one of them and follow on their route.”

“Don’t be too hasty. I hadn’t planned on shadowing a carrier. And honestly, I don’t know how they work. For all I know, they may be out on their routes already.”

“Well, can’t we go in and see them sorting the mail? Maybe one of the carriers will be late getting out.”

It took Karyn a moment before she remembered how open the post office in Equestria was, and how Derpy didn’t understand the difference. “People who don’t work for the post office can’t just saunter into the back. That’s true of just about any store or office. There are parts where the general public can’t go. Insurance reasons.”

The last two words made no sense to Derpy, but she said, “I guess I don’t count as a worker for a different postal service.”

“Sorry.”

Karyn didn’t know where the nearest post office was; on the rare occasions she had to use snail mail, she just put it in Gayle’s mailbox and raised the flag. Stamps she bought at the grocery store or the bank. But a search on her phone showed that it wasn’t too far away. They were able to pull into a side entrance and find a parking spot. It almost appeared deserted. There were no customers and everyone behind the counter was working in the back.

“Well, here it is,” she said. “This is a post office. At least, a small branch one. It’s not too different from the one near my parents’ house.”

“But where’s all the mail?”

“In the back. See, I think that we have rather more post offices than you do. You’ve only got one in each town, but we’ve separated areas smaller so that this one will only serve the neighborhood.”

Derpy couldn’t respond, because one of the workers, having seen Karyn on camera, came out and said, “Can I help you?”

“Oh, no, just checked my PO box. Wanted to make sure you put in today’s already.”

“We did, yes.”

Karyn smiled and left to where they could talk. “Hate having to make up cover stories like that. So what did you think?”

It took a few seconds of silence before she realized that Derpy was not present. Sometimes she had to think of an answer for a while, but the subtle cues that someone was present were missing. Not knowing what to do, she went to the car and left the passenger door unlocked and the window down.

After five minutes or so, in which she played on her phone, Karyn heard the door opening, and Derpy said, “I snuck into the back room to see the mail. Sorry.”

“No, I’m used to it by now.”

“Well, there are advantages to being invisible.”

“So what did you think?” Karyn pulled out of the parking lot before someone questioned why they were staying there so long.

“They had all sorts of trays and chutes to move the mail. It’s all run by electricity and made of more metal than the wood that we have, but it’s very similar to the one in Ponyville. Made me feel like home. I could definitely work there.”

“I guess there are some things that are evolved the same way no matter what universe you’re in. Interesting.”

Derpy’s satisfied smile came through even though she was invisible. “Hey, where are we going? You’ve taken a different route and you won’t get home that way?”

“Did you think that was the end of the tour? I wanted to show you another post office. When I was living at the dorms, this was the one I had to use once, because I couldn’t find any other. I’d like to find a parking place and take the light rail, but maybe we’ll be lucky and find a space close to the office. This would have been easier on a Sunday.”

They drove into the city, and it took some looking but Karyn was able to find a spot close enough for a short walk. It required paying a parking meter for three hours, even though they didn’t intend to be there that long.

When Karyn pointed out the building, Derpy at first refused to believe that it was the office. It took up the entirety of a city block, and though it was only one story, it still had to be thirty feet high.

“Now, this is a post office for a big city.”

Derpy just stared, then she put her hoof on the side and felt the hard stone. Karyn of course could not see that, but she could feel Derpy’s positioning and hear the reverence in her voice. “I...I could never imagine that there would be so much mail in all the world.”

“Well, it’s not stuffed to the brim.”

“I don’t mean that, I just mean, how many people, how much mail, how much time? Who decided that this space should be used for this building?”

Derpy couldn’t put into words what she was trying to ask, but Karyn understood nonetheless.

“A long time ago, before we had the internet and telephones and even telegraphs, which we don’t have anymore, the postal service came about. Indeed, one of our most famous people set up the post office. We put him on the hundred dollar bill and we wrote books about him.”

“Can we go inside?” Derpy whispered.

“Of course.”

The floor inside the building was some stone that had been laid down many years ago and had patterns in the design. In the air was the smell of dust that had been circulating through the ventilation system time and time again.

Instead of a back room, the larger office was a square within a square, and customers could line up on either side while the windows lined the inner square. There was none of the personal attention that they had seen at the smaller post office. Everyone was trying to get through their business as soon as possible.

“I’m getting the itch again,” said Derpy.

“Itch?”

“This is a major hub for mail, right? I just feel like I should be helping out. I could be sorting or bagging or doing something to get mail to the recipients. I know there’s mail here. It’s not even like the other place where I can just fly in the back. I’ve got to find a way in there.”

Karyn huffed. “Or we could, you know, not.” But this was half to herself. She ducked down into an alcove where some of the PO boxes were and changed into one of the postal uniforms, altering her face too so that, if she showed up on camera, it wouldn’t be her.

Finding a way into the bowels of the building wasn’t difficult. They only had to wait for someone to go on break and open the door. For the first time Karyn could see the inner workings of the post office. It did look busy, but she coudn’t appreciate it the way Derpy did. Well, she thought, fair is fair. Derpy didn’t understand the big server rooms the way she did.

“Can we at least get somewhere out of sight?” Karyn asked, her voice being lost in the sound of machines. With her hand on Derpy’s shoulder, she was led to the quietest part of the post office, there to find another door.

The room they entered had no light but what was ambient, and no sound except the echoes from without. Derpy felt free to speak up. “Where is this?”

“I don’t know.”

Sacks of mail were strewn on the floor, and shelves lined with cubby holes were also filled. Derpy walked over and looked at some of the letters.

“Some of this mail is months old! Why haven’t they delivered it?”

Karyn walked over, looked, and understood. “This must be the dead letter office. It’s where they put mail when they don’t know where it goes.”

“Why wouldn’t they? Look, here’s a letter for...’Beverly.’ Why didn’t they send it to her?”

“What’s her last name? What’s her address?”

Derpy looked over the mailpiece. “It doesn’t say. Maybe a child wrote it, or someone who forgot to write the rest of it. That doesn’t mean it should go missing.”

“Maybe not, but the post office must have done all they could. They would have tried to figure out who sent it and contacted them to get more information. I guess. Don’t you have dead letters?”

Derpy was almost in tears. “No. Not that I know of. Maybe ponies are more careful, but even so, all of these letters, not being delivered. I...I...”

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m going to take this with me.”

Karyn thought about saying that it was a federal crime, but on the other hand, wasn’t the crime interfering with the proper delivery of mail? If Derpy didn’t take the letter, it would just stay here until it was destroyed.

“You can’t deliver every dead letter. It would take you a dozen lifetimes.”

“I don’t intend to. I know that. But I do intend to deliver the Beverly letter. It’s just like with Muffinhead. I knew I couldn’t save every cat on Earth, but I had to save that one because he was in front of me. Now, yes, let’s go.”

Outside, and back in the car, Karyn said, “So how do you intend to find the recipient of the letter?”

“I have no idea!”

“Maybe the reason you never have dead letters in Equestria is that you have a method for finding them that you don’t realize is special. Like a spell that some unicorn uses. If that’s the case, maybe you can get a duplicate for your bag and that will help. It might trace, from the intent of the sender, where it’s supposed to go.”

Derpy thought about that. “It’s possible, but even so that’s not what I want to do. I’m not looking for a shortcut. I think it’s important to me to take on a challenge.”

“Well, open the letter and let’s see if that gives us any clues.”

“I can’t open it! Mail is private! That would just be...well, it’s so unthinkable I can’t think of it.”

“You are playing this one on hard mode, aren’t you?” Karyn asked, but Derpy didn’t understand the gamer lingo.

“If everything else failed, I think I would try to use magic. But I’m a pegasus, and I do have certain abilities. I can fly, for one.”

“That you can.” They drove on, and Karyn let her mind wander as she mainly focused on the road. She forgot for a second that she wasn’t alone, and came out with a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, no, I was just thinking. Suppose that you find the recipient of this letter. You go on an epic quest until you find her. And you finally give it to her, and it turns out to be some junk mail. Or a bill. Something that she didn’t even want.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” said Derpy, but clearly the idea disturbed her. “In the first place, if it were a bill, they would have to be extra careful to make sure they got the address right.”

“And in the second?”

“It just feels to me like someone put a lot of heart into this letter.”

Karyn wondered if Derpy’s feeling was the sort of vague wishful thinking that people did sometimes, or if she really did have a sixth sense about mail. She hoped it was the second, and was a little jealous.

Arriving back at the apartment, they returned to the positions they had assumed the day—or week—before, with Derpy on the bed and Karyn at the computer.

“So that’s the post office. What did you think?”

Derpy paused. “I know that around here you’ve got e-mail and text messaging and such. It would be like if everypony had their own dragon to send mail by. But I think there’s power in letters, and I think people know it. Because of that, there’ll always be a postal service. It’s changed, I can tell that from having gone to the new office and the old one, and thank you for that by the way. But where it’s important, it’s all the same.”

“That’s really insightful. So what are you going to do about the letter?”

“Nothing right now. It’s going to require some intense thinking. I’ll take it back to Equestria with me and it’ll be safe there.”

Still holding the letter pinned against her body by the root of one wing, Derpy was limited in her flight capacity, but could still get airborne. She put on her saddlebags and gave Karyn a hug good-bye. Using more of a glide than a flight, she reached the ground in Ponyville and started walking home.

When she opened her door and remembered that she had to start her work week the next day, she realized that she wouldn’t have time to make any serious plans. Laying the letter on the table, she knew that she could not lose it, and needed to think of a good place. She thought of removing one of the spells from her saddlebag and curling the letter into shape to fit, but she worried about it being jostled out of position during her trips.

Aha! There was the backup bag that she used for pony guests. She took out one of the more useless spells and put the letter in.

“Stay there until I find your owner. I promise that I will. We’re in this together.”

Derpy’s cat came out and meowed, wondering if she was talking to him. “I guess it’s silly to talk to an object, huh? Well, it’s no more silly than trying to deliver a piece of mail with only a first name on it. It would take a crazy pony to do that, but with Celestia as my witness, I am that crazy pony!”

118: Dink to School

When Derpy brought guests to Earth, she was wont to fly up to the top of the clock tower and have them meet her up there for final instructions. But on that day, she took the stairs, not wanting to waste a minute of the time she had with her guest.

“This is going to be so great!”

“I’m glad you’re excited, Mom. I am too, just not in that jump-around way. I’ve really missed Karyn.”

“But now you’re going to get to see her in her own world. That’s...well, it’s something you’ve never done!”

Dinky laughed as they made it up to the top of the clock tower.

“Ready?”

“Wait! We have to go over how to use these spells, and how to act once you’re on Earth! And you know that if you go outside, you have to use an invisibility spell, or you could get caught. And also—“

“Yes, Mom, I know. We went over all this, I’ve talked to ponies who did this, and you put all these details in the application form that everypony had to fill out who wanted to visit Earth.”

Derpy fretted. “I know, but you’re really the first foal who’s made the journey.”

“Foal? I am of age, you know.”

“Oh, right. I always forget that. Well, you’re my foal, anyway. And you’re certainly the most precious pony I’ve taken with me to Earth.”

Dinky gave a sly smile. “So you’re saying that if Pinkie Pie or Scootaloo or someone had been lost on Earth, that wouldn’t have been as bad?”

“Speaking from an entirely selfish perspective, no, it wouldn’t have. Now, put on your coat.”

“Coat?! It’s summer, and we’re not going outside, we’re going to the other universe!”

“I’m sorry,” said Derpy. “I know I shouldn’t be overprotective. All right, I trust you to know how to use the transfer spell. And a one, and a two, and...”

They appeared on Earth and Dinky bounded for the side door where Derpy told her Karyn’s apartment was. Even though it was her first time, she felt like she knew it. What she wasn’t prepared for was the texture difference, and how she could see all the small details of the wood of the railing, and how the trees were broken masses of leaves rather than blending together at that distance the way they did in Equestria.

Karyn opened the door and said, “Come on in! Dinky, I’m so glad to see you!”

Dinky did her best impression of a pegasus pony as she leaped into Karyn’s arms. Karyn wasn’t exactly prepared for this, but Dinky didn’t weigh that much, so by swinging her around and getting a good grip she was able to avoid getting tackled. Her biggest challenge was watching that she didn’t get speared in the eye with Dinky’s horn.

Derpy followed, and though her hug wasn’t as intense as Dinky’s, it was still tight. Karyn wasn’t used to that level of physical contact with her family, but she’d grown to enjoy the ritual with Derpy.

“You are not allowed to stay out of Canterlot for this long ever again,” said Dinky. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

“You’re allowed to come to Ponyville too, you know,” said Derpy. “If it’s on a Sunday, I can go and get Karyn, and if it’s not, well, I found a way to mess around with the time differences between universes that might work.”

Karyn remembered Derpy freezing all of Earth just to see the post office during operating hours, but concluded that it wouldn’t work the other way. “You’d have to wait for your next Sunday, after you came here and held our time steady.”

“Well, never mind all that. Dinky, sit on the bed. I do just about every week. It’s real comfortable.”

There could be no greater indication of Derpy’s tender care toward her daughter than giving up her perch on Karyn’s bed and keeping her hooves on the floor. Karyn took her usual spot by the laptop. Dinky did get on the bed, but quickly got off again. “Is that a computer? A real one? Mommy’s told me about them, but I want to play with it!”

Karyn and Derpy gave her a few safety instructions so as to not lose any data, and then let her have at it. Unlike Derpy, who needed her precision manipulation spell to touch the keys with her hooves, Dinky soon learned how to type using her magic to depress each key one at a time. It was slow work, but she picked up using the mouse much faster, and Karyn said that was all right.

“A lot of people tend to favor the mouse over the keyboard unless they actually have to type something. Not to brag, but I’m pretty good at navigating through most of the operating system even if there’s no mouse. I’ve had to do that a couple of times at school and work when the mouse wasn’t working.”

Dinky nuzzled her like a favorite pet. “That is so cool. You get to work with these all the time.”

Derpy walked over and showed her some of the sites she liked to go on when she was on Earth, including her social-networking garden. It amused Karyn to see the two ponies working on the human technology, sharing knowledge from one generation to the next.

At last Dinky turned away from the glow of the screen. “So if you know all about these, how come you’re going to school for them?”

“Well, in the first place, I don’t know everything about them. There’s a lot of complicated stuff under the hood.” Karyn briefly considered opening up her laptop’s case to show Dinky, but instead pulled up some pictures of the guts of some systems just to demonstrate the complexity. “Beyond that, I have to know about some of the big computers that they have in the places where they’ll hire me. Like servers and stuff.”

“Oh, you mean like in restaurants?”

Derpy laughed. It was the kind of misunderstanding that she was more used to getting into. “No, my little cutie. A server is a computer that’s designed to be always on, but that instead of having a person work on them, other computers work on them.”

Karyn was impressed at how well Derpy had summed up the definition. It let Dinky understand perfectly what she was talking about without the technical details. She would have explained that even servers need to go off now and then, and that people did have to do maintenance work on them, and she probably would have been confused.

“But as I am going back to school,” she said, “I’m going to have to go shopping for supplies at some point this week.”

“Oh, like quills and scrolls?” asked Dinky.

“Like that, but not exactly.”

Derpy poked her. “Remember when you had to take one of your tests with a quill pen because Twilight’s spell went wrong, and everyone was looking at you weird?”

“Yes, I do remember that, thank you very much.”

Dinky was confused, so Derpy had to explain that feather pens weren’t the norm and would stick out.

“What are you studying in particular this year?” asked Dinky. “Is it something that you could explain to me?”

Karyn thought for a bit. “I don’t know that I can. But, and Derpy can tell you this, I also have elective classes where I can pick something that’s interesting. Since all the mandatory classes have to do with computers, I try to steer as far away from them as possible in my electives. Do you have anything like that? I mean, does Princess Celestia have anypony teach you about history or literature, or have you try to create art?”

“Oh, sure! We have time to rest our horns, as one of my teachers says. A lot of times those classes are the fun ones. We even had one that’s all theoretical, just talking about the basic ideas of unicorn magic, but we don’t have to take any tests or even pay too much attention!”

Derpy saw the opportunity to ask something she was eager to hear. “And how about the practical courses? Are you keeping up with tests and homework?”

“Yeah, so like I was saying, about these other classes, they’re all fun, because after the class, when the teacher leaves we get together and discuss what we talked about, and then from there we just chat about whatever. It’s a blast and I’ve got lots of badflank friends.”

“Dinky! Language!”

“Oh. Sorry, Mommy.”

Karyn was amused at watching Dinky avoid giving away too much to her mother, both avoiding her question and then quickly putting on her filly halo after making the mistake. She decided to help out. “The elective classes can be the most fun. I haven’t had one where we’ve had private discussions afterwards, but this year I plan to take a couple of real softball ones, like where we’ll do nothing but watch movies in every class.”

Derpy scowled at both of them, not knowing which one she wanted to chastise first. Karyn seemed to be the worse of the two, but Dinky was her filly and she had more of a justification for trying to install discipline in her. Finally, she decided to try to split the difference. “Going to school is an important thing. You shouldn’t allow your attention to be distracted from studying. Everything you do in the upcoming year will resonate for the rest of your lives.”

Dinky rolled her eyes. “Well, gee, Mommy, don’t put any pressure on me or anything.”

“You know I just want you to be happy.”

“I know, Mommy, I really do.”

“But,” said Karyn, “that also means being happy now by not working ourselves too hard and having a little fun, even while we’re learning.”

“I’m going to go to the little fillies’ room.” Derpy got up and excused herself. Once she was in the small bathroom, she ran the water.

“That’s Mommy’s way of giving us a few moments to gossip about her. She’s great, of course, but she can’t help hovering. The thing is, she knows it, and she’s letting us be better friends for it.”

“Don’t forget, also, that she never went to school, so she can’t really know what it’s like. She sees it as this great opportunity to work hard and get better so that you can make more money and not have to carry mail.”

Dinky shook her head. “She did go to school, at least grade school.”

“That’s different. Plus it was a long time ago for her. If she had any bad memories of school, she’s probably suppressed them by now.”

“Well, thanks for deflecting some of her intensity off of me.”

“Any time.” Karyn snuck a look toward the bathroom door. Either Derpy was really giving them time alone, or she was taking a long while to wash up. There was also the possibility that she was pressed up against the door trying to listen in on the conversation, but she didn’t distrust Derpy that much. If she really wanted to know, she would ask. “I wish that you could see her some time when she’s not around you.”

“That’s not actually possible.”

“Yeah, but I mean...the way she is with other people. When you’re around she fills her role as a mother and that just pushes everything aside. But when you’re not she’s a fun pony, probably someone you’d be friends with even if you didn’t know her.”

Dinky stared, trying to picture what Karyn was talking about. Eventually she shook her head vigorously, either emphatically denying the sentiment, or trying to clear her head, or both. “I’m not sure. Mommy’s always mommy, you know? The ponies I want to be friends with have more of an edge to them. I just can’t picture mommy doing anything...”

“Rebellious?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“I see your point. Her only real vice is overeating.”

At last Derpy returned from the bathroom, still shaking the moisture off her hooves. Karyn idly wondered if it was necessary, or even effective for a pony to wash her hooves since they went right back to the ground after she came out. But she did not pursue the thought.

What she did notice was that, just as Derpy changed when Dinky was around, so did Dinky change, though hers was more drastic, like the flip of a light switch. She still smiled, but it was one of sweetness rather than true pleasure.

“So,” Derpy said, “What do you want to do?”

“Karyn and I were just talking...” Dinky began, and Karyn was surprised that she would want to reference the conversation they’d just had, but then she continued. “And because we’re both going back to school soon, we think that we should have a major celebration. Like, we should have the most fun possible for any pony or human before we all get back to work.”

“The most fun possible? I don’t even know what that would be. Karyn?”

She mulled it over. A lot of the fun things she thought of required planning of more than a day, or needed significant amounts of money, or meant traveling somewhere that, even at Derpy’s top speed, would barely leave them any time to have the fun that they were going there to have. Especially if Derpy were tired out by flying. To say nothing of how Dinky would get there.

For that matter, there was nothing in particular that she wanted to do. Over her summer of fun, Karyn felt that she had done everything she needed to do. She was as ready as she was going to be for the long run of the remainder of her education followed by a career.

And yet Dinky was here, and Dinky wanted to see the best of the Earth, or at least the best of what was local and in budget. She addressed the unicorn. “What is it that you want to do? Or, if you were in Equestria and wanted to have the most fun possible, where would you go?”

“I guess I’d have a big party!”

That too was problematic. Anywhere Karyn took Derpy and Dinky where there were people, they would have to be invisible. Introducing them to one person was possible, but revealing them to a crowd would be the shortest path to being revealed. Everyone would tell the same story, and then even the skeptics would believe them.

“A party really isn’t something we can do.”

“Actually,” Dinky said, stepping into the middle of the room, “what I wish there were was some kind of party that never stopped. Like, people could come and go as they wanted, but there was always music and dancing and food and everything that you have at a party. And it wouldn’t be in anypony’s house, because otherwise they could never get to sleep. But that’s what I want. A forever party.”

“Like a nightclub?”

Both ponies stared at her with confused looks on their faces. “What’s that?” asked Derpy.

“Hang on, I thought you guys had nightclubs. Doesn’t Vinyl play in them?”

“Vinyl plays at parties and events. If there were an endless party like what Dinky is talking about, she’d collapse pretty soon.”

Karyn held up her hands so that she could try to regain control of the conversation. “All right, so we have places called nightclubs. They’re not permanent parties; they have to clean up and restock the food bars for one, but they do party all night. Kind of. I guess you could call it a party.”

“You never told me about these,” said Derpy. “You must be going during the week or when I’m not here.”

“I don’t care for them myself.”

Again confusion showed on the faces of the ponies. “Why wouldn’t you want to go to a party?” asked Dinky.

“Well, first of all, they’re not the safest places in the world. You can get in a lot of trouble there, in more ways than one.” Karyn sighed. “This is getting into some of the parts of human life that, in my opinion, it’s better for ponies not to know about.”

That only made Dinky’s eyes get wider, and in a hushed tone she said, “Tell me about them.”

“Well, remember that I don’t go to them. A lot of them charge a cover fee just to get in, and that’s only if they let you in. The best ones judge you by the clothes you wear, what kind of shape you’re in, and so on. Of course, if you bribe the right people or know someone, that can get you in too. It’s all very seedy. Then once you’re in it’s very dark and there’s lots of colored lights. The music is too loud to talk and it’s more about beat than any kind of melody. You can go to tables and chairs and if you’re lucky a waitress will come shout at you for your orders, which cost three times as much as outside. But if you’re a real big roller you can go into the VIP rooms where they’ll get you just about anything you want. And that’s where things get really bad.”

“It hasn’t sounded so bad so far. Expensive, maybe not nice.”

Karyn girded herself for the rest. “In the clubs are where you always hear about people being shot, getting into fights, having debaucherous sex, or doing drugs.”

Derpy grabbed onto Dinky as if trying to protect her from the very ideas. “Drugs?”

“Yeah, really hardcore stuff that messes with people and even kills them. So the whole scene just unnerves me. Even if I went, and I didn’t do any of the bad stuff, I’d be keeping company with those who did.”

“Dinky! You stay out of there, you hear me?”

“Gee, mommy, I wasn’t planning on going once Karyn said all that.”

Derpy, chilled with hearing Karyn’s explanation, said, “I wonder if that’s strictly a human thing, or if ponies, subjected to an endless party, would have to make it go bad too.”

“I don’t know,” said Karyn, “but I think that Dinky’s not too far off with her idea of a big celebration. I just don’t want to go out.”

“What if,” said Dinky, powering up her horn, “we made a party club out of right here? We’ll have music and lights and all the fun things you talked about and take no risks.”

“I don’t know if we have enough room for dancing.”

“You forget I’m good at shrinking spells.”

She pointed her head at Karyn’s bed, but Karyn held up her hands first. “Before you do that, are you also good at reversing shrinking spells?”

“Nope!” Dinky fired a bolt of magic, and Karyn’s bed was more fit for a dollhouse than an apartment. “But I can do enlarging spells, which should work.”

She shrank various other pieces of furniture in the room while Karyn hastily put her laptop in the bedroom. She wasn’t sure that its tiny and sensitive parts would survive the magical change, and didn’t want to make the experiment.

“You also shouldn’t hit the carpet,” she said. “You’d pull it up from the sides, and even if you made it bigger, it would be difficult to get it nailed down again. We want to be nice to Gayle and not wreck her house.”

It was a rare carpeted dance floor, but it would do. Derpy said, “I’ll go out to get food.”

“Um...that’s not going to work.”

“Oh, right. I always forget.”

Dinky now pointed her horn straight up and cast another spell, but nothing seemed to happen. After a moment, she tried again, and a panorama of lights filled the room, as from a mirror ball that wasn’t there.

“Now we need music,” she said, and Karyn ran back to get the laptop.

“I’ll search for something we can dance to, but if you know how to amplify sounds, that might help. The laptop’s speakers aren’t that great.”

They danced in their impromptu club. Although they closed the curtains, light seeped in through the cracks, and so the atmosphere wasn’t exactly that of a club. There were no waitresses or grinding of bodies, and any physical contact between the dancers was only playful. And yet Karyn found herself having the time of her life. For whatever reason, she was ecstatic to be with these, her too best friends. All thoughts of having to go to school or work were gone. In the moment, there was only fun.

Derpy also felt like everything was going right. The two people who had been the focus of her life and her love had come together to create something beautiful, even if only for a short while. She danced less than the others, but still felt the enjoyment. It was a perfect moment.

Author's Note

We've got another fan suggestion next week, this time from Darth Wedgius. Let's see what he's got in store for us!

Derpy was starting to quiver, so Karyn tried to reassure her. “Hey, it’s all right. You didn’t screw up. Nopony is going to lose out on it, we’ll just work with everyone’s schedule.”

“Thanks. Well, I’d better go get the guest we do have. See you in an instant.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, yep, got to make sure this trip is safe for such a delicate flower.”

“You really are protective of Apple Bloom, huh?” said Derpy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What is it?” asked Derpy.

“There.”

“We can’t see where you’re pointing.”

“On the far wall, there’s a picture of a pony.”

She looked. “So there is.”

This chapter will lead into another fan-prompted one, so you won't want to miss it!

F02: For a Special Somederpy

Author's Note

Darth Wedgius said that he wanted to see somepony in particular visit Earth, so here you go. I'm pairing this up with a suggestion from my good friend Yoshi1990 next week. They only made sense together.

F02: For a Special Somederpy

“Okee-dokee, what have we got today?”

“Somepony who wants to visit.”

“Yeah? Great.”

Karyn was glad that Derpy had made the decision for her. With school starting and her schedule getting busier, it was harder to find things to do on a Sunday that were new and unique. Derpy had dome so many things on Earth that she was practically a native, but Karyn still thought of her as a tourist. Other ponies, though, were definitely tourists.

“There is kind of a catch with it, though.”

“Oh? Is it another two-in-one like when we had Vinyl and Octavia here?”

Derpy reached around the back of her head and grinned while squinting. It was a pose that Karyn used whenever she wasn’t sure if she wanted to say something or not. She hadn’t thought that Derpy knew it, and the idea that she might have picked it up on Earth amused her. “Well...it was going to be, but we had a little mix-up. After Dinky came last time, she carried the saddlebag with all the spells in it back to Canterlot. I just realized it last night and so there wasn’t time for her to post it back—if that’s how we’d do it. I trust the post office a lot, but I’d trust it more if I were the carrier, you know? Anyway, that means that we’ll have to use the third bag, bringing one of the pair this week, and the other next week.”

“I see. Wait, why can’t you just bring the first pony, carry the second bag back with you, then get the second pony?”

“I told you, Dinky has the second bag.”

Karyn shook her head. “I meant the other bag. Why can’t take the bag you’re not using back and forth?”

Derpy’s wings folded and she clopped to the ground. “I completely didn’t think of that.”

“It’s all right. You can still get them now.”

“No, the one who was told to come next week took this week to go off and spend time with her family in Apploosa. She said it worked out better for everypony. At least, that’s what the pony I’m bringing told me.

Derpy was starting to quiver, so Karyn tried to reassure her. “Hey, it’s all right. You didn’t screw up. Nopony is going to lose out on it, we’ll just work with everyone’s schedule.”

“Thanks. Well, I’d better go get the guest we do have. See you in an instant.”

She left right from the room, but forgot or ignored the fact that, once in Equestria, she would have to escort her guest to the clock tower, which put them outside in Gayle’s backyard. And so Karyn had to let them in and wait for the abatement of the invisibility spell to see who it was who had come to visit.

“Mornin’, Miss Karyn.”

“Big Macintosh!”

“Ee-yup.”

Derpy grinned at him. “I was just happy to see that the invisibility covered all of him. He’s quite a big pony.”

“I didn’t think it worked like that,” said Karyn. “I thought that the spell could kind of measure the whole pony and make them invisible, not just create a bubble.”

“It probably is that way, but it still seems like more magic should be needed for Big Mac...is it OK if we call you Big Mac?”

He nodded.

“But we shouldn’t talk about you like you weren’t here. You’re here to have fun, right?”

Finally Big Macintosh dropped his reticence. “I’m really here to make sure that she can have fun. I’m gonna scout the territory and make sure it’s safe.”

Karyn raised her eyebrows. “Nopony’s had any complaints thus far. And didn’t Applejack tell you all about it?”

“M’sister mostly wanted to talk about apples. Said they were darn tasty, and they were, cause I had a bite of some. But, uh, just between the three of us...” He leaned in close, even though anyone whom he was trying to hide from was in another universe. “...I like apples fine, but I don’t obsess over them. Sometimes I think that Applejack wouldn’t go wrong eatin’ an orange or banana now and then.”

“Or a pear?”

“Sure, pears are good,” said Big Macintosh.

Derpy let the tangent play out, then said, “So really nopony’s told you about Earth? I mean, I could have sat down with you and discussed anything you wanted to.”

“Granny always taught me that if ya really want to know something, you got to go see for yourself.”

“We have some people like that on Earth, too,” said Karyn. “I can see how it makes sense.”

She started toward the computer, but then decided against it. In the first place, Big Macintosh didn’t strike her as the kind of pony who would be good with complex technology. Derpy wasn’t either, but she was eager to learn. Mac liked to know. She recognized the difference from some of her users. Second, she doubted that seeing Earth on a screen would fulfill his requirement of seeing the Earth directly. And most of all, it was getting cramped in the little apartment. Ponies were big enough on their own, but Big Macintosh was almost the size of a full-grown horse, and the apartment wasn’t built for horses.

“So, yep, got to make sure this trip is safe for such a delicate flower.”

“You really are protective of Apple Bloom, huh?” said Derpy.

“Never said it was Apple Bloom.”

“Oh. I just figured...and then you said a delicate flower, so that’s why I thought of Apple Bloom...plus you said she went to visit relatives in Apploosa. Oh! You must mean Granny Smith. Yes, I can definitely see how you’d want to be careful with her.”

“Nope.”

“You wouldn’t want to be careful with her?”

Big Macintosh clammed up again, and Karyn had to step in. “I think he means that it’s not Granny Smith either who he wants to make sure that Earth is safe for. If I had to guess, and more so from that ‘delicate flower’ comment, he’s laying the ground for a visit from Cheerilee.”

If he was silent before, now Big Macintosh’s mouth sealed shut. And despite the redness of his coat, they could see the blood flush to his cheeks. Karyn went to twist the knife. “It’s her, isn’t it? Your special somepony, Cheerilee?”

He couldn’t even look them in the eye as he said, “Yep.”

“Ha! I knew that love poison they gave you had long-lasting effects.”

Derpy didn’t understand the reference, but she was more focused on Macintosh’s reaction. “You shouldn’t be embarassed to say that you love somepony. It’s sweet.”

“No, it is sweet that he’s embarassed. On Earth, there’s a growing stigma about males who want to be protective of ladies whom they’re sweet on, because it’s selfish to put them on a pedestal. But we know that when Big Mac wants to ensure that Cheerilee doesn’t encounter any problems, it’s because he genuinely cares about her.”

“Plus he’s strong enough to actually protect her from physical dangers.”

Karyn saw another opportunity. “Are you sure you’re not sweet on him yourself?”

But Derpy didn’t take the bait. “He’s a fine stallion. Cheerilee’s a lucky mare.”

“I’m sure she is. Anyway, what is it that she’s looking to do?”

Big Macintosh was happy that the conversation finally got past the first cold-water dip into the pool of his romantic life, and had settled in for practicalities. “She’s a teacher, she is.”

“We know that.”

“And what she really wants to do is teach a class of humans. Even one lesson. To give as much as she knows about Equestria to people who don’t know nothing about us, she says that would be the peak of her profession.”

Karyn shook her head. “That we can’t do. It’s fine for any one person to see a pony, but if a whole group could tell the same story and all agree, it would get out to the general public, and a lot of things that the princesses don’t want to happen would happen.”

In his taciturn way, Big Macintosh thought about that, then said, “I’m sure I can convince her just to watch a class. She can find out all about the Earth and then teach it to the little foals back in Ponyville.”

“If you can, that would be best. But what is it that you would need to protect her from, if it’s just a group of kids she wants to see?”

“Just that. Some foals can get awfully rowdy.”

Derpy coughed and laughed. “Really? It’s just a few colts and fillies. How bad can it be?”

Now it was Big Macintosh and Karyn who shared a knowing look. Derpy’s only impression of a foal was what she got from Dinky. And despite whatever rebellious phases she was going through as a mare, she was still the model child that any parent would be grateful to get to raise. Big Macintosh had had to be the father figure for two fillies, one of whom he was significantly older than, and Karyn, though an only child, knew plenty of brats.

“Nonetheless,” he said, “I want to watch out that she doesn’t get a class of bad’uns.”

“Well, this works out perfect, since Karyn just finished working for a school.”

Macintosh looked at Karyn with a new respect. “You’re a teacher?”

“Oh, no. Schools here are more complicated than just the little room where Cheerilee teaches. And the school I worked at is the last place that we’d want to show Cheerilee for all the reasons we were talking about.”

Now his curiosity had been piqued. “Why’s that?”

“Well, let’s just put it this way. When kids do so bad at the kind of school that Miss Cheerilee might teach at, they get sent to the school where I worked.”

“But you didn’t teach ‘em?”

“Karyn works with computers,” Derpy said. “If Cheerilee had these, she could teach all the little foals about them. If they worked in Equestria, which they don’t, because we don’t have electricity, and if they could connect to the networks, which they can’t because the protocols aren’t made to handle the cross-universe traffic.”

Mac stared at her for a long while. It was clear that he hadn’t understood any of what she just said. Karyn knew the type who understood their limitations. Derpy didn’t. Karyn concluded that, for all her learned knowledge, Derpy would make a bad support tech. She could never have the patience with anyone who didn’t care to learn as much as her.

“Well, if it’s all the same to y’all, I’d like to see this place you work at. Maybe it’s not so bad.” Big Macintosh stomped a hoof that left no room for further argument. Karyn got her purse.

Derpy took the front seat, and Big Macintosh filled most of the back. He was a little interested in how the car worked, but he was far more interested in getting where they were going. Karyn got to drive the route that she had taken all summer, and it felt good to be able to go over familiar roads without having a deadline to get to work, and knowing that when she got there there would be no work for her to do, neither that day nor evermore. It felt, she thought, a little like what she hoped retirement would be.

What she did have to accomplish, of course, was figuring out the best way to get Cheerilee the view of Earth that she wanted. And she realized that her perpetual problem with Derpy could not, in this case, be avoided.

“Now, like I said, there are many downsides to using this school to show Cheerilee. But one upside is that they still do things on Sunday. If we want to see a different school, it’ll have to be on a weekday, and I suppose that might mean that Cheerilee will need a substitue for her class. If you have substitutes.”

“Somepony’ll do it,” said Big Macintosh, “even if it has to be me.”

Karyn winced at the image of Big Mac standing up in front of a classroom of foals. Half of them would probably be crying at his intimidating nature, which would make him panic, which would in turn cause him to make an even stronger blunder, and so on.

They arrived, and Karyn parked at a discreet distance from the school. Any passerby could conclude that Karyn was simply in the area and had walked off to one of the houses or stores around. Then she got on Derpy’s back for a quick deactivation and reactivation of the invisibility spell. It was a maneuver that she was getting used to, and she felt confident that she could do it quickly and surreptitiously enough to avoid attention.

She guided Derpy, with Big Mac following her sound and her scent, along the path she had taken to her office, but then went beyond that looking for any sign of activity. Again she enjoyed being on familiar territory with no obligations.

They crept around to some of the classrooms. Most of them were dark and uninhabited. At last Karyn came to one that had a light on, and to her satisfaction it was a computer class.

“I think there’s enough room for us. Look at the far wall, there’s no reason for anyone to go there. We’ll be safe when we get there, but that could be difficult. Light tread, Big Mac, and don’t bump anything.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll make like I’ve got a bushel of apples on my back. Never bruised a one.”

She trusted him, and with just a little opening in the door, they snuck in. Now she got a chance to see what they were learning. It seemed more creative than informative; they were working with the popular presentation software that Karyn didn’t care for. What made her seethe was that the presentations they were making were laden with references to criminal activity, drugs, anger, and an entire culture she did not like. It helped that they were learning the software, but none of the students seemed to be taking the assignment seriously.

What she wanted was to talk it over with Derpy, but of course she couldn’t. She might be acting too harsh, and maybe the important thing was for the teacher to get through to them.

In fact there were two teachers in the room, one actively examining each student’s presentation, and the other working at the desk, who Karyn thought might be more for security and in fact reminded her a little of Big Macintosh. That pony, though following the instructions to stay in one place, craned his neck this way and that to catch the goings on of the class. The equipment was still new to him.

The roaming teacher got close to them, and they had to do some shuffling to give her clearance as she looked at one of the students’ work. With a gentle tone, she said, “It looks good, but remember what we talked about civility and considering others’ feelings.”

The student began his sentence with a rude word. “...other’s feelings. That’s bull—“ and here he was cut off. For although the ponies did not know the word he used, they could tell the sentiment. And since Karyn did not feel Derpy move from underneath her, she concluded that the only reason that the student’s head jerked back was that he had just been cuffed in the chin by Big Macintosh.

Big Macintosh was a pony who understood rules, and so even though he had broken one, fortunately he had still not made any noise beyond an exasperated snort. Karyn and Derpy dragged him out of the room, though clearly he went of his own accord. Not even with all their strength could they have pulled him out if he didn’t want to go.

It wasn’t until they got him back by the car that they spoke. Derpy stomped her hoof and gave a snort that, while daintier, had a similarity to his.

“What were you thinking?! You can’t give yourself away.”

“I agree. And neither can Cheerilee. There’s no way I’m lettin’ her come here when there’s all them ruffians around here. For a student to talk back to the teacher like that, it’s just unheard of!”

Derpy had never heard Big Macintosh so intense. Karyn had, the time that his sister and her friends had run the gossip column. She tried to reason with him. “Is it really your place to say that she can or can’t come?”

“Well, I mean I won’t order her or nothing, but generally she listens to me when I tell her what’s what. And what we saw there...” He shuddered.

Karyn gentled her tone. “I wasn’t pleased with what we saw, but you’ve got to remember that those kids are some of the worst.” She didn’t know if Equestria had any concept of a reform school, so she groped for an analogy. “Imagine a whole class full of nothing but Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Because every town had their own Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon and sent them all to one school so that everypony else could learn better.”

“But they’re fine, upstanding mares.”

Again the difference in times got to her. “I mean when they went to school. Ask your little sister to tell you some stories of how they acted when they were all classmates.”

“Even so, I’m going to recommend to Cheerilee not to come here. What’s she going to get out of it?”

Karyn had no answer to that, but Derpy, also with calm in her voice, said, “You can’t know what you’ll get out of Earth until you come here. Maybe all you’ll get is a feeling of how being on Sweet Apple Acres is the best place for you, all your life. Like when Applejack went to Manehattan. But maybe Cheerilee will get something else out of it. I mean, I’m just like you in that I’m a homebody, with not a lot of curiosity. But when I started coming to Earth, after the fact it grew on me. Now I think I learn something every week.”

Big Macintosh thought for a long while. The girls gave him his time. They knew that he liked to work things through. “Well, can we at least see a school of good foals?”

“We can’t see a class like we saw there,” said Karyn, “Because they don’t operate on Sundays. This one did because they have to have all the youths occupied.”

“I get that, but can we see the building?”

“I don’t see why not.”

They got back in the car, and Karyn searched on her phone for an elementary school close by. She knew that they liked to space them out so that the students didn’t have to go on long bus trips. After shutting off the phone, they got on the road.

Derpy leaned over and said, “Can we even drive into a school? I know how big Earth people are about security.”

“We can’t go in the building, but we can park there. They have open lots for if anyone wants to use the ball fields or such.”

As she said, they pulled into the parking lot past the bus lane with ease. No one else was around, and Karyn didn’t bother to make herself invisible again. It was perfectly legal to peer into windows, and that’s what she and the ponies did.

All the classrooms were on the ground floor, and the school consisted of two large squares connected by hallways and offices. Some of the classrooms had curtains, but many were open and they could see some of the work hanging on the walls. In the first- and second-grade classes, they consisted of carefully hand-drawn letters and crayon artwork. Big Macintosh stopped in front of one such window.

“What is it?” asked Derpy.

“There.”

“We can’t see where you’re pointing.”

“On the far wall, there’s a picture of a pony.”

She looked. “So there is.”

Karyn nodded. “A lot of people like drawing ponies. Especially little kids.”

Again there was a long silence as Big Mac went pensive, then he said, “All right. Cheerilee can come.”

“Great!” said Derpy. “What made you change your mind?”

Karyn laughed. “I’ll explain later. Let’s get Big Macintosh home so he can prepare Cheerilee for what we’ll see.”

“Just to make sure,” he said, “your school was like this one, right?”

“Not the building. It had a smaller area but was taller. It had these massive ornamented archways over the doors. That’s what I remember most about my elementary school. The doors. Probably from wanting to go out them so much.”

“But did you draw ponies as a foal?”

Karyn put a hand on his shoulder and felt his musculature. “Kid. The word for a human child is kid, just like a goat. And no, I didn’t, but I’m sure there were people who did. Even though people on Earth complain about loss of innocence, the kids are still mostly the same. I think Cheerilee will have a good time.”

“All right.”

They drove home and sent Big Macintosh back to Equestria. Derpy and Karyn had their usual few minutes alone, when Karyn decided to needle Derpy some more. “Big Macintosh is quite the stallion. If only Cheerilee were out of the picture...”

“Really? You and him? I figured you would want to stay with human boys.”

“No, I meant that...never mind. At least he listened to reason. Now we’ve just got to keep Cheerilee safe so that he doesn’t come back and trample us.”

F03: Class Derpmissed

Author's Note

Once again we have a contributing suggestion from a reader, this one being Yoshi1990, for whom I've done proofreading in the past, and who is a great guy. Coming next week though is a guest I think many people will be happy with!

F03: Class Derpmissed

“Hey, I was thinking of something this week,” said Karyn as Derpy arrived, “and I wrote myself a note on the computer to ask you, so now I can finally get rid of it.”

“You haven’t asked me yet,” Derpy replied. She was eager to get back to Equestria, where Cheerilee was waiting.

“True, but I do remember. Whatever became of that letter you got from the post office and wanted to deliver. Have you done anything with it?”

“Oh? No. Last week I got caught up a bit with everything that went on with Big Macintosh.”

Karyn pursed her lips and nodded. “And before that, Dinky was here, so I’m sure that you were obsessing over her.”

“Actually, I had some free time, but it didn’t feel right to do anything about the letter then, you know?”

“No, why?”

Derpy gestured to the air around her, then hugged herself with her hooves. “It’s hard to describe, but it feels like the day that I found that letter, and last week with Big Mac, and this week too; like they’re all part of some separate continuum, as if things we do here can’t affect how we normally interact with each other, and vice versa.”

Karyn stared at her, but she didn’t pursue it any further. “Why don’t you go ahead and get Cheerilee. She is set to come, right?”

“Yes. Wait here.”

Derpy returned with the teacher, who looked around the apartment. “Oh, it’s just like Big Mac told me it would be. Thank you, Karyn, for having me here.”

“Not at all.”

“Though I must say that it doesn’t feel right for me to have had to ask Berry Punch to substitute for me in class.”

Karyn was taken aback. “She’s a teacher? And fit to handle your students?”

“Normally she teaches the older foals. When she’s not pursuing her other passions.”

Neither one wanted to gossip further about Berry. Derpy said, “Speaking of which, since it’s a weekday, how did you get off from classes, Karyn?”

“I picked this day specifically because I only have one class today. As to that one, I was completely honest and said that I had some friends to entertain, and could I miss one lecture? The professor was very accommodating. And how did you get off work.”

“Took a personal day.”

Karyn laughed at such a human response from Derpy, but if ponies had personal days, it wasn’t her place to question. “Well, Cheerilee, it looks like you’re the only one who’s actually regretting missing work.”

“Well,” she said, “not meaning any disrespect, but teaching is a little different from delivering the mail. I’m trying to run a yearlong program to bring all the foals up to the next stage of development. Delivering the mail is more of a...linear job.”

“You can say what you mean,” Derpy said with a smile. “That I do the same thing every day.”

“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“I understand. But as much as I love my job, I don’t think I have the passion for it that you do. For teaching, I mean, not for delivering the mail. You don’t do that.”

Cheerilee walked backwards to the edge of the room, as if she needed a wall behind her to adequately speak to more than one pony. “I think that stems from when I was a little filly in school. I loved it so much that I never wanted to leave. So now I pour my heart into every class I teach so that I won’t ever have to, and maybe somepony will feel the same way.”

“That’s sweet,” said Karyn. “Derpy, how did you like school?”

“Oh, well, you know that I was so busy at home that I didn’t have a chance to learn much. Plus I’m not fast at picking up new things. I don’t think my teacher was as nice as Cheerilee, either. But I can’t be sure.”

Cheerilee sighed. “I’m sorry you didn’t have a good experience. But I’ve dealt with ponies like you, and I don’t think it’s ever too late. I’m hoping to see how humans handle their school, and hopefully feel the same thrill I do in class. Maybe then I can show it to you.”

Now Karyn had to step in. “I can’t promise that it will be like teaching your classes back in Ponyville.”

“I know. Big Macintosh told me what he saw when he was here.”

“Well, we’ll be taking you to a nicer school, but there might still be some children who don’t mind what the teacher says. Or the teachers might not be as dedicated. Some of them only do it for the money and because they get summers off.”

“They get summers off?” asked Cheerilee. “Wow, maybe I should teach here. I’m kidding of course. Let’s get the invisibility spell going so we can make the first bell.”

Karyn was pleased that Cheerilee was so astute about the protocol for a pony on Earth. She led them to the car, and Cheerilee was even willing to take the passenger seat instead of the back.

“Big Macintosh told me that the back was more comfortable, so, Derpy, if you’d like to take it...”

“Oh, no! I’m used to the front seat. I’ll take more time for you to find the right way to sit. Lie down in the back and your head’s perfectly positioned to look out the side window.”

Again Karyn grinned at the bonhomie that they all shared, and part of her wondered if it was because they were all girls. But she dismissed that thought as sexist.

They reached the school, and Karyn parked at the far end of the parking lot. “Now, I’m going to have to ask you to extend the invisibility spell on to me, Derpy. They’re generally not too happy when older people who have no reason to be around particular children show up to watch.”

“Can we go inside?” that pony asked. “Or do we have to watch through the window again?”

“I think we can get in there, but be careful. Human kids are tiny, and they can run into you very easily.”

“If it’s all right, I’m going to watch from out here. You and Cheerilee go inside, and then join me when you have the chance.”

Karyn walked in front of Derpy so she could be heard clearer. “Are you sure? You’re not afraid of the kids, are you?”

“No, but it’s a nice autumn day, I just want to enjoy the fresh air a little more. Cheerilee’s more interested than I am anyway.”

Cheerilee and Karyn entered the building. Now Karyn had to pick a classroom to go in, and she didn’t know her way around. It wouldn’t do for Cheerilee to go into, say, a fifth grade class and hear some boring lesson on long division. She wanted to see real grade school kids.

They poked around until Karyn found one that she was happy with. Perhaps it helped that the teacher vaguely resembled a human version of Cheerilee. They snuck in and watched.

The teacher was going over spelling words with the kids, some of them having harder times than others. Karyn was impressed with the patience the teacher showed, as well as how she doled out her attention to the problem students while still ensuring that none of the other students could get rowdy.

Cheerilee had the art of walking softly down, perhaps, Karyn thought, from sneaking up on unsuspecting students. But she weaved her way in and out of the rows of desks until at last the teacher said, “OK, let’s put this away for now and do our drawings.” The kids were happy with this and pencils were replaced on the desks with crayons and markers.

Cheerilee kept walking through the aisles. Karyn just hung at the back and waited for Cheerilee to come by. When the got to the farthest row from the door, where the kids could look out the window, she dashed back to Karyn and poked her with a hoof. They had neither visual nor spoken communication, but Karyn could sense the urgency of the request. At the second desk up Karyn felt a hoof stop her, and she looked at the drawing in progress.

There, on the child’s paper, was a crude cartoon of Derpy.

Karyn’s first instinct was that the child was a My Little Pony fan like her, and liked Derpy Hooves as many fans did. But the setting was right outside, and when the teacher came over to ask what she was working on, the little girl said, “There’s a gray pony outside the school.”

The good part was that the teacher didn’t believe her, and assumed that she was making up a story to go along with her drawing. But Karyn was still in a panic. She grabbed Cheerilee and ran as softly as they could to the door. Once in the hall they threw caution to the wind and made as much noise as they needed to to get outside.

“Derpy!” Karyn yelled.

“What’s wrong?”

“You haven’t stopped being invisible, have you?”

“No, of course not, why?”

“Because I think one of the kids can see you.”

“What?! How?”

Karyn looked around, feeling very self-conscious. “I don’t know. But if she can maybe the spell is failing. If it happened with the transportation spell it could happen with this one too. Thanks, Cheerilee for pointing it out to me.”

“Not at all. Now, are we going to have to abandon this outing?”

Derpy and Karyn, though they couldn’t look at each other, both inhaled sharply at the same time. “Well...” they said in unison.

They played a silent game of chicken over who would speak first. Derpy really wanted Karyn to take the lead, but she knew it was her responsibility to say what needed to be said.

“It’s just that to Karyn it’s very important to keep us secret. And if it’s important to her it’s important to me too. So we should retreat back to Karyn’s apartment and figure out what’s wrong with the spell.”

Cheerilee’s voice took on a tone that they hadn’t yet heard. Derpy guessed it was how she corrected foals who made mistakes in her class. “We haven’t yet confirmed that the spell has gone wrong, and I think we need to stay here and investigate this. If possible, we should examine the young human and see if she really can see us. I might even talk with her.”

Derpy’s mettle had given out, so it was Karyn’s turn. “I don’t know. If you’re wrong, things could get out of hand quickly.”

“I really think this is the best course of action. If need be, we can return to Equestria at a moment’s notice. I’ll take the risk of any differences in height above ground.”

Again Karyn had to be impressed with how quickly Cheerilee had picked up the nuances of interworld travel.

“All right, fine. We’ll see what we can find out.”

“The good part,” said Derpy, “is that if she can see us, we can ask her questions as to why she can, and no one else will see.”

“Yes, except that might make them think she has imaginary friends, which could get her bullied or worse. No, I have an idea...”

The school bell rang, and the teachers were escorting their charges onto the field for recess. With so many of them, Karyn hoped that one child out of place wouldn’t be noticed. On the side of the building, she had Derpy remove her invisibility, then morphed into a seven-year-old version of herself.

“Aww, you look so cute!” Derpy gave her cheeks a pinch with her hoof.

“Yeah, but I think I’ll change my hair color. I look too much like what I actually did at this age. I’ve also got too deep a voice for a grade-schooler, but it’ll have to do.”

Now wearing black hair, Karyn led the mares out onto the field. Struggling to remember how young girls acted, she walked up to the girl. “Hi. I’m Karyn.”

“I’m Chelsea. Are those horseys yours?”

Well, at least there was no difficulty getting to the subject. “No. If anything else, I’m theirs. But how come you can see them?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Hello, horsey!”

It was Derpy’s voice that responded. “Hello, little one. Chelsea, was it? I’m Derpy. Do you know that name?”

“No. It’s kind of a funny name, isn’t it? But that’s OK.”

“So, do you know anything about magic? Because no one’s supposed to be able to see me because of a spell.”

“We already finished with spelling class.”

Karyn thought that was the kind of thing that Derpy would say. She also realized how used she was to being able to use Derpy’s magic to hold private conversations with her friend while discussing what to do. In any other situation, she would excuse herself and motion for Derpy to come with her, then plan out their next move while the person thought she was alone. But now it would be rude to walk away from Chelsea, even at her apparent age.

But before she had to respond, Cheerilee stepped in. “May I speak to the child?”

“Of course.”

“My name is Miss Cheerilee. I’m a teacher myself. All of my students would be fascinated by you if they were here.”

“Are they horseys too?”

Cheerilee stood taller in front of Chelsea. It felt odd to Karyn to have to look up to talk to a pony as opposed to down. “We’re called ponies, dear, not horseys.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you like ponies?”

“They’re OK, I guess. But you seem nice. Of course, I never talked to a pony before.”

“Back where I come from all the ponies talk.”

“What about the people?”

“The ponies are the people,” said Cheerilee. Derpy and Karyn moved to the side, but still where Chelsea could see them.

Karyn spoke under her breath to Derpy. “I can’t believe how casually that little girl’s taking everything. I would have been amazed if I saw a pegasus and a talking pony when I was her age.”

“I’m more impressed with how well Cheerilee can handle her. She must have a lot of experience getting young ones like that to pay attention. You and I couldn’t do anything.”

“Now,” Cheerilee said in her lecturing tone, “have you noticed that none of the other children mentioned me or my friend?”

“I did think that was a little weird.”

“That’s because we’re magically invisible. But not to you. Do you know why that is?”

“No, I don’t.” It seemed like Chelsea wasn’t sure if she was in trouble for being able to see the ponies, or if Cheerilee’s question was rhetorical and she would give the answer momentarily.

“We don’t either, but it’s important for us to find out. Now, have you ever encountered any other magic?”

“Not like this, but I always hoped that when I turned thirteen I’d get to go off an learn magic and become a witch!”

Karyn got the child’s reference, of course, but neither of the ponies did. She chuckled, but Cheerilee was dead serious.

“The only witches we have where I come from are things that ponies dress up as for Nightmare Night. Do you have that here?”

“You mean Halloween? Yeah.”

Cheerilee looked to Derpy for help, as she was beginning to get out of her depth, but in the first place Derpy couldn’t see her look, and in the second, even she hoped that Karyn would answer first, which was what happened.

“Now, I wasn’t there when it all started, when Lyra first discovered Earth from Equestria and Hank and she were figuring it all out, but from what I’ve gathered, the fictions in our universe have their own universes and their own magics can find us, possibly. But what no one knows, as least in this universe where there’s no magic at all, is what happens when two different types of magic intersect. If Chelsea here is somehow the focus of some other magical universe, it’s possible that that’s why she can see you two.”

Chelsea, as kids are wont to do, focused on the one part of Karyn’s guess that was relevant to her. “Does that mean that I will get my letter to become a witch someday?”

“Ha, I don’t know, but it’s certain that you’re different from everyone else. So don’t ever let anyone tell you that they’re just stories and that there’s no real magic in the world. Promise?”

“Promise.”

Now that they had an answer, or at least a guess, as to why Chelsea could see past the invisibility spell, the mood relaxed. Cheerilee said to her, “Why don’t you play with Derpy for a little while? I want to talk to Karyn.”

Karyn followed Cheerilee, but stayed close, since she didn’t think that Chelsea and Derpy had much in common. “Yes?”

“I know that Big Macintosh said I couldn’t, but would it be all right if I spoke to this little girl and taught her? It would be exactly what I wanted out of this trip to begin with.”

“Well, you’d be limited by the time of recess, which at this point would be about twenty minutes.”

“It’s better than nothing. But if that’s the case, let’s begin as soon as possible.”

Karyn agreed. “I’d like to change back. This body’s awfully cramped.”

They returned quickly. It amazed Karyn how anyone could meet Derpy and not automatically think she was the sweetest person in the world, but Chelsea was more about cool than cute, so they didn’t mix. Cheerilee took the lead. “I know it’s recess, but since this is the only chance we’ll have to talk, would you like me to tell you some things about where I come from?”

“That would be nice. You’re a lot cooler than my regular teacher.”

Everyone had a good laugh at that, and Chelsea sat on the blacktop against the school wall. Karyn and Derpy half-listened as well. It was enlightening to hear what they already knew so well put into simplest terms. They heard as Cheerilee talked about the three types of pony, and about the princesses, and about cutie marks. Chelsea in turn wanted to talk about witches and wands and potions, and Karyn noted that she was not restricting herself to one canon, but picking and choosing the best of several series. The child was clearly well-read, and had a creative mind besides.

“It’s a shame,” Cheerilee said, “that we don’t have a unicorn here to show you their kind of magic. I think it’s the type you would most identify with since you favor active spellcasting over what I can do as an Earth pony.”

There followed another brief lecture on some of the Earth pony powers that were often overlooked by pegasi and unicorns.

Chelsea had kept her composure throughout the encounter, but only after hearing that did she look down at her shoes and really open up. “Of course, if I’m not a witch, or even if I am, I’ll still need to do some job, and that bugs me. Even you ponies, you’re a teacher. Being a pony isn’t enough.”

Karyn grinned. “In that case, I could recommend going into computers like I’m doing. It’s almost like magic without any actual breaking of physics.”

She stared. “What happened to your little sister?”

And so Cheerilee had to explain further about changelings, and how Karyn was one of them. Karyn filled in some of the story, and after that it was time for Chelsea to go back in to class.

“Well, that was an interesting encounter,” said Derpy. “Do you think we will see her often, now that she’s in on the secret?”

“I don’t know,” Karyn replied. “I get the feeling that this was one of those encounters that can’t be repeated. Like that she won’t ever really understand Equestrians, and we won’t understand her powers.”

Cheerilee hadn’t stopped using her classroom voice. “I for one am more than ecstatic. After everything that Big Macintosh said last week, I expected a much different visit. One where I would just sit in the corner watching a human teacher, and probably thinking how I would do it differently. Instead, I got a chance to teach.”

“More like tutoring. But so long as you’re happy. Are you ready to get back to Equestria?”

“Indeed! I want to write up this visit into a lesson plan and tell all my little students about it!”

They returned to Karyn’s apartment, but this time Cheerilee took no notice of the scenery passing by the window. She was lost in her memories, trying to put it all into a single narrative. When she finally arrived she was eager to get back and get her hoof on a quill and scroll, so that she wouldn’t lose any of her thoughts.

Derpy smiled at Karyn. “Another successful visit, I’d say.”

“Yes. I think we’ve got these down to a science. I only hope that they never turn out boring.”

“Maybe for us, but never for the pony who comes here. Even Big Macintosh, though he was just paving the way for Cheerilee, I think he would say he had a good time.”

Karyn eyed the stack of books piled next to her laptop. “And now I have another week of work before we meet again. But when it comes to visits, I’m still the happiest with Dinky’s. I hope I see her again soon.”

“So do I.”

119: Uniderpified Flying Object

The wind that blew through Karyn’s window bore a chill, and like a new streak of color in a painting in progress, it made her take notice. Soon she could no longer sport short-sleeve shirts or sundresses. She would once again envy Derpy for having her fur coat. Whatever the calendar said, autumn was here.

It was not yet cold enough for her to put her hands around her cup of coffee and huddle with it to her face, but the steam pouring forth from the mug opened her pores and her sinuses, and she sipped and raised the mug to Derpy who was sitting across the way.

“Yes, it’s good coffee,” Derpy said.

“I wasn’t really saying that, but it is. I changed brands.”

Derpy didn’t respond, and Karyn was OK with that. A nice, relaxing day, with conversations at a slow pace, was exactly what she wanted. “We don’t have anypony coming for a visit, do we?”

Derpy thought about it. “No. But at some point I still have to sort out the bags. One’s still in Canterlot with Dinky.”

“Yeah, we should get on that.”

They finished their coffee and breakfast, and Derpy took her usual perch on the bed. Karyn didn’t even want to sit in the chair, so she joined Derpy on the bed, both lying perpendicular to the usual direction with their feet dangling off.

“We’re being so lazy today,” said Derpy.

“Yeah, a lazy Sunday. I don’t know why they chose that day rather than Saturday to label as open for laziness.”

“Probably for church reasons. If I remember right that was a tradition on Earth.”

“Yeah, but I don’t consider it laziness, having to get up early and dress in your best—meaning stuffiest—clothes and traipse down to hear a sermon.”

Another conversational pause, and then, “So how was your week?”

“A little intense. On Thursday we had a blackout. You probably don’t have to deal with those.”

“No, explain. Please.”

Karyn laughed internally at Derpy’s hastily remembered manners. “Well, we all get our electricity from the power companies, and if they fail, then everything gets shut off at once. Unless it has batteries. Sometimes it happens for a reason, like when there’s a storm and some of the lines get blown down, but other times there’s just too much of a drain on the system. The last time it happened was about ten years ago, on the Eastern Seaboard, but this week it happened here. Everything was down for about six hours.”

“So you didn’t have any lights? That’s why they call it a blackout?”

“Yes, but that didn’t actually happen this time, since it started at two in the afternoon. So the sun was still up—that doesn’t go away. One of my classes was canceled, but it was no fun, because I couldn’t just come back and play on the computer. The laptop has a battery, but the router and modem don’t, so I can’t get any internet.”

Derpy thought that that should have been relaxing enough for Karyn, but then she considered further, and realizing that not knowing when things would come back on, and if she was going to have to go to bed as soon as the sun set, would be rather stressful. “Sorry for that.”

“Meh, it’s over now and hopefully it’ll be another ten years until the next one. How was your week? Anything similar in Ponyville?”

“No, nothing going down. The only excitement was when a couple of traveling salesponies came through.”

That finally got Karyn to pick her head up. “Not the Flim Flam brothers?”

“Yeah! Nice guys. I met them, had a little chat.”

“You didn’t buy anything from them, did you? They’re scam artists, or were back in the day.”

“No. I offered them to be some of our pony guests here on Earth, but they just laughed and called me a funny little filly. It was kind of condescending, but I’m used to that.”

Karyn never liked when Derpy accepted other ponies bullying her, but in this case it cut particularly sharp. “I wouldn’t have wanted them as guests anyway.”

Derpy shrugged. “What do you want to do now?”

“Dunno. Let me check the web site for the local news to see if there are any fun events today. They usually have a section for that.”

Karyn twisted and sat up, stretching as if she had just woken, and walked over to the laptop. After a moment, Derpy, still staring at the ceiling, heard her say, “Oh, wow!”

“What’s up?”

“There was a spate of UFO sightings in the town.”

“A what?”

“A spate. Their word, not mine.”

Derpy got up. “No, I knew that word, what’s a UFO?”

“Unidentified flying object. Which people usually think means that it’s aliens. These things flare up and die down, and they’re never proven. Usually it turns out that people are seeing regular planes or balloons or such but they can’t tell exactly and they panic.”

“I want to see one!”

Karyn sighed. “No, you don’t. No one believes people who say they’ve seen them. Plus we can’t say when or where they’ll be. Hmm.”

“What?”

“Well, in this article they say that there’s a location where people are gathering. They don’t necessarily see them there, but there are all sorts of weird lights and such.”

Derpy was now fully off the bed. All thoughts of relaxation were gone. “We’ve got to see that. Maybe I can meet one of the aliens and broker peace between them and the humans.”

“I bet you could. I see no reason not to go down there. It’s better than just hanging around the apartment all day. But probably it’s going to be a bunch of crackpots in weird outfits fussing over nothing.”

“So not that far off from when we went to the pony convention, right?”

Karyn pulled up short, and was about to say that it was completely different, but she couldn’t quite describe how.

They got in the car, at which point Karyn realized that she didn’t know quite where she was going. The news article hadn’t been specific, and she couldn’t very well put “nearest UFO crash site” into her GPS. She recalled the article on her phone and, though it didn’t have an address, she could tell the general direction in which to drive. Once they got there, her plan was to find a place to park and walk around.

All was well as they left the city and drove for a few exits on the highway, but once they got into the boondock area that Karyn believed to be their target, they hit heavy traffic, and they soon saw why. A throng of people were in the streets, and traffic cops were out directing cars to detours. The detours did not lead around; they led back.

If one good thing came of it, Derpy finally understood Karyn’s unspeakable distinction between the people at the pony convention and those there for the sighting. The ones present were older, and there were fewer costumes, but more than that it was the eyes. The people looked like they were waiting for someone to challenge their beliefs, and would relish the argument.

When the detours led them back to the highway, there was a stoplight and a gas station right before the entrance, and Karyn pulled in to decide what to do next.

“Do you think we should sneak through the crowd?” asked Derpy. “Between my invisibility and your changeling powers, we can go just about anywhere.”

“We can, but we’re not going to see anything good. What I was thinking is that we might go to Equestria.”

“Yeah? Any particular reason?”

Karyn looked around the gas station, which also had a garage and convenience store. Both were, in their own way, greasy. “For one, I would like to see some nicer scenery. But also, you mentioned that Flim and Flam were in town. I’d like to see their act. I don’t intend on buying anything—or letting you buy anything—but I bet they put on a good show.”

Derpy was more ambivalent, but she agreed and they got out of the car. It presented a small difficulty finding a private spot to activate the spell, since the area behind the garage was overgrown with weeds, and hiding there would mean being slapped with plants that Karyn didn’t trust, not to mention having no reason to be there. So they settled for walking a little bit up the highway and waiting for a moment when no cars were within view.

Once in Ponyville, Karyn looked around for where the brothers would have set up. She anticipated them in the main square where they would get the biggest “house” and have the best chance for sales, but it just looked like an ordinary Sunday.

“What do you figure?”

“I don’t know. They only came into town yesterday, so maybe they’re setting up their pitch for the week.”

Karyn got an idea. “Unless they’re in the market. Taking away everypony else’s business would be right up their alley.”

Derpy and she headed for the bazaar, but again saw nothing out of whack. She found the stand with the shortest line and waited a few minutes to get to the head.

“What kind of cheese this week, Derpy?”

“Hey, Whey. I’ll get some in a minute, but what do you hear about the Flim Flam brothers. Word was that they were setting up for a pitch?”

The mare behind the stand shook her head. “I saw them too, but nothing since. And between you and me, that’s for the better.”

“Thanks.” Derpy bought some cheese anyway, because she knew the sellers’ time was valuable, and she and Karyn split it as they kept walking.

“I forgot that you guys eat cheese too; I keep thinking of you as vegans. Was that pony Milky Way?”

“No, it’s just Whey. She runs the stand with her sister Curd. Never heard of the one you’re talking about.”

Karyn shrugged, and concluded that not everything that she read was canon after all.

They made their way idly through the market, happy to have the relaxing day they’d planned, when at the edge they met Twilight Sparkle.

“Princess,” Karyn said by way of greeting.

“Hello. It’s been a long time. Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes.”

Derpy was still fixed on her question. “Did you hear anything about Flim and Flam, the salesponies? Karyn expected them to be here and wanted to see their act.”

“I think that the mayor was going to make some trouble and ask them to get a permit before they sold anything, but I cautioned her against it for fear of settling a precedent. But it was a moot point since they haven’t asked for the permit. Last I heard they had set up their cart down in the residential area. Opposite from where you live.”

“OK, we’ll check it out, thanks.”

Karyn wondered if it wouldn’t be rude to speak so briefly to Twilight, but Derpy was already on her way in the direction that Twilight had indicated, so she followed.

“What are you going to do if they’re just hanging out there before they move on to the next town?” she asked. “There’s no guarantee that they’re here to sell something.”

“Ponies like that don’t go to a place unless they’ve got something in the works. Let’s see. Hmm.”

They came up on an alley. Karyn trusted that Derpy knew where she was going, and in fact Derpy suspected this alley as the only place where one could reasonably put a cart. No cart was there, but it appeared that there had been one. A wagon wheel lay on its side, and the broken half of another was a few feet away. Closer to the front of the alley, a double harness was on the ground, neatly sawn off a short distance from where the horse or pony would strap in to pull the cart.

“It looks like they met with an accident,” said Karyn. “Or else they ticked off somepony who broke their cart.”

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be that. If they wanted to come in here, they would have backed in, and in doing so could have broken their wheels.”

“OK, but then why would their harnesses be here?”

Derpy scratched her head. “What if they were stuck, and the only way to get out was to saw off the harnesses?”

“Where would they get the saw?”

“If they had one, they could have used magic. They are unicorns, remember.”

Karyn had been crouching by the harness. “I do remember, and I still don’t see how that could happen. Why not just magic the harness off you and worry about the cart later? Anyway, they’re clearly not here.”

“You’re right. Hey, let’s go back to Earth now that we’re around the detour!”

“What do you mean?”

Derpy pointed at the sky. “By my internal mapping and sense of direction, we’ve come exactly as far in Equestria as we would have needed to on Earth to get past where they turned us around.”

“Yeah? I mean, I trust you implicitly, but that’s like a super power, being able to do that. OK, let’s go back to Earth.”

Still being cautious, Karyn insisted that Derpy and she both go invisible before making the transition. The last thing she wanted was to be questioned as to what she was doing past the police line, and how she got there. But when they did transit back to Earth they were, as Derpy said, well past the detour line, and so Karyn had her abate the spell so she could walk around unencumbered.

She still didn’t know the area perfectly, but knew that there was a river and a boardwalk somewhere around. “Let’s head down to the river. If a UFO was around here, that’s the only logical place for it to be.”

“That makes sense,” said Derpy.

“I had a similar thought.”

Any voice other than Derpy’s would have startled Karyn just then, but when her memory placed the sound, she grunted, winced, and turned slowly until her eyes confirmed what her ears told her.

“Hello, Albert.”

“Karyn,” he said in greeting. “And, I assume that Derpy is around here somewhere.”

“How did you get past the cops?”

“I of course have no need to ask you the same question. I don’t know the particular supernatural means you used, but I’m sure that you didn’t do what I did, which is to understand exactly how the police of today establish a permieter, and where the holes therein are. Something I’ll have a say about if I ever choose to lend my services to the official force.”

Derpy couldn’t resist getting a jab in, since he didn’t know exactly where she was. “I liked it better when you just answered, ‘I’m a detective, that’s why’.”

Albert glowered in the direction of the voice.

“I’m surprised to find you here,” said Karyn. “I didn’t think that UFOs were your style. Aren’t you all about rationality?”

“That’s exactly why I’ve come. It annoys me that we’ve got so many of the credulous types coming into our fair city because of an overblown news story. I want to figure out exactly what happened. Ideally, I could tell the papers and then everyone would go away, but of course my first goal is to know for myself.”

“Oh, of course. Well, I’ll tell you what? What if we leave you here to your investigation, and Derpy and I go on our way?”

“I wouldn’t recommend that.” Albert gestured to the inside of his pocket. “A moment ago I turned on the camera in my phone, so if you decide to vanish or use any of your powers, I’ll have a full record. And before you get any ideas, it’s set to automatically stream and upload to a secure web site.”

“And what if we just walk away?”

“Then I’ve got you in a restricted area.”

Again Karyn seethed. “What do you want?”

“You know that I don’t believe in coincidence. You’re here, and I want to know why.”

“We just read an article in the local news, and Derpy thought it would be interesting to check out.”

He looked around, as if expecting something concrete to come about from his own mental churning, but then he said, “No, I don’t think so. Take me through everything you did.”

Karyn balked, but it was Derpy who gave all the details of them arriving in the car, being turned back, finding the gas station and going to Equestria, only to find that the reason they went didn’t apply, and that more fun was waiting on Earth.

“Hm. Well, I guess I was wrong. There’s no mystery here. You want to come back with me? I’ll show you how to get back through the line without cheating.”

“That’s...unusually nice for you, sure.”

He led Karyn and Derpy to a path between two streets that wouldn’t have been on the map, but did lead back to the highway. Once there they were able to blend in with the crowd. “It might be a bit tricky getting through this, but the gas station your car is at is about a quarter mile away. That said, I hope you won’t run off just yet.”

“I see no reason to stick around.”

“Well, I said that there was no mystery, and that’s true now, but I think we might be able to see something interesting tonight.”

Karyn started walking faster to get away from him. “Great, you enjoy that.”

For the first time she had known him, Karyn heard Albert drop his tone of superiority and be sincere. “I could really use your help on this one.”

“How, exactly?”

“I’m not sure. If I knew I probably wouldn’t need you guys. But, can you hang out until the sun goes down at least? I’ll pay for dinner.”

“I’ll tell you what? You get in your car, and I’ll follow you.”

Karyn reached her car and got in, opening the door for Derpy as well. “I wonder what his idea is,” said Derpy.

“I honestly don’t care.”

“But aren’t you going to follow him and then come back later?”

“No, that was an excuse. He can get bent.” Derpy didn’t respond. “Unless you want to?”

“I think I might. Call it mare’s intuition, but I think we should check it out.”

Karyn shrugged and waited for Albert’s car. She didn’t know what she expected, but it was an ordinary sedan, painted green. In other words, the perfect car for being inconspicuous.

He drove only a short distance before pulling into a diner. Karyn was happy that it was a public place, and well-lit at that. She let him lead and ask for a table for two before stepping in.

“Actually, can we get a booth? I like to have room to spread out.” Once they sat down she said, “Did you forget about Derpy?”

“Sorry, I’m not used to having to make accommodations for invisible people.”

They ordered drinks, and Karyn noticed that while Albert was still what just about anyone would call overweight, he no longer had quite the roll of fat at the back of his neck, or fat fingers, or fat thighs that made him stand with his feet far apart. “You’ve lost weight,” she said, hoping to kindle some bonhomie.

“Yeah, well, it’s a little harder to overeat when you know that someone in an alternate dimension could be watching and silently judging you.”

“Oh, right. I forgot about that.”

He grimaced and ordered a chicken salad. Karyn was hard pressed to find vegetarian dishes on the menu, but ordered for her and Derpy.

“I have to buy her a meal too?” asked Albert.

“Yes,” Derpy said. “Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I’m here. You’re not a very good detective if you don’t know that.”

Albert grumbled into his water, and they spoke very little for the rest of the meal.

When they were finished, daylight was waning, and he nodded his approval. “Should be dark enough now. Would be for me. Shall we head back?”

Now even Karyn’s curiosity was piqued. She followed him back, this time parking in the lot of a strip mall. Though still summer by the calendar, and though the last of the sun’s light was still coming over the horizon, a chill was in the air, and Karyn wished she were wearing a long-sleeve shirt. She contemplated changing into one, but figured that Albert would be happier without such an overt display of magic.

They took the same route back, waiting for the police to be looking the other way before slipping onto the path. The crowds had thinned out, and they were alone. Karyn was grateful for Derpy’s presence, as she never liked being alone with strange men.

They crept up on the water, Karyn no longer just trusting that Derpy would be there, but holding on. She was forced to stop, therefore, when Derpy did.

“What’s wrong?”

Albert looked more intense, as if he knew what the answer would be.

“Out there, on the other side of the water...” said Derpy.

“Yes?”

“The light.”

Karyn looked. A faint light was coming from the other side, but as far as she could see it might just be a car with its headlights on, perhaps with a couple parked in it. “What about it?”

“You can’t tell, but I’m more used to seeing it than you, and I know when I’m seeing it on Earth. That’s the light of a unicorn horn.”

Author's Note

To be continued...

120: Case Derped

“It was the details of the cart that gave me the idea,” Albert was saying. Karyn had figured it out, but she concluded that, for a detective, being able to explain everything had to be a highlight of the job. “The neatly sawn harness. It made no sense unless it wasn’t sawn, but cut off because the cart had simply vanished, because it was coming into our world and there was a limited range, like in the beginning of the Terminator movies.”

Karyn made a note to explain that to Derpy, and possibly to show her the movies in question, but she was more concerned with the immediate situation. “But how did they get here?”

“I’m not sure, but if I know you as an IT person, you have backups, and that would include for your...” He swallowed as if the word hurt him. “spells. So it’s possible that these salesmen...”

“Salesponies,” said Derpy.

“...found a way to get ahold of that.”

“He’s right! I still never got the bag back from Dinky. They could have come to Ponyville through Canterlot and stole it on the way.”

Albert said nothing, but wore his pensive look again.

Karyn leered at him. “Looks like you’re a pretty good detective even when magic is involved.”

“I don’t know the details of how it works, and I don’t want to. But I can look at it objectively and deduce from that. Case in point. Even though I don’t particularly care to see them, I could interrogate a pony. Or two, in this case.”

“Now hang on. We can’t just...what’s the point?”

He looked at her as she would at some of her amateur users. “Because even if we know that they’re here, we don’t know why they’re here, what their goals are, how they’re going to do whatever it is they’re going to do, and who...there’s a lot we don’t know.”

Karyn looked toward where she believed Derpy to be, hoping that somehow she could assist in the argument and make him see how foolish and dangerous it would be.

“I’m afraid he’s right,” said Derpy. “We’ve got to stop them now before they do whatever they’re trying, and more importantly, we need to get the bag back. I’ll never be so neglectful with it again!”

“So we’re all on board.” Albert looked to the river. “Now, the nearest crossing is a few miles away and, since I don’t fancy getting wet, we should take the cars.”

“We could cross over right here.”

“Derpy,” said Karyn, “please remember that we can’t all fly.”

“No, what I was talking about was what we did before. Go over to Equestria, walk across whatever’s there until we come to the other side of the river, and then come back.”

“Yeah, we’re not going to do that.” Albert got out his car keys to emphasize the point. “You can use your freaky magic all you want on your own, but leave me out of it.”

“And how are you going to get to them without alerting them to your presence? They’re probably on high alert already.”

“I’m a detect—you know what, I’m not going to stand here arguing with a pony.”

Karyn could, at time, be ornery. It was, of course, perfectly within Albert’s right to disdain magic and all of Equestria. But she didn’t think it was fair of him to specifically insult her friend. “Derpy, grab him and let’s go.”

She got in close and found a wing to grab onto, as moments later they were no longer beside the river, but standing in front of a green hill in the Equestrian night.

“What the he—“ Albert began.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Karyn was enjoying this now. “No cursing in Equestria. Unless you want to say, ‘Buck.’ That’s allowed, I think. Now come on, let’s get over the hill. You don’t want to stay here any more than you have to, and nopony here wants you either.”

“That’s a little harsh,” said Derpy, “but I’m inclined to agree.”

Walking the incline of the hill was tough work for both of the humans, but they made it over. At that point, Karyn said, “Are you sure that we’ve gone far enough to avoid the river? I don’t want to get soaked.”

“Oh, yeah. Almost entirely sure.”

She knew that that was Derpy’s expression for when she was sure, but was too shy to commit to saying so and wanted an out just in case. But of course Albert took her literally, and panicked for falling in the river as Derpy returned them all to Earth. Her directional sense had worked perfectly, and not only were they across the river, but the glow of the lights were tantalizingly close.

“Now what do we do?” asked Karyn.

Albert contemplated. “Well, you tell me. What’s going to happen if we just run up there and confont them? Will they fire some death spell at us?”

“To my knowledge no unicorn has worked on a death spell. From what I know, if it is Flim and Flam, they’re kind of cowards.”

“Then let’s go.”

Derpy went visible, disconcerting Albert for a moment, but he recovered and used the bump of adrenelin to speed his way through until they came to the cart.

“You two!” shouted Derpy. “What are you doing here?”

Flim and Flam did react as Karyn hoped they would, and froze up at being discovered. “So much for indetectibility,” said Flim.

“I’m surprised you even know how to work a crafted spell. Seems like too much work for you.”

Flam sidled up to her and tried to put a hoof around her neck, but Derpy slid away. “What do you say that we all just walk away...or fly away, and pretend that nopony saw anypony. We can make it worth your while. How does a thousand bits sound?”

“Forget it!”

“Oh, don’t worry. We can toss in a few cents for your friends here.”

Now Flim joined him. “I think they call them cents here too.”

“If you don’t tell us what’s going on right now, you can tell it to Princess Luna, because that’s who we’ll be heading to next.”

Albert looked at Derpy confused, not knowing who Princess Luna was, but the two brothers didn’t notice. “All right!” said Flim. “We got the word about ponies crossing over between the worlds, and we saw the opportunity for a little arbitrage.”

“Use words I know!”

Karyn was relieved to have some of the tension broken. “It’s a real word, Derpy. It means that they want to find things here that they can sell in Equestria and vice versa.”

“So, just another get-rich-quick scheme. What was it that you wanted to take?”

“Oh, just anything we could find,” said Flam.

Now Karyn rolled her eyes. “Derpy, let’s go. Princess Luna can do the rest of the questioning.”

“OK! We want to pipe that...what do you call it, brother?”

“Electricity,” Flim replied.

“Right, we want to bring that to Equestria so that ponies could run their own devices.”

Both Karyn and Albert came to the conclusion at the same time, and it was Albert who got it out first. “You two are responsible for the blackout!”

“Yeah, sorry, we took a little too much at once.”

“So, you’re just stealing it? That’s not making money, that’s...well, it’s stealing!”

Flim and Flam looked at each other. “What do you mean?” said Flim. “There’s plenty of it around. Look at all the lights of the cities and towns.”

Karyn shook her head. “Wow, you guys really don’t know, do you? All of that, every volt and ampere of it, has to be generated, often in ways that are damaging to the environment, always at high expense. It’s not magic, you know.”

To that, they had no answer, but Albert did. “I find it difficult to believe that you could be that ignorant of exactly what you were taking. And I think that you fit the profile”

“The profile of a thief?” asked Derpy.

“No, the profile of a patsy. I think there’s someone else behind this.”

Karyn again indicated her displeasure with the situation. “I think you’re overcomplicating it. You don’t know ponies.”

“But I do know the mentality of con men, cheats, and thieves. Electricity is worth something, but a con man sells something that’s worthless. So someone, with the proper attitude of a thief has to be pulling the strings.”

Derpy shook her hoof at the brothers. “How about it?”

Flim and Flam were visibly sweating. Flam broke first. “We don’t know who he is.”

Derpy opened her bag and went for her spell. The brothers knew what that meant.

“I promise! We only heard his voice.”

“Then how were you supposed to work it?”

“We had a meeting tonight set for an hour from now.”

Still keeping an eye on them, Karyn went over and whispered something to Derpy. “That could work.” Derpy scanned all around her thinking of details. “First off, the spare bag. Give it back.”

Dejected, Flim floated the bag out of the cart and tossed it to Derpy. After checking that all the spells were present, she turned to Albert. “Can you keep an eye on them? Please?”

“For how long?”

“Well, if all goes right, about ten seconds.”

Albert rolled his eyes as he continued to be out of his depth. Karyn got on Derpy and flashed to Equestria.

Night had fallen completely over Ponyville. Counting on Flam’s estimate of an hour until the meeting being on the low side, they moved quickly. They had a plan, but wanted to make sure they had help.

“That’s one of the things that I always see people doing wrong in fiction,” said Karyn as they ran, “they rush into things without telling anyone.”

“Are we really going to get Princess Luna?”

“No, but Twilight’s here. I hope she’s up. If not, we’ll just have to wake her and let Spike be mad. We can’t have pony criminals running over Earth.”

Twilight was awake, taking late notes with Owlowiscious, but they still woke Spike. After bringing her up to speed, Twilight asked, “So what exactly is your plan?”

“Well, we want to keep the appointment to find out who’s behind it all,” said Derpy. “Karyn?”

She focused, and green light filled the room. When it subsided, there was Karyn disguised as Flim. “It doesn’t have to be long,” she said, not liking the smoothness of the voice, “just enough to find out who the meeting is with, if indeed there is somepony.”

“All right. I approve it. But be careful. It could be someone really villainous, like Sunset Shimmer or Queen Chrysalis. Cadance trusts her, but...”

Derpy grinned. “I’m thinking it’s just some greedy pony like Filthy Rich. But we’ll find out.”

They moved out and arrived back near the alley where they found the cart. Derpy went to hide in the shadows while Karyn waited. It was a dull and boring hour for Karyn, who couldn’t even sit down, there being no place to do so. But at last a figure entered the alley, checking around to see if he had been followed.

“What’s the word? Did you get the feed?”

“Yeah, we got it,” Karyn said, hoping to not have to play the part too long. “We could be found out, though.”

“By humans? From what I’ve heard they’re not too bright.”
That was enough for Karyn. She dropped the disguise and said, “We’re not, huh? Bright enough to fool you!”

The other pony bolted for the alley, but Derpy got in the way and spread her wings to deny any exit.

“Derpy?!” the pony cried out, in surprise and confusion. He turned to look back at Karyn, and a moonbeam struck him. Karyn needed a moment to recognize him. For Derpy it was instant.

“Rocky Top? Really?”

For indeed it was Derpy’s prodigal ex-husband, and Dinky’s father. Karyn had thought him rather a cowardly figure, and she echoed Derpy’s sentiment. “You were the one who planned to steal our power?”

It was, perhaps the wrong choice of phrase, because it made Rocky laugh, and that made Derpy want to hit him. But before she could, she made a connection. “I bet it was you who took the bag from Dinky in Canterlot! You really are a thief!”

“No, I—“

“Save it. We’re going to tell Princess Twilight that it was you behind it all, then we’re going to send Flim and Flam back and she can deal with all three of you.”

They escorted him back to the library, Rocky too cowed—or too cowardly—to disobey. Once there, they showed him to Twilight.

“I see. Now that we know who it is, we actually have time to discuss everything. Tell me exactly what happened, from when you first noticed something out of the ordinary. If what you told me is correct, time on Earth is still frozen, so please make your account as detailed as possible.”

They told the story, going back and forth between Karyn and Derpy as each remembered details the other forgot. Twilight made notes with a quill, nodding her head as she went along. She asked many questions, and both Karyn and Derpy would have preferred that she held them until they were all done. But since it was she that they were going to for official justice, they let her have her way. She asked about the nature of electricity, and about exactly how much it cost, and how it was generated, and if they thought it could be used in Equestria.

For his part, Rocky stood there, defiant, volunteering nothing. Twilight didn’t ask him any questions, and he seemed not to care about the entire proceeding. Derpy was worried about the general situation, but part of her felt that if he got some comeuppance, it would be well-deserved.

“All right,” Twilight said at last, “I think you had better go and get the Flim Flam brothers. I’ve got to think long and hard about how exactly to deal with this.”

They left and returned to Earth. Albert was still amazed at how they could speak of hours worth of time passing without him knowing. But they had no time to put up with his discomfort, as Derpy made each of the brothers put on the spell and return. Finally, all was sorted and only Derpy remained as the Equestrian on Earth.

“So what are we going to do with the cart?” Albert asked.

“Good question.” Karyn looked around each side. “Probably we’ll go through and find anything that’s too overtly magical and get rid of it, then leave it here.”

“And who turned out to be the ringleader?”

“Derpy’s ex, believe it or not. I’ve met him before and he’s kind of a jerk, but I didn’t think he’d go this far. He stole the bag from their daughter who lives in Canterlot.

“Hm.”

Derpy perked up her ears. “What?”

“Well, I think that’s a funny coincidence. The ex of the regular visitor happens to be behind it all, and the spare bag was with their daughter. For all we know, it could be a conspiracy.”

“How dare you...I mean...”

Karyn stepped between them and spread her arms. “That is really cold. Accusing her is bad enough, but her daughter, who you don’t even know, and who’s the most innocent little unicorn out there...you know, if you’re ever going to be good at what you do, you’ve got to learn to think first.”

Albert stuck his finger in her face, and got ready to argue, but then he stopped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Well...that’s a start. And thank you for all your help. We probably wouldn’t have found out it was Flim and Flam without you, certainly not that it was Rocky Top.”

“You’re welcome. I guess I’ll see you around campus.”

Karyn watched him turn to go. “If you do, you know it’s OK to say hi. You don’t always have to sneak around.”

“Maybe I will. Who knows, we might even be friends.”

“Let’s not push it too far.”

He laughed and left.

“Whew,” said Derpy. “Crazy day. I’m going to go back to Twilight to see how everything plays out. You want to come with? Or I can drop you off at the car.”

“No, I’ll join you. I’m kind of in the mood to see what’s going to happen to Rocky and to the Flim Flam brothers too. It’s probably none of my business, but I’ve been punished enough times in my life that I don’t mind seeing other people get it once in a while.”

They went back to Equestria, and had to retrace their steps one more time. When they got to the library, the lights were already dimmed. Karyn tapped on the door.

Twilight welcomed them in. “Ah, good. I’m glad that you came back tonight. Now I can take care of all of this business at once. Let’s begin with the contributions of your friend Albert.”

“He’s not my friend. In fact he’s one of our worst enemies.”

“And yet it wasn’t he, but an Equestrian who turned out to be the biggest threat to keeping our secret. That was unexpected. But in any case, I believe that Albert is also under sanction for what he did. I think it’s time that we lifted that. You can tell him the next time you see him that nopony will watch him anymore.”

Karyn gave a sly grin. “Maybe I won’t tell him.”

Twilight looked askance at Karyn. “Really?”

“He seems to be better off for it. Living cleanly and taking care of himself. But I’ll probably let him know eventually.”

“Good, I think that’ll be best for everyone.”

Derpy was eagerly bouncing up and down. “And what about the bad ponies?”

Twilight took a deep breath, and the look on her face was far from one of relish. “They’re my problem. Mine and the other princesses. They did wrong, but at the same time...this is very difficult.”

Now they could sense that there was something more intense here, and all thoughts of schadenfreude left Karyn and Derpy.

Twilight stood tall and faced them. “I’m sorry, but effective immediately, no more ponies can be guests on Earth.”

“What?!” Derpy gave a full-throated scream, not caring who knew at that time of night.

“Excepting you, of course. You may keep going to Earth each Sunday as you have been, but I’m going to have to ask for the other bag back.”

Forlorn, as though she had been stripped of a badge of office, Derpy unstrapped the saddlebag and held it out on the end of her hoof. When it floated away, it felt like Twilight took a part of her too.

“This isn’t fair,” said Karyn. “We didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did any of the ponies who wanted to come. Why do you have to punish everypony for three bad apples?”

Derpy interrupted. “They weren’t Apples. Big Macintosh and Applejack didn’t cause the problem.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“You’re right,” said Twilight. “It isn’t fair, but it is safe, and that’s what we’re going to do. It’s my decision and I’m taking the responsibility for it. Maybe, in time, under proper supervision, ponies will walk on Earth again. But not right now.”

There was nothing more they could say. With her head held down, Derpy plodded to the door, Karyn trailing behind.

Karyn snorted. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

“Yeah. I want to be on Earth now. It’ll make me feel better if I know that I can still go.”

Karyn mounted up, but she could tell that Derpy’s heart wasn’t in the flying as she reached the transition point, and seemed more happy to have her hooves on the ground to walk to Karyn’s apartment.

The light as Karyn turned it on seemed harsh and cold, stinging their eyes. Derpy went to collapse on the bed, but even that didn’t seem right.

“Why does this hurt so much?” she asked.

“Because it’s the first step backwards. All this time we’ve only gotten looser with the rules, never tighter. There’s been more magic on Earth, one way or another, but now we’re going to miss out on some. It’s like when you’re in class, and you have a good rapport with the teacher, and you can get away with anything, and then one day they just come in and say that they’ve gotten yelled at or something, and that they’ve got to enforce the rules now. So you hope that it’s just temporary, and they’re not really that hard, and that it can go back to the good times soon.”

“Well, let’s hope that that’s what happens here.”

“And it’s not all bad. Maybe we can go back to the times when it was just us and we had relaxing Sundays together, not worried about doing anything in particular. And too, I’ll be busy in school, so I won’t have to be distracted with anticipating somepony coming each week.”

Derpy tried to smile, but she couldn’t. “I hope everypony won’t be upset with me that they can’t go.”

“They won’t be. Whatever else, it isn’t our fault.”

“I know, but there are still times I dread facing other ponies. Can I stay here a little bit longer?”

Karyn held her hoof. “I was going to ask if you would.”

Author's Note

Hey, look! It's an ordinary chapter that's not a fan suggestion or a two-parter! And that means a preview!

“This takes me back to when I was living at the dorms,” Karyn said as she bit into her wrap.

“Yes, although we didn’t eat here often.”

“Well, I have to keep my back to everyone so that they don’t see you eating and the food disappearing. So it’s not the most pleasant. But that’s not your fault.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the water turned off, she gave a hoarse, “Morning, Derpy!” only to see her friend running out with her mane still wet and wrapped in a towel.

“Hi. I’ve already had my coffee, but there’s a cup for you there. I think we should go in about a half hour.”

That didn’t give Karyn the time that she usually wanted in the morning, but she knew the schedule was tight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Derpy! Derpy Hooves, he’s calling you!”

“What?!” Derpy said. “What for? What did I do?”

“Go on up, Derpy!”

Please read that one too, or put this in one of your new bookshelves!

121: Efficiently Derperationalize our Strategies

The day had not been spent on any particular activity of note. Karyn and Derpy had met up and followed their routine. The weather had not been bad, but neither one felt like a special event, and besides, Karyn’s wallet was lighter than she hoped it would be. So it was that they had hung around the apartment watching movies and videos online, chatting about pleasantries; and so it was that Karyn had brought them for dinner at the canteen attached to her school, where she still had credit and the food was cheaper.

“This takes me back to when I was living at the dorms,” Karyn said as she bit into her wrap.

“Yes, although we didn’t eat here often.”

“Well, I have to keep my back to everyone so that they don’t see you eating and the food disappearing. So it’s not the most pleasant. But that’s not your fault.”

Derpy concentrated on eating. She finished first, but that let Karyn relax and eat in peace without having to worry.

On the walk back, they were halfway home when Derpy said, “Thanks for dinner.”

“You don’t have to thank me. It’s my pleasure to have you here.”

And then Derpy let that go until they were almost home. “It’s my pleasure too.”

“Is something wrong?”

“What? No, nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry, I’m a little distracted. I should be focusing more on us.”

Karyn let them into the apartment, and Derpy was finally able to be visible again. “If you’ve had something on your mind, I haven’t noticed. So I think you’ve been very good about keeping focus.”

“Thanks.”

They settled in. Normally, they had subtle signals that indicated the end of a visit, changes in inflection when they spoke or gestures of separation, but Derpy was giving no sign that she was ready to go, so Karyn decided to push the issue.

“What are you distracted by?”

“Back to work tomorrow.”

Karyn eyed her laptop, thinking of her own impending week, but not wanting to talk when she should be listening. “Anxious to get a hold of the mailbag again?”

“Anxious, yes, but not eager.”

“I always get those two words confused. But what anxiety do you have then?”

Derpy licked her lips, as she was hoping that Karyn would ask about it. “Because tomorrow we’re not carrying mail. We do this one day a year, and everypony has to plan ahead for it and mail their letters ahead of time. Or wait until Tuesday.”

“Yeah? Why? So that they’ll appreciate it more when you do?”

“I think that’s part of it, but more than that it’s for us. Every post office does it in rotation, so it’s only local mail that isn’t delivered. But we carriers don’t get a day off. We have to go and listen to a lecture by the boss. Although, that’s the cool thing this year. Usually it’s like a district manager or such, but this year we get the postmaster general for all of Equestria!”

Karyn didn’t quite understand, but she was duly impressed. “I guess he probably doesn’t get out to small towns like Ponyville very often.”

“She. But she does speak in a lot of small towns, just not us because we’re so close to Canterlot. In theory, we could go there any time if we have some business with her, and Mr. Mintsugar probably has her ear on certain things. But the ponies on the street, we don’t get to see her often.”

“That makes a kind of sense. So close to home for her, she wouldn’t want to go there so often. Well, I certainly hope you enjoy it.”

“I think I will.” Derpy gave Karyn a look like she was trying to imply something more. “I would certainly enjoy it more if I had a good friend with me.”

“You don’t have any friends at the post office?”

“Some, but, well, you know, I like to have fun on the job and gab with all the ponies I deliver too, and everypony else is all about work, work, work. So they’re friends, but not the kind that I would hang out with. Especially when it’s a work function. I mean, it’s cool that she’s coming, but if it were up to me, she would just wave and say hi and then we’d all go eat dessert.”

“So, what you’re saying is that you’d like me there.”

“Yeah.”

Karyn gave it some long thought. She bounced her hands as if she was weighing the decision by physically balancing the options. Derpy wondered if she wouldn’t bring out a coin and decide that way. Instead, she said, “I think I might like to do that, actually.”

“Really? Great. What I figure is, I can get to bed early tonight, swing by here early in the morning, and then we’ll go and see the lecture.”

“Well, I hate to impose...”

Derpy didn’t pick up what Karyn was trying to say, so she had to be more explicit. “...but what if I stayed over at your place? I won’t be too much trouble and I’ll bring food so you don’t have to make breakfast—“

Derpy cut her off. “I would love to have you stay over! I didn’t want to ask because I know how you get about spending too much time in Equestria. And I’ll take care of breakfast.”

Karyn had slept in Derpy’s guest room once before, but it was long ago when she was ill to near delirium, and so it was only now that she could appreciate how much fun it would be to sleep over at Derpy’s. She put on her warmest flannel nightclothes and got into the bed. As she lay there, she thought of the other times that she had slept in Equestria, whether it was on the train to the beach or on the cloud in Derpy’s other house in Cloudsdale. Each of those times, she thought, was a special kind of sleep, either a nap or a travelling sleep. This would be the first time that she had actually run the routine of getting ready for bed and waking up to a morning just like anypony in Equestria would. It was the last thing she remembered for the night.

When the sun rose, Karyn felt more awake than she normally was for school, and she thought that a good thing, since she had to be at work with Derpy on the morning shift, whereas in school the earliest classes she took didn’t start until ten.

Already she could hear the shower going, and thought it funny that ponies had morning routines the same as humans. To the best of her knowledge, ponies didn’t sweat unless working hard, and even then they never stank. But they still probably got dirty, and in that case they would want to clean themselves. Toweling off all that fur, though, struck her as a difficulty.

When the water turned off, she gave a hoarse, “Morning, Derpy!” only to see her friend running out with her mane still wet and wrapped in a towel.

“Hi. I’ve already had my coffee, but there’s a cup for you there. I think we should go in about a half hour.”

That didn’t give Karyn the time that she usually wanted in the morning, but she knew the schedule was tight. She decided against any actual ablutions and just went with changeling magic to look her best. Then she thought again. “Do you think I should go as a pony? It would probably be distracting if everypony knows there’s a human there.”

“Oh, yeah. You totally have to. I mean, it’s only for postal employees, so if you’re there as yourself, everyone will know you’re not.”

“Wait, what?! I have to pretend to work for the post office?”

“Just don’t say that you don’t. Everypony will think that you’re supposed to be there, that you’re from another branch or something.” Derpy stuck her head in and grinned. “Either that or you could be invisible.”

“I’ll go as a pony.”

Derpy went back to brushing her teeth.

Karyn picked her usual pony look, something a little similar to Derpy, and with wings, but with her own coloring and hairstyle. It was a bland enough pony that no one else would ask about her, unless they were confused by her keyboard cutie mark.

They started on the way to work. Derpy was happy for the companionship to take her out of the zombie walk that usually was her commute.

“Of course, what’s bad about this,” said Derpy, “is how much more work it’s going to mean tomorrow. Everything will get backed up. It’ll probably take us the rest of the week to catch up.”

“Funny that the postmaster general, whose job it is to make sure the work goes as efficiently as possible, is going to be the cause of a major slowdown.”

“Yeah, funny. But not for us. Here we are, just next to the usual office.”

Already ponies wearing the postal uniform were milling on the grass, and Karyn realized that at least the meeting would be held outdoors. That made sense. If they had ponies who worked different routes and shifts, they probably would never fit in the office all at once. A tent had been set up for shade, but with the pitch of the hill and the early-morning angle of the sun, the shade was actually beyond the tent.

Derpy went off to greet a few of her colleagues, and Karyn realized that she was out of uniform. She hadn’t counted on that, and was still thinking of herself as an invited guest instead of an interloper. She needed a private spot, and conjectured—hoped—that nopony would be in the building itself. The doors were locked, but they were recessed into the wall, and she had to count on that being enough. She pressed herself against the wall and conjured up a blue hat and jacket.

“You there!”

Great, she thought, she was caught after all. Now she would have to lie her way out of another hairy situation.

“We’re just about ready to start. Go and join the others.”

Relieved, Karyn found Derpy and they took a spot at the back. The only thing that prevented it from looking like a gathering on Earth—other than the ponies—was their chairs. Resembling more the ergonomic attempts at back-straightening, the ponies only had angled stools for resting their flanks on. Most of them didn’t even bother to use these, and they only served to mark the places where they should stand. Karyn was more comfortable with her backside up against something.

The murmur of conversation petered out as Mr. Mintsugar, Derpy’s boss, took position at the front.

“Thank you everypony for coming out today to join us on this occasion.”

Karyn had never had an extended conversation with the head of the Ponyville post office, but she hadn’t realized what a droning voice he had. She was glad that he wasn’t making the speech; she would be asleep within five minutes.

“And now let me introduce our guest speaker, postmaster general of all of Equestria, Urgent Express.”

The clopping of hooves on the ground was more polite than excited.

Craning her neck to see the stand, Karyn finally got a look at the pony everyone else worked for. Remembering Derpy’s correction of her assumption, she knew that it was a mare, but without that, she would have been hard pressed to tell. In a world of bright colors and pretty designs, this pony was downright homely.

She was elderly, but that in and of itself meant nothing; Granny Smith was old, but she could smile through the wrinkles. Her face was misshapen, her body twisted, her ears ragged. Her wings looked like paper, and Karyn doubted if she could fly. She wanted to say as much to Derpy, but had to phrase it diplomatically.

“Looks like she’s had a rough time.”

The old pony pulled out a series of index cards and prepared to give her speech. Karyn was grateful that at least the assembly would be spared a slideshow presentation like that which accompanied every speech on Earth. That was the up side. But they also had no microphone, only the megaphone to project her voice. It didn’t matter for ponies with their directional hearing, but Karyn’s ears were only part of her disguise.

The speaker cleared her throat and began. “What motivates you to do a better job?”

Oh, thought Karyn, it was going to be one of those speeches. She had heard them at college, and heard her parents talking about hearing them at work. She knew the model, even though she hadn’t been subjected to many. Leaning down on her chair, Karyn let out a bored sigh.

“What is it?” asked Derpy.

“I’ve got nothing against motivation, but I’ve got two problems with this kind of speech. First, I think it’s a shame to waste your motivational energy on drudgery, and that makes the whole speech disingenuous. They don’t care about you being happy in your work as an end in itself, only as a means to being more productive. Second, I don’t think it works all that well. Yes, there are things that you can do to prompt you to do things you know need to be done, but a speech doesn’t bring those about. It’s not a course you can teach. It’e something inside you that you have to choose to use.”

Derpy listened to her, but then faced back to the front. “I’m going to listen anyway.”

Karyn shrugged and, with nothing better to do, followed along. She remained cynical as to the speech’s purpose, but she did notice that never once during the talk did the postmaster general mention mail, or routes, or flying, or sorting, or anything having to do with their actual job. She got an image in her head of this pony having kicked the assignment down the calendar over and over until, frantically, she had gone yesterday to the library and cribbed some nice sounding words onto the index cards.

Searching for something nice to think about it, Karyn concluded that at least she moved well from one topic to another, never staying too long on any one point. She wondered if there would be a question and answer period when it was over.

With all these thoughts in mind, she leaned over to whisper to Derpy, but to her amazement Derpy was staring forward and nodding, apparently riveted by the speech. She even saw a small notebook in her hooves, and with a pencil that she had gotten from somewhere, was taking notes.

“Is this really interesting to you?” Karyn asked.

“I’ve heard it before, but never so well.”

It didn’t make sense, and Karyn tried to listen again. To her it seemed trite. But then she reconsidered. In schools, she listened to lectures all the time; they were part of almost every day. But Derpy had never had higher education, and school for foals rarely consisted of long talks. The teachers had to work within the students’ attention spans. She tried to think of how Derpy would be perceiving this. Her co-workers all had their own assignments to take care of, so they could never spare the time to lay out a comprehensive concept, even if it was an old one.

But now, someone important was taking the time out of their day to talk to her. To Derpy. Yes, there were a hundred or so other ponies in the audience, but so was Derpy. Probably for the first time she was hearing an extended talk dedicated to helping her do her job. All of the things about mail that Karyn hoped to hear, Derpy was filling in for herself. And it occurred to her that, after all, the speech wasn’t meant for her. Maybe, she thought, this postmaster general knew what she was doing.

The speech finally wound down, but there was no question session. Derpy clapped her hooves more enthusiatically than the other ponies, but they had all thought it a good speech.

In among the noise of the speaker leaving the podium, Mr. Mintsugar taking the place back as emcee, and the shuffling of hooves and wings as everypony relaxed came the first murmurs of conversation. The ponies talked as people will do during a meeting when they think there is a lull and no one is listening, in low tones, not projecting enough to shout over the speaker on their own, but as a collective making a lot of interference.

Karyn and Derpy joined this trend, and Mr. Mintsugar didn’t have the patience to wait it out with stern looks to bring the meeting back to order.

“So what happens now?” asked Karyn.

“Well, normally when it’s just us here, we take care of general housekeeping, welcoming new employees or giving thanks to anypony who’s left or retired. But we had one of these a couple of months ago, so there shouldn’t be too much of that.”

“You did? I thought this was the first.”

Derpy pulled her eyes away from the front of the gathering to face Karyn head on. “We have them often, but they’re shorter and staggered in among work. They’re not big affairs like this, which is why I never thought to bring you.”

That made sense to Karyn, but before she could respond again, she heard the megaphone say, “...py Hooves!” and it sounded like it was not the first time that it was said. She looked up to see Mr. Mintsugar scanning the crowd, and other ponies, closer to them, said, “Derpy! Derpy Hooves, he’s calling you!”

“What?!” Derpy said. “What for? What did I do?”

“Go on up, Derpy!”

Still slightly panicked, Derpy got up from her seat. One other unusual thing about a meeting of pegasi occurred to Karyn, which was that it was unncessary to have aisles to get seating, since anyone could just fly to where they needed to be. In this case it was Derpy going up near the megaphone. The other ponies were listening now, and Karyn was grateful for it, since she wanted to hear too.

“Derpy Hooves,” said the supervisor, “for all you long years of faithful service, and for a perfect attendance record, we at the Equestrian Postal Service would like to present you with this plaque.”

Derpy seemed still shocked by having been called up there in the first place, and that led her to think before she spoke. “But my dentist says I shouldn’t have plaque!”

Everypony had a good laugh at that, but it was quickly cut off as they saw how it embarrassed Derpy. The crowd grew silent, but then somepony clapped their hooves, and then someone else, and soon Derpy was definitively the recipient of a Slow Clap.

She returned to her seat, and the meeting continued. Other awards were being given out, but Derpy was too focused on hers. Karyn waited until everypony else had congratulated her so as to not be noticed, then got closer.

“You deserve that.”

“I—maybe I do, but I still never thought I would actually get it.”

Karyn had another laugh at that. Then they looked over the plaque. It was wood base with some sort of ebony on top, with Derpy’s name and everything that Mr. Mintsugar had said carved into it. The grooves for the letters had then been painted in gold. “Where do you think you’ll put it? At home or at work?”

“At home, definitely. I wouldn’t want to be showing off at work. But, as nice as it is, I wish that they had just given me a day off tomorrow.”

Karyn looked at the plaque one more time. “Hey, is there something on the back?”

Derpy turned it over. There, taped to the wood was a small folded paper. Taking it off and reading it, she said, “Hey, it’s a voucher for fifty bits extra pay this week! Not bad!”

“Well, that’s almost like a day off. You could take one off and just spend that instead.”

“But then I wouldn’t have perfect attendance!”

The meeting came to an ending soon after, and it was still earlier than Derpy would usually get out of work. She waved goodbye to everypony and accepted a few more congratulations, then trotted off with Karyn, who was glad to use her magic to go back human.

“That was very sweet. I doubt I’ll ever get to work for a place that does things like that.”

“You don’t know. There might be a place where you get to do that but still work in IT and not have to hustle carrying mail.”

“Could be. But not if I don’t get back home and hit the books.”

Derpy took the hint and put Karyn on her back. Once home, with time started up again, Derpy gave her a hug.

“See you next week, then?”

“Yes. Though, I have something particular in mind that I’d like you to accompany me on.”

Derpy cocked her head to invite more information.

“There’s a movie I want you to see.”

“Oh, that’ll be great! We haven’t gone out to the theater in forever. In fact, I think that was the first time I went out among humans.”

“But,” Karyn said, “this one might be a little weird.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, for one, you’re in it. Kind of. It’s hard to explain. But next week I’ll figure out how to tell you.”

Author's Note

You're all going to watch Rainbow Rocks next week when it comes on the ex-Hub, right? Or view it online, right? Because it's going to be helpful for next week. That's going to be a very...different kind of chapter. Not what you're used to, but if you don't like it, it's only one week.

F04: The Balcony is Derped

Author's Note

This one is another fan suggestion, this time from Granpa_pony, who wanted to see the girls go to the movies and watch Rainbow Rocks. You should see it before reading this, as there will be spoilers. Also, this is a very different kind of chapter, just four long speeches really. More normal stuff is coming next week.

F04: The Balcony is Derped

“I still don’t get it.”

Derpy looked at the Blu-Ray that Karyn was holding and the figures that adorned the cover.

“I’m not sure I do either, because I’ve never understood how Equestria exists. I mean, somewhere, probably in California, someone has to write each episode of My Little Pony. So does the real Twilight Sparkle say the exact same thing that the writer thinks of her to say? That’s weird and coincidental, right? So this is a story about how Twilight goes through a mirror to a different world.”

“But that never happened. At least, not that I heard of. To be fair, I don’t keep up on all the news, but I think ponies would know if one of their princesses left the entire world.”

Karyn slid in her chair over to the Blu-ray player and opened the tray. “I think so too. So, just imagine this as a movie that happens to have some real ponies in it, but didn’t actually happen. But they happened to be played by perfect copies of the ponies who are real and who sound exactly like them.”

“I got it.”

“Then here we go. It’s called ‘Equestria Girls’.”

“Hang on! There are no girls in Equestria. It should be ‘Equestria Mares’ or ‘Equestria Fillies’.”

Karyn tried to give an answer, but said, “Just watch it first, then you can ask questions or give objections.” She put in the disc...

“Well,” Derpy said, “that was about as good as I would expect it to be. If it had to be made, I think that’s the best that they could have made it. But I don’t see why it did have to be made.

“But, OK, I’ll treat it as a movie and see what I can critique. Like, first, I have a hard time believing that Princess Celestia would ever banish somepony to another world, away from all their friends and family, no matter what they did. It’s out of character for her. I think she’d be more likely to try to talk to them. Especially if it was a pony that she knew, like this Sunset Shimmer supposedly was. And how did Sunset know that the portal was opening at that particular time? How did she know that the mirror and the crown would both be in the Crystal Empire? Had she ever been to the Crystal empire? How did she adjust to the other world and enroll in Canterlot High School? And then, once she was a pony again, would she remember how to act and use her magic?

“So then Twilight goes to the human world and she too is able to waltz right in to the high school without anyone noticing a new student? And they didn’t catch her sleeping in the library? And how would she sleep comfortably on a pile of books?

“Now, she decides that she has to actually win the crown back at the Fall Formal instead of just asking for it back, saying that she owns it. Fair enough. But to get an entire school of people who don’t know you to vote for you in a popularity contest is a hard thing to do.

“But then there’s this whole subplot about how she gets framed by Sunset Shimmer and Snips and Snails, and it just goes nowhere. I find it difficult to buy that Luna—granted, she’s no longer the noble princess that she is in real life, but only some vice-principal, and that certainly got my eyes rolling—would be fooled by some pictures pasted over cutouts of Twilight. I mean, granted that they actually have computers and such, couldn’t they have at least photoshopped it instead?

“Of course that does lead into the thing where they need everyone to clean up the gym, and get all the rival groups to get together. That was kind of nice, but the music wasn’t what I was hoping for. I mean, ponies sing all the time, and sometimes we do it in chorus, but it just all felt so...ordinary. It would have been nicer with more solo songs.

“Oh, and I didn’t talk about all of Twilight’s friends yet. The ones who have the same names as ponies. So, I don’t see how a few fake text messages could drive a wedge between good friends like that. Didn’t they talk to each other? For that matter, don’t cell phones keep records of the texts they send? They could prove that they didn’t send them. And I don’t see why Sunset wanted to break up their friendships specifically.

“But speaking of friendships, let me talk about the biggest problem I had with the movie: Flash Sentry. Now, I’ve never met the pegasus pony that shows up at the end, and maybe he’s nothing like the guy we see through the movie, but he’s just so bland. I have a hard time believing that Twilight Sparkle would be attracted to a guy like him. Even if she was infatuated with his looks, once she got to know him and see his lack of personality, I think she would wise up and find somepony else.

“Let’s see, what else? Well, the ending I liked. They did a good job of explaining why Sunset Shimmer wanted the crown. But I don’t know. One high school’s worth of zombies coming in to invade all of Equestria? Why wouldn’t Princess Celestia just undo her spell? Well, even if it didn’t make sense, there were a lot of good visuals, and the way how at the end they used all that power to blow a big crater in the ground was cool.

“Oh, but that part where Sunset threatened to smash the portal with a sledgehammer, wouldn’t it have just gone through? And where did she get a sledgehammer from anyway?

“Well, that’s what I think. How about you?”

Karyn took a moment to collect her thoughts.

“Well, I liked it. I don’t know that I can answer all of your criticisms, but for me, a movie isn’t so much about internal consistency and whether it all makes sense as it is about whether it tells a good story.

“Now, one thing I will correct you on is that you called the other world that Twilight visits the world of humans. They never actually say that in the movie. Nor do they call it Earth. Because it’s not quite Earth. We don’t have that much of a variety in skin colors, for one. Unless Fluttershy has jaundice and Rarity is an albino and Rainbow Dash overdosed on silver. But even then, we don’t have names like ponies do. Very few people only have one name like Applejack, and even if she did, having her sister not have the same surname as her is something we don’t do here.

“So that could explain some of the problems you have. Maybe this is a much more relaxed society, and it’s OK for someone to just sleep in a school library.

“But I think that Twilight kept a lot of her personality and such, and there was a lot of what I love about Equestria in there. Everyone, for the most part, acted reasonably. Yes, Vice-Principal Luna should have been a bit more skeptical, but the way that Twilight and her friends interacted seemed in character. I especially liked the fact that Twilight wasn’t trying to hide Equestria from the other girls, or even her own pony identity. You have to do that here, because that’s just the world we’re living in. But there, the only reason she didn’t tell them that she was a magical pony princess was that she didn’t think they would believe her. Once Pinkie suggested it, she came clean.

“Now, again, this is looking at it from the perspective of someone watching a show, but I thought that the whole climax was really cool. The bad guys didn’t automatically get the crown; Twilight and her friends did a good job of keeping it away while they had a chance. And then when Sunset turned into that demon creature and they battled her, well, it was like the great moments when they defeated Discord or Queen Chrysalis. That’s how it was for me at least.

“The other thing to remember is that this was the first time that I saw Twilight as a princess. I wasn’t too happy about that when it happened—when it was just a show to me, I thought it was a bad decision. Obviously, in the real Equestria, it’s not my place to say who gets a crown and who doesn’t. But I thought she did a good job of acting princess-like. What she did here—helping a school, defeating evil—seemed to me to be more worthy of ascension than just repairing a spell that you messed up. It also gave me confidence that her new wings wouldn’t go to her head. She wasn’t being haughty or taking herself too seriously.

“Let me then talk about Flash Sentry, because that does seem to be one of the bigger points of contention. I don’t think it’s necessarily out of character for Twilight to fall for a guy like Flash. From what I know of her, she doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with romance; she’s more interested in her studies and her career. But that’s why I think that Flash might be a good match for her.

“In times gone by, men would be the head of the household while women were just ancillary. But the relationships worked, maybe even better than now where every relationship is supposed to be based on mutual equality. My only complaint is that the roles were restricted to genders. What’s wrong with a strong, independent mare like Twilight having someone like Flash who’s just sort of an adjunct in the relationship? She would clearly be the head of the household, she would have the final say in all the major decisions, and he would understand his place.

“I also think it would be nice for Twilight to get a love interest. That would be much more character development than her ascending to be a princess.

“So to end where you started, it was the best that could be made if it had to be made, but I’m glad it was. They didn’t go for too much of a fish-out-of-water story, I liked seeing all the designs, and I got good value for my movie dollar.”

Both Karyn and Derpy needed a drink of water after their long talks.

“So why did you want me to watch that?” asked Derpy.

“Well, the sequel is coming on TV right now.”

“Ooh, a sequel.”

They settled in, and Karyn made popcorn. After another two hours, including advertisements, they faced each other again.

“Why don’t you go first this time,” said Derpy. “I don’t want my opinion to color yours.”

“But you’re OK with the reverse?”

“I already know what I think.”

Karyn didn’t, and she needed another drink before she was prepared to talk that long, but after that she dove in. “Well, if I ended where you started, I can start where I ended. I don’t regret seeing the movie. I would probably pay for a ticket, and might actually do that if I can find the time and if it’s still playing anywhere.

“The villains were a lot more interesting this time. Two of them, anyway. Adagio was the typical bossy leader, and Sonata Dusk was the funny, ditzy one. But it felt like they forgot to give Aria Blaze any personality. They also seem like kind of recycled changelings, except instead of feeding on love they feed on dissension. I guess you wouldn’t find sirens and changelings in the same environment.

“One thing that bugs me is how useless Celestia and Luna are. I mean, I know that they’re just regular people in this, and not powerful alicorns, but they’re supposed to be some of the smartest people in the school, right? And they get taken in by the sirens’ magic just like everyone else?

“Oh, and how many times is someone going to change people’s mind by doing a number in the cafeteria. If that was an intentional reference to the first movie, that’s cool. But I’m dubious. It feels like a recycled plot idea. Even if it wasn’t, though, the song itself was way over the top. They might as well have come out singing, ‘We’re evil, we’re controlling all your minds, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.’ I know that they have to establish that they’re the bad guys, but still.

“On the other hand, I really like what they did with Sunset Shimmer. Taking a villain who’s now turned good and exploring that character further is one of the best thing you can do in fiction. Because they still have that edge to them that can defeat even badder bad guys. The way she had to deal with not being accepted and how the rest of the group did accept her, that’s the kind of reasonable conflict that I like. But, why didn’t they invite her in the band sooner?

“In particular I thought that the scene where she reveals the magic book and that it’s her only connection to Equestria, and how she gets to write to Princess Celestia for the first time in so long, it was really touching.

“But the scene that did take place in Equestria, I thought that was just a plot device. Like, all the stuff in the first movie that you pointed out were plot holes, I could still suspend my disbelief about because it was the beginning of the story. Here it took me out of the story somewhat.

“I was also sure that they would find some way by the end to sever the connection between the worlds to get back to the status quo ante. Not doing that was a good choice, even though we could be asking now why people aren’t going back and forth through the portal all the time.

“Let’s see, what else. Well, they did include a lot of the background characters that I love. Like putting Lyra and Bon-bon together as humans. I bet she would really like that if she knew. And Bulk Biceps as well.

“The underrated star might be Trixie. She made it all the way to the semifinals. Oh, yeah, the tournament. I was kind of annoyed that all they had were symbols and we really couldn’t tell which band was which unless that was part of the montage.But Trixie being the secondary villain, who has to lose to Rainbow Dash and crew even though she should have won...what that means is that if there weren’t any magic in the music battle, she would have won.

“But overall, while I loved this movie, I felt it wasn’t as good as the first one. There was just as much of an epic battle, but I was used to it by then. Seeing the ponies redrawn and walking on two legs, that was special the first time, but now it wasn’t. Maybe what it is is that I liked Equestria Girls out of defiance; everyone else said it was a bad idea, but I enjoyed the movie. Of course, I went in there expecting to like it. After all, I know something about ponies who come through to alternate dimensions to meet with two-legged people.”

Derpy took the meaning, and smiled at her. “My turn, now, huh? Well, what I would have like to have seen is how they actually formed the band. I mean, they kind of skimmed over that. Why would Rainbow and the others start a band?”

“Actually, before you go in to it, they kind of did. There were some short films that they released over the Internet. Let me find them.” Karyn slid over to the computer.

“OK, those helped explain. And I can see how they would be good at getting people to want to see the movie. And the one with Vinyl was a nice little piece of foreshadowing too. But I’m done stalling, let me begin.

“I liked this one rather more than the first one we saw. Maybe it was because I was used to the concept now, but I think that this one held together a lot better without the kind of plot holes or questionable writing that the first one had. It seemed like a tighter story, possibly because it’s a sequel and we didn’t have to build so much story and character first.

“In particular the music was far more memorable in this one. In the first it just felt like they were putting in songs because they wanted to have some. The only one I liked was the one in the cafeteria. And maybe that was part of why they made it the story they did: they wanted better songs and a reason to have them.

“But here’s what I think is a big difference between this movie and the last one. They had the whole subplot in the first of Twilight being framed for destroying the gym, and it went nowhere. Almost nowhere. You could trace the coming together of all the students to it, but that could have been left out. Here, the subplot of the tournament was less going off onto a side tangent and just coming back as it was starting small and building up.

“I give the movie a lot of credit because it didn’t have a singular protagon...prot...hero. Like, you think it’s going to be Twilight, but she doesn’t even show up for a while, and when she does she has her little arc, but other things are going on. It could be Rainbow as the leader of the band, but her story is no bigger than Applejack’s or Rarity’s.

“Really it’s Sunset Shimmer’s story, but the story is how she feels that she has to stand on the side while everyone else does all the work. Which clearly isn’t true, but that’s how she acts. That’s the kind of story you don’t see or read too often, because it can’t be interesting if the main character isn’t doing anything. That’s the essence of why the movie works for me. All these overlapping storylines and it turns out that the most important one is right there in front of you.

“The big scene that makes it all work is the sleepover. In the first place, it’s a funny scene with Pinkie Pie doing her thing and everyone enjoying themselves, but you know that Twilight’s tense. Then they go for snacks, she and Sunset, and they see how similar they really are. They probably should have realized it at that point, but of course the movie still has to go on.

“One thing I thought was really well-written was where Sunset has to stop the band from performing because their pony ears are coming out. I’d forgotten about that restriction when they started the song, so it surprised me. But then too when Rarity asked why she didn’t just close the curtains or such, and she explained it as panic. Yeah, that’s something that would really happen. And then they tied that in with the students being suspicious of her to begin with. So three plot threads come together in a moment, and it all works. After that, things were kind of predictable. Not that that’s a bad thing, always, and here it works because of how effective moments like that are. Rather than predicable, I’d say that the story was on rails.

“So that’s where I fall. I thought the first one was OK, but this one was better. If they made a third, I’d watch that.”

They both sat there for a minute. It was no longer their mouths but their minds that needed a rest. Derpy never spoke for that long on any topic, and Karyn only did when she had to give a report at school.

“Well, I guess we have to agree to disagree on this movie thing,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I guess some of our disparity is the fact that you’re seeing it from the perspective of a native Equestrian, and I’m seeing it as a fan of Equestria.”

Derpy angled herself so she was no longer facing Karyn, but was more parallel. “I don’t think so. I really tried to put myself in a human perspective, and I think I succeeded. No, we just have different opinions on it.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Actually, I think that’s the sign of a good friendship. I knew a girl once, when I was about eight years old, who I guess you could call a friend, but she seemed so afraid to contradict me on anything. Then when I finally had a different opinion from hers on something, and stuck to it, she didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

“Ooh, that’s a good lesson about friendship. Being able to say, ‘I don’t like that thing, but I see why you do,’ is definitely a line that you only go over with good friends.”

“And all we had to do to learn it,” Karyn said as she laughed, “was to sit through three hours of movies and then do a full review twice. But speaking of things I don’t understand, how’s it coming with that letter you’ve been looking for the recipient on?”

“Oh, I haven’t thought of anything. Hey! But maybe now that we’re not so frosty with Albert, we could ask him.”

“I’ll mention it to him the next time I can’t avoid running into him.”

“Thanks. Well, I’ll see you next week. But when I do, I want to do something. Can’t just sit around the house every day.”

“You got it.”

122: Derp-Eighty-Six

“So we’re definitely going to do stuff this week.”

Derpy and Karyn had both gotten up early, and so they had more of the day ahead of them than after their usual dragging breakfast. Neither was a morning person, but that day they were.

“Right,” said Karyn. “Do we have a g—oh, right.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Never mind.”

“Come on, tell me!”

“No, I just forgot that we can’t have pony guests any more.”

“Oh.” Derpy frowned. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have told me.”

“Yeah, it still stings.”

“Not even so much for the fact that we can’t, as that Twilight just made it an edict, without giving us a chance to argue.”

“That’s the way of things with authority figures.” Karyn, perhaps in deference to their plan to do things that day, got up and started walking around. “I hoped that Twilight would be more personable, but she’s still a princess and she has responsibilities.”

“Well, forget that. We can’t have one here, so we shouldn’t talk about it. It was just nice how having somepony who’d never done anything on Earth made it easier to find things to do.”

“You’re still talking about it.”

“Oops.” Now Derpy got up and joined Karyn. “But one thing’s for sure, we’re not going to just sit around on the computer all day watching videos.”

“Oh!” Karyn sat down at her desk. “That reminds me, there was a really funny video that I saw this week, and I wanted to remind myself to show it to you.”

She pulled up the video site, and even though Derpy was about to scold her, she joined in watching until it was over.

“All right, that was funny, but no more. Not today. Although, I’ll be honest with you. I sometimes look forward, during the week, to getting here just so I can see videos or look up things on the internet.”

“It is nice to have.”

Derpy planted her hooves on the carpet, raised one of them, and said, “I’ve decided that it’s too much to wait for. I want a computer of my own!”

“Really?”

“Yes. Besides, it’s something that Twilight hasn’t ruled against. It would feel like a little something rebellious if I owned one.”

Karyn reached behind her own laptop for the Ethernet cable. “Wouldn’t do you any good. Without networking, you couldn’t get to any websites or watch videos.”

Derpy knew a lot about computers, but she couldn’t always recall the knowledge quickly. Karyn could see her mind trying to engineer a way around it.

“But can’t you take your laptop other places and get connectivity?”

“Yes, because of wi-fi. They still have to have receivers to connect it to the wired internet to actually reach the servers where all the information is. Even if we wanted to, your spell only lets things jump from Equestria to Earth; it doesn’t create a portal. And if we did have such a portal and ran a cable through it, we’d be doing the exact same thing Flim and Flam did, and I’m sure Twilight would find out and stop us.”

Derpy pictured it, and winced at the thought. No computer was worth losing Karyn. “I guess it might be of some use even without the networking. But by the same logic I couldn’t even power it.”

“Well, now don’t be too hasty there. I remember reading about a laptop program for children in poorer countries where it was battery-powered, and they could be recharged with solar power or a hand crank. Although I think the crank didn’t work too well. But you’ve got plenty of sun.”

“Yeah. No hands though.”

Karyn laughed off the irrelevancy and started looking up solar powered computer hardware. “Yes, I think it definitely could be done. But wouldn’t be useful.”

“Hey!” Derpy said. “If computers need the internet, but the network is built of computers, how did it start?”

“They don’t need the internet. Well, they kind of do today, like I said, to do anything useful. And actually, a lot of the software, including major operating systems, insist on being activated over the internet. But back in the early days of computing, people just bought them and used them at home. They might buy software later and install it.”

She thought back to when she was very young and saw her father working at a computer, before they had even dial-up access. He used it to write reports and she remembered the word processing software, nothing like the modern ones. Just a blue screen with white letters that looked different when printed. They weren’t nearly as powerful, but at the same time, there was a nostalgic feeling about them. Karyn chided herself, though, since the generation before hers felt equally nostalgic about their Apple ][s as she did about her 486es.

“You wouldn’t need that powerful of one, especially if you didn’t need the internet. At least you wouldn’t have to worry about having two dozen browser tabs open.” Karyn’s blush led Derpy to think this was a common affliction for her.

“Where did you buy yours from?”

“Technically, all over. It was cheaper for me to put it together myself, plus it gave me some much-needed experience on how that’s done. I’ll probably need to do that when I’m working. Or if not to build one entirely, to know how so I can repair them.”

“Can you teach me?” Derpy’s puss face showed that she understood that she was asking for Karyn to distill several years of education down to one day, but would she please try anyway.

“I thought you learned all about this when you took apart my desktop all those years ago.”

“Somewhat, but...it’s hard to explain. Back then I didn’t know anything about them, so I was putting everything in my own terms. Now I’ve used computers a little, and so I understand them more as a human would. But the human in this case would be a poor user, one who you would call ‘computer illiterate’. I don’t want to be that.”

Karyn understood, because it was exactly the type of user she always made fun of. Derpy, although knowing that Karyn would never say anything to her face, didn’t want to even be thought of in that way.

“OK, we’ll begin with the basics, which is the motherboard. The major component are all on this board, and at the heart of it is the chip. You know what that is?”

Derpy nodded her head, but then said, “No. Not really.”

“Well, all it does it make calculations, but it does billions of them every second. It’s like, um...” She grabbed a few pencils and made a brief demonstration of binary addition. “So, as hard as it is to believe, doing that a whole bunch of times is what gets us all the stuff we see on the screen. But all of those numbers have to be fed to the chip, so that’s where you’ve got your memory, buses, and bridges. Actually, the bus is kind of outdated, but it’s a good name, since it kind of transports the data from the memory to the chip.”

“I’m with you so far, I think.”

Karyn found that she was enjoying playing professor, and adopted some of the tones and motions that her own favorite teachers had. “So the memory is the first part that’s really replaceable—well, the chip is too, but you’ve got to remove the fan and heat sink and apply new thermal paste, so it’s something I like to avoid doing. But RAM chips come out fairly easily if you’ve got the knack for it. More and faster RAM is usually a good thing.”

“I thought it was called a hard drive.”

No way. Karyn gritted her teeth. For all Derpy’s cleverness, there was no way she made the rookie mistake of confusing memory and hard drive. It had to be a joke.

Derpy could tell she messed up, and listened all the more intently as Karyn explained the difference.

“Wait, so what you were talking about before with the motherboard and chip and such, that’s all one part?”

“Well, no, if you were going to put one together, you’d get the chip and the RAM separately. But all the circuits are on one board.”

“Yeah, so let’s start picking out parts for mine.”

Karyn had to smash another one of Derpy’s illusions. “We’re still not talking about this seriously. Putting together even a cheap computer will be a couple of hundred dollars. And I’d do it for you—I owe you lots of presents for birthdays and holidays—if you want me to break my budget.”

“No...wait! I have a spell that should work. It’s a cloning spell. If we can find the part itself, I can make a copy.”

“Really? I’m not sure that’s fair. And I’m sure it’s not legal,” said Karyn, but she reconsidered. Software downloads were an everyday occurrence, and people were always talking about how they in fact would download a car, if it was physically possible. In Derpy’s case, since she was an outsider, it wasn’t even particularly messing with the market. It would be akin to the early days when Western fans would avail themselves of Japanese programming, the makers not considering them in their business plans.

This of course precluded her from ever taking advantage of this particular piece of magic herself, but she was fine with that. Such power, she was sure, would corrupt her.

Derpy watched this ethical struggle with curiosity. When Karyn explained her position, she said, “Great! Let’s look for some good stuff then.”

To Karyn’s amazement, the spell even worked when viewing items online. Like a camera, it would take the picture of whatever it was and reproduce it right in the bedroom. “Now, we need to make sure that everything is compatible. You need to have the right board for the right kind of chip, and the right kind of memory. Fortunately, sound and video are on just about every board these days.”

Soon enough Karyn’s apartment was cluttered with equipment, much to the disdain of Derpy’s eye. “We’re going to need more room to put all this together.”

“We are. Let’s go back to your house. If I have enough anti-static bags I can pack up the sensitive parts and we can carry them all in one of my bags. Then I just need to hang onto the case.” Karyn had suggested one of the fancy cases that had colored internal lights, but Derpy was more concerned about practicality and ventilation.

“OK, and do you have tools? I only have a screwdriver at home, and I’m not sure it’s the right size.”

“You don’t need much more than that. But I’ll bring my kit.”

Karyn found the small plastic pouch that had been a birthday gift from some relative who couldn’t come up with something more fun to give her. Taking an oversized purse that she no longer used, she managed to get the boards and parts in so that they wouldn’t be jostled in flight. With the bag over her shoulder and the case in her lap, she was ready to go.

Derpy flew more gently than usual, and let her hooves brush the ground a few times to get rid of her speed before she landed entirely. After that, she could go the rest of the way with her sense of balance to hold the case on.

At the house, Karyn directed her to the kitchen. “It’s a good room to use. Open and well-lit, plus there’s no carpet on the floor. Hmm..even if that’s the case, you probably should use the strap.”

“Strap?”

“In my case there’s a little wrist strap with an alligator clip on it. It’s designed to clamp onto the case and distribute any static electricity to it. Static can kill some of the sensitive parts. Sometimes I go without it, if it’s the summer or something, but you’re fuzzy so let’s not take chances. We just have to make sure it’ll fit.”

By putting it on the widest hole, the belt-style strap would just go around Derpy’s hoof. Karyn put the case down on the table and unscrewed the side panel.

“OK, where do we start?” asked Derpy.

“Well, we could put the power supply in first. Many cases come with one already installed, so that would be more traditional. But then we’d have to pull the power cords out of the way while we install everything else, so let’s not do that. Put in the motherboard first.”

“How do I do that? Screw it in?”

Karyn looked at the case. “Good, the spacers are already in. You’ve got to keep the board off the side of the case, so there are spacers for it. Sometimes people forget about that and break things. So yeah, screw in wherever the holes line up with those in the case.”

Derpy manipulated a screwdriver by using two hooves and pushing in opposite directions. It wasn’t the most efficient way, but she seemed to be enjoying it. “We’re lucky the holes are lined up.”

“Well, they’re designed like that. That’s why there are more holes on the case, because some motherboards will have holes in difference places, so they want to be as compatible as possible. OK, let’s do the chip now. This is one of the most sensitive parts of the job. You want to be very gentle.”

The chip went in, as did the memory, and the hard drive. “So it’s done now?”

“We can start testing it to make sure that we’ve done everything right and that none of the hardware is defective. If magically replicated hardware can be defective. But there might be some things you’ll want to add on later.”

“You know what I really want?”

“What?”

Derpy looked at the back of the computer and some of the ports. “I want to get a printer like you have. Or, maybe just a cheap one. I don’t care if it prints fast. But how cool would it be if I could send printed letters to other ponies. They would be freaked out by how neat it is. Because I don’t have the best penmanship.”

“We’ll see about that for the future. Right now, let’s start testing.”

The batteries reported charged, and Karyn wished that she had any of her own electronic devices so that she could test that component specifically. It was completely new to her, and as a general rule she liked the “swap it to a known good situation and test” method. She checked all the connections one more time and then hovered her finger over the power button. But she didn’t press it.

“What’s wrong?” asked Derpy.

“This is the first time that we’re starting this computer. Since it’s yours, I think you should do it. Kind of christen it a little.”

Derpy shrugged and pushed the button. The fan started spinning and a beep was heard. Karyn listened for more. She didn’t know all the beep codes, but if she had to look one up it would help if she heard it the first time. The motherboard light was on and the monitor was warming up. The only snag was the “missing keyboard” warning, which was quickly rectified. The next time it was started up the monitor showed “No system disk.”

“What went wrong this time?”

“Nothing. This is an error I planned for. Now that we’ve seen it, and that we know the memory and the video work, we can start installing the operating system.”

She took out a CD and put it in the tray. One more restart and it began loading the install. Soon it was asking for basic profile information. “What do I put here?”

“Well, do you trust me to set all this up for you? I’ll pick a username and the settings and such just like I would for myself, only with your name.”

“Of course. You do this for a living.”

“Not yet I don’t.” But Karyn deftly chose settings for the install and watched as a progress bar started its long trek from gray to blue. “But when I was, I enjoyed doing OS installs. There’s a lot of waiting around during them. So I got to look busy while I wasn’t actually.”

“What did you do? Just browse on your phone?”

“Sometimes, but if someone was watching I just relaxed and stared into space and thought about stuff. A lot of times I would think about you.”

“Aww...I think about you on the postal route sometimes too.” Derpy looked at the screen. “Is it done?”

“Almost. But right now you need to choose a password.”

“What for?”

“Well,” Karyn began, but then reconsidered. It was highly unlikely that anypony would come over and even understand how the computer worked. Even if they did, most were too honest to invade Derpy’s privacy. With no network access the computer couldn’t be hacked. “I guess you don’t. You can just have it go right to the startup screen.”

She plugged in the speakers and they heard the sound that would play each time at startup. Derpy eyed the batteries. “I’d better put these by the window for the sun. But, is it ready? Can I use it?”

“Yes, it is. Go play.”

Derpy sat down on the floor and put her hoof over the mouse. She went right for the menu and found one of the solitaire games. “I know you don’t mind, but I never feel comfortable playing games on yours.”

“I can kind of understand that mentality. This is going to be your own intimate device. I mean, it’s not like sharing a toothbrush, but it is kind of like sharing a coffee cup. I hope, though, that you’re not just going to use it to play games.”

“If I am, I’m sure they’ll be bigger games than this. I’ll become an elite gamer and hack all the levels.”

Karyn laughed at her slang, but Derpy intended it as a joke and not a serious attempt to gain that reputation.

Derpy didn’t want to play games anymore just then, so Karyn showed her how to shut it down properly, and they watched the batteries report their charge as increasing.

“It should work out well for the weekdays. You can charge it while you’re at work and then use it at night.”

“Right. And if I know it’s going to rain I’ll put it on top of the clouds.”

Karyn wondered if the battery would stay there without Derpy holding it, but counted on Derpy to figure that out. “So what now?”

“Now I’ll take you out for lunch to thank you.”

“Suits me fine.”

They found a cafe and ordered. When it came time to pay Derpy took out her coin purse. “Hey!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m missing some money!” Derpy counted a second time, then paid for the food so as not to hold up the line. Once they sat down at a table, she made a third count.

“There’s a possibility,” said Karyn.

“What’s that?”

“Maybe your spell is somewhat ethical. It copied the parts you wanted, but debited your purse by making the coins disappear. That sounds like something Twilight Sparkle would incorporate. She might even have figured a way to get it into the accounts of the sellers.”

Derpy’s jaw dropped. “That sneaky...you’re probably right.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’ve still got the only computer in all of Equestria, and that’s something to brag about.”

“I wonder if anypony else will find out. I don’t plan to keep it a secret, but I’m not going to advertise that I have one, and I don’t have many guests. Dinky, mainly. I suppose she could find out and spread the word. But it’s also possible that I’ll always have the only one.”

Karyn took a bite of her flower sandwich. “It’s a question of their taste. I’m not sure that ponies will like the computer, really. It’s not that kind of simple pony life that they seem happy with. Derpy, have you ever considered that maybe the reason you say you don’t fit in is that you’re a lot more ambitious and intelligent than the average pony?”

“Nah. It’s nice of you to say so, but it’s not true. I’ve got my strengths, but I also have my weaknesses. They’re just all different from what most have.”

Derpy ate as well, and finished first. This was typical for the two of them, and normally Derpy didn’t mind waiting while Karyn took her time and savored the meal, but now she kept looking behind her. Karyn figured it out.

“You’re eager to get back to the new computer, huh?”

“You can tell?”

Karyn took a bigger bite, hoping to move the process along, but then she had to chew harder so it wasted time. “Derpy, I’ve been there. I remember putting computers together for myself, or even just buying them, or video game systems, and then having to go off to school which felt like a waste of time, and all day I’d be thinking about it. Sometimes the anticipation was better than when I actually got there. So I know what you’re feeling, a little.”

Derpy grinned, and she switched to sitting patiently looking at Karyn. “Thanks for understanding.”

“If I can find them, I’ll get you some fun software on CD-ROM. Maybe even the earth encyclopedia. Then you would have stuff to read and could learn all about Earth.”

“I appreciate it, but don’t bother with that last. I like learning about Earth just the way I am.”

Author's Note

Normally, since this isn't a fan-suggested chapter, you'd get a preview here. Well, there was a little SNAFU. See, the chapter that I had listed to come after this is all about Halloween/Nightmare Night. But somehow I skipped over that and wrote two different chapters. But if I publish them in the order I've written them instead of the order I intended them, then Halloween will come at the end of November. So I'm going to write that chapter this week and then publish it next Wednesday, then go back to the proper order. :derpytongue2:

123: Trick or Derp

Derpy peered out the window. “This is going to be so cool! Why have we never done this before?”

“Because this is the first year that Halloween’s been on a Sunday. I mean, since I met you.”

“I still think it’s weird that you not only have a different word for it, but that it’s such a weird one.”

Karyn smiled as she got a chance to show off knowledge of trivia. “It derives from ‘the evening of the hallow.’ They just cut out the v and the ing.”

“What’s a hallow?”

“Something sacred. In this case, it refers to spirits that have passed on.”

Derpy still didn’t like talking about death. “I still think Nightmare Night makes more sense. Even if it does refer to the whole day and not just the night.”

“You may have something. But I’m glad that you still decided to come today. You didn’t have anything going on?”

Her sly grin betrayed a naughtiness that Derpy seldom showed. “In fact I specifically realized that, if I’m here all day, then I don’t need to buy candy to give out.”

Karyn had a good laugh at that. “Well, at least you won’t be tempted to indulge and gain weight.”

“True.”

“When you’re not here, you don’t go out to parties or asking for candy?”

Derpy sighed. “I used to. When Dinky was little, every year, even if I had to pour all my efforts into making her costume instead of mine. You know I’m not very good at sewing, but if she says that she wants to go as a firemare, then I’ll make her a costume even if I poke my hooves with the needle a thousand times. Anyway, those were the old days. The hard part with that was letting her run with the other foals when I wanted to be with her. But it gave her a chance to make friends. As she got older, it was less about the candy and more about the ritual. Plus Princess Luna was back, and so everypony understood that it wasn’t really about keeping Nightmare Moon away. Still, right up to when she went to school we went out. But after that I felt it was my responsibility to stay home and give candy out, kind of paying it forward for all the years we ate for free.”

“Hrm. The way you say that makes me think I could still be going out instead of doing just that.”

“You’re going to give out candy?”

Karyn went to one of the kitchen cabinets and pulled out a large bag of miniature chocolate bars. “That’s the plan. I never had the chance at home. Mom and Dad were always very strict that they gave out the candy. Probably they expected me to swipe some instead of giving it all out. Or maybe they wanted to see all the little kids’ costumes when they came to the door. Anyway, I couldn’t do it at home, and obviously no one came around when I was living at the dorms. But now, here I am.”

“Yeah, and you couldn’t have avoided it by coming to Equestria.”

“Right, that would have been a double whammy. I would have had to give out to the ponies and then come back here without being able to sleep in but would have to give away more.”

Derpy eyed the bag of candy. Even though they had just had breakfast, Derpy’s hunger had not been assuaged yet. But she saw that each one was wrapped individually, so even if she could get one, there would be evidence.

“We should probably get the candy set up, right? Do you have a bowl or something to put them in?”

Karyn didn’t catch Derpy’s ulterior motive to get a piece. Instead she said, “No. This was another big pet peeve of mine. See, they sell in stores these little bags. They used to be paper, but now they’re plastic, makes them rip less. Anyway, they hold about three or four pieces of candy. Some people use them and some people don’t. Now, when I’m out trick-or-treating, I—“

“When you’re what?”

“Oh. That’s what we call going around for candy. What I was saying is that I never liked getting the little bag. I liked to keep track of how many of each type I got, and the bags just messed with my count. It was all the worse that my parents used the bags, and they made me help pack them each year.”

“Was that a whole lot of work?” asked Derpy.

“Not necessarily, but it’s tedious, and just didn’t seem to me to be valuable. No, when people come to my door I’ll just reach in the bag and pull out a handful. Even if someone gets one more piece than his sibling, no big deal.”

And with that, she tore a small hole in the bag and left it by the door.

“Maybe before then we can go outside and look at some of the costumes?”

“Sure, that sounds like fun—hey!” Karyn’s eyes brightened and she stood up.

“What is it?”

“You can go out today!”

Derpy nodded. “That’s what I was just asking.”

“No, I mean without going invisible. Everyone will just think that you’re a costume! I mean, if that doesn’t offend you.”

“Why would it? But, you mean it? People will be fooled?”

Karyn thought about it some more. “A horse costume is one of the classics on Earth. Usually two people wear it, one in the front and one in the back. With your size, people will think it’s two kids. Now, you can’t fly or do any magic out there. That would definitely give it away. Just act like an Earth pony.”

“But that’s what I’ll be! A pony on Earth. Let’s go. I’m keen to see what other humans think of me.”

“Sure thing.” Karyn got her coat and opened the door. “I still feel nervous, but I’m sure it’s all right.”

“What about you?”

“Hm?”

Derpy instinctively moved to the side of the door to stay out of view. “Aren’t you going to go out in costume as well? I mean, it might be weird if they see me, and they think I’m a costume, but they you’re just yourself. And even if I’m supposed to be a couple of kids, no one will buy you as my mom.”

“Don’t be too sure. There are some young mothers around. But I’d go in costume, except I didn’t buy one!”

Derpy just stared at her.

“Oh, right,” said Karyn. “Guess I kind of had a vapor lock.”

“Happens to me all the time. So pick something. You can have pretty much any costume you want.”

Karyn thought about it. She could indeed, but if she went for scary, she could actually scare some people. Even just becoming a changeling would throw people off with the fangs and the holes. She thought about a more sexy costume, but she was still nervous about showing off her body, even if it wasn’t really hers. “Oh, I’m no good at this! Too many choices!”

“That should be a good thing.”

“Sometimes it’s not. But I don’t really want a great costume, just one to go out with you. Next year I’ll plan ahead for exactly what I want. Do some research.”

Derpy now stuck her head out and was eager to get going. “So what about now?”

“Well, I’ll just wear something simple.” Karyn focused and changed into a vaguely Grecian toga. She also put her hair up. It was enough to look like she was wearing a costume without being too specific. A pair of gold shoes completed the look. No one had to know that they were actual gold, or rather the illusion of actual gold.

“I like it. OK, let’s go.”

“You know, come to think of it, this will be my best chance for research. I should look at all of the costumes that I see and then I can pick out one to use.”

They went out to the street. Karyn’s first instinct was to head toward the college, but then she decided that would be the least fertile hunting grounds. The students didn’t usually spend for candy. No, better to meander around the residential area and hope.

It was still early, but she knew that a lot of parents didn’t like taking their children trick-or-treating in the dark.

Derpy, meanwhile, was nervous. Technically, this was against the rules. The spirit of the rule was to not get caught, but the letter was to only go out when invisible. They came upon the first humans out and about, and they weren’t even in costume, just a family out for a walk to see the falling leaves. They looked at Derpy and laughed, but then continued on without paying too much attention.

“I think it works!” she said.

“See, I told you.”

Eventually they found other trick-or-treaters, and then the looks from the children got longer. Derpy waved to anyone who looked at her and smiled. Karyn kept her pace slow, so they never really caught up with anyone for conversation, but they shared a moment, and Derpy was happy about that.

“Can I go to some houses and get candy?”

“I don’t see why not. You can keep it in your saddlebag.”

“Yeah, convenient.” She trotted up to a house where she saw a group of kids had just left and knocked. An elderly lady complimented her costume and gave her a few pieces of the same type of candy Karyn had shown her before.

“Having fun?”

“This is the best. I’m going to take a personal day next year when Nightmare Night is on a weekday and come back here to do this. I’m going to make this an annual tradition.”

Karyn watched her as she fairly galloped to the next house. “Take it easy. Not too fast of a run. Little kids can go fast but still not as fast as you can gallop. And try to keep your wings to your sides. Even the fact that they open and close looks suspicious. But anyway, yeah. I’d like to see you do that. Hopefully I can find a job that will give me personal time so I can take it with you.”

After a block or so of trick-or-treating, Derpy got bored, and so they went back to looking at the costumes. “It’s funny,” said Derpy.

“Yes?”

“See, in Equestria everypony gets together and goes around for candy in big groups. I figured that humans would go around alone more.”

“A lot of parents want their kids in groups for safety. And sometimes people—more adults than kids—will theme their costumes. I remember one year my folks and a bunch of people from my mom’s job all dressed as...well, you wouldn’t know them, but all the characters from a TV show.” Karyn remembered that there was a picture of them in her home, and made a note to show Derpy some time.

“I think I’ve got enough candy. We should get back to your place so we can start giving out.”

“Probably a good idea. It looks like most of the groups are moving in the direction of home anyway. The ones who went the other way probably have been to ours and missed us. We can go back and hang out and watch movies, and then we’ll have lots of interruptions to give out candy.”

They darted back towards Karyn’s apartment, with Karyn still having to remind Derpy not to go too fast. “I’ll try my slowest walk.”

“It still looks like a rhythmic pony gait. If you were two people, your hooves wouldn’t be in sync so much.”

“OK, I’ll walk more like a giraffe. It’s not easy.” Derpy tried moving both left hooves at the same time, then both right hooves, but on the second step she lost her balance and careened into Karyn.

“Never mind. Just walk normally.”

Derpy did so, and no one looked at them for more than a glance. Even the glances were more likely to be followed by a smile than suspicion. Soon they made it home and climbed the step. Karyn stopped and looked at Gayle’s front door. “Hm.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Derpy.

“Well, the main door is much more prominent than mine. If you were a group trick-or-treating, you’d probably go up to this one and get your candy, then go on your way. You wouldn’t even notice my apartment.”

“Maybe you can ask Gayle if she can send everyone around to the side. I know I’d be happy if I went to go get candy and I got double for it.”

“Good idea.” Karyn went up and knocked on the door. “If she heard that she probably thinks we’re here for candy.” But after a minute or so there was still no response. “This could be a problem. If she’s not home maybe I can make a sign or an arrow or something.”

“Or we could just sit out here with the candy. It’s not too cold.”

“Maybe not for you. I’d prefer not.”

At last they heard footsteps echoing through the big house, and the door opened to reveal Gayle. She had shed her usual laid-back artist’s look for a black witch costume. “Sorry, I’m just going out and—oh, Karyn, Derpy!”

“Hey, Gayle,” said Karyn. “I guess I should get the rent for you, but I also wanted to ask a favor.”

“Don’t bother, it’s not due till tomorrow. What’s up? Wait, Derpy, you shouldn’t be out in view. Oh, I see, you’re playing at it’s a costume. Speaking of which, do you like mine?”

Derpy traced her way through this stream of consciousness. “It’s very nice. You make a lovely witch. Or sorceress or enchantress.”

They all had a good laugh at Gayle’s old term for Karyn, then Karyn gave her request.”Oh, but if you’re going out I guess you won’t be here to give out candy to begin with.”

“No, but if you want to hang out here I won’t mind?”

“You’re sure?”

Gayle looked back into the house as if to make sure she hadn’t left anything incriminating in plain sight. “Yeah, just don’t mess it up too much. I know you won’t.”

“Certainly not. I’ll just bring the laptop over and we’ll watch movies.”

“Great, just give me a few minutes and then come over. Happy Halloween! Wait, do ponies even celebrate that?”

Another explanation followed, and then Derpy and Karyn retreated to her apartment to pack up. “We’ll bring snacks and stuff too, so we don’t have to eat all the candy.”

“Cool,” said Derpy. “At least in here I can fly.”

“Yeah, and once we get into Gayle’s place you’ll have the high ceiling. Hey! I just got a costume idea!”

“You did? Great, what is it?”

Karyn opened her mouth, but then shook her head. “Maybe just the start of an idea. See, everyone’s been seeing you as a pony, but you also have wings, so you can be Pegasus!”

“I am a pegasus.”

“No, the Pegasus. It’s a legend among humans of a flying horse. People would imagine how great it would be to have a horse who could fly. Although he was a stallion in the legend. But if I wear something that’s also from Greek mythology, we’ll have a kind of theme between us.”

Derpy didn’t understand, but she liked the idea of theming. “What other creatures did they have?”

“I can’t remember off the top of my head. I’ll search on the internet.”

She went to an online encyclopedia and went for the general category. “That looks scary,” said Derpy, pointing over her shoulder.

“A harpy? That would be too ugly. Hang on, that’s it. She’s supposed to be ugly too but I don’t have to do it that way.” She concentrated and changed again. Keeping the general look of the toga, she changed her hairstyle and augmented her body slightly.

“What are you?”

“A medusa, or technically a gorgon, of which Medusa was a proper name. I suppose I could have made the snakes in my hair be real ones, but that’s scary and I don’t like snakes myself, even if they’re a part of me.”

They heard a car door close and the engine start, so concluded that Gayle had left. Grabbing the candy and the laptop, they walked around to see the first group of kids heading up the stairs.

“Cool costume!” one of the youngsters said.

“Thanks. Here’s some candy.” Karyn passed it out to all of them.

“I meant her! Cool horse costume. It looks so real!”

“Thanks,” said Derpy.

Karyn rolled her eyes as they went inside.

More people came in increasing frequency. Karyn remarked to Derpy, “It’s like microwaving popcorn. You get a few at first, then a din of so many that you can barely tell one from another, and then you think it ends and that there’s no more when you get a final knock on the door. “

“Popcorn knocks on the door?”

“No, sorry. I lost control of my metaphor.”

Another group came to the door and they answered it. Soon enough they had a good routine down. Derpy would say hi and accept the compliments of the trick-or-treaters, while Karyn would handle the actual giveaway of candy. The door was wide enough that she could move from bag to bag and bucket to bucket without having the children cycle through. She liked this and made a silent vow that, if she ever had a house of her own, she wanted a large vestibule and oversized doors like this.

Most of the children understood that Karyn was in costume, but they barely looked at her when Derpy was there. A few of the adults understood and complimented her for the theme. Some of the youngest ones wanted to pet Derpy.

After the wave started to ebb, Derpy asked in the middle of another video, “Is there an age limit to trick-or-treating here?”

“Not officially. It depends on when your parents stop letting you or such. I know a lot of teenagers still do it. No adults, really. Except you, and I don’t think that counts.”

Another knock came at the door, and as if to underscore the point, Karyn could see that it was an older group. She hesitated. “Problem?” asked Derpy.

“No, but if they try to egg the house or play a prank I’m going to turn into something nasty and scare them off.”

She opened the door to hear, “Trick or trea—whoa! Hey, it’s Derpy Hooves!”

Karyn panicked for a moment, then remembered that Derpy was not entirely unknown on Earth. But she kept herself on high alert hoping that they wouldn’t pry too much. “You like her costume?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s great! I haven’t met any other bronies out tonight.” The speaker was a young man who had clearly had this discussion with his companions, who rolled their eyes at the idea that someone else would use ponies for a costume. He himself wore a simple horn and wings, enough to look like a costume to someone who didn’t know, and like an alicorn to someone who did.

They talked ponies for a few minutes before his friends dragged him off, and Derpy shut the door again. “That was fun. I got to play like I was being myself instead of actually being myself.”

“You did a good job, making him think you weren’t real while still making him happy.”

“Good enough for a piece of candy?”

“Sure,” said Karyn with a laugh, and found another chocolate for Derpy.

“You know, Earth candy is much different from Equestrian.”

“I bet it’s tastier.”

Derpy stared down at the wrapper. “I didn’t even think about that. What I mean more is, you don’t have names of candy bars like you do here, or shiny wrappers. They’ll just wrap the candy in cellophane or something, and it’s usually like a gumball or a peppermint candy or such. They don’t have nuts and caramel and chocolate as much. Not in candies anyway.”

“Simpler, homey candies. Fits in.”

“Yeah, but I like the Earth candies better I think. You always know what you’re getting unlike the hoof-made ones.”

Karyn looked at the candy. “I was thinking that it might be just because it’s unfamiliar, but I might agree with you on this one. I mean, we have that kind of candy too, but it’s less popular on Halloween. I guess I always associate it with going over to visit old people where they have that candy because it’s what they knew as kids. Back when candy was sold in specific candy stores and cost a penny.”

“And there’s one other thing I really like.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy hopped up and let her voice echo through the cavernous room. “The holiday here is all modernized. You don’t give away your candy to Nightmare Moon. You give it to the kids and they eat it. There’s nothing really too scary about it. I know that lots of ponies enjoy that part of the holiday, being scared for fun. But I never did. Being scared isn’t fun for me. It’s, well, scary. And that’s one more way that I feel I don’t fit in.”

“Well, don’t. Halloween can be something for everyone. Yes, we don’t have Nightmare Moon here, but that also takes the edge off it. I bet lots of people wish it would be more like Equestria. So everyone has their own thing they want to do. It’s as unique as their costumes.”

“That’s why I’m glad that my best costume is myself.”

Author's Note

Back on schedule, and that means a preview!

“Glad the weekend’s here,” said Derpy. “Took most of yesterday to recover from the work week?”

“Why so rough?”

“I tried to put in some overtime."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“When is the train officially supposed to go?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Karyn looked around, saw Derpy’s face, and made a snap decision. “Buy the tickets.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m in much the same boat.”

“You’re getting a lot of tests too at school?”

Karyn shook her head. “Not yet, but I know they’re coming.

Come and read that one too, please!

124: Derp Ya!

It was their usual breakfast, their usual coffee, their usual banter, but that Sunday it was taking place in Derpy’s house instead of Karyn’s apartment. Derpy had made the gesture, and Karyn was happy to accept, since it meant that many fewer dishes to wash.

“Glad the weekend’s here,” said Derpy. “Took most of yesterday to recover from the work week.”

“Why so rough?”

“I tried to put in some overtime to make up for the money I lost when I bought the computer. I’ve barely had time to use it.”

Karyn winced. “I hope that you don’t have to work too hard for it. That’s almost a human kind of thing. A rat race. You work so hard that you don’t have time to do the things that you’re working to get.”

“I don’t intend to make it a habit. Remember that I didn’t know I was spending bits on the computer until after the fact. Essentially I bought on credit. Normally I don’t do that.”

“Do you regret using the spell to make the parts?”

“Oh, no!” Derpy slid over and ran her wing over the keyboard. Karyn smiled as she realized that this was probably how Derpy saw things when they were in Karyn’s apartment and she would search for details on whatever the activity of the day was going to be.

“Because that would be a human reaction too. Buyer’s remorse, or cognitive dissonance. This year is psychology class, can you tell?”

“Ha, but no, I’m not going to act like that. What’s done is done. I’m going to enjoy the computer, and more than that, I’ve got the memory of the experience that’ll be with me always.”

Karyn was impressed. “Wow, that is so mature. I know that they always say to treasure experiences more than things, but I’ve never met anyone who does it.”

“Well, I want things too. Which brings us to today’s experience.”

“Which is?”

Derpy went and got a map and a train schedule. “There’s a big trade festival in Rainbow Falls. They do it once a year.”

“Oh, yeah! I know about that one. I got to see it once.”

“You did? That’s right, you get glimpses into Equestrian life now and again. Well, I’m hoping that if we go it’ll be worth the train ticket, but even if it’s not I’d like to do it for once.”

“You never have?” asked Karyn.

“A long time ago, when I was a little filly.”

“And maybe you can make back some of the bits that you lost.”

“No, it’s not a selling festival. You’re not allowed to buy or sell using bits. That’s one of the reasons they have to have a princess there to make rulings. Because, like, sometimes you get numism...numma...coin collectors there, and they can trade their coins, but they have to make sure that they’re not secretly using ordinary money.” Derpy checked the schedule and indicated that they should start walking.

“I don’t see why, but I guess that the princesses have a reason. I know that sometimes ponies get into arguments over business, but they do that over trades too, don’t they?”

“Hopefully I won’t.”

She picked up her pace and they got to the train station. There was a good line of ponies buying tickets, and the train to Rainbow Falls was already parked and steaming. Derpy was a little worried that they would miss it, but she saw that almost all the ponies were taking their ticket right to the train, so she figured it would stay till everypony could get on. Indeed, by the time she reached the ticket window, there were some other stragglers who had come behind her, all laden with parcels.

“Hey, Derpy?”

“Yeah?”

“You did remember to bring what you have for trade, right?”

Derpy blanched. “No, I don’t! I put them in my spare saddlebags, but then I have the saddlebags I wore to get you, the ones with all the spells. This is bad! I’ll never get home in time.”

“When is the train officially supposed to go?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Karyn looked around, saw Derpy’s face, and made a snap decision. “Buy the tickets.”

“But there’s no point.”

“I either have time to explain this or to do it. Buy the tickets.”

Derpy reached the head of the line. Sullen and wondering what Karyn was doing, she said, “Two third class seats to Rainbow Falls, please.”

The cashier stamped them and Derpy put them in her bags. Karyn hopped on. “Now get me back to the apartment. I’ll toss everything I can think of that I don’t need into one of my own bags, we’ll come back here, just make the train, and you’ll have lots of human stuff to trade everypony.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No, but I want to. I feel partly responsible for your predicament, since I pointed out all the most expensive and high-end parts for your computer, figuring that they were all free.”

Derpy reached her apex point and transitioned back to Earth. “But I was the one who got the computer.”

“I guided you. Here, hold this bag open. Ah! This is perfect. My parents sent me a whole bunch of cooking gear when I first came to college, and I’ve never used half of it.”

“You could learn to cook.”

“If I do, I won’t need all this stuff. Like a garlic press. I can mince garlic myself when I do need it. It’s really just a time saver. Maybe somepony who uses a lot more garlic can use it.” She shoveled some more items in the duffel bag. “Old ring binder, I don’t need that for class anymore. Stapler, don’t use it because everything’s digital now. Getting staples might be hard for a pony but there’s a box here and when it’s done it can be a stress reliever. Scissors? No good, ponies don’t have fingers.”

Derpy grabbed them from where Karyn tossed them down. “A unicorn can use them. They’ll just think the holes are for style. Come on, I don’t want to miss the train.”

“I wish the time stop worked the other way.” But she hopped on and Derpy dove for the train station.

The all-aboard had been given and the last ponies were climbing onto the train. Derpy was panting as she made her way down the hall to the third-class seats. The car was packed, and the ponies barely had any room. They found the last row with two seats open and Derpy took the window, leaning against the cool glass as she recovered.

“Sorry I had to make you go all out like that,” said Karyn.

“No, I should be thanking you for making this trip worthwhile.”

There was no place to store the bag, so Karyn had to hold it on the seat, which in true pony fashion had no back. The most comfortable position she found was to lean over and use Derpy’s torso as a body pillow, but that cramped Derpy’s wing against her. They both liked the train generally, but at that point they just wanted the ride to be over with.

When they finally arrived they took five minutes to just sit in the station and recover. Then they followed the general direction that everypony else was going in, which indeed led them to the trading fair.

The booths were all set up in rows, and Derpy remarked on how much work must have been done to set it all up. She turned her head this way and that at each booth.

“Is there anything in particular that you’re looking to acquire?”

“What I’d really love is some new furniture for my porch. The set I have, when I sit on it I almost fall through. I was going to buy some new ones soon, since they would be cheaper in the colder months, and if I can get them here, then basically I’ll have spent what I saved for them on the computer, and the budget is even.”

Karyn shook her head. “You’ll be hard pressed to find a matching set here.”

“It doesn’t have to be matching. I’d like that, but can’t have everything.”

They reached the end of the first row and saw another small gathering of ponies. They looked up and saw that it was the dais for the princess to preside over disputes. That day, it was Celestia in charge.

A pony couldn’t help looking at Celestia as they passed by. Most didn’t see a princess every day, and she was such an imposing figure. Derpy and Karyn were no exception, but what they didn’t expect is for her to catch their eye. They weren’t even sure it was intentional until she raised a hoof and gave a come-here gesture that still managed to be graceful. After a look behind them to see if she was waving to anypony else, they approached the dais.

“Excuse me a moment,” Celestia said to the next pony who had some for a dispute settlement. “Hello, Derpy, Karyn.”

They both bowed. “Everything going well?” asked Derpy.

“Oh, yes. Especially since I have an excellent clerk here to help me with all the paperwork.”

Before they could inquire further, a pony came from behind a curtain saying, “Celestia, do we have any more—“ but then cut off when she saw Karyn and Derpy.

“Dinky!”

“Mommy, Karyn! I didn’t know you were here.”

Derpy embraced her daughter. “I didn’t know you were either. Did Princess Cel—“ she looked up, but the princess had gone back to speaking to the traders.

“I’m helping out with the trading festival! We used to just make note of the trade disputes, but this year some ponies thought it would be a good idea to keep a record of every trade, so ponies have been running around all over bringing me reports and then I have to compile them!”

As if to give a visual example of what Dinky had explained, another young mare about her age came up and extended a paper. Dinky’s horn glowed, and three seconds later the paper floated onto a stack.”

“What are you going to do with the end report?” asked Karyn.

Dinky stared, but the smile never left her face. “I have no idea! Maybe we’ll be able to see who are making the best trades, or who’s getting more than they’re giving. Meanwhile it’s loads of fun! All the gifted unicorns are doing it. Oh but it’s so good to see you!”

She jumped on Karyn for a hug while Derpy gave her a kiss. “So I guess you can’t stop working right now and come with us, huh?”

“I’ll get a break eventually.”

Karyn said, “Why don’t you go see if you can find what you’re looking for and I’ll keep Dinky company. Here, if I put the bag around your neck it shouldn’t bounce around too much.”

“Thanks.” She trotted off, and Karyn hoped that she wouldn’t be needed to explain how any of her trade bait worked.

“So, Dinky. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“That’s what mommy says all the time. If I think of anything, I’ll let you know. Unless you brought your laptop and want to digitize everything.”

“I didn’t. Did your mother tell you she got a computer?”

Dinky received a new batch of reports. She floated them all into a pile using a fanciful flourish that made Karyn think of shuffling cards. “Yeah, she wrote about it to me, but I didn’t realize she would be coming here. I didn’t write her that I was working with the princess.”

“Well, you’re doing a great job. You’re even working with style.”

“Thanks,” said Dinky, and her horn glowed again. Karyn expected the papers to do something else, but Dinky was just punctuating her agreement.

“So is this what Celestia has everypony doing now? More active work instead of tests or practice?”

“Ha, I wish. If anything there’ve been more tests this year. I’m up all night studying sometimes.”

“Ooh, that’s hard.”

Dinky did a little twirl as she put another stack of completed work on a pile. “Yes, but I’m remembering what mommy and what you told me. I’m hoping that if I can just get past this hump that things will start getting easier for me.”

“I’m in much the same boat.”

“You’re getting a lot of tests too at school?”

Karyn shook her head. “Not yet, but I know they’re coming. I’m taking six classes this semester because of how my scheduling lines up and the electives I want. That means that I’m going to get bombarded with work until the end of the term, after which I’ll only have to take three classes. Which will save me time, but I’ll have to spend it on looking for a job. But if that happens, and I get hired, well, I had my last true vacation last year, but I’ll be able to coast along. One real class and two softball electives, now that’s how school should be!” She smiled as she said it though.

Dinky worked again. “Actually, maybe there is something you can help me with.”

“Anything.”

“Can you give me a count of these pages? See how many there are? It’s a spell that we’re supposed to be learning, but then I have to verify it physically.”

Karyn licked her fingers. “Of course. A hand can be useful for this kind of work.” She rapidly flew the papers through her thumb and forefinger until she reached the end. “I’ve got fifty-seven.”

“No! You weren’t supposed to tell me. I was supposed to tell you and then you tell me if I was right. Well, I’ll do it anyway.” She cast another spell. “Yeah, fifty-seven.”

“Oh, are you practice counting spells?” Karyn and Derpy both turned around to see that Celestia was behind them.

“Princess!” said Dinky, filing the pages back. “I didn’t hear you sneak up...I mean come up behind us!”

She winced, but Celestia laughed. “Long experience. Why don’t you take that break I mentioned? Karyn, you can go and find Ms. Hooves, see if you can help her complete her trade.”

“Thanks, Princess!” They said in chorus, and ran off down the next aisle.

“Do you think we can find her?” asked Karyn.

“I hope so. Do you know what she was trying to trade for?”

“She said she wanted lawn furniture.”

“Well, that would be on the right side of the fair, but I don’t know if mommy knew that.” Dinky led Karyn in the direction she indicated.

There was a number of traders with larger pieces, including furniture, and they found Derpy at a booth haggling. “But this is stuff from right out of another world!”

“Yeah, but how useful is it?” The pony behind the booth was a gruff and heavyset stallion, and he looked like a shrewd negotiator.

“You could re-trade them. But even if you don’t want them for that, you could use this stapler to attach papers.”

He took it in his hoof and looked at the way it worked. “Fancy mechanism. But I don’t know...”

Dinky reached the booth. “Hi, mommy. The princess let me go find you.”

“Hey!” said the trader. “You’re the one I give my trade records to.”

Karyn decided to play up the situation. “Yes, this is the personal clerk of Princess Celestia, and the pony you’re talking to is her mother.”

“I’m not Princess Celestia’s mother!” said Derpy.

The trader looked at the three of them. “This isn’t worth the hassle. Take the pieces.”

“Hooray!”

Karyn held up her hand. “You do know that that doesn’t include the bag, right?” He rolled his eyes and tossed the bag back to Karyn. “I like this bag.”

“So what did you get, mommy?”

“We settled on these two. I won’t have two chairs anymore, but I like this.”

It was a little table, barely tall enough to reach, in black metal. But that wasn’t what caught Karyn’s and Dinky’s eye. Derpy had traded for a large porch swing in a bright pastel pattern.

“That’s really something.”

Derpy got into it right in the middle of the trading festival. “When it’s on my front porch I’ll be able to lounge around and watch ponies go by. Karyn, do you remember when you came over for the rainstorm long ago?”

“Of course.”

“I would have liked to have had this then. We could have swung in it while the rain came down. That was the image I had in my head when I saw it.”

Dinky started walking. “That sounds great. I wish I could have been there. But I’d better get back up to Princess Celestia before she misses me.”

“Good-bye, little one. Don’t stay away too long. You know I’m always waiting for you.”

Dinky left and Derpy kept swinging. She was out of the way of the booth so other ponies could stop by, and if anything she being the picture of contentment helped advertise for others to trade for similar pieces. Karyn joined her in the swing.

“Hey, Derpy?”

“Yeah?”

“How are we going to get this home?”

Derpy stopped.

“You didn’t think about that, did you?”

She resumed swinging. “Well, not directly, but I’m a mailmare! I’ve handled packages before.”

“But this isn’t just a package to be sent somewhere, it’s a big item.”

“I’ve moved heavy stuff before.”

Karyn was getting annoyed that Derpy seemed to be ignoring the problem. “But don’t you usually have a team of pegasi and a truck with you when you do that?”

“Technically.”

“And in those cases, haven’t you moved from one place to another within Ponyville? Have you ever carried something town to town over a train line?”

“I’ve carried letters,” Derpy said, but she was coming to realize that it was indeed going to be an issue. “Maybe I can go ask Dinky or the princess for advice.”

She ran off, leaving Karyn on the swing to make sure no one took it. She got off and lifted one side of the metal. It wasn’t heavy, and she figured that in all honesty, the two of them could carry it to the train station and then to Derpy’s house with a little effort. The problem was its bulk. They had barely had room for Karyn’s kitchen tools on the train going to Rainbow Falls, and they didn’t anticipate more space going back. Unless Derpy stepped up her ticket, and that would negate any savings she’d made.

She came back and Karyn stood up when she arrived. “What did she say?”

“Not much. Dinky had the good idea to use the shrinking spells she learned, and even started charging one up, but Princess Celestia pointed out that we would have no way to restore it once we got home. And she can’t spare Dinky to go with us. So I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“Well, let’s get it down to the train station at least. Maybe we’ll figure something out by then.”

Karyn picked up her end, but realized that there was a problem in them carrying it as a tandem. She could grip one of the side poles in her hand and it fit perfectly, but Derpy couldn’t form a circle with her hoof. So she wound up wearing the crossbar like a harness, which made them look like a comical parade float. The table managed to go upside down on Derpy’s back

At the station they took their seat in the swing again to try to figure out how they could transport it, but no new ideas came forth. A half hour later, the train to Ponyville pulled into the station. Karyn figured they would bite the bullet and try to force it on. They would just have to deal with the angry stares of ponies.

“Hey, Derpy!”

They picked their heads up at the voice to see a figure emerging from the back.

“Oh! You’re the baggage handler from our first train trip! Crush, right?”

“Smash. Don’t feel bad about forgetting the name. I only recognized you because of your human companion. Um...”

“Karyn,” she said.

Derpy gave her best pleading smile. “Could you do us a super-big favor? I just got this swing at the trading fair, and I have no way to get it home. You could probably get it in the baggage car and fill the space with other ponies’ bags.”

“Ha, sure. I’ll figure a way to get everything in. But hurry up and get on. This isn’t a full stop.” He lifted up the swing with one hoof and slid it through the door. Karyn and Derpy hopped up into their seats. It wasn’t as cramped as before.

“See,” said Derpy, “everything worked out in the end.”

“Yes, but you can’t always count on that. We’re just lucky that a strong stallion we know happened to be around.”

“Something else would have come up.”

Karyn shrugged. “Hey, isn’t this exactly the wrong time of year to get that kind of furniture? You won’t be able to use it till next year.”

“No, I’ll still use it some. On a day when it’s not too cold and the sun’s out, I’ll sit outside and enjoy the breeze. I prefer it like that to when it’s so hot that I don’t want to do anything. Then I want to just stay in bed all day.”

“Just don’t get any ideas about buying an air conditioner.”

They laughed, and the train pulled out of the station.

Author's Note

Next week's chapter suggestion comes from EpicManlyMare22. Let's see some of what I got from his idea:

“Ponyville’s been bustling all week.”

“Yeah? What with?”

“Tourists.” Derpy visualized the crowded streets that she had had to deal with.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before she could even react to be afraid, she felt a set of hooves grasping her, and then another.

“Nice catch, Derpy. You got her almost as fast as I did.”

“You have the speed, but when Karyn’s in trouble, I get the strength of ten Derpies!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn swallowed and winced. “So what you’re saying is that it’s going to be difficult.”

“Yes. Which is why as a responsible adult I advise you to give up and go play video games.”

They had a laugh, but Derpy missed the sarcasm.

Thanks again to everyone who sent in suggestions!

F05: Derp, Derp, and Away

Derpy had waited patiently for Karyn to finish her coffee and be fully aware before she started in on what she had waited all week to talk about.

“Ponyville’s been bustling all week.”

“Yeah? What with?”

“Tourists.” Derpy visualized the crowded streets that she had had to deal with. “For whatever reason, a whole bunch of Japonese ponies decided that Ponyville was the place to go this year.”

“Japonese?”

“Yeah, from Japony.”

Karyn pursed her lips and wondered if that wasn’t a little bit racist, but of course Derpy wouldn’t see it that way. It was just the name of where they came from.

“And what have they been doing in Ponyville?”

“What haven’t they been doing? Mainly it seems like they all want a photograph of every square inch of the town, each individually.”

“I guess they are a little bit like Japanese people here, except they don’t go to small towns, as far as I know,” said Karyn. “Of course, you do have a princess there, so maybe that’s it. Anyway, at least the shops can make some more money.”

“Yeah, it’s good for them, but for me all it means are crowded streets and ponies too busy to talk to me when I drop off their mail.”

“Well, I’d like to see them. Maybe I can make friends.”

Derpy shrugged and let Karyn get on her back. When she landed in the Ponyville town square, there didn’t seem to be the mass of ponies that Derpy had implied, and Karyn pointed this out.

“Wait a few minutes. They’re quick on their hooves.”

True to her word, a family of ponies that had a vaguely Asian look stepped out of an alley. Karyn tried to place where she’d seen that style before, and the only thing she could remember was Photo Finish’s assistant who helped her with Fluttershy.

Both of the adults of the family had cameras draped around their necks, and Karyn reflected that with all the technology that ponies didn’t have, photography seemed to be one place where they were close to humans. Of course, they still used film instead of digital, but the camera mechanism was the same.

The family flocked toward Karyn, pointing out this new oddity and snapping pictures. Karyn enjoyed this at first, but when she tried to talk to them, they ran off. A moment later they were leading another family and shouting for more. In short order Karyn was being mobbed by flashbulbs. Derpy tried to get to her, but she couldn’t make her way through the crowd, so she shouted, “Get away and meet at my house!”

“Right!”

Derpy took to the skies while Karyn ducked and dodged through the throng. When she finally came to the edge of the crowd she broke into a full run. She was no match in speed for the ponies, but she could make it through spaces that they couldn’t, and the ponies would have to take a longer trek. Finally Karyn got smart. When she lost her pursuers briefly she activated her changeling magic and adopted her pegasus form. When the Japonese ponies caught up this time, they only saw another resident of Ponyville, and left her alone to go after their quarry.

Karyn was then able to proceed at a leisurely pace to Derpy’s house where that pony was pacing testily. “There you are! I was so worried!”

“It wasn’t pleasant, but I wasn’t scared either. You’re lucky that you can just fly away whenever something like that happens.”

“It wouldn’t have helped if I were being chased by pegasi, but yeah.”

They went inside and Karyn resumed her accustomed form. “When was it that we first learned I couldn’t fly even if I changed into a pegasus? Oh, right, when you were doing the tornado.”

“Yes, you should remember that.”

“Maybe it’s time I learned how to fly.”

Derpy scratched her head. “I don’t know. If it’s something magical that’s specific to pegasi...”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t learned it. You were trained how to fly as a little filly. It’s like, if no one taught me how to walk, even if I had perfectly functioning legs, I still couldn’t do it.”

“That’s an idea. But who can teach you to fly...wait! Rainbow Dash! She’s the best flyer, so she can probably teach anypony”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” said Karyn. “She might try to teach me all the advanced stuff like how to break the sound barrier before she even gets me in the air.”

“OK, let’s try Fluttershy then.”

“Rainbow Dash it is.”

They left again with Karyn on Derpy’s back, and none of the tourists were around to cause another scene. But Derpy took off right from the door so they wouldn’t have been caught anyway.

She went for height right away, saying, “Let’s see, where is she?”

“Do you know where to look?”

“Well, we’ll search the clouds. It shouldn’t be hard to spot blue and rainbow against the white.”

That was indeed where they found her, napping and snoring in the noonday sun. “Should we wake her?” asked Karyn.

“I wouldn’t want to be, so let’s give her a chance on her own.”

It took a few minutes of Derpy standing on an overhanging cloud, but Rainbow did wake up, and did so all at once. Derpy coughed and waved.

“Oh, hey, Derpy, Karyn. Good to see you. I had to get away from all the crowds down on the streets, and then I took a power nap. What’s up?”

“Karyn wants to learn how to fly.”

Karyn gave Derpy a love tap on the ear. “You don’t have to say it straight out like that. It needs some setup. See, Rainbow, I can go into pegasus form using changeling magic, but I can’t fly.”

“Hmm...let me see what you’ve got.”

Karyn focused and changed again, but as she did, Derpy let go and she found herself falling through the cloud. Before she could even react to be afraid, she felt a set of hooves grasping her, and then another.

“Nice catch, Derpy. You got her almost as fast as I did.”

“You have the speed, but when Karyn’s in trouble, I get the strength of ten Derpies!”

Rainbow and she had a laugh, and then they hauled Karyn back up to cloud level. Rainbow seemed surprised when, every time they tried to lower Karyn onto the cloud, she passed through as if it were only a thin mist of water.

“It just seems wrong to me to see a pony with wings who passes through clouds. You don’t even punch holes in them like an Earth pony would if one were unfortunate enough to come here. Hmm...try pumping your wings and show me what happens.”

Karyn recognized the phrase as one that she would use when conducting technical support and didn’t know exactly what the problem was, or to stall for time until she could think of something to try. But just as she would want one of her users to do, she followed directions. Flapping her wings, she gained no more lift than if she had stood in human form and flapped her arms.

“Can I change back. This is tiring.”

“You shouldn’t be worn out from such a quick workout, but if you say so. We’ve clearly seen that you’re not a true pegasus pony. But changelings themselves can fly, right? So what if you were to go into your changeling form?”

Karyn was confused. “I don’t have a changeling form. My magic was given to me by Queen Chrysalis, but she didn’t change my inner self. That’s why I don’t have to feed on love or be bound to a hive. I can try to make one that would be like a changeling and see what happens.”

Derpy agreed. “We’ll just try different things until we find something that lets you fly.”

Karyn focused, it being more difficult because she was distracted by being held up by the two pegasi instead of having her feet on the ground. She tried to picture what a changeling version of herself would look like, trying to round off the harsh eyes and blunt the fangs. She also tried to give herself large powerful wings. When she completed the transformation, she said, “OK, here I go.”

She buzzed her wings faster than before, since they were lighter and thinner than the heavy feathery pegasus wings were. Using all her strength, she squeezed her eyes and flapped for all she was worth.

“Do you feel that, Rainbow, or am I just making it up?”

“No, she’s definitely lighter in our hooves, but she’s still not getting enough lift to take off. Slow it down, Karyn. Don’t burn yourself out.”

Karyn panted and relaxed. “So what do we do now?”

“Well, what you need,” Rainbow said, “is to fly the way that birds or bats or wasps do. That is, on pure mechanics, not any kind of magic at all. Either that or I can try to fit you for a helicopter attachment like Tank has!”

“We’ll consider that a last resort. But here’s the problem. I don’t know exactly how mechanical flying works. Can you tell me a little about that?”

“I don’t know if I’m really the best pony for that job. I do know a lot about flying, but all of it’s predicated on getting in the air with my own wings. So I could tell you about wind shear and all that stuff, but it wouldn’t necessarily help.”

She changed back, and Derpy maneuvered her onto her back. “We could ask Twilight and see if she has any books that could explain it to us.”

“We could,” said Karyn, “but as much as she knows and can find, I think that we’re going to find our answers back on Earth. We know a lot about flight, with all our airplanes and such, and it’ll probably be written in a way that I can understand it.”

Rainbow hopped back onto her own cloud. “You could be right. Best of luck. Next time you’re back here, we’ll have a race.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because I only like competition when the outcome isn’t known ahead of time.”

She and Derpy waved good-bye, and Derpy swooped back to the changeover point. Back in her apartment, Karyn was grateful that for once the time difference worked in their favor; she had all day to figure out the problem with flight.

“So are we going to the library here?” asked Derpy.

“No. We should go sometime, I haven’t even seen the public one, just the research library at the school. But thankfully we’re back in the world where there’s Internet.”

Karyn did some searching. Most of what she found was talking about airplane flight, which might have been helpful, but was not directly on point. Karyn’s powers had limits, and she couldn’t form parts of herself into jet engines or propellers to move her forward at the speeds required to use the aerodynamic principles being discussed.

Derpy had expected a quick answer once Karyn had the computer, and was frustrated at the lack of progress. “Can’t find anything?”

“Turns out there’s a lot of debate still on what makes airplanes fly. They know they do, and they know how to deal with the way they do, but the base scientific reason, there are a lot of different explanations for. My guess is that the ones that are the most accurate are the ones I can least understand. The ones that have lots of math and graphs involved.”

“So it’s just like Rainbow Dash. She could explain how to fly, but not how. Wait, no. She could explain why, but not how. Or, is it how but not why?”

Karyn laughed. “I understand, even though I can’t put it into words either. Well, let me look for some info on how birds fly instead.”

This time Derpy was more involved with the search. Since she too flew on wings of feathers instead of aluminum, she was more curious and hoped to learn something about her own methods. But this too was complex.

“What if,” she said, “you just changed yourself into a bird to get the feeling of how it is to fly, and then we can see if that helps us any.”

“I don’t like changing into animals that are too small. I’m always afraid of getting into a situation where I’ll get hurt.”

“You don’t have to be a small bird. You could be like a falcon or something, a bird of prey. And besides, I’d go with you to chase off anything that would attack you, at least to give you enough time to get on the ground and change back.”

Karyn rubbed her arms. “I guess that’s the best thing for it. You’ll have to open the door for me once I change though.” She concentrated, but she couldn’t quite get the change to happen until she searched for a picture of a peregrine falcon that she got into the form. She also realized that she was without speech as a falcon.

Derpy went invisible, and it was a curious sight to see the little bird hopping around on its two legs trying to keep sight of something it couldn’t. She bounced over to the garden path and bobbed her head each way, still wary of anyone or anything looking. It may have been equal fear of embarrassment.

Karyn opened her wings and checked them, then she leaned forward and flapped. With a breath of wind in her face, she got just enough lift to slide a few inches with no part of her touching the ground.

On each pass she got some lift, but never true sustained flight. She kept her wings flapping and could arrange it so that she was rising more than she was falling, but it certainly never looked elegant. More like she was repeatedly jumping than flying.

It was also tiring. Not quite as bad as flapping in pegasus form, because the wings themselves were lighter, but it was still an effort. She let herself land and take a good rest before trying it again.

From behind, she heard a gentle voice. “Are you hurt, little bird? Did you break your wing?”

Karyn flipped around, itself an unfamiliar motion, to see Gayle kneeling down a good distance away. She held out her hand.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Is there some reason you can’t fly?” And then to herself. “I’ve never seen a bird like this around here.”

Karyn thought of playing it cool and letting Gayle think that she really was a bird, but Derpy ruined any plans of a prank. “Hey, Gayle, it’s Derpy here. The bird is actually Karyn. She wanted to learn how to fly, which is something that she can’t do as a pegasus pony.”

She bounced back away and resumed her usual shape, plus an image of some clothes which she’d had to take off when she transformed previously. “Yeah, it seems like I’m gilding the lilly or something. I should be happy enough to have the form but from an incident earlier today it felt like I should be able to fly when I need to, you know?”

“I can’t say I know, but I’ll believe you. But why as a bird?”

They brought her up to speed on the experiments they had performed so far. “No matter what she does,” said Derpy, “she can’t get consistent and efficient flight.”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if it isn’t more than just the shape. I mean, a bird has instincts that let it fly. It has to be trained by its mother, but it’s still instinctual. How about you, Derpy? Are pegasuses born knowing how to fly?”

“Pegasi. And no, we’re not. We have to be taught.”

Gayle sat down next to Karyn. “So I’m thinking maybe it’s not a skill that you can pick up immediately. It’s like painting. You know how to pick up a brush and move it across the canvas, but I would have to teach you if you wanted to actually get a picture out of it.”

Karyn swallowed and winced. “So what you’re saying is that it’s going to be difficult.”

“Yes. Which is why as a responsible adult I advise you to give up and go play video games.”

They had a laugh, but Derpy missed the sarcasm. “That’s not responsible at all! No, if anything, we have to stay out here until you can fly! No matter how hard it is!”

“Well, you heard her, Karyn. I’ll keep an eye out to make sure you get airborne.” Gayle headed back inside.

“Great. Somehow I wound up with homework.” Karyn rolled her eyes. “Well, if being a bird won’t help I’ll have to think of some other form.”

Derpy thought about that for a long time. “Maybe it’s not so much about the form being good for flying as it is a form that you’re comfortable in. I mean, it needs to be airworthy obviously. I’m not saying you could fly as a fish if, for some reason, you were comfortable as one. But don’t just think about the most efficient way to fly possible.”

“Maybe something closer to a human. Or something like a griffon?”

“I don’t think a griffon would help. I’m pretty sure that their flight methods are magical just like mine. Plus you probably wouldn’t look good as one.”

Karyn thought she could pull it off, but didn’t argue. “Maybe we need to think about this and do some planning before we actually try forms. Figure out what it is that will A, make me the most comfortable flying, B, get off the ground, and C, look good.”

“OK.” They sat down on the steps to Karyn’s apartment. Derpy didn’t understand a formal brainstorming session, but she got the idea.

“So what I’m thinking is that I should gain all the lightening advantages I can. I want to have minimal weight.”

“Fair enough.”

“Like, if I remember correctly birds have hollow bones to make themselves lighter.” Karyn pulled out her phone to confirm this fact.

“But let’s keep focus on what you think would be the best flying form.”

“See, I still think it would be like a pony, but instead of wings like yours I would need super-big ones. More like an eagle’s.”

Derpy flashed back to when Karyn was trying in the cloud. “I think that a lot of your problem as a pegasus is in the hooves. But I can’t say why.”

“Probably because without magic they create a lot of drag. Not so much weight in and of themselves, but positioned to slow me down. But I don’t want to look like a blob pony that doesn’t have any hooves.”

“What if you had retractable hooves like a cat’s claw?”

Karyn winced. “That’s almost as bad. But there’s an idea. What I want are aerodynamic hooves that will cut through the wind. Plus they can act like rudders for steering.”

Neither of them had any drawing talent, or they would have sketched out a picture of what they meant. As it was, Karyn just had to go with the picture she had. Glad that she was fully adept at using her changeling powers, she concentrated.

It looked similar to her pony form, but swept back and build more around lines than curves. Derpy did not find it attractive, but neither was it an abomination against nature. And as she said, Karyn had given herself oversized wings, such that she could almost use them as a cloak against the wind.

“Now, let’s see what you can do!”

“Maybe we should try this in Equestria? It might look a little weird around here.”

“Oh, right.” Once on Equestrian ground, Karyn spread her wings and gave a little trot forward. This time she knew. Airborne immediately, each flap was more like a swoop. It felt like rowing a boat, where the strokes weren’t constant, but each provided more momentum than was lost by the time she started again. Leaning forward, she was able to feel the wind in her face.

“I can’t believe I’m really doing it. This is a dream for lots of people, to fly unaided.” She swooped and soared, but soon enough the exhaustion came. So she skittered to a halt on some soft grass. “I need to work on the ends of my legs for better landings.”

“You want to try again?”

“In a few minutes. I’m going to have to work on my wind if this is going to be a regular thing.”

Derpy opened her own wings. “Any time you want to practice, I’ll be there to join you.”

“Deal.”

“Hey! What’s that?!” They turned to see the Japonese tourists, having reached the edge of Ponyville, notice them.

“Looks like practice time just started up.”

Karyn went right back into flight mode, and this time she was able to keep pace with Derpy. The sound of flashbulbs behind her told her that there would be mysterious pictures to be gawked over, possibly printed in the newspaper.

“Well, I guess I know that I can fly when I need to. I really feel like I’m exploring the full capacity of my changeling powers.”

“And I remember when you didn’t like them at first.”

She flashed back to herself. “Just so long as I can always go back.”

Author's Note

Thanks to Epicmanlymare22 for the idea about Karyn using her powers to figure out flying.

125: Thanksderping

Karyn sipped her coffee and jabbed her fork into her egg over easy. Derpy picked up her own egg-in-the-hole toast and took a bite. “Are you OK?” she asked

“A little tired. You can tell?”

“Your egg is a little off. Normally you make it into a perfect shape. And mine was a little runny.”

Karyn looked over. “I’m sorry, I’ll remake it for you.”

“No, that’s not necessary at all. It would mess up my diet and be more work for you. No, I just want to make sure you’re feeling well.”

“I’m in the middle of midterms. I knew I was going to get hit hard with my heavy schedule, but now it’s here. Well, three more days and it’ll be over.”

“That’s right, you’re taking an extra class this time.” Derpy nodded and patted Karyn with a wing.

“Yeah, and more than that I’ve been pushing myself for all A’s. That’s why I thought about remaking your breakfast. I’ve been focusing on perfection for the past week, making sure that all my essays have perfect grammar and just the right word, triple-checking my math, that kind of thing.”

“I’m proud of you for that. Sometimes it’s nice to see what your limits are. I hope you get your A’s.”

Karyn carried the dishes to the sink. “I darn well better. But even so, I’m working hard through these three days, and then I’ll have a blissful four day weekend. Nothing to do but relax. I can even get my cleaning done early so that I’m all set for you on Sunday. No stress.”

“Sounds nice. Wait, four-day weekend?”

“Yes, my parents are going on a vacation for the weekend. Well, I guess it’s not a vacation so much, they’re going a few states away to a friend of mom’s sister. I don’t know them very well, and, to my extreme relief, they said that I wouldn’t enjoy myself there, plus the logistics of the travel don’t work out too well. I would have to get up at the break of dawn to drive home and then be driven by them.”

Derpy waited patiently as Karyn said this, but she still had a question on her mind, and so she only half paid attention. She thought that she should try to stop doing this and give the other person speaking a chance to be heard, but then she realized that that thought was also distracting her, and so she let it go.

“But why do you have a four-day weekend in the first place? Is it because the midterms give you a day off?”

“Oh, no. It’s for Thanksgiving. I guess you don’t have that in Equestria.”

“No, what is it?”

Karyn had to take a moment to collect her thoughts. The idea of Thanksgiving was so ingrained in her that there was so much she took for granted. Then she remembered that not even all countries celebrated it, or did so at the same time, so it wasn’t Derpy who was the odd one.

“It’s a day of feasting that comes from some early settlers in this country. They had a bad year, then a good one, and they had a lot of food and wanted to celebrate.”

“Sounds like my kind of holiday.”

“Maybe so,” said Karyn. “So normally it’s a day when families all get together, just like Christmas but with no presents. There are traditional foods you’re supposed to eat and there’s a big parade that gets shown on TV each year, and it’s part of the big run of holidays that we have toward the end of the year.”

“And it’s on a Thursday this year?”

“It’s on a Thursday every year. I think it’s the only holiday that works like that. Most of them move to the nearest Monday or Friday, and some of them are on the same date no matter what, but Thanksgiving is always on the fourth Thursday of November, by rule.”

Derpy had a look of shock that Karyn couldn’t understand. “That’s a terrible holiday.”

“Why?”

“Well, you get the day off, but then you’ve got to come back to work the next day. They should just put it on Friday like all the other ones.”

“A lot of people have the day off on Friday too, like me. It depends on what you do. Retail stores are usually open on that day, but offices will close. Or you can go ahead and schedule a day off for Friday to tie it in with Thanksgiving. It’s one of those things that you consider when looking for a job, if you’re lucky enough to be able to consider things like that.” Karyn headed for the computer. “Come to think of it, I don’t actually know why it’s scheduled for the Thursday.”

She did some research, Derpy looking over her shoulder. “Any luck?”

“Not really. Every site I can find just says it’s tradition. The best explanation I can find is that it’s supposed to be the furthest day from Sunday.”

“But in the first place, Wednesday is just as far, and in the second, why far from Sunday? Just to keep it away from our visits?”

Karyn looked askance at Derpy. “Yes, Derpy, the people two hundred years ago said that the holiday should be far away from the flying pony who comes to Earth and no one knows about.”

“Got it.”

“Or because Sunday was the day for religious ceremonies. Like when I took you to the church.”

It took Derpy this second explanation before she realized that Karyn had been sarcastic with her first.

“Well, so most people get the Friday off too?”

“I don’t know if it’s most, but a lot.”

Derpy lay down on the bed and put her hooves behind her head. “That sounds nice. You finish your work, then go see your family, and then relax for three days. It’s like staging down into your weekend instead of it all happening at once.”

“Not always.”

Derpy picked her head up to invite Karyn to speak.

“A while back we started a tradition of opening the Christmas season on that Friday. They even have Santa Claus in the big parade I mentioned. And since Christmas is such a big shopping season, that Friday is when all the retailers push for big sales. They’ll make deals available and open their doors at midnight or earlier to let people shop.”

“I would like that. I don’t have many ponies to buy gifts for on Hearth’s Warming Eve, but if we could have a start to the season and I could buy them all at once, I might not always be caught trying to get gifts at the last minute.”

“Yeah?” asked Karyn. “I kind of figured you’d be the responsible type even without a formal calendar.”

Derpy blushed, as if she had revealed something she hadn’t intended to. She quickly changed the subject. “So can I see some of these deals?”

“Sure, we can look online or go out and window shop. You’re not thinking about getting another computer, are you?”

“Why would I? I just got the last one.”

“Yeah, but it could be obsolete...never mind.”

Karyn pulled up the websites of some of the stores she liked to let Derpy see the garish advertising beckoning people in. Since that kind of hard sell was limited in Equestria to scammers like the Flim-Flam brothers, it was fairly new for her, and Karyn wasn’t sure it was healthy.

Derpy flipped through the pages themselves, enjoying it even if she didn’t know what half of it was. “This all looks so fun. Everyone must have a great time.”

“Not really. Some of it gets pretty intense, with people battling over getting what they want. There have even been people trampled at some of the sales. And then you get people who think that the whole thing is bad because of that and should be called off. They want it to be like you said, where everyone relaxes for the full weekend.”

“And what about you?”

Karyn shrugged. “I don’t particularly care one way or the other. I mean, it’s bad when people get hurt, and I don’t like that, but at the same time I think the people who complain get a little preachy.”

“No, I mean do you shop at these sales?”

“Oh. No, I buy all my gifts online. Most of them, anyway. Very convenient.”

After a few more minutes of browsing, Derpy shut it down and said, “I guess none of this is for me. The shopping I can’t do and the feast would help since it would all be meat stuff.”

“Actually, that’s one good thing, is that Thanksgiving is a nice day for vegetarians. It would probably be pretty good for vegans too, but maybe not. A lot of butter. But there’s all sorts of dishes that don’t have meats in them. Potatoes and sweet potatoes and turnips and carrots glazed in sugar and stuffing—although the stuffing could be made with meat, but my mom always made some for me—and then lots of desserts as well. It’s really only the turkey that’s a pure meat dish.”

“Oh, wow. Some of that sounds good.”

Karyn kept going. “Yeah, I don’t usually overeat myself, but the thing is that unless the cook really knows what they’re doing, things will be ready at different times. So at least in my house, it was less of a binge than a steady stream of food. So by the time the apple pie came out, I had a bulging tummy and was ready to sleep.”

“And that was every year?”

“Well, sometimes my dad would help with the cooking, and he was better at timing, but not as good at actually making the dishes, so it was a whole different thing.”

Their conversation drifted away from the talk of holidays. Derpy brought Karyn up to speed on everything that she had done that week, and how she had a lovely letter from Dinky telling her how great she was doing at school, and how the mail was fairly light and everypony got a good long chance to speak to her, which was how she liked it.

Then Karyn got a chance to talk about midterms more before moving on to some of the fun she had chatting online with some friends and playing video games. In the middle of this, Derpy burst out with, “I’ve decided. I want to do it.”

“Huh? Do what?”

“I want to have Thanksgiving!”

Karyn took a moment to think of the context that Derpy could be talking in and came up empty. “You want to come here to have it with me, or you want me to go with my parents after all and bring you?”

“No, I want to have it in Equestria.”

“You want to set up a dinner for yourself at home?”

Derpy stomped her hoof. “No! I want to make this Thanksgiving a holiday there so that everypony gets a day off and gets to spend it with their family and have a feast. And I want it to be on this Thursday.”

Karyn first got the image in her head of a pony family gathered round a long table to have such a family dinner, and it didn’t seem too far out of place, even if the knives and forks would be manipulated with hooves or magic fields instead of fingers. Then she got a little cynical.

“Are you sure you don’t want an excuse to break your diet this week?”

“Well, kind of. But I think that if I can have a holiday each year that’s based around food, then I’ll be better the rest of the year at avoiding the temptation. I’ll just keep the anticipation for Thanksgiving and all the eating I’ll do then, and when I get really desperate I can plan out the menu and make preparations.”

“Well, it’s up to you of course, if you really think that’s best.” Karyn tried to put a reproachful tone in her voice, but wasn’t sure how effective it was.

“I actually do. I mean, I know that I’m being silly and that I’m not going to get everypony in Equestria to celebrate by this Thursday, but I can start celebrating myself, and maybe get Dinky to come home, and who knows? It might catch on. Although I’m going to have one big problem.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy spread her hooves as if seeing the table set before her. “The whole thing that you were telling me about with the turkey, where it’s this central important dish, I think that’s important. Obviously I can’t eat a bird, poor thing, but I want something that would fit at the center of the table and be the highlight of the meal. Something...big.”

“I can see that, but what do you want to have? If it can’t be a meat dish, it’s hard to make it central. Because usually there’s only one meat and many vegetables. So what’s something that’s unique in a pony meal?”

“Hay? I can have a big bale of hay that everypony takes from?”

Karyn visibly expressed her disdain for this, but that was her visceral reaction, not that she thought it was a bad idea.

“I guess not,” said Derpy. “What it should be is something that takes a long time to cook. That way, like you said your family does, all the other dishes could be eaten while it’s being made.”

“You know what I liked? Do you remember a few weeks after we met I got ill? And you took care of me with Zecora? When it was all done you made me stuffed mushrooms. They were really tasty. You should include those in your Thanksgiving meal.”

“That’s it!”

Karyn shook her head. “Huh? No, I didn’t mean for your main dish. They don’t take a long time to cook, and I don’t think there’s any way to make it a big central dish. Not as far as presentation, which the food channel always says is important.”

“That’s because when I made it that time I used regular mushrooms. I can find some really big ones, where I’ll only need one or two to fill up an entire platter.”

“Do you have them that big in Equestria?”

Derpy was not even looking at Karyn anymore, just staring off into space. “Yes, and I can get them sized up by a good cooking unicorn. Not too much, since I’m told that dilutes the flavor, but then I can give everypony a nice big piece.”

“And it even has a meaty flavor, or so I’m told.”

“Yes, that’s definitely the thing to do. I’ll go shopping this week and find the best one I can, then I’ll slow steam it all day Thursday and I’ll add lots of spices and fresh herbs. It might take me a couple of tries before I get the exact best flavor, but if it’s going to be a tradition, then I’ll have the chances.”

Derpy was having such fun planning out her event that Karyn hated to put a pin in her balloon. “Derpy, you haven’t established the holiday yet. That means that you’re not going to have off on Thursday.”

She seemed to be stymied, but only for a moment. “I’ll just have to take a day off. I’ve got enough good will that Mr. Mintsugar will give it to me, even if I don’t tell him what it’s for. But I’ll explain that it’s Thanksgiving and he’ll probably just laugh.”

“Go for it.”

Again the conversation devolved into minutiae, and at one point the girls decided to head out for lunch. Karyn was impressed at how little Derpy ate; it seemed that she was truly committed to balancing out her meals so that she could eat more come the holiday. Right as they were winding down the midday meal, Derpy came out with another non sequitur.

“Hey, what for?”

“What for what?”

Derpy realized that she had been vague and apologized. “What is it that you’re giving thanks for? Or is the name of the holiday just something that you thought sounded cool?”

“I didn’t name it. But you probably meant humans in general. Well, it was a religious holiday to begin with, but these days it’s different for everyone. Sometimes you’ll go around the table and everyone will say something that they’re thankful for in that particular year.”

“Oh, that sounds nice.”

Karyn thought of how it might work with the religious parallels. “Or you could make it a holiday about giving thanks to the princesses for all the work they do. Celestia and Luna particularly.”

“I don’t know that they’d like that. They try not to have us give them too much praise. I think they’re afraid of their own egos. But I should definitely get them on board with the holiday. Also Mayor Mare. That would be the best place to start. She’s always looking for some other holiday to preside at. No, I’d better let the princesses know first.”

“Why’s that?”

“So that Celestia can let me have Dinky for this Thursday.”

Karyn beamed. “I’m sure you’ll figure out how to get it done. I really think that you can do anything you set your mind to.”

“Well, I couldn’t eat a hundred cakes in one day, or fly to the moon, or turn into a unicorn, or...”

“Within reason.”

“Oh.” Derpy eyed Karyn’s laptop. “Do you think I could use that for a little while? I’d like to start planning out my menu and stuff. Can I print it when I’m ready?”

“Sure. Better than that, whatever you write I’ll save to a portable drive, and you can plug it into your own computer at home.”

“And I can print it there?”

“I meant for you not to print it at all.” Karyn looked round her apartment, thinking of how much more work she’d have to do to get it to pass Derpy’s inspections if she had to print more.

“I think I prefer paper. No offense.”

“None taken. If you take it home with you, it can’t clutter up my place. I guess you’re better at avoiding that though.”

Derpy went to work while Karyn, deprived of her main source of entertainment, played a little on her phone. She knew that Derpy didn’t approve, but if she was going to do an alone activity, so could Karyn. From time to time Derpy would ask her what she thought about a dish or a tradition.

“OK, I think I’m ready to print. It’s fun to plan things out like that.”

Karyn did the printing herself, so Derpy didn’t waste paper by using the wrong settings. “I’m sure you’re going to have a great time.”

“You are going to come, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t even think about it. You’re inviting me?”

Derpy spun around in the chair a full 540 degrees before facing Karyn. “Of course! Not only did you give me the idea, but I’d invite you to anything fun I’m doing.”

Karyn didn’t know what to say, beyond a thank-you, and she wasn’t sure if she was going to accept. She still had her midterms on her mind, but then she remembered that they would be finished by Wednesday. “I’d be delighted to some to your Thanksgiving dinner, Derpy. It won’t even cut into my time off. It’ll make it a five-day weekend. Something I could use.”

“Great. Can I ask you another big favor then?”

“What’s that?”

“Can I take this list home now? There are some ponies I’m going to want to see and since I’ll have work all week now is the only time I can do it. Plus if we see each other on Thursday, it’ll mean that we really won’t lose any time together.”

Karyn gave her a hug. “Of course I don’t mind. That will give me more time to study for tomorrow’s test, and I can get to bed early so that I’ll be at my best.”

Derpy packed up, and after assuring Karyn that she would pick her up bright and early on Thanksgiving, she used her spell and left for Equestria.

She flew home first, so she could mark up her printed list with a quill as to what she had to do first. Then she gave her cat a pet on the head and made her way around Ponyville running errands.

When the sun went down, Derpy realized that it would normally be the time she was getting home anyway, but only half the day had been spent with Karyn.

Back on Earth, Karyn wasted no time, but went right to work on her books, highlighting and taking notes. She had marked the pages that would be on the midterm, and frequently she would look at the stacked pages hoping they would have shrunk. It was slow, but eventually she reached the end.

It was already dark out when she picked her head up and stretched her neck, but it was the time that she normally would straighten the bed covers from where Derpy had crashed on it and headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth and change into her nightclothes.

And so both of them stood in their respective dwellings in their respective worlds, and both of them lamented the lost time and anticipated the time to come. Although there was no way they could have known it, both of them felt that the other was thinking of them, and they were right.

Author's Note

I hope all my American readers have a good Thanksgiving tomorrow, and for everyone else, get on board! (Canadians, push yours back) Meanwhile, here's what's coming next week:

“Anyway,” she said, “what do you think about coming over today?”

“Anything going on?”

“Nothing special, but I’ve got so many leftovers from last week that I still have to eat.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn held up a hoof. “Wait. Maybe we can do this. I could come with and fly along just for the ride. Maybe I could even help. It could be fun.”

Derpy looked at her with skepticism. “You think that carrying stuff is fun?”

“I guess not when you’ve done it as often as you. But for me it’s a novelty.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That would be awful. All the more reason that you should go and make friends with her.”

“You’re right. I think I’m going to do it.”

Despite this pronunciation, Derpy kept on checking the oven and going about her cooking duties. Karyn was skeptical. “When?”

We'll meet a new friend, someone we've never seen before! Come back to read that one too.

127: School of Hard Derps

“Hey, Karyn!” Derpy almost jumped at Karyn with her embrace as she greeted her for another visit. Once her hooves were around Karyn’s neck, though, she flapped her wing to swing around instead of knocking her over. She misjudged the distance a little, and banged her hoof on the edge of Karyn’s bureau. It hurt, but she seemed not to care.

“You’re in a chipper mood today,” said Karyn.

“I ought to be. I visited Gertie twice this week. We had a great time. She’s a lot like you. Because she’s a stranger to Ponyville, I get to show her things that most ponies know, but she doesn’t. Then I look smarter than I am.”

Karyn nodded and got to work on breakfast.

“I talked to her about working at the post office too, but I haven’t brought it up there. They’re not actively looking for anypony right now, and I’m afraid that she’ll be disappointed if she can’t get in right away. Also they might be hesitant because she’s a griffon, but I think they’ll let her work there. That would be something I’ve never had: to work with someone that I knew as a friend first. I’ve made some friends at work, but that’s different, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

Derpy looked around. “Yeah, it’s gonna be great. We won’t have the same route, but we’ll be able to fly to work together and sort together and...are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

She went to sit down on the bed, but Derpy found it unkempt and the pillows askew. She cast her eye over the apartment again. Karyn turned away, and Derpy saw that she was worried about being called out on the state of her apartment. Normally Derpy would have done just that, but she could see that this wasn’t the time.

“No you’re not. I can tell. Don’t worry, I won’t bug you about anything.”

“You’re not going to tell me that I’ve been too messy or should have cleaned yesterday?”

Derpy got off the bed and held Karyn’s head in her hooves. “I prefer it that way, but it’s more important that you’re OK. If I thought it bothered you regularly I wouldn’t do it. But most of the time you know and agree with me. So when you don’t I know that it’s something big. So tell me about it.”

“The shame of it is that I’ve been keeping up a good streak. You haven’t had to criticize me in a long time.”

“Forget about that. Talk to me.”

Karyn finally looked up with half of a smile on her face. It vanished immediately when she started talking. “You remember how I was talking about the midterms?”

“I do.”

“I got all the grades back. All A’s except one. I got a C-minus. A da...well, I don’t want to swear, but a C expletive minus.”

Now it was Derpy’s turn to have her expression fall. “Hey, I know you wanted to get them all, but you worked hard at it, right? You tried your best?”

“That’s the thing!” Karyn was now full of energy. “I did work hard. I studied so much and I was confident going in. Let me give you some background. I have to do some general courses along with my IT stuff. They can’t all be electives where I get to take fun classes, some of them are things that the college just wants everyone to know. So it’s this economics course I have to take. They’re not telling me anything that I don’t read in the news, but they’re doing it with lots of graphs and fancy terms. Well I studied it hard just as I did for all the other midterms. I got in for the test and I was cruising. Now, the test was in two parts, multiple choice and essays. I’m working through these multiple choices, bam, bam, everything was something I remember reading. Then I hit the essays and again, I know all these questions. I’m being pithy, clever, showing off that I know it backwards and forwards. There are five essays and I had to choose four. I didn’t even think about that and just ran through the first four questions there. Derpy, believe me when I tell you, having taken a lot of tests, I was good. I was the first one finished. I think the whole thing took me forty-five minutes. I was happy about that, I’ll tell you. Gave me basically another two hours off.”

“So what happened?”

“I went into class this week waiting for the grade—this is the kind of professor who hates posting things online. I think she’s just too lazy to do it. I’m hoping for the A but I’m expecting no worse than A-minus, B-plus if all went wrong. And I stare at the paper. At first I couldn’t believe it. I thought that it was someone else’s, but there was my name. Then I thought that maybe I had put all the multiple-choice answers on the wrong line, and I could explain that and get it changed. But no, I had gotten all the multiple-choice questions right. Didn’t miss a single one.”

Derpy inhaled. “So it was the essays?”

“Yes. I went through and she had marked me down anywhere she could. She had vague comments like ‘Not enough information’ or ‘improper terminology.’ What I think is that she didn’t like the fact that I finished early and decided ahead of time that she was going to grade me as hard as possible. Whether that’s because I showed her up for not writing a difficult test or because she just hates the idea of someone having an easy time and then getting to leave early, I can’t say. But I absolutely think that I got screwed.”

Having finished this rant, Derpy saw that Karyn looked less tense, and she could tell that Karyn had probably been saving it up all week to tell her. It was one of the rare times that she was sorry she didn’t have a cell phone or some way to hear from Karyn during the week.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you so mad.”

“I normally don’t like to pour things onto you. You’re my friend to have fun with, who reminds me that there’s a place where vindictive people don’t get into positions of power where they can mess with others. And the funny thing is that if I hadn’t studied so much, if I’d been less confident, I would have done better.”

It was difficult for Derpy to get Karyn to understand that she wanted to be sympathetic in a human way, the way that two girlfriends would discuss one of their problems and bond over it. If she was going to, she would have to do so in an Equestrian way. But what would that mean?”

“Do you want to see if we can turn her into an orange?”

Karyn laughed. “Yes, I do. That would be a fitting revenge. But not a practical one. Say instead that I’ll fantasize about it, and every time I look at her, I’ll think of that and this way I won’t show in my expression what I really think.”

“You said this was the midterm, right? How much does it count to the final grade?”

“That’s a good question.” Karyn opened a drawer in her desk. Derpy saw that it was cluttered with papers in a haphazard manner, which would have been another point of criticism, except that she had agreed not to do so, and in general she didn’t mind if Karyn kept things in disarray if they were hidden from view.

“What are you looking for?”

“The syllabus they gave us at the beginning of the class. A-ha.”

Karyn announced that she had found it, but still needed to search through to find the breakdown she was looking for. Derpy understood none of it, but seeing that it was mostly about the course work and less about the requirements backed up Karyn’s statement that the professor was a tough one.

“OK, here’s how it is...she doesn’t even give points for attendance or classroom participation like most of them do. But that makes the calculation easier. It’s just the midterm, the second midterm, and the final.” She put some numbers into her computer. “In theory, if I get a complete hundred on both remaining tests, I could average a 90, which could be an A or an A-minus depending on how she puts it in.”

“How about the other tests?”

Karyn bit her lip. “This is the only thing keeping me from a perfect record.”

“OK, but...I know it’s not the same, but if sometimes I screw up at work, I don’t let it get to me because I know I’m still getting paid. I guess what I’m asking is, are you really going to lose out from this one class if you don’t get an A?”

“Well...there’s no direct material reward like that, but if I can pull up my overall grades, it’ll look better on my resume. But more than that, if I can show my folks that I’m getting all A’s, well, they’ve been talking and hinting about helping me out a little bit. I’m going to be out of school soon, and I’m going to have to start paying my student loans. If it takes me a while to find a job, I’ll be in a squeeze. If my folks will float me over for that time, I’ll be saved a lot of stress and money.”

Taking a second look at Karyn’s calculations, Derpy stuck out her tongue. “OK, we’re going to do it.”

“We? Do what?”

“Make sure that you get full marks on the last two tests.”

“Ha!” said Karyn “Fat chance. Well, maybe on the final. That’s all multiple choice. I guess that once the term ends, she doesn’t want to have to spend time grading essays. She just wants to run the fill-in sheets through the reader and go home. So if I study as hard as I just did, I could do that. But there’s one more test, and it’s going to be the same format.”

“Then there’s only one solution.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy paused. Part of her didn’t want to say it, but she had to. “You’re going to have to write down everything she says in class and memorize every part of the book she tells you to. Then, when the second midterm comes, you’re going to have to put it all down on paper. Fill up an entire answer book for each essay if you have to.”

“It’s not supposed to be a stenography course. If I’m doing all that I won’t have time to learn anything.”

“You did say that it’s not one of your core courses. And you don’t know that. Teachers are different. I remember Dinky had some that she didn’t like, but I told her she had to learn from them just the same.”

Karyn was jarred by the image of any pony teacher being compared to her strict professor. “But didn’t she have any that you would agree were just bad?”

Derpy thought about it for a while. “Nope! Of course, I’m not the best judge. I only had one teacher. In school, I mean, with tests and such. And he was nice. I just wasn’t that great at learning. But for folks like you and Dinky, you can learn from anyone.”

“I’m grateful that you have so much confidence in me. Personally I think she’s just a bad teacher. There are plenty of them who aren’t good at their jobs, who don’t want to teach but just to lecture. Now, for some they feel that teaching is secondary because they’re doing research or writing books. I could understand that even if I don’t approve. But some just want a sinecure.”

“A what?”

“An easy job,” she said as she sat down by the laptop. “But come on, let’s figure out how I’m going to pull this off.”

Karyn got out her textbook and showed Derpy what she had learned in the first half of the course. Derpy didn’t understand the material but she could see how Karyn was rephrasing things. “Don’t do that,” she said. “Just say it like it’s in the book.”

“But I don’t have that good a memory. When I was in high school and they had us try to memorize passages from plays or speeches, I always took the longest.”

“OK, so even if you can’t do that, use the keywords, the nouns and verbs, that they use in the book. If you can do that at least it shows her that you’re following.”

Karyn was writing down everything Derpy said. “I don’t want to show her that, though.”

“I know, but since she’s the one giving you the grade, you have to play by her rules. Once you get the A, you can go stick your tongue out at her if you want. You won’t have any classes with her next term, right?”

“Ha, no I won’t. OK, I’ll keep my focus by thinking about doing that at the end. Or giving her some other gesture which you wouldn’t understand. And in fact can’t physically do, since it requires a finger.”

Derpy didn’t understand, and that was probably for the best. “I know you’ll work your hardest. Even if it doesn’t work, please don’t be too disappointed. As time goes by, it’ll be less and less important.”

“Well, let’s make it less important right now. I’ve done all I can today. When the time comes, and I’m in class, I’ll remember this and work as hard as I can. But right now let’s have fun.”

“Yes, let’s! What do you want to do to have fun?”

Karyn got up and grabbed her coat. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not sitting around here watching internet movies. I want to go out. I’ll have to use gas for the car, but I’ll try not to spend a whole lot of money.”

“No, I think you should.”

That got Karyn to stop while her arm was still sliding into the coat. “Really?”

“Yes. What you did today was very difficult on you emotionally. I can tell. It’s fair to give you a just reward by letting you spend some money. So long as you don’t make a habit of it.”

“How about this? I need to do some shopping anyway for the holidays. I can start on that. Most of that is stuff I’m going to have to buy anyway, so I won’t really be out any money. On the way, if I see a thing or two I want to buy for myself or for you, I can pick it up.”

“Yeah!” said Derpy.

They got in the car and Karyn drove with passion, as if she was fleeing her apartment. Derpy didn’t know the road they were traveling, but it was a fairly large one. She asked where they were going.

“It’s a mall my parents used to take me to when I was a kid. It’s on the way home, about halfway between here and there. Back then, I thought that nothing would ever be better than having a car and being able to go there whenever I wanted. I would take all my friends and be so cool and hang out there all day.”

“But you’ve moved on?”

“Yeah. I can’t afford it even now.” She pulled off the cloverleaf that led right into the parking lot. The way it was designed forced them to drive up close to the mall entrance before getting to the spaces, and it took them a long time to find a space.

“It seems crowded.”

“Yes, because lots of other people will be doing holiday shopping as well. Most of it I do online, but I can grab a few little things here and there. I like the experience, being among other people, feeling the rush and the hustle. Everything gets intense before it gets relaxing.”

They took the long walk through the cold and wind, and they were grateful to finally get in the doors. The south side doors led to the food court, and even though she had gone invisible, Derpy’s stomach was audibly grumbling.

“Can we get something to eat first?”

“Sure. Want to go to the salad bar?”

Derpy scanned the line of eateries. “I was thinking more of that pretzel stand.”

Karyn said nothing, but Derpy could hear the silent reminder of her diet.

“Come on!” she said, “Don’t I deserve a reward too?”

“What for?”

That caught her up short, but she improvised. “For being so nice to Gertie.”

“Actually, yes, that does merit something. You stepped outside your comfort zone.” With a cheer, Derpy took off for the stand. Karyn followed up with, “Just don’t make it a habit.”

Karyn had to order for both of them as usual, and the bored cashier handed her the two salted pretzels. Now they had a problem. The food court seats, and most of the mall, was too well populated and well lit for Derpy to eat her pretzel without being seen. They could not use their usual tactic of taking a seat by a wall, because there were none.

“Should I go outside and eat this?” Derpy asked. “I can get up high where no one will see.”

“No, it’ll get too cold. At one end there’s a little side hall where a few stores and the bathrooms are. It’s usually empty. Just eat fast.”

“That I can do.”

They found the hall Karyn mentioned, and Derpy went down while Karyn, who had finished her pretzel on the walk, looked in one of the shoe stores that had a sale display. Derpy didn’t mind and found a quiet corner to munch away in.

When she was finished, she went back to the shoe store, but it took her a while to find Karyn, eventually having to resort to flying and perching on the top of one of the aisles to spot her. In haste, she knocked over a box of shoes. The loud thump from the long fall got Karyn’s attention. She had been looking down at her own feet.

“Hey, Derpy,” she whispered.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, I was just flashing back to when my mom would take me here every year to get new clothes for school. I liked getting new dresses or shirts, but getting shoes was always a hassle. Guess I’m not a typical girl who loves shoes, huh?”

Derpy considered. “I don’t really like shoes either. Pulling the nails out of my hooves always makes them look bad. It’s hard to find a good farrier.”

“Not quite the same thing, but yeah. And then she would take me for a pretzel, but they weren’t like the ones we had. They were puffier and the salt was bigger.”

“It’s fun to be nostalgic sometimes, isn’t it?”

Karyn sighed, and she saw that she was attracting the attention of one of the clerks, so they left the store. “Yes, but now, here I am, again having pretzels and again shopping, and I wish I could capture the same feeling. Or enjoy this at all.”

“You’re not having fun? Even though we came here specifically for that?”

“I still can’t get my professor out of my head. All that I’ve had to put up with from her over the past couple of months. It’s just not fair. And I shouldn’t be shopping to try to cheer myself up.”

Derpy started to say something, but held up when she felt that Karyn was being deeper than just anger at an authority figure. “You said you had to get some gifts, right?” she asked at last. “Let’s take care of that, so at least you’ll have it over and done with.”

“Indeed.”

They tried a couple of different shops, but in each of them Karyn couldn’t find exactly what she wanted and would still have to buy online. The only purchase she did make was of a gift card, and even then she wasn’t happy with the selection they had of card images. Derpy could sense Karyn’s disappointment.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to drive home?”

That at least made Karyn smile. “Thanks, no. I might be amenable to letting you fly me home, but then I’d have to come back for the car next week, and I wouldn’t trust it in a mall parking lot for so long. Security would probably think I abandoned it.”

Driving back to Karyn’s apartment, a cold wind came and shook the last leaves off some of the trees. Clouds rolled in, thick and gray. The sound of the car doors closing when they got out was muffled in the thick and quiet air. Karyn mounted the steps to the apartment, tossed the gift card down next to her laptop where she would find it when she needed it.

Derpy decided that it was time to do all she could to help.

“Karyn,” she began, “I don’t know if I really understand why you’re so down. Yes, we talked about the lousy class you’re taking and yes, our mall trip wasn’t as fun as you’d like. I know that it’s not the same as when you were a little girl. But I still think that there’s more. I can’t make you tell me. Just please know that when you’re ready, I want to hear about it.”

Author's Note

Next week's chapter is very very very loosely based on a suggestion by Lunar_Twilight. Let's take a peek:

Flashing her hair from its mess into her usual updo, Karyn said, “Could I go over to your place and see it?”

“I was going to ask you that, but I didn’t want to impose.”

“No, it’s no imposition. Do you want to have breakfast first, or...let me at least make coffee.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy came out and joined her. She said nothing at first, noticing how Karyn was in such a peaceful place. Both of them just sat and rocked.

“I guess time’s not moving back on Earth,” Karyn said at last.

“Probably not. I didn’t try to anchor us mentally."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“And what if I am?”

Derpy put everything down and sat at the table. She had never been more focused. “Karyn, I don’t want to hurt you, so please understand that I’m going to say this as a friend. I think that you’re making a very bad decision. I think if you do it, you’re going to wind up in a worse place than if you don’t do it.”

“Which is the definition of a bad decision.”

This could be a good chapter! Please come back for it next Wednesday.

F06: Derpcisions, Derpcisions

Derpy’s assessment of Karyn’s apartment that week was purely informational. She knew that, even if she had found it completely unkempt, as she had found Dinky’s room only once, that she would not say anything. In the first place, she knew that Karyn was still fragile after the week before. In the second, it would not be fair to reproach Karyn when she herself was begging a favor.

“Good morning,” she began.

“Morning, Derpy.”

“So, I don’t know how to say this exactly...”

Karyn winced a little, as if expecting the reproach that Derpy had sworn to avoid. “Yes?”

“But if you can, I’d like you to come take a look at the computer. The display is off and it’s harder to work.”

Karyn was used to people in need of technical support not always being precise in their description of a problem, and had learned how to glean information. In this case, she would understand that Derpy’s use of “off” meant “not entirely proper” and not “lacking any function,” with the context of it being “harder” to work. But it was entirely possible that Derpy’s monitor was nonfunctional and Derpy had found a way to use the computer anyway, either by magic, or just by, in her Derpy way, remembering where the cursor was and what she was doing.

Flashing her hair from its mess into her usual updo, Karyn said, “Could I go over to your place and see it?”

“I was going to ask you that, but I didn’t want to impose.”

“No, it’s no imposition. Do you want to have breakfast first, or...let me at least make coffee.”

Derpy saw an opportunity for a small recompense she could offer. “Why don’t I take care of breakfast this week? And coffee? Hop on.”

Karyn put back the filter that she had taken out and got on Derpy’s back. When they transferred to Equestria, she looked up to the sun and took a deep breath. Derpy noticed the change during the ride. At first, Karyn was just sitting as she would on a chair, and it was up to Derpy to keep her balanced. This was no difficulty, as all the ponies had an innate sense of balance. But as she continued to breathe, Karyn took more of that duty herself, and Derpy only had to notice the weight, not the balance.

Still, when they entered her house, Derpy went for the coffee maker before the computer. She gave Karyn her cup and started breakfast. After Karyn had taken a few sips, she headed for the computer. “I’ll take a look.”

“No, you don’t have to do that yet. Have breakfast first and then you can look at it.”

“I won’t enjoy it then, because I’ll know that I have to look at it, but I won’t have any information. Maybe it’s something that I can take care of quick, or if it’s not, then I can use breakfast time to think of some ideas to try.”

Derpy didn’t argue any more, and Karyn got to the computer. She checked the cables first, then turned on the monitor.

“You see the problem?” called Derpy from the kitchen. “I pressed a bunch of keys but nothing fixed it.”

“Done! It’s all right now.”

“What?!” Derpy ran out and looked. “You fixed it! How?”

“Magic.”

“Yeah?”

Karyn laughed. “Right, I can’t say that and have you know I’m joking. OK, here’s what happened. You probably hit Ctrl-Alt-Left by mistake, which makes the display go sideways. All the Ctrl-Alt-Arrow keys change the orientation, so Ctrl-Alt-Up is how you fix it. It’s kind of silly of them to have made that, since very few people use their monitors in anything other than the normal orientation. It’s even dumber not to include a popup that explains it, since they have exactly that for changing your resolution.”

“I think I understand. Thank you for fixing it. I guess it was something I should have known on my own, huh?”

“Like I said, it’s something they should have done in the first place. You know, I like troubleshooting your problems more than I do those of humans. In the first place, you’re not afraid to admit when you don’t know something. Most humans are. In the second, I’m not afraid to admit that I’m trying something, and that I’m not sure if it’ll work or not. You’re too good of a friend to get on me for that. Lots of people expect you to sit down, start typing, and fix the problem automatically.”

Derpy looked back at the computer. “But that’s what you did.”

“This time.”

“Well, go relax and wait for me to finish breakfast.”

Karyn made for the couch, but then thought otherwise. “I think I’ll sit on the porch. I never got a chance to use the swing you traded for. It’s a mild day for this time of year, so I’ll enjoy it while I can.”

With the coffee to take the edge off any chill, she enjoyed rocking back and forth. Derpy announced breakfast soon enough, and Karyn went in. It was much the same food as they usually had, but it felt homier, like when Karyn had been young and her mother had made her breakfast each morning before school. And when she helped with the dishes, it was also like when she was young, and her helping was a sign of good intentions, not just an expectation.

“Now,” said Derpy, “I hope you don’t mind, but having not been able to use my computer for the last two days, there are some things I’d like to catch up on.”

“I understand perfectly. I’m going to go back out to the porch.”

Ponyville was beginning its Sunday, late as usual. Here and there a cart passed by, on its way to market, boarded up but with a sign for whatever wares were to be sold. A few of the early customers followed on the same path. Going the other way were ponies, mostly old but a few younger and faster, out for a morning constitutional.

Pegasi were working with clouds, but through some technique that Karyn understood as poorly as Derpy did computer support, they only made it warmer. The cool air and the hot rays of the sun, reflected off the clouds, made Karyn feel summery, and as she turned and rocked she could feel the sun’s residual heat deep in her skin.

A sound caught her attention, the tinkling of some unicorn far off to her left lifting some object she couldn’t see. What made her smile was how familiar it was, the casual breakage of the laws of physics.

Derpy came out and joined her. She said nothing at first, noticing how Karyn was in such a peaceful place. Both of them just sat and rocked.

“I guess time’s not moving back on Earth,” Karyn said at last.

“Probably not. I didn’t try to anchor us mentally. I know you were hoping that you could fix the computer quickly. Are you worried about your age again?”

Karyn ignored the question. “If I never went back, though, it would start up again, right?”

“I think that’s what happened before. Hank, Lyra’s Human, he never came and went like we do. He decided to stay, but you didn’t notice any change in the time, right?”

“No. So either it was working or it healed itself.”

Karyn had kept looking out at the street. Derpy leaned her head out to try to make eye contact. “Why the sudden interest?”

She paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “I’m wondering if I don’t have the same destiny. He was older, and he came here to stay very quickly. But I had...I have so much to do on earth, a whole life. And yet, so much has happened. I’ve taken in so much magic. I’m not even fully human any more. I’m part changeling.

“Maybe I’ll stay in Equestria too.”

It still seemed to Derpy that Karyn was making idle chatter until she said that. As if the words made the idea real, Karyn kept going.

“I think that would make it a lot easier for me. And so would you. They had Bon-bon to deal with, and their love kept him from seeing much of Equestria. I’d like to do that, take more trips, hobnob with the princesses more.

“I could even get to know Queen Chrysalis more. We haven’t heard from them since they signed the peace treaty with the Crystal Empire. They might need me to mediate some more. Or perhaps I should have a hive of my own. Some of the changelings wanted to rebel, remember? I could truly wear the crown as queen, help lead them to a greater relationship with ponies. Well, it’s a thought.”

Derpy didn’t know how to react. She wasn’t entirely sure how serious Karyn was being, or if she was saying that she was staying right then and there.

Smiling, and half in a trance, Karyn went back into the house to get more coffee. Derpy followed, afraid to let her out of her sight.

“The other thing I could do,” Karyn continued, is to just stick to my pony disguise except when I’m flying. I guess I can’t learn to walk on clouds or be a true pegasus, but I wouldn’t fit in any better with the unicorns or the Earth ponies. Nor would I want to. You’ve always been the pony I’m closest to, you know?”

“I do know, but this is something big to spring on me.”

“Did you never consider the possibility?”

Derpy had finally recovered from the shock of hearing Karyn’s decision to actually think about its implications. One major one was that Karyn was clearly proposing to move in with Derpy, at least initially before she found her own niche in Equestria. Derpy didn’t automatically balk at that; if necessary, her house and all her possessions would be put to Karyn’s needs. But at the same time, it seemed a little presumptuous of her. Was Karyn’s implied trust a sign of the strength of the friendship or a point of weakness?

On the other hoof, it was such a radical step that Derpy, with her natural reluctance to change, had to argue against it. “But there’s so much on Earth that you’d be leaving behind. You can’t be in computers here. It’s only mine, and it doesn’t break that often.”

“No, and I wouldn’t charge you even if it did. But remember too that that’s never been a lifelong dream. It wasn’t something that I went for out of love. I chose it because I have the talent and it’s a good career.”

“You won’t be able to pay back your student loans in bits.”

Karyn shot Derpy a look that canceled that line of questioning.

“All right, but what about your parents? Surely you wouldn’t abandon them or make them think that you’ve disappeared.”

For the first time, Karyn seemed serious about what she was talking about. “Of course not. But I was thinking. Once time starts on Earth, I can go back and forth. So I’ll give my folks a call now and again, and I’ll explain that they can’t call me because I have no cell coverage. Or something like that. And I’ll go visit them at times. It’ll be just like I’ve moved away.”

“That would mean living a lie. Can you really do that long term?”

“Not too big of one. You think I should explain truthfully? Say that I’m moving to another dimension?”

Holding up her hooves, Derpy said, “That hasn’t been decided yet. I want to make sure you consider all the aspects of this. It’s not going to be a panic seal.”

“A what?”

“Sorry. I tried out a word I wasn’t sure of the meaning of.”

Karyn thought about what she had said. “A panacea?”

“Yeah, OK, sounds right. So there. Could you stand being around me all the time when I mess up words and stuff?”

“Of course I could. You’re my best friend.”

“You know something?” Derpy said. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said that. We’ve never used the b-word. You’re my best friend too. But that’s always been the problem. We’re best friends from different worlds.”

“So?”

“Karyn, don’t you realize that if you came here to stay, you’d still never be a native Equestrian? You were born a human being on Earth. Isn’t that what you were meant to be?”

Karyn got angry, but Derpy understood that it wasn’t at her. “To Tartarus with what I’m meant to be! See, I’m going native already.”

“I’ve never heard anypony say anything like that. We don’t use Tartarus as an oath like you do on Earth. That’s what I’m talking about not fitting in.”

“You never fit in either.”

Derpy had often said exactly that, but hearing it from someone else made it seem different. “It’s not the same. Ponies still look at me and see a pony. They talk down to me sometimes, but they still talk to me. Making friends could be a lot harder. Yes, you have your changeling powers and could show up as a pony, but that’s living a disguised life again.”

“Yes, but that would be my problem to deal with.”

“So it wouldn’t be solving all your problems.”

Derpy had said it trying to shock Karyn into more of a comparative view, but Karyn seemed to have considered this. “I never said it would. But it would definitely eliminate all of my current problems.”

“Which are?”

And it was this that achieved what Derpy had been trying to do, to get Karyn to open up. “Well, that blasted professor and her unfair grading for one. All the way I’m treated as a girl in a male-dominated field. Just the day-to-day stuff I have to see in the news and on TV. The way everyone’s so cold to one another. I’m sorry, but Equestria, whatever troubles it has, everypony faces them together. Ponies help each other. Humans make things difficult for one another.”

“In the first place, you’ve got a rosy picture of Equestria. You’ve only been here on Sundays. And once in a while on a special occasion. Ponies can be mean too. I don’t think the difference is that sharp. And it still feels to me like you’re running from your problems instead of facing them.”

“And what if I am?”

Derpy put everything down and sat at the table. She had never been more focused. “Karyn, I don’t want to hurt you, so please understand that I’m going to say this as a friend. I think that you’re making a very bad decision. I think if you do it, you’re going to wind up in a worse place than if you don’t do it.”

“Which is the definition of a bad decision.”

“Yes, but I want you to understand. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do this if I were you. I’m saying that I think as strongly as anything that you shouldn’t.”

Karyn sat down across from her. “If I decide to anyway, would you stop me? Would you tell Twilight and have her transport me back to Earth? Or just say that I can’t stay here?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Because if you came here you would need all the help you could get. And because I would hope, each and every day, that you would reverse your decision and go back to Earth.”

“Can I ask why you think this?”

Derpy pinched her mouth closed, then said, “I wish I could explain it clearly. I’m not good with words. But everything tells me that you’re meant to be where you started. That your...momentum, for lack of a better word, should have you on Earth.”

“Inertia, you mean. That’s what bothers me. I’ve faced that rut for the past several years. I’m going to shake something up in my life.”

“I think there could be other things you could do.”

Karyn said nothing, and the argument was only more tense because of it. She crossed her arms.

“All right,” said Derpy. “Well, if you’re going to stay, I’ve got to make up the bed for you. I’ll be back.”

She went upstairs. Out of sight and finally with a chance to think, Derpy busied herself with the bed as she considered. Karyn was being stubborn. Dinky had done that too, and Derpy had been hard-pressed to convince her when she thought she was right. But ultimately Derpy had won out, because of the family love between them. She was no psychologist. She could only act in earnest. But sometimes, that was enough.

Before she went back downstairs, Derpy stopped in her own bedroom and went into her saddlebag. When she sat back down at the table, she placed the small object between the two of them.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t you remember?” Derpy pointed to the stained envelope. “This was the letter that we found in the dead letter office when we visited the post office that time on Earth. I had hoped that we could find the recipient together. But if you’re not going to be on Earth, there’s no reason for me to visit. So we can just forget it.”

“You’re going to throw it out?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. It’s still a mailpiece. I suppose that we should put it back where we found it, but that’s on Earth.”

Karyn looked down at it. “Hm.”

“Come to think of it, I can give that entire saddlebag back to Twilight Sparkle. Or Lyra. I won’t have to use magic spells anymore if I’m not going to be on Earth. I’ll need the one I use for the computer, but beyond that I’ve always been able to get by with just my wings. So there won’t be any more magic done on Earth. No danger of discovery anymore.”

Karyn picked up the letter and looked down at it, her hair covering her face. Derpy saw her hands shake and then her head, but she wasn’t sure what was happening until her first tears hit the paper, spreading out in spots.

Racing over to take the letter, Derpy grabbed Karyn’s hands with her hooves. “I’m sorry,” Derpy said. “I was just trying to make you see good things about Earth. I take it back, you can stay as long as you need.”

“No, Derpy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. I won’t really come here to stay, but, I’m just so scared!”

She wrenched her hands free only to throw her arms forward. Derpy matched the move and held her. Karyn’s sobs inspired tears of sympathy in Derpy, and for a long time they just embraced and cried together.

Through choking cries, Karyn poured out her heart. “Derpy, I’ve only got a few more months at school, and then I’m going to be on my own! I don’t know what I’m going to do, if I can get a job, I’ve got all this drama to work through at school, my parents keep asking how I’m doing, I keep getting into debt, I can’t spend any money, and people are going to expect me to start acting like an adult! I don’t know how! Do you understand? I don’t know how.”

Derpy didn’t respond, just let Karyn get it all out. When it was finally over and Karyn took a napkin from the counter to use as a tissue, Derpy gave her a soft smile and held her with a wing. “I understand. I mean, I understand how the stress can build up and there’s no one you can go to. No one wants to hear about your problems, because there’s nothing they can do about them. Most would say that you have no problems, that you have time, that you’ll figure out a way. But they don’t know, because they’re not you.”

Karyn sniffed. “You do understand.”

“Sure. I’ve been there. Everypony seems to know how to do whatever it is they’re supposed to automatically. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they’ve got it just as bad as we do, but they’re better at not showing it. But I don’t think so. I think you and I have got it rough, because of who we are. Still, we’ve got one thing no one else does.”

“What’s that?”

“Each other.”

Karyn laughed through her tears. “I’ve been such a bad friend these past two weeks. We haven’t done anything fun, I’m just dumping my troubles on you.”

“Poppycock.” Karyn was surprised to hear Derpy swear. “Friends have to be there when they’re needed. We’ll get through this, just as we did everything else. You’ve got a lot of troubles, but they can only win if you’re sad all the time. Whenever you are, you come to me and I’ll make it better, and then you can think logically and fix them.”

“Thanks. I do believe I can.” She reached for the envelope. “I got it all wet.”

“Wet paper dries. I’ve learned that in a rainstorm or two. There’s a lot that heals in life if you just give it a chance.”

“I think we should be a little more active in figuring out who this belongs to.”

Karyn was finally speaking clearly, and Derpy was happy to get her on a different subject. “We should. Any ideas?”

“No. We don’t even know when it was sent. Hey! Maybe I could get it dated. There are processes that scientists can use to tell you how old something is. I wonder if there’s a way to do it.”

“And if not scientifically, we can do it magically I’m sure. See, if we can do this, we can accomplish anything.”

“Together,” they both said.

Author's Note

Lunar_Twilight said that they wanted to see Karyn do more things around Equestria. I took that idea and ran with it in a bit different direction, but they still get the credit for the inspiration.

OK, LH2DH fans, time for some scheduling talk. Next Wednesday is Christmas Eve. In my opinion, Christmas Eve is a special day, a wonderful holiday, a time to be with your closest friends and family, not to be on the computer reading pony fics. So, next week's chapter, chapter 128, will be posted Monday, the 22nd. Two days earlier. At the midnight between Monday and Tuesday, GMT, to be strict.

The Wednesday after that is New Year's Eve. In my opinion, New Year's Eve is a wasted day, a lame holiday, a time to be on the computer reading pony fics, not getting plastered with people you barely like, staying up too late, and cheering too loud for the advancing of a clock. So that week's chapter, chapter 129, will be strictly on schedule.

Now, astute readers will know that when I run up to the chapters that end in 0, things start to happen, and this is no exception. Next week is just an ordinary slice of life like most of what I do, but then...well, be here December 31 and January 7. That's all I'll say.

128: The Meetderp

The most awkward moment for Karyn and Derpy upon their reuniting that week was the initial meeting. After such a poignant moment the week before, it was hard to get back to the morning routine without looking at each other, and both of them worrying that it would get sad and maudlin again. But Derpy did notice that Karyn had brought the apartment back up to full cleanliness, and she regarded that as a good sign.

But she didn’t press for anything, because the first word of the day—beyond “Hi” and “Good to see you again”—could open things up. So Derpy and Karyn took their breakfasts in silence—except for “Pass the butter” and “More coffee, please”—and it wasn’t until Karyn was washing the dishes that Derpy decided that she finally had to re-break the ice.

“So, how was your week?”

Karyn shut off the faucet. “Good. Not bad. Yours?”

“Same as always. Deliver the mail, feed the cat, plan for Sunday. Do we have any plans?”

“Actually, I had hoped to do something fun.”

Derpy brightened. “Good. Fun can work. I’m glad that you’re feeling better. If you are. Did you have anything in particular or just going out and looking?”

“Well, I signed up for this...thing that’s at the college. You’ll have to be invisible for it.”

“OK. Can you tell me more about it?”

Karyn went to pull up the e-mail confirming her attendance. “Basically it’s a kind of meetup. Not a party per se, but the same general idea. A bunch of people getting together and having fun. There’ll be lots of people into games and geeky stuff, maybe even some who like ponies.”

“Oh! Like when we went to the pony convention!”

“Not quite. In the first place, that was all about ponies. Everyone knew who you were. There are some bigger conventions that cover a lot of stuff, but even they have specific topics. Comic Con is the biggest, so that’s nominally for comic books even though there’s lots of other stuff there including ponies. But I’m getting sidetracked. The point is that this is much smaller. Fewer people, no one staying over in hotels, no guests.”

Derpy tried to digest all this. “What’s it called, though? Like the other one had a name that said what it was about.”

“Yeah, this is just ‘meet-up at USCI Hall Seventy on this date’.”

“I think I get it. What time is this all happening? Do we have to race to get there?”

Karyn checked the time on her phone and got her coat. “No, unless we want to be the first ones in the door. Which I don’t. I’m hoping to blend in.”

“If it’s for something fun, I would say the sooner the better.”

“But again, it’s not going to be major fun, like the convention. Or like going to the water park.”

Derpy shivered. “Of course not. If we went to the water park now, most of the slides would be ice rather than water! And even if it were water, it would be more painful than fun. And when we hit the pools...”

“No, I just meant that as a comparative. All I mean is that it’ll be fun today, but not something that we’re going to look back on years later and reminisce about.”

They left the house and walked casually toward Karyn’s school. Derpy was still skeptical of Karyn’s suspicion that it wouldn’t be fun. If anything, she thought, it could be more fun with a more intimate group.

Despite Karyn’s lack of haste, they walked quickly because it was cold, only pausing once they crossed the barrier of the campus. She took a moment to get her bearings, and Derpy stopped with her.

“Do you know where it is? Should I fly up to spot it?”

“No, I do. At least I know where the seventies are, so it must be there. It’ll be one of the few buildings on campus that I haven’t been to.”

“Yeah?” asked Derpy. “I would think that with all the different courses of study there would be lots of places you haven’t gone.”

“Rooms, yes, but there aren’t a whole lot of buildings dedicated to just one major. Actually, the computer lab would be one of them, along with the science lab. That one too I haven’t been to either. Ah, here we go.”

Karyn had spotted a line in which one of the people was wearing a pink wig, and she took that as a signal that they were in the right place. They queued up, and they could see the sign announcing the entrance fee, with the note that it was waived for anyone with a USCI student ID. And so Derpy was surprised when Karyn passed over a bill.

“Karyn,” Derpy whispered. “You could have gotten in free if you showed them your ID.”

“I did get in free. I paid for you. Unless you want to go to school here.”

“No, I don’t. But why did you pay for me here?”

“Because I want whoever’s running this to make enough money to do more of them.” They made it to the room where they could here the thump of a bass beat from the other side of the door. It wasn’t nearly as loud as when Vinyl had messed with Octavia’s concert, and when they opened the door it was pleasant to listen to.

“Looks like fun to me,” said Derpy.

“Yeah. That being the case, I’m going to put up a flag.”

“Huh?”

“Metaphorically.” The flash of green only showed through the collar the waist of Karyn’s jacket. When it faded and she took it off, she was wearing a pony shirt in loud colors. Prominent next to Rainbow Dash and the other, more well-known ponies was Derpy.

“I thought you said it wasn’t all for pony fans.”

“It isn’t. That’s why I did this. I want people to know that I am one at first glance. It should be easier since I’m a girl, but hopefully everyone here will be tolerant. I’m sure most of them have been made fun of at some point.”

Unfamiliar with the setting, Karyn decided to take a walk around to see what was going on. People were still filing in, and so the room had plenty of space to walk. The door they had come through opened into the middle of the room, but Derpy noticed one of the movable walls that could be folded into an alcove to expand the room, an idea she still thought was brilliant. The part to the right was smaller though, and contained a double row of chairs in front of a projected screen. A video game console stood at the ready, and a clipboard held the signup sheet for a tournament.

Karyn forewent that part and followed the line of the room. Some bare tables were set up, and at them people were unboxing merchandise for sale. Derpy remarked that she didn’t expect them to be selling at such a small meeting.

“You might be right, but they won’t be the biggest sellers. I bet you could find some good deals on rare items from these people, if you put in the effort.

“And if you had the money.”

“Don’t remind me.” They moved on to the back where another projector showed against a tightly-pulled screen. Right then it had only the background of a laptop, but Karyn looked in the taskbar and saw a minimized karaoke program. She nodded approval.

There was a door that led to a darkened room, and Karyn poked her head in to see a conventional TV, albeit a large one, and one of the staff messing around with video disks. It appeared that room was for watching movies.

Walking back toward the front they heard the banter of the attendees. Many of the conversations were the casual and friendly arguments over various pieces of pop culture. They caught a snippet of two young men having one such.

“But I’d much rather drive KITT.”

“Over the batmobile? You’re crazy.”

“Did the batmobile talk? I rest my case.”

Derpy whispered to Karyn, “Do you know what they’re talking about?”

“I think they’re comparing fictional cars, and which one they’d want to drive.”

“Yeah? I would think that in fiction you’d want to ride a horse.”

“Oh, really?” Karyn opened her eyes wide as Derpy had spoken a little too loudly, and one of the young men thought that Karyn had said it.

She decided she would have to stick up for the argument, even if it wasn’t hers. “Yes. All the great heroes ride horses. It makes for a better image, I think. Bouncing in the saddle on the way to the fight rather than just sitting in the driver’s seat grabbing the wheel.”

“You’re just saying that as a pony fan.”

“I was thinking more of regular horses. I’d say that Shadowfax is what comes to mind as the greatest, but as your friend pointed out, it’s a drawback if they don’t talk.”

The friend she had mentioned stepped in. “OK, but how many horses do talk?”

“There’s the Narnian ones,” Karyn said, “and Mr. Ed, though of course that was just comedy. On the other hand, how many talking cars are there? Outside of the movie where they’re the eponym.”

That word confused the young men, and so Karyn had to explain. Derpy was glad of this, since she not only didn’t know the word, but also wasn’t aware of the movie Cars.

They continued to drift from topic to topic, talking about different movies, tv shows, and books that they’d all enjoyed. The arguments changed more to agreements as each person would use a topic to think of something else to say. Soon they were quoting them out loud and half playing the scenes in front of everyone. Karyn smiled and laughed throughout, but took a moment to look back at where Derpy was, wishing that she could bring her in to the conversation.

But another feeling hit her, and that was of how the interaction would look to someone just observing like Derpy. If one didn’t know that they had just met, it could look like a gathering of old friends. And Karyn herself would appear as a confident speaker and partygoer, instead of showing all the nervousness she felt around strangers.

For her own part, Derpy understood almost none of the references that they were making, but silently cheered Karyn on anyway. When one of the young men corrected her on the exact wording of a quote, she hoped strongly that Karyn wouldn’t take it the wrong way, and she thought that Karyn was completely honest when she laughed it off and accepted the correction.

By that time, the meetup had started in earnest, and some of the organizers were thanking everyone for coming and pointing out some of the activities for anyone who hadn’t made a careful circuit as Karyn had. Her two companions went off to look at the sellers’ tables, so she sat down to chat with Derpy while pretending to look at her phone.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, “to exclude you like that.”

“Don’t be. It looked like you were having a great time. I’m sure you see me having lots of conversations with other ponies where you’re the odd one out, but you never say anything. So I wouldn’t get in the way while you’re doing that.”

Karyn took a deep breath and grinned. “Since I did the convention with you I haven’t been around this level of geekery. I forgot what it’s like, how good it feels. These are my people. In ordinary life, I’m awkward and an outcast, but here...these are my people,” she repeated.

Derpy didn’t say anything, but Karyn could almost see the smile of contentment on her face. She slapped her knees and got up. “I’m going to see if I can’t find some more fun around here.”

The most obvious place to do so was in front by the video games. Two people were sitting and playing, and the tournament signup sheet was still there, but right then it was open play. The game at hand was a fighting game that Karyn had heard of but never played, and it looked interesting. A small line of people who, in gaming parlance, “had next” was also sitting down, and Karyn joined them.

“Want me to sign you up for the tournament?” asked Derpy.

“I’m not sure I want to yet. I haven’t played this one, so if I do it’ll just be to lose early. Not that I would mind that, if the game is fun.”

In short order she reached her seat. To her surprise it hadn’t been a “king of the mountain” situation, but both sides had lost and left before she got there. Without knowing any of the commands, she was left to resort to button mashing and guessing. Still, by timing her jumps and with a little luck, she won her first game and got to stick around for a second one. Beginner’s luck didn’t hold, though, and she was out. She started walking back to the seats in the middle.

“What about the tourney?”

“No, it’s not a game I’d enjoy. There’s no strategy to it, or at least none I can pick up. As a gamer, I’m impatient, so I only like ones with a shallow learning curve.”

Derpy laughed. “Maybe I can play it. You’ll sit there and hold the controller but I’ll push the buttons.”

“I’m too afraid that you’ll beat everyone and then we’ll get prizes by cheating.”

“I do wish that I could participate here, just a little.”

“I’m sorry.” Karyn got up and head toward the closed off section. “Why don’t we go to the TV room to see what’s going on there. If nothing else you can participate there as much as anyone else, since it’s just passive viewing.”

They did that, and the TV room was sparsely filled, mostly for people who needed a brief respite from all the other action. It turned out that that room was being run by the college’s anime club, and while they promised some local stuff later on, at that point it was all subtitled animation. They only stayed a few minutes.

Karyn found some other people to talk to, and they watched the video game tournament as passive participants. As soon as that was over, though, the organizers awarded the prize and said that the event was over.

“Oh, wow,” said Karyn. “that went quickly. I guess time flies when you’re having fun.”

“I like to have fun when I fly too.”

“Yeah, it is kind of a cliche. “

Plenty of people filed out, but it took time for everyone to find coats and say their goodbyes to friends. Karyn noticed that some were staying back to fold their chairs or generally help tidy up. Right as they were about to break down the microphone, the organizer stepped back and said to the remaining group, “Just so you know, we want to do this fairly consistently, and we need help on some things, so if anyone wants to volunteer, let me know.”

While joining in the cleanup, Karyn said, “Shame he forgot, he missed a bunch of people.”

“That might have been smart of him. Anyone who raced out and didn’t help to clean isn’t the person he wants.”

“Maybe, but I’m here and I’m not volunteering. I learned my lesson with the student government.”

“That was different.” They had made it into the TV room where, in the darkness, Derpy could help fold chairs. “This is just for fun. You should go tell him you want to help.”

“I’ll think about it. We’ll stick around until everything’s cleaned up and by then I’ll decide.”

Some of the regular staff who had done other events were the most adept at breaking down and packing the equipment, and there was less and less for inexperienced people to do. Soon it was just Karyn and a few others looking around for anything anyone forgot.

The organizer was a dynamic and energetic young man with spiky blond hair. He bounded from person to person with instructions, advice, questions, or just a show of support. At one point, he came over to Karyn and the other first-timers who had stayed. “Thanks for coming ,” he said.

“So you said you were looking for volunteers...” Karyn brought up, and the others nodded. But she continued. “I’m a senior, though, so I couldn’t give you a long-term commitment.”

“That’s fine. We don’t insist that everyone around be a student. If you stick around the area, you can help out. Otherwise, we’ll appreciate you for the time you have with us.”

He had to go right back to helping someone else, and Karyn started talking to the others who weren’t yet regular members. They too had their own geeky shirts on, and that was an impetus to give them for things to talk about. She almost forgot that Derpy was there, but that worked out well. For the organizer, it was the quickest cleanup they ever had, since every time everyone’s back was turned, it seemed that something else got done, as if by an invisible flying pony.

What Karyn did notice, as she turned her head from her group, was that here and there, among the volunteers, was a beard with a few gray hairs, or a wrinkle, or a mention of having three children. Indicators that this was not merely a group of college students too nervous or too straight-edge to have a drunken party at night, but a real lifestyle choice that these people had chosen to stick with. If anything, it would have been harder for them before the internet let them realize they were not alone.

The cleanup moved from putting things in cases to walking out the door with those cases, and so Karyn moved outside as well. Pulled up outside the building, onto what were normally footpaths, was a truck that everything was loaded into. When Karyn tried to help there, she was told to back off, that there was a certain configuration that was necessary for everything to fit.

“But thanks again. We’re all going to go to a diner to get something to eat. You want to join in?” asked the organizer

“Sure!” Derpy said before she could answer. He seemed to shake off the fact that Karyn’s mouth hadn’t moved and that the voice was rather different.

Only two people rode in the truck, and everyone else was left to walk across campus. It was in the opposite direction from where Karyn lived, and she sneakily looked forward to asking Derpy for a ride home when it was all done. That made her feel guilty, since there was no way she could conceal Derpy among so many people. Nor could she order for two and give Derpy something to eat. Well, she thought, she would just have to make it up with an extra-large dinner.

The diner was one she hadn’t heard of, but the others seemed to be regulars, so she fit in with the crowd. Since she was bringing up the rear, though, she got an and seat, and was able to grasp Derpy’s hoof. She wished that she knew morse code so that she could tap messages to Derpy that way, and made a mental note to try to pursue the idea. As it was, she decided she would make one big apology to Derpy when it was all over, and dove into the shared lunch.

It was between the lunch and dinner hours, and so the diner was nearly empty. Their food came quickly and it was hot. Between her french fries and cole slaw, she had one more enjoyable dialogue. This time it was less about pop culture and more banter as just any group of friends might have. As the new girl, she had to field endless questions as befit an introductory event, but Karyn didn’t mind, since it gave her things to talk about.

The waiter seemed to know the group, since he provided separate checks without having to be asked. Karyn was grateful for that too. She said her final good-byes and walked out.

“Well, Derpy,” she said, “I’m sorry you couldn’t participate in that. For all that we’ve done together, and as accepting as everyone probably would be, you still have to hide in public.”

“I don’t mind. You know, just because we always do things on Sunday doesn’t mean we have to. I know you have some human friends and if you can make more, that’s good. Maybe we can meet on a Saturday now and again.”

“Oh, no. That’s the day I clean up the apartment. If I have to do that on a Friday when I have classes, forget it. Better to just cover your eyes with your wing, pick me up, and fly me right back to Equestria.”

Derpy circled in the air. “Speaking of flying back, can we go to that diner? Everyone else got to eat, and while I don’t want to go overboard...”

“Never you mind. I’ve decided you’ll have a cheat day. But we won’t go there. We’ll stop at the ice cream store.”

“In winter?”

Karyn expected this response, and had one of her own prepared. “We’ll have to use lots of hot fudge. Then you can work it off by flying me home. Come on!”

They went off for their second meal, and Karyn concluded that maybe she could work her schedule around having pony and human friends after all.

Author's Note

Next week, things come to a head!

“OK, what’s wrong?”

Derpy picked up her eyes. “Nothing.”

“Come on, I know you better than that. It’s bad enough when I’m feeling down, because I’m used to it. Somehow though it doesn’t seem right for you not to smile.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finishing the dishes, Karyn turned off the water and dried her hands. “But what I mean is, I’m coming with you to make sure she’s OK.”

“You don’t have to do that. You have class tomorrow.”

“We’ll treat it as a come-and-go, so time doesn’t move.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the kitchen, the candlelight flickered around the cabinets and fixtures. The lateness of the year meant that it was already waning daylight even though there was a good portion of the day left. In the low and soft light, everyone seemed to talk a little quieter.

Derpy began. “Little Muffin, do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

Dinky was hesitant. “...Mommy...how would you feel...if I didn’t go back to school?”

Come back next Wednesday for a New Year's Eve cliffhanger!

129: Trouble in Paradink

Karyn eyed the clock and tapped her fingers on the desk. If she started breakfast now, it might get cold before Derpy arrived. But if she waited, she knew that she would get caught up in something else and then Derpy would be sitting around and waiting. She decided to trust her microwave more than Derpy’s patience and started getting out the cooking equipment. As it happened, Derpy arrived just at the right time and got to eat right as she sat down.

“How’s it going?” she said as she put the plate down.

“OK. You?”

“Maxed out on energy. I know it seems like the midterms just finished, but finals are coming up and it’s crunch time. But I’m feeling it, you know? Like how sometimes when you’re working hard, you find extra energy, but when you’ve been lazy for a while you don’t want to do anything even though you should be all charged. That’s how I’m feeling.”

“I can see that.” Derpy tucked in to her breakfast.

“And about the economics class, I’m getting ready to do as you suggested and write up a storm. I do wish that I could bring in my laptop and type it, but I’m resting secure in the knowledge that this will, in all likelihood, be the last heavy handwriting I’ll have to do. Ever. In my life.”

“That’s good.”

Karyn expected Derpy to ask more about her week, but she didn’t. Looking up from her own breakfast, Karyn thought that maybe she was just eating heartily, but instead she was just playing with her toast. She decided to probe a little further. “I haven’t talked to anyone from the meeting last week. You think I should text them? Or would that be too forward?”

“No, you could do that.”

“OK, what’s wrong?”

Derpy picked up her eyes. “Nothing.”

“Come on, I know you better than that. It’s bad enough when I’m feeling down, because I’m used to it. Somehow though it doesn’t seem right for you not to smile.”

“You think so? I thought I heard it was bad to ask someone to smile. Read that on the internet one time I was here.”

Karyn thought about how that could work in context. It took her a moment before it came to her. “Oh, that’s if you’re a stranger. Then it’s kind of rude. But we’re friends. If you’re not smiling, it means I need to help.”

“You can. Let’s have a good day together and I’ll see you smile, and then I’ll get mine back.”

“So you’re admitting it’s gone away.”

Derpy squinted at Karyn. “You tricked me.”

“I didn’t mean to, honestly.”

“Well, all right.”

“Hey!” said Karyn. “What if we went to Equestria and saw if maybe some ponies are having a get-together. You know how the one we went to last week pulled me out of my funk. So if we do the same for you...”

“I don’t think it’s the same. That was what you needed, because you were feeling lonely.”

“So what do you need?”

Derpy got up and walked around the table. “Karyn, trust me when I say, this is purely a family affair. It’s not something you have to worry about. I have to be the responsible one.”

“Excuse me? The responsible one? You’re Derpy Hooves. There are a lot of adjectives that can be applied to you, but ‘responsible’ isn’t supposed to be one. Fun, happy, maybe ditzy...muffin-obsessed, if that counts as an adjective. But just because you’ve helped me out a time or two doesn’t mean that you’re so strong that you can stop asking for help when you need it. Because thinking that is one of the most irresponsible things you can do.”

“I...you’re right.”

Karyn put the dishes in the sink and soaked them, but didn’t wash them just yet. Then she took Derpy’s seat while Derpy sat in hers. “Now, since you said it’s a family affair, I assume you mean something with Dinky?”

Derpy nodded and went for the saddlebag she had hung on the hook. From it she took a letter and put it on the table. The writing was very poor and showed signs of having been written in haste. Drops of ink had pooled and soaked in some spots, but it could be read.

“Dear Mommy, I need to come home from school. I will be on the afternoon train from Canterlot. ~~I need~~ I’ll see you soon. Love, Dinky”

“So I don’t know what this could be about,” sad Derpy. “I don’t know if she’s sick or if she’s in trouble or if she’s running away from something or what’s wrong. As much as I love the mail, when it doesn’t give you the details you need it’s a problem. So I’ll find out when I go home tonight, but till then it’s on my mind.”

“Oh, you should have told me right away. I would have told you to skip the visit if you’re so worried.”

“Then I’d be worrying at home instead of here.”

Karyn, now having finally figured it out, went to take care of the dishes. “Well, I’m not going to stand idly by while Dinky’s in trouble. You don’t know. It could be something real silly like some arcane magical item she left somewhere in your house.”

“Then why not say that in the letter?”

“She was probably in a rush to make the post.”

Derpy smiled at the thought, but she didn’t really believe it.

Finishing the dishes, Karyn turned off the water and dried her hands. “But what I mean is, I’m coming with you to make sure she’s OK.”

“You don’t have to do that. You have class tomorrow.”

“We’ll treat it as a come-and-go, so time doesn’t move.”

“Then you’ll lose sleep.”

“I’ll stay a full day and sleep at your place.”

“Then you’ll be another day older here.”

“I’d give up a lot more than a day of my life for Dinky.”

That settled the issue, and they made plans to return to Equestria. They did not go immediately, since the one thing that they could do to kill time on Earth—watching videos—depended on the internet. Now that Karyn knew somewhat about the problem, Dinky was on her mind too, and she could understand how Derpy could be stressed out. But at the same time, it relieved the tension from Derpy to know that she would not be alone, and that too was an ill that Karyn was willing to suffer.

When the videos got boring, but still with plenty of time before Dinky was set to arrive, they traveled to Derpy’s house. Derpy hung up Karyn’s coat and said, “So what do we do now?”

“I think you should make it as homey as possible. Dinky needs to know that this is where she can always go to when she’s in trouble. If she’s in a storm, we have to be the rock she can cling to.”

“Why would you want to cling to a rock in a storm? Why not go inside?”

Karyn shook her head. “It’s a boat thing, but I forgot that you almost never go on the water.”

“So what should I do to make it homey?”

“If she’s coming this late, she’ll probably want to stay the night. So you should make up her room and her bed.”

“It’s already done,” said Derpy.

“OK, but does she maybe have a favorite blanket or a pillow that you could throw on there? Or if she’s got a toy from her fillyhood that she could never get rid of, maybe put it on the bed. Then we could come down here and light some candles or something.”

Now that she got what Karyn was saying, Derpy went to work. This too was a stress reliever, since thinking about Dinky as a child put a smile on her face.

But right as they were setting up the downstairs room, there was a thump at the door, and the sound of it opening. Karyn and Derpy raced out, and there was Dinky, panting and travel-worn. At her side were two large suitcases. Derpy dropped what she was doing and flew to her daughter. Karyn noticed the way she put her head higher than Dinky’s in their embrace, and kept her hooves over Dinky’s back. It was not a hug of equals; it was a mother comforting her child.

It was a long embrace, and Karyn felt awkward standing there. To find something to do, she went to take up Dinky’s suitcases to her room. That prompted Dinky to break away and say, “Oh! Karyn. I didn’t know you were here too. I can get those. They’re heavy.” She lifted the bags with her magic, but Karyn was already leaning over and she grabbed one of them.

“It doesn’t feel that bad.”

“I guess all the stuff’s in the other one.”

Derpy looked at the bags too. “What’s in those, anyway? It looks like you’ve brought home everything you had at your dorm at school.”

“Not everything. Most of it. Let me get these upstairs.”

Dinky was still straining with effort as she climbed the stairs, and Karyn put it down to the fact that she just had a long walk from the train station. That reminded her. “I thought you weren’t coming until later.”

“I caught an earlier train—“ she cut herself off as she dropped the bag in her room. “Honestly, I thought that Mommy would still be at your place, and that I could have a little while alone to think.”

“Your letter made your mother worry. What’s it about?”

“I...I know I’ve got to tell Mommy...and you...but oh, I’m so scared! I just wish it weren’t so!”

Karyn wanted to pursue the line of questioning, but the last thing Dinky needed was to have to tell a story twice, so she led her back downstairs and into the kitchen where Derpy had finished lighting the candles.

In the kitchen, the candlelight flickered around the cabinets and fixtures. The lateness of the year meant that it was already waning daylight even though there was a good portion of the day left. In the low and soft light, everyone seemed to talk a little quieter.

Derpy began. “Little Muffin, do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

Dinky was hesitant. “...Mommy...how would you feel...if I didn’t go back to school?”

“Is this about schoolwork again? Karyn’s helped me to understand that you don’t have the ambition to be...well, a famous unicorn like Twilight Sparkle. And that’s all right. I’d rather you be happy than famous. But I think that you should try to finish. Even if you don’t make it, you’ll know that you gave it all you could. If not for your last term, to take your tests now and see how you do.”

“Is it worth it if I know I’ll fail and humiliate myself?”

“Why would you say that?”

Dinky changed the subject. “I’m thinking it’s time I go to work anyway. I’m not earning any money in school, and you’ve always said that that’s important.”

“I never said that it was more important than being the best you can be. If you go to work now, you probably won’t go back to school. But if you stay, you’ll still go to work.”

Karyn interjected. “Can I ask something? Who pays for Dinky’s school?”

“Princess Celestia.”

“So it’s like a scholarship? Oh, Dinky. You should definitely take advantage of that as much as possible. I have to pay for my own schooling, and to borrow money to do it.”

Dinky, for the first time looked as if someone might have more troubles than her, but then her face dropped and she said, “But you’re going to get a job that will pay you more, right?”

“I’m hoping so. I went for a field where they say there’s money to be made. But if you come out of Celestia’s school, there’s so much you could do.”

“I was thinking that I might go back to the shop. You remember, the one on the edge of Canterlot, with all the magical trinkets? Maybe the owner would let me be a salesmare or sweep the floors or something.”

Derpy snorted. “I never liked that guy who owned the shop. I think that, even if that was what you wanted to do, you could find a better place than there. Don’t just go because you’re familiar with it. That might be a good reason to stay in a job, but not to go out to get one. I mean, was working there really the happiest you’ve been?”

Dinky looked down at her hooves, as she had concluded that it was a rhetorical question with the answer no implied.

Karyn tried next. “I know you feel that this is a crossroads in your life, so treat it more like an opportunity than a crisis. If you could do anything, what would you want to do? Then work on doing that.”

“What I really want to do...is become a housewife and mother.”

“OK. That’s something. Is there anypony...”

“No! Of course not! Nopony’s ever going to want me!”

“Hey! That’s not true. Plenty—“ Karyn began, but Derpy stepped in.

“All right, let’s hold off on this. Dinky’s clearly under a lot of stress right now, and what she needs is a good rest in her old bed. Why don’t you go on up? I made up your room just the way it always was.”

“Thanks, Mommy. Just the way it always was,” Dinky repeated. “Back all before I went to school and learned...anything.”

Dinky’s voice caught on the last word, and both Karyn and Derpy heard her stifle a sob. She trotted off to the stairs. As she put her hoof on the first step, Derpy called to her.

“Dinky?”

“Yes?”

“You know that whatever happens, wherever you go, your home will always be waiting for you.”

Dinky smiled, briefly, then trudged up the stairs.

Once her door closed, Derpy’s calm attitude fell apart. “She’s really bad. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I’ve never seen her so upset, and I can’t even figure out what it’s about!”

“Calm down.”

“It’s easier for me to be calm when I’m talking to her. When she comes back down I’ll find my calm again. But right now is when I need to panic and be the Derpy who always needs help.”

Karyn turned toward the stairs. “The funny thing is that I had no indication of this. Did you?”

Derpy shook her head.

“If anything, she seemed happier than ever. Do you remember when we bumped into her at the trade fair? She was a bundle of energy, working closely with Princess Celestia and her classmates. It seemed like she was everywhere at once and always with a smile on her face.”

“You’re right,” said Derpy.

“But maybe she was just putting on that face to be brave for whatever she was hiding.”

“Again, you could be right, but I should be able to see through that as her mother. I know every expression she ever had.”

“Even now that she’s been on her own?”

“There are some things a mother doesn’t forget.”

Karyn wasn’t sure Derpy was entirely right, but didn’t want to argue. It was a complete mystery, a paradox, and there was nothing to do about it but brood, at least until Dinky was ready to open up.

They sat at the table while the light faded and hoped that Dinky was at least getting some rest. Derpy went to begin making dinner, and Karyn had a glimpse into what their life must have been like as a family growing up. She was lucky to have both parents together, but even Karyn had to learn to be a latchkey child as both of them worked. Dinky would have undergone the same problem, coming home from school each day, left to fend for herself until Derpy came home.

Also, Dinky had no father figure. That was different for a girl, as Karyn knew too many boys raised by single mothers who turned out rotten. But her father had helped instill a firm sense of right and wrong in her. Derpy, for all her virtues, was ill-equipped to prepare someone for the harshness of the world. She was too kind. She knew about being bullied, but not about the temptation to stray from the straight and narrow path. What had Dinky gotten into?

Derpy’s own worries were more visceral. She had only ever known how to go into mama-bear-protecting-her-cub mode when Dinky was in trouble. That her filly wasn’t saying what happened was encouraging—she was becoming her own mare at last. But still, Derpy knew that cut both ways. Dinky had been independent the past few years. If, now, she came running home to mama, it must be serious indeed.

Once dinner was in the oven, there was nothing to do but sit and stare at each other across the table. Karyn knew that she had to be there for Derpy, to get her through, at least until they knew what the problem was. Once that happened, hopefully it would be something Derpy could take care of on her own. Something simple that Dinky was overblowing.

Right in the middle of this, Dinky came down the stairs, rubbing her eyes with her hoof. To Karyn, it was cute, and she could see why Derpy was so doting. Behind the childlike gesture, though, was still the image of fear.

“Did you have a good nap?” asked Derpy.

Dinky nodded.

“I’ve been sitting here trying to think of what I can say to make it better, or to let you know that whatever you need from me, you’ll have it.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. You would do anything for me, no matter what it would do to your own life, and why do you deserve to suffer for a bad filly?”

“Hey!” Derpy turned stern all of a sudden. “I’ll put up with whatever you have to tell me, but not with you calling yourself a bad filly.”

“But when I’m going to be nothing but a disappointment...”

Karyn held up her hand. “Just a minute. I know it’s not necessarily my place, but I’ve got to try to cut this knot. Dinky, listen. If I’m hearing you right, you don’t want to tell us what’s wrong because of what it’s going to do to your mother. And Derpy, you’re trying to be motherly about it, but it’s not working. You’re each trying to bear all the responsibility on your own. Dinky as a grown mare, Derpy as a mother.

“Derpy, you have a simple task: you need, once and for all, to see Dinky as an adult. That’s simple, but not easy. It’s a long time that you’ve been responsible for everything about her, but now you’re not. One way or another, Dinky’s going to have to own some of this.

“Dinky, you have a much more difficult problem.You already see yourself as an adult. And now you’re here for help because it’s the only place you know, and you can’t resolve the contradiction. But here’s what you have to understand, and quickly: being an adult doesn’t mean you stop asking for help. It doesn’t mean you end your mother-daughter relationship. It means you reforge it, make it different, maybe even better. You ask for help now, and then you be there when she needs you.”

With that long speech, Karyn sat down. In her mind’s eye, she saw the two ponies immediately reconciling, but instead, Dinky said, “I’m not going to be able to be there for her, though. Not for anypony.”

“You’re here now. Do this thing for her.”

“Do what?”

Karyn gestured toward Derpy, who could no longer hold back her tears. “You can stop hurting me,” she said to her daughter. “Every second that I see you here, panicking, desperate, but not opening up to me...it’s more than I can stand.”

Of course, that opened the flood gates for Dinky as well, and she ran into her mother’s hooves. “I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m sorry for what I’ve done and that I haven’t told you. I’ll tell you everything, I promise just please don’t cry I’ll tell you everything.” She was blubbering and losing all semblance of coherency.

And in the midst of all this, in this poignant moment, a perfectly ordinary thing happened. The oven timer went off. Out of sheer reaction, Dinky lifted her head to see what the ringing noise was. Breaking the embrace, she looked at the ground and pointed her horn at it. Five seconds later, it turned off, but she kept her eyes down.

“You want to know?” she said. “You want to know my shame? Here! Watch!.”

The oven timer glowed, and its dial spun forward, as it might for any unicorn who was making dinner. But though it had the capacity to spin up to two hours, after it reached the thirty-minute mark, its movement slowed. Dinky was audibly straining, but the rattle of the dial became a series of distinct clicks, each one with a bigger delay than the last. She stopped and panted.

Derpy was speechless, as though she didn’t want to believe what she was seeing. Dinky interpreted this as confusion and blurted it out.

“Don’t you see ?! I’m losing my magic!”

She tried again, planting her hooves and taking a deep breath, looking at the timer again. Her horn gave its full glow, golden and bright, for only a moment before fading to the color of pale straw. Karyn and Derpy looked on in horror as the field around her horn flickered and shrank. The oven timer was released from her hold and began to tick away the time she had given it. And Dinky’s magic glow, like a candle under a glass, diminished into nothingness.

Author's Note

To be continued, in a special, extra-long chapter next week.

130: The Dinkrifice

Derpy couldn’t react. She felt for one of the kitchen chairs and went to sit down, but missed and collapsed to the ground on her flanks. If it hurt, she didn’t notice the pain as she continued to stare straight ahead.

Karyn had an idea of what she was seeing in her mind, because it was the same frame of reference she had, and the only thing she had heard of like this.

Long before, when Derpy and Karyn had taken a guided tour of the land of the Mules, they had encountered a few ponies there, one of whom was a unicorn who said that he no longer had any magic. He seemed beaten down, broken by the work he was doing and how low life had brought him. Derpy was seeing Dinky in his place, an exile from her home, never to see any of her friends or family, living out her remaining years in constant loneliness.

She finally regained her senses, and silently vowed that her daughter would not suffer the same fate. She would bring her home and care for her the rest of her life. But as she did, she realized that this was what Dinky had feared, that she would forever be an invalid, dependent on her mother’s charity. Derpy would never have any of the nice things she wanted, would never be able to retire and leave the post office. And when Derpy got so old that she couldn’t work, what then?

Well, it didn’t matter. She got up and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get through this together. We always have. We’ve had a lot of troubles together as a family. If this happens to be one more that’s been laid on us, so be it.”

Dinky began crying again. “You don’t understand, Mommy. This is my fault.”

“I don’t understand. Please explain.”

Sniffing, Dinky tried to bring herself up to full height. To Karyn, she looked like she was facing a firing squad. “When I was at Celestia’s school, we did some research on old and lost spells. I found one that I used on myself. It was supposed to give me more energy, take away stress, make me happier. And it worked! There was one test, I was so burned out before I took it, I would have flunked if I hadn’t used the spell. I knew it was dangerous. The first thing they teach you as a unicorn is to never cast a spell that affects your own mind. How this can happen if you do. But I thought that I could just do it once and forget about it.

“Then I couldn’t stop! I did it again and I told myself that that was it, but over and over I felt more stress and more lack of energy and more need for it. Then it started getting harder to use my magic, and the only way I could do it was by casting the happy-spell. That would get me back to normal for a few days, and I would lose it again. At last it got harder to even cast the happy-spell, and it wasn’t as effective, and I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, so I came here.”

Derpy shook her head. “But why didn’t you tell me? Or Princess Celestia? Or your teachers or a friend or...anypony?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I didn’t want to have you think of me as being so easily tempted, of having used a forbidden spell. Of course, you know now, so there was no point, but I couldn’t see it that way.”

“We could have helped you though, stopped it before it got to this point.”

Dinky’s lip quivered. “No, nopony can. There’s no cure for this. I read through every book I could find and nopony’s ever found a cure.”

“Oh, Dinky, why?!”

Karyn recognized Dinky’s pattern of behavior, understood it better than Derpy. Though she didn’t know any addicts herself, addiction was talked about far more on Earth than in Equestria. And she knew that Derpy had cried out because of frustration, but seeing how Derpy’s outburst only redoubled Dinky’s malaise, she interjected. “Derpy, it’s not going to make sense, it was just a bad mistake. It’s not going to help getting mad, because—“

She cut herself off. Half listening, she heard Derpy ask for forgiveness and revert to comforting, but it was muted, like a radio pointing the other way. Her mind was racing.

Karyn was not given to inspiration. She was more of an analytical, one-step-at-a-time thinker. It befit her as a technical support person and, given time, she might have come to the same conclusion anyway. But in the midst of the emotional scene before her, and her own desperate sympathy for Dinky, it hit her like a bolt of electricity. Several disjointed pieces of information coalesced in her brain, and she saw her course like a perfectly balanced equation.

Half in a trance, she stood up and walked out of the house. If either of the two ponies noticed, they didn’t react, being too wrapped up in each other. The walk wasn’t too far, and Karyn opened the door which was not locked, as she expected. As the door closed it rang a bell.

“Just a minute!” the house’s owner said. “I’m with somepony else right now, but I’m almost finished.”

Karyn nodded, even though she was the only one there. Taking a seat, she stared ahead as Derpy had, but out of resolve instead of shock.

The pony came out with a younger one in tow. After a few words of advice, she let her out and turned back to Karyn. “Is everything all right?”

“Hello, Colgate,” Karyn said, distinct purpose in her voice. “I need your help.”

Colgate cocked her head in confusion, and Karyn laid out everything that had transpired in Derpy’s house moments before, dryly and factually, letting Colgate fill in the emotional blanks herself.

“That’s tragic,” Colgate said. “How can I help?”

“I remembered how a long time ago you were very interested in my changeling magic. You called it ‘loose,’ not well attached to me. So what I want you to do it to take it out and transfer it to Dinky to restore her own magic.”

Colgate paused herself, taking in the idea, then shook her head. “Magic doesn’t work that way, Karyn. You can’t just pull it out and put it back in like a tooth.”

“You’re right, I know nothing about magic. I come from a world where it’s only found in storybooks. But from what I do know it follows certain rules, and sacrifice is one of them. Besides, you’re wrong about one thing. My magic was put into me by Queen Chrysalis. So it’s happened before. We just need to figure out how to do it again. And by ‘we,’ I mean you.”

“But even so, why me? I’m not any kind of archmage or theoretician. I’m an amateur student of magic who’s curious about how it can help me in my dentistry. If you want to try, we need to call in a doctor, or maybe one of the princesses—“

Karyn held up a hand. “No. That’s the other part of this. We have one chance to fix this where nopony but the four of us will ever know. I need you to swear that you’ll never tell anypony else. You can’t write it up for a magical journal. Or, maybe you can, but not for a long time, and not by naming any names. If everypony knows what Dinky did to herself, they won’t treat her the same. They’ll snigger behind her back and make fun of her. Or else they’ll treat her extra-nice, like she’s still weak somehow. No, I want to save my friend’s reputation as well as her ability.”

“But it’s still a moot point. You see, magic is an individual thing. Certainly unicorn magic is. The way a unicorn horn works...” Colgate trailed off, and now it was her turn to adopt the thousand-yard stare. “Huh,” she said. “Huh.”

“Yes?”

“It’s possible, but...you might not have such a crazy idea after all. If it’s the case that...huh,” she repeated one more time. “You said that Dinky’s over at her mother’s house now?”

“With Derpy, yes.”

“Let’s go over there and talk this out. Wait, let me just get a few things.” Colgate went back into her surgery and returned with a small bag. She and Karyn fast-walked back to Derpy’s house.

Dinky and Derpy had recovered enough to be sitting at the kitchen table, but Derpy was still half stunned, and Dinky was still quivering. Karyn felt a pang of remorse as she feared that they might have thought she abandoned them. No matter. It was time to fix everything.

“Dinky,” she said, “I don’t know if you know Colgate.”

Colgate spoke before Dinky could get her head turned around. “I’ve worked on her teeth a time or two.”

“I brought her here to help. I’ve explained that what we need to do is take my changeling magic, get it out of me, and put it back into her so she can use magic again.”

A flicker of hope came across their faces. But Derpy, still with sadness in her voice, said, “Karyn, I can’t ask you to do that. It’s giving up too much.”

“It’s giving up something that I was never supposed to have in the first place. I was born a human, a mundane, a muggle. It’s what I’m supposed to be. Dinky is a unicorn. That’s what she’s supposed to be. We do this, and everything goes back into balance.”

“But still, you’ll lose out on so much.”

Karyn had not been unaffected by the emotions of the issue, and it came out as a weary anger. “What kind of person do you think I am? Could I go around the rest of my life using these powers when I know that a good friend is suffering, and that I could help? I can’t do that. Tell me, if you could restore Dinky’s magic by cutting off your wings, would you?”

“Absolutely,” Derpy said without hesitation.

“So how about it, Dinky? Are you in?”

Dinky kept her face sober, but though she did not smile, Karyn could see the glee in her eyes at the prospect of having her problem solved. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to thank you.”

Karyn got very serious. “There’s one thing. I need to know that you’re not going to use this spell ever again. Because we can only do this once. If we do it, and it works, and then you go and lose it all again, then I’ve thrown away my powers for nothing. That I won’t do. So it’s got to be absolute. Not once more when you’re desperate, not when you’re feeling your worst, not because this time you think you have control. Never.”

Neither Dinky nor Derpy had ever seen Karyn speak this way before. It was no longer the voice of a young college student. It was the voice of a woman.

Dinky’s glee went away, and again her eyes got misty. “Oh, Karyn, I promise, I swear it. By my mommy’s wings I swear I’ll never even look at it again! I’ll burn the scroll and I won’t even think about it!”

“All right. I believe you, if that’s what you’re swearing by. Let’s get to business.”

Colgate had stood idly by, and now Dinky looked at her for the first time. “Do you really think we can do this?”

“Not for certain,” the dentist said, “but if it’s true that...let me start at the beginning, for Karyn’s and your mother’s benefit. You’ve studied all about unicorn horns, but they don’t know about them.”

She opened the bag she brought and took out a film. “Karyn, I’ve seen that you have x-ray machines on Earth, so you’ll understand that this is a see-through picture of a unicorn’s head. It shows the hardest and most dense material as the whitest areas. Now, you both probably think of a unicorn’s horn as just being on her forehead. Well, take a look at this.”

She held the film to the light and let Karyn and Derpy look. The horn came through clearly in white, but then the white area kept going into the unicorns head, past the light gray of the skull. There it branched off, into large white lines at first, but then into smaller and smaller branches.

“It looks like an ice cream cone,” said Derpy, “if it fell on its side.”

“The horn reaches deep into the head. At the cellular level, it becomes the same size and shape as the neurons in a pony’s brain. Magic works because the unicorn has to think of what the spell they’re casting is. Then it gets ‘translated’ to the horn. With me so far?”

Derpy nodded. Karyn said, “I think so, but then how does the horn actually make the thoughts...do the magic?”

Colgate leaned in. “That, nopony knows for sure. But here’s the thing. Unicorns can use their magic to magnify things so that they can see them. It’s a field of magic called microscopy. What those unicorns who have taken magnification to the extreme have discovered, is that everything is made up of tiny particles that we call atoms. I don’t know if you can fully understand it because you don’t have magic and can’t see the atoms, but trust me that matter, down tiny, is all these little things.”

Karyn didn’t think it was the time to argue about the state of Earthly science, and let Colgate continue.

“Now, I said that everything is made up of these atoms, but that’s not technically true. The one exception is the horn of a unicorn itself. If a great microscope focused on anything in this room, even our bodies, they would see tiny bits interacting. But not if they looked at my horn or Dinky’s. No matter how much power they used, my horn would still show up as a field of blue, and Dinky’s a field of purple. That’s why it always shows up on the x-ray, even though we can see through the bone.”

This was going far afield from what Karyn knew about materials. She was just as enraptured as Derpy.

“This substance,” Colgate continued, “which we call alicorn, the same word for a winged unicorn, is unlike anything else in the world. Now, nopony understands it fully, but there’s a theory that it’s not even a true part of our universe, but a projection of some extra-dimensional being. We know that alternate dimensions exist, and even have the proof of it right here.” She gestured to Karyn.

“It’s all fascinating,” said Derpy, “but what does it mean for fixing Dinky’s magic?”

“We know that mind magic is dangerous and can cause this sort of malady. If the theory of the alternate dimension is true, then a horn isn’t even part of us. It’s a symbiote, a separate organism that helps us do magic. What it gets from us, we can’t say. But it’s possible that, by altering your mind, Dinky, you’ve denied your horn what it wants from you.”

Dinky looked up at her forehead. “And what could that be?”

“Your horn helps you interact with the world. If you benefit from it, you need it and will take care of it. But if your mind is completely happy, then you don’t need it. You don’t need anypony. You wouldn’t be of use to anypony or have any reason to interact with the world. You would have altered your brain so much that you’ve pulled away from your horn. In the x-ray I showed you, the cells of the brain are linked to the horn. In your case, you would have smoothed the edges. It’s like...” Colgate struggled to think of a simile.

“It’s like when I lock the fingers of my hands,” said Karyn, demonstrating. “Like this, my hands can’t be pulled apart. But if I make a fist and try to grab it, it doesn’t want to go.”

“And that’s why this crazy idea just might have a chance. I was telling Karyn before that magic can’t just be transferred from one to another. Even if we had a unicorn willing to give up her magic for Dinky, there’s no way to do that. Not with unicorn magic. But changeling magic? That we know even less about, and as Karyn pointed out, it’s already been moved once. What we need it to do is just make one last change, for Dinky. Not to your appearance or your body, but to your brain. If Karyn’s changeling magic can be used as a permanent graft, to make your neurons take the same form as they did before you started using the happy-spell, then maybe, just maybe, your horn will start talking to your brain again.”

Karyn chuckled. “It’s funny. We use the same metaphor in computers. We’ll say that two devices are talking to each other, when it’s digital communication. I guess that idea is universal.”

Colgate seemed not to understand, but what she did get was that Karyn was nervous as the time to actually begin the procedure approached. “All right, let’s set this up. Just so you know, this isn’t going to be quick. If I do it wrong, terrible things could happen. Probably something terrible will happen anyway, but like Karyn said to me, we’re trusting on good faith and hoping. Let’s get Karyn and Dinky comfortable.”

Looking around the house, Derpy came back and said, “Don’t you think we should do it in your surgery? The place where you’re most comfortable operating?”

“No. I’d prefer it there if I were doing a procedure that I’d done before, but this time I’m experimenting. I think that it’s more important that Dinky be comfortable. Remember, Dinky, this all depends on you putting your own brain in the state it was before you started using the spell. So we want a homey atmosphere. How about in your room?”

“We can go there. Fortunately Mommy’s been keeping it clean for me.”

They all headed upstairs and Dinky lay down in the bed that she had just gotten up from an hour or so before. But Colgate turned her attention first to Karyn.

“You need to make yourself comfortable too. Actually, don’t get too comfortable yet. There’s some things we have to do. Dinky, you can relax as well, relax from being comfortable I mean.”

They had a laugh at this, while Colgate got serious and pointed her horn at Karyn. Light came from her forehead, but no other effect was seen. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I’m scanning. Derpy, do you have a piece of paper? As much as you can give me. And a quill.”

Derpy flew out, anxious to aid her benefactor in any way possible. One advantage she had of keeping her house so tidy was knowing where odds and ends were, and both scrolls and flat paper were passed over to Colgate. “I assume you want ink too,” said Derpy, and got the bottle.

As soon as they were available, Colgate set up. She used both types of paper, explaining, “I’d prefer the flat paper for everything, since it doesn’t roll up on you, but there are some things I’m going to have to write on the scroll.” Her horn went back and forth from Karyn’s head to the quill, which traced out many marks on the papers.

“I can’t read any of that,” said Derpy.

“No, this is unicorn script, which can only be written and read magically. We don’t generally use it, precisely because pegasi and Earth ponies can’t read it, but for some terms it’s necessary. I’m making notes on where Karyn’s magic is.”

“Thank you for being so patient with me. I just want to understand as much of what’s going on as I can.”

“Patience shouldn’t be a problem. As much as I can do to get things right before I start taking action...” Colgate trailed off and turned to Karyn. “All right, let’s see some simple transformations.”

Karyn was caught off guard. “Anything in particular?”

“No, just let me see what you can do.”

Karyn went with her morning routine changes, altering her clothes and hair. After each one, she had to stand still for more scanning by Colgate. It took a long time, and reminded Karyn of the time when the language translation spell failed, and she had to sit there for hours while Lyra rebuilt the magic into it.

Meanwhile, Dinky just sat there feeling guilty for all the work everyone else was putting in. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. Derpy gave a little smile of pride at hearing her daughter use her expression.

Colgate didn’t even look at her. “No, not at this point. I guess you can’t even decipher what I’m writing down. This is the main problem with all of this. At some point I’m going to need you to give me feedback about what’s happening with your magic, but all the ways that we communicate like that are themselves magical. In other words, it would be a lot easier to fix your magic if you already had it back.”

Derpy cocked her head. “But then you wouldn’t have to do the procedure at all.”

“That’s right,” said Karyn. “On Earth we call that a Catch-22.”

“I’ll have to remember that term.” Colgate made more notes. “All right, try the most outlandish transformation you can. I need to see the extent of your powers.”

Karyn didn’t even know herself, and she hadn’t seen the need for extreme uses of her power, and she didn’t want to go too crazy, so she decided to go with something that was part dragon, part changeling, and part chimera. It seemed to satisfy Colgate, who kept on making notes.

“One more thing,” Colgate said. “I need you to try what we’re going to have Dinky do. A transformation to your brain.”

“Whew. I’ve never done that.”

“Yes, you have. You just didn’t realize it. When you switch to different animals your brain shape alters to fit the animal you’re in. Try a transformation like this.” She pointed to some of the writing.

“I can’t read that.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, I’m getting punchy with all this. Before we begin the actual operation I’m going to need a rest. But...how can I say this? Try an animal transformation that only affects your head, then put your own face back on.”

Karyn’s best animal transformation was to her pony form, which she demonstrated for Colgate. “How’s this?”

“Perfect. Just hold still.”

Without moving, she tracked her eyes to Derpy and to Dinky. This was the tense moment that anyone had while waiting for a doctor to tell them news that they hoped was good.

Derpy, desperate for something to do, started out of the room. “I’ll get you some water or something, for when you’re ready.”

“Yes, I think I’ve got about all the notes I can get. Everyone get yourself prepared. Karyn, take a seat on the chair or something. Dinky, lie down. Derpy...give me all the good wishes you can.”

Dinky did as Colgate instructed. Derpy seemed more confused. But Karyn ignored the instruction and remained standing. “Just a minute,” she said. “I want to do one more thing. Derpy? Do you remember back when I was first made aware that I had these powers? I was suffering from the side effects of having not used them, and Queen Chrysalis said that I needed to transform in order to stop the buildup of excess magic. I made a transformation then, because it was the only one I knew how to do.”

Karyn closed her eyes, and one more time green light came from nowhere and surrounded her. When it ebbed, there she was, standing there, a perfect copy of Derpy.

“I think it’s fitting that the last change I make be the same as the first.”

Derpy smiled at her. The gesture had said more than any words could. It made her finally understand how Karyn saw Equestrian magic, and what she meant by balance. It showed how both she and Karyn liked the poetry of repetition, of ending where you began, of events that were apropos to the situation.

Karyn went back to herself, dropped all disguises, and sat in the chair.

“Ready now?” asked Colgate.

“Yes, I am.”

“Dinky?”

“I...I think so.”

Colgate huffed and muttered, “Still don’t see how this is going to work. Poor kid’s got no magic, can’t even figure out what I’m doing.”

Karyn didn’t know about magic, but she was able to dimly see what Colgate was thinking, and to come up with an analogy in her head. “Wait. Don’t try to do this all at once. Get Dinky just enough so that she can read the unicorn script that you wrote. Maybe then she can help you with the transfer.”

That got Colgate in her blank-stare thinking mode. “Magical rapport. Could work. Haven’t used that since I was a filly, but if we can get that going...nice idea, Karyn. How did you think of it?”

“It’s the same way we start computers on Earth. A simple computer is used to turn on a bigger one, and then all the higher functions come on afterwards.”

“Hm. We’ll have to talk about that later. OK, let’s do this.”

Colgate took Karyn’s hand in one hoof and Dinky’s in another. It amused Karyn to think of this as a hybrid of a seance and an exorcism, with the joined appendages and Dinky lying in bed. Then she got serious. This was real, even if it was magical, and her friend’s quality of life was at stake.

She felt the effects of Colgate’s magic as the blue glow suffused the room. Her head tingled all over like she was getting a scalp massage or was having a bad reaction to a new shampoo. It started all over, then localized to the top of her head. Trying to hold still, she snuck a look over at Dinky.

There! It was a magical glow from Dinky! No, wait, it was the wrong color. Colgate was working on Dinky’s head. Karyn could only wonder what was going through her mind as a third glow appeared, this time on the scroll where the unicorn runes had been inscribed.

The strain was getting to Colgate. Karyn had only once ever seen a unicorn push that hard, and that was when Twilight had lifted the ursa minor through her relaxation course, lifting what must have been thousands of pounds of weight. But that was physical force, even though it was magic. This was brain surgery.

Karyn lost all track of time as she felt Colgate’s power inside her skull. All that mattered was holding still enough to let it happen.

And happen it did.

All at once Dinky levitated off the bed, her horn in full strength, eyes dilated. This too was something that Karyn had seen once before, when Twilight was overcome by her surge of magic at the moment she got her cutie mark. And just like that time, it only lasted a moment. Dinky collapsed back down, ruffling the covers. Colgate released her spell and fell backwards. Derpy raced to see if her daughter was all right. Only Karyn remained still.

Colgate made it to her hooves first. She was panting, and her coat was flattened to her skin by the sweat pouring off her. “Hardest spell I ever cast. Kind of spell a unicorn dreams of casting, prove how good you are. Can’t tell anypony about it, but I’ll know. I’ll remember the day that I left it all out there.”

“But did it work?” asked Karyn.

“Your powers are definitely gone. Dinky?”

Derpy helped her off the bed. “I don’t know,” Dinky said. “I definitely felt something there at the end, and I was seeing the runes during it, but now....” She looked around the room and found a brush for her mane. She tried to levitate it. Her magic had the same pale straw color that they had seen when it was fading out.

“Take it easy,” Colgate said. “Don’t strain yourself too much. A lot was lost in the transfer from Karyn’s brain to yours. You don’t have full power yet. Perhaps, in time, you and your horn will get closer together. I think that your brain will have to form some new pathways to your horn, but it has the roadmap to do that. We’ll figure out the best way for you to practice, get you enough use to strengthen your magic again without hurting yourself. It’s going to be a long process.”

Derpy grapsed her hoof. “You’ve done something amazing. My family is forever in your debt. Can I get you anything? More water? Something to eat? Do you want to rest and stay over?”

“Thank you, no. If I may, I’d like to return to my surgery. I believe that I’ll cancel all my appointments for tomorrow and reflect on what we’ve accomplished here.”

She walked out, treading the stairs with a heavy plod. Derpy watched her to make sure she got out all right, then turned to Karyn.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Actually, I’m surprisingly good. I don’t think I realized how much that was actually weighing on my physique. You remember that it made me sick that one time, kept coughing and passing out, like I had trouble breathing. Once I started using the powers it didn’t happen anymore, but I think it still cut my lung capacity. I feel like I’m breathing easier now. Maybe it’s just knowing that my powers are where they belong now.”

They both approached Dinky. “How are you feeling?” asked Karyn.

“Overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do now? Mommy? What am I supposed to do?”

Derpy didn’t answer, so Karyn had to be the first. “Just get through tonight. We’ll have dinner, get to bed, wait for the sun to rise. When the new day comes, you’ll take that day and figure out what to do with it. Then the same thing with the next day. Try to make each one a little better than the last.”

“I’ll write to Princess Celestia,” said Derpy. “and explain that you’ll be staying home for a while. You won’t take any tests now, and your progress will have to go back if you return to school. I’ll be discreet, tell her that you’re going through some issues right now. Which is true enough. So I’ll leave it open. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get all your power back and be able to go to school and pick up like none of this ever happened.”

“No, I’m not going to do that.” Finally, all the fear had left Dinky’s voice. “I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life. I’m not a strong mare. I’ve got a lot of flaws in my character, and sooner rather than later, I’m going to have to learn how to overcome them before they get out of hoof. I’m very lucky to have people who care about me, and who are able to pick me up when I stumble.”

“Come on. Dinner’s probably cold by now. I’ll have to reheat it, and hopefully it won’t have just gone off.”

The two mares went down to the dining room. Dinky was still trying out her horn here and there, and to Karyn’s eyes the color was already getting brighter, though she realized that that could be wishful thinking. She was the last one out of the room, and as she shut the door she realized that they had left her there, as if she belonged, as though she was part of the family.

She felt for the part of her mind that was gone, focused, and tried to make the same effort that resulted in her transformation. Nothing happened. Karyn smiled to herself. She was a perfectly ordinary young human woman. But she was also a special person, because she had friends.

Author's Note

Clip show next week, but then we go full out to the finish! Twenty-six more weeks!

Clip Show: Memoirs of a Derpling

Derpy was drained, but she knew that there would be no rest for her yet. She had done her duty as a mother and helped her child as much as she could. Now she had to do her duty as a friend.

“Karyn...I don’t know how to thank you.”

Karyn smiled. “There are some things that you don’t say thank you for. This was...not a gift or a sacrifice. This is something I’m happy to have done.”

“Well, all I will say is that if you’re ever in that bad a spot, I hope you have someone willing to take care of you that way.”

“Mmhm.”

Derpy touched Karyn on the hand. “How does it feel? It is like...you feel like something’s missing?”

“No. I feel...normal. Ordinary. But right. I don’t know if I feel anything physically. It’s all in what I think about it. How I’ll get around Equestria now. What I’ll do back on Earth. Stuff like that.”

“It’s a shame that you can’t blend in with other ponies now.”

Karyn nodded, but as she thought back, a memory came up. “That’s not always a blanket positive. Do you remember back when you had to do the tornado with the other pegasi?”

“You! Pony! What do you think you’re doing out here?! You should be in there with the rest of them!”

Karyn thought that it would be easy to explain. “No, you see, I’m not really a p—“

“This is my little sister’s first time running the tornado, and I will not have anypony sitting on the sidelines for it. You will get your flank into that formation immediately or so help me I will tan your hide!”

“You don’t understand. Your sister—Misty?—she came over to my friend Derpy and me, and Derpy told her that she was ready to go, but that I wasn’t signed up, and that’s true, because I’m actually a human from another world, only obviously I don’t look like one, but that’s because I’m also part changeling, which is itself a long story, and you don’t want to hear it, but—“

She realized that she was rambling, and the pony just kept steaming at her. “That’s the sorriest made-up excuse I’ve heard. Are you going to get in that tornado?”

Karyn decided that the only sensible course of action was to drop her disguise and show him that she was in no way a flyer. So flustered was she by his anger, though, that it took a moment before she could bring up the muscle memory needed of how to shapeshift back. To the stallion, it must have looked like she was staring blankly at him.

Just as the green light surrounded her, the stallion took off and flew towards her, his front hooves outstretched. He grabbed her around the waist and started flying toward the tornado. “Get. To. Work!” he shouted as he hurled her in.

“But that all worked out in the end,” said Derpy.

“Only thanks to you. Talk about giving things you can’t thank the other person for. You saved my life that day. Not just the quality of life, but the whole thing.”

“And of course, you did learn to fly eventually. Now you can’t do that anymore. That’s why I’m sorry for you.”

It was quite recent that Karyn had learned, and Derpy got misty at the memory

From behind, she heard a gentle voice. “Are you hurt, little bird? Did you break your wing?”

Karyn flipped around, itself an unfamiliar motion, to see Gayle kneeling down a good distance away. She held out her hand.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Is there some reason you can’t fly?” And then to herself. “I’ve never seen a bird like this around here.”

Karyn thought of playing it cool and letting Gayle think that she really was a bird, but Derpy ruined any plans of a prank. “Hey, Gayle, it’s Derpy here. The bird is actually Karyn. She wanted to learn how to fly, which is something that she can’t do as a pegasus pony.”

She bounced back away and resumed her usual shape, plus an image of some clothes which she’d had to take off when she transformed previously. “Yeah, it seems like I’m gilding the lily or something. I should be happy enough to have the form but from an incident earlier today it felt like I should be able to fly when I need to, you know?”

“I can’t say I know, but I’ll believe you. But why as a bird?”

They brought her up to speed on the experiments they had performed so far. “No matter what she does,” said Derpy, “she can’t get consistent and efficient flight.”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if it isn’t more than just the shape. I mean, a bird has instincts that let it fly. It has to be trained by its mother, but it’s still instinctual. How about you, Derpy? Are pegasuses born knowing how to fly?”

“Pegasi. And no, we’re not. We have to be taught.”

Gayle sat down next to Karyn. “So I’m thinking maybe it’s not a skill that you can pick up immediately. It’s like painting. You know how to pick up a brush and move it across the canvas, but I would have to teach you if you wanted to actually get a picture out of it.”

Karyn swallowed and winced. “So what you’re saying is that it’s going to be difficult.”

“Yes. Which is why as a responsible adult I advise you to give up and go play video games.”

They had a laugh, but Derpy missed the sarcasm. “That’s not responsible at all! No, if anything, we have to stay out here until you can fly! No matter how hard it is!”

“Well, you heard her, Karyn. I’ll keep an eye out to make sure you get airborne.” Gayle headed back inside.

“You’ll never fly now.”

Karyn held Derpy to her. “But I got to before. You understand? No other human has. We have legends of people who could, like Peter Pan. And when people watch that, they feel the joy they think they would get from being able to fly unaided. I did it. And I’ll always have that memory.”

“I’m glad that you’re taking this so bravely.”

“What I’m worried about are the wider consequences.”

Derpy looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, changelings and ponies still aren’t the most cordial of allies. I had to help formalize relations, so I hope that Princess Cadance doesn’t have any trouble with them now that I’m no longer a queen.”

“There’s definitely something odd about what’s going on here.”

“Let’s just get to Princess Cadance. She’ll sort everything out.”

They made good time to the castle, where again they met with bowing and honors. At last they reached Princess Cadance.

“Thank you so much for coming. You have no idea how much easier this will make it for me,” the princess said.

“I’m not so sure. We might have been making missteps.” Karyn related what happened on the train and with the carriage driver.

Princess Cadance’s expressive eyes showed the stress she was under. “The train is my fault, and I apologize. I should have known that you wouldn’t want to be pampered, but so many others do, and I fell in the routine. But the incident with the carriage is part of something deeper. You see, many of the Crystal ponies don’t favor this treaty with the changelings.”

“WHAT?!” they said simultaneously.

Karyn was the first to recover. “Don’t they understand that they won’t have to live in fear of the changelings anymore?”

“Unfortunately, just because they won’t have to doesn’t mean they don’t now.”

Now it was Derpy’s turn. “But you’re their princess! If you tell them that this is good for them, won’t they listen?”

“Yes, or there would be no treaty to begin with. But I can’t just do what I think is right all the time and expect them to fall in line. I have to listen and indulge the common pony most of the time. If I do that, I earn their trust and, when the time comes to do something important like this, they do. But I’m going to have to do a lot of listening to make up for this.”

Before they could discuss it any further, the door burst open and a black silhouette let only circles of light through near the floor. Queen Chrysalis had arrived.

“Ah,” she said in her raspy voice. “You came. Excellent. Then we will proceed to business and be done with it.”

“I still don’t like her,” said Derpy.

“I can understand that. She doesn’t like you very much either, and you didn’t give her a reason. She’s not a happy changeling, but given time, who knows?”

“Still, she was the one who gave you your powers, and I guess I have to thank her indirectly for that. Though I give you, like, ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent of the credit.”

Karyn laughed. “it was a pretty amazing adventure.”

“One of the only times I was ever able to impress Doctor Hooves. I remember telling him about it.”

“Anyway, Doctor, this is Earth. Ask me anything about it! I know lots of things about this world.”

“So do I, I’ve been here before.” Doctor Hooves sipped at the coffee that Karyn had given him and was looking the other way.

“You have?! I thought I was the first!”

“What? Oh, you are, of course. I sometimes get the past and the future confused.”

Derpy leaned in close to Karyn. “Sometimes I think that Doctor Hooves has some weird abilities, even if he’s just an Earth pony.”

Karyn had a few ideas about that herself, but she didn’t know enough to say.

“Oh!” Derpy turned back to the Doctor. “Karyn has powers too! She’s a changeling queen!”

“Is she now? How did that happen?”

“I’ll tell you…”

Chrysalis watched the sparks and then approached Karyn. “That is indeed a magical illness you have. I wonder why. Have you attempted any unusual transformations lately?”

“I haven’t been transformed ever. Except when Princess Celestia switched me with Derpy once. But that was more of a mind-switch than a transformation.”

“What?! No wonder your health is failing. A changeling must transform or she will suffer buildups that are quite painful.”

“Stop!” said Karyn. “That’s too confusing. You can’t flash back to when we were having a flashback.”

“I can’t?”

“No, it’s weird.”

Derpy shrugged. “I guess. But that was how you became a changeling. And now it’s all gone. I hope it doesn’t get to you too much.”

“I don’t think it will. What I’m going to miss isn’t the major abilities it gave me, like flight. It’s all the little conveniences.”

“Like what?”

“Well...”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Go shopping!”

And as she said that, she grabbed her purse and was headed out the door. Derpy barely had time to get her invisibility spell out and follow her to the car. “Isn’t this a little sudden? And besides, what’s the point of making money if you’re going to spend it on clothes?”

“Trust me. In any case, I haven’t had the chance to do a full-on shopping spree since…well, since I came to college. It takes me back to when my girlfriends and I would get driven by one of our moms—never mine, though—down to the mall. We could spend all day there. I remember thinking how cool it would be if we could only drive ourselves. Well, I never did that kind of shopping afterwards because money was so tight. I resent it a little that I can’t go shopping just to look good, but this is as fine a time as any to get a new wardrobe.”

Derpy sucked air through her teeth. “It’s bad enough to get new clothes, but to buy furniture?”

It took Karyn a moment to get it. “Not that kind of wardrobe!”

But her spirit could not be dampened, not even when she realized that she did not know where the mall was in her college town, and driving to the mall that she used growing up, while nostalgic, was not worth the time or the cost in gas to get there. After searching on her phone, she found what purported to be a mall, though the word “strip” could have preceded it without argument. There was a department store at one end, though, and even though the food court comprised only a pizza place and a pretzel stand, it was still a mall, and Karyn breathed deeply the conditioned air as they entered.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “This is it.” She made her way at quick-march pace for the women’s section of the department store.

She ran up to the racks and started pulling outfits. With her phone, she snapped pictures of some of them. Derpy caught up and blew a puff of air with her wings to get Karyn’s attention.

“Please be responsible. You’re not even looking at the prices.”

“I know. That’s the idea. I’m going to use these outfits to wear with my changeling abilities. That way I’ll save money.”

Derpy backed off, but her mind was as jumbled as her eyes. “Are you sure that’s right to do?”

“I thought you would be happy for me to be saving money.”

“I am, but at the same time, it feels a little like stealing.”

Karyn shook her head. “I’m not depriving anyone of anything. They still have the same inventory as before.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s all right. You’re not the first person to have ethical quandaries over something like this. When digital music first came out, we had the same debate.”

Derpy sounded relieved. “And you decided that it was OK to get music using your phone?”

“Well, kind of. We decided that it was impossible to stop people from doing it, so the music companies would use other means to make money. But I promise you that if the majority of humans become changeling queens, I’ll come back and buy clothing to keep them in business.”

“Oh, good.”

“That’s what you’re going to miss most?” asked Derpy. “Being able to not buy clothes?”

“Pretty much, yeah. And having to do my own hair and all that. Honestly, when I’ve read stories and watched movies, that’s what I always thought was the cool part of being magical was. And why it always annoyed me whenever they would say to the characters, ‘You must only use your powers to help others or to save the world’ or stuff like that.”

“But you have used your powers to save the world.”

Karyn shot Derpy a quizzical look. “I did?”

“Yes, when the Flim Flam brothers plotted to steal Earth’s electricity and we had to find out who was behind it.”

Twilight was awake, taking late notes with Owlowiscious, but they still woke Spike. After bringing her up to speed, Twilight asked, “So what exactly is your plan?”

“Well, we want to keep the appointment to find out who’s behind it all,” said Derpy. “Karyn?”
She focused, and green light filled the room. When it subsided, there was Karyn disguised as Flim. “It doesn’t have to be long,” she said, not liking the smoothness of the voice, “just enough to find out who the meeting is with, if indeed there is somepony.”

“All right. I approve it. But be careful. It could be someone really villainous, like Sunset Shimmer or Queen Chrysalis. Cadance trusts her, but...”

Derpy grinned. “I’m thinking it’s just some greedy pony like Filthy Rich. But we’ll find out.”

They moved out and arrived back near the alley where they found the cart. Derpy went to hide in the shadows while Karyn waited. It was a dull and boring hour for Karyn, who couldn’t even sit down, there being no place to do so. But at last a figure entered the alley, checking around to see if he had been followed.

“What’s the word? Did you get the feed?”

“Yeah, we got it,” Karyn said, hoping to not have to play the part too long. “We could be found out, though.”

“By humans? From what I’ve heard they’re not too bright.”

That was enough for Karyn. She dropped the disguise and said, “We’re not, huh? Bright enough to fool you!”

The other pony bolted for the alley, but Derpy got in the way and spread her wings to deny any exit.

“Derpy?!” the pony cried out, in surprise and confusion. He turned to look back at Karyn, and a moonbeam struck him. Karyn needed a moment to recognize him. For Derpy it was instant.

“Rocky Top? Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Karyn. “I did do that. But that’s not a regular occurrence, and I’m grateful not to be on the hook for saving the world. If you want to, well, you’re the pegasus pony who also carries a bag full of spells with her.”

“I don’t know about that. But I promise that I’ll protect you from anything in Equestria that tries to hurt you or your world.”

“How do you know you can do that? Whatever magic you have, you’re not as powerful as the princesses, or even some of the monsters that live here.”

Derpy took Karyn’s hands in her hooves. “You’re right, I don’t know that I’ll succeed. But just like when I struggle to deliver the mail or have problems with my weight, all I can do is try as hard as I can. I promise you that I’ll help you whenever you need it. Not just for this, but because you’re my friend.”

Author's Note

Let's get a preview of a true chapter!

Usually when Derpy had something for them to do in Equestria, it could wait. Equestrians were late risers. Or, Karyn thought, correcting herself, the Ponyvillians were late risers on Sundays. That was different.

She finished washing and threw on a robe to run down to the bedroom. Once dressed, she came back out. “OK, let’s go.”

Derpy made a nifty maneuver, ducking and lifting Karyn onto her back in one motion, and continuing that motion into activating the spell to get them to Equestria. Clearly she was in a hurry. “Thanks for coming with.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’ll massage your arm if you like.”

“No, I was exaggerating about that. At the time it hurt, but I’ve long recovered.”

“I have a question,” said Derpy. “How come you aren’t home for the holiday break?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Also,” said Derpy, “I have Karyn here today, so I hope you don’t mind if I don’t have you over.”

“Of course not. You’re going to get me fat anyway on your good cooking. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They were free to retreat to Derpy’s house.

What awaits us in the exciting last half-year of Derpy's Human? Come back to find out!

131: Occupational Derpy

It was early enough when Karyn got up and headed to the bathroom to wash up. Already she was getting used to not cheating and using the powers she once had to get ready. As she went through the motions, she silently congratulated herself for not relying on them too much. One day she might magic up her hair, the next day her makeup, the next her clothes, but she kept in practice doing each task. Now she just had to do them all.

Still, this took time, and when she heard Derpy appear in the apartment before she was finished brushing her teeth she spat out the toothpaste and shouted, “I’ll just be a minute!”

Derpy came to the door. “A minute’s OK,” she said, “but can we go back to my place once you’re ready?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” But it intrigued Karyn. Usually when Derpy had something for them to do in Equestria, it could wait. Equestrians were late risers. Or, Karyn thought, correcting herself, the Ponyvillians were late risers on Sundays. That was different.

She finished washing and threw on a robe to run down to the bedroom. Once dressed, she came back out. “OK, let’s go.”

Derpy made a nifty maneuver, ducking and lifting Karyn onto her back in one motion, and continuing that motion into activating the spell to get them to Equestria. Clearly she was in a hurry. “Thanks for coming with.”

“I hope nothing is wrong like what happened with Dinky.”

“Not like that, but it does involve Dinky. I don’t want to leave her alone at this point. She hasn’t gotten all her magic back yet. It’s a long process.”

Karyn patted her neck. “I understand. And you want to be there for her if she needs it.”

“Yes, but there are practical considerations as well. Anypony ought to be able to defend themselves from the beasts that come from the Everfree. Oh, sure, it’s unlikely that they’d get into town, and even if they did that they’d reach Dinky, but still. An Earth pony could fight with their hooves, a pegasus could fly away, and a unicorn could defend themselves with magic. But Dinky would be in trouble.”

This still seemed overprotective to Karyn, but if anypony had a reason to be, it was Derpy. She hopped off of her and kept a good walking pace as they reached the house.

“I’m home!” Derpy shouted, and Karyn had a vision of Derpy saying the same thing, day after day, after she’d finished the mail and finally made it back to her daughter.

“Hi, Mommy. Hello, Karyn.” Dinky approached Karyn as if she were afraid to touch her, like she was too precious.

“You see?” said Derpy. “I raced there and back to get her. I knew you didn’t want to be alone.”

“I’m glad that she’s here, but you didn’t have to run. Actually, the other thing that I’m glad of is that I had a chance to see her apartment—and her world—before the princesses had to put a stop to other ponies going. I wish I could do it again, but that too is a long process.”

Karyn winced as she realized that, however normal she appeared, Dinky’s mind was always on what was coming to be a kind of therapy.

“Well, how about I get breakfast ready?”

“Oh, I’ll help.” Karyn made her way to the kitchen.

“Thanks, but why don’t you let Dinky help? We used to make breakfast all the time, and she’s been my assistant all week. You can see how well we work together.”

Dinky brightened up as they went to work with flour, eggs, and butter. Derpy portioned everything out, but Dinky did much of the physical labor, and again Karyn saw a picture in her head of their family life, Derpy teaching Dinky how to prepare food for herself and bonding over it.

“Are you making muffins?” Karyn asked.

Derpy looked up. “No, cinnamon rolls. Why, do you want muffins? We can make them too if you really want. Or I might have some left over that aren’t too stale.”

“That’s fine, I just thought...never mind.”

They kept mixing, including the cinnamon they’d mentioned, and then they went into the oven. “Now we wait. You’d like coffee, Karyn?”

Karyn began to say yes, but, blushing, said, “Could I ask you for a different favor? Would you mind if I used your shower? I didn’t get a chance to take as long of one as I wanted this morning, and I just don’t feel clean.”

“Well, it is for ponies...”

“Of course you can!” Dinky said. “I’ll show you how it works, come on.”

Karyn followed Dinky up to the washroom and said, “Thanks.”

“Mommy doesn’t get it. Now that you don’t have your magic, it takes you longer to do things.”

“Thank you for understanding that.”

“Understanding is what I have now. Besides, I should know you well enough, because I’ve got a little piece of you in here.” She pointed to her horn.

“It wasn’t mine to begin with. It was the changeling usurper’s.”

Dinky shook her head. “Maybe that’s how it started, but I’m not so bereft of magic that I can’t tell dark magic from light. You purified it when it was in you, and I have to thank you again for that. It never would have worked if you hadn’t. Well, come on, I’ll turn on the shower for you.”

It wasn’t complicated, and Karyn could have figured it out, but of course Dinky wanted to speak to her alone. What was different was how wide the showerhead was, and the fact that it was overhead instead of at an angle. Karyn figured that ponies would want to be able to move around more instead of standing still and scrubbing.

The water was hot though, and Karyn didn’t know if it was done by natural methods or magical. It was possible that Derpy had a wood or coal heating system underneath the house that she’d never seen. She let it flow over her and scrubbed with a bar of soap left on a low ledge. It was always awkward, she thought, to be in someone else’s shower, but at least she would be clean. Running her hands over her shoulders, she finally accepted that this was her body, and it would no longer change, and it would be that way the rest of her life.

Deciding to eschew shampooing her hair, Karyn shut the water and found a towel. Here too, Equestria showed up Earth. The towel was thick and soft. Karyn had a hard time believing that there was no animal fur in the towel, but would have been equally surprised if there were. Maybe the sheep voluntarily gave up some of their wool, but it didn’t feel woolen.

Now dressed, Karyn descended the stairs to see Derpy putting the breakfast dishes in front of Dinky. It reminded her of when she would sleep late on weekends and her own mother would have breakfast ready for the family, and it renewed her connection to the two ponies. She joined them at the table.

The conversation mostly concerned the breakfast itself, with Dinky and Karyn praising Derpy for her cooking skills, and Derpy modestly accepting the compliments.

During the meal, Karyn kept sneaking looks at Dinky, hoping she wouldn’t notice. What she wanted to talk about was how she was getting on with her recovery, all the details of how her magic was doing and how long, if at all, it would take for her to get her powers back. But she knew how sensitive a subject that was, so she held off.

“How’s school?” Dinky asked, perhaps hoping for a vicarious echo of what she would have experienced herself.

“Good. Did your mother tell you about the problems I had in one of my classes?”

“No.” Dinky’s eyes opened, as if eager to hear any story of someone else’s woe, greedy for a chance to help instead of to be helped.

“Well, the teachers at my school aren’t all about instruction. Some of them use their grading to get back at students...” Karyn recounted the tale of the midterm with the professor she still despised. “...and your mother helped get me the discipline I needed, although my arm is still sore from writing so much. I made the grade though, and I happily showed her up on the final. Finished in forty-two minutes flat with a perfect score, and there was nothing the prof could do but scowl.”

“I’ll massage your arm if you like.”

“No, I was exaggerating about that. At the time it hurt, but I’ve long recovered.”

“I have a question,” said Derpy. “How come you aren’t home for the holiday break?”

“I will be, soon enough. And was, before. I spent Christmas—you remember, Dinky? That’s the human Hearth’s Warming—with my family, but one of the gifts my father got my mother was a vacation trip. I didn’t feel like staying at home all alone with nothing to do. At school there are always some people around, even if my friends are home.”

“Were you going to tell me about this or let me show up at the apartment next week while you were gone?” Derpy smiled to show she wasn’t serious.

“Nah, I was going to hit you up impromptu to help carry stuff home.” Karyn also laughed, and Dinky looked a little jealous that her mother could share such a moment with Karyn.

“All right, so how were they?”

“How were what?”

“Your holidays,” said Dinky, who felt better for correctly interpreting her mother’s vague question. “The time you got to spend at home?”

“Oh. Good, fun. Too fast. And I didn’t get the same level of pure swag that I did when I was a little girl. But that’s to be expected. Really it was more about getting to be with my folks and have them hug me while we listened to the music by the fire. That’s probably what I’ll remember about it, even if I didn’t get much.”

“That sounds nice. It was similar for us, except no fire.”

Karyn looked toward the living room, realizing that many of the houses of Ponyville did have chimneys and fireplaces, but Derpy’s did not. She asked why that was.

“I never had one as a filly,” Derpy said, “and so I never really learned how to make them effectively. Mine always go out too quickly, plus I don’t like poking at it or trying to use the bellows to get it hotter. And I’m bad at stacking the logs so they don’t fall over once they burn. Basically I don’t like them.”

“But how do you keep it warm in here?”

“Pegasus pony, remember? I channel all the warm air currents I can find into the area around the house. Plus it’s well-insulated. I even sneak a few sunbeams through on cloudy days when I’m not supposed to.”

Karyn was impressed that, for all the time they had known each other, Derpy could still surprise her with something completely foreign to her own world. She had never noticed a heat difference between Derpy’s house and the outside world, but now that she was aware of it, she felt it.

Derpy cleaned up the breakfast at last. It had taken much longer than the quick breakfasts they had on Earth, when it was just the two of them. But through all the pleasant politeness, Karyn kept looking over at Dinky. Finally she could take it no longer.

“So have you made any progress? Is your magic getting stronger?”

Dinky looked down, and Karyn feared that she had broached a tough subject. If Dinky was doomed to being a low-power unicorn, or worse, if she had gone backwards toward no magic at all, then the last thing she would want to do is talk about it. But Karyn also felt that if that were the case, Dinky would have shown it during the meal. She would have been more nervous. Now, she burst out laughing.

“I knew that you were curious, and thanks for holding out as long as you did. I’ve been working with Colgate almost daily. I have a standing appointment over at her place. It’s the perfect excuse for me to tell anypony who wonders why I’m there all the time to say that I’ve been having a lot of problems with my teeth and that I’m getting long-term therapy. We work on strengthening my magic each day. And...” Dinky made a sour face.

“Yes? What else?”

“She makes me brush and floss while I’m there as well.”

Karyn laughed at that. “But where do you think you are relative to where you were?”

“Hmm...if I had to give it a number, I would say twenty-five percent. But that’s twice as good as I started after the operation, and of course it’s infinitely better than it was when I came home. But that doesn’t put me on schedule to go back to school. Mommy wrote to the princess to say that I won’t be coming back in the new year, and Princess Celestia wrote back that she was disappointed but understood how life gets in the way sometimes. She’s holding my place there until we say otherwise, which is very nice of her.”

“It is, but no more than I expected.”

Derpy had been cleaning the dishes, but she finished and joined in. “The one who is really doing more than she needs to is Colgate. I should do something nice for her.”

Dinky stared at her. “You should do something nice for her? Really?”

“I don’t get it,” said Karyn.

“Karyn, Mommy has practically adopted Colgate into the house. I don’t think Colgate has cooked a meal for herself since the operation. Mommy has had her over for dinner every night. She’s baked more trays of muffins for her than I can count. She delivers her mail by hoof right to her door, with everything sorted and stacked. She told you about sneaking good weather over our house, but Colgate’s has been a sunny paradise these past few weeks. I said that I have a standing appointment, but half the time we do it over here because Mommy insists on her coming to try some new meal, or just so she can rub Colgate’s hooves. It’s embarrassing, but Colgate won’t say anything because Mommy would be insulted if she refused.”

“Oh, Derpy, you don’t have to do all that.”

“Dinky is exaggerating.”

“Not by much!” the unicorn said.

Karyn got up from the table to help dry the dishes. “Even so, you shouldn’t do too much, or it can have the opposite effect and make you seem officious. If you’re really that grateful, you should try to help other ponies besides Colgate. It’s what we call ‘paying it forward’ on Earth.”

“What I’m most happy about,” said Derpy, “is just having Dinky back home. I know that it’s for a problem, but after three years of her only being here for vacations and holidays, this is like going back to before she left.

“And how about you, Dinky? Do you like being home?”

“Actually, yes,” Dinky was still sitting at the table, and she had to think about the question. “But not because it’s home. Now that I’ve been in Ponyville and Canterlot, I can see the advantages of both. Canterlot was a nice place to go to school, but when I settle down, I’d like it to be in a small town like this.”

“Not that you’ve seen much of it.” Derpy gave the slightest scowl, but couldn’t stay mad at Dinky for very long.

“Why’s that?” asked Karyn.

”Dinky’s been so busy working with Colgate that she hasn’t had time to go out.”

“It’s not that.” Dinky pointed at her horn. “If I’m out and for whatever reason I need to do magic, everypony will find out. That’s no good.”

Karyn shook her head and helped Dinky down from the table. She didn’t need the help, but Karyn wanted to confront her. “What’s no good is you becoming a shut-in. You need to get out, make friends, ensure that you get a support network to help you through your troubles. The problem is that Derpy’s always done everything for you, or you for yourself. Sometimes you let me in, but I’m not a pony. You need to have more ponies on your own level...like that Suzie we met once.”

“You really think so?”

“As much as you need the therapy for your horn, you need it for what caused the problem in the first place. Come on, get a coat if you think it’ll be cold. We’re going out.”

Before Dinky could put up a protest, Karyn put on her own jacket and led Derpy to the front. Derpy liked the idea, but couldn’t bring herself to support it more vocally, preferring not to direct Dinky to things she didn’t want to do. Karyn noticed this, and considered it lucky that Dinky hadn’t been a spoiled child. Whatever her flaws, she had a good heart and hadn’t taken advantage of her mother’s soft discipline.

Out into the streets they walked, and Dinky asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

“To the market,” said Karyn, who hadn’t known herself until that moment. “It’s where there will be lots of ponies, and that’s what we want.”

“It is?”

“Yes. I know that sounds intimidating, but trust me, it’ll be easier when you have a big crowd who’ll just see you as another face. It’s the small gatherings we’ll have to work our way up to.”

Dinky’s reluctance battled with her naturally longer stride, and she kept up with Karyn until they reached the weekly market. The winter sellers had taken up residence, and Karyn saw some of the summer fruits and vegetables she’d come to rely on as landmarks weren’t there.

But she wasn’t there to buy, so it worried her less as she led the two ponies through the lanes. Occasionally she would lean in to a stand to look at the wares. If anything, she pulled more looks than Dinky, and she could no longer blend in. But soon a mare running a cheese stand said, “Derpy? Hey, Dinky! I didn’t realize you were back in town. It’s good to see you again!”

Dinky girded herself and said hi, getting into the small talk of a casual acquaintance. More than that, she was happy to have fulfilled Karyn’s assignment. As she had said, this was recovery too.

They were about to move on when the mare, who happened also to be a unicorn, said, “Before you go, let me give you a wedge of something. Call it a delayed Hearth’s Warming present. Hang on. Here you are, I think you’ll like this, if you’re into soft cheeses.”

Without thinking about it, she floated it over to Dinky. Karyn bit her lip and was prepared to take it, but Dinky’s horn field activated in full color as she landed it gently in Derpy’s saddlebag. After thanking her, Dinky went on her way.

She still didn’t want to cause any undue attention, but Karyn moved Dinky quickly to a side alley and said, “You were holding back. You did that perfectly!”

“Ha. I burned myself out for that. Right now, I couldn’t lift a feather. By the end of the day, maybe I’ll be back to where I was before then.”

“Oh. Well, don’t feel bad about that. It’s like how you exercise a muscle. You have to push it to its limit sometimes, and then it will get healthier.”

Dinky looked around while rubbing her hoof. “I would like to get home now, though. I didn’t mind doing that because I knew that I had one good spell if I needed it. Now that I’m out...”

“All right. Let’s go enjoy this cheese.”

While they were on the move, nopony accosted them, and even out of the market the ponies still looked at Karyn more than the others. Only when they were close to home did they here someone say, “Dinky?”

They turned, slightly worried, but it was the one pony they were OK with seeing, Colgate.

“Oh, hi,” said Derpy. “I don’t think we’ll actually need you today.”

“I hope you’re not letting Dinky skive off. Keeping up with her magic is important.” Karyn admired her tact. Anypony passing by would conclude that it was just an ordinary conversation about a unicorn in training. Derpy, lacking such tact, told the story of what happened at the market, and Colgate nodded approval.

“Also,” said Derpy, “I have Karyn here today, so I hope you don’t mind if I don’t have you over.”

“Of course not. You’re going to get me fat anyway on your good cooking. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They were free to retreat to Derpy’s house, and once there, Derpy got to work slicing the cheese.

“So, Dinky,” said Karyn, “you’ve got a new task. In addition to working with Colgate, I want you to go outside each day. Just take a walk around town a little. Say hi to some ponies. If you get a chance to use your magic like you did today, fine, but if not, that’s OK too. Because if you don’t get back your full power, you’ll need to learn how to interact with ponies anyway.”

“Are you going to want me to write up a report?”

“No, just do it, and know that you are. You’re not in school now, and you’re going to have to provide your own structure for your life.”

Dinky stared, as if thinking about this for the first time. “Wow, you’re right. How do you know about it?”

Karyn grinned. “Because the same thing is looming for me.”

Author's Note

So here we go, taking a look again at what's to come:

“Do we need to go back to your house to watch Dinky again?” she asked.

Derpy took her seat at the table. “No point to it. She’s already left the house, earlier than me even.”

“Oh?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Here,” she said, extending them.

“Thanks. I don’t know what his problem was.”

“We called the police,” the manager said. “Do you want to press charges?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Could be. But I’m not asking for an answer. It’s one of those, what do you call it? Ridiculous question?”

“Rhetorical.”

“Yeah.”

This should be posted on time, but I will be doing it from my mobile, so I can't promise it exactly. In any case, please read it when it is posted!

132: Nine-One-Derp

Karyn was awake and alert for when Derpy arrived that Sunday.

“Do we need to go back to your house to watch Dinky again?” she asked.

Derpy took her seat at the table. “No point to it. She’s already left the house, earlier than me even.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, she’s been following your advice and getting out of the house every day. Almost every day. More than half.”

Now that the worry about another quick turnaround had gone, Karyn relaxed and sat down with Derpy. They were able to get back into their usual routine, with Derpy taking a quick look around to make sure all was clean before having coffee and breakfast. With all the stress of Karyn’s finals and Dinky’s ailment gone, it was finally back to normal.

“I’m glad to see that you’re OK with her going out. I was worried that you were going to argue with me about it last week.”

“Karyn, I did let her go off to school on her own. I know you see me as this overprotective pegasus, always hovering over my daughter, but I do know that she has to grow up. I don’t feel it, and I don’t necessarily like it, but yeah, I have to.”

Karyn decided to take her time with cooking that day, and didn’t get up from the table just yet. “I’m glad to hear you say that. That’s something I’ve had to learn, how to deal with things that I know are true even though my intuition says it isn’t. You can do it, which is a sign of maturity.”

“Thank you. Besides, I asked Colgate to go after her and make sure that, if she got into any trouble, she could get bailed out.”

“Then maybe you didn’t get the lesson. Or I don’t understand it completely either. Whatever, let’s not worry about it.”

They had a leisurely breakfast, and it was over an hour before Karyn finished cleaning up and putting the dishes away, after which they sat down at the same table and kept up the small talk. The winter break was going well and Karyn was spending her time scoping out the job market. Also she had done some more work with the meetup group that they had spent time with. Derpy was having her own fun with Dinky back, but the hardest thing was knowing that she still felt guilty.

“So,” said Derpy, “being that I’m here and free to do whatever you like, what would you like to do?”

“Actually, I was planning to do this next Saturday, but maybe you want to come with. We haven’t done a movie in a long time.”

“Yes, we have. Remember when we saw the movie that supposedly had ponies in it, but not for long, and it was all about that weird alternate dimension with not-quite-humans?”

Karyn had to think about that for a moment. It had happened only recently, but somehow it felt disconnected from their normal weekly sessions. She put that thought aside. “But we didn’t go to the theater for that. We just watched the first one on disc and the second one on TV. I’m talking about actually going to a movie theater. Don’t you remember? It was the first time that you ever went out into the world.”

“That was a long time ago, wow. I guess it’s all right to do the same thing twice, yeah? I mean, if it’s been that long.”

“Plus there’s one particular movie that I’ve wanted to see.”

Derpy was putting on her saddlebag again to head out. “Yeah? Can you tell me about it?”

Karyn grabbed her own coat and walked toward the car. Derpy went invisible but waited for her answer, because it was clear that Karyn was thinking deeply.

“All right,” she said at last, “the thing is that some movies—most of them, these days—are just silly movies with ordinary plots and no depth. They could be action movies designed to show off special effects, or romantic movies meant to make people think that love is easy, or more likely the adaptation of some book or TV show that has a pre-made audience for it, since movies are expensive and they don’t like to spend money that they won’t get back. Then there are movies that do have a lot of ideas behind them, but also a lot of symbolism and imagery, and they tend to be depressing or just plain hard to understand.

“Sometimes I want to see the first kind of movie, and never do I want to see the second kind. I don’t like it when I can’t understand the movie. I know some people think that makes me entitled, but I want to be entertained. My point is that there are some filmmakers—they usually write and direct their works—that hit the happy medium where they have some smart concepts but I can still follow them. One of those guys has a new movie out.”

They arrived at the theater, and Derpy, although she didn’t fully understand what Karyn was talking about, did know that it was something that she cared about. Derpy herself was more interested in just having a good time. The theater was not the same one they had gone to, and she was impressed with its size. As they went inside, she asked, “Are we going to get popcorn?”

“That too is kind of expensive, and it’s way unhealthy. I’ll buy you snacks after the movie.”

Karyn went to the automated ticket machine, not because she had any disdain for ticket sellers, but because there was a line at the normal box office, and all the machines were free. She negotiated the menu quickly and purchased her ticket, declining to get one for Derpy given the high price.

“If you give them too much money,” she said, “they’ll only keep making more expensive movies that involve costly effects instead of giving the money to writers.”

In the theater, Karyn took her usual place, second from the aisle, so that Derpy was free to sit on the end and it would discourage anyone from thinking it was open and squashing her.

They had gotten there good and early, and could relax and enjoy the pre-preview previews laden with commercials. Karyn and Derpy made small talk, which drew some nasty looks from people who assumed that she wouldn’t turn off her Bluetooth when the movie started. But eventually the lights dimmed, and Karyn naturally did maintain a respectful silence.

The movie came on, and both of them watched carefully so they didn’t lose track of the plot. Depite what Karyn had said, there were some effects in the movie, and Derpy oohed and aahed at them when they did happen. Karyn enjoyed them too, but was more concerned with the narrative. She was happy that Derpy wasn’t asking any questions, though she could easily see parts where she might have been confused by the motivations of this character or that. Either she was following along just fine, or had decided that it wasn’t worth it and was just watching for the pretty images and to be next to Karyn.

As it proceeded to the climax, Karyn reflected that, unless the screenwriter had made some very odd decisions late, she was going to come out of this with a positive impression. And even if the story fell apart, she had enjoyed it thus far. But all at once, she was shocked out of her reverie by a voice to her right. For a moment she thought it had come from one of the wall speakers, but neither the voice nor the sentiment fit the movie.

“What’s your problem?!”

She looked to see that someone in the same row, about two-thirds of the way down, had stood up and was making threatening gestures at a person in the same position one row down.

Karyn couldn’t make out the figures in the dark, but she saw a bunch of small objects fly through, and concluded that one person had thrown popcorn at the other. “Wanna kick the back of my seat now?!” the lower person shouted, and Karyn heard that it was a female voice.

They continued to yell at each other, and neither Karyn nor anyone else wanted to get involved. After a few curses and obscene gestures, they sat down.

“Should we do something?” whispered Derpy.

“It looks like it’s over. Probably just some people who get annoyed easily. Better that we don’t get them annoyed at us. We’ll just let it go, and if it starts up again maybe I’ll say something.”

But Karyn knew that she wouldn’t say anything, not unless someone else did so first. She knew that this was the bystander effect, and that she was subject to it. She could make excuses to herself, how she was young and female, and couldn’t handle herself if it came to a fight, but the truth was that she didn’t have the psychology for confrontations. She wondered if ponies in general and Derpy in particular were immune to the effect, and if Derpy would try to help if she saw two ponies in a fight.

Trying to lean back and get back into the movie, Karyn couldn’t help being distracted. In the first place, the movie was nearly over anyway, and the pace had slowed as the cinematography got brighter, as if preparing the audience for the real world. In the second, she knew that as much as she liked this movie, and would probably get it on disc when the time came, she would forever remember the fight as being part of it. In a small way, two people who couldn’t just sit and watch had ruined the movie for her.

It was only ten minutes or so, and the ending came. Everyone else got up, but Karyn remained, and only once they were all alone did Derpy ask why they were still there.

“Sometimes they put a scene after the credits. It might give you a hint about a sequel, or just more information about some of the characters that they didn’t think fit in the main movie. It’s a kind of reward for sticking out for the credits.”

“Oh. I’m going to stretch my wings.”

“Go ahead.” Karyn stood up and stretched herself while Derpy enjoyed the large expanse of the theater. The credits continued to roll slowly, and the vocal soundtrack had given way to instrumental snatches that had probably played during the movie, but which the audience hadn’t noticed.

The logo came up and Karyn sat down once more. The bonus scene only lasted five seconds, and it was more of a joke than a sequel hook, but she was not dissatisfied. She called Derpy and they walked out.

Out in the light, their path back to the main lobby was blocked. The theater had two wings, each with its own person to rip tickets, and the hallways to the individual screens were narrow. Right where they were, they saw the two people who had argued inside yelling at each other again, and one of them had a bloody nose.

Karyn eyed them. Both men looked in shape, at least in their upper body and arms. She pegged them as gym rats, or possibly bouncers or some other job that required them to use their strength. Curses were still flying, and she thought about getting out of there, more for Derpy’s sake. If she went down to the far end, there was another set of exit doors there. They could walk around the outside to get to the car, even if it was cold. But a voyeuristic instinct told her to stay.

She was glad to have missed the actual blow that had caused the one man’s nose to bleed, not out of queasiness, but just not preferring to see violence. And again, she wanted to keep Derpy away from the darker side of human interaction.

What she did try to do was sidle around the crowd to get out the normal way. In doing so, she saw a black vest and a nametag walk up, and concluded that it was the manager. He was younger than her and still bore the scars of acne. Looking into the crowd and assessing what had happened, he unholstered a walkie-talkie from his belt and said, “Security, please come to theater seven.”

Karyn stayed, hoping for something more interesting to happen. Derpy seemed curious too, since she leaned over and said, “What’s going on now?”

“He’s calling in security. I didn’t even know that a movie theater had security, but apparently this one does.”

The security officer wasn’t much more imposing than the manager, but he had a thicker belt and a more visible uniform. He also had the commanding presence necessary to the position, and he spread out the crowd by force of will. He walked the aggressor to one side of the theater while the manager escorted the other combatant near to the front door. After that the crowd fully dispersed, and Karyn headed to the front with Derpy.

“Well, that was interesting,” she was saying, but as they passed the door they saw the man with the bloody nose looking for something to staunch the flow. Perhaps not thinking, Derpy flew to the concession stand and grabbed a stack of napkins. Karyn caught her move and took the napkins herself so it didn’t look like they were floating in midair. “Here,” she said, extending them.

“Thanks. I don’t know what his problem was.”

“We called the police,” the manager said. “Do you want to press charges?”

“You bet I do.” The man went into another tirade of swearing.

Karyn walked out at last, but once out in the cold, Derpy said, “Don’t you want to stay to see if we can help?”

“I think we’ve done all we can. As he said, the police are coming, so they can handle it all. We didn’t even see what happened. Probably someone else will give them the details.”

“Assuming they don’t all leave too.”

A pang of guilt hit Karyn as she again considered the bystander effect. She had excuses in the dark theater—too weak to help, too far away—but now all she had to do was stick around and give a statement.

“Fine. Let’s hang out. But then we’re still going to wait before we eat. If there’s anything more expensive at the movies than the snacks, it’s the meals.”

Back in the lobby, they moved to the side and tried to stay out of everyone’s way. Karyn played on her cell phone, more so that it looked like she was doing something other than loitering. Derpy freely watched the happenings.

After five minutes or so, the security guard came walking back. “Yes?” said the manager.

“He took off.”

The victim of the assault took the napkin off his nose and gave the guard a sharp look.

“I got his license plate, though.”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

Over to the side, Derpy whispered, “Why didn’t the security guy stop him?”

“That’s not his job. You don’t want a private security guard using force to hold someone who’s trying to get away. You can get sued that way, or worse, the guy could have attacked the guard. That’s why cars have license plates, so people can be identified when they do something like this. The police will track him down. I don’t know how he thought he’d get away with it.”

“Speaking of which, where are they?”

“Police always take a long time to come when you need them,” Karyn said, but she too was getting impatient. After fifteen minutes or so she saw the flashing lights of a patrol car. An officer stepped in and the manager had a long conversation with him. Her cheeks were beginning to flush as she wondered what she was doing there. But in time the manager indicated to the officer that Karyn had been present.

He walked over and asked what happened. Karyn tried to give as precise an explanation as possible while also not claiming too much. She opened all her sentences with “What I saw was,” or “I remember it as.”

The officer didn’t even bother to write anything down, and Karyn suspected that he had seen the situation for what it was: a civilian who never gets into fights or even sees one wanting to play the part of being a witness without having actually witnessed anything.

“All right, thanks,” he said. “You can go.”

Not wanting to annoy the officer, Karyn hightailed it to her car. That also gave her the chance to turn on the heater.

“Crazy stuff, huh, Derpy?”

No response came, and Karyn realized that Derpy had not opened her door.

A moment of panic, then she remembered that she had last seen her inside, and that Derpy wasn’t lost or captured. All she needed to do was to wait patiently for Derpy to return. She considered going home and waiting there, since Derpy knew where to go, but she didn’t want to leave her friend in the cold. Besides, in the worst case scenario, Derpy could just warp home, and everyone would be in their right worlds.

But it didn’t take long. Ten minutes or so, and the door swiftly opened and closed. “Brr! A little cold out there, even for me.”

“I’ll start driving so the engine produces more heat.” Once on the road, she asked, “So why didn’t you come out when I did?”

“Well, he let you go, but clearly you wanted to find out more. So I listened to him talk to the security guard and then radio to run a search like you said he would.”

“And?”

“The person on the radio gave a lot of jargon I didn’t understand. But neither did the manager, so he explained. Apparently the guy who ran off had a lot more things he did wrong, and they were already looking for him.” Karyn focused on driving for a while, and Derpy let her, but she still had the incident on her mind and said, “Karyn, what makes people like that?”

“If I knew that, I’d be a lot more important than I am now. What makes some ponies less nice than others, like Filthy Rich or Diamond Tiara...or Rocky Top?”

“But that’s what I want to know. It’s bad enough when ponies do it, because generally the princesses are merciful and will be nice to them. But you’ve got people here willing to punch you in the face, and then hunt you down if you punch anyone else in the face. So why do they do it?”

Karyn pursed her lips. This was the only drawback about visiting with Derpy. Talking about deep subjects with her wasn’t pleasant. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s to do with our base instincts, back when we were only animals and needed to fight for our survival.”

“Could be. But I’m not asking for an answer. It’s one of those, what do you call it? Ridiculous question?”

“Rhetorical.”

“Yeah.”

They made it home, and after all that they had been through, Karyn and Derpy wanted nothing more than to collapse into the chair and the bed respectively and relax. Not even bothering with a video, Karyn put on some light music, leaning back and only moving her hand when the song finished.

With no lead-in, Derpy stared at the ceiling and said, “It’s why I worry about her.”

“Huh?”

“Dinky. I’m worried that she’s like the guy who hit the other guy, or at least has instincts like that. I tried to raise her with love to do the right thing, but...”

Karyn flipped her head forward and stared Derpy down. “You raised her great. She’s not bad, even instinctually. You’re the odd one out. You have basically no instinct to hurt anyone else, even if you need to for your own sake.”

“You’re saying I’m weird? It’s OK, I’m used to it.”

“No, I mean...well, yes, that is what I mean, but I didn’t want to say it because it would hurt your feelings. But this is weird in a good way. Because it makes you better than everypony else. Even me, because sometimes I want to hit people. Everyone gets like that sometimes, and part of maturity is learning not to. But you were born knowing not to, not even liking it. Now, it’s not always the best thing for making your way in the world. I think that if you could have been a little more aggressive when ponies told you you were weird instead of internalizing it, you could have solved that problem. But that’s not who you are, and you can’t wish that different. Just trust me. The people you love, including Dinky, aren’t criminals waiting to happen. They just get a little angry now and again, and have to find some way to deal with it.”

Derpy hadn’t intended her remark to bring such a moment of honesty from Karyn, but she said, “Thank you. But that’s one of the reasons that I worry if you look up to me as someone to look up to. Because we’re not really the same.”

“Of course not. We’re meant for different worlds. Nothing wrong with that. What I do is emulate the way you interact with your world to find balance. If I can achieve that, I’ll be as happy as, well...you.”

Author's Note

Next week, we've got a chapter suggested by fan pierro118. Fans of a certain somepony will be happy! :rainbowdetermined2:

F07: Derped for the Season

Author's Note

Thanks again to pierro118 for wanting to read about a follow-up to a certain event in an earlier chapter. The pony we see today will also be back next week, so fans of her will get their fill!

F07: Derped for the Season

Upon arrival in Karyn’s apartment that day, Derpy evinced a calm and relaxed manner that Karyn had missed in her. If anything, she looked younger that day, like the pony that Karyn knew from the show. Indeed, to Karyn it had appeared that a few strands of her mane had turned gray, although with her coat already being gray it was hard to tell. But now she was fully blonde again, the dark circles had gone from her eyes, and she was breathing easier.

“Good morning,”

“Morning to you. Thank you, no coffee today.”

Karyn took her own cup and let the rest warm in the pot. “You look well-rested, so I can understand. What’s up?”

“Dinky’s doing really well. I’m starting to think that she’ll make a full recovery, or at least good enough to get by.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m so glad to hear it.”

“Yes, she can cast spells just about all day now. She needs to recharge at night, but she’s sleeping most of the time anyway. Here, let me help you with that.” Derpy took the toast out of the toaster right as it popped.

“So she’s pretty much there?”

“She’s still doing her exercises with Colgate, though. The question remains whether she’ll be able to stop and not lose anything.”

Karyn saw that this was a double question, asking both whether her magical biology would suffer for it as well as whether Dinky’s character would cause any more lapses.

“Well, I’m glad that she’s coming along and that you’re so happy about it. Though I wonder that you don’t want coffee anyway.”

“I’m as awake as I need to be.”

“Yes, but just to warm you up.” Karyn pointed to the window. Although there was no snow on the ground, the trees had gone fully bare and the wind gave proof of how cold it was outside.

“I see, but we’re inside.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to put the heat up too high. Gayle doesn’t make me pay for utilities, because she’s nicer than I have any right to expect, but at the same time I don’t want to abuse that and run up her bills. Just like when I lived with my folks. I think that all parents want to cut their budgets through heat energy, and keep the thermostat low. Well, as soon as I move out on my own I’m setting it where I want and forgetting about the cost.”

“You could just put on a sweater,” said Derpy, then looked at Karyn. “Oh, you did.”

“Yes, but my face is still cold.”

“You need a furry coat like mine. In the meantime, you have your coffee.”

Karyn acknowledged this with a sip.

“Although now that we’ve talked about it,” Derpy continued, “I guess I am a little cold. But what I’d like is some hot chocolate. I never got my snack from last week.”

“Let me see if I have some.”

“I mean, that’ll do, but what I really want is for it to be summer when we can just go play outside.”

Karyn had a laugh at that. “It would be nice. Do you want to wrap up winter for us, then go right past spring and make it summer?”

“Oh, I could never do all that on my own! Besides, there isn’t a whole lot I could do today. The sky’s already clear of clouds. It’s just cold.”

“Yeah, it’s a bunch of northern air that came down. Very dry, very cold. But no snow, which I like.”

Derpy was still following her own thread of conversation. “When summer does come, we’ll have to go back to the water park. That was a lot of fun. The spray as I hit the pool coming down the slide, all the little beads of water on my feathers. I miss that.”

“You could do it now if you want to freeze.”

“No, thanks. Thanks,” Derpy said as Karyn handed her the hot chocolate that she had found and made. “Come to think of it...”

“Yes?”

“You remember Rainbow Dash was going to make her own version of the water park in Equestria?”

It took Karyn a while to call it up from memory, and it was still fuzzy. “A little. Why?”

“Because she hasn’t been around Ponyville lately. I was wondering if maybe she was working on getting it ready.”

“We went all through last summer and I never thought about it. I wonder if she didn’t give up the idea. Rainbow can be rather flighty, you know.”

Derpy gave a long stare. Karyn realized that by using the word flighty, she probably confused Derpy. Derpy realized that Karyn was worried about having confused her. Then Karyn saw Derpy’s understanding, which she was about to say that she had. And Derpy saw that Karyn saw this. So in the end neither of them had to say anything, and the odd choice of word passed without incident.

“I’d like to go and check it out nonetheless.”

“That does sound like a good idea, especially if Rainbow hasn’t been around. You’ll want to find out what’s been going on with her.”

Derpy nodded. “I mean, it’s not like she hasn’t been around at all. She’s been there for weather jobs. But not as much as usual.”

“No, I completely agree. Go out to where the site was. Maybe you’ll find her there and if not, you can at least find out what happened with the project.”

“Cool. Let’s go.”

Derpy got up and went for her saddlebag. “Wait, you mean now?” said Karyn.

“Well, yeah. It’s not like I’m going to have time during the week. Besides, I don’t want to go outside today.”

“But won’t it be just as cold in Equestria?”

“Nah. We’ll go for height and be close to the sun. Remember, it’s a long flight to Las Pegasus.”

Karyn wasn’t sure of Derpy’s view of temperatures, and she took her coat anyway as she got on Derpy’s back. As she’d predicted, the air in Equestria was just as cold, and the rays of the sun only made whichever part they fell on feel like she was getting a sunburn. Karyn had to change positions frequently and shield her face with her gloves.

Derpy didn’t stop home but kept up a steady pace toward the western city. Karyn would much have preferred to stop and rest on occasion, but Derpy didn’t ask her. It reminded her of the long car trips that she would sometimes take with her parents. She had heard that it was a point of pride to be able to make such trips without stopping, but to her view it was the kind of machismo that she had none of.

But her discomfort was hidden from Derpy, who on even the coldest day could find relief in a flight above the clouds. It happened from time to time that she would get so wrapped up in a thought of her own that her single-mindedness made her unaware of how it affected others.

Not wanting to hurt her feelings, Karyn held her tongue about it. Still, she was glad when Derpy finally put down in the town of Las Pegasus. And for all that she hoped to keep it hidden, she could not resist shaking out her muscles and asking, “Is there any place we can get inside and warm?”

“Sure. Let’s find a cafe or pub or something.”

They found a building that was a hybrid of the two establishments that Derpy had suggested, not serving liquor but done up in the fashion of a rustic lodge, complete with knotty wood tables and, to Karyn’s delight, a large and blazing hearth. To this she moved, but held up when she saw a familiar tri-colored mane.

She was cautious, since she knew that other ponies had multicolored manes—Holly Dash, for instance, though only seen a few times, had a pastel pattern very similar. So she walked around until she saw the face and was sure.

“Rainbow Dash! Good to see you!”

“Hey! Karyn!”

Derpy had been making for the counter where food and drinks could be ordered, still in search of a long-delayed snack, but upon hearing Rainbow’s voice detoured back to where Karyn and she were.

“Rainbow, hi! I’m glad we found you out here, since you’re the reason we came.”

This was met with curiosity, so Derpy explained that they were reminiscing about the plans for the water park.

Rainbow scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, I’d hoped to get it up and running by last summer, but there were a lot more problems than I anticipated. But it gave me a lot of excuses to fly from Ponyville to Las Pegasus.”

Karyn realized that that would be ideal for someone who liked flying the way Rainbow did. “So where are you now with the project?”

“I’m focused on it more, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. I want to open up for the summer, but it’s going to be tight.”

Derpy sat down next to her. “Can we go out and see the site?”

Whether Rainbow noticed Karyn’s reaction or was just comfortable, she said, “Sure, let’s just hang out here for a few more minutes.”

Derpy went for drinks, and Karyn huddled by the fire to warm up. Rainbow made them stay for a half hour until Karyn was fully warmed up before she started out to the edge of town. Although there was plenty of space between the different parts of the park, there wasn’t much wind that day.

It was a new sensation for Karyn to be in such a large and open area without any other people. The walkways could be seen for all their width; somehow, being travelled made a road look narrower. The structures that would be the rides hung there like more conventional buildings.

None of which was to say that Karyn didn’t like it. It gave her the feeling that she enjoyed, of something new, waiting to be used, like when she turned on a computer for the first time or took a pause in her car before starting a long trip. She didn’t know whether Rainbow would be able to complete the project, but if it was done, she wanted to be at the opening.

One advantage of pegasus weather control was that there was no worries about winterizing the equipment, but at one end, quite visible, was a tower covered in a white tarp. Karyn led the two ponies over to it, curious. From her view it was the tallest structure in the park.

“What’s that?”

Rainbow trotted up with some pride. “That’s my secret, and my personal invention. They might have it on Earth, but I came up with it on my own.”

“Ooh,” said Derpy. “What is it?”

Karyn blushed for her friend. “Didn’t you hear? It’s a secret. Sorry, Rainbow, you don’t need to tell us.”

“Nah, I don’t mind, since it’s you guys. Plus anypony could figure it out with a little thought. It’s a slide, just like all the others, except it’s going to be straight. And tall. One of the tallest structures in Equestria, in fact. Ponies will climb a high ladder and then shoot down as fast as possible. It’s a way for me to let everypony feel just a little bit like me. And who wouldn’t want that?”

Karyn thought that this was the typical egotism that you had to get used to when dealing with Rainbow Dash, but Derpy was fascinated and flew to the top of the structure to look down. “Wow, this is impressive. I think that even some pegasi are going to want to go on this one.”

“Yeah, I’m going to have to have some stuff for them to do. Most of the regular rides will just be similar to when a pegasus flies. That was my idea behind this one. And it was probably what stopped me from opening last year. I couldn’t get this done in time. If I had really wanted to, I could have had it half-working and let ponies in.”

Derpy flew back and caught the last part of what Rainbow had said. “What stopped you? It seems like this should have been the first thing you’d build, since it’s straight and therefore easier.”

“Well, you might remember that I said I was building everything out of metal. The problem was that it wouldn’t hold together with this structure. I needed it to be one solid piece. It’s kind of complicated engineering.”

“Can you explain?”

Rainbow looked sorry she’d mentioned it, and started to answer, but Karyn said, “She could have bolted it together out of several plates of metal, but then you’d slide into the bolts and hurt your backside. So she needs it to be a single piece. But a single piece of metal that big would buckle, and even if you supported it constantly, it would warp over time and fracture because of the stress put on it.”

“Oh! I get it.”

Karyn was happy to get that reaction, since she had made up the entire explanation. “So how are you going to fix the problem?”

Rainbow looked up at the structure and stuck out her chest. “Found a different building material. Wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you. Come on, I’ll show you.”

They advance up to the structure. At the bottom, of course, was the landing pool, and beyond that the tarp, but Rainbow pulled up a corner to show them how it was built. The material was white and firm, and Karyn thought that Rainbow had indeed found fiberglass in Equestria. She found it very curious and reached out to touch it, but her hand went right through. “I don’t get it.”

“This is hardened cloud, cloudstuff that’s had all the water drained out from it.”

“But then nothing should be left.”

Both ponies looked at her as though she had said something silly, which she supposed she had. Derpy responded. “If it was just water, then it wouldn’t be white. It would be clear. But I’ve never heard of getting rid of the water and leaving the white.”

“And how are Earth ponies and unicorns going to use it when it’s cloud?”

Rainbow dropped the tarp. “We have the spell that lets them walk on clouds. We use one that only lasts a minute so it can be reused many times.”

Karyn nodded, accepting her answer. She assumed that the talk of dry clouds would be over her head.

“What has to be done,” Rainbow was explaining, “is to get most of the water out initially by drying it out while keeping it spread. But then you’ve got to leave it out in the sun for a long time. Years, really. The longer you leave it out the stronger it gets, but you also lose a little each year. So a piece this big was really hard to find. I think they laid it down over fifty years ago.”

Derpy stared. “That’s incredible. How could anypony make something like that, knowing that nopony could use it for fifty years.”

“It’s like wine on Earth,” said Karyn, “and maybe here too. You have to age it because of the chemical processes. It’s not magical, but the longer the better. For the most part. I think it’s really complicated as to how long you should let it age.”

“Yeah, well, believe you me, this is aged since forever,” said Rainbow. “At least since before Princess Luna returned.”

Derpy put her hooves up against the tarp and felt the strength. “How do you know?”

“That’s what I’m annoyed about. See, I figured that I would just go get the stuff and be done with it. If they say that it’s been there for fifty years, I trust them. Then I did the calculations for how strong it is and how strong it needs to be and was ready to go ahead. But—“

Karyn raised an eyebrow. “You did the calculations?”

“I had them done. Same thing. What I was saying is that the town of Las Pegasus came in and said I had to prove that it met certain standards. Pain in my flank.”

Derpy nodded, since both of them came from the relatively ungoverned part of Equestria, but Karyn said, “I think it’s a good idea. Makes sure that everypony’s safe before someone gets hurt. That’s better than after.”

“But nopony’s going to get hurt. I had to get a unicorn who knew how to cast an age-detection spell to come out here and scan it. And you know what he said? That’s it’s exactly as old as they told me it was. So it’s wasted bits.”

Derpy perked up her ears, and while both Karyn and Rainbow noticed, they couldn’t tell why. And so they left her alone, going on talking about further plans for the park. For maybe five minutes they chatted idly before Derpy said, “That’s it!”

Karyn turned back to her. “Yes?”

“I had to work my memory really hard this time. Rainbow, you said there was a unicorn who ran an age-testing spell?”

“Yeah, he came out here and made sure—“

“Can you tell me where to find him?”

“I guess, but we might not have to.”

Derpy got a bit indignant. “No, because I have something I need tested. It’s important we find out its age to help. It’s a letter that we don’t know who it belongs to.” She told the story of how she found the letter in the Earth post office and made it her quest to deliver it at last.

It was left to Karyn to fill in the last detail. “One of the things we thought about doing was seeing if we couldn’t get a date on the letter. There are some ways to do that on Earth, but I wasn’t sure how good they were. But if we can seek out a unicorn who can do it magically, so much the better.”

Rainbow held up her hoof. “But what I was trying to say is that we don’t need to find the unicorn. He gave me one of those portable spells that you came up with, Derpy. Seems it’s a sort of perk he throws in to make us think we’re getting something extra for all we have to spend. So if you can bring the letter here, or I bring the spell to Ponyville, we can do the test.”

Derpy flipped open her saddlebag. “And what I was going to say is that I brought the letter with me, because I put it in here last time and never took it out.”

“Oh, cool. I’m a little curious myself. Let’s see what we can do.” The letter was instantly produced, but they had to follow Rainbow to a shack which served as the office for the park, at least for now. “It’s kind of slapped together, and I’ll probably build a different one when I’m up and running. Sorry about the mess.”

Papers and spare construction material littered the floor, and Karyn turned Derpy around so she wouldn’t have to see. A quick search led to Rainbow emerging with a spell similar to what Derpy used.

Derpy looked at it. “But how is it going to tell us the age? Does it work like a speaker? Or will it print it out on a card?”

“I don’t know. The unicorn just said he knew and certified it. Let’s turn it on and see.”

With her typical boldness, Rainbow took the letter from Derpy and put it on the ground, then wore the spell like a gauntlet and fired.

“Well?” asked Derpy.

“It’s twenty years old.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. Here, try it.”

Derpy took it and made the same gesture. “Hey, it is!”

Karyn, for all her time around magic, was still skeptical, but Derpy extended the spell to her. She always found the form factor awkward, but they were made for ponies after all. She spread her hand and turned while pointing at the letter. Not knowing what to do, she listened for a voice in her head. But it was an entirely different sensation, closer to deja vu. She almost saw the letter being written and sealed in the envelope, but all that faded away and what she was left with was a sense of distance. Just as one would remember a birthday or an anniversary, Karyn “remembered” that the letter was made twenty years ago.

“You see it, right?” asked Rainbow. “It’s not something that you can describe. But at least now we know.”

“We do.” Karyn paused. “How does that help?”

“I don’t know,” Derpy said as she slid the letter gently back into place. “But it’s information. We’ll think of something else soon. Meanwhile, thanks a lot, Rainbow, for showing us around. We’re going to want to be here when it opens. We’re going to get going. Long flight back, you know.”

“I sure do. I’ll come with you, since there’s no more to be done around here today.”

She tossed the spell back in the shack, to Derpy’s consternation, and took off for the skies. Derpy preferred to prepare for a flight slowly, and besides, she had Karyn to carry. By the time they were fully airborne and heading for Ponyville, all they could see of Rainbow was the hint of blue that was the longest strands of her tail, barely a contrast against the darkening sky.

133: Derping Do

Karyn knew it was bound to happen at some point, but she kept hoping to put it off for another week. But that Sunday Derpy arrived when she had just risen and, without her changeling powers, Karyn was left to hastily shower and put her hair up in the inefficient human way.

She expected to be remonstrated for it, but Derpy waited patiently for this whole process, and didn’t even say anything when coffee wasn’t made. Once Karyn had caught up with her routine, she took the time out to say, “Sorry not to be ready.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m just glad to be here. Glad to be on Earth.”

Karyn was still a little sleepy, and took Derpy’s remark out of context, just meaning that she was happy to be alive. Then she realized what was meant. “I’m happy to have you here, so we can do something fun.”

“I’m even glad about Twilight Sparkle.”

“Hm?”

“You remember when she told us that no other pony than me could come here?” Derpy grinned. “Yeah, that means that I’m finally safe.”

Karyn showed a slight shock. Things in Equestria sometimes got tough, but to try to escape from everypony was out of character for anyone, let alone Derpy.

“Safe from other ponies?”

“Yeah. Give me a few minutes and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Karyn had extra time since she had hustled through her ablutions, so she dawdled with getting breakfast ready and messed around on the computer. Derpy just stared off into space. Karyn tried to be understanding about it. If what she wanted was some alone time, but didn’t feel right about asking Karyn to go away, then the least to be done was to not hound Derpy for answers.

Still, Karyn was very curious.

Once she put Derpy’s coffee in front of her, Derpy opened up. “We had a good time with Rainbow Dash last week, didn’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Too good a time, I think. I’ve seen her more this week than I have in a year, I think.”

Karyn blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah. And, I mean, I like her, but more in small doses than all at once.”

“I can understand that, kind of. But at the same time, Rainbow Dash is a really important pony. Like, the pegasus of all pegasi. She could open up a lot of doors for you.”

“I can open my own doors just fine.” Derpy stuck her tongue out. “Actually, she tends to fly through windows more than open doors.”

“No, I mean that it’s good to have friends in...powerful positions.” Karyn had to stop herself from causing more confusion by saying “high places.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to just make friends to get ahead. That’s not fair to everypony who isn’t friends with them.”

“I know, but it’s the best way to improve in your career. Or at least, that’s what they tell me. Maybe it’s different for ponies. I’d like to think so.”

Derpy shrugged. “Anyway, it’s not like she’s been stalking me or anything, but every time we do meet, she’s trying to draw me in to conversation.”

“But even if you’re not trying to take advantage of her, I’m surprised that you don’t want to hang out with her anyway. You don’t seem like that much of a clash of personalities.”

“No, maybe not, but I get tense when I’m around her. Rainbow always pushes herself to be the best, and I get the feeling that she expects everyone around her to do the same.”

“Fair enough. But why was it this week that she chose to dog your hooves, so to speak?”

Giving a laugh, Derpy said, “I blame you for that.”

“Me?”

“You remember last week, when you were so eager to see Rainbow’s progress on the water park?”

Karyn got a little hot and bothered at Derpy’s poor recollection of exactly who was the eager one, but didn’t pursue it. “Yes?”

“Well, Rainbow is the kind of pony who gets impressed by those who don’t follow the rules. Like the fact that I chose to fly from Ponyville to Las Pegasus and back in one day. Just on a whim, no planning or packing. She said that it reminded her of what first brought me to her attention.”

“What was that? When you damaged Town Hall?”

Derpy stared into space again, and Karyn could almost see the memories being dug out of long-term storage. “That was ages ago! I forgot that Rainbow and I worked together fixing that. But no, I was talking about a couple years back when we tied the soccer game. She was really impressed with that, but didn’t say anything. I guess if we had won this might have happened back then instead of now.”

“But what actually happened?”

“It wasn’t bad at first. We bumped into each other in town, had a nice chat. But then she brought up that she had a new Daring Do book, and I asked who that was. Now, that was silly, because I know who Daring Do is, everypony does, but I momentarily blanked. For Rainbow, though, it was like I insulted her. She sped off and returned with the first book in the series. She asked if I wanted to borrow it, and I didn’t want to tell her no. But then she’s been after me every day, asking how far I’ve gotten and if I like it.”

During all of this, they had not been idle, but had cooked and eaten breakfast. They had no plans, but the entire day was ahead of them, so they got ready in case they decided to go out. “And did you like it?” asked Karyn with a grin.

“Don’t you start too! It’s like she expects me to do a book report on it.”

“See, that doesn’t make any sense on her part. There’s no way that anyone can enjoy a book if you press them to read it. A book has to be taken at your own pace. Some people just read a chapter a night, and might take years to finish one book, but that’s how they want to do it.”

Derpy looked up as if wishing that she had the kind of time and patience to read as Karyn suggested. “I tried to get into it. I pushed myself through the first chapter. But it’s the kind of book that assumes I know so much! It kept talking about these distant lands and characters, and I don’t know which ones are accurate and which are made up. It was like reading a book beginning in the middle.”

“Probably it explains them better as you go along.”

“I guess, but I’ve never liked books that do that. In my opinion, you’ve got to go at a pace. Introduce a character, let the audience get to know one. Actually, if it were up to me, I could easily sit through a hundred and fifty chapters of characters just talking and going out to have fun, even if they never had any big adventures like Daring Do.”

Karyn laughed internally at the very notion of such a thing, but she had another point she wanted to make. She squared up and adpoted the tone she used for giving oral presentations in class.

“You know, there are some books that are more than just books, at least to some people. Sometimes you read a book—or hear a piece of music, or see a play, or anything—that you think is so impossibly good that you conclude that it’s the best thing ever, the one work that could unite the world and get everyone to love each other and solve all our problems. If someone doesn’t like it, it must be because they haven’t read it, or haven’t understood it.

“But what you don’t realize is that there are other people out there with their own works that speak to them. The first time you get someone preaching it to you, then you can understand it. I mean, I’ve had book series like that, where I’ve read them and thought that it was the key to world peace, but really it just resonated with me, not with everyone. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If anything it makes you special.

“Rainbow Dash, I don’t think, has realized that yet. You might not know it, but she didn’t start reading for fun until late in life. And nopony wants to push things on her. Hopefully someone will be brave enough to do so, because that’s the only way she’ll learn how annoying it is.”

Derpy listened to her, enraptured by any sort of idea that she could roll around in her head and agree or disagree with. “That’s interesting. I’d like to read a book that spoke to me that way. I’ve read some that are good, but never that made me think everypony would like it.”

“Do you read much, Derpy?”

“Probably more than you’d think, and less than I’d like. I read slow, taking my time. Not the once-a-night thing like you mentioned, but I’ll spend a day with a book, then find out I’ve only done one chapter. In any case, the books I’ve read aren’t like Daring Do. I always preferred biographies.”

Karyn did find this unusual, but there were always new facets to Derpy’s character that she learned about. “Can you explain why?”

“Not really. I guess I just always liked the idea of seeing what other ponies did with their lives as a kind of preview of what I might do.”

“I can understand that.”

“How about you?” asked Derpy. “What do you read?”

“Oh, well,” Karyn blushed a little at the question. “I haven’t had the chance to do so in a long time. You know, focused on schoolwork, it’s been mostly textbooks the last years. I’ve read the major fantasy series, the Harry Potters and the Hunger Gameses. When I was young that was what I was into, fantasy books with lots of rainbows and unicorns.”

“And pegasi?”

“Not as many. And some books that were specifically for young girls, books about dating and boys and so on. I didn’t pick those out, but I got a lot as gifts from people who didn’t know what to buy me. Maybe, when I graduate, I’ll ask Mom and Dad for an e-reader as a graduation gift, and I’ll get into some more adult fare.”

Derpy nodded. “I think I’ve seen them. Maybe it’s just because I’m a pony, but I prefer a regular book.”

“There are some people who do too, but I’m the one with a keyboard for a cutie mark, remember? You know, talking about reading more, I wonder if I might not like Daring Do.”

“You think? It’s not fantasy, just action.”

“Yes, but it’s a pony book, written by someone who shares fewer cultural similarities with me. That can be fun in a book, like when I read something British and have to translate an expression I normally wouldn’t use.” Karyn decided not to give examples, but she was thinking of some.

“That might be a good idea. I could lend you the book. I’m sure Rainbow would have no objection, and then I’d have a ready-made excuse to not talk to her about it.”

Karyn thought that this might be kicking the problem down the road, but it also might work, and she did want to get her hands on the book. “Let’s go back and pick it up.”

“OK, but we’ve got to be careful. Rainbow could be lurking anywhere to ask me more questions about it.”

Karyn threw her leg over Derpy’s back, and Derpy warped back to Equestria, scanning the skies and getting on the ground quickly. Instead of walking directly to her house, she took a circuitous route through alleys and yards. Karyn followed, both amused and interested in seeing parts of Ponyville she never had before.

If anyone did notice them, it was only because Derpy was sneaking around on the tips of her hooves and peering around corners before turning them. They were not accosted as they entered her house, and with Derpy’s organizational skills, it only took her a moment to find the book and put it in her saddlebag.

“Actually, can I hang on to it for the way back?” asked Karyn. “I’ll read the blurb or look at the cover. And I want to make sure that I can read the Equestrian writing.”

“Sure.”

“I promise not to drop it.”

“Go ahead.” Derpy made to head back to the sky, but then said, “No, that’s wrong. I shouldn’t say that. Even if I don’t want to read it, I don’t want it damaged. I’d just like to get it back to Rainbow.”

“Did somepony say my name?”

“Gyaah!” Derpy was about to go into her takeoff as they left the house, but stumbled, requiring Karyn to right herself and hop off to land on her feet.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash,” she said, hiding the book behind her back.

“How’s it going? Having fun?”

“Yes, you just startled me,” said Derpy. “I was about to get in the air.”

“Distractions are a part of flying. You shouldn’t have reacted to me when I spoke to you until you were airborne.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You love to fly, and everything else is a distraction.” If there was one benefit of Rainbow’s increased attention, it was that Derpy felt freer to needle her.

“Good point. But even so, you need to be a responsible flyer or you’ll get hurt.”

“I guess, but so long as I get in the air I’m OK.”

Karyn had only half believed Derpy’s claim that Rainbow had been meeting her a lot, but now this gave it credence. “So were you waiting for us?”

“Not really,” said Rainbow. “I was doing some cloudwork and spotted you guys playing ninja through the town. You should invite me next time!”

Karyn and Derpy were both embarrassed at having been spotted, and neither gave an explanation. Instead, Karyn said, “But you got here so fast. We didn’t even hear you coming.”

“Well, I am fast. Plus Pinkie Pie’s been teaching me a few tricks. Anyway, I see you’ve got that Daring Do book behind your back. You can’t even stop reading it on Earth, huh, Derpy?”

“Actually,” Derpy said reluctantly, “I was—“

Karyn interrupted her. “Derpy wasn’t going to let the book interfere with our day together.”

“Yes! I understand that you like it, but this is a tradition between me and Karyn, and I don’t want to break it.”

“But when you finish the book,” said Rainbow, “then we can spend lots of time talking about it! The only thing cooler than reading about Daring Do is talking about her.”

“I’m sure you’d say so, but the fact remains that I’m going to go at my own pace with the book. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.”

Rainbow stared at her with narrow eyes, then laughed out loud. “You just keep getting more awesome, Derpy! You know that? Most ponies don’t talk back to me. Whether it’s in a flying formation or a weather team or such, they’re afraid to contradict me. Only my best friends know to stand up for themselves with me. We’re going to be best buddies, you and me. OK, you guys have fun. Later!”

With a trail of rainbow, she was gone. “What just happened?” asked Derpy.

“I think you impressed her.”

“Whatever. Let’s get back to your place so that you can read this.”

Karyn was happy to follow since they had frozen time on Earth, and she was eager to get it restarted. As Derpy flew up to the transition point, Karyn did as she had said she would and checked the text. Whether it was the magic of the spell or something inherent in the writing, she could read it, but at the same time she knew that it was in a different script. Almost as if her eyes saw Equestrian but her brain saw English.

Once on Earth, Derpy sat in the chair and gave Karyn the bed. “I find it more comfortable to read there,” she said.

Looking through the book, Karyn started to read. It helped that she had seen Rainbow’s imagining of what Daring Do looked like, but in fact the book was short on physical description, at least at the beginning. Karyn peered over her shoulder to see Derpy watching her.

“Is there something else you want to do? It’s probably rude for me to read while you do nothing?”

“No. I can play on the computer or something while you read if you want.”

Karyn tried, but it was too awkward to read with someone else watching. “Why don’t we read it together and see if we can get through some?”

Derpy agreed to this, and they huddled together on the bed. Karyn took the right side when they found out that it was easier for her to turn the pages with fingers than for Derpy to use her hooves. Karyn took note that the paper was both treated to move easily with pressure instead of being turned at the corner, and thicker than usual to help it avoid tearing.

After an hour or so, Derpy said, “See what I’ve been talking about?”

“I do. I think the problem is that this is really more of a children’s book. But it’s also an adventure story. A lot of series will work where it starts off simple but then gets darker as the readers grow up. But right now it’s just about this pegasus who never gets in any real danger. I don’t feel for her when she battles the evil guys, because it’s just her using her gear to show it off. Maybe if I went further, I’d like it, but I don’t think I want to. You can take the book back.”

“Darn! There goes my excuse!”

“Stick it in a drawer and tell Rainbow Dash that I still have it.”

Derpy scowled. “I don’t like to lie when I don’t have to.”

“Mm. Following up, though, I guess that’s why Rainbow Dash liked it. She’s kind of a kid at heart. Intimidating, but still following the dreams of her youth. That’s the thing, you would never see yourself doing the things that Daring Do does. She wants to do stuff like that.”

“Makes sense.”

“What’s harder to understand,” said Karyn as she closed the book, “is why Twilight Sparkle was so into them. I know it was she who turned Rainbow Dash onto the series.”

“Twilight reads everything she can get her hooves on.”

“Yes, and it’s possible that she just picked out the best thing she knew for Rainbow to get her to read. But from what I remember, Twilight is also a fan of the series in general.”

Derpy put the book in her saddlebag to get it out of sight. “Maybe she wants to be flying on adventures like Daring as well.”

Karyn shook her head. “She read it before she got wings. It’s something I’ll want to ask her, maybe. It would be interesting to see how someone who thinks differently about something does so.”

“I don’t know why anypony likes it.”

“No, but that’s OK. See, it’s like what I was saying before, how a book can make you think everyone would love it. Just because you can understand a work’s merit, doesn’t mean you have to like it. It’s fine to say that something just isn’t for you, but that you can see why other people are really passionate about it.”

“You’re right! What I need to do is to take this book and give it back to Rainbow Dash. I’ll just explain to her that it’s not for me.”

Karyn stared the way Derpy often did when she had trouble understanding something. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about, but yes, it’s a good idea. Just remember that in a lot of ways, you’re more mature than Rainbow Dash. She’s very talented, and has more drive, but you’ve been through more, and have some wisdom that she doesn’t.”

“I’ll tell her that I prefer biographies, and she’ll probably try to get one written about herself.”

They shared a laugh at that.

The rest of the day was spent in relative relaxation, but despite her confidence, Derpy was still a little anxious as she went home. Fully expecting Rainbow Dash to be waiting outside her home, if indeed she wasn’t hovering at where Derpy appeared when she traveled from Earth, Derpy sighed as she felt the weight of the book in her bag.

But Rainbow wasn’t there, and Derpy made it in without any sort of sneak tactics this time. She put some water on the boil for a late cup of tea, and looked out the window.

“I know you’re out there,” she said aloud. “And I know you’re going to be disappointed that I can’t be your reading buddy. I hope you’ll still be nice to me the way you’ve been, but maybe in a little more Derpy way and less of a Rainbow way.”

“What did you say?” Derpy turned around, but it was only Dinky coming down the stairs.

“Oh, nothing. Mommy was just talking to herself. Would you like some tea?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Derpy set off to make another pot, with just a little bit of a spring in her step. When Dinky had spoken, she had thought for a second that it was Rainbow, but she wasn’t afraid at all.

Author's Note

Exit Rainbow Dash, but we'll see another Mane Sixer next week!

“You, on the other hand, seem quite warm.”

“Yeah, it always does that.” Derpy said, leaning back and letting her head loll off the back of the chair.

“What’s that?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once out of earshot, Karyn said, “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“No problem. You want to get on my back? I’ll carry you.”

Karyn threw her leg over, but said, “Doesn’t seem right. If you falter, I can’t carry you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Yeah, no. It doesn’t work that way—hi, Dinky.”

Derpy’s daughter entered through the front door from some errand, and smiled when she saw Karyn. “I didn’t know you were coming here today!”

“Neither did I.

Come back next week at the same time for that chapter!

134: Three Derps to the Wind

Karyn had had all she could take. Derpy wasn’t there yet, and she had already showered and dressed. The heat from the shower had worn off, her coffee wasn’t ready yet, and outside the wind whipped away any heat that tried to cling to the windows.

“I’m sorry, Gayle,” she said, and notched the thermostat up. Of course, she felt no immediate relief, but she did hear the hiss of the steam, so that was something. But then the hiss turned into the sound of Derpy arriving, and she forgot about the cold for a moment.

“Good morning,” Derpy said, and Karyn was a little envious of how Derpy could go around without a thick sweater on. If anything, it seemed like Derpy was warmer and more relaxed than Karyn was all bundled up. Without comment on Karyn’s outfit, Derpy took her seat at the breakfast table and spread out. “Need any help?”

“No, I’d prefer to move around and generate heat.”

“Are you cold? Didn’t you have coffee yet?”

Karyn turned the heat on the oven and waved her hands over it. “I did, but it’s still too cold for me. It’s probably just how I’m feeling. Missing some iron or magnesium or something.”

“Too bad.”

“You, on the other hand, seem quite warm.”

“Yeah, it always does that.” Derpy said, leaning back and letting her head loll off the back of the chair.

“What’s that?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, you weren’t there. I got up early and got some cider from Sweet Apple Acres.”

Karyn nodded. “I see. So you’re tired because you got up early.”

“I could probably go to sleep, but not really. I’ve just got the warmth of the cider in me and it’s such a nice feeling.”

“Is this the season for it? I guess I always figured it would have been in autumn.”

Derpy’s voice became clearer as she picked her head up. “The Apples have gotten good at rotating their crops so that there’s not a big rush and then none at all for the rest of the year. But there’s still some times when they do the first pressing of apples and everypony who wants some lines up. Some are regulars who hit every one, but there’s plenty like me who just go when they feel like it, and usually we get some on the first day.”

“Is the first pressing better?”

“Yes!” For the first time, Derpy’s voice lost her even tone. “You can go and get it later, but it tastes more watery. If you get a mug on the first day, though, it tastes almost like biting into an apple, but with none of the flesh or seeds or skin. That’s not to say that the later cider is bad, but there’s just less of it. I also think it has something to do with how they store it. There’s flavor in the barrels too, and when the early cider comes out, you get the taste of the wood and whatever they treat it with.”

“So, answer me this. Is the cider they sell there alcoholic? See, the word ‘cider’ can mean one of two drinks here. One is basically just apple juice, maybe with some sediments in it, but the other is a liquor.”

“I’m not sure. What do you mean by liquor?”

Karyn didn’t know where the confusion lay, unless ponies didn’t really understand alcoholic beverages. “Does it make you drunk?”

“I don’t get drunk, the cider gets drunk by me.”

“No, what I mean is, does it make you tipsy? Does it mess with your head?”

“Not me! I still don’t think I get it.”

Karyn waved her hand. “Never mind. I think that it can’t be, or you’d know. In any case, maybe some time you can bring me a bottle. I could sample it and then I’d be certain”

“A bottle?! I don’t even think they put the cider in bottles. No, it would never do for anyone to drink it that way. You should come with me and get a fresh mug today.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I’m thirsty right now...”

Derpy was already getting prepared. “You will be when you get near the apple orchards. Come on.”

“I dunno. I mean, you make it sound great, but I’ve never been a big fan of apple juice to begin with.”

Now Derpy stopped and looked at her. “I keep forgetting, sometimes, that you’re not a pony. Nopony doesn’t like apples and juice. I think you would, but I don’t want to force you.”

“Come on. I’ll do anything if it gets me out of this cold universe. I hope the weather is nicer in Equestria.”

“You know it can be.”

Derpy used her spell, but it was one of the rare occasions where she had to make a u-turn as soon as she arrived. Whether out of rule or habit, Derpy didn’t fly into Sweet Apple Acres, but landed early and walked toward the farm. Karyn had feared a big line for cider, and she wasn’t in the mood to stand around for an hour. But while a few ponies were milling around, the line was no worse than one she would face in a grocery store.

Up at the head of the line serving the ponies were Applejack and Big Macintosh. They were being friendly with each one as they poured the drink, but it was more listening to what they had to say than saying anything. Karyn and Derpy got on line, and Karyn began to worry about what to say when they got up there. She had never been comfortable around the Apples, with the possible exception of Apple Bloom. Their family dynamic struck her as being somewhat insular, as though they took particular pride in being part of that family. She knew that ponies wouldn’t take it that way, but for a human it was difficult to see it as something other than snobbery, looking down on anyone who wasn’t an Apple.

“Howdy, Derpy!” Applejack said when it was their time. “Come for another?”

“Actually, I was hoping to get Karyn a mug. She’s never had your cider, and since everypony knows how good it is, I wanted to share it.”

“Well, ain’t that just peachy.”

Derpy picked up her head. “No. It’s apple-y. I hope.”

Applejack had a good laugh at that. “Go on, Big Mac, pull Karyn a good one, so’s she’ll be able to tell all the humans how good we make this.”

“Yep,” the staillion said as he opened the tap on the bung and let the cider flow into a mug. He was well practiced, as the cider developed a head that stayed on top. It reminded Derpy of one of the clouds she occasionally had to deal with.

Karyn didn’t know how to attack it, though, without getting a face full of froth, so she let the head dissolve and chatted with the ponies. “How do you get it out this time of year anyway?” she asked. “If you need the apples fresh, isn’t it too cold now?”

“We pick some apples before they’re ripe, and slowly ripen them over the course of a couple months.”

“Clever. I was wondering if you didn’t freeze them.”

Big Macintosh and Applejack stared blankly. “Huh?” said Big Mac.

“I mean, freeze the cider. I don’t know what that would do to the taste, but it might work.”

“Hm,” said Applejack. “Never thought of that. Don’t know what it’ll do myself, but might be worth tryin’.”

“You have a way to freeze things? Probably magic, right?”

“Yep.” Big Macintosh didn’t go into further detail, but as Derpy went to give him a bit for the cider, he said, “No charge. It’s a good idea.”

Karyn was skeptical, wondering if he wasn’t giving them the free drink as an incentive to buy more. But since the head had cleared enough to sip, she forgot about it and put the mug to her lips.

She breathed in to sample the scent, still trying to figure out if it was a harsh alcoholic drink, but couldn’t detect any vapors. Karyn didn’t drink much herself, but knew what beer and wine tasted like. The mug reminded her most of beer, but since it was a fruit drink instead of grain, it smelled much sweeter. Experimentally, she took her first sip.

Immediately, she no longer felt cold. But Karyn was more focused on the taste. It almost made her cough, but she held together and swallowed, clearing her throat. The flavor was far more intense than any juice she had had on Earth, and it had a bite that stung her tongue. “Whoa, that’s intense,” she said. “How many apples do you use in this?”

“Per mug?” Big Mac looked up in thought. “Not sure exactly.”

“Go on with ya,” Applejack said. “As if we don’t all know exactly how much goes into every barrel. As I got it figured it’s about a dozen in each mug of cider. Now you know why sometimes we run out.”

“Yes, and I can see why the ponies line up to get this.” Karyn took another big draft. “I’m not even equine, and given how much more you guys like apples, I can only imagine how it is for you.”

“Glad you like it.”

“Actually, you know what would be good? If you warmed this up. I bet this would taste really good as a hot drink.”

“There are some ponies who have it that way,” said Derpy. To Karyn it looked like she was thinking about getting another one herself.

Applejack poured out another drink for the next pony, but kept talking to Karyn and Derpy. “Haven’t had any today, but if you really want some, I can make a fire.”

“No, don’t go to all the trouble. I was just happy to get one today. I liked the way you...”

Derpy and Applejack started talking in detail about the cider. Karyn hadn’t realized that they were such good friends, or maybe they just had a temporary bond over their mutual love of cider. She tuned out and stopped paying attention, just enjoying the aftertaste of the cider and the warmth it gave her. She leaned on the wooden table where they had mounted the cask. Big Macintosh was there, ready to give out more cider and, as usual, not saying much. Karyn thought that his silence fit the occasion, so he and she just watched the other two chat.

She drummed her fingers on the table, and it made her wonder. Even this felt good. Maybe the cider was alcoholic, or had some Equestrian equivalent chemical that would mellow her out. Thinking this, though, had the opposite effect, making her worried about side effects.

During a lull in the conversation, Big Macintosh showed himself to have some of the salespony’s instincts, as he said, “Y’all want another drink?” There was no line at just that time, so for the first time both the Apples were idle.

“I think I might like that,” said Derpy. “The one this morning has just about worn off my tongue, and I could go for tasting it again for a few hours. How about you, Karyn?”

“I don’t know.” She was starting to feel woozy.

“I was going to buy you one anyway before they gave you one for free. So I was counting on losing this bit anyway. Go on, Karyn.”

Another mug of cider was poured, and she exchanged her empty tankard for a full one. She wondered briefly how they washed all of them, and then she thought that one bit was rather cheap for a drink that everypony loved so much, and that the Apples could probably charge more to deal with the supply and demand issue. But none of the thoughts she had seemed to want to stay in her head for very long.

She was relieved for the head on the drink that gave her time to wait before taking a sip. She decided to use a tactic that had gotten her through a couple of parties where everyone was expected to drink heavily, in which she nursed one drink through the evening. Mostly people didn’t notice, and the ones who did were going through their own drinks fast enough that, by the time she should have been asking for another, they were too drunk to care.

There at Sweet Apple Acres she put the mug to her mouth and strained some of the cider through her teeth. It coated her mouth but left her none to swallow.

She enjoyed the taste again, and wished she could drink more, but her dizziness was becoming a full-blown headache. The sun, which she’d wished so much to see, was too bright for her eyes and so she looked down into the mug. The effervescence was pleasant to look at, but the vapors of the apple drink were getting to her, so she moved it away and just looked at the grass.

“...Karyn? Karyn?”

“Huh? Derpy?”

“Are you all right?”

Karyn swallowed and took a breath. “I’m not sure. I think the cider is getting to me. Are you guys sure it’s not alcoholic?”

Big Macintosh and Applejack looked at each other. “Isn’t what now?” asked AJ.

“What’s in it?”

“Apples.”

Karyn wasn’t in the mood for that. “What else? Or do you treat it in any way? Let it sit to ferment?”

“It sits for a while, maybe a couple weeks.”

Big Mac rolled his eyes. “Again, you know that we hold it for exactly seventeen days in the charred barrels.”

“Yeah, we do.” Applejack couldn’t help showing her pride, leaning against the barrel. “And these aren’t cheap either. The cooper who makes ‘em has to get the wood from the Everfree, so he charges hazard fees.”

Derpy put a hoof around Karyn’s shoulders. “I bet that doesn’t help. Karyn can be awfully sensitive to magical stuff that she eats or drinks, all the more so now that she’s not a changeling anymore so has no magic of her own.”

The Apples were stunned momentarily. They didn’t spend much time with Karyn or Derpy and so didn’t know anything about changeling magic. There seemed to be a story in it, but it wasn’t the time.

“Guess she shouldn’t have any more.”

“No.” Derpy eyed the mug that Karyn put on the table, but she’d had enough as well. “You guys drink that one. I’m going to take Karyn home to rest.”

She nudged her head under Karyn’s shoulder to help her walk away from the orchard. Once out of earshot, Karyn said, “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“No problem. You want to get on my back? I’ll carry you.”

Karyn threw her leg over, but said, “Doesn’t seem right. If you falter, I can’t carry you.”

“Sure you can. You have plenty of times, when I’m sad or afraid.”

“That’s different.”

“Yes, it is. All I need is a strong back. You need a strong heart.”

Karyn let her head fall near Derpy’s neck. “This is no time for sweet sentiments. Hey, where are we going?”

“Like I said, I’m taking you home.”

But they weren’t flying toward the transition point to Earth. “Oh, you mean your home? I thought...never mind.”

When they entered Derpy’s house, Karyn got off, but Derpy helped her up the stairs again and got her shoes off before putting her in bed. “I’ll check in on you in a while.”

“Before you go, could I have some water? If this is like a hangover, they say you should drink water a lot.”

Derpy brought a cup of her own, quite unlike the wooden tankard that the cider came in, and filled it from the upstairs tap. Karyn didn’t feel thirsty, and the water was cold, but she forced herself to drink it all before laying down.

It took a long time for her to go to sleep, and then it was a fitful rest. The bright sun didn’t help matters, and soon enough she was up and about. Her headache had faded, but she still felt lethargic and tasted cotton.

She walked down to the kitchen, hair tousled and still staggering, to find Derpy there. “I don’t know if you’re in the mood to eat.”

“Ugh, no. Don’t even mention food.”

“Mmhm. But you might want this. I went down to one of the public groves and picked some apples, then squeezed them through a strainer myself. It’s just pure apple juice, no magic or anything. I’ve got it chilling right now.”

“I think I might like that. Thank you.” Karyn found that she was drinking out of the same cup that she had taken the water in, and she thought idly that if it was another bad magical reaction, the fact that this drink came from the same fruit might mean that it would serve as a kind of “hair of the dog.”

As she sipped it she felt better, though it could have been the placebo effect for all she knew. It didn’t matter. “We should be more careful in the future,” said Derpy. “Since you’re not from around here stuff like that can really mess you up!”

“A little more careful, but don’t go crazy. I still want to try new things. But no more cider. There are some people on Earth who like to drink a lot, and get crazy drunk, but I’m not one of them.”

“Like Berry Punch?”

Karyn regretted the last thing she said. It was one of those unpleasant parts of human life that she preferred to not expose Derpy to. “Worse than that. There are people who drink so much that it messes up their livers and their social lives, and they get angry and hurt people. They tried to get rid of hard drinking, but people just did it anyway and broke the law. Even worse, since you had organized crime.”

“I’m sure Twilight Sparkle would say that if you have to have crime, better for it to be organized.”

“Yeah, no. It doesn’t work that way—hi, Dinky.”

Derpy’s daughter entered through the front door from some errand, and smiled when she saw Karyn. “I didn’t know you were coming here today!”

“Neither did I. I think I mussed your bed something awful. I’ll go fix it before I leave.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Telekinesis practice, remember?” She pointed to her horn. “What’s up?”

“Karyn got some bad cider,” said Derpy, “or else some good cider that treated her very badly.” She briefly told the story of what had happened at Sweet Apple Acres.

“Yeah, so then your mother brought me here to sleep it off.” Karyn got up. “I should really take care of that, it’s my fault.”

“No, you stay here. Please.” Dinky bounced up the stairs.

“How’s she doing?”

“Good. We’ve talked a little about what she’s going to do next, if she’s going to try to go back to school or not.”

Karyn sipped the apple juice some more, and it seemed like Dinky was taking a lot longer than needed to make a bed. By the time she finished the drink, Dinky came down with a proud look on her face. “I think I’ve got something!”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I worked out a spell that might cure Karyn of the ill effects of the cider!”

Finally showing some energy, Karyn held up her hands and skidded out of the chair backwards. “I’m feeling a lot better actually.”

“You don’t want it?”

“It could be just as risky. If you work on it, and you’re sure it’s safe, then maybe I’ll come back and drink more cider. But for now, let’s just let my system clear itself of magic naturally, OK? But rather than that, I’m glad to see that you’re back to making magic.”

Dinky grinned. “Yeah, the old horn’s coming along. Might even get back to where I was.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m glad to see that you’re trying to study and create things again. You didn’t have to do that for me, but it’s a good exercise in problem solving and in volunteering to work when you don’t have to. It gives me confidence that you might come out of it OK. Irrespective of if your horn heals.”

“Whatever. I just want to see you not feel bad.”

“Actually, now that I had that juice I think I could eat something.”

Derpy got up and went to her pantry. “Let me see what we have.”

“Actually, could we go back to my place? I’m more in the mood for human food.”

“Of course.”

Karyn said good-bye to Dinky with a promise to visit soon, and Derpy took her home. Once there, Karyn went to her freezer. “I think what my body really needs is no more of this natural stuff, but lots of preservatives and chemicals that no one can pronounce.”

“Is that really good for you?”

“No, but I think it’s better to get something in me sooner rather than later.”

She put the plastic tray in the microwave and followed the directions. In a few minutes she was eating a good impression of a vegetable lasagna.

“How is it?”

“It’s food. You want some?”

Derpy shook her head. “Thanks anyway.”

“Thank you for introducing me to Sweet Apple Acres cider. Whatever it did to me, it sure tasted good, and I’m glad I drank it.” She finished the meal and tossed away the tray.

Author's Note

Next week should be an easier time for Karyn and Derpy! Here are some snippets of dialogue:

"In this day and age the class being canceled doesn’t mean that there’s no contact with the professors. They posted assignments on the class web pages and requested e-mails to say we got them.”

“That’s good. You know you’d have to do it eventually.”

“Yes, but when I was a kid a snow day was really a free day off. But at least I didn’t have to leave the house or spend any money.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No, it just struck me as funny. I used to go shopping with my mom when I was young. She would take care of everything and I...now I’m doing it for myself. It’s such a grown-up thing to do.”

“It’s just like shopping for clothes, though. It can be fun.”

“Yeah, but...it just feels different. Come on, let’s get inside.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“So that will save you money.”

“How?”

“If you’re here, you’re not out spending.”

Come back next week for the context!

135: The Derpal Gourmet

During the week since Derpy’s last visit, a heavy wet snowfall had hit the area, but that Sunday the sun was out and the air temperature had climbed, so all the mass of snow and ice that coated roofs and had been piled was melting. Rivulets of water made their way along the road down to the storm drains. The sand laid down for traction was left, and Karyn hoped that the streets would be swept so that it would look like spring.

Derpy had asked about her week, and Karyn had told the highlight of the blizzard, how her class had gotten canceled but she had helped Gayle dig out.

“And besides,” she was saying, “in this day and age the class being canceled doesn’t mean that there’s no contact with the professors. They posted assignments on the class web pages and requested e-mails to say we got them.”

“That’s good. You know you’d have to do it eventually.”

“Yes, but when I was a kid a snow day was really a free day off. But at least I didn’t have to leave the house or spend any money.”

Derpy interpreted this as a prompt to ask a question. “Speaking of which, how have you been doing on your budget?”

“Not good. The holiday season was rough. It seems like I have more and more people to buy for each year, and most of them get me useless and impractical things in return. Which is fine, that’s what holiday gift giving is for. But then there’s all the things I need to buy for my last semester. The textbooks for the advanced classes are rarer, and that makes them more expensive.”

Although she was paying attention to the meaning of Karyn’s words, she also heard some of the malaise in her voice that tended to crop up when Karyn was talking about her future. Derpy wanted to reassure her, to tell her that everything would be all right, but in the first place, Karyn wouldn’t believe her, and in the second, she wasn’t sure it would.

“Well, we can keep things on the cheap today. Or maybe figure out a way to make some money, or at least save it.”

“I’d like that. It’s one thing to have everything typed out and see where it goes, but it would help if you knew some tricks for making less of it go.”

Karyn and Derpy sat in front of her laptop and looked over the numbers. Derpy compared month to month, looking for where Karyn was losing money. Karyn had a humorous vision of Derpy in a green visor with an adding machine, playing the role of an auditor.

“Looks like you’re spending more on food these days. Don’t you have an account with the college cafeteria? I know you do, because you buy me stuff from there.”

“Yes, but I guess after four years I’m getting tired of the same fare. They have daily specials, but I’ve had every one of those several times by now. So a while back I went food shopping. You remember I had that frozen lasagna last week. I got a bunch of those and some other quick meals for when I want something different, or when I just don’t want to go out. Came in handy during the snowstorm.”

“Hm. Let’s see.” Derpy went over to the freezer and looked inside. There were a few square boxes in attractive colors, but there was also plenty of room. “Doesn’t look like you have too many.”

“Well, like I said, I ate a bunch this week. And I think the vegetarian ones are a little more expensive. Most of them have chicken or salisbury steak or such.”

“What’s that then?”

“Nobody knows. Just a kind of meat they put in frozen dinners.”

Derpy continued to stare, and Karyn was forced to shut the freezer before the heating bill rose. “I wonder...”

“Yes?”

“It might be cheaper for you to cook your own meals. I mean, if you really are looking for variety. I still think that if you got everything from the cafeteria it would be best.”

Karyn showed her the pantry. “I can get some stuff on my meal plan that lasts, like cereal and some canned goods. I’m sure they intend for people to eat them right away, but I’m making sure I don’t lose out when it’s all over. Soon I won’t have that option at all.”

“And that’s good, but you’ll get bored of that too. I still think you should cook some.”

“I’m no cook. My mother always did the cooking at home and it kind of annoyed me, the way it was treated as women’s work. Plus between my studying and everything else I do I wouldn’t have time to learn.”

“OK,” said Derpy. “Just an idea.”

“You don’t really cook a whole lot either.”

“Sometimes I do. Mostly I bake. I think I told you about this once before. That I like baking because you can just follow the recipe to the letter and everything will come out right. But with cooking you have to make some decisions.”

Karyn shook her head. “I definitely don’t want to learn baking. I would eat too many sweets and get fat. No offense.”

“None taken. If you’ve forgotten that I’m overweight, that’s a good sign for me.”

“But my point is that it wouldn’t help me solve the problem. I’ve still got to eat three meals a day, and they’ve got to be paid for.”

Derpy returned to the laptop. “Which is why I say that making them yourself has got to be cheaper. I mean, it only makes sense that if you’re doing the work that you’d save money, right?”

“I still don’t know how. And if you don’t either, you can’t teach me.”

“But we can figure it out together.”

Karyn wasn’t sure if two people who didn’t know something could become one who did, but if nothing else it was something to do that day.

“OK, where do we start?”

Derpy waved her hooves, and Karyn realized that she was miming what she would do in her own kitchen when she had to cook. With her eyes closed, Derpy opened an imaginary door and pulled something down.

“The first thing,” she said at last, “is that you need a cookbook. They have full recipes in them, but they also have good tips on how to measure out foods or make simple things that you eventually put into the more complicated recipes. We should go buy one.”

“I think we can just use the internet.”

Derpy looked at the computer. “Yes, but we want to get it today so we can figure out something to make. If you order it online, it’ll take at least until tomorrow to get here, right?”

“No, I mean we can look for recipes online.”

“They have those?!”

“I’m pretty sure.” Karyn searched for recipes and several prominent sites were displayed.

“If you’ve got access to all these, you should have learned to cook long before! You don’t need anyone to teach you.”

“Yeah, I kind of do. So what should I make? There are so many choices.”

“What do you want?”

“I want what’s cheap.”

“If only we knew what that is.” Derpy was being serious, but it gave Karyn an idea.

“I bet we can see what’s on sale at the local grocery store if we go to their web site.”

She pulled it up and then went to their circular. They had both a scanned copy of the paper one that people less technologically savvy than Karyn still got in their newspapers, and a searchable one. Karyn went to the scanned sheet.

“They really push these sales,” said Derpy.

“They have to. Grocery businesses operate on a thin margin. OK, here’s the produce section. Good place to start.”

“See, this is what it’s all about.”

Karyn stopped scanning the circular. “What is?”

“Cooking. It’s not just about the execution but about the planning. If you make sure that you don’t forget to buy any ingredients, or that you don’t think you have some when you don’t, that can stop you from making mistakes or having to substitute something not as tasty.”

Karyn wondered if some stories were involved in what Derpy had said, but she let it pass. “Maybe I should make a database for what I buy. I could keep inventory, cross reference it with my budget. Wow, I really am a geek, aren’t I?”

“You’re not.”

“No, it’s cool. Being a geek isn’t so bad anymore. But OK, let’s figure out something I can make. Hey, pasta’s on sale. The really good kind is only a dollar a box. What if I made that?”

“Just pasta?” Derpy looked skeptical.

“I could get some sauce in a jar and pour it on. I’m pretty sure I could boil the water and make it.”

“That’s not cooking then. You should make something that challenges you.”

Karyn thought some more. “How about I try to copy what I had last week. The vegetable lasagna. That way I can still take advantage of the sale.”

“Good idea! And you can see how much better it comes out when you make it yourself.”

“OK, what else do we need?”

She searched for a recipe. Not having any standards to go on for which one to pick, she took the first and then used the circular’s search function to see which items were on sale.

“Are you making a list?” asked Derpy.

“No, I should do that. Or I can just bring up the recipe on my phone and use that as my list. Heh, it still wants jar sauce as part of the recipe.”

“It says you can use homemade.”

“One task at a time. I remember my mother making sauce now and again, and it took her all day, constantly stirring to make sure it didn’t burn. Well, come on, I’ve got my list.”

They went out to the car. Karyn seemed to know where the store was, so she didn’t use her GPS. It wasn’t very far, but when they did reach the store it took them a while to find a parking spot. And once they did get there, Karyn stood by the car and stared at the building.

“Something wrong?” asked Derpy, who had gone invisible. “The wagons are all up there.”

“No, it just struck me as funny. I used to go shopping with my mom when I was young. She would take care of everything and I...now I’m doing it for myself. It’s such a grown-up thing to do.”

“It’s just like shopping for clothes, though. It can be fun.”

“Yeah, but...it just feels different. Come on, let’s get inside.”

The grocery store had two entrances, one of which was by the produce department where almost everything they needed was. But they wound up going in the other one which was by the bakery. Derpy eyed the muffins and cakes with a greedy invisible look, but she didn’t have the time. “You’ve got the list. What do we get first?”

“Probably the pasta,” said Karyn, checking her phone. “You know, this is the perfect place to talk to you over the Bluetooth. Everyone gets on cell phones while grocery shopping. It helps people get the right stuff. Before we had them, people would forget or get the wrong thing and have to come back several times.”

“Sounds like something I would do. Wait, go down this aisle.”

“Huh? That’s not the pasta aisle.”

But Derpy had already gone down. “You need salt and pepper, and spices.”

The spice rack was at the far end, and she walked in front of it. She picked up the salt and pepper and was ready to keep going, but Derpy held her. “What now?”

“You should get some of these too. Get paprika and marjoram and rosemary.”

“But those aren’t in this recipe.”

Derpy had a sneaky grin in her voice. “No, but they’ll be in others, and having them on hand will make you want to try those recipes since you have some of the ingredients already.”

“But then I’ll be spending money instead of saving it.”

“Over the long term, it’ll work out. Because you don’t use all of the spice in each recipe. So even though one of these bottles might be five dollars, it’ll last you a couple of years and it’ll only be a few cents each meal.”

Karyn looked over the rack. “There are so many of them.”

“Yes, but different recipes call for different spices. It’s how you make something tastier.”

“How about if I look online for a spice rack that comes pre-filled. I’ll have it delivered and this way I’ll have a place to store them.

In Derpy’s mind, the immediacy of getting Karyn to cook more battled with the organized look that a spice rack would give her apartment, as opposed to just having all the bottles in a drawer. Organization won. “OK, but don’t forget.”

They made their way quickly through the rest of the store, getting the ingredients for the lasagna. When they arrived back at Karyn’s place, Derpy spread the ingredients on the table since counter space was limited. “I guess I have to cut up some of these vegetables, like the carrots, huh?” said Karyn.

“Yeah, and you have to lean over. That’s one advantage I have. I can put stuff on a high table and fly up to cut them.”

“But I have hands to grip the knife with. I should really have one of those safety peelers to do the carrots though. And then I could use it on potatoes too.”

Derpy showed her how to peel the carrots without losing too much. “Do you at least have a pan?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t try the lasagna without one.”

They layered the pasta and fillings in a glass pan according to the recipe. The noodles were a little to long, so Karyn trimmed them and used them for the top layer. “That’s not perfect, but I guess it’ll do.”

“Yeah, but here’s where I worry about cooking.” Karyn went back and checked the recipe one more time on her laptop. “It says that it needs to go in for an hour. But what if my oven is too weak? Or too strong? I could overcook or undercook it. Overcooking means I’ve wasted all my time and money.”

“So we’ll check on it when it gets close to the time. I think with lasagna you can stick a fork in it and if none of the cheese comes off then it’s done. Or maybe that’s cake.”

Rolling her eyes, Karyn put the pan into the oven. “And then what if it’s undercooked? I mean, it’s not like I’ve never cooked anything, but so often I’m impatient and take it out before the recipe says it’s time to, or I take it out on time but it’s still not done. And if I make something for other people, I could make them sick.”

“Have you ever made yourself sick?”

“No, but that could just be because the food didn’t have any germs on it in the first place. Or I killed them anyway even if it wasn’t completely done.”

“So there you go!” Derpy said, brightening. “Don’t worry, we’ll both keep an eye on this to make sure it’s safe to eat.”

“We’re going to have to pay attention to it. It’s not like we can go out and leave the oven unattended.”

“So that will save you money.”

“How?”

“If you’re here, you’re not out spending.”

This logic, while sound, did little to assuage Karyn’s skepticism about cooking as a long-term hobby. They settled in to watch videos, an activity that Karyn suspected Derpy liked more than she did. It only made sense, though. Karyn could casually take a link off an article and watch a five-minute video, then leave it alone for two days. But Derpy only got to see them on Sundays, so she wanted to take the chance when she could.

After they’d watched for about a half hour, Karyn said, “Should we check on the lasagna yet?”

“It’s not nearly done. You can, but there’s no chance, even if you had an extra hot oven, that it would be ready.”

Nonetheless, Karyn turned on the light inside her oven. It didn’t look all that different from when it went in, with the exception of some bubbling at the side.

It was fifteen more minutes before Derpy would allow her to open the oven and look at the dish. “I can’t tell if it’s done,” Karyn said. There’s no charring or anything, so it’s not overdone. I think we should leave it in a few minutes more.”

“All right, but don’t keep checking it too often. When you open the oven door you let all the heat out, and then the oven’s got to heat it up all over again.”

“I know. I can’t stand the heat, and I have no frame of reference about what to do in such a situation.”

This was said in humor, but Derpy didn’t know the aphorism Karyn was referencing.

Derpy counselled patience, but Karyn paced and eventually went to the bathroom to count the time on her phone. From there, she heard, “OK, we should take it out.”

Karyn emerged and raced to the oven. “I hope it didn’t burn while I was washing my hands.”

“It’s not like the microwave. An extra few seconds won’t burn the food.”

Karyn was busy with pot holders, placing the pan on top of the stove. She looked at it as though expecting it to explode. It didn’t.

“So, lunch?”

She carved out a couple of squares and put them on plates. Derpy dove into hers, but Karyn was more hesitant, as if refusing to believe that anything she had created would be palatable.

“It’s good!” said Derpy, blowing with her mouth open. Karyn got her a glass of water and poured herself one as well. The cheese was indeed blisteringly hot, and she took a drink to cool it. “Tell me that’s not as good as the one you had last week.”

Karyn savored and tasted critically. “The spinach has that fresh taste which I like, so that’s good. But there’s something missing. Maybe it’s in all the salt and chemicals they put in, but there’s a certain taste to the microwaved food that I like. It might be that fifth flavor they talk about, with the weird name. Umami, I think.”

“I think it’s the best I’ve had. I didn’t eat what you had last week, but this has to be better than that.”

“The one thing it has in advantage is that there are no cold spots. The microwave heats very unevenly.”

Derpy looked back at the pan. “And you’ve got plenty for leftovers.”

“I didn’t even think about that. I guess I can put some plastic wrap on that and eat it all week. I’ll have to microwave that, though.”

“Why can’t you reheat it in the oven?”

Blinking, Karyn said, “I suppose I could. It would take longer, but on the other hand I don’t have instructions for how long I should put it on for.”

“And? Do you like cooking? Will you do it again?”

“That’s harder to say. If, like you said, it saves money, then I might. Because it does give me a variety of things to eat. It’s just not fun for me. But it might be fun if it helps in other ways. Besides, they say that cooking helps you attract people too. I could find a nice guy and cook meals for us together.” She surveyed the cutting boards and dishes. “But I’m going to make him clean up when I do. This is the other downside of cooking. With the frozen meal everything was plastic and could go in the trash.”

Derpy got up and surveyed the counter. “It’s not that much more than what you have to do after breakfast each time I come over.”

“I guess not, but I’m not as big on breakfast as you are. I’ve always seen it as something to get through, a chore in itself. I guess it’s better that I’m eating it, but it’s still almost like work. And because it is, I don’t mind the added work of cooking and cleaning. When it comes to lunch and dinner, that’s supposed to be my time to consume. And that should mean no work.”

Derpy got up and walked toward her saddlebag. For a moment Karyn thought that she had somehow offended Derpy and that she was leaving. But that quickly left her mind. Derpy was hard enough to offend, and if she were upset, she would talk about it rather than storming out. Instead she reached deep into the bag.

“Could you put away the lasagna now? Just to be safe?”

Karyn didn’t know what she meant, but she found her plastic wrap and put the rest of the tray into the refrigerator. “What are you doing?”

Derpy aimed a spell at the kitchen and turned it. Within a moment it was spotless.

“This cleaning spell should be used sparingly,” she said, “or at least that’s what Lyra told me. It can get a little crazy if you use it too much, and start to think things are dirt that aren’t. She said she lost one of Bon-Bon’s socks that way. But for now, I figured, why not?”

“Thanks. Yeah, don’t give me that, I’ll make Gayle’s house go away.”

They had a laugh almost as good as the meal.

Author's Note

Alternate titles for today's chapter:

Allez Derpine!

Sorry, You've Been Derped

Derpers, Derp-ins, and Derps

Good Derps

(Yes, I watch a lot of Food Network)

Anyway, next week's chapter is based on a suggestion by Morphy who had something he wanted to see the girls do.

F08: The Skyderpers

“Hey, Karyn. No breakfast today? Or do you have something in the oven because you’re so hooked on cooking now that you have a fancy breakfast already cooking?”

Derpy arrived while Karyn was still getting ready, but that didn’t bother her. It did weird her out though when, once she was fully dressed, Karyn sat down at her laptop instead of proceeding to make toast or eggs, or even get Derpy a glass of juice.

“I’m sorry, I completely forgot. I didn’t even put on coffee. Let me take care of that.”

“I’ll help. It’ll go faster that way.” And Derpy put the bread in the toaster herself. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m just a little distracted. Or not enough.”

Derpy was confused by this remark, but said nothing about it. It amused her, as a side game, to try to guess Karyn’s moods. Frequently, in those days, there was some malaise or melancholy about her, but that Sunday, Derpy thought that it was more a case of nervousness.

“No,” said Karyn, “it’s definitely that I need to be more distracted. Come on, let’s find something to occupy our time and our minds.”

Derpy thought that making and eating a more elaborate breakfast would have fit this bill, but she had to make do with toast and butter. Instead she tried not to think about her stomach and focused more on helping Karyn.

“I know what we could do!”

“What’s that?”

“We can work on the letter.” She brushed the crumbs from her hooves and went for her saddlebag.

“Oh, right. The letter that we’re trying to find the recipient for. I don’t know exactly what we can do with it, but let’s take a look.”

Derpy removed it from the satchel and put it on the kitchen table. Karyn stared at it as though hoping some new inspiration would come to her.

“It’s not easy,” Derpy said, “trying to figure this out. I guess that’s why they have dead letter offices in the first place. But it’s just that I feel if we put our minds to something, we can accomplish the impossible.”

“Let’s start by reviewing what we know.”

“That’s not much.”

Karyn mentally agreed, but that wasn’t helpful. “We know that it was sent to the post office for this area, and we know that it’s twenty years old.”

“Thanks to Rainbow Dash’s magic.”

Karyn frowned, and for some reason Derpy got the feeling that mentioning Rainbow Dash had set it off. She could understand that somewhat. Rainbow could be in her face, but then again she could not be in Karyn’s face, since she wasn’t allowed on Earth. Derpy gave it a little thought, but was still mainly focused on coming up with any more ideas on how to find the letter’s recipient.

She figured that, eventually, they would have to open it up and see if the missive inside had any clue to where it should go. But that grated on her. A letter carrier wasn’t supposed to know what it was that she carried, because it was that person’s private business. And while in most cases she would forget right away, this was a special letter that she wanted to remember all her life.

“All right, I guess we don’t know that much, but let’s take what we have and run with it. I’ll try some searches on the computer.”

Karyn sat down and stretched her fingers, but then left them hovering over the keyboard.

“Yes? Is there a problem?”

“I’m trying to think of what to search for. It’s actually an important skillset for someone in IT to have, to be able to word searches to get the best results, what you actually want to know.”
She put her hands down and took time to think. Derpy wanted to help. “Can you look for mail from twenty years ago?”

“See, that’s the kind of thing that would be wrong. Because let’s say that someone published something on the internet five years ago and used the words ‘twenty years ago.’ The search engine would find that for me, but that’s not the time frame we’re looking for. And the word ‘mail’ is kind of vague since it could include e-mail. No, if I were going to search along those lines I would go with something like...” she started typing. “’Postal service’ and I’ll put the actual year. Hm.”

Derpy was still impressed by the speed at which the internet could work, and part of her had never ceased to believe that it was some sort of magic that humans were either unaware of or chose not to share with everyone. “What? Did you find something.”

“Only that that year was the first that the post office used their new bar coding system to scan letters easier.”

“Maybe this one has it.”

They went over and looked, but only handwriting was on the face. Karyn shook her head. “If it was that early, probably only businesses who had bulk levels of mail used it. This is clearly a personal letter.”

“Darn. So much for that. Any other ideas?”

“No,” said Karyn, and Derpy put the letter away. “But we need to find something else that’s a distraction.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“I don’t want to think about it right now.”

And so they played some computer games and watched some videos, and Derpy tried to think of something else about the letter, something that was bugging her, a thought she almost had, but didn’t. So she relaxed and hoped that it would come on her own, and tried to think of something else they could do. She wished it were easier for Karyn to open up.

They looked up other recipes that Karyn might want to try, but she didn’t go out shopping since she said she had enough food for now. The clock ticked and, despite the fact that Karyn had wanted to occupy her time, boredom was setting in.

At last Derpy thought of something to say. “So whatever happened with all your new friends? You remember, the ones from the meetup?”

Karyn laughed and shook her head. “You got to it eventually, should have figured you would.”

“Oh, no. Did you have a falling out with them?”

Now Karyn’s laughter grew to full mirth. “Not yet, but soon enough I will.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, I’ve been seeing them whenever I can. Saturdays mostly. Which means less time to prepare for you but also less time for me to mess up the place. I digress. We’ve done a bunch of fun things together, but of course not everyone likes everything and I’ve bowed out a few times. But this coming Saturday...”

She didn’t want to say it. Derpy ran out of patience. “What?!”

“We’re all going parachuting.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

Karyn considered. “Yeah, it might not be something that ponies are into. And you can’t really do it in the winter. It’ll be cold enough as is. That’s why they’re doing it, though, as a kind of welcome for spring.”

“I guess you can have fun when you don’t have to cause spring yourself.”

“Fun, she says! OK, this is what parachuting is. You know about hot air ballooning, right?”

Derpy nodded. “I’ve never done it myself, but I believe Cherry Berry makes quite a few bits renting out hers.”

“Right, so imagine the bottom part of the balloon is missing.”

“Then the basket would fall.”

“No,” Karyn said, “I explained wrong. Remember when we went on the plane? Imagine if I jumped out.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Good question! But a lot of people do it for fun. To enjoy the sensation of free fall. It’s supposed to be an adrenaline rush. Anyway, then you unfurl a large sheet, so big enough that it slows your descent so you don’t get squished.”

Derpy still couldn’t picture it, so Karyn brought up some pictures on the internet. Derpy nodded as she got the concept, but she realized something else. It was something that she could never experience. Earth ponies and unicorns could, and so could humans, but falling uncontrollably was never an issue for her. If it were, if she couldn’t protect herself from gravity with a few flaps of her wings...she shuddered. They all managed to get by somehow.

“So you’re going to do this with your friends?”

“Yeah, I’m really not into it. Can you tell? But like I said I’ve gotten out of a few things and I don’t want them to think I’m a homebody. Still, jumping out of a plane? Why couldn’t they pick this week to, I don’t know, go to the aquarium or something?”

Derpy tried to find a silver lining. “Well, if nothing else you’ll get to be with some friends. That’s going to be fun, right?”

“Yes. The funny thing is, we’re all a bunch of geeks. I mean, if it were a college event, I could almost see that, although I hate to think of the insurance liability to go with that. But this is not the typical event for that kind of person. I wonder.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t follow the anime scene, but I’ve heard vague rumors of one in which the characters are big into skydiving. People who are into anime tend to like doing what they see in the shows.” Derpy needed another explanation of that. “Of course, I can’t really speak for myself. Bronies do weird stuff too.”

“Well, I’m willing to bet that you’re going to have fun. Especially since there’s no reason for you to be scared.”

“I know, I know. It’s actually fairly safe. Plus it’s not like in those pictures. I won’t be pulling the cord on my own parachute. I have to go through eight hours of training, and then they attach me to a static line where the chute opens automatically. And there’s a backup one if it fails. I like backups.”

Derpy had only been half listening. “That’s all good, but it’s not what I was talking about.”

“Huh?”

“Do you think that I’m going to sit home in Equestria while you do this? Especially if it’s a regular day off for me? I’ll be here and if anything goes wrong I’ll catch you and fly you down like I always do.”

For the first time, Karyn seemed to relax. She hadn’t even considered this, but she knew she could have asked. “It’s not even the danger I’m worried about. No, I take that back. I’m not worried about dying, I’m worried about turning an ankle or getting caught in a tree and scraped or something. Not even that. I’m worried that the worry I feel isn’t worth the fun. Because it doesn’t seem like fun.”

Derpy put her hoof on Karyn’s shoulder. “We’ll make it fun.”

***

The next Saturday saw Karyn bundled up in layers against a lingering cold that would be worse at high altitude. Also she hoped that tight socks would help bind her ankles and keep them from turning wrong when she landed. She drove out to the airfield and was forced to park a long distance away. But that pleased her as it meant that no one would be landing on her roof or hood. It took her a while to find the hangar where they were supposed to meet, but then she saw some of her friends from the regular meetup. They, at least seemed happy about it.

It was almost time to go, and they were still missing several people. The group’s leader said that they had dropped out, some of them texting at the last minute with sudden emergencies that had cropped up. The implication was that they were really chickening out, but of course no one wanted to say that since they were all thinking about it themselves. Karyn certainly was.

The instructor came over and gave them their last safety checks. To this Karyn paid greater attention than she ever had in her classes at school. If she were to be injured for this, she would at least make it not her own fault. They boarded the plane.

It was unlike any flying she had done. There were no seats in the plane, nor any of the amenities she had become accustomed to, and the engine was far louder. If nothing else, she was going to be grateful to jump out and get away from the noise.

Although she trusted the business to keep their planes in working order, it was an ugly plane, with chipped paint and chrome, and the dirt of hundreds of predecessors who had smeared their hands on the wall. Regulations, apparently, did not warrant that the planes be clean.

She felt the typical sensation of rising, her ears popping with the pressure. For all the complaints she had about the plane, at least this part required no effort or fear. She leaned back against the wall and waited for the time when they would prepare for their jump.

Out of the corner of her eye she looked at her companions. Were they feeling the same nerves she was? Most of them had uneasy smiles.

They had reached the drop zone. Her friends were standing up and stretching, receiving their final instructions. Each one hesitated on the threshold, but then jumped. From her angle, Karyn couldn’t see them drop. They might have been stepping out onto a one-foot drop. But soon she was second-to-next, and then next, and then it was her time.

She put one foot on the ledge as instructed and looked down. Although the ground was moving as she had seen it from airplanes many times before, what she focused on was her foot. It had never looked so clear in her eyes. Beneath her, the green of the land blurred into nothing, but every white and gray streak of her sneaker stood out in her eye.

This was the moment. Karyn had to go, or chicken out. There were still three or four people remaining. She was blocking their path. She tried to tell herself that it was safe, that she would follow all the instructions, that she barely had to do anything. She went over the statistics in her head. Finally, she told herself that it was as simple as stepping through a door. Which she did.

The rush of adrenalin she expected, but the sensation of free fall was not what she expected. She had imagined the kind of weightlessness she experienced at the top of a roller coaster where she hung suspended. But no, she had weight, and in fact was being pulled by gravity as much as she’d ever been. It felt more like being in a wind tunnel on the ground, with the exception of the visuals.

Just as she was getting used to it, she felt her static line go taut, and the successive jerks of the parachute opening and catching air. Her stomach and neck felt the jolts, but there was no injury. She pointed her face skyward, and the bright glare of the sun made her squint through her goggles. From what she could see, the parachute had opened fully and all was well.

There was no way of gauging her speed, but the ground was still not racing toward her where she needed to pay attention. If anything, most of her movement was back and forth, and with the strings leading up to the parachute, it felt like a swing on a playground.

“Hi!”

Another burst of adrenalin hit her system, and Karyn shook her limbs to get rid of the feeling. She realized that it was Derpy and that she had come just as she had promised.

“Hello to you.”

“I didn’t really want to bother you while you were free falling. It was a little scary to watch you, and I was also preparing to catch you if I needed to.”

“Thanks,” Karyn said. “Thus far I think I’m going OK.”

“You’re certainly going in the right direction.”

“Ha ha. Don’t go anywhere. Now that you’re here I do feel better.”

She heard a crackle in her ear and remembered that she was wearing a radio. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, smooth sailing for now.” Karyn realized that she had been speaking aloud and that everyone in the group could hear her. Probably they thought that she was talking to herself out of fear. She didn’t think that Derpy’s voice had carried that far, but if necessary, she could turn it around and tell everyone else that they were hearing things.

“Huh?” said Derpy. “Is everything all right? Are you panicking?”

Now Karyn had more trouble. How was she going to explain to Derpy about the radio without saying more? She tried pointing to her ear, but it threw her off balance and she grabbed onto the string.

“Oh!” This time Derpy might have been too loud. “You’re talking to everyone else. Got it. We should figure out how those work, because it would be easier on some flights. Actually this flying straight down is cool. My wings don’t have to do any work.”

“Just remember to land properly,” Karyn said softly, reasoning that it could apply just as much to herself as to someone else.

She looked at the horizon to see a few trees dipping over. The ground was coming up soon enough, and she had to focus and remember her training. At the same time, her quick estimate told her that there was still over a minute before she would hit the ground, and much of the thrilling element was gone.

Spotting some of the others who had gone before her, she did some more math. A few were already on their feet on the ground and folding up their chutes. Others were getting close to the landing. She went over the training one more time about how she was supposed to direct the force of landing to be safe.

With a deep breath, she focused on her feet and putting them where she was supposed to, but was distracted by a voice in her ear. Derpy was trying to be quiet, but had to come closer to still be heard. “How about it?” she asked. “Do you want me to help?”

Karyn shook her head and waved her hand upwards, hoping to indicate that Derpy should check her own flight before she failed to pay attention and hit the ground at the same speed that Karyn was traveling.

Instead, as she picked the spot she figured she would land on and braced herself, she felt a second jerk on her parachute. Although Derpy was invisible, she could see where the fabric had been bunched up by a pair of hooves and could picture what she looked like pumping for the sky. Rolling her eyes, Karyn let herself touch down on the ground with as much force as if she’d stepped into a swimming pool of gelatin. After a check that no one noticed anything, she walked forward so that the parachute could fall behind her.

Packing up the chutes took a long time, and the instructor supervised this carefully. “The people who packed it last time did it right for you, so you should do the same for the next person,” he remarked. Karyn suspected that they would all be repacked, or at least checked by someone more experienced, but that it was one more part of the instructions.

Everyone in the group was swapping stories of what they experienced, and Karyn was no exception, but while she had enjoyed the activity with the other humans, she really wanted to analyze it with Derpy. She made an excuse and waved good-bye to everyone, then got back in the car.

“Whew! Crazy day, huh? Some things we do we can’t talk, and that’s still awkward.”

Derpy was happy that Karyn wasn’t upset about her interference. “Yes, though I enjoyed watching you do that. I don’t think I’ll ever really understand it, though.”

“Why not?”

“Well, again, I can never fall and have to worry. If I did, I think I would worry a lot. And I don’t see why someone would intentionally go out and seek something that worries them.”

Karyn nodded. “There are some people who do. Like it’s about conquering fear or making yourself better.”

“And did you?”

“Huh?”

“Did you conquer your fear?” Derpy shook her head. “Never mind that. Did you enjoy it?”

Karyn took the time needed to make a turn in order to think about it. “More than I thought. I liked being with everyone, I liked trying something new, I like being able to say that I did it. But I don’t think that I would do it again. Unless it was, like, a party for someone else. Something more than just the experience. See, I think a lot of people think it’s like flying. But back when I was a changeling, and I learned to fly, that was a lot different. It was...working with the air instead of just falling through it.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“If I really hankered after that experience, I would try to learn how to fly an airplane. It probably still wouldn’t be the same, but it would be closer. But more than that, I’ve learned that part of who I am is to keep my feet on the ground.”

They had arrived at the apartment, and Derpy went visible to show her look of shock. “I hope you don’t include when I have to fly you home!”

“No, you can do that any time. The sky is meant for birds and pegasi, and if one of them wants to carry me, I’m OK with that.”

Author's Note

Thanks again to Morphy for this week's chapter idea. Here's what's coming next week:

It amused her to watch Derpy go through the routine of feeding the cat, watering some of her inside plants, and finally washing the table before sitting down again.

“So why did you?”

“Why did I what?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I’m planning to visit my new friend’s home.”

“You’ve made friends with Derpy? That’s nice.”

“Not her, just yet. I’m talking about Karyn.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I can see that you’re concerned,” said Derpy. “Maybe I should write to Princess Celestia and tell her about what happened here.”

“I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. This should be just an isolated incident.”

Also appearing will be a character never before seen in this story!

136: I'm Derping at the Moon

Perhaps because they engineered spring instead of waiting for it to occur naturally, the flowers had bloomed faster in Equestria than they had on Earth. Karyn observed this fact as she peered out the window of Derpy’s house. She nibbled on a muffin that was tastier than the ones she got at home as well. But the coffee couldn’t compete. It seemed to be the one thing that humans did better.

“Thanks for having me over,” she said to Derpy.

“Of course.”

It amused her to watch Derpy go through the routine of feeding the cat, watering some of her inside plants, and finally washing the table before sitting down again.

“So why did you?”

“Why did I what?”

Karyn waved her hand around the room. “Invite me for breakfast. It seems to be tradition to have it at my place, even if we’re doing something here.”

“I guess that’s why. I like tradition as much as you do, but for something simple as breakfast, there’s no reason that we can’t alternate where it’s done. Besides, I always feel like I’m imposing to eat your food.”

“I always feel the same way when you have to carry me or use some magic to help me.”

Derpy gave a laughing snort. “I guess we understand that there’s give and take between friends. Even if we each feel like we should be giving more.”

Karyn smiled at this.

“Besides,” Derpy continued. “After yesterday with the skydiving, I thought you felt that you needed a rest.”

“Right, that’s another thing I owe you for, helping me land softly.”

“But you don’t owe me for it, is what I’m saying.”

“I understand. I just don’t know any better way to say it.” Karyn got up and stretched her back.

“That happens to me all the time. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m still feeling the effects of it though. Like the jerking of the parachutes probably gave me a couple of bruises or scrapes because I’m not used to it. Or the adrenalin is still making me feel all antsy. Actually, a relaxing day in Equestria is exactly what I need. I’ll chill here with you, then go home and sleep on the repeated Sunday, then stay up late Sunday night and even out my sleep schedule on Monday.”

Derpy didn’t think that was right, but if that was what Karyn wanted to do, she would try to accommodate. After a few more minutes at the breakfast table, they retired to the living room.

As they observed the foals playing in the street, Karyn leaned back and let her muscles get rid of all the knots and tension they had accumulated. It was relaxing enough knowing that she would have no obligations the rest of the day.

Which is why it disappointed her so much when she heard the swishing noise a moment later. It was similar to when Derpy appeared in her apartment, but with a lighter, almost sneering tone. The light that hit the corner of her eye confirmed what she feared even before she turned to see.

“Now,” the figure who had appeared said, “if I’m right, one of you should be Derpy Hubert, and the other is Karen Hooves.”

Derpy reacted first and stood like a cat arching its back. “First, you got our names backwards. Second, who are you and what are you doing in my house?! Third, it’s Karyn with a y.”

“Ooh, I knew I was going to like you.”

“Discord?!” Karyn said, all her tension returning. “Answer Derpy’s question. What are you doing here?”

“You know him?” asked Derpy.

“Not personally, I was thankful to say. He’s one of the worst villains in Equestria.”

“Was. I was a villain.” He bared his fang. “Now, long since reformed. To which point, I must confess that I am hurt.” His face drooped, literally slid off his skull. Derpy turned up her nose and flew farther away.

“Hurt about what?” asked Karyn.

“That in all this time, nopony thought to mention to me that we had a guest in our dimension. Why, the very idea just...intrigues me so.”

In all her time in Equestria, Karyn had never given much thought to Discord. She knew he existed, just as villains like the changelings did, but didn’t consider him part of what she wanted to see. She blanched as she thought of how he would act if he got to Earth. “What do you want?” she asked.

“First and foremost, to greet you. Why, we might become friends, and then I could come visit you just as Derpy does.”

“You just want to take over Earth!”

He went wide-eyed, as wide as his sneaky eyes could go. “Not at all! What, do you think I would reveal Equestria to your world, only to have some six human equivalents of the Elements of Harmony band together to defeat me? Because that would be the most ridiculous story possible.”

Karyn reached back as if making sure the front wall of Derpy’s house still existed. “Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Derpy cried.

Briefly Karyn ran through what she knew of Discord, while that figure idly picked at his nails and smiled at the juicy parts. Once Derpy had a handle on this, she looked at him only to see that he had somehow made a pair of suitcases appear and had conjured himself a Hawaiian shirt. “I’m ready to see your world!” he said. “No conquest, just a little...observation.”

Karyn didn’t like the way he kept pausing.

“You can’t,” said Derpy. “We used to have other ponies who came with us to Earth, but we had to be very careful about it because we can’t let any humans know. One of them messed up and Princess Twilight said we can’t have anypony visit anymore.” She neglected to mention that the pony in question was her ex-husband, and Karyn saw that she sighed, since it was the first time in a long time that she’d had to credit him with doing something right.

“Well, if Princess Twilight says that no other ponies can go to Earth...”

Both of the girls let out a sigh of relief, but he finished his sentence.

“...then it doesn’t apply to me, for I am a draconequus.”

“That’s still half pony,” Karyn said, trying.

“No, it’s half equus.”

“Same thing.”

“Then they wouldn’t have different words. Or perhaps you’d like me to leave my head behind and just send the rest of me?” He demonstrated that this would be no difficulty by popping his head off and carrying it around like a football.

Disgusted as she was by this display, Derpy put her hoof in front of him and said, “OK, this has gone far enough. You’re not invited to Karyn’s world, and in fact we specifically don’t want you there. If you want to try to become friends until we’ve gotten to know you better, then we can talk about trading favors, but for right now it’s just not going to happen.”

Karyn was happy to have Derpy say what she was thinking, but she knew it was as much from Derpy being protective of her own ability to travel across worlds as it was being protective of Karyn.

“I don’t see why you’re being so unreasonable. Besides, your collection of spells combined with your flying ability makes you almost as powerful and half as chaotic as me.”

“W-what do you mean by that?” Derpy asked.

“Oh, it’s just that some people would say that it’s not fair that you get to have both wings and magic. Without earning your way into being an alicorn.”

“I don’t think that’s true, and even if it is, it still doesn’t matter.”

Karyn brightened up. “Besides, Derpy’s far less powerful because her spells have to recharge!”

“Do they?” asked Discord, and Derpy had a confused look on her face. Unfortunately Discord caught that, and became suspicious.

“Yes. We call it a cooldown, though. Remember, Derpy?”

She had recovered. “Oh, yes, definitely. That’s why we always spend the entire day together. The spell I use to cross worlds has a full-day cooldown, so even if you wanted to go, we couldn’t.”

He cast a flash of light, but there was no other result. “Perhaps I could try my own brand of chaotic magic to replecate the effects.”

“No! I mean, that’s not necessary. We prefer to be patient.”

“Well, on the one claw, patience isn’t really my thing, but on the other...I suppose if I waited one thousand years as a stone statue, I can take...” He looked at his wrist. “...fourteen hours before seeing your world.”

“We never actually agreed to take you!” said Derpy, but Discord was already standing there with his arms in the position of a clock, one of them ticking away the seconds.

If nothing else, this gave Karyn and Derpy a chance to huddle up and decide what to do. Hoping that he didn’t have some kind of advanced hearing, they went into the kitchen while Derpy still watched Discord through the corner of her eye.

“How can we get rid of this guy?” asked Derpy.

“I don’t know. I was hoping my thing about recharging the spell would distract him and he’d go do something else.”

“Oh, yeah. You know, you shouldn’t lie.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “I don’t think it matters if you lie to a liar like Discord.”

“Is he a liar, though? He seems like the type who’d be more likely to tell the truth but in a deceptive way just so that he can come back later and say he didn’t lie.”

“That could be true, but he seems more like chaotic neutral to me as opposed to lawful evil.”

Derpy was confused, but sometimes she accepted that there were differences between human terminology and pony language. “So what do we do now?”

Karyn bit her lip. “Why don’t we see if he wants to visit Fluttershy?”

“Oh! Good idea! Because he’s made up of so many animal parts that she’ll probably be able to control him.”

“No, I think they’re friends. It was a long time ago that she—never mind, let’s just ask.”

They turned around simultaneously, both having adopted a false grin. “Um, Mr. Discord?” said Derpy.

“Please,” he said. “Mr. Discord was my father. I’m just Discord.” Karyn was even more confused, but she kept her smile up.

“If you like. Karyn told me that you have a friend in town, a pony named Fluttershy. Since we can’t go back until later, what would you think if we all took a walk over to her place?”
“Why, I’d enjoy that!” He flashed from his clock form to an outfit made for traveling, complete with hat and umbrella. “And besides, I can invite her along to Earth herself.”

“She’s already been there,” said Karyn, recalling how Fluttershy was overawed at the level of advancement that even the small city they’d visited showed. “And you forget the edict of the princesses. Even if you use your excuse, which quite frankly I don’t think will fly, it certainly applies to Fluttershy.”

“Pish-tosh!” he said, waving a claw in the air. “Is she not an intimate acquaintance of the very princess you referenced? If she’s really adamant about it, I’m sure she can stare down Princess Twilight.” He stopped for the first time, as if recalling a painful memory, then shook his head and continued walking. “But it won’t come to that, I’m sure. When you get older you’ll understand that at the higher levels of discourse, such ruling are more like...suggestions. It’s much easier that way.”

Karyn seethed. If there was anything that irritated her, it was the attitude that Discord had just expounded as virtuous, the view that those in power were free to break the rules just to make things flow easier. The type of person who believed in that was usually all too eager to enforce those rules upon a subordinate, and Karyn had been in that position too many times.

They approached Fluttershy’s cottage to find her outside watering some flowers. So into her reverie was she that she did not notice the approach of the three of them. Derpy put her hoof to her mouth to clear her throat, knowing that anypony with her back turned would want to be alerted softly, and Karyn went to apply gentle pressure to Fluttershy’s shoulder for the same reason. But before they could act, Discord, in full understanding, spoke in his most resonant and piercing tone.

“Well, hello, my friend!”

Fluttershy was startled, which was exactly the reaction that Discord seemed to be looking for, but when she saw who it was, she calmed down and smiled. “It’s good to see you again. All of you. Did you meet on the road?”

“Not exactly,” said Derpy. “Discord came over unannounced.”

“I see. But where are my manners? You must all come in and have a cup of tea.”

They entered, and Karyn wasn’t sure if Fluttershy was subtly chiding Derpy for having not similarly opening up her home to Discord. If she was, though, Derpy didn’t notice.

Fluttershy was either a more efficient hostess than Derpy, or else she had a tea set already prepared for just these sorts of occasion, for she brought out a tray with a silver pot on it and poured out for all the others. She and Discord chatted about old times while Karyn and Derpy just sipped. A tray of biscuits was there as well, and Derpy helped herself. Seeing the cue, Karyn took one as well.

If not for the company, it could have been any tea on Earth, but Karyn’s nerves were still on edge. She still half hoped that Discord would forget about wanting to go to her world, since he was so flighty. On the other hand, if he hadn’t forgotten, the time she had stalled for was rapidly running out.

“So,” Fluttershy said at last, “what brings you to Ponyville? Just wanted to talk to me?”

“Not exactly. It’s more of a way station. I’m planning to visit my new friend’s home.”

“You’ve made friends with Derpy? That’s nice.”

“Not her, just yet. I’m talking about Karyn.” He put his claw around her shoulder, which made Karyn cringe. It was bad enough that he was talking about coming to earth, but this was just creepy.

It took a moment for Fluttershy to realize what was going on. “Are you saying that you’re going to Earth?”

He nodded.

“And that Karyn invited you?”

“Did she? I can’t remember. But I mean, it’s not exactly as if she owns the planet, right? It’s free for entry.”

“Even so, that would be a horrible mistake.”

Karyn felt some of her stress loosen up as well as she slipped out of Discord’s grasp. He didn’t notice, being focused on his conversation. She sat closer to Derpy who was also relieved.

“Do you really think so?” Discord seemed to be genuinely interested in Fluttershy’s opinion.

“Oh, yes. You could get hurt on Earth!”

Karyn had to bite her tongue to keep herself from laughing, but at the same time, she felt her stomach drop. Fluttershy was supposed to be arguing on their side, and her sole claim for keeping him away had nothing to do with protecting the secret of Equestria or stopping Earth from getting Discord’s chaotic treatment.

“Could I?”

Derpy was the one who recovered and said, “Whether or not he can get hurt, he’s not the one I’m worried about!”

“But I am,” said Fluttershy. “Poor little guy, all alone in a world he doesn’t know anything about.” She flew over and patted him on his head.

Karyn was still stunned at the whole situation, but at the same time she was reading Discord’s expression, and it gave her hope. She genuinely believed, for the first time, that he was wavering.

“But how?” he asked.

“The humans have such a high level of technology that you couldn’t keep up with it all. And there are a lot of them. Do you know, I think there are over a million humans there?”

Before Karyn had a chance to correct her on her numbers, although she was technically correct, Discord said, “Really?”

“Uh-huh. And they live all over the place. You’d never have a chance to do anything to them before they got angry and made them stop.”

“You don’t say?” Now his expression went back to conniving.

“Not only that,” said Karyn, “but it would be rude.” She felt that it was finally time to bring things back to the actual point.

“Yes. You remember how nopony liked it when you made everything...the way you do?”

“Ye-es...” he said, but it seemed like he was more relishing the memory of whatever he had done than regretting the ponies’ reaction.

Nothing was said for a moment, but Fluttershy kept looking at him. They seemed to be having a battle of wills. Finally, she came out with, “But?”

“But it sounds like everything there is already a little chaotic. And that would be the perfect place for me to go. I might even learn something.”

Karyn actually felt a pang of empathy for him. “It can be chaotic, but not in the way you like. It’s not all about being fun and random. And there’s a method to how we run things, sometimes engineering things down to to width of a hair or smaller. We do a lot of work to make our world the way it is.”

“And you don’t want it messed up.”

“That’s right,” said Fluttershy. “So I’m going to have to pull rank and forbid you from going to Earth.”

“All right.”

Karyn was still listening for any sign of duplicity, but Derpy, equally worried, was more surprised at how quickly Discord had capitulated. “Are you sure he’ll listen?” she asked Fluttershy.

“Oh, yes. This is an agreement we’ve had for a long time.”

“That’s right,” said Discord, suddenly all sweetness. “You see, while I want to be a good friend to everyone and not hurt them, I don’t have the instinct for it. At heart I’m still a demon who loves his chaos. Which I still do some of, out of the way where it doesn’t bother anypony who doesn’t like it. Pinkie Pie stops by from time to time. I digress. I usually consult with Fluttershy when I’m about to try something new, and I trust her to tell me when it’s not safe for my reputation to do it.”

“Well, I’m impressed.” Karyn smoothed out her skirt in preparation for getting up and leaving. “That’s a really strong bond that you guys have, but I guess it’s like Derpy and me. I trust her to make sure I don’t get hurt in Equestria.”

Derpy rolled her eyes. “She’s being modest. She’s the one who has to protect me on Earth more than the other way around.”

“All right, all right, enough of the mutual admiration society.” Discord stuck his finger in his mouth. “If I can’t go there, I’d like to at least hear about what Earth is like.”

“That we can do,” said Karyn, and she wished that she hadn’t drunk all her tea. Now that they were past the danger, it was actually a chance for pleasant conversation. She talked about cars and computers, and in many ways it was like the early days when Derpy first visited. The difference was that while Derpy incorporated new experiences slower, Discord picked them up at once, and there was less fascination by them as there was the simple accumulation of information.

After a half hour of this, he said, “I have an idea.” Karyn watched in curiosity as he bused the tea tray back to the kitchen, then gestured to the empty table. Something like a hologram appeared full of miniature cars speeding through a city. “Is this what it’s like?”

“Somewhat,” Derpy said, “but the buildings aren’t quite so tall, and the streets aren’t that narrow. Cars still need room to move, more width than themselves.”

Karyn was more impressed with the magic to correct him. They kept on until they had a good representation of what human life was like.

“I think I’ll keep this to study it for a while. If I can’t go there, at least I can play.”

Fluttershy spread her wings out wide to encompass everyone. “I think this has been a lovely day. Feel free to stop by any time.” Derpy and Karyn took this as the cue to leave, but Discord was still fascinated by his miniature.

As they walked back toward Derpy’s house, Karyn kept looking back to make sure that Discord wasn’t following them.

“I can see that you’re concerned,” said Derpy. “Maybe I should write to Princess Celestia and tell her about what happened here.”

“I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. This should be just an isolated incident.”

“Yes, but at the same time, I owe her a letter about what Dinky’s going to do about school. That letter would be a good excuse to mention this. Or maybe I should lead with this and then mention Dinky as the side issue.”

Karyn nodded. She was concerned about Dinky too, but her mind was too much on what had happened. “Can I ask a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Can we spend the rest of the day at my place? I would just feel a lot safer a few dimensions over from where Discord is.”

“Of course,” Derpy said again. She put Karyn on her back and headed for the transition point.

Author's Note

Let's do a preview!

Karyn had done well with a simple recipe before, but now Derpy wanted to show her a more complex one. That she had made it many times before and practically knew it by heart would be something Karyn didn’t need to know. But since it required a long cook time, she wanted to prepare as much as she could before. Once Karyn arrived, she would begin the mixing.

As the hour for her to travel to Earth struck, Derpy brushed off her hooves some errant corn starch that had spilled and made for her saddlebags. But just then she heard a knock on the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m glad you came to that conclusion.”

“You are?”

“Oh, yes. I realized that about you a long time ago. But it is the sort of thing that cannot be told. It’s better to let the pony herself figure it out."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had arrived outside the train station. “Will you write me?”

“Yes. You can get me in Ponyville, but I’ll be in Canterlot too for a while, now. I’ll update you on when I’m in which place.”

Karyn shook her head. “You guys need to invent text messaging.”

Come back for some plot advancement!

F09: Derping with the Fishes

Derpy stared idly out the window. Karyn was content to let her do so since some of her best ideas came after staring. What she had going for her was that when Derpy took time to think before she spoke, she was as smart as anyone else. “So, since your winters end automatically...”

“Yes?”

“The birds here just fly north on their own?”

Karyn joined her in looking out the window. It was the first time in a long time that she had heard bird song, but she hadn’t noticed it until then. “Yes. I guess they try to stay to the same temperature, and when it’s cold up here, it’s moderate down there, but when spring comes here, it gets hot in the south. Or maybe it’s pure instinct. I’m not a...what’s the word? Ornithologist.”

“But that’s nice for you. They come back and you know that spring is here. I bet they’re happy to be back.”

“You go to get the southern birds during the wrap-up, right?”

Derpy broke her gaze to look at Karyn. “Huh? No, I’ve never done that job.”

“But I thought...never mind, it must have been somepony else.”

“Anyway, what I was getting into was that I’m happy to be back myself. We haven’t just hung out here on Earth for a few weeks.”

“That’s right.” Karyn got up and started to make breakfast. “Even though we haven’t done anything huge, we’ve been off routine. Sometimes it’s like that.”

“I like routine. But there’s something to be said for trying something new as well. I want to do something fun today.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here. Let’s eat and then we’ll find something interesting.”

This decision made, both of them enjoyed the routine motions of cooking and eating. Once the last dish was washed, they sat in front of the laptop.

“What are you going to search for?” asked Derpy.

“Things to do in our town. Why? Is that wrong?”

“No, but here’s what I’m thinking. You might find something that’s going on, like an event, but there must be things that are, like...not events.”

Karyn looked askance. “Huh?”

“I mean, aren’t there things to do that aren’t one-time things?”

“Oh. Probably. But I’m not sure what to search for.”

Derpy brightened with an idea. “How did people find fun things to do before the internet?”

“Umm...they checked the newspaper, I guess.” It irritated Karyn that it took her so long to remember a time before computers.

“Why don’t we do that, then?”

Karyn wanted to argue. After all, the computer was right there in front of her, and there was nothing in a paper that they couldn’t search for if she was clever enough to phrase it right. But her memory lapse lent credence to Derpy’s point. “All right. I wonder if Gayle gets a paper, and we can borrow it.”

A knock on the front door put an end to that plan, as they were left standing there unanswered for several minutes. “So we should go buy one,” Derpy said.

“Pay for information? Well, if we’re going all retro twentieth-century, why not?”

“Where do they sell them.”

Karyn’s first instinct was to pull out her phone and search for where to buy newspapers, but she shook her head. “I’m sure supermarkets and convenience stores will have them. Come on.” She jingled her car keys.

The first place they found was a convenience store only a mile down the road. Karyn passed it frequently but barely noticed its existence, since she had to watch her money and the items there were expensive. Derpy stayed in the car while she bought a paper.

She had parked on the far side of the lot, even though there were spaces right up against the storefront, hoping it would give her enough privacy to talk things over with Derpy. She deposited the paper in Derpy’s lap.

“This is a lot bigger than the papers we have in Equestria. Even the Canterlot Times.”

“Well, it’s a Sunday paper. The ones on weekdays are thinner, and the Saturday paper is downright spindly. But this one has all sorts of weekly magazines and the sales circulars and coupons. I’m hoping the coupons will offset the buck and a half I had to pay for this.”

She took out the slick pages of the coupons and laid them aside, then separated out the other useless sections like world news and sports. All of these were thrown in the back seat to give them room to pore over the local section.

“Let’s see...”said Derpy. “So we should pretend like this is our only source of information. How about this, then?”

She pointed to an ad that took up a quarter of one page. Karyn checked it out. “The aquarium? That’s what you want to do?”

“If you want to.”

“Me? Sure, it sounds like a blast. But I didn’t think you would want to.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’ve never heard you say that you were into fish,” said Karyn. “But then, I never said that either.”

“Oh, is that what an aquarium is?”

“You didn’t know? Then how come you suggested it?”

Derpy tapped the ad. “The word looked cool. It’s all in blue and it’s got a q in it and everything.”

“And the big fish on the page didn’t tip you off?”

“I thought it was just, like, a mascot.”

Karyn checked the address. “If we’re going to go there, we’d better get on the road. It’s about an hour away in a little town called Riverside.”

The town that they had to go to was in a direction Derpy had never traveled. They started heading toward Karyn’s parents’ house but halfway there veered south. The highway they were on gave way to a one-lane road with shops all along it and numerous traffic lights that delayed their progress.

“Is this the quickest way?”

“Yeah. They call this road a highway, but it’s really more like a main street.”

Derpy looked out the window. “Did it start out a freeway and then they built the shops?”

“Kind of. They wouldn’t have needed all the stop lights back when the road was first built, but back then one lane would have been enough for the traffic they got. Now, I bet this road gets real clogged on weekdays.”

They kept driving, but instead of returning to the big roads Derpy was used to, it got smaller and the shops became a solid wall with no break. Ornamental crenellations also appeard on the roofs, and there were fewer chains, more mom-and-pop stores.

“Wow. This place is kind of Equestrian.”

“It’s an old-fashioned town that they’ve kept the same as it was a hundred years ago. Some people like to go to places like this. It’s not a full-on tourist trap like they have out West. There, you get towns that are almost like movie sets. This is just retro and kitschy. Back before cars when people had to walk everywhere, everything was simple and on top of each other like this. I guess they liked it, but I can’t say it’s for me.”

Derpy continued to speak with awe in her voice. “So everywhere on Earth used to be like this?”

“Well, in this country.”

“Huh. I wonder if Equestria will go the same way.”

Fortunately no one was ahead of them or behind them, because Karyn was a very distracted driver for that moment. “I have to say I hope not. It would lose some of the things that make it special.”

“That’s it!”

“What is?”

“I mean, I think that’s the aquarium.”

They had passed a brick building that reminded Karyn of a library, but it had the same logo on a sign out front as had appeared in the paper. “You’re right. Now we just have to find a place to park.”

No car entrance presented itself, but several walking paths did, so they pressed on. A few blocks down they found a municipal parking lot. It appeared full. Karyn pulled in anyway and managed to find a spot at the far end nestled between two large SUVs. With a grumble, she pulled in.

“Problem?” asked Derpy.

“Pet peeve. A lot of these places still haven’t fit enough parking. There was no reason, when they were building that aquarium, that they couldn’t have put in a lot as well. But these small towns are tight on space.”

“I guess that makes sense. You couldn’t park a car in Ponyville either.”

Karyn laughed at that, but quickly stopped. “I’m probably irrational about this, but I think that everywhere should have free parking. It’s even worse in the big cities. You’ve either got to pay a lot of money for a garage, or search around hunting for an open spot, or search for an open spot only to find that there’s a parking meter and you’ve got to pay anyway. It’s much more sensible in the suburbs, where you can park wherever you like. This way people can come from out of town and not get robbed before they even come in.”

Derpy let Karyn spin out this rant, knowing that sometimes people had to get things off their chest, and that telling a friend was a good way. All this time they had walked back the way they had come in the car, and were approaching the front of the aquarium.

“Are the tickets expensive? Will you buy one for me?”

“They are, but they have to make money somehow. I don’t have an excuse for buying two tickets, but I’ll buy the VIP one at least.”

From outside, Karyn heard a sound that she recognized instantly, but Derpy had never heard. It was the putt-putt-putt of a diesel engine combined with the hiss of releasing air brakes. She knew that, turning to the front door, she would see a school bus.

From the door spewed forth a cadre of young boys all in identical yellow shirts, along with a smaller crew of harried chaperones. They milled around as youths were wont to do, before one of the chaperones squared them up into lines. Apparently they had pre-arranged the trip, because they didn’t have to stop for tickets. That put them ahead of Karyn and Derpy.

When they got their tickets and entered into the first room, the tour group had again splintered into a thousand yellow pieces, each looking at different exhibits. Derpy needed to take to the sky to avoid being trampled, and even if they could see anything, they certainly couldn’t discuss it without being found out.

Karyn found one section that seemed to be bare of the youths, possibly because it was in a nook and possibly because it was only a display of ocean rocks. She idly thought that they should have brought Maud when she had visited. She read the informational plaque about ten times while waiting for the crowd to thin.

“Psst,” said Derpy. “What’s behind that door?”

Karyn looked around before seeing a door to the outside. When she had passed it before she had assumed that it was a service door for employees, but on second look she realized that there were outdoor exhibits as well. This she could access, and did so.

“At least it’s less crowded out here,” she said. “Now let’s see what they hav—ooh.”

“What’s wrong?”

Karyn pointed at the sign for the first exhibit. “Alligators? Do they really fit an aquarium?”

“They live in the water, don’t they? Besides, they’re all the way down there, and they don’t look like they’re moving very much.”

“I’d rather skip them. It’s probably a phobia, but they just unnerve me. I’ve seen nature videos where they’re all placid like that and then they snap, literally. Let’s look at the nice, safe, penguins.”

Derpy thought she was kidding until she saw the display. “They really have penguins here? I thought they could only live in the coldest parts of the world.”

“Me too, but according to the plaque these are penguins that would normally live in Africa in a temperate region. They keep cool by swimming.”

“Now that’s the life. Hang out all day, and when you’re hot, go in the pool.”

Karyn agreed, but said that she didn’t want to be a penguin either. “Let’s see if we can get back inside now. It looks like the crowd has thinned a little.”

She was underestimating. In face, when they entered the first room again, the tour group had moved on entirely. Now they could see the exhibits with ease. Derpy went to a large tank with some very colorful round fish.

“It says to discuss fish. Is someone going to lead the discussion. Or is it just a recommendation to us?”

Karyn looked. “No, Derpy. It says that these are discus fish. Because they look like them, I guess.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a Frisbee.”

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong with you? You’re not scared of the discus fish the way I was with the alligators, are you?” Karyn skidded back at the memory.

“No, I just...I don’t know what I expected, but I wanted something bigger.”

“Well, if I read right at the entrance, they’ve expanded, so let’s go to the new section.”

The new area was down a long flight of stairs that curved around and had carpets on the walls. Karyn had fun running her hand along the carpet making a pleasant sound, at least until it started to burn her hand. Then Derpy did the same thing. Finally they passed through a door that said “Coral Reef Exhibit.”

On the other side of the door was more hallway and a flight leading up. “Why would they have us walk down stairs if we just have to go up again?” asked Derpy.

“Don’t know. Let’s find out.” They saw as soon as they started up the steps.

The aquarium had built a great circular tank, all with curved glass, and at the bottom, like the punt in a bottle of wine, was the observation room. It was all glass as well, and they were surrounded by the deep blue of the ocean. Only the sun, refracted from above, provided light.

The coral formations came right up to the glass at some places, and through and around them swam eels and starfish and jellyfish and all manner of more traditional fish.

The tour group had clearly gone another way, possibly saving this for last. If they had, Karyn couldn’t blame them, as this was definitely the highlight. For that moment, they had the room to themselves, and it really felt like they had been transported deep below the sea, seeing all the life teeming and interacting. She hoped that no one would come for a while.

She heard Derpy sit down, and until anyone else pierced their privacy, she would join her. She let her eye wander from a flat, ray-like fish to the bright orange clownfish that was right out of Finding Nemo. Each moved with the minimum of effort, as nature had carved out perfect efficiency in this habitat. If there was a predator around, she couldn’t see it.

“This is pretty cool,” she said.

“It’s so relaxing.”

“Huh? Yeah, that too.”

“You know I don’t have the best eyes. Even just going around they can ache after a full day. But this, it just makes them feel good.”

Karyn was more sensitive than Derpy was about her vision, and had never noticed any strain. But if this helped, so much the better.

“I’ve heard that fish tanks are relaxing. I guess it’s true.”

“Maybe I should get one for home.”

“You’d have to be careful with the cat.”

In the midst of the relaxing environment, they both jumped as they heard a voice, but then they realized that it was a recording. Whether it was triggered by their presence or just played every so often, they couldn’t tell. It spoke about similar reefs out in the wild and how they were being threatened by development. Karyn cared about the environment as much as anyone, but didn’t care for the preachiness.

“Hey, Karyn?”

“Yeah?”

“How come humans are hurting these places?”

Great. Now she had to explain. “Well, it’s advancement.” An idea hit her. “It’s like when we drove here. Back at home the roads are wide and fast, built for cars, because they came after. Here there’s no parking and lots of stop lights. It’s old-fashioned. The town is a lot like the reef. Something that most people don’t want. But the town’s still here, because there are some people that do want it. I just hope that’s enough.”

“I hope for more.”

“Huh?”

Derpy stared off in the opposite direction. “I don’t see why we can’t have both. That’s what I want for Equestria. That we can get modern like Earth but stay friendly and not get the bad stuff. Especially not to destroy anything.”

“I don’t know if that can be done. But if it can, Equestria’s where it’ll happen.”

They watched for a few more minutes when the tramp of steps on the stairs triggered Karyn to quickly stand up. It was one of the tour group, and she realized that if one was coming, probably the rest of them were as well. “Come on,” she whispered, “let’s get out of here before you bump into someone in the hall.”

They made it up the stairs just in time, and Derpy said that she’d had enough and that nothing could top the room they were just in. Although the day was still young, Karyn agreed, and they made their way toward the exit. But even there, they were forced to wait behind a crowd of people.

“At least they’re doing well,” said Karyn. “It means that we can come back here next year.”

“Yeah. If we can find the time.”

As they reached the door, they found out why it was taking so long. Since people who were leaving planned to come back, they were getting their hand stamped. Derpy was still confused, and asked about the practice, but they were getting close to where they could be overheard, so Karyn indicated by sign language that she would explain later.

Once out on the sidewalk back to the car, she said, “Because people don’t save their tickets, so places like this stamp the hand. That means they can get back in. If they do it to everyone, then no one has to ask if they can just run out to their car or something. Because that could be abused.”

“But they weren’t stamping the hands. I was watching and there wasn’t any ink or anything.”

“Oh, they were probably using invisible ink that shows up under UV light or something.”

Derpy looked back. “That sounds like cool magic! I want to go back and get my hoof stamped!”

“That would be awkward. I can’t really ask them to stamp at the air when your hoof will be there to provide resistance. Plus we’ve already left the aquarium, which defeats the purpose of the whole hand stamp concept, as I just explained.”

“Darn.”

With sympathy, but not much hope, Karyn said, “I’ll try to figure out how it works and see if we can’t duplicate it. Then you can pick what you want the stamp to be.”

“That would be cool, and to see it on the back of my hoof...hey!”

“What is it?”

“We have to get to the car. Now! I need to see. I mean, I need to be seen. I mean, I need to not be invisible. Or at least my bag. Let’s just go!” Derpy flew off, and Karyn couldn’t match her for speed. Hoping that Derpy wouldn’t do anything rash, Karyn ran for the car and got in. “Is the coast clear? I need to get my bag off so I can see it.”

Karyn looked around. “Go ahead, but turn it right back on for you.”

Derpy explained as she worked her magic. “Right. Do you remember how we’re still searching for answers on that unsent letter? Well, last time we looked for a bar code, but we didn’t find one. But we only looked on one side. We never checked the back.”

The bag was visible and being manipulated by Derpy, but as it was below the level of the windows, Karyn was not worried about being spotted. She understood the connection that Derpy had made, but still didn’t see how she was thinking of the letter at that time. Deftly Derpy produced the envelope, which with its time in her bag had become creased. Flipping it over, Karyn could see the faint imprint of a long-delayed bar code. “Well, I’ll be...jiggered,” she said, not wanting to swear in front of Derpy.

“Now if only we can decode it.”

“Let my own magic handle that.” Karyn whipped out her phone. “Since we were researching it last time I found an app that will scan for them. I thought it would be cool to play with.”

The app in question used the camera to scan, and it required being at a direct angle, so it took a while for it to register, but then it dinged. “What does it say?” asked Derpy.

“I’ll be...blown!” she said, still not wanting to swear. “The letter is supposed to go to Riverside. We’re right here.”

“Where? What address? We could deliver it right now.”

“That it doesn’t say. It doesn’t make sense, unless somehow the sending office was told it should go here, and instead of completing the address just added the bar code for this town and figured it would be enough. But we’ve got a town, a time, and the name Beverly on the front. I’ll do some research and see if we can’t get some answers.”

Derpy put it back in the bag and closed the flap. “Now this was a fun day.”

Author's Note

What a rough day! I need to relax like my characters do. But here's to a better one next week.

“Of course,” she said, “you’re probably wondering why I decided to make tea instead of coffee today.”

“Actually, I hadn’t yet recovered from the initial sensation. But now I’m curious.”

Karyn went into her cupboard and set up a platter with some shortbread cookies. “Because I thought it’d go better with these.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ponies on the field were few and far between, but they seemed to be filtering in from town. Derpy was beginning to feel the nerves. Ponies were looking at her and talking in hushed tones. It was nothing she wasn’t used to, because everypony stared the first time they saw her eyes or watched her act clumsily or talk to a mailbox or such. But most of the natives had gotten used to it. Now, once again, she was the center of attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That’s right. I just wanted to thank you for what you’ve done today. It will mean a big help to Ponyville.”

“We still need to figure out just how much help.” They put their heads together and did some calculations.

“I hope you’ll let me handle things from here out."

Thanks again to Morphy for this week's chapter idea. Next one is an original idea like most of them.

138: March of Derps

Derpy coughed and sputtered, breathing laboriously until she cleared her throat. After that it took some water before she could speak again.

“I’m sorry about that,” said Karyn. “That was completely my fault. I should have warned you.”

“No, it was mine. I shouldn’t react so violently when I drink something I don’t expect. And I should have noticed anyway.”

Karyn wiped down the table where Derpy had spit the tea. She was right, in a way. She should have noticed that Karyn had used a tea kettle instead of the coffee maker that morning, and that instead of the bitter taste of coffee, there was the citrusy flavor of tea.

“Of course,” she said, “you’re probably wondering why I decided to make tea instead of coffee today.”

“Actually, I hadn’t yet recovered from the initial sensation. But now I’m curious.”

Karyn went into her cupboard and set up a platter with some shortbread cookies. “Because I thought it’d go better with these.”

“Ooh, biscuits!”

“I—if you prefer. But here we call them Girl Scout Cookies. Most people like the thin mints better, but these are my favorite, and now is the season for them.”

Derpy took one and bit into it. “But I thought that your foods didn’t go out of season. Like, you can get rare fruits even in winter. And shortbread...well, I don’t know if it’s wheat or what it’s made of, but grains are always available.”

“It’s not like that. The Girl Scouts are an organization that raises money by selling the cookies. They’re fairly expensive, more so than regular store cookies, and if they were available all year round fewer people would buy them. But when they’re only sold part of the year, people will buy. Plus they know they’re giving.”

“And you bought some because you were a part?”

“Oh, no!” Karyn evinced shock. “I wasn’t part of the Scouts. I was a geek.”

“Then why?”

“Well, in the first place, they’re really good. In the second, it feels nice to give back. Yes, I know that I’m just a poor college student about to have to pay back massive amounts of student loans, but I’m still better off than a lot of people. I try to give to charity when I can.”

Derpy hesitated, and Karyn sensed that she was trying to dance around a subject. “What do the charities do with the money?”

“Well, you get some who skim off the top, and there’s an exposé on those every few years. But most of them are good and get the money where it needs to go.”

“Which is where?”

Without realizing it, Karyn had wandered into one of those unpleasant conversations she tried to avoid. “It’s, well...there are some people who don’t have enough food or water or homes or medicine and such. So we have charities to help them out.”

“Hm.”

She couldn’t tell if Derpy was judging. Probably not. “I think you have less of that in Equestria because a larger percentage of ponies are in those lines. You have more farmers and builders and maybe even doctors. Not as many IT professionals.”

“We don’t have any of those.”

“I know, I was just being silly.”

“But it sounds like a good idea!”

“Getting an IT professional for Equestria?”

It took Derpy a few moments to retrace her sentences and see where she’d gone wrong. “No, I mean having a charity for everypony to give to and using it to help.”

“But whom would it be for? Doesn’t everypony there have the basic necessities?”

“Yes, but it would be for...ponies like you. I mean, not ponies like you, but those who are starting out and don’t have a lot of money. Like when somepony wants to start a business, a lot of times they don’t have the bits to get the storefront or the advertising they need, so they decide that the business isn’t really worth it. If we gave them the money, they might.”

They decided that they’d had enough cookies, and Karyn put back the box. “It does sound like a good idea, but it could also be that you need more investment capital. Whatever. Let’s find something we can do.”

Derpy was already going for the laptop. Any sentiment from the previous week about using outdated means of finding information was gone. Together they looked at the web sites of various charities and the methods they used to fundraise and distribute.

Derpy pointed a hoof at the screen. “What’s this one? A walkathon?”

“Ugh. I had to deal with those back in high school. Not fun, if you ask me.”

“How do they work?”

Karyn cast her memory back. “Well, everyone gets together on a date to walk some number of miles. But before that they have to go out and get sponsors who’ll say that they will give so much for the number of miles. Why I don’t like it is that it puts pressure on everyone. The walker has to get the sponsors, but because they don’t just give at one time there has to be a sheet with how much they’re all given. So it’s like a contest of who can give the most. And if you’re strapped for cash, you don’t know how much to say because you don’t know how far they’re going to walk.”

“Then why do they run them?”

“Sometimes charities have to resort to pressure to make people give what they ought to. That’s one reason that I do things like buy Girl Scout cookies. It lets me say I’ve done my part.”

Derpy pounded one hoof with another. “Well, I want to give it a go. I’m going to ask all the ponies of Ponyville if they’ll give for this.”

“You want to plan a walkathon?”

“Planning’s too hard. I’ll just do it today.”

Karyn tried to talk Derpy into being more sensible, but she would not be balked. “Then at least I’m coming with you to keep an eye on you.”

“Of course. Wouldn’t have it any other way. And how much can I put you down for per mile?”

“Sorry, I spent all my bits getting Dinky to the Crystal Empire.”

“I’m just teasing!” Derpy motioned Karyn onto her back. “Even if you had more, I wouldn’t make you pay. But I am going to need paper to write down everypony else’s contributions.”

“Wait, don’t rush. You’re really going to do a walkathon?”

“Of course not. I’m a pegasus. I’m going to do a flyathon. I’l get ponies to sign up to give money for how much I can fly.”

Karyn wanted to try to argue more, but before she knew it, she was walking the streets of Ponyville as Derpy accosted everyone she could see for donations. She had to explain the concept several times. “No, I’m not delivering anything, not today. I’m just flying and seeing how far I can go. You give bits for that, and we use it for ponies who need it. Not me.”

It was impressive. Derpy was doing it right, getting donations from ponies other than those she knew. It wasn’t putting pressure on them; if one said no, Derpy just said thanks and moved on.

“This is something really good you’re doing,” Karyn told her.

“Yes, but I’m going to have to stop soon.”

“Why?”

“I want to rest a little before I actually do the flight.”

Karyn grabbed the quill and scroll that Derpy was using. “I’ll get some more.”

“Thanks,” Derpy said. She sat down on a convenient bench.

After walking a little ways away, Karyn had to return when one pony asked her a question they should have thought of. “Where are you doing this?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Let’s ask Derpy.”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” Derpy replied when asked the same question. “I really don’t just want to fly in circles over the same spot again and again. What I think I should do is to go over as many of the streets of Ponyville as I can. That way we can add up the length easily just by knowing which way I went.”

“That’s good. And that way anypony who doesn’t want to follow you for the whole thing can go just about anywhere and they’ll catch you overhead at some point. But we still have to decide where to start.”

“There’s a field on the edge of town where pegasi take off from when they’re having races and such. Once, a long time ago, Rainbow Dash and another pony...well, that’s a boring story. But the field’s still there. Come on.”

She led the way, walking slower than her usual pace to keep her wind up. “Let me see how many ponies are on the list.” Karyn looked, and more than the number of ponies she wanted to know the total amount, so it took her a while to add it up. “Ponyville will do all right if you can fly far.”

“I think I’ll wait an hour or so. The sun is making the air as hot as it will be. Besides, we might get some more contributions between now and then.”

On the field, Derpy, who normally shied away from others, seemed to be making a spectacle of herself. Well, thought Karyn, if there was a time for it, this was it. She alternated between resting and stretching on the ground, bouncing up and down to practice her takeoff, and telling any ponies who stopped by what was going on.

Ponies on the field were few and far between, but they seemed to be filtering in from town. Derpy was beginning to feel the nerves. Ponies were looking at her and talking in hushed tones. It was nothing she wasn’t used to, because everypony stared the first time they saw her eyes or watched her act clumsily or talk to a mailbox or such. But most of the natives had gotten used to it. Now, once again, she was the center of attention.

The sun had come down from its peak already, but Derpy knew that two hours afterwards was the hottest time of day, and it would be better after that. If she had had the idea earlier, she would have taken off at noon. That would have still been cool enough, and the high sun would have been out of her eyes.

But that was not so, and she had to deal with the heat as it was. Early spring, it wouldn’t be too bad. She took her place and spread her wings.

“You’re ready?” asked Karyn.

“As I’m going to be.”

“Everypony!” Karyn raised her voice. “Derpy’s about to take off. Let’s all hope she flies far so that we can help as much as we can!”

A cheer ran through the crowd, and Derpy left the ground.

The wind vibrated her wing-feathers and her mane at the same frequency as Derpy glided across town. The cheer had petered quickly as everypony realized that she wasn’t going to fly fast like Rainbow Dash but pace herself for distance. Besides, she was out of hearing range quickly.

The first few streets she flew down, she was all focused on staying up with the minimum use of energy. But as she made her way, she was slowly entering a flow state. Each time she noticed she tried to focus more, but it was like counting sheep at bedtime, where she could never get far above one-hundred before her mind wandered. But she realized that it was a kind of flying she hadn’t done in a long time.

When she’d first learned to fly, she would take endless treks through the sky, just seeing where her wings could take her. Always in a new direction, often without any useful accomplishment, but she would fly every day, and she would drift off in the bliss of her own movement.

But as she grew, every flight was a means to a destination. Delivery on weekdays, Karyn’s on Sundays. Now, in her flight for charity, she felt an echo of the old enjoyment. All the more so because she was free to choose her path, so long as she stayed in town. Each intersection gave her the option to take it or keep going. She deliberately chose ways opposite those she took on her mail route.

There was a tree she could never remember seeing before. Over there, that building, was it new? No! It was just the back side of a store that she passed every day. But she didn’t know that they had a back porch. Did the road really curve in parallel with the river? From this direction, she could see that it did. She wondered if somepony in old days owned a mill there and graded the road to match.

If she was feeling fatigue, Derpy hadn’t noticed it yet, but there was something she wanted to do before she got too tired to enjoy it. One road went a few blocks behind her house. If she flew there, and crossed over to the road that other ponies took to get there, she could see her own home from a new angle. Yes, she would lose some of the distance count, but it would be worth it.

Her angle was just right so that the sun was behind her, and it danced on the backs of bushes and trees that she saw every day, but not like this. And there was the little path that she walked every day. And there—

It was Karyn! Perhaps not knowing what better to do, Karyn had walked back. Derpy was pleased that she had learned some of the directions without using her GSP or whatever that device was in her car. She waved and Derpy smiled at her. A small loop let her know that Derpy was thinking of her while again adding only a little to her distance.

Now she felt it. It began as a tinge in her sides, and she tried to ignore it, but her wings were getting tired. No! Not far enough yet, not nearly enough. If she’d planned this better, she could have worked up her distance, but she had been impulsive. Taking a deep breath, she plunged on. If she could make it through every day carrying the mail, she could do this.

She abandoned her hometown sightseeing tour and took the familiar routes. Now it was about stretching the time. Over and over she told herself, you do this every day, for longer than this. You can make it. But of course, on those days, she had frequent stops to deliver mail and talk with other ponies.

It was almost over. Her wings were cramping. She needed to land and rest. Circling back home, she would land there and that would be it. Her flight was all glide now, but it was still an effort to keep her wings spread.

Karyn saw her again, and there was disappointment on her face, or was it worry? Derpy would land and find out. Talking and flying were separate things. Tired of flying wouldn’t make her too tired to talk.

“Come on!” Karyn was shouting. “A little more!” But Derpy was done. She had made her “a little more” move on the last pass. She was spent.

Gritting her teeth, Derpy determined that she would beat her fatigue. With minimal effort, she changed position from a glide to a dive. This had to be precision, and she hoped Karyn would understand. Flying right for her, she waited for Karyn to turn, then swooped down and ducked her head. She caught Karyn’s leg and flipped her into the air, deftly catching her on her back.

Then she pumped her wings, finding reserves she didn’t know she had. Her muscles burned, her feathers were numb, but she was gaining height. Karyn’s surprise had given way to elation, and she gave a “Woo!” as Derpy peaked one more time.

It was only another flight around the block, but it was that much longer that she wouldn’t have gone without Karyn. For the third time she saw her home, and this time, she touched down and got her footing. As soon as she did, her wings snapped to her side, and she was sure she could not reopen them.

“How far did you go?” Karyn asked.

“I couldn’t say. I’ll have to add it all up when my head is clearer.”

“Oh, of course, how silly of me. You must be exhausted. Come on inside. Or, I could take you to the spa and let Aloe and Lotus give you a rubdown.”

Derpy shook her head. “I just want to get off my hooves right now.”

She collapsed on the couch, and though room was tight, Karyn sat next to her. Derpy said nothing, but Karyn could see the swelling and redness at the base of her wings. Assuming a forwardness not common to their friendship, she reached over and pulled Derpy’s right wing open with her hand, and gently rubbed the sore area.

“Ooh—“ Derpy said, wincing, but it only lasted a moment. “You don’t have to do that.”

“You’ve done something very helpful today. Someone needs to help you in return.” She switched over to the left wing, and kept going back and forth until enough strength had flowed back into Derpy to prop them open herself.

Now she could lean over and rub each wing with one hand. She had no technique, but it had to be better than nothing. If only, she thought, there were some oil or whatever the masseurs used to make muscles feel better. “I’m all right,” said Derpy after a few minutes. “I can get up now.”

“Just a little bit more.” Karyn said this in a way to reassure Derpy that she didn’t have to get up right away, but the truth was that she liked rubbing Derpy’s soft wings, and had never had a chance to do so.

Whatever intimacy was created by the physical contact, it was broken by a knock at the door. Karyn pulled her hands off at the sound, only a second before Derpy would have trapped them by the rapid closure of her wings once more. She got up and answered the caller.

“Mayor Mare!”

“Good to see you again, Derpy. I haven’t been here since...”

“Lyra’s wedding,” said Karyn, joining them.

“That’s right. I just wanted to thank you for what you’ve done today. It will mean a big help to Ponyville.”

“We still need to figure out just how much help.” They put their heads together and did some calculations.

“I hope you’ll let me handle things from here out. It is part of my job. I can collect the money and manage the fund.”

Derpy brightened. “I’d be all the happier for it. The flying was easy compared to what I was worried I’d have to do there. Though, I do wonder, would you be willing to entertain a request?”

“Hm?”

“When you collect it, and before you spend it, can I at least come and look. I’ve never seen a whole lot of bits in a pile, and to think that I earned it, even if not for myself, it would interest me.”

Mayor Mare laughed, and said, “I’m not sure if we’ll have it all at once. Finances don’t often work like that. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’d appreciate it. But excuse me now, please.”

“Something to do?”

“I have to take another flight.”

The mayor looked surprised. “So soon?”

“Karyn has to be brought home.”

There was still time, but Karyn didn’t argue and got on her back. On Earth, she said, “I need to tell you again what a good thing you did today. They should acknowledge you for what you did. Like, if they use the money to build a park, they could call it the Derpy Hooves park or something.”

“That would be too much for me.”

“OK, maybe just a bench in the park with a plaque that says that you helped donate it. You see that a lot on Earth.”

Derpy shook her head. “I wouldn’t deserve it if they did something like that.”

“Hey! You busted your tail out there today.”

“Sure, but while I was trying to do nice things for everypony, I had a selfish end on my mind. It was there all the time, even though I enjoyed canvassing around and the flight itself.”

Karyn sat down next to her. “Tell me about it. Nopony else needs to know.”

“Because I said I wanted to do nice things for ponies who need it, and I was thinking about Dinky. And about myself when I was her age. I have no regrets, but I do wish that somepony had been there with a little money to get me by when I had to find a job and get a house and raise her all on my own. And I worry that she’ll wind up the same way. I’ve done as well as I could for her, but I don’t feel it’s enough, and I do feel that everypony else should help her too.”

“That is selfish. But it’s not your selfish thoughts that you’re judged by. It’s what you do. Personally, I agree with you, that Dinky is awesome and everypony should help her. But there’s someone else who needs help just as much, and you’re going to be the one to have done it. That makes things a little more right.”

“Well, I suppose that’ll be enough. For now.” Derpy, tired wings and all, hugged Karyn goodbye and left for home.

Author's Note

Let's take a peek at what we'll see next time!

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“As the representative of this universe here, yeah, I do.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She crept the car forward toward the gate, looking for any sign that would give her the full info, but to her surprise the gate was open. “Is it all right?”

“Looks open.”

“Well, let’s park and see. The worst thing they can do is kick us out.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Only when they reached the traffic light did she speak. “You mind if we take a different way back?”

“I’m here to spend time with you. If you want to take a drive, I’m down.”

Smiling at Derpy’s use of an Earthly expression, Karyn made a right instead of a left.

“I hope we don’t run into my parents. They’ll ask why I drove out all this way.”

Come back then for the next part of the story!

139: Back to the Old Derperhood

Derpy peered out the window at the clouds, low and heavy. Then she looked down at the ground. Though the only snow remaining was that which had been piled against the fences by the plows, the grass was still brown. Just by looking, she could see that, were she to step on it, it would be as hard as the asphalt walkway she had taken.

“I think you need to have another go at wrapping up winter. It didn’t take.”

“Natural seasons here, remember?” said Karyn. “Nothing we can do about it. Not that I’m disagreeing with you. The forecast is calling for more snow soon as well.”

“Why would they call for that? No one wants it.”

“No, it’s just how they mean that they’re predicting it.”

Karyn’s argument finally reached Derpy’s brain. “Oh, right. Don’t mind me. It’s early.”

“Well, let’s have coffee. That’ll solve both problems at once.”

She put on the pot while Derpy kept looking. “Actually, it’s cold in Equestria too. I was hoping that I’d get here and warm up.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“As the representative of this universe here, yeah, I do.”

They let the conversation lull until Karyn put Derpy’s mug in front of her. Then Derpy brought up a subject.

“So how’s school going?”

“Great. Really good. And not in the sense of ‘great, really good’ that I would tell my parents when I didn’t want to discuss details.” Karyn flashed a grin to let Derpy know that she was giving her inside information. “But no, I’m genuinely enjoying myself in all the classes. I’m studying on a schedule that works for me and leaves me plenty of time for myself, and I’m passing all the tests. Only took me eight semesters to figure out this whole college thing, and now I have to leave.”

“That’s probably how they set it up. They want you to learn those skills, and once you have, all the rest you can do on your own time.”

“I suppose I should resent that, but at least I stop accumulating student loan debt.”

What she left unsaid was that she would have to begin paying the debt she had. Derpy said, “Dinky’s back at school as well. I don’t know how long she’ll be there. It depends on when she’s ready to take the tests. But I can say that this time, when she left, it wasn’t as bad for me as the first time.”

Karyn suspected that Derpy wanted to talk about Dinky, and that asking about her own schooling was just an excuse. Well, she thought, that could be forgiven, since she asked questions for that reason sometimes. “I know she can pass the tests. Then she’ll probably come back to live with you again, at least for a little while.”

“Mmhm. Hopefully by the summer. Speaking of which, I wish it were summer now. Even on the coldest days of summer, it wouldn’t be this cold.”

“Definitely.” Karyn let her mind drift to thoughts of summer. Each prior year around this time, she would have been counting the days on the calendar. In grade school and high school, it was a countdown to two months of complete fun. In college, she knew that she would have to work part time, but it was still a relief of stress from her classes. But this year...whatever happened, she would still have the summer warmth, and she would make time to go to the beach, and have barbecues, and take Derpy to...

“Oh! I forgot!” What had been a leisurely breakfast now turned intense as Karyn gobbled the rest of her toast and downed another gulp of coffee before putting the mug in the sink. Derpy took the cue and finished her own meal in short order, but she had more time since she could leave without having to put on a coat.

Leaving was what Karyn clearly had in mind as she got ready quicker than Derpy had ever seen her do before. She understood that Karyn didn’t have time to explain whatever it was she needed to do, and that the best thing she could do to help was to be ready to go where Karyn told her.

That didn’t stop Karyn from saying it, though. “There’s no time to explain. Get in the car!”

Derpy had the invisibility spell ready and turned it on. Keeping pace with Karyn, she took her spot in the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt. Once they were on the road, she ventured to ask, “Can you tell me about it now?”

“Yes. Sorry. I was thinking about this off and on, but it didn’t hit me until just now. OK, you know how we go to the park every summer?”

“Right, our little tradition.”

“But we’re not going to be able to this summer,” Karyn said, speeding up.

“Hey, yeah? Why?”

“My mom texted me the other day and mentioned that they’re closing it down this year for renovations. And I looked up the details and they’re starting after this month. So if we want to go, it has to be sooner rather than later.”

At last Derpy understood. “But do we have to race there? If it’s going to be open all day, we’ll have time.”

“But what I’m figuring is that it’s going to be packed since so many other people are going to want to enjoy the park while they can.”

“All right, but we’re not going to have any fun if we stress ourselves out over getting there. If we just go to say we went, that’s a day wasted. We always would stop off for a picnic lunch and make a day of it. Even though it’s cold and we might not get to stay the whole day, we should at least do it right.”

Karyn saw the logic in this, and slowed the pace of her driving. When they got near the park, they stopped into the deli that they had been to before and got some potato and macaroni salad.

Back in the car, Karyn turned off the main road down to where the park was, but as she approached, her stomach knotted. They came upon the park from the far end and drove past the parking lot to the gate, and she only saw two cars in the lot.

“Oh, no! They’re closed already? They said not till next month!”

“Uh oh. Where are we going to eat the salads then?”

She crept the car forward toward the gate, looking for any sign that would give her the full info, but to her surprise the gate was open. “Is it all right?”

“Looks open.”

“Well, let’s park and see. The worst thing they can do is kick us out.”

Karyn was still convinced that the park had been closed, but Derpy reached a conclusion. “Maybe they’re not, and no one showed up today?”

“But if they know it’s going to close, why wouldn’t people come while they can?”

Derpy surveyed the lot and the lawn nearest the entrance. Early shoots of grass were trying to make their way up, but the ground was still brown, and the trees were bereft of leaves. “I guess not everyone likes it as much as we do.”

“Maybe. So much the better for us. If you’re right, that means that there won’t be any renovators here either and we should have the run of the park.”

They started around the lake, and they saw that some of the water was still frozen on the surface, thin white bands around tiny islands in the middle, like someone had slashed the islands with a frosting knife. But as they reached the playground, Karyn stopped.

“Something wrong?” asked Derpy.

“I’m going to go on the roll slide.”

“Yeah? I think it’s a lot of fun. Go for it.”

“But it’ll probably be the last time. I’m sure that that’s being pulled out of there.” She walked toward the ladder on the other side.

“How do you know? They might keep it. Or get a new one.”

“It’s unsafe. Kids can get their fingers caught between the rollers and smash them. I’ve done it a couple of times myself. Just hurt a little, but as soon as one with brittle bones uses it, forget it. They probably don’t even make them anymore. It’ll be the last time in my life.” Karyn reached the top and slid down, raising her arms over her head. Once at the bottom, she experimentally put her pinkie between two of the rollers. It was, of course, too big to get pinched.

“Do you want to go again?”

“Maybe on the way out.”

They walked around the lake, with Karyn keeping an eye out for anyone who might have come in the other two cars. She spotted one family in the barbecue area just sitting on benches chatting, but that was all. The other person was around somewhere, or maybe the family had taken two cars.

At least the meadow was unoccupied. This was the one place that Derpy felt free to be visible in the outdoors on Earth. Karyn sat on the ground. It was cold on her backside, but her sweatpants made it not too bad, and she rather enjoyed the hardness of the frozen earth. When she stretched out, it felt good on her back.

“So why do they do it?” Derpy stared back the way they came.

“Why do they do what?”

“Renovate the park? I mean, you like it just fine the way it is, and probably so do a lot of other people.”

Karyn flashed her a grin. “Maybe someone ran a charity event and they wanted to use the money to fix up the park.”

“You really think so? And you thought that was going to happen in Ponyville too. You don’t think that my flying is going to help destroy some poor foal’s memories of a park somewhere?”

“I was kidding. They pay for these through taxes, not donations.”

“Oh.” Derpy showed relief, even though she wasn’t that big a fan of Earth’s taxation system. “But that is what we’re talking about, right? You want the park to stay the same because it’s where you played as a young girl.”

“Well, yes. I suppose that’s selfish of me. But—no, it’s not selfish, it’s more like, I get upset when I can’t go and do something that I used to again. Like something’s been lost forever. It’s why, when I was young, I never wanted to throw out books or movies. If I did, I couldn’t get them back. I guess that’s one reason that I love the Internet.”

“But there are going to be kids who will love the new park just as much as you did the old one.”

“You’re saying it is selfish?”

Derpy was worried that she had insulted Karyn, but she smiled again and got the salads out of the bag.

“We should have gotten something hot,” she said.

“You’re right. We could have gotten eggplant parm sandwiches or something. That would have warmed us up nicely. Or I could have packed a thermos with hot chocolate. But this is what we have, so let’s picnic.”

Since the grass was tamped down, Derpy put the plastic tub on the ground and ate laying on her stomach. “We don’t have to worry about ants at least.”

“Good point. There probably are some, but it’s too cold for them to come out. Or only a few survive from season to season. I don’t know, I slept through entomology.”

“I thought that was about words.”

“That’s etymology. But don’t get upset. I confused those myself for a long time.”

They munched away for a while, and Derpy enjoyed seeing the trees that formed the privacy screen empty of their leaves, the stark brown of a completed winter with the anticipation of spring. But she could tell Karyn wasn’t enjoying it.

“Problem?”

“No. It’s just not the same, you know?”

“Probably because it’s so close to the last one. The thing about doing it every year is that it has time to get fun again. So look at it this way. The next time we come here, next summer, it’ll be over a year and even more fun!”

Karyn stopped eating and poked at her salad with the fork. She came to full alertness, though, when a fleck of white came before her eyes. She shook her head, hoping she was mistaken, but soon others were there. Still she wondered if it might not be some tissue paper that had gotten torn up and was blowing in the breeze, until she touched one with her hand and felt it. Cold.

“It can’t be snowing now!”

“You said it was going to.”

“But that was for tomorrow night. This is too soon!” She covered the open tub of salad with her hand, even though a few snowflakes wouldn’t have hurt it.

“Maybe it’s just a few flakes.”

“Even so, I don’t want to be out in the middle of it.”

The picnic was brought to a swift end, and Derpy went back invisible. That was another problem, as her distortions on the snowflakes could be seen, and she had to fly up out of where people would look. Fortunately they passed no one on the way back, and Karyn fairly jumped into her car, quickly brushing the snow out of her hair.

“Am I showing?” asked Derpy.

“A few flakes are there but don’t worry. They’ll melt quick once the car starts. It’s not even that cold out.”

“It must be higher up in the atmosphere that it’s cold.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t stand it in my hair. So I’m making it warm in here.” Karyn turned on the engine and ramped the heat up to three out of four. It didn’t warm up immediately, but the snow melted all the same.

She backed out of her parking space and pulled toward the gate, then stopped. No cars were coming on the cross-street.

“Forget something?”

“No,” said Karyn, “but this is the last time I’m going to see the park this way. I wonder I’ll ever come back.”

“Of course we will. Next year, remember?”

Karyn said nothing, but put the car in gear and pulled out into the street. Only when they reached the traffic light did she speak. “You mind if we take a different way back?”

“I’m here to spend time with you. If you want to take a drive, I’m down.”

Smiling at Derpy’s use of an Earthly expression, Karyn made a right instead of a left.

“I hope we don’t run into my parents. They’ll ask why I drove out all this way.”

“You can just tell them that we went to the park. That you wanted to go before it closed.”

“Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t say we, of course.” Karyn sighed. “This is my old neighborhood. My old stamping ground. Probably I won’t live here anymore. Not really. I might wind up moving back with my parents for a while, but I’ll try to get out soon. And houses here are expensive. But this is my home town.”

She drove back streets and odd turns, going nowhere that Derpy could predict, but with perfect assurance that she knew where she was. Then they passed a strip mall, much bigger than the small store where they had bought the salads. She pulled in.

“Another one?”

“What?”

“This stationery store.” Karyn pointed at a store that took up a good portion of the mall. The sign over the windows said “Lincoln Stationery” in an outdated font. A much newer typeface spelled out “Going Out of Business” on the window.

“You went here, huh?”

“It’s just a stupid store. There’s no reason for me to feel anything.” Karyn wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t smiling either.

“You want to tell me about it?”

“From here we could walk to my house. My folks’ house, I mean. It would take a while, but...I came here all the time. Every year in August my mom would take me to buy school supplies. New notebooks and pens and folders. One year she even bought me the plastic binder that holds the folders. I was so excited because all the cool kids had that. I think it even had a pony on it...

“One time, I had to do a report. Not like the ones I do now where it’s all words on paper, but I had to add art and paste things on it. It had to be on oak tag. I didn’t even know what that was. Of course I put it off until the night before it was due. My mom was so mad. But she drove me here and helped me finish the project. I think it was the first time I ever stayed up after midnight...

“Then there was the time when I was really young, maybe six or seven, when I stole a roll of candy from this store.”

Derpy interrupted with shock. “You stole?”

“Yeah. I found the rack at the end of an aisle and I really wanted the candy. The store guy walked away, and I just put it in my pocket. This was before there were cameras everywhere, or I probably would have gotten caught. I didn’t, but I felt so guilty that I couldn’t even finish the candy. To this day I don’t like that brand...”

“Maybe that’s why they’re going out of business.”

Karyn didn’t think Derpy was being sincere, but even if she was, it broke her out of her nostalgic funk with laughter. “I doubt that the twenty-five cents—or less, at their wholesale cost—broke them. Come on, let’s go.”

She pulled the car around to the other side of the lot, slowing up again in front of another store. “Did you go to this one too?” asked Derpy.

“Yeah. You can’t even see what it was. But it was a video store. Rented movies.”

“So not quite a store then.”

Karyn stopped in the fire lane by the boarded store. No one would come by. “No, more like a club they would have you join to rent. I remember feeling so grown up when I got my card that let me take movies. In summer I would walk down here and you could get two or three movies for five dollars. And they’d let you have them two days, so I would come back then and rent more. It’s where I got most of the movies that people expect you to know.” She saw Derpy about to ask a question, and anticipated it. “This was before the internet, or at least before it was robust enough to stream movies reliably.”

“Oh. So the internet was what put them out of business.”

“Ultimately, but before that it was the big chain video stores. They could afford to buy up dozens of copies of movies when they came out and advertise that they would guarantee availability. So people went there. Then they jacked up prices so that five dollars only got you one movie. I didn’t like it.”

For a long while they just sat and looked at the shell of the store. Then Derpy had had enough. “Come on, let’s go back home. I mean, to your apartment now. Looking back too much isn’t good for you.”

“I’m really not upset about it, just melancholy. All these things have gone away, and I thought they were going to be my world forever. You’ll probably tell me that it’s just because I was a child.”

“There’s that, but it happens more than once. The stores and places you go to now, some of them are going to change in the future. You’ve got a lot of time left, and you can see it change more than once.”

Increasing her speed as they got back on the highway, Karyn said, “I hope I get more used to it in the future.” She let her voice trail off and wondered how Derpy knew this, and thought that there must have been places in Equestria that Derpy remembered as a filly, that now were gone. And she, Karyn, would never know them at all.

“Next year,” Derpy said, “when we come to the park, you can look at these places again. But not until then, OK?”

“Are we?”

“Are we what?”

Karyn took a deep breath. “You know, I’m going to graduate real soon. I’m going to have to figure out what to do with myself afterwards. Next year...I could be somewhere else entirely. Might have to move away to go to another school or a different job.”

“It’s OK. I can re-adjust the location of the spell so that I can go wherever you do on Sundays.”

“I appreciate that, but even if I have time, what that means is that we wouldn’t have the park, or eating at the school cafeteria ever again, or anything like that. My most familiar locations will be in Equestria.”

Derpy missed the significance of Karyn switching from the plural to the singular. “Don’t you worry. Whatever happens, we’ll make new traditions. It’s just like these stores. Something new always grows over something old. No matter what, we’ll always be together.”

Karyn looked over at the empty seat, turning back every few seconds to keep an eye on the road. Not sure if she was doing it to give comfort or to get it, she reached over and held Derpy’s hoof in her hand.

Author's Note

Chapter 140 means a climax, but since it's the penultimate 0-chapter, not too much of one.

“Do you just want to hang out here?”

Karyn didn’t answer for a long time. Placidly, Derpy finished eating. Normally, she would wonder if she did anything wrong, but she knew she hadn’t, and just needed to wait for Karyn to be ready.

“Derpy, can we sit down and talk about some serious stuff?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The point is that you’re doing the right thing now. And I think we need to talk about this deeper.”

“That’s what I want to do. Let’s sit down again.”

“No.”

Karyn had one hand on the chair, but raised her eyebrows. “No?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What would you do, if it were your decision?”

“I can’t answer that.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Come on. I know that it’s my decision and I’ll ultimately make it myself. I’m not going to automatically go with what you say. Or against it. I just want to know what you would do, and then we’ll talk about how you came up with that.”

Come back to see what Karyn's big decision is.

140: At a Crossderps

Derpy had gone to bed early the night before. With Dinky off at school and her work done for the week, she felt free to set her own schedule. Normally she liked routine, but delivering mail had grated on her so much that she felt both physically tired and eager to get to her time with Karyn. So when she woke up and still saw darkness out the window, she rolled over and fell back to sleep.

When she woke again she flew up, assuming that she had overslept and would be late, but in fact she was perfectly on schedule, and felt that, for once, everything was going her way. She washed up, put on her saddlebag, and flew to meet Karyn.

The brief relapse into winter had passed, and spring was in bloom, even if the trees weren’t. Derpy’s keen nose told her that a squall had passed by a day or so before, and probably they were soaking up the water from the ground to begin growing.

Bouncing into Karyn’s rooms, she cast off her invisibility and gave Karyn a warm grin and a hug. “Hey, friend! How’s everything?! I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”

“Good morning, Derpy.” Karyn said it flat and placidly.

“Do you want help making breakfast?”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes, but not famished. If there’s something you want to do first...”

“No, let’s eat first.” Karyn took out the pans and began cooking. Derpy saw that the coffee maker hadn’t been touched, but Karyn still seemed awake enough. Between the warmth and both of their states of alertness, Derpy thought they could let it pass.

“Do you have anything fun planned for today?” Derpy asked through bites of toast and jam.

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you just want to hang out here?”

Karyn didn’t answer for a long time. Placidly, Derpy finished eating. Normally, she would wonder if she did anything wrong, but she knew she hadn’t, and just needed to wait for Karyn to be ready.

“Derpy, can we sit down and talk about some serious stuff?”

“Of course. But let’s clean up first and make sure that we’re not going to get interrupted.”

Karyn smiled for the first time that day, just a little, and put the dishes in the sink. Derpy took the towel and waited to dry them. She checked for other distractions, but so long as the phone didn’t ring and Gayle didn’t stop by, they were free.

Derpy didn’t know where to go, but since Karyn sat down at the kitchen table, just as they had for breakfast, she joined her there. It reminded her of the times that she would have to redress Dinky and would sit similar.

The one difference was that in her house the background noise was the ticking of a clock. Here it was only the fan on Karyn’s laptop. Derpy looked over, again waiting for Karyn to start.

“What’s going to happen to us?”

She snapped back to attention. Now she was afraid that she’d missed something. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Over three years.”

“Is that long?” Karyn didn’t want to call Derpy old, but it seemed like a long time to her. “Ever since I came to college. But I’m not going to be going anymore. What are we going to do then?”

“Does anything have to change?”

“I know it sounds silly, but I always thought I would outgrow ponies. But that was before I met one. So I don’t know if it’s right to still have half my heart in Equestria.”

“Ooh, nice expression.”

Karyn huffed. “Please, Derpy.”

“Sorry. But I think you’re being a little silly about this. Ponies are people just like humans. I understand that our worlds can’t cross over. But I know a couple of humans, like Gayle...and Albert. I don’t worry about them.”

“You have a point. But like I said, it’s different from before I knew you. Anyway, that’s not the main issue.”

“What is?”

On the laptop, Karyn brought up a calendar application and switched it from weekly to monthly, then moved it back and forth a few screens. “Soon I’ll be done with school. After that I’m going to have to decide what to do. What I decide will make a difference about how we’ll be interacting.”

“What are your options?”

“Briefly, I could try to go to graduate school. I’d either stay here or find a different school and keep studying IT. Or I could say that I’m finished with school and decide to look for a job.”

Derpy thought about it. Dinky was in a similar situation, but going to school had been a bonus for her. Finding what you wanted to do was easier as a pony. Karyn had to make a choice.

“It’s a big decision,” she said, not really knowing what else she could say. Derpy wasn’t the best when it came to important things.

“Here’s what really bugs me about it. I need to make the decision sooner rather than later. There’s no deadline, but I’ve got to apply for schools or for jobs now. That means that I can’t wait and get more information.”

“Can you do both?”

“Apply for jobs and schools? Yes, but in the first place it means that whichever I decide on, I’ll have wasted my effort for the other. And it means that I’ll probably make a half-effort on both. But more than that, I need to stop running from the choice and make a decision.”

Derpy approved of this sentiment, but something about it nagged at her.

“The thing is,” Karyn continued, “it’s the first real big decision about my life that I’ve had to make completely on my own. When I decided to come to college, it was out of necessity. And USCI was close to home and they would take me with my grades. It’s the kind of school that takes local people. If I had chosen college a year before, I could have done work for it. Applied to better schools, gone for scholarships or grants, stuff like that.”

She still didn’t fully understand, but Derpy did see the parallel between Karyn’s decision then and her decision now.

“Thank you,” said Karyn.

“For what?”

“For not asking why I didn’t do that. Everyone else did.”

Derpy didn’t accept the praise. She just hadn’t gotten that far yet. “The point is that you’re doing the right thing now. And I think we need to talk about this deeper.”

“That’s what I want to do. Let’s sit down again.”

“No.”

Karyn had one hand on the chair, but raised her eyebrows. “No?”

“If it’s a decision that’s this important, we can’t just sit down at the kitchen table. We need to find the right place to talk it over.”

“Is it going to change anything?”

Derpy was slightly cowed, but stuck to her point. “No...and yes. It won’t change any of the factors in your decision, but it might change your emotions, and sometimes, just facing the fear of a tough choice is enough to lead you in the right direction. And I know just the place.”

Bemused, Karyn cocked her head and invited further information, but Derpy strapped on her saddlebag and motioned her on. “I didn’t think you meant in Equestria, but of course there’s no place you’ve been on Earth that I haven’t. And somehow it seems right. If I get away from everything, maybe I can get perspective on my dilemma. If nothing else, I’ll have extra time to make it. Hmm...”

“No, you’re not going to take all your applications and fill them out there.”

“You’re getting good at reading me.”

Derpy warped back home, but almost immediately banked around two-hundred-seventy degrees to the left. It wasn’t away from Ponyville toward the train station, nor was it toward home. If Karyn had to guess, she was trying to get close to the border without actually entering the town.

Far in the distance the mountains of Canterlot loomed. They caught the eye so much that Karyn barely noticed that they were descending, and that there were some foothills where Equestrian geology had pushed up less. This was what Derpy was making for.

“One time I flew completely in the wrong direction, and I wound up all the way here before I figured it out. It’s kind of a barren area.”

The grass was only on the hills nearest town, after which they became bare rock. One of the last rolling hills kept rolling as they flew over it, as the natural—or pegasus-caused—effects of weather erosion had made a little curl in one part of the hill. There Derpy lit.

“Cool spot,” said Karyn.

“Yes. After I found it I would come here some times to clear my head. Not much of a view though.”

Indeed, it could have been a rock quarry if there had been a crew to mine it, and if ponies didn’t farm rocks instead of quarrying them.

“So here we are, what do you think we should do?”

Karyn wasn’t sure to what degree Derpy was just delaying. Well, now that delay was no longer an excuse. “What I think,” Derpy said, “is that we should lay out the good and bad about each choice.”

“You sound like my parents. But sure, let’s do that. I wish I’d brought something to write with.”

Derpy checked her saddlebag. “I don’t have a quill, but there’s this spell that will let you carve into the rock.”

“I’m not sure if I want my thoughts etched in stone for anypony to see, but we’ll go with that.”

“Actually, can we go back a step. You said that I sound like your parents. What did you mean by that?”

Karyn remembered what she was thinking. “Just that they too think it’s a simple matter of laying out the pros and cons and seeing which one is better. And if I could see both futures, maybe it would be. Hey, do you have a spell for that?”

“Seeing the future? No. It wouldn’t work. You’d see the future, and then just decide to do something else.”

“I suppose. But that’s for another day. Let’s lay this out.”

Rather than spoil what little view they had, she turned to the rock wall which was at a near-perfect angle to use as a writing desk, which made up for the discomfort of her carving tool. She drew a T and above one she wrote, “G. Sch.” Above the other, “Job.”

“You want to write fast, huh?” asked Derpy.

“And I want it to be a little obscure if anyone does find it. It’s force of habit. When I take notes they’re for me to read, not anyone else, so I like to be private.”

“Enough avoiding the issue. Let’s make a list.”

Karyn squared up to the rock. “So, the main thing that works against going to graduate school is that there are more student loans involved.” An “SL” went up under the left column.

“Good. What else is for job?”

“Umm...nothing. For grad school is that once I do get out, I’ll earn more.”

Derpy moved her hoof from one side of the list to the other. “So that should cancel out the student loans. If you earn enough to cover it.”

“Which is its own question. Like I said, I can’t see the future and now how much I would earn with the graduate degree and without. Probably more. Companies would advance me sooner. Of course, that does mean more work.” Karyn was writing throughout. “But here’s the main thing. Going to graduate school feels like running away from my problems. It’s like I’m trying to still be a child for longer. Two more years of school.”

“Here’s something. If you go to graduate school, you can start looking for jobs immediately, and have two more years to get one.”

“If I have time to do so. I’ve got time management down fairly well now, but grad school would mean learning a whole new course of study, and that would take time to do. I might find myself in the same position two years from now. And there are no IT doctorates. I think.” She completed her list. More items filled the left column for staying in school.

“Anything else?” said Derpy.

“Maybe, but this is something to start with. Thanks for bringing me here. This is a lot easier than trying to do it at home, or worse, in front of my folks.”

“Like I said, a calm, relaxing spot is the best place to think.”

Karyn looked out over the vista. It wasn’t the most beautiful spot in Equestria. The only think it would be useful for, she thought, would be to get away from it all. But that was a purpose, as it seemed everything in Equestria had one.

“I don’t think it’s that,” she said. “It’s always easier to do something than to start doing it, if you know what I mean. Plus the way you ask me to do something I have to do, it’s different. You actually ask, instead of making me feel pressure to do it.”

“And it’s not like choosing where to go have lunch. This is a big decision. That said, I think it would be a good idea if, by the end of the day, you at least have a direction that you’re leaning. Maybe take a week or so to confirm it, but definitely have one picked.”

“The shame of it is, if it were a simpler choice like that, I’d just flip a coin. But for something this important...hey, Derpy?”

Derpy had prepared to tune out when Karyn started talking about the coin. She knew that Karyn was just thinking out loud. But now her attention was needed. “Hm?”

“What would you do, if it were your decision?”

“I can’t answer that.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Come on. I know that it’s my decision and I’ll ultimately make it myself. I’m not going to automatically go with what you say. Or against it. I just want to know what you would do, and then we’ll talk about how you came up with that.”

“It wouldn’t help. You see, my decision would me for you to go to school more. But I say that out of pure selfishness. I want to keep our Sundays together.”

“But if you didn’t have that bias, what would you do?”

Shaking her head, Derpy scowled in sympathy. “I can’t do it. I’m too attached to you. You’re part of me now. But I know that you’ll find the right answer. That’s something that’s inside you.”

“I guess.” Karyn stared at the rock a little more. As the sun traced its daily course, Derpy looked at it, trying to determine the time. She rose to her hooves with a start.

“Oh, no! I’ve got to rush home. I’ll be right back, OK?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I left my uniform in the laundry tub to soak because I got a stain on it. Normally I would hang it up tomorrow and use my backup, but it’s going to rain tomorrow, so I’ve got to get it in the sun today. I won’t be long.” She took off, and Karyn couldn’t argue with her. It was inconvenient to not have power dryers, but then again, she also knew for certain that the rain would come.

Without the noise of Derpy’s breathing, it was a very quiet place indeed. The Everfree Forest was still some miles off, and that gave her some comfort, since she was unable to defend herself. For the first time, she wished she had her changeling powers back. As it was, she had to just wait for Derpy to come back.

She thought back to the time that she had fixed Derpy’s computer and thought about staying in Equestria permanently. This was the decision she had hoped to avoid. But Derpy had talked her out of it and so she would have to make it. At least she wasn’t emotional the way she was back then. Scared, maybe. But not stressed. Not yet. The stress would come once she made her decision.

What was it Derpy had said at that time? That she thought Karyn’s inertia bound her to Earth. To Karyn, that was just another way of saying that she was stuck in a rut. But although that had only been a few months before, she felt that she had grown up just a little.

Karyn picked up the rock-carving spell and ran it back and forth like an eraser, wiping out all her illegible notes. She didn’t need them. She knew what to do.

She carved herself a nice little seat with room for her legs to dangle while leaning back against the stone. Crossing her arms, she smiled placidly with her eyes closed and let the sun warm her face. It wasn’t that she felt the release of stress that she expected, but for the moment she did not have to think.

True to her word, Derpy returned swiftly, coming in for a hard landing instead of her usual glide. It broke Karyn’s mood of serenity, but not much.

“Were you trying to sleep on the decision?” she asked. “That can be a good idea sometimes. You just wake up with the right answer. Or at least a new idea. I’ve heard ponies say that, but it’s never happened to me.”

“No, I wasn’t.” Karyn opened her eyes and spoke with extra clarity to let Derpy know that she hadn’t nodded off. “I’m not going to graduate school. I’m going to look for a job.”

“Can you say why?”

“Yes. I realized that where I am is a crossroads, not a fork. If I go to school, I’m just going straight. I don’t want to do that. Because while I’m not unhappy, I’m also not where I want to be in my life. I said it back then, too. I’m going to shake something up in my life. This is what it’s going to be.”

Derpy spoke with acceptance. She knew that even if she could change Karyn’s mind, she wasn’t willing to. “And what about us?”

“I don’t know. Our routine might change. I’d like it not to go away altogether.”

“Of course it won’t. But we’re going to have to figure out a time plan for how best to get you a job.”

Karyn realized that her decision meant that she was now obligated to start working on it, and that this—pure procrastination—was holding her back from making a choice. She picked up the carver one more time, then laughed. “I don’t need to cut this into stone. Come on. Let’s go home and do it the old-fashioned way. On a computer.”

Derpy got her joke and laughed with her, then flew her back to Earth. They banged out a draft for a schedule. “Are you sure this is the most efficient use of your time?” asked Derpy.

“No, but the schedule isn’t the project itself. All I need to do is use it as motivation to job hunt.”

“How are you going to do it?”

“Some online. Those are the late-night times I’ve marked out. But I also want to use the college’s job connections and the library. There’s not much I can do in the library that I can’t do here on the laptop, but there are fewer distractions. It’s just like when I do my papers.”

Leaning over to look at the laptop screen, Derpy said, “I think you should hone it better, but you’ve accomplished a lot today.”

“What have I done?”

“Something important. If you stick with it and don’t think about grad school.”

“I’m not.” Karyn closed the laptop and sat on the bed. “I’m writing it off completely. Unless some school calls and says they’re going to give me a full scholarship with room and board. But that’s rather an edge case. I’ll worry about that when it doesn’t happen.”

“Then that’s a big step. I’m glad I could help you.”

Karyn looked at her with a quizzical expression. “Did you plan this?”

“Huh?”

“Did you know it was right for me to choose not to go to school and just make me see it for myself? It’s like when Dinky went to see Princess Celestia. I wondered if she intended for her to—“ she cut herself off before she could reveal the secret that Dinky didn’t want to tell her mother yet. “—to come back to school just for a little. She seemed to know what was going to happen.”

“Maybe Princess Celestia is that smart. I’m not.”

Karyn wasn’t sure if she believed her. It was more a question of empathy than brains. “You’re right. You’re only nine-tenths as smart as her.”

“Not even that.” Derpy missed this joke.

With some time left on their visit, Karyn and Derpy put all thoughts of importance out of their mind and relaxed. They swapped anecdotes, chatted idly, and watched videos until it was time for Derpy to go.

“There’s one thing,” Karyn said, and Derpy turned to look back. “One thing we have to make sure of, because of this.”

“What’s that?”

“If we have to change how we see each other, then we still have some good weeks left. And they have to be the best weeks ever. We need to work extra hard, hang on to the time we have with our fingernails.”

“I don’t have fingernails.” Derpy showed her hoof.

“No, you have good, strong hooves. Just right for holding on. The rest of this semester is going to be the best ever. Promise.”

“I promise too.”

Author's Note

Next week we've got a chapter suggested by Chiroknu. Something else they wanted to see Karyn and Derpy do. Come back to find out what it is!

F10: Derp Woods Off

When Derpy arrived at Karyn’s place, she was eager to hear how her friend’s week had gone.

“Did you find a job yet? Did they make you the chief IT person for Earth?”

“Ha, there isn’t such a person. That’s the great thing about information technology. We distribute things so that no one has too much power. There’s no Princess of IT.”

Derpy nodded understanding. “If there were, you should be it.”

“I’ve given up my crown, thank you. In any case, one doesn’t get jobs that fast.”

“But you did look, right?”

Sliding over to her laptop, Karyn brought up the schedule they had made the week before. “I kept all my appointments, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time to apply because I had to build up a resume. That’s not so fun when you don’t have experience. I had to tout my education, and even there I could only put my anticipated graduation day.”

“What’s that, then?”

“You don’t have resumes in Equestria? Another point in its favor. Anyone who hires someone wants to see a summary of your career on a single sheet of paper. Then they look for any excuse not to hire you.”

“I don’t get it.” Derpy sometimes had trouble telling when her not understanding something was because it was weird or because she was.

“I don’t really, either, but I have to do it. If I were going for human resources, maybe I’d try to change it, but I’m not.”

“But you did it, and now it’s done, right?”

Karyn shook her head with a sarcastic smile. “No, because I also have to have a cover letter. Something that says exactly as much as the resume but in prose. And I can’t just have a form letter, but one that’s tailored to every job I apply for. I’m supposed to tell them how much I want to work for their company, citing specific examples of great things they’ve done, and how I’d do it for as little money as possible.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Maybe not, but I’m making progress.”

Derpy walked over to the bed where she usually flopped to relax, but kept her stance and addressed Karyn. “I guess I thought that after you made your decision everything would be OK. But clearly not. Well, forget about it. It’s our day together and we’re going to have fun. Then you’ll be happy.”

Karyn agreed, but without much enthusiasm.

“Maybe what you need...” Derpy said, “...is more people. You know, the more the merrier, that kind of thing. What happened with that meetup group that you were hanging out with? Just because you’re working hard at trying to find a job doesn’t mean that you should neglect your friends. Even if they’re not me.”

“It’s funny you should say that. Anyway, I’m not neglecting them, but I’ve found that they’re not all what they seemed at first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Karyn waved her hand in a circle, choosing her words carefully, “when I first met them I thought they were all into geeky stuff all the time. But it turns out that that was something they do occasionally, but they want to get as many people from all different interests to try new things. Like when we did the skydiving thing last time. Now, we do stuff that I like, and we do it more often than not because it’s simple and cheap. We’ll just get together for movie night or to play video games or such, but every once in a while someone suggest something more outdoorsy.”

“But that’s good. You should get out of your comfort zone.”

“Do you do that?”

Derpy looked up in remembrance. “I try to. When I can. I was always working and money was tight and when I tried to meet other ponies, they were always standoffish because of, you know.” She pointed to her eyes. “If anything, I wish I’d had more of a chance to try new things.”

“You sound like my mom does sometimes. How I have opportunities that she never did and should take advantage of them.”

“Well, it’s not that. I mean, do what you like.”

Karyn went over to her closet and pulled out a large luggage bag. It had four wheels on the bottom, and was of brown canvas. “I don’t know if I’m going to like this, but we’re going to do it anyway.”

“Huh? What are we doing?”

“This is what the group has planned for today. Camping.”

Her expression blank, Derpy eyed the bag and said, “Camping outdoors? Like, in the woods?”

“As I said, it’s what some of the people there like. I figured you would be into it.”

“There’s an awful lot of dirt. I did it once, and I couldn’t wait to shower.”

“If you don’t want to come with, I can understand that. You could go back to Equestria and...no, the time jump won’t work that way. Dang.”

Karyn had been looking down at her bag, but Derpy stuck a hoof under her chin and lifted her head up. “In the first place, I wouldn’t let you down when you need me. In the second, it’s our day and I’m not missing it. In the third, maybe camping in a different world will be fun.” She didn’t look like she meant the last one.

“Thanks, Derpy. Well, I’m meeting everyone soon, so I’ve got to pack. The last time I visited my folks I took some stuff that my father uses.”

Into the bag went a collapsible tent, and a thick sleeping bag that took up more space than Karyn wanted. A lantern and a pack of bottled water joined them, and last she put in some snacks including a bag of marshmallows.

“You’ve got a lot of stuff,” Derpy said. That could make camping more fun. When I did it it was just laying on the ground.”

“That’s called roughing it.”

“I guess that’s what I’ll be doing since I’m not bringing anything but myself and my saddlebag.”

Karyn hefted her bag, struggling with the weight. Once outside she let it rest on the bottom wheels, then had to power-lift again to get it in the trunk of her car. Slamming it down, she got in the driver’s seat and puffed out a heavy breath.

“Let’s get going.”

She drove a route that Derpy was familiar with from another recent drive. “Where exactly are we going?”

“It’s a place called Jerusalem Park. Don’t ask me why. It’s a much bigger place than the park we go to, and there are campgrounds there.”

“Oh, in a park. That could be better.”

“Better?” Karyn asked.

“I assumed that we’d be going out to the wilderness, way out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh, no. I probably would have found a way to beg off if they had been doing that. It would be a long hike in addition to the camping, and that’s a double whammy.”

The towns got smaller until they passed Riverside, the same place they had visited the aquarium. Derpy wished that she could see it again, but it wasn’t on their route.

One thing that was available was parking, even if it was on gravel. Karyn inched her way into the spot, worried that going too fast would puncture a tire.

When she stepped out, she looked at her phone and scowled.

“What’s wrong?” asked Derpy.

“No bars out here.”

“But you don’t drink—oh, you mean the phone.”

“Yeah. But that also means that I can’t talk to you with the Bluetooth. Everyone knows that there’s no coverage out here.” Secretly, Karyn was disappointed that she didn’t have reception just for general use.

“We’ll make do somehow. Where do we find the others?”

Karyn unloaded her bag, and Derpy did help by lifting one end just off the ground. Not only did this alleviate the weight that Karyn had to lug, but made moving it across the uneven ground easier. Even when they were on the dirt paths, it was nice to not get the wheels soiled.

The meetup group was listed on a bulletin board at the main gate, and they were directed to a campsite by number. When they reached it, several tents were already set up, so Karyn got to work on hers.

“Hey.”

A young man in a T-shirt waved to her. “Hey...Brian, right?”

“Yeah. Need some help with your tent?”

“No, it’s a pop-up. I just need to know where to put it.”

“Anywhere out of the way of the fire.”

The fire had not been lit yet, but Karyn could see the circle of stones where it would be. Opting for discretion and hoping to get some time with Derpy when she needed it, she put her bag down right where the campsite met the tree line. The tent did indeed come to full size with one twist of a rod, and all she had to do was pound stakes into the ground. After this, her next step was to slather herself in sunscreen and bug spray.

There were over a dozen people there by now, and a few of them were working on getting the fire started. Karyn walked over, but not knowing what to do she just stayed out of the way of the experts. She knew that that’s what she liked when she was working.

Even before it was lit, someone brought out a guitar and began a campfire song. Karyn joined in on this, and when they had enough voices that she would be noticed, so did Derpy.

When it was done, almost out of instinct, Karyn reached for her phone to look up the lyrics to the song. Once she turned it on, she saw the “No Service” indicator, and put it away. Then she wanted to check the time, so pulled it out again.

“You’re really attached to that, huh?” It was Brian again.

“Yeah,” she joked, “I’ll probably start going through withdrawal soon.”

So as not to seem too obvious, she hung by the campfire a few more minutes, but then stood up and walked back toward her tent.

“There’s no service in there, either.”

The first thing that occurred to Karyn was to say that she had a signal booster, but she wasn’t in the mood for arguing. “No, I just need to...are there bathrooms here or are we using the bushes?”

“Keep going along the path you used to get here. About a quarter of a mile.”

It gave her a perfect excuse, and once she was out of earshot, she whispered to Derpy, “He’s really not that bad, usually.”

“You’ve seen him before?”

“Yeah, he comes to the meetups a lot.”

“He probably likes you and that’s why he’s awkward. Hey, the bathroom’s over here.” They had reached the facility, but Karyn had walked around the privacy wall instead of behind it, and Derpy pointed her in the right direction.

“I don’t really need to go. I’m going back here so you can warp us to Equestria.”

“Huh? Something you need there?”

“There is.” Derpy asked no more questions but used her spell. Karyn didn’t recognize the place they appeared. “Do you know where we are?”

Derpy flew higher, then returned to their starting point, which gave her pegasus sense enough information to figure it out. “We’re about as far from my house as usual, but in the other direction.” During this, she was already gliding for home.

“I’m sorry, but I just needed to take out my phone without being called out for it.”

“But there’s no signal here.”

“I know, but there are some offline apps, like games or such. The same way you have on your computer.”

Derpy changed her direction. “I think you’re a little addicted to your phone.”

Karyn looked up. “Probably, but it’s not a dangerous addiction like drugs or alcohol. Unless I use it while driving, which I don’t.”

“Nonetheless, I think you should go back and put it away for today. Just to prove you can.”

“Can I at least check the time, since I don’t own a watch?”

Derpy thought about it. “No. I’ll go sneak looks at other people’s watches if it’s that important.”

“Well, if not that, can we hang here for a few minutes while I psych myself up to go back in among the bugs and nature?”

“You can, although your bug spray will probably wear off.”

“I’ll put more on.” Derpy landed out in a field and gave Karyn the time she needed. Normally she wasn’t like this, and Derpy reckoned that it was the combination of the unpleasant outdoors and the still somewhat unfamiliar people that was getting to her.

Derpy didn’t want to bother her, but since time wasn’t moving on Earth, it was just delaying the inevitable. She opened her mouth to say something, but Karyn, perhaps anticipating, went first.

“OK, let’s go back. Though be prepared to take me away again if I need it.”

They made their way back to Earth and back to the campsite. Karyn walked gently but not slowly, trying to avoid attracting attention.

But it was her attention that was directed to the fire where some of her friends seemed to be arguing. Karyn walked up. “What’s going on?”

“The barbecue lighter we have is out of juice,” one of them said. “We’ve got some matches, but we want to make sure we can start the fire again if we have to—“

“I’ll go into town and get one!” Karyn said.

“You sure? We were gonna do another sing and maybe play volleyball.”

“No, I’d love to help out. Anything else we need?”

That opened the floodgates, as it seemed everyone wanted a snack or supply that they’d forgotten and planned to do without. Without pen and paper, Karyn had to break her word and put it all on her phone’s note-taking app. Fortunately, everyone threw money at her with their requests.

Driving down into Riverside, Karyn stopped at the first convenience store she could find, parking in the street. Some of the campers didn’t have cars of their own, or even licenses, and they’d been impressed with her ability and generosity. It was only when she’d reached the register with all the stuff that she realized that Derpy hadn’t come in with her.

She didn’t go into panic mode, knowing that Derpy could always go home if necessary. It didn’t seem possible in a sleepy town like Riverside that anything bad could happen. After loading the car and feeling around in the passenger seat, she heard Derpy say, “Psst!” from a few yards away. It was the place next to the convenience store and Derpy was standing in front of it.

Normally convenience stores in her area had their own lots, but here it was part of a long stretch of shops, and the next one over was a craft store. It had a hand-lettered sign and looked as though it had been there for over a hundred years. Karyn tiptoed up and asked “What’s up?”

“There’s something important here.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t remember. I’m looking at this window trying to figure it out, but I know I’ve seen something here before.” Karyn joined her in looking. It didn’t seem like she owned anything the store would sell. It was filled with yarn and knitting needles, a few books, some finger paints, pens, paintbrushes, and some stationery just for odds and ends. The books had outdated fonts and, on closer look, were several decades old.

“They must not sell a lot of this. Look at some of this. Those envelopes have so much dust on them—“

“That’s it!” Derpy said in full voice, but there was no one else on the street. “That’s the envelope the letter came in. The one that we’re looking for the recipient!”

“Calm down. Are you sure?”

“I know mail. That’s the same style of envelope that the letter came in, I’m positive.”

Karyn looked up at the store. The windows were dark. “We don’t know that they’re exclusive to this store, but the letter was sent in this town, so it’s entirely possible.”

“We should ask them who bought it.”

“They’re closed, and the odds that they’ll remember someone who bought something twenty years ago...well, we’ve found a clue, and that’s the important thing. Come on, let’s get this stuff back to camp.”

They got back in the car, but both of their minds were on the new lead they had. From the start, Karyn had thought it a fool’s errand, but fate seemed to be stepping in for them, and for the first time she thought that they might actually deliver the letter.

When they reached the camp, daylight was waning and everyone was glad to see Karyn arrive with the barbecue lighter. The fire was fueled with store-bought wood and the fake logs they sold that burned better, and Karyn was happy for that since at least she would not be cold.

They sang a few more songs, but mostly at this point it was conversation, talking about news and current events, sports (which Karyn cared nothing about) and TV shows (which Karyn did care about, though she didn’t want to reveal too much with Derpy listening). Her status as a soon-to-graduate senior carried some weight with the other members of the group who went to her school, and she was asked about some of the upper-level classes and professors. When complaints about tuition and the quality of the campus food were shared, she was quite happy to throw in her lot. And although she didn’t have something to say to everyone, she felt like she belonged.

This worked so well that she didn’t need any of her planned trips to Equestria. Before she knew it, people were walking away from the campfire back to their own tents.

The really late stayers were those who defied the park’s rules and brought a few beers with them. Karyn didn’t really drink, so she excused herself and made for the tent. Once there, she huddled to one side in a sleeping bag and made room for Derpy. They felt free to talk again in low whispers.

“See, this wasn’t so bad,” said Derpy.

“You’re right, it was kinda fun. I don’t see why we couldn’t have done it in a restaurant or such, but iI enjoyed socializing.”

“Because you would have spent all the time on your phone.”

“Whatever.” Karyn rolled to face the canvas. “Let’s go to sleep.”

“Wait, I want to use a spell first.”

“Huh?”

Derpy was reaching for her saddlebag. “It’s a protection spell. Like a force field. It’ll make sure no animals get in here.”

“I’m pretty sure that the camp people have this area taken care of.”

“Yeah, but it’s still wild, like the Everfree. You won’t begrudge me some safety, right? I’ll have a hard time sleeping.”

Karyn nodded assent, though she was unhappy with the bright glow the spell gave off. If questions were raised, she would have to say she was on her cell phone again.

Between the sounds of nature, the remaining conversation, and the light of the campfire, Karyn found it hard to sleep. She let everything get quiet, then spoke in the abrupt way that one does when talking in the dark.

“I’ll stop by the craft store tomorrow on my way back and see if there’s anyone who knows about the envelope. Next week I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

“You said this isn’t your first time camping?”

“Yeah,” said Derpy, her voice fully awake. “One time, with my father. He likes it a lot. It was further out than this, and it was just us. He let me stay up half the night, later than I ever had before.”

“That’s sweet. Hey, Derpy.”

“Yeah?”

“You remember that I said we need to make all our Sundays that we have together be extra fun?”

“Yeah.”

Karyn nestled herself in her sleeping bag and closed her eyes. “This was what I meant.”

Derpy let it drop at that, and Karyn began to nod off. It seemed to her that before she fell asleep she heard the zipper of the tent opening, and figured that Derpy might have to use the restroom herself.

When Karyn awoke, Derpy was gone, but she realized belatedly that she expected this. Monday was a work-day for her, as it would soon be for Karyn. There was mail to deliver. Her own classes, at the reasonable hour of one PM would give her time to drive home, shower, and dress; all while keeping her appointment with a shop in Riverside.

She rose and stretched, packing up her things as were the other campers. The one called Brian came up to her.

“How did you sleep?”

“Just fine.”

“I didn’t get a wink,” he said. “There was a deer or something prowling around the camp, scared me something awful.”

“Deer never hurt anyone.”

He was still shaking off fatigue. “No, it couldn’t have been, because it took off and flew. Actually, from its shape I think it was a horse.”

Karyn perked up as she realized what happened, but covered quickly. “You know horses don’t fly either. Perhaps it was a flying Bigfoot.”

“Ha, yeah. Well, I’m going home, get some sleep there. See ya.”

He walked off, and once he was gone Karyn felt free to shake her head and grin. She threw her bag over her shoulder and strolled to her car.

Author's Note

Chiroknu wanted to see the girls go camping. I don't like that much myself, but here you go.

Meanwhile, here's what you'll see in a regular chapter next week.

Derpy, being the first done, took her dish to the sink and began washing it. “I’m really not. Besides, you’re much smarter than me.”

“No way. You always seem to know what to do.”

“That’s experience, not brains. When you’re my age, you’ll know more than me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, then let’s get all this in so we can get back home and have fun.”

“Sure. Actually, I’ll make us some snacks and refreshing drinks first. Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy put down the table. “Let’s have them in the kitchen.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy finally understood. “Please, just let me help. I promise that I won’t say anything about how you keep it. I won’t even think anything. And I’ll do all the work.”

Standing up like a zombie from its grave, Karyn said, “I can’t let you do that."

Heading into the home stretch, not the time to miss a chapter!

141: Spring Derping

Karyn was used to Derpy arriving with only her saddlebag, so it threw her for a moment when among the grey, blonde, and brown, she saw a spot of white and yellow. It had been so long since she had seen a flower in bloom that she had to recall it from long term memory.

“Brought you a daisy,” said Derpy.

“Thank you.” Karyn dug in a kitchen drawer for a thin vase which she filled with water. “Spring is there in Equestria, huh?”

“Yes. In fact, I opened my windows today for the first time this year. It’s always fun to hear the cracking of the wood that’s settled in for all those months.”

“That would be nice. I still have to wait for it to be warmer.”

“Are you sure?” Derpy sniffed at the air near the glass. “It seems fine to me.”

“I’ve still got the heat on low, it could be throwing you off. But I’ll go ahead if you’re willing to risk it.”

The windows in Karyn’s apartment opened with a crank, and it did have the satisfying sound of separation as she pushed it to the left. But the cold air that came in pushed Derpy back and she said, “I was wrong. You can shut it.”

“Thanks,” Karyn reversed the crank. The window didn’t seal shut but it was closed enough that no wind would get in. “How was your week?”

“Good. Any jobs yet?”

“No, but I don’t mind if you keep asking. I sent out some letters and I kept hitting my schedule. The good thing is that I was planning on doing so even if I didn’t have to talk to you about it.”

“How is that good?” asked Derpy. “You should have been doing that anyway.”

“Yes, but, like, when my parents ask me about sticking to something, it’s like I’m trying to just satisfy them. That’s how it was when I was trying to pick schools. I was just going through the motions. But now, even if I lie and tell you that I sent out resumes, if I didn’t do it, then I’m that much further from finding a job.”

“You shouldn’t lie in any case.”

A twinkle came into Karyn’s eye. “Of course, but I do anyway. You wouldn’t, because you’re a sainted pony. They should have given you the element of honesty.”

“It’s not that, I just never had anything to lie about.”

“Like I said, sainted.”

During this time, they had eaten their breakfast, and Derpy, being the first done, took her dish to the sink and began washing it. “I’m really not. Besides, you’re much smarter than me.”

“No way. You always seem to know what to do.”

“That’s experience, not brains. When you’re my age, you’ll know more than me. No, the only thing I can claim to have on you is cleanliness.” She picked up Karyn’s dish as well.

“I concede the title to you.”

“For example, have you scheduled your spring cleaning yet?”

“Spring cleaning?” Karyn answered by reflex. Derpy seemed to be watching for that answer. If she had had time to think about it, she might have answered, “not yet,” which would have been true while also implying that she was going to. As it was, Karyn was aware of the concept, but considered it one for other people to worry about.

“Yeah, since spring is coming. I was planning to do mine today.”

“I’m surprised that you have to do any. Your house is always spotless.”

Shaking her head in shock, Derpy said, “No way, and I’ll show you.”

Karyn knew what that meant, and prepared herself for the trip to Equestria. The sun warmed her up and she slipped out of her jacket while trying to stay on Derpy’s back and not throw her off balance. When they entered the house, her instincts had her extend the jacket toward the couch, but she remembered they were here to clean, and instead hung it up on the coat rack.

Looking around the house, she still didn’t see much to clean. Just like her own weekly tidying sessions, no papers were out on the tables, nothing that should be in a drawer wasn’t. What more needed to be done? Sure, in her place, the closet could use some organization, but what was a closet for if not to throw things that you didn’t want to deal with? And where were you supposed to put things that just didn’t have a place? Or that you knew you would need in a few weeks, but didn’t want to forget about until then?

“So what are we going to do first?” she asked.

“Well, the couch is too big to move outside, so we’ll have to dust that here. But the coffee table will go.”

She picked up one end, and Karyn grabbed the other, not understanding why the cleaning couldn’t be done in situ. But she brought it outside and then took one end table while Derpy hauled the other. A brazier-type lamp joined the other furniture, where Derpy dumped the ashes onto the lawn. Soon the room seemed quite bare indeed, but then Derpy began rolling up the rug.

The carpet in Derpy’s living room was oval-shaped and had a striped pattern. Karyn had barely noticed it, but with the room empty it was the central piece. She took one end and made for the door, only to find Derpy pulling the other way. “No, bring this upstairs. We’ll do this first.” Asking no questions, Karyn complied. When they got it up, Derpy took it out to the terrace outside Dinky’s room and threw one end over the rail. “Normally I pin it under something, but if you can hold on, great.”

Karyn did, and Derpy took off. Using her wings in time, she was able to keep aloft while beating the rug with large, flat strokes. Each one sent a cloud of dust into the air, and Karyn had to turn her head to get a clean breath. She realized that they probably wouldn’t have vacuum technology in Equestria, so this was necessary.

After changing ends, Derpy continued to beat the rug, and Karyn was amazed how much dust it held. It reminded her of when she had to clean computers with canned air, and how she could hit the same spot in the chip fan or drive bays and get more dust each time.

“Is that it?” she asked once Derpy came back in.

“For the rug, yes. Now we’ve got to sweep out. Or, I’ve got to. Because I’ve only got one broom.”

The broom Derpy brought out looked like it had seen its share of years, but it did the job. Karyn showed her surprise again as Derpy managed to extract unseen dirt from the wood of the floor. Methodically she moved it toward the door and out where the wind would do what it will. After moving the couch she covered that area too.

Karyn thought about it. Unlike humans, who wore clothes all the time and washed them after one or two uses, Derpy would touch her body to her furniture every day. It might be that Equestrians were naturally cleaner and more free from germs, but the regular dirt of the world still clung to them, and so it would be more difficult to stay clean.

She had never considered how systematic cleaning was. By showering every day and doing laundry every week, they avoided living in filth and didn’t need to clean their environments as much. But even they needed occasional maintenance. It brought her back to her idea that Equestria had no vacuums, and that made her realize that they couldn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting. Was that true? Had that only been invented after the vacuum, just the way that tall buildings needed elevators first?

Although Equestria had magic, Earth had a degree of integration that they didn’t.

Karyn didn’t want to seem too petulant, but when Derpy started bringing furniture back in, she repeated her question. “Is that it?”

“For this room, yes. I’ll probably do the bedrooms and the bathroom and the kitchen over the next couple of weeks. It’s spring cleaning, so I’ve got some time left to do it.”

Karyn realized that Derpy thought it meant cleaning during the entire spring. That was even worse than doing it once.

“Well, then let’s get all this in so we can get back home and have fun.”

“Sure. Actually, I’ll make us some snacks and refreshing drinks first. Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Derpy put down the table. “Let’s have them in the kitchen.”

Karyn laughed, and they kept the living room pristene for that day at least.

Once they’d finished up, Derpy returned them to Earth. On walking back to the apartment, they caught the sound of a hose being sprayed, and Derpy diverted to look. Gayle had been washing her car, just finishing the final rinse.

“Hi, Karyn!” she said. “Derpy?”

“Afternoon, Gayle.” It still unnerved Karyn when Derpy spoke on Earth, but this was safe.

“Having fun?”

“Oh, lots. We just did spring cleaning on my house.”

Gayle uncoupled the hose and bled out the water. “Yeah? I was working on that too. I guess we’re all on the same page.”

“You need any help?”

Karyn wished it were she that was invisible, because she wanted to flash Derpy a look to go with her sentiment. Spring cleaning was bad. Doing it for a friend, so that it wasn’t even her place that got the benefit of it, was worse. For her landlady, though she liked her, it was a total waste.

“I don’t think there’s much you can do, but come on in.”

Gayle didn’t even use carpets the way Derpy did, having a bare wood floor in her studio. Though it was one big room she seemed to have it separated into a work and a living area. The work area in the back was the neater, but needed the stronger cleaning, as spots of paint or molding clay had gotten all over.

“This does look like it needs cleaning,” said Derpy.

“I’ll take care of out here today,” Gayle said, gesturing at the area by the door, “but the art part I need to use turpentine and all sorts of nasty chemicals. I’ll want to have the window open for that, and it’s too cold.”

“Yeah, we found that out this morning.” Karyn didn’t want to mess with Gayle’s stuff, but at the same time she wanted to extricate herself while have fulfilled Derpy’s offer of help. So idly she turned the handles of some coffee mugs to be parallel and bounced a stack of papers into rectangular shape, avoiding seeing what they were.

When that was done, she went over and sat by Gayle, as thought trying to indicate that the working portion of this visit had come to an end. But it was not to be. Derpy poked her head into a closet and came out with a feather duster. The mild surprise on Gayle’s face told Karyn that she might will have ducked back to her own home to retrieve it, leaving Earth frozen in time.

With a will, Derpy attacked the art side of the room. “If we clean all the dry dirt, then your scrubbing and chemicals will be more effective.” No one responded and Gayle took no steps to hinder her.

“So,” Gayle began, “magical pony. You know I’ve been bursting with curiosity about her and her world.”

“It’s not as different as you think. Apparently the reason the world exists is because someone dreamed it up, and magic pierces the veil between reality and fiction. The unicorns say that our world might be just as much ‘fictional.’ We just don’t have the magic to do it.”

“OK, pass that over. Tell me about Derpy herself.”

That gave Karyn pause. Where did she begin with Derpy’s personality?

“Well...” she began, then faltered.

“Start with this. Why does she seem so intent upon cleaning?”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Not at all. But I’m not, and she is. You understand something different about someone, you start to get to know them.”

Karyn filed that thought away for later use. “I’m not that neat either. But about Derpy. She insists on my place being clean enough as well. Not so much about being clean as being consistent week to week. She needs a familiar environment. She has to know where to find things.

“A lot of people—a lot of ponies, I mean—think she’s slow or stupid, but she’s really not. Quite the opposite; at times she can be brilliant. But not in the way that we think about genius. She doesn’t see what no one else sees. Instead, she sees what everyone else should see, but gets cluttered in all the minutiae of life. I don’t know if I’m making sense.”

“No, I think I get it. Because I have to do that a lot in my work. A lot of artists are so intent on creating something difficult or smart, but the ones that sell are those who show people what they want to see, what they ought to see.”

Looking over at Derpy flying everywhere and dusting cobwebs out of the overhead lights, Karyn grinned. “She’s definitely off-normal like that. I think it took her a long time to come to grips with that. So she’s a late bloomer. But here we are talking like she’s not in the room.” She got up and walked to the back. Again trying to avert her eyes from any projects that Gayle might not want viewed yet, Karyn tried to flag down Derpy. “Why don’t you go visit with Gayle for a while and I’ll do this? I think you two would be good friends.”

“I’m almost done here.” Derpy wouldn’t be stopped, and even with her one tool, inefficient in many cases, she managed to get a good pile of dirt and dust built up. “Do you have a dustpan?”

Gayle walked over to them. “Yes, but I’ll take care of it later. I want to sketch something out.”

Karyn read her implications, and said, “You’re not going to draw Derpy, are you?”

“Not all of her. I’m just intrigued by how her feathers and those of the duster work together. Parallelism is a thing in art.”

“Come on, Derpy. Gayle’s inspired and we should leave her to work while she’s still got it.” Gayle beamed at her for understanding this.

“OK, sure. I’ll talk to you later, Gayle.”

Beating a path back to her own apartment, Karyn flopped into a chair and effected fatigue. “Whew! That was a lot of work.”

“Yep!” said Derpy. “Only one more place to do.”

Karyn raised her head while the rest of her remained slack. “Huh?”

“If we give your place a spring cleaning too, we’ll have accomplished a lot today.”

It was a struggle to come up with any reason why she couldn’t. “Derpy, you don’t want to clean my apartment. It’s my responsibility to do that. I’ll take care of it during the week.”

“During the week you’re going to be looking for a job. Plus it can be fun to clean.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Please, really, leave it alone for now. If you really want we’ll do it next week so I have a chance to get it in shape first.”

Derpy finally understood. “Please, just let me help. I promise that I won’t say anything about how you keep it. I won’t even think anything. And I’ll do all the work.”

Standing up like a zombie from its grave, Karyn said, “I can’t let you do that. Come on, let’s see if opening the closet will cause an avalanche.”

It didn’t, but there was still plenty of clutter in there, textbooks from back in Karyn’s freshman year that she’d been unable to sell and some odd computer parts that she’d never needed but still worked. “Do you have a trash bag?” asked Derpy.

“Yes, but I don’t know that there’s going to be a whole lot to throw out.”

“Maybe there’ll be some things that you know you don’t need. Even though you might someday it’s easier to get a new one then and have the space now.”

Karyn shrugged. She didn’t know if she believed Derpy but thought it might be a case of having more experience. They attacked the closet, when Karyn noticed they had different methods. Derpy was trying to move objects like a puzzle, while Karyn pulled them out into the middle of the room.

Scowling, Derpy said, “You’re making a bigger mess.”

“That’s how I do it. We’ll make a mess out here, and that’ll be easier to clean. In the closet something might be out of place, but on the floor, everything’s out of place, so we have to place it all. Either in the trash or back in the closet.”

“I guess. It’ll make it harder to clean the floor.”

Karyn decided to be firm. “Listen, Derpy, I understand how important this is to you, but I’m more concerned about getting organized than scrubbing this place down. It’ll be more useful.”

“I said I wouldn’t complain. So we’ll do it your way.”

There was gentleness in Derpy’s voice, so Karyn agreed and pulled more clutter from the closet. Finding a thick garbage bag meant for lawn clippings, she started throwing away things she didn’t want. “This is kind of fun,” Karyn said out of nowhere.

“Really? You’re getting into cleanliness?”

“Not so much that, but being as this is a transition period in my life, it’s fun to get something done that will help that. If I have to find some place closer to a job I get, we’re making it easier to move when I do. So it’s like when you work hard to have fun later.”

Derpy nodded approval, but something still seemed to be eating her. Karyn pursued it until Derpy said, “Can’t we at least do the rug? You know, since I did mine?”

“Didn’t you notice? The carpets here are nailed in.”

“No, I hadn’t. I figured it was just laid in the exact shape of the apartment. Which I approve of.”

“Well, it kinda is, but if you go to the edge, you’ll see.” She pulled the pile away to show metal. “OK, it’s stapled in, not nailed, but same thing.”

“So do you have to unstaple it to beat it clean?”

“No, we vacuum clean it.”

“Oh! I know what that is! Can we use it?”

Karyn blushed. “I don’t actually own one.”

“Maybe Gayle does. I’ll go see if I can borrow one from her...is that OK?”

“Thanks for asking. Yes.”

Derpy had gotten quite adept at quickly going invisible, then moving a short distance, and back to normal. So she knocked on Gayle’s door and went in to explain her errand. Gayle was only too happy to lend.

“It works on the wood floor, but should have a setting for carpet. Tell Karyn I appreciate her keeping the place up.”

She didn’t say anything to contradict Gayle, but returned to the apartment. Karyn had done a good job on the clutter, having the trash bag well loaded. Derpy said, “I’ll haul this out while you start on the vacuuming.”

“Why don’t I take out the trash so that no one sees it floating down to the trash because you’re invisible?”

“Good idea. I guess I can work around the furniture rather than move all that out as well.”

Karyn played with the settings until the vacuum raised up. “Yeah, no need to get crazy.”

“Besides, it’s not like dirt can get under there if it’s flush against the carpet.”

“You’d be surprised,” Karyn didn’t say, swallowing the words at the last moment.

Though the noise was ear-piercing, all the more so because of the small space, Karyn bore with it as she passed the vacuum over the rug. When she would hit some deeper dirt she would hear the satisfying crackle of something substantial being sucked up, and she saw the lines of the wheels making the carpet darker. She hated to admit it, but everything was looking cleaner, just from a trace effort.

Derpy came back in and took over, pushing it all the way into the corners and making sure each pass was perfectly square to the wall. “There,” she said, shutting it off. “We’ll call that a good job.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I guess this doesn’t qualify as making each Sunday as fun as possible.”

Karyn didn’t want Derpy to feel bad. “The reason I said that is that afterwards, they’re not going to be. But I’ll have to find the good in them. I’d rather spend a Sunday cleaning with you than partying alone.”

Derpy smiled and thanked Karyn, then left for home. Once she was gone, Karyn realized that she hadn’t had lunch and was too hungry to go out for dinner. She made for the freezer to get something to eat, but then looked at the rug.

I can’t get crumbs on it. Not a one. Not tonight. I’d have to go ask Gayle for the vacuum again. Just for tonight, let it be clean.

She poured herself a glass of water to make sure something got in her stomach, then trudged outside to head out to eat. Taking one more look back at her apartment, she smiled at the clean floor, then shut the door.

Author's Note

As the weather improves, the girls will have new things to do! Here's what's coming next week.

Derpy smiled, but she put her hooves on Karyn’s shoulders and sat her down. “You keep saying that, like it excuses everything. What is it?”

“You don’t know? But I’ve done it every year.”

“Sorry, I don’t remember.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beyond that were some obscure DVDs and Blu-rays. Karyn looked them over. “Anything good?” muttered Derpy.

“Yeah, but nothing I couldn’t get online if I really wanted, and discs break.”

“Don’t hard drives fail?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t even know how long that is. Hang on, I’ll look it up.” She pulled out her phone. “Two hours?!”

“Then that’s how long we have to wait.”

“Derpy, you can’t mean that."

Come back for fresh new chapters while they're still being written!

142: Road Derp

Each week when Derpy arrived on Earth, Karyn was usually still in her robe, or maybe in pyjamas. Sometimes she would be in the process of getting dressed, but it was rare that she was ready to go and even more unusual that she should be perky in the morning. But that day Derpy found her in shorts and a light shirt, holding a glass and wearing sunglasses.

“Woo! Spring break, yeah!”

“Hey, Karyn! Looking good! What’s going on?”

“Spring break, yo!” Karyn repeated, dancing in the small space.

“You’re so loud. Aren’t you worried that Gayle might still be asleep and you’ll wake her up?”

“Probably she’s up, or I won’t be loud enough. Besides, if I do, spring break!”

Derpy smiled, but she put her hooves on Karyn’s shoulders and sat her down. “You keep saying that, like it excuses everything. What is it?”

“You don’t know? But I’ve done it every year.”

“Sorry, I don’t remember.”

Karyn got sober for the first time. “We get a full week off from classes in the spring semester. It’s kind of like the Thanksgiving break in fall, but that’s only a long weekend. Anyway, lots of students take the opportunity to go on trips or have big parties.”

“And you’ve done that.”

“No, but I have had spring breaks each year. The first year I was too frazzled by school and life in general. Same with last year.”

Derpy did some mental math. “What about second year?”

“I wasn’t old enough to drink.”

“You have to drink?”

Karyn blushed. “Well, you don’t have to. But it’s a big part of the spring break culture. The ideal is that you drive down to some place tropical where it’s warm, dress in revealing and risque clothing, drink until you get sick, do illicit drugs, and basically spend a week that you’ll regret forever.”

“And you want to do this?”

“Well, obviously not the regrets, but I do want to cut loose. It’s kind of a tradition among humans. Like, when people get married, the men and the women all have a party with just their own gender, which is also fairly debaucherous. A lot of people don’t like it when young kids do it, but since I’m going to be an adult soon, it’s my last chance to deny all responsibility and have fun being bad.”

Derpy nodded and said, “Thank you for that patient explanation. I understand now.”

“And you probably disapprove of—“

“Spring break, woo!” Derpy flew around the room.

Karyn broke up laughing, which set Derpy to laughing herself, and they both doubled over for a good minute before calming down. Then they looked at each other, cracked again, and it was another ten seconds before they could continue.

“So, that’s what spring break is.”

“Right, so where do we find some of these parties?”

Karyn was pleased that Derpy hadn’t tried to play the role of her mother, but at the same time she was wary. “You really think it’s OK?”

“Yeah. You’ll go, and I’ll be there invisibly. If I think that you’re in real trouble, I’ll pull you out of there. So you’ll be safe.”

“Thanks, I’ll be the only girl on spring break who’s sure of it.”

“But,” Derpy said, turning to the laptop, “we still need to find somewhere to go.”

Karyn tried a couple of searches, but nothing came up to her liking. “I’m not sure that this is the best way. The point is that they’re supposed to be spontaneous parties. I mean, I could look for ‘best spring break bars,’ but they’re probably all in south Florida and California...New Orleans.”

“Can we go there?”

“Ha, not without planning ahead and flying there. Not on your back I mean. In a plane. Costs a lot of money.”

Derpy’s face fell.

“I wonder,” Karyn continued, “if the stories about spring break aren’t half made up, or at least strongly exaggerated. Because I think you would have a lot more people in major trouble—I mean like winding up in the hospital or worse—if they were true.”

“Well, everyone likes to enhance their own stories.”

“Yes. And going back to what I said before about money, that could be it too.”

Again Derpy had to dig back in her mind to remember what Karyn had said. “You mean that they fly there?”

“No, what I’m saying is that the ones who go on spring break to those resort areas are the same ones whose parents bought them a car when they were still in high school. So not me. It isn’t right for me to be envious, but at the same time, it would be nice if everyone could have the same kind of spring break, not just the privileged.”

“That’s right, but we’ve got to be practical. What can we do to make our own fun spring break?”

“Unfortunately we’re really far from a beach.” Karyn tried to map out in her head where the closest one was, but realized that it was probably Mountauk Point in Equestria, and they certainly wouldn’t have any spring break parties there.

“What I’d prefer, if we had to have some kind of real fun, would be to do something like when we went to the convention. You remember that?”

“Of course I do...”

“Karyn. I think the opening ceremonies are starting.”
“Meh. We can go, but I wouldn’t expect much out of it,” said Karyn.

“Hey!” Derpy waved her hooves. “This isn’t one of those times where we sit around and reminisce over past adventures, but not doing anything new today.”

“Good point. But even if there was a convention going on, we would have had to register for it a while ago and plan the trip.”

“Seems like everything requires planning. Isn’t there anything like the convention, but is open regularly?”

Karyn thought about it. “Actually, I’ve read about a big store where there are lots of geeky things sold. But it’s way far away.”

“So again, something we’d have to plan for.”

“Unless we got in the car now and drove for two hours.”

“OK.”

Karyn was about to protest to Derpy that she had missed sarcasm once more. Then she thought twice and reckoned that it wasn’t sarcasm so much as presenting a ridiculous idea that Derpy had assumed was normal, both because she was Derpy and tended to do that and because she was unfamiliar with the ways of Earth. But then she thought a third time and realized that it fit in exactly with what she wanted to do with spring break.

“Road trip!”

“Yeah! Though, aren’t most of our trips on the road?”

“They are,” Karyn said, grabbing a few things for the car, “but a road trip refers to a long journey by car. It goes back to when the country’s roads were first all connected by highways, and you could go just about anywhere by car. Before that it was all about train trips or boat trips. But the car has more freedom, because you can just pick up and go.”

“Although, we can’t go too far. I have to work tomorrow.”

“Yeah. You should be younger and in school like me. Then we could go all week. We’ll spend lots of money and waste gas and be irresponsible.”

Derpy looked like she was about to argue, but followed Karyn to her car. “Do you at least know where you’re going?”

“I know the city. Once we get there, I’ll GPS it.”

They strapped in for the trip. Karyn had nearly a full tank in the car, so for the moment she wasn’t worried about gas. Once they got on the highway, she put it in cruise control and hung out lazily in the right lane until she came up on a slower car. The cruise would have run her into it, so she accelerated past. The sound of the engine had its own rhythm, so the flipped on the radio and found a music station playing a dance song. She rolled down Derpy’s window and her own, letting the wind catch her hair and Derpy’s mane.

“This is fun!” Derpy said. “Normally when we’re driving I’m focused on where we’re going. But since it’s so far away today I can just relax.”

“Yeah, driving’s a great stress relief. If it were free I’d do it all the time.”

They cruised on and didn’t speak. Karyn leaned her elbow out the window and drove with one hand. Derpy thought that this was less safe, but she adopted the pose itself and found it comfortable. Sometimes they would shift and Karyn would drive with her left hand and rest her right on the shift, even though it was an automatic.

After an hour or so they had fallen into flow state, and didn’t notice how hungry or tired they were. The first shock back to reality was when the radio station they had been listening to—not caring about commercials or DJ banter—started to have static interference. They were getting out of range.

“We’re making good time,” said Karyn as she turned off the radio. “We’ll stop off for drive-through. And while we’re there we’ll put on my MP3 player instead of trying to hunt around for other stations.”

“Road trips must have been harder when you didn’t have all that stuff. You would have had paper maps and you wouldn’t know where to go to find music.”

“You’re right. That’s why I don’t hold with people who are like Luddites and think that technology is bad.”

“It is what you do, after all.” Even though Derpy was invisible, she hunched down as Karyn pulled into a restaurant.

“Yes, but it’s why I chose this. OK, clam up and let me order.”

Choices were limited on the road, and there was no all-vegeterian restaurant, so Karyn had to make a meal out of side dishes. Her order was heavy enough for two, and it was difficult for her to get the person taking her order to understand. But the relaxed day gave her patience, and she didn’t get upset with him.

Once they had their food, Derpy asked, “You want to just park and eat?”

“Nah, that’ll cost us the time we’ve made. We’ll eat on the road and make a mess of the car. I’ll have it cleaned when I get back.”

The time it took them to eat was just about all they had left for the highway, which was fortunate as Karyn needed two hands to navigate the surface streets.

The city wasn’t as urban as the one by where Karyn lived, nor was it as rustic as Riverside. Parking was available in several municipal lots, including one right by where they wanted to go.

As they got out, Karyn turned back to the car and removed her jacket, tossing it in the back seat. “It’s nice enough that I don’t need this, especially since it doesn’t fit the look for spring break.” She had worn one of her more daring outfits, a spaghetti-strap top that showed her bare shoulders. Back when she could adjust her figure at will, she would try even more low-cut tops, but now she was somewhat embarrassed about her figure.

“Let’s go find this place you want to see,” said Derpy.

“Yes, and I might want to pick up some sunblock as well. I didn’t expect it to be so warm.”

They found the store, a brightly-colored place with a Japanese name. As they entered, Derpy realized that she would be hard-pressed to stay out of everyone’s way. The aisles were narrow and the store was packed to the ceiling with merchandise. Karyn’s first stop was a glass case full of model figurines.

“Oh, I remember that show!” she said, pointing at some elaborately designed robot. “Haven’t thought about it in years.” Looking at the price tag, well into the triple figures, she gave a low whistle and moved on, afraid to bump anything and be forced to buy it.

Beyond that were some obscure DVDs and Blu-rays. Karyn looked them over. “Anything good?” muttered Derpy.

“Yeah, but nothing I couldn’t get online if I really wanted, and discs break.”

“Don’t hard drives fail?”

Karyn scowled at the empty air. “I keep excellent backups.”

She browsed around some more before finally deciding on a mini-figure. She had hoped to see more pony merchandise, but she thought that perhaps hardcore geeks weren’t as open to the pony thing. She didn’t see anything in pony that she wanted to spend money on, but at the same time she didn’t feel right not supporting the store.

Back out on the street Derpy had room to stretch. “What should we do now?”

“Let’s take this back to the car first of all. I didn’t spend too much on it, but at the same time I don’t want it damaged or stolen. Or forgotten by me which is most likely.”

“And then?”

“Well, we’re here to have fun, right?”

“I am having fun.”

“But you didn’t do anything.”

“You’re having fun, and I’m enjoying being with you when you do it.”

That was enough for Karyn, who skipped down to the parking lot and flashed open the door to get it in. “Ooh,” she said, “I’m going to enjoy getting in the car when we go home.”

“Huh?”

“It’s the best feeling, when you come in from the cool air to a car that’s been warmed by the sun. With your open carts you can’t know it.”

“That does sound nice...where are you going now?”

Karyn was heading toward a corner. “I want to go into that bar.”

“A bar?”

“Yes, Derpy. I know this isn’t a real spring break, but I want to at least get close to being edgy. It’s not enough just to be on a road trip and go to a geek store. I want to test the waters of being an adult. And since I don’t know where to buy drugs and since I’m too protective of my body to go pick up a guy, that leaves that bar.”

Into Derpy’s voice came the same tone she used when talking to Dinky. “I don’t know. Don’t bad things happen in bars?”

“Yes, but this doesn’t look like a dive, and it’s not the middle of the night yet. I won’t get drunk, but I just want one or two.”

They entered the bar. What Karyn didn’t say, but thought about, was that if she got in trouble, she was counting on Derpy to stop anything really bad from happening. She was still worried about being found out, but that would be OK so long as she wasn’t hurt.

The bar was sparsely populated, and the bartender got to her quick, but Karyn didn’t know what she wanted. A drink menu was laying on the bar itself, and that saved her from having to ask what things were. Eventually she decided on a tropical drink with fruit juice mixed with liquor. The bartender gave a knowing smile, as though expecting her to order something like that.

When it came, she sipped nervously at first, but then found that she could barely taste the alcohol at all and drank with more vigor. “How is it?” asked Derpy.

“Interesting. Tasty. Let it actually get into my system first. See, I’m thinking that if I get a job I’m going to need to learn how to drink with coworkers. I’ll want to be able to enjoy it without getting crazy. Of course, it’ll help if other people are paying for them.”

As though she had sparked the idea, a young man came over and sat down on the bar stool next to her. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“What’re you drinkin’?” he said with an accent.

Karyn had to check the drink list again to remember what it was called. She giggled at herself as she told him.

“Get you another?”

“I’m not sure about that. You from around here?”

“Yeah, I go to the college.”

“Oh yeah? Finishing this year too?”

He blushed. “No, I’m a freshman.”

“Oh.” Karyn smiled again and finished her drink.

They shared a little more polite conversation, but when Karyn was done she left the bar and walked back across the street with a smile on her face. Derpy said, “I think he was trying to hit on you.”

“I know! It was awesome. If he’d been a little older...and if I hadn’t had you with me, then I might have spent some time with him.”

“You’re happy about it?”

“Yes. It makes a girl feel good for people to want her and think she’s pretty. Derpy, you were married once. Did you really give up on stallions forever after that?”

Derpy usually responded quickly because she knew that Karyn couldn’t see her and needed sound cues. But she didn’t say anything for a while. “It never came up again. Nopony wants a mare with issues and a daughter.”

“Somepony must. But even if not, wouldn’t you like it if they flirted with you?”

“I guess I would.”

Karyn was relieved that she hadn’t offended Derpy, and wondered if finding her a special sompeony wouldn’t be a good project for her. “Well, don’t worry about it. Let’s go home.”

“Now?”

“Unless there’s something else that you want to do.”

Derpy swooped in between Karyn and the car. “But you’ve been drinking!”

“I slowly sipped one fruity drink after a large meal while talking to someone. I think I’m OK to drive.”

“No! The very fact that you think you can means that your judgment is impaired. Come on, give me your keys.”

Karyn made no motion for her purse. “Are you going to be the designated driver?”

“No, we’re going to wait until the alcohol leaves your system.”

“I don’t even know how long that is. Hang on, I’ll look it up.” She pulled out her phone. “Two hours?!”

“Then that’s how long we have to wait.”

“Derpy, you can’t mean that. I’m going to be fine to drive.”

Derpy slammed her hooves together. “Sorry, but rules are rules.”

Karyn wished that she had lied and said one hour, but it surprised her so much. “What if we take a little walk around and see what the rest of the city has to offer. That will speed up my metabolism so that I’ll be sober sooner.”

“Well, we should wait the full two to be sure, but I guess an hour-forty-five wouldn’t be too bad.”

Karyn hoped that Derpy’s sense of time wasn’t as good as her sense of space and direction, and that she could shave some off of that. But she put her keys back in her purse and took a walk around.

It wasn’t a city she’d particularly like living in. Making a mental note to not focus her job search on this area, she passed historical areas that seemed like the worst sort of tourist traps. Beyond that were more bars and restaurants. Neither of them were hungry, and going into the bars would have been counterproductive.

“Is there any water around here?” asked Derpy. “You could at least have that aspect of your spring break.”

“No, not in this city. I guess I know I’ll never have that full experience, where I get plastered or take my shirt off on camera. I don’t want that; I’m too sensible. But part of me wants to want that.”

“I don’t really understand, but if it’s something you think you should do, maybe you ought to.”

Karyn thought before speaking. “Here’s where this comes from. Because I’ve been looking for jobs I’ve been reading tips on how to act, and some of them say to make sure there are no compromising pictures of you on social media. Don’t show yourself drinking, and such. But, what, are you supposed to wait until you get hired to do that? Until you’ve worked there a year? Until you’ve retired? Because I don’t see a lot of forty-year-olds cutting loose and living like teenagers. And that’s not fair. The implication is that hard partying is bad, and that you’re better off if you don’t want to. Well, maybe it’s a rebellious streak, but when someone tells me something is forbidden, I want to do it more.”

“Pinkie Pie parties hard.”

“Ha, yes, she does, but not in that way. More like Berry Punch, though even she doesn’t take her alcoholism to where it can hurt her.”

Karyn turned her steps back toward the car with the aim of driving home one way or another. She wanted to get back on familiar roads before the sun went down, and Derpy would have to go then anyway.

“Are you sure you’re fully sober?” asked Derpy.

“Yes. Probably after having the Apple’s cider I can hold my liquor fine.”

“All right, but I’ll be ready to take the wheel at a moment’s notice.”

“Thanks, Derpy.”

“You’re safe with me.”

Karyn shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. Thanks for thinking that I’m too impaired to drive. It’s the one way this is like the worse of the spring breaks. Even though you’re sincere, it’s like you’re pretending this was all that it could have been.”

“And besides, by doing it all in one day, you have the rest of the week off.”

“There is that. Or rather, I have the rest of the week to look for a job. I hope I get an interview this week, because it’ll be easy to schedule.”

Derpy leaned the seat back as Karyn pulled on to the highway. “And you say you’re not responsible,” she said as they headed for home.

Author's Note

Next week, we have the penultimate of the F## chapters, based on a suggestion by Granpa_Pony, who last gave me the idea for having Karyn and Derpy watch Rainbow Rocks together.

F11: Hay is for Derps

Derpy’s powers of observation were always on high alert when she would enter Karyn’s apartment, though this was usually for the purposes of making sure it was clean. But that day she noticed that Karyn had put out her suit to hang on the wall. “Did you get a job?” she asked, hoping for the best response.

“Not quite, but I have an interview.”

“That’s awesome! I’m so proud of you.” She flew in for a hug.

Karyn returned the hug and smiled, but she disclaimed it as anything good. “I’ve sent out enough applications that by the law of averages something good had to happen. Besides, it’s doubtful that they’ll hire me and even if they do I don’t know if I’ll take it.”

“Why not?”

“I know I probably shouldn’t think this way, but I want to make sure I get something good to start out with. See, the trend with jobs today, especially in tech, is to change them every so often, and that’s how you advance. But I’m not sure I’m fit for that. I want to get one or two, maybe three jobs in my life and just work my way up within the company.”

Derpy’s mood fell only a little from when she thought that Karyn had completed her quest. “I can understand that. While I’m not ecstatic about having worked for the post office all my life, at least I’ve always worked under Mr. Mintsugar and I know his style.”

“Exactly. I want to find a good boss and a good role and just fit into it.”

“I hope you find one as good as Mr. M.”

“Yeah, I haven’t talked to him much, but he seemed like a nice stallion,” Karyn said. As soon as she did, she saw Derpy turn away and worried that she had had said something wrong. But Derpy turned back and acted like nothing had happened.

“He is. And a real hard worker too. I’ve seen him lift heavy mailbags and carry them a long time.”

“I can imagine, and—“ Finally it hit her. The week before she had mentioned how Derpy hadn’t been pursuing any stallions since her divorce so many years before. Now she had brought up one that she saw every day. “I’m sorry!” she same out with.

“For what?”

Karyn stumbled over her words. She wasn’t sure how to apologize without making poking at the wound further. “Well, I mean...talking about stallions...and...you don’t...”

“I don’t understand. You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“No? I thought you were sore because I mentioned you don’t date much.” It was the best she could do.

“What? Oh! Right, from last week. No, not at all. Karyn, please understand, that’s something I’ve learned to live with.”

“OK. I’m glad I didn’t offend you.”

Derpy looked away again. “Although come to think of it, there are such things as stallions on Earth, right?”

“Huh?”

“Well, I mean, ponies are a thing here, right?”

It struck Karyn as a non sequitur. “There are some, technically, but not the kind you’d want to meet.”

“Maybe I would. It might help me understand your world more if I encountered the part of it that’s closest to me.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

Karyn heard it, but it didn’t seem like Derpy’s heart was in what she was saying. “Is this something you actually want to do? Or did somepony else ask you?”

“Found me out, did you? Yeah, a bunch of the ponies around town—ones I don’t talk to much like Roseluck or Daisy—want to know about ponies in this world that I go to. The word gets around, but I don’t think that it’s as clear as it could be. They must think that there are a bunch of ponies they could make friends with.”

“Maybe we could ask Twilight to start up the pony tours again. Otherwise put it on her to explain it.”

Derpy shrugged and said, “But it’s still me who comes here every week, so one way or another, I’m the one who gets asked.”

“But you can tell them that the equines here aren’t like Equestrian ponies, right?”

“They don’t listen. They insist on me giving details. I’ve spent some time on the internet looking at stuff, but they say it’s not the same as seeing one in the flesh, and I might have to agree with them there.”

Karyn had already made for the computer to use the internet to get Derpy the information she wanted, but balked when she heard this. Then she changed tacks and tried to find out if there was any place to go see horses. After a few searches she said, “It looks like there’s a dude ranch about an hour away. That’s the best place to go. There are probably some proper horse places, but they won’t be too happy if we show up.”

“Can we do the dude ranch thing?”

She browsed deeper into the web site. “I don’t know that we can afford the full package. It’s a kind of touristy place that’s built to rope in people’s dollars.”

“Maybe I could make it up by doing some work for them.”

“Yeah, see, that’s what I’m talking about with the differences between you and Earth horses. Actually, yes, you could make scads of money because people would pay to see a real pegasus, especially if you flew. But, you know, you can’t.”

Derpy bowed her head from having momentarily forgotten the rules. “So we can’t go?”

“I was thinking that we might say that we’re looking into it and see if they’ll just let us look around. I mean, let me. You’ll be invisible, of course.” Karyn felt she needed to stress this again. “I could say I’m thinking about a group outing, and then just not follow up. Even if we don’t get a full tour, we can see some horses.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Karyn put on a pair of jeans that she didn’t mind getting dirty, and they got in the car.

It surprised Derpy a little that Karyn didn’t put the location into the GPS, and she mentioned it once they had gone a few miles down the road.

“I have a pretty good idea of where it is, and once we’re in the general area I’m sure a ranch will stick out. It’s not like I can just drive by it and miss it. Though finding the entrance might be an issue given that there has to be a lot of fencing. Well, I always have it if I need it.”

By this time, Derpy had figured out, roughly, the direction they were going. “Isn’t this by Riverside, where we went camping? And before that, skydiving?”

“Near there, but we have to go past.”

“Why is all of this outdoorsy stuff there?”

Karyn considered. “Riverside is a small town, and in olden days it used to be a farming town. Since farming’s done in the Midwest these days, places have to figure out new uses for land. So campgrounds and parachuting and dude ranches can spring up.”

“And, the aquarium?”

“That was probably just a coincidence. They built that because they had money to do it.”

Derpy’s tone got very ethereal. “You know what else is coincidental?”

“What’s that?”

“Every time we come out to this area, we find another clue about that letter that we’re trying to get to its destination. It’s eerie.”

“Well, we found out that it was sent here last time. So it makes sense.”

“Speaking of which, did you call at the store where they sold the envelope.”

“I did,” said Karyn, recalling her embarrassment. “They said it was probably one of theirs but there was no way they could remember whom they sold it to.”

“So that’s a dead end. I just don’t know, though. It feels as though someone or something outside of the norm is guiding us every time we go by that town.”

“I don’t get you.”

Derpy waved her hooves in the air to help her talk. “It’s like, imagine if your life destiny were sequenced out in numbers. But all of the Sundays we’ve come out here have been a different destiny, with a different set of numbers.”

Karyn had no way to tell what the feeling was that Derpy experienced, so she said, “Well, if someone is messing with our destinies, let’s hope they have a happy ending in mind.”

With that, they let the conversation lapse and concentrated on the increasingly bucolic roads. About a mile outside of town, even the power lines ceased to exist, and for a stretch they could have been in the middle of nowhere.

But then they came upon a wooden fence and determined that it was the ranch they were looking for. The entrance was right at the beginning and so they didn’t have much of a chance to see it by car. Parking was on the grass.

When Karyn opened the door, she knew what to brace for, but when the smell hit Derpy, she gagged. “Sweet Celestia!” It was the first time Karyn had heard her swear. “What’s going on here? Is this some place where they mistreat the ponies?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s a difference of how Earth horses digest things. From what I understand they produce quite a lot of waste. And they can’t be trained on how to go only in certain places. Probably all this field is covered in dung, which dries out and fertilzes the ground. But yeah, it’s going to smell.”

“I’m still not sure I like this,” said Derpy, and Karyn could hear the flap of her wings as she stayed in hover. Wisely she wasn’t stepping on the ground, and Karyn wished that she had some rattier shoes to wear. Likely she would get rid of them after the outing.

At the office she met with a receptionist and said that she was interested in touring. She didn’t even have to lie that much as she was told to make herself at home. They seemed nearly as friendly as the Apple family was.

They didn’t have to go far before reaching a stable. There for the first time Derpy saw a proper Earth horse.

“So, what do you think?” asked Karyn.

“I guess...they just don’t look right to me. The joints are all in the proper place, not like they are with you...meaning no offense! I mean, they’re right for the way you work. I’m getting sidetracked. Their faces are so long and not pony-like. And I hope they wouldn’t be insulted if I say that they don’t look that intelligent.”

“Remember, they’re horses, not ponies. Not exactly the same species as you. And these are for riding and such.”

Derpy scoped the ground for a clean area, then landed gingerly. She stared at the horse for a long time, then said, “I wish that I could go visible here. I can’t explain what the differences are between us without seeing it. I’d like to talk to that stallion and see if I can’t bridge the gap.”

“You can’t.” Karyn was worried Derpy would carry it out.

“I know. It’s just frustrating.”

“Besides, he’d probably be scared of you. Like, humans have this thing called the uncanny valley where things that look not-quite-human unnerve us. You could be the same way to that horse. And he’s powerful enough that if he got scared, he could do some damage. I’ve heard of people who’ve been seriously hurt because a horse kicked or trampled them.”

Derpy brooded and took off again. “Can you take some pictures? Maybe once we’re back at your place I can make the comparison that I want to.”

Karyn saw nothing wrong with this, and she’d been told she could do whatever she liked within reason, so she pulled out her phone and started snapping. “There are some phones that can use parallax to make 3D pictures. If this doesn’t do what you want, I’ll have to see about getting one to get the kind of image you want.”

“Don’t think about upgrading your phone already!”

“I was more thinking about borrowing one from a friend, but if I could....There, how about that?”

Derpy scanned some of them. Karyn reflected that the cover of the Bluetooth worked here, because she could have sent pictures to someone and be looking at them together.

“It’s good,” Derpy said, “but I want to utilize the time I have here as best I can. I’m going to try to talk to him.”

“Be careful.”

Karyn stood back, hoping that nothing would go wrong. But the horse reared and swished its tail like it was batting away flies. At this point some of the ranch hands came within earshot, so Karyn couldn’t yell for Derpy like she wanted to. What she did was to back off and hope that Derpy would get the message. The hands steadied the horse and rubbed its neck, unsure of why it was spooked. They looked at Karyn who played innocent, and they concluded that no one as meek and small as she was could have been a danger.

She walked on away from the stables. Irrespective of the incident, it was a nice place to be, if you could ignore the smell. Karyn could see herself spending a vacation on a place like this, dressed like the popular images of Applejack, relaxing. Of course, she told herself, having a vacation depended on having a job first.

Once she was away, she ventured to ask, “Derpy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine, but how rude he was! I’ve never in my life been treated so roughly. Someone needs to teach that stallion a thing or two. Are all of them like that on Earth?”

Karyn didn’t know how to answer that. No matter how many times she tried, Derpy just couldn’t accept that Earth ponies weren’t the same as Earth Ponies.

“Not all of them are going to be as skittish as that one. Some are quite gentle, because they’ve been ridden and are used to it. Others, the wild horses, can run so hard and fast that no human can catch them.”

“So they’re all different, just like ponies.”

“Yes, but not really. That stallion shooed you away because he can’t grasp the concept of an invisible flying horse.”

Derpy put more emphasis in her voice. “Which is why I wanted to be visible. And I wouldn’t have taken off around him if it would have helped make friends.”

Karyn didn’t know how to tell her that she believed there was too great a barrier to ever achieve friendship.

They continued walking, having found a path near the outside. Derpy felt confident in the footing, and the clip-clop of her hooves was, for once, not out of place. Karyn didn’t know what more Derpy was looking for.

At last they came upon a different section, where more activity was going on. A young lady was riding a horse while wearing full gymkhana garb, complete with the hemishpherical black hat. She put the horse through its paces, dancing around poles and having it trot sideways. The horse looked well-groomed, fit for a show.

The sound of Derpy’s hooves stopped, so Karyn held up. “What is it?”

“She’s driving that horse.”

Karyn looked again. “Yes, she is.”

A long pause. “I think I get it now. When you ride on me, I’m the one who decides where to go. But not that one. It’s all on the human. You’d never do that to me, force me to turn with your knees and feet.”

“Of course not! Because you’re people.”

“And they’re not. I guess I’ve already found the people of Earth.”

Karyn had nothing to say to that.

“Unless—” Derpy continued. “No, I forgot. You don’t have unicorns or pegasi here. All the ponies and horses are like that one, ready to be ridden.”

“Exactly.”

“But wait. You knew that I was a pegasus pony. You didn’t have to be told what a unicorn was. How did you know? Did you used to have them on Earth but they all went away?”

Karyn spoke quickly. “No, it’s not like that. Unicorns are made up creatures here on Earth. Probably what happened is that people saw horses, and they saw creatures with a single horn on their forehead like rhinoceroses and combined the two. Why they’re associated with magic, that I can’t say.”

“Well, they do magic. It’s only natural that you’d associate them with it.”

“But again, we don’t have any unicorns here. We have an idea of magic, and an idea of horned creatures, and an idea of horses. But why did people conflate them?”

“That’s what I’m asking!”

Derpy’s voice was heading up, and Karyn was worried about it carrying in the open fields, so she started leading them back to the car. “And so am I. Because nobody knows. It happened so long ago, when history was just barely being recorded. So unicorns became legends.”

“And what about pegasi?”

“Same thing. Although...well, let’s talk about it when we’re back home and I can relax. And do research if need be.”

She drove back along the same route that they had come. Clouds were gathering ominously, but Derpy’s instincts told her that rain wouldn’t be for a while yet. She was glad to see them, though; they fit her mood. All week she had thought that meeting the ponies of Earth would be something fun, but it was one of the biggest disappointments.

And there was no equivalent for Karyn. Equestria had no humans other than Lyra’s, and he was an immigrant. Nothing even like them. Derpy remembered that humans were evolutionary offspring of primates, and there might have been monkeys in distant parts of Equestria, but Karyn wouldn’t go seeking them hoping to make a connection.

They made it back with the skies more threatening, and sat down inside. “Now, tell me about pegasi.”

“Actually, I was never even sure that pegasi was the correct plural of pegasus. Because in the legends, there was only one Pegasus.”

“What was her name?”

“His name was just Pegasus. It wasn’t a race of horses or anything. Or maybe there were in some legends. But the famous one had just Pegasus. He came about because in the old days, travel was so difficult. So if a hero had a horse like Pegasus, he could scale any mountain or cross any ocean. Humans always envied the birds who could fly, so even if we couldn’t ourselves, we wanted our steeds to do it.”

Derpy nodded. “If I ever revealed myself, you think humans would take me for this Pegasus?”

“Well, plenty of people know who you are already. And he was always depicted with very big wings, not like yours. But they would understand.”

“So how did you come to know about Equestria?”

Karyn put away the computer that she had looked for pictures of Pegasus on. This was something she needed no help with. “The whole My Little Pony think started about thirty years ago, before I was even born. I think my mom played with the toys. Little girls have always thought that horses were fun. I’m not sure why. But it was something obvious for a toy line. And since they like magic and pretty wings as well, they made unicorn and pegasus ponies as well.”

“You think my wings are pretty?”

“The prettiest. Anyway, long story short, they eventually made stories of Equestria. How it tied in with your world actually existing, that’s magic way above my pay grade.”

Derpy stopped paying attention after the compliment.

The rest of their day together was spent in idle pursuits, and it wasn’t until Derpy was out back of the apartment ready to go home that she remembered something. “Hey!” she cried.

“What’s up?”

“We went to Riverside, but we didn’t actually find out anything about the letter. Remember that I told you we always did?”

Karyn laughed. “In the first place, we went to the outskirts of Riverside. So it wouldn’t count. Second, that’s a coincidence, not something that’s necessarily cause and effect.”

“Yeah, but I had hope. Sometimes I wonder if we can really do it.” Derpy pulled the letter out of her bag again. She looked over the primitive bar code that had let them trace it to the town of Riverside, but beyond that, and knowing what shop the envelope came from, they were no closer to finding the recipient. The penmanship on the front didn’t help either. Surely only a child would address a letter to only a first name, but it seemed like fine handwriting. “I wonder where you are now, Beverly,” Derpy said, apostrophizing the recipient.

With no warning of thunder, rain from the low-hanging cloud dotted the pavement and splashed the grass. Derpy’s first move was to get the letter under cover, then she ran for the shelter of the apartment rather than take the quicker step of just magicking herself back home.

“Pleh,” said Karyn. “Stupid rain.”

“Yeah, and I’ll have to go out in it. Well, it isn’t raining back home, so I can air dry on the way down. I’m just glad the letter didn’t get soaked.” She took it out again and went wide-eyed. A single drop had fallen on it, right at the first letter of the name on the front. Some of the ink seemed to be washing off, but Derpy recognized what was happening. “Look, Karyn!”

“It’s getting wet.”

“Not that. This isn’t all ink. It looks like a grease spot or something. See, the first letter’s changing.”

Karyn peered closer. It was running, but she could still see it, and for the first time, she realized that the capital B wasn’t fully formed. The thin and fancy stroke was fatter at the bottom. “Holy smoke, you’re right! It’s not Beverley, it’s Peverley.”

“Does that help?”

“It’s a much less common name. There couldn’t have been too many Peverleys in Riverside twenty years ago. Maybe we’re closer to delivering this than we think.”

“Fortunate drop of rain, wasn’t it?”

Author's Note

As we come down to the end we have some guest stars coming in. Let's take a peek into the next chapter.

“I’m sorry!”

Coming alert, Derpy said, “What? What happened? What did Karyn say? Or was it me?”

“No, it wasn’t you. I brought up a painful memory that I shouldn’t have.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Do you think that’ll happen to us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will our friendship be like that and diminish and fade out?”

Since she hadn’t started the car yet, Karyn slapped in her Bluetooth and turned to face Derpy directly. “Listen, don’t let that silly piece of paper get to you."

Be sure to read that one when it comes out.

143: Netderping

Derpy was sipping coffee and waxing nostalgic. “Do you remember,” she asked, “when it was mostly just me coming here, and you not so much going to Equestria? The first time, you know, I brought you over to Twilight’s and she got so freaked out about me bringing you home.”

“I do remember. It was a long time ago. Is this just idle remembrance?”

“Not exactly. I think it’s funny how Twilight’s changed over the years.”

Karyn nodded to invite more information. “You don’t say?”

“Yes. Why, this week, she practically wants you there.”

“You don’t say. Or rather, you do say, and I suspect that everything you said was leading up to the fact that Twilight wants a favor and you want me to do it.”

With no response, Derpy put her muzzle in her coffee cup to hide her blush.

“Well, it’s not like I mind,” Karyn continued. Can you give me details?”

“Somehow or other, Twilight got wind of the fact that I have a computer now. Maybe somepony saw it on a visit to my house and word got around. But I think she’s curious about one of her own.”

“I’ll be willing to help, but I don’t want it to become a precedent. I can’t be computer sales and support to an entire dimension. Although…”

As Karyn got on her back, Derpy said, “Yes?”

“It would be an interesting challenge to network them. Yours and hers, I mean. See if I could get you two e-mail or IM or something. There aren’t a whole lot of uses for a computer off network, not that I’m used to.”

“Maybe we could be better friends if we had that.”

They teleported to Equestria and made good time to Twilight’s castle, where they sat and conferred about the computer.

“If you like,” Karyn was saying, “I can spec one out for you, but I’ll need you to get Earth money in some way, because they won’t accept bits.”

Twilight had offered drinks, but since Karyn and Derpy had just had coffee, they declined. Twilight sipped at hers. “Actually, I was planning on duplicating Derpy’s by magic. It would be easiest if I just made an exact copy.”

“You don’t think that’s cheating and unfair?”

“Why? I’m not taking hers away, I’m just making a brand new one.”

Karyn thought about arguing, but realized that she had been on the other end of the “You wouldn’t download a car” debate. She just never expected to have a practical application for the ethical question.

“There’s one thing that we don’t have in Equestria, and that’s an Ethernet cable. I’ll have to get one if I want to network them.”

Twilight asked what that was. After an explanation, she said, “I don’t know that we need that.”

“No, it’ll be good. And it’s the one interesting thing I see about this little experiment. I set up computers all the time. Making a network will be a good learning experience, even if it’s only two computers. Now, the cabling itself could be a thorny issue. You’re a ways away from Derpy. Normally on Earth, we’d run cables through the air or bury them underground. I’m not sure if you want to do that, but the other option would be wireless repeaters every so often between here and there.”

Derpy understood some of what Karyn had said, and looked forward to Twilight being in the dark for once. But she had picked it up from the context and said, “The burial option might be the best. Out of sight.”

“I think so too, but getting somepony to dig…hm. This might not be possible after all.”

“Why’s that?”

“If I remember, Ethernet has a maximum length of about a hundred meters. There must be cabling that can handle more, fiber optic probably, but then I’ll need a more complex switch.”

Derpy shuffled over with her bag. “There must be a way to make it work magically.”

“Good thinking,” said Twilight. “What if I expended an area of space underground between Derpy’s house and here such that the actual distance is only fifty meters or so?”

Karyn looked at her, agog. “If you can pull that off, we’ll try it. I don’t know if that will mess with the signal, but we’ll give it a go.”

Now it was Twilight’s turn to scowl. “I don’t think I can do it. Not from here. There are limits of that kind of space magnification. But we could do it from the library, and that would be a more appropriate place for a computer anyway. Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

Something nagged at Karyn, but Derpy was already following Twilight in the air, so Karyn had to get on her back to keep up, and the thought was lost.

Neither of the two was a fast or steady flyer, and they stayed at a good distance to avoid crashing into each other. It let Derpy have a private conversation with Karyn.

“I’m sorry to take your day off and make you do work. If you want to drag your hooves—I mean your feet—on this, it’ll be OK.”

“No, I’m genuinely interested. I do want to try out building a two-station network, and besides, Twilight’s a good friend to have. Setting this up could help.”

Derpy nodded, which lost her some altitude. She pumped to regain it. “Like you said, if we can e-mail each other.”

“And more than that, just doing the work for her might lead her to do more favors for us. A princess has a lot of power.

“But more than that, I think it could be good for ponies if technology spread throughout. As I said, I don’t want to do it all, but who knows, maybe somewhere out there is a colt or filly whose cutie mark is going to be an RJ45 connector. If they see what you and Twilight have, you could be trendsetters.”

As they headed for land, Derpy said, “That would be nice, to be ahead of others instead of lagging behind.”

They entered, and Karyn looked for the best place to run a line. She found a knothole near the base of the tree that she could knock through with her finger. So long as it could be protected from weather, it would be the perfect opening to the outside.

That triggered her memory again, and the nagging thought came back in full. Forgetting computers, she stood up and said, “Hang on, I thought this tree was destroyed at the same time that your castle came into existence. How are they both here now?”

Twilight was diagramming out how she wanted the screen set up, and she looked up. “Destroyed. What—Oh.” She dropped her quill and stared for a moment, then turned away to face the window, but not fast enough. Karyn had seen the mist in her eyes.

“I’m sorry!”

Coming alert, Derpy said, “What? What happened? What did Karyn say? Or was it me?”

“No, it wasn’t you. I brought up a painful memory that I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s all right,” Twilight, said, but her voice had a rough edge to it. “A long time now, those wounds should have scabbed over by now. Yes, the original Golden Oaks Library was destroyed.”

“What was this?” asked Derpy. “Destroyed? How? When? I thought this was always here.”

“You don’t remember the battle against Tirek?”

“Tirek, Tirek…Oh! You mean the Great and Powerful Tirek-sie! When she took over town and put it under a glass dome.”

Twilight sputtered out a laugh, and that brought her out of her momentary funk. “No, that was a walk on the beach compared to this. You don’t remember when he nearly took over Equestria? He stole all the unicorn magic and pegasus flight?”

“Nope. Maybe I was out of town?”

Karyn was about to argue, since she had distinctly remembered seeing Derpy be affected by Tirek’s powers. Then she realized that this was another one of Derpy’s repressed memories. Whether or not it was better for her to confront things like that, she couldn’t say. But she wasn’t going to be the one to poke at them.

The problem was how to make Twilight understand this, because she was the type who would pursue a point until she was sure. Already she was countering. “It wasn’t just Ponyville, though. Everypony in Equestria was hit.”

“As far as you know,” said Karyn. “Maybe some of the outlying areas were too obscure for him to notice. Derpy might have been on a long-distance delivery. After all, you can’t be everywhere.”

“I suppose. But how do you know about it?”

Karyn wasn’t sure how much Twilight knew about Equestria being shown on Earth as a TV show. She decided to be cute about it. “The tales of the battle you had with him are known even in my world.”

“Why don’t you take me through what you know? Sometimes those tales can get garbled when they’re told and retold.”

It had been a while since Karyn had seen the episode in question, but she thought back. “I remember that you and Tirek had an epic fight that ranged all over the area, with blasts of magic going back and forth. He aimed at you and you dodged, it hit the tree and burned it to a cinder instantly. Owlowiscious barely made it out.”

“Correct in essence.”

“But I also remember your friends uprooting the remains of the tree and using it as a chandelier in your new castle. We didn’t go into those rooms, so I didn’t see it there. Did that not happen?”

Twilight chuckled. “Now that’s a funnier memory. I remember that Spike held me away from the castle all day while they decorated, and they spent all that time uprooting it and hanging it and decorating it. I was proud of myself for keeping a straight face and being genuinely grateful. What I didn’t tell them is that I’d spent a good deal of time forming a regrowth spell. Another two, three months, I would have had it.”

“So how did you get this one?”

“Well, that wasn’t the only tree in Equestria. I found another oak, quite a sturdy one, had it transplanted here and hollowed out. It was still growing, so I did a little bonsai work in full scale to make it close to what the old one would have been. I should probably have called this New Golden Oaks or something, but I was attached to the name.

“Of course, the tree was an emotional loss, but what really hurt were the loss of the books. The libraries at Canterlot and the Crystal Empire were happy to donate copies of the ones they had, but I’m afraid there were some unique ones. They’re lost forever.”

Frowning, Karyn said, “As an IT person, that disturbs me. Offends me, even. When we get this set up, I may have to work on getting you a scanner and a good backup system. Information should never be destroyed. If you had a daily feed to, say, Derpy’s house, you could have recovered all that.”

“But did anypony read them?” Both heads turned to Derpy, who had asked the question. “I mean, if they were popular, there would have been more than one copy. They were probably obscure books, weren’t they?”

“Does it matter? Even if only Twilight was going to read it, maybe fifty years from now, that’s something lost.”

“But was it something worthy. Everything has to go eventually. Twilight, can I ask why you rebuilt the library here? Why not do it in your castle? You have plenty of room. That would have been the real New Golden Oaks. Even though it wouldn’t have been golden. Or an oak. I’m getting distracted. Why not move on instead of moving back?”

Twilight took a while to phrase her response. “Moving on is good, but not all at once, like that. The better way is for things to grow and diminish, like the seasons. It’s parabolic.”

“It’s what?”

Twilight always had writing material close by. She floated over an inked quill and some scrap paper. Quickly she sketched a grid and a simple y=-x^2. “This is a parabola, a function in math.”

“Ooh, I was never good at math. I bet Dinky would understand.”

“Well, you don’t have to know the math behind it. Just see how it’s like a hill or a hump? I’m using that as a metaphor for things in life. They grow, they build, they peak, they trail off.”

Derpy took the paper and looked it over. Satisfied, Twilight talked to Karyn about the logistics of rigging the network cable. Over and over, Derpy traced the figure with the tip of her hoof. In the background she heard Karyn talking to Twilight, mentioning that she would need to find high-grade cable suitable for outdoors, and that she should rig a patch inside the library so that there wouldn’t be tension on the line.

“…py? Derpy?”

“Hm?”

“You spaced out there. Are you ready?” Karyn had stood up.

“Huh? Yeah, I did space out. I was thinking about this thing Twilight showed me.”

“Well, I need you to take me back to Earth so I can find an Ethernet cable for the network.”

“Oh, sure. Won’t that be expensive, though?”

“No, I’ll just buy it and return it once Twilight’s made a duplicate. It’ll go on my credit card, but come right off again. No fuss.”

“OK.” Derpy flew back to Earth. After that it was a short drive to a computer store that Karyn knew was open on Sundays. But she was surprised when Derpy declined to come in with her. Usually Derpy liked seeing the insides of stores.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Hey, did you know about that parabola thing Twilight showed me?”

“Well, I knew the figure, but I never thought about it as a life lesson. Why?”

“Do you think that’ll happen to us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will our friendship be like that and diminish and fade out?”

Since she hadn’t started the car yet, Karyn slapped in her Bluetooth and turned to face Derpy directly. “Listen, don’t let that silly piece of paper get to you. Besides, it’s just math. If magic can stretch this cable from Twilight’s place to yours, it can keep us together.”

“But I’m talking about our friendship.”

“Don’t you know that friendship is magic?”

Derpy smiled at that. “Thanks.”

“Come on, enough of this sappy stuff. Time’s moving, even back in Equestria. Let’s get there so I can work on this for Twilight.”

Back the way they had come and back into the library. Twilight welcomed them back. “I’ve been working on the stretching spell while you were gone. I think I can get it underground at the same time I warp its existence in space.”

“Great. Let me just feed through this end, which we want to remain in real space. Once the cable is set I’ll terminate it. I brought my crimper from home.”

There followed a slow walk to Derpy’s house, with Karyn feeding out the cable and Twilight casting her spell. It was weird to feel a roll that only held a hundred meters making a single turn over such a long distance. There was still a lot of slack when they reached Derpy’s house and Karyn stripped the wire.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” said Twilight.

“Well, the eight individual wires within the cable have to go all in a row touching these metal contacts in the terminator, which then go to the computer. So I have to untwist them and get them flat.”

“Why are they twisted?”

“Each twist carries opposite signals to stop electromagnetic interference.” Karyn looked up. “Hm. I wonder if that even exists in Equestria without electricity. Well, you still have lightning, so it must.”

“Oh, clever, very clever. You probably already had rope-twisters, so it was the same idea. So how does it work when we get them plugged in? Do they just connect automatically?”

“No, we’ll need a switch to route the traffic between them. I can get one of those, and we’ll put it in Derpy’s house, nicely out of the way.”

Twilight showed doubt for the first time. “Why not keep it back at the library?”

“If it ever needs repair, I’ll have to be the one to do it. And I’m at Derpy’s house far more often than I’m at the library.”

“Good thought.”

There was, of course, no knot in Derpy’s house, so Twilight had to be sent outside to drill a hole for the wire to pass through. As she found the best spot, Karyn said to Derpy, “While what I said is true, I also want your computer to be the server and Twilight’s to be the client. You should get to feel more important than her for once.”

Derpy smiled at that, but then it was time to get to work. Karyn went inside with the crimping tool, and Derpy served as assistant, passing her the terminator and taking away the cutoffs as she needed. The switch was rigged up in a closet and powered on the same solar battery that ran her own computer. When the door was closed, there was no evidence of it. Karyn was quite proud of her design.

“So what happens now?” asked Twilight.

“We’ve done the hardware side of it, but now I’ve got to configure the software. I’ll set up a domain with e-mail addresses for the both of you, and I’ll make shared folders so you can drop documents and such in for each other to read. Derpy can show you how to use the writing software. I think you’ll be happy.”

“I’m definitely interested in this new way of doing things. It’s just like when I got the castle. That was something new as well.”

“But you wanted to go back. You wanted to regrow the tree where you lived all those years. That makes sense to me. Similarly, you shouldn’t get too obsessed with the computer and forget about talking to friends in person.”

Twilight breathed deep and paced across the room. Karyn recognized the move at once as one that many of her professors used when they wanted to phrase a point properly. She wondered if Twilight had ever done any teaching of her own over the years. Derpy didn’t understand that she was supposed to pay attention, but she was listening to Twilight anyway.

“Of course I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “It’s all about finding balance between the old and the new. Of course, everypony’s different, and some look more to the past and some look more to the future. The curious thing about you two is that it’s Derpy, the older pony, who’s more about the future, and Karyn, the younger, who wants to keep reliving the past. But I think that’s why you’re so good for each other. Each one has something that the other one needs.”

Derpy was very grateful, and practically fawned over Twilight with praise and thanks for what she’d said. Karyn was more reserved, and kept working. “So when you’re on your computer, Twilight, you’ll see screens very similar. Of course, Derpy has to use her hoof to move the mouse, while you can just magic it around. Be careful, though, because it’s an optical sensor on the bottom, and I don’t know if the glow of your magic will throw it off. Be gentle.”

“Got it.”

They continued to go over details of working the computer until Twilight felt confident enough to start playing around on her own. “That’s the best way to learn, anyway,” said Karyn. “It’s how I did it.”

“I can’t thank you enough for taking time out of your day with Derpy to help me out for this. You know that any time you need anything, feel free to ask.”

Karyn waved it off, but Derpy said, “You want to let us start bringing ponies on tours of Earth again?” Karyn bit her lip at Derpy’s brashness. She was thinking of this too, but didn’t want to press the subject so bluntly. It would have been better to introduce the idea slowly.

For her part, Twilight just laughed and patted Derpy on the head with a wing. “I won’t go that far, not yet. There are a lot of things I’m still worried about.” She got serious all of a sudden. “But let me say this. I know that you’ve also worried about whether or not the separation of our worlds would necessitate cutting you two off. So I’ll make a promise on my honor as a princess. No matter what happens, Derpy Hooves, you will always have access to travel to Earth. I crafted the spell to do so, but now I grant its rights to you. The bond of friendship that you have with Karyn is too strong to ever be broken, certainly not by the Princess of Friendship.”

Derpy was all smiles, flying around the room. Karyn was more stoic, feeling almost as if she’d been knighted. “We’ll try to use our friendship responsibly,” was all she could think to say.

“Just as I will with my computer. Well, I’m champing at the bit to try it out. See you later.”

She left, and Derpy and Karyn were left alone. “Isn’t that great, Karyn? Now, no matter what happens, we’ll be together forever.”

“Yes, we will. If I could gain such a good friendship every time I set up a computer, I’d have all the friends I’d ever hope for.”

Author's Note

Let's see what we'll be reading next week!

“It’s really not necessary. Buy yourself something nice. Or throw a party and invite everypony.”

“I can do that too, but you should still have something. How about a new dress?”

“A dress? Something that I could wear to go out? Yes, I think I might like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Left alone, Karyn said to Derpy, “You took that news quite well. I’m glad.”

“You think so?”

“Mmhm.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Told you she was smart,” he said.

“Yes, I see. Well, I just wanted to see her one more time, make sure she was happy. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

We've got a bunch of guests next week, so come and read!

144: Evedink Gown

It was well past the time that Derpy normally went to see Karyn, and she was fully aware that her friend would be worried about her. Soon she would go, and Karyn would be wondering what happened. Hopefully she would have a story to tell.

Dinky had written to her to say that she and Princess Celestia had decided that her extra study was over, that she was to take her exams. She had to do them on Saturday night, since Celestia was busy with the other students, to say nothing of ruling Equestria and raising the sun.

The exams would last long, but Celestia would look them over immediately, and Derpy expected her to be on the morning train with either a certificate or disappointment and a new plan.

The train’s scheduled time had already passed, but Derpy couldn’t hear the whistle from where she lived, so she couldn’t tell if it was late. It had to be. Dinky had nowhere else to go but home, right?

Derpy paced. She could leave, pop in at Karyn’s, explain that she was busy, and then make it back, but she was sure that if she did, Dinky would show in the time she was absent. And if she had fai—if she had not passed, then she would need her mother.

Without even noticing that she was bounding up to the door, Derpy heard the tinkle of magic on the door handle and saw it fly open. Checking first for the expression, it appeared that all was well. Dinky was smiling, open-mouthed. But Derpy was still cautious. “Did you…?” she began.

“Passed them all! Near-perfectly! Mommy, I am a graduated unicorn.”

Derpy swept in and put her hooves under Dinky’s. She lifted her up and flew in a circle. This had been a fun game when Dinky was small, but Derpy could only go around once for fear of throwing out her back. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of you.”

“Thank you, Mommy. Actually, they were the easiest tests I think I’ve had.”

“You’ve recovered your magic well.”

Dinky flopped onto the couch. “Maybe, but there were two things. One is that there wasn’t as much pressure. Even if I failed, it was going to be OK. It wasn’t like I had to make up the work.”

“And the other thing?”

“Is that they’re the last tests I’ll take in my life.”

She made as though to chastise her daughter, but Derpy realized that it was true, that her child who had been a student for the vast majority of her life, was now no longer under that burden, and was free to shirk studying now. It was time for celebration, not reproach. “You must have a gift for this,” she said.

“I don’t need anything.”

“Nonsense. You know I put away bits for things like this, and I’ve been doing so for your graduation gift for a while. What do you want?”

Dinky appeared to think of something, but shook her head. “It’s really not necessary. Buy yourself something nice. Or throw a party and invite everypony.”

“I can do that too, but you should still have something. How about a new dress?”

“A dress? Something that I could wear to go out? Yes, I think I might like that.”

“Perfect. Let’s go pick it out.” Derpy was already half out the door.

“Just a moment. It’s Sunday. Isn’t it supposed to be when you visit Karyn?”

“Oh, wow, you’re right! I completely forgot! She must be flipping out thinking I’m not coming.”

“And I was hoping she could help me pick out my dress. You go get her and I’ll wait here.” She made for the couch again, but Derpy swooped around back and pushed her to the door.

“We’ll walk to the dressmaker’s and you can start picking out ones you want. Then I’ll come back with Karyn and you can talk it over.”

She was not to be balked, and so Dinky followed her mother. When they reached Ponyville’s nominal business district, she looked for dress shops that would be reasonable, but Derpy pointed right to Carousel Boutique.

“Oh, Mommy, you can’t afford to get me a Rarity. And I don’t need one.”

“Nonsense. Besides, I’m flying to get Karyn, so you’d better stay here and look.” Before Dinky could get in another word, Derpy took off.

With a cautious step, Dinky poked open the door with a hoof, quite unlike her magical opening that she used at home. She was relieved to not see the designer herself, but only an assistant straightening a dress on a mannequin. As the bell in the shop rang, she turned. “Welcome! I am Tweed, are you looking for a dress today?”

“Yes, I’m supposed to get one as a graduation gift.”

“Perfect. Wait right here and Miss Rarity will attend to you.”

Dinky tried to get the assistant to stay, but she was already getting Rarity out of her working cloister. “Hello, my dear girl. How can I help you? Tweed said you need a dress for a graduation?”

“Well, no. I’ve just graduated, sort of, and there might be a party, but maybe not…I’m sorry, I’m not sure what I want.”

“Well, don’t worry. I will find or make something just for you. Maybe something to catch that special somepony?”

Dinky blanched. It was bad enough trying to talk to the famous designer, but this touched a nerve. She backed away.

Rarity immediately turned sympathetic and pushed away the rack of fabrics she had brought over. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, but please don’t mention special someponies.”

“Unlucky in love?”

“No, it’s the opposite” Dinky wasn’t sure why she was confessing to a relative stranger. “I have one and I haven’t told my mother. I don’t know how she’s going to react when I do.”

“If it’s your mother, she should be the most supportive.”

“Yes, she should. Show me some dresses in the meantime, please.”

Rarity picked out some off the rack that she thought would fit her, but Dinky was only half paying attention. She would wait for her mother and Karyn to help her.

After a while she heard the bell ring again, and she looked over the racks to see Karyn’s blonde hair looming over. Racing over, she exchanged greetings. “I hope you don’t mind,” Karyn said, “but Derpy’s already told me the good news. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do next?”

“You mean after we decide on this dress?” Dinky convinced herself to say it quickly, before she lost her nerve. “I’m going to have to discuss that with Able. You know, my coltfriend.”

She was somewhat pleased that she was able to slip in two pieces of information at once. Hopefully, her mother would be so focused on the existence of the pony in question that she would gloss over the fact that Karyn knew.

“You have a coltfriend?” Derpy said. “That’s great! I hope I get to meet him soon. Well, if that’s the case, then we have more to celebrate, and you’d better pick out the best dress possible. Rarity, please give her the best you’ve got.”

Rarity nodded, happy to avoid any drama in her store that she didn’t provide herself. She led Dinky to a fitting room to get all her measurements perfect.

Left alone, Karyn said to Derpy, “You took that news quite well. I’m glad.”

“You think so?”

“Mmhm.”

“Good. It’s the first time I’ve been able to act well enough to convince Dinky. Really I’m all a mess inside. I mean, Dinky with a stallion? Really? I’m scared and I’m sad for her and I’m feeling old and just so crazy with all these feelings. But Dinky needs to think that I’m behind her all the way.”

“I suppose that’s the best thing.”

Dinky emerged with a fabric that she preferred. It wasn’t gaudy, just a simple pale peach, but it would go well with her hair color. Rarity got to cutting and styling the dress while Dinky gave her mother a brief biography of her new beau. She explained that he was a baker and by all appearances was doing all right at his work.

“But his knowledge is limited to the Crystal Empire…did I mention he’s a crystal pony? Anyway, I want to show him southern baking style so that he can impress them up there, and he’s on board with that. We can split living between there and here, so I won’t be going away permanently and will still be able to visit.”

“That’s important.”

“Just think, Mommy. All those times you and me baked muffins, you were helping to set me up for what I was going to do with my life. Even though I’ve got a magic cutie mark like so many unicorns, this is really my destiny.”

Derpy couldn’t say anything to that, and she hid her face lest her emotions show.

Rarity finished the primary cut, and assured Derpy and Dinky that it would be ready soon. “And if you need to come back for a wedding dress, I can do that for you too.”

Both of them scuttled back and raised their hooves in shock. “I’m not ready for that!” they said simultaneously.

Everyone had a good laugh at that, and Derpy and Rarity stepped aside to haggle over price. Karyn had never seen so many bits exchanged in a single moment, and feared for Derpy, but only a moment. She knew that her friend was financially responsible.

After the paperwork was signed, Derpy and Dinky turned to go, but Rarity said, “Just a moment, please. I have something here…ah!” She pulled over a rack from a distant corner of the store and floated over a jacket on a hanger. It was off-white but when the light hit it just right it would shine ever so slightly. “For your new coltfriend.”

Derpy shook her head. “I just wanted to buy the dress.”

“On the house, dear.”

Equally embarrassed, Dinky said, “We don’t need a lagniappe, Miss Rarity.”

“Men’s clothing doesn’t sell nearly as well, but even so, it ought to be part of the deal. Still, if you don’t want to take it for free…”

“We don’t want to prey on your generosity.” Derpy went to leave again.

“…then you could do a favor for me in return.”

That got everyone’s attention. “What did you have in mind?” asked Karyn.

Rarity signaled for them to wait, then returned with her cat Opalescence. “Do you remember when my little kitty here had kittens by your cat, Derpy?”

“Of course.”

“She sees all of her kittens from time to time, with the exception of the one you placed, Karyn.”

Karyn was still catching up remembering the kittens. She had placed one with a family near her school, but it wasn’t someone she knew personally and she hadn’t thought about it since. The cat, called Iridescence, was more intelligent than the average feline, but not magical in any way and could give no proof of Equestria.

“You want us to take Opal to see her kitten?”

“I was rather hoping that you could bring the kitten here to see her mother. Just look at the poor liitle thing. No little kitty should be separated from their child forever.” Rarity hugged her pet, offering her as evidence of her case. Opal herself seemed nonplussed, wearing the same bored expression she usually did.

“I’m not sure that I can convince the family who has her to let her go, but I’ll see what I can do. Derpy, I’ll need your help.”

“Sure thing. Dinky, you want to hang out here? Keep chatting with Rarity?”

“If it’s all the same,” Dinky said, “I’ll head home and relax. It’ll be the first time I won’t have to think about schooling since…well, since I first went to Miss Cheerilee’s classroom.”

Derpy let her go and took Karyn on her back. While flying back to Earth, she said, “She seems happy to get out of school. I can’t help thinking that, if it was me, I’d be regretting that I hadn’t held on and graduated with all my friends.”

“You say that, but you never had to do all the work. It’s different when you’ve put in the time. It’s the same way that we, Dinky and I, can’t understand all the years you’ve hauled mail. But let me focus on this little mission here and find the people we’re looking for.”

Once they were back in Karyn’s universe where she could get signal, she went back through her social network archives and found the communication between her and the family that she gave Iridescence to, the Delacroix family. After some cross-referencing, she found an address.

“I think I can get there,” said Derpy.

“Take your time. I need to gird myself for this. I get nervous when I have to talk to relative strangers. I’m not sure how I’m going to approach this subject.”

Derpy found the house in a neighborhood near the college but unconnected to it, and by providence the mailbox had the family name on it, ensuring they were at the right house.

After ringing the doorbell, Karyn endured the interminable thirty-second wait for someone to arrive. It helped that he was an older man, mustachioed, with an avuncular smile.

“Mr. Delacroix? You don’t know me, but I arranged the adoption of your cat.”

“Of Eerie?” he said, using the cat’s nickname. “That was a while ago. Is there any problem?”

For a moment Karyn thought of trying to spin some story about a spreading disease that she could be investigating, but she didn’t trust herself to lie well that quickly. She tried to stay vague. “Would it be possible to see the cat for a few moments?”

“I’m sure it’s sleeping right now. Are you a friend of Jane’s?”

Trying to understand his question, Karyn concluded that Jane was his daughter who had gone to the same school as her. “Not particularly, but how’s she doing?”

“Hasn’t found work yet,” he said, reminding Karyn of her own obligations. “Ah, here she is.”

Iridescence, either by coincidence or by recognizing Karyn’s voice or smell, came toddling into the room. She rubbed up against her owner, then looked up curiously at Karyn, or rather at the place near her where Derpy was hovering invisibly.

“Hey, little one.” She held out her hand to let it be sniffed. “You remember me?”

“She very well might,” Mr. Delacroix said. “She’s a smart cat. She can open the pantry, and if we didn’t keep something heavy on the food tub, she could get that too.”

While her mind was racing on how to get the cat out for a while, Karyn felt the ground drop out from beneath her, and in a moment of panic, let out a small scream. Then she realized what had happened. Derpy had scooped her both her and Iridescence and, in a single motion, teleported to Equestria and stripped her invisibility spell.

“Yeesh! Warn me next time, will ya?”

“I thought this would be easiest. We’ll go back at the same moment, so you won’t have to ask to take Eerie anywhere.”

“No, I’ll just have to figure out an excuse to leave.”

For her part, Iridescence seemed to take the change in dimensions in stride, and hopped out of Karyn’s arms to nestle on Derpy’s neck and let her keep her balance as she landed.

They went right back to Rarity’s shop, where the proprietress had hung around the front area waiting for their return. She fawned all over the kitty, being the type who liked all cats even if they didn’t take to her. Then she put her with Opalescence and watched, hoping for some sort of bonding scene.

The two cats sniffed each other, and Iridescence turned her back to show trust. Opal nibbled at the back of her neck the way she would have with a tiny kitten, but did not pick her up. Eerie accepted this and then they both laid down in a kind of spoon position, the mother on the outside.

“Aww, how cute,” said Derpy.

“Why don’t we leave them here for a while and go back and see Dinky.” Karyn liked cats, but did not find them entertaining to be around. Neither did she think it would be fun to hang out in the dress shop.

“Sounds good. I think I want to see my own cat and give him a pet on the head.”

But when they reached her home, Derpy’s cat Muffinhead just meowed at them and ran to go back to sleep. Dinky was also taking a nap, and so the two girls just sat in the kitchen and chatted in low voices. Karyn considered whether she should tell Dinky, when she woke, about her mother’s reaction to the news that she had a coltfriend. Also, if she did, whether to do so in secret or to try to reconcile the family over it. For it struck her that this would be the last barrier to a perfect love between the two. Once Derpy accepted that this would be her daughter’s adult life, no more but no less, nothing would mar their relationship.

She turned the conversation to Dinky. It did not take much of an effort to get Derpy to open up to her, describing fears both vague and concrete. What if he left her? What if he mistreated her? What if the bakery business did not do well, and they were dependent on Dinky? Dinky’s only job had been in the curio shop, and without the full certification of Princess Celestia, who would hire her?

It took Karyn a while to realize that Derpy was projecting her own fears based on her marriage to Dinky’s father, Rocky,

It was then that Dinky came down stairs, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “You know, Mommy, your voice carries through the house.”

Derpy was caught short. “I didn’t mean for you to hear all that. I know that you want me to like your coltfriend.”

“You haven’t even met him yet. All I want is for you to give him a chance.”

“I’d like to meet him, at some point.”

“He’s in town, but busy today. Maybe we can invite him for dinner during the week. But Mommy, you have to know, he’s not Daddy.”

Derpy nodded, but Karyn could see that she wasn’t convinced. In one of her rare moments of inspiration, she said, “Don’t you see? It’s just like Muffinhead and Opalescence. Even though they’re apart, both from each other and from their children, there’s still a tie of love there. You saw how Opal still laid down with her kitten, though they haven’t seen each other for two years. No matter what happens with you and Dinky, what you have is a bond that can’t be broken, not by any harm she could receive. Because you’re always going to be here for her, with your door open. Isn’t that right?”

The response given was not to Karyn, but to Dinky, and Derpy let her voice soften as she said, “I’m sure that, if you like him, he’s got to be a wonderful stallion.”

Dinky hugged her mother and went back to her own room to relax more. This was another instinct that Karyn understood. Given her freedom to do anything, Dinky wanted to indulge it by doing nothing.

Karyn’s thoughts were on returning Iridescence to her proper home, and she brought it up to Derpy. “I don’t know how much time Rarity was having the cats spend together, but we should see if we can’t end the visit.”

“Yeah. Or, let’s take Muffinhead with us, so he can say hi too.”

She would not be talked out of this, so it took another fifteen minutes to get the cat ready for travel. Once back at Carousel, Rarity was less than thrilled at the full family reunion, but this helped extricate both father and daughter from Rarity’s clutches.

“I’ll have the dress for you in a few days,” she said to Derpy, “and you can give it to Dinky.”

“The sooner, the better. She has a dinner to wear it to.”

She explained no further, but Rarity smiled as if in on the joke.

There followed a comedy as Karyn picked up Iridescence and tried to get into the same position as when they left, with Derpy flying them up to height. Derpy reversed her motions, going invisible first then letting the other two go as she brought them back to Earth.

The cat jumped out of Karyn’s hands almost immediately and scaled the furniture with the grace of an acrobat until she reached the top of a wall unit. The kindly Mr. Delacroix laughed, bringing Karyn back to the moment.

“Told you she was smart,” he said.

“Yes, I see. Well, I just wanted to see her one more time, make sure she was happy. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

He sensed that there might have been something deeper to the visit, but did not pursue the issue as he showed Karyn the way out.

“I feel good about today,” said Derpy.

“Because of the cats or Dinky?”

“Both, I think. As you said, there’s a parallel.” After they got back in the car and headed for Karyn’s apartment, she added, “But there’s no way I’m waiting two years to see her, ever!”

Karyn laughed. “Agreed.”

Author's Note

Here are some of the lines from next week's chapter!

"I’m impressed with the decorations you put up. Must have cost you a pretty bit!”

“It did, but I had some left over after buying Dinky her present.”

Karyn looked over the scene and realized where she’d seen it before.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“But nopony does go hungry, I mean, not past dinner time.”

“You’re right. And humans do. But then again, you don’t have seven billion ponies to deal with.”

“Stop reminding me."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy was rapt. She’d probably never thought how people made things more efficient.

“Then she’s helping out?”

“She’s invaluable.”

Come back and read while the reading's good!

145: Derp Hard, Play Hard

Derpy always liked to check Karyn first thing in the morning. She believed that if one was stressed out, unkempt, or had slept in, then there must be some problem that needed to be addressed. Too often this led her to assuming things that weren’t true, but she stuck to it. So when Karyn sat at breakfast with blear in her eyes and her hair stuck to the side of her head, Derpy saw an opportunity for her to help.

“How are things?” she asked, planning to draw Karyn out by degrees.

“Rough going. The whole job thing is getting to be a pain.”

“Do you—“ Derpy started, wanting to ask a follow-up, but Karyn hadn’t heard and in fact was giving all the information herself.

“I’ve done a couple more interviews, but I can tell that they’re not looking for someone fresh out of college. Or worse, they are, but they want me to be finished because they want someone to start right away and work full-time. I can understand that they’re more concerned with having someone to fill a position, but why can’t they think long-term and realize that it’s better to hire the right person now than to wait and have more turnover?”

“I can see how that would be frustrating.”

“I wish I could be like Dinky and get a provisional degree. Although it’s different. She’s probably not going to use it, while a big reason I want it is to get ahead in my career.”

Now that Derpy knew the problem, she had to figure out how to help. “Well, if what you say is true, then it should be better when you get closer to finishing. You’ll be able to tell them that you’re ready to start quick.”

“Yeah, but then there’ll be everyone else from my school looking for jobs too. And every other school. But more than that, I’m getting annoyed at the whole hiring thing. They filter out your resume if you don’t have the right keywords. If you do get a look, the people aren’t considering you as a person, they’re just looking for a reason to reject you, and if they can’t find one—or are too bored to care—then you get passed to the next step. I go on these interviews with stupid questions completely unrelated to the job, because they’re supposedly looking to see how professional I am. Well, guess what? I’m not that professional! I’m a twenty-plus girl who’s still into ponies! I just want to have a job to support myself and pay my student loans. I’m not dedicated to helping the company culture or whatever their line is. But I will listen to my boss and I know how to build and fix computers. That should be enough. If I could get some interviews with real IT people instead of HR drones, I bet I’d have something already, and it’d be good. As is, it feels like I’m just spinning my wheels.”

Derpy knew that Karyn had to get that rant out of her system, so she nodded where it was needed, but didn’t respond. But still she looked for some way to give her friend comfort.

“At least you’re getting the practice in. There are probably a lot of people who aren’t putting in applications or going on interviews. When the time comes, you’ll be quicker, more confident. You’ll get things done.”

“You’re probably right, but it won’t be much of an edge, especially when there are people who have actual experience working for money, not just internships. They’ll be ahead of me. Honestly, if there were a spell you had in your bag to get me a job, I’d forget about the ethics of it and use it.”

There was no such spell, of course, but now Derpy had another issue. She would have gleefully helped Karyn with any problem to get to what she thought of as the point of that week’s visit. But now that point seemed like it would be poking at a sore spot. Dinky’s graduation party, such as it was, was being held that day, and Derpy intended Karyn to come. How could she mention it without making Karyn feel bad that she still had school to finish?

While she was racking her brain, Karyn said, “Anyway, forget about that. Dinky’s out of school, right? Tell me all about how she’s doing. Did she ever have the party you were planning?”

Of course Derpy was not suave enough to play it off and be subtle. She burst out with “I’m having it today and I hoped you would come but then you seemed all down about not having a job which Dinky will so I wasn’t sure I wanted to mention it.”

Karyn laughed. “Of course I want to be there. And I’m sure we should go sooner rather than later. Come on.”

Derpy’s home was in readiness. She had spent all day Saturday preparing, leaving only the removal of the perishables. Space was at a premium, and so Derpy had come up with a clever idea. The terrace that looked over the yard held one set of bowls for snacks, and another set was on a picnic table. Pegasi would be encouraged to snack from the top and converse while in hover.

Not that so many would be coming. A few of Derpy’s workmates, some friends that Dinky knew, and ponies who were always on the lookout for a party. To which point, when Derpy and Karyn arrived they knew there would be someone waiting.

“Hi hi!”

“Hello, Pinkie Pie.” Derpy bowed.

“I’ve got music and games for later; can’t have a party without ‘em! But I’m impressed with the decorations you put up. Must have cost you a pretty bit!”

“It did, but I had some left over after buying Dinky her present.”

Karyn looked over the scene and realized where she’d seen it before. “Do you remember when I first started coming here and there was a party for Sweetie Belle’s cutie mark? The de-cute-ante ball? This has that feel.”

“Yes, I think it does. And that was the rare party that you didn’t have your hoof in, Pinkie.”

“I know, right? But Sweetie’s family was insistent. Thanks for letting me give this one my touch.”

Karyn wondered how much persuasion was needed on Pinkie’s part to convince Derpy to relent. And what her actual contribution would be. “What touch is that?”

“Just a little confetti when the time is right. Ooh, I think the time is right!”

The turn of phrase was so typical of Pinkie that Karyn had to laugh, but then she realized that Pinkie likely meant to use her party cannon. Bracing herself, Karyn covered her ears, but then to her surprise, Pinkie pulled out of hammerspace something much smaller. She realized that it was another instance of the hoofheld spells that Derpy used.

The spell fired out confetti, conjuring it from nowhere, allowing Pinkie to spray it like a hose. Had she become less random as time had passed? Did even Pinkie Pie age? Or was it simply a case of a more efficient tool for a particular job?

It was a different use of confetti, one Karyn remembered mostly at New Years’ parties; spread on tables, you were supposed to ignore it, put your drinks on it, and let it serve as pure decoration. But it was fun to take in hand. Of course, that would be confetti specific to the occasion. This was the traditional stuff, colored squares of a thick paper.

“That’s a handy little device you’ve got there.”

“More like a hoof-y little device, am I right?” Pinkie said, showing off her lack of fingers. “And I have Derpy to thank for it all.”

“Hey, don’t credit me.” Derpy backed off. “I just had the idea to go to Earth. It was Twilight and Lyra who did all the thinking and work.”

“Yeah, but you had the idea. Isn’t that everything?”

Karyn interjected. “No, it isn’t. The work is more important. Not to disparage Derpy. Whatever. What I’m more interested in is how you got one. I’ve only ever seen Derpy use them, and our guests on Earth when we had them.”

“They didn’t start out too popular at first because pegasi and Earth ponies figured that magic was best left to unicorns, and unicorns didn’t need them. But when some ponies were shown how they can do things faster and better, they caught on. Now there are some unicorns who just get by on crafting spells for other ponies. I should show you how my family uses them on the rock farm!”

“That sounds great. We should definitely do that sometime.” Karyn hoped that using “sometime” to mean “never” would translate well across worlds. But Pinkie was already walking away.

“Come on, they’re really proud of it.”

“But what about the party?”

“We’ll be back in time. Derpy, you don’t mind if I borrow Karyn for a little while, do you? Great.”

Karyn still searched for an out. “Won’t it take a long time? Don’t we need to get on the train? I can’t afford a ticket.”

“I’ve got another one for that.” Pinkie switched spells, and the next thing Karyn knew she was surrounded by a barren field of rocks. At that point she wasn’t entirely sure that Pinkie wasn’t teasing her and using her own weird powers. They hadn’t even been in contact when the teleportation occurred, and that was something Derpy always needed.

It was just as Karyn had seen on the show, but she remembered something about it. “Didn’t your niece take over and expand the farm? Isn’t it headquartered in Mustangia now?”

“Yes, but we’d never sell off this one. It’s been in the Pie family for generations. Three of them, at least. We use it for experiments and stuff. To wit, let me show you how we’re using the spells.”

She oriented herself, then led Karyn to a different field, this one busy. Nearest to them, a strong stallion was shaping a rock to what looked to Karyn like a cornerstone for a building. A mare was polishing wherever he took a chip or filed a burr. But Pinkie led them past that to some other stallions.

“Magic hasn’t outpaced hoof-work there,” she said, “but we do have a spell in case he chips off too much. It can put back rocks that have broken apart.”

“An undo function is always warranted.”

“Here’s where magic really gives us an edge.” Pinkie pointed to an area where the stallions were clearing and a solitary rock had the land to itself. A stallion carefully pointed one of the hoofheld spells and activated it. The rock doubled in size.

Karyn stepped back. Over the years, she’d developed a good appreciation of magic, especially when she’d had some herself. But when told to look directly at a breaking of physics, it still shocked her senses to see something that, on Earth, would be the start of a free-energy singularity. She wondered if the ponies would think the same way.

“So would this mean that you won’t have to farm rocks again? I mean, you could just have seed rocks and grow them like this, then chisel it off until you have the seed rocks back.”

“Nah, we’ll just keep farming them but use this when there’s an order for big ones.”

Shaking her head, Karyn said, “I just think that if you had ponies who were really inclined, they could take spells like that and industrialize Equestria. Imagine if it could work on food. You would make sure nopony ever goes hungry.”

“But nopony does go hungry, I mean, not past dinner time.”

“You’re right. And humans do. But then again, you don’t have seven billion ponies to deal with.”

“Stop reminding me. You know that I can’t go to Earth and be friends with them all.”

Karyn flashed back to Pinkie’s visit to Earth. It honestly hadn’t gone that bad.

Pinkie was quickly off that, though, and back on the main subject. “I know what you mean, though. Everypony who uses them worries about them getting into the wrong hooves. Like, if griffons had them or if there were just some pony who didn’t want to use them for the right purposes…if they wanted to make a rock so big that it just crushed everypony…then I’m pretty sure the princesses wouldn’t allow them. But as a tool to have around the house, spells are quite useful.”

“It’s good to know that the princesses would ban them, but that can have enforcement problems too.” Karyn was thinking of weapons laws in her own world.

“I don’t know that they’d out-and-out ban non-unicorn spells, but they’d just disapprove of them. Most ponies think that the princesses are wise and they listen to them, so they don’t have to lay down the law all the time.”

“Trust does matter. I wish we had that on Earth too.”

They watched the work for a few more minutes, but Karyn was getting impatient. “Don’t you think that we ought to be getting back to Derpy and the party?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

Karyn stood still and prepared to be teleported again, but Pinkie started cantering off, and Karyn had to catch up before she got too far away. “Aren’t you going to zap us back?”

“No, I was thinking that we’d take the train back.”

“But then we’re going to miss the start of the party. Or at least the chance to set up the party. Which might make sense. Less work for us.”

Pinkie laughed, possibly at the notion that setting up a party could be work. Then she said, “No, it’s not that. There’s somepony coming up on the train that I’d like to meet. This way, once she makes it to Ponyville I can guide her to the party rather than just having her stumble around hoping to find it.”

“Who is it?”

“Let’s not spoil the surprise. Come on!”

There was nothing to do but follow her. Karyn wondered if Pinkie might not have been subtly giving her a hint that the special guest she was looking for was, in fact, Surprise, the pony said to look almost exactly like her. But when they reached the small station near the rock farm and boarded the train, she was set right when she waved to a pony that Karyn recognized.

“Hey, Auntie,” the pony said. It was Suzie, Pinkie’s niece who now ran the conglomerate of rock farms and had been Dinky’s friend as a filly.

Karyn coughed to draw attention to herself. “You remember me? We met once.”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“And miss Dinky’s graduation? Even if I were inclined to do so, Aunt Pinkie wouldn’t let me.”

It was only one stop back to Ponyville, but a long trip through barren fields. When they finally got off, Karyn had no trouble keeping up with the ponies. They wanted to catch up with each other, while Karyn wanted to get back to the party.

When they got back, they saw an outdoor grill set up with an oven beneath it. Karyn had never seen it before, and wanted to find Derpy to learn where it came from.

“Hey, Karyn! How was the rock farm?” Derpy asked, emerging from the house.

“Same as always. What’s with this?”

“My oven isn’t big enough for everything. Able rented this. I’m starting to come around on him.”

“Someone call my name?” Able Baker followed Derpy out with trays of baked goods balanced on his back. He slipped them into the outdoor oven. “We’ll get these on heat, and I think the ones inside are about ready to be pulled.”

“I’ll take care of that!” Pinkie said. “Let me do all the baking. You just stay here and socialize!”

Able didn’t argue with her. Indeed, Karyn hadn’t seen him argue with anypony. They all sat down at an outdoor table. Karyn and Derpy, Dinky and Able, and Suzie.

Derpy sipped a drink and smiled. “So like I was saying, once I got my head around the idea of Dinky having a coltfriend, I realized she picked a good one.” Able blushed at that.

“Right, you guys all had dinner together last week,” said Karyn. “How did that go?”

She was looking at Derpy, but Derpy only blushed, and Able had to explain. “She began with a real cold shoulder. Asking me, in essence, what my intentions were with her daughter. But then she calmed down and we had a great time.”

Recovering, Derpy said, “And Dinky got to wear her new dress, which looked amazing on her.”

Karyn remembered them picking it out. “Where is it? I’d like to see it.”

“We put it up for washing.”

“Oh.”

“But no,” Able said. “It was really nice. I envy Dinky’s relationship with her mother. It’s something I wish I could have had.”

“You weren’t close to your mother?”

“No. I barely saw her. My father raised me mostly.” He turned to Suzie, changing the subject. “You’ve known Dinky a long time?”

“Oh, yes, ever since we were fillies, though we lost touch for a long time and only got back in contact a year or so ago.”

Pinkie had brought out lemonade, and Karyn sipped at hers. It was just like a scene around the table at her parents’ summer parties, except that she was the only human being there. But she felt like part of a group, and if it expanded to where she was no longer noticed for being different, then that must mean she fit in.

Suzie was telling Able all about rock farming and how her mother had taken them from one struggling farm to many successful ones all over Equestria. Everyone else had heard this story, and they made small talk amongst themselves until Able slid his chair over to Dinky.

“We’ve got plans along those lines,” he said, “but nothing on the scale you’re talking about. You probably have to travel all over from farm to farm, right?”

“Sometimes, not as much as you might think. I still get to see my family plenty.”

“What Dinky and I are thinking is that we’ll start by having two bakeries, the one I have in the Crystal Empire, and one in some town here.”

Suzie was a little wary. “Are you going to compete with the Cakes? Pinkie Pie might not like that.”

“I’m scouting locations. Nothing’s set in stone yet.”

“When you want it to be, get in touch with me.”

It took Able a second to get it. “Ha, yeah. So we’ll have one here and operate each one for half the time until we can find a manager who can handle it while we’re gone.”

Derpy interjected. “You’re saying that you and Dinky will run it together?”

“Derpy, you don’t know how much she speeds up operations. With Dinky’s magic, she can heat an oven almost instantly. That means I don’t have to get there early to pre-heat them, and it saves on fuel. Or she can rapidly cool down a tray of cakes that just came out of the oven, meaning that I can fill orders on shorter notice. With more time and lower costs I can work on growing the business.”

Suzie nodded wisely, and even Karyn thought that it was simple, if not easy. But Derpy was rapt. She’d probably never thought how people made things more efficient.

“Then she’s helping out?”

“She’s invaluable.”

And Derpy looked at her daughter with new eyes, seeing her as an accomplished adult for the first time.

Pinkie Pie came and joined them, saying that all the baking was under control. When Derpy caught her up on the conversation, she too smiled knowingly. “Then I guess you’ll be…”

Derpy put up her hooves and said, “Aaa-aaah” to drown Pinkie out.

“Oops, almost spoiled the surprise.”

“How did you even know about that? I haven’t told anypony.”

“Oh, just figured it out on my own.”

Karyn leaned over. “What’s she talking about?”

“Don’t worry,” said Pinkie. “You’ll find out eventually. Let’s just enjoy the party.”

From there it was a typical Pinkie Pie party, with all the exuberant fun that implied. When at last it wound down, Derpy got ready to take Karyn home.

On the flight back, Karyn talked about what she had seen at the rock farm. “It’s amazing the way that magic can be used. It’s a big reason why I want to make sure it doesn’t get loose on Earth. While the princesses here can keep it under control, I don’t trust the human governments to do so.”

“I’m sure Pinkie was right about the princesses, but there’s something more than that. Ponies like Pinkie and Dinky are the ones most likely to look at things like hoof-mounted spells or using unicorn magic to make a bakery run better. And they’re good ponies who would never take it too far. The ones who would, I don’t think that anypony would sell them a hoof-mounted spell or help them out that way. And if they do go really bad, that’s what we have heroes for. Like when Sombra almost took over the Crystal Empire, they fixed that just fine.”

“Well, yeah, but it took a lot of hard work and Sombra almost won.”

“But he didn’t. Even when things are bad, good usually wins. Maybe that’s just Equestria, but I think it’s for Earth as well.”

Karyn thought Derpy was being naïve, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. “I hope you’re right,” she said.

Author's Note

Next week is the last of the "F" chapters, the ones based on fan suggestions. Who suggested it? What's it about? You'll have to come back next week!

F12: Friendship is Derpic

In Gayle’s spacious rooms, the slightest sound would echo through, but that made it all the quieter. Every shuffle of their feet was like sandpaper on the bare wood floors. The clink of a metal knife on the butter dish chimed like a xylophone.

“Thank you for inviting us to breakfast,” said Derpy.

“Thank you for coming. I remember when you didn’t even show yourself to me.”

“Well, I have to be careful, you know.”

When Karyn had told Derpy that they were going over to her landlady’s to eat, Derpy had been skeptical. But compared to the eggs and toast Karyn usually made, it was a sumptuous banquet. Gayle had gone out and gotten a big paper bag of bagels, planning to have some the next few days. Derpy was halfway through her second one.

“I think the coffee’s ready,” said Gayle, “but I hope it’s to your liking. I drink tea myself, but I have to have a coffee maker for guests.”

“We need to follow the stereotypes. You’re an artist, so of course you drink tea. I’m in IT; coffee fuels the industry.” Karyn passed a cup over to Derpy and then took her own.

“Either of you want lox?”

Derpy picked her head up. “I’m not sure. What is it?”

“You don’t want it,” said Karyn. “It’s fish. Thanks, but we’re both vegetarians.”

“Oh. My bad.” Gayle lifted a filmy slice of the lox onto her own bagel. “I know a lot of people who do eat fish don’t like it, but I have a taste for it.”

Seeing how Gayle had slathered it with cream cheese, Derpy went to match her for a third bagel, but Karyn cleared her throat, knowing how many calories were in each one. Settling for a thin veneer, Derpy munched away. “This is the best breakfast I’ve had in a long while. No offense, Karyn?”

“None taken.”

“So, Karyn,” Gayle said, “I was walking by the college the other day and I see they’re winding down another year. You’re graduating, aren’t you.”

Karyn was suddenly alert for tough questions. “Yes. But I don’t know what I’m doing afterwards. I’ve been looking for a job, but it could be months before I find something.”

“Hmm. We don’t have a formal lease, but maybe we should hash that out before you graduate.”

“Yeah, I honestly don’t know if I can stay then. I’m thinking I’ll move back with my parents probably. Even if I do get something, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be close to here.”

Gayle softened. She’d gotten the information that she wanted, or as much as Karyn had to give. “Well, whatever happens, even if we’re not living in the same place, I hope we remain friends.”

“Of course we will be,” Derpy said. “I’ll make sure that Karyn brings me out here some Sundays to see you.”

Now she looked even more satisfied. Karyn was almost jealous, as though wanting to be Derpy’s only regular human friend.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Derpy skittered to the back of the room and prepared to go invisible if necessary, but she recognized the uniform of a courier.

“Here for the pickup?” Gayle asked him. “Just wait a moment.” She went into her back room and emerged with a very large package that she had to stretch her arms to carry. She was struggling, and Karyn went to help, but the well-built courier handled it easily.

“You know there’s an extra charge for an oversized package.”

“It’s being paid by the receiver, so I don’t care.” She signed his electronic pad, and they were alone again.

“Sell a painting?” Karyn asked.

“Yes, thanks for asking.”

“I never thought of the problems that involve moving one.”

“Well, it’s not as bad as a piano. But yes, I got good money for it. Would you like to come back to the studio?”

Karyn and Derpy put down their coffee mugs. It wasn’t as though Gayle kept her work hidden, but this would be the first time they were formally invited to step into the back area. What they found could best be described as organized clutter. There were hundreds of paint tubes, but all in racks arranged by shade or material. Four smocks hung on hooks, and against a wall were the brushes, knives, and palettes. Two easels were folded up against the wall, and one was in the center. A canvas was resting on it, but it was covered with a tarp.

“I try to never work on more than two projects at once,” Gayle said. “If I think of something else to do, I sketch it out and put it off. But I keep the three easels in case I get a specific order that I can’t refuse. Anyway, this is another copy of the one I just sold. Would you like to see it?”

Karyn nodded. Derpy said, “Yeah!” Gayle gingerly rolled up both ends of the tarp, paused to check that the lighting was right and the sun wasn’t about to go behind a cloud, flipped it over in a single motion.

It was a close in shot of two objects. Karyn needed a moment to identify the one on the left, but then she realized it was a hand. On the right, though, she immediately recognized Derpy’s wing.

Every facet, every feather, every detail had been captured. Karyn thought that, if she were to run her hand across the paint, that it would feel soft and light. Outstretched, the wing looked to be billowed by the unseen air currents.

The hand, by contrast, was steady, but it reached out to the wing in friendship.

Gayle was narrating now. “I couldn’t paint you entirely of course, Derpy. You’re copyrighted. But I’ve been watching you whenever you’re visible, looking for the right angle to capture a part of you. I’m sorry to say I used my own hand for the model, even though it’s supposed to represent Karyn’s. I thought about doing the wing folded up against your body, because that’s an interesting look too. It doesn’t seem like it would fold out that far.”

“It’s…really something,” said Karyn. “I’m impressed.”

“You like it as a painting?”

“I don’t have much taste in art myself, but I like that it’s about us, and that you cared that much.”

Gayle grabbed a stool and sat down. “Good. It’ll take about a week to have it framed and then I’ll have it delivered to you.”

“What?!”

“Well, why do you think I did more than one? I always intended to give it to you.”

“But you’re an artist for hire. I can’t accept this free.”

“Please. I made enough on the one I sold to cover the costs of doing another. Once you’ve got the idea, the actual painting is fun.”

Derpy got closer and stared with one eye, then the other. “I think you did a good job too. I’m a little envious of Karyn.”

“Don’t be.” Gayle went to the other wall where a rack of canvases was kept. From there she took another one, which she showed to be a third reproduction. “I couldn’t be that cruel.”

Derpy took it in her hooves. “I’ll have it framed back in Equestria. I don’t want to let this out of my sight. I can’t tell you how thankful I am.”

“You’re welcome. Well, I’m going to go have another bagel.”

Karyn and Derpy were left alone, and Karyn still wanted to run her hand over the painting, but she feared that would mess it up somehow. “This is way too nice of her.”

“She matches Rarity for generosity. I only wish that there was something we could do for her that would be as nice.”

“Maybe, someday, when I’m successful, I can turn other people on to her art.”

Derpy was deep in thought. “I know, but it would be nice to do it now…hmm…”

Karyn shrugged and joined Gayle back at the breakfast table. They talked more about art and Karyn told the story of when she and Derpy went to the art museum, and how she didn’t care for it that much.

After a few minutes, Derpy walked back into the room. In her most serious voice, she said, “Gayle, would you like to come visit my world?”

With a bite of bagel halfway in her mouth, Karyn couldn’t protest, and that gave her a moment to think. Why shouldn’t Gayle be trusted in Equestria? She was good people.

It took Gayle longer to recover. Karyn had already regained her composure when Gayle said, “Are you…you’re…for real…you mean it?”

“Yes. We probably shouldn’t go broadcasting it across Equestria, but a little visit wouldn’t hurt anypony.”

“Anypony…because there are others like you…a whole world. For me to see that…”

Karyn wanted to snap her out of it. “Go on, it’s not that impressive. Just watch that first step, it’s a doozy.”

“How do we do it? Is there a portal or a magic mirror or something?”

“No,” said Derpy. “That was just in a movie. I have a spell that moves me and whoever’s sitting on me from Earth to Equestria or vice versa. Have you ever ridden a pony?”

“Never.” Gayle stood up and walked next to Derpy. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to go about this. Karyn showed her how to lift one leg and let Derpy sort of roll underneath. But even once she was straddling Derpy, Gayle still treated her like glass, something too precious to touch.

“Oh, and one other thing, have you ever been invisible?”

“Well, let me think for a minute. Of course not!”

Derpy got her bearings. “Well, we’re not too far off from the usual transition point anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem if we just go from here. Hang on.”

She took a sharp intake of breath. Karyn watched for the two of them to disappear. Only right before Derpy activated the spell did she realize what was going to happen. Gayle didn’t know how to anchor herself in time, so everything on Earth would freeze. She would see it as a single blink in time.

And it was true. There was a stuttering change in Gayle’s position on Derpy’s back, like a movie with a few frames lost.

If her mind had been boggled at the prospect of visiting Equestria, Gayle seemed even more stunned at having returned from there. Derpy handled most of the dismounting process herself. It reminded Karyn of when she first traveled with Derpy and half of the times she got off Derpy’s back it resulted in her stumbling and falling.

“That was incredible. Beautiful.” Gayle reached for the back of her chair, caught it on the second try, and lowered herself into the seat, unblinking.

Karyn watched her for reaction. Finding none, she brought Derpy a few steps away. “Well, it was certainly weird being the one stopped in time rather than being the stopper, but I guess that’s not what’s important right now. How long were you in Equestria, anyway?”

“Not long, maybe an hour.”

“Did you show her anything special?”

“Not really.” Derpy lowered her voice to give Gayle the quiet reflection she was looking for. “We landed and I mentioned that we hadn’t cleared her being there with anypony. But then again, I don’t think that anypony who doesn’t know you directly can tell the difference between one human female and another at a casual glance, so—no offense.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“So I thought we could go into town. But the first thing she wanted to do was land. She touched the grass carefully, like it would dissolve if she made contact, and just stared at the sky for about five minutes. You know in that part of town there’s usually very few ponies around. We saw a couple from a distance, but after just walking around the field and looking at some trees, she asked me to bring her home.”

Gayle shuffled and exhaled, so they both looked at her. “Are you all right?” asked Karyn.

“Yes. But that…wait, I have to get some of this down.” She ran back to her studio and emerged with a sketch pad, some colored pencils, and a piece of charcoal. Beginning with the colored pencil, she scratched out a few lines, then said, half to herself, “No, I can’t reproduce the colors I saw. That I’m going to have to work on. I’m not sure the paints exist to do that. But I can get the shapes.” She sketched rapidly and crudely, first a hillside, then a farmhouse.

Derpy and Karyn walked behind her to see. Since neither of them were artists, they both stared in awe as Gayle’s hand flew across the page, making seemingly unconnected lines bond together into images of clouds in the sky or a dirt road cutting through a meadow. “You’re going to paint from these?” asked Derpy.

“Yes. If my mind can hold the memory of what I saw and my hand can translate onto canvas. Landscapes have always been the weakest part of my art, but maybe it was because I hadn’t seen the right ones. Until now.”

“I hope you let us see them when they’re done.”

Gayle put down the sketch pad and finally seemed to come back to reality. “Yes, I will. Though, I don’t know how long it’ll take me. When I first began painting, I had to go through many failures before I had something that I was willing to show others and have my name attached to.”

“Well, yes,” said Karyn, “but now you’re accomplished. Even your worst effort is still going to have some competence behind it.”

“I guess, but I was thinking of when I started. Like when I was a little girl and I knew I wanted to paint the areas I saw so that I could keep them forever instead of having to go home. I haven’t thought about that feeling in a long time. Maybe I forgot about it. But when Derpy took me to her world…it was like being that little girl all over again.”

“You knew back then that you wanted to be a painter?”

Gayle nodded.

“Wow. I know kids talk about what they want to be when they grow up, but I don’t know too many who actually do it.”

“Exactly!” said Derpy. “I didn’t plan to become a mail carrier. It kind of just happened.”

“Same thing with me and IT. How did you know? I mean, when did you figure it out?”

Leaning back in the chair, Gayle looked up to remember. “I was very young, still in pre-school, maybe in kindergarten, but I remember that sometimes we had finger-painting in class, which was great fun because we got to be all dirty, which every kid loves. And then one day my parents must have decided that I needed some culture, because they took me to an art exhibit at a park. I remember seeing all the paintings, and it didn’t seem right that the same word was used for my messes and these things. But that’s when I first understood that there was a progression, a learning curve to things. That if I worked and practiced something, I could get good and produce something of value, maybe even something beautiful.”

She looked at them. “Of course,” she continued, “I didn’t put it in those terms. But I remember thinking that when I got older, I wanted to be as good as the artist my parents took me to see.”

Karyn and Derpy were now smiling, thinking of Gayle as a cute little girl. “That’s a great story,” said Derpy. “I wonder if the artist ever knew how much he meant to you.”

“Funny you should say that. I remember that even though I barely knew how, I tried to write him a letter to say that I would someday have a show like his where I lived. Of course, that was back when I lived a ways away. I even thought of using one name the way he did.”

“One name?” Karyn asked.

“Yes, like Donatello or Michelangelo. I guessed that’s where he got it from. Or maybe he was just being pretentious. But yes, he just went by Peverley.”

Gayle was too deep in her reminiscing to notice the way Karyn and Derpy both snapped their heads up to full attention. They looked at each other as if refusing to believe it for the moment, then realizing it had to be true. Neither knew what to say, and they only drew Gayle’s view when Derpy, still gob-smacked, reached into her bag, pulled out the letter, and set it before her.

Her eyes went saucer-wide as she looked. “What is—where did you get that?!” She looked to Derpy for an explanation, her thoughts perhaps turning to time travel or other arcane magic.

Instead, Karyn told her the tale of how visiting a post office was one of the weekly outings that they took to teach Derpy more about Earth, and how they’d found it in the dead letter office.

“Maybe we can finally deliver it now.”

Gayle shook her head. “He died a few years back. I never even thought about this. Probably would have realized that they couldn’t deliver it without the address.”

Derpy’s voice went soft. “Was it around here that he lived?”

“Yes. I think that influenced why I bought the house here.”

“Then you should know that they tried. It got to this post office. Someone else must have known and shipped it with the mail, but a grease spot got on it and changed the P to a B. It wasn’t your fault. Just bad postal work. I’m sorry, on behalf of my profession. All we can do now is to mark it Return to Sender.” She pushed it forward with her hoof.

Gayle picked it up, but she had to wipe tears from her eyes. “I don’t even remember what I wrote. All those years ago…” The envelope had been glued shut well, without an easy way to open it, and she put a fingernail to the edge. Then she stopped. “No, I don’t want to open it. It makes me feel good just to know that this still exists, that I started here. What I have to say…that’s all in my art.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Keep it somewhere safe, in a drawer somewhere maybe, or a safe deposit box. I don’t mean to lose it again. Sometimes, not too often, I’ll look at it. Maybe when I finish a painting, and I need to know where to go next, this will remind me to start at the beginning."

Karyn couldn’t help her own tears of sympathy. “Then that’s what this means to you. What he meant. Your inspiration.”

Gayle sniffed, and her voice was clear. “Yes. Listen, to be creative, to be successful at it, you have to be able to create without inspiration. That’s the drudgery, the work of it. But sometimes you get it. And those times are like diamonds. You have to treasure them. And when it comes from a person, then the creator owes them something. I owed Peverley this letter, and he didn’t get it. I owe you two as well. You’re an inspiration. Derpy, because you showed me a new world. Karyn, because you’re showing me a different way to live, a way that combines the magical with the ordinary.

“I’m not sure if I can explain how much people like you mean to me. Just by looking at my art, by giving me a smile or a thank you, or just letting me know to keep going; you give me something that’s necessary for me to create. And it’s necessary for me to create in order to live. You keep me young.”

They looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. Gayle wasn’t that old, not much more than Karyn, but she was successful in her work and had a house of her own, big enough to rent out part of it. In many ways she was further ahead, but if people like Karyn and Derpy were needed by people like Gayle, then they must be special as well.

There was nothing left to say. Gayle hugged each of them in turn, then let them go back to Karyn’s apartment. Once there, Derpy and Karyn decided it was time to relax. They would go out no more that day. Instead, they talked over the amazing way they’d completed the task they’d set for themselves, and how a new bond of friendship had formed. Whatever happened, Gayle would be a part of their lives forever more.

And all they could hope for was to say the same thing about each other.

Author's Note

So if you're wondering who suggested this as a chapter, the answer is...nobody! But credit goes to everybody.

When I asked for ideas, I said I wanted to get twelve more chapters into this story. All the people whose ideas I used, thank you in the highest. This is one that came out of the conjunction of all of them, and of all those who didn't make a suggestion or who didn't get picked.

I write because I have to, because I have ideas that I don't want to go away. If I didn't have an audience, I would still write. But I wouldn't have written this. So this one is for you. Further, more emotional sentiments, can be found in the chapter itself, in the form of Gayle's last comment.

Anyway, enough sentiment, time for a preview!

“It’s probably still too early for the beach.”

Shivering, Derpy said, “Oh, definitely. I don’t want to get wet at all. Plus you know that I prefer our Equestrian beaches. No offense.”

“Never. But OK, what to you says spring?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I didn’t think this would be so popular,” said Derpy.

“No? Why not? We came here. I mean, I didn’t hear any advertising for it, but they probably didn’t hang flyers at the college. Most people here do look to be older.”

“Yeah, but I thought they’d all be too busy. It strikes me that most humans always have so much stuff to do.”

Karyn considered. “They do, but that’s all the more reason they want to come out for something like this. When you’re stressed, it’s all the more that you need to relax.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s wrong?” asked Derpy.

“Did I just see go in who I think I saw?”

“Huh?”

This will be the last of the true slice-of-life chapters. From here, we go to the finish.

146: A Host of Golden Derpodils

“It’s getting more humid out,” Derpy observed as she sipped her coffee.

“I know, right? It’s like there was this brief window when it wasn’t freezing cold, and now it’s all muggy. That’s not fair.” Karyn debated turning the air conditioning on, but it was far too early in the year for that. After the good rapport she’d developed with Gayle the previous week, she wanted to be nice and not raise her electric bills. “I wish that I could remember how terrible it felt in the winter, and how much I would have liked to walk from that right into this weather. Similarly, there should be a way to get the icy cold of winter when it’s a hundred degrees and full humidity.”

Derpy nodded, but she really didn’t see where Karyn was coming from. The weather was the weather. She could change it locally, but heat had to come from the sun. The higher an arc it took, the more heat would reach the ground, and the hotter it would get. Princess Celestia had her schedule, and everypony followed it. It should be even easier, she thought, in a world where the sun moves on its own.

“Would you rather have it too cold or too hot?”

“If I have to choose…too cold. Because I can always put on more clothes, but I can’t take more off.”

Derpy didn’t think it would be polite to say that she could. “I can understand that.”

“Plus the warming weather is another reminder that I’m getting closer to the end of term and I still haven’t found a job yet.”

“Any good leads?”

“Some, but it feels like I’m spinning my wheels. I have to study more, because finals are coming up, but I’ve still got to get in my goal for applications. The only way I can do that is to sacrifice either quality or sleep. I’ve been doing both in equal measure.” Just as Karyn seemed ready to veer into self-pity, she smiled and looked at Derpy. “Sometimes, the only thing keeping me going is that I know Sunday is coming.”

“Keep heart. It won’t be for much longer.”

“I know. Soon I’ll be out of school and I’ll be spending all my time looking for a job. That’ll be just great.”

Derpy caught the sarcasm. “It’s only until you find one. Or, until you find a good one.”

“As if that’s going to happen. Whatever. It’s my day off, and I want to relax. Let’s do something fun, something that’ll get you more in tune with Earth.”

“What would that be? I think I’ve done most of what you have.”

“I doubt that,” Karyn said. “Earth has so much going on, there must be something to do.”

“Well, let’s do something particular to spring. If the weather’s getting better, we should at least be outside.”

“It’s probably still too early for the beach.”

Shivering, Derpy said, “Oh, definitely. I don’t want to get wet at all. Plus you know that I prefer our Equestrian beaches. No offense.”

“Never. But OK, what to you says spring?”

Derpy thought about it a while. “It’s hard to say, because spring covers so much time. From the winter wrap-up to the summer sun celebration. They seem so far away. I guess it’s the time that I work the most. I usually don’t take vacations or days off, or spend too much money. I save that for the other season.”

“There’s something to that. Like our major holidays. There’s always one a few months away, with the exception of the three-month gap between President’s Day and Memorial Day.”

Although she knew of those holidays only vaguely, Derpy didn’t pursue it. “Actually, what I would be doing around this time normally would be to start my garden. It’s a lot of work to get everything plowed and fertilized and seeded, but it’s very time-sensitive. Ever since I saw some pony farmers doing it, I know that, although I was going to do something with my wings, I wanted something that would work on a schedule like that. I love getting my hooves in the dirt.”

“Don’t remind me. I went through all that last year, remember?”

“Oh, yeah! Do you want to do it again? I can mark out a plot for you.”

Karyn’s mind went to a more prurient meaning of the word that Derpy used, and she laughed. “No, that’s fine. I’m glad that I got the few herbs that I did last year, and they helped me in cooking, but it wasn’t worth the sweat and toil. I can get the same thing for a few dollars at the grocery store. Of course, I’d like to be able to earn those dollars easily, but I can best do that by spending my time on the job hunt.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to talk about that.”

“You’re right, and then we circled back around to it. Forget about it. Let’s find something fun to do.”

Derpy agreed, and wanted to use the laptop to find activities, as they did from time to time. But something hit Karyn about what Derpy had said.

“You’re not growing a garden either?”

“No, not this year.”

“Hm. I’m a little disappointed.” Realizing her hypocrisy, Karyn said, “I guess that is isn’t right to say it, but I like flowers and gardens a lot more when someone else does the work. If I were rich and had a palatial estate, I would definitely have a gardener to make it beautiful. So I thought that you liked gardening, and I hoped to see how it would come out.”

“Maybe next year. Or maybe not. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get you out…I’m saying too much. Let’s just leave it that I’m not planting this year, and there’s a good reason.”

If Derpy didn’t want to reveal any more than that, Karyn wasn’t going to press her. She joined Derpy at the laptop.

“Anything particular you’re interested in?”

“What you were saying with the flowers. If there’s something where we can see other people’s flowers that we don’t have to grow ourselves, that would be best.”

Karyn didn’t quite get what Derpy was talking about. “You mean a flower-gazing party? I remember those from some of the cartoons I used to watch. They would have cherry blossom festivals and someone would have to get there early to get a good seat. Then everyone else would arrive and they’d share lunch. But I didn’t think that anyone actually did it in real life.”

“Maybe not, but we can find some and do our own, right?”

“We’ll see. Actually, it’s funny. Because those stories come from Japan. The one place in this country where they do have a lot of cherry trees is in Washington D.C., because some Japanese diplomats gave them a whole bunch. Around here, they’ll be harder to come by.”

“They don’t have to be cherry trees,” said Derpy. “Although I do like a good cherry. But the blossoms and the fruit just always seemed like two different things, you know?”

“I do. And it was flowers that we wanted to see anyway, right? All I can do is search for it.”

“Even if it isn’t that close, I’m willing to drive a fair distance.”

Karyn didn’t know if she would be, but she put the phrase “flower viewing” in the search engine and, by serendipity, something came up. “Well, what do you know about that? It looks like there is a flower festival this weekend at a botanical garden not too far away. I didn’t even know there was a botanical garden that close.”

“They probably don’t advertise. Can we go?”

“It doesn’t look like there’s an entry fee or anything. Maybe it’s one of those places where they have a suggested donation, but no actual cost. Yeah, let’s do it.”

They took their time getting ready. There was no scheduled start time, and it would last all day. Karyn was grateful that they were going on a Sunday. The festival had been over both weekend days, and she hoped that the mass of crowds would have gone the day before.

Parking near the botanical garden was sparse, but they found a municipal lot a few blocks away. From the time they had figured out what they wanted to do to the time they walked in was less than an hour.

The garden was laid out in a massive square, three city blocks on a side. Massive hedges spanned the blocks, and between some were gates to block off people from just entering and exiting wherever they pleased. Free entry was at the corners, and it was there that Karyn and Derpy went. As they overlooked the park, Derpy realized that the hedges had concealed a decent throng of people. Different sections had been laid out in seemingly random shapes, like blobs when viewed from the sky. Between them the people walked like ants through a colony.

“I didn’t think this would be so popular,” said Derpy.

“No? Why not? We came here. I mean, I didn’t hear any advertising for it, but they probably didn’t hang flyers at the college. Most people here do look to be older.”

“Yeah, but I thought they’d all be too busy. It strikes me that most humans always have so much stuff to do.”

Karyn considered. “They do, but that’s all the more reason they want to come out for something like this. When you’re stressed, it’s all the more that you need to relax.”

They were getting into the crowd, and because of that, they didn’t want to speak. Karyn’s Bluetooth was a good trick, but it didn’t disguise Derpy’s voice. On this occasion, though, they didn’t mind, because the beauty of the flowers was best appreciated in silence.

At each bush, Derpy would hover over the flowers like a bee pollinating. The colors were so vivid and bright that Derpy could be fooled into thinking that she was back at home, and the fragrances were heady and vibrant. Karyn enjoyed them as well, comparing them to wines and liquors she had smelled.

They moved from garden to garden. Karyn wished that she and Derpy could have done this on their own, without anyone else present. They found a corner near the hedges where, for the moment, no one else was walking and they could talk.

“It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Karyn.

“Yes. I wonder how much time, how many people had to work to make this. Back in Ponyville, Daisy and Lily and Roseluck could do something like this, but it would take them days of making sure everything grew just right.”

“I’m sure there were a lot more than three people, and they probably spent weeks here, not days.”

That made Derpy appreciate it all the more, and she insisted that they visit each garden, with none left behind. Karyn was fine with this and enjoyed the walk. She tried to keep track of where they were from the nine-block square they had seen from the outside, but when she lost sight of the hedgerow, she gave up on that and just enjoyed the flowers.

She did reflect, though, that as a little girl this was exactly the sort of event that her parents would have to drag her to, and that she would get bored at, demanding to be taken home sooner with a stop for ice cream on the way, to make up for it.

All at once Karyn realized that she wasn’t even sure which direction they had come from. The next break in the crowd, she mentioned it to Derpy.

“I haven’t kept track myself, but if it really came to it, I could fly up and find out where we are.”

“Or I could GPS it myself. But not now. I like the idea that this garden has some secret path that would take us to the land of flowers.”

Because of their disorientation, they doubled back a few times, but they had a general idea of where they were going. Eventually the low bushes and flower displays gave way to more flowering trees, and then just plain trees. When even those were gone, they found a row of carts that served food.

“Can we get something to eat?” asked Derpy. “I’ve been walking around all day.”

“Sure, but I don’t know if they’ll have anything good.”

The first few carts they passed were completely unacceptable. It all seemed to be carnival fare, corn dogs and cotton candy. They weren’t in the mood for the latter and the former wasn’t on their diets. After the sixth cart, though, they found one that was serving rice. Karyn got two plates, which was far more expensive than it would have been anywhere else.

“Where should we eat these?”

“Let’s head back toward the garden area. We won’t go all the way, but there’s got to be a tree we can get under.”

They found a spot where a few other people had the same idea, but Karyn took a tree far from anyone else. The plastic plates and forks made eating the rice difficult, even more so for Derpy.

Karyn also wasn’t happy about having to sit on the grass. She hadn’t even thought about lunch, and had worn a nice skirt that she would now have to have cleaned. Had she considered that she’d be eating on the ground, she would have worn jeans, even if it was hot.

It was impossible for them to get all the grains of rice on the forks, and after a few minutes of chasing them around the plates, they gave it up and threw the plates out. “I’m still hungry,” said Derpy. “And if there is going to be all that food we should get something more substantial.”

“Fine. How about a funnel cake. It’s definitely vegetarian, just deep-fried batter and powdered sugar.”

Again Karyn had to order two, although she doubted that she could finish hers. Derpy loved the waffle-shaped treat and gobbled it up. “This is so decadent, but I could eat it every day.”

“You’d better be careful, or I’ll have to put you on a diet again.”

“I think I’ve got that under control. I eat much lighter on workdays, and then I can cut loose on the weekends.”

“I guess that works.”

Derpy finished it off with a smack of her lips that probably drew attention to her despite being invisible. “So what do you want to do next?”

Karyn considered. They hadn’t really spent much time there at all, even though it seemed like longer. And something in Derpy’s tone, maybe just a slight deepening of the voice, told her that maybe they were both ready to go home. “I could say that we were done here, unless there’s something else that’s really important to you.”

“No, I was going to say the same thing, but I wonder if you worry that we didn’t get the full experience.”

“I’m glad to have a friend who thinks like me on that issue. When one person’s not enjoying themselves but the other is, it can be hard for them to say that they want to go.”

They made their way back through the flowers, neither bothering with any directional aids. Certain colors of flowers served as landmarks until they could see the entrance. After that they took their time, getting one last sniff of the fragrance and one last glance at the beauty before them.

On exiting the botanical garden, they crossed the street immediately since they had the light. They walked parallel to the hedge until they reached the other corner, and after that it was a few more blocks to the car. But Karyn pulled up short.

“What’s wrong?” asked Derpy.

“Did I just see go in who I think I saw?”

“Huh?”

“I swear I thought I saw Albert walking in to the garden.”

Derpy took off and looked over the hedge. “It is him! I was sure you’d be wrong since he usually spots us first.”

“I wonder what he’s doing here. I wouldn’t have figured him for the flower-gazing type.”

“Maybe you misjudged him. Or maybe he’s just here to get some of those funnel cakes.”

Karyn laughed at that. “Although, I think he might have lost weight too. Not that I see him that often, but the first time, he was plain fat.”

Derpy took off for height again. “I think you may be on to something. Though again, it could stem back to when we had him under surveillance. In any case, good for him for getting it under control. You want to go back in and say hi to him?”

“What? N—“ Karyn’s immediate reaction was to say no. Their history had given her an instinctive repulsion to him. But when she thought about it for a moment, she reconsidered. He was no longer truly an enemy, would never reveal the secret of Derpy to the public, and even treated her civilly. If she agreed it would not be a difficult or harrying encounter. It would just be a quick hello that any two people might have who knew each other. “Do you want to?”

“I can tell that you don’t. So you don’t have to.”

“Ask me on another day and I might say yes. For today, I think it’s enough that I’m not actively running away.”

Derpy liked that, once more, Karyn could be open with her about something that she didn’t want to do. But as for her, she had even less of an abrasive history with Albert. If anything, it was he who didn’t like her, or her world, or the existence of magic in general. “Do you mind if I do?”

“I suppose not. You know, just be careful. I’ll wait here and play on my phone.”

Derpy went over the wall to find him. He was walking along the outside of the gardens, not getting too close. She was about to go over and whisper in his ear, planning to give him a little scare, but before she could he stopped and reached into his pocket. Pulling out a handkerchief, Albert put it to his face and sneezed. Then he sneezed about six more times before breathing in through his mouth. He was clearly in distress.

He must have hay fever, Derpy thought. A shame that he couldn’t enjoy the flowers the way everyone else did. Then she realized that there was an element of serendipity here. She flipped open her bag, but she couldn’t find the spell she wanted by touch alone. Shelter was not to be found, so Derpy did what she could, forcing herself into the hedge. It hurt, but she wasn’t in anyone’s way and no one would be looking.

It only took her five seconds, but during those five seconds she was visible. No one seemed to notice except for Albert himself, despite bleary eyes. She activated her spell, clearing up his airways immediately. He rolled his eyes, walked over to where he thought she was, and said, “Thanks.”

Derpy flew back, making her presence known with a cough. “Did you say hi?” asked Karyn.

“No, but I helped him out.” She recounted what she did.

“If you were going to do him a favor, why didn’t you stick around and talk to him?”

“Like you said, maybe next time.”

Karyn nodded as they walked on. It had been an interesting evolution of the relationship. Outside of a few of her meaner teachers and the occasional school bully from her childhood, Karyn had never met anyone that she disliked so immediately as Albert. But unlike all those others, she had come around on him. Someday, she thought, they would be friends. Perhaps even the initial heat between them would forge the friendship into something stronger.

They neared the place where they had parked, but there they found a display associated with the garden that they hadn’t noticed on the way in. Some of the cuttings were being sold, and Karyn took a look at them. “Maybe I should get one.”

“Sure, if you like. It would be a way you could spend some money since they didn’t charge use for going in and looking at their flowers.”

“Probably I’ll kill it in a week, but for now it’ll be a reminder of the fun we had today.” She handed the keeper of the stand a five-dollar bill and took a four-pack of the flowers, packed in some fancy soil.

“You can take care of it fine if you keep at it.”

“Who knows? It might even relieve some of the stress I’m under from job hunting?” They reached the car, and Derpy held onto the little flowers so the dirt wouldn’t get over Karyn’s upholstery. “There’s more than one. We could split it up and you could take some back with you to Equestria.”

“Thanks, but this one is yours. If it grows again next year, I’ll take a cutting.”

Now Karyn had a challenge, and she made up her mind to rise to it. She drove home swiftly and put the flower by the window where it would get sun. She didn’t know how long it had been since it had water, so she filled a pitcher and gave it a splash that soaked into the dirt. “I hope you grow, little flower,” she said, remembering that plants that were talked to did better. “If you do you’ll be a good symbol for friendship.”

Author's Note

The title of this week's chapter comes from Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," which made it into another chapter title as well. Anyway. We go now to the final story arc. Let's see a preview!

“Do you remember when we first met?”

“Let me see…oh, of course. You didn’t like me at all.”

“Do you remember what you did about it?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

Derpy smiled and walked away, but only then did she catch Karyn’s tone. Something still wasn’t right. “Are you sure? I won’t be insulted if you think it’s a bad decision.”

“No, it’s wonderful. It’s perfect."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm putting this last one in spoilers. Please think hard before reading.

“Great old house, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s lovely.”

“I hope you don’t worry, though, because this might be the last time you come in to it.”

Karyn panicked. “What?! You mean that I’m not going to be allowed to come to Equestria anymore? Did something happen with the princesses? Are you going to be cut off from Earth? Please say no!”

That'll be next week!

147: The Derpest Gift

Derpy was particularly bright-eyed that day, in contrast with Karyn’s mood, but Derpy credited that to lack of sleep. “How’ve you been?” she asked.

“Still stressed out over the job search. Nothing much has gone on with that. It feels like I’m spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.”

“Today’s your day off, though. Why not come and visit at my house today?”

Karyn pulled herself up out of the chair. “Might as well. At least I won’t have to clean up later. That will give me an extra hour tomorrow to send out more applications that won’t be responded to or go on an interview where they won’t call me back. But you don’t want to hear that, because it’s the same song I’ve been singing for the past few weeks.”

Derpy wanted to be kind, although it was repetitive. She said nothing, but let Karyn get on her and transitioned as gently as she could to Equestria. Indeed, she seemed to be taking her time on the path that, by now, had become the most familiar commute for Karyn, outside of her walks to school.

She even lingered outside the door, saying, “Great old house, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s lovely.”

“I hope you don’t worry, though, because this might be the last time you come in to it.”

Karyn panicked. “What?! You mean that I’m not going to be allowed to come to Equestria anymore? Did something happen with the princesses? Are you going to be cut off from Earth? Please say no!”

“No! No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” Derpy held up her hooves and put them by Karyn’s shoulders to stop her from having hysterics. “I just meant the house, that’s all.”

This was a new mystery for Karyn to solve, but for the moment she wasn’t thinking about it. The sheer terror that had gripped her when she had thought the worst was something she didn’t want to experience again. The failing job search was bad enough. For her to lose her best friend, she wondered if life would be worth living.

Karyn wasn’t given to depression, and if it turned out that her initial impression was true, and if beyond that they had been unable to fight such an edict, she would have found a way to go on somehow. But for a brief moment, she’d looked over the abyss of despair.

“So what’s going on with the house?” she asked, trying to hide her feeling.

“Actually, can I wait to tell you about that. It was really supposed to be a surprise, but it’s been on my mind so much, and I’ve been just bursting to tell someone, that it kind of slipped out.”

“OK, we can wait. How long? I mean, will I get to find out today?”

“Oh, sure! An hour or so at the most. Just waiting on…well, that might ruin it too.”

Karyn rolled her eyes, but not where Derpy could see. She would let her have her fun.

If, for whatever reason, this was going to be her last time in Derpy’s house, Karyn wanted to make it memorable. She walked into the kitchen, remembering when Derpy had gotten her new oven. It was still well outdated when compared to those on Earth, with rounder corners and a general old-fashioned look. In fact, as she took it all in, Karyn realized that none of what Derpy had would be out of place in the kitchen of a black-and-white sitcom. Except the saddlebag full of magic spells and the pegasus pony sitting at the table.

“So, if it’s not prying too much,” she asked, sitting down across from Derpy, “I can guess that you’re selling the house?”

“Kind of.”

“I hope you’re not in dire straits for money. I know that you spend a lot on me, and the post office isn’t exactly the most well-paying job.”

Derpy waved her hoof as though swatting away a fly. “No, nothing like that. Like I always say, if you budget right, you can afford anything. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. This house isn’t paid off yet, but it’s a lot closer to it than you’d think. I owned it for nearly a year before I met you, and I rented it out then. The rent was more than the price of the mortgage, so I ate into a lot of it then. Plus since then I’ve had tenants in my home in Cloudsdale, and that’s helped. But now I’m moving back to Cloudsdale.”

“Oh. That’ll be awkward when you want to have me over.”

“Yeah, we might have to stick to doing things that are public. Or we’ll have to find a good, permanent cloud-walk spell for you. Maybe I can get a hoofheld one like the rest of those in my bag.”

Karyn was glad that Derpy was still thinking about how they were going to conduct their visits. And of course nothing would change when Derpy was on Earth to see her.

She heard the front door open and turned to see the only other pony who could enter without knocking. “Dinky!” she said, glad to see another friend.

“Hey, Karyn. Able’s here too.” He waved, but kept silent and looked down at his hooves. Well, it was always awkward in other people’s houses.

“Sit down and have a drink,” said Derpy. “What have you been up to?”

“At work,” Able said, accepting a cup of coffee, “but not running it today. We’re still looking out for a permanent place to sell from.”

“Oh?” said Karyn. “You have a temporary one?”

“We rented a cart. Real estate in Ponyville isn’t cheap like it is in the Crystal Empire. All the places we’ve looked at have been out of our range. The cart’s nice, but we’re just treading water at this point, not making money.”

Dinky said quickly, “His place in the Empire is doing just fine, it’s only the expansion that’s on hold.”

“Well, I’m hoping that I can help with that a little.” Derpy rarely made grand pronouncements, and one reason was that she always looked comical when doing it. She stood tall on her back hooves and spread her wings out wide. If Spitfire or Rainbow Dash had done it, it would have been a cool pose. Derpy just looked off balance. “You know, Dinky, that I grew up in Cloudsdale, but of course you’re a unicorn, so Ponyville became our home, and I’ve never regretted it. When you left to go to school, I thought I could go back there, but I wasn’t ready. Now I’m going to try again. And as for this house…Dinky, Able, it’s yours.”

Karyn sat back. She had figured it out as Derpy was speaking, but for Dinky and Able, it came out of nowhere. Dinky was the first to recover. “Mom, you’re giving us the…but it’s so much…I mean…thank you!” She leaped for her mother, which really did knock Derpy off balance, and there was a good minute of hugging and kissing. Then she walked over to Able and nuzzled his shoulder. “Isn’t it wonderful? We’ll be able to live here and save money too!”

“It will help a lot.” He started making calculations with his hoof on the tablecloth, until he dropped it and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Derpy. “It’s yours now. Apologize to Dinky, if you like.” Meanwhile she got him a proper quill and paper.

“It’s still not a working premises, but just to have it available makes life a lot easier. We’d have overflow storage if we need it, which we will. And if push came to shove we could use it as collateral. That might be the best thing. Take one of the more expensive places and mortgage both.”

“If you can avoid that, I’d advise it. It’s better to be out of debt.”

“I know, maybe some sort of line of credit where we don’t lose it.” Able looked over his notes. “I mean, we can pay off whatever debt we get into, but we can never pay you back for this gift.”

“No, you can’t. But when visiting the human world I learned this great expression. You can’t pay it back, but you’ve got to pay it forward. Someday, you’ll be in a position to do something good for somepony else, and when that comes, that’s how you pay the debt, by paying it forward. I think it fits for me, don’t you? To go in the opposite direction.” She screwed up her eyes more than usual.

Dinky had been all smiles, but now she squinted. “Are you saying we have to give the house away later?”

“Maybe not the house, but if Able’s plan works and your bakery takes off, you’ll have money and stability. You can use that to help somepony who needs it.”

“I think I get it. Because I don’t think I’d want to give the house away. For me, it’s the only one I’ve known. If anything, I’d like to keep it in the family.”

It took Derpy a while to think through that. Dinky didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and neither did Derpy. Dinky wouldn’t think of letting her father back in, and as for her grandfather, he was happy where he was. So that could only mean…

“Oh, no! I’m not ready for grandfoals yet!”

Everyone had a good laugh at that, but Dinky didn’t contradict her. It was possible she would have to deal with them anyway.

“Well, thanks again, Mommy. Is there anything we can do to help out, being that you’re going to be moving?”

“I hadn’t actually planned out the move yet. I wanted to do that together, as a family. I think it’s better if we don’t dive into it and mess it up. The house isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the place in Cloudsdale. We can move you in slowly and carefully over the next few months if need be. I’d much rather do that than just have ‘Moving Day,’ where we’re racing around, getting in a panic, and making a lot of work for ourselves. Not to mention breaking or losing half of the stuff.”

Dinky nodded. Able said, “And of course we’ll help you move into your other house.”

“We can’t do that,” said Dinky. “Don’t you know about Cloudsdale? Oh, right, you probably don’t. As the name implies, it’s a cloud city. Only pegasi can walk there. If you went, you’d fall right through the clouds and go splat! But you’ve got to have help, Mommy. You can’t do it all on your own.”

“I’ll get some movers. I’ve done some work for them, as part of a contract the post office has for heavier stuff.”

“We’ll help pack for the movers. We’ve got to do something for you.”

Derpy moved her hooves to the left as though throwing something away. “We’ll worry about that at the time. Besides, there won’t be much to move if you’re keeping the furniture. But then again, there are some accent pieces that I might want to take with me.”

Able got up. “Of course. And if you don’t mind me saying so, Dinky and I will want to put our own touches on it. Make it feel more truly ours, if you follow me.”

Dinky nodded in agreement. “We should go look at some now! I’ve always wanted to go furniture shopping.”

Both Derpy and Able gave her an odd look. “You have?” asked her mother.

“Yes. I mean, Mommy, you’ve made do the best you can with secondhoof stuff, and I appreciate it because you were clearly saving money, but I’d like to have something new and chosen, you understand?”

“Of course. Go pick out anything you like.”

“Especially since we can take our time.” She led Able out of the house, practically walking on air.

“So what do you think?” Derpy asked Karyn. “Am I crazy for doing this?”

“No, it’s quite generous.”

“You think so? Because you didn’t say much when I mentioned it and I was worrying that you were thinking about our time together. If we were going to miss out because I won’t have the house.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

Derpy smiled and walked away, but only then did she catch Karyn’s tone. Something still wasn’t right. “Are you sure? I won’t be insulted if you think it’s a bad decision.”

“No, it’s wonderful. It’s perfect for Dinky. Just, yeah, do it. Make her happy.”

“Karyn, please talk to me. I think I know when you’re concealing something, and you only do that because you don’t want me to help. But I’ve got to.”

All at once she slammed her hand down on the table. “Because I’m jealous! Why should she get a house?! And a good job and a guy who treats her right. I’m not getting anything like that, especially nothing this nice from my parents. And I like Dinky, she’s a good friend, so I feel bad about feeling this way, but I can’t stop the jealousy.”

“Actually, it’s envy. Jealousy is when you don’t want others to have what you…” Derpy trailed off, regretting that she had said it. Karyn shot her a look, clearly not in the mood.

“Do you know how I can stop it?”

“No, but I don’t think that it’s that bad. You’re not a mean-spirited person at heart. I mean, just the fact that you feel bad about it is a good sign. But beyond that, you have every reason to have bad emotions these days. Dinky just finished her tests, but you still have to take yours. All the stress you have of looking for a job, I know about it, and it’s OK to let it out.”

“The problem,” Karyn said, “is that I’ve always thought I was ahead of her. She had trouble in school, but I always passed my classes. And everything that happened with her magic. So it was like, even if I wasn’t living up to my potential, neither was Dinky, so it was OK. Now she is, and instead of being happy for her I’m feeling self-pity.” Derpy tried to give her a hug, but Karyn held up her hands. “Can you just give me a few minutes. I don’t think I’m ready to be a good friend right now.”

Derpy opened her mouth, but then said nothing. Maybe Karyn was right, or maybe she was wrong and did need a friend. But Derpy wasn’t sure she was the one to be that friend. She walked out and left Karyn alone in the kitchen.

Karyn let out a long, shaky sigh, the kind she gave when she wasn’t free to cry. However much she tried, she knew she couldn’t shake her envy. So she turned to the more immediate problem of the house. She was about to see a lot less of it. Dinky would certainly invite her over, but the home of a young couple wasn’t the place to visit too often. And yet she had a connection to this just as much as the two who had lived in it. Here was the kitchen, and out there was the porch where they had sat and watched the rainstorm. Beyond the hall that led upstairs to Dinky’s room.

She passed Derpy in the living room, but each ignored the other, as two people who lived in the same house might do. Making her way up the stairs, she entered. Here was where she had first visited the house, the day she was sick. And here was also where she had found the cure for Dinky’s more grave ailment.

If anything, she was more Derpy’s child than Dinky was! No, that was unfair and wrong. Dinky was Derpy’s blood, and blood was important. But what Karyn did think might have been true was that she was more Derpy’s child than she was her mother’s. Karyn did love her parents, but if they weren’t her parents, she would not socialize with them. They were different people.

And that was the problem. She wasn’t supposed to be looking to Derpy as a surrogate mother. That was a responsibility she hadn’t asked for and didn’t deserve. A friend, that was what she wanted. Was Karyn that? Or had she asked too much?

She stretched out on the bed and thought some more. No, that wasn’t fair either to her, Karyn. She hadn’t sponged off of Derpy, not for help or for love. But she was in a transitional period of her life, without anchor, just looking for any way back to stability. Dinky was getting it from Derpy. Karyn didn’t care where stability came from, but she ached for it.

Karyn didn’t know how long she lay there, and she might have fallen asleep. She sat up at the sound of a knock at the door. “Yeah?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Can I come in?” It was Dinky’s voice. Not as deep as Derpy’s, but lower than Karyn’s.

“It’s your room. For that matter, it’s your house, now.”

The door didn’t move. “Do you want me to come in?”

Karyn had to laugh at that. “Yeah.”

Now it opened, the knob bathed in Dinky’s magic field. She stepped in and looked at Karyn on the bed. “When we move in, Able and I will take over the master bedroom. But I’m not going to keep this like it was when I was a filly. That was Mommy’s thing, not mine. This room I’ll make into a guest bedroom. Get a more adult bed, something less fancy. Put my own touch on it, you know? I was looking at some while I was out. Anyway, the point is that you’re always going to be welcome. This will be your room more than anything.”

Karyn sat up. “Thanks, Dinky. I appreciate it. It means a lot to me.”

“About your own problems, I don’t know if I can help with that, but…”

“You found out about that, huh?”

“Mommy told me”

“Of course she would.”

Dinky came over and sat next to her. “Do you remember when we first met?”

“Let me see…oh, of course. You didn’t like me at all.”

“Do you remember what you did about it?”

“Not really. Just talked is all.”

“You did a lot more. You started teaching me how to be my own mare, not always listen to Mommy. Something I needed to hear. I never would have made it through school without you.”

Karyn was not very interested in the nostalgia. “Why bring this up?”

“Because it’s my turn to help you. This is how I can start paying it forward like Mommy said. By making you happy like you should be.”

“And how can you do that?”

Dinky kept fidgeting. She was back on her hooves again, like she didn’t know whether she should sit or stand. “You’ve got the opposite problem as me,” she said. “You’ve been too independent for too long. You need to know how to ask for help.”

“But I do that.”

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t heard you.”

For the first time in the conversation, Karyn made eye contact with Dinky. It had all seemed like idle chatter until the last thing Dinky said. Cautiously, Karyn said, “Can you help me?”

“I can certainly try. I mean, going forward, we can talk about anything you need, but right now, I want to try this. I found a spell, I’m not sure if it’ll help, but I’ll try it. It’s kind of a spell for good fortune.”

Remembering Dinky’s problems, Karyn held up a hand. “It’s not black magic, is it?”

“No, no! Pure white magic. Well, it’s purple, but you know what I mean. It’ll be less effective, though. And you won’t be able to trace it. It’s not like you’ll wake up and someone will give you a house, but maybe you’ll find a cheaper one or something.”

“OK, let’s do it.”

Dinky’s horn glowed, and Karyn half wondered if it wasn’t a bluff, akin to the magic feather from Dumbo. But she levitated off the ground and felt something wrap around her. Whether or not it was real magic, whether or not it would work, it did make her feel better.

“Now I know everything will work out.”

Karyn slapped her thighs and stood up. “Maybe, but there’s something I have to take care of first. Come on.”

She stomp-marched downstairs to find Derpy relaxing on the couch. “Everything all right?”

“I just want to say that I’m sorry for how I acted before. I shouldn’t have demanded to be alone in your house.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. You’re part of this family, and that means giving each other space when we need it.”

“And what about hugs when we need them?” Karyn held out her arms and Derpy fell into them. Then they rotated toward Dinky and made it a group hug.

“We’re going to get you through this, I know it,” Derpy said, “and when we do, we’ll all be right where we want to be, and there’ll be nothing left but to kick back and enjoy life.”

“Whatever we do, I’m just glad that the transfer of the house is going to start with smiles, not with anger and tears.”

“You said it!” And they went back in for another hug.

Author's Note

Only three more chapters to go...it's getting a little hard at this point.

“Might not be able to go out.”

“Well, we might stay in.” Karyn whisked the eggs with vigor.

“You do seem cheerful, though.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“But isn’t it good to know where you stand? That’s why you need this budget.”

“Yes, you were completely right. For all its annoyance, it helps.”

“I don’t think it’s annoying. To me it’s like a game. But never mind."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hello.”

“Hi, Mom. Can you get Dad? I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Just a minute.” Karyn’s mother walked away from the phone, giving Karyn the chance to sneak an aside to Derpy.

“I hope they don’t guess ahead of time."

And I hope I haven't given too much away either. There should be some good moments in this one. Please come back next week for it.

148: Gainful Emderpment

Karyn was already at the breakfast table when Derpy arrived, but she was drinking orange juice instead of coffee that morning. Derpy figured that she had waited for her to arrive before putting on the pot, and after greetings and hugs, asked as such.

“No, but I’ll get it going straight away for you,” she said. “The weather’s too hot and sticky for me to drink coffee this morning. I’ll wake up eventually the natural way. Or maybe I’ll figure out how to make ice coffee. Or I’ll get a soda.” She had gotten up and loaded the pot with water, but Derpy held up a hoof before she could scoop the coffee into the filter.

“That sounds good, actually. We’ll go without, today.”

“Suits me fine.” She let the grounds pour back into the can before dropping the scoop in and snapping on the lid. Then she lifted it again and breathed in. “Just the smell of it is good.” Staying on her feet, she danced over to the refrigerator to get the eggs, then cracked them with a flourish.

“If you asked me,” said Derpy, “I’d say you were going to have a squall later on.”

“I think the weather report said as much.”

“Might not be able to go out.”

“Well, we might stay in.” Karyn whisked the eggs with vigor.

“You do seem cheerful, though.”

“I might have a reason to be. I had a very good interview this week.”

Derpy perked up at that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you remember a long time ago, as an exercise, we worked that one Sunday at a bank?”

Derpy did remember, but she didn’t answer right away, because she wanted to think about some of the details. Yes, they had helped out so that Karyn could learn about the working world, and they had also solved a problem and gotten paid. Or rather, Derpy had solved the problem and Karyn had gotten paid. Not that she resented it. “Yes.”

“The guy who ran the computers there, Jim, you remember? He got me the interview.”

“So you’re going back there to work?”

Karyn shook her head. “It was with one of the software companies they contract out to. They do banking and collection software for many clients, but Jim’s bank is one of them and he knows a guy there.” For the first time, she stopped smiling. “I don’t know that I like getting my foot in the door that way.”

“Why not?”

“Well, in the first place, if someone else did it the proper way, filling out the application and just banking on their merits, why should I get preference because I’m a friend of a friend? Or, more selfishly, if the same thing happened on all the jobs that I applied for the proper way, how is it fair to me?”

Shrugging, Derpy said, “I guess that’s just how things are. But maybe they aren’t really looking to hire you and just gave you the interview as a favor to Jim.”

“I don’t think so. It was definitely a different tenor than the other interviews I’ve gone to. Like, in all those, it felt as though they were looking for a reason not to hire me, but still had to talk to me to fill out a minimum number of candidates. Here it was the opposite. Like that all they were trying to do was make sure I wasn’t a psychopath or so lazy that I would just take the paycheck and not do any work. Which again doesn’t seem fair. A hirer shouldn’t go into an interview with any preconceived notions.”

“Even so, I hope you get it. Just because things aren’t always fair like that individually doesn’t mean it’s unfair overall.”

“You’re talking about karma? Or ‘what goes around comes around’?”

“Could be. Anyway, when will you hear from them?”

Karyn sneered. “They said by the end of the week. Not this week, last week. The interview was on Wednesday so they should have called me yesterday. I was hoping to have good news.”

“Maybe they run the week from Monday to Sunday.”

“I suppose that’s possible, but it’s more likely that they, along with every other company that I or anyone else has ever interviewed at, isn’t going to keep their promises about getting to you. Even though they expect you to jump at a moment’s notice.”

“You’re getting bitter again.” Derpy tried to put a smile into it to get Karyn back to happy.”

“Well, it’s not fair, and this time I mean in the aggregate. Companies should know how important these jobs are to the people they interview, and get back with quick answers, even if it’s no. It would help the people, but I guess they’re not interested in that.”

“Nothing to do about it, though. Want to go out before the rain sets in?”

Karyn pulled her chair over to the window. “I’d actually rather stay in, hope they call.”

“Won’t they call your cell phone, though?”

“Probably, but if they do I don’t want to be outside where I can’t hear anything, or worse, where I don’t have bars and I miss the call.”

Derpy thought that Karyn was being melodramatic, and that even in those cases she would get a voicemail.

But in defiance of all expectations, they heard the dim buzz of Karyn’s cell phone vibrating, only to be confirmed by the piercing ringtone.

With hope in her eyes, Karyn looked at the caller ID. “Unknown number. Could be. Hello?” She listened for a moment, then made a gesture to Derpy where she put all her fingers together and shook her hand. Derpy shrugged in confusion, then Karyn gave up and moved toward the laptop. Derpy flew out of the way and watched as she opened up word processing. Now she understood the gesture; Karyn was looking for a pen. Too late, as Karyn was taking down notes. Derpy listened to the one-sided conversation. “Yes….Yes, I am! Well, that’s good to hear…OK…Got it. How will that work? I see. Can I call you tomorrow to work out all the details? Great. Thanks. You too. Goodbye.”

Derpy gave her an open-mouthed smile. “Good news? It sounded like good news.”

“They made me an offer.”

“Great! That’s what you’ve been waiting for, right?”

It seemed to snap Karyn out of her thoughts. “Yes, exactly. Finally, after months of searching and interviewing, there’s one place that’s willing to say that they want to pay me to do some work.”

“Awesome!”

“I didn’t say yes right away, though. Actually, I’m a little proud of myself for that. See, all the books I’ve read and the lists of tips all say not to jump at the offer or seem too eager, but I expected that I would mess up and say, ‘Yes, please, I’m desperate! I’ll take anything!’ But I did just what it said and told them that I would call them back.”

Grinning, Derpy said, “So are you going to make them wait longer than you told them?”

“It doesn’t work that way. I can’t get petty revenge. Or maybe I can, but I’m not risking it. Unless I decide not to take it.”

“Well, let’s talk about that. Why might you not want to?”

Karyn switched programs on the laptop to the spreadsheet. “In the first place, the money’s not awesome. I mean, there are some figures they could have named where it would be like, OK, I’m set for life on it. But this is decidedly entry level. I’ve got to see if I can even live on this.”

“Well, plug the numbers into your budget and let’s see.”

“First I’ve got to figure out the tax implications.” She did a lot of research before arriving at an estimate of what her take-home pay would be. “They said payday was every other week, so I’ll put it in twenty-six times.”

Derpy saw an opportunity for pedantry. “Unless your payday falls on the first of the year, in which case you’ll have twenty-seven. Or if it falls on the second of the year, but it’s a leap-year.”

“Yeah, I won’t worry about the edge cases. See, here’s how it is. I’m still going to have to scrimp. I can’t afford to buy new clothes every month, like I’d want to. And I’d have to factor in commuting too.”

“But isn’t it good to know where you stand? That’s why you need this budget.”

“Yes, you were completely right. For all its annoyance, it helps.”

“I don’t think it’s annoying. To me it’s like a game. But never mind. Besides, if you just break even for a while, you’ll be advanced, won’t you?”

Karyn sighed at another difference between Earth and Equestria. “It used to work that way, but the way to advance now is to keep changing jobs every few years. Which, believe me, I don’t want to do. I’d prefer to stay in the same office with the same co-workers. Assuming they’re nice and all. But beyond just the pay is something big.”

“You mean the work itself. Is it going to be something you want to do?”

“Actually, yes. It’s the kind of thing I’m looking for. Minimal support, maximal project work. I’d be coding for database software, and sometimes building the machines that run it, or installing the software on the machines for testing. They said they’ll move me around until they find out what I’m best at. That’s the techie’s dream, to stay behind the scenes, not have to work with the users. But that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

Derpy sensed something ominous in her voice. “What’s that?”

“As I said, it’s coding and installs and projects. Which often has to be done out of hours. Some bank that’s open to the public can’t be installing software when customers are there. It means night work. And it means weekend work.”

“Well, you can deal with that.”

She wasn’t getting it. Karyn had to be more direct. “Derpy, every week, we’ve never missed Sunday together. I’ve been on a regular schedule. Better than regular, because I’ve only had fifteen hours of class, more or less. Sometimes Fridays off. But we’re not going to be able to see each other like we have been.”

“Oh. You mean that this is the end for Derpy and her human?”

“Hey! No! No way. If you think that I’m going to let something like a job stop me from seeing you, you don’t know me at all. But it is going to make things complicated, and that’s why I’m wondering if I should reject the offer. Maybe there’s something else out there for me. Something with more money and regular hours.”

“But if you want this type of work, won’t every place be like this?”

“Not necessarily. It’s just because it’s a customer service industry. I could wind up working IT for, say, a big factory that pushes software out on its own schedule.”

Derpy kept looking for excuses. “But there are going to be holidays and vacations, right?”

“Not so many in the early years. Holidays, maybe, but again, the bank holidays will be opportunities to do our work. I mean, they won’t make me work on Christmas in all likelihood, but those convenient Monday holidays will be up in the air. Vacation time might be a week or two for the first year, and I’ll be last in line for getting to pick the ones I want.”

“Well, we’re going to have to figure out a way to schedule visits. I know you’ve always been against it, but maybe we can finally figure out a way to communicate between the worlds.”

“Interuniverse texting?” Karyn said “Yes, maybe it is time for that. I’ve been wary of it as a way to get caught, and because we didn’t need it. But now we do. I wonder if we can do it in time.”

“Even if it’s not smooth, we can do something as simple as me sending a note to Earth with the same spell I use for myself.”

“Yes, but again, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I haven’t said that I’ll take the offer. Just like when I made the decision to look for a job instead of going to graduate school, I’ve got to weigh all the pros and cons. And not getting to spend Sundays with you is a con.”

Derpy thought back, as far as she could remember in her friendship with Karyn. Back to when Karyn was a freshman and she, Derpy, was going through her empty nest syndrome. Coming together had been a key point in both of their lives. Now a new cusp was approaching.

“Listen,” she said. “You can’t base your decision around me. Not even as a factor. Not even if it meant never seeing each other again. If it’s going to be the right job for you, with work you want at a salary that will sustain you, then there’s no reason to say no.”

“Are you saying that work is more important than friendship?”

“No, I’m saying that friendship is more powerful than work. That even if our story ended here, our friendship would be everlasting.”

“Aww,” Karyn said, but she trailed off, deep in thought. Derpy figured that despite what she had said, Karyn was making the cost-benefit analysis, and she anticipated that it might be a long and drawn-out process like her last decision was. But she snapped right up and said, “I’m going to take the offer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It might not be perfect, and there might be something better out there, but what it’s going to do is relieve the stress in my life and make me happier. I can work within the system to try to improve, rather than have to go out trying new systems. Not to mention that if I have weekdays off that I can still go on interviews on those days looking for better work. I’ll set my mind to doing that. This way, a few years down the line, we can go back to Sundays. Maybe.”

Derpy nodded, and she hoped that it would be sooner rather than later. Even though Karyn had to do what was best for her, she wanted to spend more time with her friend. “So are you going to call them back and accept it?”

“No, I’ll call them tomorrow. I still don’t want to sound desperate. But what I will do is call my parents. They should be the first to know. After you of course.”

She moved her chair closest to the window. Although the cellular reception had gotten better as her carrier had improved the network, it was still the one place she knew to make sure that she didn’t drop a call. Hitting the speed dial, she waited for the ring.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Mom. Can you get Dad? I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Just a minute.” Karyn’s mother walked away from the phone, giving Karyn the chance to sneak an aside to Derpy.

“I hope they don’t guess ahead of time. But I also hope that they don’t think I’m telling them I’m pregnant or something.” She heard the phone go to speaker and greeted her father. “So I got a job,” she said.

Her parents spoke over one another. “That’s great! Where?”

Karyn ran down the details of the job. Her father wasn’t too overwhelmed but her mother seemed happy. “Are you going to stay where you are? Your room here is still available if rent will be an issue,” her mother said.

“I haven’t decided yet. I mean, yeah, it’s not like I’m walking into an executive’s salary. But I think I always knew that I wouldn’t be. I’ll get by.”

Her father spoke up. “I’m very proud of you. I know how many kids your age are coming out of college and they’ve got nothing, so I guess you were working hard after all. And thank you for calling us and letting us know.”

“Of course.”

“And I’m sure you want to go on the internet and tell all your friends now, right?”

“Actually, I’ve got one friend here. Sorry you weren’t the first to know.”

“Oh?” Karyn’s mother broke in again. “Who’s that? Have we met them?”

Karyn wasn’t sure why she had mentioned that, until she realized that she had gotten so used to having Derpy around that her innate self-consciousness about keeping her hidden had gone away. What surprised her was that she wasn’t worried about it this time. She tried to think of a lie to cover it up, but she decided that she didn’t want to lie anymore.

“Her name is Derpy, Mom. I don’t think you know her.”

“That’s kind of a funny name.”

“Mom! You’re on speaker phone.”

“Sorry. Can we talk to her?”

That would be going too far, thought Karyn. Right? Of course, she could always say that Derpy had to go back home to…some far off country. No, there aren’t flights. Or phones. Technically it would even be true. Could she let her parents talk to Derpy? Why not?

“Sure. Just a sec.”

Derpy was more surprised. She pointed a hoof toward herself, as though still not sure Karyn was serious. But she smiled and nodded, so Derpy approached the phone. “Mr. and Mrs. Hubert? I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you. Karyn’s been such a helpful friend to me.”

“That’s good to know. Are you going to school there too?”

“Oh, no. I left school a long time ago. I work, just like Karyn now.”

They all shared a laugh over that, more of relief than of humor. Although they didn’t say anything, Derpy could tell that Karyn’s parents were worried about her employment too. “Karyn, dear, sometime you have to bring Derpy out to spend a weekend here,” her father said. “We’d love to meet her.”

“Maybe someday,” Karyn said, but it was the kind of maybe that people used to mean no.

They wound down the conversation and got off the phone. Karyn was glad to get it over with, and she slumped into the chair, but before she could throw her head back and relax, Derpy said, “Hey!”

“What?”

“I just realized. You remember Dinky’s spell? It worked!”

Karyn thought back. Dinky had said that she was giving her a kind of good-luck-charm magic, but Karyn wasn’t even sure that she didn’t just say that to make her feel better. “Are you saying that I didn’t get the job on my own merit?”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that. I just meant—“

“I suppose I have no right to complain, seeing that I already did about getting it through networking. If anything, I’ll credit Dinky’s spell for having the place call me back in a timely manner. That’s something that can only be accomplished by the most arcane of magic. Indeed, I’m still not sure she didn’t use a dark and forbidden spell to make that happen.”

Derpy laughed.

“And the scheduling might be credited to that as well,” Karyn continued. “Weekday time off can be useful.”

“Even though it means we have to figure out a new way to get together.”

“Well, I’m thinking of things like if I need to get my car inspected. I can go in early and not have to have someone drive me.”

“I guess.” Derpy of course had never had that problem. “What are we going to do today, though? We’ve still got the whole rest of the day, even though it feels like so much has already happened.”

“I’m thinking of what I have to do next. Finals are coming up. I’ve got some study days in class where I don’t have to go in, but I’m going to have to use those.”

“Right. If you don’t pass school, they won’t let you work.”

That brought Karyn up short, and she laughed. “Actually, I’m not sure that’s true. I mean, I told them I anticipated graduating in a couple weeks, but I could be wrong. But no, I’m not going to coast my way through the end of college, not after all the effort I put in in all my other classes. I want to be able to hang my degree on the wall and know that it’s real.

“And more than that, I want to put a bow on this whole college thing. I’m not going back there again, not to study. Maybe for a reunion or an alumni affair or something, but never to, you know, go to college. It’s too expensive. I’ll keep learning, but at my own pace, in things I’m interested in. Over the internet, probably.”

“But that still doesn’t answer the question of what we’re going to do today.”

“You’re right.”

Derpy reached for her saddlebag. “But this does. We’re going outside. To eat, maybe have a drink. Celebrate. You deserve it.”

“Right! And it’s my treat, since I’ll have income soon enough. And also because you don’t have any Earth money.”

They decided to walk toward Karyn’s college. The cafeteria was there, the same one where Karyn got food for Derpy the first time she ate on Earth. Karyn had a good remaining balance on her meal plan, and she spent most of it on hot food and an extra cheese sandwich for Derpy. They found their booth in the corner where Karyn could hide Derpy’s eating from prying eyes.

“Congratulations,” she said.

“Thanks. But, now that I’ve told my parents, and you know, I don’t really have anyone else.”

“Sure you do. I’ve got to tell everypony back home. Dinky and Able, Twilight and Lyra, they’re all going to be happy for you.”

“I guess I’ve got a lot of friends after all.”

Author's Note

Well, that's the antepenultimate chapter. Only two more left. Next week, certain precedents will be broken. I won't give you any clips, but for those who really need something, here's a spoiler. In chapter 149 there are only two words of dialogue.

150: Pomp and Derpumstances

Once again, straightening up the apartment. Once again, making breakfast. Once again, a cup of coffee for Karyn and for Derpy.

But as soon as they finished their morning routine, Karyn was a mass of activity, showering and getting herself ready to go out for the day, and leaving Derpy to do the dishes. Only when she had put the last of them in the drain did she remember that that day was to be Karyn’s graduation ceremony. She worked faster to make sure that Karyn wouldn’t be held up.

“I miss being a changeling,” Karyn said as she emerged with a towel around her head. “You can better believe that I wouldn’t have gotten all dolled up for this. I had to get my hair done yesterday, and spend money on this dress for later. I would have just…” she pointed at herself and snapped her fingers.

“You look great, though. The pictures today should come out nice.”

“There’s that. Assuming I’m not all shiny from sweating having to run all over the place. Bad enough to cost me a Sunday, but we have to get there at ten, even though it doesn’t start till noon. Waste of my time.”

Derpy figured that Karyn was really bubbling over with happiness inside, and that she was half playing at being upset to keep from being giddy. “Anything I can do to help you get ready?”

“No. I’ll tell you another thing though. If I could change myself the way I used to, I would totally go naked today. It’s going to be a scorcher, and this robe won’t help.”

Karyn got out the orange robe that she had rented. Derpy noticed something off with it right away, but didn’t figure it out until she felt it with her hoof. “This is a robe?”

“Kind of. It’s plastic, as you can clearly tell. More like a rain poncho than anything decorative or fashionable. It’s designed so that I can wear it for a few hours over my clothes, then they’ll take it back, hose it down, and leave it in a box somewhere in storage for another twelve months. After that, they’ll charge someone else ten bucks to do the same. Or maybe they’ll be silly enough to buy it and leave it in their closet until it gets lost in a move.”

“You’re really upset about it, huh?”

“Well, it’s cheap.” Karyn threw it over her tank top anyway. “I bet that at Harvard or Princeton the graduates have real robes. And it’s going to be hot under here, in the bright sun. Of course, it’s not even opaque enough that I could wear it without anything underneath. Not that I would.”

Derpy now understood what Karyn was upset about. “Hey, just because you’re not as fancy as those schools doesn’t mean this isn’t real. And afterwards, when we have your party and everyone’s there for you, then you’ll know how much it means.”

She was a little proud of herself for recognizing the names of the two schools that Karyn had mentioned. When she had first met her friend, she was completely ignorant of all things Earth. Now she had a good working knowledge. With Karyn comforted about how much the day would mean, they got down to the logistics of preparation. Derpy went invisible, and they walked out toward the school.

Karyn took off the robe a few steps out, so as to not have it drag on the ground and pick up dirt. When they reached the campus, Derpy saw the multitude of people and remembered that they had seen such a throng on the first time she had flown Karyn around the area. At the time, this day seemed like a far-off dream. Now it was here.

There were a few signs with arrows on them directing the graduates to where they had to go, but again Karyn sneered at them. “See how they wrote ‘Graduates’ underneath upside-down? Because they printed them out before they knew where to put them up, and wanted the option of reversing them”

The last arrow led into one of the classroom buildings where Karyn signed in. A woman in a tight suit was directing the graduates. She wasn’t wearing a nametag, but a similarity of mannerisms led Karyn to nickname her Ms. Harshwhinny.

“Come on, everyone, I need to get you all in some semblance of alphabetical order!” she shouted. Most of the graduates weren’t paying attention, more focused on their own conversations with friends. Karyn did see a few of her fellow students that she knew, and exchanged greetings, but she was trying to be good for the coordinator. She stood where she figured the H’s might go.

But now there was nothing to do. She checked her phone and found that they had more than an hour before it was supposed to start. Where she was positioned, she could still see the outside through the doors. It was more pleasant out there, but at least where she was she had the air conditioning.

Two heads poked into the building, and Karyn recognized her parents. Grateful to have something to do other than wait, she walked toward the exit, checking first for Ms. Harshwhinny.

“Hey!” she called out. They had already started walking away.

“Karyn!” All was hugs and kisses for a few moments. She checked to see that Derpy was still nearby. When she felt a wing in her hand, she knew that she was.

“I’m glad you guys could make it, but shouldn’t you be waiting in the bleachers?”

Her father waved his hand like he was dismissing a fly. “Rules are for people content not to see their daughter on her most special day. Until you get married.”

Karyn’s mother gave him an elbow in the ribs. “No pressuring her, sweetie. This is all about today. I can’t tell you how proud we are of you.”

“Thank you.” Karyn thought a little of what had occurred to her the previous week. “I think it’s more than just graduating. I’m growing up a little.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I mean, I’m still scared of a lot of what’s out there, but I know that one way or another, I’ve got to press through it and meet life head-on. Once I get to work, I’ll be responsible to keep the job and impress people to have them pay me more, or improve my resume so someone else will hire me.”

Nodding through this, Karyn’s father said, “Yes, but what about your social life? We want to make sure that you’re making friends as well.”

Before she could respond, her mother broke in. “Well, there is that one friend that we talked to on the phone. The one with the funny name. Is she around today, Karyn? All your friends should be here around you to wish you the best.”

Three factors came together in Karyn’s mind. The first was what she had just said, about growing up. The second was her father’s request to know that she was not becoming a recluse, or dedicating her time so much to money and work. And the third was the atmosphere of the commencement ceremony. It was time to take a bold step, and so she made a decision.

“She is. Can you step inside for a moment? We need to have privacy.”

It was a difficult goal, but they kept walking down the hall until they came to an empty classroom. Several others had been occupied with graduates adjusting their outfits or taking pictures. But this one seemed to be clear and had no cameras.

She closed the door and asked her parents to sit down. Without understanding, they did so. Karyn took a deep breath. “Derpy? Why don’t you go ahead and meet my parents.”

They looked around, and thoughts of it being an imaginary friend flashed through their heads, before the voice responded. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, please.”

“All right.” Derpy dropped her invisibility spell and lit on the floor. Karyn’s mother leaped out of her chair and toward her husband. Karyn’s father held his composure better, but was still stunned.

“Mom, Dad, this is Derpy Hooves. She’s a pegasus pony from Equestria.”

“It’s very nice to meet both of you in the flesh at last.” Derpy said. She wasn’t sure if she was expected to shake hooves, and settled for a quick bow of her head.

They refused to acknowledge her and turned to stare at Karyn, their expressions asking for an explanation. Karyn started in. “Yes, she’s from a magical land, so magical that they found a way to come to our world. But it’s just Derpy who comes regularly, just to see me. And so I haven’t tried to exploit that magic for fame or personal gain. I’ve left it alone, along with the world, to grow in its own way.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” her father asked.

“Because you see how hard this is, and I didn’t want to have to deal with you acting like this.

“The bottom line is that I wasn’t going to get through school without a friend. Someone reliable that I could count on to help me through the troubled spots. And whom I could help in return. I didn’t have the time to find one here on campus, or even of my own species. What you need to understand is that Derpy is a little different in her world too. But we fit with each other. Also, you’ve both been incredibly rude to her by ignoring her.”

Karyn’s father was surprised to hear his daughter speak so forcefully, but her mother took her last point to heart. “Pleased to meet you, Derpy,” she said.

“Now, just as I haven’t,” Karyn continued, “you can’t tell anyone about this, or try to prove that magic exists. It’ll just be our particular family secret."

Her father seemed to want to argue, but either because he was still reeling from the revelation or because his wiser side prevailed, he nodded agreement.

Her mother, perhaps prodded by greeting Derpy, seemed to find her voice. “Yes, as you said, you did grow up. And although this seems like a childish fancy, I think you’re right in that this was the best friend for you. I’m proud of you, once again.”

“Thank you, Mom.”

“Can we spend some time with Derpy? Get to know her?”

Karyn checked the time on her phone and pressed her face to the window out of the classroom. The graduates were still milling around. “You should probably get to your seats. Afterwards we’ll figure everything out, just between the four of us.”

Accepting that she was right, Karyn’s parents gave her one last hug and kiss, then left to find the audience gallery.

She made another check of the line outside, but still Ms. Harshwhinny hadn’t been able to get everyone ready to walk out. So Karyn decided that she would take a few minutes and compose herself. Derpy had gone back invisible, anticipating that they’d go quickly, but held back when Karyn did.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Just want a minute. Things like that are another reason that I don’t like graduations.”

“Things like me meeting your parents?”

It took Derpy a moment to parse Karyn’s entire sentence, so she got an answer to her question. “I mean them just being here in general and fawning all over me. It’s like going to a family party but worse.”

“Wait, you really don’t like this? You’re actually not having a good time, and you weren’t just concerned about the schedule or the robe or a few little details?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve gone to other people’s graduations, and it’s boring. You sit there while they read off names and people walk, get a piece of paper, and sit down. It’s meaningless.”

She started back, but Derpy turned off her spell again. “I can’t let you go out there like this. This is too important.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“Wait. Give me a moment. I’ve got to think about this and say it right.”

Derpy put her hooves on the side of her head, like she was trying to stop a headache. Karyn wanted to make sure the others wouldn’t leave without her, and suggested that they talk about it later.

“No,” said Derpy. “I’ll keep one eye on them and one to talk with you. But you need to listen. Sit down.”

Karyn did as instructed.

Derpy softened her tone a little, but it still had the stern tone that Karyn herself had used when dressing down her parents for being rude.

“A long time ago, I realized something about life. The bad things in life, they come up randomly and they hit hard. Losing a job, someone getting hurt, a disaster that burns your house down—you don’t know when they’ll happen. Good things you have to work on day after day, and if you don’t take time to reflect, then you can’t feel the good things, and the bad things get put in sharper relief.

“When I realized that, it was when Dinky first went off to school. I remembered all the hard work I put in, the days and years raising her, trying to make her the best pony I could. Nopony was going to give me an award for that, even though it was the greatest thing I’ve done. So I knew I had to make my own award, in order to feel the good I did as much as I would feel something bad.

“To do that, I needed a friend to share it with. But nopony in Equestria would do. So I had to find someone else. I found you.”

Karyn’s eyes got misty as she listened to Derpy.

“Now you’re in the same position I was,” Derpy continued, “but you’re going to throw all the emotions away? I am not going to let you do that. I wasn’t there for you during all those hours that you spent in the classroom, or all those nights that you wrote your papers, or all those days when you had to see your professors instead of having fun. But I am here now, and in the name of our friendship, you are going to feel all of the good you’ve accomplished, if I have to reach into my bag and pull out a magic spell to make you feel it!”

Karyn broke down and fell into Derpy’s hooves. As she felt Derpy’s wing gently stroke her hair, she said, “I worked so hard, but I thought that was what I had to do. I never thought about getting any reward for it.”

“Well, you should. You deserve it.” She lifted up Karyn’s face. Her eyes were puffy and her eye shadow had run. “Now I am going to have to go into my bag. I think I have a spell for fixing makeup.”

Laughing through her tears, Karyn stood still to let Derpy work her magic. Then she walked back out into the hall. All the robes were in some semblance of a line, so she returned to her spot just in time for Ms. Harshwhinny—whose real name, she found out, was Ms. Jones—to put her in her exact position and chastise her for running off.

It was a fairly large class, and it took a while for the head of the line to move enough for Karyn to start off. The entirety of the graduation march had played once by the time she reached the outside.

Karyn, before she had gone to school, had a brief period where she got into classical music, and the Elgar march had been one of her favorite pieces. Now, hearing it for her, it took on new meaning for her.

The march had to be slow, since at the head people were filing into their seats. The audience was behind them, with the graduates’ section roped off by masking tape. She remembered so many occasions when she was forbidden from the best seating. Now it would be hers. Derpy was right. She should enjoy her honors while they lasted.

She looked for her parents, but their delay in speaking with her had put them in the standing crowd. Karyn realized that the sports field was the only place on campus big enough to hold all the graduates and their well-wishers, so even though it meant being in the hot sun, Karyn was glad it was outdoors. It seemed miraculous—or maybe just magical—but she didn’t even feel hot.

Another point of serendipity fell her way. She got the first chair in a row, giving Derpy space to squat next to her. She could hold her hoof until she had to stand and walk to the stage.

Since she had missed the instructions, being too busy having moments with her parents and with Derpy, Karyn had to infer how they were supposed to do this. The first person, two rows ahead, stood up and walked to the stage, paused a moment, then walked up to shake hands with the dean of students and receive her diploma. So a secondary bottleneck was created, but the row of chairs was cleared, and so the student could leave the other side of the stage and walk back across to her seat. Karyn would have to do the same.

Each student received a base amount of slight applause when their name was called out, but some definitely got a full cheer. Most of them she didn’t recognize, although Nadia, with whom she had once done a group project, effected one of the louder receptions. Karyn joined in with enthusiasm.

As the bottleneck cleared, the second row was instructed to move to the stage. Karyn went on high alert. Soon it would be her turn to move, and she didn’t want to hold up the process at all.

“Catch me if I trip,” she whispered to Derpy.

“I always will.”

When the time came, she did not trip, and filed into line behind the last person in the second row. One by one the graduates had their moment, until there were three in front of her, then two, then one…

“Karyn Hubert!” came through the microphone. The speaker had paused for a moment over her given name, then gotten it right. Karyn waited for the polite applause, but instead, there was a cheer that rivaled the most popular students’. She was touched. Maybe she had made an impression in school after all. She heard a long whistle and a cry of “Yeah!”

Back down the row, and into her seat. She found Derpy and said, “That was pretty cool.”

“Mmhm. I might have used a teensy loudness spell for it, but not too much.”

Karyn rolled her eyes and smiled. It would sound loud on the video at least.

After her row, there were three more to go, but instead of being bored, Karyn took it as a time for silent reflection. She was popular, no matter the quantity of her friends. The quality couldn’t have been better.

For the first time, she saw herself from outside, as someone else would. She was no longer a stressed-out college student. She was a young woman with a job, access to magic, and a special best friend. Karyn was awesome. Like Derpy, she would be a figure in the background of many people’s lives, but who secretly had a full life of her own.

When the last of the participants had received their diploma and returned to their seats, there was a brief speech from a hired speaker. Karyn missed who he was and what he had done, but he was adept at his job, keeping his speech limited to pleasant platitudes, lofty promises, and—most importantly—five minutes.

The graduates were told to rise, and place their hands on their tassels, hanging to the left of their heads. Karyn remembered this from the rehearsal and instructions. She had thought it a meaningless gesture, but now, thanks to Derpy, she understood.

The dean got to the microphone and said, “Graduates, graduate!”

Karyn pulled her tassel across to the right side. It was like a magic spell. Four years of work coalesced into a special piece of paper, and her moving of the tassel imbued it with all the education she had.

As rigorously controlled as the ceremony was, when it was over, there were no instructions given about what to do next. So Karyn just walked back around the chairs to find her parents.

She could see that they were going to speak, but she wanted to go first. “I love you both, very much.”

“We love you too,” said her mother. “Let’s take some pictures. Derpy, are you there? Can you take one?”

Derpy laughed. “I am. But it might freak people out if they saw the camera just hovering in midair.”

“You’ll get used to it,” said Karyn. Let’s wait until we get home for the party and we can take some that have Derpy in it too.”

Her parents looked at each other, wondering why that wasn’t forbidden. “All right. You want to come with us? We’re heading out to beat the traffic.”

“Thanks, but no. I’ll take my own car. I can stay over, but then I’ve got to start work in the morning, and I’ll want to drive back to my place after.”

“OK, kid.” Her father gave her one more kiss on the forehead, then they walked off.

“Looks like you made a connection with them,” said Derpy.

“Maybe. They’ll always be my parents, but now I hope we can be friends too. I wouldn’t have picked them for friends otherwise, but I will now. And that’s OK. That’s how life works. You build things up over time, like friendships, and you have to take notice on special occasions.”

“You learn life lessons quick!”

They shared a laugh and began walking, out of the sports field, off the campus, back toward home. Under the shade of the trees, in the bright light of the summer sun, Karyn and Derpy walked together until they arrived and Derpy could be seen.

“So I have work next Sunday,” Karyn said. “We’ll have to miss our visit.”

“Oh! I forgot to mention. Graduation present.” Derpy went into her bag and passed Karyn a spell. “For you, for keeps. Point it at a piece of paper and it will come out of its twin. I have the other one. We can send messages now, even when we’re apart.”

“Perfect. Just perfect. Now our bond can’t be broken.”

“Bond?”

Karyn turned to look at her. “Of course. We have a true bond of love and friendship. That can’t be broken anyway, but now we’ll have all the good times ahead, no matter what.”

And Derpy said nothing to that, because there was nothing to say. “Come on. Let’s go to the party.”

They walked together, as they would walk together for the rest of their lives. Derpy Hooves was Karyn’s pony, and Karyn Hubert was Derpy’s human.

1: Through a Glass Derply

Derpy Hooves looked down at the small object before her. It was designed to look like a hat, though not the kind of hat that a pony wore around town. She recalled seeing Spike wearing something like it, and she had heard it being called a top hat, but that confused her. Weren’t all hats for the top? What would a bottom hat be? Something to cover up your cutie mark? But she usually didn’t ask questions like that out loud, because when she did, ponies tended to laugh in a way that wasn’t entirely friendly.

It had taken a long time to get this object, which wasn’t really a hat after all, but which was something precious to her. Before using it, she thought, it was important to remember everything that had gone into it. Life was like that, she thought. The bad things come up on you randomly and hit you hard. Good things you had to work on day after day, and if you didn’t take time to reflect, then you couldn’t feel the good things, and the bad things were put in sharper relief.

Over a year, she thought. More than twelve months since the day she first made her decision to go after this, although she hadn’t known it was this she was after. She first had to track down Lyra Heartstrings, and track her down in the right setting. Several years prior, Lyra had done a very un-pony thing, researching a magic spell to transport a human into Equestria. Nopony had even believed in humans other than her, and all the ponies in town had been freaked out when it became known. Princess Celestia herself had come to town, and though Derpy was away at the time, she heard all about what a terrible row it had been. But it all worked out in the end, and Lyra had been living with the human ever since.

Derpy wanted to talk to Lyra alone. Truth be told, she was a little scared of the human, and would probably be tongue-tied if they were both together. When she had to deliver mail to the house that Lyra and the human shared with another pony named Bon-bon, she always hoped that the one to answer the door would have hooves instead of hands.

It took about a week and a half before Derpy finally spotted Lyra alone, out shopping in the town square. Even so long after the incident, Lyra was still something of a pariah in town. Nopony was uncivil toward her, but she was definitely treated like an outsider, not unlike Zecora, the zebra from the Everfree Forest. To actually accost her for conversation was not something most ponies would be seen doing, but Derpy was used to doing embarrassing things. She descended near her and got her attention.

“Hey, Lyra.”

“Oh, hi! You’re the mailmare. . . Derpy, right?”

“That’s right, Derpy Hooves. I wanted to talk to you for a bit if I could.”

“Why don’t we go sit down?”

The two ponies went to a table with a big umbrella overhead. Derpy set down her mailbag. She was ahead of schedule, but couldn’t stay for too long. And so, as Lyra looked at her in anticipation, she decided to come quickly to the point.

“So, you’ve been living with a human for a few years now, and I’ve heard some of what it’s like.”

“Yes, and?”

“And I want one.”

“Want one what?”

“A human. I’ve heard the one you have say that there would be other humans who would want to come and live with ponies, and has occasionally asked for volunteers. Well, I’d like to be the first.”

“OK, first off, I don’t ‘have’ a human. They’re not pets, you know. We’re friends and housemates, and we treat each other as equals. Second, taking care of a human is a big responsibility.” Lyra cut herself short as she realized that she had somewhat contradicted herself, but Derpy hadn’t noticed.

“I understand, and I certainly will treat her—or him—as an equal. And as to the responsibility, you know I have raised a foal, so I do know something about keeping someone safe.”

“But this is going to be a creature who knows almost nothing of our world and will have all sorts of preconceived notions. You’re going to have to lead them by the hand—that’s what they have instead of hooves—for a long while.”

“I’m willing to do so and to work hard.”

“OK, let me ask this: why? Why a human and why now?”

Derpy looked out at the ponies milling about. “Well, one reason is that ever since Dinky left home to go to school, I’ve been awfully lonely. Empty nest syndrome, I guess.”

“Well, that’s a good reason to want a friend, but there are plenty of ponies—“

“No,” Derpy interrupted. “That’s the other reason, the big one. I don’t fit in. I never have. You probably notice the way ponies look at you because of what you did. They look the same at me for things I haven’t done. You and I, we’re just a few degrees off normal. And that’s what a human would be if he came here. So it’s the right companion, I’m sure of it.”

“All right, well, I’ll go home and talk it over. No promises, though. If nothing else it will take some time to find the right candidate.”

Derpy accepted gratefully. Every day when she would deliver mail to Lyra’s cottage, she had to fight the temptation to ask how the search was going, but she knew that harping on her wouldn’t bring the answer any sooner, and it might change it from a good answer to a bad answer. Still, the possibility itself, and that she wasn’t rejected right from the start made Derpy happy, and allowed her to occupy herself in planning for things that she could do with her human if she ever arrived.

It was perhaps a month later that she decided she could no longer stand it. She resolved to speak to Lyra and ask for a progress report. Luckily, the next time she brought mail to the house, it was Lyra who came to the door. Derpy wanted to sidle up to the topic, not seem too eager. In contrast to their previous encounter, Derpy spoke haltingly.

“So. . . I was wondering. . . have you given any more thought to what we talked about a few weeks ago?”

“You mean about a human?”

“Yeah. . . I’m still interested..”

“We haven’t found anyone yet. You know, Derpy, you are a pegasus.”

“I know that. I’ve been one all my life.”

“Well, if you’re living with a human, you can’t exactly live in Cloudsdale anymore. You’ll need pied-a-terre, literally.”

“Huh?”

“Pied-a-terre, it actually means feet on the ground, but it’s also used to mean a second residence that a pony keeps in town.”

“Oh, I never knew that, thanks!”

“So anyway, unless you’re going to vacate Cloudsdale entirely, you’ll have to get some place—“

“I’ll start looking right away!”

“Are you sure, Derpy? Keeping up one house is expensive enough, two might be too much for you to handle.”

“No, it’s a good chance for an investment. I’ll find somepony who’s renting but not looking to stay long-term, and I’ll put in to take over the ownership on a mortgage. Then until we’re ready to move in I’ll collect the rent to defray the early part of the mortgage where it’s almost all interest, let the tenant know that I’ll eventually want to take residence myself, and rent or sell my old Cloudsdale place, depending on how the market plays. Hopefully that’ll be a rental as well so once the mortgage is done it’ll be a source of income.”

Lyra looked agog at Derpy, who had been talking half to herself, planning out strategy. “Oh, Derpy. I had no idea you... “

“Could afford something like that? I don’t know why everypony seems to think that I’m dirt poor. Yeah, mail delivery isn’t like owning a store, but it’s steady pay, and with proper economizing, anypony can save up money.”

Lyra was going to say that she had no idea that Derpy was that smart, but didn’t want to insult her. “OK, I guess you’re really serious about this then. You work on that and I’ll definitely try harder to find a human who wants to stay with you.”

“Thanks, Lyra.”

Derpy headed off with her head full of ideas. Even if she didn’t get to meet a human, to become a property owner and a landlady would be exciting on its own. Her filly Dinky had been smart enough to get to go to Princess Celestia’s school for unicorns, and with one fewer mouth to feed, Derpy’s bits had grown even as her heart emptied a little. Not that she regretted it. Dinky was growing and was going to be a wonderful mare, whether she went on to a career or found some stallion and became a house-mare.

After that conversation Lyra became more accommodating and proactive in talking to Derpy about the search, even if it was just coming up to her and saying, “Nothing yet,” or “Talked to a few people, but they were mean and not the type we want around here.” Then one time she told Derpy, “We had what we thought was a definite possibility, but it fell through.”

“Why?”

“Well, did I ever explain to you about the time distortion?”

“No, but I think I get it. Equestria and the human world are on different timelines, right?”

“Sort of. When a human comes here, no matter how long they stay, they go back to the same time they left. And we thought that would be a selling point, you know? ‘Come to Equestria and don’t lose any of your time.’ But the one we talked to, she said that she wouldn’t like it if she came here and got older while she missed out on her ordinary life back home. She’s rather young, you see.”

“Hmm, I can see how she’d say that, but I definitely agree with you that it’s an advantage. Hey, maybe instead of bringing a human here, I should go to their world!”

“Whoa, whoa, hold your humans.”

“Huh? I can’t hold her until I meet her.”

“Oh, it’s an expression I’ve taken to using.. You see, on Earth—which is the name of the human world—they say ‘hold your ponies’ when someone’s getting ahead of themselves. I think that’s what they say. Anyway, forget that. For one thing, the timeline trick doesn’t work the other way. If you went to Earth for a day, a day would still pass in Equestria. At least, that’s how we assume it is, because we’ve never sent a pony to Earth.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too risky. We don’t know if the pony could get back. We don’t even know if magic works on Earth. There’s no way to tell without sending a pony who might be lost forever.”

Derpy seriously thought about saying that she would volunteer, but when she thought about it she did realize that losing her home and her filly forever was too much of a chance to take. If only they knew for sure. “OK, Lyra, thanks anyway. Keep me posted,” she said.

Derpy had nonetheless gone off reinvigorated from hearing that there had been a human who at least considered coming to see her. But her joy waned over the weeks that came when it seemed that Lyra could find no more prospects.

Flying over Ponyville every day, Derpy normally liked to watch the seasons change, particularly in autumn when the carpet of green that normally served as her view put on a show of colors for her. But that year it seemed like she was marking time when she should have been busy. One day she flew over the apple orchard that served the town. It would soon be time for zap apple jam. It would come and go, she thought, and that’s one more experience that she would be having alone. It was near lunchtime and she decided to make it a picnic and eat under the trees.

She sat, munched, and contemplated. She had thought often about whether her quest to make a human friend was something she ought to be doing. Lyra had come close to accusing her of wanting an escape from her real problems, but the only problem she had was loneliness, and there was no better cure for that than a friend. Derpy was a simple pony, and she believed that if it was right for her that she’d find a way. Or, she thought, if I can’t find a way, maybe it wasn’t right.

A stiff breeze blew. From the tree above her, one of the zap apples let go its stem and fell squarely onto Derpy’s head. Startled and hurt, she dropped her lunch and started rubbing her wound with a hoof. Nopony was around, but if there had been some, they would have seen both her eyes, as she opened them, pointing in the same direction.

“That’s it! Directly proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them!”

Another apple fell and conked her on the head, and her eyes returned to their crossed state.

“That’s it! We can test magic in the human world! Forget that other thing, this is important!”

She picked up the apple and took to the sky, eager to explain her idea to her co-conspirator. She found Lyra eating her own lunch and did not hesitate to interrupt her.

“The apples, Lyra! That’s how we can know!”

“Derpy, slow down. What are you talking about?”

“You said that I can’t go to the human world because I might never get back, because magic might not work there, and we can’t test whether magic works there because we don’t want to risk sending a pony. But zap apples are magical and aren’t a pony! We could send one there and see if it disappears if it’s not harvested!”

“Yeah, Derpy, harvested from a tree. We’d have to send a whole apple tree there, and I’ve never moved that much weight between worlds. Then it would have to be planted in time for it to grow and then watched. . . but maybe you do have something there. “ Lyra started talking more to herself than to Derpy. “And it would be useful too, really useful. A bit tricky to work, I might have to do some research. I gotta go, talk to you later! Thanks for the idea!”

As she galloped off, Derpy was confused as to what happened, but it seemed good, so she went on with her day. She had only finished half her lunch, after all.

It was over a month until she next saw Lyra, but for the first time in the project, it was the unicorn who sought out the pegasus.

“I’ve got something to show you,” said Lyra, as she reached into her saddlebag and pulled out some small objects.

“Rocks?”

“Not rocks. Well, yes, rocks, but special rocks. Enchanted rocks. See, based on what you told me I got the idea that what we need are inanimate objects that can do magic, and are small enough to transport between worlds. As far as I know, that’s never been made by anypony. Magic’s always just been done by unicorns. But if a unicorn could store her magic inside something, she could give it to a pegasus or an earth pony. . . or a human. So it’s incredibly useful, and we have you to thank for it.”

“So these rocks do magic on their own?”

“Simple magic. Throw one on the ground and it floats back up. Watch.” She spiked one of the rocks to the ground and sure enough it formed a faint glow around it and rose back up to eye level for a few seconds, then dropped back to the ground like the rock it was.

“Wow, Lyra, you’re really good at magic!”

“No, Twilight Sparkle’s really good at magic. But she’s the kind of pony who would never think to do something like this on her own. When I gave her the idea she realized what a breakthrough it would be and raced down to her laboratory—did you know she’s got a lab in the basement of that library? A little creepy if you ask me. But she came out later with these. Just of experimental value, she says, but could be big.”

“And we can test how they work in the human world!”

“Exactly. We’re going to try that tonight, when I send my human home for a bit.”

“A bit? There’s money in the human world?”

“No, I mean, home for a spell.”

“Yeah, to try the spell on the rock.”

“No! I mean, home for a short length of time.”

“Oh.”

“And as Twilight said, technically the experiment can’t tell us that everything is safe to send a pony to Earth. But it can tell us if it’s dangerous if it doesn’t work.”

“It’s something. It’s a chance. Thank you for all your hard work!”

Derpy and Lyra went their separate ways. An old one-liner asks whether, if you send a letter to your mail carrier, she’ll get it earlier than she should. As it happened, Derpy saw a note from Lyra in her bag the next day and did not hesitate to tear it open.

“Experiment successful,” it read. “Must meet tonight to discuss plans if you’re really committed to visiting Earth. Come to the library at eight. Excitedly yours, Lyra.”

Derpy went on her mail route paying even less attention than usual. For the first time fear started to share a place with hope inside her. She had to take a chance and make a leap of faith. Was she really completely willing to take the chance of never seeing Equestria again? By the time she had made her last delivery, she had an answer: no, but she was less willing to give up and spend the rest of her life wondering what would have happened.

Derpy, Lyra, and Twilight sat around a table in the library with candles burning. Twilight had a quill and scroll ready to take notes, and she addressed the other two.

“OK, first thing: I’ve written the princess about this, telling her what you plan to do. If she says no, then that’s it, we drop the whole discussion. I won’t help you go against her wishes. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Derpy and Lyra in chorus.

“Second thing is that we’re not doing this for a while yet. I want to meet with you a couple more times just because we might think of something in a week or two that we forget now. This whole project is going to be done safety-first. Now, the plan as I understand it is that we’re going to send Derpy into the human world for one day to spend time with a human and get to know each other.”

“One day at first,” said Derpy. “If we hit it off—and I know we will, I want it to be a regular thing.”

“OK, one day at first. But at least for that day you want to just stay with the one human and talk. Lyra, can you tell us a little bit about the human Derpy’s going to meet?”

“Her name is Karyn, and I know that’s a weird word, but even though humans speak regular Equestrian for the most part, they have made-up words for their names. She’s a young human who’s currently going to school, kind of like how you went to Celestia’s school for unicorns, Twilight, or how your filly is going, Derpy. In other words, she lives at the school and not with a family. We think that’s safest. She knows some things about Equestria and ponies. To humans, we’re a made up story that they can only see bits and pieces of. But Karyn has seen everything there is to see of us in the human world, so it shouldn’t be a complete culture shock.

“But it probably will be for you, Derpy, because we know far less about them than they do about us. You want to not stray off into the world without her to guide you.”

“Yeah, that’s important,” said Twilight. “And it’s the biggest topic for tonight. Lyra’s told you how we’ve developed the science of spellcrafting, making small objects that will let you do magic in the human world—hopefully. What we want to brainstorm is spells that we want Derpy to carry with her there to plan for every contingency. Then we’ll spellcraft them for you.

I’ve also been working on the design for exactly how the spells should be activated. We want something that you can’t set off by accident, but you can be sure to be able to use when you need it. Let me show you what I came up with.”

Twilight passed Derpy a small, hollow cylinder and said, “You put your hoof in until you feel three bumps. Then twist and push forward. It’s like one of the foal-proof caps we put on medicine bottles.”

“I think I get it. So let’s start thinking of what I’ll need.”

“First and foremost,” chimed Lyra, “the return-to-Equestria spell.”

“Right,” said Twilight. “And also something if you need to make a quick getaway from a sticky situation, maybe an invisibility spell.”

“Can’t I just fly away?”

“Yes, but what if you’re grabbed and held down. I’ll also give you a speed boost spell so you don’t get caught.”

The three of them spent the rest of the night coming up with other useful things for Derpy to be able to do, trying to cover every eventuality. As they finally prepared to break up, Derpy held them back.

“I just want to say, both of you have gone way out of your way for me, and I really want to thank you. I still want to do this for the reasons I told Lyra a while ago, but you two make me feel like I do fit in, just a little.”

“Aw, Derpy,” said Lyra. “I’ll let you in on a secret. We’re all ponies who don’t fit in. Everypony in town, and probably all over Equestria. Not fitting in wasn’t why I agreed to help you out.”

“Then why?”

“Because you cared, and because you wanted it, and because you showed passion. Passion counts. Don’t let anypony tell you otherwise. And I also did it because you’re my friend.”

“But I didn’t really know you until we started this.”

“You know me now, right? So we’re friends. Don’t let a little thing like the time of the friendship mess you up. Somewhere there’s a human who’s your friend too. Just because you haven’t met her yet doesn’t make her less of a friend. We’ve just got to get you to her.”

“I don’t quite get it, but thanks, Lyra.”

After more meetings, Twilight presented Derpy with a saddlebag full of spells, then pulled aside one. “This is the one that will take you to Earth. Before you use it, double check that everything is in place. Don’t forget anything. And stay safe. The princess said it was all right to go, but to be careful.”

“Thank you, Twilight. I’m planning to go first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll come over tomorrow night to let you know how it went.”

And so Derpy returned home and looked at her ticket to a new world. She hadn’t forgotten anything. She had remembered everything. She left behind fear and doubt. She put her hoof into the spell, turned it, and pressed.

I'm looking for pre-readers/editors to help ensure quality in future chapters! Details on my Fimfiction blog.

11: Rain, Rain, Derp Away

The sound was like static as the rain came down against the streets. Karyn and Derpy stared out the window.

“Well, there goes our picnic,” said Karyn.

“Yeah. Why do they have rain on the weekends anyway?” asked Derpy.

“We don’t have weather control like you do. Rain comes when it wants and no one knows how to stop it.”

“I bet I could. I’m not a weather pony, but I could open up a small hole in the clouds if I really tried.”

“That would probably freak people out,” said Karyn. “Storms have to dissipate, they can’t just cease to be.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“If we can’t go out, I don’t know, stay home and watch videos on the Internet?”

Neither of them had any better ideas, so Karyn sat at the computer and called up some funny clips. They began with blooper videos and commercials, but Derpy wasn’t laughing much. Karyn chalked it up to the cultural differences. They moved on to stand-up comedy. After a few of them still failed to elicit anything from Derpy, they found themselves watching an older man doing a routine. Derpy seemed to be paying rapt attention.

“You like this guy?” asked Karyn.

“I like his hair,” said Derpy. Karyn saw that, while he was balding in front, he still had a long ponytail.

Karyn turned up the volume and the man spoke to the live crowd.

“People like to sound important. Weathermen on television talk about shower activity. Sounds more important than showers. I even heard one guy on CNN talk about a rain event! Swear to god, he said, ‘Louisiana’s expecting a rain event.’ I thought, ‘Holy crap, I hope I can get tickets to that!’”

Derpy broke up laughing. She rolled around on the bed clutching her stomach.

“Really, Derpy?” Karyn said. “I didn’t think that you’d be into George Carlin.”

“But that’s funny! Selling tickets to a rain event. How would you keep anypony out?”

“No, that’s not the joke. It’s that there’s an extra word—wait, you actually have rain events?”

“Sure! All the time. If you’ve got to have rain, why not make an event out of it?” said Derpy.

“But what do you do at a rain event?”

“Set up the rain, dance in the rain, play games in the rain, all sorts of stuff!”

“Wow. I’d like to see that.”

Derpy scowled. “Well, we don’t schedule them for the weekends. But If you really want to see one, you can come to Equestria this Tuesday.”

“Why Tuesday?”

“Because it’s clearly the most boring day. Friday you have the weekend coming, and Monday you’re recovering from it. Thursday you’re so busy getting your work done so that you can slack off on Friday that the day goes by so quickly, and Wednesday at least has the excitement of being the middle of the week.”

Karyn stared for a moment. “That’s some logic there. I’ll give you that.”

And so, two days later, Karyn prepared to visit Equestria.

When Derpy arrived for pickup, Karyn was ready to jump right on her back and go, but Derpy held up a hoof. “Unfortunately, we can’t just jump dimensions right from here,” she said. “At least, not this time. The pegasi are preparing the sky over Ponyville, and they told me to stay well clear. So we need to go a few miles away before we use the spell.”

“That could be problematic. We can’t both go invisible at the same time, can we?”

“No, we can’t. But it’s an overcast day, and I can get above the clouds fairly quickly. Then it’s smooth flying all the way.”

Karyn climbed on Derpy’s back. “I guess, but watch out for airplanes and try to stay small so you don’t show up on radar,” she said.

“On what now?”

“Humans have an invention that can tell when things are in the air and how they’re moving. It sends out light beams and measures how long they take to come back. They can get a good picture of the sky like that. So watch out.”

They took off out of the dormitory window. Derpy wanted to circle and see some of the city, but she took Karyn’s words to heart and went for altitude quickly. They reached the clouds and were hidden. But Derpy heard Karyn’s voice.

“Bleah! I’m getting wet! And it’s cold!”

“Hang on, Karyn, we’ll be up above this layer soon.”

Pumping her wings with all her might, Derpy broke through to the sun.

Karyn shielded her eyes. “That’s better. Derpy, why aren’t you wet?”

“Why should I be?”

“Because we just went through those clouds. I’m soaked. Though the sun is drying me. It’s nice. It’s been cloudy all week and it’s good to feel the warmth again.”

“I’ve flown through clouds lots of times. They’re like puffy cotton,” Derpy said.

“It must be a pegasus thing. You could even land on the cloud and have it be solid to you. I can’t even imagine what that’s like.”

Skimming the top of the cloud layer, Derpy flew lazily and looked at the city through the occasional breaks. It was impressive, but cold. She said as much to Karyn.

“Some of those buildings are very old,” Karyn said. “Or rather, they’ve had a lot of people in them. Ponyville seems newer, because you’re only a few generations removed from the founding, however many years it was.”

“We do tear down and rebuild a lot. Anyway, speaking of Ponyville, I think we’re far enough away now to go there. Can you reach into my bag and get the spell? It’s the first one.”

Being careful not to drop it, Karyn retrieved the spell and passed it to Derpy. She slid it on her hoof and twisted.

The transition from the sky of Earth to the sky of Equestria was like breaking through the clouds for a second time. Karyn again had to shield her eyes and allow them to adjust to the brightness. But Derpy circled around and they could see where the team of weather ponies was gathered to set up the rain event.

Pegasi were coming from all sides, collecting drops of moisture and making little clouds, then passing them on to others who made them into big clouds.

Derpy and Karyn made their way back toward the action, losing altitude as they did.

“It’s just so weird,” said Karyn, “seeing all this happen by design. What would happen if you didn’t make it rain?”

“I don’t make it rain. I deliver mail.”

“Not you specifically, I mean pegasi.”

“Oh. I guess Ponyville would turn into a desert eventually. There are some desert parts of Equestria. The pegasi who live there must be awfully lazy. And some swamps and wetlands as well, for hard-working and industrious ones.”

Derpy glided closer to the ground, trying to stay well clear of the weather ponies. Already the sun was beginning to be occluded, and the warmth of the rays was fading.

From above, Karyn heard a voice. “Hey, Derpy! Is that Karyn with you? Bring her up!” It was Rainbow Dash.

“Are you sure?” called Derpy.

“Yeah! Come on!”

Derpy took wing again, carefully looking around her. They got close enough to Rainbow to avoid having to shout.

“Hey, Karyn. Long time, no see.”

“Hi, Rainbow Dash. Are you sure it’s all right for us to be up here?”

“Yeah, sure. We’re not due to start for another hour or so.”

“The pegasus in charge told me that it would be dangerous,” said Derpy.

“Nah, he’s just being cautious,” said Rainbow. “Anyway, we’re really glad you could make it for this. We’re going to have one of the biggest storms Ponyville has seen in a long while. We even brought in a special cloud machine for the nimbo-stratus.”

“I don’t see any machine,” said Derpy.

“Here it comes now. Hey, Nimbo! Hey, Stratus!” Two muscle-bound pegasi were carrying what, to Karyn’s eyes, looked like a big meat grinder. They gingerly placed it on top of a flat cloud that some others had pushed over. Then, from a compartment in the machine, they pulled out two buckets and dove for the ground. When they returned, the buckets were filled with water, which they poured into the top spout. Soon, dark cloud was spewing out the other end.

“Not that we couldn’t do this on our own,” Rainbow Dash said, “but it would have taken us a week to get it set up. This way, we’ve had sunshine all week, and now everypony’s ready for the rain!”

“So, Rainbow,” Karyn said, “why do you have to have such a big storm?”

“A couple of reasons. First off, it’s lots of fun! We make an occasion of it, celebrate with extravagant food and drink, all the usual party stuff. But it’s also to stress-test the village. After we’re done, there’ll probably be a few downed tree branches, maybe a roof or two that needs repair. There might be a drain that’s clogged in somepony’s yard. It’s better to find out when we have time to repair them than after an ordinary rainstorm.”

Karyn thought this was good policy. As a technology student, nothing bothered her more than when a piece of equipment had been working fine for years, and then one day just decided to quit. Her rule was that a major scheduled outage was better than a minor unscheduled one.

The buckets of water were coming faster now, and the smoky cloud was pouring out faster and darker. Derpy said, “It looks like you’re doing a lot of work here. It makes me glad to be a mailpony.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Derpy,” said Rainbow. “If you ever want to turn weather pony, I’ll. . . definitely give you a tryout. But let me finish this so we can start on time.”

“OK. Come on, Karyn. See ya later, Dash!”

“Goodbye, Rainbow Dash,” said Karyn. “Derpy, where are we going to watch this from?”

“My house.”

Derpy’s house had a crude wrap-around porch. The roof of straw extended past the outer wall a few feet, but the second story did not. Planks had been laid down outside the front door to give the feeling of a boardwalk. Derpy had put in a wooden bench with a cushion, and also a pair of wrought-iron end tables. Karyn sat there while Derpy fiddled in the kitchen.

Over the next hour, the humidity started getting worse and Karyn was sweating. Normally she didn’t notice the weather getting worse until it happened, but the whole point of today was to pay attention. Derpy noticed her perspiration.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It will get cooler once the rain starts.”

They chatted about odds and ends, then Derpy said it was almost time. Ponies all over town were gathering under their own porches, or under large umbrellas, or in tents. A few foals and fools were out in the open, wanting to enjoy a cold shower on their backs.

She went into the kitchen and came out with a tray on her back. Tall glasses of pink lemonade filled with ice sat there, condensation already forming on the sides. There was also a small, white box with “SCC” marked on the top, tied with a striped string in a bow. Derpy slid the tray onto the table by Karyn’s side, then sat next to her. “Pass me a glass, please,” she said.

The air was heavy. All around them, conversations tapered to a whisper, birds stopped chirping, and the rustling of the trees could not be heard. The dirt road that led away from Derpy’s house and into town was hazy with the dust kicked up by ponies and carts. The dry clay showed off its contours and cracks. Under the gray canopy, everything came to a standstill. Ponyville held its breath.

The first raindrops fell. Karyn and Derpy watched as they formed silver-dollar circles on the ground. Evaporating from the heat or sinking in to the porous ground, the roads remained dry for a moment, then the circles began to take hold. Filling in like a puzzle, the circles of wet became hypocycloids of dry, which were then swallowed up. The scattered haze of the dust gave way to the steady haze of the rain.

The patter of the first drops became the pattern of the downpour, as each individual plink or tap melded into a pleasant hiss. Shh, it seemed to say. Stop and listen. The rain that fell on the metal roof of a shed kept time in the symphony, while the leaves of the trees clapped a melody. A playful guffaw was heard any time a fat drop fell into a half-full rain barrel, or into the deeper puddles that were forming in the ruts of the road.

Steamy wisps of vapor rose from the dirt roads and the wooden houses, evincing and surrendering the heat they contained. The muggy heaviness was lessened as each tiny sphere took unto itself a minute fraction of a degree of the heat. Karyn sipped at her lemonade and wiped off the condensation, then put her hand on her cheek, enjoying the feel of the cool moisture. Derpy took a heavy breath through her nose, attracting the currents of cool air that ran through the heavy atmosphere.

Derpy tapped Karyn on the shoulder and pointed at the white box. Karyn picked it up, and Derpy bit through the string holding it closed. Inside were two cinnamon buns covered in gooey icing. The humidity had made the icing melt a little, and Derpy indicated that they should eat them quickly. Karyn handed one to her and took out the other one.

The rain was coming down harder now, and the wind was starting to blow. The tops of the tall trees swayed in a pendulum pattern with the leaves in a frenzied flapping. Ripples riffled through the puddles, and the gusts even reached the falling rain itself. The jumbled pattern formed itself into sheets of water that meandered up the road like a ghost.

Young ponies were out playing in the rain, splashing into puddles and rolling in the mud, then standing up and washing themselves clean, their manes sticking to their bodies. Among the gatherings in the tents and houses, laughter and singing rang out, only to be muffled in the din of the rain.

The wind tore the drops apart into an invisible mist. Karyn felt the spray on her face. It was like a cool hand. She had finished her cinnamon bun, and her hands were sticky from the icing. She stood up and stepped to the edge of the porch, holding out her hands and rubbing them in the water that dripped from the roof. As she sat back down, Derpy held out her wing toward Karyn’s hand and nodded. Karyn rubbed her hands gingerly on the feathers. It was the softest towel she had ever used.

“I’m glad I could see this,” said Karyn. “We never do this sort of thing at home.”

“You should.”

“We can’t schedule them like you can. And someone’s always got something more important to do. Can I tell you a story?”

“Sure,” said Derpy.

“When I was little, my mother tried to get me to enjoy the outdoors. She signed me up for an organized sports league.”

“Like for the soccer game we played?”

“More organized. And a different sport. There’s a ball that you throw, and—never mind, that’s not important. But there was a practice and a game scheduled for every Saturday. But wouldn’t you know it, for five straight Saturdays it rained. And they refused to cancel the games, because it meant that they would have to refund the money we’d paid. So when it finally was nice, we wound up playing two games in one day. I had to get up early and go out all day. And do the same thing the next weekend. By the time it got late, I was hating the game. We had one more game to go. As hard as I could, I wished that it would rain every Saturday forever. Well, of course it didn’t. But it did rain that Saturday. And I sat by my window and just watched and listened to it. That was a pretty good day.

“I haven’t thought about that for a long time. But this brought it back. Thank you.”

Derpy put Karyn’s hand in her hooves. “I wish I had known you back then,” she said. “I would have come and made it rain every Saturday for you, if that’s what you really wanted.”

Karyn smiled. “Thank you.”

The heavy rain was coming down now. Ponies in the tents were pulling tarps to enclose them fully, and parents were calling their foals in. The light mist became an irritating spray, and Karyn and Derpy went inside.

The house was dark, and Derpy lit some candles she had placed around the room. The rain now blattered against the windows and the walls, and Karyn could barely see outside. There were no shapes, only blotches of color moving against each other.

“Come on, Karyn. Help me push this couch over to the window,” said Derpy.

Derpy’s front window was not large, and it was made to look smaller by the curtain. Once they were settled on it and watching the rain through the window, they could feel the warmth of the candles. It had been fun to be outside, but now it would be dangerous and unpleasant.

“This is the climax of the rain,” said Derpy. “Rainbow Dash will have everypony hammering on the clouds until they tire out. It won’t last more than five or ten minutes. Like I said before, I’m glad I’m not a weather pony.”

“Don’t you have to make deliveries on rainy days? On Earth, our mail carriers pride themselves on being able to make it through any kind of weather.”

“If I do, I just fly above the clouds until I get to my destination, then kick a hole in when I get there.”

Karyn concluded that some Equestrian ways were more practical. The discussion reminded her of something.

“The one thing we can’t experience in this rain event is to drive through it. Being in a car in a rainstorm is something you’ve never done.”

“No, I haven’t. The closest thing we have are the trains.”

“Oh! We should have taken one!”

“To where?” asked Derpy. “We don’t have any place to be.”

“To nowhere. To anywhere. I’d love to go on an Equestrian train someday.”

“It must be hard living in a world without trains. I mean, the car was nice, but you have to drive it yourself. Trains are great. You can just sit back, relax, and you don’t even have to steer them because they’re on rails.”

“No, no. We do have them. There’s just almost no occasion to ride them,” said Karyn.

“Oh.”

The wind and the torrent of water had subsided, so Karyn and Derpy went back outside. The porch furniture was soaked, so they just stood and watched.

The temperature had dropped, and Karyn took a deep breath, remembering how stifling it had been before the rain. There was a particular sweetness to the air, and no trace of smog or pollution. Far off in the distance, she could hear the low rumble of thunder that, on Earth, would mean the storm was moving off.

Suddenly, without taking the time to think twice and stop herself, Karyn kicked off her shoes and ripped off her socks. Then she ran out into the muddy street and stood in the rain.

She threw her arms out wide and danced. Derpy stood laughing on the porch. “Karyn, what are you doing? Before, you couldn’t stand getting wet!”

“The rain got to me!” she shouted. “Come on out. The water’s fine!”

Derpy shook her head and flew out into the street. Hovering and trying to stay out of the mud, she dipped and rolled until her mane and tail were sticking to her. “You’re crazy!”

Most of the other ponies were still inside, but a few were staring at Karyn. Laughing, she leaped at Derpy and dragged her down to the mud.

The rain was starting to taper off. Karyn looked up and saw pegasi rolling up the clouds like a carpet. For a minute or two, there was still a steady fall even though the sun was now out.

“Oh, a sun shower!” said Karyn. “I’ve always loved those.”

“So have I,” said Derpy. “The rain cools you off and the sun dries you. It’s the only time that you have to pay attention to the weather, but not do anything about it. Come on, let’s see if we can help anypony.”

They walked around to some of the houses that had bushes uprooted or shingles dislodged. Derpy was asked a few times to knock some debris off a roof. At one, an Earth pony said, “Have either of you seen a unicorn around? I’ve got a stopped up drain and I can’t clear out the leaves.”

“I’ve got this,” said Karyn. The Earth pony looked skeptical, but he led her to his basement stairs where she could see the drain. The water was already a few inches deep, and if he opened the door, it would get inside the house. Karyn reached down where she figured the drain had to be and felt the leaves. They were a bit slimy, but she didn’t want to back out when she had the chance to help.

The water level dropped, slowly at first, then rapidly formed into a whirlpool. Karyn threw the leaves back into the yard and washed her hands in the last of the water. There was still a small blockage in the drain, so she took a stick and poked it through.

“Thanks!” the Earth pony said. “Never figured on a human being so helpful. Come around any time for some hoof-made hay casserole.”

Karyn and Derpy thanked him for the invitation and went off again. The rain had all but gone.

“Let’s see if we can spot a rainbow,” said Karyn.

“I don’t think we will. All the other pegasi are busy with finishing up the storm.”

“No, I mean a naturally occurring rainbow, the kind you only see in a sun shower.”

“Sun showers don’t cause rainbows, you silly!” said Derpy. “They’re formed when a pegasus releases rainbow juice as she flies. Everypony knows that.”

“Well, it’s not that way on Earth.”

“You mean that you have rainbows that just show up, without anypony making them? And you say Equestria is magical?”

Karyn looked around. The last of the clouds were rolling away. Ponies were pulling down the tents and returning to their homes. The rain event was over.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

Author's Note

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next week, things really start to heat up!

Karyn slipped into the bathroom and turned on the light. “Derpy?” she whispered. “Are you here?”

“Yeah,” came the return whisper. “I figured out what happened. You’re smart the way you figured out how to tell me!”

“Let’s not go patting each other on the back.”

“Right, unless we’re choking. Then it’s OK,” said Derpy.

**************************************************************

“But you want me to go. No, it’s all right. I’m just worried about you with him,” said Derpy.

“I can see why you would be. But, as much as I’d like you around, it’s just too tiring trying to split time between you. I’ll make it up next week, promise.”

“Talk to you later,” said Derpy.

Beyond that, I can't give anything away. Trust me, this one you don't want to miss!

28: A Mile in Another Derp's Shoes

On Tuesday morning, Karyn slapped her books down as she entered the classroom. Although they had no assigned seats, she had gotten used to the second row, second column, and came early to get it. It was out of everyone’s way and easier not to be noticed. She waited for the professor to come in and daydreamed. There was a rumor that a pop quiz would be given that day, but she wasn’t worried. The required liberal arts courses were dumbed down so that anyone could pass them, and the history class she was in was no exception.

As her thoughts drifted idly, so did her body, and she found herself in midair. She panicked for a second, then remembered what Derpy had told her and spread her wings for the glide. When she landed, she took stock of her location. It was the Ponyville post office.

That makes sense, she thought. If it’s Tuesday morning here, it would be time for her to go to work. But that means she’s in my body in my class! What if she fails my test? Don’t panic now. You’ve got to do the best you can at her job because she’ll be doing all she can for you.

“Hello! Equestria to Derpy!”

Somepony was talking to her. Pony-Karyn blinked and said, “Yes?”

“About time you came around. Postmaster General wants to see you.” It was a stallion in a blue uniform that she realized must signify a postal employee, possibly her boss.

“Right away, sir! Um. . . where’s that exactly?”

“The second door on the left, same place it’s been for the last twenty years.”

Pony-Karyn quickly composed herself. She was not doing well, but at least she had Derpy’s reputation to help her. She headed to the second door.

This guy must be the big boss. And he’s actually named Postmaster General, which is weird, but I guess it’s par for the course with ponies.

She knocked on the door with her hoof. The cornflower blue pony inside beckoned her in.

“Ah, Derpy, good to see you.”

“Likewise, Mr. General.”

He laughed. “Always with the jokes.”

Just then a secretary walked in with a paper for him to sign. “Thanks, Mr. Mintsugar,” she said. Pony-Karyn shut her eyes. The stallion in the sash had called him by his title, and she had assumed it was his name. Luckily, she seemed to be getting away with it.

“Anyway,” he continued. “Lazy Susan called herself in sick, so you’ve got to take over her route today. I know you won’t be familiar with it, but just do the best you can.”

Pony-Karyn breathed an internal sigh of relief. If she messed up, she had a built-in excuse. “I’ll certainly try, sir. I know that all these ponies are waiting for their letters.”

She went back out to where the blue-uniformed stallion was. “I’m supposed to take Lazy Susan’s route,” she said.

“Yeah, I heard.”

“So, um, where do I get the mail to take there?”

He sighed. “Do you want me to run the route for you?”

Pony-Karyn decided not to be intimidated by this pony, even if he was bigger and more boisterous. “No, I just want you to do your job and make sure I get the mail to the right place.”

He stared at her. “I’m sorry, Derpy. Let me get it for you.”

He found a sack of mail and strapped it to pony-Karyn’s back. She stepped out and took off.

******************************************

Derpy was drifting through the air on the way to work when she felt herself slam to a halt with her rear end in a chair. She blinked and looked around as she realized what had happened.

I’m in a college class for humans! she thought. This is going to be awesome. I’m going to learn so much about their world now.

She turned to the young man next to her. “Hey, do you know what we’re going to learn today?”

“Did you miss last week? We’re still on double-you-double-you-eye-eye.”

Human-Derpy’s eyes almost returned to her crossed state. “Oh, that sounds really interesting.”

She hoped that he couldn’t tell how confused she was, and decided to keep a low profile during the class. The professor entered a few minutes later, and human-Derpy was amazed. She had never been to college herself, and had a mental picture of all instructors as vibrant young folks like Cheerilee. The fellow who entered was graying at the temples and wore thick glasses. As he started his lecture about history, she concluded that he must have gotten his position as a history teacher by having been present at the events of which he was talking.

A half hour later, she sat stunned as she had listened to the lecture. It wasn’t the content that bothered her as much as the disaffected way that the professor described it. Even the students seemed bored and weren’t as emotionally affected as human-Derpy was.

She endured the tales of horrors and atrocities as long as she could, then heard something she couldn’t believe. She looked around the room to see if anyone else was going to bring it up. Finally she had enough and raised her hand.

The history professor liked to have students engaged in the class, but didn’t expect it in the 101 and 102 levels.

“Yes, miss?”

“Um, OK. If these Japonese—“ that was the word she heard, anyway—“knew they were going to crash, why didn’t they just go land somewhere else and not tell anypo-anyone?”

“Well, there was such a thing as national pride. Although a study of the culture of that time would be out of our depth, there was definitely a unique perspective.”

Human-Derpy was still shocked. She couldn’t reconcile in her mind the kind human she knew with the story she had just heard. She wasn’t even sure whether or not to believe it. But a moment later, she had a more immediate problem to deal with, as the professor announced the feared pop quiz was indeed about to occur.

Her initial delight about at least being able to write like a human was quickly dashed when she found out that the test was multiple-choice. She was handed a small card and read through the instructions. She found them simplistic, but was strongly unnerved about the test itself. It wasn’t fair to Karyn, she thought, to have her take the test when she hadn’t been in the class, but wasn’t about to explain that she was off delivering mail in the pony world.

Nonetheless, she felt that she owed to her friend to give it the best effort that she could. She worked by process of elimination on the multiple-choice questions, and looked for easy true-false questions that were too specific and used words like “never” and “always.” Although she had never been to college either as a pony or a human, she had an instinct for how a test writer would think. To Derpy, all questions were trick questions.

When she was finished, she looked around and saw that she was the first one finished. That made sense, since she wasn’t thinking about the subject matter per se. She decided not to hand in the test. Not only would that be particularly conspicuous, but if by chance Karyn switched back into her own body, she could check over the test herself.

As it happens, they did not, and Derpy waited out the entire period bored. She reflected on what she had learned and resolved to ask Karyn more about it. She finally jumped back as she was heading back to Karyn’s dorm after the class.

******************************************

On Thursday afternoon, Karyn had already finished with her classes for the day and returned to her room. She tried to keep herself on a schedule, and Wednesday was her cleanup day, but she had gotten distracted hanging out in the common room the day before and put it off. She was all set to begin tidying when she felt the switch again. At least this time she was on the ground.

She took stock of her situation. She wasn’t on the mail route, so Derpy must have already taken care of that, but neither was she at home. She didn’t recognize any of the surrounding buildings, so she just walked forward.

Soon she came to a wooden fence that seemed a little familiar. The veil was lifted when she saw the red barn come up over the horizon. Applejack was standing outside pitching hay. Pony-Karyn thought about waving hi, but remembered that she was in Derpy’s body and didn’t want to have to give an awkward explanation. Applejack saved her the necessity when she saw her.

“Howdy, Derpy. What’s shaking?”

Pony-Karyn faced a dilemma. Should she try to fake being Derpy or try to convince her of the truth? It was one thing to fool ponies she was only seeing for a few minutes, but Applejack might well be Derpy’s friend, and Karyn hoped that she would be hers as well.

“Well, actually. . . “

“That’s incredible,” Applejack said after Karyn had explained. “That’s the princess for you, always pushing the envelope on what we know.”

“Yeah, so on Tuesday I worked a mail route, and now I guess I should go to Derpy’s house and take care of it for her.”

“Well, if you’re lookin’ to learn about Equestria, you might try seein’ what it’s like on the farm.”

Pony-Karyn looked over Applejack’s shoulder at the bales of hay that she had stacked. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, you can’t buck the trees the way I do, but there are plenty of things that a pegasus can do to help.”

So it happened that pony-Karyn found herself tying the hay into bales and stacking them next to the barn.

“So what do you use the hay for?” she asked.

“You eat it, of course. But we also use it for animal feed and such.”

Pony-Karyn took a little bit of one end, then spat it out. “Still tastes like grass to me,”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Hey, Applejack, can I try an apple instead?”

“Sure. Help yourself.”

She flew up to the top of the nearest tree and picked a shiny red apple. She was unused to eating an apple without washing it first, but figured that ponies did it all the time. She also wished that she could remove the skin, but bit into it.

“It’s tasty. Fresh. I like this.”

“You should. Everypony knows that we’ve got the best apples here.”

“Yeah. For the work I’m doing I should at least get a pie or a fritter or something.”

Applejack laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll hook you up.”

Pony-Karyn went back to hauling hay. Applejack’s stack of bales dwarfed her own, but she didn’t feel too bad, not being experienced. As she stacked the last of them, Applejack went inside. It was right then that she made the leap back into her own body.

Derpy looked around. “Huh? Why am I working on a farm?”

Applejack walked out. “Here you go, Karyn. A whole box of apple turnovers, all for you.”

Derpy was still confused, but recognized a treat when she saw it. “Thanks!"

******************************************

Derpy was heading home from her route in high spirits when she found herself relaxing at Karyn’s desk, the computer screen showing a news web site. Deciding that she had enough of depressing human stories since the class two days before, she switched it off and tied to find something to do.

“Ugh, this place is a mess,” she said to herself. Karyn’s desk was laden with papers, books, and an empty soda cup. Derpy tossed the cup into the trash bin and found a leather-bound notebook. She opened it to reveal a day planner. It fell open to that day’s agenda which showed “Clean dorm” written and doubly underlined.

“Well, if she was going to do that, I suppose I’d better help.”

She went around collecting all the trash and putting it in the bin. It quickly overflowed, and human-Derpy poked her head outside to find the larger receptacle for the floor. It took several trips this way. On the last there was another girl there. Human-Derpy gave her a smile, but she scowled in response.

“You know,” she said, “you should really separate your trash.”

“Oh, I have. This is my fourth or fifth trip here.”

“No, I mean take out your recyclables. The green bin’s down the hall.”

“My what now?” asked human-Derpy.

“You never heard of recycling? Are you not from here?”

Thankful for the escape, she said, “Nope, I’m not. My name’s Karyn, what’s yours?”

The other girl didn’t respond, but just said, “Whatever, just go ahead and dump it. The earth can go ahead and rot because of you.”

She walked off, and human-Derpy was left looking at the pail. She didn’t see anything in that would damage the earth, but she made a note to ask Karyn about it.

At last the room was emptied of the trash, and human-Derpy could get down to organizing the rest of it. She made the bed, finding it much easier to do with hands than her normal teeth-pulling method. Just to see what it was like, she tried mouthing one corner in, and immediately gave it up to go back to hands.

Then she neatly stacked the books that had been strewn around in alphabetical order. By this point, she was getting a little frustrated. She muttered to herself, “Come on, Karyn, couldn’t you just keep it neat for me? It’s not that difficult.”

She realized that she was being unfair. Karyn wasn’t planning on having anyone else visit, and even Derpy’s presence was not something she had planned for. How she wanted to keep her private room when no one else was around was her business.

But now Derpy was there, and she liked an organized space. She had a theory that with her thinking as jumbled as it was, she needed an anchor of rationality to give her something to hold on to.

It hadn’t always been that way. When Dinky was a filly, she had been the mess that most foals were, and Derpy hadn’t minded. But at that point she had Dinky herself to serve as an anchor to reality. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her filly. She made another mental note to prepare, as Dinky would be visiting soon.

When that was done, she made an actual note for Karyn. While she used her hands to make the bed, she still found it easier to write with her mouth. “Dear Karyn,” she wrote. “I hope that you are well, and that you don’t mind too much that I cleaned up your room. If you are, feel free to mess up my place the next time you’re there. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon once the spell finally wears off.

“Love, Derpy.”

******************************************

On Saturday night, when Derpy switched once again into Karyn, she found herself wearing a black dress and her hair done up, with a bottle of perfume at the ready. Determined to maintain Karyn’s life as best as possible, she decided to put it on and see if she couldn’t figure out what the occasion was.

“Maybe I should look for her day-planner again. That was helpful last time.”

Before she could rummage through the desks, there was a knock at the door. She opened it to a young man in an ill-fitting shirt and off-center tie. His shoes needed a shine, but the cut of the clothes still gave an air of formality to him, particularly in the low light. Human-Derpy was more surprised that it was a face she recognized.

“Mike?” she said.

“Were you expecting someone else?”

“Well, no, I wasn’t expecting. . .” Her speech slowed as she took time to think. Clearly Karyn hadn’t broken up with Mike after the last incident, or had gotten back together. Karyn must not have told her because she knew that Derpy didn’t like him. And under normal circumstances, it would be none of her business. But once again she had committed an involuntary invasion of privacy. She ought to do her best to be Karyn and then pretend she didn’t know.

On the other hoof (hand, she told herself), she was still of the opinion that Mike was bad for Karyn, and the best thing to do might be to break them up again. She spent a few seconds weighing which option would hurt Karyn least, or if indeed she shouldn’t just try to beg off sick. No chance of that, though, having already dressed up and looking perfectly healthy.

Finally she decided that she had to be true to her friend’s wishes. She wasn’t Karyn’s mother, and had no right to interfere by magical means. Besides, she could always do it later.

“Hello?” Mike said.

“Oh, sorry. I spaced out for a moment.”

“I guess I do have that effect on girls.”

This might be harder than she thought. “I’m ready to go.”

“Well, at least that’s a change from most girls.”

Human-Derpy bit her lip and accompanied him out.

The dance club they went to was filled with other young humans, none of whom were infested with the consciousnesses of pegasi on the edge of a panic attack. Was she going to be expected to dance? Could Karyn dance? If so, would her skill carry over when it was Derpy in her head? Derpy liked music well enough, but preferred quiet listening to frenzied movement. It didn’t help that the music being played was more to Vinyl Scratch’s taste, while Derpy preferred the sort of thing that Octavia listened to.

Mike led her to a booth on the side of the dance floor and left to get them drinks. She stared at all the dancers and the black lights. When Mike returned, she would have to be careful to nurse her drink and make it last as long as possible. It would be just like him to try to get her drunk, and human-Derpy concluded that she would be more susceptible to liquor with the smaller frame she had.

He came back and set her drink before her and she took a sip. It was frozen and tasted like banana and strawberry. She liked it and had to remind herself to be careful.

“So,” he said, “do you want to dance or just hang out here?”

Still afraid of showing her ineptitude, she said, “Let’s stay here a while.”

He seemed pleased, and she realized why after a moment. He put his arm around her and leaned in. She felt that she had made a bad situation worse. Please, Karyn, come back and help me! she thought. I don’t want to kiss your boyfriend!

******************************************

When Karyn realized that she was pony-Karyn once more, sitting quietly in Derpy’s house, everything that would occur became clear to her. Derpy would be in her room, wondering why she was dressed up, Mike would be coming to the door any minute, and from there the situation could dissolve into any number of outcomes, all of which, she thought, were bad.

“This is horrible! What am I going to do?”

She hadn’t asked the question of anyone in particular, but there was an answer nonetheless. Muffinhead looked at her and said, “Blerp?”

“I wanted to tell her, I did, I just never got around to it. Now she’ll break us up again.”

“Myewp!” the cat said, pawing at Derpy’s saddlebag.

“You’re right, I’ve got to go to Earth and stop her, er, stop me!”

She picked up the bag with her teeth, awkwardly, and flipped it open. There was still no indication of which spell did what, but she hoped that invisibility and transportation to Earth were the first two.

Pony-Karyn activated the second spell in front of a mirror and was relieved to see that she couldn’t see herself anymore. She used the first one and found herself back in the dorm that she had left not five minutes ago, but it was too late.

Getting to the club was a challenge for pony-Karyn. Mike had the speed advantage by taking his car, but she had the ability to fly straight and cut corners. Her earlier fears about flying were gone. She soared fast and didn’t notice till afterwards that she wasn’t nervous. It took a few more minutes to wait for a break in the club’s entrance line to sneak in invisibly, then she finally spotted herself.

Mike was just leaning in to give her body a kiss when pony-Karyn reached human-Derpy. She pulled her away and Mike wound up leaning past and awkwardly righting himself. Human-Derpy reached to her left and felt feathers and fur.

“I’m sorry, could you excuse me for a moment?” she said to Mike.

She ran off to another alcove and whispered to pony-Karyn, “Thanks for getting me out of there! I did not want to kiss him.”

“And I didn’t want you to. Oh, this is awkward.”

“I wish you had told me that this was going on.”

“Well, I know how you feel about Mike,” pony-Karyn said. “And thanks for not just slapping him and walking away.”

“I thought about it, but I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Anyway, that doesn’t tell us what we should do now.”

From pony-Karyn’s invisible bag, a pop and a ding were heard. This time, they actually felt their consciousnesses moving in space to the other body.

“That must have been the last of the twenty-four hours,” said Karyn. “We’re saved!”

Derpy breathed a sigh of relief as well. “All right, you go back to your date. I’ll see you back at the dorm. Tomorrow’s our day, remember.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

When the sun rose the next morning, Derpy and Karyn woke up together and got cleaned up. “I’m going to check back in at home before we do anything else,” said Derpy. “You want to come with?”

“Sure.”

When they were back in Equestria, with Derpy topping up Muffinhead’s water bowl, there was a knock at the door. Karyn took it upon herself to go get it.

“Good morning, Miss Karyn.”

“Princess Celestia!”

“It’s good to see you back in Ponyville. Tell me, how did you like my little gift?”

Karyn thought about how best to be diplomatic. “It certainly gave me new insight into pony life, which was what you wanted, right?”

“It was indeed. And Miss Derpy?”

“You can ask her yourself. She’s in the kitchen.”

Derpy came out and curtsied to the princess. “Nice to see you again,” she said. “Come to hear about our adventures in each other?”

“I would like to hear that, but there’s something else we need to discuss.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Come in, please,” Celestia said to the door. It opened and a blue unicorn walked through.

Derpy smiled. “Dinky!”

Author's Note

Here's what's coming up in next week's chapter!

Still cautious, Dinky put her hoof in Karyn’s hand and shook. “Dinky.”

“I’ve tried to be a good friend to your mother, and I’d like to be to you as well.”

Dinky opened her mouth to say something, but Karyn interrupted and pressed her advantage. “And to prove it, I’ll help you out of this jam.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dinky’s mouth dropped. “Come on, let me relax a little. I haven’t even had a chance to unpack.”

“Well, all right, you can do that. Your room is exactly the way you left it.”

Dinky started to leave the room, then came back. “Mommy, this is a new house. I don’t even have a room here."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy caught up with them and landed. “Did you two get everything sorted out?”

“I think so,” said Dinky. “Karyn really is a good friend.”

“I know.”

30: The Sun Also Derps

And so, once more, Karyn and Derpy found themselves on the train.

It was a second-class ticket, not the all-the-bells-and-whistles of their first trip, but neither were they uncomfortable. They got to see the sights again through the window in a roomette.

They were heading southwest. The countryside was less densely populated than any region that Karyn had been to before. Gentle hills and valleys provided an almost roller-coaster experience.

“Dinky couldn’t make it?” asked Karyn.

“She’ll be along. She missed the train from Canterlot, but the next one isn’t too far back. She’ll certainly return with us.”

“I’d like to have her along for the trip though. She’s pleasant conversation. Not that you aren’t.”

Derpy grinned, then turned serious. “I think she had something to tell you as well. She asked if she could have a minute or two with you. Oh, well. If it's that important, she'll tell you eventually.”

“So tell me, what’s he like?” asked Karyn.

“Huh? Who?”

“Your father, silly filly. The guy we’re visiting.”

Derpy was still spaced out. Karyn tried again. “OK, what does he do? Does he still carry the mail?”

“Oh, no. No, he’s too old for that. He’s stopped working.”

“That’s nice, I guess. I’d like to stop working someday, so maybe I can ask him what retirement is like. I hope he’s enjoying it. But why did he move out so far?”

“A lot of ponies move there when they get older,” said Derpy, staring out the window. “It’s pretty, you’ll see.”

“I hope that he likes me. You can never tell how ponies are going to react.”

“Well, everypony’s unique, but he’s family. You saw how Dinky took to you.”

Karyn still hadn’t told Derpy about Dinky’s initial hostility, but even so, she was right. Dinky had been more receptive to a human than most ponies. It just took a little work.

They had left behind Ponyville and Appleloosa. The trees had thinned and the grasses were taller and less green as the train proceeded. Stops were fewer and farther between, and soon even the grass was left behind as they entered a desert.

Barrel and saguaro cacti dotted the land as the sun blazed above. Karyn watched dust devils pick up torrents of sand and spray them around. Even though she was warm, she didn’t risk opening the window. The sand would have gotten in her eyes, and whatever cooling the wind would provide wasn’t worth it.

“Is this where your father lives?” she asked.

“No, not here,” said Derpy. “Very few ponies do. A few pegasi just make sure that the desert doesn’t encroach past the boundaries set out by Princess Celestia. Nopony grows anything.”

“I hope the train doesn’t break down out here.”

“If worse comes to worst, we’ll just all have to take shifts pulling. I don’t think they’ll make you pull, though. The harness wouldn’t fit.”

Karyn grinned. The sandy desert gave way to salt flats that might once have been a river or lake. The reflection from the sun on the white salt blinded Karyn, and she shaded her eyes.

“It’s hard to believe that anypony can live beyond this. They seem cut off from the rest of Equestria.”

Derpy seemed distracted and didn’t respond at first. Karyn shrugged it off and went back to looking at the open plain.

The train made one stop in the desert, a town even more technologically backward than the ones Karyn was used to. This was like a stopover in the Old West. She thought that it would not be out of place to see two ponies having a gun fight at high noon.

Only a few ponies got on the train, and they were very old, reminding Karyn of Mr. Waddle, he of the pipe cutie mark.

She was still trying to get Derpy to be more engaging. “You said there were a lot of older ponies where we’re going to?”

“Huh? Yes, there are. And they’re not that cut off. This is just the most direct route.”

Derpy kept pausing and restarting her side of the conversation. “A few young ponies too, but no one wants that. Everypony should be old together.”

Karyn thought that it wasn’t so good for old people to not have any younger folk. They tended to be happier when there were unwrinkled faces and unbent backs around to remind them of their better days. But she didn’t disagree.

At last the train was pulling out of the desert into more lush lands. The area was still tropical, but now palm trees and ferns were more plentiful than the hardy desert plants. The train was making more frequent stops. When the train went around curves, Karyn could see the direction they were traveling, and she caught the first glimpse of the ocean horizon.

They disembarked at the station. A cobblestone road curved off into the distance. Karyn got the impression that they were walking atop some great retaining wall that held back the ocean. Derpy trotted along the road.

“Don’t you want to wait for Dinky?” asked Karyn.

“She’ll be along soon enough. Come on, Daddy’s waiting.”

Karyn shrugged and followed. She was still looking for the residential area, but hadn’t yet seen it. There weren’t even too many shops. The buildings that were along the road seemed more specialized. She passed a smithy, a mason’s shop, and a woodworker’s. I suppose they need to have these somewhere, she thought.

She raised her head to the sky. There were no clouds, only a deep and endless blue with the sun behind her. When she turned toward it, she squinted and the light made sparkles on her eyelashes. She could see tiny rainbows in the circles.

“It’s such a beautiful day today,” she said. “We picked a good day to come out here.”

“It’s always a nice day in this section of Equestria,” said Derpy in monotone. “Pegasi don’t let any clouds come by.”

She turned back and looked at Karyn. “Some ponies think that rain once in a while would be nice, just a plain, steady rain with some gentle clouds, but most are of the opinion that having the bright sun is better. Anyway, that’s what they do.”

“But how do they grow plants and keep it from turning into the desert?”

“Oh, everypony around helps out. They water the grass with hoses and use plant food. They do it at night though. Any day that you stop by, you’ll have the nice weather and the grass. Here we are.”

Derpy had come to a break in the shops along the road and turned down a little alley. At the end was a tall metal gate that was slightly ajar. She pushed it open with a hoof.

Karyn was about to follow when she heard the whistle of the train from off in the distance. “That must be the train that Dinky’s coming in on. Are you sure you don’t want to wait for her?”

“Huh? No, she’ll be along. Come on.”

Karyn walked through the gate.

She had always felt that Equestria was more beautiful than Earth, at least the parts that she had seen of both. After coming through the desert and the salt flats, she was prepared for some kind of desolation. Instead, she had a good idea of what paradise would be like.

The valley gently sloped away toward the sea. In the distance, gulls danced on a breeze from the sea. The sun’s reflection was a shimmer of gold on the water. Drawing her eyes back up, Karyn saw the network of marble-white walkways crisscrossed with the hedges. Each hedge had been squared off at the top with the precision usually reserved for topiary gardens. But there were no fancy designs here, just the simple beauty of shapes.

The houses that made up the village were small, and she wondered if any held more than one or two ponies. All were made of stone, and that gave the sun one more surface to shine on. That made sense, though. If this was a place where old ponies dwelt, they probably wouldn’t have large families.

Derpy had started down, but Karyn stood still, stunned by the beauty of the valley below. When Derpy noticed that she wasn’t being followed, she went back to Karyn.

“You coming?”

“Yes. Where does your father live?”

Derpy turned toward the valley. “Over yonder. In fact, maybe I should go and talk to him for a few minutes before you come down.”

“OK. When Dinky comes by, I’ll catch up.”

“Thanks.”

As Derpy flew down, Karyn realized that something was missing. There were far fewer ponies than ought to be in a town this size. The valley was every bit as large as Ponyville’s main square, but only a few gardens were being tended and, far off where she could barely see, a small gathering was being held. Was the beautiful day really so commonplace that the ponies didn’t want to run around and enjoy it? But she didn’t mind since the town itself was unspoiled. She leaned against the back wall of the building by the gate.

“Karyn!”

She heard a faint voice calling her from behind. Ducking her head out the gate, she saw the small speck of Dinky coming up the road to her. She waved and turned back to look at the valley. She was still in awe and wanted to use her time to look at it.

A detail she had missed the first time caught her eye. Throughout the valley, in among the yards and houses and hedges, there were small round stones. She couldn’t tell what purpose they served, if indeed they weren’t simply decorative. She looked to the yard closest to her and saw more of the stones close up. They looked like perfect, polished spheres.

“Karyn!”

Dinky’s voice was louder, and Karyn thought there might have been some urgency in it, but she was more curious about the stones. She walked over to inspect one closer, when she saw yet another odd thing. Far off, but still in view, Derpy had stopped and landed. She seemed to be focusing her attention on one of the stones themselves. “Did she get lost?” Karyn said to herself, but then continued toward the stone.

“Karyn, wait!”

Dinky was coming through the gate, but whatever it was could wait a moment. Karyn had reached the nearest stone. It was lacquered and reflected in the sun, and Karyn wanted to touch it and feel the smooth surface. She noticed that it wasn’t quite spherical, but had small pockmarks on it.

It looks like the surface of the moon, she thought. Why would they have so many copies of the moon here? I thought that for so many years ponies were afraid of it, since Nightmare Moon came from there. What would that symbolize to ponies?

Then it hit her.

“Oh, no,” she said, sinking to her knees. She looked around the stone for confirmation and found it. A name, and two dates with a dash between them.

Dinky had caught up to her, realizing that it was too late. Karyn looked down at where Derpy was facing the stone. “Then that means. . . “

“Yes,” said Dinky. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you in time. I wanted to explain everything.

“It happened ten years ago, and Mommy got very depressed afterwards. She kept on saying how she didn’t know how she would go on without him. After a few days, I guess she decided she wouldn’t. She kept talking about him as if he were alive and had just moved away. She talked about visiting and spending time, and now she has one-sided conversations with him when she comes here.

“I told you that one time I really upset her. I don’t remember what the fight was about, but she said something like, ‘Grandpa will be very disappointed in you,’ and I spoke without thinking. I said, ‘He would be, if he were still alive!’ She stopped yelling at me, but she just cried. I’d never felt worse. I can’t ever say it again in front of her. That’s why I wanted to get you alone, but I didn’t have a chance last week, and then I missed the train today, so. . . “

Karyn was only half-listening. As though in a trance, she walked toward where Derpy was.

Things became clearer as she headed down. What she thought were houses were mausoleums. She passed a few where the marble tombs shone through the glass doors. The names of the ponies interred were carved inches deep into the rock.

She approached Derpy and was able to make out a few words. Derpy was speaking without lament or sadness in her voice. She really did act as if her father could hear her.

“I’ve been busier than I ever have been this year. Even with Dinky gone. Oh, she had a little trouble in school, but she’ll get over it. She’s so smart, but you know that. Much smarter than I was at that age.

“I made a new friend this year. Her name is Karyn, and she’s a human from another world. Some ponies probably think I’m weird for it, but I don’t mind. Not really. There have just been too many good things to come out of it.”

Derpy still hadn’t noticed Karyn approaching from above.

“Oh, and I got a cat too! Can you imagine? Silly, forgetful Derpy taking care of a little kitty. But I never forget to feed him. Actually, sometimes I wake up and worry that I have forgotten, but then I go down and check and his bowl is full of food. Isn’t that funny?

“I’m getting along well at work too. It’s hard, carrying all that mail every day, but you know that. Hey, I met Princess Celestia! Can you believe it? And not only that, but she made me a princess too! Only for a little bit, and to me it really didn’t count, but how about that? Maybe that makes you a king, huh?”

Karyn shifted on the grass, and Derpy picked her head up.

“Aha. Daddy, this is the friend I was telling you about. She takes care of me so that I’m never lonely. Karyn, do you want to say hi?”

Karyn felt a bit awkward. “Um, it’s nice to meet you, sir. Derpy takes just as much care of me. She’s really an awesome pony. You should be very proud.”

Derpy kept looking at the stone. Karyn watched her.

“She such a good friend and a mother. Don’t listen to her about other ponies thinking she’s weird. Everypony loves her. She hangs out with all the famous ponies, and we go all over Equestria. Even on Earth where I come from, we all love her. She’s kind and caring and it really shows.”

It was too much. Karyn’s voice cracked. “I just, I. . . she’s the most wonderful pony and. . . “

Derpy still spoke to the stone. “No, it’s OK, Daddy. I understand. You always get tired around this part of day. It’s all right, we’ll come and see you again in a little while. Dinky will want to say hi as well, and I’ll bring some of those chrysanthemums you like.

“Come on, Karyn. We need to let Daddy rest a bit. “

Tears streaming down her face, Karyn nodded. She trudged up the walk with her hand on Derpy’s shoulder. She didn’t know who was leaning on whom.

When they reached the top where Dinky was standing, Derpy said, “I’m going to go pick up the flowers. You two can visit for a little while. Dinky, you can see Grandpa when I get back, OK?”

“Sure, Mommy.”

Derpy went back through the gate. Once Dinky was sure that she wouldn’t hear them, she said to Karyn, “Are you mad that I didn’t let you know? I really tried.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not sure what to feel. Or what I ought to feel. I never knew him, but to see the way Derpy acts around him, it’s harder than if she cried.”

“I know. Thanks for playing along. We just have to be stronger than she is for once.”

“Of course I can’t contradict her. I know it would break her heart.” Karyn kept looking down, making sure she knew exactly where he was. “Tell me about him. What you remember.”

“Huh? Oh, well, he was a very large pony. A big stallion with lots of muscles, but he hadn’t used them for a while because all he did was carry the mail. I never knew my grandmother, but from what I gather she was kind of a silly mare and not attractive. That’s probably where Mommy gets it from. Anyway, all the other fillies said that she would never find a handsome stallion, but then Grandpa chose her, so I guess he saw something inside.”

“Your mother gets something from him as well, I think.”

“I’m sure, plus he raised her.” Dinky thought some more. “I would stay with him when I was a baby and Mommy had to work. He would make my breakfast every day. Every day he would ask me what I wanted, and every day I would say the same thing, toast. He made it for both of us and he never got tired of eating it. Or maybe he did and didn’t let on. That’s what I remember most, those breakfasts. Funny, how it’s the little things you remember, right?”

Derpy came back in. “Are you sharing stories about Grandpa, Dinky? He’s so nice, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is,” said Karyn.

Derpy looked at Karyn, as if wondering why she answered. But her tears were drying and she was smiling, so Derpy said, “I got lots of flowers. Let’s go down and give them to Daddy.”

She had indeed. On her back was a tight arrangement of mums in white, yellow, red, and lavender. They were so bulky that they looked heavy, and it seemed like Derpy would tip over.

“Why did you get so many?” asked Dinky.

“We might get hungry.” Derpy reached her head around and pulled a yellow flower out, chewing on it as she started down. Dinky shrugged and bit down on a lavender one.

“Karyn, do you want a flower?” she asked.

“Um, sure.” Karyn took a white mum and nibbled on it as she brought up the rear. “It’s actually not bad.”

They reached the grave and Derpy began arranging the flowers around it. “Here you go, Daddy. We only ate a few, so the rest are for you. Unless we want a few more. You won’t mind, will you?”

They sat on the grass and talked and talked, the three of them, for hours. If Derpy addressed her father, Dinky and Karyn would talk to him as well, though for long stretches she did not. Eventually the shadows grew longer and the shimmer of gold on the horizon grew wider.

“Oh, look at the sunset!” said Karyn.

The sun was low enough to where you could look at it. The orange-red light suffused everything. A gentle breeze blew the ponies’ manes back, and Karyn’s hair as well.

“Sunset City. That’s what they call this place,” said Derpy, smiling. “I think it’s one of the prettiest parts of Equestria. Someday, many years from now, I’d like to come out here myself. I’ll watch the sunset every night and I won’t ever get tired of it. Someday when all my work is done and after I’ve seen you get married, Dinky.”

“Hey, don’t pressure me!”

Derpy laughed. “Take your time. Like I said, not for a while yet.”

Karyn’s emotions started welling up in her again. “Derpy, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope it’s a long time before you come here to stay.”

Derpy was silent for a long time, and Karyn was afraid that she had offended her or triggered something in her, but she was just looking out as the sun itself sank into the sea and turned to water.

“Karyn, do you know the best thing about a sunset? Do you know how they say that the anticipation of a big event a lot of times makes you happier than the event itself? Every sunset is a preparation. A getting-ready. Every sunset happens just so that a sunrise can happen soon. Every one. So long as Princess Celestia is around to bring it back, which is forever. So don’t ever be sad about a sunset. Promise me, OK?”

“I promise, Derpy.”

They all stood up and walked back up the hill, to the train heading East toward home.

To the new sunrise.

For Bernice, and for Charlie as well

34: Derpective! You're Looking For Me

After hearing of Derpy’s insomnia a few weeks before, Karyn decided to make her dorm ready for an early arrival. She had told Derpy that, if she was awake early, to go ahead and come over. The computer would be ready, and she could browse the internet or play games until Karyn woke up and they could spend the day together.

She had anticipated that such an arrival would wake her up, either by the sound of Derpy’s spell or the light from the monitor. She had also been concerned that, if they were both up early, they would be tired early as well. The problem she did not anticipate was that Derpy would come in, start watching funny videos, and they would both be distracted so much that she didn’t get dressed until noon.

“I wish we had the Internet back in Equestria,” Derpy said. “Any time you want, you can just type in something and be entertained.”

“Yeah, but at the same time, it makes you not want to go out and do things.”

“Not for me. I’m ready to go out right now.”

Karyn dealt with her tousled hair and put on her makeup. “It’s easier for you to be ready.”

“Whatever. I still say that you’re lucky to be working with computers. I wish that, when I was a filly, I started working and going to school to learn about the Internet that we had in Equestria thanks to my previous wish.”

“Oh, come on, there are lots of other things you probably would have studied. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

“Yeah, but I just have this feeling,” said Derpy, pointing at the computer, “like the Internet loves me.”

“It does.” Karyn headed to the bathroom to finish making herself presentable.

“What other things?”

“Huh?”

Derpy poked her head in and talked over the sound of the hair dryer. “You said that there were other things I might have studied as a filly. What kind of things did you mean?”

“Um, well, I didn’t have anything specific in mind, but I’m sure that the college offers plenty of interesting things that an inquisitive mare would like.”

“No history, though. I’ve had enough of that.”

Karyn shut off the dryer with an audible click. “Yes, I remember how you did my test. But why don’t we go around today and I’ll show you all the departments and explain to you what they do?”

“Can’t we just look them up on the web page?”

“Yes, but that’s what I was just saying you shouldn’t do. All the information we need can be obtained by using our legs, plus it’s a nice day for this time of year. I’ll grab my coat and hat, and you can keep warm because you’re a pony, and we’ll go out and get some air with our information.”

Derpy still thought that Karyn was being a little Luddite-ish, although she didn’t know the word for it. Nonetheless, they put on their disguises and headed out into the bright sun and cold air.

“Why is it so much more dazzling in the winter?” asked Derpy.

“Because the sun’s at a lower angle at the same time of day, so it gets in our eye.”

“I’m telling you, you humans need a princess to raise the sun for you instead of letting it go wherever it wants. We have winter the same way you do, and the sun stays overhead where it belongs.”

They walked down the path away from the dorms and toward the classrooms. Karyn’s college, being a state school, offered a lot of different programs. The first building they passed was a square, modern building with an open courtyard underneath.

“This is the school for business and accountancy,” Karyn said.

“So the students here want to run their own businesses?”

“Probably not, for most of them. You’re more likely to find people who want to run a business in another school for whatever it is they want their business to do. Or skipping going to college and just diving in. The people going here want to be part of other people’s business, telling them how to run it better and spend their money right. Of course, in a lot of those cases, they say that spending the money right means paying the business majors more.

“This is just my opinion, but the whole thing’s problematic. If people did start their own businesses, and didn’t sell stock and just ran it on their own, then no one could complain if they got rich and spent their money on perks for themselves. But because everything is a big corporation, they’re bad guys when they fly private or have big houses.”

Derpy let Karyn rant on, then raised a concern of her own. “For money, you guys use those plastic cards or paper bills, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I just think the architecture here is so plain. If we had this kind of school in Equestria, we’d build a nice, round, gold building to make it look like a bit.”

Karyn laughed, but then sighed. “I know. That’s why everything’s a little prettier there. But at the same time, we have all the modern conveniences like the computers you admire so.”

Derpy couldn’t argue with that, and they moved on.

Down the road, Karyn put on a smirk and pointed at two buildings right next to each other. “This has to be a kind of joke on the part of one of the administrators. The one on the left is the engineering department, and the one on the right is the Women’s Studies center.”

“How is that a joke?”

“Those two disciplines are rivals. The engineers think that schools for things like women’s studies or ethnic culture studies are ivory-tower fluff that have no relevance to the real world.”

“I’ve seen some very nice ivory towers in Canterlot,” said Derpy. “But you’re probably using it as an expression to mean far above the streets where things happen.”

“Very good, yes. Anyway, the women’s studies people think that engineering and the hard sciences are just perpetuating the world as it is and getting in the way of social progress.”

“Who’s right?”

Karyn thought about how best to answer her, and she kept walking as she did. “Neither one, really. IT is one of those hard sciences, and I’m certainly a woman, but I don’t feel loyalty to either side. But everyone’s after money.”

They turned a corner and walked along the main entrance road to the college. There were cars and trucks coming in and more people milling about. It looked like a class was about to start, as students were running into a building from several directions.

“What’s this one?” asked Derpy.

Karyn pointed at the sign on the door. “Like that says, this is the criminology department. You probably don’t have a lot of crime in Equestria, and when you do it’s more like somepony taking a bite of a cake they shouldn’t. But here, it’s an awful problem, and how to stop it and conduct investigations is a big issue.”

At that moment, Derpy’s stomach gave an audible grumble.

“A bit hungry, are we?” Karyn asked.

“Yeah, we got such a late start that I didn’t eat much.”

“Me neither. Well, come on, let’s grab something at the cafeteria and head back to the dorms.”

Suiting the deed to the word, they made their way swiftly to pick up lunch. There was a bit of a lunch rush, and Karyn had to sneak Derpy a few lettuce leaves just to stop her from continuing her stomach-rumbling. It was hard for her to pretend that the loud noise came from her own belly, which was tiny in comparison to Derpy’s barrel.

The young man there had a pudgy face that Karyn didn’t recognize. His pop-eyes scanned the room as soon as the door opened, and sweat gleamed from his face, despite the relative cold. He said nothing, but Karyn had a distinct feeling of discomfort, so she said, “Yes? Can I help you?”

“I saw you a few hours ago in front of the criminology building. I’m studying there to be a detective.”

“That’s good, I guess.”

“They train us there to be observant. I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two. For example: when I see someone ostensibly talking on a cell phone, but whose Bluetooth isn’t showing any light, and who’s point at signs like the person on the other end of the phone can see, in an area that I know to be a complete dead zone for cellular coverage, I start to get suspicious. So I’d like to know what’s going on.”

He watched her face for a reaction, and was not disappointed. Karyn showed panic before recovering and trying to bluff her way through. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. I do talk on my cell phone, and maybe I point because I forget, but there’s nothing duplicitous.”

“Mmhm,” he said. “May I come in?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“That’s fine. I can also tell you that I heard two voices coming up, and even looking in I don’t see anyone else.”

“Of course you did,” said Karyn. “I was Skyping with a friend.”

“Very nice of you to set two places for lunch, both of which have been eaten, for a friend that you’re only talking to online.”

“I’m sorry, I never got your name.”

“It’s Albert. Very nice to meet you.” He flashed a toothy grin and extended his hand, but Karyn didn’t want to shake it. It looked as greasy as his face. “And I accept.”

“What?”

“You said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Twice. And you changed the subject. It’s clear you’re hiding something. I like to know what people are hiding.”

Karyn didn’t know what to think. The cover was blown. He wasn’t going to go away until he found out all about Derpy, told the world, and got his name in the paper for discovering that talking ponies were real. Then she took a moment. He was just a student, with no real authority. He couldn’t search her room or conduct any kind of real investigation. And whatever he suspected, it was probably nowhere near the truth. She’d have to brazen it out.

“All right. What do you think is going on?”

“My theory isn’t complete, but it’s definitely something supernatural. You’ve got a ghost or an invisible man or something. Maybe you have fairy godparents.”

She wanted to slap his fat face. Instead she said, “You’re way off” and closed the door in his face.

“What—“ she started to say, but Derpy turned back visible and waved her hoof frantically. She pointed at the door, and then at her ears, wiggling them about. Karyn understood that she meant that Albert was probably still listening. Then Derpy pointed at her bag, at Karyn, and at her own back in sequence. Karyn nodded and got on her back as she pulled out her spell as quietly as she could.

Once they were safely in Equestria, Karyn exhaled and started gibbering. “What are we going to do? How could he have made so many connections? Oh, we’ve been so careless. I should never have taken you out so often, or we should have used a better disguise. I need to watch what I say and I should remember that everyone else sees me as talking on the phone when I’m really not. We’ve got to get him to go away!”

Derpy listened, letting Karyn expend her energy before they discussed it rationally. She was pleased to hear that at no point in her ramblings did Karyn suggest, or even worry about, the two of them not seeing each other on Earth anymore. They had gotten past that at least.

“We were careless, but he also got lucky,” said Derpy. “We pass hundreds of other humans all the time and they don’t notice anything because they’re polite enough not to.”

“That’s true. He’s definitely a jerk. So what can we do about him? I don’t suppose you have a spell to erase his memory? We can make him forget that he saw anything.”

Derpy was shocked. “I don’t have anything like that! Twilight and Lyra said they would under no circumstances craft any spells that would hurt anyone, humans or ponies.”

“It wouldn’t be hurting him exactly.”

“A person’s mind is their most precious possession. There’s nothing more hurtful than messing with another’s mind.”

Karyn wasn’t sure if she agreed. “Well, it’s a moot point anyway, if you don’t have the spell. So how do we deal with him?”

“Do you think he knows about the show? If he does, or if we can make him understand, maybe we can just explain everything to him.”

“I don’t know if you looked at him, or if you heard the tone of his voice. He’s not out looking for friends. It’s either that he’s so driven by a puzzle he can’t figure out that he won’t go away until he understands, or he’s envisioning the fame and fortune he’ll get once he reveals it to the press. He might even think I’m planning a terrorist attack or something that he’ll stop.”

Derpy pondered for a moment. “Then what we’ve got to do is give him a plausible explanation for what he thinks he saw, and let him know that it’s something completely mundane. After that, he won’t care.”

They brainstormed a few ideas, but weren’t meeting with much success. “It’s the second lunch that’s the real problem,” said Karyn. “He knows that there was a second person in the room eating and talking. If we could show him someone else, we could try to explain it away. But there’s no way to do that.”

“Maybe there is. But we need some supplies. And maybe a little luck of our own.”

“What did you have in mind?”

They descended to Derpy’s house, where she brought out a big sheet of paper. Together they drew up their plan.

“And are you sure about this explanation?” Karyn asked.

“It worked once before.”

Half an hour later, they walked out of a shop in Ponyville carrying a package. “I didn’t even realize that you had shops like this here,” said Karyn.

“Oh, yes, for parties, or for Nightmare Night when parents don’t want to spend a lot of time.”

Karyn opened the box and slipped on the black wig. “I’ll need a different outfit too.”

“You’ll have to change as soon as you get back.”

“No, I’ll just throw on a sweater or jacket over top of this. Come on, let’s go.”

She got on top of Derpy’s back, signaled her readiness, and looked around as soon as they returned to her room. She found a gray jacket in her closet that provided a nice contrast to her maroon shirt. She ran to the door and looked out the peephole, bending her eye to see down the hall. As she expected, the junior detective was still waiting and listening. Silently counting to three, she tore open the door and broke into a run down the hall to the stairs at the end.

Now she had to be a little careful. She didn’t want to get caught, but neither did she want to lose him by running too fast. The stairs were the kind that went back and forth in a well behind swinging doors. He burst through a few seconds after she did, and she was on the first floor when he was halfway down the flight to the second. She opened the door and let it swing, then went outside.

She slowed up to allow him time to catch up. Crossing over the front of the building, she turned to move to the back where the garbage bins were kept. As soon as she was sure that he saw her go there, she moved in to where Derpy, invisible and guiding her by whispers, was standing. She jumped back on and a moment later was back in Equestria.

Now it was time for phase two. “For once I’m glad of the time distortion,” Karyn said. They flew back to Derpy’s house, where she took off the jacket and wig.

When they appeared back in Karyn’s room again, she calmly walked over to the window and peered out to where Albert was still looking around the corner. “Everything all right?” she called.

He looked back up to see her, his eyes narrowing. She pulled her head back in the room and gathered up the trash from the two lunches. Calmly strolling down to the bins, she dumped it in and grinned.

“All right, who is she?”

“Who’s who?” If she had faked confidence before, now it was genuine, and he knew it.

“Where was she went I was up there?”

He was on the defensive now, and Karyn sensed it. “Excuse me if I decide not to tell you about what my girlfriends and I do in my room.” She figured that the thought of two females together would cloud his judgment.

“But you weren’t talking to her outside the building. You couldn’t have been.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t. That was a completely separate issue.”

“All right, then,” he said, “spill.”

“I suppose I might as well, since it won’t do you any good. You are familiar, I assume, with proprietary information as related to new products and services? And the laws that go with them?”

“Yes.” He stretched it out as if expecting a lie.

“I don’t know how well you keep up with technology in the criminology department, but I can assure you we’re always researching something new. Or at least combinations of old technology. For example, you’ve seen that software on cell phones that answers questions you pose by voice. And I’m sure you’ve also heard of GPS. Then again, there’s also the satellite and local camera apps that give you real-time views of street locations. Well, it’s a project of mine to combine all three. So yes, even though I don’t have cell reception everywhere on the campus, I can still input information into the system I’m working with. You didn’t see the hidden camera I had below my bangs. Ultimately I plan to have a system that can recognize images, addresses, and voice commands, and translate any one into another.”

Karyn didn’t know if he would buy the explanation, but she was sure of two things. One, that he was completely out of his depth with the level of technology she was describing. Two, that she spoke with confidence, as if she actually believed the story she was telling.

Albert’s pop-eyes shrank to dots as he tried to stare her down, but she kept her grin and stuck out her tongue a little.

“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see. I’m going to keep my eye on you, and find out who that other girl was. I still say there’s more here that you’re not telling me. Maybe not illegal, but definitely embarrassing. Oh, yes, I’ll be watching.”

“You just try it.”

“Don’t underestimate me. I’m smarter than you.”

Karyn laughed. “No. You’re not.”

He stormed off. Her laughter rose to audible levels, and Derpy came up and said, “What’s so funny?”

“He said, ‘I’m smarter than you.’ The word you can mean both one person or multiple. He might be smarter than me, but he’s definitely no match for the two of us.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“First, we’re going to write up a fake but plausible sounding paper about cell-voice-GPS-camera integration—which isn’t a bad idea, actually. I might start working on that for a term paper. Then we’re going to stop worrying. Between technology and magic, we won’t have any problems.”

Derpy shook her head and laughed. “When you put it that way, it almost sounds fun.”

Author's Note

Sorry it's a little late, but here's the preview for next week!

Derpy headed to the door, but then stopped. “Breakfast! Darn, I forgot to feed the cat. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

“Why don’t I come with you?”

“No, that’s OK. I’ll be back in an infinitesimal amount of time. You won’t even notice I’m gone."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the ponies who was setting the table heard the tail end of their conversation. He was a short and stocky stallion with a shoe for a cutie mark. “What’s that you’re talking bout?” he asked. “I’m always interested in how magic works.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Underneath was a spread of desserts. Tarts, pies, and strudels steamed into the air.

“It all looks good,” said Karyn, “but I really couldn’t eat another bite.”

“Another?”

“Um, I mean, I had a big meal back home.”

Be sure to check it out!

Clip Show: One Derp or Two?

Here we have another clip show. After the adventures of the last four episodes, Karyn and Derpy need a break! So today they just hang out and reminisce, and next week they take off entirely. But they'll be back in two weeks' time with their usual adventures.

Karyn grabbed the pot holder and put it over the teapot handle. Even though it was only slightly hot, she felt the holder gave her a better grip. Pouring the boiling water into the mugs, she set the pot back down on the hot plate and passed one mug to Derpy.

“Do you want regular tea or one of these fancy ones?”

“I’ll start with regular for now.”

Karyn pulled out an unmarked bag and dropped it in Derpy’s mug. For herself she selected a Lemon Zinger.

“This is exactly what I wanted for today after all that hullabaloo. Just a relaxing day at home, sipping tea and watching videos over the internet.”

“Ha. I remember when you didn’t even want to let me leave the room.”

Derpy sipped her tea and thought back…

“Is that your subtle way of letting me know that you want a change of scenery?”

“Oh no, Karyn! I try not to play games like that. Not that I wouldn’t mind getting out and about, but I don’t drop hints. Letters, flower pots, the odd piano, but never hints,” Derpy said.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind some fresh air myself. Back to Equestria then?”

“Well, I was wondering. . . “ Derpy swung one hoof back and forth, which Karyn had learned to interpret as her being indecisive.

“Yes?”

“Can we maybe go out into the human world today?”

“Oh, Derpy, I don’t know. There are just so many things that could go wrong,” said Karyn.

“But so many ponies, after last week’s game, were asking me what the human world was like, and I didn’t have a whole lot to tell them.”

“How are we going to avoid notice?”

“I’ve got an invisibility spell. No humans will see me!”

“Hmm. . . I don’t know,” said Karyn. “You’ll be invisible, but what if you bump into someone?”

“I’ll stay in the air above everyone’s head! Please!”

“OK, we’ll go out and do something. I’d just really like it to be a place where there aren’t a whole lot of people milling about who could knock into you anyway.”

Derpy had ignored everything after Karyn had said OK and was rummaging through her bag for the right spell, dumping out rejects all over the place. Karyn picked up one and looked at it.

“Derpy? Will the magic work only for you? You know that there’s no magic on Earth, but I’ve always wanted to do some, ever since I was ten and didn’t get to go to Hogwart’s.”

Derpy was still pawing through and muttering to herself. “Spell to keep warm. . . no. Infinite muffin spell. . . save that for later. Spell to allow you understand when human makes reference to something I haven’t read, don’t need that. Aha! Got it.”

“Cream and sugar?” asked Karyn.

“Well, I suppose I should only have one or the other, not both.”

“How have you been doing with your diet anyway?”

Derpy blinked. “You know, I never even bothered to check how much I weighed at the beginning. But take a look. What do you think?”

She stood to the side of the table, and Karyn leaned over. “Looks like you’re a little slimmer, but sometimes the inches and the numbers don’t coincide. She remembered when the issue first arose…

“Do me a favor, Derpy? Go stand against that wall.” Karyn pointed to one end. “This was the picture I took of you when we were playing with my camera a while back. I want to do a before-and-after.”

“What for? I haven’t changed.”

“I think you have. Oh, yeah. Derpy, you’ve put on a lot of weight.”

Derpy snorted. “I have not!”

“Look at the picture and then look between your hooves.”

“Give me that.” Derpy snatched it out of Karyn’s hands and looked. She was standing against the same wall, and could see a foot or two of wall beneath her. Trotting back over, she tried to measure from the bottom of her belly to the floor.

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Trust me, your belly has grown. Small wonder, I’d say. You took seconds at that Apple Family reunion, and—“

“It wasn’t a true reunion, just a get-together.”

“Don’t change the subject. And you’re always finishing my meals. You have a problem, Derpy.”

“I do not!” said Derpy, stomping her hoof. But beneath her, she felt her belly jiggling. How did she not notice before? “Well, maybe I’ve gained, but I’m not a young filly. Everypony puts on a few pounds at my age.”

“Ponyfeathers!” said Karyn. Derpy spread her wings and looked at them. “No, I mean that you’re trying to cover up the fact that you have a problem. I’m serious, Derpy.”

“I don’t see—“

“And I’ll bet that’s the reason you’ve been having insomnia lately. I mean, look. I don’t know anything about pony anatomy. Maybe you can weigh as much as you like and have no ill effects. Maybe unicorns have a spell that can zap you to the perfect weight without any effort. Maybe there’s no such thing for you as heart attacks and arthritis. All I know is that you’ve changed, and for the worse.”

Derpy scowled and wanted to argue some more, but she saw how worried Karyn was, and the image of the picture versus her own figure was stuck in her head. “I guess I have. I’m sorry.”

“Say, I think the girls across the hall, that I share a bathroom with, put a scale in there. Let’s get a figure now so we can compare in the future.”

Derpy agreed, and Karyn peeked in to make sure the coast is clear before returning with the scale. “Hm, it’s really not built for users who stand on four legs,” said Derpy.

“Maybe you should try to stand like Lyra.”

Derpy got on the scale, and Karyn peered down to try to read the dim LED numbers. Without looking up, she said, “Derpy, stop using your wings to try to add weight now to better your numbers in the future.”

“How did you catch me?”

“Because I know you’re a great flyer with lots of wingpower, but you don’t weigh four hundred pounds.”

“Darn the imprecision! You know, you’re not always so strict about following the rules.”

“What do you mean?” asked Karyn.

“Remember when we first ran into Albert?”

“What did you have in mind?”

They descended to Derpy’s house, where she brought out a big sheet of paper. Together they drew up their plan.

“And are you sure about this explanation?” Karyn asked.

“It worked once before.”

Half an hour later, they walked out of a shop in Ponyville carrying a package. “I didn’t even realize that you had shops like this here,” said Karyn.

“Oh, yes, for parties, or for Nightmare Night when parents don’t want to spend a lot of time.”

Karyn opened the box and slipped on the black wig. “I’ll need a different outfit too.”

“You’ll have to change as soon as you get back.”

“No, I’ll just throw on a sweater or jacket over top of this. Come on, let’s go.”

She got on top of Derpy’s back, signaled her readiness, and looked around as soon as they returned to her room. She found a gray jacket in her closet that provided a nice contrast to her maroon shirt. She ran to the door and looked out the peephole, bending her eye to see down the hall. As she expected, the junior detective was still waiting and listening. Silently counting to three, she tore open the door and broke into a run down the hall to the stairs at the end.

Now she had to be a little careful. She didn’t want to get caught, but neither did she want to lose him by running too fast. The stairs were the kind that went back and forth in a well behind swinging doors. He burst through a few seconds after she did, and she was on the first floor when he was halfway down the flight to the second. She opened the door and let it swing, then went outside.

She slowed up to allow him time to catch up. Crossing over the front of the building, she turned to move to the back where the garbage bins were kept. As soon as she was sure that he saw her go there, she moved in to where Derpy, invisible and guiding her by whispers, was standing. She jumped back on and a moment later was back in Equestria.

Now it was time for phase two. “For once I’m glad of the time distortion,” Karyn said. They flew back to Derpy’s house, where she took off the jacket and wig.

When they appeared back in Karyn’s room again, she calmly walked over to the window and peered out to where Albert was still looking around the corner. “Everything all right?” she called.

He looked back up to see her, his eyes narrowing. She pulled her head back in the room and gathered up the trash from the two lunches. Calmly strolling down to the bins, she dumped it in and grinned.

“All right, who is she?”

“Who’s who?” If she had faked confidence before, now it was genuine, and he knew it.

“Where was she went I was up there?”

He was on the defensive now, and Karyn sensed it. “Excuse me if I decide not to tell you about what my girlfriends and I do in my room.” She figured that the thought of two females together would cloud his judgment.

“But you weren’t talking to her outside the building. You couldn’t have been.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t. That was a completely separate issue.”

“All right, then,” he said, “spill.”

“I suppose I might as well, since it won’t do you any good. You are familiar, I assume, with proprietary information as related to new products and services? And the laws that go with them?”

“Yes.” He stretched it out as if expecting a lie.

“And lie you did,” said Derpy.

“Well, it all worked out in the end. And he turned out to be not quite so much of a jerk anyway, helping us with the changeling invasion. Maybe only ninety-nine-point-nine percent as much of a jerk.”

“You really don’t like him. Don’t you think that maybe we can take the monitoring spell off now?”

“One good deed doesn’t absolve all he’s done. It’s more important to make sure Equestria is kept secret. Maybe one day.”

Derpy looked nervous, but said nothing.

“Speaking of Equestria,” said Karyn, “one thing I’ve always wondered is whether the word refers to your entire world or just your country. Like, remember when we went to Muland?”

As they waited for the mule to go find the mail to go back, Derpy and Karyn had their first real moment of privacy in Muland. “I really don’t get how any of this works,” said Derpy. “I can’t believe that any mules would work hard knowing that they’re going to get the same reward. I try to do the best I can on my mail route so I can get more money and better routes, and to improve my relationship with the ponies there. I wouldn’t do that here.”

“But you’re not here,” said Karyn. “The mules have a different way of thinking. They do work hard, just because they can. What I don’t get is how Equestria works. Think of all the so-called Canterlot elite. They’re really just snobs. They look down on you as a simple mailmare, while they live decadent lives with jewels and fashions. Doesn’t that make you mad?”

“No. What other ponies think doesn’t bother me, unless they’re my friends. But I guess that I have a different way of thinking too.”

The mule returned with a small sack of mail and a large stack of paper. “Sign here, please, miss, and here, here, initial here, and confirm the weight and the number.”

Derpy gritted her teeth as she complied. “Very different,” she said.

Their mood lightened as they made their way back to the docks and found Stubby waiting for them on the boat. Derpy tried to fly out to meet him.

“Sorry, ladies, but I can’t let you on right now. This vessel is currently under inspection for safety and health concerns, and as such only authorized personnel are allowed. I can’t be held liable for your welfare.”

Karyn kept her distance, but Derpy hovered over anyway. “Oh, forget those stinky regulations, Stubby, it’s us!”

“Rules are rules. I can’t let you on.”

Derpy huffed and flew back to the dock. “He’s so much nicer when we’re on the water.”

Derpy finished her tea. “See, now Stubby was a nice guy, even though he was brusque at first. Maybe Albert could be like that.”

“You mean we should take him down to the water and dunk him? I could agree to that plan.”

“Don’t be uncharitable. And besides—you did say I still have more weight to lose, right?”

“Well, yeah,” said Karyn, “but what does that have to do with it?”

“Once I’m thin I can’t make fat jokes anymore. I was going to say that if we did dunk him in the water, he’d float.”

Karyn had a good laugh at that as she poured them some more tea.

For a while they just sat and drank. The sun climbed in the window.

“It’ll be getting warm again soon,” said Derpy. “At least I don’t have to wrap up winter in two worlds.”

“No, though I wouldn’t mind if you did. You’re a really good friend, Derpy Hooves. I know you know it, but we don’t say it enough.”

Derpy flew over and gave Karyn a hug. “Of course I know. And however we treat other ponies and other people, we have no secrets from each other.”

“Well, funny you should say that. Do you remember one time we went to visit Dinky?”

It’s just that both of us have such wonderful mothers, and she deserves one too.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet. Yes, it would be nice to hear more stories about Grandma Dancey. But the only pony I know from that time is Princess Celestia.”

“Yeah,” Karyn muttered. “Hey, what about Granny Smith, the matron of the Apple family? She’s old enough that she might have known your grandmother.”

“I never thought of that. We should go see her.” Dinky started packing a saddlebag and heading for the door.

“You mean right now? Shouldn’t we wait for your mom? And how will we get to Ponyville?”

“Train, same as always. And we don’t need to tell mom, it’s supposed to be for her. And yes, now.”

Karyn wanted to protest, but Dinky was already halfway out the door. Finally she thought of something. “But you know that your mother will catch us. She always does when we try to sneak out.”

“You’re right. Hang on.” She levitated a hat onto Karyn’s head. “There. Now you’re disguised. Come on.”

Matter-of-factly, Karyn said, “You are your mother’s daughter.” But she left with her.

Despite Karyn’s fear, they reached the train station without incident and took the train back to Ponyville.

Apple Bloom was repairing a fence at the edge of Sweet Apple Acres when they approached. She wasn’t a close friend of Dinky’s, but they knew each other’s name and were cordial to one another.

“Howdy!” she said. “What brings you round the farm? Most of our crops ain’t for sale right now in the season.”

“Actually,” said Dinky, “we were hoping we could talk to your grandmother. Maybe hear some old stories.”

“Really? Well, I’ll lend you my hair ribbon. Maybe with her eyesight she’ll think you’re me, and then she’d tell them to you instead of me. Not that I don’t love her, but I must have heard them all a million times by now.”

Karyn grinned. “We’ll take that chance. Is she around?”

“Granny’s mostly retired now. She doesn’t even sort apples on cider-making day anymore. But she sits upstairs in the house and watches the ranch. She’s the one mentioned this fence needed mending.” Apple Bloom pointed toward the second-floor window. Dinky and Karyn spotted the elderly pony rocking in her chair.

“Thanks. We’ll go talk with her.”

The old boards of the house squeaked as they climbed the stairs, and the old bones of Granny Smith creaked as well.

“Hello, Miss Smith,” said Dinky.

“Hello yourself, whipper-snapper. What’s that you got there with you? Some kind of baby dragon?”

“No, she’s my friend. She’s called a human, and her name is Karyn.”

Granny Smith looked down at her knitting. “Well, if she’s a friend, I guess that’s all right. And you are?”

“My name’s Dinky, Dinky Hooves.” She hesitated as she realized that she was imposing on a relative stranger. “I was just wondering, since you’ve been around so long, if you might have known my grandmother. Maybe you can tell me something about her.”

“Well, sure I knew your grandam.”

“That’s great! What was she like?”

Granny Smith leered. “She was the orneriest, meanest, twistedest pony I ever knew and no mistake! Kind of mare who would kick you in the teeth so much as look at you.”

Dinky’s jaw dropped. “Really? Everypony always said she was nice. Tough, but nice.”

“Well, of course nopony wants to hurt a little’un’s feelings, but them’s the facts. Now you take old Mr. Waddle f’r’instance. Kindest feller you’d want to know. Always sayin’ hi and smilin’. Well, one day he passed by and sure as I’m sitting here your grandmother comes right out and says, ‘Can’t stand that stallion.’ Didn’t care who heard it either.”

Karyn wanted to stop her. Dinky looked as if she were about to cry. But Granny Smith was still talking.

“No wonder your daddy left home as soon as he was old enough to work.”

“Wait, what?” Dinky picked her head up. She thought back and realized that she had never specified who she was talking about. “I’m sorry, Miss Smith, I don’t mean that grandma. I meant my other one, Dancey Hooves.”

Granny Smith perked up at the name. “Oh! Well, that’s a pony of a different color! Gray, if I’m not mistaken. Poor Dancey. Shame what happened to her.”

“You knew her?”

“Dancey Hooves. Haven’t thought about her in a long time. Not the brightest apple in the basket, but you couldn’t tell her that. Kept a flower garden of chrysanthemums, every color of the rainbow. Wasn’t stingy about giving them away, neither. Yes, she was a darn fine pony. Shame what happened to her.”

Karyn put her hand on Dinky’s back. “It wasn’t entirely a shame. A very nice pony came out of it. No, two very nice ponies.”

“You did that with Dinky?”

“Yeah. We didn’t think you would really mind.”

Derpy took another sip of tea. “Did you mix in the salt with the sugar or something?”

“No, Derpy. You’re crying into your tea. Here, let me get you a fresh cup.”

“I think instead…”

“Yes?”

“I want a refill on that hug.”

67: The Derpy Mark Crusader

Karyn poked her head into the kitchen. “Any breakfast ready?”

“You can make yourself some if you like.” Her mother was clearing away the dishes from her own meal. “If you’re going to sleep in, you’ll miss my cooking. But it looks like you were putting on your face. Are you always this formal now?”

Karyn flashed her teeth. In fact, she had done as she had at school and used her magic to appear in a fancy sundress with her hair perfectly combed and her face made up. She could feel the bed-hair still sticking to the side of her head. It was still a little unbelievable to her. Fooling strangers that she passed on the street was one thing, but this was her mother, who knew her every day growing up. Now she was staring right at Karyn and not really seeing her.

“I like to look nice. Even if it means making my own breakfast.”

“Is that a new dress? I don’t remember buying that. It looks expensive.”

“I didn’t pay anything for this. It’s looks a lot nicer than it is.

She slipped some bread into the toaster and dialed it down to light. Although she now had the added lead time of Derpy’s flight from school to home, she wanted to be waiting in her room for the arrival.

After gobbling down the toast and assuring her mother that she’d be around if needed, Karyn returned to her room and dithered around on her computer for a few minutes before hearing the window slide up and then down again.

“Hello, Derpy. All is clear for now.”

“Good. You’re looking well, even if it’s just magic and you didn’t actually make the effort.”

“You can tell?” asked Karyn.

“Not by sight, but I know how you are.”

“And how are you?”

Derpy went visible. “I’m not the type to use a disguise that actually fools people. I just let them not see me and be done with it.”

“I meant ‘how are you’ in the sense of your health and general welfare since the last time I’ve seen you.”

“Oh. Fine. Just fine. How are we for time? Can you spare an instant here?”

Karyn, still wary, poked her head out to make sure her parents were nowhere nearby. “You mean to go to Equestria? What’s going on?”

“I figured that I could give you that trip to Cloudsdale that I owe you.”

“You don’t actually owe it to me. It’s just a plan that we made. Not even that. A plan that you made.”

“Yeah, but I really want to.” Derpy knelt down and spread her wings, showing that she would not be denied. “As I was saying, I want to feel the clouds beneath my hooves again.”

“How about me? Should I get that cloud-walking spell done to me that I know Earth ponies and unicorns use sometimes?”

“Hmm. I wasn’t planning on it. I was kind of thinking that you’d just ride me the whole time.”

Karyn thought about that. “Well, if it’s not too long, I guess I can put up with that. But let’s get out of here while we’re safe.”

She mounted up, and Derpy took off out the window, making sure that no one was watching before she lifted for height. Once in Equestria, Derpy took stock of her position and glided for the ground. They landed in front of Derpy’s house.

“Ready?”

“Is there a reason we stopped here?” asked Karyn. “Did you forget to feed the cat or something?”

“No, I just find that it’s easier to get somewhere if I start from a place I know. You don’t do that?”

“I probably would if GPS didn’t exist.”

Derpy decided to ignore that in favor of getting in the air, but as she spread her wings once more, the sound of rushing hooves came from the other side of the house. “Derpy!”

“Who’s that?”

It was Karyn who recognized the pony galloping towards them. For Derpy, orange was probably a typical color for ponies. She only knew of one. “Scootaloo?”

“Derpy! Glad I caught you. I heard that Sunday was the day that you go to Earth, and that sometimes you bring Karyn back—hello, Karyn—and I’m glad that I got lucky enough to see you.”

“What’s up?” asked Derpy.

“I just got back in town. I’ve been away for a while.”

“Doing your cutie mark research?”

“Right.” Scootaloo finally came to a halt from her nervous fidgeting. “I’ve been out in Zebrabwe trying to determine if zebras get theirs any different from ponies. But that’s not important right now. We don’t get much news out there, and even less of it concerning humans, but word managed to filter through anyway.”

“Word of what?”

“That the changelings had returned! That in and of itself was a big deal. You two were part of it?”

Karyn squirmed. “You could say that we were the whole reason for it. Or at least I was.”

She recounted the tale in brief. Derpy interrupted trying to make it look as if she, or Dinky, was more heroic than she actually was. To Karyn’s mind, all she did was wait in prison and talk.

Scootaloo listened, enraptured. “And at the end, Chrysalis appointed you a changeling queen, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that means you can change your form, right?”

Karyn blinked and stared. “Really? That was intuitive to you? I spent months thinking that it was a purely honorary title with no actual benefits before the buildup of magic nearly made me choke.”

“Oh, no!” said Scootaloo. “If I had been here I would have spotted something different immediately. Well, maybe I would have. It doesn’t matter. You’ve been given something that nopony in Equestria has ever had.”

Derpy shook her head. “I’m not sure that anypony would want it. Meaning no offense to Karyn.”

“None taken. Ponies all have their own magic of some kind. Only on Earth are we complete muggles. So just to be able to do anything makes me feel special.”

“Whatever that word means.” Scootaloo moved her hooves like setting something to the side. “The point is that you’re also the only human with a cutie mark. It’s ironic if you think about it. All those ponies out there with cutie marks and it’s the human who I need.”

Derpy and Karyn looked at each other. “Need?”

Scootaloo knelt down and drew on the ground. Karyn had seen Derpy do the same thing, and wondered if it was a pegasus trait. She crafted a Venn diagram. “Here’s how it is. You have a cutie mark, but you can also alter your form. That means, in theory, that you could remove or even alter your cutie mark. That could give us new insight into exactly how cutie marks work.”

Karyn scratched her backside. She was still embarrassed about the pair of ergonomic keyboards that emblazoned on her rear, even though no one had seen them. The notion that her newfound magic could rectify some old magic seemed right to her. On the other hand, she wondered if it was right.

Scootaloo was carrying on. “Obviously we’ve never had the chance to investigate changeling magic on its own, since they’ve been enemies of all good ponies. But even now, I’m not sure they even know what a cutie mark is.”

“Wait just one minute,” said Derpy. “But don’t actually wait one minute. That’s an Earth expression that means to stop and think. The last time that some ponies wanted to use Karyn for research purposes, Princess Celestia had to step in and do some fancy political maneuvering to stop them. I want to make sure that this is going to be safe for her.”

Karyn flashed back, grinning. “Of course you do, your highness.” She drank in Derpy’s pained expression. “But this is Scootaloo, not those stuffy ponies from Canterlot. I’m sure she doesn’t want to do anything dangerous.”

“Of course not,” said Scootaloo. “I just want to ask you to do some transformations and activities and take some observations. It’ll be mostly writing on my part. I’ll buy you guys lunch afterwards. What do you say?”

Once more, Karyn and Derpy shared a look. “I guess it’s OK,” said Derpy. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“What exactly is the lunch?”

Everyone else had a laugh at that and they all started walking. On the way they chatted about Scootaloo’s research.

“I know that everypony thinks I’m just all about running around on my scooter or trailing after other ponies like Rainbow Dash. And that’s what I was, but I realized that if I wanted to break out of that mentality and grow up, I was going to have to work my brain and get smarter. I think I surprised Miss Cheerilee when I wound up at the head of the class!”

Karyn was a little surprised herself.

“And then, of course, you were there when I finally got my cutie mark. I sometimes wonder if I had stuck with scooting and emulating, if I wouldn’t have gotten it sooner.”

As Scootaloo carried on with her reminiscences, Karyn distractedly thought that her and Derpy’s plans had been disrupted, and while she didn’t mind helping the research, she wondered if they couldn’t do both.

“Excuse me, but Derpy and I were planning to spend the day in Cloudsdale. Why don’t you come with us and see all the other pegasi.”

“Oh. Yeah, we could do that, I guess.”

Scootaloo took a deep breath, and Karyn felt a rush of blood to her face. She sped her walking pace as Scootaloo slackened hers. Once Derpy caught up, Karyn whispered, “Did I say something wrong?”

“You didn’t know? Her wings are underdeveloped. She’s really not welcome in Cloudsdale. She’d need a cloud-walking spell just like an Earth pony or unicorn would.”

“Oh, I didn’t even think about that. I’m such a heel. I should go apologize to her.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Derpy. “It would only make things worse.”

Lagging so as to let Scootaloo catch up, Karyn racked her brain trying to think of how to make it better. “So, with this research you’re doing, do you think you’ll write a book or such?”

“I might. I’m more interested in gaining the knowledge, but I suppose that other ponies will want to know it too.”

“Mmhm. When you’re not out in the field, do you work out of your home?”

At last, Scootaloo’s spirit returned. “Oh, no! I’ve got a nice research position at a private school just on the edge of Ponyville. I guess I’m kind of a research professor. They don’t let me teach, or at least they haven’t asked me to yet!”

“I’d love to see this school. I didn’t even know there was that kind of school out here. The only one I’ve seen is the School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“Well, let’s go!”

Scootaloo was all energy now, and it was all that Karyn and Derpy could do to keep up. The school wasn’t on Derpy’s mail route, and it was a part of Ponyville that she almost never got to. In Karyn’s mind a school was large stone buildings and fancy grounds, but it turned out to be closer to the one-room schoolhouses of the past on Earth.

“Yeah, scholarship isn’t big among ponies, at least around here,” said Scootaloo. “Fillydelphia and Manehattan have more ponies into that thing, whereas here most ponies go right from Miss Cheerilee’s class to work.”

“I wonder how she actually gets money,” whispered Karyn to Derpy.

Derpy shrugged, and Scootaloo led them inside. There were only a few ponies there, and Karyn wondered if more weren’t engaged in field research as Scootaloo had been. She led them past a few classrooms, and said, “Here’s my office.”

A moment later, Karyn turned to see Derpy, and wondered if she wasn’t going to have to administer CPR.

Bookshelves lined the walls, but the books were thrown every which way, some on their sides, some facing backwards, others lying open. On the two guest chairs, notebooks and loose paper had been piled up, with the corners sticking out at odd angles. The main desk had a scroll falling off it and an inkwell—empty, thankfully—on its side. Broken quills lay strewn about the floor near the rubbish bin, and a few intact ones were bound together on the desk.

“Did—“ Derpy tried to speak. “Did somepony else do this as a prank?”

“Oh,” said Scootaloo, scratching the back of her neck with her hoof. “I guess it’s a bit messy, but I came back with so many notes, and then I started to collate them, and…you know how it gets.”

“Not really.”

Scootaloo lifted the piles of paper off the chairs and dropped them unceremoniously on the floor next to the desk. “Sit, sit! Let’s start getting into the details of what it is I want to record.”

Derpy was still reeling from Scootaloo’s less-than-fastidious nature, and particularly at the dumping of the papers. She trotted right past the chairs and tried to organize the notes.

“Don’t worry about those, Derpy,” said Scootaloo. “They’re not relevant to what we’re doing now.”

“Forget it, Scootaloo,” said Karyn. “She can’t hear you right now. Think of it this way. If what she sees is clutter, her mind will melt into clutter itself, so she has to arrange her environment so as to keep her brain in order.”

“Well, if it’ll make her happy.” She reached in her desk drawer and rummaged around. Karyn watched another vein throbbing on Derpy’s neck. But Scootaloo shut the drawer and set to work with a new scroll and quill. “OK, name, Karyn. Species, human. What does your name mean, by the way?”

“Huh?”

“Well, like Scootaloo means ‘one who rides scooters,’ and Derpy, for example, means ‘cross-eyed.’ What does your name mean?”

Karyn recalled when she had looked it up. “Well, passed through a dozen different languages and spellings, it means, ‘a pair’.”

Scootaloo wrote that down, and Karyn wanted to ask if it mattered or if was just her curiosity at a foreign naming system.

“Age?”

“Twenty.”

“Age when you got your cutie mark?”

“Nineteen.”

“All right, that’s all the preliminary stuff, now for the fun part. I’ve had to become quite a good artist over the years.” Scootaloo took out a series of colored paints. “Let me see your mark so I can take it down.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Scootaloo acted as if she hadn’t asked anything personal. “I want to draw your cutie mark.”

Karyn realized once again that, when in Equestria, she was going to have to do as the Equestrians did and not concern herself with nudity. She took off the sundress and lowered her underwear. “There you go.”

Scootaloo picked up her quill and started sketching, occasionally dipping into the white or grey paint. Karyn had a laugh as she saw the moment out of context. If she had been told, two years prior, that she’d be stripped bare in another universe as one pegasus sketched a picture of a keyboard using her rear end as a model while another pegasus tidied up the office, she would not have believed it.

After a few minutes of this, Scootaloo said, “All right, hold still. I want to make sure I have the measurements of your cutie mark.” Karyn had to stand still while Scootaloo ran a tape measure over her butt. Once that was done, she was finally able to dress again and sit down.

“Is all that really necessary?”

“Ponies who are into cutie mark theory like to see pictures of cutie marks. Having one from a human will probably get me into the journal next month. Actually, it definitely will.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Karyn.

“I’m the publisher.”

“Ha, that would work.”

Derpy, meanwhile, had finished with her cleaning. The room still wasn’t to her standards, but at least she could walk around without tripping over anything, and look at the desk without having apoplexy. “So, if you’re doing research on Karyn’s cutie mark,” she said, “you should take measurements of it first. It’s too bad that you can’t draw a picture. Wait! I bet Karyn can take one with her phone.”

Now it was Scootaloo and Karyn that shared the significant look. The picture was on the desk, and Scootaloo picked it up and showed it off.

“Ooh, I didn’t know you had a printer here,” said Derpy.

Scootaloo did her push-aside gesture again. “Beyond that, I have a question about this cutie mark.”

“I’ll try to answer,” said Karyn, “but you’re the expert.”

“My question is fairly simple. What is it?”

“It’s a cutie mark.”

“Yeah, but what does it represent?”

“Oh! Yeah, you wouldn’t have keyboards here. It’s part of a computer.”

Scootaloo grinned. “I see. And that is?”

Karyn wondered where to start, but Derpy came to the rescue, explaining the basics of what computers did and how Karyn worked with them. Whether it was because they were both ponies or because Derpy was a novice, Scootaloo figured it out from her explanation.

“That sounds cool! I want to see you using one, so I can record your talent.”

“I guess if Derpy brings me home briefly I can grab my laptop.”

“No, no!” said Scootaloo. “I want to see you using a computer, not a laptop.”

One explanation and two universe-hops later, Karyn unfolded her laptop and showed it to Scootaloo.

“It doesn’t look exactly like your cutie mark.”

“No, those keyboards are fancy and an option. I don’t even think they could work with this one.” Karyn decided not to explain about USB versus PS/2.

“Well, we’ll do what we can. Make it go.”

Karyn didn’t expect to find wi-fi in Equestria, so she was limited to offline activities. The games that came built-in would have been the most visually impressive, but they used the mouse more than the keyboard. She decided to just open the word processor and dash off a quick letter.

“That’s cool,” said Scootaloo. “Now change into something else and try to keep doing it.”

Karyn had practiced mostly with similar human forms to herself, as well as a larger male disguise for when she felt in peril. But she had been specifically told to change to something else, and the only non-human form she had experience with was a pony. She concentrated and reappeared as the pegasus who had been tossed into the tornado.

“There. What do you think?”

“It’s good, and you’re certainly a lot prettier, but you still have the same cutie mark. Can you change it?”

Karyn bent her neck around, not used to such flexibility, but sure enough the keyboard was still right there, albeit in a less embarrassing position. “Did I have that last time?”

Derpy looked. “I’m not sure. To me it’s natural for you to have those. I think you did, or I would have noticed a blank flank.”

“That’s probably the easiest change to make.” She focused again and two small green patches of light erased the marks.

Scootaloo passed her the laptop. “Now, try to type that same letter again. Make it as close to the first as possible.”

Karyn reached out with her hooves, but immediately saw the problem. “I can’t—“

“A-ha! This was what I hoped for! Evidence of a link between the existence of a cutie mark and the talent it implies. By taking it away, even by changeling magic that’s just supposed to alter its appearance, it’s messed with your ability!”

Karyn looked at Derpy, but she was just as excited. She shook her head. “I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your conclusion there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m not a complete expert on the scientific method, but I believe that you want to control as many variables as possible. In this case, I think it’s far less likely that covering up my cutie mark is what’s stopping me from typing, and more the fact that I no longer have any fingers!”

She began in a casual tone, but accelerated her speech as she became increasingly agitated that neither pony seemed to understand. At last Scootaloo said, “You may be right. You should become a cutie mark researcher yourself!”

“I think it would be difficult finding subjects. But now, are there any other tests that you want to try?”

She rifled through her notes. “If we can, why not try giving yourself a different cutie mark and seeing if you can use the associated talent?”

“Ooh,” said Derpy. “If that works, you could have a lot of powers.”

Karyn tried to think of a cutie mark that she could try. Neither of the two in front of her were useful—she didn’t have any eye issues and was only studying cutie marks to please Scootaloo.

The useful cutie marks she could envision—Rainbow Dash’s speed or Fluttershy’s talent with animals—all needed some sort of implement not in the office just then. She looked around and saw only the stacks of paper. Could she make use of them?

Standing in the middle of the room, the green light encircled her body. She came out identical, but with a wrapped scroll on her flank.

“You stole the mayor’s cutie mark?” said Derpy. “Better hope she never finds out.”

“I’ll get rid of it soon. What I want to do, for Scootaloo, is to see if I can wrap these up in ribbons with any kind of skill.

Scootaloo found a stopwatch and, amazingly, some ribbon. “I have all sorts of odds and ends around this place. All right, you’ve got the scrolls. See how many you can roll in one minute. Ready? Go!”

Karyn did as best she could with her hooves. It was an unfamiliar task, and more than once the scrolls creased as she rolled. But they didn’t unroll, so the tying was easy. When Scootaloo called time , she was just finishing her eleventh.

“Hmm, that was good,” said Scootaloo, “but I think I could do about the same. I’ll try it later to compare. I think as a partial conclusion, we can assume that this cutie mark didn’t give you any excess skill.”

“I guess not.” Karyn stood up, and straightened her dress. Assuming a commanding voice, she said, “Therefore, I declare this experiment…officially closed!”

Both ponies stared for a moment. Derpy was the first to recover. “We just had the wrong talent.”

“Nah, I’m just messing with you,” said Karyn. “A cutie mark is a reflection of who you are inside. It doesn’t make you who you are.”

“I suppose that’s a conclusion on its own,” said Scootaloo.

Author's Note

If you liked this chapter, here's a preview of the next one!

“And to you. Can I go visible?”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.” Karyn poked her head out the door. “The Parent Patrol is downstairs now, but they’re around, and we don’t want them poking their heads in because we’re careless.”

“Understood. You seem happy this morning.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Derpy seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Can I ask something else?”

“Of course.”

“What are we on line for?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, it kind of made me miss Dinky again. We haven’t seen her for a while. What would you say to me inviting her around or us heading to see her next week?”

“We wouldn’t be studying, would we? She’s off for summer too, right? Because I don’t even want to help a unicorn study on vacation.”

Derpy chuckled. “She’s off too. Just a fun visit.”

That's right, it's a preview within a preview! Please keep reading!

82: A Derp as Lovely as a Tree

“Good morning, Karyn!” Derpy appeared in the kitchen as Karyn set up for breakfast.

“Morning to you.”

“How was your Thanksgiving break?”

“Pretty darn awesome,” said Karyn. “Breezed through the midterms, had a quiet and intimate dinner with the folks, then got to veg out for two days with the anticipation of seeing you today. All in all, a good weekend. How about you? Did you have any luck convincing anypony to celebrate Thanksgiving with you and get a day off?”

“To the contrary. I had to work overtime this week. Some of it was planned, but then the time just went by so quickly and I didn’t have the chance to get anything done beyond feeding the cat, cleaning the house, and writing to Dinky.”

“That still seems like a lot to get done.”

Derpy stomped her hoof. “Maybe, but I still didn’t get to my project. It’s my own fault, really. I planned for the day off, and that means I didn’t get it. If I had kicked the project back a week, I would have been off and had nothing to do. That’s just the way life works.”

“It’s true. But what’s this project you’re working on?”

After a moment of thought, Derpy said, “I doubt it’s something that you’re interested in.”

“Oh, come on. Is it something really pony-specific, like having your hooves polished? Or maybe something pegasus-related, like you have to fly around Equestria to make sure it’s the same size as it was last year?”

“That’s just weird. No, it’s just that the last time we did something similar, you showed that you weren’t happy, so it’s better to leave it alone, not talk about it, and have fun.”

Karyn gave an exasperated gasp. “Well, now it’s built up so much that you’ve got to tell me.”

“All right, but only if you come to Equestria and I can show you. This way, if you hate it and want no part of it, you can come back here and not have lost any time.”

“Deal.”

Karyn checked the time and mounted Derpy. She held still for the familiar feeling of jumping between worlds and suddenly being airborne. Gliding down toward Ponyville, Karyn searched for anything that could fit into the category of Derpy's project, but gave up and just enjoyed the ride. Once they landed, she raced into the house to see what it was, but all that was there was Derpy's cat who, as usual, ignored Karyn.

"Well, where is it?"

"Back out here," said Derpy. "I never said it was inside."

"Oh." Karyn went back out to see Derpy beckoning her to the side of the house.

She had set up the outdoor furniture that they had once used while watching the rainstorm so long ago, but there was no sign of foul weather. What there was was a patch of bare earth on the lawn and, sitting next to it, a round burlap cloth surrounding what looked like a boulder of dirt. That was connected to a thick tree trunk, and that led up to branches and leaves. The tree was leaning slightly to one side, but the bottom of the root ball had been pressed flat so it seemed stable enough.

She gave Derpy a sideways look, and Derpy said, "I know what you're thinking, but I'll run all the leaves off myself once it's in. I just wanted to see it as it would look in the spring before I did."

Karyn had not been thinking that, but she checked around, and indeed all the other trees in the area were bare of leaves. But still, the tree's existence was what she was more concerned about.

"This was what you had to hide from me?"

"Well, I remembered how much you didn't like gardening, and I thought that this would be so much worse since a tree is bigger.

“Do I have to plant it myself and get dirty?”

Derpy bristled. “Oh, no! You weren’t even planned to be here, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. But are you going to be able to get it in the ground all by yourself?”

If she had scooted back before, now Derpy shot into the air in surprise. “Certainly not! No pegasus could do that on her own. Well, maybe Snowflake, though I don’t really know him well.”

“So you’ll have a crew put it in?”

“That would be expensive. Ah, here he comes.”

She pointed to the horizon, and Karyn stared until she saw a moving splotch of crimson. It kept getting bigger until it resolved itself into a recognizable shape.

“Big McIntosh!”

“Sure. He’s strong enough to handle the whole job on his own. Less money that I have to spend, plus it goes to a good friend who can use the money anyway.”

Big McIntosh finally arrived. “Howdy, Miss Derpy. Miss Karyn.”

“Nice to see you again,” said Karyn.

“I’ll get ‘er in, then, Miss Derpy.”

“Oh, not yet!” Derpy headed for the house. “You just trotted all the way over here. You want to take a load off first. Let me get you a drink.”

“Just water, please.”

Karyn followed Derpy. Once out of earshot, she said, “It seems that all the big burly stallions are the most polite of all ponies.”

“Hmm, that’s true. I guess they know that when you’re strong you’d better be nice.”

She filled the glass and brought it back outside. Big Mac had not been idle while they were getting the water. He had removed a shovel from his cart and was deepening the hole where the tree would rest.

“You don’t have to do that,” said Derpy as she passed over the water. “You should really take it slow and pace yourself.”

“Nope. Want to get it done.” He downed the drink in a gulp and went right back to shoveling.

“What can you do?” Derpy said to Karyn as they retreated to the porch. “If he’s that eager to work himself into a sweat, I can’t stop him.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

Karyn leaned on the railing and spoke distinctly, as with a purpose. “Why do you want to put in a tree? Why now and why on the side?”

“It’s been bugging me for a long time actually. The sun, when it comes up, shines right in my eyes and wakes me up. Not all the time—it depends on the season. For a few hours on a few days, it’s just right there and it dazzles me sometimes. The problem is that every time it happens, I think about getting the tree but then the angle changes and I forget.”

“Why not just put in blinds?”

“I could do that,” said Derpy. “but it’s not that I don’t like the sun at all. I just like it when it’s not coming at me. When the leaves of the trees break it up, it’s quite pretty.”

Karyn was looking, not at the tree itself, but at the house, and Derpy wondered if she wasn’t trying to eye-measure the angles and figure out exactly when the sun would come in.

The shovel went in, the dirt came out, over and over. Karyn wondered what would happen to it, but figured that most of it would fill in once the roots were in the ground, and the rest could be spread across the lawn.

The girls went back in the house and poured their own drinks, then flitted back outside. “Here’s the downside of having a friend come and help you with a big job like this.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, normally if I have work-stallions doing a job for me, I can watch them and enjoy it, somepony else doing work for me. I always wonder if my boss doesn’t feel that way once he’s sent everypony on their routes.”

“Probably not,” said Karyn. “He’d be too busy worrying about other jobs.”

“Maybe.” Derpy didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, since it’s Big McIntosh, I can’t kick back and get that same enjoyment that I could.”

“You don’t know, he might like that, a fine mare such as yourself checking him out as he strains himself.”

Derpy tittered at that, and Big Mac looked back from where he was shoveling, as if he sensed that they were discussing him. “You do know he’s married, right?” said Derpy.

“No, did he marry Miss Cheerilee after all?”

“That’s right, a while back. So if he did like me admiring him he’d have to be careful with her. But I’ll ask him.”

Karyn grabbed Derpy around her neck. “Don’t do that! You’ll put him on the spot. Either he’ll have to admit he does like it, which won’t be good with Cheerilee, or he’ll have to say he doesn’t and risk getting you angry.”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“You’ve always got to think two or three moves ahead when it comes to boys…or stallions. Anyway, let’s just make sure he gets the tree in right.”

Derpy looked at her. “You make me feel ashamed. I’m older than you, but you seem to understand relationships better than me.”

“Don’t be. I was just thinking before of how immature I was.”

“What do you mean?”

As Big McIntosh dug in and pulled out the shovel to a metronome rhythm, Karyn backed away, as if worried he would hear. “What you said before about using the tree to block the sun, and how you thought long term about the value of your house, all of that scares me a little, because it’s the same thing I’ve heard from my folks.

“I mean, you own two houses. That’s even crazier. I know that the economy’s different here in Equestria and there aren’t taxes and inspections and stuff that we have on Earth, but even so, people own houses there, and I just can’t see myself doing it. Mortgages, maintenance, repairs, and then to think about something like putting in a tree? I just feel like if I tried to take on all that, I’d never have time to think about anything else. Is there something wrong with me that everyone else can do that but I can’t?”

Derpy opened her wings for a hug. “Listen. Nopony and no one can tell you what to do about things like that. If you feel it’s too much for you, then don’t get a house. How many times have you talked to me about computers and all the things you know about them. Well, most people don’t, and they’d feel just as ashamed as you do if you showed off some fancy new machine you built. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Just do what makes you feel good, OK?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry to bring up my neuroses when you’re trying to get your landscaping done.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just watch the tree go in.”

Big McIntosh finished his shoveling. He rested the spade on the ground and circled the hole once. “Mm-hm,” he muttered. “That’ll do it.”

Karyn held her breath as she watched him approach the tree. She could see the muscles straining as he put his shoulder against it, wrapped one hoof around, and lifted it a few inches off the ground. With his back legs he forced himself forward. The difficulty was that his head was being used to brace the tree, and he couldn’t look down to see exactly where the hole was. But by trial and error, he found it, and softly lowered the tree in. The leaves gave a whoosh as it hit bottom.

He looked unsure, which surprised Karyn. Still with his shoulder against the tree, he scooted around to where he was facing the girls. “Could one of you steady this while I fill in the dirt? I don’t want it to move until it’s secure.”

Both of them rushed to help, Derpy thinking that the top of the tree would be the part most likely to move, and Karyn having no choice but to go to the bottom. She shifted form to her more muscular, athletic body that she used for such occasions.

Whether for their efforts or because Big McIntosh was being overcautious, the tree held steady. He leaned down and bit the end of the burlap covering the roots. The string holding it on popped off, and he circled it once, tearing all but the bottom of it and tossing it on the ground. Reaching for the shovel, he bulldozed the mound of dirt into the hole.

“You all can let it go,” he said.

Slackening her grip at a pace, Karyn felt the tree take hold and not move. Although it would take time (how much in the land of ponies?) for it to root, it felt like it had been there always.

Big Mac stood on the ground and pounded with his front hooves. Round and round he went like a very small race course, but the earth was packed thick and hard. Apart from the hoofprints everywhere, no one would be able to tell that there had been an empty hole there ten minutes before.

Derpy thanked him, and she insisted on getting another drink down his throat before letting him go. She had offered to wash his hooves for him, since he had gotten so dirty in tamping down the area around the tree, but he shook his head and said that he got plenty dirty in his usual work, so this was nothing special.

The girls went back inside to the kitchen. “You know, there’s something else that’s different,” said Derpy.

“What do you mean, different.”

“Between you and me, why you’re so uneasy about getting a house and taking care of it. I’m a good deal older than you. However the years advance, I’m not a filly anymore, while you still are. You don’t reckon time the way I do. To you, everything still seems rushed because you have no basis of comparison. When you get older, you’ll find time for all sorts of things you thought impossible. Even if you don’t like domestic life, you’ll find something that you didn’t like at this age.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “You think so? Everyone always tells me that I’ll have no time when I’m older. It’s a complaint I always hear about people with video games.”

“You won’t have time for things like games because of all the cool stuff you’re doing.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that one.”

From the kitchen they could barely see the leaves rustling, but Derpy took her time and poured them out glasses of lemonade.

“Why didn’t you offer this to Big Mac?”

“You saw him. I had a hard enough time getting him to accept the water. Come on, let’s go to my bedroom.”

Karyn hadn’t quite taken her first sip of lemonade yet, so she didn’t spit take. “What?!”

“So we can see the tree and where it’ll be.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“I thought…never mind.”

Karyn had never seen Derpy’s bedroom, and it was much darker than she expected. Even with the sun out, the only window was small and the wood paneling was stained a deeper color than the rest of the house. Naturally it was impeccably clean, and there wasn’t even much furniture. That made sense—ponies had little need of elaborate wardrobes, dressers, or makeup mirrors.

Through the window the tree swayed, and Derpy looked with a proud sense of ownership. “It’s a shame you aren’t here to see it in the morning when I need it.”

“Yeah. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if I hadn’t just seen it get planted, it would be just another tree to me.”

“Well, we can’t have that. We should think of a way to make it special.”

“Special?” said Karyn.

“Yes. Some way to make us remember this day.”

Karyn racked her brain for things that made one tree stand out from all the others. There was only one thing she could think of, perhaps because the subject had been discussed before.

“You want to put a treehouse in there?”

Derpy burst out laughing. Karyn had meant it semi-seriously, but if Derpy wanted to take it as a joke, she would play it off as such.

“No, but seriously. Let’s go back out there and see the tree. I have to get the leaves off anyway.”

They took their lemonades back out to the yard, and Derpy took some deep breaths to warm herself up. “Don’t strain yourself,” said Karyn.

“I won’t. It’s just a little annoying that I have to run the leaves off. Why can’t I fly them off? It’s discrimination against pegasi!”

She held her wings tight to her body and started galloping. She couldn’t make the tight turns to just circle around the tree, so instead she traced a kind of Spirograph pattern of looping ovals, and with each pass a few more leaves fell. It fascinated Karyn to watch, because there was no burst of wind that came with Derpy, the leaves just detached from the branches on their own by magic.

Panting, Derpy at last came to a halt. The pile of leaves at the base of the tree was already starting to blow away, but there were still a few left. Derpy waved her hoof and said, “Leave them. They’re not hurting anypony.”

“Ha, leave them.”

“What?”

Karyn pointed. “You said, ‘Leave them,’ and…never mind. I wonder if I could run them off or if it’s something only ponies can do.”

She stood up and sprinted around the tree a few times, but it was harder getting close when she had to run through the leaf pile each time, and she understood why Derpy quit with the job nearly done. Also, each time it felt like there was a kind of gravitational force holding her back until she got past the tree. On the fifth pass, she felt a snap, and the force lessened. She stopped and turned back to see a small patch of leaves falling.

“It worked!” said Derpy.

“A little. I can understand why you don’t want to expend all your energy on it, but it was a cool feeling, almost like tearing Velcro. Anyway, now our tree’s a little bit more special, since it’s the only one I’ve ever run leaves off of.”

“That is nice, but I still wish that there was some way to physically mark the occasion.”

The obvious answer hit Karyn. In fact, she wondered why it had taken so long to think of. “On Earth, a lot of times people like to carve their names into trees.”

“What?! Deface a tree like that? That’s horrible!”

“Oh. Maybe the trees are different here. If doing something like that hurts them, then I guess we won’t.”

“I don’t think it hurts them,” said Derpy, “but it just doesn’t seem right to take a blade to a tree. Hang on, I’ve got an idea. Wait here a few minutes.”

Without another word, Derpy left Karyn alone in her house. She sat on the porch and spaced out until Derpy returned. To Karyn’s surprise, Big McIntosh was with her.

They walked up to the tree while Karyn still just observed. Big Mac eyed the tree and then leaned up against it. To Karyn, it looked as if he were going to push it over. Surely Derpy wouldn’t allow that after so much effort to get it in. But then he withdrew, gave Karyn a wave of his hoof, and was gone again.

“Come see!” said Derpy, and Karyn moved with effort to the far side of the tree. There, on the side of the tree, the bark had been pressed in with their initials: KH + DH.

Whether Big Mac had taken some sharp object and gouged in the depressions or whether he had some Earth pony magic in his hoof that could write that way in wood, the letters were deep and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “I like it,” said Karyn. “Because if you were just walking by the tree you wouldn’t notice it at all. But anypony who was to sit in the shade of this tree or use it as the end marker for some game totally would.”

“I only worry that someday it’ll get too high and we’ll forget about it.”

“Oh! I actually heard about this. Trees only grow from the top. So that’ll be there as long as the tree is.”

Derpy stood up. “That’s sweet. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Once Karyn was mounted up, Derpy flew a lazy circle, admiring the tree from all angles, then flew toward the point she needed to be to get back to Karyn’s apartment.

“So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?”

“I don’t know,” said Karyn. “It feels like we’ve accomplished so much already, even though we just put a tree in the ground. Actually, there is something I want to do. Wait here.”

She returned a moment later with her winter coat. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Just outside. But you should still go invisible in case Gayle’s around.”

They walked around the side of the house, and Derpy expected them to go to the car, but instead Karyn continued to the back where there was an old picnic bench. Karyn took a seat and held still.

“I don’t get it. What are we doing?”

“I just thought I’d sit here and watch the trees…at least until it gets too cold.”

Derpy’s laughter rang across the yard.

Author's Note

Here's what you can read if you come back next week!

“Is it cold? I didn’t notice.”

Karyn bundled herself in her sweater and went to the window. Opening it a crack, she beckoned Derpy over. “Feel that? That’s cold.”

Derpy did indeed stick her hoof through, but then shook her head. “That’s not cold,” she said. “That’s winter.”

********************************************

Derpy scrunched her nose, but then took a deep breath and spoke with a more calming tone. “I know it’s not your fault, but that doesn’t always mean it’s not your problem. No other person here can use changeling magic, and they all have to deal with it too.”

“I think a lot of the reason I don’t want to use my powers is because I know you feel that way. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“And I appreciate that. Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

********************************************

They rode the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived Gayle was standing outside.

“Hey,” she said, “I never gave you your mail from yesterday. Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

I hope you'll enjoy that chapter as much as this one!

96: Derp Contact

It was a rare event that the Equestrian weather was worse than that on Earth. Since the pegasi had control of weather anyway, and since very few ponies wanted rain on what was widely a day off, most Sundays were also sunny days. But for some reason that Derpy didn’t know, they had scheduled a cold and blustery day.

Back in Karyn’s apartment, the sun was strong enough that she had opened the windows and worn a shirt that, while long-sleeved, was of a thinner material. Now, standing outside waiting for Twilight, she felt the bite of the cold.

“Sorry I can’t make it any warmer,” said Derpy.

“It’s all right. I can handle it. Wait, I can handle it.” She flashed green and magicked herself up a winter coat.

“Does that work? Don’t you feel it against the skin of the coat?”

“No, I don’t. Because it’s still me, but it doesn’t have any nerves.”

Derpy was still skeptical, as it was a blending of magic and science, but she didn’t know enough about either to continue the argument, and in any case it was then that Twilight emerged from the library.

“I’m ready to go. Got plenty of scrolls to take notes on.”

“I promise we’ll show you the best time possible, Princess,” said Derpy.

“Don’t treat me different from anypony else. Well, amend that. Don’t take me out to eat or to the tall buildings. I want to see the school that Karyn goes to.”

Karyn huddled within her crafted coat, but picked her head up at that. “You want to see my university? Well, sure, we can do that.”

“Of course I do. You can find out the most about a culture from their education.”

“Have you seen that with other cultures? Are there griffin or mule universities?”

Twilight scratched the back of her head. “Well, no. Not that I’ve seen. But it makes sense, right? So let’s go.”

Karyn mounted Derpy and Twilight spread her own wings. Though Karyn was a religious watcher of My Little Pony, seeing Twilight with wings still threw her off. Even more so when she remembered that Twilight was long used to them. If she was not a fast flyer, she was an experienced one, and she could keep up with Derpy who did it for a living.

They reached the point at which they usually transferred. Now that they once again had a winged pony with them, they could forego the clock tower. As the two mares got out their spells, Karyn reflected that if Twilight wanted to see the university, they could proceed to the old location that led to the dormitory. But in the first place, they were already on their way, and in the second, Karyn preferred to travel the distance in the nicer weather on Earth.

The ponies activated their spells at the same time, but it looked to Karyn as though Twilight vanished a split second before she did. It might have just been her eyes playing tricks on her, or else the natural affinity of Twilight for magic in general made it work better.

“Ah, it’s nice to be back. I’ve got to change out of this winter coat.” Karyn realized that there was a hangup in her plan. There was no way for her to go back to her shirt without showing off her changeling powers. She could, of course, run inside, but felt it was silly to go in and right back out again. Instead she removed it while keeping contact with her hands so it stayed contiguous, then used her power to force it back into herself. It could only be seen from the house, and if Gayle was watching , all that would happen would be another squee from her.

Now free from her confinement, Karyn led the way down the road toward the university. Part of her resented having to make her familiar walk on a Sunday, but it was for a happier reason than usual, so she chose instead to relish it.

“So this is what Earth is like,” said Twilight. “I hadn’t realized it was so…blended.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just the way all the colors and shapes are, the way light works, it’s different from our world.”

Karyn realized what she meant. Equestria was still what would be considered an animated world. Karyn had gotten used to it by now, and figured that Derpy had as well. “You’re right, it is. But I wonder why the other ponies didn’t notice.”

Derpy said, “Rainbow was probably too focused on the clouds and Applejack on the apples, and those are things that do look similar to Equestria.”

“And Fluttershy?”

“Maybe she did notice, and that’s what contributed to her silly reaction.”

Twilight interrupted. “Excuse me, but is it very far? I’m sure I could arrange some teleportation if we have to go a great distance.”

“No, we’re nearly there,” said Karyn. “I picked this apartment, among other reasons, for its proximity to school. And if it were farther away, we would have driven or taken the train.”

“Driven? Oh, right, in the auto-running cart that Applejack told me about.”

The residential area ended at a highway that was bereft of cars at that time of day on a weekend. Beyond that was the campus, and Karyn thought about asking Twilight to close her eyes so she could be led up to the high tower and take it all in at once. Instead, she just waved her hand and said, “There it is!”

“Which one?”

“Beg pardon?”

Twilight repeated, “Which one is your school?”

“Oh, they’re all the school.”

“What?!”

Derpy leaned in and whispered. “Twilight, remember. You’ve got to keep your voice down.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. But it’s unbelievable. I mean, I know that there’s so much to teach and to learn, but I could spend years studying here, if all of these make up the school. Back in Equestria, a school only takes up one building.”

Karyn recalled when she was still in high school and went on several visits. “There are some schools that are like that, but they’re specialized. I could have gone to one that was specifically for technical subjects, but it was way too expensive. And that’s another thing. Even if you wanted to spend years studying here, that would be a lot of money. Just my four years are costing…well, I probably can’t put it into Equestrian terms, but a lot.”

“I see. Yes, an educational economy based on the skillset it offers. Could work, could be very interesting. But what happens to the students who don’t earn back the cost?”

“To paraphrase a popular saying, they’re going to have a bad time.”

Derpy had to explain further. “That’s something that Karyn’s worried about. She’s studying hard so that she can get a good job that will pay for all the school and let her live well as well.”

“I see. Let’s go around and see some of these buildings.”

Karyn led the way, but Derpy did most of the choosing of direction, since she had seen the campus and knew which parts a pony would be most impressed with. She explained the various disciplines. Although Twilight subscribed to the scientific method when researching, she was still amazed at how many diverse ways there were to study.

“But what I don’t understand,” she said, “is how you do experiments without magical observation.”

Karyn shrugged. “We use regular observation. What we can see or record.”

“Right, but at a small enough level, you’re not going to be able to see the true nature of things.”

“We have microscopes that let us see tiny things.”

“I don’t know if I’m explaining it right.” Twilight held up and thought for a while. “Let’s try this. If you’re making observations, you’re doing it by sight or hearing or some form of recording, right? But the light or the sound or whatever is interacting with you. So that skews your results.”

“Oh! You’re talking about quantum physics and such. I don’t really understand that. Few people do. We have a few theories on how to deal with that through probability estimates.”

“Probab—ooh, that would work!”

“Um, excuse me?” Derpy stepped in between them. “I’m more confused than usual.”

“You’re on the same level as me,” said Karyn. “If Twilight says anything else, I’ll be confused too.”

Twilight hadn’t heard and was still reeling from her observation. “Are there people here who study things like that? Did one of them come up with that probability model? Can I meet them?”

“Hold it, hold it. In the first place, there might be some professors here who do some kind of research, but it really isn’t that kind of university. It’s more for teaching regular people like me what everyone already knows. At least, none of my professors have ever done anything noteworthy. Second, if you met with a professor, you’d probably freak them out. Particularly if you have some magical way around the uncertainty principles that underlie our understanding of the universe.”

“Fair enough, but what about—I know you don’t have a princess who reigns here, but there must be some leader of the university.”

Derpy was happy to finally have one she could answer. “There is, but they’ll have much more to do with administration than with research or even teaching. It’s really the same thing with Princess Celestia. If she does have time to give any personal attention to Dinky, it’s rarely teaching her. Those moments are precious, and everypony looks forward to when the princess can give a lecture.”

“I see. I saw a lot of her. Maybe things have changed with more unicorns enrolling.”

Karyn was skeptical. “Don’t forget, too, that you were her personal project, so that you would find the Elements of Harmony and become a princess yourself.”

“True. Would it be possible to audit a class? Just to see how the professors work with the students would be informative.”

“Listen, Twilight.” Derpy sighed and put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, after some fumbling since they were both invisible. “You’re a fine guest here, but the humans don’t have an obligation to you.”

“I see your point.”

“So I’m sure that their classes are running fine, and they don’t need you to run an audit on them.”

Twilight burst out laughing, and even Karyn had trouble resisting a chuckle. “I didn’t mean that kind of auditing! I just meant to observe a class without participating.” Her voice became more serious. “Technically I could participate, I just wouldn’t take the tests or be graded.”

“Oh.” Derpy didn’t mind her mistake. “She can do that, right? I mean, not the participation, just watching?”

“It’s academic,” said Karyn, then corrected herself to forestall another misunderstanding by Derpy. “I mean it’s a moot point. It’s Sunday, and there are no classes.”

“I see,” said Twilight. “Well, then there’s no point in me being invisible, right? I can see how ponies like Fluttershy would prefer it, but I would like to see Derpy and vice versa.”

“You can’t do that! Just because there aren’t classes doesn’t mean that there won’t be any people around.”

“You mean caretakers and such?”

Karyn shook her head. “Plenty of students will be around. They’ll be studying, doing activities, or just using the facilities for fun. Campus life, you know?”

“I actually hadn’t thought about it. When I was being educated, that was when I was more concerned with books than friends. And afterwards, it wasn’t organized study, just the natural learning that everypony does on her own. But if that is the case, can we see some of the recreation?”

“Of course we can. Let’s go down to some of the practice fields and see what’s going on.”

It was up to Karyn to lead the way. Derpy could have with her impeccable sense of direction, but she would have had to fly up and down to use it. Karyn pondered whether Twilight had a similar power now that she was part pegasus herself, but even if she could it would be necessary to take her high up so she could map the campus first.

For Karyn, it was nothing more than good, old-fashioned memory. The sports facilities were spread throughout the campus. USCI could not boast any major athletic teams, being more of an academic school, but a few existed, and it would be the best way to show off.

They made their way past the student union building, and Derpy flashed back to when Karyn had been part of the student government. She brought it up. “Hey, maybe they’re having another meeting today. We could show Twilight that. It would be a great way to introduce her to the school.”

“It’s not likely, but we’ll try.”

They ducked in, and Karyn felt the warmth of the still-running heat combined with the sun streaking through the glass windows. Their steps echoing, they walked through to the meeting room to find it barren. One of the side rooms though had its door open slightly, and through the crack they could see a few people at a table.

“No meeting,” said Karyn. “Let’s keep going.”

“Hang on a moment.” Twilight opened the door wider. “Let’s stay and observe.”

Karyn was self-conscious and wished that they had a third invisibility spell. But she moved in and sat at a table, pulling out her phone so that it looked like she was doing something. Two of the heads turned to look at her, but the rest kept poring over the book they were reading.

She didn’t know what sort of observations they were supposed to be making, so she just kept her ears open. It was much the same as any study group, and she had been a part of some herself. One of the people said, “Thanks for making it this week, by the way. With the test coming up I needed to hit this hard.”

“No problem,” another replied. “I know how hard this section is.”

Karyn felt the touch of a wing on her shoulder and left the room. Once outside, Twilight said, “I saw enough there. Let’s move on to the place we were going.”

They got back on the walking path and headed a few more yards into the center of the campus. They could hear the sound of bodies slamming into each other and whistles as some sport was being played. Karyn didn’t follow many herself and hoped that Twilight wouldn’t ask for a detailed explanation.

Instead, they all leaned against a chain-link fence and watched the scrimmage. A coach kept directing the action, telling people to get up and move to various parts of the field where others were calling for specific exercises.

Near the fence, enough to make Karyn jump back, two of the players tried a move, winding up with one of them on his backside. The other extended a hand, lifted him up, and they carried on.

“I’ve seen enough again,” said Twilight. “Let’s find someplace a little more secluded.”

The quad was nearby, and it was empty enough that Karyn could sit on a stone bench and listen.

“What did you want to tell us?” asked Derpy.

“Just this. I think it’s great that you’ve let my friends and me come to Earth to visit, but thus far it’s still only been Karyn and Derpy welcoming guests. We need to go beyond that. It’s time to introduce one of your guest ponies to another human.”

Both girls were stunned. “Really?”

“Yes.” They could hear the smile in Twilight’s voice. “You’ve done a wonderful job caring for each other, but now I’ve seen that Karyn’s not the only one who’s like that. All around are humans here who act toward each other in friendship just the way that ponies do. If that’s the case, then they’re ready to meet us.”

Karyn took a deep breath. “You know, Twilight, not everyone is like that. There are some people who would do terrible things if they knew the kind of power a pony like you had.”

“I do know that. But I’m not looking for those people. I’m looking for the kind who comes in on a day off to help a friend study, or who picks a friend up when they’ve fallen down.”

“All right. I’m sure we can find someone who fits that bill. Let me think about it a little.”

“Not too long,” said Twilight, still perky. “I want to spend a little time with them.”

Derpy sucked in air through her teeth. “You mean now? And to meet you?”

“Yes I did. I’m ready to be an Equestrian ambassador. Truth be told, I’ve done that on a few occasions when Princess Celestia was busy elsewhere.

Karyn was coming to grips with how adamant she was. “Well, if we are going to meet someone, I’d prefer it be someone who already knows about Equestria. I think they run some gaming tournaments on campus, and the people there are most likely to be the kind of geek I’m looking for.”

Twilight had no objection to that, and so they trekked deeper into the campus. The gaming club was at one of the classroom buildings that was kept open on Sundays so the professors could have office hours, hold meetings with their department heads, or just sit on the university’s exceptionally fast internet and play online games.

What Karyn was hoping for was someone wearing a brony shirt or carrying a brony bag, some obvious sign that they were a fan of the show and would be impressed by Twilight. What she would settle for was any geek who looked harmless enough that, even if confronted by the supernatural, they wouldn’t react in any crazy way and so would satisfy Twilight’s request.

The card gamers were indeed there, huddled around a wide table, each with a hand and some cards on the table, and Karyn wanted to wait until they were finished. It also unnerved her that there was not a female to be seen among them. The game went on, and Karyn tried to insinuate herself into watching. After a few awkward smiles, they returned to play. As one of them took a particularly long time to make a move, the others were discussing different games.

“I’ve heard really good things about the My Little Pony CCG,” one said, and Karyn perked up her ears.

“I’ve checked it out,” said a tall blond youth, “because I watch the show. When we’re done I’ll show you the cards.”

Now Karyn was very intent. Aware of how it would look, when the game ended and they were reshuffling their cards, she sidled behind the one who had mentioned pony cards and said, “Sorry to be so forward, but could you come with me a moment?”

Eyebrows raised across the table, but he went. As she looked for an empty room where they wouldn’t be disturbed, she introduced herself.

“I’m Cal. Calvin, but Cal’s fine.”

“Nice to meet you. You were saying that you’re a My Little Pony fan.”

“Yeah, a brony, if you know what that is.”

“I do.” They had reached a classroom, and after letting the ponies in, closing the door and standing against it so no one else would enter, she said. “Now, you might want to brace yourself for this. All right, girls.”

Cal looked around, and the two mares deactivated their invisibility spells.”

“Wow that’s…” he started, but then took a second look. “Are…are they real?”

“We are,” said Twilight. “I am Twil—“

“Holy F—“ He cut himself off before he could swear. “I can’t believe it.”

“Yes, in fact we are here to greet you and become friends—“

Again he interrupted. “Derpy Hooves! I can’t believe I’m meeting you!”

Twilight’s jaw dropped, and Derpy was sheepish at the reaction. She cleaved closer to Derpy, and Twilight raised her voice a little in volume. “Ahem. Yes, Derpy and I, Princess Twilight, have come to learn more about you, teach more about us, and grow closer as two worlds do.”

“Wow.”

“Karyn, Derpy. Why don’t you head back so I can talk to Cal one-on-one?”

Derpy cast her eyes down. “Are you sure you don’t want me here for support?”

“You handled it once when you met Karyn for the first time. I’ll have to do the same.”

Karyn was nervous as well, but as Derpy went invisible again, she walked out, checking over her shoulder frequently. As they passed the gaming table, she said, “Your friend Cal might be a while.”

It was a long walk back to Karyn’s apartment, and they filled it with conversation.

“I guess that’s it then,” said Derpy. “I’m not a special pony anymore.”

“Sure you are. You’ll always be the first pony on Earth, and nopony can ever take that from you.”

“Good point. But Twilight wants us to not only bring in other ponies, but other humans as well. Where are we going to find them? Do we have to make a list like we did in Equestria?”

Karyn crossed the street on the edge of campus. “Hopefully not. We’ve met enough people in our time together that it may be just a case of thinking of them and bringing them together with the ponies who’ll match best.”

“That sounds like a good starting plan. If Twilight hadn’t rushed us, we might have matched her up with one of your professors or something.”

“Or someone. But not everyone is going to know what ponies are. I mean, they’ll know Earth ponies…not Earth ponies like Pinkie, but the ones we have here…never mind. What we have to do is find a way to connect someone who doesn’t know Equestria with somepony who comes from there. I’ll work on that.”

Author's Note

We're rapidly approaching the one-hundredth chapter, which is going to be very special! Let's see what we're heading towards!

“Well, good luck with that. I’ll be waiting to hear all about it.”

Derpy skittered as if she’d forgot something. “Am I supposed to be reporting on all these visits?”

“No.” Twilight laughed. “Whoever goes with you will do that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It really wasn’t until she saw the top of Derpy’s head and the wings on her sides that she started to get unnerved.

“But, they’re horses.”

“We prefer ponies. My name is Derpy Hooves."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn moved her chair around to Derpy’s head and kept her voice low as she did in public. “Those two are natural friends.”

“They have a lot more in common than you and me.”

“But we’ve had a lot more time together."

Come back for another special guest!

98: Breaking the Derpth Wall

As Karyn kicked a stone down the dirt path outside Ponyville, Derpy looked up at the sun. Even Karyn noticed that it was higher up in the sky than it usually would be if they were beginning their day in Equestria.

“We’re late,” said Derpy.

“Yes, we are.”

“You want to get on my back so we can catch up and make up time?”

“Not particularly.” Karyn slowed her walk even more, although Derpy could only go so slow.

“Are you really that worried about what Pinkie will do?”

“Somewhat. More than that I’d like to give her as little time as possible to do whatever it is she’s going to do.”

Derpy turned around and walked backwards. “What are you afraid of? That she’ll refuse to go invisible, jump around and pop out of odd places, introducing herself to every human she can find?”

“Yes.”

“Are you worried that her presence will turn all the humans into smiling, singing drones who’ll wind up parading with her through all the cities of Earth, only to then be released from her spell when she leaves and wonder what happened and how they can stop it again?”

“Yes.”

“Are you scared that she’ll just randomly decide that the entire Earth looks like a giant snow-cone with blue and green flavoring on top, and then it’ll become exactly that?”

“No, I wasn’t worried about that, until you mentioned it.”

Derpy decided she’d had enough and walked faster. “Well, we’ll ask her not to do those things. But if she is, then there’s no sense putting it off. Come on!”

Karyn tried to catch up. She reminded herself that, whatever mysterious powers Pinkie possessed, she was still just a pony, and a friendly one at that. If she talked and was in the mood to listen to reason, everything might go well.

Derpy was waiting outside the door to Sugar Cube Corner for Karyn to catch up. In her mind’s eye, Karyn saw Pinkie already waiting for them, probably knowing by sheer psychic ability their exact position relative to the bakery. She reached the entrance and opened the door.

“Pinkie Pie?”

“Hey!” She popped up from behind the counter, though of course it was perfectly plausible that she was crouching behind there to clean and hadn’t just teleported in.

“Sorry we’re late,” said Derpy.

“Oh, don’t worry about that at all! It gave me a chance to catch up on a few things I’m behind on in my work. This bakery is still open, you know, even on Sundays. Speaking of which, can I get you anything? Cookie, cupcake, éclair?

“No, thank you.”

“Actually,” said Karyn, looking in through the glass, “I think I am in the mood for a treat. But I don’t want something too sweet or that’ll make me hyper. Do you have anything like that?”

Pinkie Pie stared at her with a blank expression, and Karyn wondered if she had inadvertently insulted her by suggesting that sweet was ever an unwanted flavor. But Pinkie said, “How about some super-rich dark chocolate with an absurdly high cacao percentage? It’s like, one-hundred-forty proof!”

That relieved some of Karyn’s tension as she was amused at the thought of treating the strength of chocolate like alcohol. “I’ll try that.”

It came in a broken cube that looked like the side of a dark brown mountain after some volcanic activity. She bit into it, and as it spread through her the warmth made her feel better about the endeavor they were about to begin.

“Like it?” asked Pinkie.

“Yes. So, whenever you’re ready, we’ll leave for Earth.”

"Yes! I'm so excited to see your world! You don't understand what it's like. For me to see a whole new group of people that I've never seen before, it's like opening up a new can of chocolate frosting, where the top is smooth and flat, but maybe has that little swirl at the top where, when they poured it in, they finished it off by pulling away the spout so the chocolate went all pointy. It's a smooth layer, and then you dive in with your spreader, or sometimes I use a spoon, and you dig it out and then you see all the inner goodness and you know that that sweet, chocolatey goodness is just going to flow through you!

"And I actually get to meet one of them!"

Derpy had gotten lost in Pinkie's long simile. "You want to meet a can of frosting?"

"No, a human! I'm so glad that I didn't go first or second or third but got to wait until Twilight approved ponies meeting more humans so I get to see one of them and make them smile and laugh and give hugs and be the best of friends!"

Karyn looked to Derpy to try to stop this, but before she could get a word in edgewise, Pinkie kept going.

"But while making friends is the number-one thing I'm going for, just to see new places and new cities and eat new desserts is awesome all on its own! I could go on one of those tall buildings like Fluttershy did and look down and go 'woo-oo, woo-oo'." She pistoned her head up and down like she was a telescope. "Or I can go to one of your big mountains and see really far. Hey, Karyn, is it true that your world is spherical like a big marble? Can I run around it?"

Derpy flew up to the height of Pinkie's head, grabbed her face in her hooves, and forced Pinkie to look her in the eye. "Listen. Stop talking. We have to talk. I mean, I have to talk, and you have to listen, so that we can be clear on what's not allowed when you're on Earth. You're going to have to act properly and not go crazy."

Pinkie's back hooves tapped against the ground, as if by holding her head steady, Derpy threw her out of balance. But she said, "Is that how you acted when you first went to Earth?"

Flashing back to her early times in Karyn's dorm, she said, "Well, no. But I'm just a bumbling pegasus who can't do much harm, even with Lyra's spells to help me mess things up. And it was a month or two before I even left Karyn's room. We don't have that kind of time with you. So we need you to realize how serious this is."

"Aw, but serious is no fun. Pretty much by definition."

Karyn took a deep breath. "Yes, but this isn't just about you. Ponies visiting humans isn't something that's set in stone. Twilight could come back and say that it isn't working out, that it's too dangerous. So could Princess Celestia. Derpy and I have a veto as well. So if you do something to mess it up, you'll be messing it up for everypony else who wants to have the same fun as you do. Is that a Pinkie Pie thing to do?"

"No, it isn't." Pinkie's voice had slid down the scale, and her mane was sagging from its usual curls.

"Hey, don't be sad about it. It's just as bad if you go all Pinkamena."

"Huh? What do you mean, 'go Pinkamena'? Pinkamena's my real name. I just prefer the nickname. It's not as if that's some alternate identity of mine that's evil."

Karyn was surprised, but she smiled, and that made Pinkie happy, so the faux pas was passed over. "In any case, though, you have to promise not to cause trouble on Earth."

"I promise."

Derpy shook her head. "No, you have to Pinkie promise."

"Aww, shucks."

"Hang on," said Karyn. "Are you saying that if I had just left it at that where you promised but didn't Pinkie promise, that you would have broken your promise and caused trouble anyway?"

"Oh, no!" Pinkie got back on her hooves and started drawing an invisible diagram. "What I would have done is to made it look like I was causing trouble when I really wasn't so as to set up the most complicated comedic scenario, only to show you at the end how it all worked out and nopony got hurt, and how I really did keep my promise, just not in the way you thought I would."

"And a Pinkie promise?"

"Means I keep the promise the way you think I would."

"That's so Pinkie Pie that it makes sense. All right. Let's go."

Derpy got up as well and opened the door to the bakery, shaking off the flour that had collected on her coat and heading toward the clock tower. With Pinkie Pie bouncing ahead of the group, she got a chance to get a word with Karyn.

"Anything else you're worried about before we go?"

"If there is, she'll probably hear us and make another complicated joke about it."

"Right. Let's just go." The sun was directly above the spire of the tower as they entered, and Karyn realized that her weariness was not just the pressure of worrying about what Pinkie could do on Earth. She was hot and a little tired, and while Pinkie bounded up the stairs, Karyn took her time and trudged on each stair. The top did not seem to be getting closer.

Before she could wonder if Pinkie’s very presence had locked her into some sort of spatial loop, Derpy scooped her up and carried her through the gap in the staircase up to the top, where Pinkie Pie had just completed her hopping ascent. Karyn expected Derpy to proceed with the teleportation, or to give further instructions to Pinkie.

Instead, Pinkie was looking at someone who was already at the top of the tower, someone whom Derpy also stopped and stared at.

“Knew you’d be coming eventually. I figured you’d be earlier, but I can see why you’d want to take your time with Pinkie Pie.”

It took Karyn a moment to recognize why the figure looked out of place because, for all the time she spent with Derpy, and for all the time she spent in Equestria, she was still used to looking at humans more. It also didn’t help that the dark room in browns and grays was most like a setting on Earth. But when she took stock of her situation and realized that it was still Equestria she was in, then she put two and two together.

Derpy and Pinkie, of course, figured out who it was immediately, despite not having a clear view of the face. It was Lyra’s human.

“Hi!” said Pinkie Pie. It was close to impossible to avoid smiling around Pinkie, but the smile quickly faded into a scowl. Derpy could sense anger, but couldn’t pinpoint why.

“Heading back to Earth?”

“Yes.” Karyn didn’t like the tone she was hearing. “I’m bringing Pinkie Pie for a visit.”

“Well, that’s very nice.” The sarcasm was plain to everyone with the possible exception of Derpy.

“What, is there a problem with that?”

“Yes, there is. I don’t know that I should be consulted on this, but I still would have liked to have a chance to voice an opinion.”

Karyn read the meaning behind the words better than the ponies, but Pinkie Pie spoke first. “I love hearing opinions! What’s yours?”

“I don’t think that we should be opening up the border. I said this to Princess Celestia so long ago. What if some human figures out how to use pegasus weather control or unicorn magic for selfish ends? That could devestate the world. Both worlds.”

It wasn’t in Pinkie Pie’s nature to argue, and Derpy would say something once and then give it up. But Karyn was willing to hash over a point. “You said that,” she said, “but it’s not long ago anymore. Things have progressed. And we’re not just opening up the border. We’re being very careful.”

"Color me dubious. Sooner or later, this is going to turn out wrong."

Pinkie Pie reached into the saddlebag that had been passed among the guest ponies. Karyn thought she was planning to ignore the argument and go to Earth anyway just to make the point, but instead she held the spell aloft. "I think I know the problem. You're homesick! And maybe a little jealous that all the ponies are going to earth and not you, hmmmmm?"

"No! That's not it at all."

The ponies and Karyn could tell it was a lie, but neither Karyn nor Derpy knew what to do about it. But Pinkie Pie, to their surprise, became serious. She was not unhappy; the smile never left her face, but the tone of her voice was one that they hadn't heard.

"No, it isn't." Pinkie almost sounded like Twilight or Princess Celestia giving a lecture. "I know all about it. You see farther than most of us here. Everypony laughs at me not just for the fun things I do, but how I have these quirky charactaristics like 'breaking the fourth wall.' And since you were the one, way back at the beginning who figured out that life in Equestria is just a story, I can see how it would grate on you."

Derpy whispered to Karyn, "What's she talking about?"

"Shh. I'll explain later. Once I've figured it out myself."

Pinkie continued. "You're worried about how this will go not because of the logical possibilities of comingling the two worlds, but because of the dramatic possibilities. Ponies should be smart enough to avoid falling in with bad humans, but it's so tempting that it's got to happen, right?"

"It's more than that," Lyra's human said. "It's more selfish than that."

"I see."

"You do?"

"Of course. Part of why I love to effect laughter and smiles in everypony, and why I like to smile so much myself, is that if my life is a story, I'd much rather be the comic relief. Bad things don't happen to the comic relief. But the protagonist?" Pinkie cocked her head and pointed a hoof.

“Yeah, exactly, the protagonist. But when you’re a protagonist in a bad story with a broken plot and lousy characters, then what do you do? Look at me. Do I even have a name? Do I even have a gender? And you, you’ll always be a part of Ponyville, making everyone laugh, because that’s who you are. But what would you do if your story were over? If there was nothing left for you to do but watch everything happen around you?”

Pinkie, Derpy, and Karyn formed a semi-circle. Any anger had melted into pity. “It can be hard to shift from first-person to third,” said Pinkie. “And as far as a name, I dunno, you always seemed like a Hank to me. Can’t say why, maybe because that’s kind of a hard name, or maybe because it’s halfway between Hand and Hunk, which is how Lyra sees you. And I guess that makes you a guy, because that’s not a girl’s name.”

Hank, for no one had any reason to call him anything else, and no one had any reason to use any other pronoun, looked at Pinkie as if amazed that she would be so bold.

“Now,” she carried on, “do you still want to come with us back to Earth? I know you stop by from time to time, to pick up things for Lyra. You could get her something nice, or just enjoy the sights with us.”

“Yes, please do,” said Karyn. “We’d welcome having you back. I could show you where I come from and I could actually get another human’s perspective on what it’s like to know ponies and talk with them, and how living in Equestria has changed you.”

While they were talking, Derpy had gone and was looking off the edge of the clock tower in boredom. Karyn gave her a nudge on the flank, and she said, “What?”

“Wouldn’t you like to add how happy you’d be if he joined us for our day on Earth?”

“Oh! Sure. We do fun stuff all the time, so yeah, come with.”

“Anything wrong?”

Derpy looked at Hank, wishing she could talk without him present, then said, “All this ‘fourth-wall’ talk messes with my head. It’s too weird.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” he said, but if the anger had gone out of everyone else, it was rising in his tone. “Really, Pinkie, who do you think you are? Just because none of it affects you, you think you can just toss out names and have fun like there aren’t any consequences? I’ve had enough!”

He shoved Pinkie and Karyn aside and took off down the stairs of the clock tower, stomping his feet in a quick-march. After a half-minute of this, they heard the door at the bottom slam, echoing up to where they were.

“What happened?” Derpy looked down at the stairwell. “Was it something I said?”

“I don’t think so,” said Karyn. “If anything it was Pinkie Pie.” They looked at her.

“I was just trying to have a little fun. But I know that not everyone is like that. I just didn’t think that he’d react so strongly.”

Still looking down, Derpy said, “I feel like we should go after him. We didn’t really give him a fair hearing.”

“I thought I was helping.”

“You said good things, but none of us were really listening.”

Silence hung in the air for a few seconds, then Karyn said, “I’m for going after him.”

“Me too,” said Derpy.

“Then what are we waiting for?!” Pinkie started bouncing down the stairs.

“Hold it. I don’t think you should come.”

“Huh?”

“He was the maddest at you. So I think it would be better if you waited.” Derpy looked to Karyn for support.

“Derpy’s right. He’s never had anything against her, and when I talked to him at the Christmas party a while back, he seemed personable. If he gets irritated, it’s just from circumstance. I get the feeling he was never really a happy person, even back before he met Lyra.”

Pinkie pouted. “But meeting her should have cured all those gloomy-gus feelings.”

“They may have love between them, but that doesn’t always bring happiness.”

“I guess.”

“But what about Pinkie’s trip to Earth?” asked Derpy. “I hate to have to deny it to her because of Hank.”

“We can reschedule that,” said Karyn. “Will you be very upset?”

Pinkie shook her head. “No, I’ll understand. Besides, I got to spend time with a human, and that’s what I had planned for today anyway, right?”

Derpy and Karyn smiled. “Thanks for being a good pony,” said Derpy.

All of a sudden, Pinkie’s mood changed. The seriousness was gone, and she was back to being the happy Pinkie everyone knew. Her mane even poofed up beyond its usual. “Yep, and now that that’s done, you guys can get on to the next part of your story.”

“Huh?”

“Well, I knew that I wasn’t going to Earth, and that everything was going to turn out bad, but that you’d go after Hank and my part would be over, at least for the moment. So now that I’m out of the story, I can go back to having fun and eating pastries!”

Karyn took in a breath, like she wanted to argue, but just asked, “Pinkie, are you saying that you can see the future?”

“Of course I can! Pinkie sense, remember?”

“No, I mean really know what’s going to happen, not just—how did you put it?—vague and immediate events?”

Pinkie, still happy, said, “It’s hard to explain unless you can do it. I know, but that doesn’t mean that I can change it, or even say that I know unless that’s part of what I’m supposed to do. Just like right now you’re supposed to go and finish your story. I’m looking forward to it. This one’s even a multi-parter!”

With that, she did bounce down the stairs, and Karyn and Derpy let her go. It was faster anyway for Derpy to put Karyn on her back and fly down from the tower. Earlier that day it was Karyn who was all for dawdling and Derpy who wanted to keep up the pace, but now their positions had reversed. Although Karyn would never be so barbaric as to use spurs on her friend, she dug in her heels a little stronger than usual, hoping to make her descend a little faster.

“What are you worried about?” she asked.

“Well, like you said, he’s not a very happy person. So if we have to go there and he yells at us or gets mad, what are we going to do?”

“We’ll deal with it. He’s not going to hit us or do anything horrible; Lyra wouldn’t allow it, and I’m sure the princesses wouldn’t like it either if Earth’s only permanent resident here got belligerent. So if we have to argue, we’ll do that. It’ll be a lot easier than worrying about Pinkie Pie making two plus two equal five or something.”

Whether Derpy acceded or just reached the landing normally, Karyn didn't know, but they touched down outside the yard of that house that Lyra and Bon-Bon shared with Hank, and trotted up to the door.

Before they could knock, the door opened, and they each prepared to continue the bickering that had begun on the clock tower. On first view they assumed it was he, but the mint-green coat and horn gave away who had answered.

“What did you two say to him?!” Lyra demanded.

Author's Note

To be continued...

110: A Time to Every Derpouse Under Heaven

The events of the previous Sunday had gnawed at Derpy throughout the week. On her mail route, some of the ponies had noticed that she wasn’t staying to chat as long as she usually did, and at home Colgate, the neighbor that she was closest to, pointed out that she was listless and sullen. But Derpy had concluded, rightly or wrongly, that if Karyn couldn’t confide in her as to what her problems were, then Derpy asking for help would be doubly unproductive.

But time moves on, and at last the new Sunday came, and Derpy hoped that she would resolve the situation, one way or another. She made her way to the rendezvous point and switched over to Earth, and tried to approach Karyn as quietly as she could. She half-wished that Karyn would have slept in as she did on occasion, which would let her take her place at the breakfast table and force Karyn to make the first move.

Derpy was half-lucky. Karyn was in the shower, and somehow through the din of the water she heard Derpy appear, calling out, “Is that you?” Now Derpy had no chance of concealing herself.

“Yes, it’s me! Want me to start making coffee?”

“No, I’ll be out in a moment.” As though to support her statement, Karyn turned off the water with a squeak of the handle. “Let me just put up my hair.”

That left Derpy with nothing to do, so she brooded around the kitchen, not wanting to shout through the door any further. She wished for Karyn to hurry up, but it took her five minutes to emerge.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “If I just magic my hair to a proper style, it still gets tangled and makes it harder to deal with. Maybe I should just shave my head and be have a permanent changeling-do.”

Derpy laughed, and it was a good feeling. “How are you doing?”

“Good, good…or did you mean on the tests?”

“I didn’t mean that, but I’ll be happy to hear about them.”

Karyn looked over at her computer. “Glad to be done, first and foremost. But overall, pleased with the results. A pair of B’s, a pair of A’s, and one grade that I’m still waiting on, but I feel very good about what I wrote on the exam. That’s the stressful thing, though. In my estimate I got an A, but I can’t be sure until the grade comes out, and even then I’ll either have my estimate confirmed, or I’ll be disappointed. There’s no chance of anything better.”

“I see your point. But aren’t you happy to have them over with?”

“Definitely. I can look forward to moving on to senior year now. Who knows, maybe freshmen will be scared of me now.”

The happiness was in her words, but not in her voice. Derpy decided to pursue further. “And you’ve got my little calendar to use between now and then. Awesome summer coming, right?”

“You bet.”

The feeling still wasn’t real. Karyn set about making breakfast, and Derpy, not knowing what else to do, surveyed the room for her usual inspection. Karyn had cleaned in earnest, possibly from having nothing else to do outside of her tests. It looked better than most weeks, but still not ready to go home for summer. Karyn would have a lot of packing to do, and Derpy made note to offer to help.

Karyn put two mugs of coffee on the table and plopped down into the seat by one.

“I can keep an eye on the toast,” Derpy said.

“Thanks, I’ll appreciate it.”

Derpy took a deep draught of the coffee. It was hot in her mouth and bitter. She lowered the cup into the saucer with enough force to give it a little rattle and attract Karyn’s attention. She scowled. “In Celestia’s name, what is it?! I can tell that something’s wrong, and I knew it wasn’t the studying. I hoped I was wrong, that you’d be back to your old self, but I knew it wouldn’t be that way. Whatever’s eating at you it’s tearing me apart, and I can’t help you until I know!”

“Derpy, what are you talking about?”

For a moment, Derpy said nothing. Then she shook her head. “Nice try. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a bad friend, but sometimes being a bad friend is the only way to be a good friend. OK, that sounds dumb, but, you know what I mean. Something is wrong. I’ll do anything to fix it. I have a whole bag here full of spells that we can use together. Is it money? We’ll go convert lead into gold and I don’t care if we get caught. Is it Mike again? I’ll turn him into anything we have to to make it right.”

“It’s nothing that magic can help.”

Just as she hadn’t missed Karyn’s evasion, Derpy didn’t miss that Karyn had finally admitted something was wrong. “If it’s not in this bag we’ll go back to Equestria and beg Lyra or Twilight to make a spell that will work. Or we’ll go to Princess Celestia and Luna and have them stop the sun and the moon until it’s right. I’ll…I’ll hold up everypony’s mail until they help!”

Karyn laughed at that, but stopped when she saw how serious Derpy was. “All right. You want to know what’s going on? You want to hate me for it? I know I shouldn’t have, but I did it anyway. Notice anything missing?”

Derpy took a second look. She was far better at spotting things that were out of place and present than at seeing missing items. But this was important. Karyn had gestured toward the desk, and for a moment Derpy feared that the laptop was having problems, but then she saw the space where, for the past few months, an Equestrian scroll was kept.

“You lost the names of which ponies we’re bringing to Earth? That’s no problem, we can go back and regenerate it.”

“Yeah, we could.”

Karyn moved as if to get her things so that they could go to Equestria, but Derpy stopped her. “But we don’t have to. Is there a reason?”

“Yes. The fact is that I don’t want to do the pony tours, at least not for the summer.”

“Can I ask why?”

“In the first place, they’re really wearing on me. Half of it is the ponies themselves, and I worry about them getting out of hand. But then there are the humans, where I’m afraid I don’t know enough.”

Derpy extended a wing. “We don’t have to include humans in the tours. Other than you, I mean. And I can take care of rebuilding the list on my own.”

“It’s more than that. I really don’t think I want to do the pony tours over the summer. Like I said, it’s my last one, and I know it sounds extremely selfish, but I just want to spend it, kind of going retroactive. By which I mean spending time with you, or goodness forbid, alone.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be alone. I have too much of it, so it’s not for me. The one thing to understand is that you can’t let being alone make you keep your problems inside. Even if you don’t want to come to me cause I’m a pony, it has to be something you can talk to your parents about.”

Karyn took the wing in hand, carefully not pulling too hard. For a moment she looked bright. “It’s really all right if we don’t have any more guests for a while?”

“It’s all right if you don’t ever want to have them, or if you want to have a dozen guests at once, or whatever you want to do.”

Derpy hoped, and half expected, that giving in to Karyn would cheer her up. Instead, Karyn did pull on the wing, making Derpy lean forward, and broke down crying. She was unintelligible for a few minutes before she could sob out something that sounded like, “Thank you.”

Now Derpy had a new hope, that having broken through Karyn’s sang-froid, she would at last learn what it was that was weighing so heavily on her friend’s mind.

“I must look a fright now,” she said when she had at last calmed down. “I should magic myself back to what I should look like.”

“Why don’t you go into the bathroom and wash up proper instead?”

“That sounds like a good idea. Thanks again.”

When she had finally emerged again, Karyn sat down. “What you need to understand is how much of a crossroads I’m at in my life. I have so many decisions to make. I don’t even know if I’m going to go home for the summer.”

“Really? Tell me about it.”

“I’ve been considering keeping the apartment for the two months of the summer. Now, right away that’s a huge expenditure I’ve been trying not to plug into the spreadsheet where I keep my budget to watch what it’s going to do to my bottom line. Then I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do about a job for this summer, and that’s not going to be easy. Basically, I’ve got to choose between jobs I’ll have a decent chance of getting hired for, jobs that will pay well enough to pay my way through next year, and jobs that will give me better standing for actually starting my career.

“And whatever I do now is going to be huge next year when I actually have to put together a resume and start looking for a job in earnest. And that ties in with why I want to keep the apartment, but…oh, Derpy, I’m going to be an adult! And I am not ready for it!”

“Come here.” Derpy extended her hooves and got Karyn in a proper hug. A human, or indeed any non-pegasus couldn’t understand, but wings weren’t made for hugging.

“I don’t know if you can really come to grips with what I’m facing. Just the fact that I’m confessing to a cartoon pony instead of another human…oh, that probably sounded terrible, didn’t it?”

Derpy let the slight pass. “No, I don’t know everything about it, and I might not be the perfect person to talk to right now, but I have one advantage over everyone else. I’m here.”

“You are. I would even welcome Dinky’s advice, since she’s going through a similar period in her life. Can you ask her for me?”

“Sure. You could write a letter to her and I’d mail it. And maybe doing so would help you break this all down for me, because I’m still not sure I understand everything.”

Having expended all her energy, Karyn at last was able to calm down. She let out a breath that shook with nerves. “All right. Now, here’s the problem. If I stay in the apartment, I’m still close to the city. I can drive in to the companies there if I can find work.”

“Or just go to look for work.”

“That’s exactly what my dad said, and his error is less forgivable. If some pony needs a job, I’m sure they go around making applications, and that’s how it used to be on Earth too, but now all the applications are online.”

Derpy got to smile for the first time that day. “That should be perfect for you then.”

“They’re not made for, or by, computer-savvy people. So when I’m applying I’ll just be going from website to website anyway. Now, that fact is definitely a point in favor of staying, rather than living at home and have my parents asking why I’m not pounding the pavement.” Before Derpy could be confused at the expression, Karyn continued. “But on the other hand, that kind of a job might just be what I want. I could go home and go back to standing behind a counter at a fast food place. It’d probably be a lot easier to get work there, and I’d make more money, which would mean a more fun time next year.”

“Mmhm. Go on.”

“Well, like I said, it’s either go for the internship here, which will still be tough to get and might leave me spending the whole summer applying fruitlessly, or go home and work for pay, easier to get and with money, but then next year I’ve got to start applying with a less impressive resume.”

Derpy’s relieved smile became a full-on grin. “You want to know how I know you’re going to do OK?”

“Huh?”

“I’m telling you, I know that whichever choice you make it’s going to work out well.”

Rolling her eyes, Karyn said, “Why? Because I’m special and have magic?”

“No, because all this time you’ve been talking you never once suggested not looking for a job. You’re talking about it like you’re going to spend the summer working either way. Now, it’ll be hard to stick to that drive, but having it is a good step in the first place.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. The hirers don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“It does mean something.” Derpy stopped there, but then decided that she had to continue, even if it was hard. “You remember I told you about when I was raising Dinky, and I was still with her father Rocky, right? He was out of work a lot, and he never talked about when he would work, only if.”

“Well, I’ve gotta work. With all you’ve drilled into me about budgeting, it’s not going to look good if I don’t get work soon. And in another year I’m actually going to have to start paying those student loans, so…”

“Hey!”

Karyn finished trailing off her previous sentence and was once again paying attention. Derpy kept going.

“Didn’t that Jim guy say that he would get you something?”

“He said he would try. And that’s more for when I’m fully graduated. I’ll put him on my search list, but there’s only so much power that an IT person has in hiring people. That’s part of the problem, like I said: dealing with human resources people who don’t know enough.”

“Well, all right, so we’ve got some work to do this summer as well has having the most awesome fun times ever.”

“We?” asked Karyn.

“Yeah. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

“You know, that might actually be something there. What I’m going to need from you is to lean on me. If I get complacent, if I’m not working hard enough, I need you to be hard on me and tell me to do more. It’s like, I’m sure my parents will do that, but it’s different with them.”

“Haha!” said Derpy, taking to the air. “It’s just like how you got on me about my weight!”

“If that helps you, then yeah, it’s like that.”

“Speaking of which, how about we go out to get something to eat?”

“Now, hang on.” Derpy was already heading for the door, and Karyn moved quickly to block her. “If we’re going to be committing to making our lives better, that’ll cut both ways. I think instead we should eat in and eat healthy.”

Derpy grumbled at that, but had to accede. Karyn set to work making a spartan breakfast with inexpensive ingredients.

“Besides,” said Derpy once they were eating. “If it comes to it, you’ve got a good network of friends and family who will make sure that you never go hungry. At least, not for reasons of poverty.” Her stomach grumbled as though to underscore her point.

“I know that. Even though I’m not a pony who can just go out and eat the grass, that’s not what I worry about. But in the first place, when you get help from someone, there’s always payback to be made. That’s one reason I’m trying to get away from my folks. I don’t like owing them, even owing them the obligation to show up when they call. But more to the point, you can’t ask people for help when it comes to things like, well, funding our awesome summer.”

“No, I see your point. So you’ve made your decision.”

“I haven’t!” Karyn poked at her food with her fork. “It seems like I have, but every time I feel like I’ve come to the right conclusion, all the negatives come back to me and all the positives of the other decision.”

“If only there were a way for you to see the outcome of both decisions. The problem is that you lack knowledge. If you knew exactly which jobs you would be offered in each scenario, it would be easier to pick.”

“Of course, but we can’t do that. Can we? Do you have a spell for that?”

“No. Didn’t you hear me say, ‘if only there were a way”? Karyn might have responded, perhaps questioning Derpy’s rare linguistic ability, but Derpy didn’t pay attention. She was hard at work thinking. Just because there wasn’t a magical way to provide Karyn with more information didn’t mean there wasn’t a practical way. It might be that she and Karyn relied a little too much on magic, but she put that thought aside for later.

No, even if she couldn’t get perfect information, if Karyn was teetering between two options, really all she needed to do was push her a little bit, make her take one step in the right direction. In Derpy’s mind, the right choice was for her to stay, though of course it was easy for her to think so. What she really needed was a third party to help out.

Both ideas came together, and a light bulb turned on over Derpy’s head.

“I have an idea!”

“Yes, I saw the light bulb. I didn’t think that happened to ponies. It feels like more of a cartoon cliché, and maybe it’s something specific to you.”

“Wait right here.”

Derpy went for the door, and Karyn momentarily forgot all her troubles. “Where are you going? You can’t be seen outside!”

“I’m not going far. Trust me.”

True to her word, Derpy raced around to the front of the house with all the speed she could muster, and kept her eye on the road in case any cars or pedestrians happened to come by. She was prepared, if spotted, to pretend to be a kind of statue, or to bolt for the sky if she thought she could escape detection that way.

But neither of those precautions were necessary, as her knock on the door was soon answered. Gayle peeked through as she opened the door only a crack. “Hey! Derpy, how you doing? Have you heard from Maud lately?”

“I haven’t, but I’m sure she hasn’t forgotten you. In any case, could you come around to the apartment? Karyn needs to ask you something. Or I do, for her.”

“Sure, let me just clean my hands. Working, you know.”

“We’ll wait for you.”

When Gayle finally arrived, Derpy greeted her at the door. “So Karyn’s thinking about keeping the apartment for the summer. Do you think you could accommodate her?”

“Hey!” said Karyn. “I didn’t say that I was set on doing so. Gayle, I didn’t commit to that. I’m still not sure I want to. Derpy spoke out of turn.”

“We’re supposed to take turns?”

Gayle laughed at that. “Of course you can. If you don’t, it’ll just sit idle, though I would have a chance to paint it for you.”

“Ooh, Karyn. Maybe you should go home. Gayle’s great at painting.”

Now it was Karyn’s turn to laugh. “There’s a big difference between house painting and artistic painting. But no, really, it’s just part of a bigger decision that I have to make.”

“Look,” said Gayle, sitting at the table. “I hadn’t planned on having you around, and you’ve got to remember that your rent, for me, is walking around money. I’m doing all right, maybe even better since Derpy revealed herself. I’ve had a whole new line of inspiration. Forget about that. The point is that I can afford to be a little loose with the rules. So how about this? You stay for July and August, but you only pay August.”

“You would do that for me?”

“Well, it’s kind of that ‘pay it forward’ thing. A lot of people have done nice things for me over the years. But like I said, I can afford it.”

Karyn stood up like she wanted to hug Gayle, but held back. “One condition. If I get a paying job here in the city, the deal’s off and you’re getting your July rent. OK?”

“That’s up to you. If you need the money, don’t hesitate to take it. Just do me one favor?”

“Anything.”

“Let me get back to work now. I was kind of in the zone when Derpy showed up.”

Karyn of course bid her a hasty goodbye, and once again she was alone with Derpy. “You really embarrassed me there.”

“I’m sorry, but hey, everything worked out all right, didn’t it?”

“I guess they did. In any case I’m feeling better.” Finally Derpy believed it to be true. “In fact, you know what? Just go ahead and keep on embarrassing me.”

Author's Note

Last week I promised a big announcement, and this week I deliver. Go here to read all about an important time in the development of this story. Also I will tell you what the next chapter is about.

126: Working Derpertime

Karyn gave Derpy another slice of toast and finished her own breakfast. “Well, Derpy,” she said, “of the past two meals that we’ve had together, this one is...let’s just say it’s in the top two.”

“That would always be true, of any meal.”

“You’re right. I mean that it comes up a distinct second.”

“Ah. Then I will have to agree,” Derpy said, but then dropped her toast. “Not that I’m not happy with your breakfast cooking!”

“Don’t worry. You have the right to brag this week. You put out a spread that rivaled the best Thanksgivings I’ve had.”

It had been a grand holiday. Only half a dozen ponies, plus Karyn, had come to Derpy’s feast, but she had made enough food to feed them ten times over. Karyn had sampled almost everything, and felt distinctly pudgy afterwards. It made her feel better about the fact that on Earth’s actual Thursday she had stayed in her apartment and relaxed all day.

“What I like is that we’ve gotten to see each other three times in eight days. That’s the kind of schedule I’d keep up with friends who didn’t live in an alternate dimension.”

Derpy thought about saying that they should have midweek visits more often, but it would be difficult for her to get time off from work on a regular basis. And while Karyn’s time wouldn’t be lost, she didn’t like spending time in Equestria on frivolities. Besides, she needed to keep her mind on school.

That reminded Derpy of something else. “How did the rest of the midterms go? We didn’t talk about that at all when you came over.”

“No, and thank you for that. All I wanted to do was forget about it. They were hard. The problem is that I knew most of the stuff they were asking, but there was just so much of it. It was more work than thinking, and I went into IT in the first place because I would rather think than work hard.”

“Everyone has to do some work. You’re just getting it over faster. But did you actually get good marks?”

Karyn sighed as she washed the dishes. “I won’t find out until next week. Not entirely true. I got one back posted on line, one of the ones I took two weeks ago. I got an A.”

“That’s great! I’m proud of you.”

“It’s what I expected. And that was the easiest of the tests. Probably why my professor got it graded first.”

Derpy would have continued, but she remembered Dinky being similarly aloof whenever she tried to praise her for success in school. It was something Derpy didn’t understand, but she had to accept. Scholars never counted their achievements as high as others did.

“Anyway,” she said, “what do you think about coming over today?”

“Anything going on?”

“Nothing special, but I’ve got so many leftovers from last week that I still have to eat.”

Karyn thought back. The dishes were still on the table by the time Derpy took her home, and it was uncharacteristic of her to say that she would clean them up later. As far as Karyn knew Equestria, or at least Derpy, didn’t have refrigeration technology, and she had assumed that all the food would be discarded. Thinking about it now, she didn’t know if Equestria had food-borne illnesses, so it was possible that Derpy just left the food on the plates in cupboards.

“That sounds great, if the food’s all safe to eat.”

“Sure, nothing too dangerous. Let’s go.”

Derpy flew Karyn down to her house by their usual path. She headed right in to start preparations for lunch, even though they had just finished breakfast. For her part, Karyn observed how familiar she’d become with the place, and she also saw Derpy’s computer humming away in the sunlight that kept it operational.

“Hey, can I use the PC?”

“What? Oh, the computer. Of course you can. I’ve used your laptop plenty of times and you’ve never said no.”

Karyn moved it out of screen saver and explored the file structure. While she thought of amusing herself with the games or any files Derpy had, she also wanted to make sure that Derpy was keeping it in good working order. To her approval, and slight annoyance, everything seemed clean and uncluttered. Derpy deleted files when she didn’t need them and had a naming structure that, while not exactly how Karyn would have done it, made sense. She wished that she could keep her own computer so well. Her annoyance was doubled when she opened one of the accompanying games and found that Derpy had a higher score than her.

She left to join Derpy in the kitchen and ask if there was any way she could help. Before she could, a knock came at Derpy’s front door, so she said, “I’ve got it,” and turned around. Deciding that it would be less of a shock, she transformed into her pony form before opening up.

On the other side was a heavyset stallion with a shaggy mane. He was holding a clipboard and seemed to be in a hurry. “Hey, Derpy, we’ve got...wait, you’re not Derpy.”

She came out of the kitchen and recognized the pony. “Hey, Haul. Haul, this is my friend Karyn. Karyn, this is Haul, one of the mailponies I work with.”

“Nice to meet you. Derpy, we’ve got a big moving job, wanted to see if you wanted to pick up the overtime.”

“You can see I’ve got a guest. I’d like to, but you know...”

“Of course. In that case, I’ve got to run to find somepony else. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Karyn held up a hoof. “Wait. Maybe we can do this. I could come with and fly along just for the ride. Maybe I could even help. It could be fun.”

Derpy looked at her with skepticism. “You think that carrying stuff is fun?”

“I guess not when you’ve done it as often as you. But for me it’s a novelty.”

“Then it’ll work out for everyone. You’ll have fun and I’ll get paid.”

They followed the pony that Derpy identified as Haul to a house a few streets down. The trucks had already landed and the ponies were doing the unloading. Two were already there. With Haul, Derpy, and Karyn it would make five, and Derpy hoped that meant quick work.

One of the others who seemed to be in charge told Karyn and Derpy to take care of one truck that had boxes in it while the others worked on the furniture. They were to check that nothing was damaged and then organize everything by which room it best fit.

Whoever had done the packing seemed to have been fairly organized, as the first box they checked was filled with all kitchen supplies. Derpy put it at the far end and made a note of which order to bring them into the house in.

The second box was for the bathroom, and Derpy was going to give it a simple tick again, but then she noticed a large nail trimmer. “Whoa! Maybe whoever’s going to live here is a hooficurist. I’ve never seen one like this. Aloe and Lotus might have some competition.”

The next box was for the living room. “I think it’s a pegasus who’s moving in,” said Karyn. “There’s a book on flight here.”

“That could be fun. I could make a new friend to go flying with.”

From inside the house they heard a raspy voice. “Hey! You bozos quite looking at my stuff and get it in here! Move it!”

Derpy snapped to attention and slammed the box lid shut before picking it up. Karyn had already noticed the speaker. She was looking at them with her head turned to the right, a scary and unnatural pose, and the beak looked sharp and dangerous. The house belonged to a griffon.

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know...” Derpy stammered, but the griffon rolled her eyes and went back in.

“Come on,” said Karyn. “You can’t stare. Let’s just get the boxes in and unpacked and then we can talk about it.”

Derpy had had her moment, but then she recovered. “I just didn’t expect it, you know. I’ve never even seen one before.”

“Me neither, but she’s going to get that a lot, so we should be as nice as possible.”

They took the box they were working on and hustled it into the front room. The couch and bookshelf were already in there, so Derpy started putting the books that they had just been caught looking at on the bottom shelf. From there she worked her way up.

“Oh, my...not like that!” The griffon came back and swept all the books off the shelf with a claw. “In alphabetical order! If one of the books is too tall for the upper shelves, put it on its side. I’ll do it.”

“I...I’m sorry.”

She didn’t bother to respond but faced the other movers. “Be careful with that! It’s delicate!” Leaving Derpy and Karyn alone for the moment, she went to berate the others.

“What did I do wrong?” asked Derpy.

“Here, let me take care of it. I think I understood what she wants. It’s not set up like your bookshelf where you have it looking nice. She wants to be able to find things easily. It’s like when I had all my music on CD and I had a place for each one.”

Derpy took in one of the other boxes and tried to set it up as fast as possible, figuring that the griffon would be upset no matter how she did it, but she could work quickly and be out of there before she got yelled at again.

Now the strain was on Karyn. Unfamiliar with the work and always preferring to pace herself with moves, she had to keep on her toes and transport boxes in swiftly, then take the empties outside, hoping the others knew what to do with them. But soon enough they were able to get out and head back toward home.

“So that was...something we did,” said Karyn. “I’m glad you like doing that. I think this is what it feels like for you when I bring up something about computers that you don’t get.”

“This wasn’t the most fun day for me either. I don’t mind when they switch me from mail to moves, and I will get some extra money for it, but I don’t appreciate being yelled at.”

“I don’t think anyone does.”

They made it to Derpy’s house, and Karyn collapsed on the couch while Derpy resumed the cooking.

“I do wonder though if that was just because she’s a griffon?”

“Pardon?” said Karyn, picking up her head.

“You know that griffons are more aggressive than ponies.”

“Have you met one?”

“Before today? No.”

Karyn had to be delicate. What Derpy had just said was deeply offensive to her, and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing Derpy would say. That kind of sentiment could break a friendship. Karyn didn’t want that, and she was worried that she didn’t fully understand yet. Maybe everypony thought that, but Equestria didn’t seem like a place that had many prejudices, despite how Zecora was first treated.

“Well, are you sure about that? If you’ve never met one, how do you know that they’re not just living up to what you think they should be? She’s a griffon, and everyone tells her that griffons are expected to yell, so she does.”

“That might be the case for her, but griffons have to be more aggressive. They live in much harsher country than we do. There are predators there that would attack them or take away their food. And between them that’s how they interact. That’s what I was taught at least. It’s a cultural difference, not a species one.”

Karyn still wasn’t sure that she liked the way Derpy was thinking, and she resolved to keep an open mind on the subject herself.

Derpy, though, seemed to sense that her friend wasn’t fully convinced. “I know that a lot of times humans have rough conflicts because of treating people that way. You guys can be aggressive too. And ponies are laid back. That’s problematic too. We have Princess Celestia and all the other authorities to take care of us, plus between unicorn magic and pegasus weather control and Earth pony strength, no one wants to mess with us. So we don’t fight. When times go bad for us, they go really bad. If the weather gets so bad that the pegasi can’t handle it, we don’t know what to do. We can’t be strong. But it never happens.”

“So you could be friends with a griffon? You wouldn’t automatically write them off?”

“Of course I wouldn’t. Let’s say that a griffin chick and a pony foal somehow got switched at birth and no one noticed. The griffin would probably grow up to act like a pony and be docile. The pony would probably be more aggressive.”

That still didn’t seem right to Karyn, and yet if she looked at it a certain way, it was the opposite of prejudice.

Then it hit her. “But this griffon wasn’t raised among ponies. Not that we know of anyway. So why did she move to Ponyville? To my knowledge there aren’t any griffons living anywhere in the Equestrian towns and cities I’ve been to. Are there?”

“There must be some, but haven’t seen any either. I’m not that accomplished a traveler, though.”

“So if she was living happily in the Griffon lands, why did she pack everything up?”

Derpy looked over her shoulder. “Maybe she’s an exile.”

“That would be awful. All the more reason that you should go and make friends with her.”

“You’re right. I think I’m going to do it.”

Despite this pronunciation, Derpy kept on checking the oven and going about her cooking duties. Karyn was skeptical. “When?”

“I’m sure I’ll see her around, now that she’s a resident.”

“Mmhm. How about we bring her some of the leftovers instead of eating them all ourselves?”

That cut Derpy to the quick. She never liked to give up food. But Karyn looked insistent, so after reserving a generous portion for herself and Karyn, she put all the rest in a picnic basket.

“Can we wait until after we eat to bring hers?”

“We reheated it once. We can reheat it again. So could the griffon, but then again, which is more important? A good meal or a good friend?”

“A good friend,” said Derpy, but it seemed like she had to think about it.

They got back on the road, and halfway there it occurred to Karyn that the griffon only saw her in her disguise before. That might make it more difficult to break the ice, but she would just have to prod Derpy.

Reaching the new cottage, Derpy took a deep breath and knocked on the door and had the awkward moment she always experienced after a knock on the door. She never knew how long to wait before knocking again. If it was somepony she knew, she then didn’t know whether to try the door. And then if it opened, whether to call in and say hi or go all the way in.

In this case, after a few seconds the door flew open and there stood the new homeowner. “Yeah, what’d’ya want? Hey, you’re the mover who messed up all my books? What, you want a tip?”

Derpy stammered. “I...no...there were leftovers and...um, my name’s Derpy...I wanted to be friends.”

Karyn expected that the griffon would come back harder, and was prepared to back up Derpy in an altercation. She hoped that the griffon would see reason. What she didn’t expect what what happened. The griffon broke down crying.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been so mean to you. It’s just that I’ve been under so much stress from moving and you were trying to make friends and I was blowing it and...oh, I’m sorry!”

“Hey, don’t worry about that. First impressions are overrated. Come on Derpy, let’s get her inside.”

The move had been completed and the house was in perfect shape. Derpy could have found nothing to criticize. They walked the griffon over to the couch. “Thank you. Um, I never even got your name. You’re Derpy, but you...”

“My name’s Karyn.”

“I’m Gertie.”

“That’s nice. It’s almost like Derpy if it were a griffon name.” Both pony and griffon looked at each other as if unhappy about this comparison.

“I had this whole thing planned out, about how I would come to Ponyville and live a more laid-back life, and my first day I can’t get past my past.”

“Is it so bad?” asked Derpy.

“Have you ever been to the griffon kingdom?” asked Gertie. Derpy shook her head. “It’s no place for anyone who doesn’t hunger for competition. Among griffons, everything from the first shake of the claw to every conversation is about trying to one-up the other griffon. And that’s fine if you’re into it. Some great things come out of it.”

“Do they really? I would think that if everyone’s competing, things wouldn’t get done. No one would grow food or do work.”

“To the contrary, we have plenty of food and great works because of the competition. If a griffon is a hunter, he wants to prove that he can bring in more that anyone else. Beautiful eyries as well that the biggest competitive builders have made. Apart from the people, it really is a nice country.”

Derpy was happy that Gertie had calmed down, and pressed her for more. “So why did you leave?”

“Because, if everything’s a competition, someone has to lose, right? I wasn’t good at hunting or cooking or building or much of anything, except being nice. That didn’t get me very far. Then one day we were having a diplomatic visit from your princess, what’s her name? Celeste?”

“Celestia?”

“That’s it. And I guess she asked to see which griffons weren’t happy so the king took her to where I was working and she said that if I ever wanted to move, I would be welcome here. I thought about it for a long time, because being decisive is another thing I’m not good at, but eventually I decided to take the plunge.”

Gertie scratched her head when it was all done. Karyn still wouldn’t have called her cute, but it was certainly a cute gesture.

“So what are you going to do here in Ponyville?” asked Derpy. “I mean for a job.”

“I don’t know. Both kingdoms gave me a stipend. Apparently I’m some sort of an advent that everyone’s happy about. After that runs out, I figure I’ll work for one of the ponies here. I’d like to get something where I could be nice.”

“Have you ever delivered mail?”

Gertie cocked her head and Karyn showed shock. “That’s very nice of you,” she said to Derpy. Gertie seemed not to get it, so she had to explain that Derpy was a letter carrier and would put in a good word if Gertie wanted to join up.

“And I can be friendly there?”

“Of course!” said Derpy. “Everypony likes friendly ponies. Oh, that reminds me. Since you’re new in town Pinkie Pie is probably going to want to throw you a welcome party.”

“Oh. I’d like to put that off until I can get some rest.”

“I understand, but it’s kind of inevitable.”

Gertie was skeptical. “What if no one told her?”

“No good. She’ll know anyway.”

“Great,” Gertie rolled her eyes.

Derpy got up. “Why don’t you get your rest now? We’ll try to head off Pinkie. Sometimes she can be reasoned with. Sometimes.”

“I’d appreciate that. Please come over again, Derpy?”

“I promise.”

Karyn and Derpy left, and though the sun was still up, if Gertie drew the curtains it would give her some darkness. As they walked away, they heard a repeated boing sound, and sure enough Pinkie was bouncing toward the house.

“Hey, Derpy! Karyn! I got a shake of my flank and a twist in my mane that says that somepony new is in town! Did you just come from their house?”

“Actually,” Derpy started, but Karyn interrupted her.

“There’s nopony in the house now. Nopony at all. I would come back tomorrow if I were you.”

“Really? Darn! My Pinkie sense is never wrong! But I guess there’s a first time for everything.” Changing direction in mid-bounce, she went back towards Sugar Cube Corner.

When she was out of earshot, Derpy said, “You lied.”

“No I didn’t. I said there was nopony in the house. There is no pony. There’s a griffon, but Pinkie didn’t ask about them.”

“I guess even the nicest of ponies can have a little prejudice in them.”

“Touche,” said Karyn, and she looked back at Gertie’s house. “There are a lot of things I like about Equestria. I thought one of them was how open-minded everyone is. But maybe that’s not it. You have different species here, different ones that can talk and think and have societies I mean. So what I like is that even though you’re not perfectly tolerant, you don’t think about how intolerant you are or aren’t.”

“I don’t know that I get all that. But I think that this would have gone a lot worse if you weren’t here. You helped me get in with her. So really, you’re like two friends in one.”

Author's Note

To keep you in the loop of the schedule, there's going to be one more fan-suggested chapter between now and chapter 130. If you've been following, you know that chapters that end in 0 usually are the more plot-centered, like the end of the seasons in MLP. After 130, I'll be running another "clip show" chapter, hopefully the last. Then there'll be twenty more regular chapters and six more fan-suggested ones. Meanwhile, here's what's for next week:

“No you’re not. I can tell. Don’t worry, I won’t bug you about anything.”

“You’re not going to tell me that I’ve been too messy or should have cleaned yesterday?”

Derpy got off the bed and held Karyn’s head in her hooves. “I prefer it that way."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I’ll be saved a lot of stress and money.”

Taking a second look at Karyn’s calculations, Derpy stuck out her tongue. “OK, we’re going to do it.”

“We? Do what?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Can we get something to eat first?”

“Sure. Want to go to the salad bar?”

Derpy scanned the line of eateries. “I was thinking more of that pretzel stand.”

Thanks for sticking with me, and please come back next time!

137: Taking a Dinkferent Path

Derpy surveyed her kitchen. She knew how it was supposed to look, but she always liked to take a mental picture to remind herself. When the time came to clean up, she could then just make it like the picture and be done. Much like Karyn, she found the cleaning to be the worst part of cooking.

Picture in place, she went over to a high cabinet and pulled out a large pot. It had been her mother’s before her, and her father, no great cook himself, had kept it in storage. It had been a happy day when he was able to pass it on to her. She made a mental note to tell him that she was using it.

Next came dry ingredients. She set them out in precise order on her counter top. The visual cues were necessary for her. Either that, or she would be checking the recipe every five seconds.

Karyn had done well with a simple recipe before, but now Derpy wanted to show her a more complex one. That she had made it many times before and practically knew it by heart would be something Karyn didn’t need to know. But since it required a long cook time, she wanted to prepare as much as she could before. Once Karyn arrived, she would begin the mixing.

As the hour for her to travel to Earth struck, Derpy brushed off her hooves some errant corn starch that had spilled and made for her saddlebags. But just then she heard a knock on the door. Expecting no callers, she approached with curiosity. This only increased as she opened it to find a pegasus pony wearing the same uniform that she bore the rest of the week.

“Letter for Derpy Hooves. Needs a signature.”

“Mail on a Sunday? We don’t deliver then,” she said, hoping that the “we” would let the messenger know that she also belonged to the service.

“Special exception, ma’am.” He held out a clipboard and pen, which Derpy took in mouth and signed. When he presented the letter, she understood why.

It was only an imprint on a wax seal, but the pony who would co-opt the seal of the wave-ray sun and so fake a royal letter would have to be braver and more foolhardy than anypony Derpy knew. She thanked the messenger and brought it to the kitchen table to get the best reading light.

“Dear Ms. Hooves,” it began. “Time has passed, and I have resumed the education at the School for Gifted Unicorns. Yet every day I cast an eye toward a desk still kept vacant, and my heart hangs heavy. I think the moment has come for me to speak with your daughter about her future pursuits. While you have served her as well as any mother in these lands, she is of age, and perhaps would appreciate a consultation with a different authority. I assure you that I shall put forth all my power to ensure that Dinky finds her niche in life.

“I enclose a train ticket for her for today’s train. If this is not convenient, please write back with a more acceptable time. Sincerely yours, Celestia.”

Derpy scanned down the rest of her signature, filled with Regent of This, Viceroy of That, Dutchess of The Other. “How masterfully she writes!” Derpy said aloud. “She’s so diplomatic in telling me not to come with, and she even says we could pick a different time, as if we would!”

Dinky had taken to sleeping in on Sundays, but Derpy woke her up and showed her the letter. It took Dinky a few readings before her head would clear, but then she understood and looked at the train ticket. “There must be a mistake! This ticket is to the Crystal Empire.”

“The princess is good about things like that. She must have known she would be there when she sent the letter.”

“But I’ve never been that far away! I don’t even know where it is!”

Fortunately Derpy had been there. “It’s up north. But it doesn’t really matter. You just get on the train and get off when the announcement says ‘Crystal Empire.’ Which is a terminus, so you don’t even have to worry about missing your stop. The train’s not for a while, so you have plenty of time to get ready.”

“I wish you could come with me, Mommy.”

Derpy felt a pain at having to say no to her daughter, but she knew that she had to. “The letter says I can’t go. Besides, I have to cook today. I’m making your favorite stew.”

“Well, I guess that’s worth you staying for. Hey! What about Karyn?”

“I’m hoping she’ll help me with the stew.”

Dinky shook her head. “No, I mean, why can’t she come with me? The letter doesn’t say I can’t bring a friend.”

“Well, I need to go get Karyn anyway. She might not even want to go.”

Dinky was left to brood while Derpy took off for Earth. When she explained everything that had happened that morning, to her chagrin, Karyn was eager to go.

“No offense, but the idea of sitting around all day watching a stew and stirring it every few minutes doesn’t appeal to me. Yes, it’s exactly the sort of relaxing thing that I like to do sometimes, but right now I’ve been so busy that it’ll be easier to just keep busy. Besides, it sounds like Dinky really needs me.”

“But Princess Celestia only sent one ticket.”

By this time Karyn had toasted them each an English muffin and made a quick breakfast out of it, and Karyn was already on top of Derpy heading back to her house. “I’ve still got a few Equestrian bits. Actually, I think it’ll be just enough for a ticket of my own. It’ll be expensive, because I want to match the first class one that Dinky has, but like you said, it’s subsidizing the cheaper rides.”

Dinky walked with her to the station, stopping once so that Karyn could get her money out of the bank. If there was any change left over, she planned to keep it so that she could look at the Equestrian coins. Once there, she bought her own ticket and they waited for the train.

“What’s it like?” Dinky asked.

“Hm?”

“The Crystal Empire.”

“Oh. Well, it’s cold. Not once you’re in the city, but even there, the sun doesn’t shine as bright as it does down here. And there are mountains covered with ice so it feels cold. Plus all the crystals look like ice. Keep warm, is what I’m saying.”

Dinky nodded and watched the tracks. Karyn looked at her expression. Dinky was still nervous, and she sympathized. She had, in essence, been called for a meeting with the principal, and whatever you had or hadn’t done, that was still unnerving.

She was glad that she had come. Dinky would be even more nervous without her, while Derpy would be all right. But that was an oddity too. Karyn wasn’t supposed to be more experienced than a native pony.

The train arrived and they piled in. Dinky enjoyed the luxury of the private room more than Derpy had, and even though they weren’t traveling overnight, she had fun opening and closing the bed.

Once the conductor had been through and checked their tickets, Karyn shut the door for privacy. “So tell me,” she said, “how have you been coming along? With your magic I mean.”

“I think I’m there. Back to where I was. But at the same time...it’s hard to explain. I’ve had to relearn most of it, and it’s all working in a different way. Harder, more concentration needed. But I can do just about anything I used to. And a few things I couldn’t.”

“Oh?”

Dinky nodded. Karyn gestured for her to tell more. “Like shuffling a deck of cards. That’s a challenge for unicorns because even though it’s just levitation, it’s precision work. Don’t ask me why I’m better at it now than before. I can’t ask anypony.”

“So what do you think you’re going to tell Celestia?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to let her take the lead and ask me questions, and just answer them. What I want from her...I don’t really know that.”

Karyn ached to help, but she didn’t quite know how. “Even if it’s not to ask her, what do you want?”

“I don’t know. I’m still torn. On the one hoof, my mommy’s always taken care of me. On the other, most of the ponies my age are already on their own, and I want to do that too. It’s just that every time I’ve tried, something goes wrong.”

“Well, we’ll figure it out together. Maybe today will be a step forward.”

For the rest of the train trip, they sat in quiet reflection. Karyn faced the rear of the train so that Dinky could see all the sights. Once they came to the final stop, they stepped out and looked around the city.

“Where do we go from here?” asked Dinky.

“Last time I was here—hm.”

“What?”

“I just remembered, the last time I came it was because the ponies and the changelings were signing their peace treaty. They should be living fairly close. I hope I don’t run into Queen Chrysalis.”

Dinky thought about that. She wasn’t much of a fan of the queen either. “Oh, yeah. It would be awkward trying to explain why you can’t change anymore.”

“That, plus I just don’t like her. Come on, let’s go to the palace. If Princess Celestia’s in town, that’s probably where she’ll be.”

With a hasty step, they got on the road. Even Dinky could see how the city was laid out in a spoked wheel, and all the straight roads led to the palace at the center. There was the usual confusion at the gate, and Karyn for once wished that the easygoing nature of Equestria had room for the bureaucratic efficiency of Earth. But they gained admittance, and walked up a few flights of stairs to a room where Princess Celestia was waiting.

“Dinky!” she said, beckoning her into the room, “Ah, and Karyn too. Welcome.”

Karyn curtsied, but Dinky gave only a cursory bow as she sat across from the princess. Karyn was amused at how Dinky only regarded her as a teacher. She also tried to figure out what Celestia was doing there. There were no papers or signs of work in the room, and it in fact was sparsely furnished. Curiosity got the better of her.

“May I ask why we’re meeting here and not Canterlot? Is there some sort of summit meeting you came for?”

“Not exactly. There’s a particularly tasty cake that they make here, and I had a hankering for it, so to speak. So I arranged to move the travel plans.”

Karyn was amused to think that another of the popular images of the ruler of Equestria had a basis in fact. Dinky seemed to think it was more reasonable. As Celestia looked toward a side door, she put a more serious tone in her voice.

“But, I’m glad that you came this far. It tells me the first thing I wanted to know, which is whether you were still committed to working with me on your education. Or at least, it tells me that you are not so uncommitted that you would not take a train trip to an area unfamiliar to you. Incidentally, can you tell me why you had to leave school?”

For the first time, Dinky seemed unsure of herself with the princess. Karyn decided to take a risk. “She can tell you. But she declines to do so.”

Celestia’s eyes never left Dinky’s. “Is what Karyn says true?”

“Yes. I will not tell you.”

“Very well. I do not require an answer to that. But I do for this: do you wish to return to school? If you do, there will be an intense course of catch-up learning for you. You must review and test for everything you learned last year, while learning what your fellow gifted unicorns have done during your absence.”

Dinky paused again, and Karyn was worried that she was going to have to continuously serve as Dinky’s mouthpiece, but at last she came out with, “I’m not sure how much equity there is in it. Even if I complete the course, I don’t think I have a taste for scholarship. I don’t want to go into research or teaching.”

Celestia smiled. “I’m glad you came to that conclusion.”

“You are?”

“Oh, yes. I realized that about you a long time ago. But it is the sort of thing that cannot be told. It’s better to let the pony herself figure it out. Do you know what it is that you do want to do?”

“Not really.”

“I have certain ideas about that too, but again, better not to say.”

Dinky was skeptical, and annoyed at how Celestia seemed to be lording her superior knowledge. She wanted to turn it around. “Then, do you think I should just quit school?”

“I propose a compromise. Return to school for a few weeks. In the first place, it will allow for an orderly removal. You still have some items in your dorm room. But I’d also like you to study and complete the tests you missed. If you pass, I shall allow you to consider yourself an alumna of the school, in good standing, even though you would not walk with your fellows. Essentially, a provisional graduate. Perhaps, in your later years, you would return to complete the course. But it is not required.”

“Can I ask my momm—my mother about this? And Karyn?”

“Certainly. Advice is always helpful. But it must be your decision.”

Without waiting to be asked, Karyn said, “I’d jump at the chance. Princess Celestia’s being quite generous, carving out an exception for you. Go, work hard, and maybe you’ll figure out what your next step is there.”

“You’re right! I will do it! I’ll convince mother it’s right, one way or another.”

“Excellent!” said Princess Celestia. “Then, since the business is concluded, relax with me and enjoy some of the cake when it gets here.”

She shot another look to the door, and as if on cue, it opened to reveal one of the crystal ponies bearing cake on a tray. He had opened the door walking backward, and as he turned to face the princess, the sight of the other two threw him off just enough. Though balancing the cake tray on one hoof, his weight was leaning that way and he needed that hoof on the ground to stay stable. Karyn dived forward out of instinct, but Dinky kept her cool and floated the cake away. The crystal pony recovered quickly to jab a hoof under the tray, but he had seen what happened, and Dinky kept the tray locked in her field until he deposited it on the table.

“Thanks a lot,” he said. Karyn took a look at him for the first time. Seeing a crystal pony still threw her off, because it didn’t seem biologically possible for a land-based quadruped to reflect light that way. His coat was a pale yellow, so in her mind she thought of him as a topaz or garnet.

“No problem. Lucky Princess Celestia’s cake didn’t get damaged, or you might have lost your head!”

“Eh? Would she really do that? I thought that...I mean Princess Cadance is in charge—“

“I’m teasing,” said Dinky. “Everypony’s afraid of Princess Celestia when they don’t have to be. She’s nice enough to figure out what’s best for them. By the way, I’m Dinky Hooves. What’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m called Able Baker, Ms. Hooves.”

“Just Dinky is fine.”

With a blush, Able sliced the cake for the princess and, at her direction, the others. Karyn took a bite. “This is really good. I’m not sure it’s worth traveling all this way, but then again, I can’t do so at the drop of a hat.”

Celestia smiled at her. Dinky just brooded. “Problem, Dinky?”

“Oh, no. Just thinking. Able, he’s the only one who makes this, right? That’s why you have to come here?”

“Mmhm.”

“He must be at the top of the cake industry. A really important pony.”

Celesita gave a noncommittal nod. They finished the cake in silence, then Able returned to take the tray. Dinky brightened as he entered. “Did you all like it?” he asked.

“It was awesome,” she said. “Can I ask you something? Oh, sorry, one moment. Princess, are we done meeting?”

“I believe so.”

“Great. Able, can you escort us back to the train station?”

“Really? Sure. Just let me put this away and wash my hooves.”

Dinky and Karyn walked out to the antechamber, and Karyn poked Dinky in the ribs. “You like him, don’t you?”

“I just met him, but I’ve never seen a pony that...sparkly.”

“Right, you’ve never seen a crystal pony before. They all do that. But irrespective of that, he does seem a fine stallion, if I’m any judge, which I’m not.”

Able came out of a side door just then, fairly galloping toward them. “Dinky, I’m glad you waited. Let’s go. Oh, and thank you again for your help in there. I’ve never seen anypony do anything like that. It’s magic!”

“Well, yeah,” Dinky said. “But it’s just levitation.”

“Still...magic!”

Karyn realized she was going to have to be the cultural interpreter. “There aren’t any crystal unicorn ponies, Dinky. All the magic they have up here is Earth pony magic.”

“What’s an Earth pony?” Able asked.

“OK, amend my statement. It’s crystal pony magic. Able, Earth ponies are another kind, like Dinky they don’t sparkle, but they also don’t have horns. And then there are pegasi, who have wings.”

“Like Princess Celestia.”

Dinky took over. “She’s an alicorn. Pegasus wings and unicorn horn. I can’t believe you’ve never been down south where we have all types. We should talk more.”

“We should.” They had arrived outside the train station. “Will you write me?”

“Yes. You can get me in Ponyville, but I’ll be in Canterlot too for a while, now. I’ll update you on when I’m in which place.”

Karyn shook her head. “You guys need to invent text messaging.”

Able hadn’t taken much notice of Karyn, but now he eyed her suspiciously, wondering if she wasn’t also some mysterious creature from the south, or else a sort of familiar to a unicorn. But since she was Dinky’s friend, he treated her as a friend too. But still, his main focus was on Dinky. “Will you be coming back?”

“I don’t know,” Dinky said. “It’s my first time here. I’ve never had occasion to before. But I’ll try.”

“Do it. There’s the train.” Indeed, a train was steaming up for a run. “Good-bye, Dinky.”

“Good-bye, Able.”

Karyn had to drag her on the train before it left, and she was still looking at Able from the vestibule. “You’re downright smitten!” she said.

“Maybe so. A baker, you know. Hm.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing specific. But if he runs a bakery that caters to Princess Celestia, he’s got to be doing all right for himself.”

Biting her lip, Karyn said, “Just don’t be too hasty. You need to get to know him before you get closer.”

“That’s why I’ll be writing him. Ooh, I just thought of something. Mommy will know whenever he writes me. She has the route that goes by our house. Unless I wait until I’m back in Canterlot.”

“You weren’t planning on telling her?”

Dinky blinked as she realized that she hadn’t even considered telling her mother. “I...I just figure it’ll go badly. She wasn’t good with me going off to school. The idea of having a coltfriend, who knows what she’ll do. Plus as you said, I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere. And if it doesn’t, then there’s nothing to tell her. Promise me you won’t say anything?”

“Of course not.”

The rest of the train ride was uneventful, and they reached Derpy’s house as the sun was setting. “Welcome back! What did Princess Celestia say?”

Dinky gave her a rundown of their conversation, leaving out any mention of Able.

“That’s great!” Derpy ultimately said. “Though I’ll be a little disappointed that you won’t be fully graduated.”

“Yes, but on the other hoof, I’ll have a chance to actually do things before any of my contemporaries.”

“I hope you figure out what it is you want to do soon.”

“I have some ideas.” Dinky looked at Karyn with a wink. “Anyway, how about that stew?”

“Oh, right!” Derpy ran to the pot to give it a stir and a taste. “It’s almost ready. Karyn, of course you’ll stay?”

“Of course.” She made herself busy setting the table with Dinky’s help. With full control of her magic back, she could lay out all the spoons with one spell.

Derpy served the stew right out of the pot and they all sat around eating. Dinky and Karyn kept sneaking looks at each other, and if Derpy noticed, she didn’t say anything. After finishing first, Dinky said, “Would you excuse me, Mommy? After today I need to go take care of something.”

“What is it?”

“Just something I need to write.”

Derpy smiled. “Oh, right. You’re going to be studying again for your exams. Just like old times. Go on, then.” Dinky dashed from the table, and Karyn was content that her lie had been one of omission. “How was she, really?” Derpy asked.

Karyn looked up at the stairs to Dinky’s room. “I think she’s going to be all right.”

Author's Note

We're going right back to fan suggestions. Last time, we had a prompt by Morphy. This time I took an idea from...Morphy. And yes, I said that I would only take one idea per person. The reason I am doing another one of Morphy's is simple: I lied. So come back and read that one too.

149: Karyn Hubert's Day Off

Over the four years she had been there, Karyn didn’t realize how much her college had grown in scope. The class sizes were getting bigger every year, and it was for this reason that the finals period was so jammed in schedule. So it was that a class she had on Wednesday had its final on a Friday. It was her last final, and it was set for the afternoon.

The long summer day meant that there was plenty of light left for her to travel home to. Once there, with no more studying to do, she got a jump on her weekend chores and cleaned the apartment. Then she called ahead to check on her graduation robes. She would be walking with her class regardless, but she was fairly confident that she had passed. Indeed it had happened again that, in one of her classes, she had done so well during the semester that even if she had gotten a zero on the final, the average grade would still have been a healthy C+.

When the last dinner dish was washed, Karyn was tired and went to bed early. It was only when she woke up that she realized that she had literally nothing to do.

She wasn’t starting her new job yet for a couple of weeks. Classes and tests were over. She had gone shopping and had groceries for the week. Her home was clean. She had nothing scheduled with Derpy until the next day, nor anything with any other friends. There was nothing to call on her time. It was everything Karyn had hoped for and lamented not having.

Opening the window, she found a sky bluer than any she remembered, with just a few clouds of pure cotton white to give it contrast. The sun shone down through cool air to take back the morning dew. It was perfect weather, the kind that Derpy always wanted to make for her.

Karyn decided that she wasn’t going to waste such a day staying home and watching videos on the internet, as she had too many days before. She hopped in the shower and grabbed her purse to head out. Besides, she thought, if I stay around, I’ll have to eat, and that will mean that the place will get dirtier. Then I’ll have to clean it up again before Derpy comes. This way, it’ll be just like it was this morning.

As she slipped the key into the ignition of the car, she realized the flip side of her decision. Going out would cost money. She had to check her budget. She thought about going back inside, but when she stepped out it was still too nice. She sat on her bumper and brought up the shared document on her phone.

Running down some quick calculations, she concluded that a hundred dollars wouldn’t break her, or even make for a loss. Even though she would only have her job half the year, if she had it calculated right, she still would be breaking even from January to December. It would begin eating into her student loans.

She remembered how she had wanted to spend the previous week, to celebrate getting the job. Derpy had decided on the parallelism of going to the school cafeteria, just as they had for their first meal together in college. It gave Karyn more money to play with that week, and she gave a silent thanks to her friend for being so thrifty.

Karyn got back in the car, enjoying the warmth of the sun through her windshield. She drove to the ATM and withdrew five twenties.

What should I do now? she wondered. She needed time to think, and since the ATM was a drive-through, it wasn’t the place to take that time. She pulled out and drove toward the school. Not many more opportunities to see it, she thought.

The roads at the college were well-maintained and, on a Saturday, barely trafficked. She cruised through with the casual air of a plutocrat driving for pleasure across his estate. At the far end was a parking lot for students who commuted farther than Karyn had to. She pulled in and decided to figure out her next move while taking a walk around.

She flashed back to when her parents had brought her here for a visit, back when she was still in high school. Back then, she had been overwhelmed. Now, this campus was her own.

From the number of cars in the lot, Karyn realized that some finals must still be going on. The sidewalk led up to one of the buildings. She hadn’t had any classes there, but inside she could see a hundred students, freshmen most likely, chewing their pencils in concentration.

Good luck to you all. She gave a silent wish. I hope you all do as well as I have.

Although pleased with herself for her empathy, Karyn felt a part of her enjoying the schadenfreude. The other students had finals, and maybe another one-to-three years of studying to do. Plus they would have to go through the stress of finding jobs. But she had hers.

Karyn heard her stomach growl, and realized that in her haste to begin such a wonderful day she had skipped breakfast. But such a day demanded more than a simple repast. She got back in her car and drove to the nearest town. Even the diners seemed too beneath her that day, but she found a family restaurant that would serve breakfast.

She ordered and ate well. It was the kind of meal that Derpy would put away easily, but Karyn found it difficult to get through the entire stack of pancakes. The breakfast wasn’t expensive, so she left a thirty-percent tip. Waitresses need to live too, she reasoned.

But that was one more path that she wouldn’t have to tread. She heard about how hard it was working in retail, having to deal with angry and entitled customers. She had worked hard to avoid that. Although she still might have to work support, it would be with other professionals, who had no incentive to be demanding and angry.

Checking the time on her phone, Karyn saw that the day had barely begun, but it felt like she’d gotten plenty accomplished already. She’d eaten, and visited her school…and more importantly, made the decision to do nothing important.

She got back in the car and drove with no particular destination in mind. Ideally, she thought, I would have done this on a weekday, when the traffic was lightest. But although there were cars on the highway, there were few of them that she got to enjoy passing the slower drivers and had plenty of room to let the faster ones pass her.

Her mind drifted as she enjoyed the vibrations of the car. What was it that she had heard about cars? That they represented freedom. She thought back to all the times that Derpy was in the car with her, from first learning to drive, to getting her new wheels, to taking the road trip for the spring break. Karyn put her hand on the passenger seat. It was warm, but from the sun.

As she turned she found another location she had gone to with Derpy: the museum. It had been one of the rare times that she could honestly say she didn’t have fun. If anything, Derpy had mollified the boredom and annoyance that she would have felt if she had been alone. Would it still be that bad? There was no reason not to find out. Besides, she thought, there was a movie about a day off, and that had a visit to the museum too.

The exhibit going on was more integrated and unified than the other time she had been there. But more than that, she enjoyed it more because her parents weren’t there lingering over every work of art. Karyn could decide that a piece was too simple or not to her taste, and just walk on by. Besides, it would leave more time for other things she might want to do.

But at the same time, she did wish that Derpy were with her. Just like a few weeks prior, when they had gone to the flower garden, they knew how to move at a good pace rather than getting bogged down like her parents did.

The quiet of the museum was the perfect mood for reflection. All sorts of funny thoughts ran through Karyn’s head. She imagined being watched by a camera as her day, her life, was part of a movie. This part would have a soft soundtrack, and the camera might cut back and forth to Derpy. What was she doing right now? Could she have been so lucky as to also be having a day off? If so, did she have as many fun things to do? Was she thinking about Karyn right then?

Most of the exhibits were in inner rooms. That made sense to Karyn, since the sunlight would only fade the paintings. But there was one room that had an exposed window, letting in the bright sun. Maybe the works in that room were cheaper, or maybe they were made of something that wouldn’t be damaged. Or Karyn considered, maybe it’s some eccentric artist wanted them put in the sun as a symbol for the ephemeral nature of all things.

She was glad that she had come here. It was the perfect waste of time. Or rather, it was a good use of time because it gave her a chance to think.

On her way out, Karyn saw the donation bin. The museum was nominally free, but there was one of those bins with a list of suggested donations. There was a time when Karyn would have bypassed it, thinking whoever designed such a thing to be a sucker. Or because she was a poor college student, and giving less than suggested was what surely what the museum intended. But now she had a job, and knew how much money she had to spend. She dropped in double the suggestion and felt proud of her generosity.

If nothing else, it made up for the times when she would sneak Derpy into places.

But that brought a worry to Karyn’s mind. She had a budget, a job, the beginnings of a social life, and apparently a conscience for dealing with others. Had she grown up? Had she left childish things behind and joined the world of adults?

Karyn knew that there was no single moment when one was declared to be an adult, other than at her legal age of majority, and that didn’t count. It would be a process, but for the first time, she thought that she might be on the downward slope of that hill.

As though to ward off the emotions that came with this concern, she decided to go back to the amusement park. This would cost her the bulk of her remaining cash, but she was ready to throw caution to the wind.

The park was crowded. It was the peak time, but if Karyn had known that she was going to encounter an existential crisis, she would have planned it for earlier. Still, it wasn’t so bad because once she got near the head of the line, she could always get on when they needed to fill one more spot.

But if she took the big roller coasters too much, her day would slip through her fingers. She opted instead for the merry-go-round, and for the rotating swingset that pushed her out forty-five degrees from vertical, and for the Ferris wheel. She remembered how happy Derpy had been on that last ride the first time she had gone on, even though she could fly. Once that ride ended, Karyn went for cotton candy and popcorn. Her parents had never let her snack at the amusement park when she was a little girl. The snacks were expensive, and they were always afraid of her upchucking on the rides.

She decided to go on the largest coaster one more time, and then leave. The crowds had begun to thin out, or else Karyn got lucky, with barely a ten-minute wait before she got to ride. And she promised herself that she would not be sick, would hold her stomach with the snacks she just had, at least until she got off the ride.

As the car was pulled up the incline by the conveyor belt, Karyn thought more. Growing up didn’t mean just accepting responsibility. There was an element of power too. She was in charge of her own life now. Risks were hers to take, if she was prepared for the consequences. No one would help her, but no one would stop her either.

And could that be an opportunity for deeper living? Higher highs and lower lows? Is that what growing up is all about? If so, then it’s worth it. To have a chance to see new things and learn what I wouldn’t do if I stayed a child, that’s worth it. But I’m not going to lose my sense of fun.

Then she couldn’t think about those things anymore, because she’d reached the top. The roller coaster dropped her, and she wanted to just experience the sensations.

Once she got off the ride and began making her way toward the exit, her mind drifted again. If anything, the adrenalin rush had sharpened her thinking, putting into perspective all the realizations she had had about growing up.

She wished Derpy were there to talk about it, though she realized that, if she had been, there wouldn’t have been anything to talk about. But Karyn always leaned on Derpy as a sounding board, to take her thoughts and translate them into words.

But that too was a point of growing up, and how she could still stay young at heart. Ponies, cartoons, and dolls were playthings for young girls, but friends…friends were forever. That she happened to have a friend based on one of those playthings was no different from anyone who had a childhood companion and kept up the friendship all their lives.

As she thought about all this, she crossed the parking lot and got into her car. She had spent time and money, but she still felt that she needed something to cap off this perfect day.

There was only one place Karyn could think of that was free, and fortunately the season fit the occasion. It was a little out of her way, and it meant a long drive back, but it was right.

Just as the crowds at the amusement park had dwindled away, so it was that when Karyn arrived at the beach, she saw few cars, and half of them were being packed up as she entered. If she got some funny looks, wondering why someone would arrive in the evening, she didn’t care. There was no sign that said that the park closed at dusk.

She didn’t intend to go in the water, or do much of anything, but she had a ratty old chair in her trunk, and she put it up high on the sand, not far from the entrance, where she could watch the waves. Then she turned her chair to face west.

Derpy had taken her to see the sunrise in Equestria, on a beach. It seemed fitting, now, that she should watch the sun set on a beach on Earth. It was the end of a chapter of her life, just as meeting Derpy had been the beginning.

Back then, she had been adrift. There had been a plan, once, of the course her life should take. She would do a semester or two of school, just to relax, then wait for Mike to come home. They would marry, he would finish school, they’d start a family. Money would be tight, at first, but her parents would help.

But it never came to pass. Mike was shiftless. Karyn hadn’t heard from him in over a year, and honestly didn’t care. There was no animosity, just a clean breakup. Still, it had made her buckle down, get serious about study for the first time.

And then there was Derpy.

The casually answered question in a moment of respite: Would you like to live in Equestria? Probably few others had answered. And Derpy had chosen her. From there it had been four years of growth, four years of coming together as friends, as each mentored and learned from the other.

What now?

The beach was deserted. The disc of the sun had gone below the horizon, and only the leftover light let her see. She stood up, and a breeze blew her hair out to the side. If she could have seen herself from the outside, the scene would have looked like the end of one of the anime shows she used to watch.

What was it that the mayor had said in the background pony episode? That everyone was the star of their own story. That was true, but the problem with being the star was that you had to go through all the troubles before you got to the happy ending. If there was one. Karyn much preferred being the background character, the one who had a brush with the protagonist, but lived a life happy and quiet.

She was ready for that now. Her life was coming into balance. Work and spend money, have time with friends and time alone, be young and grown old, see a sunrise and a sunset. Like the old song had said, to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

The last light of the sun had gone. Out on the shore, there were only the lights of the stars, and the sound of the waves. Karyn used the flashlight on her phone to get her back to her car.

Although she had never liked driving at night, it wasn’t so bad. The causeway was empty; she could use her brights. When she finally found her exit, guided by GPS, she had to douse them, but now she had streetlights.

This won’t last she thought as she got back onto familiar roads. I’m feeling a high from all the fun stuff I did today, or just from having the day off. Tomorrow I’ll go back to preparing for the new job and figuring out how I’m going to get by.

But she couldn’t make herself believe that. She didn’t want this to be a passing fancy. And besides, some of the conclusions she had reached were factual. Her life was better now. She had achieved a kind of balance. Those facts would stay true tomorrow.

There was no sense ignoring the good feelings while she had them. Karyn smiled, because, for the moment, it was more comfortable to smile than to let her mouth droop.

She was reaching her home, but from a different way as usual. It fit. She’d go out again many times, and usually she’d return the same way. But not today. Today was special.

It was all the more special because it was rare, and Karyn knew that it was right to be rare. She would go back to work on her life the next day, and she looked forward to it. She would work hard at her new job, and at her new life, to make sure it was stable and prosperous. Someday, maybe, many years from now, there would be another chance to have a day like today. But until that happened, she would enjoy the work.

Pulling out her keys, she opened the side door of the big house as though it were the first time. True to her plan, the apartment was clean, pristine, with even the dust of the day having barely accumulated. If she was to keep it that way, it would have to be a quick night. She checked her e-mail and a few sites on her computer, but then she decided that it was time for bed.

She lay there, unable to sleep, her consciousness hanging on. It was like trying to sleep on Christmas Eve, though all the land lay quiet, the anticipation and excitement would keep her awake. But she closed her eyes and drifted, hoping she would dream of Derpy.

***

The long summer days meant that the sun was up long before Karyn awoke. When she did, it was with a murmur and a stretch and a yawn. She had slept well. It was Sunday. It was her day with Derpy.

It took but little time to correct what had been put wrong, to make her bed and put yesterday’s clothes in the hamper. Then a quick shower, and ready for the day.

They had no plans for that Sunday. Rarely did they ever. They would take what life gave them.

Four years prior, she had sat at her desk. It was a different desk, a different chair, a different laptop, a different Karyn. At that time, she had barely been paying attention. Now, all was focus.

She put the water in the coffee pot and the bread in the toaster and sat down to wait.

It was happening. The shine and the melodic tinkle of magic, real magic. The sound, purely physical, of the air being pushed out of the way or destroyed. And there she was, the gray mare with the blonde mane, and the eyes forever crossed. Karyn stood and smiled.

“Hello, Derpy.”

Author's Note

Next week, the end of Lyra's Human 2: Derpy's Human. Here is your last preview:

She walked toward the exit, checking first for Ms. Harshwhinny.

“Hey!” she called out. They had already started walking away.

“Karyn!” All was hugs and kisses for a few moments.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She started back, but Derpy turned off her spell again. “I can’t let you go out there like this. This is too important.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“Wait. Give me a moment. I’ve got to think about this and say it right.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karyn went on high alert. Soon it would be her turn to move, and she didn’t want to hold up the process at all.

“Catch me if I trip,” she whispered to Derpy.

“I always will.”

Thank you all for sticking with this story for this long. I will be happy to bring the last chapter to you next week.

And one more: Derpily Ever After

Judith Miller’s watch beeped, and she tapped it with her finger to see the alert. It was almost unnecessary, as the black shadow out the window caught her eye. She zipped her suitcase closed.

“Kids! The car’s here!” she called down the hall.

“Seriously?! I just got home!” Al Miller’s voice was cracking, which wasn’t unusual for a ninth-grader, but it took all the force out of his complaint.

“Which should have given you plenty of time to do your homework.”

“I didn’t get any for the weekend.”

Judith suspected that her son was lying, but didn’t call him out on it. The school year was young. There was time to get him straightened out later.

“Well, I’m ready,” said a voice that had already deepened, though not much. Kelly was attractive, a fact that caused Judith significant consternation, more than her own mother ever had to deal with. Judith was as plain as her mother, and had found her husband based solely on the force of her personality.

“Sure you are,” Al called. “You don’t have to go to school.”

“I do next week, and I have to pack for more than two nights.”

“Mom, why does college start later and finish earlier than high school?”

Judith’s watch beeped again. “Let’s argue about it in the car. Are you packed?”

He slung a backpack over his shoulder. A rumpled pile of clothes pressed onto a laptop and tablet. “Yeah.”

“Then come on, the meter’s running.”

“I don’t see why I have to throw away every weekend going over to Grandma Karyn’s.”

***

It had long been proven that rear-facing seats were safer, and as Judith got into the right-hand seat, she thought that both the front and back could be made that way. But in the first place, that would eliminate the conversation pit that the car had, and in the second, the last car crash had been over five years ago and made all the news sites.

“Mommy?” Kelly said. “Is it true that you used to own a car all on your own?”

“Yes, it is. Well, technically I leased it, but it was mine to use and no one else’s. Then again, my first car was given to me, used, by Grandma Karyn.”

“And you had to drive it yourself all the time, not just in emergencies?”

“That’s right. It was unsafe and inefficient. We couldn’t just be sitting here talking while we traveled. I would have had to keep my eyes on the road, and if I wanted to take a call I would have been distracted and risked our lives.”

Al was leaning against the glass playing some game or other on his phone, but he chimed in. “And Kel, don’t try to bring up that Grandma Karyn invented the auto-drive car, because she didn’t.”

“Of course she didn’t, Al. You never paid attention. Grandma Karyn made up the story about testing the auto-drive car because Derpy had been learning to drive, and they got caught by someone.”

“Yeah, except that didn’t happen either. Grandma Karyn never had an invisible horse drive a car, because there are no such things as invisibility, horses that can fly, or other dimensions.”

Kelly leaned up against her own window and clammed up. Judith was relieved. This was an argument that they’d had too many times before.

But Al wasn’t giving up that easily. He put his phone down and needled his sister. “You still believe them, though, don’t you. Geez, you’re older than me and you still haven’t grown up.”

“If growing up means that I have to forget about Grandma Karyn’s stories, then call me Peter Pan.”

“That’s enough, you two.” Judith held her hands between them, even though they were keeping to their own sides well enough. “Whatever you both think of her, she’s your grandmother and she loves you.”

There was no more conversation until they reached the house.

Karyn lived in a kind of split-level. The lawn sloped up to the entrance, so Judith and her children walked to this. To the left a garage left over from the era of automobile ownership had been turned into a fully functional living space. But she no longer needed it.

At the entrance, stairs led up to the living room and four of the five bedrooms. Karyn had planned for a larger family, but it never came to pass. Still, guests were frequent and rare was the weekend that they were all empty. Indeed, usually Kelly and Al occupied two, and as children they had had endless fun playing hide and seek. In Judith’s childhood, it was the Only House.

Still spry, Karyn heard the door opening and went to greet them all. Dropping to her knees, she embraced Kelly before she reached the top of the stairs. Al stood by with his hands in his pockets. When the path was clear, he gave her a quick kiss and then made for the living room where he collapsed into a chair and resumed playing on his phone.

“Hi, Mom,” said Judith.

“Hello. Cup of coffee?”

“Thanks.” She watched Kelly run to the bathroom. Both children were out of earshot. “How are things?”

“About finished.”

“How finished?”

“It’s going to be tonight.”

Judith said nothing. She looked back at Al, but he was still lost in his electronic world. When Kelly returned, she let her play cards with her grandmother, a favorite pastime of theirs.

She had a second cup of coffee, a rarity for her. But she wanted to be on her highest alert, to remember this night forever. From her seat at the dining room table she could see her mother and her daughter at their game, and her son in the other room. Al wasn’t a bad child by any means. By all accounts he would be a success once he lost some of his flippancy and buckled down. But not too soon. He was so much like her father…

It shook her out of her reverie to think of her father again. She knew it would have to be dealt with, and once Karyn finished her game with Judith and sent her off to play, she came in and sat down.

“You’re doing it because of Dad,” Judith began.

“I’m doing it because I’ve always know that I would do it. But you’re right, I wouldn’t have done it when he was alive.”

She looked over at the picture that she kept between two candles. It was of a younger man, resplendent in a suit and tie. Careful observation of the skin would lead one to conclude that he had once been heavy and lost a great deal of weight.

“I still don’t see how you two got together.”

“Well, you know the story. Your father caught me and Derpy one time, and—“

Judith held up the hand. “I’ve heard that story a hundred times. But I thought you didn’t like each other.”

“Sometimes the closest friendships start out that way. Where you begin as rivals, but then you realize that you’re having so much fun getting together to argue with each other and fight that one day you give up and admit that you like each other.”

“Well, I haven’t heard the story a hundred times.” Kelly came bouncing into the kitchen. It was clear that she had only heard the last part of the conversation.

“It must be ninety-nine,” said Al.

“If you don’t want to hear Grandma Karyn’s stories, then go back to playing with your phone.”

“Kelly, I would like nothing better than to listen to Grandma Karyn actually tell us what life was like for her growing up. Everyone says how important it is to respect the past and what it can teach us, and I agree with that. It just happens to be the case that our particular grandmother would rather spin yarns than tell us real stories. It’s why I liked listening to Grandpa better. He made being a detective sound cool.”

Karyn laughed. “There was probably about as much truth in his stories as you think there is in mine. I’ll tell you that most of his work was investigating from a desk, doing research on a person online, not trailing them in cars like you’re thinking of. Which I was fine with, I’ll tell you.”

“You’re calling him a liar?”

“No, just that he told stories in his own way. Are you calling me one when I tell you about Derpy?”

Al bristled, but it was the playful banter of family, not a serious argument. He shrugged and shook his head. “OK, how about this? How did you and Grandpa get together afterwards? You’ve told us almost nothing about after you left school.”

“You’re right, I haven’t. But there isn’t much to tell. I moved from job to job for the first five years or so before I settled in at a small company that got bought up by Google. That made me comfortable and gave me the chance to work on the kind of tech I always wanted to. Moved into embedded software that the average person doesn’t have to see the insides of and can’t break. That gave your grandfather and me enough breathing room to get married, which wasn’t as expensive as it is today but still cost a pretty penny. Then there was your mother, and we always talked about having more kids, but I never caught at the right time, so we decided that we were meant to only have one. It was a happy time, and happy times don’t make for the best stories.

“In all honesty, we could have made it just on my income, but Grandpa likes his work, he was always passionate about it, and he was good. There were times we didn’t see each other for a while because he was on a case, but he got the kind of reputation where the other detectives called him in for the tough ones. That gave him times when he wasn’t working at all, and managed the household, once I taught him the budgeting techniques that Derpy explained to me.”

Al’s eyes rolled, as it seemed every story that Karyn told went back to Derpy.

“I liked those times,” said Judith. “There were times when Dad raised me all on his own, and times that you did, Mom. It was interesting. Like, I could relate to both my single-parent and two-parent friends. But I never got to ask you for something when Dad said no or vice versa.”

Karyn laughed, but Al hadn’t gotten the answer to his question. “But what I want to know is how you and Grandpa got together. When did he decide that you were the one?”

“You think it was his decision?” Karyn gave him a kiss on the forehead. “But OK, your grandfather and I were enemies at first. I didn’t like the way he kept invading my privacy, and he didn’t like that I kept secrets from him. Also I had Derpy cast some weird spells. Or maybe he did see something in me right from the first, and his suspicion was just his way of trying to get close to me. You never know how you’re going to find a friend, even a lifelong one as he was. That’s why you’ve got to be open to new people.

“But I digress. After we both finished school, we bumped into each other a few times until we knew where each other lived…although he probably knew where I lived first. We kept going to places we knew we would be, until we realized that we were enjoying fighting with each other more than being apart. After a few months of doing that without saying anything, we decided we might as well call each other friends. He said that he hoped we would be more than that, and by that time he had gotten into shape and mellowed his personality. I said yes, and then, eventually, I said yes when he asked me to marry him.”

“Well, I think that’s sweet. Especially the part about Derpy.” Kelly looked at her brother, but Al refused to take the bait on this occasion.

“My goodness, it’s getting late. Time seems to fly by more quickly these days.” Karyn stood up, indicating to her grandchildren that it was time for bed. Al was content to walk off with a cursory good-night, but Kelly insisted on being tucked in by her grandmother just as she had when she was a little girl. Karyn didn’t object.

When she returned to the table, Judith was holding on to her coffee cup, and Karyn could see that her hand was shaking.

“Does it have to be tonight?” the younger woman asked.

“No, it doesn’t have to be, but it’s going to be. I’m all the more sure after talking to the children about your father. Ever since he died…Judith, dear, I don’t have the strength to be a widow, waking up alone, watching TV all day, going to doctor’s appointments, hanging out with other widows, talking about our ailments. Since he passed, I’ve had something to do, to keep me going, but now…I’m old, my darling. I’ve been old for a while, but now I’m starting to feel it. Something has to be done.

“And it’s not as if I’m saying goodbye forever.”

“Aren’t you?” Karyn said nothing, so Judith continued. “Tell me that you really believe you’ll ever see Al again.”

“Do you think that he will miss me that much?”

“Won’t you miss him?”

“Dreadfully. But some sacrifices have to be made. It’s part of life. I’ve always told you that life isn’t as happy as in my stories of Equestria.”

“Then won’t you check on him once more?”

Karyn smiled. “Of course I already am. I sent them to bed early. I didn’t think they’d really go.”

Judith had learned a while back that Karyn, ever technologically savvy, had wired her house for sound. As a daughter, she found this unconscionable. As a mother, she understood completely. Karyn had denied Judith privacy, but in exchange had given her a long leash so long as she didn’t commit crimes or endanger herself. It was good policy.

So now she turned on the monitoring. As she predicted, both her grandchildren had gone to one room and were talking. For all their differences, they were still siblings.

“I’m not saying that there’s nothing true in Grandma’s stories.” It was Al’s voice. “There are some real elements in there. But isn’t it coincidental how none of her stories have any proof with them? Like, supposedly she was given a ten-million-dollar dress, but chose not to spend any money. Or, she was a shapeshifter—“

“Changeling,” Kelly said, interrupting.

“Whatever. But she conveniently lost those abilities a year later.”

“What about her cutie mark? That could be tested.”

“That’s safest of all. She knows that no one’s going to ask to look at her backside; it’s not done in polite society.

“You have an answer for everything.”

Al snorted. “I just want to know why you believe in fairy tales when you’re an adult now.”

“Because it makes me happy, OK? Because I care more about happiness and friendship than about being right all the time. Maybe you’re right, and there’s no magic in the world, and there’s no such thing as ponies or Derpy Hooves. But if you are, then that just means that the world sucks.”

She got up and slammed that door, indicating that they had been in Al’s room. Judith turned to her mother. “I suppose that we shouldn’t go comfort her.”

“No, not yet. There will be a time for it.” Karyn got up and stretched her aching bones. “Right now, I think that I’d like to go to bed. I find myself eager for tomorrow.”

“All right, Mom.” Judith gave her one more hug, and they went off to their own rooms. As soon as they did, Karyn came back out and took one more walk around the house. Everything that she needed to take with her, she had.

When dawn came, Karyn rose first. It was important for her to keep things quiet so as to not wake the children. Creeping down to the kitchen, she made herself some coffee and waited.

It didn’t take long. There was the familiar sound and effect of magic, not once, not twice, but thrice. Three ponies stood in the kitchen, but Karyn’s house was so expansive that they didn’t want for space. Derpy and Karyn nodded as though greeting each other from across a room, then couldn’t hold themselves and embraced. When they finally let go, she turned to the unicorn beside her. “Hi, Dinky.”

The third pony was an Earth pony, or would have been taken as such by any casual observer. She had jet black fur, but as she moved, light from some unseen source flashed across her coat and made it shine with a purple light that was darker than black. Her mane was cut in a pageboy that made it look like a helmet, and she pawed at the ground while looking around, as though afraid a monster would emerge. She was a rare hybrid, a half-breed Crystal pony.

“Well, Downy,” Dinky said, “this is Earth.”

“Yes, Mommy, it is.” Downy had picked up Dinky’s term for her dam. Although Dinky had finally grown out of it, and now called Derpy “Mother,” she was happy to see the tradition carry on.

“You don’t have to be scared.”

“You tell me that, but my body shakes anyway. At least Karyn is here to comfort me.”

The old lady and the young mare came together in embrace. Karyn rubbed her mane, but it fell right back into place. She had a special place in her heart for Downy. Derpy was older, Dinky the same age, and Downy younger. She’d gotten to experience a relationship with a pony from all sides.

Whether roused by the noise or because she hadn’t slept well, Judith came downstairs to see her mother and the three ponies.

“Hi. You weren’t thinking of making a clean getaway, were you?”

“No, not at all. I would have come to wake you.” Karyn’s voice had no trace of dishonesty.

“So what are your plans once you get to Equestria? When you told me you were leaving forever, I sort-of took that as an absolute. But I want to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“Of course I will be. And don’t call it leaving forever. Think of it as…retirement. Just like other old people move to Florida or the islands. In any case, once I get there I’ll move with Derpy. We both think that we’re good enough friends—and old enough—to not have roommate squabbles. We’ll stay out of everypony’s way, and I’m sure the princesses won’t kick up a fuss about one more human living in Equestria.

“Oh, that reminds me. Time might stop here on Earth when we leave, but it’ll get going eventually, and you won’t notice.

“Where was I? Right, what we’re doing. Just relaxing, that’s all. Though I was thinking of finding Queen Chrysalis and asking to be a changeling queen again. I could get rid of some of my wrinkles. At the time, I thought I was supposed to be human, but now I’ve got to take what I can get.”

Judith treasured these last moments with her mother on Earth, and was listening carefully. “If the time stops, will I not see you again?”

“Of course you will. We’ve gotten good at moving it when we translate to Equestria. When you visit with Dinky, she’ll bring you to see me. More important, at this point in her life, is for Kelly to meet Downy so they can grow together. And someday…

“Dinky will come get you when your time comes, just as Downy will come for Kelly someday. It’ll be up to you and to her to keep the tradition. You weren’t born into a normal family, but I make no apologies for that. Perhaps it was always meant to be that Derpy’s line and ours were supposed to be family, but something got crossed up and we wound up in different universes, and we needed magic to reconnect us.”

Judith gave her mother a hug and told her that she loved her. Karyn went to stand by Derpy and Judith by Dinky.

“May I meet Kelly now?” asked Downy.

Karyn said, “No, but you can see her. Dinky, would you take her to Kelly’s room?”

While the ponies left, Karyn went to see her grandson. He was asleep, but stirring. She put a hand on his head.

“You’re very different from me. But that’s who you are,” Karyn whispered. “It’s better for you not to know. You’ll grow up believing that you have a good grip on the world, and it will make you happy. Though you’ll not see me again, I think you’ll get over it soon.”

Al’s eyes flitted open. “Gramma?”

“It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”

“Love you,” he muttered, closing his eyes.

Then Karyn went back to Kelly’s room. She was sleeping more soundly and did not notice the three ponies in her room. Downy was hovering over. “She’s pretty,” she said. “I’m sure that we will be good friends.”

“So am I,” Karyn whispered. “But let’s let her sleep right now. Next week, your mother will show you how to calibrate the spell and visit her.”

“I’ll give her some preparation and warning,” said Judith as she headed toward the door. “Rather than just have Downy pop into existence in her room.”

“That worked out well for me. But I see your point. Give me a moment with her.”

Judith and the ponies left, and Karyn repeated her gesture of devotion that she had given her grandson. “I love you, the most and the best. I’m sorry I have to leave you, but my greatest gift to you will be knowing that magic exists and that you are a part of it.”

Kelly did not wake, but Karyn didn’t mind. She would see her again.

Downstairs to the great room they all went. Karyn kissed her daughter one more time. “I’ve made arrangements to put the house and everything in your name. All my affairs are settled. I’ve had a good life on this world. It’s time for me to go.”

“I understand now,” Judith said, but there were still tears in her eyes.

“Come and see me in Equestria. I won’t be far away.”

She mounted up on Derpy, who looked up at her. “Now everything will be perfect, forever.” She slipped her hoof into the spell that she would use for the last time. Dinky and Downy prepared theirs.

They turned their hooves, and the only people left on Earth were human.