One year later…

I’ve been living in my new apartment a mile south of Ponyville’s city limit for half a year now, and I still can’t shake the habit of waking up early in the morning. Richard, ever the gentleman, had already woke up to head to Cherry Berry’s hangar at the new Ponyville Airport, and let me sleep in a full thirty minutes. Better than a bucket of water over my head to be certain but I’d rather wake up with the sun like normal ponies.

Finding the pull switch on my electric lamp in the darkness, my eyes caught the first of two letters on my nightstand. I’d taken to re-reading them before I went to sleep instead of filing them away. The first was from Linky, who’d reached the Gryphon Kingdom safely months earlier, thank Celestia, and said she would write again as soon as possible, but from what she’d seen, the Shetland Provinces had been left a wasteland that even with all the magical and human assistance available would take a while to recover from. For the foreseeable future, she would be lucky to have access to a post office, much less a new cell phone tower to get reception from.

“Twinkleshine’s magic is amazing, but she hasn’t got dragonfire to send messages like Twilight,” Linky explained in her letter, referring to our Princess of Friendship’s young drake servant, Spike. In any case, she’d have her own protection available in the form of patrolling griffins and guardsponies, and unlike water balloons and snowballs, their projectiles — and the foreleg-mounted crossbow that she herself now wielded — would do far more than just hurt somepony’s feelings.

Celestia help the fool that tries to mess with her! I’d thought, shaking my head at the idea.

She told me she had a griffin in Arnau who would pick up her mail, but that I could expect serious delays between replies. I wrote back wishing her the safest path through the wasteland and to keep in touch as often as she could.

The second letter was from the writer of the Manehatten Post’s Gentleman For Mares articles: Five Stars. This one was much older than the last, written just before she’d taken the portal to Earth months earlier. Before she left, I had the honor of getting to meet her at the mine and Richard’s wedding. She wished us both luck and told me the entire hope of Gentleman For Mares was to bring about the very situation Richard and I now found ourselves in — a happily matched pair. While she said it was ‘regrettable’ for Gentleman For Mares to lose such a talented Gentleman, she went on to note that in the long run, it was the best possible outcome as there was ‘one less lonely mare in Equestria’.

I chuckled to myself. Me lonely? Never! She did have a point though: even after what happened, or nearly happened with Lily, I hadn’t regretted my decision to marry Richard one bit and I had no nostalgia for the days of stallion searching. Likewise, I don’t think Richard regretted leaving Gentleman for Mares and settling down with me… though to my occasional chagrin, he had certainly retained his appetite for adventure and dangerous fun!

With a couple hours before work to burn, I went into the kitchen to do some cleaning up. The land around Cherry’s hangar was now home to a growing industrial park and is the reason we have to thank for our current home. It wasn’t the Shemareaton I’d stayed in during a recent visit to Manehattan, but my new apartment was not far behind, at least to somepony like me whose sources of light once came from kerosene lamps and open windows. Everything was now powered by electricity generated by our local and newly hydroelectric dam, even the oven. I had a modest refrigerator compared to the one back at the hotel, but it kept the food cold, and the light shut off when the door was closed (at least I think it did!). Our new home was everything I could have dreamed!

After wiping down the kitchen counters and mopping the tiled kitchen floor, I went to work in the living room with the vacuum, starting with the left side facing out. This wall was dedicated to Richard’s side of our happy family: family members, lots of pegasus and griffin friends he’s made throughout his time in Equestria, and a poster autographed by Rainbow Dash. She hadn’t taken her rejection back at the Gala personally, and the two of them had become fast friends when she found out he was working to build flying machines to allow flightless pegasi like her godchild, Scootaloo, and non-pegasi ponies the chance to experience the convenience of air travel — once the technology was perfected and fully integrated with Equestrian magic, of course.

Maneuvering around Richard’s lifting equipment on the left wall facing out, I made my way to the other side of the room. The infrastructure for broadcast television hasn’t been constructed yet, but we already had a purchased a new T.V. and had watched many a movie and shared more than a few bowls of popcorn in front of it.

On my side of the living room, hanging over the sofa, were pictures of my friends and family. Lily and Golden Harvest stood side by side in the far left frame; the two of them were still very much a happy couple and I daresay still in their honeymoon phase. Despite opening up a great deal in the last year, Lily hadn’t shown much inclination towards finding a stallion to form a herd with, but for Golden Harvest’s part, she wasn’t pushing the issue. The two of them vastly preferred mares to stallions anyway and were happy just to have each other.

The middle frame next to Lily and Golden Harvest held a picture of what I suspected was going to become a new herd — Daisy and Dizzy Twister, plus one of my old coltfriends, Time Turner, and his now-longtime fillyfriend, the mailmare Derpy Hooves. The four of them were beginning to see a lot of each other these days and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they finally decided to make it official. To be sure, they would be cramped for space with all four of them in the old flower house even once Lily moved out. At least they wouldn’t have issues bringing down a wall or two with Derpy around if they decided to remodel, though I shook my head at the memory of the great Town Hall destruction by her hooves. It’s a miracle this town still stands, all things considering.

On the far right frame, Lyra heartstrings, Bon-Bon and Sam stood smiling. Sam was a rarity among humans: a human man in a herd. It only seemed natural though, it was Ponyville’s worst kept secret that Lyra and Bon-Bon were a matched pair, and while Bon-Bon was initially cold towards humans at first, that’s normally how she relates to everypony. I wondered if he’d taught her to play the guitar yet and made a note to give her a call later and ask.

With Celestia’s sun due up in an hour, I locked up the apartment and walked out into the early morning. It had felt odd to be walking to my old home at first as if it was just another shop that I happened to work at. I’d ate, slept, and occasionally even had a good rut there. They were good times. But all good things must end, and life must move on. And I wouldn’t give up my current one for anything.

At least I still had my friends, my trusty slingshot, and another earth ponies vs. unicorns day at the flower shop. Even without Linky here, we had the honor of earth ponies to uphold. And besides, I can’t very well let down those who come to appreciate my wet fur, after all!

• The End -

Author's Note

Until we meet again, Gentlemanverse.

Edit 5/22/2018: Well that's the entire story edited by Grammarly. I can honestly say I've learned a lot since 2015 and while I was certainly more relevant back then and writing stuff that got hundreds of likes, I'm a better man than I was back then. Here's to better in 2018.