dC/dt ≠ 0

The amount of stares we drew on entering town still creeps me out to this day.

More unnerving were the whispers. Twilight apparently hadn’t exactly thought through what mysteriously closing the library to leave a day later with a stranger would look like to the local gossip mill.

Thankfully, Twilight had her head buried in her agenda as we walked to the train station. She didn’t see the stares and definitely didn’t hear the rumors.

For my part, I just silently swore never to use this disguise again and added damage control to my list of chores.

“Don’t forget anything!” Twilight called from the window as the train pulled away.

I shook my head and chuckled. That made 473 reminders of today’s itinerary, give or take a couple I might have zoned out on. Any more and I would have them all bouncing around my head for the rest of my life.

I waited until the train was just out of earshot before perking up as if I’d remembered something. Running after it I called out. “Say hi to Auntie Velvet for me!” As I faked catching my breath at the end of the platform I listened to what the gossip mill had to say.

“She’s just family? That’s way less interesting.” The reporter that had been stalking us sulked.

“Aww... And here I was hoping Twilight had finally found somepony.” One of the local flower vendors gave a melancholic sigh.

“Does that mean I have to give you back the money?” That one irked me. I wondered if Rainbow Dash knew her weather pegasi made bets on the job.

There wasn’t much more I could do without letting on I’d heard, and that would just make me seem defensive. Thus – whistling a jaunty tune – I turned around and trotted out the station.

I was determined to enjoy my pseudo-freedom for the day. The analysts were busy reworking the master equation. The lords were busy parsing a report I’d sent in buried under three different kinds of encryption layers. Twilight was taking Spike to Canterlot. And nobody left in Ponyville had the faintest idea I was a changeling yet.

There was the princess’ little list of chores, but they gave me exactly what I wanted for the day – namely a nice quiet stroll through town.

I had spent barely any time outside since my chrysalling from nymph to lord. I missed simply wandering the wastes on my own, lost in our thoughts.

This was the perfect day to do that. The sky wasn’t that deep crisp blue I loved back home, but the sun was balmy instead of oppressive. There wasn’t the comfort of warm sand between my fetlock cavities, but there was a delightful breeze dancing through them instead.

Fresh cobblestones passed beneath my hooves as I began to tour the town. Ponies moved about their day, heading to work in the early morning. Earth ponies trundled forward at a sturdy trot, while pegasai zipped past on the winds. Unicorns strolled at a leisurely pace, and even a mule or two trotted along.

There was plenty of chatter buzzing about the air, and I received a constant stream of friendly greetings and compliments. I answered with simple nods and waves of acknowledgement, continuing to whistle as I headed down the street.

The whispered rumors seemed to have disappeared without the presence royalty to fuel them, but I figured it more likely they were now growing out of ear shot.

“She spent the night with who?!?” Sometimes out of earshot rumors came into earshot when shouted from across town.

Ve placed the voice as Twilight’s friend Rarity and sighed. I added a trip to Rarity’s to the list of chores. I didn’t want to, but it seemed ve would need to for proper damage control.

“What do you mean she was pink?!? What kind of pink? There are at least 5 shades of pink that wouldn’t flatter Twilight in the least!”

I mentally underlined the trip to Rarity’s twice.

There were simpler chores to handle, however. Ve opened our senses to the emotions in the air.

The air tasted of a mix of different feelings – too many feelings in fact. It was as if somepony had poured hot sauce, vinegar, carrots, peas, whole potatoes, cotton candy, chicken, and even the kitchen sink into a cauldron to be served flambe. There were just too many conflicting emotions drifting off of the houses to get anything useful. A front door opening here or there sent a brief waft of a more stable emotional cocktail, but ve doubted shopping for food in other ponies households would endear us to them – even if ve were only looking for ambient emotion.

Thatched roofs gave way to tents and stalls as ve entered the market place. Ve had barely glanced around when ve noticed a particular apple stall with a particular Apple family owner and her friends.

Applejack was too busy tending to customers to notice me, and Rainbow was napping on a singular cloud above the stand. I did not escape notice, however, as two soulless blue-eyes locked on to me the minute I whistled my way into the square. Ve had many names for the monstrosity before us in the Archives. Anomaly. Enigma. Reason’s Bane. All of these names – and more – were used to describe the abomination before me.

As she saw me recognition lit in her eyes, and I panicked.

I continued to whistle in a desperate attempt to remain nonchalant.

Her mouth opened to utter what could only be a baseless accusation of my disguise given through the clarity of her madness.

“Oh my gosh! The new ice cream mare’s here and she knows the jingle and everything!” The perky pink body turned to match the previous 180 of its owners head and began what ve can only label as pronking up the road towards me.

Ve suddenly realized just what a bad idea it was to have a rainbow snow cone for a cutie mark.

“I want a double chocolate dip and a painful pepper pop…” The unearthly chatter did not cease as the creature pronked onward at a pace no creature should pronk. Our pupils dilated. I didn’t run. Ve knew ve could not hide from Pinkie Pie.

“…And a banana-swizzle sandwich…”

The stabilization plates on my legs slid into place – sealing my fetlock cavities to prevent fractures. A quick calculation on our part had us shifting our carapace density to strengthen the armor at the estimated point of impact while softening the surrounding shell to mesh with the tactile illusions on the disguise spell.

“…And a peanut butter and pickle split…”

All this left a few milliseconds to have my life flash before my eyes as the pink mare tackled me to the ground.

We tumbled end over end for at least a good ten feet or so before stopping. I woozily looked up from the ground to see Pinkie Pie looming over me. Her face was mere inches from mine, and she was still prattling off a large and varied list of exotic ice cream flavors.

Ve attempted to put together a coherent response that might allow us to bring some form of order to the meeting but found ourselves too muddled from the impact. Thus I was thankful when Applejack arrived on the scene.

“Simmer down now, Sally.” The sturdy farmer pulled Pinkie back a few feet – a feat in and of itself given the amount of enthusiasm the Unsolvable Puzzle was showing – and tossed her a warm fritter as a momentary distraction.

I watched in morbid fascination as Pinkie tore into the fritter much like a bear would gut a fish. The joy radiating off of her was like a thick and murky fog of sweet and delicious cotton candy. If she left this much emotion everywhere, I could probably live off of visiting Sugar Cube Corner and her various parties alone.

I made a mental note to look into it further.

That much emotion also might explain why our infiltrator reports on her tended to lack coherence. I was already slightly giddy from all the ambient joy myself. Someling who wasn’t a lord might overload on that much free emotion.

Ve were snapped out of our observations as ve noticed Applejack holding out a hoof towards us. She had been saying something, but ve had been too focused on the Endless Riddle to notice.

I shook my head and hesitantly held out my hoof. “Sorry. Could you say that again? It seems my brain is taking its sweet time to catch up to the…“ Ve paused to run a quick calculation. “…fifteen point seven three meters we slid.”

Applejack cocked her eyebrow for a second before taking my hoof. “Sure, partner. Ah was just saying not to mind Pinkie there. She might be a little enthusiastic sometimes, but she means well.”

As I was pulled to my feet, I found my hoof in an iron grip. Applejack was shaking my hoof so hard I swore I could feel a couple cracks forming in the chitin.

“But where are my manners? Ah’m Applejack-“

“And I’m Pinkie Pie!” A pink blur pushed Applejack to the side, and I found one overzealous hoofshake had been be replaced by another. “I just know we’re going to have so much fun together, and I already have at least three ideas for your surprise welcome to Ponyville party. I’m sure you’d love them, but if I told them to you they wouldn’t be a surprise, and then you…”

I let the Anomaly’s speech wash over me without really listening. Tasting the air around her was one thing, but direct contact left me feeling dazed. I smiled and nodded without paying attention.

Before retracting my hoof, however, I carefully slid one of my fetlock cavities open. A few extra seconds of shaking hooves allowed me to mark her with a few stray strands of silk. In their unwoven state, they were thin enough to be undetectable to the naked eye. That didn’t stop me from tasting the synthesized emotion I’d spun into them.

A little warning would be nice after all.

“…and that’s how Equestria was made! Enough about me though. We don’t even know your name – mysterious ice cream mare.” The tirade finally ended and I stumbled back.

Two pairs of eyes looked at me expectantly.

I shook myself to clear the foggy thoughts I had from contact with Pinkie. Ve needed a straight head for this. Mother had been able to fool Applejack with the excuse of wedding day jitters, but ve had no idea if being the Element of Honesty came with built in lie detecting.

“You can call me Snow Flurry.” That was not technically a lie. It was the name I had chosen for this disguise.

“I’m not the new ice cream mare though. I’m okay at making ice cream, but I’m better with snow cones.” This was also not a lie. With the Hivemind I could draw on the memories of any changelings who knew how to make ice cream, but it would be passable at best. Cooking was just one of those skills that didn’t translate one hundred percent. Snow cones were just ice and syrup though. They were definitely easier to make than ice cream.

I ran some quick calculations in my head before continuing. “Would you like one?” A successful disguise always sells the cutie mark talent, and ve were pretty sure we could make one on the spot.

Pinkie latched onto the concept of free treats like a nymph onto free love crystals. “Would I? Of course I would!”

I had been ignoring most of my pegasus magic since signing the contract. I could generate the lift I needed and I could stand on clouds, but anything more might count as abusing the Contract.

There was an exception in the Contract for using magic related to any disguise’s talent, however. It was more meant for the harvesters I was planning to bring in, but there was no reason for me not to use it now,

Opening my fetlock cavities, I began pouring my magic into the air within them. Guiding the magic created a series of currents, and there was soon a small bit of swirling wind around my hooves. There wasn’t much moisture in the air, so I sent a number of small breezes out to collect it.

I shaved a bit from a fountain here and a pony’s drink there.

There was a particularly loud snort from Rainbow as I gathered a little moisture from her cloud, but ve barely noticed. There were already about a hundred other discussions going in and out our ears as all the snippets of wind ran past different groups of ponies. Normally ve would be filing all of them away to parse into intelligible conversations later, but ve were currently struggling to actually use the moisture ve gathered.

Ve had thought that ve could simply force the moisture to condense into a tiny cloud full of snow. Weather manipulation like that wasn’t normally an option for us, but there was so much ambient joy in the air from Pinkie that ve had thought ve could brute strength it.

That was a mistake. The tiny wisp of a cloud we’d made suddenly condensed into a mini-storm cloud.

“Hit the deck!” A raspy voice called out. A cyan bullet slammed in my side and for the third time that day I found myself eating dust as I slid along the ground.

I found myself rather thankful this time as I heard an explosive crack of lightning. There were a number of frightened whinies, and for a moment I was afraid the disguise had dropped. A quick glance at myself as I got up and pretended to brush myself off showed that this wasn’t the case.

There was a really nice scorch mark where I’d been standing though.

“What the hay was that?!?” It seemed I had woken Rainbow Dash and she was anything but pleased.

I decided to play the stupid card. “Lightning?”

It’s surprising how often that works.

Rainbow’s emotions were spicy enough to be labeled as rainbow flavored. “I’m talking about what you did to make the lightning. Normal wind doesn’t sound like a mob of ponies talking all at once.”

It’s also surprising when somepony ends up being far more perceptive than they should be.

I didn’t even try to hide our hanging jaw. “You heard that?”

I got a nod in response.

There was only one way for me to react to that. “Well buck…”