I’ve found the best way to assure I don’t break something or do something wrong is to concentrate on the task at hand. Of course, then something distracts me and all hooves go out from under it. When there is so many interesting things, it’s hard to not to become distracted. I mean, take this wedding. Who knew that Cranky and Matilda were also named Jack and Jenny? Who has two completely separate names? Compound names, yes; separate, no. I guess mule ponies do.
And those flameless fireworks! Glowing flowers and then a spectacular flying light show. I mean, woohoo! Look how it lit all Jack and Jenny’s cheering friends and turned the scene into a wondrous throbbing rainbow. Even Doc jumped up and down in excitement.
Speaking of friends, the seat beside the princesses and a bunch of others remained empty. Where were Princess Twilight and her friends? Suddenly, I remembered a second bang when I closed the door at the beginning of the ceremony. A glance showed it locked. A too loose latch must have spun itself into the strike. As I threw the door open, I found Twilight and her friends hugging and gazing at the sunset.
“Ow! That’s where the bugbear bit me.”
“Sorry,” said, Twilight, glancing back to see me. “Oh, good. The door’s open.”
The six turned and came marching up.
I cried, “I’m sooo, so sorry,” my wings starting to lift me out of the way as my ears flopped back.
The princess fluttered up and grabbed me into a hug, bringing me to the floor boards with a thunk. “No. Nonsense! You were just being a good usher, Muffin.”
“And we were darn late,” Applejack said, hugging me as she passed, as did Fluttershy and Rarity (who smelled like gardenias), while Pinkie Pie said, “Oh, hugs are good!” She hugged me like a bear, taking my breath away.
Rainbow Dash just offered me a hoof. “Bugbear bite and all,” she said, clacking hoof to hoof. “Doing good, Ditz– uh, Muffin.”
She trotted rapidly past, having accidentally used the nickname the weather patrol used for me. She probably remembered when I partially demolished city hall and her with it. Turned out the roof had been infested with termites and had had a bad case of dry rot. That I managed to find the worst of it was just my bad luck. Ponies even tried to blame me for that freak snowstorm that completely blanketed Equestria a couple months back on my visit to Cloudsdale. Fortunately, I’d been attending a postal seminar with Bulk Biceps and had been no where near. And I wasn’t blue. Witnesses agreed the culprit was a blue pegasus. I certainly didn’t know who that might be, and I’m not blue.
I flexed my shoulders as if I could still feel Twilight and the others’ embrace. I smiled. I like hugs.
I don’t like being lonely.
I followed Twilight back inside. The last of the fireworks exploded with a breathy whiz; and despite being flameless, they did smell sulfury, though faintly of cinnamon. Amethyst Star was a pink whirlwind as she zipped about, directing the caterers, pulling out trays, and arranging tables. Meanwhile, a single-file pastel line of particolored ponies queued up to congratulate the Doodles. With amazing alacrity, Star managed to parade around steaming baskets of fresh baked bread with crocks of butter, which served to freshen the air. With a triumphant string and electronica preamble, Octavia and Vinyl launched into playing the reception music, which with a mellowing progression turned into a remarkably uncharacteristic low-key vibe, considering all the gossip I had heard about the pair.
Over the next few minutes, I ushered in a few ponies after checking their invitations, but remained by the door, kind of alone. If you discounted that all the princesses of Equestria attended, ignored the few royal guard staged discretely in the corners, and kept yourself from staring at the changeling who nonchalantly eyed the haystack pie on the dessert table, everypony seemed like normal guests at any wedding.
Doc, however, had begun bouncing excitedly at the end of the ceremony, and now bounded around studying the ash and smudges left by the fireworks on the walls, the floors, and the columns. The eyes of the four royal guards followed his antics. He waved around a silver stick with a red jewel on top clenched in his teeth, often dropping it to the ground, appearing to read something upon its featureless barrel. It couldn't be a wand; the metal made it resemble a tool, like a wrench without lug or a screwdriver without a chisel end. A few times, he switched it with a curved magnifying glass that he could look through holding it in his teeth. I didn't see what happened next because Twilight’s friends walked between him and me, but suddenly he cantered out of the crowd with a clear bag containing fuzz and ash in his teeth. He pocketed it as he approached.
"And, I'm off!" he declared in his Trottingham accent. "And you were brilliant!" He grabbed me into a strong brief hug, with back pats, that left no doubt that I had been embraced by an earth pony stallion. And as quickly as that, he set off across the town hall’s ramada.
Me? Brilliant?
"Wait, Doc!" When he turned on the steps, I said, "You haven't eaten anything. It's free food. Not only that, it smells good, too.” Mostly, I wanted to ask what he meant by “brilliant.”
“I’ve made a momentous discovery; I really must write it down.” He trotted away.
Momentous? I shivered with curiosity, weighing dinner against the fact that I have barely one muffin left in my larder at home. I looked frantically back into the room. The royal guards had watched Doc’s exit. I waved to a white unicorn in brass armor, pointed out the door with both hooves, shrugged, and took wing. I hoped he might take over the ushering duty I’d volunteered for because, well, nobody had offered me anything to do after I installed Doc’s wondrous flowers... and nobody had been doing it.
I liked that Twilight thought I had done a good job ushering.
I caught up with Doc and followed above to his right. “So, what did you discover, Doc?”
Lit by the orange twilight, he laughed, his trot turning into a proud high-stepping canter, making his sand-timer cutie mark look like it might start spinning. The long scarf fluttered behind him. “Only an explanation for the frustrating duality of the physics of this entire universe!”
“Wow! That sounds great!” I flapped harder to keep up. “What does that mean?”
“I think I’m going to call it the Theory of Exceptionalism. Take gravity or magnetism. These forces always work following strict rules, even here in Equestria, except–” he emphasized the word “–when influenced by magic, a condition where the acceptional philosophy of the magic user warps the rules that gravity and magnetism must otherwise abide. And all ponies are magical, even me. When I built the flameless fireworks using charcoal, sulfur, metal filings, and some herbs Zecora told me about, I also imbued them with my expectations. That caused the glow. What I have discovered is there is another set of fundamental forces. Love and friendship are just two. The former ignited the fireworks because of how I thought about them when I built them.”
“That sounds, uh, complex.”
“Physics is complex, but simple once you understand the math.”
“I’m not so good at math.” I settled on to the red-brick porch of his house as he grabbed his key. With a snick, he opened the six panel door and trotted in.
As I waited, I watched his silhouette in the dusky vestibule unwind his incredibly long scarf onto a shadowy hat rack. As I preened a feather, I noticed the building had the typical alpine plaster and wood, thatched roof design of most older Ponyville homes, but his windows were perpetually closed and shrouded by velvet curtains. There was no more eccentric pony than Time Turner, except perhaps me.
That said, I did not have the temerity to saunter into a bachelor stallion’s home uninvited, especially since I had followed him uninvited, even if we were pals around town. This morning he had invited me.
He stuck his head into the fading twilight. “Do come in, my brilliant guiding light. Do.”
I smiled, flaring my wings. As I trotted behind, he reared, striking a square lever. That started a strange hum, followed by a clacking chunk-ka-thunk that heralded the ignition of lights recessed within alcoves where the ceiling met the wall. The indirect lighting provided bright pleasant illumination for the strange and arcane gadgets that filled the single bottom floor of his house. Much of it consisted of machinery, sheathed in bronze with brass trim. It had a museum quality that reminded me of the inside of a century-old Baltimare factory I had worked in as a foal, but Doc’s had a gilded-age flare for decoration that had no-functionality. Like, why did the handle on his time machine have a blackened metal ball at the end? There were fluted beakers, brass encased wheel knobs to control pipes, and even that carved wooden glider with intricate bat wings that I had tried out this morning when I found it hanging from the cluttered ceiling. It all looked so fun. There was even a ornate cuckoo clock with multiple doors that looked about ready to strike 5:30 PM. As I lifted my wings for a downstroke to fly closer, Doc nudged my shoulder.
“It’s like this: sometimes we are so sure of what we expect, we miss the exceptional.” He tapped a table where lay a steel ball and a gray down feather I must have shed earlier today. “Which falls faster? The ball bearing, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, let us experiment and see if it’s true!” He galloped across the lab to a cylinder barely a hoof in diameter, but more than my height. It set atop a copper pot attached to chimney bellows belted to pulleys. Atop was an blue enamel and brass onion dome. He reared, caught the top’s rubber rim, flipped it, and spat out the feather wetly, then replaced the lid. He pushed a topaz jeweled lever. The belts started pumping the bellows with a loud thwack-thwack. When I knelt to see what powered the mysterious little engine, he said, “Look up toward the top of the cylinder. Wait for it…”
Suddenly the feather fell like a dropped bit. I put my nose against the glass, checking the bottom to make sure it was my feather, and it was.
“I pumped out all the air. Air resistance lets you glide.”
“No air, no air resistance,” I said, pushing my nose into the glass. “Wow.”
The cylinder went, crack.
Doc tugged me back and kicked the throttle off in one move. The cylinder hissed, then imploded, the glass raining into the center, the onion dome clanging down atop the pile.
“Bollocks!” Doc cried, “Twin Unicorn Glassworks delivered that just yesterday.”
My eyes teared up, and I hung my head in shame. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be silly.” He craned his neck around to look up into my eyes. “Obviously the glass was knackered. That was the first vacuum it took; I should have tested it upon delivery.” He pushed my head up with a hoof. “It had a fault, not you.”
“You don’t understand, Doc. I break things.”
He took out a pair off black-rimmed glasses and examined the shattered glass. “This whole day has been a lesson in observation.” He turned and looked me in the eye, the right one, then the left one which turned independently to follow him. His magnified blue eyes blinked. “You see just fine, don’t you?” He put the glasses away.
I blinked at him, not understanding the segue. “Better than most people, I think. The day I got my cutie mark, I was so disoriented that I stumbled against a statue. The unicorn’s horn fell off and hit my head. Since that day, my eyes go where they go and I seem to see things before they hit me. Plenty of things try to–”
“Observation, my fine feathered filly friend. That’s what science is all about. Don’t worry about the mess,” he said as I gravitated toward a broom.
All right, then. I followed him. He came to the glass barrel from which I had taken the flameless fireworks. Oblivious of the disaster a moment ago, he tapped the empty glasswork with a hoof, making it ring. “In the reactor, floating on air currents, I just couldn’t see it. But then you removed them to the city hall reception room. You forced me to see the feather dropping in a vacuum. Dual physics. Exceptional forces of nature modifying the normal ones. One just cannot see the flaws in one’s own work!” He tapped his chin. “That means I’ll have to develop a whole new mathematics to describe magical forces… though perhaps Princess Twilight might guide me in that. Huh–”
He circled the reactor, looking at the clips and how the glass fit into the fan mechanism. “How did you open this?”
“Well, there’s the– uh, and pulled the wire thingy and, well– I opened it the obvious way.”
He waved a filigreed gold t-shaped key, pointing to an unopened lock. He put on the blocky professor glasses again to peer closer at the opened seal. “Well, that explains it...”
I backed away, my heart beating fast. No, this couldn’t be happening. Doc was the last friend that treated me like a normal mare, not like the walking disaster I often turned out to be.
He mumbled, “Too little silver in my solder; the welds snapped,” at which point my flank bumped into a lever. Startled by the cold thing, my tail flipped over a rod. As I shrank away, the hair caught; I wrenched sideways, pushing hard against the mechanism, lost traction on both back hooves, and fell.
Breath knocked from my lungs, tears veiled my sight. I had to get out before I brought the entire house down upon him. I slid repeatedly as I levered myself up until I finally slipped, kicked, and dented the cabinet.
Doc was there, pressing down on my shoulder. “Calm down, calm down.”
That moment, the cabinet let out a horrendous grinding-screeching sound. Stinging ozone and machine oil tainted the air as an electric sensation froze us both. We looked together at the laboring device.
Though my tears, I could see his time machine. The dials spun counter-clockwise like propellers. Little crackles of lightning scintillated between branch-like metal rods hanging from the bulbous electrical tubes bolted above the tortured contraption. Blinky lights flashed while an unseen moving rod ground against some invisible rough metal stator, rhythmically, again and again.
“Gob-smack me! It’s working. It’s. Working!” He got up squealing, danced in place, then went to the controls. “Great whickering stallions! It’s working!” He threw some levers and turned some knobs. His enthusiasm cooled as nothing he did seemed to change anything. “And it’s still working. Why’s it still working?”
I slid away, fluttered my wings, and righted myself. It was no wonder I was so lonely. Eventually everypony realized it was safer to avoid me. As quietly as I could, I flew then trotted out into the entry way. I looked back to see Time Turner tapping dials and waving his red jeweled rod. I was better off going straight home and making a meal of my last muffin. I wouldn’t be able to look a pony in the eye at the wedding reception. Worse, I’d probably make the cake collapse.
When I opened the door, I froze, cold fright traveling down my spine. My heart stuttered once. What I saw finally registered–and I screamed.
Ponyville had vanished.
Instead, I saw a flickering blur of dark night and bright sun. Trees appeared and shrunk in seconds and disappeared. Suddenly there were blackened trees, which became a forest, which shrank into a meadow. I gasped when the house sat in a muddy green lake up to the height of my elbows, though no water flooded in as if I looked out into an aquarium. Then the view changed to a searing golden desert.
Then the house tilted crazily as sand and reddish rocks and occasional trees appeared and disappeared in blinks of an eye. The house shoved right.
Doc kicked closed the door and pulled me back into his work room. “Show me what you did. Quickly, Muffin, please. Before we get caught in a sedimentary layer or a geological uplift tumbles us down into a chasm!”
His earnestness made me flutter to the angrily grinding machine. It made its horrendous groan as often as a pony might breathe. “I backed into it,” I said, demonstrating but not touching despite the jerks and yawing of the house. “Then I flipped my tail and caught it in that bolt rod, which tripped me up and I hit that lever. Trying to stand, I kicked the cabinet in.”
“Uh! Not the controls–the clockworks.” He dove down, but couldn’t wrench the cabinet open because of the dent. I saw a flat rod and trotted it over to him so he needn’t get up. One pry, and with a bang it opened. The pry-bar clanked on the floor. “Well, that explains it. You realigned the balance wheel. There’s a tooth missing on this tertiary gear, so it couldn’t have worked otherwise in another alignment. I gave up ten years ago, thinking I needed magic to make it work and here I find there was a tooth missing? Oh, and it looks like the clutch lever broke clean through. That probably was your fault, an accident, but I can fix that.” He rolled on to his back, hooves up, shimmied under the control board, and lipped his red jeweled rod as his head disappeared into the darkness.
“Careful,” I said.
“No worries.”
I noticed how the onion dome lid reflected light. I flew it over and positioned it to reflect light to him. He shimmied around, his legs connecting with the control panel so he could crane his forequarters.
“There!” The grinding stopped mid-screech and the house lurched right about a foot. I danced to stand upright, hooves clattering on the floor. I could smell his perspiration despite the oil and other scents.
He clocked his head standing and rubbed between his ears. “Well, then. I guess Twilight was wrong. She insisted you needed a spell to time travel and refused to show me any. ‘Restricted,’ she said. Ha!” He smiled at me, his eyes closed momentarily in bliss, and said, “I’d explain it to you but I’m not sure what set of theories is actually in force. I built a bunch of versions of the thing and didn’t remove all the parts betwixt and–well, you see.”
He shook his head, and added, “That’s that. Let's see where we are!” He trotted for the door he’d so recently pulled me away from. I didn’t want to see the flickering maelstrom. It made my eyes cross painfully, but when he gasped, I galloped over.
Outside lay a grassy plain, sporting waving purplish wheat with tiny rattling seed heads. A scaly red-barked tree rose about a block away, displaying swordlike silver-green leaves. In the distance, I saw what at first looked like birds, but they were heading away. And if they were birds, they were the size of the house and had wings that seemed to look like those of a bat. The air was redolent with the smell of alfalfa, enough to make me want to take a bite despite the gaudy color.
As I stepped forward, Doc stopped me. I heard a strange keening sound. Oddly, it seemed enveloped in a bass rumble that I could feel in my chest. It became louder, along with loud threshing sounds as something ripped through the grass to the left.
Suddenly, a monster appeared in the late afternoon sun. He might have been the result of horse and a dragon mating. Each leg had three steel keg-like hooves, but instead of fur, scaly maroon feathers covered his skin. His back legs were completely out of proportion to his front such that he walked on two legs as if perpetually rearing. He had the long snout of a crocodile and dangerous teeth to match, and tooth-like yellow scales proliferated along his neck instead of a mane. His tail was rat-like, pink, and naked, but huge like the rest of him. At full height, he might just nearly have been able to see over the top of the house. He made a loud snuffling sound and started to turn his head toward us, but Doc had closed the door, gently. He then locked it.
He whispered, “About three million years before the paleo-pony era. The Pliocene, most likely. Follow me. Quietly.”
When I stood shivering, he pushed until I slid, then I got my senses back. A shriek wanted to rocket out my throat, but the afterimage of the terrible lizard horse kept me thankfully mute.
Doc looked remarkably calm standing before the control panel of the time machine, though he did take a moment to adjust his tie and collar, which he must have suddenly found too tight. He put on the awful glasses and peered at the dials and numeric read-out, adjusting some knobs. Nonchalantly, he said, “I know what your special talent is, Muffin.”
“Wha—What do you mean? I–I break things.”
“No,” he said, clacking the temples of his eye glasses together and dropping them on the console.
I looked nervously to the door as the keening became louder out front. I heard a tearing sound in the roof thatch. “Then what?” I breathed, returning my attention to Doc and fighting my instinct to gallop around mindlessly.
“It is as precise as it is powerful.”
“I can bring down a building with a single swish of my tail.”
“You have a talent for finding fault. Bubbles–” He pointed at my cutie mark. “When they rise to the surface of an ice-covered lake, they crack it where the ice is least strong.”
He found an oil can, causing it to crinkle loudly and repeatedly as he pumped red liquid where the levers met the console. I felt my ears swivel, listening for our unwanted friend. He checked the play in gears, then cranked a patina-covered copper wheel by spinning a brass knob that assisted the movement. As he did, he added, “How many score of ponies’ lives did you save when you brought down that building that had nopony in it… with a swish of your tail?”
He pumped a rubber ducky button that quacked loudly, causing the living fossil dragon pony to roar. On the fifth pump, he reared and threw two levers at once.
The machine immediately resumed its screeching-grinding sound. The house literally twisted in a quarter circle. I kept my balance with a downbeat of my wings, but Doc slammed into me, still on two legs. He caught me in a half-hug. With six legs, we stood upright as the building rotated dizzily around. He glanced at the dial, which progressed in a clock-wise manner.
He brought his face around so we were muzzle to muzzle. “Do you see what you really are?”
“Are we safe?” I asked, more concerned about Mr. Sharp Teeth outside.
“Piffle. We’re in a working time machine, now, thanks to you. And I asked you a question.” I smelled mint on his breath.
I concentrated, like I said I could when I began this–and that despite having a stallion lip to lip with me, and, oh yeah, that spinning house thing. “If I’m finding faults, I’m not so much breaking things but... causing things about to fail... to fail? That means when I find something interesting that then breaks, that’s my talent?”
“Two for two. Kind of brilliant, isn’t it?”
The house stopped suddenly, staggering us both. Doc released his half-hug and returned to peer at the read-outs. I felt oddly bereft, but then I was often lonely. I shook myself, ears drooping. “Is that monster gone?”
“More like fossilized.” He smiled and punched a button that caused the time machine to power down with an exhausted whine. He frowned when it made a pony-like cough, causing sparks to shoot from the electric rods above and cascade like a sudden rain of stars to our left. He murmured, “Better now than before,” then louder, “I set our return to about 5:45 PM. Wouldn’t be good if we materialized over the existing house, though come to think of it, since that hadn’t happened before we left, I probably could have cut it much closer.” He tapped his chin, then trotted to the door. He threw it open and said, “Voila! Downtown Ponyville.”
And it was. Night had descended early, as it was wont in winter, and Luna’s stars twinkled above. No snow remained on the dried grass, as the unseasonable snow storm had exhausted Cloudsdale’s reserves, and wrecked the weather machinery, too boot. That didn’t mean it hadn’t turned nippy, though.
I stared, grateful for a mundane view turned suddenly beautiful thanks to the fading memory of the monster I had last seen out this door. Unexpectedly, I felt knit fabric gather on my neck and withers, smelling of stallion and years of travel. Doc wound his long scarf warmly around me and I stifled sudden tears.
He then wound the rest around his neck, leaving plenty between us. “Enough to share, what. Fancy a slice of wedding cake?”
“I do,” I said.
“Well then, allons-y!” We trotted out together, in tandem, me no longer alone.
Author's Note
Well, Muffins! That wasn't the planned end of the story, and if you noticed the foreshadowing about time spells being restricted, I'm sorry for dishing out red herring. Should anybody ask me to write the original ending, I will. It will probably be a short chapter, though. Meanwhile, Muffin has a stallion.
It is odd, how hard it is to come up with ideas until you come up with them. I spent two days trying in despair to find something in the Slice of Life Writer's Training Grounds prompts. Then I thought, "Muffin's cutie mark finds faults in things, often catastrophically." And I was off to the races. I almost put that as my short description, though it contains spoilers.
Sins of the Writer
1) I enjoyed writing too many too long sentences. Even if Doctor Who would use them, bad writer, bad bad writer.
2) Concision dictates that I ought to have removed at least a dozen extraneous sentences; I didn't.
3) Didn't remove unneeded foreshadowing. (And maybe I'll write a follow-on.)
4) The grammar of the last line is compromised, despite working.
Lessons Learned
Go for the heart, even if you end in tears.
As always, if you would like to critique, please! Be sure to point out what didn't work for you, and describe what you understood. It is only through your reporting to me what you read that I can understand why what I wrote didn't come across.
And please give a round of applause for the talented Alicia Spring, who graciously gave me permission to use her absolutely fabulous image. Fun how it ended up being the last scene, isn't it. Better yet, visit her page: http://alice4444dm.deviantart.com
