The Layout

by AlwaysDressesInStyle

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Slice of Life
Length: 10374

Snowcatcher lovingly creates a diorama.

When running a hotel gets to be too much for Snowcatcher, she retreats to a room in the Mareiott's attic that only she can get to. Away from the drudgery and turmoil, she creates a diorama in her little fortress of solitude to showcase her Matchbox car collection.

Written for Ponyville CiderFest's Scattered Pages: Tales from the Book of All Stories. More stories from PVCF's 2023 Interactive Storytelling Experience can be found here.

Thank you to the entire Ponyville CiderFest Interactive Storytelling team (Vivid Syntax, Nyronus, Sonicsuns, Note Worthy, SteelTheWarrior, Snowday, Aria E. Diamond, SoloBrony, Skywriter, Ellwyn, Ghost Note, Overlord Pony, RQK, Shade Hunter, Shottsy, Celestilune). You pulled it off, and it was amazing!

Special thanks to Admiral Biscuit for pre-reading and for being the liaison on this with the PVCF staff.

Published 2023-11-28 04:50:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-11-28 04:50:00 UTC

The Layout

Snowcatcher had never been a herd pony. Now that she was on Earth, she’d adapted to the local saying of not being a people person. There was only so much interacting she could do with others before she got peopled out. It wasn’t anything malicious, and it wasn’t because she didn’t like people; she just needed alone time to recharge.

Choosing a career that kept her near others twenty-four/seven hadn’t been the smartest decision of her life, but it had been the right one. Many of her coworkers had needed something stable in their lives and a pony they could look up to. Snowcatcher had provided that stability, and in turn, the others looked to her for guidance.

She’d combined finances with fifteen other mares. By going in together, they’d stretched their meager individual funds and purchased a fixer-upper. A derelict old mansion, it had already been gutted when the ponies bought it. Over the next few months they’d worked tirelessly to turn it into a hotel. More of an oversized bed & breakfast, if they were being honest with themselves.

Sometimes it was all too much for the little blue unicorn, and she retreated to the attic. It had become her fortress of solitude away from the rest of the world.

In short, it was the only way she could stay sane. It had originally been intended to be her office, attested to by the desk in one corner of the room. It was overflowing with paperwork, things that needed Snowcatcher’s attention. She sighed as she wrote a check out to the electric company. Air conditioning was a necessity, she reminded herself. Summer had never been her favorite season – the air conditioning made it tolerable. The cable bill was another necessary evil. She had little interest in the programs the television showed, but their guests expected to have hundreds of channels to surf through and then not watch. While she was still getting used to human customs, she was confident that would always seem weird to her, no matter how many years she eventually spent living on Earth.

Snowy sealed both bills in their respective return envelopes, then teleported to the mailbox a few blocks away. With the bills paid, her vacation had officially begun. They’d shut the hotel down for a week, and the last guests would be trickling out of the hotel no later than the 11:00 AM checkout time. After that, her coworkers were on their own for seven days. Some had made their own travel plans, while others had decided on a staycation like Snowy had.

She might not be traveling, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some fun. Snowy turned her attention to the empty space surrounding her desk. At first, Snowcatcher had intended on filling the attic with bookshelves and filing cabinets, to really make it look like an office. But then she realized she didn’t need a fancy office to impress others, nor did she want one. This was her space, and she could do with it what she wanted.

Once she’d made that decision, the rest was easy. She knew what she wanted to do. All that she needed was time and money, both of which were always in short supply. Running a small business had its ups and downs, and even though she and her coworkers were equal investors, they’d all agreed she was in charge. That meant that in the months where money was short, the others got paid before her. If there was nothing left over for her… well, such was life. She was ultimately responsible for whether the business succeeded or failed. She would reap the rewards… or face the consequences of her decisions.

From reading The Wall Street Journal, she was aware that large corporations tended to pay their executives outrageous salaries and lavish bonuses even as they teetered on the brink of insolvency. It seemed like a horrible way to run a business. There was no accountability. One could incompetently stumble around, yet be rewarded for wiping out shareholder wealth and destroying the livelihoods of employees and investors alike.

That wasn’t to say that being in charge didn’t have perks. During the renovation process, she’d salvaged anything she thought might be useful and stored it away in the attic.

Leaning against one of the walls were the original doors from the mansion. They were too scuffed up to be presentable to guests, but too nice to throw out. She’d removed the ornate doorknobs, which had been polished and then sold to help finance the renovations. The hotel’s new doors had pony-friendly door handles.

She’d also commandeered the sawhorses they’d used while renovating, once they’d no longer needed them. These were randomly strewn throughout the attic – or at least it would look that way to anypony other than Snowcatcher. She navigated into the maze of sawhorses, levitated one of the doors over, and deftly positioned it on top of two of them.

Along another wall was a stack of boxes, as well as bags from various retail stores. Once she was satisfied with the arrangement of the door, she grabbed the bags in her magic, carefully spreading the contents onto the floor, sorting them in the process.

Like many ponies who’d come to Earth, she’d become enamored with Matchbox cars. They were cheap, and she still had a hard time believing such exquisitely detailed little models were designed to be toys. They were far and away more detailed than anything made in Equestria, where most toys tended to be hoof-made out of wood. Those pony-made toys had charm, but they lacked realism.

The few toys that were mass-produced in Equestria tended to be very poor quality. Snowy could still remember the crushing disappointment when her Windy the Windigo doll had fallen apart mere days after getting it for Hearth’s Warming. One thing was for sure; once Hasbro and/or Mattel decided to expand into the Equestrian market, Flim-Flam Toys would go bankrupt.

Toy cars weren’t the only thing she’d purchased, so she moved them into a corner to be opened later. First she needed to create a place to display them all. She pulled up her music list on her phone and scrolled until she found Starship. She clicked ‘play’ and We Built This City started playing.

With her supplies sorted, she slid a Bachmann green grass mat out of the cellophane protecting it. Seconds later it was spread on top of a door. She quickly appraised the appearance – the mat was wider than the door, with some overhang on each side. The door, however, was longer, leaving approximately two feet of uncovered space.

It was time for her to make a decision. More than half of her door was now covered with simulated grass. There were plenty of other mats, but did she want to cut one of the others to fit or not? There were other options – she could use the sandy yellow mat for a beach, or she could simulate a large parking lot with a gray mat.

She decided to go with the beach since Diamond Rose and Lily Blossom had traveled to Daytona for their vacation. Snowcatcher had grown up in Whinnyapolis and attended school in mountainous Canterlot. She’d never even been to a beach before moving to New Jersey. They were overrated in her opinion. Hot and crowded; she didn’t really see the point of baking herself in the sun for days on end. If she was going to go somewhere, she’d go to the mountains.

She had no qualms cutting the sandy mat to fit the door. It had limited uses for her needs, and unless she also wanted to replicate a desert, this mat had served its sole purpose. She rolled up the remnants and stuffed it back into the cellophane, then levitated it over to her desk to be dealt with later.

Snowy levitated another door over, placing it on top of another pair of sawhorses. She placed the simulated grass mat in the center of the door, with uncovered space on either end. She trimmed two sections from the gray mat, simulating parking lots on either side of the grass. The diorama’s whole purpose was to showcase her Matchbox cars, and what could be a more realistic display for a bunch of cars than parking lots?

The next door she levitated over was placed atop the sawhorses closest to her desk; the space she’d reserved for what would no doubt be her favorite diorama. She covered this door with a pair of white mats to simulate snow. The overhang off the ends was fine; this was supposed to represent a mountain, after all.

Snowy wasn’t particularly fond of Hot Wheels cars. They lacked realism compared to other brands, yet for some reason humans considered them the best, hence they were the most popular 1/64 diecast cars. But despite her disdain for them, they weren’t completely unrepresented in her collection. In fact, she’d gone out of her way to acquire a vintage Hot Wheels Alpine Mountain Adventure playset.

She unfolded it, and took a good look at it. There were some garages and silly-looking buildings, but the real reason she’d bought it was because it was one of the few snow-themed playsets available in 1/64 scale. Like most Hot Wheels, it was far from realistic, but she’d bought the cheapest one available online for a reason – it wasn’t in the best shape, and it was missing some accessories. She really only wanted to cut it up for its parts.

She glanced at the stack of doors leaning against the wall. She could spend some time setting up this diorama now… or she could continue laying out doors and creating diorama bases like she’d planned on doing.

Some ponies were slaves to schedules. Snowcatcher had always prided herself on being adaptable to almost any situation. But she’d made this schedule for a reason. Setting things up was the first step. The reward would come later. She tore herself away from the snowy layout and turned her attention to the next pair of sawhorses.

So went day one. When all was said and done, she’d turned sixteen doors into tabletop dioramas. There were a few doors left over, but that just gave her the ability to expand at a later date.

The second day of her vacation began the best way possible – by sleeping in. Gone were the demands of guests and coworkers alike. For once, no one was forcing her to be up early to make breakfast. It was nearly noon before the little unicorn rose from bed, stretching out each of her legs in turn. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in this late; it was definitely before she’d moved to Earth.

She teleported to the attic, taking a minute to appreciate the fruits of the previous day’s labor. It might’ve been faster to just buy tables, but they’d needed sawhorses during the renovations, and she’d made a bunch of them cheaply. She’d also made a few more from leftover wood after the fact, when it became apparent they didn’t have enough of them for her to repurpose.

She turned her attention to the beach diorama. Right now it was just sand and grass, but that wouldn’t do. Most beaches were separated from roads, towns, etc. by a barrier of some sort, whether that be a wall or a naturally-occurring cliff. There was no easy way to change the elevation from one section to the other, so she decided a wall would have to be sufficient. She levitated a sheet of paper over and made a note to search for scale accurate walls.

She’d bought more than a dozen rolls of road tape. Each roll was fifteen feet long, and she figured she’d need one roll per diorama. She unpeeled the leading edge of the roll and stuck it to the grass mat. It was designed to be reusable, so it didn’t stick particularly well, kinking up in places. The rough texture of the grass mat didn’t help the adhesive.

She grabbed her phone with her magic, levitating it in front of her as she used her hoof to scroll. She found a website offering diorama figures, and started browsing their inventory. American Diorama had a surfer set, with two dudes and two dudettes, each with a surfboard. They also had several other beach-themed packs, all of which came with six female humans. She was unable to find any sets of male human beach-themed figures, which she thought was odd. She ordered one of each of the sets, including the surfers. She browsed the other packs of figures, buying any that she felt would work on one of her layouts. She cringed when she saw the final bill, but it was a one-time expense and still cheaper than traveling somewhere for vacation.

Once she confirmed the order she sent a text to Diamond Rose. Hey, just checking to see if u & Lily got in OK. Lily Blossom was horrible with technology, but Diamond Rose had taken to it like a duck to water.

The response was nearly instantaneous. We’re good! ☺

Snowcatcher envied Diamond’s dexterous pegasus wings as she typed her reply. Send some pics for those of us stuck back home! Magic was awesome, but it couldn’t interact with a phone’s touch screen as easily as pegasus wings or human fingers.

It took a few minutes, but the pegasus complied. The first was of a very reluctant Lily Blossom posing awkwardly in a floral print bathing suit, the beach visible behind her.

The pictures kept coming. Diamond Rose sent a duckface selfie next, followed by a kissie face selfie. Snowcatcher groaned. She should’ve expected this, inviting Diamond to send photos. More selfies followed, before her friend finally sent the photos Snowcatcher actually wanted to see – shots of the beach. As she’d guessed, there was a fairly equal split between male and female beachgoers, so it was odd that she couldn’t find many males for her diorama. Likewise, there were plenty of children on the beach, running in the surf and building sandcastles, but there were no figures of them, either. She levitated the page over and scrawled another note, this one reminding her to look into finding a better variety of beachgoer figures in the future. Her beach would be very boring otherwise.

She’d also noticed that there were dogs in a few of the packs she’d ordered, but no cats. Not that she disliked dogs, but she was a cat pony through and through. She made a note to find some cats too.

Snowy’s phone vibrated yet again. She was starting to regret asking for pictures. Apparently Diamond Rose’s idea of a vacation was to take an endless stream of photos with her phone. So pretty much normal for her, but with a different backdrop.

With her phone now blowing up from Diamond’s vacation photos, Snowy ignored it. She smoothed out the road as best she could, then placed more strips of road down to create intersections, and eventually a grid pattern.

She opened one of the boxes that had been gathering dust for months, and started levitating HO scale model railroad buildings out. She’d lucked out at a train show and found a railroader who was liquidating his collection. He was knowledgeable on what the trains were worth, but had little interest in the buildings, accessories, or even his vintage diecast cars. They were priced well below market value and she’d made an offer for the entire lot. He was happy to be rid of it, and she was happy to give it a new home.

Snowy was surprised to find sections of wall mixed in with the buildings, and she quickly added that to the diorama to separate the beach from the town. She didn’t remember them being in there, but she’d never inventoried her purchases, so she dismissed it as them not being interesting enough to make note of at the time.

True 1/64 scale buildings were usually pricier than their slightly smaller and larger cousins. GreenLight offered a few, but they were mostly gas stations. While her diorama existed to show off her car collection, Snowy didn’t need more than two gas stations on her layout.

Researching all of the various scales had made Snowy’s head spin. HO was 1/87 scale, a bit smaller than the 1/64 scale of the majority of her cars. It was short for ‘half-O’ since O scale had been the preferred scale many decades earlier. O was approximately 1/48, and she noted that technically, half of that would be 1/96, not 1/87. Someone had explained they were going by 1/43 scale, but the explanation went over her head. Math was math. Excuses couldn’t change the fact that HO wasn’t really half of O.

In terms of model railroading, she was collecting S scale, which had fallen out of fashion in the 1960s. Now a niche demographic, pieces were still available but were usually prohibitively expensive for her budget. So she’d settled for HO scale, because it was readily available. She’d scrounged plenty of secondhand buildings and accessories at model train shops, toy shows, and even thrift stores. They were small, but her space was limited, so they’d work for her needs.

There were people who were complete scale purists. If it wasn’t true scale, it wasn’t good enough. Snowy loved realism, and if she had an unlimited budget, she could easily see herself being a purist. But she had to make do with what she could afford, and then make it as good as possible.

Soon there was an entire row of buildings along the road, across the street from the beach. At a later date, she would have to decorate the various buildings with banners and signs appropriate for a beach resort town. Once she was satisfied with the miniature city, she moved on to the next diorama.

For the layout she’d set up with large parking lots on either side, she decided that it would represent a suburb, with the parking lots for big box retailers. As far as she could tell, there were no big box stores available in any scale, so she’d have to kitbash or scratchbuild them if she wanted them. She hadn’t learned how to make things from scratch, so she bluffed it. She moved that table against one of the walls, and printed out pictures of a Caldor and a K-Mart, sticking them onto the wall. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do for the time being. She mused that a big box retailer should be simple to make, and a great way to get started on kitbashing.

Her little town was a mishmash of styles, with modern office buildings sharing space with ‘50s fast food restaurants, medieval castles, and Equestrian houses with thatched roofs. It looked like no town in either world, with bits of Canterlot and Camden; Ponyville and Pequannock. Trotter's Cider Bar looked right at home next to Caldor.

She raided more buildings from the boxes of HO scale structures she’d bought, and was dismayed to see that her supply of buildings was rapidly diminishing. Looking at the other unfinished layouts she realized she was going to need more – a lot more. She groaned. Nopony ever said this was going to be a cheap hobby. She once again pulled out the page and wrote ‘more buildings’ on it. She didn’t notice the paper glow once she turned away, nor did she notice another two boxes full of buildings appear along the wall with the rest of them.

She turned her attention to the snowy landscape, the one that she was most excited about. She decided that a single strip of road, running lengthwise across the diorama, would be fine. This was to be an alpine town.

Snowy trotted to the wall where the boxes were stacked and blinked in surprise as she found two additional boxes tucked behind the others. That’s odd, I thought there were only five boxes.

Digging through the newly discovered boxes, she chose the most rustic of the structures available to turn the diorama into a resort town. Then she stripped the snow from the Alpine Adventure set. The snow cave made for an excellent tunnel for the road to enter into. This she propped against the wall, letting the tunnel extend far longer in her imagination.

Snowscapes weren’t popular, so she had few accessories to pick from, most of which were repurposed holiday decorations. More things she was going to have to scratchbuild. She’d practice on simpler things first, like the big box retailers.

Simpler was the theme of her next diorama. The entire door had been covered in grass mats, and she grabbed another roll of roadway tape. Lengthwise across the door went two strips of tape, creating two sides of a four-lane expressway. All it needed now were trees, assorted other scenery, and cars. She made a note on the page to look for jersey barriers and traffic cones, plus trash cans, telephone poles, and mailboxes for her other displays.

But that would be a project for another day. She turned out the light and winked to the garage. She’d skipped dinner, and it was nearly dusk. She started her 1975 Ford Mustang II and let the car idle to warm up while she decided where to go for dinner. Ultimately, she decided on the Cheesecake Factory – this was technically her vacation, and if she didn’t indulge herself, nopony else would.

She rolled out of bed early the next day. This was the day she was most excited for.

We Built This City started playing on her phone as she kicked off day three of her build. She lamented that the only commercially available version of the song had a spoken traffic report about the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a version from the New York metro area that had a traffic report about the George Washington Bridge. She’d heard it on the radio, once, during a replay of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 countdown from 1985. She’d been searching for it ever since with no luck. It wasn’t even available on the internet.

She’d wanted the next diorama to represent New York City, but had run into a math problem. 1/64 meant that one inch represented sixty-four inches of the thing being replicated. Most cars were roughly around sixteen feet long, and sixteen divided by sixty-four meant they came out to a quarter of a foot, or roughly three inches long. The Empire State Building, at 1,454 feet tall, scaled out to over twenty feet tall in 1/64 scale. That wasn’t even the tallest building in the city anymore, though in her opinion it remained the most iconic. So her plans for a 1/64 replica of New York were put on hold indefinitely.

What she wanted to do instead was replicate her favorite place in the city, the George Washington Bridge. She technically had the space to do it. Scaled down to 1/64, the bridge was just under seventy-five feet long and nine feet tall. If she did it in 1/87, it would come down to just under fifty-five feet long and only seven feet tall. Either way, it would take up one entire wall of the attic.

She’d debated the merits of each before deciding that if she was going to do it, she wanted to be as accurate as possible. Eleven doors were strung together lengthwise, with a twelfth horizontal at the end, making a slight L-shape to the layout. Rather than create the entire height of the bridge, Snowy decided that anything beneath road level wasn’t necessary for her layout, since she had no intention of adding the Hudson River or ships to her diorama. This gave the roadway the added benefit of being at pony height.

The doors were too wide, so she trimmed a bit off the edges with her magic. She only replicated the bridge’s top deck, not having enough doors to replicate both decks. Not that anypony would really be able to see any cars on the lower deck, but she kept the idea in the back of her mind in case she wanted to expand at a later date.

She used some leftover wood from the renovations to create the bridge’s towers.

It took her all day, but eventually she got to the point where she was satisfied with the bridge’s design. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it would do for now. She teleported the entire structure to the hotel’s parking lot, sawhorses, doors, and all. She grabbed gray spray paint and coated the replica bridge from top to bottom.

It was tedious, but Feathermay joined her outside to bring her a soda and keep her company. Snowy was thankful for both the beverage and the company. Feathermay could talk for hours, and often did.

By the time the bridge was dry, both ponies were famished. Snowcatcher returned the bridge to the attic and drove the two of them to Pompton Lakes to get Tony’s Pizza for dinner.

The attic smelled like paint.

Snowy grabbed every fan she could get her hooves on and plugged them in trying to dissipate the fumes. It was an effort in futility, so she grabbed some of her purchases and supplies, then winked back to her bedroom.

Just because she couldn’t spend the day working in the attic, it didn’t mean she couldn’t continue working on her diorama.

A company known for making HO scale model railroad figures had come out with a pony nine-pack, available in ten different colors. Each pack came with three earth ponies, three pegasi, and three unicorns: one stallion, mare, and ‘foal’ from each of the tribes. They’d only invested in one mold for the ‘foal’ which was obviously a filly well on her way to adolescence, not a foal. There was no colt available – apparently the company thought fillies and colts looked alike, or at least similar enough that there was no need to invest in a separate tooling.

She’d of course bought dozens of the sets, multiples of every color they offered, and extras of the white set, or as she preferred calling them, blanks.

She opened a pack of blue ponies, and the figures tumbled out of the package and onto her desk. She quickly located the unicorn mare, and levitated it in her magic as she compared the color to her own light blue coat. It was a close match; close enough that she didn’t see a need to repaint the whole figure. Narcissistic or not, she detailed the miniature plastic pony’s mane and tail with pink and red paint to match her own. Replicating her cutie mark was decidedly more challenging, since the snowflake on her flank was intricately detailed with six hearts and five dots. Then she had to detail her blue eyes, since the mini ponies were a solid color.

The other eight figures were dumped into an empty box, and another package of blue ponies was opened. She once more grabbed the unicorn mare from the bunch, dumping the remaining eight figures in the box. This unicorn got decorated like her best friend, Dewdrop Dazzle, with pink and yellow hair. Dewey was currently visiting Crater Lake on the other side of the country – a vacation her friend had been wanting to take since arriving on Earth.

Snowy had known Dewey since they were foals; they’d grown up next door neighbors, then both traveled across the country to attend Princess Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns together. They’d been roommates then, and were still housemates even now. When the time came for her to come to Earth, Dewey had been right there with her every step of the way. Snowy hadn’t needed a photo of the mare’s cutie mark to replicate the umbrella sheltering a pair of hearts. She could see it clear as day in her head, even with her friend three thousand miles away.

The same could not be said of the rest of the ponies sharing the same roof with her. She pulled her phone up and scrolled to the pictures she’d taken of her friends. She dumped out the purple ponies, pulling out the pegasus mare to replicate Flitterheart. Blue and purple hair, with a pair of hearts on her flank, in the same two colors. Even her eyes were blue, not that she’d needed a photo of them to know that. Flitterheart had the brightest blue eyes… she could look into them forever.

Of course, that would take her attention away from Flit’s pretty wings, too. It was quite fortuitous that all three of the molds for pegasi had their wings unfurled to better show them off. Flitterheart was currently away with Sunny Rays; the two pegasi trying to jumpstart the latter’s stalled music career. Flitterheart had been easy to paint, and she grabbed the purple earth pony mare in her aura next.

Daisy Dreams also had blue eyes, and Snowy detailed those first since she still had the blue paint out. Daisy was currently in Europe, travelling with fellow Rutgers students. The first pony on campus, she tended to get invited to events and on trips frequently.

Daisy’s two-toned pink mane was pretty straightforward, though her daisy cutie mark was very delicate, with lots of thin lines. That took patience. She was grateful she didn’t need to use her mouth to paint. Not even fingers could keep both the brush and the figurine as steady as her magic could.

She picked up the purple unicorn figure and scrolled through her pictures on her phone. She found a photo of Rainbow Flash and compared it to the miniature. Her coat was somewhere between pink and purple. Neither the purple figure, nor the pink figure, was quite the right color for her. The fashionista would be the most particular about getting her exact shade right. The purple figurine was a few shades too dark, and Snowy thought of a trick she’d learned from customizers on the internet.

All unicorns had a special spell. Snowy didn’t have one, not exactly. Her snowflake cutie mark had dual meaning – she loved the snow, and she’d gotten her mark by catching a snowflake in her mouth without using her tongue. But she was also a special little snowflake in another way: her magical talent let her learn other spells with ease. She could perfectly imitate almost any spell, including other unicorns’ special spells. Not that what she was about to do was a special talent, she merely needed to use the most basic spell in every unicorn’s repertoire. Just really, really intensely.

She rummaged around in her closet, finding several dark-colored t-shirts. She trotted into the bathroom and wrapped the shirts around her head, blindfolding herself. She levitated the purple unicorn figure, then lit her horn with the basic lighting spell. Her horn glowed with light. It glowed brighter and brighter, reflecting off the mirrors in the room. She kept it up for five minutes before snuffing the light out and undoing the blindfold.

She compared the figurine first to the other purple figures, then to Rainbow Flash’s photo. She’d successfully ‘sun faded’ the figure, and the application had been even thanks to the bathroom’s mirror. But it was still a smidge too dark. She repeated the process for another thirty seconds, and was satisfied with the results this time.

Rainbow Flash’s hair was also difficult. The figurine was very basic, and didn’t have particularly detailed hair. Rainbow’s tail was purple, that was easy. Her mane, however, was purple, pink, yellow, and orange. The figure’s hair was one blob of plastic with no parts or locks, so there was no easy way to break up the colors. Two-toned manes weren’t difficult, but it got harder with each additional color.

Snowy did her best to get Rainbow Flash’s hair just right, the way the unicorn would want it. Rainbow Flash was always in style, and any more than two hairs out of place would immediately be a bad mane day. Snowcatcher did her best to capture that with what little she had to work with.

She decided to break open a bag of the white ponies next, or ‘undecorated’ as enthusiasts called them. Feathermay’s bright magenta coat was going to require repainting entirely; starting with a white base would be easier. She could spend an hour painstakingly brushing a coat of magenta paint on the white pegasus, or she could just dip the figurine in the paint jar and then back out with her magic. She, of course, chose the latter, dunking the miniature pegasus into the paint. She let it drip for a few seconds, before once more heading into the restroom. Her horn glowed as she warmed the figurine, trying to dry it faster. She continued rotating the figure while she warmed it, so the paint wouldn’t run.

Another aspect of Snowcatcher’s talent was the ability to adapt spells to situations where they wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing to jump to mind. Teleportation was her go-to for a lot of things, but it wasn’t the only spell at her command.

She surrounded the figure with a bubble, and let it float over the bathtub. It was a spell she’d learned from a unicorn named Fizzy. Much to Snowy’s surprise, she’d discovered that bubbles were surprisingly useful in a number of situations. She also borrowed Rainbow Flash’s special spell, pinning the bubble in place magically. Rainbow used the spell to keep clothes suspended as she worked on them, but, like the bubbles, it had a number of other uses.

She returned to the figures. Since the undecorated ponies were still sitting on her desk, she picked up the earth pony mare, and slid the rest into the box with the others she wasn’t using just yet. Plumsweet was fairly straightforward, with pink and magenta hair. It was sometimes hard to tell that the best cook among them had two-toned hair. Unlike Rainbow Flash, Plumsweet was notoriously messy, and the two colors blended together well. Plumsweet treated her hair as an afterthought.

Her cutie mark was an ice cream soda, which made Snowy crave one as she painted it. She reminded herself that she was on vacation. If she wanted dessert, she could go get it and not have to wait until there was a good time to do so. Besides, staying hydrated was important. She winked to Carvel and returned to her room ten minutes later with a refreshing milkshake.

The flash of light and popping sound of her teleport had roused her cat, Snowflake, from his birdwatching in the bedroom’s window. He demanded attention, butting his head against Snowy’s legs. She dangled her tail, letting the feline play with it, before reaching out a hoof and offering him some whipped cream from her beverage.

She finished Plumsweet and ripped open another bag of blanks. The pegasus mare floated out, and the other eight were added to the box of spares. Diamond Rose was similar in coloration to Plumsweet, with red, magenta, and pink hair. That was where the similarities ended. Plumsweet was a plump earth pony with a heart of gold, while Diamond Rose was a petite pegasus heiress who thought the world revolved around her. To the pegasus’ credit, she’d adapted to life on Earth better than any of them. She wasn’t malicious, but she was naïve and definitely difficult at times.

Diamond’s cutie mark was another easy one – a diamond. The only tricky part was getting the shading right; the facets of the gem had slightly different colors, which was probably impossible to tell at HO scale, but Snowy wanted to be accurate. Technically, the ponies were being offered as HO scale accessories, but like many of Bachmann’s figures, they were a little big for 1/87. In this case, they looked almost perfect for S scale. Considering how many ponies liked collecting Matchbox cars, that probably wasn’t a coincidence – Bachmann could grab sales from ponies and model railroaders alike with something sized between both scales.

She’d get a chance to compare the size soon enough. GreenLight was issuing a pony figure as an accessory with an upcoming release of their Hobby Shop series, appropriately paired with a Ford Mustang II hatchback. Unlike Bachmann’s railroad accessories, GreenLight advertised everything they made as being exact 1/64 scale.

She took a sip of her milkshake, then licked whipped cream off her muzzle as she opened another bag of purple ponies. She grabbed the pegasus mare, and started detailing her golden locks. A solid mane and tail color like Lily Blossom’s was the easiest thing to detail. It was the mare’s cutie mark that wasn’t: a trio of lilies.

Lily was the longsuffering friend of Diamond Rose’s. They’d grown up in the same household, but Diamond’s parents owned the home, and Lily’s mother was staff. There’d been an unhealthy power dynamic between the two of them for years, and Lily hadn’t completely gotten over it. Diamond Rose had recognized the problem, taken ownership of it, and had been taking strides to make things up to her. Diamond was paying for their trip to Daytona Beach entirely out of her own pocket.

Considering Lily Blossom’s cutie mark was much more intricately detailed than Diamond Rose’s, it was Lily that was being the difficult one today, even if only by proxy. Snowy took another sip of her milkshake as she finished painting Lily’s cutie mark.

A bag of pink ponies was opened next, and a pegasus mare was the next to get Snowy’s attention. Ploomette was a duchess, had become the very first Equestrian Consul General of New York City… and was the hotel’s single most important investor.

They would’ve failed from the start if not for her intervention. They had all been among the earliest ponies through the portal, and Snowcatcher had been the first pony to propose a business venture to her. Ploomette had offered her full support, in more ways than one. She was the closest Earth had to a princess, and as such, she’d become the de facto face of Equestria.

She was also difficult to paint. Rainbow Flash’s mane had proven tricky to replicate with four colors; Ploomette’s hair literally had all the colors of the rainbow. Snowcatcher had to resist the urge to throw the figurine several times. No matter what she did, she wasn’t satisfied with Ploom’s mane. Ploomette was, in a word, the prettiest mare Snowy had ever laid eyes on. In the back of her mind she knew darned well that she’d never be happy with the replica no matter how good it was, but that didn’t stop her from trying to make it perfect.

There was no such thing as a vacation for Ploomette. She was still commuting to New York City every day, with her entourage of guards and her Archmage. She was supposed to live on site, but she preferred the hotel to the consulate. Snowy had a much easier time with the duchess’ blue eyes and her cutie mark – a heart wearing a crown.

Archmage Starbeam Twinkle was next on the list. Starbeam and Sweetie Swirl presented her with the same exact problem as Rainbow Flash. Both unicorns were similar shades of pinkish-purple. They even had similar hair colors. Neither had traveled anywhere for vacation. Sweetie Swirl had taken an interest in video games, and was no doubt playing Xbox. Starbeam, however, was still working as Archmage.

Neither was particularly good with guests. Sweetie Swirl was shy, introverted, and asocial. Starbeam Twinkle was bitter and abrasive. She hated Earth, despised customer service, and at best tolerated the rest of them, including Ploomette.

She grabbed two purple unicorn figurines and her blindfold, then headed to the restroom to fade them. Neither figure needed to be faded all that much, so it only took a few minutes of intense light to do the trick. She checked on the painted Feathermay figure while she was in there. Satisfied that it was now dry, she brought it out with her to work on alongside the two unicorns.

She started with Starbeam. The unicorn had pretty turquoise and blue hair. Supposedly, she’d competed in pageants as a filly. Snowy had a hard time believing that, if only because of just how antisocial she was. Getting answers out of her was like pulling teeth. If she didn’t want to share details of her life, she wouldn’t. She seemed to enjoy tormenting everypony by dropping hints about her past, without explaining anything. The stars on her flank were easy to paint – one turquoise, one yellow, and two white ones.

Sweetie Swirl had blue and pink hair, with orange in her mane only. After painting Ploomette, Snowy had no intention of complaining about only needing to paint three colors of hair. Sweetie’s cutie mark was a swirl of blue and pink ice cream in a cone, something she had to repeat constantly to new guests who thought it was cotton candy.

Snowy looked at the clock before starting on detailing Feathermay. She’d gotten through almost three quarters of her coworkers and it was only dinnertime. Magic made painting so much easier. She painted Feathermay’s red, orange, and yellow hair, and the trio of feathers on her flank, then closed up her paints and cleaned her brushes.

Snowcatcher wanted something quick and easy for dinner, so she ended up making spaghetti. The smell of food was enough to get Sweetie Swirl’s attention. For a pony who was using her vacation time to play video games, she looked surprisingly well-presented.

Sweetie explained that she was livestreaming a game because people enjoyed watching her play. Snowy doubled the amount of spaghetti in the pot of boiling water and chitchatted with Sweetie until dinner was done.

When they were finished eating, Sweetie offered to clean up since Snowy had done the cooking. Snowcatcher returned to her bedroom with four mares left to paint. She found Snowflake on her desk, sniffing at the recently painted ponies. She petted her little quality inspector, then distracted him by making his dinner.

The pink ponies were still sitting on her desk, so she picked up the unicorn mare. Lulu Luck had magenta, yellow, and green hair. On paper, her color combination sounded awful, but it was much better in person. Her pair of interlocked horseshoes was easy enough for Snowy to replicate, with tiny dots representing the nails. Lulu had gone somewhere for vacation, but she hadn’t told anypony where. Like Starbeam Twinkle, she played her cards close to her barrel. Unlike Starbeam, Lulu was pleasant to be around and well-liked by her peers.

She needed another pink unicorn mare, and opened another bag of pink ponies. Cherry Pie only needed yellow and orange for her hair, and Snowcatcher quickly replicated her friend. A pie decorated the mare’s flank, complete with a cherry on top. Unlike the craving she’d had for a milkshake when drawing Plumsweet’s ice cream soda cutie mark, the pie did nothing for Snowy’s appetite. Actually, she didn’t care much for cherries, a fact she’d never let on to Cherry Pie for fear of insulting her.

Neither yellow nor orange was a common coat color, at least not compared to pink, purple, and blue. She hadn’t purchased many bags of either, and she had to root around at the bottom of the box to find them. An earth pony mare was extracted from a pack of orange ponies, and the rest were dumped in the box.

Honeybuzz, like Feathermay, hadn’t gone anywhere. She had an apiary in the backyard, and while her bees were capable of taking care of themselves, she didn’t want to leave them. Instead, she was using her time off productively, doing research on colony collapse disorder. Snowy replicated the orange mare’s yellow and pink hair. Unsurprisingly, a bee decorated her flanks. The trickiest part about replicating her cutie mark were the bee’s movement lines.

As she put Honeybuzz aside to dry, Snowy reached for a bag of yellow ponies. She only had one of her coworkers left to replicate: Sunny Rays. The yellow pegasus had been a filly pop star in Equestria, but her fortunes had taken a drastic turn. Her voice had dropped two octaves as she got older, and then her father embezzled her money and fled to parts unknown with a neighbor. She’d gotten a job wrangling weather before coming to Earth.

She’d come to Earth to go on tour… but had fallen in with them instead. Sunny wasn’t singing and she wasn’t working with the weather very often – human laws tended to frown on modifying the weather, not that that stopped them from changing things over the hotel. Sometimes in the middle of the summer Snowcatcher wanted a snow day. Between two unicorns with weather-related cutie marks and half a dozen pegasi, it was a thing they could make happen, and they did so periodically. Their neighbors didn’t mind as long as they gave advance notice. Returning the favor to ensure perfect weather for neighbors’ gatherings helped keep them on good terms. The rest of the block tolerated the chickens and the bees. Snowy was fairly confident that the hotel’s zoning didn’t allow them to keep chickens, but she’d never officially looked into it. What they didn’t know they could claim ignorance on.

It was amazing how much an adorable pastel pony could get away with on Earth just by looking sad. It was a tactic that worked, but its effectiveness required them to use it sparingly. Human culture was so different from pony culture, and both sides were willing to allow the other a lot of leeway when it came to things they didn’t understand.

She finished up Sunny’s purple and pink hair and turned to her friend’s cutie mark, a trio of suns. After detailing Sunny’s purple eyes, Snowy put her with the rest to finish drying. She glanced at the clock and was shocked to see it was significantly earlier than anticipated.

She started fishing through the box where she’d dumped the figures she wasn’t immediately using. There were plenty of other ponies she could replicate – her parents for example, and her older sister, Snow’el. All of Dewey’s siblings. Her favorite Wonderbolt, Rainbow Dash. The possibilities were almost endless.

The attic still smelled like paint on the fifth day of Snowy’s vacation. The fans helped, but it would’ve been better if the windows weren’t sealed shut. She bore with the smell. Time was running out, and she had yet to place a single car on her new dioramas. Having a place to display her collection was the entire reason she’d created them in the first place.

She levitated a Matchbox AMC Eagle station wagon over from the pile of cars stacked in the corner. With a quick tug of her magic, the plastic blisterpack separated from the cardboard backing, and she’d opened her first car, supposedly destroying all value in the process.

But what value was there in having a car that couldn’t roll? The rugged wagon found a spot of prominence on her alpine layout. She levitated the cars waiting to be opened towards her, scanning them all in quick succession as they whizzed past her. She plucked trucks and SUVs out of the air, putting them aside to be opened for this particular diorama. The next to get liberated was an International Scout made by Johnny Lightning, followed by Matchbox’s 1986 Ford pickup.

A GreenLight dump truck with a snowplow soon joined them, and Snowcatcher put it on the roadway, clearing a path for the other cars. She levitated over some cotton fluff, putting it in front of the plow to give it some ‘snow’ to push.

She turned her attention to the beach layout. For that diorama, the first to be released was GreenLight’s Ford Bronco Sport. It had a tent on the roof, as part of a series of camping themed vehicles. GreenLights usually retailed for about five times the price of a Matchbox, so she was picky when buying them, but the tent had won her over for this particular model. As had the Bronco name.

Woody station wagons were strongly associated with surf culture, so she placed her Hot Wheels Dodge Aries station wagon on this layout. Yellow with woodgrain, it was a car she’d purchased secondhand. Hot Wheels had only issued it once, years before she’d been born, let alone come to Earth.

Even though Hot Wheels cars were the same price as Matchbox, she rarely even glanced at the silly-looking vehicles when she was out shopping. Hot Wheels made some nice cars, ones you had to join a club to get access to, and then pay through the snout to get. $25.00 for a car, plus shipping? No. That wasn’t even counting the yearly membership fee to the Redline Club. The few Hot Wheels cars that had made it to her diorama were mostly vintage pieces from the 1980s, made during the brand’s brief brush with realism. Her favorite Hot Wheels models were cars that had no business being in that brand’s lineup, like the Dodge Omni 024, Cadillac Seville, and Ford Fairmont. She had no need of a toilet on wheels or a coffin with an engine sticking through it.

Her favorite cars were reserved for the GWB. Her eyes drifted to the Tomica Mustang II, the one she’d customized to look like her own car. She’d struck up a friendship with the toy dealer who’d sold it to her – he lived on Staten Island and she was welcome to visit his place anytime she felt like purchasing some more cars – it saved him paying bridge tolls. As an added bonus, she could peruse all of his inventory, and not just whatever he’d brought to any given toy show.

She gingerly placed the Mustang II on the bridge, heading away from the city and back towards Fort Lee. Back home. She’d been on Earth long enough that she’d started to consider New Jersey home. Next was a GreenLight Checker taxicab, the iconic vehicle of New York City, even decades after the last one rolled off the assembly line or saw active duty as a cab.

With the first two cars on the layout being 1970s vintage, she pondered turning the diorama into a period piece. 1970s cars were popular in 1/64. Muscle cars especially, but everything from subcompacts like the AMC Gremlin and Ford Pinto to land yachts such as the Dodge Royal Monaco and Lincoln Continental Mark V were readily available. 1980s offerings were starting to be offered by diecast manufacturers also. Auto World had come out with a Mitsubishi Starion, and they were teasing a Toyota Celica Supra that was ‘coming soon’ according to their social media. They also had a big Buick Estate station wagon from the mid ‘70s.

She tapped a hoof on her muzzle as she thought it over. She liked older cars better than newer ones, a sentiment shared by a lot of ponies. Modern aerodynamic cars were too blobby for pony tastes – they looked like a normal car had melted. If you asked a pony to draw a car, you’d probably end up with a boxy ‘80s car, something akin to a Plymouth Reliant K or Renault 9.

…Or a Volvo 240, like the Matchbox Snowcatcher was levitating out of its cardboard and plastic prison. The empty blisterpack joined dozens of others in a pile on the floor as the little blue sedan was set on the miniature bridge. She decided then and there that the cutoff year to be displayed on the GWB was 1986, the same year as the Volvo miniature.

GreenLight’s 1965 Ford Thunderbird and Auto World’s 1975 Cadillac Eldorado were placed on the bridge to cruise in style. Replicas of the long dead market segment known as personal luxury coupes, the cars were miniatures of an entirely different kind of car than any that could be purchased new. The best way to describe the plush cars was comparing them to driving your living room sofa.

But bigger wasn’t always better, and tiny hatchbacks like GreenLight’s Volkswagen Rabbit and Konami’s Toyota Starlet found a home on the bridge as well. Utilitarian minivans like Auto World’s Dodge Caravan joined sporty Ford Mustangs and Pontiac Firebirds. GreenLight’s NYPD Plymouth Fury patrolled the bridge, keeping potential speeders in check.

She moved to her other 1980s display, a miniature town. If she ever built some big box retailers, she could move the entire display to be part of the end of the bridge, creating an ‘L’ shape to her layout. For now, though, it would have to be separated.

She had a pair of parking lots to fill up, and a town to populate. A Majorette Porsche 924, with its giant opening hatchback, was placed in the parking lot of the Caldor, hatch wide open, ready to be loaded. Matchbox’s Mercury Cougar Villager station wagon joined it, tailgate down. She really liked Matchbox and Majorette models of the 1970s and 1980s, with their opening parts. Many had opening doors, like the Majorette Honda Accord at the K-Mart.

Sports cars and muscle cars were the most popular cars in small scale, and she had more than her fair share of cars like the Plymouth Road Runner Superbird and Chevrolet Corvette. She liked that these cars were offered in bright, cheery colors instead of the dreadful sea of beige and silver SUVs she saw on the road every day. It was a lot easier for a bright blue or mint green car to go home with her than one painted a more boring color. She decided to turn one lane of her highway display into a muscle car cruise, with more mundane traffic mixed in. Ironically, the cruisers were in the slow lane, letting impatient drivers in mundane sedans and bland SUVs blast past them in the fast lane.

She looked longingly to the remaining doors piled against the wall. If she could figure out how to stack them, she could set up a few more dioramas. The idea of a scenic covered bridge display made her smile. That would be next on her list – Bachmann made a covered bridge in their Plasticville line of train accessories. She could make it look realistic with a little work… and a lot of practice. Thankfully, there were a number of tutorials available online.

If I’m going to have a covered bridge… She pulled out the page where she’d been taking notes and added ‘Amish buggy’ to her list.

Her American Diorama figures arrived on the sixth day of her vacation, conveniently in time to make her display pop. She’d already acquired a few figures that had come with GreenLight cars. She’d also acquired a USPS mailbox and gas pumps via their Hobby Shop series. Much to her surprise, as she dug through the box there were additional items included that she hadn’t ordered. Preiser beach figures were exactly what she’d wanted in the first place. They were HO scale, but there was a healthy mix of men and women instead of just the latter.

Maybe they saw I ordered a bunch of beach figures and tossed in some extra inventory as a ‘thank you for your business’? She prided herself on doing that for the hotel’s guests – giving them more than money’s worth. They built rapport with their customers, and many of them made it a point to come back because of that.

Then she found some 3-D printed models – jersey barriers, traffic cones, trash cans, telephone poles, mailboxes, even an Amish buggy, all of which were things she wanted, and all of which were in 1/64 scale.

This is really getting weird now.

Near the bottom of the box, she found a Tomica Limited Vintage set with a man washing a gray Honda Civic. There were a couple of children and a bicycle included, but what caught her eye was the orange cat curled up on the hood of the car, and a recolor of the same set, with a red Civic and a white cat, just like her Snowflake.

Snowy blinked. Somehow, she’d gotten everything she wanted. She looked through her phone, trying to confirm that they hadn’t mixed up her order with someone else’s. The order showed everything that had been included in the box, yet her bank statement recorded only the amount she’d remembered spending.

Where did this all come from? Their website doesn’t even offer Tomica or Preiser, and there’s no way I’d forget ordering the cats. I didn’t even know those existed until now. There has to be magic at work here, but what? I wrote everything I wanted on a sheet of paper… Of course! It must be enchanted! It’s the only way this makes sense. That’s why there were more boxes of buildings and sections of wall. I’m not getting forgetful or going crazy.

Snowy spent the rest of the day looking for the page she’d jotted things down on, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

Snowy started the final day of her vacation with another fruitless search for the magical page, but it was gone. Now that she was actively looking for it, she could feel the residual magic left behind. She could’ve had anything – she could’ve become an alicorn, she could’ve solved all the world’s problems, she could’ve had a large sum of money in an offshore bank account. Instead, all she’d gotten was a few extra model accessories.

She was okay with that. It made sense – the spell probably only worked as long as nopony noticed it. It would be too easy to abuse otherwise. She could ponder the ‘what-ifs’ all day, but that wouldn’t bring the page back to her.

Instead, she decided it was time for the final step: populating her towns with miniature people. A lady in a dress was added getting into the Honda Accord, and other human figures were added near the cars with their tailgates open. A man in a suit walked down main street. He was probably overdressed for the small town, but she didn’t have a way to replicate a big city. At least not yet…

The swimsuit-clad girls were added to the beach, along with the two surfer dudes. They’d had a bikini car wash set, which she’d blindly purchased along with the rest. It soon became apparent they didn’t look quite right on the beach with their accessories, so Snowy adapted, creating a car wash a block away from the beach. She wasn’t sure how a ‘bikini car wash’ was different from any other charity car wash. Swimsuits were smart attire when washing a vehicle. Besides, some fabrics could scratch car paint, like corduroy jeans. Ponies didn’t have that problem – she always washed her car wearing her normal outfit: nothing. She had clothing for special occasions, and also to wear when she needed it. There were some establishments that actively enforced a ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ policy, so she would have to put on a t-shirt to go inside.

Once all the figures were in place, she lost herself in the layout, becoming a little filly all over again. She spent time moving cars around, with police cars chasing criminals across the GWB, and cars going through the car wash at the beach, scrubbing away the salt from the ocean spray.

She added the figures of her friends around the layouts. She picked up the figure of Diamond Rose and moved her to her native habitat, the mall, with Lily Blossom in tow, as always. Dewdrop Dazzle was feeding ducks at the lake. Lulu Luck was tinkering under the hood of a GreenLight Checker. Feathermay was browsing the selection at a car dealership, debating between a Matchbox Studebaker Lark Wagonaire or a Tomica Suzuki Swift. The Studebaker was the oldest model in her collection, made when the real car was still in showrooms. When Studebaker was still in business. She’d been enamored with the car’s sliding roof, so she’d purchased it.

Ploomette was riding in a classic Mustang convertible in a parade through town, with Starbeam Twinkle riding behind in the back of a pickup truck. Sweetie Swirl was getting an ice cream at the beach, while Plumsweet was checking out a bakery. Daisy Dreams and Rainbow Flash were frolicking on the beach. Cherry Pie and Honeybuzz were at the little hotel representing their own business.

Her own figure was standing atop the George Washington Bridge, looking down on the world. She liked teleporting up there – it was her place of clarity; a place she could get away from it all for a little while. She probably wouldn’t be going up there as frequently now that she finally had her layout. After a little thought, she added Flitterheart and Sunny Rays to the bridge’s tower as well. Sunny would probably prefer the beach, but Snowy wanted a little company. She’d spent most of the week alone, and while she was asocial by nature… even she desired contact with others periodically.

Her stomach rumbled and she tore herself away from playing. She still had things she wanted to get for her diorama. Cars, buildings, figures, accessories. The list was endless. Even though her focus was on cars, she wanted a train running across one of the layouts too. It would be a great thing to place alongside her interstate highway, taking up some of the unused space on the side. There was no shortage of things she could do with her new layout, the only limits were her time and her budget. It would never be ‘finished’ as long as she lived. There would always be something new and exciting released by extant companies, and lucky toy show finds of pieces manufactured years ago.

Author's Note

Story notes: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1027718/story-notes-the-layout