An Earthling Earth Pony at Celestia's School of Magic: Year One

We finished classes for the day. Me, Bright, Summer, and Hannah all decided to do another excursion out to the park. This would be our first joint trip to the park since our incident with the rainboom. Bright, Hannah, and Summer had all made individual trips to the park, or come in pairs, but I hadn’t made another attempt to visit the park since that day. I was nervous, but I was bound snd determined to face the terror of trees.

“Um, roomy, ya feelin’ alright?” Bright asked as we approached the park.

“Yes. Why do you ask?” I replied.

“Cause ya keep goin’ slower and slower,” Bright answered.

Hannah chuckled. “Are you still freaking out about trees?”

“No…but don’t laugh. Trees are scary…to everyone else, not me,” I replied.

“I think you might have that turned around,” Hannah said with amusement. “Come on, pick up the pace. We’ll defend you from the big stationary plants.”

“Ya’ll should come out ta Sweet Apple Acres. That would get Turnip over his fear of trees. Can’t be scared of those butes.”

“Why is your name Bright Pear if you’re an Apple?” Summer asked.

“Ah’m as much a Pear as an Apple, all of us at Sweet Apple Acres are. Mah granny was a Pear, an’ mah grandpappy was an Apple,” Bright answered. “The Pear orchards are ours, gifted by my great grandpappy—on mah granny’s side, an’ as much our birthright as the Apple ones. One day, after ah am older and married, them Pear orchards will be gifted ta meh. Mah family will keep them safe and tended till ah retire from the royal guard ta tend them mehself.”

“You seem to have your whole life figured out,” I said, mildly jealous.

He shrugged. “Ah know who ah am. Ah’m an Apple. Ah’m a Pear. Ah’m a farmer, but ah also want ta defend mah fellow ponies—like mah sis’. Mah brother will take the Apple orchards, ah shall have the Pear orchards, and mah sis’…well…she still has ta figure out what she wants after she retires from the guard, likely marry into some other family, like my great great grandaunt married into the Oranges.”

Hannah chuckled. “Is your family on a quest to conquer all the fruits? Ready to get the lemons, strawberries and grapes?”

“Ain’t got no relatives in those families yet that ah know of…there might be a Grape…but they is pretty distant,” Bright replied.

“I was kidding,” Hannah said, bemused. “Never heard of unicorn farmers, at least not in Equestria.”

“Ah only inherit the Pear orchards if ah marry an earth pony mare to make the new matriarch of the Pear clan,” Bright clarified..”Farmin’ is earth pony business, an gotta make sure we keep at least one earth pony husband or bride in every weddin’.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Hannah said.

Bright looked at her. “Why not?”

“What if you fall in love with a pony that isn’t an earth pony?” Hannah asked.

“Then ah don’t inherit, mah brother will take both orchards, or mah sister, if she marries an earth pony. Gotta keep the farms in the hooves of the earth ponies—although, she don’t view herself as a farmer, so she might not even then. It’s okay ta have one pony in a couple that ain’t an earth pony, or ta have non-earth pony youngins’, but ya got ta make sure earth ponies keep in the family. Farms will fail without ‘em.”

“Hmm, it seems the unicorn nobles aren’t the only ones concerned with bloodlines,” I observed. “I wonder if pegasi are as picky.”

Bright looked at me, ears flattened. “It ain’t nothin’ like that. We just gotta keep our farms thrivin’. Can’t be doin’ that without earth ponies. Ya come from a farm; ya should know.”

Humans farmed well…maybe not as great as earth ponies, but they were still very effective farmers who had been doing it for about ten thousand years, which was longer than ponies had, even by my best estimates of sketchy pony history. I was fairly certain a farm could survive and do well with other pony tribes running it.

“Maybe it is easier with earth ponies, but not impossible,” I suggested. “Ponyville is a farming community, right? Yet it still has plenty of non-earth ponies. Aren’t any of them farmers?”

“Some of them,” Bright conceded. “But none of them compare with farms like ours.”

Summer stopped. “Well, we don’t need to think about that kind of stuff right now because we’re here.”

We all stopped and looked. There were the trees on the outskirts of the park, just as I remembered them. We were standing exactly where we had been standing when the rainboom had happened, I was certain of it. There was no sign of any damage to the trees or the pavement around us, no sign of what our surges had done. Someone had come and cleaned all the damage up, and done so completely that there was ln’t any trace even a detective could find. If not for the memory, people might claim it never happened. We knew what had happened, and I, who had only now returned, felt unease as I looked at the park.

Bright gave me a bump. “We’re with ya. It will be alright.”

“Yeah, it is just a park. The rest if us have come plenty if times since then. It really isn’t that interesting,” Hannah confirmed.

“And we haven’t had any other surges,” Summer said supportively.

I shook my head. “Thanks. I’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Just tell us if it gets ta be too much for ya,” Bright said.

“I will, but it won’t,” I assured them.

We walled up towards the path that cut through the trees. I kept close by my friends, keeping them within touching distance. I was walking faster, but only because I didn’t want my friends to get any further ahead of me.

“Dang, you really do have a fear of trees,” Hannah said. “Don’t feel ashamed. Everyone has stuff they’re afraid of. I won’t laugh anymore.”

“Once we get through the trees it opens up quickly to nice green grass. You just have to get past these trees,” Summer assured me.

I gulped and nodded.

We walked closer to the towering trees. As we got close, they blocked out the sun, like a building would, only they weren’t buildings. Their long greedy branches reached out, trying to steal the sunlight from everything below. There was no room for flowers or grass at their base. The trees took everything. Monster plants, heavily armored, uncaring about the needs of other plants. How could nature make such cruel things?

The path went between the trees, and I shivered as we passed between them, choosing to look down at the dirt. It was hard packed dirt, There hooftracks, light ones. The dirt was packed hard enough that no one’s hooves really dug into it. All there was was light dust on the path to hold the memories of those many hooves. The shade from above made it difficult to tell that it was even daylight. It just kept going. The path eventually curved, then curved again. How far did this go?

Then there was sunlight, free from the clutches of trees.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Hannah asked. “People wouldn’t even pay for such a boring experience.”

I looked up. There was plenty of grass, a few hills, a stream that ran through the park from somewhere beyond the trees, and a white painted bridge curved over it. The entire area was surrounded by a wall of trees in all directions, and there were a few smaller trees standing isolated in different areas of the park, but these ones had flowerbeds below them. There was a playground off in the distance with many foals playing, and there were a few ponies having picnics on blankets here and there.

I took a deep breath, pulling in the scent of grass. The scent if the trees was still strong, but if I focused on the grass, the dirt, and my friends, I could ignore the trees.

“Yeah, this is much better,” I confirmed.

“Let’s go walk over the bridge, and we can go play at the playground,” Summer suggested.

“Ain’t we a little old ta be playin’ at the playground?” Bright asked.

She shrugged. “We aren’t much bigger than them. We’re getting old enough that it won’t be long till we hit our growth spurt, and then we will be too big to play on the playground equipment, then we’ll feel bad because we never took the chance when we had it.”

I never thought of things like that. I suppose it wouldn’t be that bad to just be kids. How often did we get to be just kids when we were out on our own at this school, far from home, and our parents? I suppose Summer wasn’t far from her mom, but her dad and home were far away. Bright’s family was a train ride away, yet I never saw him go home for a weekend—I wondered why. I thought about my parents…they’d be here soon enough, and I would be explaining myself and my deception to them. I’d written them the letter, and Professor Newman said she would ensure it was delivered. I had tried to not think about what their reaction was, but suddenly I found myself wondering.

Playing on playground equipment seemed a good enough distraction.

“That sounds good to me,” I replied.

Hannah shrugged. “We’re primarily here for you, so that’s what we’ll do. I think we should still try spending some time next to one of the trees after that. You know, to get you through your phobia.”

I looked out of the corner of my eye at one of the trees before diverting my eyes again. “Yeah, we’ll do that.”

So we walked towards the bridge, my tension easing the further from the treeline we got. The trees blocked out the ability to see most buildings in town, making the park a pocket of wilderness that hid within the midst of the city—neither city or wilderness aware of how close they sat.

We walked onto the bridge and propped ourselves up on the wooden railing. We weren’t big enough to see over it, but we could see through it fine enough. The stream curved through the park exiting out through the trees. I’d seen it in town. From what I could tell, it came down high of the Canterhorn mountain, went through town, right past one if the castle gates, and it eventually went off the side of a cliff on the far side of the city. I hadn’t actually seen where it exited the city. I wanted to see a steep fall off a cliff about as much as I wanted to see trees. Earth ponies didn’t really appreciate heights. Our hooves belonged planted on solid ground. We didn’t want to be high up in the mountains. We didn’t want to feel like we were in the sky.

I lowered myself back down to stand on four hooves again. “Let’s go see the playground.”

“You okay?” Summer asked.

“I’m fine. I-” I began, but I paused as I looked out at the playground.

There were swings, seesaws, merry-,go-rounds, slides, and sandboxes. There were many foals playing, primarily unicorns, but a few pegasi and earth ponies, even one griffin chick.

And jumping and frolicking among them was a foal in a cloak.

I started heading at a brisk trot towards the playground, never taking my eyes off that foal.

“Turnip! Wait up!” Hannah yelled as my friends came galloping after me.

“Why are you running?” Summer asked.

“It ain’t that interestin’” Bright said as he came up beside me.

“Do you see the foal?” I asked, refusing to take my eyes away from the cloaked foal. Every time I had seen something before it had vanished when I had looked away. I was not going to look away for any reason.

“It’s a playground, there’s lots of foals. Which foal?” Hannah flusteredly asked.

“The one in the cloak!” I answered as I slowed down, reaching the playground’s edge. The foal was still there. I hadn’t turned away. It’s face was turned away from me, so I couldn’t see, but the fur on my body was rising again, and despite the warm sun, I felt a chill. That sense of dread and wrongness that I felt last time was back.

“We don’t see no cloaked foal, roomie,” Bright said.

“No cloaks anywhere,” Summer confirmed.

“Can you point the foal out?” Hannah asked.

I stood on the edge of the playground and pointed right at the frolicking figure. Several other foals ran right by it, not stopping or looking at it. I knew, just like my friends, they couldn’t see it. I was not just seeing things; it was right there. As long as I didn’t look away, it would remain. I was sure of it.

“There ain’t no cloaked colt or filly there,” Bright said.

I put my leg down and started marching right at the foal. I was going to find out what it was.

“-if you go out to woods today, your in for a big surprise-”

I stopped. That was definitely the foal singing…the filly…it was definitely a filly by the voice.

“If you go out in the woods today, you better be in disguise-”

It wasn’t frolicking, it was dancing and singing, and it had something in its forehooves. Was that a human doll? It was do old and raggedy looking it was hard to tell.

“For every bear that ever there was-”

I took a step closer. What was that smell? It smell awful. It made my fur rise even more.

“Will gather there for certain because-”

I took another step. I only needed another few steps and I would be close enough to speak to her and see her face.

“Today’s the day-”

Another step. The smell was so bad I could barely breathe.

“-the teddy bears have-”

One last step. I was ready to reach out. I would learn the truth.

“-theeeeiiirrr picni-”

Something collided with me, knocking me down. I lost sight of the filly.

“Oops, sorry about that,” a younger colt said as he shook away some dirt he picked up when he had fallen to the ground after running into me. He went off Immediately, laughing with some friends.

I turned to look, but the filly was gone.