Izzy Vs. Personal Space

Chapters

'Bakoff'? Sounds foreign.
...With Restricted Liberties, And Justice For...?
Mobile Discomfort Zone
Restrained Disorder

'Bakoff'? Sounds foreign.

Every day, Izzy woke up in Maretime Bay and forced herself to take that first conscious breath of strange salt air. And then she would remember that she had to be happy.

Happiness could be exhausting.

She'd originally tried to set herself up in Bridlewood as a living example: see, we don't have to live like this! It's possible to trot around smiling and singing and just enjoying the forest -- at least to the degree which Bridlewood would allow, because everything had spent centuries steeping within what Onyx liked to describe as 'a fine and pleasant misery', usually while Dapple slowly beat on a drum. That level of constant depression had a certain effect on the environment, to the point where most of the forest clearings defied the rare burst of unfiltered sunlight through finding ways to be dark and gloomy anyway.

Even the majority of the food was at least somewhat bitter, possibly because eating wasn't supposed to be fun either. Alphabittle's tavern benefited right up until the hangovers kicked in. They always did. Unicorns expected no less.

It was like they wanted to be miserable and after the world had changed, Izzy had learned some of them truly did. The majority of those in her home were tentatively exploring the twists and turns of a new path, but... there were those who refused to push a single hoof out of the gloom. They were the new minority, and they weren't happy about it.

...well, of course they weren't. Not being happy about anything was pretty much their whole reason for existing. They wallowed within the bottomless depths of truly refined angst, and it was very much like watching somepony viciously wallow in mud, sending splashes out in all directions. The whole point was to cover everypony else and make them all indistinguishable again. Unified, weighed down, and sort of crusty. The Kickbacks wanted their depression to be both mandatory and universal, and it was another reason not to return.

But they were a recent development or rather, one which hadn't really been noticed until the rest of the protective camouflage had taken a hoofstep back. There were a lot of relatively happy unicorns in the forest these days and in the past, it had just been Izzy.

She'd wanted to show unicorns that there was another way. What she'd mostly wound up demonstrating was all of the myriad means by which somepony could wind up arrested. This included the one where she'd wound up at the bottom of a ten-pony pile, which Izzy considered to be rather hard to do.

The usual charge was recorded in the forest's law books as 30-8: Excessive Public Happiness. Izzy had spent most of her first court day in asking the magistrate how that was even defined, only to be told that the older mare knew it when she saw it and by amazing coincidence, that exact same status applied to Izzy. And then she'd found herself trying to be happy about being in a cell. This was actually easier than doing it in public, mostly because fewer unicorns could stare at her.

(Izzy didn't really have a lot in common with Sunny: having been outcasts in their own communities was most of it. But when all else failed, they could always compare criminal records.)

So ultimately, she'd left the forest.

She'd... left the forest. The place of sorrow for sorrow's sake, where anguish mostly maintained itself through generational inertia. There were still ponies there who wanted everypony to feel that way. Forever.

And she didn't fully understand why so much of her wanted to go back.

She'd paused in her hoof travels, stopping along the boardwalk on a warm, exceptionally breezy spring morning -- well, for Bridlewood, it would have been exceptionally breezy. Wind tended to get broken up as it moved through the trees. Izzy hadn't really known what it felt like to have her mane streaming out behind her until she'd come to Maretime Bay. And, depending on the wind's direction, there was also the option for having the whole thing go left, right, directly into somepony's face -- this happened a lot -- or have most of it wind up stuck in front of her own eyes.

Izzy was starting to suspect that her mane was slightly on the long side. The process of reconciling herself as being 'tall' was taking somewhat longer. It was hard to think of herself as possessing any real size when she'd lived in the same area as Alphabittle and sometimes suspected he'd played a few games to win extra height. Any subsequent collection process was mysterious, but obviously functional.

There were plenty of ponies out and about: locals, mostly. As Sunny had told her, there were ponies who traveled the full length of the boardwalk every day for exercise, while others just liked to look at the sea. Some of them passed behind her, because she had reared herself up in order to plant forelegs over the edge of the railing, being careful to keep her anklet from scraping against the metal. It wouldn't be a comfortable position to hold for long, and it still rendered her into a temporary obstacle for those whose habitual trot left them skidding the safety border between vertical and horizontal. Most of them muttered and scooted around, making a lot of space at the rear because there was no telling what the wind might do with her tail.

The majority were locals, quite a few muttered, and a small number of half-caught syllables blamed her. For... everything.

Izzy didn't feel this was strictly fair. Yes, she'd set things off. But as far as she was concerned, only the first wave of consequences from having entered the city should even partially be hers, and a portion was certainly due to Sunny. Blame needed to lose strength across generations and since there hadn't been time for that yet, it at least really needed to find a different Usual Suspect based on total frequency of incidents. So if you looked at the majority of the most recent events, they really should have been muttering about Pipp.

Some of the earth ponies liked to look at the sea. (If seaponies existed, then Izzy imagined they spent a lot of time gazing at the shore.) Izzy was still getting used to it.

...trying to get used to it.
...failing --

-- Sunny had taught her about the water. How the pounding of the waves was effectively constant. That the impact of liquid could, in time, wear anything away. Very slowly, but -- the cliffs had been further out once, and going down to the beach would discover that the rock had an inward curve near the base.

The sea pushed in. Constantly.

Izzy felt as if it was trying to push her out.

Most days were too bright. Sure, the clouds blew in from the water, but they blew out again just as quickly. Izzy had grown up in a place where light was almost constantly filtered: first by the forest canopy, and then through a general miasma of emotional gloom. There were times when her eyes watered, and she kept sacrificing sunglasses because when she was unicycling, those little screws were just so useful.

The sea breeze was effectively random, except when it was constant. Or constantly random. It shouldn't have been possible to have the air hit her from every direction at once, but she was surrounded by the stuff at all times anyway, so there you go.

There was always salt in the air, and it was disorienting. Izzy understood the scents of the forest: loam and mulch and oak moss. (Especially the oak moss, because that was one of the best scents in the world.) It was possible to get a rough idea of where you were in Bridlewood just by pausing and taking a deep breath. To do so in Maretime Bay could send her reeling, along with renewing a series of questions about why nopony was licking the buildings.

Just about every voice came with a foreign accent. A few familiar words had found new definitions. The struggle to unite three disparate technologies was nothing compared to the collective effort required for figuring out exactly how long a 'moon' was supposed to be.

Everything was new and when everything qualified for that status, when she was constantly under sensory barrage from things she'd never known and the world changed too quickly for the new elements to become familiar...

Strangeness pounded against her from all sides. And there was something in her which wanted the protection of the trees, the familiarity --

-- but when so many of the memories were inextricably linked to the pain of endless solitude, how could you still want the only thing you'd ever truly known?

(Did Misty ever want to seek the castle as a place of final retreat? Those memories were darker, but -- they were all the other unicorn mare had. Izzy lacked the same degree of horrible associations, and was fairly certain she would be able to redecorate. Plus there had to be a lot of interesting old parts lying around.)

Izzy didn't understand the urge to return. There were a lot of things she didn't understand, and she was trying every day. To learn, to get better. To become somepony who could be a good friend.

She'd tried to work out exactly what she was feeling, held an internal debate with the why of it. But the urge to retreat wasn't comprehensible, much less reasoning. It was just... there.

The unicorn gazed down at the sea, and waves pounded against her resolve. Trying to wear it away.

She'd resumed her journey. Multiple ponies looked at her as she went by, some stared, others dodged out of the way of a wind-whipped mane and didn't quite make it. Izzy kept trying to apologize, and most of them scurried on.

Apologizing had the benefit of letting her talk to ponies. Smile. Izzy usually tried to smile with her whole body, typically from a distance of about eight tail strands away. It was a habit picked up from Bridlewood, where nopony would ever believe she was actually happy unless she was doing it from really close up. Well, nopony except the magistrates, who had pretty much stopped questioning her entirely after Round Three.

And being that close let her breathe in their scents.

It was easiest when she encountered another unicorn, because that scent was familiar. It was an anchor of sorts, giving her a brief chance to root within what she knew. Pegasi and earth ponies... they didn't carry the same olfactory signature. There was a certain sweetness around the feathers for the former, and with the locals -- well, they didn't smell fishy at all, obviously. (Izzy had eventually worked out that the rumor had arisen from the air itself: the scents which came from proximity to the sea.) And there wasn't really anything of the soil about them either. Sunny, with whom she had the most experience, smelled -- solid. It probably wasn't the right word, but it was the best one she had.

Still, just being close to anypony (and the closer, the better) told her that she was among a population. There were others around her. She wasn't alone. Going back would --

-- Bridlewood was changing --

-- it hadn't changed that much. Sunny needed her here. Maybe they all did.

Today, they'd mostly needed her to run an errand, and her hooves moved along the old wooden boards to suit.

Her destination was located in what Maretime Bay residents called the Oddtrot: a section of the boardwalk which was filled with small businesses, each catering to its own very narrow specialty. It was supposedly what you got when the only chance to diversify in retail was through focusing ever more finely. Prior to the start of the Second Age, it had been a good day in Bridlewood when a given seller worked up enough motivation to actually unlock a door.

This particular shop was fairly small. A little on the cramped side, to be honest about it, and Izzy was thinking that as a pony whose best arrangement for crafting and repair supplies was Wherever I'm Going To Be Rummaging In The Next Five Minutes. It was almost impossible to move without having her tail brush against something and since the owner treated excessive contact as You Just Bought That, the layout effectively substituted for both sales pitch and charisma.

The yellow mare looked up as the bell over the slow-opening door rang. Her snout wrinkled, and then a pulled-back pink mane tried to sniff. That was normally a further task for the snout, but Posey's disdain was a full-body event.

"Oh," the earth pony said. "You. "

She was reared up on her hind legs -- or rather, that was what Izzy was presuming, because those limbs were hidden behind the elevated, delicate-seeming balsa wood counter. Then again, earth ponies didn't exactly hover or levitate.

Forehooves were busy moving across a carefully-arranged selection of petals, flowers, and twigs. Bits adhered to her frogs here and there, clung until she pressed them against something else. Posey did flower arrangements. Some were created to customer order, others were apparently traditional, and Sunny had said there was at least one which was made from everything which could potentially create an allergic reaction. Just in case.

There was a lot of stock on display. The majority of it consisted of wreaths and garlands. Hitch was of the opinion that Posey liked to make things which could be wrapped around a neck.

The unicorn took a breath. All of the flowers smelled lovely. New. Foreign. Wrong.

'Hi, Posey!" Izzy chirped, because being extremely friendly was a good way to let ponies know you meant it. And she moved closer, as a truly sincere smile had to be presented from close-up --

"Stop breathing."

The earth pony's voice had been cold, and Izzy almost froze.

"Stop what?" came out as something purely curious. Surely Posey hadn't meant to say --

"You're just about right on top of the counter," Posey softly projected, "and I'm working with petals. One strong breath will scatter everything. So if you're going to be that close, stop breathing. Otherwise, back off."

...oh. Izzy took about half a hoofstep back: forelegs only. It left her spine slightly bunched up, and her tail curled in to keep it away from the inventory.

"I'm just here to pick up the centerpiece!" she happily told the shop's owner, and a brief ear tilt indicated an empty, waiting saddlebag.

No answer.

"The one for the dinner party," she helpfully added. "I'm sure you remember. Or you might remember the payment, since that was made in advance."

Light green eyes narrowed.

"By the little princess," Posey eventually said. "Yes. She didn't say it was for a dinner party, though."

"Maybe she forgot," Izzy proposed. "Or she was worried about the consequences, since she's the one who's going to be putting it on the table. Things happen when Pipp puts stuff on display. Like stinky hooves. Or manes going after ponies, even though that's a little after the display part. But this is a centerpiece! So it'll probably just turn everybody's manes green. Unless they're green already, and then how could you tell?"

Posey was staring at her.

"It's nothing you would have done," Izzy quickly added. "You're just the crafter. You're a very good crafter. I can tell! Since we're sort of in the same line of work. Or twigs off the same branch, anyway." Thoughtfully, "I can't really work with flowers. They're too light. But I can work with glitter, and that weighs so much less. I don't understand why my mark is like that. It just is."

The stare came with a certain... pressure.

Izzy smiled. Posey didn't. This wasn't a bad thing. In Izzy's limited experience, Posey didn't smile right. Posey's smiles came with an agenda.

"Is the centerpiece ready?" felt potentially helpful.

There was no immediate answer. Yellow hooves moved. Twigs shifted, bent, almost seemed to work themselves into a springy lattice.

"I wasn't expecting you this early," Posey finally said. "There's still a little ways to go. And I need to finish this first."

Izzy squinted. There was a lot of blue going in.

"What is it? Because it's very pretty. Sort of somber, but --"

The other mare's expression twisted. It was an odd thing to watch. Who didn't like talking about their work?

"An apology bouquet. For cultural misunderstandings." Thin lips didn't quite approach a smile. "It's my bestseller. I go through a lot of blue hyacinth. Or I would, if I couldn't use clippings and seeds to get my own."

Izzy thought about the first part.

"How does it know?"

Posey blinked. "How does it know?"

"To apologize! Do you tell it what went wrong, and then you use your magic to make sure it knows to apologize? How does it figure out what to say?"

This made perfect sense to Izzy, because nopony understood what the rules were in magic and that meant everything was possible. For all the unicorn knew, there was a bird who laid chocolate-shelled eggs. (Which seemed kind of counterproductive, because you couldn't count on every major predator being allergic to chocolate and even if they somehow were, what if the shell melted?) So for an earth pony to enchant wood and flowers into speech? Utterly sensible, right up until it was proven impossible. And then they probably just had to work on it.

The earth pony's features had gone tight. Izzy instinctively unhunched her spine, moved closer to the counter. She needed to see Posey's features exactly. Her snout, which had effectively taken the lead, began to make its way over the counter --

"-- what are you doing?" Posey tensely asked.

"Looking at you!"

"You're almost on top of me! You do this to just about everypony, all of the time! Don't you know what personal space is? And I told you about the petals!"

As far as Izzy was concerned, she had to be close. She'd once heard the term 'microexpressions' and when it came to earth ponies, she'd discarded 'goes with microbrains' fairly early on. But she didn't have her glasses or magnifying lenses with her, and it remained important to work out exactly what strange ponies were feeling. And there were days when just about everypony came across as being somewhat strange. Tones weren't enough, words could lie...

It had been easier in Bridlewood. The other unicorns had mostly felt upset. With her. Because she hadn't been more upset.

Also, space was very big and couldn't possibly belong to just one individual, so now Izzy was somewhat confused. She decided to postpone those questions for later.

"I'm trying to see how it works! The apology part. Do you read them a script?"

"It's just a traditional meaning for these flowers!" was at least half-bark.

"So you're teaching it traditions!" Izzy glanced down. "I like the scent blend. But have you ever thought about adding oak moss? I feel like that would sort of balance out some of the sweetness."

"I don't have oak moss," just barely emerged from between tight-pressed teeth. "This is a coastal city. We don't have oaks. This is my job --"

"-- and it's so fascinating to watch --" Izzy sincerely complimented.

"-- and I don't need supervision, or suggestions, or interference --"

Izzy mostly ignored this, because there was an equally-important source of information trying to make itself known: one which required no effort to figure out at all.

Her mark was trying to suggest something.

She was a unicycler: one of the few ponies who had been capable of maintaining Bridlewood's decaying -- everything. Patch that, fix this, force another thing to limp along for an extra week and, if she was feeling creative and the populace had fizzled off most of their anger from the last attempt, make something new. She wasn't particularly good with electrical items and computers utterly defeated her through the mere act of existing -- but when it came to gears, clockwork, structure and jointing and weight balances... that was where Izzy thrived.

Izzy could, with effort, turn one of Pipp's pass-along phones on, and had something of an anti-talent for opening exactly the wrong app. But she understood wood.

"Those two branches," she thoughtfully said. "The ones you sort of wove around each other. The tips are too free. Enough motion and it'll jar them until they start to spring back."

"I haven't," declared the last unnoticed dram of patience in Posey's body, "gotten the chance to tie them off yet --"

"-- which gives you two more things which could work loose! You know knots and vibrations, right? A lot of the second, and then the first is just gone! But I think that if you just put one more twig in, that one over on the right side, and weave it through like this --"

Words could get away from Izzy. Ponies occasionally scattered. Wood seldom tried to escape and when it did, dead cellulose was a lot easier to chase down.

It was just about always easier to show somepony what she meant than to try and explain herself.

So she reared up.

Afterwards, she would realize that she hadn't needed to. Hornlight could have surrounded her selected twig, carried it into position without a care. But Maretime Bay was still new to her, just about everything within it was foreign and strange, and magic... she'd spent just about the whole of her life without it. Magic wasn't the first resort, and it was just about never her first instinct. She didn't think to ignite her horn because the initial surge of creativity was so seldom about thought at all. Refinement could require focus and concentration, yes -- but the first burst was something which rose from the soul.

All she wanted to do was touch the twig with one hoof, have it adhere, and then weave it through. Demonstrating could work when words didn't.

But she'd reared up. And to effectively hold the position, she needed to brace herself on something. So the right forehoof went for the twig as Posey, mouth already opening for the shout, started to pull back.

The left forehoof planted itself, along with a significant percentage of Izzy's weight, into the counter.

There was a cracking sound.

In the last split-second before Izzy, the counter, everything placed on it, and the soon-to-be-corpse of an apology bouquet tumbled forward, the unicorn's mark belatedly suggested that balsa wood probably hadn't been meant to take the mass of a fairly large mare.

It all fell and because there wasn't very much room behind the counter either, it fell on top of Posey. This very much included Izzy and the earth pony, who was by far the stronger, still hadn't been braced for the weight.

The shout only emerged after they'd both hit the ground, fallen among the splinters. And then it quickly transitioned to a scream.

Izzy, half-splayed across yellow fur and limbs which were already trying to kick her off, didn't really have a good view of Posey's face. (That was where most of her mane had wound up, and she distantly wondered if she needed a trim.) She probably didn't need a direct line of sight, because microexpressions weren't really in play. And the earth pony's scent was pleasant, heavily-overlaid with flowers and woods of all kinds -- but there was another aspect rising quickly. A fully familiar one.

Pegasi and earth ponies could come across as being foreign, strange in ways both small and great... but when it came to emotional states, 'utterly furious' was effectively universal.

...With Restricted Liberties, And Justice For...?

Eventually, Hitch came to get her.

Izzy hadn't called him, because phones almost occupied the same category as her own magic: she just didn't think of either one as a first resort and when things started going wrong, the magic was a lot easier to turn off. And Posey... well, some of the screams had probably been loud enough to reach the police station, but the floral designer really hadn't wanted to summon the sheriff. The details on that had been shouted out to everypony who'd crowded into the shop, because certain ponies would move in to investigate upon hearing a crash and Posey did her best vocal work when she had an audience.

According to Posey, there was absolutely no point to bringing in Hitch because law enforcement was just going to come down on the unicorn's side. Again. She'd said that loudly, repeatedly, and not quite in time to do anything about the ponies whose first response to hearing a crash was to call the sheriff's office in the valiant hopes that somepony else would deal with it.

Izzy, who'd been head-shoved outside at the first available opportunity, didn't see him trot up. The wind had shifted again, she was mostly looking down to start with, and it gave her a perfect view of her own mane. Which didn't do anything to block words and murmurs and the dark syllables of those who'd decided it was all her fault (and as far as Izzy was concerned, it pretty much was), but at least she didn't have to look at any of it.

She'd been left to wait outside the shop. Trying to figure out what was coming next, especially when all of her apologies and attempts to personally make repairs had been rejected.

There was a special bouquet for the apology part, but she didn't know how to get it talking. Izzy did know of multiple trees whose wood would make for a more sturdy replacement counter. Enchanting the living treetrunk to do carpentry seemed to be somepony else's problem.

She didn't see him trot up. But there was a certain world-weariness to the cadance of this particular four-time hoofbeat, and the unicorn was just about on the verge of recognizing it -- but then he spoke.

"Izzy?"

She raised her head. Just enough mane fell back to give her a glimpse of tired amber eyes.

Izzy really didn't spend a lot of time thinking about how Hitch looked. She was aware there had been calendars: it was hard to stay near the sheriff for any real amount of time and not have the evidence of photo shoots come out. But she was sure that she wasn't attracted to him.

Izzy was fully in tune with her own desires. This mostly meant that if one ever turned up, she would be able to regard it, say 'That's a desire, all right,' and strictly in theory, she might then have some chance of figuring out what to do about it. But nothing had arisen from proximity to the sheriff, so she'd decided that she didn't desire Hitch. And she silently swore that just trying to consider whether he was actually that handsome could make Zipp spontaneously materialize from thin, mostly-salty air. And the older princess would not be happy about it.

When it came to the quality of his appearance, she didn't really think about how the sheriff looked. She usually just felt that he looked exhausted. Being a single parent did that. Raising a dragon in a world where the total amount of written material regarding the 'how' equaled zero added more weight. And having been rendered into the lone voice of law enforcement authority for a recently-desegregated city didn't exactly help.

Hitch usually looked as if he was at least a little worn out, even while he was sleeping. Today, he looked worse.

"Yes," said a mare who was more than slightly tired herself. "I'm Izzy. A lot of ponies wouldn't have worked that out. Especially the ones who haven't met me yet."

She briefly looked past him. There was a ring of ponies out beyond his tail, watching the proceedings. The boardwalk featured puppet shows and musicians, but this was clearly better.

Hitch sighed.

"I'm going in," he said. "You stay here."

He did. She lowered her head and let her mane slip forward again. This let her focus on the boardwalk itself, and she wondered how often the planks were replaced. Sea air almost had to be doing harsh things to the wood...

...time was passing...
...the phone had a timer built in and the last time she'd tried to use it, she'd somehow sent the whole of Pipp's mailing list a picture of the smaller princess sleeping with her face planted snout-deep in a pillow and buttocks presented to the air --
-- more hoofsteps.

"Let's go," the sheriff quietly told her.

To jail was her first thought. She was intimately familiar with Bridlewood's cells. Izzy had replaced the door several times, usually after removing it so she could get out and go home after somepony had forgotten to release her at the end of a shift. But she wasn't quite as familiar with Maretime Bay's holding stables. Sunny had given her some preemptive advice on getting the best bunk.

"Where?"

"Back to the Brighthouse." She almost heard him look up. "Clear a path, everypony. Let us out." And with the faintest hint of a fractional extra decibel, "Now."

She heard hooves moving on wood and, a few seconds later, her own joined them.

Izzy followed Hitch out. Following him home.

...to her bed. There would be a bed at the other end of it, and something in Izzy wanted to sleep. She couldn't try to pretend the most recent stupid thing had been a dream unless she woke up first.

The Oddtrot fell away behind them. Crowds thinned, dissipated. He waited until they had full privacy before he spoke, and that didn't happen until the Brighthouse was almost in sight.

Steadily, "I told her that you'd pay for the damages and fix everything."

"I did too. She didn't listen..."

"She didn't want to listen to me either," Hitch sighed. "You've seen enough of Posey by now to know how she reacts when she's really angry. Izzy, why did you even get that close?" Paused. "You're almost always that close, you know that? And ponies don't always deal well with somepony getting so far up in their snouts that they're breathing each other's nostril hairs. You have to back off --"

"-- I'm trying to see!" Microexpressions. Cultural divergence. Surrounded by an environment she hadn't grown up in. All things which made it so difficult to figure things out. To anchor.

A little dryly, "I didn't think your eyesight was that bad."

She occasionally wore glasses to help with detail work, magnifiers for the finest parts. They weren't strictly necessary, but they saved her from headaches. "She was making things. I make things. I thought I could help."

Somewhat more softly, "Izzy... we've had this talk. You come on too strong. Constantly. The intensity -- you have a smile which is three muscle twitches from showing all of your teeth, and teeth can make it look like you're about to go for a throat... I've had ponies call me just because you said hello for the first time while you were practically sharing their lungs..."

They had gone through the talk before. She'd also had it with Sunny, and suspected there was going to be a repeat performance ahead. "I have to make it look like I'm really happy!" Part of her had wanted to say 'really-really', and she wasn't sure why. "It was the only way anypony in Bridlewood would ever believe I was feeling anything which wasn't sad!"

"Izzy," tried a fresh-but-scant supply of patience, "this isn't Bridlewood --"

"-- I knew they believed me when they locked me up." There were ways in which it almost substituted for applause. "At least almost nopony's tried to charge me with a 30-8 here. Except for the visitors who didn't realize it doesn't exist."

He didn't have to ask. They'd had that talk before too.

"Izzy," Hitch quietly said as the first hints of Brighthouse rainbow began to discolor his fur, "I've spent a lot of time trying to talk ponies out of pressing charges against you. Telling them that you're new, you're trying to adjust, figure it all out. And I know that's true. But it's been a few seasons now: we're all the way to spring. That explanation's wearing thin. We've been lucky, and -- that's not going to last."

She couldn't seem to say anything.

She did wonder what the hinges on the local cell doors were like. Bridlewood's had been poorly maintained, just like nearly everything else.

"And this is Posey," the stallion added. "I don't know what she might do. I do know that she might just skip over me and go straight to the prosecutor's office. Or look for an attorney. So I'm asking you to keep things quiet for a few days. Stay around the Brighthouse, work on making the new countertop. I'll go back to her shop, see if I can get a read on what she's planning. But you shouldn't go near her for a while."

"I have work," Izzy protested. "Stuff to make, to fix! And I had to pick up that one piece over by --"

"-- call and tell the customer you got held up." Hitch paused. "I'll call. We don't need you ringing the emergency sea monster reporting hotline by accident." With a faint mutter, "Again. Just give Posey some personal space. Maybe she'll calm down. And I'll keep you updated."

Izzy was currently prepared to give the florist most of a small galaxy. It just wasn't hers to nose over. "I'll just work on the counter." Maybe it could have pull-out trays with multiple compartments. Did the petals need to be kept at a given temperature in order to last longer? Some of the display cases were refrigerated, so maybe...

"Do that," Hitch said as they came up to the doors. "And I'll try to defuse the rest of this before it goes off."

The centerpiece was delivered by courier shortly before dinner, along with the additional bill because Posey wasn't going to hire a courier with her own money. Pipp carefully placed it on the table, then decided that it needed a little extra something and acted accordingly. The 'little extra something' ultimately had everypony floating around the kitchen while hoisted by glowing tails, which left all of their docks sore and had Zipp loudly resolving to keep her sister away from strange plant life, familiar flora, the most common woods which could ever exist, and anything which looked like it might enjoy sunlight because as far as the older sibling was concerned, this was a trend.

Izzy spent a couple of days in and around the Brighthouse. Sunny had The Talk with her again. The term 'Resting Serial Killer Face' was reluctantly invoked as a measure of intensity, and Izzy promptly asked a few questions about what that sort of face looked like when it wasn't at rest. Sunny, due to a thankful total lack of personal experience, was unable to provide details. Misty heard part of the discussion while casually walking by and responded through hiding under her blankets for two hours.

A couple of days spent in mostly isolating herself. Doing unicycler work while not going out into a community which didn't really understand her and apparently wanted to deal with her presence through putting her in a cell. So if it hadn't been for the other mares in the Brighthouse, it would have been exactly like home.

Two days of labor.

Hitch came by with her court date on the third.

"And thank you, Mr. --" the judge squinted at the overlong sheet of paper " -- twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty... ah. Mr. Beltway. Your testimony was appreciated. You are dismissed."

The very last character witness trotted out of the testimony stall. Posey silently watched from her side of the courtroom, and Izzy didn't really regard the passage at all. She was familiar with character witnesses, because there had been more than a few of them in Bridlewood. Every last one in her home had offered the same testimony: she was certainly a 'character', they'd witnessed it, and somepony had to make her stop.

Hitch had talked about previous complaints in Maretime Bay. Ponies who didn't want to deal with her -- intensity. She hadn't thought there were thirty of them and if she had, she would have been wrong. The court had looked at the number of other cases waiting on the docket, evaluated the size of the witness pool, and chosen thirty as a representative sample.

The sheriff was in the gallery, watching along with the other Brighthouse residents, what seemed to be most of the dismissed witnesses and quite a few who hadn't been lucky enough to have their names drawn. It left Izzy alone at the defendant's table. Sunny had offered to serve as her attorney, because getting into legal trouble that many times offered a certain degree of procedural experience -- but Posey hadn't pressed criminal charges.

It was a civil case, brought by a mare for whom civility was a one-way street. All traffic went in. Nothing ever came back out.

Izzy watched the judge pushing papers around with his forehooves, and once again wondered if there was any real difference between a judge and a magistrate. She didn't have a good record with magistrates. And she'd asked Pipp to do something with her mane. Pull it back, braid it, present a professional look. And she'd worn her glasses. She didn't feel as if it had helped with her supposed intensity. She wasn't sure if anything could.

Even the courtroom smelled a little like salt. She wondered what the table tasted like.

"Miss Moonbow," the old grey-maned stallion finally said. "Rise and step forward."

She carefully got up from her bench, approached as close as she dared. The courage which had taken her from Bridlewood to Maretime Bay ran out several paces away from the waiting verdict.

Her anklet felt awkward on her foreleg. Unbalanced, unwelcome. But she hadn't wanted to take it off.

"In terms of the damages to Ms. Bloom's store," the stallion calmly began, "the court is willing to consider that they resulted from exactly what you described during your own testimony: an accident. You had already offered to make full reparations, and I understand that a replacement counter is already being crafted. So in terms of restitution alone, the only sentence is that you will finish the labor, and do so at no charge."

There was a sudden, short, semi-musical burst of sound from the gallery: even Pipp's gasps of relief came with silent requests for a backup band and full chorus. Izzy heard Sunny's rather loud exhale, followed by a soft impact: the combination, added to a sharp yelp, suggested that the activist had just slumped over onto one of Zipp's wings.

"However," the judge evenly continued, "when it comes to the rest of it..." He paused. "The court has tried to make allowances for the Second Age, Miss Moonbow. We recognize that there are cultural differences and drifts, with each city having its own definition of 'normal'. We're all trying to figure each other out, and I expect that to continue for some time. To that degree, when it comes to minor matters, the system has tended towards mercy, second chances, and strict instructions to not do that again."

She didn't move. Waited.

"Which does not change the fact," he went on, "that you are the only unicorn who has produced this exact complaint. Over and over and over. Mr. Trailblazer may have kept matters from reaching this stage before, and I can respect his persuasive powers -- but there's been a rather unwelcome result. You haven't learned anything from it. And accordingly..."

The judge took a breath and in that moment, he was the only one who did so at all.

"I am granting Ms. Bloom's request," the older stallion said. "Restraining order zone of twenty-five hoofwidths. You can't come any closer to her than that-- or with anypony who uses the sign-up sheet within the next two days. The list of names will be delivered to the Brighthouse at the end of that time, and we may issue tokens to indicate who's being protected." Another pause. "A small badge, perhaps. Anypony on that list can personally rescind their choice at any time, simply by informing you before a witness. And the court can take the whole thing back on plaintiff request -- or if we are convinced that you're showing improvement. Dial it back, Miss Moonbow. Learn to moderate yourself. That time is well past due."

Sunny's gulp was audible. Zipp stiffened, and a wing thrust pushed the earth pony upright. Pipp was probably trying to make sure the courtroom artist got the good side of her wince. Misty, who didn't do well in the presence of authority, could be presumed to still be halfway under her bench. Hitch was silent. And Izzy couldn't move.

He looked down at her, and the steely gaze softened.

"I understand that you were the first," the judge quietly told her. "But when it comes to adjusting... you've been the last. Make this temporary, Miss Moonbow. I know you can do that. Just... figure it all out."

She wanted to ask him how, was perhaps a single heartbeat from voicing the desperate query. But that was when the gavel came down.

Mobile Discomfort Zone

It would have been unfair to say that Izzy spent the next two days in pretending that the problem didn't exist. She was very much aware that it existed: she just didn't know how bad it was truly going to be. Waiting for the fourth horseshoe to drop was one thing. Every signature collected on the restraining order's sign-up sheet added a certain amount of extra weight. And until the full roster of names was collected, all Izzy could truly do was wait to see just how much of the local terrain would be shaken by the final impact.

It occurred to her that the name 'earth pony' potentially implied the potential for magically shutting down any triggered tremors, but Sunny had shown her an X-ray and 'bones of stone' hadn't exactly worked out either.

She did need to have one major aspect of the verdict explained to her, because the judge had said the zone would be twenty-five hoofwidths. This presumably radiated from every protected pony, created a few inquires about having a sphere of effect, openly wondered whether little things like walls and floors got in the way because Izzy was fairly sure that some scenarios would leave her trying to scoot on barrel and belly across what was probably a really dirty basement -- and also, because this felt like a really important part, how large is a hoofwidth?

...oh. Well, they didn't use that in Bridlewood. And it was really silly way to measure anything, wasn't it? Because it wasn't as if pony hooves were standardized. Take Alphabittle. Twenty-five of his hoofwidths, expressed as a restraining order, might leave somepony across the street. Or pressed against the boardwalk's railing. And what if they were using Pipp as the basis of measurement? Because twenty-five of those probably wouldn't even clear her personal camera space. Or her wingspan. Possibly not even the longest part of her mane --

-- which was when the younger princess had stormed off to the upper levels in something of a huff.

Sunny had sighed, then gone to fetch the measuring tape.

Twenty-five hoofwidths turned out to be the sort of radius which kept Izzy far enough back to require raising her voice in any conversation. It utterly blocked the average hallway, formed invisible barriers against doors, and could tie up most of a bathroom all by itself: that last gave it a lot in common with Pipp. And it was more than sufficient for keeping a windblown mane out of nearly everypony's face: the 'nearly' was because it didn't protect Izzy's own features. She wasn't sure whether there was any point to taking out a restraining order against her own hair, and suspected the wind wouldn't respect it anyway.

Izzy was fairly good with spacial relationships -- on a small scale. She could instantly judge how much distance was required for safety on a pair of independent gear systems: trying to work out a similar factor for ponies was giving her some trouble. Zipp's offered solution was to cut a length of thick string to exactly twenty-five hoofwidths, then offer it to Izzy. All she had to do was use hornlight to stretch it out and if the far end didn't contact a pony, she wasn't violating the order.

She thanked the older princess, then went to her crafting supplies and cut off seven more strings to the same length. Ponies could potentially pass her from any direction, and there seemed to be a pretty good chance that at some point, she was going to wind up checking herself against low-flying pegasi.

Izzy had to make sure she would be complying with the restraining order. (She always did her best to never make the same mistake twice, and it mostly let her discover just how many errors were still waiting for their first shot.) After all, if she did a good job in following the restrictions, and just -- convinced everypony that she was improving -- it could be lifted. She wanted it to be lifted --

-- no, she needed that. Because the world was too strange -- but Sunny was the one who insisted that no matter where you went, even if there were feathers or a total lack of horns, ponies were still ponies. So if Izzy got close to ponies (although not quite as close any more), breathed them in while trying to work them out -- then that was her anchor. If she didn't have that, then she might start to drift.

The current always pushed inwards. That also meant it was pushing away.

She spent most of the waiting period in work. Posey's replacement counter needed to be finished. And besides, if she didn't interact with anypony in Maretime Bay outside the Brighthouse during the signup period, then she couldn't possibly cause offense.

...which also held true for going back to Bridlewood.

Hitch made a few calls on her behalf. Pickups and dropoffs were postponed accordingly. She occasionally heard dark muttering coming from the phone's speaker and tried not to think about it any more than all of the time.

When it came to the new counter... Izzy had managed to build in several well-concealed storage compartments, but didn't know if she wanted to try for any refrigeration aspects. Posey worked with dried petals more often than she used freshly-plucked, which meant the space requirements for cold storage were fairly minimal. When it came to the required technology for supporting a cool space... well, that was going to need a power supply, plus Izzy would need to hollow out most of the counter and then it would all just break again.

(There was a known magical solution. However, Izzy didn't know how to make inanimate objects talk, she wasn't sure whether an artificial voice would have the same effect and in any case, it was probably a bad thing to have a countertop whispering "Frosty shivers!" on continual loop.)

Izzy did like the way the design was coming out. (She was completely certain that Posey wouldn't, largely because she couldn't picture the florist admitting to liking anything.) Putting most of her crafting hours into the replacement meant it would be ready for delivery on the first day of the restraining order. Izzy intended to deliver it personally or rather, given the 'protective' radius, as personally as she could.

In theory, she'd also had the option to just pass the results over to Posey when the florist came to the Brighthouse during the signup's second day, but it just hadn't been ready yet.

It was rare to get Posey anywhere near the Brighthouse, because there was an actual beacon for the center of the world's changes and the main reason for the florist to get close would be if she'd come up with a reason for turning some part of it off. And Izzy never actually saw her: she'd heard a distinctive I'm Coming In Anyway sort of hoof knock all the way from her carpentry post in the backyard, then made sure not to enter the building until everything associated with it had departed.

She didn't see Posey. But the florist could speak in a way which allowed a significant fraction of what had once been a too-small world to hear her, and so Izzy found out why Posey had come around. Collecting signatures for the signup sheet. And as the mares of the Brighthouse had gone through the experience through living with Izzy, surely they would be interested...?

Pipp had sniffed, very loudly, and then flown away. Misty, who often had trouble dealing with any quantity of ponies which required a plural, had tentatively asked if there was any way to make most of the Bay give her some extra space: this had led to Pipp hurriedly swooping back and chasing the unicorn to the upper level.

Zipp had held back vocal rejection for what felt like far too long a time, and Izzy had tried to tell herself that it make sense. Zipp, if left completely to her own devices, would have freely attempted to explore the entire world. It was just that the older princess wanted the world's population to stay out of her way. Say, on the other side of a door. Or a wall. Approaching only by appointment and because it was Zipp, an appointment book would have been on the wrong side of 'optional'. But eventually, she said no.

Sunny's response had been the sort of low, back-of-the-throat demi-growl which made an argument for earth pony devolution all by itself, along with offering a rather strong suggestion for the florist to move on. And then a few stray sparks of light had come through the open back door, which suggested that many more were being emitted from forehead and flanks.

Posey left.

Shortly after sunset, Hitch came by the full list of names. This was initially delivered as a file which Izzy could put into her phone and after the fourth attempt to access it erased her Match-3 game collection again, he switched to a printout.

Izzy had looked at the results upon the kitchen table, and evaluated them in the only way she truly understood.

"It's too late for the countertop."

The fur along the light streak on Hitch's forehead creased. It probably wouldn't have helped much in a photo shoot.

"Huh?" the stallion finally voiced.

"Pressed paper," Izzy said. "You apply pressure to the used stuff. A lot of pressure. Maybe even a lot a lot. And there's a resin. The pressure compacts it, and the resin keeps everything together. And if you do it right, then the results can be as strong as stone. Some kinds, anyway." She examined the thick sheaf again. "It can make a good countertop. But just the top, because it's a lot harder to hollow out than wood. It's best for those things which are just going to be one solid piece."

"...oh," Hitch eventually responded. "We don't have that." Paused. "Bridlewood does?"

"Some older pieces. We stopped making it after the last comedy books were confiscated."

The stallion sighed.

"You don't have to memorize it, Izzy," he told her. "The judge understands that there's too many names to casually learn."

"I don't think I can learn the names of everypony in Maretime Bay," Izzy considered. "Not even uncasually. Is 'uncasually' a word?" Which emerged in tones of distraction, because she was trying to figure out whether she should be knocking the list onto the floor. It wasn't disregarding the contents: she just figured it was going to be dropped eventually and all things considered, the Brighthouse needed to know how bad the resulting tremor would be. Under controlled conditions.

That got another sigh out of him. "It's not that bad, and I think you know it. I took a rough count on the way up here. At most, it's a seventh of the population. And a lot of them are the usual suspects. The ones who still want the Second Age to end in the same way as the first. Some of the rest are going to be from peer pressure: going along with the local herd --"

"-- and some of them are ponies who didn't deal well with me getting really close," Izzy softly cut him off. "Isn't that sort of what you said?"

He didn't answer, not immediately. And when he finally did talk, the words weren't an answer at all.

"They'll be wearing badges," the sheriff informed her. "That's how you can tell. There's no penalty if you get too close to somepony who forgot their badge. Izzy, you've been cooped up in the Brighthouse for a few days, and I know your work has been piling up because I'm the one who had to keep telling your customers. The judge wants to see that you're improving, and the only way that happens is if you go out and interact. So take your cart around tomorrow. Pick things up, drop them off. Start catching up. And when you see a badge, respect the order's distance. Give that pony some personal space."

She still wasn't sure whether anypony could own space. If that was possible, then Izzy probably had very little to give.

But she had to try. There was an alternative to trying, and it was called 'Bridlewood'.

(Bridlewood had the benefit of offering familiar pain.)

"Okay."

You had to get up very early to be the first mare awake in the Brighthouse. Sunny occasionally seemed to be lightly in tune with the more celestial version, in part because she liked making breakfast for everypony and mostly due to the fact that given Sunny's cooking skills, she might still be cleaning up from dinner. Misty's hours were irregular, while Zipp sometimes wanted to look for evidence before anypony had the chance to step in it. And Pipp had been known to sleep through the opening of her own shop -- given what they had to deal with, Rocky and Jazz were really underpaid -- but if inspiration struck, then the smaller princess would stay awake until it had been fully recorded. And if she didn't keep her efforts confined to written sheet music, so would everypony else.

It was the first day of the restraining order, and Izzy had wanted to get a fast start. It had taken so long for her to get a replacement counter together (at no charge, but that was only fair), and that expenditure of hours had taken time away from other projects. Add that to everything she hadn't been able to pick up or drop off while she'd been effectively confined to the Brighthouse... well, she was well behind. The same thing had tended to happen when she'd been arrested on a 30-8, to the point where Bridlewood authorities had finally let her keep some crafting supplies in her cell.

There was one very big thing to get out of the way first: a pickup which had been delayed for several days, and Hitch had made the phone call which verified that it was okay for her to fetch it so early. It put Izzy outside the Brighthouse, checking on the condition of her scooter.

(She'd built it herself, starting from some barely-usable base parts. There were some electronics involved and that would usually come fairly close to being her bane, but the majority of that was just making sure the lights worked. Izzy, after spending several hours trying to get the cricks of an extended ride out of her spine, would usually wonder if there was something else she could have done with the seat.)

The power supply seemed fine. The fold-out drawers did just that. There was a bug on the minimal windshield, and she repeatedly asked it to leave. From a distance, because she was so much larger than the insect, probably intimidating, and she didn't need the judge to hear a very, very small claims case.

She taped a map of Maretime Bay to the interior of the windshield. (Pipp had initially tried telling her to use the turn-by-turn directions in the phone app, only to finally give up after Izzy asked for turn-by-turn instructions in doing so without locking into voicemail replays for six hours.) Checked her first destination: hornlight fetched a pencil, then drew a path and finished off with a small circle.

She'd checked the weather forecast before leaving the Brighthouse, making sure to keep the television's volume low. It was going to be an exceptionally warm day for spring: the nicest to date for the season. Some of the breezes coming off the sea might only freeze her halfway to the bone, and the salt in the air was strong.

The unicorn got on her scooter, started the engine and rode towards town through lightly-snoozing, almost completely empty streets.

She got eight blocks before realizing that she'd never asked what the restraining order badges looked like.

When viewed through the slow-motion replay of memory, this was the sequence of events: she knocked, the door started to open, and then Izzy came within a few hoofwidths of setting the Maretime Bay record for the standing backwards jump.

Somewhere between #2 and #3 in that sequence was when she got her answer about the badges.

The one which was on her customer's sternum was cheaply-printed paper, probably attached with a faint coating of adhesive: there hadn't been enough time to make much of anything else, especially in bulk. And it was easy to spot as a badge, because...

A lot of time had passed between the end of the First Age Of Unity and the start of the Second. (Nopony seemed to be sure about just how much time had been involved. Sunny's father hadn't been able to pin down an amount, and Opaline apparently really liked being asked that sort of question because it gave the alicorn something else to dismiss.) It had allowed for a certain degree of cultural drift. Traditions had twisted. Social mores became social more-or-lesses. Everypony still more or less spoke the same language, but some words had acquired new meanings while kicking away old ones.

But some things were still held in three-city common. Everypony celebrated the manifestation of a youngster's mark. Nightmare Night had the same name everywhere. And a red circle with an angry diagonal slash across the middle meant NO.

The slash was cutting across a rendition of Izzy's horn.

She could mostly tell that based on the colors. It was hard to make a quick sketch which got all of the grooves and patterns right. If an observer wasn't paying close attention to the hues, it could have meant any unicorn...

Izzy's startled body landed. Her brain caught up two heartbeats later, and sent her legs scrambling backwards. Twenty-five hoofwidths...

Her horn ignited. Light fetched a string, carefully unrolled it, and found she was just barely clear. Rerolled it.

Izzy exhaled. The lightly-trembling elder earth pony on the other side of the door just watched, and exhaled a little too loudly as the glowing string moved away from her face.

"I forgot you were due so early," her customer said.

Even after all the calls? Well, this was an old mare. Hopefully her memory was okay. "I'm really late, actually!" Izzy quickly said. "By a few days. So I wanted to be early now, to make sure there wasn't as much extra late being added on! Anyway, this is still a pickup, right? I'll just fetch the piece, load it up, and take it back with me." She helpfully tilted her head slightly to the right, because the earth pony's gaze was sliding in that general direction --

-- it kept moving. Skidding away from Izzy's features.

From my horn?

This was a customer. Somepony she couldn't have shaken up too much before this, or the elder wouldn't have hired her... right?

"...you -- still want me to fix it, right?" Izzy carefully said. "I know I'm late, but --"

"-- you can take it," the earth pony quickly said. "Yes. Take it with you and do the work at your home."

Which was probably going to mean the Brighthouse's backyard again. Izzy only went home when the entire group had to enter Bridlewood, or if there was nowhere else to search for the one part which she'd sworn had been packed two seasons ago. Most of what she did during those occasions was dusting.

I don't want to go home.

And she didn't know how she'd meant it.

A salt breeze blew past her snout. The sun shone down on the little tableau, and did so far too brightly. Strange birds sounded their calls.

Maybe her customer smelled more or less right. Provided something to which Izzy could anchor a single sense, in the name of having anything a little familiar. But she couldn't get that close.

"If you're sure," Izzy tried, and wondered if the words had come out of her mouth even more slowly than they'd assembled in her brain.

"Well," the elder carefully said, "I was talking to some ponies on the boardwalk and... some of what they --" stopped, quickly shook her head until the rough green mane was thoroughly disrupted. "-- but I did hire you, I suppose. And I didn't line up anypony else. So just take it with you. Then bring it back when you're done. And fetch it quickly. I wanted to go shopping today."

"Okay!" Izzy readily agreed, because picking up the item brought her that much closer to leaving.

To --

She carefully looked around. The shaded stoop was empty. Most of what occupied the fenced-off front yard was flowers, plus a small vegetable patch. (The front of the fence had a rock garden, which in Maretime Bay meant 'pleasingly-arranged colorful rocks'. Sunny had needed most of an hour to originally explain that one, and Izzy still wasn't sure the things weren't being grown.) Nothing had been shoved out to the curb.

"So where is it?" Izzy asked.

"...in my bedroom," the elder said.

A little too hopefully, "Are you going to bring it out?"

"It's a walnut amoire," the other mare darkly observed.

"And you're an earth pony! I know you're smaller than I am -- and honestly, how weird is that? -- but you're supposed to be a lot stronger! I'm sure that if you just got your head and forehooves into it --"

"-- then I'd just make the side cracking that much worse," her -- customer? -- informed her. "Carry it out. I'll supervise. Closely. To make sure you don't do any additional damage. That horn looks more than hard enough to gouge wood. As my new friends kept telling me the other day."

The part of Izzy's brain which had recently been forced to take cram classes in larger-scale spacial relationships peered out through her eyes. It looked past the earth pony, made a few measurements of the hallway, then factored in twenty-five hoofwidths in all directions.

"...how am I supposed to come inside?"

The older mare's gaze briefly moved to Izzy's face, and only stayed there for a moment before shifting to the horn.

"You have magic."

"It's not magic for walking through walls. Or making things come alive and having them walk through walls. I'm not sure I can do anything with walls. I tried. Walls don't really listen to me." Walls had a lot in common with ponies that way, although the wall was at least somewhat less likely to leave. "I can't --"

"-- just lift it."

"But --"

"-- make your horn glow," the elder stated, tones dripping with what probably wasn't heroic patience. It was the voice of somepony who was explaining how breathing worked, and doing so to a newborn's lungs. "Push the light past me. Down the hallway, turn left, send it up up the ramp, three doors --"

Almost frantic now, with her legs starting to prance in place. "-- it doesn't work that way! If I can't see something, or touch it...!"

Something in Izzy wanted to run. To sway, if nothing else was available. Channel turmoil into movement: the more of the second, then maybe the less of the first. But this was a customer --

-- a customer with a badge...

"You're sure."

"I'd know!"

The elder thought that over, and did so with visible doubt.

"Then..."

A lot of words had seen their meanings drift over the presumed-to-be-centuries.

The process of getting into an earth pony's home, when the owner insisted on staying close enough to supervise everything Izzy did while insisting that the unicorn obey the restraining order at all times, creating situations where one or the other kept having to duck into closets, bathrooms, there was a porch involved at one point and Izzy didn't want to ever discuss what happened on the ramp again for the rest of her life...

Then there was the armoire. It was sort of like a wardrobe, only it had decided to take out the usual portal to another world and fill in all the space with extra drawers. Plus a hang bar. And it was made of walnut wood, which wasn't the most dense material available from the tree family. That was buloke, and Izzy hadn't seen any near the Bay because when conditions weren't right for oak moss, then you probably weren't going to get the forest's strongest oak either. Walnut wasn't anywhere near that dense. It just felt as if it happened to be way ahead of whoever was in third place.

Izzy wasn't entirely sure as to how strong her hornlight was. She'd learned that she could lift a metal box large enough to contain her own body, because that was what the box had been doing at the time. But she was incapable of lifting herself by herself. Something she was standing on (or in), yes. But just trying to float her own body had the hornlight going backwards, and that just gave her a headache -- something very close to how she'd felt after moving the box around for most of a day.

The armoire outmassed Izzy. It also weighed more than unicorn and metal box combined. She could sort of get it floating just over the floor, but that made her feel as if somepony was very, very slowly lowering their hoof into her brain. And when she moved it, the drawers tried to rattle and slide, the doors threatened to open, wrapping the whole thing more tightly in glow seemed to help up until the moment the lowering hoof started to grind, and she could feel the elder's stare on her neck the whole time. Something which had spiked in intensity when Izzy had passed near the jewelry box.

Then she'd had to get the furniture out into the hallway. Still with the elder watching, still with the restraining order in play. (She kept deploying strings, checking the distance to make sure she was in compliance, and the elder recoiled from glow. The recoil didn't really help.) And she still didn't want to ever talk about the ramp again, right up until she had to deal with it on the way down. Only with extra armoire.

The migraine was well on its way to settling in by the time she finally reached the scooter again. Which gave her some room to work with because she was outside the house, and then provided a crash course in physics because when it came to subjective mass balance, trying to strap the armoire to the back was the full doctorate. This left her trying to levitate the furniture to the top and by the time that ended, the hoof had reached the bottom of her skull and was trying to jam the last coherent thoughts into her neck.

She slowly drove away from the house as her customer watched from the doorway, because 'slowly' was all the scooter could now manage. Listened to a rather strange, near-constant sound which was coming from the vehicle's underside. A pained second-guess questioned the wisdom of trying to balance anything on three wheels, then lay down next to what was left of a misfiring visual cortex and begged to take a nap.

Izzy forced herself to look up towards the Brighthouse.

Then she remembered that reaching the Brighthouse meant going up.

It was at that point when she identified the strained noises. It was the sound of the scooter's suspension giving out.

A lot of words had seen their meanings drift. Izzy was fairly sure that 'fiasco' was perfectly content with where it was.

She couldn't find Misty, and really wished she had. Misty, based on the scant times they'd all seen her using magic, was stronger than Izzy -- but still refused to be tested, continuing to say that anything under Opaline's power probably didn't even matter. For a unicorn with a splitting headache who had to get the armoire down again, it mattered a lot.

The furniture was deposited outside the Brighthouse's doors. Izzy added a note which said that she'd move it later, put in a postscript which just about begged Misty to move it for her first, and then went back inside. This allowed her to verify that Sunny and Pipp had left for work, Zipp was nowhere in sight, and the bathroom cabinet was completely out of headache medicine.

She loaded up the scooter again, adding on the completed pieces which had to be delivered. (It took three times longer than she'd expected, and her hornlight kept flickering in odd ways.) A test roll down the driveway found the undercarriage coming far too close to the road, but... it would take her at least a day to get everything fixed, and she'd lost enough time already.

Izzy slowly drove off towards her first dropoff point.

The air was warming up. (Warm salt didn't feel like much of an improvement.) The extraction of the armoire had taken so long as to allow the bulk of travelers to reach the streets. Ponies were out and about, with some heading for their workplaces, others were enjoying the trot, and that one had a badge --

-- her hornlight just barely managed to surround a string, flung it in the stallion's general direction to give her some idea of how much space she needed and when she surveyed the narrow shore town residential road ahead...

Maybe she would have been able to lift the scooter while she was riding it, if that had been the first thing she'd attempted that day. But there had been an armoire, with no chance to ask what an 'arm' was. She didn't have that kind of strength left. There was only one conclusion to be reached.

Izzy utilized her only option.

...so on the bright side, she hadn't broken the restraining order.

Also, the Maretime Bay tendency towards rock gardens meant that Izzy hadn't driven across any soil or plants. And rocks could be put back. She knew that, because she'd spent at least an hour in doing exactly that. This had been a rather mobile hour, as ponies had kept passing her in the street and because she couldn't always spot whether a badge was in play, she solved her potential problem preemptively by moving away from all of them.

Plus after she'd gone over all of those rocks, the scooter had pretty much stopped squeaking.

It was more of a grinding noise now.

Restrained Disorder

"The usual," Izzy softly said as she trotted up to the smoothie stand. "Please." And paused. "Sunny, what's my usual?" She couldn't seem to remember.

The activist didn't answer. Instead, she took a long look at Izzy's face. That was sort of nice. Ponies had been not-looking at Izzy for most of the day, so getting Sunny's direct attention was a refreshing change of pace.

Then the earth pony moved her gaze across the length of Izzy's back. Moved out to the sides, briefly darted past an exceptionally-limp tail, and returned to magenta eyes.

A few of the ponies who were waiting in line for smoothies muttered and, due to Regulations, did so from a fair distance back.

"I was watching you come up," Sunny quietly noted.

Izzy decided that probably didn't represent her usual order, presuming she had one. 'Coming up' was more suitable to how her stomach felt right now.

"It was pretty easy to do," the earth pony added. "Given the vacuum around you. Izzy, why do you have the strings going out to the back and sides?"

"I took down the front one before I reached the counter," Izzy wearily said. "Your counter. I still have to deliver the other one."

"Izzy --"

"-- most ponies with the badges are wearing them on the sternum," the unicorn said. "So I can't see when somepony in front of me in the line has one. And I'm pretty good at seeing to my sides, because unicorns are still ponies." She wasn't sure the entire Bay remembered that. "But there's limits. And seeing directly behind me would probably make me something else entirely." She tried to think about that. "If we ever find a city full of ponies who can do that..."

Sunny was staring at her. Izzy tried to focus, and found imagination running out.

"They'll probably have really weird traffic laws," the crafter decided. "Do I have a usual? I'm not sure."

The activist took a slow breath.

"You look like you're in pain."

"Headache," Izzy understated. "I had to move some furniture. One piece, but it really should have counted for a plural." There had been a lot of drawers, and they'd all ganged up on her.

"Your hornlight's flickering," added a note of serious concern. "Getting dim around the edges. And that's just with string."

"Maybe I strained something." Izzy sighed. "That's sort of what it feels like. Overworking a muscle, only it's in my head --"

"-- could you just pick something out already?" was projected across the distance by stallion aggravation. "I can't even get close enough to see the specials!"

"I'll take a special if I don't have a usual," Izzy's weary mind decided. "Or a less special. Maybe an ordinary. No restraining on the side, please."

Sunny took another breath.

"Drop the strings, Izzy."

"I can't see who's got badges. I'm trying to follow the law." She paused. "And I really need to show them what the zone is because when I'm on the boardwalk, somepony could get close enough that I'd have to go over the railing --"

"-- that's not how restraining orders work," Sunny immediately said. "The other party breaks it if they're trying to deliberately use the thing for a push."

With faint notes of relief, "...really?"

Sunny nodded.

"How do you know?"

Dryly, "Wanna compare arrest records again?"

"JUST GIVE HER SOMETHING SO THE REST OF US --"

Sunny's eyes narrowed. A fountain of sparks erupted from forehead and flanks. The trailer shook.

"-- shutting up," the stallion decided, followed by committing.

"Izzy, you're in pain," Sunny softly said as a rewarming gaze refocused. "I don't have anything suitable in the first-aid kit, but you need to hit the pharmacy."

"It's hard to go in doors when I don't know who's on the other side. What they're wearing. And maybe the pharmacist is on the list." She sighed. "Because I had her as a customer. Client? A new rotating rack for pill bottles. And I was wondering if my customers signed up because I pushed too hard to get their business. I try so hard to make a good first impression, Sunny, I really do..."

"Hi, new friend!"

What could have possibly been more welcoming than that?

"...because most of history beat me to making a bad one. But maybe I get too close, I press in, and then ponies feel like it's all just pressure..."

The smoothie stand was on the boardwalk. It blocked some of the wind, at least until the gusts changed direction again. But there was salt in the air, salt everywhere, earth ponies moved around her and some of them were grumbling about how much space she was taking up with the strings, she had yet to get a complaint from flying pegasi but she really couldn't look up all the time and the sun was too bright when there was always shade in the forest...

Getting closer to Sunny might have helped. Breathing in that scent. But the trailer was in the way, and climbing in would have kept too many customers from approaching.

"Go home," Sunny softly instructed.

Well, that would solve everything. Nopony had a restraining order against her in Bridlewood. That she knew of.

...oh. She means the Brighthouse.

"I'm too far behind on my work. I still have to drop things off. Pick more up. And there's so many ponies out today --"

"-- because the weather is so nice --"

Was it? "-- that it's giving me trouble with moving. There has to be enough space to get by wherever there's a badge, and sometimes that space is mostly rocks." She paused, and then the headache added "Are we still sure earth ponies don't grow rocks?"

Concern was starting to take on tinges of low panic. "Izzy --"

"-- I'm trying to do better," the crafter said. "You know that. But I have to show everypony. That's how the order gets lifted. Never make the same mistake twice." Except that she couldn't really get close enough to make most of them once.

The wind changed direction. Whipped in, blew Izzy's mane in front of her eyes. She waited for vision to clear.

It could be said that it was so important to be close, after all that time apart. But that was on a species level. For Izzy... she could have trouble working out what others were feeling. Proximity sometimes helped with that. Hoping to spot those elusive microexpressions. Anchoring. And if she wasn't close, then she might miss something. That happened a lot anyway.

Maybe other ponies had trouble with the little signals too.

Or maybe everypony around her could see just how upset she was.

Maybe most of them didn't care.

"I parked the scooter over there." A string tilted in that direction, and her entire skull twinged. "The scooter can go anywhere. Except where it can't because I'm riding it. And there's probably parking laws, but the traffic department is just Hitch and he may not get to ticket anything before I move it. Sunny, can I please just get a smoothie?"

One more breath. "Pick up and drop off," the activist instructed. "And once that's caught up, go to bed."

Izzy nodded. Sunny busied herself behind the counter, delivered a cup. The unicorn carefully took it up in hornlight, and they both watched the container bob. Nearly drop out.

Izzy forced herself to trot away, and to do so in a way which kept her twenty-five hoofwidths away from everypony else. Everypony except Sunny, who just -- watched. Gazing after her with worry and open concern.

It was nice to have somepony who cared. It was just that when you compared that to an entire city --

-- one-seventh: it just felt like the whole Bay --

-- maybe there just hadn't been enough time for more signatures --

-- 'somepony' didn't seem like enough.

Behind her, well past the end of the back-trailing string, she could hear the waves crashing against the base of the cliff. Pushing. Slowly wearing everything away.

Driving the scooter didn't help, especially when the 'driving' part was just barely working. City regulations kept her at low speeds in most areas, and she needed that because it gave her time for reacting to badges --

-- she was trying to speak more softly, more slowly, and at a greater distance, but she felt like she was missing so much and when a badge unexpectedly trotted out of a shop, most of what she tried to miss was the nearest lamppost --

-- but she wasn't sure the scooter could reach greater velocity anyway. It was now squeaking and grinding, at the same time. Any bump in the road was conveyed directly to her spine. She was allowed to (slowly) drive on the boardwalk and would need to for the final delivery, but she was going to feel every gap between planks. And there were so many ponies out and about, enjoying a day in the sun and salt because they hadn't grown up in a place which allowed them to do so in shade.

Of course, if they'd grown up in Bridlewood, they wouldn't have much of a hoof press on 'enjoy'. But that didn't seem very important right now.

Ponies kept staring at her. Maybe some of them were looking at the strings. There would always be a few who reacted to the sight of any unicorn with a minimum of stares, and she hadn't gotten used to that.

Or maybe they were just looking at the first one to win her very own restraining order.

She was trying not to hit anyone with the strings. The mobile stay-away zone traveled with her, and demonstrated the limits of safety for those who might consider future signups.

So many ponies. And she couldn't always spot a badge, especially as the density of the crowd increased. She picked up and dropped off, she didn't make eye contact with customers or clients in case that offended, she certainly didn't try to sniff any of them, and it was just so much easier to assume that everypony had a badge and stay away accordingly. That way, she couldn't possibly offend anypony else, other than through being a unicorn.

No anchors. Not even the scooter, although it was currently just about that mobile.

The badges...

Her head hurt...

Pick up. Drop off. She finally reached the point where the scooter was just barely moving, there was one last delivery to make, and the thing she most wanted to pick up and drop off was her own head. There might be some problems with getting a replacement, but she was vaguely hopeful for the new model to have a few less things wrong with it.

She hadn't tried to get into the pharmacy. It was just easier to assume the world had badges. Bridlewood would have used a few if they could: the main differences were that the rendition of her horn would have had all of the details, and it might have taken up to three weeks before the printer could work up the motivation to load some ink.

Just one piece left, and then she could go back to the Brighthouse. Rest. But Izzy was sure that she was doing better with the public. She had to be making a better impression, in that she rarely got close enough to anypony for making one at all.

The scooter just barely chugged up the boardwalk, and the low speed allowed each small jolt to be placed into vertebrae with the precision of a fine hammer. There was hardly any space to move and the wind pushed against her from the sea, the salt filled her snout and her mane kept going everywhere, she was trying so hard not to hit anypony with the zone-defining strings and maybe she needed to be twenty-five hoofwidths from the ground too, but it was down to one last delivery. The most important one.

It was nearly impossible to steer the scooter now. The front wheel was sticking. And there were earth ponies everywhere, some unicorns and a few pegasi but mostly earth ponies, she couldn't see where the badges might be and that meant they were everywhere, she was trying to make spacial relations work and find enough space to slip through the entrance to the Oddtrot --

-- and then the scooter stopped.

Izzy cut the engine. Locked the parking brake, and stared ahead.

The width, length, and possibly breadth of the Oddtrot was teeming with ponies. Most of Maretime Bay seemed to have folded itself up and dumped population into the shopping sector, simply because it was such a nice windy, salty, and too-bright day. They trotted and chatted and moved around each other, because there was enough space to do that. What there wasn't room for was a scooter. Or twenty-five hoofwidths of string in any direction but one: directly behind her, and that was going to close itself off because there were more shoppers on the way.

Some of the ponies had badges. Perhaps it was a seventh, and maybe it wasn't. What really counted was that when you considered all the ones who were wearing them and sort of mentally overlapped their restraining order zones with each other, you got an invisible, quasi-mobile, and fully effective wall. One she couldn't pass. And the delivery site was on the other side of it.

There was a little *!ting!* from underneath. A small piece of metal had just hit the boardwalk, bounced up, and impacted the underside of the scooter. Trying to return to whence it came.

No way to get past. Going around would risk getting lost, and there was no guarantee of finding an approach path anyway. She couldn't go anywhere except --

-- back.

All the way back.

Izzy made a small sound.

She wasn't sure what kind of noise had just barely emerged from her throat. A tiny whimper, or the remnants of a mostly-suppressed sob: those were the leading candidates. What mattered was that it somehow penetrated the babble of the crowd, because pain had its own sort of anti-magic. And ponies heard, turned to look at her...

Two of the badge-wearers spotted Izzy, and presumably figured out the problem. It was the best explanation for their mutual snicker.

She'd seen that. Heard it and, for a rare once, fully understood. Maybe it was a macroexpression.

Slowly, Izzy got off the scooter. (Her back hurt. Her head was pounding.) Dropped down to all four hooves, within the last portion of rapidly-closing safe space, as so many ponies watched and stared and a few made a show out of touching their badges.

It was always easier for her to demonstrate than to explain. But she couldn't get close enough to do anything, to scent, anchor, to figure things out and it was as if the crowd had united against her, especially when the crueler expressions were all she could seem to acknowledge.

(It wasn't all of them. Some looked awkward, others were asking ponies to move, and some just seemed helpless. But for all that it mattered in that moment, it was the world entire.)

Maybe words were a demonstration of sorts. They could show the world how your soul felt. Especially when it was aching.

"I don't understand."

It was, at most, half a gasp. And yet the herd fell silent.

"I want to," Izzy softly told the world, while simultaneously feeling as if she was speaking to nopony at all. It had to be that way, because nothing in her believed that any of them would listen. "I came here because I wanted to."

No response. A few hooves shuffled.

"Because we didn't understand," the unicorn continued. "None of us did. Nopony understood each other, and... there wasn't any place to start. But I found an invitation, I decided that somepony had to start, and... that was me. Because nopony can ever understand unless somepony lets them come in. Come close. Come home. And I try to pretend this is home, when the air is wrong, the sun is too bright, there's salt everywhere and the only thing that's the same is having just about nopony like me. And I know I get too close, I'm sorry, but none of us can learn unless we're close again and..."

Her head felt too heavy. Of course it did. The weight she had to bear was constant. Overlong mane and...

"Maybe the badges need to be more generic," she said.

Hornlight winked out along the strings, and the safety zone collapsed onto the boardwalk. What was very nearly the last traces of glow formed around her head, twisted into a circle, and then sent a diagonal slash across something not quite bone.

Somepony gasped.

"Because that's what it is for a few of you, isn't it?" Izzy asked, as her existence was briefly illuminated by the radiance of NO. "I haven't met all of you. I haven't done anything wrong with so many, except just -- be. And maybe that's how you'll always feel. I'm sorry for that. Sorry that you'll never get a chance to learn anything new. But this is half of what you wanted, isn't it? That I have to stay away. Sunny said a restraining order can't be used to push. But it's halfway there. To pushing me out. Maybe it's precedent, is that the word? Halfway along. First you push me, then you push all of us, and then... it starts all over again."

She almost had a glimpse of a rough green mane, rapidly being shaken out. Off to the left, in the shadow of a doorway, yellow ears cupped forward.

"I don't understand," Izzy whispered. "It's so hard to stay somewhere when you have to learn everything about it. About everypony in it, and nopony can see how hard that is. The place I do know used to be about hurting, and the pain almost seems better because it's familiar. Does anypony understand that? I know I'm -- intense. That's the word, right? I had to work so hard to be happy because nopony else was. And now I have to work hard at everything else, I know I get it wrong, I try not to make the same mistakes twice, and I'm sorry. I'm trying. Why won't everypony just let me...?"

They didn't want her near them.

How was that any better than home?

It wasn't.

Izzy stopped talking.

The glowing NO winked out. She forced herself to face the scooter. The final dredges of magical and emotional strength surrounded the new countertop, just barely got it off the roof and scooted it above the boardwalk nails towards its destination.

Ponies got out of the way. Izzy dazedly wondered if hornlight counted as a personal approach. Maybe the light was legally an extension of her. She'd find out when the next civil suit arrived.

The countertop was deposited against the edge of an occupied doorway. (She didn't see that part.) The last of her magic fizzled out, and she got back on the scooter, tried to start it --

-- nothing. The wheels sagged, the suspension didn't, and the engine decided to join in the lack of results. It was probably solidarity.

She relocked the parking brake, then slowly staggered up the boardwalk, doing her best to keep her distance from the world as silent, head-lowered ponies failed to watch. Somepony would tow the scooter, or push it into the sea. The actual results didn't matter: whether it was bad parking or ocean littering, Hitch would still be presenting her with the ticket later.

Izzy forced herself towards the Brighthouse, and the radiance of a false rainbow. And she didn't cry. Being sad in public was Bridlewood, and thus just about mandatory. So she moved in a way which let everypony see how she was absolutely not crying.

She couldn't anchor.

She could always... drift. Back to the forest.

The familiar comfort of a fine and pleasant misery.

At least it was something she understood.

She didn't remember having gotten into bed. Skipping dinner also escaped her memory, which made perfect sense because Izzy wouldn't reasonably expect to remember something she technically hadn't done. She was fairly certain that skipping would have required a degree of intent to eat in the first place.

Most of the headache was gone when she woke up. Everything else lingered, and immediately had to be put on hold because of what had woken her up. Or rather, who.

Izzy squinted. The view didn't change, and she still didn't feel it was particularly handsome.

"Isn't there some sort of rule about coming into a sleeping mare's quarters without permission?" inquired the lingering remnants of migraine. "Or a law? Because if there is, then there's enough mares in here that it should be enforced at five hundred percent of the usual. Maybe you need a restraining order --"

"Izzy --"

"-- Hitch, I just want to sleep. And maybe then I can pack --"

"-- the order's been rescinded," the sheriff softly told her.

...maybe she was dreaming. She'd gone to sleep, and her mind had tried to provide the comfort of the impossible.

"Is McSnipps with you? Tell him to pinch me --"

"-- it's over, Izzy," Hitch quietly stated. "Gone. I came up to tell you."

Every part of her reached for words, and found just about nothing at all.

"...why? I... don't think it was enough time to really show improvement..."

The bell over the slow-opening door rang, and a yellow snout wrinkled.

"Oh," Posey said, and slipped several dried petals back into their built-in drawer. "You."

Izzy made herself go all the way inside. (She'd taken the trot. The ticketless scooter was still being repaired.) It smelled nice inside the shop, if rather foreign --

-- less so than usual. There was an undercurrent in the air. Something inside one of the compartments, almost drowned out by proximity to unfamiliar elements.

"Posey --" she began, and was allowed to get no further than that.

"I need to clear something up," the earth pony mare stated. "A few things. Like how I don't appreciate it when ponies touch unfinished pieces. I'd think a crafter would get that. Or how irritating it is when somepony questions my work. Something which, and I'd think anypony should understand this, rises from my mark. You questioned what my mark was trying. And based on how your head just went down, I'm guessing that's just as big an offense in Bridlewood."

"...yes," wanted to hide in a corner.

"Is that a mistake you're going to make twice?"

"No."

"A few things," Posey said. "That was two of them." Irritably, "A few should be at least three, by law. Or else it's a couple. Get over here."

Izzy rather carefully got. Her tail was kept well away from the finished pieces and with the wind temporarily blocked, she didn't have to worry about her mane.

There was a mare behind the counter, and another one in front.

"Listening?" Posey snidely asked.

Izzy nodded.

"I hate your stupid anklet."

Some part of her had been expecting hatred. Having it directed at jewelry came as something of a surprise.

"What did my anklet do --"

"It's unbalanced." Which produced a snort. "Like you. It's been annoying me since the first time I saw you. Well, a lot of things have been, but -- there's one anklet and two forelegs. It needs to be paired off. For the good for the Bay. Or at least my nerves. Hang on..."

Well-hidden compartments opened, and an adhesive, green-stained, sore-looking forehoof extracted an object.

"There," Posey said with dark satisfaction. "Put that on. I know it's twigs and leaves and moss, but the colors will balance with the other one. And since I made that, it'll hold up."

Izzy didn't move. Posey's eyes narrowed.

"At least show me how it fits," the florist said. "I can't make adjustments without that. I had to guess, as big as you are. And you should wear it when you're in here, so I'll know you're trying --"

The unicorn took a breath, and anchored.

"Posey?"

"Oh, good. She remembered a name. Progress."

"That's oak moss."

"Scent's not bad," the earth pony begrudgingly admitted. "I may try to work it into a few things --"

"-- we're all still trying to work out the rules," the unicorn said. "For cultures, and I was thinking about getting an apology bouquet, but I'd be buying it from you so I could give it to you and I wasn't sure that made a lot of sense. But also for magic. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think earth ponies grow plants from nothing. You at least need a little piece to start with, right?"

Silence.

"How did you get the oak moss, Posey? Where?"

No answer, and no smile. The latter could be seen as an improvement.

Hitch said there were a couple of ways to have the order rescinded. The first was if the judge felt there had been improvement.

The other was plaintiff request.

They both stood still and silent within the shop, which was a very personal space indeed.

"Try it on," the florist finally said. "In front of me. And once it fits, take it and get out."

Izzy looked over the newer arrangements on her way out. And when she spotted how some of the top arches had a strategic third twig laced into the work, she decided to say nothing at all.

She was at the railing, reared up with her forelegs braced on metal in such a way as to leave both anklets safe. Looking out over the sea, as ponies passed close behind her. And the wind pushed against her, but -- not hard enough.

Every day, she had to wake up and remember where she was. That there were still so many things to figure out, and Izzy didn't feel like she was very good at that. But she tried not to make the same mistake twice, and -- she remembered to be happy.

Happiness could be exhausting. But it helped if you actually felt that way, at least some of the time. 'Some', when expressed as a percentage, was slowly moving up.

There were still times when she wanted to go back, and she didn't understand those either. But she was learning. Maybe she'd figure that out eventually, and then she could truly anchor herself within the new.

Familiar agonies remained pain. New aches only felt worse for a little while.

Something in her wanted the dubious comfort of familiar roads. Grooves and ruts worn into the past, which never went anywhere at all.

The present was better.