Ponies of Fayra — Legend of Harmony

Arriving back at the TriStar store, Flare took a deep breath as Amber led her back in.

“Welcome back, ma’am. Did you manage to exchange your coins?”

“Indeed, even got a mobile there, but I was hoping you could teach my daughter how to use it since I’m not a TriStar pony.”

“Do you also have service already?”

“No?”

“Do you want prepay or post-pay?”

“Simplest one.”

“Alright, how long do you want it to last?”

“As long as possible.”

“Alright, we have a three-year unlimited prepay for three hundred. Which is our most popular offering. Will that work?”

Amber took three of the slips of paper out of her bag that had hundreds on them and held them out for the mare.

“I’ll take that as a yes. In that case, please follow me, and I’ll help you get started.”

Flare nervously followed the mare over to a counter and placed her mobile on it. The mare showed her how to turn it on by holding her hoof against the screen for five seconds. Once the device was active, she asked Flare a few questions and then held the mobile up to a much larger glowing device on the counter.

“We’re just activating your service now. Once that’s done, I’ll start going over how to use it with you.”

A moment later, the mare sat the mobile back down on the counter.

“Let’s go over what each app does since you’re pretty young. Let me know if you already know something, and I’ll skip over that, okay?”

Flare nodded, trying her best to act shy.

“And if you don’t understand something, tell me what you don’t understand, and I’ll do my best to help you.”

Flare nodded again.

“Do you know your mother’s number?”

“No.”

The mare looked over to Amber. “I assume you want me to enter your number in her mobile?”

“Not now.”

“Are you sure? I can’t teach her about calling and messaging without it.”

“That’s fine. I mostly want her to know how to use the map.”

“Alright.” The mare turned her attention back to Flare. “In that case, let’s go to the map.”

After what felt like an hour, and the mare laughing at most of her questions, Flare felt like she was starting to understand mobiles. She could take a photo, which was some kind of art capture magic, search for a business and navigate to it in the map app, ask the assistant for information, which, as far as she understood, was some kind of automated magic book search, use a calculator to do math that she could do in her head faster than she could enter it into the device, use her mobile to produce light, and use an app store to get more apps, which cost credits, which the mare had talked Amber into prepaying for, given that she didn’t want to link a credit card, whatever that was. To practice buying an app, Flare chose to get a cooking app that promised to teach her everything she needed to know about making any food.

“Now for the most important part. You’ll need to watch your battery level and place it on a charging station or pad.”

“I don’t think I have any of those.”

“Alright, I’ll talk to your mother about that once we’re done. In the meantime, we’ll use the store charging station. A lot of places have free charging stations. Simply hold your mobile to them so the symbol on the back is facing the same symbol on the station, and they’ll pull together. You can pull it off the station at any time or wait until it says it’s done.”

After practicing a couple of times, Flare felt like she understood the process, which prompted the mare to go over and start talking to Amber. Breathing a sigh of relief, Flare decided to try out the news app while she waited for Amber, as when the mare had shown it to her briefly, she had thought she saw a picture of Argon.

After some fiddling around, Flare landed on a page that showed a picture of Argon riding atop the magenta-colored earth pony from the poster she had briefly seen with him. Under the photo read, “Starshine triples reward for any information on the whereabouts of her beloved missing pet.”

With her gaze fixed to her mobile, Flare heard Amber’s voice calling out to her. Looking over to Amber, Flare saw her holding out a necklace that looked a lot like the one Starshine was wearing.

“Apparently, these are sunlight and kinetic energy collectors… Which I still don’t really understand what is… Anyway, apparently, you wear it around your neck, and when it glows, it means it’s collected enough light to charge your mobile. It cost a lot of the paper we got, but since we saw quite a few ponies with them, I thought it would help you blend in.”

Amber put the necklace around Flare’s neck and then motioned for her to follow.

“You might want to take a look at this,” Flare said as she held out her mobile for Amber to see.

“Just summarize it for me.”

Flare nudged up close to Amber and whispered, “Argon, the bunny Zeph’s trying to get back home, is Starshine’s pet. As in, the pony’s whose picture is plastered around this building.”

“We’ll talk later.”

Amber led Flare out of the building and back to a secluded part of the nearby park.

“Is something bothering you? You look pretty worried all of a sudden?” asked Flare, noticing Amber was breathing rougher than normal.

“I had a terrible realization when you told me what you did. What if she’s on the run? Can you find anything about her on your mobile? From what I gathered from your learning session, it sounded like the mobile could also be used to find out about current events?”

“Yeah, that’s where I found the thing about Argon being Starshine’s pet. Let me just look around a bit more…”

Scrolling through the news, Flare felt overwhelmed but focused on finding things about Starshine, Argon, or Zeph.

“Lots of stuff about Starshine, a couple more things about rewards for Argon, but nothing about Zeph or pegasi of any sort.”

“How about the princess and her son returning?”

“Nope.”

“I wonder how up-to-date the information in that thing is? Maybe it only has old information?”

“If I’m reading the calendar right, the most recent reward notice was from this morning.”

“I’m both impressed and horrified by how things have changed. There’s so much magic here now that I’m having a hard time with it all. Digressing, we need to figure out our next move. Do we keep following the waystone, or do we try and investigate?”

“I’d—really like to find Zeph, but I’m guessing you’d—really like to investigate?”

“Zeph’s been here for a long time. You have to admit it’s strange that she isn’t doing what she came here to do. Does your device tell you where Starshine lives? Maybe if we get near that location, we’ll find out more. After all, when Zeph got here, she would have done the same.”

Flare asked the assistant where Starshine lived, and the resulting message read, “If you are referring to the founder of TriStar, she lives in Apple Valley.” Going to the map app, she entered Apple Valley and hit navigate.

“We’re a—long walk from there, but a much shorter train or auto ride.”

“Trains, now that’s something I haven’t done in a long time. Last time I was here, I rode one from Apple Valley to Oakton. I thought about writing about them once, but since there isn’t anything like them on the Lost Isles, I thought it would be too weird.”

“So you want me to select the train route?”

“Yes? At this point, your guess is better than mine. You seem to be taking to all this stuff a lot faster than I am. Honestly, all this change is making me feel old. In a lot of ways, I’d like everything to just go back to the way I remember it. All the noise, lights, and magic is just… a lot. Probably doesn’t help that I’m starting to feel tired, too.”

“Tired!?” Flare exclaimed in a panic as she recollected Amber saying when she slept she’d be out for days.

“Yeah, I know. Not ideal timing. I’m doing my best to fight it, but I’m definitely feeling the effects.”