This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Patrick has been hiding his toys again. (And, annoyingly, his siblings' toys as well.) For Jenny, this means that once her siblings fall asleep, she gets to spend the next hour hunting around for all the places he may have stuck something. Her latest find is Anne's stuffed unicorn, which was for some reason shoved under the bathroom sink. She doesn't need to wake her sister up for it, but she can at least go put it outside her door.
Except that when she leaves the bathroom, she's not in the hallway. She's in what appears to be a large, brightly lit bar. None of these things apply to her hallway. She feels rather out of place; t-shirt, pajama pants and stuffed unicorn are not exactly magic bar attire. (She thinks.)
As far as Jenny knows, there's only one person in her immediate vicinity who associates with magic. This doesn't seem like Soph's style, but it also doesn't seem particularly threatening. From Soph's explanations, evil magic is pretty up front about being evil. "I replaced your hallway with a restaurant" does not scream evil to her, it's just weird.
She ventures inside a few steps. "Soph? Soooooph, is this you?"
bright_and_beautiful
bright_and_beautiful
"Ponyville, awwwwww, that is completely adorable. It sounds so nice! Can the pegasi fly?"
bright_and_beautiful
"Well, in our world, the larger something is, the harder it is to fly! So I wasn't sure." She reconsiders Guiding Star's size. "Maybe it's not as much a problem for you...?"
follow_polaris
"I can't fly, I'm not a pegasus. I have some pegasus friends, and they have wings, and they're about my size, maybe a little bigger because I'm pretty skinny, and they can fly."
bright_and_beautiful
"Eep, sorry. I meant collective-you, not you-in-particular. I promise I am not hallucinating you wings!"
follow_polaris
"I mean, not that I wouldn't be flattered if you thought I was a princess, but I'm not."
follow_polaris
"Princesses - there's three - have wings and horns. And earth pony properties, but those are harder to see."
bright_and_beautiful
Flying unicorn princesses! Today just keeps getting better.
"Earth pony properties? What are those?" she asks, puzzled.
"Earth pony properties? What are those?" she asks, puzzled.
follow_polaris
"Earth ponies are tougher and stronger and they're good with plants and animals. My friend Cordy is an earth pony and she has a cherry farm and she can understand animals, it's very cool."
bright_and_beautiful
"I don't suppose people who aren't earth ponies can learn how to do that," Jenny sighs.
follow_polaris
"Well, sometimes a unicorn or a pegasus will have a special talent that lets them be good at something specific animal- or plant-related," says Guiding Star. "Cordy's talent helps her. Otherwise not really. Do giant apes have special talents?"
bright_and_beautiful
"I have a friend who's a witch, but I think it's more general?" Jenny offers. "Like, she made this magic shapeshifting knife gadget, and she can throw glitter at things, and there's probably other stuff but she hasn't shown me."
follow_polaris
"You probably don't have them like ponies have them if you don't know what I mean. Ponies are all especially extra good at a thing, and when we figure out what the thing is, we get a cutie mark - mine's the gold star - that represents it. I'm good at predicting the future. Usually. I can't seem to make the spell work here."
bright_and_beautiful
"How does that work?" Jenny asks, fascinated. "Like, next day, next week, a thousand years?"
follow_polaris
"It's useful! People who need to know what's going to happen ask me, and then if they don't like it, they can do something else, and if they do like it, they're happy."
follow_polaris
"Yeah. Gosh, it wouldn't be much use otherwise, would it? I see what'll happen if everything goes along pretty normally. People who behave in weird ways can throw me off, like my friend Joy does that sometimes, and if you don't like what I see you have a chance to do something about it."