To my friend, Celestia,

I may have done something rash and foolish. I am a pony madly in love. You told me to try new things and I have. I am crazily in love with two mares, as I am sure you have figured out by now. I cannot express the words. By myself I am a broken pony, but with both of them I am made whole. There is no way I could function without them both. I know these things are forbidden, but I have asked both of them to form a herd with me. I hope you will understand. I hope you will forgive me. I hope you will allow this, as there is no way I will ever be able to have some semblance of a normal life without them both. I have had a lot of time to think during my convalescence and Bon Bon has opened my eyes. I do not understand how or why Bon Bon is able to do what she does, but she has a knack for fixing broken unicorns, Lyra Heartstrings and I are evidence of her talent.

I am begging you to reconsider your stance on herd marriage. I understand there are herds here in Ponyville. They need to be recognised. They deserve to be recognised. I am aware of the complications of such arrangements, I know there has been trouble in the past, and to that end, Derpy, Berry Punch, and I are all working out rules of engagement for one another. We want this to work. I need this to work. I want to be whole again. I want to feel better. I want to have foals and be able to love them. I want to feel something other than a hollowed out sense of emptiness.

I think I had an epiphany about your school and my time there. You were trying to help me, help my kind, help all of us there, am I right? To that end, I accept the proposal being offered, if you will grace me with the privilege, I will head a school here in Ponyville, I have no idea what I am doing, but I trust that you will guide me. This seems to be a good place for unicorns to heal. Perhaps the ley lines are funny here. I know they cross here. I think I tapped into two of them that day I had to keep Dinky safe. I’m not quite sure what happened there.

I trust you. Bon Bon wanted me to say that, so I have.

Trust is a funny thing. I trust Derpy and Berry to carry me where my heart and mind would choose not to go. I have had to let go completely and allow them to do what is best for me. And I trust them to know what is best for me. In spite of my own best efforts, I think I am getting better.

I really don’t want to write this next part, but Bon Bon insists that total honesty and full disclosure is the only way for me to get better, so here goes.

When I was a colt, in school, just before the Summer Sun Celebration, I accidentally caught a glimpse of your backside when your tail was no longer strategically covering various places of interest. It caused me to have troublesome thoughts about you for almost three months, and this is why I went through that phase where I could not look you in the eye no matter how many times you told me to do so. I was not trying to be disrespectful, I was just a very confused and damaged colt that couldn’t deal with what I saw.

And I saw everything.

Recalling this memory has been problematic, confessing this is causing me great strain. Do not be surprised if I cannot make eye contact when next we meet again. (The rhyme is accidental I assure you) I am certainly not trying to think of you in that way. Oh no, Bon Bon is giving me the stinkeye right now for slipping into neurosis, Berry is about to die from laughter, and Derpy is giving me a one eyed stare that I cannot make out. I cannot repeat what Lyra is saying without completely destroying decorum, but it is causing Berry to laugh Berry hard.

What have I done…

Bucky.

The rules of engagement.

Berry Punch pondered the meaning of these words. Yesterday, there had been an actual engagement, a formal official engagement. Bucky was out of the bed now. He was slow, and he was wobbly, and he needed help to get around the house, but he was upright. Enough time had passed that the crack in his horn had mended, he had a little more strength, and, during a quiet moment with all three of them together in the bed, there had been an arrangement of engagement, and the rules of engagement had been discussed.

Marriage.

And the agreed upon foundation rules of their forming herd. Simple things really, to make sure they all stayed civil and loving towards one another. There was only one issue that had really stood out enough that Derpy had insisted on, and it was something they had all agreed was vital.

No sex with one another without the other knowing about it. No hiding. No withholding. Ideally, it was to be treated as a group activity, but needs were needs, and they couldn’t always be together.

The train to Canterlot rocked back and forth on the tracks and Berry thought about other rules of engagement, not in love or marriage, but in war. She knew what needed to be done and she was on her way to do it now. She was surprisingly calm, given what was about to take place.

She was a pony in love, on the cusp of being both a wife and hopefully a mother, and she was not about to take chances. She hadn’t been drinking, not lately, she was doing this stone cold sober, which made it worse somehow.

The only pony that knew what she was doing was Barley, and he had given his blessing. He was at home now, with the two ponies that Berry loved, Bon Bon and Lyra, who were becoming fast friends, Sparkler, and the foals.

Berry sat in silence as the train rolled on towards Canterlot.

Twilight Sparkle sat in her library, silent, reflective, a book open in front of her that she was not actually reading. Everything Celestia had said to her was settling in and reshaping her jumbled thoughts into something a bit more coherent.

She listened to Spike arguing with Owlowiscious about something, or specifically somepony, because Owlowiscious kept saying “who.” Poor Spike was sounding frustrated.

Twilight Sparkle, the trick to good leadership is to get all of the ponies in the herd all running in the same direction. To do this, you must give them something to chase. We are creatures born to run, we need something to follow.

The words repeated over and over again in Twilight’s mind.

It was in the middle of Twilight’s reflections that the door burst open and Rainbow Dash came bursting in, running up to Twilight and shoving her book to the floor.

“We gotta go Twilight, Berry Punch hopped a train to Canterlot. We have to go keep an eye on her!” Rainbow Dash said.

“Can’t you just go look after her?” Twilight said sullenly.

“Well, yeah, I could, but I don’t want to be alone. Besides, we know there was an engagement yesterday, it is all the flock can talk about, I bet Berry is going to go look at wedding dresses or find somepony to help plan a wedding or find a nice place to get hitched… or something. Come on Twi’ this will be fun!” Rainbow Dash said, leaning in nose to nose with Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight sighed and allowed Rainbow Dash to drag her towards the door.

The last thing she heard as she was leaving was Owlowiscious asking “what?” which left Twilight feeling a little troubled as she was hauled out the door.

Bucky’s nerves were frazzled. He was trying to have a nice time, but it was becoming more and more difficult. Barley and Sparkler were in a heated battle for dominance, and it had left Bucky’s poor sensibilities quite sullied.

The sound Bucky thought to himself, mentally cringing. He had to make it stop somehow.

He winced as Sparkler let go another foul blast, filling the whole house with a resonating gurgling belch that must have lasted for all of thirty seconds or so, causing the old unicorn’s bushy eyebrows to almost meet his ears.

The old unicorn wasn’t going to take this affront any longer it seemed, and began to mutter about putting the upstart filly in her place. He took a long pull from his beer, took a deep breath, swallowed some air a few times, and then let go with a foul sounding belch that was equally as nasty as Sparkler’s.

Something had to be done.

The foals were rolling on the floor with laughter, Bon Bon had a broad grin, Lyra looked sheepish but was trying to have a good time, and Derpy was laughing so hard that she was crying.

Bucky was clearly the only pony not having a good time, and that bothered him on some level. He was clearly not moving with the herd. He had a strange longing for Berry to touch him. Or Bon Bon. A hug might be nice. He shook his head, not believing that he had just thought that.

Another thunderous belch was heard, this one from Sparkler. Her eyes bulged halfway out of her skull as she let go and her mouth was opened so wide that you could see her uvula flapping in the breeze.

It is interesting to note that certain unicorns have a biological quirk that connects their thaumaturgical system to their vocal cords, providing magical amplification for anything going through their throats. This particular genetic quirk exists among the “noble” unicorns and those with high magic. The condition is called “the Canterlot Voice” and it gives immense vocal power to any unicorn in possession of it.

And, disinherited or not, Bucky was a noble unicorn, coming from a long bloodline that could be traced back to the noble families of the Old World before the Long Walk.

Bucky’s thaumaturgical system was coming back online, bigger, better, and stronger than before, his extreme use of magic completely frying his old system and forcing new connections of thaumaturgical neurons to be created. New jumpy neurons that were still very spastic and in the process of creating stable new connections.

Celestia had been mistaken. Bucky had been a type three, and would have continued being a type three, had not he magically fried himself into being a faulty and badly wired problematic type four susceptible to surges as his body was forced to create new thaumaturgical connections to allow for magical discharge to keep his beloved Dinky Doo and Piña safe from harm. Much like stories of mothers lifting heavy things to save their foals, Bucky’s body had responded to the emergency the only way it could. More magic.

It was under these completely unknown revelations that Bucky sat, guzzling a rootbeer, after already downing one, determined to join in on the fun and make himself try something new.

Having listened (with no small degree of horror) to Sparkler’s lessons to Dinky and Piña about how to swallow air and make yourself belch, Bucky pulled in a considerable mass of air to mix with his rootbeer.

The initial blast actually struck Barley and Sparkler before the sound could be heard, blowing them from their chairs. The kitchen table slid for several feet over the floor, and one of the chairs tipped over. The kitchen window shattered.

The actual sound itself was deafening in the small room, filling the kitchen with a dreadful sound that no words could describe. It came along a mere moment after the blast hit, leveling all those trapped in close quarters.

The Royal Canterlot Belch spread through Ponyville, causing birds to take wing and leave behind fresh deposits of bird droppings as they flew for their lives. Startled pegasi, never calm creatures to begin with, also caused a number of cries of alarm and panic as ponies below were treated to objects falling from clouds. Those objects were not meteorological precipitation, but were the evidence of long evolved reflexes of pegasi whose bodies shed all possible extra weight before taking wing when in panic mode.

“Aye, damn yer eyes laddie, ye best make sure ye pass on the gift of yon Voice to Berry’s foals, or I’ll ne’er forgive ye, ye great lout!” Barley said, rubbing his head and struggling to sit up.

“What hit me?” Sparkler asked, dazed, and sprawled on the floor. She blinked several times. “It was like hearing a train coming.”

“My jelly bean feels like it has a heartbeat!” Derpy announced, her wings sticking out ramrod straight.

“I beg everypony’s pardon, I don’t know what happened,” Bucky said, looking sheepish and rubbing his barrel.

Thunderlane poked his head through the kitchen window, looking around inside. “What in Tartarus was that?” he asked, his face full of terror.

“Sparkler’s lessons in table manners paid off,” Derpy announced, looking proud.

Author's Notes:

Bucky slowly recovers and reveals a deeply embarrassing secret to his teacher.

Canterlot awaits for Berry.

Things keep moving along slowly.

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