Derpy swooped around once to check for Gayle’s snooping before entering Karyn’s apartment. Seeing the artist busy working on a new canvas, she figured that the combination of walls and distraction would be safe, so she entered and said, “Good morning!”

“And to you,” replied Karyn.

“You’re looking much more awake this week. Or is that your…?”

“I’ll never tell. Except you. It’s all me today.”

Derpy grinned. “That’s great. That means you’re getting into your classes and still being able to get up.”

“Yes. It’s really intense learning, but so far I’m still finishing all my work.”

“Good, but because you’re dressed well—“

Karyn went to check herself in the mirror one more time, but then turned back. “Oh, tell me what’s gone on in Equestria since last week!”

Derpy showed a moment’s confusion, because it was unusual for Karyn to ask, but she answered anyway. “Well, let me see, on my last mail delivery route, one of the ponies needed to give me a letter to mail, which is fine by the mail codes, but he didn’t have a stamp, so he tried to just hand me a bit, which isn’t fine by the mail codes. So he asked me if I could buy the stamp for him at the post office, and while that’s technically not allowed, it’s not forbidden either, so I said yes. But then the next day when I brought him the change—because a stamp doesn’t cost a whole bit, of course—he wanted me to keep it, and taking tips is a major violation. He was very insistent, so what I did was to drop it into one of the charity bins that were around. If I do that, I figure it counts as him donating it and I never took the tip, right?”

“Yes, but actually, what I was talking about was, you know, unicorn, magic, humans?”

“Oh! Lyra and her human are pretty much the same. They’re having their usual tiff with Bon-bon about whether either they or she should move out, but I think they talked about putting an addition on their house, so they wouldn’t need to do that.”

Karyn raised her hand to interrupt again. “No, I actually meant to ask if you’d gotten any further figuring out why Colgate acted so oddly last week. But that’s my fault. I should have been clearer.”

“Oh. Well, I wanted to follow her around to see if she did anything weird, but she stayed mostly at home. I think she definitely got a weird reaction from that spell she tried to cast, but it’s probably something she can’t explain to me as a pegasus. Still, if I do run into her I want to ask her straight out. If it’s something she needs to keep secret, then I want to know about it for sure.”

“Isn’t that the way with secrets? But we’ll table that for now.”

Derpy looked at Karyn’s breakfast table. “We’ll do what?”

“You don’t have that expression? It means to put something down on the table to be picked up later. Metaphorically. What’s weird is that there’s another country that speaks the same language that I do, and over there the expression means to put it on the table to discuss it.”

Derpy just stared.

“What?”

“Are you pulling my hoof?”

“No, I promise. But it’s funny that you have that expression and not the other one. In any case, what I mean is that we won’t deal with it now, but we won’t forget about it either.”

Derpy nodded, and then said, “Well, since we’re not going to worry, I can reveal the really good news.”

“Good news? Let’s hear it.”

“Well, I’ve got it all set up with everypony. We are going to Cloudsdale!”

Karyn started to say something, but Derpy kept going, sound like the announcer for a game show.

“We’ll check out the weather factory, and you can even take home some rainbow juice! I’d let you take home some cloud too, but, you know, you can’t carry it. Oh! And we can visit the Columnseum!”

“Don’t you mean the Coliseum? And isn’t it the Cloudiseum there?”

“Of course there’s the Cloudiseum, but that’s where competitions and things happen. I’m talking about the place where they make all the columns. Cloudsdale uses a lot of columns, in all sorts of styles.”

Karyn flashed back to the one episode where Rarity and Rainbow Dash competed in the flight competition. There were a lot of columns, she remembered, and made a note to ask why.

“And then, of course, the highlight of the day,” Derpy continued. “Which is my house! You’ll get to see how I lived when I lived among the other pegasi. Sadly, I didn’t always have the best neighbors, but the house is there and we can see it all and…you can’t go, right?”

Derpy had seen Karyn’s lack of excitement on her face.

“I’m sorry, I want to go, but—“

“We are never going to get there, are we? No, it’s funny, really. It’s just like when we wanted to take the train trip to the ocean, but we either couldn’t find the time or the money. But we got there eventually.”

“Yeah, but not I feel bad,” said Karyn. “I’m sure you had to pull a lot of strings to get us into all those important places.”

“No, not really.”

“I don’t mean actual strings. Do they use a lot of strings in Cloudsdale?”

Derpy grinned. “No more or less than anywhere else. And that’s not a pony expression, but I’ve read it on the Internet. It’s all right, really. But tell me what’s going on that you can’t come with?”

“One of my cousin’s friends is getting married today. I got invited. My parents are going too. It’ll be fun.”

“You know that we could pull the time trick. We could spend the entire day in Cloudsdale and you’ll still have time for the wedding.”

Karyn shook her head. “I’d be dead tired by the time we finished. It’s a noon wedding, and everyone will notice if I’m yawning during the vows.”

“We could go to Cloudsdale, then you could take a nap at my house. If you really want, I’ll find a unicorn to use the cloud-walk spell, then you can take your nap on a cloud.”

“That sounds like the most decadent thing possible. But that would age me an entire day. I’ve got to watch that. When it’s my next birthday, it won’t be my next birthday.”

Derpy pulled out a piece of paper from her saddlebag and asked Karyn for a pen. She ran it down the paper and said, “Well, there’s nothing here that we can’t postpone. Ha, it makes sense that we can’t do things on time, since I’m a mail mare.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a post-pony.”

Karyn was speechless for a few moments as she digested the pun. Once she recovered, she said, “We’ll definitely find time to do all that. In the meantime, I’ve got the wedding to go to, which will be in a banquet hall. High ceilings, lots of room. I’m sure you’ll be joining me.”

“I would have even if it were in a tight closet.”

“Of course.”

They had breakfast, and afterwards Karyn said that she should try on dresses for the wedding. “It’s important that I don’t look too good so as to outshine the bride or the bridesmaids, but at the same time I obviously want to look good…just to look good.”

“And I think we know what that means.”

Karyn took her into the bedroom. “One of the advantages of having these blackout curtains is that I can do all my evil enchantress sorcery witchery back here and Gayle can’t spy. The green light doesn’t show.”

“All right, where do you start?”

“I think with…earrings.”

Karyn looked at a mirror and focused. She tried several different styles from studs to hoops. Derpy critiqued each one and suggested that she go as simple as possible. “If they dangle down, they can get caught in your hair.”

“I don’t think that holds with fake changeling earrings, but I’ll follow your advice. Now, let’s pick out a dress.”

Derpy acted distracted for a moment, but Karyn was too intent on her magical dress-up to pay attention. When she had finally picked out a dress, she looked back to see Derpy’s smile.

“It looks good.”

“See, where this works is that I can wear a light sundress like this in the cold, and I can actually wear a warm pair of pants and a shirt.”

“Clever,” said Derpy, with a hint of conspiracy in her voice.

“So, are you ready to get invisible and go?”

“But I want to wear a pretty dress too!”

Karyn blinked. “You do? I guess that’s all right, even though no one will see it.”

Derpy grinned and stuck out her tongue. To Karyn’s shock, a green light appeared in front of Derpy, and then she stood in a party dress.

“What the—how? You got them too?”

She held a straight face for a moment, but Derpy couldn’t keep it up. “No, I just cheated. I got a green flashlight and waved it around, then zapped back to Equestria, put on this dress, went back to the same spot, and came back without any time passing. It’s a completely real dress.”

“You got me on that one.”

“How are we getting to this wedding anyway?”

“Just driving,” said Karyn. After Derpy got invisible, they walked out to the car. She typed the address into the GPS on her phone and then handed it to Derpy. “You be the navigatrix. The directions here don’t have voice instructions.”

“Got it. Step one, turn on the car.”

“You can just wait until I get on the highway.”

Once they were cruising, and Derpy told Karyn what the exit to take was, she spaced out for a while. “This will be the first wedding I’ve been to in a long while.”

“Since your own?”

“No, I went to the one between Shining Armor and Princess Cadance.”

“Oh, yes,” said Karyn. “I remember seeing you there a couple of times. How did you get an invitation to that anyway?”

“That was a long time ago, let me see if I can remember. That’s right, I didn’t!”

“No invite? You crashed the party?”

“I guess. A lot of ponies just showed up and took whatever role was there. I think even Lyra showed up and tried to be a bridesmaid, and she didn’t even know Cadance very well.”

Karyn realized that there was a connection with that event. “And it was there that the changelings first showed up.”

“Was it? I think I was hiding away during that. I do remember that the wedding was delayed a while. But then again, I was pretty spacey back then. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a changeling invasion.”

“Thank goodness you’re not that spacey now.”

“Exactly, and—ooh, pretty bird!” Derpy got distracted by a bluebird, which even Karyn thought was pretty. But she had to keep her eyes on the road.

They soon arrived at the hall. It was on a lake, and the weather was cooler because of it. Negotiating one of the many entrances, Karyn drove up to the vestibule to find a valet in a red coat.

“Are you here for the wedding?” he asked.

“Yes, but I’ll park myself. Just over there?”

He directed Karyn to one of the lots, and she drove quickly to the far end.

“Did he want to park the car?” asked Derpy.

“Yes, that’s his job, but I hate giving my car to anyone else, especially if I’m not there. It’s a quirk, but I always feel that a car is very intimate.”

They got out and hustled into the room. It was half-filled with people already seated, and Karyn waved to her parents. As she sat down next to them, there was no room for Derpy to go without getting displaced by someone else, so she hovered above. Karyn’s mother asked, “Do they still have the air conditioning on? I feel a draft.”

There was little time for Karyn to chuckle at the misunderstanding, as everyone else sat down and the ceremony began. The couple had chosen a nontraditional song for the processional, and Karyn thought that “Here Comes the Bride” would have fit better. As it was, the love song got repetitive and boring as the various flower girls, bridesmaids, and relatives who could not be excluded walked down the aisle. Once that was done, the minister performed the ceremony quickly and brightly, before any of the small children had a chance to get too bored.

Once the vows were completed and the couple walked back, the rest of the guests shuffled toward the reception room. Here Karyn saw the advantage of having arrived late and being seated in the back. Since the door was there, she was one of the first out, and found a seat in a large room with the bar. Temporarily separated from her parents, she got a chance to chat with Derpy.

“What did you think?”

“It’s a lot more similar to Equestrian weddings than I thought it would be. Lyra would love the fact that they hold hands during the ceremony. Other than that, let me see…I liked the music.”

“You did, huh? Hey, speaking of hands, can I ask you a question? It’s one that a lot of people have wondered about.”

“Go ahead,” said Derpy.

“When unicorns get married, they put the rings on their horns. What do pegasi and Earth ponies do?”

“Alicorns put it on their horns as well.”

“Right. More general question. What do non-horned ponies do for their ring exchange?”

Derpy brightened up. “Oh, that’s easy. They—“

“That was a nice ceremony, wasn’t it?” Karyn’s father walked over and Derpy had to silence herself.

“Yes, quite. You look very nice today.” She straightened her father’s tie.

“I’m going to go spend time with your mother. Don’t drink too much.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “I’ll be legal soon and then you’ll have to be serious.”

Once he walked away, Derpy said, “Now, as I was saying, when I got married, having no horn—“

A young woman in black and white walked up and said, “Scallop?”

“Beg pardon?” Karyn stepped back.

“Bacon-wrapped scallop?”

“No, thank you. Is there anything vegetarian?”

“I think someone will be serving turkey meatballs.”

Karyn looked at her as if expecting her to realize what she said, but she had already moved onto the next guest. Karyn walked into the next room and looked over what there was. She filled a plate with penne alla vodka which seemed safe. Feeling Derpy stop behind her, she turned around to see a carving station. “Yeah, they do this kind of things at weddings,” she muttered.

“I thought that humans could cut their own meat.”

“They usually do, but not here.”

Derpy flapped her right wing only and made a circle in the air. “Now, this is completely different from Equestrian weddings. All this food, nopony’d ever be able to afford it.”

“Weddings are very expensive as well.”

“Hey, I think there’s some cheese over here. Can I have some?”

Karyn walked over and saw the stand. There were many slices of cheese, but they were mixed in with rolled up cold cuts. Karyn took the tongs and put a few slices on her plate where she had cleared the pasta. Once she was sure that no one else was looking, she surreptitiously slipped some to Derpy.

Many of the other guests were milling about, not talking to any one person for more than a few minutes. Karyn was pleased about this, for anyone she did meet was quickly onto someone else, so she didn’t feel as if she was neglecting Derpy. But beyond the food, which Karyn had to constantly examine to make sure it was acceptable to her and Derpy’s diets; and the guests, which Karyn as a distant relation didn’t know many of, it was not the most exciting time.

After a half hour of this, with no real signal but with everyone seeming to know, they all proceeded into the main dining hall. Place cards were laid out on a table, and Karyn queued up to find her name. She looked near the middle of the table for the H’s.

“They never put these things in alphabetical order. It’s impossible to find on the first look.”

Derpy whispered to her. “It should be right after mine. Hooves, then Hubert.”

Karyn found hers by random selection and grabbed her parents’ card as well. After handing it to them, she sped up so that she could laugh and explain to Derpy. “Did you forget that you weren’t actually invited?”

“You mean I’m crashing?!”

“No, technically the invitation was for me and a guest. Since you won’t have your own plate, no one will mind. I suppose the hall might charge more for an extra guest, but I think it’s based on round numbers.”

Derpy’s whisper had a tinge of worry to it. “But what if I’m the one who would have pushed it over, say, a hundred?”

“Just relax and enjoy yourself.”

They were seated at a table on the far side from the main dais, and close to one of the large speakers. Karyn grimaced at that. Her parents took their seats next to her, and no communication with Derpy was possible as the newlyweds were introduced to cheers. A DJ was playing master of ceremonies, and while his voice was not distorted, Karyn still had to cover her ears. When Derpy saw her distress, she put her hooves in place of Karyn’s hands, making it appear that she was not bothered.

The wedded couple had taken their seats, and the DJ started his set proper, inviting people to dance. Karyn’s parents stood up and advanced to the parquet dance floor and, to Derpy’s surprise, so did Karyn. The tune began slowly, but picked up into a pop beat soon enough.

What amazed Derpy even more was how talented Karyn seemed to be as a dancer. Most of the adults had at least one drink in them already, and so were a little shaky on their feet, but Karyn, even without a partner, stood tall and moved on the beat. If no one else noticed her abilities, Derpy, from Karyn’s vacated seat, did.

Once the song ended, some people stayed out but Karyn returned. As salads were placed in front of all the seats, she dug in.

“You were beautiful out there,” said Derpy.

“Thank you. I took a dance class for one year before I got bored. But I still know some of the ideas. You could probably have that salad if you wanted. My father won’t eat his.”

Derpy was grateful. She checked for anyone watching before munching the lettuce and onions as quickly as she could. “Do you think I can have some of his water too?”

“That I wouldn’t advise. My father does tend to drink a lot of water at events like this. I think he does it because he knows he’s drinking liquor as well, and hates hangovers.”

The party was in full swing, and all the people moved from the dance floor to the tables to the bars in turn. After being informed that the only meal choices were steak, chicken, or fish, she ordered a second steak for her parents and then took Derpy once more to the appetizer table.

“It’s nice that they leave all this out for the whole event,” said Derpy. “In Equestria we’d take all this away and pack it up to eat later if we put it out for a party.”

“Maybe they knew that a vegetarian and her pegasus were coming.”

The pasta was cold, but the cheese was still good and they even found a station that they had missed the first time around that had small flatbread pizzas. They were cold too, but neither of them minded.

Only once did Karyn get to say hello to her cousin, and she was only permitted a passing wave at the bride herself. It didn’t bother her. Some distant friends and relatives were company enough, especially when she had Derpy.

The only other time when everyone was seated, and Derpy had to assume a hovering position above Karyn, was when the formal dance for the couple was held. It was a slow instrumental piece that Karyn didn’t recognize. In her lowest whisper she said, “However good my dancing is, I am not having a song like that at my wedding. I like that style of music fine, but when everyone’s watching I want something with a beat so I can shake away my nerves.”

“We’ll see if we can get Vinyl to do your wedding. Of course, you’ll need someone to marry first.”

Karyn rolled her eyes, and a burst of applause ended their need to keep their voices low. Everyone went back to their mingling, but Karyn told Derpy to wait. “They’re going to cut the cake. We’ll stay for that.”

Derpy indeed plopped into a chair and waited, but it took a long time for the servers to get around to the far tables. By then, Karyn’s parents had returned.

“Aren’t you going to eat your cake?” asked Karyn’s mother.

“I’m not the biggest fan of wedding cake. But maybe later.”

They all got up for the last dance, a bouncing number that made Karyn glad that she ate light. As they went back to the table for the last time to pick up Karyn’s purse, her mother saw the slice was eaten anyway. “I think someone took yours while we were dancing.”

“Whoever it was, I forgive them. I’m sure they wanted it more than I did.”

Karyn’s mother heard a laugh, but couldn’t place where it came from.

Author's Notes:

Next week, Derpy and Karyn are back for more adventures!

“Speaking of rough times with money, can you believe that the post office wanted me to work today?”

“On Sunday? There’s no mail then.”

Derpy raised her hooves. “That’s what I said!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Are you feeling uncomfortable carrying me for so long?”

Derpy flapped her wings and reestablished her hooves on the top of the cloud. “Not at all! I’m not an Earth pony, but I can carry loads like you all day.”

“I’m a little envious. I couldn’t carry you for even a minute, and what I can carry I can’t hold for as long as you can.”

Also, a special moment between Derpy and Karyn!