“Good morning, Karyn!” Derpy appeared in the kitchen as Karyn set up for breakfast.

“Morning to you.”

“How was your Thanksgiving break?”

“Pretty darn awesome,” said Karyn. “Breezed through the midterms, had a quiet and intimate dinner with the folks, then got to veg out for two days with the anticipation of seeing you today. All in all, a good weekend. How about you? Did you have any luck convincing anypony to celebrate Thanksgiving with you and get a day off?”

“To the contrary. I had to work overtime this week. Some of it was planned, but then the time just went by so quickly and I didn’t have the chance to get anything done beyond feeding the cat, cleaning the house, and writing to Dinky.”

“That still seems like a lot to get done.”

Derpy stomped her hoof. “Maybe, but I still didn’t get to my project. It’s my own fault, really. I planned for the day off, and that means I didn’t get it. If I had kicked the project back a week, I would have been off and had nothing to do. That’s just the way life works.”

“It’s true. But what’s this project you’re working on?”

After a moment of thought, Derpy said, “I doubt it’s something that you’re interested in.”

“Oh, come on. Is it something really pony-specific, like having your hooves polished? Or maybe something pegasus-related, like you have to fly around Equestria to make sure it’s the same size as it was last year?”

“That’s just weird. No, it’s just that the last time we did something similar, you showed that you weren’t happy, so it’s better to leave it alone, not talk about it, and have fun.”

Karyn gave an exasperated gasp. “Well, now it’s built up so much that you’ve got to tell me.”

“All right, but only if you come to Equestria and I can show you. This way, if you hate it and want no part of it, you can come back here and not have lost any time.”

“Deal.”

Karyn checked the time and mounted Derpy. She held still for the familiar feeling of jumping between worlds and suddenly being airborne. Gliding down toward Ponyville, Karyn searched for anything that could fit into the category of Derpy's project, but gave up and just enjoyed the ride. Once they landed, she raced into the house to see what it was, but all that was there was Derpy's cat who, as usual, ignored Karyn.

"Well, where is it?"

"Back out here," said Derpy. "I never said it was inside."

"Oh." Karyn went back out to see Derpy beckoning her to the side of the house.

She had set up the outdoor furniture that they had once used while watching the rainstorm so long ago, but there was no sign of foul weather. What there was was a patch of bare earth on the lawn and, sitting next to it, a round burlap cloth surrounding what looked like a boulder of dirt. That was connected to a thick tree trunk, and that led up to branches and leaves. The tree was leaning slightly to one side, but the bottom of the root ball had been pressed flat so it seemed stable enough.

She gave Derpy a sideways look, and Derpy said, "I know what you're thinking, but I'll run all the leaves off myself once it's in. I just wanted to see it as it would look in the spring before I did."

Karyn had not been thinking that, but she checked around, and indeed all the other trees in the area were bare of leaves. But still, the tree's existence was what she was more concerned about.

"This was what you had to hide from me?"

"Well, I remembered how much you didn't like gardening, and I thought that this would be so much worse since a tree is bigger.

“Do I have to plant it myself and get dirty?”

Derpy bristled. “Oh, no! You weren’t even planned to be here, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. But are you going to be able to get it in the ground all by yourself?”

If she had scooted back before, now Derpy shot into the air in surprise. “Certainly not! No pegasus could do that on her own. Well, maybe Snowflake, though I don’t really know him well.”

“So you’ll have a crew put it in?”

“That would be expensive. Ah, here he comes.”

She pointed to the horizon, and Karyn stared until she saw a moving splotch of crimson. It kept getting bigger until it resolved itself into a recognizable shape.

“Big McIntosh!”

“Sure. He’s strong enough to handle the whole job on his own. Less money that I have to spend, plus it goes to a good friend who can use the money anyway.”

Big McIntosh finally arrived. “Howdy, Miss Derpy. Miss Karyn.”

“Nice to see you again,” said Karyn.

“I’ll get ‘er in, then, Miss Derpy.”

“Oh, not yet!” Derpy headed for the house. “You just trotted all the way over here. You want to take a load off first. Let me get you a drink.”

“Just water, please.”

Karyn followed Derpy. Once out of earshot, she said, “It seems that all the big burly stallions are the most polite of all ponies.”

“Hmm, that’s true. I guess they know that when you’re strong you’d better be nice.”

She filled the glass and brought it back outside. Big Mac had not been idle while they were getting the water. He had removed a shovel from his cart and was deepening the hole where the tree would rest.

“You don’t have to do that,” said Derpy as she passed over the water. “You should really take it slow and pace yourself.”

“Nope. Want to get it done.” He downed the drink in a gulp and went right back to shoveling.

“What can you do?” Derpy said to Karyn as they retreated to the porch. “If he’s that eager to work himself into a sweat, I can’t stop him.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

Karyn leaned on the railing and spoke distinctly, as with a purpose. “Why do you want to put in a tree? Why now and why on the side?”

“It’s been bugging me for a long time actually. The sun, when it comes up, shines right in my eyes and wakes me up. Not all the time—it depends on the season. For a few hours on a few days, it’s just right there and it dazzles me sometimes. The problem is that every time it happens, I think about getting the tree but then the angle changes and I forget.”

“Why not just put in blinds?”

“I could do that,” said Derpy. “but it’s not that I don’t like the sun at all. I just like it when it’s not coming at me. When the leaves of the trees break it up, it’s quite pretty.”

Karyn was looking, not at the tree itself, but at the house, and Derpy wondered if she wasn’t trying to eye-measure the angles and figure out exactly when the sun would come in.

The shovel went in, the dirt came out, over and over. Karyn wondered what would happen to it, but figured that most of it would fill in once the roots were in the ground, and the rest could be spread across the lawn.

The girls went back in the house and poured their own drinks, then flitted back outside. “Here’s the downside of having a friend come and help you with a big job like this.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, normally if I have work-stallions doing a job for me, I can watch them and enjoy it, somepony else doing work for me. I always wonder if my boss doesn’t feel that way once he’s sent everypony on their routes.”

“Probably not,” said Karyn. “He’d be too busy worrying about other jobs.”

“Maybe.” Derpy didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, since it’s Big McIntosh, I can’t kick back and get that same enjoyment that I could.”

“You don’t know, he might like that, a fine mare such as yourself checking him out as he strains himself.”

Derpy tittered at that, and Big Mac looked back from where he was shoveling, as if he sensed that they were discussing him. “You do know he’s married, right?” said Derpy.

“No, did he marry Miss Cheerilee after all?”

“That’s right, a while back. So if he did like me admiring him he’d have to be careful with her. But I’ll ask him.”

Karyn grabbed Derpy around her neck. “Don’t do that! You’ll put him on the spot. Either he’ll have to admit he does like it, which won’t be good with Cheerilee, or he’ll have to say he doesn’t and risk getting you angry.”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“You’ve always got to think two or three moves ahead when it comes to boys…or stallions. Anyway, let’s just make sure he gets the tree in right.”

Derpy looked at her. “You make me feel ashamed. I’m older than you, but you seem to understand relationships better than me.”

“Don’t be. I was just thinking before of how immature I was.”

“What do you mean?”

As Big McIntosh dug in and pulled out the shovel to a metronome rhythm, Karyn backed away, as if worried he would hear. “What you said before about using the tree to block the sun, and how you thought long term about the value of your house, all of that scares me a little, because it’s the same thing I’ve heard from my folks.

“I mean, you own two houses. That’s even crazier. I know that the economy’s different here in Equestria and there aren’t taxes and inspections and stuff that we have on Earth, but even so, people own houses there, and I just can’t see myself doing it. Mortgages, maintenance, repairs, and then to think about something like putting in a tree? I just feel like if I tried to take on all that, I’d never have time to think about anything else. Is there something wrong with me that everyone else can do that but I can’t?”

Derpy opened her wings for a hug. “Listen. Nopony and no one can tell you what to do about things like that. If you feel it’s too much for you, then don’t get a house. How many times have you talked to me about computers and all the things you know about them. Well, most people don’t, and they’d feel just as ashamed as you do if you showed off some fancy new machine you built. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Just do what makes you feel good, OK?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry to bring up my neuroses when you’re trying to get your landscaping done.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just watch the tree go in.”

Big McIntosh finished his shoveling. He rested the spade on the ground and circled the hole once. “Mm-hm,” he muttered. “That’ll do it.”

Karyn held her breath as she watched him approach the tree. She could see the muscles straining as he put his shoulder against it, wrapped one hoof around, and lifted it a few inches off the ground. With his back legs he forced himself forward. The difficulty was that his head was being used to brace the tree, and he couldn’t look down to see exactly where the hole was. But by trial and error, he found it, and softly lowered the tree in. The leaves gave a whoosh as it hit bottom.

He looked unsure, which surprised Karyn. Still with his shoulder against the tree, he scooted around to where he was facing the girls. “Could one of you steady this while I fill in the dirt? I don’t want it to move until it’s secure.”

Both of them rushed to help, Derpy thinking that the top of the tree would be the part most likely to move, and Karyn having no choice but to go to the bottom. She shifted form to her more muscular, athletic body that she used for such occasions.

Whether for their efforts or because Big McIntosh was being overcautious, the tree held steady. He leaned down and bit the end of the burlap covering the roots. The string holding it on popped off, and he circled it once, tearing all but the bottom of it and tossing it on the ground. Reaching for the shovel, he bulldozed the mound of dirt into the hole.

“You all can let it go,” he said.

Slackening her grip at a pace, Karyn felt the tree take hold and not move. Although it would take time (how much in the land of ponies?) for it to root, it felt like it had been there always.

Big Mac stood on the ground and pounded with his front hooves. Round and round he went like a very small race course, but the earth was packed thick and hard. Apart from the hoofprints everywhere, no one would be able to tell that there had been an empty hole there ten minutes before.

Derpy thanked him, and she insisted on getting another drink down his throat before letting him go. She had offered to wash his hooves for him, since he had gotten so dirty in tamping down the area around the tree, but he shook his head and said that he got plenty dirty in his usual work, so this was nothing special.

The girls went back inside to the kitchen. “You know, there’s something else that’s different,” said Derpy.

“What do you mean, different.”

“Between you and me, why you’re so uneasy about getting a house and taking care of it. I’m a good deal older than you. However the years advance, I’m not a filly anymore, while you still are. You don’t reckon time the way I do. To you, everything still seems rushed because you have no basis of comparison. When you get older, you’ll find time for all sorts of things you thought impossible. Even if you don’t like domestic life, you’ll find something that you didn’t like at this age.”

Karyn pursed her lips. “You think so? Everyone always tells me that I’ll have no time when I’m older. It’s a complaint I always hear about people with video games.”

“You won’t have time for things like games because of all the cool stuff you’re doing.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that one.”

From the kitchen they could barely see the leaves rustling, but Derpy took her time and poured them out glasses of lemonade.

“Why didn’t you offer this to Big Mac?”

“You saw him. I had a hard enough time getting him to accept the water. Come on, let’s go to my bedroom.”

Karyn hadn’t quite taken her first sip of lemonade yet, so she didn’t spit take. “What?!”

“So we can see the tree and where it’ll be.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“I thought…never mind.”

Karyn had never seen Derpy’s bedroom, and it was much darker than she expected. Even with the sun out, the only window was small and the wood paneling was stained a deeper color than the rest of the house. Naturally it was impeccably clean, and there wasn’t even much furniture. That made sense—ponies had little need of elaborate wardrobes, dressers, or makeup mirrors.

Through the window the tree swayed, and Derpy looked with a proud sense of ownership. “It’s a shame you aren’t here to see it in the morning when I need it.”

“Yeah. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if I hadn’t just seen it get planted, it would be just another tree to me.”

“Well, we can’t have that. We should think of a way to make it special.”

“Special?” said Karyn.

“Yes. Some way to make us remember this day.”

Karyn racked her brain for things that made one tree stand out from all the others. There was only one thing she could think of, perhaps because the subject had been discussed before.

“You want to put a treehouse in there?”

Derpy burst out laughing. Karyn had meant it semi-seriously, but if Derpy wanted to take it as a joke, she would play it off as such.

“No, but seriously. Let’s go back out there and see the tree. I have to get the leaves off anyway.”

They took their lemonades back out to the yard, and Derpy took some deep breaths to warm herself up. “Don’t strain yourself,” said Karyn.

“I won’t. It’s just a little annoying that I have to run the leaves off. Why can’t I fly them off? It’s discrimination against pegasi!”

She held her wings tight to her body and started galloping. She couldn’t make the tight turns to just circle around the tree, so instead she traced a kind of Spirograph pattern of looping ovals, and with each pass a few more leaves fell. It fascinated Karyn to watch, because there was no burst of wind that came with Derpy, the leaves just detached from the branches on their own by magic.

Panting, Derpy at last came to a halt. The pile of leaves at the base of the tree was already starting to blow away, but there were still a few left. Derpy waved her hoof and said, “Leave them. They’re not hurting anypony.”

“Ha, leave them.”

“What?”

Karyn pointed. “You said, ‘Leave them,’ and…never mind. I wonder if I could run them off or if it’s something only ponies can do.”

She stood up and sprinted around the tree a few times, but it was harder getting close when she had to run through the leaf pile each time, and she understood why Derpy quit with the job nearly done. Also, each time it felt like there was a kind of gravitational force holding her back until she got past the tree. On the fifth pass, she felt a snap, and the force lessened. She stopped and turned back to see a small patch of leaves falling.

“It worked!” said Derpy.

“A little. I can understand why you don’t want to expend all your energy on it, but it was a cool feeling, almost like tearing Velcro. Anyway, now our tree’s a little bit more special, since it’s the only one I’ve ever run leaves off of.”

“That is nice, but I still wish that there was some way to physically mark the occasion.”

The obvious answer hit Karyn. In fact, she wondered why it had taken so long to think of. “On Earth, a lot of times people like to carve their names into trees.”

“What?! Deface a tree like that? That’s horrible!”

“Oh. Maybe the trees are different here. If doing something like that hurts them, then I guess we won’t.”

“I don’t think it hurts them,” said Derpy, “but it just doesn’t seem right to take a blade to a tree. Hang on, I’ve got an idea. Wait here a few minutes.”

Without another word, Derpy left Karyn alone in her house. She sat on the porch and spaced out until Derpy returned. To Karyn’s surprise, Big McIntosh was with her.

They walked up to the tree while Karyn still just observed. Big Mac eyed the tree and then leaned up against it. To Karyn, it looked as if he were going to push it over. Surely Derpy wouldn’t allow that after so much effort to get it in. But then he withdrew, gave Karyn a wave of his hoof, and was gone again.

“Come see!” said Derpy, and Karyn moved with effort to the far side of the tree. There, on the side of the tree, the bark had been pressed in with their initials: KH + DH.

Whether Big Mac had taken some sharp object and gouged in the depressions or whether he had some Earth pony magic in his hoof that could write that way in wood, the letters were deep and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “I like it,” said Karyn. “Because if you were just walking by the tree you wouldn’t notice it at all. But anypony who was to sit in the shade of this tree or use it as the end marker for some game totally would.”

“I only worry that someday it’ll get too high and we’ll forget about it.”

“Oh! I actually heard about this. Trees only grow from the top. So that’ll be there as long as the tree is.”

Derpy stood up. “That’s sweet. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Once Karyn was mounted up, Derpy flew a lazy circle, admiring the tree from all angles, then flew toward the point she needed to be to get back to Karyn’s apartment.

“So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?”

“I don’t know,” said Karyn. “It feels like we’ve accomplished so much already, even though we just put a tree in the ground. Actually, there is something I want to do. Wait here.”

She returned a moment later with her winter coat. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Just outside. But you should still go invisible in case Gayle’s around.”

They walked around the side of the house, and Derpy expected them to go to the car, but instead Karyn continued to the back where there was an old picnic bench. Karyn took a seat and held still.

“I don’t get it. What are we doing?”

“I just thought I’d sit here and watch the trees…at least until it gets too cold.”

Derpy’s laughter rang across the yard.

Author's Notes:

Here's what you can read if you come back next week!

“Is it cold? I didn’t notice.”

Karyn bundled herself in her sweater and went to the window. Opening it a crack, she beckoned Derpy over. “Feel that? That’s cold.”

Derpy did indeed stick her hoof through, but then shook her head. “That’s not cold,” she said. “That’s winter.”

********************************************

Derpy scrunched her nose, but then took a deep breath and spoke with a more calming tone. “I know it’s not your fault, but that doesn’t always mean it’s not your problem. No other person here can use changeling magic, and they all have to deal with it too.”

“I think a lot of the reason I don’t want to use my powers is because I know you feel that way. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“And I appreciate that. Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

********************************************

They rode the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived Gayle was standing outside.

“Hey,” she said, “I never gave you your mail from yesterday. Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

I hope you'll enjoy that chapter as much as this one!