The engines hum at the even pace. I sit comfortably in my seat, steering the machine. Inkie is sitting by my side and Hexie sits behind us, doing something in front of a large board full of colourful buttons. Below us, only water.

Well, I can’t look at it for long. Else I’ll puke.

It’s been just a day since we left the smugglers at the shores of South Zebrica and we’re already quite far south. Hexie keeps yelling at us for putting too much strain on the engines, but Daring Do says we’ll worry about it later.

In fact, I hope she knows a way out, or the engines are as strong as she trusts they are. I’d rather not be stranded in the middle of South Pole. Zebrica at least was warm. Sometimes even too warm.

“Heating, my ass,” Hexie mutters, turning the knob of the said heating to the max. “It keeps getting colder. And why is it so dark?”

“Our planet keeps tumbling after the great rock from outer space hit it,” Inkie replies. “Even when Celestia moves the sun to this hemisphere, the bottom of the planet stays in the dark. But it goes the other way round in winter.”

“Ah, so it’s like when seaponies, reindeers, and geezers from Saint Ponysburg have white nights in summer,” Hexie replies. “But couldn’t someone straighten out the planet? It should be easier than moving the sun, don’t you think?”

“It’d probably fuck us more than it’s worth,” I reply. “Like, we’re used to the planet moving the way it moves, and if it stopped, everything would move slightly to the left.”

“Define ‘slightly’,” Hexie says.

“About two circles around the earth.” I shrug. “At least everything that’s not firmly attached to the ground. And I’d like to remind you that we are not.”

Somepony pushes the door open. I told everyone that they should knock at the cockpit’s door, but of course ‘discipline’ is not a word in my friends’ dictionary. I turn to see a big pile of jumpers, coats, and blankets stacked on one another. It shuffles around for a moment before it speaks in Ruby’s voice.

“I’d like to point out that if it gets any colder in the back, my cunt will freeze off.”

“Maybe you’ll stop thinking with it,” I reply. “Is it really that cold?” As I say it, I feel a gust of cold wind coming from the back of the plane. Apparently the heating is less effective than I thought.

“Vinyl is currently checking whose snot has a funnier colour,” Ruby replies. “And you can pretty much pee ice cubes.”

“It seems that we’re close,” Inkie says.

“Close to making a fire.” Ruby shrugs. “You’ve said that smoking on a plane is forbidden?”

“Remind everyone that we carry a lot of fuel,” I say. “If they start a fire, we’ll be warm till death. Which isn’t much.”

“Okay.” Ruby sighs and walks back to the rest of our friends, losing some clothes on her way. I really don’t get it. It’s not that cold.

Okay, now it’s fucking cold.

Like, seriously, when I went to sleep, it was all pretty cool, although I buried myself under several layers of blankets. The back of the plane really was colder. But it was pretty mild in comparison to what we have now. Not to mention that soon it’ll start to smell, because the toilet froze and I had an attack of morning sickness. Just great.

On my way to the cockpit, I encounter Daring Do. She’s currently pretty busy punching her mattress for some reason.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I have nothing to do, and in such cases I’m prone to attacks of aggression,” she replies. “It’s a prevention.”

“Normal ponies masturbate in such cases,” I mutter. “Not that there’s much place for that in here.”

“Do tell.” Daring Do sighs. “Not that Vinyl and your kid mind.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I also did, but it doesn’t help.”

Can this trip be over? I guess first thing I do on the ground will be cleaning the whole plane. To show how much it affected me, I get another attack of morning sickness, straight on her hooves. Woohoo. This day just got much better.

“You’re putting my patience to the test,” Daring Do mutters through gritted teeth.

“I’m pregnant, remember,” I reply. “Maybe you should try, dunno, karate lessons with Hexie?”

“Yeah, that’s a better idea.” Daring Do storms off quickly. Sometimes I think she’s a bit claustrophobic. Though after a while in here, everyone would be. I guess it’ll only take a while before we start throwing each other out.

I’m about to get some rag and clean the floor, when Hexie walks in. “Hello,” she says. “Inkie told me to tell you that there’s some land in front of us. She’s asking where to land.”

Before I can reply, Daring Do emerges from the shadows and tackles Hexie. Or rather tries to since Hexie is at least fifty kilograms heavier, not counting all the tools, she usually carries with herself. Daring Do simply bounces off. She spreads her wings to brake and tries once again, this time aiming for the head. Hexie isn’t having any of it. She ducks, letting Daring Do fly over her. Then she does three simple things.

First, she jams a wrench in the back of Daring Do’s knee, causing her to sit on her haunches. Then she grabs her left wing and smacks her in the back of the head with the other hoof. Kinda like a prison guard position with the donkey punch added for a good measure.

The sound Daring’s joint makes when she flies forward makes me sick again. At least Hexie releases her before ripping the wing off, but it doesn’t really help since she runs face-first into some crate.

“What the fuck was that?” Daring Do mutters, opening her eyes. Blood drips from her nose and her left wing is twisted at some weird angle.

“You started it,” Hexie replies. “You tell me.”

Daring Do points at me. “I had a temporary bout of insanity and she told me to train karate with you.”

“Good thing I didn’t hit with the full force, then,” Hexie says.

Daring Do groans and gets up. She limps towards the wall and smacks her wing against it until the joint pops back in the socket. Seriously, I’m gonna throw up again. “That wasn’t full force?” she asks, her voice unnaturally high-pitched. “What’d it do? Rip my wing clean off?”

“No,” Hexie replies. “It’d break your skull and make your brain flow out of your nose. The wing usually stays in place. Makes it easier to clean later.”

“Great,” Daring Do deadpans. “Three more days of being unable to fly.”

“Two weeks,” Hexie says. “No one who met me got back to health in less than two weeks.”

“You clearly haven’t fought many pegasi,” Daring Do says. “We regenerate pretty fa–” She’s interrupted by a sudden shock, as if the plane hit something hard. We all fly forward, falling on the floor. It seems that Inkie finally decided to land on her own and, since snow is kinda like water, do that without the landing gear down.

Well, I guess our comfort is the least of her concerns.

Hexie gets up first. “Kurwa twoja mać…” she mutters under her breath, rushing to the cockpit. Soon, we hear her yelling, “I didn’t clean that fucking plane for you to drop it in the snow like that!”

“Would you prefer broken gear?” Inkie asks. “The snow is rather deep here, I think.”

Well, at least they’re not throwing punches at each other. Given their strength, they’d utterly trash the cockpit.

“And how are you gonna take off now?” Hexie sighs. “It’d take a lot of digging, not to mention that we’ll have to leave half of the stuff…”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Daring Do says. “Let’s see where we landed.”

I look through the window and see… Well, I can’t see shit. Mostly because the snow we threw up into the air while landing didn’t fall down yet. Or maybe it’s snowing in general. Probably a bit of both.

“Wheee!” Ruby shouts. “Winter!” She opens the door and jumps into the snow. Immediately, she falls deep into it. After a while, she digs herself out and levitates some snow, forming a large snowball.

“I guess we’re gonna need some snowshoes,” Hexie mutters. “Trixie and I first. We’re the heaviest.”

“Maybe you’re the heaviest,” Trixie replies, emerging from the back of the plane. “Trixie is just– Aaargh!” she yells when Ruby’s snowball hits her right in the face.

“Snowball fight!” Vinyl knocks Trixie away, jumping out of the plane. She throws a snowball at Ruby, but my apparent daughter is faster; she unleashes a barrage of snow on Vinyl, who hides in a trench created when she landed in the drift.

“Now I’m gonna show you…” Vinyl grabs something with her hoof. She’s about to throw it, when she looks at it and screams.

“What’s that?” Daring Do tries to fly to her, but her wing twitches and she falls on the ground. At least she can stand in the snow due to being rather light. Or maybe it’s the cloudwalking thing?

“Looks like a frozen hoof,” Vinyl replies, throwing it away. She looks into the pit. “Hell, there’s a rest of that frozen wanker here…” Suddenly, she faints.

Daring Do, now armed in sunglasses and a warm coat walks into the pit in the snow to take a look. I join her, sliding slightly in my snowshoes. The body next to Vinyl is blue and completely frozen. Seems like it’s been there for some time. The mare doesn’t have any clothes and has a rather calm expression.

Well, I’ve heard that freezing to death is actually pretty nice, but she took that idea and ran with it. Without bothering with a thought of some idiots who would find her body one day, having no idea how to bury her. The ground is frozen, so the only thing we can do is to put her back in the snow or something.

“To think about it, we can stay in here,” Daring Do says. “The snow, except of the outer layer, is pretty hard. The only thing we need is some roof.”

“How about the body?” I ask, poking Vinyl with my hoof.

“It’s dead.” Daring Do scratches the snowy wall. “It can’t do anything to us. We’ll make it a crypt.”

Inkie jumps into the ditch. “I’d like to point out that we’ve been attacked by mummies on our way here. They seemed pretty dead to me.”

Hexie walks to us, carrying the tents and some firewood. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I know a ritual to keep the ghosts off.”

We look at her blankly.

“It involves food and vodka.” Hexie clears her throat. “Zamknijcie drzwi do kaplicy i stańcie dokoła truny!” She smiles sheepishly. “No?”

“Not really.” Daring Do rolls her eyes.

It takes us a few hours to set up a tent. First we dig a crypt in the wall and hide the body in it. If it ever wants to come back, it’ll have a hard time unfreezing. Then we get our tents and the rest of the stuff into the entrenched position near the plane. After some digging, our whole camp fits nicely in this big hole. Guess that if we have to stay for longer, we’ll build a big igloo or something. Way more practical than tents.

“Okay,” Daring Do says when we all sit around the campfire. She turns to me. “Where is that ancient town?”

“Why are you looking at me?” I ask. “It’s not like I have a map of the whole continent in my head.”

“Bastet didn’t tell you the location?” Daring Do sighs.

“Well, we have a map.” Vinyl produces a large piece of paper. “It’s shit, though. Lots of places are blank.”

“Maybe we should go in there?” Inkie whispers.

Daring Do looks at her. “Good plan. Tomorrow we dig out the plane and check every place that is not on the map. I’ll check other places, so we cover more area that way.”

"Wait, your wings healed already?" Trixie asks.

"Wonders of pegasus genes." Daring Do grits her teeth. "And painkillers."

“We’ll waste a lot of fuel that way,” Hexie mutters. “Unless we contact Lyra somehow and tell her to bring a ship here or something. But it’ll take weeks.”

“We’ll do that too,” Daring Do says. “We do need more backup.” She stares into the fire. “Though now I think how to deal with Aryanne and company once they find us.”

“How do you know they will?” I ask.

“Exactly,” Trixie says. “Last time we met them, Trixie gave them a nice fireshow.”

“Someone will remember a bunch of idiots trying to buy winter clothes in South Zebrica,” Daring Do replies. “Caballeron is intelligent. If he hears about what we bought, he’ll know that we can go to three places in the world: North Pole, South Pole, and Yakyakistan.”

Trixie nods. “So, since we’ve been going south all the time…”

“Yeah.” Ruby shrugs. “We’re lucky Daring Do is not chasing us.”

“Shit,” Vinyl says. “You should’ve told me that before. I’d buy a million pairs of sunglasses, a parade float, and a didgeridoo, just to fuck with them.” She throws some wood into the fire.

Daring Do raises her eyebrows. Then she grabs her notebook and writes something in it.

“Okay,” I say. “Before we give Daring more ideas for new books, I think it’s better to go to sleep. After all, we’re gonna do some patrolling tomorrow.”

“Is that supposed to be tomorrow?” Ruby asks, looking at the snow below us. “It’s still dark.”

“Polar night,” I reply. “It’s gonna be dark till winter. That is, July.” I look at her expression. “Southern hemisphere. Remember that the planet tumbles.”

“Hey, how about this pillar of ice?” Vinyl asks, drawing something on the map. “May be an ancient phallic symbol.”

“Nah, It’s just a pillar, I think.” I shrug and lower the plane a bit. “Unless the whole town is under the snow. In this case, we’re fucked.”

“Meh.” Vinyl writes something on the map. “I hereby call it ‘Camel’s Dick’.”

I turn to her. “Why camels? None live here, I think.”

“Polar bear then.”

“They don’t live here either,” Ruby says. “They are in the north, Miss Cheerilee told us about that. All they have here are penguins.”

Vinyl groans. “That’s it? I hoped for something more exciting. How about giant, flesh-eating penguins?”

“Shut up, please,” I say. “Things you’re saying have an alarming tendency to come true and giant, flesh-eating penguins are the last thing I need in my life.”

“What if they learned to fly?” Vinyl asks. “Or maybe they’re zombie penguins, controlled by some entity from outer space…”

“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter, taking a sharp turn, partially to throw her at the wall. “I don’t need no zombie penguins, voodoo sharks, or motherfucking snakes on this plane and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want it either, given that your usual reaction to danger is shitting yourself and running away.”

“I don’t recall shitting myself,” Vinyl scoffs. “You, however…”

I have to think for a while to remember that episode. “I technically died on that day and only came back because I saw you attempting the CPR.”

“So, I saved your life,” Vinyl says. “And then again, when I found the gorillas, not to mention a few more instances.”

I roll my eyes. Seriously, what does she want? “Well, you’re saving me from trouble I wouldn’t have if I didn’t know you!”

“Hey, what is that?” Ruby asks, pointing at something in the snow.

“What?” I ask.

“Big cunt made of shit,” Ruby replies. “Nothing, in fact. I just wanted you to shut the fuck up while I’m enjoying this pure landscape without any dumb fucks living in a thousand-mile radius.”

Vinyl looks at me. “I’m pretty sure your daughter could work on her vocabulary.”

“Yeah, she repeats herself,” I mutter. “But she’s right, if you keep talking about fucking zombie penguins, we’ll miss something important.”

“Well, but she’s also right in that there’s nothing here but snow.” Vinyl lifts her glasses and looks at the map. “And a few objects I drew and named: Valley Full of Shite, Fucking Rock of Sucking Cock, A Good Place for Getting Drunk, Another Good Place for Getting Drunk, That One Place Where Penguins Go to Fuck, Toilet for the Giants, Polar Bear’s Dick, and Mount Celestia.”

“Future generations will be grateful for this contribution to this continent’s geography,” I say. “Let’s see if Daring has something.” I click some buttons on the radio. “Hello, Daring Do! Birds are singing, sun is shining, did you get something?”

“Frostbitten arse!” Daring’s voice explodes from the speakers. “There’s nothing here but snow and shit!”

“Well, that’s an improvement,” Vinyl replies. “We only have snow.”

“I’m going back to the base.” Daring Do’s voice sounds like she has a sore throat. “Stay there as long as you can.”

“Stay there as long as you can, my ass,” Vinyl mutters when Daring’s voice disappears in static. “I’m hungry and it’s not much warmer in here. Can we fake a little mechanical failure and go back to the base?”

“Sure,” I reply. “One frostbitten arse a day is enough, I think.”

To think about it, we need to watch out for ourselves. After all, I’m pregnant and it’s not getting better for the next eighteen years, to say the least. Not to mention that while our group includes ponies of all talents, including a travelling magician and a DJ, we somehow forgot to find a proper doctor. The closest we got are Inkie, who can nurse you back to health, but can’t patch up anyone, and Hexie whose universal cure for everything is vodka and a kind word. And I can’t drink vodka.

About half an hour later, we are back next to our ditch. The landing is much softer now, as we evened out the snow. If it were to stay here for a few more years, we’d probably end up with a proper town, with its own railway station, hoofball team, Barnyard Bargains store, and a cart track.

“Wonder what they’re doing,” Vinyl mutters, putting on the thickest coat we have. “I hope it was Trixie’s turn to make dinner. I like my food not smelling of rocks or motor oil.”

As we get closer to the camp, we hear some kind of ruckus going on inside. Did someone attack our friends? I don’t see any airships around, but I drop on the snow and crawl closer. Vinyl and Ruby follow me.

“Trixie! Don’t do that!” Hexie’s scream drowns in the sound of Trixie’s magic.

“Did Trixie get it?”

“You got my leg, kurwa!” Hexie yells. “Pierdolony chory kurwiszon…”

“I got it!” Inkie shouts. Then we hear the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. “No, I don’t…”

I crawl closer, listening to Hexie’s long rant in which she explains Inkie and Trixie that they both can go and suck numerous dicks while she takes care of the situation herself. Which she now can’t do because Trixie injured her leg and Inkie somehow managed to kick her in the ribs.

I take a peek at the camp. Something blue is jumping around it, swiftly avoiding both Trixie’s magic and Inkie’s punches. Both Inkie and Hexie have holes burned in their clothes – a clear sign that Trixie isn’t very careful with her aiming.

“What’s going on here?” Ruby jumps into the ditch, getting her BB gun ready. Just great. All we needed were bullet wounds.

The blue thing jumps high into the air as Ruby aims at it. A pellet throws the thing backwards at the snow, but it doesn’t give a damn. Instead, it just bounces off and smacks Ruby in the face.

Vinyl stands up and looks down “Is it…”

“Is it what?” I ask.

“The hoof of that dead wanker we buried,” Vinyl replies. “I may have accidentally thrown it into the fire.”

“So it can survive death, being frozen, burned, shot, and tackled to the ground by Inkie,” I mutter, watching as Inkie rolls in the snow. “What should we do about it?”

“Freeze it again?” Vinyl shrugs. “It worked for the first time.”

“Yeah,” I mutter. “Let’s see if I can–”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie can’t be fooled by a dumb limb thingy!” Trixie yells. I look at her and see that she’s levitating a cauldron, rushing to the dismembered hoof, who is currently jumping between Hexie and Inkie, probably trying to make them ram into each other. Fat chance – they keep the distance, since Ruby shoots at it constantly.

Trixie lets out a powerful scream, and drops a cauldron at the hoof. It bangs against the metal, but Trixie puts the iron cover on the dish and holds it firmly in her magical embrace.

“Not bad,” Hexie mutters. “Shall I get an arc welder?”

I get down to the camp. “Hello,” I say, smiling. “How was your day?”

Hexie gives me a heavy glare. “Boss, with all due respect, stick such jokes up your ass.” She sighs. “We’ve been fighting this thing for the last few hours.” She points at the cauldron. The hoof is still banging at it.

Inkie shrugs. “I guess it wants to get to the rest of the body. Maybe we should dig it out?”

Ruby groans. “If that was just the hoof, imagine how is the rest. It may absorb us or something.”

Vinyl smirks. “We’ll never know if we don’t try. Maybe the rest is wiser? It has a head. And a pussy.”

Trixie looks at Vinyl and only shakes her head. Hexie is much more vocal in her opinions.

“Can I look for another job, far away from this place and her?” she asks. “I’m experienced, know three lan-goo-ah-guess…”

“Languages,” I mutter.

Hexie sighs. “Two languages and some messy thing where words are not pronounced the way they should be.”

“Messy thing?” Daring Do lands next to Hexie and rubs her sides with her wings. “What happened?”

“We caught a hoof from outer space.” Vinyl points at the cauldron in Trixie’s hooves.

Daring Do rolls her eyes and walks to the cauldron. “I’m gonna use a vocabulary you guys understand: you’re fucking with me, right?”

The cauldron shakes. Trixie grabs it harder and says, “Why would we?”

“I know you all too well,” Daring replies. “Show me what’s inside.”

Trixie sighs. “Okay, but you’ll catch it again.” She lifts the cover. A second later, the blue hoof smacks Daring Do in the face and runs away, towards the snowy wall.

“What the–” Daring rushes to grab the hoof, but it’s too fast. It rams into the snow, causing some hardened pieces to fall off, revealing the rest of the frozen body. One more punch and it falls on the ground. The hoof turns to us, as if it was checking what we’re doing, then goes to its place in front of the pony.

With the sound resembling cracking ice, the body unfreezes, changing into a blue, gelatinous pony who stands on its wobbly legs and looks at us. All its organs, including eyes, mane, and tail are made of this semi-transparent substance.

After a while of standing there and moving its snout as if it was sniffing, it trots to us. Well, “trots” is not a good word. Just like Bastet, the way this thing moves is slightly off, as if it was more used to crawling like an amoeba than walking on four legs.

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen such things before,” Daring Do says. “Though it’s probably closer to gelatinous cubes than slithering trackers…”

“It doesn’t look like a cube,” Inkie mutters. “And didn’t they eat ponies?”

“Nah, that’s one of the intelligent ones,” Daring Do replies. “Probably some domesticated subspecies of Gelatinum shoggothi. It has seen ponies before, given the shape it uses.”

The blue thing forms a hole in the place where its mouth should be. “Gah!” it says.

“Gah, gah, motherfucker,” Ruby replies.

“Trrg?” the thing asks. “Tekeli-li?” It tries to furrow its eyebrows but fails, owing to the lack of them. “Khyrla krtnnxzpvwds?” Some portion of jelly inside of it moves upwards.

“It’s trying all the languages it knows and rebuilds its articulators to try another set,” Daring Do says. “Monks from the Gelding Grotto have a similar thing. It’s thousands years old, but all it says are corny jokes.”

“No wonder.” Vinyl nods. “They’re probably older than Celestia.”

“Zy’r prbbl oldr zn Clsta,” the thing says.

“Vowels,” I mutter. “You can use them.”

The jelly makes a sound as if someone farted underwater. “I apologise for the minor inconvenience caused by my attempts to understand you,” it says with an accent resembling Octavia. “I initially did not realise that speaking your language does not require three tongues and a prehensile penis.”

“Holy shit, it talks.” Hexie chuckles. “Say, pierdol się, złamasie...”

The creature makes a sound that could pass as a pretty good sigh. “Zdaje sobie pani sprawę, że próby sprawienia by cudzoziemiec wypowiedział słowo uznawane powszechnie za wulgarne zdecydowanie nie jest oznaką dobrych manier? To mówiąc, proponuję, aby chwilowo przymknęła pani jadaczkę.”

“Whoa…” Daring Do stares at the creature. “Do you know any other languages?”

“All of them.”

“Do you have a name?” I ask. Seriously, I’m tired of referring to it as “creature”. I’m not even sure if it’s a mare or stallion – sure it looks more feminine, but who can tell how amorphous blobs of jelly make babies?

Speaking of which, I’d eat a jelly baby. I guess my cravings kick in.

“My previous master used to call me Blkkrrr’nt’fn.”

“Blackcurrant Muffin?” Ruby smirks. “You’d better get used to that name, because there’s no way we can pronounce it properly.”

“From the context, I suppose that you mean a nutrition item. Is that how your species calls themselves?” Blackcurrant Muffin asks.

“Not necessarily,” Ruby says. “I’m named after a gem, Vinyl and Inkie are named after household items, Daring Do after her traits, and Minuette and Hexie after some random shit.”

“She doesn’t mean it literally,” I say, seeing Blackcurrant Muffin’s jaw drop. “Also, Ruby, I’d like to remind you, once and for all, that I’m named after a dance. Got it?”

“Yeah.” Hexie sighs. “And my name is Hexagon Nut. That’s a figure and food, that happen to make an iron thingy used to screw things. Just something I do. While being slightly nuts.”

“Intentionally using words with two meanings to confuse the interlocutor. Interesting,” Blackcurrant Muffin says.

“Yeah,” Daring Do mutters. “We’ll talk linguistics later. I’d like to know something more about your master. Did he live in a town?”

“Using a male pronoun is probably a bit of a stretch, given that the society I lived in had thirty two sexes, which was why the couples had to go for a date marching in formation.”

“Shit…” Vinyl mutters. “No wonder they’re not around anymore. Imagine you can’t find the last guy…”

“Trixie thinks that’d require a lot of screwing around.”

Vinyl looks at Trixie and chuckles.

“Don’t mention they died out,” Daring Do whispers. “We shouldn’t shock her like that…”

Blackcurrant Muffin waves her hoof. “Well, to be honest, I calculated that such a social system could only last for about five hundred more years. Given that an unfortunate accident left me frozen for at least five million years, it comes to me as no surprise that my master and his kind are no longer among the living.” She makes a wet sigh. “On a side note, why did you assume I am a female? We were bred to do all the kinds of jobs for our masters. Technically, we were intelligent dough.”

“Don’t take the ‘muffin’ thing too personally.” Vinyl chuckles.

Blackcurrant Muffin just stares at her blankly. “I neither understand, nor appreciate your sense of humour.”

“Well, that’s a thing you have in common with like, half of the world,” Ruby says.

Blackcurrant Muffin nods. “Don’t mind me. I wasn’t created to do that.”

“Were you created to show us the way to the ancient town where you used to live?” Daring Do asks. “We’d be very grateful.”

“It is a long way.” Blackcurrant Muffin gets out of the ditch surprisingly fast for a pony-shaped blob of jelly. “Shall we go there now?”

“We won’t be going there by hoof,” I say, pointing at the plane. “Does this town have enough even space for the great metal bird to land?”

“You mean the plane?” Blackcurrant Muffin smiles. “The town’s airport could fit much bigger ones. Though most of them were Golden Condors from the north.”

“I think we saw one of them,” Daring Do says. “Okay girls, pack up things, we’re going to town!”

“So, Muffin, you have a lot of catching up to do,” Vinyl says. In the warmth of the plane, Blackcurrant Muffin got a bit more transparent and probably softer, but I guess on cold days she can be mistaken for a crystal pony. During the heat, she probably dissolves.

“Catching up?” she asks. “I’m pretty sure your culture can’t be superior to mine. At least not yet, given that creating organisms to serve you is something you’re not familiar with.”

“Nah, we invented ethics committees first,” I reply. “Given the existence of Aryanne, at least some of us got around to cloning.”

“Also, I’m fine with what we have,” Hexie says, clicking some buttons on the wall of the cockpit. “We invented the wheel and since then we’re going in circles.”

“I thought we were flying?”

“It’s a pun,” Vinyl mutters. “As for catching up, you need to know that we invented telharmonium and theremin. We were playing with tapes and then some Prench dude invented musique concrete. Nothing to do with concrete, by the way. Then someone invented the synthesisers, and everything went fast from there. We had cool bass, and–”

“Are you seriously teaching her about electronic music?” Inkie rolls her eyes. “At least mention hard rock.”

“Well, you’re the softest of hard rock girls, but you can tell her about it,” Vinyl replies.

Inkie clears her throat. “So, a rock fell on the ground first and that’s how we discovered drums. Then we rolled from there, discovering that if a rock fell on a cat, it’d scream beautifully and then we could gather the guts and make strings out of them. We invented guitars and bass guitars, then someone decided that you could connect them to magic and that metal strings were much better since we wouldn’t run out of the cats so fast. With more power, we could use power chords and–”

I pull the plane up to avoid hitting the mountain peaks. “Would you kindly focus on steering?” I ask Inkie. “I know you’d like to tell her more once you have a chance, but if we crash, you won’t be able to tell her anything.”

“Why?” Blackcurrant Muffin asks.

“Because unlike sentient blobs of jelly, we can cease to function indefinitely if we crash,” Trixie says, levitating a deck of cards. “Do you want to see a magic trick?”

“Fifty-two pieces of laminated cardboards with four symbols, numbers, and depictions of ponies on them.” Blackcurrant Muffin nods. “Do they have some ritual meaning?”

“Nah, we just use them for entertainment,” Trixie replies. “Trixie thinks that word doesn’t exist in your vocabulary yet.”

“Ah, so it’s like fights of–” Blackcurrant Muffin says some word that is completely impossible to say, unless the speaker has two mouths and is able to fart some of the consonants.

“More or less.” Hexie nods. “We play games with them. Like poker, mau-mau, solitaire, three-card Monte, shithead, dupa biskupa, gin rummy, or skat.”

Vinyl blinks. “Can you repeat that last one?”

Hexie smacks herself in the forehead. “Skat. With ‘k’ in the middle, you shithead.”

Blackcurrant Muffin rubs her temples. “Too many words with double meanings. I don’t get it.”

“Welcome to the club,” Daring Do mutters.

Huh. Apparently Blackcurrant Muffin learned to sigh with utter despair after only a few hours with us. “Do you mean club as a wooden stick, an association of ponies with common interest, a place of social gatherings, or–”

“The second one.” Daring Do shakes her head. “Have you ever heard about context?”

“The relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary?”

“Yes, that. But can you use it?” Daring Do asks.

“I’m not sure.” Blackcurrant Muffin drops on the floor, losing some of her pony shape. In other words, her legs kinda melt.

“Just great.” Daring Do turns to Vinyl and Hexie. “The product of ancient civilisation far more advanced than us and we broke her almost immediately.”

“It’s like with speakers,” Vinyl says. “Old ones can last for centuries, but new ones, with more electronic shit in them break once the warranty ends.” She hugs Blackcurrant Muffin, levitating a cigarette. “Hey, girl, wanna smoke?”

“I’d rather not inhale any poisonous substances, thank you.” Blackcurrant Muffin replies weakly.

“Or maybe…” Vinyl leans to her and kisses her. Suddenly, Blackcurrant Muffin’s tongue changes shape, penetrating the inside of Vinyl’s mouth while she holds her tightly with her arms. Vinyl thrashes, muttering something incomprehensible.

Hexie doesn’t even have time to kick Blackcurrant Muffin when she retreats. An off-white blob of jelly appears in her mouth before moving in the place where her stomach would be.

Vinyl spits on the floor. “What the fuck was that?”

“I found DNA in your saliva compatible,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies. I guess if she could blush, she’d do just that.

“Compatible for what?”

“Recombination,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies, looking at the white sphere inside of her. “Now it’ll grow and in two weeks the bud will separate and start living on its own. It may display some of your traits.”

“Congratulations, daddy.” Trixie pats Vinyl’s back.

“Assuming the DNA in her mouth was hers…” I mutter.

“Eww…” Daring Do and Inkie both wince.

I use a moment of silence to take a look at the ground below us. I blink, trying to pierce the snowstorm below us with my gaze. Too bad I see only the outlines of some shit at best. Whether those are rocks, glaciers, or something else, I can’t tell from here.

Blackcurrant Muffin pulls herself together and looks outside the window. She furrows her eyebrows. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have them a while ago, but I guess she’s getting better at parroting our expressions. Her first attempts at that were pretty creepy – just like Bastet, she didn’t see many ponies after assuming that shape.

“It is the town,” she says.

“How can you say?” Daring Do asks.

“I sense its electromagnetic patterns,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies. “You can’t do that?”

“No, we don’t have electroreceptors,” I reply, holding the rudders to fight the wind as we go lower. “Where can we land?”

“Just go straight,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies. “The airstrip was big enough for Agni’s vimana during the Tarakamaya battle and later it host many of what you may know as Ezekiel-class spaceships.”

“Sorry, we know neither Agni nor Ezekiel,” Daring Do replies. “Were they even ponies?”

Before Blackcurrant Muffin can reply, the whole plane shakes. I can hear Ruby yelling at the back; something about me and Inkie being inbred retards who can’t even steer the plane without killing everyone or something. I wonder if that makes her a second-generation inbred retard.

The powerful gust of wind nearly causes us to hit some column. Who the hell puts columns near an airport? And don’t tell me their old flying thingies didn’t have wings that could hit something. That golden condor had wings, right?

Inkie screams, yanking the steering column upwards. The plane shakes, but yet again, the snow cushions the fall slightly. It still causes Blackcurrant Muffin to fly across the cockpit and splash on the wall. Literally. The whole thing and all the instruments are covered in jelly. One of the windows cracks as we skid to a halt, spinning after hitting something that was mostly buried under the snow.

One of the engines makes a weird noise. Hexie immediately turns both of them off and we stop completely.

“Everyone’s okay?” Inkie’s voice sounds weird. For a moment I think my hearing is damaged but then I realise that Trixie is lying on her.

“It’s the last time I land with you,” Daring Do mutters. “Next time, I’m leaving before landing and watch you crash.”

“My ass…” Vinyl groans. I can still hear Ruby calling us a bunch of cocksuckers and whatnot, so I guess she’s fine.

“Yeah, I totally love installing new windows,” Hexie says, pointing at the cracked glass. “Also, I guess one of the propellers is screwed. I can repair it, but I’m not sure how’s the rest of the wing.”

I barely listen to her, stumbling to the door. I open it and dart outside to throw up. As I stop retching, I turn back to see everyone staring at me.

“Motion sickness?” Trixie asks. Daring Do takes off to kick some of the clouds away from the town. Good idea. I’m most definitely not into snow.

Inkie shrugs. “Pregnancy?”

“Both,” I reply, spitting on the ground. I take a look around and it occurs me that I should probably watch out what I’m spitting at.

We’re at the end of a long, flat runway, right next to something that looks like a palace made of crystals and gold, if such palaces were made with flying in mind. Most of it is crushed, though; as if some giant sat on it. I immediately look for the giant, but there are none in sight. Instead, I see the rows after rows of buildings. Empty and scorched, but I can still imagine how they used to look. There’s a lot of debris around, which makes me think that they used to be taller. Several spires can be seen in the distance, glowing in the faint light that seems to be coming from the inside of them.

Is there someone alive there? Or maybe some machinery still works there after all those years? I shudder, remembering the monstrous hamster wheel from the temple where we found the golden condor.

“Hey, look at that!” Vinyl points at something. “It’s another golden condom!”

Right in time. There’s indeed a golden condor there, half-buried in the snow. It looks like someone tore a hole in its side, revealing some mechanisms I’ve never seen before. What the hell happened here?

“That’s one hell of an ancient dumpster.” Ruby jumps out of the plane and picks up some random piece of debris. “Where’s Blackcurrant Muffin? Maybe she’d make sense of it.”

“She’s all over the cockpit,” Hexie replies. “And some was in my mouth, I think.”

I hear some sucking noise and then I see Blackcurrant Muffin sliding to us. Most of her body looks pony-like, but her legs are still not there.

“Ah.” Trixie smirks. “You got yourself together.”

“I wish I could appreciate that joke as much as you expect me to.” Blackcurrant Muffin looks at the remains of the crystal palace. “I see Chclttpdng eventually crashed his vimana.”

“I’m afraid Chocolate Pudding may be dead for ages,” I say.

“I am physically unable to feel sad because of this loss.” Blackcurrant Muffin sighs.

“Really?” I ask.

“No. He was a bad master. Strwbrsnde gave me the ability to feel, but the others thought he was really eccentric in his approach towards his slaves.”

Daring Do lands next to us. “I’m afraid we may have a bigger problem than Strawberry Sundae’s eccentricity.”

Hexie nods. “Yeah, digging in all that snow…”

“Fuck snow.” Daring Do grabs binoculars from the pocket of her shirt and gives them to me. “Look at that mountain pass.”

I take a look. Hell, indeed. At the top of the pass I see four silhouettes of ponies wearing skis and leather suits. Stars reflect in black-tinted lenses of their goggles and they’re pointing at the town in the dale.

Even from this distance, I can easily recognise Aryanne, Kyrie, Kloppenfuhrer and Dr. Caballeron.

Author's Notes:

Zamknijcie drzwi do kaplicy i stańcie dokoła truny! - "Close the chapel's door and stand around the coffin!" Hexie has the romantic literature of her country covered.

Pierdolony chory kurwiszon… - "Fucking sick whore-gherkin". Yes, it's an actual word.

Zdaje sobie pani sprawę, że próby sprawienia by cudzoziemiec wypowiedział słowo uznawane powszechnie za wulgarne zdecydowanie nie jest oznaką dobrych manier? To mówiąc, proponuję, aby chwilowo przymknęła pani jadaczkę. - "You do realise, madam, that attempts to make a foreigner say a word generally considered vulgar is definitely not a sign of good manners? This being said, I propose you to shut your mouth."

All the card games mentioned by Hexie actually exist You'd better not think too hard about existence of bishops in Equestria.

For informations about vimanas and Tarakamaya battle, consult Mahabharata. For Ezekiel-class spaceships, go and ask that ancient aliens dude with weird hair. Or Erich von Daniken.