It took us a bit longer than anticipated to exit Town Hall once the formalities were over, as we were periodically waylaid by small clusters of ponies. Most of them stopped us to have a few words with Twilight and her friends, but every now and then, one would come up to talk to me ‒ especially those who had wanted to ask a question but didn’t get a chance to during the performance.

Ten minutes had passed before we were able to extricate ourselves from the final group and emerge from Town Hall, blinking rapidly as our eyes adjusted to seeing natural light once more. Princess Celestia’s escort and the carriage that had brought us here were already taking off for the return flight to Canterlot. Thankfully, our pilot and co-pilot had been generous enough to unload our luggage while I was faffing about on stage. Everyone else had errands to run before the party, so we parted ways after agreeing to meet up at the library a half hour before the party was scheduled to begin.

Celestia had arranged for Faran to stay in a rental home on the northeast side of town, not far from the hospital where she’d be working when not tending to my medical needs. Most of her personal belongings had already been moved into the house, while the remaining items were in the process of being shipped to her new home. Twilight had “volunteered” the two of us to escort Faran ‒ over the nurse’s objections ‒ to her place before swinging back towards the library that I’d be calling “home” for the time being.

Before we set out, I picked up the suitcase containing all my worldly possessions ‒ a week’s supply of clothes. The three of us walked in silence ‒ or rather, I walked in silence a few feet behind Twilight and Faran, who were engaged in idle conversation as we traversed one of the dirt roads leading away from downtown Ponyville.

During the journey, I retreated into my own thoughts, barely paying any attention to what was going on around me. While the citizens of Ponyville had certainly given me a warmer welcome than I had any right to expect, just seeing so many alien equines in one place brought back the same depressing feeling of “being on the outside looking in” that had caused me to run out on Twilight and her friends during the castle tour. In a very real sense, I thought, I kind of feel like a cosmic castaway.

As if the multiverse had a sick sense of comedic timing, I was suddenly reminded of a song from the soundtrack of an exceedingly average animated science fiction movie starring Prince Lone Starr, Jason Bourne, Luigi Mario, and Gertie from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Even more oddly, the song itself started playing in my head on that same obscurely peculiar psychic radio station that had been playing when I first regained consciousness about a week ago.

I began to lose myself in the song, no longer caring where we were going, or even if I was still with Twilight and Faran. The only thing that I was certain of was that I was still walking forward ‒ a task that was made more difficult by the strange images that began appearing before my eyes.

Some of them were eerily familiar, such as the time I narrowly avoided setting a neighbor’s car on fire with a misaimed Roman candle one Fourth of July with my high school buddies. Others ‒ a red and yellow sun sigil with the core done in the style of a yin-yang, for instance ‒ seemed like they should’ve been familiar, but for the life of me, I couldn’t quite place them.

And as the song progressed, the images got more and more ridiculous. I mean, Twilight gaining wings and becoming a princess like Celestia, Luna, and Cadance? In what universe is that even possible?

But before the images could get any more ridiculous ‒ or disturbing, given some of the visuals that played across my mental movie screen ‒ I suddenly found myself confronted by a veritable wall of outstretched hooves. Two of those hooves ‒ one lavender, and one a mixture of brown and white ‒ turned out to be all too real.

Reality reasserted itself with a pair of solid thwacks ‒ one in the solar plexus, and one in the sternum ‒ as I ran into Twilight and Faran’s forelegs. Blinking, I shook my head to clear it of the unusual hallucination. It was then that I noticed my companions giving me concerned looks.

“What?” I asked out of sheer stupefaction.

“Are you alright?” Twilight asked in a concerned tone.

“Umm, maybe?” was the only reply I could think of.

Faran frowned, her expression and tone of voice morphing into something resembling genuine concern for my wellbeing. “You certainly didn’t act alright. Miss Sparkle had to use her magic at least three times to keep you from unwittingly bumping into anypony. It was like you were off in your own little world.”

“Maybe I was,” I murmured uncertainly. “I kind of got lost in my own thoughts and started… seeing things.”

“Seeing things?” Faran parroted skeptically. “Like somepony slipped you a Whickering Stallion?”

“If that’s pony slang for drugging me, then yeah. Only thing is, most of the hallucinations seemed at least somewhat grounded in reality. And I doubt anyone drugged me. I don’t think I’ve honked anyone off that badly yet.”

“Hmm,” Twilight said, puzzlement written on her face and a hoof touching her chin in a contemplative manner.

“Did anything unusual happen while I was being a space case?” I asked.

“Well, you were… singing,” Twilight said.

“Singing?”

The two mares nodded in unison. “Something about the fifth dimension and not being a loser. I couldn’t make much sense of it,” Faran said, a ferret-like grin working its way onto her muzzle.

“That’s about as far as you got before we stopped you,” Twilight added, casting an unreadable gaze at Faran. “What was it about?”

“Oh, that,” I said blandly. “It’s from a movie back home.” From what they’d said, I hadn’t gotten to the part about “beating the alien,” and for that, I was eternally grateful.

“I see. Must be one of those artsy films that nopony can figure out,” Faran said in a deadpan tone.

“Be nice,” Twilight murmured.

I simply rolled my eyes in response. “So, are you two going to figure out what happened to me, or would you prefer to continue wallowing in Schadenfreude?”

“Schadenfreude, Mister Knox?” Faran replied, “I’ll have you know that I don’t wallow in Schadenfreude.”

“Now that I think about it, that’s true.”

Faran smirked.

“You actually revel in it.”

Faran’s eyes widened in shock and outrage. She opened her mouth as if to retort, but was cut off by a sharp shout from the other member of our group.

“Hold it!” Twilight interjected, burying her face in a hoof. “Do you two always go at it like this?” she groaned, “Just start yowling and sort of make it up as you go along?”

“Yowling?” Faran yowled indignantly, her voice climbing an octave as she did so.

“It’s not always yowling,” I helpfully added, flashing Faran an evil smile, “Sometimes it’s screeching. I much prefer that. I can work with screeching, at least.”

This time, it was Faran’s turn to press a hoof to her forehead. “Trócaireach Luna, ach amháin dom ó greannú seo,” she muttered in a barely audible tone. She then fixed me with a cold stare. “So, do you want a diagnosis, or would you rather sit around making smart remarks?”

“Sit around making smart remarks,” I quipped, sticking my tongue out at her. She let out an irritated-sounding whicker in response, and I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “I was just kidding, Faran. Geez. No need to make a Capallian spectacle of yourself.”

Faran visibly struggled to regain her composure, letting out a heavy sigh and massaging her temples with a hoof. “Fine,” she said primly, “but you’re going to need to provide more information. Miss Sparkle and I still don’t have enough to go on in order to figure out what might be happening.”

I thought back to my trippy mental vacation for a moment. “Well, there was one other thing that struck me as odd,” I said. I then balked slightly upon noticing Twilight holding her ever-present clipboard and quill in her telekinetic aura.

Blinking rapidly, I did a brief shake of my head to reboot my brain. “What’s odd ‒ and this isn’t the first time this has happened, by the way… What’s odd is that while I was off in lala land, I heard the music of the song. I still don’t know how I could tell this, but it didn’t seem to be coming from my own thoughts and memories. More like it was coming in on some sort of otherworldly radio receiver in my head.”

“Radio receiver?” Twilight asked with a quizzical tilt of her head and an equally quizzical expression on her face ‒ one that Faran seemed to be matching.

“Human communications technology,” I stated simply. “We can use radio waves to transmit sound over long distances to specialized electronic devices that then play back the sound waves. I’m probably over-simplifying a bit, but that’s the basic idea.”

“Oh,” Twilight said blandly. She and Faran then shared a look. “When was the first time you experienced this phenomenon?” Faran asked.

“About a week ago, right before I first regained consciousness.”

The two mares took a few steps back and started conferring in heated whispers, with Twilight’s hoof blocking me from reading their lip movements. After a few moments, they shared a nod and approached me once more.

“Well, Derren,” Twilight said, “We think we know what’s going on, but there are a few things about what you’ve told us that don’t quite make sense, so we can’t say for certain without more information. If it happens again, be sure to let us know.”

“Great,” I muttered. “Is there anything useful you can tell me?”

“Well,” Twilight said, somewhat hesitantly, “while it’s probably vastly different from anything you’ve ever experienced, I can assure you that it’s a perfectly normal part of life in Equestria.”

“Why does that not reassure me?”

Faran gave me a weak smile. “I know it can be hard to believe, especially in a case like this.” Her ears folded back, and her smile faltered. “There’s no easy way but to just give it to you straight. We think that you may have had your first experience ‒ or rather, your first conscious experience ‒ with the Music of Harmony.”

“The Music of Harmony?” I parroted irritably. “What the hell is that?”

“It means that harmony isn’t just an abstract concept here in Equestria,” Twilight supplied. “In addition to the planet’s primary thaumic field ‒ which unicorns can access for their magical abilities ‒ there’s a secondary field as well. This one seems to have a will of its own, perhaps even a consciousness ‒ but if it is conscious, it’s on a level beyond that of mere mortals.”

I tried to ignore the part about thaumic fields, as the technical details were most likely way above my pay grade. Instead, I focused my skepticism on the implications of Twilight’s statement. “You mean the planet is alive?”

“Not in the same way you or I would perceive it. In fact, we don’t really know a whole lot about it, other than it seems to have a will of its own.”

“So, now you’re saying this planetary will, as it were, is divine, like a god or goddess,” I said, nonplussed.

“Again, not in the normal way you or I would define it ‒ though some pre-Unification pony cultures did worship it as such.” Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof as a thoughtful expression descended upon her facial features, evidently trying to find a good way to word her explanation.

Eventually, she found the words she was looking for, and faced me with that professorial stance she tended to use when sharing her knowledge. “What little we know about it comes from the notes of Starswirl the Bearded. In addition to having a connection to the Elements of Harmony of some sort, this secondary thaumic field ‒ which is known as the Harmonic Magic Field ‒ is also responsible for what we call the Music of Harmony. This latter phenomenon is the reason why ponies spontaneously break out into song and dance routines seemingly at random.”

“You’re… kidding, right?”

Twilight shook her head.

I stared bug-eyed at Twilight and Faran for a few moments on the verge of hyperventilating before carefully bringing my breathing under control. “Of all the weird planets in all the universes in all the multiverse, why did I have to land on the one that operates like a goddamned musical?” I shouted, throwing my arms in the air in an overly-dramatic fashion that I was sure Rarity would approve of.

Exchanging another look, Twilight and Faran both approached me carefully, only to be forced to take a partial step back, forelegs poised in midair as my rant continued.

“I mean, what’s next? Are ponies suddenly going to start singing about my problems?”

Sure enough, as if on cue, the psychic radio station in my brain crackled to life again, this time with a tune I didn’t recognize. I stood there in mute horror as the disconcertingly upbeat melody continued. To top it all off, random ponies passing by were indeed singing about the trials and tribulations I’d endured in the past week.

At the climax of the song, a lilac pegasus mare with a purple bow adorning her teal-gray mane pirouetted gracefully through the sky as she sang, “And now he’s citing Casablanca!”

Rainbow Dash, in a display of uncanny timing, flew through a cloud at that moment, bursting it into rapidly-dissipating vaporous chunks as she replied with a half-spoken, half-sung, “What the hay is Casablanca?”

From among the chorus of gathered ponies, all the mares sang as one: “He thinks this world is crazy!”

The stallions in the group followed suit: “He thinks he’s going mad!”

The entire group then finished as one with a flourish:

The instant ethereal music cut off, I finished my recovery from my mental blue screen of death, and was finally able to form coherent thoughts again. The first thing I did was to slap a palm to my forehead so hard that the sound echoed over the semi-crowded street.

“I just had to go and open my piehole, didn’t I?” I groused.

“Well, maybe you should avoid tempting fate like that, Mister Knox,” Faran said. Her muzzle crinkled almost adorably, and her emerald eyes were twinkling with barely-suppressed mirth. I gritted my teeth and groaned at the acidic sniping. It was one aspect of Faran’s personality that I was quickly getting fed up with.

“So, umm, yeah… That’s the Music of Harmony in action,” Twilight said lamely, making an already awkward situation even more awkward. After a moment, she looked me up and down, as if searching for something.

I smiled weakly at her. “I believe this is the part where I ask if you’re seeing anything you like.”

“Ha. Funny,” she said flatly. “Actually, there’s a couple of things that puzzle me about your experiences with the Music of Harmony.”

“Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

“This is serious, Mister Knox,” Faran interjected, the expression on her face deadly serious. “I’d suggest you pay attention to what Miss Sparkle has to say.”

I made a rude noise with my mouth before letting out a long breath to steady myself. “Fine. Lay it on me, Twilight.”

“Well, the fact that you were having hallucinations seems fairly anomalous, since there’s never been a case of that sort of thing happening in any of the thousands of events involving the Music of Harmony in all the time that the phenomenon has been studied. Even when griffons and minotaurs got caught up in the event, not once did they ever report the sort of hallucinations that you did.”

“Huh, wonder why that might be...” I muttered, a slight heat rising in my face. Some of the hallucinations had been… decidedly risque…

“However,” Twilight said, ignoring ‒ or perhaps oblivious to ‒ my utterance, “That could be because you’re not from Equis, and thus, your connection to the Harmonic Magic Field may be a little…” She paused as her face fell into a troubled frown, seeming to have trouble finding the right word.

“Glitchy? Buggy?” I was spitballing. I didn’t even know if she understood the terms.

“I’m sorry, I’m not following what you’re trying to say.”

Figures, I thought. “Human technical jargon, Twilight. Put bluntly, it refers to unexpected ‒ and often undesirable ‒ behavior from our electronic devices, usually due to a logic error on the creator’s part.”

Twilight’s eyes brightened in a sudden epiphany. “Oh, kind of like that one time when Spike and I were trying to get away from a crowd that Pinkie had told about my tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala, and due to pressure we were under, I inadvertently reversed the sign of the trans-spatial displacement matrix. We ended up back at the library like I’d intended, but Spike… got a little singed.”

A long pause followed. “What,” I said flatly.

Faran chuckled as she watched me scramble to reassemble my mind from the debris left by the nuclear blast of magical technobabble Twilight had dropped on me. “I think what Miss Sparkle means is that she miscalculated during a teleport due to being rushed, and Spike suffered the consequences for it.”

Twilight and I both stared at her in shock. “How did you figure that out?” Twilight asked.

The nurse gave Twilight a sly smile. “During my residency, one of my supervisors was a unicorn with a knack for explaining magical maladies in terms non-unicorns could understand. It came in handy when I got my first job at one of the most prestigious unicorn finishing schools in Capallia. Some of the more precocious fillies would try to teleport without doing the proper math.”

She chuckled again at what were likely some highly amusing memories. “Teleportation-induced first-degree burns were the least of our headaches some days. Thankfully, the mishaps tended to be more absurd than life-threatening. Never did find out where some of those socks wandered off to...”

“Sounds like you’ve had quite the storied career as a nurse,” I said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Faran replied with a knowing smile.

In the back of my mind, I was wondering why a school for unicorns would be willing to hire an earth pony as a nurse. The only thing I could come up with was that there weren’t enough unicorn nurses to go around, and Faran just happened to have the experience and skills they needed.

Twilight, meanwhile, shook her head as if denying the reality before her. “I don’t know how you two can go from sniping at each other one minute to being so friendly the next, especially since you’ve only known each other for a week.”

“I wonder that myself, sometimes,” I quipped, aiming a look at Faran. She merely rolled her eyes and let out a long-suffering sigh.

Twilight’s flat stare told us that she was nearing the limit of her tolerance for our shenanigans. “Anyway,” she said, falling back on her haunches as she looked towards me, not focusing on anything in particular, “I’m still curious about one thing. If you’re from a world that has no magic, how in Equestria were you able to connect with this planet’s Harmonic Magic Field?”

“Why are you asking me?” I demanded. “Of the three of us, I’m probably the most in the dark about how magic works.”

“I was mostly asking myself,” Twilight corrected, unable to keep a slight tenseness out of her voice. She took a breath, held it, then let it out before continuing. “I’d like to perform a few scans on you sometime, if you’d allow it.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked in a small voice, half-serious.

“Oh, good gracious, no. It won’t hurt at all!” Twilight’s hasty reply was accompanied by her ears folding back and her eyes snapping open wide. “I would never do anything to harm you. Honest!”

She spluttered out a few more panicked reassurances before getting a good look at the teasing smile on my face. “Oh, you are quite the comedian, aren’t you?” she grumbled, her tone as sour as the look Faran was shooting at me.

I merely stuck my tongue out at her playfully. “I try.”

“Anyway, would you mind if I took the scans?” Twilight was using the most devastating argument in her arsenal: puppy dog eyes that somehow looked even more adorable than they should’ve been on her equine features.

I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“I, however, would advise against it.” Faran’s pursed lips emphasized her disapproval. “At least, not by yourself.”

“I know what I’m doing, Nurse Faran,” Twilight protested, holding a foreleg up in a defensive gesture.

“That may be so,” Faran countered, “but you are not a licensed medical professional, Miss Sparkle. And I cannot in good conscience recommend this course of action without the supervision of at least one doctor and one nurse.”

“So, what do you recommend?” Twilight asked.

Faran took a deep breath of her own to gather her wits about her. “Princess Luna wants Mister Knox to come back to Canterlot at his earliest convenience to make amends with the academics that he offended earlier today. I suggest that we accompany him when he goes, and meet with Doctor Silverclaw. You can perform your scans then.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” I replied. “How about it, Twilight? Does that work for you?”

Twilight muttered inaudibly to herself for a moment before nodding. “I suppose it will have to do. It’s just that I was kind of looking forward to learning more about you, Derren. I guess I got a little carried away, huh?” She flashed a sheepish smile at me.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Twilight. I know I’d be curious if I were in your shoes. But if Nurse Faran’s asserting her authority as my health care provider in this matter, then I’d recommend heeding her advice.” I leaned in close to Twilight’s ears before adding in a hushed tone, “Trust me. It’s much less painful that way.”

Apparently, my tone wasn’t hushed enough, as Faran’s ears perked up. “And just what in the hay is that supposed to mean?” she demanded harshly.

“Umm, that you’re very convincing when you want to be?”

Faran’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Uh huh,” was all she said, in a tone that left no doubt that she didn’t believe me for a second. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I’m going inside.”

“Inside?”

“Yes,” Faran stated simply. “This is where I’m going to be staying in Ponyville.” She waved a hoof to indicate the residence in front of us.

The building in question was a sturdy two-story affair made of roughly weathered limestone and topped with a thatched roof. Though the thatching looked like it might need to be replaced once spring rolled around, the house appeared to be well-maintained to my untrained eye. The design must have been fairly uniform for this part of Equestria, as the only things distinguishing it from the rows upon rows of other nearly identical houses was a white picket fence surrounding a small vegetable garden and the number above the door: 242.

“Ah,” I said blandly.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get settled in,” Faran declared matter-of-factly. “I’ll see you both at the party tonight.”

She turned and practically marched inside. As she did so, I decided to make an attempt to end the conversation on a positive note.

“Okay, then. See you ‒” the door shut gently, but firmly, in my face “‒ later.”

Twilight and I shared a look. “Well, that went swimmingly,” I deadpanned.

Twilight merely rolled her eyes before turning and leading me back towards the center of town. Pausing just long enough to take once last glance at the front door ‒ and catching a glimpse of a roan coated flank attached to a dirty blonde tail rapidly receding from the large, curtained bay window near the front door ‒ I tightened the belt strap on the khaki trench coat that Ruby Weave had provided for me, and followed after Twilight.

The cookie-cutter houses began to give way to the more varied edifices bordering Town Square as Twilight and I walked through the streets of Ponyville side-by-side. Neither of us had been able to break the somewhat tense silence that had hung over our heads since leaving Faran’s house, and after a while, neither of us cared to try as we walked through the late December afternoon.

Late December, of course, by the human calendar. Twilight had taken great pains to teach me the Equestrian method of marking time when she and her friends visited me in Canterlot a few days previously. Aside from the index year, the only other significant difference between our two calendar systems were the names of the months.

To be fair, Twilight’s diligence made sense. After all, I’d get nothing but bemused tilts of the head from my neighbors if I referred to “Sun’s Glory” as June, for instance.

As we walked, I took in the sights around me. Here and there, pegasi flitted about, some handling clouds much like their brethren in Canterlot had, and others just enjoying the bright, sunny afternoon. The snow had been swept off the streets to provide clear, safe travel for pedestrians.

All around, the town was buzzing with a lively holiday atmosphere. Parents watched as their foals played in the snow, while the “downtown” area containing Town Square and Town Hall was awash with busy activity as ponies of all sorts were setting up an outdoor performance venue, arranging picnic tables and additional seating along the periphery, and stringing up festive decorations suitable for ringing in the new year to come.

Pinkie Pie and Rarity were directing the organized chaos ‒ or rather, Rarity was leading the decorating. Pinkie was near the stage and seemed to be lining up several identical blue cannons, each mounted on pink-rimmed wheels that had hubcaps decorated with a painting of a flower on a purple background. The two mares were able to stop long enough to give a friendly wave to Twilight and me before returning to their work.

“What’s with the cannons?” I asked.

Twilight blinked for a moment and looked back at the scene in Town Square. “Oh,” she said in a tone that suggested this sort of thing was normal, “those are Pinkie’s party cannons. Pinkie usually uses them when she needs to decorate for a party in a hurry, but for tonight, they’re going to be used to launch the traditional New Year’s fireworks display. She also used them to incapacitate several changelings during the assault on Canterlot.”

My jaw dropped at that. “She weaponized… partying?”

Twilight gave me a strange look. “I suppose you could put it that way,” she said, an uncertain waver in her voice.

I turned and looked blankly at the pink mare that was zipping around Town Square like a caffeinated hummingbird. Once my brain rebooted, I shook my head and let out a long sigh. “Is there anything that mare does that doesn’t defy logic, common sense, or basic physics?”

Twilight giggled. “I still wonder that myself sometimes. I’ve come to see it as sort of being part of her charm.” She then gave me a long look, eyes shimmering with emotion as she continued, “When I first moved to Ponyville, Pinkie was one of the last ponies I would’ve wanted to spend time with. Now, I can’t imagine my life without her ‒ or any of my friends, really.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I replied, “I’ve seen how you six are with one another.” A wistful smile came upon my face unbidden. “To be perfectly honest, I envy you a little for it.”

“Maybe this party will help you to come out of your shell a little,” Twilight said with a hopeful smile.

“Maybe,” I said dubiously.

Twilight’s face lost none of its confident expression, however. “Well, if there’s one pony I can count on to make this party worth your while, it’s Pinkie. I know she can be a little much to handle at times, but if there’s one thing she’s really good at, it’s making ponies ‒ or humans, in your case ‒ smile.”

“I wish her all the best of luck, then,” I said as we resumed our journey.

Our route took us on the westbound road away from downtown Ponyville, past an odd building shaped like a gingerbread house with a cupcake on top, which Twilight identified as Sugarcube Corner ‒ a bakery that served as both Pinkie Pie’s residence and place of employment. She also noted that Mr. and Mrs. Cake, the bakery’s owners, shared the living space with Pinkie ‒ effectively doing double duty as her landlord and employer.

As we walked past the brightly decorated bakery, a trio of unicorn foals burst forth from the entrance, followed closely by a unicorn couple ‒ a stallion and a mare. The adults ‒ presumably the parents ‒ were quick to reprimand the foals for nearly bowling us over, offering a polite, if hurried, apology to us as they passed.

Watching the foals disappear around the corner ‒ each one zealously holding a cupcake close in a brightly glowing telekinetic field ‒ I turned to Twilight.

“You know, Twilight,” I said as we resumed our previous course, “If I’m going to be living here for an extended period of time, it might be helpful if I got a bit of a crash course on how magic works here.”

Twilight’s head reared back slightly and developed a quizzical tilt to it as a curious expression descended upon her face. “Shouldn’t you have gotten this explanation when you went to the Institute?”

I shrugged. “They couldn’t get anyone from the Arcane Sciences department on that short of notice. The faculty members were all either teaching a class, giving a lecture at some other academic institution, or ‘at a critical point in their research and couldn’t be pulled away from it’ to meet the visiting alien.”

“Ah,” Twilight said.

I looked around for a bit, taking in the surroundings. The claustrophobic commercial edifices were already starting to give way to the more sedate architecture of the outlying residential areas. Occasionally, we’d spot small clusters of ponies as we walked. I’d wave at them in greeting as we passed, and my greetings were always politely returned, and though some were more friendly than others, the worst reaction I got was mere neutrality.

“Besides,” I added, breaking the silence that had lasted no more than a minute, “I figured it would be better to fill the air with something other than awkward silence.”

“Yes, it is,” Twilight replied with a giggle. “At any rate, I’m happy to help you learn more about magic. What would you like to know?”

“Well, looking around, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that telekinesis is a common spell, right?”

Twilight nodded. “It’s one of the most basic spells that unicorn foals learn once they manage to gain control of their magic.”

“Wait, what do you mean, gain control of their magic? They just fire off spells at random before then?”

Again Twilight nodded, and I shuddered in response. “I’d hate to be the insurance adjustor dealing with a claim involving a foal accidentally setting their house on fire.”

“I’ve… actually done something like that,” Twilight hesitantly admitted, sporting a blush and a sheepish expression.

“You set your house on fire?”

“Well, I didn’t set it on fire, per se. But I did accidentally flood the house when one of my magical flare-ups caused the refill cutoff valve on the upstairs toilet to stop working. It also clogged the drain and activated the flush mechanism.”

Twilight stepped back a couple of paces at my stunned expression, concern dawning on her muzzle. “What?” she asked, “I was only a month old at the time. I couldn’t have done anything about it! For Celestia’s sake” ‒ here she stamped a hoof on the ground, her face flushing even harder ‒ “I was too young to even remember it. I only know about it because my parents keep jokingly threatening to mention it to the first stallion I bring home to meet them.”

I burst out laughing at that. “Well, it’s nice to know that ‘embarrassing your offspring in front of potential suitors’ is one thing our two species have in common.”

Shaking her head, Twilight couldn’t resist a chuckle of her own. “I guess we’re not nearly as different as surface appearance would suggest,” she said, settling into a winsome smile as the wind ruffled her mane.

For some reason, seeing her like that made the atmosphere grow slightly awkward. We both looked away for an uncomfortable moment, and I took the opportunity to clean my glasses for the fourteenth time that day.

A deliberate clearing of the throat drew my attention back to Twilight. “I believe you were wanting to learn some more about Equestrian magic,” she said, smiling shyly.

“Indeed,” I replied, gesturing with a hand for her to take the lead again as we set off once more along the slightly moist, chilly dirt road. “What other spells do foals typically learn growing up?”

Twilight pursed her lips in thought. “There’s about a dozen spells that are part of the standard unicorn curriculum, including a basic force beam spell that’s used for self-defense purposes.” I suddenly found myself having to fight back a very strong urge to complain to imaginary subordinates about their inability to provide me with ponies with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads at hearing her say that.

”However,” Twilight continued, thankfully oblivious to my struggle to maintain my composure and pay attention to her lesson, “the ones that are most commonly utilized in daily life are levitation ‒ or telekinesis, as you like to call it ‒ a few minor first aid spells, and a magelight spell.”

“Magelight?”

“We use our magic to produce light to see by.”

“Ah. Like a magical flashlight of sorts.”

Twilight smiled again. “That’s the basic idea, yes.” Her demeanor turned professorial again. “After that, though, learning spells gets a bit trickier. All spells require energy to cast.”

“Sure, it probably would take a fair bit of energy to break the laws of physics,” I retorted cheekily.

“I’m being serious here, Derren,” Twilight said flatly. “You asked for this lesson, and I’m not going to continue it if you don’t take it as seriously as I do.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding my hands out in a placating gesture. “I get it, Twilight. This is important, and I shouldn’t be trivializing it with snarky comments. Sorry. Please, continue.”

Twilight muttered something that resembled a “Thank you” under her breath before perking up and resuming the lecture where she left off. “Anyway, a lot of why not every unicorn has the same spell repertoire has to do with three things: thaumic energy reserves, casting skill, and the spell’s relation to a pony’s special talent.”

“Those first two seem fairly straightforward. Such concepts are frequently found in the games I used to play as a kid. But what does a pony’s special talent have to do with the types of spells that can be cast?”

“Quite a bit, actually,” Twilight answered. “In addition to being naturally inclined towards learning and understanding the concepts behind spells related to one’s special talent, such spells are also easier to cast, requiring less energy to do so than if cast by a unicorn whose special talent doesn’t cover the spell in question.”

“This sort of thing is testable?”

“Indeed,” Twilight replied. “In every way that matters, magic is simply another field of science here in Equestria, much like physics or biology.” Her eyes fell to a half-lidded state as a sly smirk slithered onto her lips. “Hence, the Arcane Sciences department at the Canterlot Institute of Applied and Arcane Science.”

“Okay, I get the point,” I muttered, “No need to be smug about it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Twilight said, and though the smile never left her face, it transformed into a friendlier one as she continued. “Perhaps it would help you if I gave a more concrete example. Do you recall what Rarity and I told you about our special talents?”

“Rarity’s is ‘bringing out the natural beauty in things,’ to hear her tell it. And you said that yours is magic in general.”

“Correct,” Twilight replied. “And as a consequence of that, any spell that relates to ‘bringing out that natural beauty’ is easy for her to cast ‒ even easier than it would be for me. For instance, Rarity knows a spell for finding gems buried underground. She once taught it to me, and it came in handy when she was captured by diamond dogs.”

I nodded in understanding. “I remember you telling me that story the last time you girls came to visit me in Canterlot. I assume you have a reason for mentioning the incident.”

Twilight’s smile never faltered for a second. “When Spike reminded me that I also knew Rarity’s gem-finding spell, I was able to improve it so that it covered a wider area. However, it still required a small, but noticeable effort on my part. Even when I showed her how to improve it later, she was still able to cast it almost as effortlessly as she uses basic levitation.”

I let out a low whistle at that. “That’s… quite the feat.”

My lavender companion giggled once more. As much as I might have wanted to deny it, the sound was growing on me the more often I heard it.

“Indeed,” she said. “But, as I said, there’s more to it than just having a special talent for certain spells. Some spells are either so complex, or so draining on a unicorn’s thaumic energy reserves, that they can only be cast by the most powerful of unicorns.”

“Would teleportation happen to be one of those higher-level spells?”

Twilight nodded with a sheepish grin, likely recalling the mishap with Spike that she mentioned during our conversation with Faran. “It is, because it’s both complex to cast, and somewhat energy intensive. I’m probably one of a hoof-full of unicorns that can cast it at all, much less cast it consistently.”

“You must be pretty powerful to be able to do that.”

She stopped walking for a moment and dropped to her haunches, rubbing the back of her head with her right hoof as her ears drooped and a rosy tint invaded her cheeks again.

“You could say that,” she said sheepishly. “I don’t like to brag about my abilities, but shortly after I was accepted to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, the teachers there did a more thorough test of my magical abilities. In terms of both overall casting ability and magical capacity, I’m one of the most powerful unicorns in a generation ‒ probably even the most powerful since Starswirl the Bearded himself.”

“You mean the unicorn you were telling me about that lived during the founding of Equestria?”

“That’s the one.”

I let out another low whistle. “Damn…” I said, ignoring Twilight’s glare in response to what I felt was a very mild curse, “I don’t know whether to be impressed or intimidated.”

Twilight gazed back at me, downtown Ponyville receding in the distance behind us as we walked. Her expression became difficult to read, but I thought I caught sight of a slight smile worming its way forth. “I’d rather not have to choose between the two if at all possible, but if those were my only options, I’d rather have you impressed than intimidated.”

“Better to be loved than feared, eh?” I said with a sly smirk, earning a girlish giggle from Twilight.

“I suppose so, even if Marechiavelli would disagree,” she replied, cheeks creased in mirth.

“I suppose so. But even he would stop at becoming so feared that that fear turns to hate,” I pointed out.

“She, actually,” Twilight corrected. She then tilted her head downward and looked up at me through her bangs, a frown darkening her features. “Still, it seems kind of odd that you’d be able to refer to the original text as if you’d read it, when we both know that isn’t possible, due to the fact that you’re still learning how to read Equestrian. Is this another one of those weird parallels you mentioned the other day?”

I stroked my chin in contemplation. “I can only assume so.” My demeanor then turned from thoughtful to that of one who has stepped in cat vomit in the middle of the night. “I wish I’d quit running into them everywhere I turn, though.”

“It does seem kind of creepy, now that you mention it,” Twilight said. “I wish I had better advice to offer you than empty platitudes like ‘you’ll get used to it,’ but I don’t.”

“Not to mention the fact that I don’t want to ‘get used to it,’” I replied in a sour tone.

Twilight seemed to have noticed the darkening of my mood, and decided to get my attention by tapping my arm with her hoof. “Derren, do you think you’d like a little demonstration, since you seem to be so interested in my magical abilities?”

I smiled, my spirits already lifting at the prospect of getting to see Twilight showing off a little, despite herself. “Sure, why not?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Twilight snarked with a roll of her eyes. I did notice that she was smiling as she did so, however. She then adopted a tone of friendly concern as she said, “You might want to step back a bit.”

“Oh. Uh, okay.”

I did as she asked, and her horn started glowing a bit more brightly than usual. Shortly thereafter, a bright purple flash engulfed Twilight, and the modest snap-crack of a vacuum being created and then filled in an instant quickly reached my ears.

When the flash cleared, the space she had occupied was noticeably vacant. Dimly, I perceived a familiar female voice calling me from somewhere off to my left, and I turned to find that Twilight had spontaneously appeared on the other side of the wide avenue we had been walking on.

Seconds later, Twilight repeated the process, surprising me slightly when she suddenly reappeared less than a foot away from me in a similar bright purple flash.

“Oops, sorry,” she said with a sheepish grin and flattened ears. “I didn’t mean to startle you with that one.”

“Nah, that’s alright, Twilight,” I replied. “It’s not every day that a powerful magic user suddenly pops into existence in front of me.” With a good-humored roll of her eyes, Twilight jabbed me in the hip with her hoof just hard enough to get my attention, but not hard enough to cause significant pain. I felt the urge to muss her mane in retaliation, but somehow managed to keep said urge at bay out of fear of giving offense.

As we resumed our frequently-interrupted trek to the library that Twilight called home, I repeatedly caught her glancing back at me out of the corner of her eyes. “You know, Derren,” she eventually said, “If you want, I could try teleporting both of us to the library. I’d have to compensate for your body type, but I think I could pull it off.”

A nervous chuckle escaped me in response. “If it’s all the same to you, Twilight, I’d rather not.” I then attempted to put on my best British accent, adding, “I don’t think I’m quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a datastream.”

Unfortunately, my best British accent sounded more like a Canadian actor playing an Australian who was trying to speak in a Welsh accent. Worse, even if I had gotten the accent right, the effect was lost on Twilight, who merely responded with a confused, “Huh?”

I pressed my palm to my face with a sigh. “Never mind, Twilight. Let’s just get to the library as soon as possible.”

“Um, s-sure,” Twilight stammered. “It’s not much further.”

As we crested the next rise, a giant oak tree slowly came into view. It was immediately apparent that this was no ordinary tree. In addition to several windows built into the tree and a solid wooden door that was stained a ruddy color and whose frame curved gracefully to a tapered point, I spotted several balconies that, while obviously artificial, were designed to give the appearance of being natural outgrowths of the tree from which they sprung. To the left of the door was a sign bearing the image of an open book, with words in Equestrian script written below it. In the tallest branches of the tree, one balcony was equipped with a telescope that seemed pretty sophisticated for Equestria’s average technology level. Idly, I wondered if Twilight did any stargazing at night.

“Well, there it is,” Twilight said grandly, “The Golden Oak Library ‒ the place that I call home.” She looked back at me with a demure smile. “Of course, this is also the place that you’ll be calling home for the time being. Spike, Owlowiscious, and I have been busy the last few days getting everything ready for you to move in.”

“Owlowiscious?”

Twilight flashed a wan smile as her horn lit up and the front door of the library was encased in an identical magenta glow. “He’s my Junior Assistant, helping me with my studies at night after Spike goes to bed. He’s an owl.”

I blinked… owlishly. “Say what?”

“He’s an owl.”

“Are owls that intelligent here? ‘Cause that sounds like borderline sapient behavior, which is pretty rare where I’m from.” A thought occurred to me. “Is this why you said that some ponies might object to me eating chicken?”

A slightly worried look crossed Twilight’s features, and she chewed her mane for a moment before answering. “Basically, yeah,” was all she said before returning to the task at hand.

Once she regained her focus, both halves of the Dutch door yielded gently to Twilight’s magic, swinging inward to reveal the foyer. She looked back at me with a stern glare. “Remember, Derren. Watch your language around Spike. He’s just a baby, after all.”

“Yes, mother.” I grumbled under my breath.

Crossing the threshold, my jaw dropped in utter amazement ‒ not at the selection of books, impressive though it was, but at the sheer volume that had been hollowed out just to form the main part of the library. My eyes darted this way and that, never settling on any one thing for very long.

I walked over to one side of the library, carefully inspecting the wall. Several shelves had been built into the wooden walls of the tree’s interior. The walls themselves had been given a light coat of varnish. Even more strangely, though, they seemed remarkably healthy for a shell of a tree ‒ almost as if the tree itself were still alive somehow.

Twilight had patiently watched my stupefied traipsing about the main room for several minutes before clearing her throat to get my attention.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she asked that polite, professional tone librarians are known for.

“Sorry,” I said, sheepishly rubbing the back of my neck, “I guess I’m a little confused, or maybe I’m just not in the right mindset to fully appreciate all the things magic can do.” I paused to let my brain backtrack to the point that my logic had simply glided past. “Or at least, I assume magic is the reason why the tree this library is made of is still alive somehow.”

Twilight wore the proud smile of a teacher whose student had finally managed to master a particularly difficult concept. “You would be right in assuming so,” she said. “Or at least, mostly right ‒ as long as you don’t cut through the bark all the way around the tree’s circumference, it can still live.”

Her smile changed to a knowing smirk and her eyes became half-lidded as her voice dropped into a conspiratorial tone. “The enchantments on this tree are just added insurance. It could probably withstand anything up to a Class Five fireball spell.”

“Ah,” I replied blandly, “That would explain it.”

Twilight giggled. “Come on, I’ll show you around, and then you can get settled in your new room.”

The main library area ‒ a fairly open space dotted here and there by solid-looking tables and seats ‒ took up most of the ground floor, with a few meeting rooms located towards the very back next to some stairs that led down into a basement. Many of the bookshelves were built into the walls the main room, though there were three rows of free-standing shelves near the western wall of the main room. There were also two separate rooms with shelves built into the walls much like the main library area ‒ Twilight noted that one contained various periodicals, research journals, and other reference material, while the other was a special section of the library designed with foals in mind. The center of the library was dominated by another of the tables: this one circular, and bearing a wooden bust of a pony ‒ probably someone famous or important in Equestria’s history, perhaps even from pre-Unification days, for all I knew.

Of course, it could have just as easily been decorative art of a generic nondescript pony, kind of like those water fountains one sometimes sees at stores selling the sorts of knick knacks that would make an interior decorator have an orgasm… Or that just makes them facepalm and walk away, shaking their heads in shame…

Our tour of the library began in earnest with a trip to the basement. A door at the bottom of the basement stairs restricted access to the bowels of the library. Out of a desire to be a polite houseguest, I let Twilight open the door with her magic before following her inside.

Once past the threshold, bewilderment and wonder overtook me as I looked around the organized chaos of the basement room. Calling it a laboratory would be more accurate, and indeed, Twilight had described it as such. Various beakers, flasks, test tubes, and other equipment that would find a home in a well-stocked chemistry or biology lab were also present ‒ all meticulously arranged and seemingly well cared for. I also happened to notice a couple of large devices along the side walls of the room that strongly resembled the magitech equivalent of old vacuum tube computers from the Forties and Fifties. Less charitable people would say that it reminded them of a mad scientist’s lab from the B movies of the same era.

And let it not be said that I am an uncharitable person.

As we headed back up to the ground floor of the library, Twilight explained that though magic was her primary interest, she also occasionally dabbled in other endeavours ‒ everything from hard sciences like chemistry and astronomy (her second love after magic) to sociology and statistics, among other things. The mare seemed to have an insatiable thirst for knowledge ‒ one that readily extended into learning about species that ponies had never met before.

“You know, Derren,” Twilight said as we ascended the stairs to the upper levels of the library, “I realize that we’ve been mostly telling you about our lives to help you acclimate to life here, but I wouldn’t mind hearing a little bit more about the world you come from, especially since your answer to Bon Bon’s question seemed a little… lacking in detail.”

My brow furrowed and my lips creased into a frown as I considered Twilight’s request. A brief silence followed before I ultimately decided that no harm could come of her innocent inquiries ‒ no permanent harm, at least.

“Sure, Twilight,” I replied with a shrug, “why not? What would you like to know?”

Twilight paused at the top of the stairs as a contemplative expression descended upon her muzzle, and a distinctive hum resonated audibly in her throat. “Well, whatever you’re comfortable with, I suppose.”

“How about I start simply, then?” I replied as I reached the landing barely two seconds after Twilight. “I was the youngest of two children. Like you, I had an older brother.” I paused with a rueful smile as I recalled some of the memories of my childhood. “We had the sort of relationship one usually expects from siblings ‒ part of the time we ignored each other, part of the time one of us would go out of our way to drive the other one crazy, and part of the time we’d actually get along like we were friends. The neighborhood I grew up in was pretty closely knit, so a lot of the kids knew each other well. I think that’s one of the main reasons why I was able to get along with my brother’s friends about as well as I did with my own friends.”

“And it also explains why you were so close with that one friend of yours,” Twilight replied with a warm smile.

“Yeah,” I said, my good mood faltering. “And I suppose it’s why my bad luck with keeping friends didn’t catch up to me until later.” I let out a small huff of air. “No doubt I would’ve given up on friendship long before becoming an adult if that weren’t the case.”

“You’re in luck, then,” Twilight said with a warm smile as she gently touched my arm with a hoof, “because Ponyville is probably about as closely knit a community as the one you grew up in.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I replied, a world-weary sigh escaping my body.

Twilight’s smile turned sympathetic in response, and she laid a hoof on my arm in an attempt to keep me from spiraling downward into the darker recesses of my mind.

Unfortunately, she’d left the hoof on my arm a tad longer than intended, and what was meant to be a comforting gesture turned awkward. At the reproachful gaze I shot her, she yanked her hoof back as if scalded by hot water. “Sorry,” she said with a sheepish expression, “I forgot what you said about humans valuing their personal space for a moment.”

I knew she meant well, but one thing that became glaringly obvious during my week in Canterlot was that ponies tended to be more touchy-feely than humans. Even ponies who seemed to be little more than casual acquaintances tended to exchange hoof bumps at the minimum, if not friendly nuzzles and hugs.

Furthermore, despite some initial hesitancy due to not having seen my kind before, the castle staffers who I had regular contact with while I was a guest of the princesses had been more than happy to share those disconcertingly affectionate gestures with me when I departed for Ponyville earlier this morning.

Twilight’s friends, naturally, had also gotten in on the “fluster the human by innocently violating his personal space” act as well when they’d visited the other day. Applejack and Rainbow Dash had both showered me with knowing nudges whenever they’d make a joke, in addition to rearing up and draping a hoof across my back when they wanted to whisper something in confidence ‒ or in Rainbow’s case, make a lewd joke or two out of Twilight’s earshot. There were a couple of times when Rarity would paw at my cheeks with her forehooves ‒ for lack of fingers with which to pinch said cheeks ‒ when she thought I was being silly or “adorable,” in her words. Even the notoriously timid Fluttershy had given me an affectionate nuzzle when the girls said their goodbyes as they left for the train station that evening.

The less said about Pinkie Pie ‒ the mare with absolutely zero sense of personal space ‒ the better.

I let out a long, low sigh. “Don’t worry about it, Twilight,” I replied, making a sweeping gesture with my hands as if to clear the air of any tension, “I know you didn’t mean it. Besides, if I’m going to succeed here, I’m going to have to learn to not let it get to me.”

I had to resist the urge to scratch her ears in response to the adorable look she shot at me. Even though ponies seemed to have fewer boundaries with regard to personal contact, I didn’t want to risk giving offense like I had with Rainbow Dash during the castle tour.

At Twilight’s urging, we moved on with the tour of the library’s upper section. We walked past a closed door on the right, behind which was the master bedroom that Twilight shared with Spike. Further ahead lay additional rooms ‒ one of which was a study area that Twilight spent a good deal of her free time in, while the other two were used for storage. At the end of the hall, another staircase led up to the attic, and from there, to the upper balcony where I’d seen the telescope earlier.

From here, we turned left to find another room with its heavy wooden door closed. This time, however, there were muffled voices coming from behind the door ‒ or rather, one juvenile voice and a series of hoots, somehow seemingly directed at one another. Embedded in this strange “conversation” was the soft, yet distinct sound of bedsprings squeaking rhythmically.

Twilight opened the door with her telekinesis, revealing a modest bedroom dominated by what looked to be a queen-sized bed, in human terms. Like the rest of the library, the floor was little more than a cross-sectional slice of the trunk of the tree the library was made from, varnished to a dull shine. A large bay window was built into the far wall, looking out over the path that Twilight and I had taken from downtown Ponyville. Next to the window stood a rather hefty-looking chest of drawers made of stained cherrywood that looked brand new. Other than a pale blue throw rug at the foot of the bed, the room was sparsely decorated.

As I was taking this all in, I noticed that the bed was occupied at that moment by a certain baby dragon who was grinning sheepishly at Twilight and I. His companion, a moderate-sized owl with dark brown wings and lighter brown body plumage, was perched on a nearby bird stand with its face buried in a wing ‒ before coming to Equestria such an act by an owl would have left me blinking in bemusement, but I’d already had one big shock today. This was fairly trivial in comparison.

The reason for the owl’s consternation was obvious, as Spike had apparently managed to mess up the covers with overly-exuberant bouncing on the bed.

“Spike!” Twilight shouted from behind the forehoof jammed into her forehead, “What are you doing messing up Derren’s bed?”

“I was just testing it to make sure it was the right firmness for our new houseguest,” the little dragon replied defensively before adding in an officious tone, “and I give it my official Spike the Dragon Seal of Approval!”

Twilight and I shared a long look, not sure what to make of Spike’s antics. We decided not to press the matter further in favor of allowing me to get settled in.

“Fine, Spike,” Twilight replied neutrally, “But if you’re going to help mess up Derren’s bed, you’re also going to help him make it again.”

Spike grumbled under his breath at having his fun ruined, but complied anyway. As he did so, I took the initiative of addressing the elephant in the room ‒ or rather, the owl in the room.

“You must be Owlowiscious,” I said, receiving a hoot in response that somehow managed to sound affirmative. “I’m Derren Knox, and I’m going to be living here for a while.”

“Hoo,” came the owl’s stoic reply. Just to humor Fate, which seemed to get a massive kick out of trolling me, I replied in accordance with the time-honored Knox Family Tradition: make an obscure reference and quickly move on.

“No, he plays first base.” I turned to Twilight. “Can I go ahead and unpack and everything else?”

Twilight did some bemused blinking of her own before replying, “Umm, sure, go ahead.” She then addressed her companions, “Spike, Owlowiscious, I think it’s time we gave Derren some privacy.”

So saying, Twilight turned and walked out of the room, with Spike and Owlowiscious following close behind her. As soon as the door closed behind her, I set down my suitcase and shook out my arm, which had become decidedly numb in the process of hauling said suitcase from Town Hall all the way to the library.

Once sensation had finally returned to my arm, I set about unpacking my few worldly possessions, promising myself that I would take a few minutes to unwind and plan my next move when I was finished moving in.

Five minutes later, I emerged from my new bedroom, having unpacked and taken the opportunity to freshen up. My room had an en-suite bathroom, which Twilight had ‒ thankfully ‒ had the foresight to outfit with a minotaur-style toilet. Faran had taken great pleasure in describing pony-style facilities to me when we first met, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. I wasn’t looking forward to that particular learning process for the same reason that I tended to stick to the parts of Japan where Western-style toilets were common during a summer study abroad program I did while I was in college.

Not that toilets made for extra-large bovine-human hybrids were devoid of their own learning curve. Unlike most human facilities, where wiping one’s ass with toilet paper was a way of life, the toilets of Equis came equipped with a sort of built-in bidet to accomplish the same task. It took some getting used to, but by the time I arrived in Ponyville, I was an old pro at bracing myself for the sudden high-volume blast of water against my posterior.

If it is to be judged by what it chooses to record, then the human mind can sometimes be a very strange and alien environment…

During the unpacking process, I had decided that I needed to get a breath of fresh air to clear my head before the party. As I approached the landing at the top of the stairs, I heard Twilight and Spike’s voices filter up to me from the public section of the library. This made me pause to consider my options.

I wanted to get out of the library with as few hassles as possible, and in order to do that, I would have to sneak past both of my benefactors. That presented two problems. First, I had no idea how good pony senses were compared to their terrestrial counterparts ‒ much less compared to humans, and I had absolutely no basis for comparison with Spike, since dragons didn’t exist back home.

The other problem, to put it bluntly, was that even when I was trying, I was about as stealthy as a bus. I very much doubted my chances with sneaking, but maybe I’d get lucky and Twilight and Spike would be too absorbed in whatever they were doing to notice me quietly slipping out the front door.

And maybe hell is endothermic.

My only other option was to just be upfront with Twilight and tell her where I was going. The only problem was that since I’d only just arrived in Ponyville, she’d probably insist on tagging along, and that’s not what I needed at the moment. I had to hope that Twilight would at least let me go back to the town square and walk around a bit, since I already knew how to get there, more or less. All things considered, I probably had a better chance of talking Twilight into letting me go out on my own than sneaking past her and Spike.

I decided on a course of action, only to have it rendered moot when the light footfalls of someone small coming up the stairs reached my ears. I heard Spike call out for me just before the spines on his head became visible over the top of the stairs. It didn’t take long before the rest of him followed, and he caught sight of me in the midst of calling out to me a second time. His eyes blinked slowly a few times, then gave a start as his brain rebooted. “Oh, there you are, Derren. Twilight asked me to come up and see how you were settling in.”

“Well, I at least got the unpacking done,” I said, flashing a small smile. “I take it she’s downstairs?”

Spike nodded before fixing me with a surprisingly serious gaze for someone his age. “She’s kind of busy at the moment, though, so I wouldn’t disturb her.” He smirked knowingly. “Not that you could disturb her once she’s ‘in the zone,’ as Rarity would say.”

“She’s that focused?”

The juvenile drake suddenly burst out with a loud guffaw. “I don’t think Twilight would notice if aliens came down and started shooting up the place with death rays.” He blanched suddenly, as if realizing what he’d just said. “Umm, no offense, Derren.”

“None taken,” I replied with a chuckle of my own. As if to show him that I hadn’t taken it personally, I attempted to muss his spines like I would someone’s hair. While I didn’t get the result I wanted ‒ dragon spines are notoriously difficult to mess up ‒ I was also pleased to discover that Spike’s spines were not as sharp as I might have expected from his more mature kin.

“Hey, cut it out!” he whined, jumping back out of the reach of my hands. “I may still be a baby, but I am a dragon, and don’t you forget it!” He pointed a sharp claw aggressively at me for emphasis.

“Okay, okay,” I replied throwing my hands up in a placating gesture, though I couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped me. “I get it. You’re a tough, ferocious beast, and I shouldn’t provoke you.” I shrugged before adding, “I don’t know why, but something about you brings out the big brother in me, even though I was the baby in my family.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I got that from Shining Armor a lot when Twilight and I lived in Canterlot. You would know how quickly that can get old.” I gave him a sympathetic smile, which he acknowledged with a toothy grin of his own. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Radiance comic to read!”

The childlike excitement in his voice was at once endearing and strangely familiar, while the word comic drew my attention to the item he was holding in his claws. The cover was dominated by a picture of a yellow unicorn mare in diamond-studded spandex, whose purple mane and tail were oddly reminiscent of a certain fashionista of my acquaintance. Naturally, the text on the comic was rendered in the ponies’ strange writing system that I was still trying to get the hang of. All I could make out of the title was Pow- P-n-s Or-g-ns: Ra-n-.

I felt a swelling of pride in my chest over understanding even that much.

Spike quickly pushed past me, leaving me to my own devices. I shrugged, then headed downstairs to test my luck with Twilight. Sure enough, the lavender unicorn was seated at the main circulation desk, sorting books into piles. Judging from the pitiful state of some of the books, and dark utterances from the mare herself about the “casual disregard for the printed word,” I could tell that she was in the midst of weeding the library’s collection. I would have to approach this carefully if I didn’t want to draw her ire.

“Hey, Twilight,” I replied nervously, but loud enough to get a murmured acknowledgement of my presence. “I realize that I haven’t been in town all that long, but I think I need to go for a walk to clear my head. You shouldn’t have to worry, because I’m just going to head downtown. Might as well check out how the preparations for tonight’s party are coming. You know how it is.”

At this point, it was clear that Twilight was ignoring me, so I decided to try a different approach.

“Sure, you may be worried that I’ll run into someone who wishes me harm or something, but after my performance at Town Hall earlier, that seems about as unlikely as the Mayor of Cloudsdale coming down here and giving me a reason to punch him in the face. But even if that were so, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

I began to pace about and gesticulate dramatically as I continued. “Sure, you’ll occasionally get one who’s covering up evidence of abuse at one of the orphanages in his jurisdiction, but most politicians are content to drunkenly snort cocaine and go on incoherent, expletive-laced rants from their front lawns as they rudely push reporters around. You know, the sort of thing that provides fodder for stand-up comedians.”

Still nothing. I was going to have to really push my luck to get any reaction out of Twilight.

“Did I mention that my nose is on fire, and that I have fifteen wild badgers living in my pants?”

If looks could kill, the unamused glare Twilight shot me would’ve stripped the flesh from my bones.

“I’m sorry, would you prefer ferrets?”

With a roll of her eyes, Twilight returned to her work.

That did it, I mused internally.

After a full minute of Twilight pointedly ignoring me, I decided to quit while I was behind. “Right, then. I can see that you’re in the middle of fifteen things, all of them annoying, so I’ll leave you to it.”

And with that, I walked to the front door, opened it, and unceremoniously exited the library.

Once outside, I took a moment to get my bearings. The road leading from downtown dead-ended in front of the library, forming a T-intersection with another road running north and south. In the distance to the north, I spied the long, semi-open facade of a train station near the edge of town, while an unrelenting sea of houses lined the street to the south. Unlike the houses in the northeastern section of Ponyville, these residences seemed to show a fair degree of variety in their architecture.

However, my destination lay neither to the north, nor to the south. With that in mind, I proceeded straight down the east-west road towards downtown.

As I did so, I noticed the mid-afternoon sky seemed to be filled with pegasi. While a few were doing away with the remaining clouds, most were just out and about, enjoying the holiday atmosphere. I watched in awestruck wonder as they wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence, topping the wind-swept heights with easy grace. Where-

Oh, hell.

Just as I’d started waxing faux poetic with words shamelessly stolen from a famous sonnet, I dimly registered the psychic radio in my mind crackling to life again, this time with a hauntingly mesmerizing tune.

Great, I’ve just triggered the Music of Harmony again, haven’t I?

Letting out a heavy sigh, I found myself gradually sinking into my role in the number, and at the appropriate moment, uttered the fatal words:

The main melody picked up, and I began singing in spite of myself:

As the song progressed, more and more pegasi joined in, dancing the skies on laughter-silvered wings. By the time we reached the climax, downtown Ponyville was in view, and I could see that even the nearby unicorns and earth ponies had joined in the chorus line. It was a sight that was simultaneously awe-inspiring and horrifying ‒ the latter was because I couldn’t tell how much of my rapturous ecstasy was truly my own, and how much was imposed upon me by the planet’s Harmonic Magic Field.

When the last note finally died away and I had regained full control of my faculties, I noticed that I was on the far side of Town Square, on the verge of venturing into what was for me unknown territory.

I shook my head as a mixture of wonder and worry settled on my face. “I think I need a time-out from this time-out,” I muttered.

Author's Notes:

So, yeah. More pony Gaelic fun with Nurse Faran. This time, we have the following:

"Merciful Luna, save me from this irritation." = "Trócaireach Luna, ach amháin dom ó greannú seo."

Or so Google Translate tells me.

I should also note that the enchantments protecting the library that Twilight mentions were placed there before she moved to Ponyville.

And yes, that is a reference to Fleeting Flames there towards the end. I figured that it was only fair after the author of that fic made a reference to Nurse Faran in the most recent chapter.

Next time on Greater Lights: Adaptation, Derren finally gets to meet a couple of mares that we haven't seen since the prologue. Should be interesting.