Fall Harvest had a million different thoughts going through his head, mainly how to escape this situation but nothing came up that wouldn’t raise any flags. He knew that he would have to run fast before word got back to Princess Celestia that he had resurfaced and she started to burn down the countryside looking for him. And depending on how enraged she was, he just might have Hollow Grave appear by him and start smacking him upside the head for increasing her workload.

Then again, she might just do it for the fun of it. He knew he would bug himself if he was her; he could be such an asshole at times.

Wait…

“Is everythin’ okay, partner?” Applejack asked, tilting her head up at him.

“Oh yeah, everything is fine, perfectly fine, fine as could be!” he said with the mare giving him a flat look that told him he needed to work on his lies.

“Great!” His vision was suddenly nothing but pink. “Come on, Harvesty, let’s get you to Ponyville!”

Using his hooves to remove her as he wasn’t sure if his magic would be his old reddish orange or the death grey which would raise eyebrows, even with them not being unicorns, and gave Pinkie Pie a somewhat serious look.

“Hey, mind keeping off of me, please?” he then grinned, sharing her smile with his own roguish grin. “I know that I have amazing looks and all but I am somewhat certain that Applejack would object.”

“Ya really are full of yourself, aren’t ya?” Applejack said, raising an eyebrow at him.

“You said it yourself earlier, do you really want this sort of thing going on in front of your impressionable younger sister?” Fall Harvest raised an eyebrow right back at her.

Applejack sighed. “You’ve got a point there. Pinkie, get off, he doesn’t need to be dragged around.”

“Aww…”

“Relax, Ah’m certain he’s used to it by now,” Applejack snorted, rolling her eyes at him.

“Yes, of course I am used to it. Totally used to it, happens all the time in fa-”

“Y’all never been with a mare, have ya?”

“Do kissing and snuggling count?”

“Eenope,” Applejack said with a laugh that caused his ears to go red.

“I, frankly, believe that one should wait until they’re married before they do… that,” he trailed off, feeling himself blush. “That was the plan with my old marefriend before we broke up.”

“Yer hoof don’t count, Harvest,” Applejack quipped with Pinkie Pie and Helheim laughing loudly.

“I was referring to a real pony, thank you very much, and may I remind you that there is still a filly present who is getting far more of an education than you expected from this turn of conversation?”

Applejack turned beet-red. “Erm…”

Beside her, Apple Bloom looked confused. “What’re you talkin’ about, sis?”

“Nothin’! Never you mind!” Applejack blushed even deeper. “You’ll find out when they cover it in health classes in high school, alright?”

Apple Bloom gave her another confused look, then sighed. “All right…”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” Fall Harvest grinned. “Enjoy being a little squirt for as long as you can.”

“Okay mister Harvest,” Apple Bloom said with a smile.

“Please, don’t call me mister; makes me feel old,” he chuckled before looking at the mares and smacking the top of his head. “I just realized I have no money on me; I guess I can’t buy anything from your shop so I guess I should just go on my wa-”

“Don’t worry, Harvesty,” Pinkie Pie waved him off. “I don’t mind letting new friends try something for free.”

“Right, right,” Fall Harvest muttered, having that escape line dashed. “Well, lead the way, Miss Pie.”

He was still trying to think of an escape route several minutes later as Pinkie guided him into Ponyville, chattering all the way as he did his best to tune her out without making it obvious that he was doing so; Applejack and her sister had remained at the farm, Applejack saying something about still having a little more work to do before she could join them in town.

He got a few looks, which he did his best to dispel with his lies that he was a winged unicorn which was a thing as well as a horned pegasus as well as a winged horned Earth pony. They were extremely rare, but they did exist and it wasn’t that big of a lie. If he wanted to, he could turn himself into one to make the lie the truth, but he wasn’t that desperate or bored.

“So where are you heading, Harvesty?” Pinkie Pie asked him, causing him to snap his head around.

“Oh, I… was just planning on rambling and wandering,” he said. “Letting my feet carry me to and fro, with no particular place to go.” Inwardly, he winced at the unexpected rhyme; he never did that on his own!

Pinkie giggled. “You’re funny!”

“Thank you,” he brightened at that; it had been too long since someone had meant that genuinely and it felt go-

“Hey Pinks, who’s the new alicorn?”

Turning his head, he saw the latest Loyalty fly down to them with a tilt of her one colour short of a proper rainbow head.

“I’m not an alicorn,” he said without even batting an eye to his lies anymore. “I’m a-”

“Horned pegasus?” she asked, causing him to blink in surprise. “I have a cousin who’s like that; my aunt has tried to get her to have her horn removed but she likes it.”

“Other way around, actually,” Fall Harvest said, still surprised. “I’m a winged unicorn.”

“Cool.” Rainbow Dash rolled her shoulders. “Stinks that you don’t have cloudwalking and full flight, but hey, gliding’s better than nothing.”

“Yes… quite.” He said, scratching his chin. “It is reallyfun to just jump off tall things and glide all the way down, ain’t it?”

“You got it,” Rainbow Dash laughed before looking around and coughing as she spotted an orange filly watching them from a distance. “I mean, you really should make sure it’s safe and junk first; bad enough that I broke my wing once, but at least it got better, don’t want to mess up and break something that can’t be fixed, like your neck, right?”

“Absolutely,” Fall Harvest replied, seeing where she was going with this. “We ponies may be hardier than some species, but you’re still only mortal, after all.”

“That’s a weird way of saying it, Harvesty,” Pinkie Pie frowned, staring intently at him before shrugging her shoulders.

“Eh, I am not the most usual of sorts,” Fall Harvest shrugged back.

“So who are you?” Rainbow Dash asked, landing in front of him.

“I’m no one that import-”

“He’s Fall Harvest, Dashie, and everypony is important, Harvesty,” Pinkie Pie said in a lecturing tone that was so cheerful he couldn’t help himself from snorting playfully and rolling his eyes.

“Yes, miss Pie, I know that,” he said, knowing as a Reaper that every soul was important and special. Even with so many people having identical versions of themselves in the multiverse, they were never the same. Take a thousand Twilight Sparkles with a low divergent range from the Prime dimension, grind them up and put them through the finest sieve and the differences between their individual souls would be staggering. It was one of the more beautiful things that he was privileged to know of the true nature of their existence. “But I also know I am a wanderer, just somepony trying to get by.”

“And before he goes; he’s going to go to Sugarcube Corner for some treats before he goes,” Pinkie Pie chirped happily. “Want to come with us?”

“Eh, why not?” Rainbow Dash gave a careless shrug. “I could go for something sweet.”

“Then lead on ladies; you know your way around Ponyville far better than I do,” Fall Harvest said.

Pinkie beamed, and immediately began pronking off, Rainbow Dash hovering just behind him to make sure he followed her.

It didn’t take too much longer for them to reach Sugarcube Corner, and Fall Harvest took a moment to marvel over the gingerbread-styled building. Just as Pinkie was about to open the door, it opened in front of her, and a tall figure stepped out, accompanied by a willowy, butter-yellow pegasus with a pink mane and tail. “-telling you, Fluttershy,” he was saying, “You just need to sprinkle some paprika -” Then he caught sight of Fall Harvest and stopped dead. “Oh… this is unexpected.”

“Quite.” Fall Harvest gave him a look. “Long time no see, Discord…”

“You know this guy?” Rainbow Dash glanced between he and the draconequus. “Since when?”

“We had a run-in the first time he escaped his prison, before he got turned back into stone by you girls,” Fall Harvest said dryly, keeping quiet on the earlier times as it would stick out like a red and black alicorn. “Fortunately, there wasn’t any lasting damage after what you did in that town…”

“Well you know me Fall,” Discord harrumphed. “No fun in breaking stuff; there is an old saying that if you break all your toys, then you’ll have nothing to play with. Calamity never learned that.” He muttered that last part softly, to where only Fall could hear it and he had to agree with Discord on that one.

“And one I’ve heard is that Causality waits for us all and sometimes she gets a bit impatient,” Fall tossed back with Discord paling as he mentioned the name of the Reaper of Draconequui and reminded the Lord of Disharmony that Disharmony was still beneath an Adjunct of Death and an act against him would be an act against Lady Helheim. No one could ever win against Death itself; there were several souls across the multiverse who had tried at different times, and even those who had avoided that Power the longest had, in time, either been caught or willingly given in in the end.

He could also remember periodic instances of souls who had died and just not realized it at the time, including a story told by one adjunct of a Death from another dimension who had recounted being sent to retrieve a young adult female, one so in denial about her own death that she had kept traveling along the road she was on, despite seeing the adjunct by its side repeatedly, until finally she had been forced to confront the truth and had come back to let him take her on to the next plane of existence. The adjunct had always ended the story with the same line he had given the female: "I believe you're going… my way?"

“Well, um,” Discord stammered before creating a watch on his wrist. “Well look at the time, I think I’ll take this stuff home Fluttershy, and I’ll see you this time next week, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course not,” Fluttershy told him, smiling up at the draconequus. “I’ll see you then.”

“Right then. Tally-ho!” Snapping his fingers, Discord and the things he’d been carrying vanished.

Rainbow Dash let out a long, low whistle. “Dang. I’ve never seen him react that way to anypony; what’d you do?”

“Even a draconequus knows not to mess with someone who works for my employer,” Fall Harvest replied with a sly smirk. “She has a certain… way about her that makes anypony feel like a little foal in front of their parents, and even Discord himself knows better than to upset somepony like that.”

Even someone like you, Fall Harvest, who never knew their parents.

“Thank you,” he muttered. Helheim was wrong, despite her perfect memory as he was certain he could recall having a mother when he was a colt.

“For what, Fall?” Rainbow Dash asked him; he looked up, startled.

“Just talking to myself,” he said nonchalantly. “Nothing that needs to be repeated.”

Rainbow Dash eyed him suspiciously, but shrugged it off. “Okay. Hey, Fluttershy, want to come on in with us?”

“Oh, I just finished, but…” Fluttershy ducked her head. “I do need to take care of a few things. I’ll meet up with you later, okay?”

Pinkie looked disappointed, but nodded, and stepped aside so Fluttershy could trot off.

“Interesting mare,” Fall Harvest said in a curious tone. “Not the sort I’d have expected to be friends with a spirit of chaos and disharmony.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t easy at first,” Rainbow Dash told him. “But somehow, they pulled it off.”

“Indeed.” Fall Harvest watched Fluttershy disappear into the distance, then looked at his two companions. “Well. Let’s go in, shall we?”

Pinkie beamed. “Mm-hmm!”