My hooves stilled, and I pressed my right fetlock to the strings to silence my bass completely. The music had come from a world away, but with my fretless bass held to me, Primus seemed forever close.

I was sitting outside the dormitory, in the back garden. With Mum spending Sunday afternoons at the castle, and my lesson with Twilight completed earlier, I had time to practice my craft. Adjusting my hoof on the long neck, I brought my other hoof to the strings.

The next song was bopping, bouncing, and my left hoof moved effortlessly into position each time my right plucked and slapped at the strings. I only wished I had some ponies on rhythm guitar and drums to play along with it.

Opening my mouth, there was only one way the words would work for the song—English. "There's a time for lies—"

I froze my playing and singing at the sound of a gasp. I turned to see Candy Cane's daughter looking at me with a shocked expression. "What's wrong?"

"N-Nothing! I heard sounds coming from out here, and was worried somepony was playing in the stream again. Was that really coming from your guitar?"

"Yeah. I haven't seen anypony playing a bass here. Maybe I'll start a trend?" I ran my hoof down the strings, gently, causing the little amp I had to purr with the heavy bass notes. "I'm Lyra."

"My name's Sweetie Drops. Can I listen to some more? I promise I won't interrupt again."

I looked Sweetie over. She was wearing blue, rubber coverings on her forehooves. Small dusty patches marred her otherwise perfect yellowish coat. Her two-tone blue and pink mane was secured back in a hairnet, but her tail was free to show off her natural curls. She was pretty, but given my association with Cadance it was hard to call any mare beautiful.

"Sure. This isn't my song, but a good one from where I'm from," I said somewhat awkwardly.

To cover my blunder, I returned to playing Shake Hands With Beef. I refrained from lyrics—now that I had an audience—but still followed them along in my head. The plucking was the hardest part of the song, but once I had my rhythm going it all just flowed.

Music was literally my special talent. It poured out through my music, and without even meaning to I put myself into the song. I'm not even sure how it works—I didn't play the bass any different—but it just worked.

I must have played the song twice over, maybe three times, but eventually it felt right to let it end. I stilled the strings for the last time and let out a little sigh—playing like that should have drained me, but I felt stronger for it.

"That. Was. Amazing!" Sweetie Drops said. "I've never heard a guitar make any of those sounds before. How do you do it? Is it magic?"

I had no obligations for the rest of the afternoon, so I indulged. "No magic. I can't use magic." To demonstrate I eased a little power into my horn and touched the strings with it.

Both of us tucked our ears back at the screech the amplifier emitted.

"What was that?!" Sweetie Drops asked.

"What happens when magic and stuff from my world get together. It's not pretty." I let the magic in my horn flow back into me. The little glow the power created inside me felt nice—a reminder that this world was nothing like Earth. "This can only be played with your hooves. No magic at all."

I played the first line. Plucking strings with the leading and trailing edges of my hoof, stilling them and slapping the strings with my frog, and moving my left hoof just so to build the chords.

"Your cutie mark is a stringed instrument, too?" Sweetie Drops asked.

"Yeah, but I was playing this for eight years before I got my cutie mark. Though I didn't play it as a pony until after—of course." Reaching out with a hind-leg, I carefully turned the volume down on the amplifier. "Did Mom tell you the story of that?"

"Your mom's here? At the halls?"

I nodded. "Her name's Joyce. Big wings, definitely not a pegasus." While I spoke, my hooves kept moving, kept the rhythm going.

"You're that Lyra? Now it's starting to make sense. Your mom scared me half to death! She seemed so strange at first, but she's really nice. Mom was talking about when you arrived, that you were pulling a cart and everything—even though your friend was an earth pony." Sweetie looked like she would be ready to rant, then stopped. "I sometimes feel a little underappreciated."

"How'd you get your cutie mark?" I asked.

It was the one question that put a smile on anypony's face. Getting your cutie mark was the single most exciting moment in any young pony's life. Sweetie Drops practically glowed when I asked her about hers.

Sweetie Drops looked directly ahead of herself, her eyes looking through the stream and marble that was in front of her. "I was baking cookies with Mom, and we realized there was way too much sugar, butter, and cream left. But, there was no flour. While Mom was looking for a recipe to use them up, I practically jumped on the kitchen bench.

"Mom said I worked like a mare possessed, but I felt lighter than a feather. Mixing up the caramel, I don't even know where I found the chocolate for the coating, but by the time I was done I had a whole tray of bonbons, and my cutie mark."

The other part of hearing about a pony getting their cutie mark was it reminded you of how you got yours—which lifted your spirits.

"I was out in a field with a friend. We were just relaxing after—Well, it was after I visited here for the first time. Canterlot that is. Anyway. So we were just chilling in the field, talking about the day, when a bright flash of light lit up the sky. Rainbow colored waves spread out from the north, and we both got our marks right then!" I said.

I couldn't stop myself. My hooves took on a life of their own, and I was shoved into a more active song. I wove joy and excitement around each other, and worked them into my song.

Sweetie leaned down and turned the amplifier back up, and we both basked in the shared experience of gaining our cutie marks. I never saw her hoof until it was right before my mouth. Instinct told me she had something, and I opened up for her.

Rich, perfect chocolate spread throughout my palate. As my music was a raw expression of my emotions and my cutie mark, so was Sweetie Drops' bonbons. The moment the chocolate melted enough to release the fondant inside, my music exploded.

It was a moment I somehow knew I'd never forget. With the same feel as when I'd first gotten my cutie mark, I could tell that meeting Sweetie Drops was important. The rich flavor of her sweets lingered, and so long as it did I kept playing. The music just poured from me. Tunes and patterns I forgot as soon as played, but it was the moment that mattered.

Finally, both flavor and song found their concluded their assault, and my bass became silent. We both sat in silence—or what silence a busy city at the end of the day could afford—and thought about our shared moment.

I took a breath, and from one moment to the next I found my voice. "Wow."

"I'm glad I met you, Lyra," Sweetie Drops said. "But I have to finish some work."

The way her tone dropped at mention of work was a stab wound in my heart. I jumped to my hooves. "Can I help?"

It was almost sunset, but Sweetie Drops' face looked like a sunrise. The pain of her statement was erased. "Really?"

"What are friends for? I made you late, so the least I can do is get you caught up. What are we doing?"

Sweetie got to her hooves with a bounce and turned toward the dormitory. "We have the dubious honor of feeding dozens of hungry, young unicorns. At least, we need to prepare to feed them, cook their food, and serve it. Come on!"

I'd never disliked preparing food, but I'd never tried to cook for two-dozen ponies before. Everything was prepared in large batches, cooking in oversize ovens. Because of my magic, I got the duty of loading things into and out of ovens, while Sweetie Drops prepared the dishes from the trays.

I got to watch her work, and I could have sworn there was a little of her special talent going into each meal—no wonder the food was so good. Our words were mostly either instructions or laughing, sometimes both at the same time. By the time the last dessert was served, Sweetie Drops and I almost fell against each other.

Candy Cane walked in just as the first of the dessert plates started coming back. She looked around the kitchen with surprise on her face. "I didn't expect you to be done yet! Is that Joyce's little filly under that apron?" Her tone lacked any real heat with the accusation, and she was smiling.

"Yup!" I said. "I distracted Sweetie with some music, and thought I could pay her back by helping out in here. I hope it's okay?"

Sweetie Drops reached her hoof up to my head and smeared a little whipped cream into my already dirty mane. "Sorry, Mom. She followed me home—can I keep her?"

I barked on cue.

Candy seemed to be struggling not to laugh. She move into the room and started making shooing gestures. "Both of you! Out of here and clean yourselves up!"

Laughing, I rushed out of the kitchen and froze in the hall. "Last one to get clean has to help the other tomorrow!"

Sweetie looked at me, clearly trying to do the math on my statement. "You mean the loser has to help the winner in the kitchen?" When I nodded, she giggled. "You're a silly pony, Lyra."

It turns out I sucked at showering quickly. The batter we'd made shire puddings (at least it's what Sweetie called shire pudding, back on Earth they were called Yorkshire pudding) out of was just about the stickiest thing ever, and no amount of cleaning agents on their own would remove it. At least I had a brush and my magic.

I had no idea how long I actually took, but when I got out of the shower Mom and Tufts were still not home. I dried off as best I could and headed back out.

Sweetie Drops proved that I still had a lot to learn about being a pony—she was waiting for me. "You took your time."

"Hey, it takes work to look this good," I said. "So what am I doing tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah. The deal was I'd help you in the kitchen, right?"

"Oh no. Not tomorrow." Sweetie Drops gestured down the hall toward the kitchen. "You agreed to my rewording. Right now. Come on."

I admit I was more curious than confused. Following Sweetie, we got to the kitchen to find Candy Cane having just finished cleaning up.

"Back for more?" Candy asked.

"Nope! We're making bonbons!" Sweetie slipped past her mother and started pulling out ingredients.

Candy Cane looked at me, then back to her daughter. "I'll leave you two to it. Make sure to clean up when you're done."

"Of course, Mom." Sweetie Drops' tone hadn't wavered, and I realized why—this was her special talent. The bonbons of her cutie mark were a literal talent.

I squeezed past Candy Cane as she left the kitchen, and took up my place as Sweetie's assistant. I'd never made bonbons before, but I had to assume it was going to be a little complicated.

"Can you do any cold spells?" Sweetie Drops asked.

The question confused me. There was a refrigerator (or at least what passed for one in Equestria, I had no idea what it used to make things cold), but Sweetie obviously knew that. "Uh. I guess. Can I try testing something and you see if it works?"

"This would normally take overnight, but if there's a unicorn who can chill something until it's hard, then we can make them all in one go. Pass me that butter."

I did as asked, and watched Sweetie combine the butter, some sugar, nuts and some kind of milk in a bowl. When she produced one little ball with her hoof, she thrust it out to me. "Cool this."

With my magic, I lifted the ball over to the sink and focused on it. The snuffing spell for flame used cold to chill the fire, and I just pictured the ball as a flame and used it. More power. More power. Done! "Like that?" I asked.

Plucking the ball from my magic, Sweetie examined it. She turned it this way and that, then bit clean through the ball, and examined the inside. "Yeah. That should do it." She tossed the other half to me.

Catching the candy in my magic, I brought it to my mouth and bit into it. The flavor was a mirror for the inside of the gooey bonbon she'd given me earlier in the night.

"So what else am I doing, besides being your personal chiller?" I asked.

"Low heat. Melt me twelve cups of chocolate chips and eight tablespoons of butter together. You need to do it in a glass bowl over a pot of warm water." Sweetie was already working on a bigger batch of the overly sweet center-stuff.

Of course, I cheated. I used my magic to warm the water before I put the pot on the stove, then put the basin in it and started adding chocolate and butter.

"You need to keep stirring that constantly," Sweetie Drops said.

"Your wish is my command!" I used magic to stir the bowl, working the slowly melting chocolate into the butter. Realization hit me that despite my morning magic training, using my magic to help Sweetie was more training.

Sweetie Drops began rolling out balls of the stuff she'd been making. "How much kick do you like in yours?"

"'Kick'?" I asked.

"Most I make just like this. But for the older fillies and colts…" Sweetie Drops reached up to a ubiquitous dark bottle from a shelf. "We add some kick." And with that, she splashed a dark gold liquid into about a fifth of the ball mix.

"Oh. Kick! Uh, I guess I like it. How strong is that stuff?"

"The rum? It's pretty killer, you don't want to drink it like this. But a little splashed into the center of these makes them taste amazing. Trust me."

It was easy to trust a mare on her bonbon making prowess, whose cutie mark was a literal bonbon. I kept working at stirring the chocolate until Sweetie set the tray of balls before me.

"All those?" I asked. When Sweetie Drops nodded, I started working the cold spell. "There you go. Oh, did you want me to dip them, too?"

"Show me," Sweetie Drops said.

Picking up a ball, I floated it to the bowl of melted chocolate. Dipping it in, I was aware that Sweetie had a big grin on her face. When I lifted out the ball, it was still clean of chocolate. "Uh…"

"Rookie mistake. You're holding the ball all around, right?" Sweetie picked up one of her own and cupped it with both hooves. "No way for the chocolate to get in and coat it."

"Huh. So what do I do?" I asked.

"I use skewers. Stick them halfway into the chilled ball, dip it in. You might be able to do something fancier with your magic." Sweetie Drops was issuing a challenge, and I'll be damned if I'd turn it down.

Changing my focus, I tried to make fingers with my magic. It took until Sweetie had about half the first lot of balls done before I managed it. Fingers led to hands, which were easy enough to make. No matter what I did, however, I couldn't make them smaller.

By the time Sweetie started dipping the rum bonbons, I just used my magic to pluck up a skewer and did things that way.

"See? I knew you'd work it out," Sweetie Drops said. "Too many unicorns would spend all day and all year trying to make their magic like a skewer, when there's a skewer sitting right there you could have picked up."

It was just about the most zen thing I'd ever heard in my life. Magic was great, but sometimes magic plus mundane was better. "What can I say, I've got the best teacher in all Equestria." When Sweetie didn't rise to the bait, I used my magic to lift a dob of chocolate and booped her nose with it.

By the time we got done making Sweetie's bonbons, and cleaned up the kitchen, I was actually yawning. Sweetie slipped four bonbons into a bag and passed them to me.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"Duh. Helping." Sweetie packed the rest into two piles—alcoholic and non-alcoholic. I watched as she twisted each up in a little piece of baking paper.

"But I lost the bet, I had to help." Not that I wanted to complain too much. My sampling so far had reinforced the fact that Sweetie Drops made the best bonbons of all time.

"Oh dear. Well, since I paid you for this work, you're going to have to help me tomorrow!"

I rolled my eyes, but there was just something good about Sweetie Drops that pushed her right into best-friend status with just one afternoon of being together. I let out a defeated sigh. "I guess it does. Oh woe is me!"

My sense of taste was overwhelmed with chocolate, rum, and nutty candy. I closed my eyes to Sweetie Drops' silly grin, and chewed at the treat. By the time I was done, and opened my eyes again, Sweetie had a self-satisfied grin. "That is the most powerful weapon to shut people up with ever. I'm not sure if one mare should be trusted with all that power."

"Oh? And what will you do about it?"

"My duty as a pony," I said. "I'll have to eat all of them."

Sweetie Drops snorted. "But, Lyra, I have the easiest way possible of sneaking away from you."

"You wouldn't da—" I was stopped short by Sweetie's lightning-fast hoof shoving another bonbon in my mouth. Flavor exploded on my tongue, and I had to concede that I had no chance of intercepting her while encumbered with the treat.

"Goodbye, Lyra."

Letting the greatest evil in pony society escape, I finished eating the bonbon and headed back to our rooms. Mum and Tufts were back, and both were hanging from their perch. "Hey," I said.

"Been out chasing mares?" Mum asked.

"Yes and no. Chasing—no. Mares—yes. Sweetie Drops found me playing outside. We chatted a bit, then I helped her with cooking dinner." As I spoke, I walked to my bookshelf and lifted out one of the primers on using my magic for manipulating things physically.

"You see that, Tufts? That is what I'm talking about," Mum said. "It's just not natural for her to ignore a pretty mare and come home to read a book." The humor in her voice was so dry I almost shed a tear for her.

"She needs more mangoes, obviously." Tufts, his tail wrapped around the perch so that he hung almost as far down as Mum's shoulders, rubbed his vulpine jaw with one wing-claw. "There's nothing else for it, I'm afraid. Her lack of battiness is terminal."

"Oh sure, make jokes. Sweetie's really cool, but we're just friends. You two are worse than Cadance." I stepped up beside my bed and flopped sideways. Rolling, I wound up on my back with the book hovering above me.

Squirming a little to get comfortable, I had the distinct impression that Mum was staring at me. "What?" I asked.

"I was just thinking how that position seems perfect for showing off literally everything a mare shouldn't." Mum's tone was more humorous than serious.

"Says the mare who always walks with her tail arched high," I said.

"I do not! I—" Mum halted mid tirade. "I do, don't I?"

"Probably all thanks to Dream's little gift. You don't even think about it, but all day you are looking at other ponies' privates, and they can see yours." I waved a hoof in the air to indicate the pervasiveness of the thing. "And now, Mom, whenever you walk around, you are going to remember this little speech and it will suddenly hit you."

"Lyra?" Mum asked.

"Yes Mom?"

"Now you're focusing on breathing in and out, and you can feel your tongue moving in your mouth."

I barked a short laugh. "That's a horrible one, but I think mine will be worse," I said.

"Tufts, did you know our daughter is evil?" Mum's tone was full of regret. "I best alert the Royal Guard."

"There's something she forgot," Tufts said. He flapped a wing, earning my attention. "You might have given that idea, but you will have it yourself."

I froze. My brain pulled up dozens of interactions and situations, flashing me images I'd rather I didn't see. "Damn it!"

Tufts' screech was suspiciously like laughter.

Turning my full focus on the book, I tried to blot out even the time spent cooking. The shaping of magic, it seemed, was an advanced topic. Despite that, I read as much of the introductory book as I could before sleep came.

I was a rock star. A pony rock star. On stage, playing my bass, I had a band with me and we jammed Primus tunes out for all we were worth.

There was a huge audience—massive. There were millions in the crowd, and they all got to see me play. Bouncing along in the front, I saw Cadance, and Shining (they were together, of course), then I saw Sweet Dreams and Sweetie Drops.

For a moment I saw Mum and Dad (in my dream I called Tufts dad, of course). People were shouting, but I didn't know if they were shouting to me or along with the music. I assumed the latter and kept playing.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
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