The unicorns that inhabit Equestria are famous for their undiluted power. Telekinesis is literally an afterthought for them in every sense of the world. These unicorns harness magic, making the very laws of the universe sit still and shut up for a few minutes, as something trivial and mundane.

Some unicorns are relatively weak and untrained. Other, more famous unicorns, like Twilight Sparkle, have the power to raze entire cities and level mountains if they so wished. These ponies are even able to move ethereal creatures of dark matter itself, as in the infamous case of the Ursa Minor.

Even they , though, do not have the power of a select few Earth ponies.

Earth ponies are far more passive than their horned counterparts. Humble, hardworking and durable, their natural magic makes them very good at their select professions.

They achieve this by harnessing the natural background magic of Equestria itself. Earth magic. The magic of the planet.

These magics are strictly off limits to unicorns, who deal with the power in its purer form, undiluted in potential. This gives them immediate advantages, of course, but it blocks from their ken the ability to tap into one of the very most fundamental powers of the universe that some of their Earth brethren can.

That force is the force of life, and death, itself.

Some select few Earth ponies are forces to be reckoned with, untouchable by conventional magic, almost immortal and having the power over life and death itself in the same way that unicorns lift everyday objects with ease.

These individuals are to be feared, machines of literal death and carnage.

Lurking in the Everfree forest we find one such pony, a pony away from society. In his self imposed exile he practices his obscene power.

Who knows what this pony is capable of? Who knows what this pony could do if he let his guard down for even a second?

"Hmm, I think it needs a bit more basil... What do you think, Skully?

This is where our story begins, on a completely uneventful day for one Specter Shift.

"Sorry, Speckle, I can'nae help ye there, I ain't got nae tongue of which to help. It's been many a year since I last cooked myself, Specky boy."

Specter Shift appraised the skull sitting next to the hissing and frothing stew pot. The skull itself was named Skully, he was a sucker for puns, but the occupants seemed to have preferred habitations. Thus, he found himself in the kitchen with Skully the skull, currently occupied by the famous late Chef Ramsea.

Specter, an otherwise ordinary grey earth pony, had found that the best tutors tended to be the ones who had literally lifetimes of experience.

They tended to be dirt cheap, too.

"I suppose I could find a more recent head with a tongue but-" Specter flinched at the thought, "I don't think that would be all too comfortable for either of us. Besides, I don't want to mop up what you drink after it passes through. Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew."

"Aye, lad, I get the point. A pinch more basil it is, bu' only a wee bit. 'tis a very delicate broth ye chose here."

"Well, as the saying goes, quickest way to a mare's heart is through her stomach and all that."

Skullduggery the skeleton piped up from the next room. Again.

"Bah! The truest way is through the ribcage, fool! Have you learned nothing from our lessons?"

"For the last time, I want to befriend the lady, not kebab her... Actually, Skully, a lovely tomato, garlic and onion kebab would probably go rather well with this, don't you think?"

"Aye, lad, we'll make a chef of you yet!"

"I'm really glad you're here to help with these lessons, Skully... I mean, being away from your afterlife just to help-"

"Och, lad, enough," Cried Skully, "I be here of me own free will. I cannae thank ye enough for pulling me out of that blasted purgatory."

"Oh? And why's that?"

"My wife joined me nae but a few weeks ago. Took her sweet time, I tell ye, bu' some of me, er, fans of the female persuasion weren't so slow if ye catch me drift."

"Ah," Specter nodded knowingly, "I do indeed. Now, do you think Cous Cous would go well with this or-"

"Do ye want the lass to think ye be gay?!"

"Err... I prefer 'sensitive' and 'understanding..."

"Le' me correct myself then, lad. Do ye want me to think ye be a flamin' poofter?"

"Err, no Cous Cous it is then."

"Thatta boy."

"He has insulted your honour, my liege!" Skullduggery rattled off from the ironically named living room, "Defend your dignity, sire! Unleash your fury! Fight the noble-"

Skully sighed, notable in the sense that Skully didn't, in fact, have lungs. Specter screwed his eyes shut and felt the familiar pulsing in his temples. Skulldugery never finished his sentence before-

Well, usually Specter is polite enough to say goodbye, it didn't do well at all to be rude to his guests. Skullduggery was an exception, however.

"Och, lad, I dinnae understand why you keep 'im around."

"Oh, Skullduggery isn't all that bad. He's just a bit eccentric, when you get down to the bare bones of it." Specter chuckled at his own pun. "He's great for helping me learn to be a bit more assertive."

"Lad, I dinnae think you should be takin' lessons from him about personality."

"Err... I don't. He's just the only one of my friends that cheeses me off enough that I can work up the nerve to tell him to go away."

"Ah. Aye."

The broth finally slowed its simmering as a chill wind blew out the fire beneath it.

Having incorporeal friends was pretty cool like that, sometimes. Other times it meant looking for the open window in the middle of the night and not finding any, because some spirits liked a good prank.

Oh, well, it was only fair. He disturbed their rest, after all.

"So, Skully, this must be pretty lame for you, huh? Giving private lessons to some kid like me instead of being with your, er, wife? I mean, you're the great Chef Ramsea! Wouldn't you rather be cooking meals for, like, Kings?"

"Aye, ye'd think so lad, but nae. This is how I like my afterlife for now. Relaxin', no worries, good company. Makin lovely homecooked meals, sort of, with no real pressure. Not surrounded by buckin' incompetent ingrates.

Aye, lad, ye listen. Ye be a nice lad, ye give yeself too little credit. Now, remember, applewood bowl to store it in, it holds the broth nicely and lets it soak up some of the natural flavour ye got there."

"Err... Could you stop with the ye's? I geddit', you have an accent."

Skully would have raised an eyebrow. Let's leave it at that.

"What ye be talkin' about? Wha' accent?"

Sigh.

"Sorry, Speckles, could you send me off now? Not that I don' appreciate our little lessons together but, er, me wife has me on a bi' of a curfew... Normally, t'aint a problem but... She foun' me titanium rollin' pin again."

"Ah! Yes sir! Might I recommend a box of those Rosewater Delights she loves so very much?"

"Aye... Tha' should probably keep the heat down to a simmer for a while... Thanks, Speckles."

'Speckles' snapped off a mock salute. He could swear that Skully was grinning at him, well, more than usual before he scrunched his eyes shut and sent him on his way.

A lone, unmoving skull sat in the place of the animated Skully.

Specter Shift sighed, and took a small sip from the broth.

Hmm... Yeah, the basil would definitely have been a bit too much. At least I have all the ingredients for the kebabs!

And with that Specter trotted off into the little garden he kept outside his cottage by the caves. The whitewashed fence still gleamed with craftman's pride, a stark contrast to the horrors that lay beyond it, and the tight, checkerboard-like garden was filled with bright, cheery plants, obviously in season. Their fruit bulged and gleamed with ripeness, as they always did.

He could grow all his own food and supply himself generously, but at the cost of not being able to not be able to trot through the markets to buy or sell anything without causing some form of mass hysteria. Having powers over life and death was sort of like that, he guessed.

The pony was always a little melancholy when his friends had all left him. Oh, sure, he could summon some of the others but he also realized, deep down, that talking to nothing but dead ponies wasn't exactly healthy.

Well, less for me than others, but still. At least the dead talk back when I do it. Usually.

Some of them are quite stubborn, for reanimated spirits.

The garden was neatly arranged to the advice of Headstrong, a little ornament in his garden he used to channel an old Roamin stallion who had taught him the ways of crop rotation. He also taught him how to make that lovely little cobblestone path to his mailbox.

Not that he got much mail, of course. It was merely the principal of the thing.

Turns out that crop rotating didn't actually mean just twisting the plants around every now and again. Who'd have guessed?

As eager as he was to talk to a good friend like Aegis Shield, Specter merely frowned and collected his ingredients.

Today, today he would venture off to Ponyville.

Today he was going to make some living friends.

He hoped.

Sighing, the lonely grey poney with the tussled black mane trotted back inside to make his completely masculine kebabs in silence.

Dead silence.

Specter Shift trotted up to the library treehouse, home to thousands of books and one aforementioned Twilight Sparkle. Like most ponies that didn't immediately run away at the sight of him, Twilight didn't know what he could 'do'.

Specter had, not that he would ever admit it, a teensy, tiny, all-consuming massive crush on Twilight.

He wasn't going to risk their friendship, though.

Twilight was one of the very few genuinely living ponies that Specter could call himself friends with. An unlikely chance at something more than that wasn't worth the risk of further exiling him.

Skullduggery had given him no end of grief for it though.

"Take her! Take her and claim her as your own! Ravage her! Make her scream into the pillow! No regret, no hesitation, no protection! She shall bear your mighty foals and-"

Eeyup. Eenope.

Not that telling you any of this was necessary. This would all have been self explanatory in scant seconds, for as this exposition was happening Specter 'Speckles' Shift had finally knocked on the door.

You can do this, Specter. I can do this. I can do this. She's only a super nice cute nerdy librarian wizard pony that is probably the only pony you can talk to nowadays without oh dear Celestia what am I doing?!

His legs became blocks of granite, completely unable to move. Traitors!. His heart was running laps around his chest and his brain was bouncing around his skull like a super-ball.

As the door opened it didn't reveal a perfectly groomed purple librarian. It instead showed a scruffy, slouching purple dragon.

"Oh, hey Spike!" Specter said just a little too loudly, "Is Twilight in? Or, home? Or working? I mean, I know she lives and works here, so I'm not sure which she'd be doing, I hope I'm not interrupting!" The stallion was barely pausing between words at this point. "Oh, geeze, she isn't busy is she? IknowhowmuchshehatesitwhenshegetsdisturbedbypeopleIshouldprobablygonowokaythanksbye."

As he tried to turn and run as fast as he could back into the Everfree forest, probably running across ponies headed in the opposite direction at the same speed, his traitorous legs refused to move and he started to keel over, completely rigid.

Would it be worse if I landed in the soup, or if the soup landed on me? Oh, who am I kidding, this is going to hurt like Tartarus either way, I just hope it still tastes as good as I remember.

Now, it's incorrect to say that the stallion fell over. It is far more accurate to say he went from vertical to horizontal on the right side. If it weren't for the purple aura enveloping him, and all the provisions precariously balanced on his back, he would simply have been more down to earth than he was comfortable with.

As it was he was stuck, in a perfect posture, hovering at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

There was Twilight Sparkle, a small, worried smile on her face as Specter grinned a broad, goofy grin at her. Specter chuckled his best not-awkward-at-all chuckle.

"Oh, hey Twilight! Looks like I'm really falling for you, huh?" Oh, by Nightmare's Full Moon, did I just say that? Did I really just say that?!

Twilight just let out a soft giggle and blushed faintly as she corrected Specter and floated the food from the various states of gravitational entropy into a neat, orderly meal setting.

Okay, she didn't mind! Good, good! Now, talk to her. Nod. Good pony, now... Oh no, make eye contact, make eye contact! NO! TOO MUCH EYE CONTACT! Look away and, no, too obvious, just-

Oh no, the story just got sad, stop smiling.

Why aren't you making eye contact?!

NO! NO! TOO MUCH! YOU'RE BEING CREEPY!

"So, yeah! I'm just really glad you could come over. This smells great! what is it?"

Specter took a deep breath and a sigh.

You can do this. It's not rocket surgery.

"Oh, it's nothing, just... Just something I whipped up in the kitchen..."

The mare opposite him dropped her jaw.

"What? You made this?"

Oh, buck, she doesn't like it,,, Or does she like it a lot?! Try being non-committal! But not too non-committal, you don't want to seem arrogant!

"Yeah it's... It's nothing special. I mean, it's just, something I thought would be nice, you know?"

Perfect!

...More eye contact, darn it!

Twilight beamed and nodded with a friendly smile adorning her face. Of course, Twilight nodded in the rapid head bob that comes so naturally to those who get passionately excited by so much in their lives.

To Specter this was one part cute and endearing to three parts disorientating. He had forgotten to stop making eye contact.

Specter did remember to keep all limbs together until the room was no longer in motion. This took uncomfortably long, especially for Twilight, who had stopped nodding a few seconds ago and noticed that Specter looked slightly green.

Well, greener.

"Are... are you okay?"

Aww, she's concerned about me... Specter smiled dreamily. Wait, why is that a good thing? Yeah, I would be concerned about me too...

"Equestria to Specter, Equestria to Specter, come in Specter." Twilight giggled.

Specter blinked and shook his head, horizontally of course, until the pretty stars and swirls swam out of his vision.

Now was not the time for prettiness! Now was the time for Twilight!

Admittedly those things weren't entirely mutually exclusive, but still.

"Err, sorry, I'm totally okay..." And when you're around, maybe a little better.

"You look like you're off in your own little world there, Specter."

"It's more of a time-share, really." And now a totally not-worried giggle from Twilight. Solid recovery!

"You know, it's strange. You were like this when we met and, I swear, it felt like we'd met before..." Twilight sipped at her broth in thought.

"I guess I'm just one of those faces, I guess."  Specter was sweating bullets.

"Ha! You're pretty unique, though. There aren't many ponies I could confuse you for."

"Well, you must have. Better not think too hard about it." Maybe a sincere grin would sell it?

"It wouldn't be the first time some pony told me to think less," Twilight grumbled, "So I guess maybe you have a- Specter."

"Yes, Twilight?"

"Your eyes are twitching."

"Are they? I hadn't noticed. I mean, I can't look at my own eyes, can I?"

Twilight beamed. Please don't say you have a spell for tha-

"Actually, I have just the spell for that if you-"

"No! No, no, I think I'm perfectly fine, I think." Twilight looked disappointed. It positively broke his heart. Disappointing Twilight was like kicking a puppy!

Quick! Change the subject!

"But, uh, what were we saying before?" He tried to distract his guilty conscience by stuffing his face with tasty, tasty food. Fortunately he had the metabolism to support occasional comfort eating, so he picked up one of the probably-manlier-than-the-alternative gourmet kebabs and opened his mouth to take a slow bite, to savor it.

"I was just thinking where I knew you from."

Started mouth clamped shut on the skewer. It was painfully delicious as well as painfully painful, not the thing he wanted to savor at all....Oh, buck.

"Oh, now I remember!" Twilight's eyes widened at the sudden realization. "I was walking to Zecora's and then..." Her eyes winced in thought.

Oh. Buck. Nonononono-

Now her eyes slammed open in realization and, as Specter Shift had dreaded and expected, fear.

I can't believe it took her a whole week to remember that. I mean, it's been a while, but dying isn't something many ponies forget.

"And then... I saw the cockatrice." Twilight looked him dead in the eye, as if gazing into his very soul. The one time I don't forget to make eye contact. "That's when I saw you..."

"Ha! That's a good joke!" Breaking eye contact by gazing around shiftily at all the nearest exits, smooth as silk. "You can't have seen me, silly, you were-"

"Dead?" Twilight finished lamely. "I guess I was. Never thought of it like that until now, though, I guess."

Gulp. So, do I run out the front door, or dive out the window? She might not chase me out the latter,  but the former is significantly less painful...He mulled it over. And less cool, I guess. Might be a bit fun actually.

"So what? You're saying that we just, I dunno, had a nice chat whilst you were 'otherwise living'?" he laughed nervously.

"Oh, no, not at all." Twilight grinned weakly.

Oh. Maybe she-

"I think we also had tea."

N'aww, she remembers- Oh, bad thing, right.

"Alright, you caught me. I know the drill." Specter sighed, rising from his seat. "If our friendship over the past week has meant anything to you at all, you'll allow me a thirty second head start before you start chasing me with a pitchfork or something."

"...Pitchfork? You seem to have very low standards of friendship, there."  Her expression was unreadable.

She's right. None of the other ponies could shoot friggin' laserbeams. Why would she need a pitchfork? Maybe if I held up a mirror? Oh, wait, telekinesis... Well...

Buck.

"Huh. Is forty five seconds too much to ask instead, then?"

Twilight just stared. Specter prayed to Celestia that she wasn't eating into his escape time.

Wait! That's it! He knew how the perfect solution!

Crash!

"Eugh..."

"Now, tell me again; Why did you just jump out my window, you silly, crazy pony? This is the sort of stuff I'd expect from Rainbow Dash, maybe Pinkie P- Oh, who am I kidding, definitely from Pinkie Pie, but you? You seem too-"

"Mild? Boring? Timid?" Specter supplied.

"Well, I was going to say normal but that works too."

"Normal ponies don't talk to dead ponies! Specter yelled in frustration, clamping his hooves over his mouth seconds later, trying with all his might to cram the words back in.

"Hey, calm down, really." Specter melted under that soft smile, the weight of his many, many bandages melting away.

Turns out glass is a lot less fragile than movies make it seem. "I used to be worried about stuff like that too, Specter, really. 'If I show my friends how powerful I am they'll all hate me', right? True friends will just be happy for you, and share in your accomplishments." Twilight nuzzled him softly, reassuringly. Specter could have died right then.

Well, actually he couldn't, but he felt like he could.

"You're the first pony to have seen it that way, actually." Specter muttered. "Most other ponies see me and, well, grab their pitchforks. Turns out they don't want to talk to a walking existential crisis."

"What? That's ridiculous! You can't be seri-"

Specter cut her off. "Twilight, when was Ponyville established?"

"About three generations ago, why?"

"I've tried to come, talk to ponies, make friends four times since then, and every single time they've run me out with an angry mob, screaming for my blood."

"You can't be serious, Ponyville? Pitchforks?"

"Well, one time they used brooms, but I think they tried to sweep that one under the rug." Specter grinned at his own weak joke.

"Well, I haven't- Wait, three generations? You're three generations old? But... You don't look much older than a college student!"

"Hey, I'm not that slow a learner."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "I meant you don't look like Granny Smith for somepony that would have to be even older than her."

"Ah, Granny Smith... I remember back when she was as old as little Applebloom is now. She looked so adorable in that bunny costume, as hard as that is to believe." Specter sighed at the memory. "She had rather agreeable folks, actually. Didn't come after me at all. Oh, sure, they didn't exactly stand up for me either, but that's still better than most."

"So, you're honestly saying that..." Twilight left the question hanging in the still library air.

"About 5 generations, actually. That soup there? Took me a good seven years to make that." He paused and gazed thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "Well, not that soup, I made that this morning. Wouldn't be particularly appetizing if it was a few years old and I didn't even refrigerate it, I think. Just learning to cook, I mean."

"You spent seven years learning to cook? Where did you learn?" Twilight spoke slowly, still processing the amount of raw data being given to her.

"Oh, books, mostly. The rest of the time I just ask very nicely and some friends show me how. Flock Goosetoe, Chef Ramsea, Martini Oliver, they're all really nice ponies, really. Well, Ramsea has his quirks and keeps calling Martini a 'flamin' poof' whatever that means, but I think it's just because he's jealous, really." The grey pony nodded sagely.

"You knew Goosetoe? Ramsea? Those were some of the greatest chefs in Equestria! How could you possibly-" Twilight's eyes widened in shock as she did some maths. Whilst maths was not her strongest skillset she could still work out that- "You said you've been learning for seven years and Goosetoe has been dead for over fifty."

"Wait? You- Oh. Oh!" Specter let out another defeated sigh, his hopes dashed once more that some pony would finally not run screaming at the sight of him. "Twilight, what do you think I actually do?"

"Well, you live in the Everfree, I guess, so I thought maybe ponies treated you the same as Zecora. Why are you so surprised I'm not scared of you, even if you are old? Maybe it's just some plant in the Everfree that nopony knows about."

Twilight said, more to reassure herself than anything it seemed.

"Twilight Sparkle... I talk to dead ponies."

Twilight laughed, but there was a tinge of nervousness, as though she were afraid of the ridiculous pony mummified in the bandages before her. Of course she would be.

"Really, though? You can't be serious."

"It's true. You have your tea with milk and two sugars. You have nightmares about disappointing Princess Celestia, You eat cake from the thin end to thick, one spoonful at a time, making sure to get the same ratio of frosting to cake with each bite."

"That's, well, that's right, but anypony could have guessed that about me. What does this have-"

He cut her off once more, pressing ahead despite himself.

"Your deepest, darkest secret is that once, when you were a filly, you broke a birds neck when you were trying to pet it and you didn't know your own magical strength. He's forgiven you, by the way, and yes it was a he."

Specter paused and considered his next words carefully, granted a brief respite by Twilight's shock.

"You're also really cute when you talk about a book you've just read."

In for a bit, after all.

Twilight blushed slightly, "I'm...  I'm flattered, really, but how do you know this? All this?"

"Twilight, what you remember, having tea with me when that cockatrice got you, that wasn't a dream."

Please, please don't make me jump out a window again, that really hurt. I couldn't see through that window plan last time. Specter grinned at his own lame joke, despite realizing it probably wasn't helping his 'I'm not insane, honest' case.

"You were dead, and you weren't gone for long, but you happened to pass by my house. We had a delightful lunch, and now, you aren't dead, but I really liked the lunch part. It was a lot more important than the dead part, to me. For you, probably not so much, I guess that's relative."

Specter realized he was probably babbling, but he couldn't help himself.

"The thing is, I thought maybe, just maybe, I found a pony that wasn't terrified of me. But when we met again and you didn't remember me, I still thought maybe, if you had forgotten, I wouldn't have to and I could still just be me around somepony."

Again Twilight smiled that sad, soft smile. Why did she have to be so Celestia thrice damned nice. She was making this so much harder than it needed to be. Just, dump him in the woods, just run, run like all the others had, run and hide and never see him again, never-

This time it was Twilight who cut Specter off with a gentle nuzzle, and it was then that Specter realized he was crying.

Damn it, maybe Ramsea was right, he needed to man up.

"It's fine, really. I'm used to it. Just, I don't know, leave me be. I'll be alright."

Alright, she might have just bought that if my voice hadn't cracked like fine china dropped off a Canterlot spire.

With a voice as soft and kind as a mother to her babe came Twilight's honest reply.

"Now why would I be afraid of a silly pony like you?"

"In a word? Zombies." Specter scoffed.

Twilight leaned back into focus, eyebrow raised.

"Need I ask?"

"Oh, you would have found out eventually anyway. Again, no matter what happens next, could you still promise me that head start?"

Twilight rolled her eyes again. "Again, low standards. But sure, I guess I owe you that much, based on what you've told me." Her tone softened again, "Apparently you feel you've taken a real risk here, haven't you?"

Spectral nodded, slowly, imagining all the possible ways a pony could be shot with a laser.

ARGH! MY EYE!

"Twilight Sparkle, meet Black Velvet." Specter felt the familiar throb of his temples as he made the call.

"Black Velvet?"

"Aw, Sprinkles, don't you remember your-"

"Gran-Gran!" Twilight jumped, whipping her head around to look for the source. "Where are you? Mum said you moved far, far away.!"

"I guess you could say that, dearie, I guess you could." And it was then that Twilight stared in horror as she finally identified Grandma Velvet.

Twilight screamed.

"A hug would be more appreciated, love." The book on her nightstand muttered. Next Chapter: A shift in Location Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes