Until now, Thiemo had never worried much about money. Whenever he had found himself without a coin to his name, he had either stolen some or directly pilfered the desired goods he needed. Luckily for the public, his needs were low and his skills were embarrassingly restricted. The only trick he had in his repertoire was where he would roll his feet in order to create less noise. Because of this inability, Aura often ended up being the thief while he did the one thing he was good at: creating a distraction. For the most part, he only had to stand on the street in full view for that to happen.

However, this was only an option when there was no other way to get money. He usually did this mostly by telling tales, not his own ones; they were much too common for this world. After all, what could you tell people who were used to mysticism and magic along with a plethora of mythical monsters? Science Fiction was the simple answer. As often as he had told of the adventures of Captain James Tiberius Kirk, it was likely that there were already fan clubs in some regions already. Sadly he didn’t know more than one or two episodes so that he was usually forced to improvise something.

What he had never realized was that his own appearance and what he was played a big part of the credibility and believability of his tales. A pony, in a city full of ponies, who told a story about an incredible adventure between the stars would be mildly interesting to a few ponies, but it would remain a story, something they might have forgotten by the end of the day. When told by a large two-legged creature out of a foal’s nightmare however, it made things somehow more believable and frightening, the tale and the storyteller etched in their minds for a long time. However, since he was still a pony and his stories hadn’t gone down well with the locals, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to Thiemo when Amaryllis, Aura and himself got kicked out of the third tavern in Fillydelphia after they had tried to gain an audience inside. To add to his never ending list of problems, even though he didn’t want to admit it and had tried to bury it under his immediate priorities, fears about their finances did play upon his mind. It wasn’t so much about their immediate financial security he was worried about but for the time they would have to spend in Canterlot. He wanted to learn much about magic, Amaryllis wanted to search her father and in between he would search for Aura’s relatives. In other words, it was nothing that could be accomplished in a few days or even weeks’ time.

Stealing was always an option but Canterlot was the capital of the empire. Aside from the guards being relatively well trained when compared to the smaller towns, he would also not being able to disguise as a pony anymore since the chitin was only enough for one more use. He cursed internally that Aura had not taken the bag from the bank in Round Rock even though he knew it was the right thing to do. Well, in the end they were chased out of the city anyway.

With a loud bang, the door of the Tipsy Mare behind them slammed shut and once again they found themselves in the bright glare of the afternoon sun in Fillydelphia. “Well that could’ve gone better,” Thiemo dryly remarked, trying to shake the dust off him.

“I don’t know what their problem is, I like your stories the best, Dad.” Once again, Aura tried to cheer him up as she had done ever since they had first been thrown out of a tavern. She was lying though, she genuinely seemed to love his stories. Be it the stories of Spacefish Surprise, Black hole Extreme or the tales of the Grimm brothers, the child friendly version of course. Even though his daughter was mature for her age (or simply more jaded, even if he refused to acknowledge it), he wanted to preserve what childlike innocence she had remaining.

“I must say, they are very special,” Amaryllis agreed with a nod of her head. “I never thought of traveling between the stars with a ship. I mean, there isn’t any wind in space, is there?” Well, his attempts to explain warp machines seemed to have failed horrendously. Of course, that may have been due to the fact that he didn’t understand most of the theories and mechanics behind it. The only thing he was relatively sure of was that space and time bended.

“It’s… not really a sailing ship like the ones you know,” Thiemo sighed and looked into the confused faces next to him. “Never mind. That doesn’t change the fact that we need money, at least a bit to survive the first few days in Canterlot. Any ideas?” They were currently walking down one of the side streets, so they could talk relatively freely without being afraid of someone hearing something his ears were not supposed to.

Both said nothing at first, the only sounds their footsteps (or hoofsteps in this case) dully echoing as they walked. Just as Thiemo was about to ask again, Aura stopped, brightening up considerably. “I could go uh… empty some pockets,” she suggested, jumping around excitedly. “I’m so fast that they would never get me, that always worked,” she said, a hint of cockiness in her voice. What a foal considered fast was far from what fast meant for grownups. In response, Thiemo merely raised an eyebrow at her statement. While it was certainly true that she was agile, almost any adult pony would be able to outrun her stamina-wise. Ponies weren’t like humans; they got faster the older they aged. Only when they became elderly did they start slowing down considerably.

Thiemo coughed and pointed at himself. “If you were that good I wouldn’t be here,” he dryly noted, causing her to hang her head, feeling somewhat abashed. “Besides, it’s not as though I would be able to distract anyone like this.”

“I could distract them,” Amaryllis suggested, causing them to turn towards her. “I mean, we changelings are masters of camouflage and disguise. I could just transform into a beautiful mare.” Without waiting for a response, fire seemed to consume her body, burning brightly for a few seconds before it died down. Out came not the white young mare with purple mane, wings and horn from before but a yellow pegasus whose mane seemed to be perpetually aflame. Thiemo noticed as she turned that her cutie mark looked like a phoenix of flame. “Something like this?” To underline her offer she twirled her tail as she walked, making sure she placed more emphasis on the way she walked so that her flank seemed to bounce and tremble with every sultry step she took.

Aura giggled a bit as Thiemo tried to detach his gaze to look at something other than the swaying flank in front of him, his efforts only partially successful. “Sure uhm… and who are you imitating?”

“I’ve seen this pony on a poster a drone brought in once. She is called Spitfire, I think.”

“Well I admit that could work.” And how it could, it had even affected him, though he would never admit to it. “However, since this pony was on a poster, she’s probably famous. So what’s your exit plan?” he asked.

Amaryllis blinked with her orange eyes, looking at him confusedly. “My what?”

“How would you get rid of the attention once we’re finished? Also, this Spitfire is a pegasus and judging by her name and this poster, she’s apparently famous for her flying skills. Can you fly at the moment?” Hesitantly, she gave her wings a few flaps before jerking from the unexpected and sudden pain. In his own mind, Thiemo was secretly happy for this, since it meant that Aura would not be involved. “Well, I guess we’ll have to abandon that idea for now. By the way, if you transform back, spare the wings. You can’t use them and Aschlant told me that the pony princesses have both horn and wings too, but I haven’t seen a normal pony with both. It would explain the trouble back in Appleloosa.” She nodded and transformed back to her old form without the wings this time. “I think I’ve got a better idea. Can you use magic without someone seeing it?”

Amaryllis gave him a look that seemed to seriously question his sanity. “What do you mean? I have never heard that magic is visible. Of course you can see the consequences like a levitating object, but you can’t actually see magic itself. I think you need to be more precise.” Thiemo’s eyes widened and he turned away from them, his mind racing. Could they not see the auras around the horns of unicorns when they used magic? If they could not, then why was he able to? The most likely answer swam to the forefront of his mind a few moments later. He was a shaman and Zarni had trained him to see energies. Unicorns and other magical creatures were always surrounded by this special energy so they unconsciously filtered them. All ponies had some sort of magical nerve system at least, so perhaps that was why they seemed to be unaware of it. “Okay!” he stated firmly and turned around again. “I will distract the ponies. But let’s get two things straight. We take only what we need and only so much that it is not missed. The last thing we want are guards on our tails.”

Should Thiemo have ethical worries that this way was almost too easy? Probably. Stealing a little child’s balloon should be harder than taking money from pony’s pockets. “There’s a UFO!” he screamed and pointed his hoof towards the sky. All ponies near the booth looked to where he pointed and slowly a couple of bits flew from the open cash register of the cherry booth into the backpack on Amaryllis’ back. Thiemo figured the merchant somehow deserved it because he charged ridiculous ten bits for a fruit. Playing a dispenser of karma didn’t help to ease the guilty feeling in his stomach every time he did this.

“Hey, there is nothing there,” came the bewildered voice of one of the surrounding ponies and turned to Thiemo. The others turned their gazes towards him shortly after but Amaryllis had already taken her share.

“Excuse me, I must’ve been mistaken, it was probably just a fat pegasus,” he said, allowing some sheepishness and embarrassment to leak into his voice. With that, he quickly walked off, followed by his accomplices.

“Wait a minute… what is a UFO anyway?” he heard someone ask in the background before they turned around the next crossway. He didn’t know how many bits they had swiped, that was Aura’s job.

And so they continued, one distracted the ponies, the other one magicked away a few bits from the unsuspecting merchant and the last one counted. In case anyone approached them, they could always say Aura was simply counting his money for him. “Add in the last twenty bits which makes…” She chewed on her lip unconsciously as she calculated. “Sixty two bits in all.” Not a bad haul for an hour’s work. His stories earned them, if he was lucky, a bit less than half of this and that was for an entire evening’s work. Until now their victims were mostly the big booths surrounded by ponies; it was rather obvious that the more customers they had, the more money they could get away with. While he did not have a real limit, Thiemo thought getting around one hundred bits would be sufficient.

They continued walking through the crowded marketplace. Aura seemed eager to contribute more significantly and every now and again she made a move to nick something from a pony’s saddlebags but every time she was met with Thiemo’s disapproving look and resisted the urge. She had been raised as a thief and the relative short time she had been travelling with him didn’t make her forget old habits. From time to time he had even had problems explaining to her exactly why stealing was wrong even while they did it. The concept of ‘necessity’ was probably too much to explain to a young filly; even Thiemo had a hard time justifying what they did to himself.

Amaryllis poked Thiemo in the side, abruptly interrupting his self-recriminations. Seeing she had his attention, she nodded towards a booth nearby. Upon closer inspection, he saw that it belonged to a jeweller. Whether ponies wore clothes or not, they seemed to jewellery, well, at least the mares, something Thiemo wryly noted was something they seemed to share with their counterparts on Earth. The difference was that in this world, gold and silver were used to decorate and highlight jewellery made of gems since these precious metals were much more scarce and valuable while on Earth it was the other way round, where humans used gems to highlight jewellery made of gold and silver. It didn’t really come as a surprise to Thiemo, considering that gems were like weeds in some areas.

While this potential target seemed promising, one considerable problem was that not one pony manned the booth but three. Three unicorns to be exact. One of them was binding different hoof rings around the legs of a customer while she flashed them into the sun to see how good the contrast to her fur was. At least, that was the only explanation for why they held them into the air with their legs. The second one was supplying the first with choices from a small cart behind the booth. The third and last one was also the oldest and judging by the similarities she shared with the first two, she was probably the mother of the other two. All three had a silver fur with slightly different tones and green manes. The mother was watching her booth and everyone around it with a hawkish gaze and Thiemo doubted that she would be as easy to distract. Unfortunately Amy and Aura went ahead and also watched the goods.

With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, he pushed himself through the crowd of mares to the ones who were travelling with him. It was at that exact moment that he wished he had a male companion. “Look at all this beautiful jewellery!” Amaryllis said excitedly as he stopped next to her. Thiemo sighed; she seemed to have forgotten why they were here, so he did the only thing he could and also looked at the wares laid out to catch a potential customer's eye. There was a variety of horseshoes with all sorts of patterns here and there with little gems for decoration. There were also smaller ones, which looked like rings but were too big for a finger; he guessed that they were probably for horns. Then there were hairclips, medallions, earrings, brooches and buttons, all of which seemed to be made of either silver or golden or other metals he didn’t know and couldn’t identify. He had to admit, some of the pieces were quite attractively and beautifully done. When he was home on Earth, the only jewellery he had always worn a chain, a gift from his aunt. It was golden and had a little dolphin on it, a present for his third birthday.

“And just how can I help this lovely young couple?” He looked from the jewellery to the voice who had addressed him, spotting the elder mare. Confused what she meant, he looked to the side and realized that he hadn’t even noticed that Amy had leaned on him to view some pieces. “Uh, no thanks. We are just looking and furthermore we aren’t-” Amaryllis chose this moment to pull her head back, a single earring dangling in the air.

“How much is this fine piece?” Thiemo gave her a sharp look that totally sailed over her head as she was busy haggling over the earring. As soon as she was told a price, she immediately started butchering it down. Very changeling-like of her, he thought sourly. Did she really completely forget that they were here to make money, not to spend it? Especially on something as trivial as jewellery! Just as he was about to stop her and if necessary pull her from the booth, she turned back to him. “Look darling! Isn’t this earring absolutely wonderful? And it costs only fifteen bits!” She shoved it so close to his eyes that they started to derp.

“Miss, I thought we agreed to twenty bits,” the salesmare interrupted and her horn glowed slightly. It seemed she was to regain her jewellery thought Amaryllis wasn’t so eager to comply as Thiemo saw a purple and green aura fight over the earring.

“Look, my poor friend just wanted to buy me a nice present.” The two stared a couple seconds at each other, the earring dangling in front of them.

“Seventeen bits my last offer,” the elder mare finally said. Content, Amaryllis nodded and looked at Thiemo expectantly.

Thiemo, for his part, was completely perplexed at this chain of events. “Uhm… yeah sure, give me a moment.” He walked to her backpack and numbly took out a purse. They exchanged the money for the earring, Amaryllis cooing in delight all the while before they walked out. As soon as they were out of sight, Thiemo pulled her into one of the many streets. “What was that all about?” he hissed, unable to control the anger leaking into his voice. “We are here to make money and now you trick me into buying you an earring?”

Amaryllis jumped a bit at his words, not expecting him to be so mad. “N-No…. but we needed a distraction so that Aura…” He didn’t let her finish as he realized that he had completely forgotten about her. Panicked, he looked around wildly. “Aura? Aura, are you there?” At that exact moment, said filly came to them from the main street, holding a bag which seemed to burst with the amount coins in it with her mouth.

She let it drop and grinned at Thiemo and Amaryllis. “Didn’t I say that I’m good?” she said smugly. Unsure, he looked at her and then checked the content of the bag. It was too much to count here but even with the expenses their money had just been doubled. “And that was just one of the bags, they had five or six hidden in the cart,” she said, puffing out her chest in obvious pride.

Thiemo fought with himself. On the one side he wanted to praise her, knowing what she had done would save them a lot of trouble yet on the other hand he knew that he could not encourage her, fearing she would become even bolder. “Aura, how often have I told you that stealing is nothing to be proud of?”

She tapped on the paving stones with her hooves, hanging her head. “A lot…” she mumbled, looking dejected.

“Good. But today, just for today….” Thiemo walked slowly towards her and put his right hoof around her neck. He had no clue how ponies hugged or if they did it at all. But since Aura also leaned on him, the gesture didn’t seem to be for nothing. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this will make it easier for us.” They let go of each other and met the big smile of Amaryllis. “How about we relax for the rest of the day? I’m sure we have enough for an ice cream or two,” he said, jiggling the bag. From the cheer of his companions, he knew that a verbal answer was unnecessary.

Author's Notes:

Transformed into pure reading pleasure by JBL