Big Macintosh did his best not to fuss as Tombs combed the snarls out of his mane. He’d stood still for the currycomb and pedicure, but after ninety minutes of being worked over by every possible grooming implement, even his nearly bottomless patience had begun to run out. The attention was much less awkward now that Tombs had clarified the exact nature of his relationship with Blueblood, though Big Macintosh had still insisted on bathing himself. While Tombs combed, Big Macintosh narrated the events of the previous night as best he could remember. Tombs nodded his understanding.

“Just about finished, sir.” Tombs smoothed the last cornsilk blonde hair into place “and done.”

He levitated a mirror to allow Big Mac to examine his appearance.

This was the first time he’d actually seen “his” face in a reflective surface. The shock took the strength out of his legs and he felt a momentary tension in his chest. Looking into a mirror and seeing a stranger look back is an experience anypony could live a happy life without experiencing. He winked and waggled his tongue at the mirror and watched the stranger do the same thing.

Still though…

He imagined the new him, fresh groomed and regal, trotting up to Twilight’s door, a bouquet of flowers in his mouth, no, hovering alongside with magic. She opens the door and her eyes flutter with delight at seeing her beloved: Prince Macintosh. She plants a warm kiss on his cheek and together they go out for a moonlit stroll. Could he do it? Could he play the role of the Handsome Prince?

Macintosh watched Tombs as he levitated the mirror with his magic. Could he do that too? He concentrated on the tingling in his forehead and felt the magic respond in his mind. He realized that his horn wasn’t just a numb spike of keratin; he could feel the air moving across it, and something else, too. Beneath the air, an electric current whose ebb and flow permeated every object in the room. He felt his consciousness drifting into the strange tide and quickly withdrew, frightened by the new, unfamiliar sense he now possessed.

“Is everything to sir’s satisfaction?”

Big Mac hesitated.

“Eeyup,” he finally answered.

Together they trotted out into the late morning sun to find Blueblood. Big Mac had a good idea where Blueblood probably ended up and he led Tombs down the dirt path to the east field where the freshly tilled soil still waited to be furrowed and planted. As they trotted, Big Macintosh allowed himself some timid exploration of the world touched by his horn. He found that he could not only feel the currents of magic as they drifted past, but that he could bend and direct them as well. He gave a nearby apple a timid prod and was pleasantly surprised when it bobbed in response. He continued his practice as they made their way to the end of the path and before too long he had become dexterous enough to lift and manipulate objects. The pair rounded a small knoll and Macintosh froze in his tracks, his newfound powers momentarily forgotten. Tombs trotted to a halt alongside.

What Big Macintosh saw made his blood boil. There was his body, dozing quietly in the broad shade of an apple tree while his little sister Applejack, his yoke huge and heavy around her neck, struggled step by step to drag the massive plow through the soil. He puffed a snort of frustration and involuntarily pawed the ground with his hoof. Before Tombs could react, Big Macintosh was halfway across the field to his sister.

“I’ll help,” he said as he trotted up.

Applejack shied away, spooked by the massive white stallion bearing down on her.

“Uh, ah got it, thanks.”

Big Macintosh didn’t wait for her assent. He reached out to her with his magic, pushing his consciousness down the invisible lines of force that emanated from her body. He lifted the yoke, a little more roughly than he intended, and yanked it from Applejack’s head, clipping her ears and knocking her hat off in the process.

“Hey! Now see here!” she blustered, rubbing her sore ears with her hoof.

“Ah’m sorry…” Big Macintosh stuffed his head through the hovering yoke and released his magical grip. The yoke was slightly too big for Blueblood’s narrower build, but he hove forward and the plow only gave a second’s resistance before following.

Applejack was dumbstruck. The stranger looked at her as if he’d known her all his life. He’d looked at her like… she glanced over at Big Macintosh, still dozing, before shaking the idea out of her head. Somepony had better bring her up to speed on what all this craziness was about.

She saw Tombs treading somewhat daintily across the field in Big Mac’s direction. Maybe he’d have an explanation.

“Mister Tombs!” she hollered. He stopped and turned.

“What’s the meanin’ of all this hullabaloo? Why’s yer master ponyhandlin’ me while mah big brother’s busy collapsin’ of heatstroke? Yer the only pony here actin’ half-sane and I ‘spect some answers!”

Tombs wavered slightly in the face of her anger, but maintained his composure and raised a calming hoof.

“I believe I may be able to shed some light on this mystifying misunderstanding, miss. If you’ll kindly follow me.”

Tombs stepped over the furrows to the edge of the field and made his way over to Big Macintosh. Applejack followed.

“I believe you’ll find these to be the culprit,” explained tombs, lifting up her brother’s forehoof with his. Nailed to the bottom was a gleaming arc of gold. Big Macintosh roused from his slumber and looked up into the faces of Applejack and Tombs.

“Golden horseshoes!?” Applejack exclaimed “Well no wonder yer havin’ trouble, Big Mac! What kind of idiot wears golden horseshoes? Those’re no good fer farmin’! Gold’s way too soft! That’s a good way t’ chip a hoof and hurt yerself! You tellin’ me that’s been the problem all along?”

Blueblood pulled his hoof back from Tombs and planted it on the ground, hoisting himself up.

“Er, you see…”

“It seems that my master and your brother have swapped souls, somehow.” Tombs interrupted.

“Swapped soles?” Applejack rolled her eyes “Ah kin tell that much. Only a fancypants like yer master there would spend money on sumthin’ like golden horseshoes. Ah just dunno whut would possess mah brother to try swappin’ with him. Ah guess everypony’s curious about the high life once in a while…”

Tombs looked confused.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, miss. That’s not Fancypants, that’s-”

Blueblood stepped in.

“Charmington. Princeton Charmington.” Blueblood pointed across the field to where his body dragged the heavy plow, already halfway done with his second furrow.

“That handsome stallion over there is Princeton Charmington, and Tombs works for him and I’m Big Macintosh.” Blueblood turned around and gave Tombs a meaningful look. That dumb bumpkin must’ve just told him everything! Hopefully Tombs would get the hint and keep quiet.

Tombs’s face was unreadable.

“Very good, Sir,” he responded with deliberate enunciation.

Applejack was as confused and frustrated as ever.

“I know who everypony is! What I wanna know is what it’ll take to get this field plowed on time!”

“Well Princeton can’t do it. It’ll just ruin my… I mean his pedicure.”

“Well switch yer shoes back and get t’ work, then. You seem to be feelin’ better,” she shot him a dirty look.

Meanwhile, Tombs produced the iron horseshoe they had removed from Big Macintosh’s hoof last night, and a hammer and nails as well. Blueblood took a step backward.

“Big Macintosh! Take off that shoe right now!” Applejack ordered “Itain’t yers and this foolishness has gone on long enough. Honestly, pedicures and such and such…” she trailed off, grumbling to herself.

“Yes, but…”

Tombs levitated Blueblood’s foreleg while applejack wedged the claw end of the hammer between the shoe and his hoof. She heaved with all her might.

No good. She pried at it with all her strength, but even with Tombs helping the shoe wouldn’t give even a hairsbreadth. They huffed and puffed at it for a solid few minutes, but eventually gave up.

“Tarnation! What’s keepin’ that thing on?”

“Magic, I suspect,” answered Tombs.

“Magic is right,” she looked up at Blueblood “Big Mac, when yer done in the fields today ah want you t’ go and see Twilight. Maybe she can fix this.”

“I could just go right now…” Blueblood suggested.

“Nope, too much to do and we’ve lost too much time already. Don’t be a bad host and make yer houseguest do yer chores for ya. He’s got places t’be ahm sure.”

“But-”

“Get!”

Blueblood gave Tombs a pleading look. Once again, Tombs’s expression was unreadable.

“My master and I have errands to run in town. Making arrangements to have his luggage delivered from the station and all that. I’m sure you’ll understand if we take our leave, Mr. Macintosh.” Tombs explained.

Blueblood searched the faces of Tombs and Applejack for any sort of mercy and found none. Crestfallen, he plodded out onto the field where Big Macintosh had started down his next furrow.

“I’ll take over from here,” said Blueblood, pawing at the ground like a scolded foal.

Big Macintosh stopped in his tracks, breathing heavily from his labors. He fixed Blueblood with an icy look that was shocking in its ferocity. The prince didn’t know his face could do that.

“Will you, now?” Big Macintosh growled. It was strange to hear his own voice turned against him, and to have it sound so forceful.

“Er… Yes.”

“Good.” Big Macintosh slipped his head out from the yoke and used his magic to force it over Blueblood’s neck. This time his roughness was deliberate. Big Mac pressed his face close to, well, his face.

“If ah come back and find out you’ve made A.J. plow one more inch of this field, yer gonna wake up with yer back broke…” he paused and corrected himself “my back broke.”

Blueblood’s ears drooped and he swallowed back a nervous whimper.

Big Macintosh raised his head.

“Tombs!” he called.

Tombs sidled up alongside and together they made their way off the field. Blueblood watched them until they passed out of sight, then turned to the unplowed earth ahead of him. He had a long way to go…

Big Macintosh fumed in silence as he and Tombs followed the winding road into town. The hours spent carefully grooming and bathing him were all for naught, as dragging the plow across the field had roughed up Big Macintosh’s appearance considerably. He stepped awkwardly; in his rush to leave, he hadn’t retrieved his other horseshoe, and was still walking on only three. Tombs trotted alongside like a dutiful bloodhound, for the first time unsure of what he should do. Finally, he spoke up.

“Since it looks like I am temporarily in sir’s employ, perhaps sir would enlighten me as to where we’re going?”

Big Macintosh stared straight ahead.

“The Library.”

“I see.” Tombs could tell his “master” wasn’t in a talking mood, and respected his silence for the rest of the walk into town.

Big Macintosh’s smoldering anger had cooled quite a bit by the time they had reached the main thoroughfare into Ponyville. He nodded politely to the ponies he passed on the street. Though they nodded back, their lack of recognition was unsettling. Big Macintosh knew nearly everypony in town by name, yet ponies he’d known all his life looked through him as if they’d never seen him before and, let’s face it, they hadn’t.

It was past noon by the time they reached the town common. The sun was high in the sky and, despite Winter Wrap Up having been just two weeks ago, the air was pleasantly warm. Traffic in the square had slowed with the noonday lull. Many ponies were inside napping during this time of day, or laying in shady spots, whisking at the flies with their tails as they lounged and chatted with each other. A large fountain dominated the square, its jets filling the air with a crystalline mist that was cool and refreshing. A bubblegum-pink pony with a frizzy mane of candyfloss hair was doing calisthenics at the edge of the pool. She wore lime green leg warmers and a fluorescent orange sweatband that clashed horribly with her coat. Her expression was one of deep focus as she balanced on her hind hooves, bobbing up and down on the fountain’s edge to exercise the muscles in her hocks and cannons.

“Afternoon, Pinkie Pie.” Big Mac greeted absent mindedly as he passed.

“Hey Big Macintosh!” answered Pinkie Pie without turning around.

A beat passed between them before all three stopped simultaneously. Pinkie Pie looked over her shoulder and hopped off the fountain. Big Mac realized his jaw was hanging open and he snapped it shut. Pinkie Pie cocked her head, examining him closely before breaking out into a large grin.

“Oh wow! I’m so super sorry! I thought you were Big Macintosh,” she giggled.

“How did-?” Tombs began, but Pinkie Pie cut him off.

“You see my thighs got all quivery, and when my thighs get quivery, that usually means Big Macintosh is somewhere nearby, just like when my tail gets twitchy, it means something’s about to fall, or when my ears get all floppy it means-”

Big Macintosh tried to speak, but Pinkie was still talking.

“-Because I get all these little niggly feelings that sometimes tell me what’s going on! I call it my ‘Pinkie Sense.’ But you know, I’m not the only filly whose thighs get all quivery when Big Mac’s around! I guess everypony’s got a little bit of a Pinkie Sense when it comes to him! And who can blame them? He’s such a dreamboat, you know?”

Big Mac shook his head. He didn’t know.

Pinkie giggled “Well of course you wouldn’t know. You’re new! And if you’re new that means-”

Pinkie’s face locked dead still and her eyes shot as wide as dinner plates. She gasped so sharply and deeply that even Tombs flinched before she rocketed four feet into the air and galloped off in the opposite direction.

Tombs straightened his bowler hat.

“What a strange pony,” he said.

“Eeyup.”

The library was on the opposite side of town, beyond the main streets on the edge of a broad park. While most of the buildings in ponyville had their roots in the timber-frame and plaster style of architecture with its wildly jutting jetties and balconies, the library had its roots deep in the soil. Much of the land that incorporated Ponyville had been reclaimed from the Everfree Forest centuries earlier. The trees the first settlers felled to clear the land for their crops were now the ancient timbers that formed the posts and pillars of Ponyville. Only one tree of the original forest now remained in the town proper: a sprawling old growth oak, which the townsfolk originally hollowed out as a silo for the storage of seed grain during the winter. Later, as the town grew and the silo fell into disuse, Celestia herself endowed it as the town library rather than see the proud tree be chopped down. Now the library was a proud landmark, and the position of town librarian traditionally held by a respected scholar.

Big Mac looked up at the venerable tree and the butterflies welled up in his stomach. The respected scholar and personal protégé of the Princess that ran the library also happened to be that exotic Arabian flower, Twilight Sparkle. Big Mac choked back the fluttering in his stomach, steeled his nerves, and trotted through the ancient Dutch door into the still and silent air of the library.

He could hear Twilight’s prim voice drifting down the stairs from her quarters above the library. She was in the process of dictating a letter to her personal assistant/pet dragon whelp, Spike.

“Dear Princess Celestia, this week I learned that it’s never a good idea to loan someone a large sum of money, especially if it’s a close friend. No matter how much you trust someone, it’s easy for that debt to come between you, causing a rift which can divide even the closest friendship,” she announced as Spike scribbled rapidly onto his scroll.

A second voice piped up, “And I learned that you should never borrow money unless you’re absolutely sure you can pay it back. Borrowing money is something you do in an emergency, and not just when you really want something…”

The voice belonged to Rainbow Dash.

“No hard feelings, Rainbow?” asked Twilight. “I’m sorry I got so obsessive about getting that money back from you, and for spooking you and getting you hurt.”

A sky-blue Pegasus whose mane was a shock of rainbow colored hair fluttered down the stairwell. Her left eye was black and shiny, but her smile was warm and genuine.

“No hard feelings, Twi,” she called up over her shoulder. “I’m just sorry I blew all that money on Wonderbolts tickets and didn’t save any for an icepack. Ow.”

Rainbow Dash dabbed her tender eye with her hoof before pushing past Big Macintosh, catching him on the nose with a wing as she folded it against her side.

“’Scuse me, buddy,” she said, trotting out into the afternoon sun.

Big Macintosh and Tombs stood awkwardly in the center of the room. The air of the library was once again dead still, punctuated only by the soft scratching of Spike’s quill. Big Macintosh cleared his throat involuntarily. The soft murmur of his throat seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.

“Is someone there?” Twilight Sparkle called down. He heard her hoofsteps on the stairs before she stepped out into the light. Big Mac drank in every flourish of her shimmering purple mane, every nuance of her graceful step. Her dainty horn gleamed as if sculpted from deep-purple quartz, a glimpse of untold power pulsed in its depths.

As an Earth pony, Big Macintosh couldn’t perceive the arcane powers that surrounded Twilight Sparkle, them being as invisible to him as magnetism to a block of wood but, as a unicorn, the energy coming off Twilight seemed as bright as an arc lamp. It wasn’t something he saw with his eyes, but he knew it was there all the same.

Their eyes met and Big Mac’s heart raced for a golden moment before the mood turned sour. Twilight’s intelligent, inquisitive face soon darkened with a frown.

“Hello, Prince Blueblood,” she spoke evenly “So it was you in the square yesterday. What’re you doing here?”

Big Mac found himself more speechless now than he had ever been in his own body. She knew Blueblood? Damn that stuck up little weasel! He knew Twilight all along and didn’t warn him!

Twilight continued,

“It doesn’t matter, unless you’re here to check out a book or you’re in town to apologize to Rarity, I have nothing to say to you.”

“Twi, who’s there?” Spike scampered down from the floor above. The tiny purple dragonlet stopped in his tracks at the foot of the stairs. He, too, frowned upon recognizing their guest.

“Oh, hello ‘Your Highness,’” he said before turning up his nose and marching out the door.

Big Mac looked to Tombs for help. Tombs responded with a look that said, “Are you really so shocked?” before turning to Twilight.

“Forgive my master’s intrusion, miss, but we are, in fact, here to apologize to miss Rarity.”

Tombs looked Big Mac in the eye and gave an encouraging nod. Big Mac caught on.

“Er… Yes,” he said “Ah feel just bad about the way I acted.”

Tombs cleared his throat and Big Macintosh realized he was still speaking like the dumb hayseed he was pretending not to be. How would a fancy pony talk? The fanciest pony he knew was miss Rarity, so he did his best to imagine what she would say in this situation.

“I would deaaarly like to make amends,” he spoke in a half falsetto “Could you kindly direct me to her abode?”

Twilight apparently didn’t think there was anything strange about his affectation.

“She lives at the Carousel Boutique. Ask a pony in town and they can give you directions.” she turned up her nose and walked over to a stack of books. Turning her back deliberately, she levitated them with her magic and began shelving them. Big Mac didn’t leave, instead just watching her in silence.

After a few long seconds of Twilight pretending Big Macintosh wasn’t there, her resolve cracked and she spoke to him over her shoulder.

“Is there something else I can help you with?”

“You really shine when you’re surrounded by books,” said Big Macintosh, speaking aloud the last sentence to pass through his mind. He realized what he’d said and quickly buttoned his lips. His words had disarmed her and the book she was shelving faltered in its path.

“Excuse me?” she frowned.

“Ah’m sorry… I mean… I’m sorry.” Big Mac took a deep breath. It was time to go for broke. He had the looks and the charm he always told himself he needed, if he couldn’t talk to her now, he might as well go back and hitch himself back up to the plow for the rest of his life.

“I just can’t believe it took me this long to talk to you.”

“We’ve spoken before.”

Big Macintosh wavered. He didn’t have any idea how well they’d known each other before although, judging by Blueblood’s character, probably not well.

“But… never as friends,” he offered.

“I’m not sure I’m that interested in what you would consider friendship, Blueblood. I’m not the kind of filly who gets loose after two drinks and some cheap pickup lines.”

“I’m interested-”

“Ha. The only thing you’re interested in is the contents of my pants… When I choose to wear pants, that is. Anyway…”

Big Mac’s eyes involuntarily shifted to Twilight’s backside before shifting back to her face. Twilight scowled and adjusted her tail to better cover her hindquarters.

“…Anyway I don’t need friends like you. Go apologize for being so rude to my real friend Rarity, then go back to Canterlot and stay there. ”

Twilight harrumphed and went back to shelving.

Big Macintosh looked down at Tombs, who was obviously deep in thought. No help there. His shoulders sagged and he turned to leave. Before walking out the door, he turned back to her.

"You may not need a friend like me, but I've always wanted a friend like you.”

Twilight rolled her eyes.

The door latched behind Blueblood and his valet as he left, leaving Twilight alone in the library. The nerve of that guy! He strikes out with Rarity so he just moves onto her? As if she’d ever fall for his cheesy lines.

“You really shine when you’re surrounded by books,” she mocked aloud in a whinier approximation of Blueblood’s voice.

“What a jerk.”

Still…

Why were her thighs all quivery?END OF PART IV

TO BE CONTINUED…