An hour or so later, stomachs full to bursting with second and third helpings of potato stew, Trixie and I settled down by the fire to let our food digest.
Though, somehow, I got stuck with cleaning out the cast iron cauldron.
For the record, if you're from my original reality and reading this, It's surprising the little things that you take for granted. Dish soap, for instance. Or sponges, particularly the abrasive scrubbing side. Seriously, try scrubbing out a pot wearing a pair of oven mitts sometime and you'll rediscover the joys of something that costs maybe a dollar.
After the fifth or sixth attempt to hold onto the rag I was using to clean the pot out was lost in the slurry of stew remnant, I decided to voice my frustrations in a very mature and erudite manner.
"Gah! These hooves are friggin useless!" I glanced over at Trixie, who seemed to be having a fit of giggles at my antics.
"No offense, but pony anatomy is pretty stupid. How, I ask you, are you supposed to get any of this stuff done?"
Trixie rolled her eyes and got to her hooves, bumping me to one side as she sauntered over and levitated the rag out of the pot and wrung it out with her magic before giving me a deadpan look. "Ta daa."
"Oh har har." I frowned as I snatched the rag from her aura and returned to my task with frustrated determination. "That's just cheating." A thought occurred to me and I stopped in mid scrub. "You got any spells in that hocus poker of yours to clean out this pot?"
She shook her head, taking another rag in her hoof and helping me scrub out the rest of it. "The Great and Powerful Trixie was never the best at such displays of domesticity. And after I melted my first few pots and pans, I decided hoof grease was the most practical way forward."
We scrubbed together for almost a minute before Trixie spoke up. "If you bend the hoof you're using back a little bit more, you can get a slightly better grip. Tr...I spent a good amount of time washing dishes before I managed to put my act together."
I glanced aside at her and smiled. "Thanks. You know, I still haven't seen you perform."
"You will, at least if they'll let me at the Summer Wrap Up Festival. There's always an appreciative crowd there, and it will be a good cover for our mission." A contemplative look crossed Trixie's face before she spoke. "You know, for the record, your anatomy is pretty stupid. I mean, no hair anywhere except your head and privates. No wonder you people have to wear those clothes all the time."
"I mean, there is some hair, it's just really-"
"And another thing!" Trixie spoke over me, with the air of one who had sitting on a complaint for far too long. "I wish to heartily complain on behalf of all the mares in your world about the placement of their udders. Your people are unsteady enough as it is walking around on two legs, and then you have all that weight up top. It's a wonder your mares aren't constantly pitching over. Not to mention the Tartarus blasted contraptions they need to hold them up! It's bad enough that all of your people have to wear clothes at all times, but what sanity forsaken reason would you wear more underneath them!"
I kept scrubbing, knowing full well that when confronted with a female complaining about her body in any reality, prudent silence is the best course of action. Meanwhile, Trixie's tirade continued unabated. "How in Celestia's name a woman from your reality is supposed to stay in shape is beyond me! There's no magic for them to burn off all the extra calories, and even whatever exercise they can do, they've got to do running around on their hind legs with their udders flopping around everywhere and toppling all over the place!" She huffed a breath, then abruptly lifted the scrubbed cauldron in her magic and dumped the slurry of water and stew off to one side of our campsite.
Seizing on something she had said, I valiantly attempted to change the subject. "You know, that's something I've been meaning to ask about."
Irate, she whirled on me, an expression of perfect fury stamped on her features. "You...you jerk! Trixie's udders are her own business!"
"Not them- that!" I managed to blurt in pure self preservative instinct. "The magic that's out here, and the way ponies burn calories." Trixie's expression of fury dwindled to something merely suspicious, so I continued. "I mean, everyo-everypony walks or flies pretty much everywhere they can, so the average individual is a lot more active than back in my own reality, but...burning magic also burns calories?"
"Of course!" Trixie shook the cauldron out behind her, then set it aside to dry by the fire. "Take that display for example. I needed to levitate the cauldron, manipulate it, and set it down with enough force to keep it from warping or breaking. That takes effort." She nodded up towards the clouds that caught the last of the day's illumination. "Pegasi have it easy. It takes a great deal of effort to keep one aloft, and they naturally have the appetites to go with it. Earth ponies like you have a great deal of stamina, but even then they are usually able to turn their abilities toward growing things like...oh, squash or some such, or crafting. It's why Equestrian food tends to run towards pastry, carbs, and massive amounts of butter."
I nodded at that, pondering my situation and gazing at the fire. Trixie settled down across from me, a curious frown across her features. Absently, I dug into my saddlebags at my side and pulled out a deck of cards I had bought for a few bits back at the Castle Canter Gift Shop. I'd always found the act of shuffling cards relaxing and soothing, ever since grandad taught me how to when I was a kid. Now, however, it was an exercise in learning how to use my new limbs. If I could eventually figure out how to cut and shuffle, never mind a double lift, it using a cleaning rag would be child's play.
"Bit for your thoughts."
I considered the deck in my hooves. "I was just thinking about our mission and how much we've got on our plates. I think we might have bitten off more than we can chew."
A pale blue eyebrow arched as she took off her spangled witch's hat and tossed her mane out, a brush levitating out of her saddlebags. "How so?"
"Well, take these cards, for instance. There's four suits, and thirteen cards for each suit. And two wild cards." With difficulty, I managed to deal out five cards. "Which is innocuous enough, but a common deck of playing cards back home are set up exactly the same way." I flipped over the cards I'd drawn as I kept talking. "Heck, even two of the suits are the same as back home. You have hearts and diamonds here too. The other two..." I frowned down at them. "Horseshoes and..." I turned the card sideways. "Horns?"
Trixie nodded, brushing her mane out. "What's your point?"
"Well, it's uncanny, that's what. What are the odds of two different universes developing a deck of cards each with the same similarities? For that matter, what are the odds of a race of beings without thumbs developing playing cards in the first place?"
Trixie frowned at that. "Well, they weren't originally for playing. They were used in..."
"Fortune telling." I said. It was just a guess, but Trixie's eyes widened as I continued. "It was the same back in my world. The suits were changed too to appeal to sensibilities. But the similarities don't end there." I held up the box the cards came in. Like the backs of the cards, they contained abstract linework and designs, but featured what could only be an alicorn on a unicycle. "The designs and brand names are too similar to the ones back home. So there's even more commonalities."
"So, you're thinking there's some sort of confluence."
I nodded. "Someone from my world could have introduced the cards at some time in the past to yours, which would account for the similarities in the fortune telling origins. And, at some point more recently in history, someone came up with the unicycle brand name. So, we have a common article here in Equestria with an equally common reference point back in my reality with potentially multiple confluences."
Trixie's manebrush paused in its trip through her mane briefly while she pondered that. "That's one possibility. But it's just as likely that somepony from Equestria brought it to your world. We know that Celestia isn't above taking particular jaunts out of our reality. And any reasonably powerful unicorn could have discovered a portal to your world."
I nodded at that. "Exactly. Something like this would take time to research, and it's not like we could go to the..." I turned the box over and read the back "'Unicycle Playing Card Co of Fillydelphia' and shake them up looking for displaced people from my universe."
Trixie nodded, her eyes distant. "When you put it that way..." She blinked. "Well. There's not much we can do one way or the other." She yawned magnificently, stowing her brush away in her bag. "So we might as well get some shut eye." She rose and trotted over to her wagon. "Can Trixie trust you to put out the fire?"
"Of course, but I was going to stay up for a little while anyway."
Trixie nodded. "Fair enough." She glanced at her wagon, then back over to me. "Trixie should warn you that my wagon door is firmly enchanted, and if you should try to enter it without my permission, you should get used to the idea of spending the next week as a teacup."
I raised my eyebrows at that. "I wasn't going to. But could you toss my bedroll out first?"
"And why wouldn't you want to enter Trixie's wagon?!" She demanded as my bedroll and blanket shot out at near supersonic velocity. I suddenly was aware of more stars in the night sky than were there to begin with. I was also on my back, and the door to Trixie's wagon slamming shut.
Sighing, I dizzily got to my hooves and started unrolling my bed for the evening. "I'll never understand women. With hooves or without."
⚜☀⚜
I awoke the next day next to a smoldering fire. The pre-dawn light was starting to filter through the grove of trees around us. Grumbling, I rolled over, grabbed a log and chucked it onto the embers of the fire, hoping to stoke it back so I could get breakfast ready. While I waited for the log to catch, I lay back and listened to the surrounding landscape start to wake up. It hadn't been too long since my last camping trip, but it was always my favorite time of day, when the world around was still, and the first birds started their songs in the morning.
"QUIET YOU POX RIDDLED BUZZARDS! TRIXIE NEEDS HER BEAUTY REST!" A wooden window on the wagon clattered open and a trio of rocks flew out at the various and sundry birds, who took wing with alarmed cries. The window slammed shut again, and all was quiet in the forest save for Trixie's surprisingly stentorian snores.
Note to self: Let Trixie get her beauty rest.
I quietly placed another log on the fire and wondered just how long it would be to safely get up and start brewing coffee without disturbing the unicorn in the Wagon.
⚜☀⚜
As it transpired, it took a half hour before I rose to Nature's Call, tip-hoofing a discrete distance away. It seemed a waste of time to go back to my bed, so I rummaged around in the other wagon, finding a coffepot and grounds. A short while after the coffee was steaming and percoating merrily , Trixie emerged from the wagon, her mane and tail tangled and her eyes half closed and gummed up with sleep, stumbling across the forest floor and, remarkably, not tripping over the upturned logs and rocks. The coffee pot floated up out of the fire, poured out a measure into a mug floating nearby, and was downed in one slug by the sleep deprived mare. She gave a satisfied sigh, and then cracked one eye open to stare at me. "Trixie is pleased that you have a second redeeming quality."
I sipped at my own coffee, arching an eyebrow. "Second?"
She nodded, pouring herself more coffee. "Yes. You're capable of puling the wagons."
I snorted at that. "What was my first redeeming quality?"
She sighed, levitating her hat back onto her head as she took a more ladylike sip of coffee. "Well, I was going to say you didn't ask too many stupid questions. Now Trixie supposes she will have to find another redeeming quality."
After a light breakfast of bread, butter, and blackberry jam, we broke our camp. Though I didn't have the fine motor skills that I used to, I was starting to become proficient enough with my hooves to bundle my kit up tight enough so it wouldn't come loose as we arrived in town. Trixie managed to levitate a small mound of dirt over the smoldering ashes of the fire and I poured the dregs of the coffee over to douse any lit ashes.
I considered it a mark of my preoccupation that I didn't notice Trixie's earlier comments about pulling the wagons, as in plural.
"Now, hold up a second. Didn't you used to pull your own wagon all up and down this land?"
She tossed her mane and bobbed her curls with a hoof, the picture of feminine daintiness. "Just because Trixie did doesn't mean she likes to. A true gentlecolt would pull both!"
"Well', I said, slipping into the traces of her wagon, "Luckily for me, I am without any of the traces of your average gentlecolt, never mind a true one. You take the fireworks wagon. Should be lighter anyways."
⚜☀⚜
The hike into Ponyville...again with that name...was reasonably pleasant as we were headed downhill still. The late summer day had the first hint of fall crispness in the air, though Summer still had enough fire left in it for one last solid hurrah before Autumn Proper set in. The trees still held plenty of green in them, cicadas buzzed their rhythmic calls in the trees and bushes, underpinning the melody of bird song.
As we plodded down the road towards the town, I started picking out details of the town. Ponies bustled here and there setting up for what had to be the aforementioned Summer Wrap-Up festival, hanging wildflowers, bunting, erecting food and game stalls, all the while going through their tasks with an air of cheerful busyness.
While I watched them work as I hauled the wagon along, I became aware of music. I don't mean that I was hearing music. It was at once like I'd walked into a spray of perfume or mist, where between one step and the next there was suddenly something. I could feel the music around me, a light but fast paced percussion driving a sense of celebration and merriness. The melody was carried by strings-violins primarily- skirling around and around in a tune that repeated itself, but then built on it, adding cellos, viols, basses as the melody crescendoed in merry, frantic energy that I found myself matching my pace to. Further strings added, not to the melody, but as sweeping chords that served to hold up the tune, supporting the melody and, simultaneously, serving to emphasize it. But despite all that merriness, the music had a minor tonality to it, as if all involved knew that it served to mark something wonderful and tremendous, but that was all the more amazing because of its transient nature.
I couldn't hear the music with my ears. But at the same time, I could feel it, much the same as if I were standing in the same room as the musicians playing it. The pulse of the percussion beat a tattoo against my limbs, and I felt almost like I had to stop and dance, grabbing my traveling companion and taking her up in the song. I must have slowed up, however, because suddenly Trixie was standing to my left, arching an eyebrow at me.
"What's the matter, Comstock? Don't tell me your strength has given out already. No mare likes to see a stallion give out so early in the day."
I shook my head, my mane flopping against my neck, and twitched my ears, trying to see if I could catch a source of the music. "No, it's not that. Can you hear it?"
"Hear what?"
Guess that answers THAT question, I thought to myself. "Um...music, I think. Sounds like a dance tune."
Trixie cocked her head to one side, her eyes going distant as her ears perked towards the town. After a silent few minutes, she shook her head. "Nothing but some ponies warming up for later this evening. Why, what's up?"
I pondered answering her question honestly. I really did. But, back in our reality, if you admit to hearing things other people can't, that's usually the time the men with the butterfly nets and free suits with the extra long arms show up to haul you off to a padded cell. While I couldn't be certain that ponies would react in the same way, I'd rather not take that chance. That even included Trixe, who, while occasionally referring to herself in the third person, seemed canny enough to recognize someone insane when she saw them.
"Nothing" I lied glibly, and then quickly tried to change the subject. "Looks like a rather large party brewing."
"Yes." Trixie said flatly. "It certainly does." As if to punctuate her statement, a mushroom cloud blasted up through the center of town, the pressure seconds later blasting my mane flat against my skull. A second glance showed me that the cloud was made up of confetti, which was drifting back down to earth with a magnificent disregard of future tidying up.
It may have been my imagination, but it looked like Trixie suppressed a shudder. "Oh Celestia, she's got it running again." She said, more to herself than me.
"What was that?"
The blue unicorn shook her head, giving me a look. "You'll find out soon enough. Come on, we've got to get these fireworks into town."
With that, she shouldered past me, and I wondered, not for the first time that morning, just what I had gotten myself into.