January 1 12 After Ice Moon
I was glad that we'd left the door open, 'cause when I woke up I saw that there were a couple of other ponies on the bed next to ours. I couldn't tell who it was just by looking, and there had been so many ponies all gathered together that I couldn't tell them from their scents, either, although if it had been somepony that I knew well I would have been.
I yawned and stretched out as much as I could without waking anypony else up and I didn't want to get out of bed right away, 'cause it was still just barely light outside.
So I tucked my head up against Gusty's withers and that made me a little bit heartsick, 'cause with her sleeping clothes on it was like snuggling up with a human sort of but it wasn't quite the same.
I wondered if she was going to keep on wearing clothes when she got back to Canterlot, or if she was going to slowly get out of the habit. Maybe she'd just stop bothering with her underwear after she'd been back a couple of weeks and then slowly go around less and less dressed. Or maybe not—it was gonna be winter in Equestria, too, so she might want to keep her clothes on until the springtime at least.
If it hadn't been rude, I would have asked her when she woke up.
I drifted a little bit off to sleep until I heard Aquamarine yawning and then I could feel the mattress move a little bit as she stretched out and then since she was up, I got up, too.
We were both curious so we took a look at our roommates. On the close side was a white earth pony with a blue and purple and pink mane that was really pretty even though it was kind of tangled up from sleeping, and then on her other side was a yellow earth pony with a blue mane and tail and she had a white diamond star on her face and I didn't remember seeing her last night and I would have 'cause stars and blazes and socks were really rare on mares although both me and Aquamarine had discovered that they weren't that rare on Earth horses.
Aquamarine thought that maybe they'd gotten back really late last night and so we ought to let them sleep. We could meet them at breakfast.
So we went into the shower and were happy to find out that there was proper pony shampoo and soap in there for us and they also had a hoof-pick hanging from the wall and in the cabinet were a bunch of brushes and combs which was really thoughtful of them 'cause I hadn't packed any of that in my saddlebags and Aquamarine hadn't either.
And we weren't sure how much hot water there was and so we decided that we'd take a cool shower since neither of us minded that much and that way there's be plenty of hot water for everypony else.
While we were drying off I was thinking about the ponies on the other side who were about to come through—I didn't think they'd started yet, but maybe they had. They wouldn't really know what to expect and so I told Aquamarine how I'd left a letter for whoever came after me and her ears fell and she said that she wished that she'd thought of that.
We couldn't decide if we should leave our room yet, or if we should stay a little while longer for when Cayenne woke up. So we went over and looked out the window, and it was still grey and overcast outside but it was getting light as the sun came up behind the clouds. And it was a strange thing to wonder, but I all of a sudden started thinking about what the weather would be like on the other side. It wasn't like taking a train or even an airplane where the weather changed as you went; when we went outside to get to our trains it could be completely different.
Aquamarine said that she was a little bit sad that she couldn't bring any plants with her back to Equestria, just because it wasn't safe. She said that humans had found out that some plants were invasive and they'd get away and take over everything and there were people at Michigan State who were trying to figure out the best ways to kill them because they competed with the native plants for food and water and sunlight. And she said that there were lots of them in Michigan like garlic mustard which didn't taste very good, and dame's rocket, which was kind of pretty and did taste good.
Well, we were still at the window when our roommates woke up and once they got out of bed they came over and introduced themselves. The white mare was named Gingerbread, and she came from a town called Tambelon, which was in the south part of Equestria, and the yellow mare with the star was from Grayvaile which was on the other side of the Sparkling Sea, and her name was Bubbles.
They'd both gone to school on the west coast, which was why they'd come in so late and I was kind of jealous of Bubbles, 'cause she'd gone to the Western Washington University which was practically on Puget Sound, and she said that the beach wasn't even a mile away from the university.
We would have liked to talk some more but gave them a chance to take their shower, and we decided that when they got done we'd wake up Cayenne and Gusty if they hadn't gotten up yet, 'cause they had to be ready when it was time to go back to Equestria.
So we waited until we heard the shower stop and then we both got up in bed and started nuzzling Gusty to wake her up, 'cause we thought that it would be best to wake up Cayenne last. And I guess Gusty hadn't been all that much asleep any more, 'cause she opened her eyes right away and then she stretched out and pushed the covers off of her.
The three of us had gotten Cayenne up by the time our new friends came out from the bathroom, and Bubbles had a ribbon tied around her dock. Gusty said that that was in fashion in Grayvaile but it looked kind of odd to me.
I think Cayenne had gotten all cried out yesterday but she was still pretty gloomy and also tired and we had to kind of push her into the shower, and I said that I'd go see if there was any coffee to help wake her up.
There were already a few ponies in the hall, and the table was filled with breakfast food and they had a nice selection of hays and fresh pasture grasses, along with some human foods like shredded wheat, and most importantly they had big urns of coffee and also a bunch of different kinds of tea, and all the mugs were hoof-friendly.
So I got a mug for Cayenne and then I thought that I should get one for Gusty, too, if she wanted it. Me and Aquamarine could get our own, and we were both awake enough that we probably didn't need it. I was starting to really look forward to being back home again and I wondered if maybe that was why they had us wait a little bit, so that we'd have time to get used to the idea that we were really going back.
Cayenne looked a little bit more alert when she came out of the shower, but her head was still down and her ears were drooping and the coffee didn't help with that, either.
She wanted to get back in bed and rest until it was time to go but we wouldn't let her, 'cause we didn't think that it was gonna be good for her and I thought that maybe she was thinking of trying to get out of the transfer center and she'd get in a lot of trouble if she did that, so we made her go to the dining room and Gusty got some food for her even though she said that she wasn't hungry.
And we sat down at our table with Gingerbread and Bubbles and we didn't talk about what we'd done on Earth at first, 'cause we thought that that might make Cayenne more depressed, and instead we talked about what we missed in Equestria and what we were looking forward to getting back to.
Gingerbread said that she didn't like how the weather just happened and even though she'd learned better, she still read the weather reports every morning and then they were usually wrong and after a while she'd started to see a bit of humor in it but at first it had really annoyed her, and it was going to be nice to see pegasuses up above moving clouds around.
Bubbles said she was gonna be happy with furniture that was pony-sized, 'cause it seemed like everything she wanted to get to was put up higher than she could easily reach and that it had been really frustrating to go shopping and have all the food that she wanted to eat being up on a shelf that was higher than she could get to and she'd tried standing on a shopping basket but that hadn't worked so well and she'd broken through one once.
Aquamarine was most looking forward to seeing her family again and just relaxing in Ponyville 'cause East Lansing was nice, but it was too busy for her. She said that she liked it when the town shut down for the night a couple of hours after dusk.
I was looking forward to spending the night on a cloud, which was something I hadn't been able to do on Earth. I had thought about using my rope to tie one to my balcony, but then I'd thought that it might dissolve in the middle of the night and dump me to the ground, and I didn't want that to happen. Or if it got free it could fly up and get hit by an airplane, which wouldn't have been good if I'd been sleeping on it.
Gusty said that she had bought a bunch of human plays and when she got back she was going to see if she could get ponies to perform one of them. She said that she thought that would be a good way to show what human culture was like, and she said that there had been some human plays before but nopony had really done them right, because they didn't quite understand what it was like to live on Earth.
And Cayenne said that she was gonna enjoy shopping at stores that had proper jewels instead of the sad little things that they had on Earth, and that kind of cheered her up a little bit. And she said that she was going to enjoy a proper hooficure, too, because she hadn't liked her farrier too much and when she went back to him to have him fix the shoe that she'd lost in Walt Disney World, she'd wanted to buck him in the face, 'cause she'd never lost a shoe in Equestria.
Aquamarine said that she had, 'cause sometimes they got caught under rocks and got loose, and then all of us were talking about grooming and the lack of human spas and how humans didn't like social bathing at all but then we found out that we'd all managed to convince at least one of our friends to try it.
So then we were thinking about what our human friends had gotten us to do and Cayenne said that hers had gotten her to try different kinds of meat and when I said that I had, too, Aquamarine said that didn't count 'cause I ate fish anyways but I'd tried bacon and that wasn't from a fish.
Gingerbread said that she'd had some turkey for Thanksgiving and it had been pretty good. And then she said that she was sorry and she hoped that I wasn't friends with any turkeys, and I wasn't. There were some wild turkeys that lived near Chonamare but they mostly stayed to themselves and they'd chase you off if you got in their territory, especially around mating season, and it was a good thing that they didn't fly very well.
By the end of breakfast, Cayenne was in a much better mood and she started to look around the room for the first time since we'd gotten there, and I was glad, 'cause I thought that we might have to drag her by her tail to get her to leave Earth.
We got our saddlebags on and made sure that we hadn't left anything in the room, 'cause it was almost time to go, and then we decided that everypony ought to go to the bathroom before we left just in case, and then we heard that maybe one of the Princesses was going to meet us on the other side so everypony had to make sure that they were well-groomed.
So there was a lot of talk about that and everypony was pretty excited. Aquamarine knew Princess Twilight of course, and most of the Canterlot Unicorns had met Princess Celestia and Princess Luna before or at least seen them. There weren't any crystal ponies to tell us about Princess Cadance and most of us didn't know too much about her but then we heard that there was a pony near the front of the line named Posey Pink whose sister knew Diamond Rose who had known Princess Cadance when she was a student at Canterlot Academy.
It didn't feel like we had to stand in line all that long before we were moving forward, and then I started to get a little bit nervous as I got closer and closer to the doorway and then all of a sudden I was the next one in line and then it was my turn and one moment I was on Earth and the next moment my coat and feathers bristled and I was back in Equestria and at first it didn't quite sink in but then I got a little giddy and I think I would have pranced around except as soon as I got outside the door, there was another lineup of ponies and Princess Twilight was at the head of it, greeting everypony as they went by.
When I got up to her she nuzzled my cheek and asked me a little bit about the friends I'd made on Earth, so I told her about Peggy and Aric and Meghan and said that there were lots and lots more but I didn't want to make everypony wait and she nuzzled my cheek and then told me that we could relax for a while because traveling between the worlds was kind of stressful and everypony reacted a little bit differently. And she said that there'd be a lunch and she was going to give a speech before we all got on trains and started our final journey home.
When I got into the next room which was a big open hall there were a lot more ponies in there than had been in the transfer center and I guess I hadn't really thought about it but I'd kind of noticed that there had been more ponies in line waiting to talk to Princess Twilight than I'd expected and that was because they had been in different countries that had their own transfer centers, and then I got to thinking that we were actually pretty lucky 'cause some other ponies must have had to leave in the middle of the night to get here.
And I heard a lot more foreign languages, and there were more ponies wearing clothes and there was a stallion that had a neat uniform on and a couple of mares that had really pretty wraparound dresses and I saw a couple who were napping on the chairs and I bet they'd come over in the middle of the night.
It took a while before the last of the line finally made it in, and it was pretty amazing looking at all of us all gathered together like that, 'cause we'd filled up the room and we didn't start to quiet down until Princess Twilight walked through the room and up to a little podium and she said that she had a few words that she wanted to share with us.
So she told us about how she'd hardly had any friends when she went to Ponyville and she hadn't really thought that she needed them, but it was only with the help of her friends that she was able to banish Nightmare Moon and she came to realize after that just how important friendship really was, and that her friend Sunset Shimmer had learned the same lesson, and then she said that the thing about friendships was that they'd challenge you and take you to unexpected places and she asked everypony to raise a hoof if their year on Earth had gone exactly how they expected, and nopony did, and she said that our friends teach us things and then we teach them things and we're all better for it.
She said that she wanted us to all try and remember what we'd been feeling and thinking right before we came through the first time, and then to ask ourselves if we were the same pony as we'd been a year ago, and I knew that I wasn't.
Then she told us that when we went back to our universities and colleges we might notice that they'd changed a little bit, too, because of the humans that had been there in our stead. And then she said that for most of us, there'd be a new human there now and we should do our best to help them feel welcome because we knew now what they'd given up to come here, and then she smiled and said that she probably hadn't had to tell us that, and that got a few laughs from everypony.
She looked down at the podium where I guess she'd put some notes so she didn't forget everything that she had to say, and she told us that the rest of our luggage would be at the train station for us and then she thanked us and all of us were cheering and stomping our hooves so loud that we didn't hear her at first when she said that there was food in the next room for us and we should probably eat before we went to the train station, and then she stepped away from the podium for a moment and kind of paused and came back and it got quiet and she said that just so we knew it was 12 days after Ice Moon, and I heard some ponies muttering in surprise.
I was surprised, 'cause I'd completely lost count on the Equestrian calendar.
Well, by now everypony was starting to think about getting home, plus most of us were gonna be on the train at least part of the way home with our friends, so we kind of all hurried through lunch and then when we were done we went out to the train station.
I don't know why I thought it would be the afternoon, 'cause it wasn't. I looked up in the sky real quick so that I could tell what time it was and for a moment I was really disoriented 'cause the stars were all different than they had been on Earth.
I wasn't as good at reading the stars as a sailorpony, but I could do it well enough and I saw that it was getting close to dawn. And it was funny, 'cause you could tell who'd come over from the night-side of Earth—they weren't stopping in confusion, because they'd expected it to be night. And I'd thought that Twilight looked a little tired, but I'd just assumed that was because she'd met a whole lot of ponies all at once and not because it was the middle of the night.
We had to figure out which train we wanted, so we all crowded around the timetables and then we said our goodbyes to Bubbles and Gingerbread, 'cause they were on a southbound train, and we were going north. And Bubbles was gonna have a really long trip, 'cause after she got to the coast, she was going to have to take a boat the rest of the way and that was another couple of days. There weren't any airplanes that you could take to just fly you right where you were going.
Then when we went out to the platforms the trains seemed really tiny and it was weird having to adjust to that, 'cause I'd always thought of them as being big and heavy and now I was thinking about how small it was and it almost looked like a toy, and the rails were too close together and we almost needed helpers to get us used to being ponies again.
There was a line of ponies getting on our train and we weren't in a hurry, so I brushed the snow off one of the benches with my wing and we all sat down and I got out the poem that Conrad had given me because now it seemed like the right time to read it.
It was called Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and everypony really liked it and thought that it was a good poem for today. Aquamarine said that she always liked overnight snowfalls and I didn't like them as much when I had to help make them 'cause it was dark and confusing and so we tried to put down snow during the day but every now and then we had to start a snowfall at night or it carried over, and it was pretty.
It took a while for everypony to get settled on the train and they wouldn't let us leave until everyone was accounted for, and there were ponies on the platform who were helping if somepony didn't know which train she was supposed to get on.
So the sky was light by the time the train finally pulled out of the station and it was really confusing to see the sun come up again for the second time in maybe ten hours—I couldn't really rely on my sense of time any more. And we chatted for a little while, then Cayenne fell asleep against Gusty and that was really cute. Aquamarine had her muzzle up against the window so that she could see all the familiar trees, and even though most of them were hibernating for the winter she still recognized them.
We had to make a couple of stops for water because some of the stations were too far apart for the train to make it to the next station, and when we stopped at one of the water tanks I happened to look out the window and saw a couple of railroad pegasuses pushing rainclouds over to the water tank to keep it filled up.
And I couldn't help but think that the Amtraks had been much nicer. They'd been bigger and faster and sleeker and didn't have to stop all the time to get more water. I bet they could have gone from one side of America all the way to the other without stopping if they'd wanted to.
We had a long station stop when the train got more fuel and that gave everypony a chance to get off the train and stretch out some and I got to fly around a little bit and it was strange but I felt like I could fly better than ever before, but I thought that I was just thinking that because I was tired. If anything, I ought to have been having trouble flying because I was out of practice at flying in Equestria, and it did feel strange.
But it was nice to have the winter air ruffling through my coat with no flight vest on, and I felt a lot lighter without my radio and camelback.
And it was really nice to see other pegasuses up in the air, too. They were a ways off, too far away to fly to and talk to, but that didn't really matter, because they were there, and I realized how much I'd missed having a flying partner whenever I wanted one. Even when I was at the university, which didn't have too many pegasuses, I could always find some weatherponies who were up in the air and wanted to have a quick race or just hang out on a cloud for a while.
I zipped back to the ground and I could have come in for a better landing I'm sure, but flying was still kind of feeling weird so I made a more cautious landing where there wasn't anypony standing around and I saw an enterprising stallion had set up a food cart, but I didn't have any bits, so I couldn't buy any food. Maybe they'd have some on the train, or else I'd just have to be hungry until I got to my stop.
I could see that they were finishing up with the train, 'cause the collier was pulling his wagon away from the locomotive, and the platform was starting to empty off as ponies got back in the train, so I got back aboard and found our seat and Cayenne was still asleep and I was getting kind of tired too.
So when the train started moving again, I asked Aquamarine if she minded if I stretched out on the bench and she said it was okay.
Aquamarine promised to wake me up before we got to my station, which was really nice of her. I was gonna be the first one off the train in our little group of friends.
Well, it turned out that she didn't have to because even though I'd probably been up a full day since it was light out my body insisted that it was daytime and so I only really napped a little bit and then I woke back up again and the train was stopped again because it needed more water.
And I was kinda hungry and I was sort of getting a bit of nervous anticipation in my stomach, too, 'cause what if my family had changed when I was gone? What if my mom had found another stallion that she liked and he'd never met me? Or my sister had gotten pregnant—she hadn't said anything about that in any of her letters but maybe she'd wanted to keep it a surprise.
I could be an aunt and not even know it yet.
And I got up and walked back and forth down the aisle, 'cause I wanted to be off the train; I wanted all this travel to be done with. I think it was 'cause I was still tired, but I couldn't remember how long it had been since I left Kalamazoo. Was it yesterday? Or the day before?
And then I thought about the new exchange pony and hopefully Meghan had found her already and given her the letter I'd written, or maybe it would be better if she had a day to settle in her own way before getting it, 'cause it would probably take a little bit of time before the newness of everything wore off some.
I had to force myself to sit back down on our bench and I kept fluffing my wings out 'cause I was getting impatient and Aquamarine nuzzled me which helped. And I looked out the window some but I wasn't really seeing what was going by, so it was a surprise when the train began to slow down and Aquamarine almost had to shake me out of my trance.
And I said my goodbyes to my friends and we all promised to keep in touch, and we gave each other big hugs and when the train stopped I got off and I could see up front that the baggagepony was unloading a couple of big crates that were mine—I guess that the fancy silver containers had to stay on Earth.
I waved at my friends one last time before I looked back on the platform and there was my family just like I'd remembered them, and I trotted over and hugged and nuzzled them all and there were tears in my sister's eyes 'cause she was so happy to see me again, and my mom said that I looked kind of skinny and wanted to know if they didn't have enough food on Earth.
And I had so much to show them and tell them about but first we had to get all of my things loaded onto a wagon and take it back to college, and there was a pony with a wagon there just for me which I hadn't expected at all. And he said that the dean had told him to take everything back to my dormitory, and he knew right where that was because a couple of days ago he'd been taking a human from the dormitory to the train station so that she could go back to her home.
So we decided that we'd go to the inn instead and I was glad that I didn't have to worry about my things.
It was a little bit different eating Equestrian food again and my stomach wasn't used to it at all but I guess that was kind of normal, and so even though I was hungry I didn't eat too much. And we sat and talked and I told them about some of my adventures and showed them the scar on my leg from when I fell down on the train, and I showed them the pilot's license I'd gotten and all the different places I'd been and how it was true that humans wore clothes almost all the time and that there were lots and lots of Taco Bells and people made movies of me, and there was a game called Quidditch that I was gonna teach ponies and I had books and books of poetry and human trains were so big that some of them had two stories, and I promised that it was all in photo albums and books that I'd brought back with me.
And they all found it hard to believe that humans really couldn't control the weather at all, but I swore it was true, and when my mom kept asking about that, my sister said that I'd been there and I ought to know.
We probably could have kept talking all night except that I was exhausted, and so we finally went upstairs to our room and my sister asked if I wanted to use the tub and I said that I was too tired right now and I'd probably drown myself, but in the morning we could have a nice flight together before breakfast and then relax in the tub a little bit.
She got in bed with me even though we hadn't shared a bed in a while and the last thing I thought before I fell asleep was how nice it was to be back with my family again.
Gingerbread
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Bubbles
mylittlewiki.org/w/images/thumb/5/59/Bubbles_pilot.PNG/300px-Bubbles_pilot.PNG
Our little Silver Glow is home. Now a few epilogue chapters and then what?
Maybe she just got really used to saying 'pegasuses' instead of 'pegasi', or was there another reason she kept saying it?
I wish there were a drawing of Silver Glow (or maybe there is and I missed it).
still incomplete? Huh.
The paradox of just how long the trip home can take. Can so easily be well after sunrise to before sunset, yet feel like taking days, then before you realise it, once you get there, a week has gone.
Given the fun on bothsides of the Transitional Doorway Im glad Silver didnt get to see what sorts of fun things were on the human side. Let her think Ospreys are small birds of prey.
Im not sure if its me or very tired author, but Cayenne and Aquamarine swap places several times when waking up before the doorway transition?
Wonder if theyll jump the trains to steam turbomagic driven by biomass LNG as its closest to solar power with storage and composting they can get without advanced battery tech? Otherwise using coal to supply power, Minotaur tools and Diamond Dog miners, will limit the overall power available while keeping things clean.
So many fun things theyre so close with, or beat human tech. Gem based optical quantum processors would be so easy to make, and smuggle over.
Dangit, Biscuit, you and I really are of a kind. I recall waaaaay back when Silver was in her first poetry class and you kept giving us all these good poems and I commented that it was kind of funny because in one of my own stories, I'd had a character with an interest in poetry, and I'd been noting many of the same poems for her that you'd used for Silver. Well, I'm still as stalled out as ever, but I'd written the end of that story a few years ago before I stalled, and it ends with
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before
THE END."
You been tapping back into my brain waves, amigo?
(This is just me trying to take my mind off my melancholy for this story coming to its end.)
a vary good chapter and you are so close to the 1 mill mark.
Gingerbread or G1 pony's are known of their jeweled eyes or Twinkle Eyes.
if I remember right gingerbread did not appear to often in the first part of G1.
I have all of g1 on DVD I code check but it is out with a close friend right now who is digitizing it all for him self and me.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/4/1/285359__safe_g1_nervous_my+little+pony+%27n+friends_gingerbread.jpg
this second photo is from the movie return of tembelon.
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as you are using the bubbles with feet and not the seapony.
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I remember coming home from work (worked on a dairy farm pulling tit) and watching G1 back in 1984 or 85 I still enjoy watching G1 now and agene.
great now i have to go back to the start and read the new pony on earth chapters your evil
and a great story teller
34 Midwinter ~= 27 December 2015
12 After Ice Moon ~= 1 January 2017
I wonder how the Equestrian calendar works in this story. Are these both months, or do the ponies count days from several points on the year that aren't equally spaced? In either case, I'd speculate that Midwinter comes before Ice Moon (or "After Ice Moon"). The days must be fairly similar in length, because Silver would have commented if Earth's days clashed with her sleep cycle too much.
Since there are at least 12 days between 34 Midwinter and 12 After Ice Moon, but only five days between 27 Dec and 1 Jan, the Equestrian year must be shorter than the Earth year - yet not by much. "After Ice Moon" sounds wintery, so the seasons didn't massively desync over the course of one year.
Since there is some calendar drift, though, it's coincidence that the seasons match up right now. Maybe in about 10-20 years, summer and winter will coincide.
Edit:
Okay, so Ice Moon is a single event, not a month, I guess, and the same for Midwinter, presumably.
That must make Cadence quite a young alicorn - especially considering Silver herself is barely old enough to remember the parasprites.
8000126 Search through Admiral Biscuit's blogs. There are several Silver Glow pictures in the posts.
The culture shock will come when SG goes to text her friends on the other side of the portal and realizes how used to the integrated information network of Earth's 21st Century she has gotten.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Could we put in a few cell towers?
Sincerely....
Wait, isn't Aquamarine beside Silver Glow... Oh shit, a changeling!
Cayenne, our first unicorn illegal immigrant.
Time to upgrade to diesel-electric trains.
"It's the exercise, Mom! "
Too bad Silver Glow aren't allowed to bring back her smart phone but whichever company that phone belongs to will be miffed if the ponies reverse engineered the phone before they could export theirs into Equestria.
8000126
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/710117/silver-glows-journal-dramaturge
As in the shadow city that Grogar rules over?
I'm not sure, but I think you keep calling Cayenne Aquamarine here. Silver and Aquamarine were the first two awake, and they showered together as well. Unless Aquamarine went back to sleep and showered again?
native plants
Cayenne and Gusty
Cayenne
Cayenne
what our human friends had gotten us to do?
and that
there'd
she liked?
I thought that Biscuit had talked about Celestia having one-on-one interviews with the returning ponies. Maybe the next chapter?
So you're saying that there are different, far-flung portals on Earth that allows instantaneous travel to a single place in Equestria...
... maybe Equestria should offer a transit service.
Wow! So we have Earth, and the EG verse (which can't be Earth, because Earth humans don't have pastel-colored skin and horse names and CHS.)
A human would probably be massively weirded out when meeting an EG "human" for the first time, and vice versa. Maybe as much as Silver in her first encounter with a horse.
Back to steam locomotives... Not really a problem, I'd guess. In 19th century America, they'd normally stop for water and/or fuel at about 40 mile intervals, and Equestria doesn't seem to be all that large. I wonder if they're using coal, or still burning wood.
"Old No: 90 is almost to the hill. Now, watch what happens when they switch from pine to Osage orange."
A plume of sparks blasted from the smoke stack, and the pitch of the steam whistle jumped, bringing a smile to the old engineer's face. "No matter how many times I see it, that's just plain pretty."
Hah! And we thought this story would end when she got back to Equestria. No, her journal is just going to keep going. FOREVER!
8000204
Well, before someone rang his bell anyway. If it came back, it wouldn't be the first time part of Equestria had popped back from an evil dictator's grasp eh?
¿Is the "12" in 12 days after Ice-Moon in duodecimal or decimal?
8000159
I think it's more like Diamond Rose met Cadance while Diamond was a student. Cadence probably was already an alicorn for some time by then.
8000323
Derp, I misinterpreted that pronoun.
8000289
I imagine he's got to do at least 4,000 more words so the story reaches 1,000,000.
8000289
There's probably just a little bit of loose-end tying up to do before the end (like, perhaps, Silver learning of Conrad's unfortunate demise). I'd imagine that Admiral's trying to work it out so that the final chapter has exactly... *checks current word count, does the math on a calculator* 3,653 words in it.
(Or, if he really wants to troll those people rooting for a million-plus word count, 3,652 words... )
(On a separate note, I was a tad disappointed that the poem Silver had been given wasn't a Conrad original.)
I was expecting more inspections and examinations and quarantines on the Equestrian side.
I guess doing it once Earthside was enough.
What were the first techs the 19th century brought to the 'backward' regions of Earth?
Telegraph?
If it has been years since first contact there should be SOME Earth tech in Equestria.
(Maybe using magic instead of electronics?)
Wait until SG shows her mom the fancy mechanical altimeter Mr. Salvatore gave her.
"Oooo! Looks expensive!"
Then she has to explain to her that the jewels in her mom's earrings were larger than any Earth princess could afford.
Three thoughts:
I'm a bit confused where the transfer center is, in Equestria. Gingerbread and Bubbles are going South, yet Silver and co are going north. Logically that would place the city somewhere central. Originally I assume the transfer center would have been in Canterlot, but if so it seems odd that Gingerbread and Bubbles would be going south seems a bit odd, if Silver and Co are going north. Other than there not being any sea down south (unless you mean south west/east), its even odder that Silver and co are going north and she's getting off first. This implies that the portal is A) south of Canterlot, and B) south of Ponyville, possibly in the badlands.
vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/a/a4/Map_of_Equestria_2015.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151205072352
My second thought is that I'm kind of a bit surprised at the number of ponies suddenly in this program. I always had the impression that the program was relatively small, possibly to the point where Silver Glow, Aqua, Gusty and Cayenne were almost the whole sum of the current program, or at least a large and significant chunk of it. Yet, this chapter seems to be suggesting that the program was much, much larger, and that it was global. (Yet, to go back to a comment months ago, somehow she's treated like a horse when entering Canada). Obviously there's more than just the four ponies scattered among the continental US, but it feels like all along the premise was that there were very few ponies on earth as part of the exchange program, because if there were more, ponies ought to be more common, and Silver's presence less remarkable for people, and I think she probably should have had an expanded circle of pony friends.
Finally, you mentioned Sunset Shimmer and that's really mean, Admiral.
I hope we get to see the one on one Celestia interviews. That I was always hoping for!
That was also the perfect poem to end on. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening always reminds me of my grandfather reading it to me when I was small.
Hey Porter by Johnny Cash (When I was growing up, my Mom was a big Country Western fan. It drove me nuts because I was into Rock & Roll. Ironically, these days a lot of early Rock & Roll is CW (Elvis, for instance))
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=hey+porter+lyrics&&view=detail&mid=892AB30736D059694A5E892AB30736D059694A5E&&FORM=VDRVRV
It seems to me that you missed an opportunity to show that this is in the future:
From what you wrote, the portal opened after the last season and that was a decade ago. If we assume that the show went out on top on its 10th season, then this would be season 20. As part of her grooming to rule, Princess Furry Heart could greet the returning students. That is the sort of minor responsibility one would expect a teenaged princess to do.
8000406
I believe you, but if that was really in the story I'm surprised I don't remember the nerdgasm. That is my favorite kind of world building!
Edit: I've checked and absolutely can't find it, and the technical tone sounds pretty out of character. Maybe you're mixing it up with a different contact story? My first suspicion might have been Sunflower due to the sci-fi tone, but earth electronics actually work fine there.
You have to have at least one more chapter. The one Million word mark is quite impressive and you are so close to breaking it. Congratulations.
Quite liked the story.
8000349
The Equestrian Transfer Student Program has been active in all of Europe, Canada, America, and a few other places. I forget who approved it first, but America was second or third in line to partake, iirc.
I would have to reread more than i'd like to confirm that; the first discovery-of-earth portal was made in America, i think.
One thing i do recall confidently is that America had permitted much fewer ponies per year than any other nation, a few hundred to a thousand at most, to be sent to the equally few locations that were considered culturally safe enough to not risk anti pony unrest.
8000349
They do all fit in one room. I figure a hundred of them, two hundred at the very most. That's really just not that many ponies on a global scale. You could spread them out limit one per country. Even if you limit them to the Anglosphere (which covers plenty of time zones-remember, the sun still hasn't set on the British Empire, and the Anglosphere is more than just the Brits), they'd be very spread out.
As for her treatment upon entering Canada, I don't agree that she was treated like a horse. I admit that I'm not personally familiar with how Canada treats incoming horses right now, but I do strongly suspect that asking the horses questions about the duration and purpose of their visit is not part of the SOP. The ear tags felt like a bit of lingering bureaucracy, where the rules haven't been officially updated to say that Equestrians Are Not Horses but everyone involved is damn well aware that they're people, combined with Mr. Salvatore indulging his inner troll.
No mention of Flurry, I hope nothing's happened to her in the last few decades. If I understand the time line she should be in her late teens now. Maybe she's gotten into dying her coat black and getting various piercings so the rest of the royal family try to keep her out of sight.
Awww! Her Mom's a mom.
Which is a little odd given it seemed from Silver like Pegasus didn't have a big cooking tradition leaving it up to their earth bound neighbours to feed them. I guess Silver-mom will want Silver to eat a load of someone else's cooking.
whose sister
student at Canterlot Academy
I think this is supposed to be 'ought to have had trouble flying', but I'm not sure.
force myself
I am now idly wondering if a million words has been targetted from the beginning.
8000492
While asking the questions is a concession to her intelligence, the fact that the questions were the sorts of things you'd ask someone bringing a horse into Canada is the same as treating her as if she was a horse.
As for 'how many' ponies, it largely depends on how big of a room it is; a gymnasium probably could fit up to 500. More to the point, though, we're told that Silver's university, irl, is supposed to be big on exchange students and programs, at least according to Admiral, yet if the program is so big, it seems odd that only one pony out of all those in the program, would end up at that university.
Very early in the story I mentioned that I kind of thought that the lack of other ponies was a bit of a detriment to the storytelling because Silver is treated as being largely in complete isolation. It seems odd to me that if the program was so large, they wouldn't make an effort to put more than one pony pre university in the same area, if for no other reason than to lessen cultural shock/give them someone they can talk to with a common cultural background/in built support group.
Man, I really wanna get caught up reading, but I had to stop reading this on my breaks... Eyes have repeatedly gotten dangerously close to leaking, the closer it gets to the end of the year...
8000289
Like we mind. Nope, too invested in the characters he'll just have to write another month or twelve worth of journal entries. :)
8000349
I think we could attribute the sudden appearance of the ponies on Silver Glow not paying attention as she left Equestria, she had so much else on her mind. I also think that the program is recent as this is one of the first groups being sent out. My head canon is she was part of the first or second group of students and leasure travel was only for the rich. That would explain why people seeing ponies regularly would be rare. If a sequel story where done I would like to see either a humans going to school in Equestria or an established character like the CMC, Diamond Tiara, or Silver Spoon going to college or Cheerlee teaching for a year over here.
It's all the morning and evening 'sessions' with Aric and Meghan, I swear!
I hope the ride never ends! To equestria, shiny and Silver!
Was hoping Conrad had given Silver the poem High Flight But 'tis not to be. A pity as just about every pilot I've met says, 'Your first solo? Yeah, that's exactly what it's like.'
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/john-magee.html
8001132
For sure she is not the first wave, because before her was... Action Shot? Who was causing a little trouble to Mister Salvatore. A little, yea. ;)
8001778
That's the problem with these long runners. We forget some of the little things like that. So she is probably part of the second group at the minimum. Still I am willing to bet that there haven't been that many pony students. I bet Twilight wishes she was still in school so she could study on Earth, unless she was part of the initial group.
Ouch, super jetlag. That's got to suck.
I guess it meets sense that there'd be multiple portals, I was kind of expecting one.
You mentioned my school. Yay go WWU. This made me ridiculously happy for some reason. Great fic.
It' nice how the epilogue is deconstructing the fic by having Silver being out of her element again when returning to what once was familiar.
I know it is to be expected, but still.