Chapter 23 of 23·7 min read·The next day, from morning into afternoon
A Face in the Street
I went walking the next morning with no particular destination, which was how I described it when I wanted to sound adventurous instead of restless.
Ponyville was easier to take in when I wasn’t being escorted or invited somewhere. I could stop at a shop window without anyone wondering whether I needed a chair, and I could watch the carts negotiate the main street while pretending I was studying traffic patterns for professional reasons. My legs held up. My balance still had opinions, especially where the road dipped, so I kept to the packed earth and gave the curb a healthy amount of respect.
A pony in a white coat came out of a boutique carrying a stack of folded fabric. The top bolt slid sideways. I caught it with my horn before it hit the ground, which was either basic telekinesis or the world’s least impressive superhero entrance.
Her blue eyes fixed on the fabric hovering between us. Then she looked at my horn.
“Nicely done,” she said, easing the stack onto a bench. “Though I ought to warn you that catching silk by magic can leave it smelling faintly of singed nerves.”
I lowered the bolt carefully. “I’ll add that to the list of things my magic hasn’t been trained for.”
She gave me a brief, assessing look, as if deciding whether I was joking or asking for help. “Rarity,” she said, extending a hoof. “And you must be David. Ponyville has been trying very hard not to stare at you.”
“Is it working?” I asked, touching my hoof to hers.
“Not especially.” She glanced back at the shop window, where a mannequin wore a dramatic hat. “But the effort is sweet.”
I knew that voice. I knew the mane, the sharp posture, the way she made a small inconvenience sound like a challenge to civilization. That was the odd part: I knew enough to feel recognition, but not enough to know how she took her tea or what she disliked in a stranger. A drawing had never held out a hoof to me.
“You look as if you’ve remembered something,” Rarity said, adjusting the bolt on the bench.
“I’ve seen you before,” I answered, then immediately regretted how that sounded. “Not here. I mean—back where I came from. You were a character in a show.”
She paused with one hoof on the fabric. “A character.”
“Yeah. I’m not going to pretend that isn’t strange to say to your face.”
“It is strange.” She kept her voice light, but the pause stayed between us. “And I’m not sure I like the idea of being known before I’ve had a chance to introduce myself.”
My ears folded back. “That’s fair. I’m sorry.”
Next
The players have found the mill apprentice, but the water channel may rise again—and the mill owner still has to prove that regret can become useful action.
Rarity studied me for a moment, then picked up the fabric again. “You may begin with the introduction, then. What do you like, what do you do, and are you always this careful when carrying on a conversation?”
I let out a breath I hadn’t noticed I’d held. “I write. I run tabletop games. I’m careful when I’m trying not to be a creep.”
“An admirable ambition.” She nudged the bench with her hip, making room for me to sit. “I design clothes. I can be a little particular about fabric, though I do try to reserve my most unreasonable opinions for my workroom.”
We talked for a few minutes about writing, costumes, and the challenge of making something fit a body that did not match its pattern. She did not ask me to explain how I had arrived, and I did not try to borrow her story from the show. When I stood to leave, she pressed a small cloth packet into my hoof. A strip of soft material, she explained, could protect the base of my horn if I kept using it for awkward lifting.
“I’ll try not to turn this into a whole mysterious origin story,” I told her.
“Do try,” Rarity replied, arranging her fabrics. “Mysterious origins are dreadful for fittings.”
By afternoon I was at Twilight’s table with Spike, Big Mac, Apple Bloom, and Twilight. My trial notes stayed sealed in the envelope beside the bookbag. I didn’t open them. Whatever had happened at Brindlehook, it could wait while a group of fictional ponies worked up the nerve to open a door.
Spike spread the mill map across the table. “The oak door is still wedged open. The iron door hasn’t moved. The mill owner is upstairs, and you’ve heard one knock from behind the iron.”
Apple Bloom leaned over her character sheet. “I want him to come down. He wrote the note. He can explain why he got the doors mixed up.”
Twilight tapped the edge of her map. “He might not know what’s on the other side.”
“Then he can find out with us,” Big Mac said, setting his pencil beside the iron door on the map. “No reason to send somepony in alone.”
Spike looked at me, trying to keep his grin from getting involved. I took the mill owner’s part, but left him upstairs until the players made their choice.
The courier called up the stairwell and asked the owner to come down. For a while, there was only the sound of water moving through the mill channel. Apple Bloom rolled a die and slid it to Spike. He checked his notes, then nodded.
“The owner comes to the top of the stairs,” Spike said. “He hasn’t started down yet.”
Big Mac’s character stepped away from the iron door. “You wrote the warning. We need to know what you know.”
I leaned into the old mill owner’s voice. “I know the bell rang once before, and I heard a knock after it. I thought the iron door was a water gate. I didn’t open it.”
Twilight’s mapmaker looked from the map to the stairs. “You thought?”
I let the owner look down at the note in his hoof. “I was scared. I wrote it fast, and I named the wrong door.”
Apple Bloom’s courier kept her stance square to the stairwell. “Come down, then. We’ll open it together.”
Big Mac drew a line from the stair to the iron door. “I’ll hold the wedge. You can bring the key.”
Spike rolled for the owner’s nerve. He came down. The game’s mill owner was older than I’d pictured him, with flour ground into the seams of his coat and one ear nicked at the tip. His hoof shook when he took the key from his belt. He didn’t hand it over; he kept it, but let the courier stand beside him.
At the table, Apple Bloom watched the mill owner closely. “Does he know who might be in there?”
Spike glanced at the notes. “He looks at the door. Then he says there used to be an apprentice who worked the lower channel. The apprentice went missing a week ago. He told himself the pony had run off.”
The room went quiet. Twilight’s pencil stopped moving.
I looked at the map. “The owner didn’t tell them that before?”
Spike shook his head. “He didn’t think it mattered. Or he didn’t want it to.”
Big Mac moved his character beside the owner. “We open it slow. If there’s water behind it, we don’t let it take the room.”
Twilight’s mapmaker wedged a board against the door’s lower edge. Apple Bloom’s courier stood back with the owner, then asked him to turn the key while Big Mac took the handle. Spike described a stiff lock giving way with a gritty click. The door shifted less than an inch. Cold air breathed through the gap, carrying the smell of wet stone and old grain.
Then came a second knock, close enough to rattle the iron.
Apple Bloom’s courier called out, “We’re here. Knock again if you can hear us.”
Spike tapped the table once with a claw.
Big Mac’s millwright braced the door. Twilight’s mapmaker held the wedge in place. The mill owner turned the key again, and all of them pushed together. The door swung inward on a slow, rusted hinge.
Beyond it lay a narrow maintenance room, not a water gate. A small pony was crouched beside a dry channel, one foreleg wrapped in a torn sleeve. He had been tapping a metal pipe with a broken tool. His face went pale in the lantern light.
“The apprentice says the water wheel jammed,” Spike continued, looking down at his notes. “He got trapped when the lower passage flooded, and he’s been waiting for the owner to come back.”
The mill owner in my voice had no excuse left. “I should’ve come sooner.”
At the table, Apple Bloom set her pencil down. “Then he can help us get the apprentice out.”
Big Mac’s character moved to the channel to check the water level. Twilight’s mapmaker went to the trapped pony, but stopped short and asked before touching his injured foreleg. Spike watched the players work out a rescue together, and I watched the mill owner finally step through the door he’d been afraid to open.
It wasn’t a neat ending. The apprentice needed help, the channel might rise again, and the owner still had to answer for waiting a week. Spike left those problems on the map, ready for another session.
When we packed up, Big Mac handed Spike his pencil. Apple Bloom was already arguing for a safer way to drain the channel. Twilight asked if the apprentice would have a name next time.
I thought of Rarity, of the moment I’d let an old familiarity stand in for knowing her. I’d been carrying a whole cast of characters around in my head. Ponyville kept handing me the ponies.
“Next time,” I told Spike, “we find out whether the mill owner can do anything useful with that regret.”
Spike smiled and rolled a die into his palm. “He’d better learn fast.”