Inkwell

Inkwell snickered. That was certainly one way to describe Pinkie Pie. "I think my sister only really gets over-enthusiastic about three things: her writing, Nightmare Night, and handing out dating advice, whether I want it or not." He gave a little smile and sipped his latte again. "Yeah, I won't be running, either," he said. "Knowing me, I'd get dehydrated and pass out, or maybe get a cramp. Physical exercise isn't really one of my strengths, you know?" He glanced down at his scrawny body. "I'll just be in the stands, drawing the race as it happens. I know I won't be able to see the whole track from there, but maybe one of the unicorn spectators will be able to hook up a scrying portal and let me use it." When Rarity mentioned a spa, Inkwell's ears perked and he looked right at Rarity. "They have a spa here?" he asked. "That's great! I haven't gotten myself treated since I left Fillydelphia!" He couldn't keep a smile off his face. "I'd love to go with you, Miss Rarity!" he said. "Um, just as soon as we finish up here." Resisting the temptation to just gulp down the rest of his coffee, both because it would be rude and because it was still too hot to drink, Inkwell instead looked at the rest of his tart and finished the rest of it in a few slow bites.

Rose's advice went in one of Dark Core's ears and out the other. The little twerp was sticking to his guns, whether Rose liked it or not. But she supposed it didn't really matter in the end. "Suit yourself, squirt," she said. "That's just what I'd do." Nopony around had gotten her joke, either. Perhaps it was too subtle for them, or maybe they all had other things on their minds, too. That was probably the case with Cat, what with this whole romance she'd found herself wrapped up in all of a sudden. She wondered when Cat would break the news to Inkwell. Hopefully it would be today or tomorrow. It was such a shame this had to happen, though. Inkwell was so happy and lovestruck after the gala. He was just starting to experience the magic of love. But then, who said it had to end here? "Say, Cat," Rose asked. "I don't suppose you know about any other Ponyville mares Inkwell might warm up to?" While she waited for an answer, she turned to Malediction. "I don't suppose it's too much to ask for you to lighten up a bit?" she asked. "I mean, there's more to life than fighting, you know."

Aqua graciously declined Inkwell's offer to help her. "Oh, okay," he said. "If you say so. You don't look heavy at all." He looked at the edge of the lake with the rest of them as they all started to talk about how the construction of Aqua's house would go. "Yeah, I'd love to see a house like that, actually," he said when the others brought up a house that would exist partially underwater. "But I'm not sure how you'd actually build one. I don't really know anything about engineering. Maybe we can check the library. Twilight Sparkle ought to have a book on the subject." The surface of the water drew his attention. He looked into it, spotting his reflection, and couldn't help but check himself out just a little bit. Then his glasses slipped off and landed with a splash. "Whoops!" He levitated them back out and set them aside, along with his saddlebags. "I think I'm going to take a dip," he said, walking into the lake. The water rose up to his knees, making him realize that it was a little on the chilly side. "Um, a-anypony want to join me?"

Heh. It's been a while since I really visited this topic, hasn't it? Oh well. Here are the next chapters: https://docs.google....4/edit?hl=en_US https://docs.google....Q/edit?hl=en_US https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BKRNgCowiRtHS8Mmab1oD0tu0bweHyPlSsdt5C0qzXk/edit?hl=en_US I'd be grateful for any comments in this thread, especially if it has advice on how to make this better.

Rose heard Cat pour her heart out to Rose, and she couldn't help but smile. She didn't care what Mal said about Cat being soft, it still did Rose's heart good to see Cat find somepony for her. She'd have to make sure that everything turned out all right, that Cat didn't make the same mistakes Rose did. "I understand," Rose said, "and I think Inky'll be just fine with this. From what I hear, he hasn't gotten his hopes up that much. You just make sure that you let him down gentle as soon as you can, alright? The worst thing you can do is lead him on." Her smile exposed a bit too much teeth, and she raised her hoof a bit too close to Cat's face, giving the little pegasus a good look at the hard edge on the bottom. "Remember that." Then she heard Dark blather on about whatever stupid thing he was talking about, acting like a villain straight out of a comic book. "What self-respecting villain would blather about his plans and intentions to ponies who had the means and motivation to stop him?" she retorted, giving Rainbow Dash a glance as she talked. "You're not very good at villainy, are you? Now, if I was a villain with plans to grab control, I'd bide my time and put on a facade of trustworthiness, disguising my affinity for dark magic and nightmarish beasts from beyond the fabric of space and time as a harmless fiction-related hobby, living a double life as a novelist and dispenser of romantic advice with unsuspecting friends and family to cover up for the rituals I practice in secret. Then one day, I'll be powerful enough to make an army to take Canterlot by surprise. They'll never see it coming." Rose smiled wide at Dark and Cat, then giggled. "But that's a big if." She leaned in to whisper to Cat. "Seriously though, I'm going to trust you enough to believe that you see something in this goober that I don't."

I've been writing out a fic that's been in my head for quite a while now, as National Novel Writing Month has given me the perfect excuse for it. As of today, I've finished the first chapter! You can read it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KRIZrSDTVuqjmef8_tcAG1YpJWUnIlDt_fNyy-2ytZ0/edit?hl=en_US Let me know what you like about it and what could use improvement. I won't be going back and editing old chapters until I reach fifty thousand words, but once that's done I'm perfectly willing to revise things.

Rose sighed. So that was it, then. Cat made her choice, kissed this Dark Core colt without provocation. It was a pretty good kiss too, for one so short and without tongue. When Cat looked around, Rose caught her eyes and started walking up to her. "Cat, you know what you have to do, ri-" "YOU!" She turned to watch Malediction interject herself into the scene apropos of nothing. As if the emergent love triangle centered around Cat wasn't enough, it appeared that Dark had one of his own, too. This one looked to be twice his age, no less! She proceeded to act like a complete tramp, calling Cat a thing and throwing wild accusations. "Murder the princess?" Rose repeated, her voice dripping with incredulity. She hadn't been exposed to such stupidity since she saw Sweet Refrain's analysis of the Chains of Light and Shadow series. She didn't care how dangerous Mal or Dark were, they had a better chance of eating Manehattan than they had of killing Princess Celestia! But the damage had been done, and public opinion swiftly turned against Malediction, rather than her intended target. "You're actually taking her seriously?" she asked Dash. "She's just being a spiteful nag." Not even Dark Core was happy with Mal's stunt. Rose barely knew anything about him, but she was certain that he was too good for Mal. "And for YOUR information, I've not ONCE planned regicide. Simply usurping someday is all. Nothing wrong with that." Rose facehoofed. Now she was slightly less than certain.

Rose paused, wondering how to respond to Survey's admission. She finally settled on "Seriously?" Weren't items of historical like that protected by museum security? How'd Survey get past those, and where'd he work up the nerve to do it? From what Rose saw of him, he was a stuttering, timid wallflower who wasn't suited to taking risks. And this was a pretty big risk to take, all for the sake of getting a good costume! Her imagination had already started conjuring up exciting explanations for how this could have come to pass when it occurred to her to say something more to him. "Oh. Well. Best of luck in getting those back in one piece. You may want to think about doing that pretty soon, before something happens and you end up getting fired or arrested or whatever. Don't worry, I won't let anypony know." She looked around and remembered that the two of them weren't alone. "Um, except these folks here. Whoops." She looked away from Survey and saw Haywire reveal the devil costume underneath her ghost sheet. "Whoa, that's not a bad idea there!" she said to her. "Of course, I think I'd prefer to make one really good costume instead of two in one, but that's just me. I'm sure you'll be turning heads in no time!" Her congratulatory look swiftly turned uncomfortable, and she started wincing and rubbing her hind legs together. "Ugh... too much pie... not good. Hey, you girls have fun, alright? I'm just gonna... settle this real quick." She turned and galloped off, beginning a frantic search for the festival facilities.

"What happened?" Rose asked Haywire, curious about the filly's talk of being big. "Did I miss something?" Rose figured that the odds of her missing something were rather high, since she decided to take a quick break after visiting the statue of Nightmare Moon. She'd only meant to sit down and have a drink for about five minutes, but somehow she ended up nodding off for a whole hour! Thankfully nopony took advantage of her vulnerable state like she remembered them doing last year, so she was spared the embarrassment of having to clean off marker from her face or something like that. All she was left with was the determination to make up for lost time, so she quickly headed for the only attraction she hadn't yet visited, the house of mirrors. It was probably her favorite of them all by far. Even the time-honored technique of following the left wall barely helped her navigate this maze, since she had a hard time telling where the walls were to begin with. But soon she ran into little Haywire again. "Besides, I thought you didn't like being a squirt, squirt!" Rose smiled and stuck her tongue out at her.

Rose thought about eating the butterscotch the Princess gave her, but she thought better of it. Better to savor it later, along with the rest of her haul. The prospect of free candy always outweighed the stigma attached to trick or treating at her age, and besides, she loved spooking the younger foals who roamed the streets with her. But there didn't seem to be any younger foals here, or anypony at all. The statue of the mythical Nightmare Moon stood alone in the clearing, all by itself. Rose wandered up to it and stared into its stone eyes. "Just you and me, huh?" she asked, lying down underneath it. The statue didn't move, of course, nor did its eyes seem to be looking in Rose's direction. How boring. "I'll get you some candy later, I promise. I'm a little short right now."

Rose had thanked Aloe for the napkin and was wiping herself off when the Princess arrived. She blinked in amazement, then bowed like the rest of the ponies in the crowd. She didn't often think of Celestia - the princess's presence was a bad fit for the murky world of Rose's imagination - but much like the rest of the nation, she held Celestia in high regard when she did think of her. So why would the most important pony in the realm stop by merely to reward some strangers with a piece of candy? Was it special candy? Rose only saw an ordinary piece of butterscotch before her. Oh well. She put it in her bag and shook her coat free of any last bits of cake. "Well, that was fun. I think I'm gonna go visit the Nightmare Moon monument for a bit. You guys have fun, okay?" She trotted out of the house before anypony could reply.

Rose didn't know how the hairs on her werewolf costume were standing on end, but they were! After she got a nasty shock from Nightmare Moon, she galloped out of the forest and back to the safety of civilization as fast as she could. She could have sworn that she was being chased all the way through, the evil mare hot on her hooves, but then again, she did have an overactive imagination. Regardless, once she finally stumbled to a stop, she felt her heart race and knew that she had probably hit the highlight of the evening right there. Nothing beat a really good scare on Nightmare Night, after all. It wasn't until a little later that she realized that she ran so hard it bumped some toffee out of her bag. The prospect of parting with toffee was a lot less ideal than that of getting scared, but she'd likely never find it again in the darkness of the Everfree. No, the right thing to do was visit the biggest sugar fiend around, the one and only Pinkie Pie, and hope she had candy to spare. But such a task proved more complicated than Rose thought. While the party pony herself was nowhere in sight, she'd left behind a haunted house just full of creepy imagery and hidden scares waiting to pop out at her. She tread carefully through the house, until she caught sight of her friend for the evening once again. "Hey, Hayw-!" She took a step forward and triggered a trap, causing part of the floor to part and reveal a cake with an evil face frosted on it. In a split-second, a powerful spring propelled the cake directly into Rose's face. She stood there for a few seconds, trying to get a grip on what just happened, before she opened her mouth and started licking the cake off. "Mmm. Kind of a waste, isn't it?"

"Heh. I suppose I could say the same," Rose responded. "Oops. Ah well, I was tired of hiding anyway." The faux-werewolf stepped out of the shadows and dispelled the dimming spell she'd kept on her since she entered the forest. It seemed like the spookiest place she could go into that night, and besides, that Haywire filly she met earlier went in there earlier with the sort of confidence that only the very young could muster. Rose remembered when she was like that, and some of the scrapes she'd gotten into as a result. They weren't anything serious, but still, Rose felt like maybe she should probably make sure Haywire made it through the forest alright. "Heya, squirt. Having a spooooky Nightmare Night?" she asked, waving her false front paws in front of her face like a corny campfire storyteller. Then her eyes turned over to the other filly next to her and jumped a bit. "Gah!" This one was wreathed in an unearthly white flame, but soon Rose could tell that it was a "costume", if it could be called that. Spirit Fire was definitely "cheating" by Rose's definition, using magic like that. "Nice spell. I could use one of those," she commented. "How's your Nightmare Night going?"

Rose felt her furry chest swell with pride. At least two of the ponies there, the ones dressed like a mummy and a ghost, got just the shock she wanted out of them. In fact, it seemed like the one in the mummy costume hadn't recovered from the scare, stuttering like a broken record when he responded to her. "Real mummy wrappings?" she asked, taken aback by the admission. "You're pulling my tail, right? How... where could you possibly get those? I'd think those would be pretty well priceless, wouldn't you?" A confrontational tone crept into her voice. How was she supposed to compete with real mummy wrappings, short of going out and skinning an actual wolf, or perhaps looking up a transformation spell of some kind? She guessed that what this colt was doing wasn't technically cheating, since there were no real rules outside of Rose's head, but it still annoyed her. She almost didn't notice the newcomer, dressed as a librarian, until she spoke in a hilarious surfer accent. She'd never heard a filly talk like that before, and she had to suppress a laugh. Was it an affectation, a part of her costume? It couldn't be, could it? Not unless this girl had a weird image of librarians. "Thanks, you're costume's pretty good too," Rose told her, unable to keep a huge grin off her face.

Malediction's casual recounting of encounters with so-called monsters made Rose take another look at her body. It certainly did have its share of scars, scars that kind of made Rose wince due to their sheer numbers. She could barely find an unblemished patch of blue coat thanks to all of the cuts and burns that Mal suffered in the past. "So that makes you a monster hunter, then?" she asked, looking back at Mal's empty eye socket. "Never really met one before. I bet you must have a lot of interesting stories..." But then Rose's mood was broken by the loud and clumsy declaration of love from behind her. It made her giggle, which she realized this battle-tested unicorn might take the wrong way. "Sorry, that was him, not you," she said, still smiling. "I guess I have a soft spot for young love." But then she remembered something that made her smile fade. It was her meetup with Cat and Inkwell at the Grand Galloping Gala. Though she didn't stick around to see how the two of them made out, she could tell that there was something between them. After years of relationship turbulence, she'd gotten a bit of a seventh sense regarding attractions like that. But now it looked like this other colt, Dark Core, was going to complicate things. She turned an eye toward him and Cat to see how things would play out. While her first guess (and a secret little hope) told her that Cat would let him down gently, she admitted to herself that she barely knew Cat, and the possibility existed that the little pegasus could well have changed her mind. It was Cat's move now. What was it going to be?

Magi's reaction to Rose's speech confused Rose at first, until she remembered that she somehow managed to include four puns in a row. They weren't even that great, and yet all of them completely bowled Magi over, making her literally roll on the ground. Rose noticed another unicorn staring at them awkwardly, and she just gave him an awkward shrug and smile. The smile remained when Magi got up and introduced herself like nothing happened. "Nice to meet you, Magi," Rose replied. "I do my best to entertain, glad you liked my jokes." For a moment she thought maybe she could work on her comedy a bit and really impress ponies with it. "Well, I guess since we're not strangers anymore, I don't suppose you'd mind it if I walked you home?" Rose wasn't mean enough to say it out loud, but she was kind of worried that Magi would fall down a well or get her head stuck in a pipe if she were left to her own devices.

When Aqua started slipping, Inkwell gaped, then made himself rush over to help her. He stopped when Tempest did it for him, wrapping her forelegs around Aqua's tail to give her some support. "Lemme know if you start to slip," he said. "I can, you know, levitate you a bit if you want." He just shrugged and moved on with the rest of them, looking back at Granola when she almost slipped.

Inkwell managed to catch Rarity muttering about her professors, which made him chuckle. "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that you sounded a bit like my sister for a second there," he explained. "She had quite a few colorful words to say about this one creative writing teacher. I... think I'll spare you the details." He took another sip of his latte. "Suffice to say she was furious." He waited for Rarity to finish sipping, wondering where to bring the conversation next, when she solved that problem for him. "Oh, I plan on staying here for at least a year," he answered, "but beyond that I can't say. I've lived in a few cities since I got my cutie mark and left Trottingham, Sooner or later I always end up with the wanderlust and move on to the next town." He sighed and looked down at the tart on his plate. "I have a lot of pen pals now. Including my sister. She says she's gonna come and visit for one of those festivals you mentioned. I think it was the Running of the Leaves, right? Yeah, that was it." Another smile. "She's a very lively mare. I'm sure she'll get along great with Pinkie Pie."

As Apple Bloom galloped to the fake cemetary, eager to scare an unsuspecting pony with her costume, she never suspected that somepony else might have the same idea. At the moment, a much older pony waited behind a mausoleum in the middle of the cemetary. She grinned at the sound of footsteps, showing artificially pointed teeth. To the untrained eye, she didn't look much like a pony at all, but like a werewolf. Her costume was so carefully assembled that she'd gotten odd, rather frightened looks from some of the other ponies. Perhaps they actually suspected that a real werewolf was among them? But that impression was dispelled when Rose Madder talked to the other ponies in a perfectly normal voice. Werewolves weren't known for talking outside of growls and snarls. Perhaps she could have done a feral sort of accent, but that would have been murder on her throat, and besides, she didn't want to be in character all the time. There was a time and place for scaring ponies, and Rose decided a few minutes ago that it was here and now. When the footsteps got close enough, Rose took a deep breath and howled like a wolf. She'd been practicing her howl all week, gleefully anticipating the time when she'd be able to use it in public and chill some poor pony's blood with it. Even she was impressed with how deep and lifelike she sounded, and she felt her hair stand on end (despite the false wolf pelt attached to it with spirit gum). Once she finished, she popped out of hiding to see who she scared: a pair of little fillies and a skinny stallion. "Not bad, huh?" she asked. "Your costume's not bad either, guy. How'd you get the wrappings like that? They look really real!"

Minutes later, Rose growled and grumled to herself as she left the entrance to the maze. Seems she jumped the gun a little, trying to get into the maze before the right time came along. Heaven forbid that she surprise anypony else who went into the maze! It left her with the question of what she was going to do until then. Maybe the haunted house? Or eating more food? So many possibilities! As she wandered away from the maze, distracted from that whole spooky atmosphere thing, she came awfully close to the hiding spot of a certain other unicorn...

The very first guest that Grim Moire was a fierce-looking werewolf, padding silently along the festival grounds. At first glance, there wouldn't be much evidence that this wasn't a costume. In fact, the sharp-looking unicorn horn coming out of her forehead was the only indication that this wasn't a real wolf at all. But trained eyes could spot the flaws in this costume if they knew where to look. The shaggy, furry pelt on the beast didn't go all the way down to the skin, but was grafted on with a special adhesive, and in places it didn't run entirely in the right way. The fangs sticking out of her mouth looked a lot more like the implants they were when she smiled widely, and the pads of her lupine feet didn't have individually moving toes. It was a costume, but it was a damn convincing one. Rose Madder made sure it was convincing. She loved the occult and the horrific and the creepy more than anything in the world, and this was the time of year when lots of other ponies would join her in celebrating it. Some of these costumes were absolutely amazing, and now Rose had the budget to get an amazing costume herself. So she padded through the festival, pleased at the stares she got for her work. They'd better notice her; she shaved off her mane to make this costume work! Then she approached the entrance to the corn maze. There were so many blind corners where she could get jumped by horrors of the night, or where she could jump other thrill-seekers. She crept into the maze as slowly as she dared, looking around and drinking in the atmosphere of the night.

"The Usual?" Rose asked. "So fights to the death are just an everyday thing for you, is that it?" Just who was this mare? Rose found herself in awe of Malediction, a character she wasn't expecting to actually meet around Ponyville. The battered mare stuck out like a sore thumb around the kind and friendly town of Ponyville, and judging by the harsh, completely unprovoked words she said to Rainbow Dash, fitting in was the last thing she wanted to do. The altercation between the two mares made Rose back away a bit. She felt concern for Mal and Dash; she kind of liked both of them based on what little experience she had with them. Mal was an unpleasant pony, sure, but an interesting character nonetheless. Rose could already catch herself filing away aspects of the disfigured unicorn for future reference in her writing. Dash reminded Rose so much of herself it was kind of scary; it was like the world had made the same soul twice, but with different interests. It'd be hard for Rose to watch either of them hurting each other, moreso than for most real-life ponies fighting. "Yeah, no need to kill each other," she said, agreeing with the berry-picking pony. Rose didn't even notice her until she spoke up. "Probably better if you two stayed apart, really." It was a feeble attempt to stop them from coming to blows and she knew it. The awkwardness of the situation was starting to get the better of her. Fortunately, she happened to hear a whisper from the young colt she passed earlier. She turned to him and suddenly remembered where she remembered him from. Inkwell had mentioned a weird wannabe villain he'd met before, somepony who just wasn't meant to be a bad guy, not like Malediction. And now he wanted to talk to Cat in private, huh? Well, she could help with that; Cat seemed to want privacy, too. She called out to her and pointed a hoof in his direction. "Hey Cat! I think this guy wants a word with you alone! Wanna indulge him?"

Rose let out a relieved sigh, walking away from the busy street to a smaller side street seconds away. She felt exposed and vulnerable after the confrontation, and wanted to leave before the authorities showed up to question her about her friend's illegal firestarting. The thought made her chuckle; the orange unicorn couldn't get them to mobilize that fast, could she? Probably not, but Rose didn't doubt that she'd made a blood enemy for life, whoever she was. All she could do was weather the storm and hope for the best. The incident wasn't really worth ruining a career over, and besides, the orange mare didn't know who she was, either. She didn't get her name, and Rose used a pen name anyway. Not many ponies knew about that. Her new friend asked her a question as she walked down the street, bringing Rose back to the real world. She turned to look at the black mare and smiled back at her. This one didn't seem worried at all. She didn't have a care in the world, actually. It didn't seem to sink in that there were ponies who would ruin her life for the slightest of reasons or anything else that could threaten her in the long term. Poor girl. "I'm Rose Madder," she said. "You just seemed like an interesting pony to talk to and, well, I couldn't stand to see that awful mare having her way with you." She scowled and spit on the street. "I don't know if she was bluffing about those strings she could pull, but you really ought to be more careful with ponies like her. You had her all fired up and she was about to roast you bad. I know you had a burning desire to punish her - Celestia knows I did, too - but you'd just be fanning the flames in her case. Show a little self-preservation next time, kay?" She tapped Magi on the shoulder and gave her another grin. Something about this filly made Rose want to smile all the time. Maybe it was her infectious good cheer. "What about you? What's your name?"

Five days after she arrived in Ponyville for the Running of the Leaves, Rose was not-so-seriously considering just staying in Ponyville a while longer, just living at her brother's apartment and annoying him to death. It wasn't because of the town's atmosphere, though it was charming in its own way. It wasn't because of the cool ponies she'd met here, since she could still write them and there were more awesome ponies back home. And it certainly wasn't because of her proximity to Inkwell, which was starting to irritate the two of them and make Inky eye his calender when he thought she wasn't watching. No, it was because of the delicious apple pies that came out of Sweet Apple Acres. After the Running of the Leaves after-party, Rose had stopped by the ranch to buy a pie from Applejack. Then she came back for another one the next day, then two more after that. By this time Rose had spent so much money on those apple pies (and a bit more on some other sort of treat from the Acres or Sugarcube Corner that inevitably proved less satisfying) that even money-conscious Applejack was starting to look scared at the sight of Rose approaching her farm. Honestly, the gal acted like she'd never had a fan of her cooking before! Of course, she wasn't just eating pie all day. She'd started work on a new story idea, experimenting with a new concept or two. At the moment she wandered around the outskirts of town, wondering if she should focus entirely on one idea or make a sort of anthology out of all of them. But did she have enough ideas to make a decent anthology? If so, should she come up with a frame narrative for them all or just make a collection of unrelated short stories? Was it a good idea to link any of this to her published novel? So many decisions! As she walked, she noticed parts of her rubbing together where they didn't before. She stopped and peered underneath herself. My, but it looked bigger there than before. Softer, too. That settled it. She had to leave Ponyville soon before those pies became the death of her. It would probably help if she started running, too. Right after the Running of the Leaves she felt sore all over, but she'd gotten plenty of time to recover. Before she could think about resuming or even stepping up her usual Canterlot jogging routine, her train of thought was derailed by the sound of a very familiar voice. She knew it to be that little artist "friend" of Inky's, the one she saw in the Running for a few minutes or so. Poor little girl didn't do quite so well in it, not that Rose was surprised. One look at her short little legs told Rose that Cat would have an uphill battle in a race. Now she sounded like she'd gotten into a fight, or more accurately reenacting a fight in a sort of melodramatic way. Rose had to see this! She bounded towards it, through the thickening trees in her way, until she found a clearing with quite a few other ponies in it. There was Cat and Rainbow Dash and an intense-looking mare with an empty eye socket! Rose did a double-take at it, slowly approaching the one-eyed mare from the edge of the clearing. On her way, she passed a young colt that she would have recognized from somewhere if she had her mind free. "Wow," she said, staring at the empty socket like a little filly who was shown a glowing magical artifact for the first time. "There must be some story behind that." Then she remembered that it could potentially be rude to stare or single somepony out because of their disability. Whoops. She broke eye contact and studied a dandelion on the ground. "Um, you know, if you don't mind telling it..." She craned her head down and munched on the dandelion. The better to get used to non-pie foods again.

I'm sorry about the whole lynching thing. I wasn't meaning to use the word to imply anything racially motivated, but now I realize there's really no reason to use that word, is there? I'm gonna change it right now. As for a long-term plan, no, Boxer doesn't have one. He's lived all of his life in Beakbreak City, not really knowing anything about the outside world. Now he's on very unfamiliar ground, and it's really hard to think of long-term plans under those sorts of circumstances.