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Organised by
RogerDodger
Word limit
2000–8000
A Mare Far Away
“I’m telling you Snips, frogs are the way to a filly’s heart.”
“Snails, try to remember that we’ve already tried frogs. Twice. It didn’t work either time!” Frustrated, he skipped a stone across the pond.
“Well, you know they say that the third time‘s the trick, right?” Snails skipped his own stone.
“What? No, we are not doing frogs again.”
“Ooh, how about we get twice as many this time?”
“Argh! You said that the last time you convinced me to try frogs again! No, this time it’s chocolates or flowers or both or something we haven’t tried twice already that we shouldn’t have tried once!”
“Why are you so hung up on mean ol’ Diamond Tiara anyway? Didn’t she tell you last time not to come near her again?”
“Because she’s beautiful…” Snips trailed off as he spied Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo trudging along the far side of the pond. “Wait, I got an idea!” He motioned for Snails to follow him as he tried to quietly catch up with the three young fillies.
The two colts crept into a thicket right behind where Scootaloo had flopped onto the grass with her two friends facing her.
“O-kay, Cutie Mark Crusaders! It’s time we came up with a new plan!” she announced.
“No kissing this time!” Sweetie Belle announced, glaring at Scootaloo, who blushed. “I’m not doing that again!”
“And no arsoning, either!” Scootaloo glared at Apple Bloom, who was also blushing lightly.
“Oh yeah? Well then no… um… uh… well, it’s Sweetie Belle’s turn anyway”. Apple Bloom said.
Behind the thicket, Snips was taking notes. He was just putting a big x-mark through “arsoning” when Snails whispered: “Snips… what’re we doing here?”
“Taking notes, duh!” he whispered back.
“Notes on what?” Snails asked, as he leaned forward to watch a particularly interesting slug make its way along a branch.
“These three are always planning something, they must be pretty good at it by now, right?”
Snails thought there was something wrong with this line of reasoning, but couldn’t quite put his hoof on what it was. He was about to ask Snips about it when Snips put his hoof over Snail’s mouth with an emphatic “Shhh!” Snails just nodded and turned his head to watch the birds flitting through the branches over their heads.
He was just about to nod off when something caught his eye. “Snips, come look at this cool slug!” he whispered loudly.
“Shh! I’m trying to listen” replied Snips.
“No, seriously, this is really cool! We aren’t supposed to have Coloniconcha Prima here, it’s too cold for them, and they’re hard to find in their normal environment. I’ll need to put this guy in my collection, maybe even write to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Phillydelphia….” Snails trailed off as he realised Snips wasn’t listening to him. His horn lit up dimly as he plucked the rare semislug off of a branch and dropped it into a spare sample vial. He set the vial down in front of his face and watched the tiny creature explore its new home. Fairly soon though, the warm afternoon got the best of him and his eyes drooped, until he dozed off thinking about getting published in the Equestrian Malacological Bulletin.
A little while later, Snails woke up to Snips shaking him and motioning him to be quiet as they snuck away from the thicket. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked after they were well around the pond and on their way back to Ponyville again.
“Boy did I! I was totally right, those three are great planners!” Snips replied. “Getting Diamond Tiara to be my special somepony is going to be a piece of cake!”
“But uh… Hearts and Hooves day is months away, why are you worried about that now?”
“Augh, Snails, you don’t have to wait all the way until then to have a special somepony! You can do it any time of year!”
“Right, but you still haven’t explained why you’re worried about it now.”
“Someday you’ll understand, Snails, what love is all about.”
Snails rolled his eyes and examined his sample vial again. He was definitely more interested in his find than in something silly like love. Unless maybe it was Trixie. He could see himself touring Equestria with Trixie, her performing magic while he collected—
Wham! Snails’ train of thought derailed as he tripped over Snips, who had stopped walking without any warning, and stumbled face-first into the dirt.
“Ow, Snips! What’d you do that for?”
“Shh!” Snips replied. “There she is….” He trailed off, his gaze following two fillies walking by on the other side of the street.
Snails looked up, and say Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon making their way to Sugarcube Corner and disappearing inside. He shook his head as he stood up and dusted himself off. He knew most people thought he was a little slow, but really he was usually just distracted thinking about various Mollusca and getting dragged along with whatever Snips’ latest adventure is. Snips’ obsession with Diamond Tiara, however, baffled Snails to no end, and he really wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Come on!” Snips yelled. “We can catch up. Maybe you can double-date Silver Spoon with me and Diamond Tiara!”
Snails was already in motion to follow Snips before he processed that statement, and he’d only gotten as far as “Wait, what?” in his objection before Snips had drug them both into Sugarcube Corner and was trying to figure out a way to weasel his way into the conversation the two snobby fillies were having over what sort of ice creams to order.
“Snips! I thought you were trying to come up with a plan!” he whispered loudly at his friend.
Snips paused, hoof raised, just on the verge of tapping on Diamond Tiara’s shoulder, and was still in that pose when Silver Spoon turned around and noticed him.
“Ugh, look out Diamond Tiara. You’re totally about to get hoofprints in your mane from your like, number one cuh-ree-ee-per.”
“Huh?” The lavender filly spun around and the pair of colts. “Ew! I told you to leave me alone you weirdo!” She and Silver Spoon took their milkshakes and left the store in a hurry, while Snails just shook his head at his friend.
“Come on, Snips,” Snails said. “Let’s just have some ice cream since we’re here, and worry about that… problem later.”
The two of them were still sitting in Sugarcube Corner when Spike came in to talk to Pinkie Pie. After talking to her for a few minutes, he came over to them. Snips was dejectedly playing with his ice cream while he moped. Snails was turning his sample vial around and around again.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Hey Spike, sure, why not?” Snails returned.
“Pinkie Pie told me you were having a spot of trouble with Diamond Tiara and said I might be able to help. What sort of trouble are you having?”
“Spike,” Snips asked. “What kind of pony is Rarity?”
“Huh? I’d have thought you’d ask me about Diamond Tiara.”
“Well, sure, it’s just that I understand her, you know? I mean, I pay attention, she’s beautiful. She’s funny. I just can’t figure out how to get her to like me.”
“You’re wrong. You only felt like you understood. That’s why ponies try to understand each other, after all. That’s why life is interesting.”
“Does that fit your relationship with Rarity, too?”
“Snips… do you realise that the character we use to write ‘she’ means ‘a mare far away’. It means that there is a river, deeper and wider than any ocean, between stallions and mares. For us, mares exist on that distant shore.”
“Wait, that’s it!” Snips exclaimed.
“What is?” Snails asked.
“Come on Snails, we need a boat!” Snips ran out of Sugarcube Corner with a huge grin on his face, Snails trailing after him in confusion.
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand ponies…” Spike said to himself.
“That was strangely eloquent of you, Spike,” Pinkie Pie said as she walked over to clear the table.
“Ah heh heh…” he scratched the back of his head nervously. “I read it in a book Twilight gave me this morning. It seemed to fit.”
“Well good job! You certainly managed to cheer them up in a hurry!” She gave him a big grin and hopped away with the dishes.
“Seriously, I think you’re going about this all the wrong way, Snips.”
“Hush Snails! If you ever thought seriously about anything except slimy things you’d understand why this is so important!”
“Okay, but I really don’t see how a boat is supposed to help you win over Diamond Tiara.”
“You heard Spike! She’s on a distant shore, that’s why nothing I’ve tried has reached her! So obviously I have to get there somehow, and how else do you cross over a river?”
“With a bridge?”
“Augh, no, before there were bridges! You have to use a boat! Now come on! I think Cranky has a raft!” Snips led the two of them out towards the grumpy donkey’s house.
“What is it, Randolph?” Diamond Tiara asked, looking up from her book.
“A young master Snails to see you, mistress. I believe he is one of your classmates.”
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “Of course he’s one of my classmates, you old fool. Tell him to go away, we don’t need ponies like that around here.”
“Oh, I’ve already said as much, mistress, but he refuses to leave until you come talk to him.”
“Randolph,” the lavender filly sighed. “What would daddy say if he knew you weren’t turning away the rabble properly?”
“Based on his previous behaviour, young mistress, I believe he would say ‘go outside and play with your friends’.”
Diamond Tiara slammed her book down on the table next to her and stalked towards the front door, grumbling about the inadequacies of butlers everywhere.
“What do you want, peasant?” she said to Snails.
“Oh, it’s not what I want, it’s what Snips wants,” he replied.
“Ugh, I know that, you fool, but what is it?”
“Oh! He wants to know if you would come down to the pond and talk to him.”
“Why would I want to do that? I have like, so many more interesting things I could be doing, like watching the grass grow or staring at the wall.”
“Well, maybe, but he wants to apologise, you see.”
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes and turned to go back inside, only to find that Randolph was blocking the way.
“The governor has instructed me to tell the young mistress that she may not come back inside until she has gone to play with her friends.”
“What!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “That’s impossible! Daddy would never say that!”
“I’m afraid Mr Rich has commanded me to not let you back into the house until you see what the young master Snips wants from you.” The old stallion grinned. “Muttered something about the amusements of young love, he did. Good afternoon, mistress.” At that he shut the door and locked it, so that she could not get back inside.
“Augh! This is the worst.” She stamped her foot. “Well, let’s go then. Take me to your stupid friend so I can laugh at him and come home.”
Snails didn’t say anything, but turned and led her off towards the pond.
When they arrived, Snips was sitting next to a covered basket on a dilapidated raft, which he’d somehow managed to cover in trampled flower petals. It looked none too stable, and the excited waving he started as soon as he saw them seemed to threaten to capsize the whole thing.
“Come on, come on!” he was yelling, but Diamond Tiara stopped a few lengths short of the muddy shoreline.
“Please tell me you don’t want me to get on that thing with you,” she said to Snips.
“Of course! It’s perfectly safe!”
She looked at Snails, but he just shrugged and motioned towards the raft. She sighed loudly and tried to tip-toe through the mud onto the raft. She almost yelped when a buck from Snails sent them out onto the water, but Snips seemed to have practiced poling the raft well enough that they were only going in slow circles as they moved.
They were almost out of earshot from the shore before Snips started trying to talk to her, but Snails wasn’t paying attention anyway. He was still more interested in his vial than anything to do with Diamond Tiara. He’d helped his friend assemble the modest picnic lunch in the basket and gone to get the lavender snob, so he figured he’d earned himself a little nap. Whatever those wild gesticulations the two were making out there were supposed to mean, it certainly didn’t have anything to do with him.
Snails was awakened by a spray of water hitting him in the face. He looked up to see an angry lavender filly staring coldly at him.
“Your raft collapsed. I’m not staying to help fix it. You might want to go help your friend before he has to explain how he sank it to whoever you two idiots borrowed it from.” She shook herself off again, hitting Snails with another spray of water. “And your friend is pathetic.”
Snails turned his head to look at the pond, where he saw Snips, struggling to drag the raft onto the shore. Had he moved as fast as other ponies, he would have missed Diamond Tiara’s whispered words, obviously not meant for him to hear: “He’s sweet, too, but pathetic.”
Snails made his was down to the raft and grabbed a corner of it to help his friend.
“What are you grinning about? Everything must be ruined now!” Snips asked him.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Snips.” Snails surveyed the damage. “Looks like the centre support was rotted out, maybe we can fix it if we can find a good log to replace it.” He put a hoof over Snips’ shoulder and led him into the woods to search.
“Say Snips,” he said as they disappeared into the brush. “Have you thought about trying frogs…?”
“Snails, try to remember that we’ve already tried frogs. Twice. It didn’t work either time!” Frustrated, he skipped a stone across the pond.
“Well, you know they say that the third time‘s the trick, right?” Snails skipped his own stone.
“What? No, we are not doing frogs again.”
“Ooh, how about we get twice as many this time?”
“Argh! You said that the last time you convinced me to try frogs again! No, this time it’s chocolates or flowers or both or something we haven’t tried twice already that we shouldn’t have tried once!”
“Why are you so hung up on mean ol’ Diamond Tiara anyway? Didn’t she tell you last time not to come near her again?”
“Because she’s beautiful…” Snips trailed off as he spied Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo trudging along the far side of the pond. “Wait, I got an idea!” He motioned for Snails to follow him as he tried to quietly catch up with the three young fillies.
The two colts crept into a thicket right behind where Scootaloo had flopped onto the grass with her two friends facing her.
“O-kay, Cutie Mark Crusaders! It’s time we came up with a new plan!” she announced.
“No kissing this time!” Sweetie Belle announced, glaring at Scootaloo, who blushed. “I’m not doing that again!”
“And no arsoning, either!” Scootaloo glared at Apple Bloom, who was also blushing lightly.
“Oh yeah? Well then no… um… uh… well, it’s Sweetie Belle’s turn anyway”. Apple Bloom said.
Behind the thicket, Snips was taking notes. He was just putting a big x-mark through “arsoning” when Snails whispered: “Snips… what’re we doing here?”
“Taking notes, duh!” he whispered back.
“Notes on what?” Snails asked, as he leaned forward to watch a particularly interesting slug make its way along a branch.
“These three are always planning something, they must be pretty good at it by now, right?”
Snails thought there was something wrong with this line of reasoning, but couldn’t quite put his hoof on what it was. He was about to ask Snips about it when Snips put his hoof over Snail’s mouth with an emphatic “Shhh!” Snails just nodded and turned his head to watch the birds flitting through the branches over their heads.
He was just about to nod off when something caught his eye. “Snips, come look at this cool slug!” he whispered loudly.
“Shh! I’m trying to listen” replied Snips.
“No, seriously, this is really cool! We aren’t supposed to have Coloniconcha Prima here, it’s too cold for them, and they’re hard to find in their normal environment. I’ll need to put this guy in my collection, maybe even write to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Phillydelphia….” Snails trailed off as he realised Snips wasn’t listening to him. His horn lit up dimly as he plucked the rare semislug off of a branch and dropped it into a spare sample vial. He set the vial down in front of his face and watched the tiny creature explore its new home. Fairly soon though, the warm afternoon got the best of him and his eyes drooped, until he dozed off thinking about getting published in the Equestrian Malacological Bulletin.
A little while later, Snails woke up to Snips shaking him and motioning him to be quiet as they snuck away from the thicket. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked after they were well around the pond and on their way back to Ponyville again.
“Boy did I! I was totally right, those three are great planners!” Snips replied. “Getting Diamond Tiara to be my special somepony is going to be a piece of cake!”
“But uh… Hearts and Hooves day is months away, why are you worried about that now?”
“Augh, Snails, you don’t have to wait all the way until then to have a special somepony! You can do it any time of year!”
“Right, but you still haven’t explained why you’re worried about it now.”
“Someday you’ll understand, Snails, what love is all about.”
Snails rolled his eyes and examined his sample vial again. He was definitely more interested in his find than in something silly like love. Unless maybe it was Trixie. He could see himself touring Equestria with Trixie, her performing magic while he collected—
Wham! Snails’ train of thought derailed as he tripped over Snips, who had stopped walking without any warning, and stumbled face-first into the dirt.
“Ow, Snips! What’d you do that for?”
“Shh!” Snips replied. “There she is….” He trailed off, his gaze following two fillies walking by on the other side of the street.
Snails looked up, and say Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon making their way to Sugarcube Corner and disappearing inside. He shook his head as he stood up and dusted himself off. He knew most people thought he was a little slow, but really he was usually just distracted thinking about various Mollusca and getting dragged along with whatever Snips’ latest adventure is. Snips’ obsession with Diamond Tiara, however, baffled Snails to no end, and he really wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Come on!” Snips yelled. “We can catch up. Maybe you can double-date Silver Spoon with me and Diamond Tiara!”
Snails was already in motion to follow Snips before he processed that statement, and he’d only gotten as far as “Wait, what?” in his objection before Snips had drug them both into Sugarcube Corner and was trying to figure out a way to weasel his way into the conversation the two snobby fillies were having over what sort of ice creams to order.
“Snips! I thought you were trying to come up with a plan!” he whispered loudly at his friend.
Snips paused, hoof raised, just on the verge of tapping on Diamond Tiara’s shoulder, and was still in that pose when Silver Spoon turned around and noticed him.
“Ugh, look out Diamond Tiara. You’re totally about to get hoofprints in your mane from your like, number one cuh-ree-ee-per.”
“Huh?” The lavender filly spun around and the pair of colts. “Ew! I told you to leave me alone you weirdo!” She and Silver Spoon took their milkshakes and left the store in a hurry, while Snails just shook his head at his friend.
“Come on, Snips,” Snails said. “Let’s just have some ice cream since we’re here, and worry about that… problem later.”
The two of them were still sitting in Sugarcube Corner when Spike came in to talk to Pinkie Pie. After talking to her for a few minutes, he came over to them. Snips was dejectedly playing with his ice cream while he moped. Snails was turning his sample vial around and around again.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Hey Spike, sure, why not?” Snails returned.
“Pinkie Pie told me you were having a spot of trouble with Diamond Tiara and said I might be able to help. What sort of trouble are you having?”
“Spike,” Snips asked. “What kind of pony is Rarity?”
“Huh? I’d have thought you’d ask me about Diamond Tiara.”
“Well, sure, it’s just that I understand her, you know? I mean, I pay attention, she’s beautiful. She’s funny. I just can’t figure out how to get her to like me.”
“You’re wrong. You only felt like you understood. That’s why ponies try to understand each other, after all. That’s why life is interesting.”
“Does that fit your relationship with Rarity, too?”
“Snips… do you realise that the character we use to write ‘she’ means ‘a mare far away’. It means that there is a river, deeper and wider than any ocean, between stallions and mares. For us, mares exist on that distant shore.”
“Wait, that’s it!” Snips exclaimed.
“What is?” Snails asked.
“Come on Snails, we need a boat!” Snips ran out of Sugarcube Corner with a huge grin on his face, Snails trailing after him in confusion.
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand ponies…” Spike said to himself.
“That was strangely eloquent of you, Spike,” Pinkie Pie said as she walked over to clear the table.
“Ah heh heh…” he scratched the back of his head nervously. “I read it in a book Twilight gave me this morning. It seemed to fit.”
“Well good job! You certainly managed to cheer them up in a hurry!” She gave him a big grin and hopped away with the dishes.
“Seriously, I think you’re going about this all the wrong way, Snips.”
“Hush Snails! If you ever thought seriously about anything except slimy things you’d understand why this is so important!”
“Okay, but I really don’t see how a boat is supposed to help you win over Diamond Tiara.”
“You heard Spike! She’s on a distant shore, that’s why nothing I’ve tried has reached her! So obviously I have to get there somehow, and how else do you cross over a river?”
“With a bridge?”
“Augh, no, before there were bridges! You have to use a boat! Now come on! I think Cranky has a raft!” Snips led the two of them out towards the grumpy donkey’s house.
“What is it, Randolph?” Diamond Tiara asked, looking up from her book.
“A young master Snails to see you, mistress. I believe he is one of your classmates.”
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes. “Of course he’s one of my classmates, you old fool. Tell him to go away, we don’t need ponies like that around here.”
“Oh, I’ve already said as much, mistress, but he refuses to leave until you come talk to him.”
“Randolph,” the lavender filly sighed. “What would daddy say if he knew you weren’t turning away the rabble properly?”
“Based on his previous behaviour, young mistress, I believe he would say ‘go outside and play with your friends’.”
Diamond Tiara slammed her book down on the table next to her and stalked towards the front door, grumbling about the inadequacies of butlers everywhere.
“What do you want, peasant?” she said to Snails.
“Oh, it’s not what I want, it’s what Snips wants,” he replied.
“Ugh, I know that, you fool, but what is it?”
“Oh! He wants to know if you would come down to the pond and talk to him.”
“Why would I want to do that? I have like, so many more interesting things I could be doing, like watching the grass grow or staring at the wall.”
“Well, maybe, but he wants to apologise, you see.”
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes and turned to go back inside, only to find that Randolph was blocking the way.
“The governor has instructed me to tell the young mistress that she may not come back inside until she has gone to play with her friends.”
“What!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “That’s impossible! Daddy would never say that!”
“I’m afraid Mr Rich has commanded me to not let you back into the house until you see what the young master Snips wants from you.” The old stallion grinned. “Muttered something about the amusements of young love, he did. Good afternoon, mistress.” At that he shut the door and locked it, so that she could not get back inside.
“Augh! This is the worst.” She stamped her foot. “Well, let’s go then. Take me to your stupid friend so I can laugh at him and come home.”
Snails didn’t say anything, but turned and led her off towards the pond.
When they arrived, Snips was sitting next to a covered basket on a dilapidated raft, which he’d somehow managed to cover in trampled flower petals. It looked none too stable, and the excited waving he started as soon as he saw them seemed to threaten to capsize the whole thing.
“Come on, come on!” he was yelling, but Diamond Tiara stopped a few lengths short of the muddy shoreline.
“Please tell me you don’t want me to get on that thing with you,” she said to Snips.
“Of course! It’s perfectly safe!”
She looked at Snails, but he just shrugged and motioned towards the raft. She sighed loudly and tried to tip-toe through the mud onto the raft. She almost yelped when a buck from Snails sent them out onto the water, but Snips seemed to have practiced poling the raft well enough that they were only going in slow circles as they moved.
They were almost out of earshot from the shore before Snips started trying to talk to her, but Snails wasn’t paying attention anyway. He was still more interested in his vial than anything to do with Diamond Tiara. He’d helped his friend assemble the modest picnic lunch in the basket and gone to get the lavender snob, so he figured he’d earned himself a little nap. Whatever those wild gesticulations the two were making out there were supposed to mean, it certainly didn’t have anything to do with him.
Snails was awakened by a spray of water hitting him in the face. He looked up to see an angry lavender filly staring coldly at him.
“Your raft collapsed. I’m not staying to help fix it. You might want to go help your friend before he has to explain how he sank it to whoever you two idiots borrowed it from.” She shook herself off again, hitting Snails with another spray of water. “And your friend is pathetic.”
Snails turned his head to look at the pond, where he saw Snips, struggling to drag the raft onto the shore. Had he moved as fast as other ponies, he would have missed Diamond Tiara’s whispered words, obviously not meant for him to hear: “He’s sweet, too, but pathetic.”
Snails made his was down to the raft and grabbed a corner of it to help his friend.
“What are you grinning about? Everything must be ruined now!” Snips asked him.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Snips.” Snails surveyed the damage. “Looks like the centre support was rotted out, maybe we can fix it if we can find a good log to replace it.” He put a hoof over Snips’ shoulder and led him into the woods to search.
“Say Snips,” he said as they disappeared into the brush. “Have you thought about trying frogs…?”