Hematite's P.O.V.
I soon landed in what looked to be the center of town, which was a pretty large area with a tall, shabby town hall. Many homes and shops circled the area and broke off to many other roads and streets.
Since today was my first day here, I wanted to get acquainted with my new surroundings, and search for shops and stores that would be useful to me.
I started walking down a few streets picking up some things to make the house less of a wreck, and noting down stores for future need.
As I turned a corner past an extremely sweet smelling bakery, which read on a sign, 'Sugar Cube Corner,' an impossibly fast pink blur zoomed past me, backed up, then with a huge smile, focused onto me. I realized that this blur was a very excited looking mare that had a large puffy magenta mane and tail, a light pink cote, light blue eyes, and three party balloons for a cutie mark.
With an excited gasp, she quickly spilled out, "Hi, I'm Pinkie Pie, are you new? Of course you're new, I mean I've never seen you before. What is your name? Where are you from? I really like your cutie mark! What does it mean?!"
As she finished I thought her questions over and cheerfully replied, "Hi you can call me... 'Mat'. I just recently moved here from what everypony seems to call the Everfree Forest. My cutie mark is a symbol of my medical talent." I finished, while looking back at my cutie mark, a red line with a single heartbeat.
She then appeared to be slightly shocked, then asked, "Wo, I knew you were new to Ponyville because I know everypony in Ponyville and even a little beyond, but you actually lived in the Everfree forest? How long!?"
"Too long." (What? I'm not going to tell somepony I just met my life story. Besides I don't really want to tell anypony about my past right now, the beginning is too dark and the ending is too grim. She also seems just the type to spread it around as well.)
"Okie-dokie-lokie," she playfully said, "You should come over to Sugar Cube Corner some time. Oh I know come by later today. Bye!" she said with a wide smile, she then zipped away at her impossible earth pony speed, leaving behind a smell of... (Cotton Candy?)
I chuckled to myself, then continued on my way to find other new places to remember while noting down to come back here later.
As I continued on throughout the streets, I had a sudden realization, I really needed some more modern clothing. Although I don't need them often, they do come in hoovey on certain occasions, and all my current clothing at home is either for combat, old and rotted or just do not fit in with the times.
So I went in search of a clothing store for my greater-than-average size.
Asking around town, everypony kept pointing me in the direction of this really girly looking store that was labeled the 'Carousel Boutique' which was supposed to have custom fitting and reasonable prices.
Now, I didn't care for my own pride anymore as I had thrown it out of my mind years ago as pretty much useless, given my situation, but this store just screamed the essence of filly.
However, my want for custom clothing I'll barely ever wear outweighed that con.
So I sucked it up and went in.
As I walked in however I found that all my suspicions about the place were all justified by the fact that it was covered in all things more girly and as some would say, 'froo froo' as I had ever seen.
I heard faint steps coming down the stairs in the back of the shop. I soon found that it was a unicorn mare with eyes in the shade of royal blue, a pure white coat with a purple main and tail that looked expertly styled along with a cutie mark consisting of three diamonds. She trotted up to me with a pleasant smile.
"Hello and welcome to the Carousel Boutique, My name is Rarity. Is there anything I can help you with?" she stated in a voice that I could only describe as fancy.
"Hi there, I'm called 'Mat,' I heard you make some pretty nice cloths and I was just wondering how much a suit and maybe a white coat would cost?"
"Oh yes of course, I don't get many orders from stallions… especially of your size, and therefore isn't something I normally practice, so… I say…," she said looking around me, "it shouldn't cost more than about eighty bits."
Thinking it over, this was quite the deal. The last time I had bought a suit the price was at least a hundred bits and that was when the economy was just being started, so happily I pulled out some bits from my saddle bag, "There you go, will this cover it?"
"Why yes, this is perfect, all I need to do now it take some measurements and it should be done some time this week." she said as she took out some glasses and a measuring tape with magic, then wrote my measurements on a clipboard.
After she was finished, I thanked her and was about to exit out the door when I had a sudden urge to find some books to read, so I turned back and asked, "Hey before I leave, is there a book store or a library around here that you might know of?" (What can I say? I act on impulse)
"Why yes I do, my friend Twilight on the other side of town runs the library, it looks like a large hollowed out tree, you can't miss it, she would be pleased to lend you some books." she called back from her shop.
Joyed by the answer, I called back, "Thank you Ms. Rarity!" and continued out the door.
I leaped from the ground and just started to fly when, WAM! Something slammed in my face and I dropped down onto the ground. I'll save you most of the details, but it would have possibly been fatal if it had not been for my curse. Thankfully the area wasn't that crowded and anypony who was there hadn't really noticed as I rotated my head and snapped it back into place. ('Wow, one day here and I would have already died') I laughed to myself as I got up to look for the one who rammed into me.
As I turned around, I noticed a cyan colored Pegasus mare lying face down in the mud. I trotted over to her just as she got up and got a better look at her. She had a long rainbow colored mane and tale, from what I could tell form under the mud she had magenta eyes and her cutie mark was that of a white cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt striking out. She looked kind of dazed as she readjusted to the ground and looked at me with a slightly apologetic look.
I was the first to speak, "Hi there, are you alright? You took a massive fall there."
"Yeah, this happens all the time, but what about you? I just slammed into your face." she asked with a bit of a raspy, tom-boyish sounding voice.
"I'm not too important. You just need to be little more careful. Anyhow, what happened that made you crash like that?" I asked, wondering what would have been the cause of my death.
"Oh yeah I was practicing a new trick for the Wonderbolts!" she said with pride and continued, "But I kind of lost control and crashed." she finished with a little bit of shame.
Seeing how she looked, I had to help, "Well you know what they say 'practice makes perfect.' And sorry, but... just so I'm not out of the loop, who are the Wonderbolts anyway?"
At that she gasped, "Are you kidding? The Wonderbolts are just the greatest flyers in all of Equestria! Where have you been!" she asked with a surprised look.
I snickered at her outburst, "Oh nowhere important. Well if anything, away training." I told her more seriously than I think she meant.
"Oh you train! What do you train for?" She started breaking away from the previous topic.
"You know, just keeping active, and studying for more experience in my medical field."
"No way, I've never met a doc' who I've seen to be active." She said apparently not noticing the contradiction she just stated in her words.
"What do you mean you've never seen an active doctor before?! Their talent should be in health right? They should be completely active!" It was just such an unbelievable thought that I just couldn't keep it in.
"What am I going to say, Any time I see our towns doc's and nurses they're all doing their jobs," She defended, "Does it even really matter? The only thing I know is that you're the first one I met who is active."
"Fine, fine, I can't just up and blame you for not keeping a watchful eye on this town's medical practitioners." I backed off. I still found it odd, but the matter was trivial and not very interesting.
"Anyway I'm Rainbow Dash! Fastest flyer in all of Equestria." She said in introduction. (At least one of us was remembering their manners… weird why did that thought feel completely ironic?)
"Nice to meet you. You can call me 'Mat'. The umm… well the quick response medic." I said awkwardly, trying to play along with her title thing she used.
"Well Mat gotta' go, but you seem cool, we should totally hang later."
"Anytime, I not doing much seeing as I'm new here and all."
We said our farewells and took off in separate directions, Rainbow to wherever and I to the Library.
A few minutes later I finally found the library. I was amazed at what they had actually used for it, as it was just as Ms. Rarity had described, 'a giant hollowed out tree.'
As I neared it to knock on the door, I heard a muffled call with a set footsteps. Then suddenly the door opened and what I saw was surprisingly, a small purple baby dragon with green spikes.
"I'll be back with the quills and ink soon." the dragon finished calling, then he turned around, but got spooked as soon as he spotted me, "Dude you just scared the hay out of me, just standing there blending into the shadows."
Looking down I chuckled at how I had, inadvertently, stepped into the library's shadow to let the small guy by. "Oh sorry about that, didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay, gotta' go." he then ran off toward town.
"See you later!" I called and walked through the doorway into the library.
I looked around until I heard somepony come up behind me, I turned around and there was a unicorn mare, whose cote was a shade of lavender, with a dark indigo mane and tail with a violet and pink streak running through each, her eyes were purple and her cutie mark was... (A magenta six pointed magic star), with a couple of smaller white stares scattered out around it.
(This couldn't be.) I tried to reason as many happy thoughts and memories raced through my head of an old friend of mine, all because of the mare in front of me.
"Hello there sir, welcome to the Ponyville library. Is there anything I can help you with?" she asked politely, snapping me out of my trance, "There are books on anything that you may need from ancient texts, to modern fiction. By the way, is there anything wrong? You're looking a little pale."
When she said that I struggled to regain my composure. I hadn't even noticed until she mentioned it, "No, nothing is wrong, I'm just a little light-headed from flying over here so fast is all, sorry. I'm 'Mat', and you are?"
"I'm Twilight Sparkle, the librarian. I hope you'll excuse me I don't tend to see many ponies come in here, you are probably the first visitor I've had in months. It's like nopony understands the joys of reading these days." she said looking kind of down cast.
"Well this is just your luck because I really need books." she seemed to cheer up as I said that.
"Great is there any specific book that you need?"
"Well not really, I'm kind of behind in my studies, so I'm going to need a book on everything from say, the last thousand years." When I finished that sentence she had this absolutely overjoyed look on her face, probably because she had never met somepony who wanted to learn as much as she probably did.
She then rushed to the bookshelves and started looking for them all. I wanted to help but, she seemed too happy as she lifted books and cycled through them placing the ones I needed in a stack.
While I was watching this happen, she suddenly spoke up and asked, "I don't mean to pry, but what are you studying exactly? Because there are a lot of books for this time period."
I answered simply, "Everything. I'm a bit of a history nut." This was true but also a bit of a lie, I mean I always had a fascination about history, but I wasn't about to tell her the real reason, (Oh I'm just a 35 hundred year old immortal that is a little bit behind in times.) Well... not yet at least, I just really didn't want her, or anypony for that matter, drawing any unneeded attention toward me.
When she had finished, we stared at the pile of about one or two hundred books. She awkwardly smiled at me, probably at how carried away she had gotten and offered to teleport them to my house, seeing as there was no way I was going to carry them all on my own. Of course I gave her the location and she performed the spell.
"Thank you very much Ms. Sparkle. I'll have your books back as soon as possible"
"No problem, you can come back any time you want. And please don't call me miss, everypony just calls me Twilight."
With that, I thanked her once again, and headed out. I took to the sky and decided to head back home for the day. This would give me the chance to drop off my already heavy load of supplies and get started on those books. Which, by the way, were all piled on the kitchen island (nice aim.) I picked a book off the top and sat down to read, (Well I should head over to that bakery soon, I wonder what surprises will be in store.)
A/N: Finally, am I right? Truth be told, I've been done with this chapter for quite a while now, but when everyone started expressing an interest in the story, I decided to put it through some stricter quality control. So just bare with me if I take too long. If something comes up and I can't write for a while, I'll let you all know, otherwise I'm just trying to make sure the story is as good as I know how to make it.
I'd also like to thank everyone for reviewing and like I said, taking an interest to my story. I hope that you will enjoy what is to come.