Author's note:

First of all, thanks to everyone who has commented thus far. Thank you for your encouragement. It means a lot to me.

A couple of reviewers have asked if the Mane Six will make an appearance, or if the characters of this story will meet them. The bulk of this story takes place 95 years before the present time: Mister Smith is supposed to end up being Granny Smith's father. I suppose I could have him live long enough to witness Applejack's birth, but that is as close as I think I'm going to get to a meeting between my characters and the canonical cast. There will probably be the occasional flash-forward, though, so cameos are a possibility; I had an idea for a scene with Spike, though I'm not sure yet how to work up to it, and right now the plan is to begin chapter 5 with a flash-forward to the Canterlot Wedding episode.

Reviews and criticisms are always welcome. Thank you all again.

A Horse Named Smith

Chapter 4

Manehattan, Equestria. Anno Caelestiae 897

There was just so much to see. "Just you wait," Grandpa had said, yesterday evening, "they're finding ways of making buildings even taller. Twenty years from now, you'll be able to step off the rooftops of Manehattan and onto Cloudsdale." And Primrose believed it. Happy said that earth ponies and unicorns would never dream of living in buildings that tall—it would be murder climbing all those stairs every day, for one thing—but Grandpa had only chuckled and told them to ask their father to show them one of Delicious Oats"elevators", whatever they were.

They were at the annual Forge Hammer trade fair in Manehattan. Rocky Road had followed Daddy the last couple of years, but this year declared himself uninterested in whatever that "stinking hellhole of a city" had to offer; and so Primrose Path and Happy Trails accompanied their father instead. Happy's interests were similar to Daddy's; colt and stallion were busy looking at the various farrier and blacksmith stalls, chatting about new metal alloys, new developments in horseshoe nails, the concept of self-removable shoes... Primrose, less interested in that sort of thing, wandered off to look at the other stalls.

The biggest crowd was around a tall unicorn who was touting Razzle-Dazzle's Straw Stripper Supreme 700, a kind of haymaking machine. Just apply a bit of unicorn magic, and you could mow down a whole field of hay in minutes. This being a smithing trade show, the focus was more on how well such an invention would sell, and how it could be produced, and what sort of maintenance work needed to be done on it... Primrose watched for a while, thinking that, if anything, it would make it easier for unicorns to do earth pony work. But it occurred to her that earth ponies were somewhat more limited in what they could do; no-one could work agriculture like an earth pony, everyone knew that, but unicorn magic was just so much more versatile. Really, what you needed was something that enabled earth ponies to do unicorn work, rather than the other way around...

These thoughts still running through the little filly's head, she trotted down to the next stall, and stopped. The invention being presented there was, according to the placard, Songsmith's Sewing Machine. It was worked with a hoof treadle, and allowed even the most non-magical pony you could imagine to stitch and sew like the most gifted unicorn seamstress. Primrose peered at the sample dresses. Such fine, even stitching! An earth pony did this? Tattersall, the best earth pony seamstress in Haymarket, was good, very good, but even she couldn't compare!

"Would the young filly like to give the machine a whirl?"

Primrose looked up to the smiling eyes of Songsmith, the old unicorn inventor. "Oh, may I?" she asked eagerly. Songsmith nodded and helped her up onto the stage. Primrose took a seat on the bench and fitted one hoof on the treadle. The sewing machine needle began to move up and down. Under Songsmith's guidance, Primrose pushed the sample fabric through the machine, watching as the tiny, tiny stitches formed before her eyes.

That was where Happy found her half an hour later, proudly displaying her work. "Primrose, we've been looking all—oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"What?"

"Your flank, little sis. Stop showing off your souvenir hanky and take a look at yourself, why don't you?"

Primrose looked around, and gasped. "I've got my cutie mark!"

"And it's one of them new-fangled sewing machine things. I guess this means Daddy is going to have to get us one, huh?"

Most ponies might assume that Primrose's special talent was in sewing. Those closer to her thought it was in tinkering with newfangled inventions—Daddy always made sure to bring her to the trade fair after that, and always knew he could find her among the inventors' stalls. Only Primrose herself knew that it was a little more complicated than that: her interest was less about technological progress for its own sake, or interesting little gadgets; it was more about finding ways for the different pony races to cross into each other's so-called bailiwicks...

Haymarket, Equestria. Anno Caelestiae 906

Balderdash had made Mister Smith the same offer he'd made to Strawberry, but explained that since Mister Smith was putting in only half a day's work, he would get only half a day's pay: three bits. That seemed fair enough, and left them with nine bits total at the end of the work day. Then, for a piece of slate and a bit of chalk, they'd paid Balderdash one bit; food and lodging together swallowed up all the remaining eight bits, much to Mister Smith's disappointment. He'd been hoping to have at least a little bit left at the end of the day to put towards what he owed to Happy Trails. Still, as Strawberry said, tomorrow was another day, and they would have three bits more at the end of it than they had today, if they both put in a full day at the farm. Mister Smith supposed that that was true, but horseshoes were costly things and even then it would be a number of days before they would have enough to pay the farrier.

Neither of them wanted to sleep out in the fields, or graze for food, which would have cost them nothing. It seemed to them that the ponies here did not do that sort of thing, and therefore neither would they. They were uncomfortably aware that their fit with the town was far from seamless as it was, and any further "eccentricity" on their part would only aggravate the situation.

They spent the evening writing out the words they knew. It was slow going, especially since they were unused to writing anything in the first place. The first hour was spent just learning how to hold the chalk in their mouths and how to drag it across the slate with just the right amount of force, and in just the right distance, and in just the right direction. Strawberry proved to be far better at this than Mister Smith, by the end of the hour producing shapes that might almost have been written by human hands. Mister Smith would have been happy to let Strawberry do all the writing from then on, but he felt he needed all the practice he could get. And then there was the problem that, while they recognised various letters by sight, they had no idea what those letters were called—nor had they any idea of capitalisation, or punctuation, or the standard left-to-right direction of wordflow.

It was close to ten o'clock when Strawberry spat out the chalk and confessed himself utterly frustrated. "I want to do something else for a while."

"Fair enough. I'm frustrated too." Mister Smith kicked the slate under his bed. "Anyway, I've been meaning to ask you if you've seen anyone in this town without some sort of fancy picture on his flank. I'm fairly sure that those things are the 'cutie marks' I keep hearing about."

"I think I've seen a couple of foals without them. But they were very young. If you're thinking what I'm thinking..."

"Branding?"

Strawberry nodded. "I've been wondering how they got branded in all those colours, but they they're naturally all sorts of unusual colours anyway. Perhaps brands come out in colours over here.."

Mister Smith remembered the London docks, seeing humans with patterns and pictures marked on their bare skin. Humans must do it to themselves too, he thought, and theirs sometimes came out in colour. Perhaps it was a universal rule that the sapient species got colourful brands. "I've never seen branding done before. Do you know how it's done?"

"Well, first you heat up a bit of metal until it's red-hot..." Strawberry had seen cattle being branded on more than one occasion, and his description of the process filled Mister Smith with unease. The cattle of Strawberry's description seemed to take it well enough, but they were only dumb animals ... Mister Smith realised with a shock that, just two days ago, he and Strawberry might be classed as dumb animals too. They wouldn't have protested a branding because they wouldn't have known any better.

Strawberry finished the lecture with a note about military horses getting branded on their hooves. Mister Smith blinked and looked down at his hooves, with their gleaming new shoes. He wasn't sure if getting a red-hot poker stuck into his hooves was better or worse than having it stuck onto his flank. "Well," he said slowly, "I suppose if everybody here can stand it, I can too. We should get ourselves branded."

"How? I mean, do you know if we're supposed to find some sort of specialist to do this?"

Mister Smith shook his head. "I asked Miss Path where she got hers. She said she got it quite unexpectedly while visiting a trade fair in Manehattan. That doesn't sound like something with 'proper channels' to go through. And anyway, what are we going to say if there is one and we find him?" He picked up one of his old shoes, which Happy Trails had been quite happy to let him keep. "Personally, I'd like to get this over and done with as soon as possible, and as quietly as possible. We can use this horseshoe for its shape, but we obviously can't use the stable fireplace unless we want to get caught; and we're going to need tongs of some kind to hold it. Happily, I know where we might be able to get both fire and tongs, if you're willing to try going down those stairs one more time today."

"Practice makes perfect," said Strawberry, trotting to the door. "And I agree, the sooner the better. I'm tired of being stared at."

Mister Smith led Strawberry back to Happy Horseshoes. The shop was shut up for the night, but through the window they could see the glow of embers in the forge. Neither horse had thought of the possibility that the door would be locked, and it swung open when Mister Smith pushed it with his forehoof.

"Mr Trails? Are you in?"

Silence.

The two horses crept into the shop and made their way to the forge. A few pumps of the bellows got the fire back up and going. Mister Smith fetched a pair of tongs and laid it on the floor between them, along with his old horseshoe. "Strawberry? Are you ready?"

Strawberry gulped. "I guess so. It's just once in a lifetime, right?"

They stared at the tongs and horseshoe some more. Mister Smith said, "all right. Let's do me first. You've seen this done, so you know better than I what to do." He nudged the tongs over to his friend, turned, and settled down on the floor. Looking around, he watched as Strawberry clumsily picked up the horseshoe with the tongs and thrust it into the fire. Neither of them said anything as they waited for the horseshoe to glow with heat. Finally, Strawberry drew the red-hot metal out of the forge and gave Mister Smith a look that said "just say the word and we can forget all about this." Mister Smith took a deep breath, closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "Do it, Strawberry."

He could feel the heat as the horseshoe slowly approached his bare flank.

"What are you two doing!"

Strawberry gasped. Mister Smith opened his eyes in time to see the horseshoe and tongs clatter against the far wall where they'd been thrown, a yellow glow just dissipating from around them. Both horses turned. Malachite Dream, pale and wide-eyed, stood in the shadow of an inner doorway, her horn glowing with faint yellow light. "Are you trying to mutilate yourselves?" she asked, her voice tight with horror.

"Um. We can explain."

"It's not ... uh ... I mean ... we thought..."

The horses exchanged worried glances. Malachite moved carefully along the wall towards the exit, keeping a good distance from them.

"You won't tell anyone, will you? Please?" Strawberry begged.

"We just wanted a brand, like everybody else," added Mister Smith.

Every-"body"? Malachite suppressed a shudder. It sounded like they thought of everypony as corpses. "What do you mean, a brand like everypony else?" Two pairs of equine eyes flickered towards the brass lantern that was her cutie mark. Malachite, in her nervous, hyper-aware state, caught the glance and followed it. "Are you talking about cutie marks?" She gasped. "You are! You were trying to make your own cutie marks! You're insane!"

She was close enough to the door now to make a dash for it, but Mister Smith was quicker. He was between her and it in an instant, and Malachite skidded to avoid running straight into him.

"Let me go!"

"Please, you have to help us. If cutie marks aren't brands, then what are they?"

"Mister Smith, I think we'd better tell her everything."

Canterlot, Equestria. Anno Equestriae 2

"Clover, thou shalt of course handle the negotiations. I for one can tolerate the Chancellor and the Commander thus far and no farther; and I will not sully my hooves in parley with their underlings. I trow, if we would live in harmony from this time hence, 'twould be better for all concerned if all future diplomacy be placed in thy hooves and in the hooves of thine counterparts Smart Cookie and Pansy. The Chancellor in particular vexes me much. In simple conversation, she did once refer to our signum acritatis as an 'acuity mark', which irreverence doth drive me almost to drink."

"Your Highness, we doth now enter unto a new era. 'Tis perhaps well that some modernisation come upon us, even to the adoption of the lingua vulgaris for that which we have thus far designated only in the lingua arcana. The common pony would know in the instant by the name 'acuity' that the mark maketh reference to the sharpest wits of the pony..."

"Pah! And what pony would not already know that ere he hath reason? But let the masses speak as they may, thou shalt never do so in my presence! The signum acritatis shall not be called otherwise. Why, if today we should accept this ... this abomination, this 'acuity mark', what next shall happen? 'Tis but the first step, this 'convenience of language', and next shall come the dropping of syllables. Will the noble signum acritatis descend to become a ... a 'cute mark'? A 'tea mark'? A 'cue mark', perhaps, and then wilt thou make noise that the pony taketh his 'cue' from his signum? Neigh, never! Verily, I shall not allow it! Fetch unto me my couch; I doth perceive an impending onset of the vapours."

"As you wish, Your Highness. Forsooth, we have far larger fish to fry than these little matters of appellation..."

Haymarket, Equestria. Anno Caelestiae 906

Happy Trails watched as the two strange ponies left the inn. In truth, he only half-believed that they were spies from Manehattan; but he did believe that they were a potential threat and that they were well worth watching, whatever their actual purpose in coming to Haymarket. He'd convinced Malachite to keep watch over the house that he shared with his sister, while he took up position in a shadowy corner of the stable's common room. With Primrose out on a date with Balderdash, it would be the perfect opportunity for these ponies to make their move—if they were in fact targetting his sister's studio. And sure enough, the clock had just gone ten when they came creeping down the stairs, oh so very carefully; and there was definitely something furtive about the way they snuck out the stable door...

Happy contemplated running ahead to give Malachite a hoof, but figured that the unicorn could take care of herself. It might be more important to see if any evidence could be found in the room the two ponies shared. He'd ascertained earlier which room that was, and now he crept up the stairs and over to the door. The door creaked open at a touch—here, Happy experienced his strongest doubt as to whether they were indeed spies—and Happy quickly ducked inside.

Through the window, he could see the two tall shadows slinking along in the direction of his shop—and Primrose's adjoining studio. Just as he expected. He waited and watched. He could just see the glow as somepony fanned up the flames in his forge; why a pair of spies would do such a thing, he did not know, but Malachite would tell him all about it when he caught up with her later.

Now, what was in this room? It was quite bare: those two ponies hadn't turned up with much in the way of belongings. A pair of saddles had been tossed willy-nilly into one corner; a leather bridle hung from the post of one bed. One of the saddles was an odd, asymmetrical design, and if either of them had a secret compartment built in, he couldn't find it, not even after several minutes of poking and probing. He gave the bridle only a glance, but it was enough to see that the buckles seemed a little small for an earth pony—this, to Happy's suspicious mind, suggested an accomplice in the background.

There was a piece of chalk on the floor. That was unexpected.

Happy took another look around the room, then took a peek under the beds. Underneath one, he found a piece of slate. The chalk had been used to write on it"FARRIER ... STREET ... MEAT PIES".

Happy Trails dropped the slate and kicked it back under the bed. Farrier Street? That was him, of course: he remembered how Mr Smith had called him "Mr Street" earlier that day. But "meat pies"? Who in Equestria put meat in pies? Meat was a necessary evil that you fed to dogs and cats and you tried not to think too hard about where it came from. No pony made pies out of it, in case some silly foal mistook it for a proper apple pie and ate it. Only ponies ate pies. Ponies didn't eat meat. Pony digestion couldn't handle meat. He'd never heard of any pony even try...

No, that wasn't true. He'd heard about the Cult of Diomedes: ponies who ate ... other ponies. He'd always thought they were a fairy tale meant to frighten little foals into behaving.

Why would a pair of spies fan up the fire in that great oven-like forge? How long had he left Malachite alone in that house, and did she have the sense and stealth to stay hidden?

Sick with terror, Happy Trails dashed out of the room, leapt down the stairs, and galloped as fast as he could for home.