<<< FROM: Ponyville Schoolhouse

Xing followed Poppy at a brisk pace, not wanting to slow the wheeled pony down too much by her own short legs and their limited stride. She could smell the scents as well from the outside, unusual flowers that didn't bloom in Shanghay, along with still familiar scents of compost, dirt, and fertilizer.

"What kind of... flowers do you grow here? Or is it... is it just 'all kinds'?" she asked curiously. She knew nothing about plants or gardens, and didn't know if different types of plants had to have different places to grow or not.

=> From School! =>

Bumblebee landed, looking around with the other young ponies and blinked, "Ah... Ah don' think anyone is here..."

"Guess not," Poppy agreed. "Bummer - I guess I'll have to try again tomorrow." She brightened a bit. "But if you wanna see what kinds of flowers we have here, Xing Ming, you guys could come over to my house and I could show you? I've got the flowers all planted," she giggled.

"Sure, I would... like that," said Xing with a smile. She turned to Bumblebee. "Are you coming, too?"

Bumblebee nodded, "Ah'd love ta!  Mighty kinda ya Poppy." she grinned widely

"No problem - let's go," Poppy giggled, putting her skates back on.

-->To Avagadra's Treehouse

With a smile and an eager sort of giddiness only a pony who loved to learn could display about a subject she was totally foreign to, Xing followed Poppy and Bumblebee at a quick trot to keep up with the older girls.

>>> To: Ava's Treehouse

=> To Ava's Treehouse =>

Bumblebee hovered over the group, making sure Xing could keep up with them, zipping back and forth so neither would be lonely on the walk to Poppy's house

--> From Adventure Zone 006

Pansy chose to return immediately to her garden shop.  They'd been gone at least a couple days, and her poor plants, while resilient, would need her there for special care.  "I'm sorry, guys, I need to set my shop to rights.  Who knows what's happened while we were gone."  And she had the two new plants in her pack.

In fact, that's what she started to do immediately, finding a few simple pots for the new flowers and setting them in a secluded place away from her others.

As Pansy went about tending to her plants, she'd find them all a bit different than she remembered.  Her plants were all in wonderful condition and looked as though they'd been tended to in the meantime.  Some of the blossoms she'd had just as buds before she left the shop were in full bloom, or ferns had grown several inches taller.  That sure was odd... and more notably, she'd catch a curious sound coming from behind the main counter.

SNNRRRRRK~!  Whooooo~  SNNNRRRRRK~!  Whoooo~

Snoring?  Peering behind the counter would reveal a Pony Pansy knew well -- Roseluck; a friend, neighbor, and fellow gardener.  The mare was fast asleep slumped over the counter and had been hidden from sight at first by all the potted plants laden about.  But why in the world was she there in the first place?
This message was last edited by the player at 06:39, Tue 01 Jan 2013.

Pansy was surprised at the state of her plants.  Surely two days away without regular watering would have left them worse off.  The state of her shop was much better upon discovering Roseluck there.

The gardening pony nudged her sleeping friend gently with a hoof.  "Roseluck.  Hey, wake up sleepy-head."  If that failed to work, she'd grab a particularly ticklish leaf and tickle Roseluck's ears.

It did indeed take a few moments of tickling to get the sleepy gardener to rouse, leaving her snorting and mumbling as she jostled herself into wakefulness.  For a second she blinked blearily at Pansy while her faculties returned to her, but once she realized who it was that had woken her up, she snapped to attention.

"Pansy!" Roseluck yelped before she caught the other Earth Pony in a tight squeeze.  "You're finally back~!  Where have you been?!  Where's your beau at?"

Pansy was more than a little surprised at Roseluck's enthusiasm.  "Finally back?  My beau?  What do you mean?"  The young mare was very confused.  She knew they had been gone for a few days, but, did that really merit that response?

"I just got lost in the Everfree forest for a couple days.  A little longer than usual, I know.  Did I miss much?"

"Oh c'mon Pansy, you don't need to keep up an act around me~!  Wordsmith!" Roseluck insisted as she relinquished her hold on her friend.  "You skip town with a Canterlot stallion for more than a week and you don't expect me to want details?  C'mon, spill~!  Were you dating him before?  Or was this some kind of whirlwind romance?"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:12, Thu 03 Jan 2013.

"A--A week?" Pansy stepped back, visibly alarmed.  "It was only a couple days--we couldn't have been gone a week!"

"And Wordsmith and I aren't dating!  We just met!  He just offered to keep me company while I went to get new plants!  He was new in town and I wanted him to feel welcome--"  She was babbling.  She'd never been the subject of any rumors before, so to suddenly come back to not only having lost a week, but also a story of wild romance centered around her and Wordsmith...It was more than a little startling.

"Look, I know time flies when you're having fun, but it shouldn't go by that unnoticed." Roseluck gestured to the calender on the wall and, by the red X marks crossed through the days, showed that time was indeed much further along than Pansy first thought.  "Now you've gotta tell me what you two were up to~!  Did you go on a trip?  Somewhere romantic?  Are you two a serious item?  Does he have a brother?"

The eager Earth Pony let Pansy explain herself, though her enthusiasm notably deflated once her friend set the record straight.  Her ears flopped back and she gave a disappointed pout that things weren't really what they seemed.  "Aww... really?  Geeze, and here I went and got my hopes up.  That's no fun."  she grumbled as she rubbed at her chin thoughtfully.  "Well, if you two didn't run off together, where the hay have you been all this time?  You can't honestly have been walking around in the woods for that long and not noticed it?"

Pansy couldn't tell Roseluck where she had really been.  The Queen herself had said that everyone would think she was crazy.  "Well, it was the Everfree.  You know how that place can turn you in circles over and over."  It was a weak explanation, and she knew it.

"Look at what I found though!"  A distraction, that's what she needed.  She quickly found the two new flowers that she had brought home.  "Tell me these weren't worth getting lost for a week."

"Fine, fine... I guess a mare needs to keep her secrets."  Roseluck obviously didn't buy the story but at least backed off her interrogation since it seemed she wasn't going to be getting anywhere with it.  When Pansy presented her with the little folded paper boxes containing those unusual flowers, however, quizzing her about her love life was set as the furthest thing in her mind.

"Whoa!  Pansy, these are beautiful~!  What are they?" she marveled over the vibrant colors of the blossoms.  She'd never seen anything like them in her life!

"Well, I don't know for sure.  I've never seen anything like them!  I want to call this one a Gilded Lily, and this one a Prism Bloom," she pointed to each of the flowers in turn.  She was, of course, stealing the names, but certainly nobody would mind.  It was always best to call something by its real name, right?

"I'm hoping I can grow more of them."  She gingerly touched one of the leaves with her hoof.

"Well, let me know if you manage it.  I'd love to try and grow some of my own, or maybe cross-breed this rose with my variety~!" Roseluck seemed entirely captivated by the brilliant colors of the blossoms.  Part of her really wanted to ask to try a petal and see how they tasted, but if those were the only samples Pansy had, then it would be too risky to damage them.

"Ooh... Daisy and Lily are going to want to hear about this too.  But they're gonna be really disappointed that you didn't elope.  We were all excited about it." the gossip-mare couldn't help but pout as she cast her friend a sidelong look.  "Are you sure you two aren't in some kind of whirlwind romance?"

"I'm sure.  As I said, we've only known each other a couple of days.  That kind of thing doesn't happen in Ponyville," Pansy replied.  "If you don't believe me, you could always find Wordsmith and ask him."

She set about transplanting the flowers into proper pots.  They couldn't stay in the hastily assembled paper boxes forever.  "Of course if I get more I'll share.  After all, we all love flowers."

Roseluck stuck around to help Pansy out with the transplanting.  She'd tried to keep the shop in the same sort of order that Pansy had left it earlier that week, but she was running a little low on supplies like fresh mulch and soil conditioner by that point.  Once the two unusual flowers were safely in their own planters, she gave her friend a warm hug about the shoulders.

"Thanks, and it's really good to have you back again.  Any longer and I would have figured you'd moved to Canterlot."  she winked playfully even though the whole matter had since been cleared.  "I'm gonna get home now, but if you need anything else, you just give me a house call, okay?"

"Of course,"  Pansy replied as she warmly returned the hug.  "Thanks for covering the shop for me.  Think I'll be able to show my face around town tomorrow without causing a stir?"  She made a face as she momentarily wondered how Wordsmith was taking the news.

"Don't worry -- I'll spread the word that it was just a false alarm." Roseluck assured her friend as she headed for the door.  "Besides, you know how Ponyville is.  In another day or two everypony will have forgotten all about it for the next bit of gossip."

This message was last edited by the GM at 03:04, Tue 23 June 2015.