Journal of a Book Pony

Ponies choose appropriate routes in the Equestrian environments to optimize their own displacements, but they also use this predictive ability to move objects, from thrown apples to rain showers.

Ponies have a feel for taking a route that gets them to their destination despite living in a landscape where the shortest distance between two points is rarely a straight line. As I explained before, the slightest shake changes how long a train trip lasts and just hoofing it can get you there faster.

Ponies start to develop these skills from the day that they're born, developing a cognitive map of their immediate surroundings and recognizing landmarks. They inventory objects, remember outcomes and sense the passage of time. The critical part of the brain responsible for navigation is the hippocampus, a pair of 'c' shaped structures in the temporal lobes. As young ponies grow, they choose preferred paths to navigate a wiggly environment where distance is a function of approach. Of course, each pony makes slightly different choices when building a cognitive map of their Equestria, but the outcome is generally the same.

The hippocampus is where memory, time sense and the cognitive map of a pony's private Equestria resides, but it's in the prefrontal cortex part of the brain where a pony makes sense of it all and acts accordingly. The prefrontal cortex also connects to a unicorn's horn. By capitalizing on the wiggle of Equestrian topography and the fact that nothing is ever perfectly still, a unicorn moves objects. What moves and how subtly is a function of the mental origami performed in the unicorn mind. Timing, movement and form. Grab, throw, grab, throw, pull through and there you go. Tying that winter scarf, just like your mother taught you. That's magic.

A unicorn may be adept at guiding an object through space, but all ponies get a sense of where objects that they've let go will land. Earth ponies and pegasi use position and timing to ensure objects to which they've imparted kinetic energy and momentum land where they want them to. Rain clouds generally stay where weather ponies put them, but it takes extra skill to get the rain to fall where you want it to. Just like it takes skill to get apples to fall from the trees and into your baskets, and not land three fields over.

Pinkie takes navigation in a non-euclidean landscape to the next level. She not only predicts the best path for her movements and for things she's moved, she feels out the possible paths of objects around her that could intersect with her projected positions.

Like traveling from point A to B, it's largely subconscious. Pinkie has connected her enhanced map to her motor cortex and translated her feelings of dread into coded body spasms to better know what it is she's expecting and act accordingly. She calls this her Pinkie Sense.

A cutie mark is a pair of images that appear on the hindquarters of a pony, situated between the point of the hip and the dock, on the skin and hair above the gluteus superficialis muscle. There is one on each side and a cutie mark on one side is the mirror image of the cutie mark on the other side.

These marks are a manifestation of a pony's special talent or affinity. Just like a unicorn has a horn, a pegasus has wings and an earth pony has neither, a cutie mark dictates to some extent what you are going to do in your life. How much a cutie mark shapes your life depends a lot on how powerful you are at what you do.

A unicorn need not excel at magic, a pegasus need not fly and an earth pony need not be outstanding at agriculture and strength. There are many tasks a pony can adapt to, neigh, has to adapt to and master, despite not being born with specialist affinities for that task. Naturally, the same holds true for cutie marks. A pony who's special talent is being grumpy or popping balloons is going to have to develop other talents to get by.

There is a caveat -- the more powerful the magic in a pony, the stronger the bond between their special talents, as described by their cutie mark, and their identity. I learned this the hard way when I cast Starswirl the Bearded's unfinished spell in the presence of the Elements of Harmony.

The Magic of Friendship has transformed me and my friends. With every lesson we've learned about friendship, with every battle we have won, with every adventure, sorrow, laugh, hope, fear... we have shared, we've grown more powerful. Each and every one of us. Dash flies faster, I teleport further, Applejack is a rock of dependability, Fluttershy tamed Discord (!), Pinkie and Rarity keep making each of their projects better and more refined every time. And that magic feeds back into their special talents to the point that if somehow you remove that special talent and replace it, it's like you've yanked out and transplanted their raison d'être, their reason for existence. And with them it's not a small raison d'être that can be ignored as they get on with their lives, but a huge, central to their existence raison d'être, a primal urge that resonates with them, body and mind.

When I accidentally switched their cutie marks, I replaced one motivator with an equally powerful motivator. My friends got saddled with powerful talents that their minds and bodies couldn't mesh with. I suppose it would be like feeling like a flying ace pegasus without wings. Good thing everything snapped back into place with a judicious combination of the Elements and going through the motions of what my friends are talented at. And then I got vaporized. And winged.

My wings were not something I'd been born with. They were not part of me as I grew in power through Friendship. So my wings were not well meshed with my mind and body, but unlike my friends'... experience with swapped cutie marks, since my wings were somewhat underpowered relative to their appearance, they were catching up to me instead of the other way around. Good thing too. Those things are huge. And they keep getting in the way. Well, less now. Hmph.