Close Enough
Cuddlhu didn’t stop running until she reached her home. The midday sun beat down on her all the way, and she had nearly ended up letting one of her zips slip open from all the slime she was exuding. By the time she reached her residence - if it could even be called that - she was panting out stinky breaths of exhaustion as she dragged her sagging hooves behind her.
She groaned and made her way round the back to a garden, overgrown with weeds and a couple of baby trees that had managed to find their way in. Cuddlhu, pointing a glare at the sun, slogged up to the rotting fence and raised her muzzle into the air. Something slimy and green within her grabbed the pull tab and split her front in two. Now open to escape, Cuddlhu quite literally spilled her guts out into the mess of brambles and flowers.
Cuddlhu looked back as her mock-pony suit crumpled to the ground, and dove into the undergrowth to avoid the heat of the sun. Now that she was out, she was even more vulnerable.
That was so embarrassing! What a silly mistake for me to make, Quilliam warned me about putting truth first and now somepony knows about me! the creature thought to herself. But… I’m safe now. Nopony will find me here, the sun can’t get me, and… “Oh no.” An image of the old mare she had spoken to came to mind. “I told her where I live… She’ll be coming to greet me, and give me presents and kisses and pats on the head!” She looked at her disguise laying empty on the ground, and switched her thought train to a completely different track. “I’ve got to get ready!”
Cuddlhu slithered out of the garden and through one of the windows in her home. She then reached back out into the open and wrapped her disguise in a few green tendrils to hold it up. Making sure to keep the fragile skin away from any thorns, Cuddlhu guided the slime out of the hooves and, like she was squeezing frosting from a pastry bag, the green gunk slowly emerged out of the skin suit’s mouth and disappeared into the plants.
Alright. She dragged the drained suit into the house with her. What next…? Cuddlhu looked around at her home and wriggled her spinal growths in thought.
Having no prior knowledge of what made for a well-kept home - or even what made a good pony house in the first place - Cuddlhu had chosen the first empty-looking place she’d come across when she first emerged from the Everfree Forest. The one she had ended up picking served her needs perfectly well: It was small and dark, just like a mossy cave, and it even had patches of water laying in small pools on the floor. To top it all off, the garden out back provided her with all the sustenance she needed.
Had she been wearing her disguise, she would have smiled at the sight. “This place is perfect,” she repeated to herself.
Looking at it with two independently moving eyes, Cuddlhu picked up her suit from the floor and, with a shake, dunked it in the largest pool in the house. The water was filled with algae and seemed to be the beginnings of a small pond, but it served to get rid of the smell of bodily liquids from the skin and hair, if only to replace it with the acrid scent of rotting, waterlogged plants.
All of a sudden, a sound tore through the air: a scream. Cuddlhu’s entire body tensed up at the sound, sending her tendrils into the nearby ground and walls as their owner’s surprise turned them rigid. Her eyestalks whipped around to see a pink mare, her blue eyes staring at the pool, coming to the end of her scream. Before Cuddlhu could say a word, the mare leapt past her and grabbed what looked vaguely like a drowning, shriveled pony out of the water. The display sent a splatter of algae across one of the walls.
“Yay! I saved- oh. It’s just a very, very life-like pony suit, what are the chances?” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. She gave the thing a shake, producing a papery wobble sound. Her bright eyes went brighter at the discovery, but she had more important things to attend to at the moment. She dropped the suit back into the water and looked at Cuddlhu, naked of any disguise. “Man, lemme tell you, ‘Tentacle Cosplay Monster’, you’d have been in trouble if I hadn’t noticed that your suit was just a suit! Good thing I’m a master of disguises, myself!”
Oh no, oh no, Cuddlhu thought. There’s a pony in my house, and it isn’t Quilliam or that old mare I met in town! What do I do? She opted to scream in terror. Her body quivered like a sea anemone as she coiled all of her tentacles upwards towards the ceiling. “Don’t look at me! Give me my suit back, I need that to be a pony!” the tentacle monster cried, flattening herself as much as possible against the wood in an attempt to hide.
Pinkie watched with an unconcerned smile, and fished the skin suit out of the water once more. “It’s ok, I know the feeling,” she responded as she raised it up to her newest friend. “Sometimes, I don’t feel like a pony. Not like everyone else does, at least.”
Cuddlhu cautiously gathered the suit out of Pinkie’s hooves. She held either side of the gaping chest and opened it up further. Pinkie Pie watched with intrigue as the creature slithered back into the suit, the tentacles and exposed organs filling it up and arranging themselves to take on the look of a solid body. The red eyes took their positions in the empty sockets, the underside was zipped up and Cuddlhu looked at her visitor. “I don’t understand. Where did you come from? How did you find me?” she asked.
“Uh, duh? I’m Pinkie Pie, I know everypony in Ponyville!”
“... That doesn’t really answer my question…”
Pinkie sat and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well… to answer your first question; I came from a rock farm north-west of here, in Ghastly Gorge. Then Seaddle burned down and I moved here to Ponyville. As for how I found you…” Her mane drooped slightly. “It was by pure chance. For some reason my Pinkie Sense didn’t warn me there was a new pony in town, and I just happened across Mrs. Withers today who told me about a pony I hadn’t heard of before.”
Cuddlhu looked sympathetic, despite not really following all that the other mare was talking about. “Well, you know that I’m not really a pony now, don’t you?” she asked. “Do you… promise not to tell anyone about me? About what I really am?”
Pinkie brightened up and smiled. She performed an odd routine, ending with one of her forehooves stuck in her eyeball. “I Pinkie Promise not to tell anypony that you’re not just anypony!” she replied with a grin. “Personally, you look like a pony and you smell like a pony, so you’re close enough for me!” She grabbed one of her own legs and glared at it. “Stupid Pinkie Sense, discriminating against almost-ponies like that! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
A smile, just as big as the one Pinkie wore, stretched across Cuddlhu’s face. “You- you really think so? You really think I make a good pony?”
Pinkie let her traitorous leg go for the moment and looked back at her new friend. “Of course you do! Why, I’d bet if I threw a party here, no one would be any wiser that you were straight out of the Everfree! Come to think of it, how long have you been here? You only just got to Ponyville, right?”
Cuddlhu shook her head. “No, I only just went into town properly today. I’ve been living here for five-”
“FIVE DAYS?!” Pinkie exclaimed in absolute horror, leaping into the rafters.
“No, years. Five years,” Cuddlhu corrected.
The joyous, energetic feeling that had filled the room fled, and Pinkie dropped from the ceiling like a fluffy, dead flamingo. For a while she said nothing. Cuddlhu looked between Pinkie’s staring eyes, and found an emotion she didn’t recognise from the energetic pony: an incredible, cutting sadness. Her formerly bunchy, tangled mane lay splayed out across the floor, with her tail drooping into the baby pond. Her big, blue eyes had shrunk to the size of pinpricks and it almost looked like her coat was losing its colour.
“Five years?” she almost whispered.
Cuddlhu nodded.
Pinkie fainted.
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Five years... Pinkie must feel awful, having not notice a new pony in Ponyville... you'd think she'd notice the shack once or twice, even if it IS on the edge of town.
Pinkie's got five years worth of parties to make up for!
5024985
Oh god, you're right. She will be adding up all the parties that she's missed. All to make the incoming super-party even more ridiculously terrifying for poor, introverted Cuddlhu, I guess :P
La! La! Cuddlhu fhtagn!
5024990 Her small and dark shed is going to be PACKED with ponies that don't know who she really is... Quilliam never warned her about "The Pink One".
They WILL find out about her secret... if even ONE finds out, that party's gonna go haywire, and her poor garden's going to be absolutely trampled.
... Enjoy the chaos!
Well, a party is now unavoidable, this will be fun.
Darn...
5025553 I know... I know... it's okay, Abby. It's still got my seal of approval on it, and clop is being made on Derpibooru... In the meantime, get to work making some clop for it!
What the fuck Parallel? REALLY? I can't, I don't. I can't even. I can't odd.
5026885 I know, I know, no clop is a bit of a downer.
I kid. Don't be afraid of the tentacle pony, Kazi, she won't eat, kill or tentacle rape you. I know you're used to more tame stuff from me, but if you read this one, go in with the mindset that it's a perfectly normal story, because that's exactly what it is. The only difference is that it has a very odd main character. I love doing this sort of thing.
Well that was weird, and cool, and I really liked it.
You need to add a link to the picture this is based on, though. I can't find the source at all.
5027575
You are probably using a filter that hides the tag questionable. But a link should work anyway so here you go: https://derpiboo.ru/710658
5027901
Okay, thank you. I just didn't know what to search for.
Well at least she's not carnivorous of ponies...