Like (almost) every other morning I was awakened by the unmistakable sound of chirping birds and the sun shining through the closed curtains, right into my bedroom, illuminating the whole room in its beautiful annoying golden light.
"I should've taken that damn revolver with me." I grumbled angrily, opening my eyes slowly and glaring at the closed curtains. "One day those damn birds are going to pay..."
'And what about the sun? What do you want to do about that?'
'Shut up.'
'I'm your brain, don't tell me what to do.'
'No, don't you tell me what to do! I am...uh...'
'Dude, you're literally talking to yourself.'
'Yeah, well, at least I'm not an assh-'
I'm still not quite sure if that bowling ball accident gave me more than just some scratches and a headache.
Fortunately my little internal battle was interrupted as a certain orange filly started stirring and yawned, announcing that she was slowly waking up. I looked down, only to see her already returning my look, a smile on her face that made me brighten up instantly.
"Good morning, dad." She greeted cheerfully, nuzzling against the crook of my neck.
"Well, good morning to you too." I said, returning her loving gesture by planting a small kiss on top of her head. She blushed, standing up on my chest and playfully hitting my shoulder.
"Daaad!"
"Anyways, how about some breakfast? I could make some pancakes, maybe scrambled eggs, or hell, maybe even som-"
"Did you go grocery shopping yet?" She asked, interrupting my daydreaming about all the various, incredibly tasty things I could've made for breakfast - that I just realized I couldn't make.
"...We could also go to Sugarcube Corner again."
"Do you have any bits to pay?"
I sighed, facepalming. "...Shit, you're right. Pinkie was kind enough to give us that meal for free..." I muttered through my hand.
"Yeah, so what now?"
I let my hand fall back down, giving her a slightly helpless look. "I dunno. Do you eat flowers?"
"Depends." She said, 'hmming' and lifting a hoof up to her chin, tapping it idly. "What flowers are we talking about?"
"Uh...white ones and some...yellow ones, I think? They're... pretty?" I said helplessly. She rolled her eyes. "What? I ain't no botanist."
She smacked her lips after a short period of silence. "Yeah, well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to get me some flowers." She said, jumping off of my chest and then from the bed down onto the ground. She walked over to the door, which, somehow, opened itself as she put a hoof to it. "Better be fast or I'll eat them all alone."
"But I don't even like flowers!" I stated aloud with a pout on my face, looking at her retreating form.
"That's your problem." She called back from somewhere in the hallway. "It's either that or nothing."
"Ugh..." I groaned, pulling the blankets off of my body and sitting myself up on the edge of the bed. I stretched myself, smiling tiredly as I heard my joints popping, but that smile didn't last long as I soon started missing the feeling of the incredibly soft and therefore comfortable mattress beneath my back.
'Who knows, maybe flowers aren't that bad?' I thought.
So I stood up, scratched my back, pulled on the only set of clothes I had and made my way downstairs to join Scoots at the breakfast.
I looked down into my left hand, a bunch of white petals collected in it.
Sitting opposite of me was Scootaloo, nose deep in a big plate filled with flowers of all colors, happily munching away on them. "And you are sure these aren't poisonous?" I asked her skeptically.
Polite as she was she swallowed before speaking up, "I'm eating them, ain't I?"
I lifted one of the little white petals up to my face, gently holding it between thumb and index finger. "Well, I don't know about this for sure... Like, maybe they just aren't poisonous for you?"
She shrugged. "Only one way to find out, I guess."
Now, I really didn't want to die, but I also didn't want to miss breakfast, the most important meal of the day. I slowly brought the petal closer to my mouth, gulped once and reluctantly bit into it.
I was almost, almost, disappointed that it tasted like bitter and slightly tangy grass. The only thing that actually made the little petal even eatworthy were all those vitamins it was supposed to have, if Scootaloo had been right about that.
"Aaaand? How was it?" Scootaloo asked, maybe a little bit too excited, her plate that was previously filled with hills of flowers completely empty. "Good, right?"
"It tastes like grass." I stated simply, not looking very impressed. I then threw the rest of the petals into my mouth, chewing and chewing, but the taste remained the same. It was the same grassy, slightly tangy and bitter taste, only more intense.
"Grass?" She inquired, raising an eyebrow. "Doesn't taste like grass to me."
"And what does it taste like then?" I questioned in return, raising an eyebrow equally high.
She 'hmmed', rubbing the underside of her muzzle with one of her little hooves. "I dunno, like...daisies?" She answered unsurely.
"Scoots, these are daisies."
"I know."
I stood up from the chair, stretching once. "Well, I'll get myself some more. They aren't that bad. Better than nothing, at least."
"Hehe, yeah, about that..." Scootaloo started nervously, looking down at the empty plate. "I may have...eaten all of them."
"You have what?" I asked, the last part of her sentence not really reaching my ears.
She sighed. "I have eaten all of them."
I blinked, then groaned.
"Fuck."
****
My stomach grumbled, my feet felt heavy with every step I took.
"Where are we going Scoots?" I asked the orange pegasus in front of me.
"To the Carousel Botique, duh." She answered as if it was obvious, giving me a short look from over her shoulder.
"Okay, and why are we going there?" I asked, annoyance growing with every second we were walking through the vibrant town called Ponyville. The stares and glances I was (still) receiving -some of them even showing pure disgust towards me (why was beyond me)- were making things even worse. "I really don't know why you are dragging me there. You just told me to follow you."
It was right. As soon as I was done with cleaning the plate she used for her breakfast she literally dragged me out of the door and told me to follow her. Why, she didn't say, but apparently I should've known that the moment we went outside.
Yeah, well, I didn't. Go figure.
"Because we need to ask Rarity about making new clothes for you."
"What's so bad about them?" I asked confusedly, one eyebrow raised as I looked down to my t-shirt. "They look normal?"
"Well yeah, they look normal, but they definitely do not smell normal." She said, her face contorting in disgust as she took a rather big inhale through her nose. "Yeah, definitely not." She concluded, shuddering slightly.
At first I didn't believe her, but then I took a smell of my own - she wasn't lying when she said that I smelled bad.
"Oh boy." I muttered, face scrunching up in disgust as the sweaty and quite disgusting smell hit my nose. "That is disgusting. I really have no idea how I didn't smell that until now."
"Yeah, well, it wasn't that bad yesterday." She said, face features softening into her normal look again. She then shrugged once and resumed walking. "At least I'm not the only pony that has to smell you."
I looked around me, seeing some of the ponies waving their hooves in front of their noses in a disgusted fashion as they passed me. Apparently ponies were way better at smelling things than I had thought, which explained a lot of things.
Not that I particularly cared about them. They had been nothing but assholes to me back then, or hell, even downright psychotic.
Let's take that mint-green unicorn mare as an example for 'downright psychotic'. I still didn't know what was up with her, but I'm sure that I had some kind of deep mental scarring from the encounter at the hospital. If what Rainbow told me about her had been right, she lived in town. It was a miracle that I hadn't seen her again - a miracle I'm quite grateful for.
But I knew that my luck was, sooner or later, going to run out - I just had to hope that it wasn't going to run out this day, because, boy did I not want to cross paths with her again.
"There it is!" Scootaloo said, pointing a hoof at a big white something in front of us.
I looked, and looked, and looked some more, but no matter how hard I analyzed the thing in front of me, I had no idea what exactly it should portray.
Sure, it was a building, the Carousel Boutique to be exact, where Rarity and her little sister lived in, but what the actual fuck was it? How exactly should I describe something that looked like an eight-year-old girl had drawn it? Why couldn't the ponies in town build one normal looking house?
I mean, seriously, a gingerbread house bakery, a castle made out of crystals, a house that was literally a tree and now that?
"C'mon dad!" Scootaloo called, pulling me out of my thoughts about pony architecture and all that jazz. She was standing in the doorway, holding the door open for me as she gestured for me to enter the downright fabulous, girly colored building with one of her forelegs.
With a sigh I walked over to the door and entered the building, already dreading what was going to await me inside.
As soon as I entered it my nose was assaulted by the very potent smell of perfume and more perfume, the sheer amount of it that was lingering in the air making me feel dizzy for a second.
Scootaloo closed the door beside me and trotted up to my side, wearing the same expression on her face as I did. "Ugh, I hate that smell..."
"Yeah." I agreed, even though I didn't really hear her; my mind was just too fascinated by the counter to my right, or, more precisely, by the silver bell that was placed on top of it. It was almost like it was calling for me to ring it, the silver glistening in the room's bright light hypnotically.
I outstretched an arm absentmindedly, ringing the bell before I even registered what I was doing.
"♫ Cooom-iiing ♬" A melodic and unmistakeable voice called from somewhere around the corner, from somewhere upstairs, quickly followed by the tell-tale sound of clopping hooves. The sound grew in volume until the source of it revealed itself.
"Welcome to the Carou- Oh, hello William, Scootaloo." She greeted as she rounded the corner, looking genuinely happy to see us. "It's good to-" She interrupted herself mid-sentence, sniffed once, then twice, and in a matter of seconds her face took on a look of disgust.
"By Celestia, what is that smell?" She asked, eyes darting between me and Scootaloo. "It smells downright horrifying!"
I chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the back of my head sheepishly. Rarity looked like she was about to faint as I did so because by doing so I somehow managed to make the smell even worse - but she managed not to faint, which kinda impressed me.
"Y-yeah, well, It may-"
"It's his clothes." Scotaloo answered, not giving me the chance to answer Rarity myself, pointing an excusing hoof at me. "That's the only set of clothes he took with him and they're kinda stinking now."
Rarity finally managed to look at me again, albeit a bit annoyed, one hoof in front of her nose, trying to prevent the bad-smelling air from reaching her nostrils. "Darling, pardon my language, but why the buck didn't you think of coming to me earlier?" She asked me, voice muffled by the hoof in front of her muzzle, but the annoyance was still very much hearable. "It could've made things so much...less gross."
"Well, I don't exactly have any mon-...Er, bits, on me." I answered matter-of-factly. "Buying clothes is kinda out of the question right now."
"William, dear-" She started, reluctantly moving her hoof away from her face and interrupting herself with a cute giggle. "-you don't have to pay me for making you clothes."
"Wait, what?" I asked after a short moment of silence, staring at the white pony like she was a maniac. "You want to make me clothes for free? Like, free free? The kind of free that doesn't involve me giving you bits?"
She nodded, answering my question. "Yes dear."
"But why?"
She made a tsk sound, shaking her head from side to side. "Do you really think that after you took care of Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow and little Scootaloo there-" She pointed a hoof at the filly to my left. "-that I'm going to charge you for making you some clothes or two?"
I opened my mouth to form a retort, but the white unicorn mare beat me to it.
"Don't even think about saying that we already did enough by building you a house." She said, smiling up at me in a gentle way. I closed my mouth again, surprised that she knew what I was going to say. "You gave those four a home for over two months and hid them from your own government, which, considering the nature of Twilight and Rainbow, you did very well, I might add."
"They weren't that bad." I answered, rolling my eyes. "It's like everyone's thinking that Twilight's going to blow things up as soon as she starts experimenting, or that Rainbow's hard to be around because she's... well, Rainbow."
"I mean, it's not like Twilight blew anything up or did any permanent damage to something." I paused, idly rubbing my stubbly chin with one hand as if in deep thought. "At least I think so."
"And Rainbow...Well, she was okay, but did some admittedly stupid things." I continued, thoughts drifting back to that one day where she thought showing me the Sonic Rainboom was a good idea... Outside. Right in front of my house. Where everyone who was in the near vicinity could've seen her and that rainbow trail she created.
"Actually, let me rephrase that: she did some really stupid things." I concluded. "But that still doesn't mean that they weren't good guests. They helped me too, you know?"
Rarity nodded in acknowledgment. "That may be true, but you still helped them a lot, which is why you have the privilege of getting some fine clothes made by none other than moi. For free, I may add."
I opened my mouth to politely decline her offer, that I somehow was going to pay her for her service (even though I wasn't sure how), but she interrupted me even before the words were able to leave my mouth.
"I insist on it." She said firmly but friendly, that smile never wavering.
I was about to say no, to again decline her offer as politely as I possibly could have done, but then I was reminded by my brain how much I needed those clothes, and, if she insisted on making them for free, why not accept it? Plus, it didn't look like she was changing her opinion on the matter, or read to let me go before I accepted her generous offer.
"I...Okay..." I said, sighing in defeat. Her smile grew ten times bigger and I could've sworn that I heard an excited squeal coming from her. "But just this once! I don't want you to go bankrupt."
"Oh, this is so exciting! I'm the first pony to make clothes for an alien!" The unicorn said gleefully, sitting herself on her haunches and clasping her two hooves together, excitement clearly visible.
I shook my head at the silly display in front of me before looking down to my side, to Scootaloo, who looked like she was trying her hardest to hold back giggles.
She wasn't good at holding back, though, so that meant that a few managed to slip past her lips. And then a few more.
Rarity cleared her throat and my head automatically turned back to look at her. She still looked happy, but the tint of red on her cheeks was noticeable, even though she tried to hide it. She must've realized her overreaction, though I definitely understood why she was so excited in the first place - It was her job to make clothes, after all. Why shouldn't she be excited about making clothes for a new species?
"Anyways, how about we take some measurements?" Rarity asked, this time trying her best to seem professional and more 'ladylike'.
"Sure."