“Look, Bon Bon!” Lyra said, pointing to the human wearing gloves. “This one has hand socks!”
“Yep.” Bon Bon sighed, resting her head on her hoof and her elbow on the table. “It does.”
“They’re called gloves, actually. Motorcycle gloves,” Jason said, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them in his jacket pockets. “And this one has a name, believe it or not. Jason.” He smirked and extended his hand toward Lyra. “Nice to meet ya.”
Lyra reached for the hand and inspected it, scooting forward on her wooden chair. She rubbed her hoof across the palm. “Ooh, yours are kinda rough,” she said, squeezing the palm. “But still squishy.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jason said, holding out his hand but trying to gently tug it back out of Lyra’s hooves. “I’m a carpenter.”
Bon Bon pulled back Lyra’s hooves and gave an embarrassed smile to Jason. “You’ll have to excuse Lyra, here. She’s been hung up on human hands today.” Bon Bon pointed an accusatory hoof in Lyra’s face. “You have a problem.”
“How can you not freak out over this, Bon Bon? An entirely new bipedal sentient species. Isn’t this so weird? In a good way, I mean. Like fascinating.” Lyra pulled Jason’s hand over to in front of Bon Bon’s face. “Just look at these. It’s like five tiny hooves at the end of one big hoof.”
“Okay, and?” Bon Bon said. “Dragons have claws. Those are like four tiny hooves.”
“Yeah, four tiny, pointy, scaly, hard-as-a-rock hooves. But these aren’t claws, Bon Bon. They’re squishy claws. Soft claws. Aren’t they great?”
Bon Bon looked up at Wendy’s hand as it brushed through the smooth curls of her mane. “Yeah, I mean, they’re all right.”
Lyra held up Jason’s hand in her hooves. “Do you know how useful these would be? Wouldn’t they make life so much easier?”
“I think you’re overexaggerating,” Bon Bon said. “How about this: name one thing you can do with a hand that you can’t do with your horn.”
“I—hmm.” Lyra squinted. “What about—mm, no…” She rested her head on her chin, muttering to herself, then turned to Bon Bon with a sly grin. “But you’re an Earth pony. Name one thing you can’t do with your hooves.”
Bon Bon shrugged. “I can’t. Hooves can do it all.”
“Turning a doorknob,” Lyra said.
“Can do that.”
“Opening a jar of peanut butter.”
“Yup.”
“Turning the page of a book.”
“Yeah.”
“Using scissors.”
“Ye—hmm.” Bon Bon rubbed her chin. “You got me there. That’s hard to do as an Earth pony. More of a unicorn thing.”
“And a human thing,” Lyra said, picking up Jason’s hand and bending the index finger and thumb in a pinching motion. “These are optimally built for scissors-wielding.”
“Great.” Bon Bon smirked. “Humans can use scissors. So what?”
“So that makes hands better than hooves.”
“That one reason.”
Lyra closed her eyes and nodded, holding up Jason’s hand to her neck to guide his hand in petting her. “Yup.”
Bon Bon cleared her throat, pointing to the hand petting Lyra.
Lyra opened her eyes. “Hmm? What?”
“Never mind,” Bon Bon said. She turned to Wendy. “Zoologists, right?”
“I wouldn’t know. Never met one,” Wendy said, putting her phone away. She brushed her blonde hair behind her shoulders. “All I can say is you two argue over the silliest things.”
Bon Bon opened her mouth, about to protest, but instead turned up her chin. “They’re not silly at the time.”
“So,” Wendy said, putting her phone away. She took a sip of her venti coffee as she continued to rub Bon Bon’s shoulders. “What brought you two here to the café?”
“Well, because this one—“ Bon Bon shoved Lyra in the shoulder “—just had to go to this new world to meet these new human creatures. Once Twilight had made the call for volunteers in Ponyville, she was first in line before Twilight had even finished speaking.”
“Excuse me,” Lyra siad. “I was simply making my way to the front of the crowd to better hear her. I just happened to be closer than everyone else.”
“You were a foot away.”
“She’s soft-spoken for a princess.”
Bon Bon turned to Wendy. “Nope, you’re right. We argue over silly things.”
“But that’s okay,” Lyra said, giving her friend a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “The silly arguments are what makes it fun. It’s not bickering, it’s banter.”
“Yes, banter,” Bon Bon said, grinning. “Shenanigans.”
“Hijinks,” Lyra said.
“Buffoonery.”
Lyra giggled. “Buffoonery. That’s a good one.”
Wendy stopped petting momentarily to look between the two ponies. “Are you two dating?”
“No, we’re BEST FRIENDS—ach, ahem.” Bon Bon thumped her chest. “Sorry, something caught in my throat. We’re best friends.”
Wendy set her coffee aside and leaned on the table. “How did you guys meet?”
“We met when I first moved to Ponyville,” Bon Bon said. “She was my next door neighbour at the time, and invited to show me around town and introduce me. We hit it off and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Lyra wrapped a foreleg around Bon Bon. “Bon Bon’s a great friend. And a great roommate. She does all our dishes and cleans and everything. She even brings home some of her rejected candy for me.”
“It’s not rejected candy. It’s just not quite perfect.” Bon Bon drank some of her apple juice. “I’m a candy maker in Ponyville, and I make pretty much anything and everything chocolate or sugar coated. Sometimes, though, I’ll accidentally add too much water to a batch of peanut butter filling, or squeeze a bon bon a little too hard and crack the pristine outer chocolate shell… And, well, if I can’t use it or sell it, I bring it home and we have some dessert.”
“And it’s the most. Delicious. Thing. Every time.” Lyra thumped her hoof on the table for emphasis. “She says not quite perfect, but the only not perfect part is how it looks. Even if the peanut butter filling becomes a peanut butter soup, it’s still the most incredible candy I’ve ever had.”
“Thanks, Lyra,” Bon Bon said. “You know, you’re not so bad yourself. You’ve taken out the trash, I think, at least once.”
Lyra waved it off. “Oh, it’s nothing. Anything I can do to help.”
Bon Bon pointed at Lyra. “She’s into anything and everything animals, animal behaviour and history and etymology, you name it. So she tells the best boring stories.”
Lyra grunted. “She tells the worst exciting stories. If you think I’m weird ‘cause I like human hands—”
“To be fair, it is kind of weird,” Wendy said.
Jason nodded. “Yeah, honestly, if a human friend of mine told me they liked horse hooves, I might stay away.”
Lyra tilted her head. “Why? Is there something wrong with horse hooves?”
“No, it’s…” Jason waved it off. “Never mind.”
“Anyway,” Lyra said, “if you think I’m weird, wait until you hear Bon Bon make a story about monster hunting sound like a tax audit.”
Bon Bon glared at Lyra and whispered, “First of all, Lyra, that was a tax audit. Second, you can’t just tell these people I was a secret agent.”
Lyra groaned. “Come on, Bon Bon. Nopony cares.”
“Lyra!” Bon Bon hissed. “It’s called secret for a reason.”
“Well, it’s no secret, that’s for sure. Everypony in Ponyville knows you’re a secret agent.”
Bon Bon’s jaw dropped in despair. “Did you tell them?”
“No way.” Lyra raised her hooves. “I didn’t have to! You don’t think anypony saw you when you rappelled out of Sugar Cube Corner to fight the bugbear?”
Bon Bon’s eyes shifted. “We’re background ponies, Lyra. We blend in with the background.”
Lyra snorted. “Don’t throw a ‘we’re just background ponies’ at me, Bon Bon. That’s besides the point. You rappelled out of a second story window in broad daylight. How could anypony not see you?”
“I was in disguise, Lyra.”
“All you put on was a pair of sunglasses.”
Bon Bon rubbed her chin. “Right. I forgot to wear my moustache.” She sighed and hid her face with a hoof. “Ugh, darn it. I messed up. I’ve completely blown my cover.”
Lyra frowned, rubbing Bon Bon’s shoulder. “There, there.” She glanced at Jason, but Jason could only offer a shrug. Lyra followed suit and shrugged. “It’s not so bad.” She bit her lip. “I mean, to be honest, I could hardly recognize you with those sunglasses on.”
Bon Bon shook her head, her face still buried in her hooves. “You’re just saying that.”
“Yeah, I am,” Lyra said, hugging her friend. “But secret agent or no, I like you all the same.”
Bon Bon slowly raised a foreleg and wrapped it around Lyra. The two held their embrace and patted each other on the back.
Lyra smirked. “The moustache wouldn’t have helped anyway.”
“Nope, wrong,” Bon Bon said, backing out of the hug and smiling. “And now because of my negligence, I’ve compromised my secret identity and made myself more vulnerable to attacks from former enemies that could track me down. But hey, on the bright side, Twilight could teleport us to San Francisco if we had to lay low and stay by the new petting café there.”
Lyra nodded. “Yup. Or we could go to San Francisco because we want to travel there. Either or, really.”
“So if you’re a secret agent,” Jason said, “or, former secret agent, does that mean… the name’s Bond? Bon Bond?”
Bon Bon glanced at Lyra, shrugging. “I… have no idea what that means.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Wendy said, rolling her eyes. She glanced at the timer on their table, which was almost up to five minutes. “It’s just a dumb pun to end on.”