Chapter One
Spring Cleaning.
The floor of the library is littered with memories. Countless memories. Memories that have been plastered on the walls, the floor and even a bit on the ceiling. “How the h-hay did I even get up there?” I ask out loud.
Out of this mass of chaos, there are small islands of order. From the spot where I first made the tea, there is almost a flower of papers sprawling out. This eventually pours out into random directions with no real pattern. I sigh. At least Twilight helped a little before she went to run some errands.
This time I wasn’t left alone. Spike is over in a corner of the room with papers I have deemed “safe” to look at. Apparently, Owloysius is also somewhere around here. I find it odd that I haven’t seen him at all during my week here. Well, It’s been more than a week. It’s like two days after the tea incident. Those last two days I did nothing but sleep. It was a deep, dreamless sleep, and when I was dreaming it was like walking through a blank sheet of paper. Sketchy lines and nothing of substance. I figure it had something to do with the Creativi-tea sapping any real creativity from me.
I sigh again and look at all these papers, picking them up with my mouth is a tedious task. It has resulted in one or two paper cuts. Paper cuts on the fingers are bad enough, but on the lips?! Ugh.
Spike picks up a few more papers and looks at them questioningly. “Hey, HB, I’m just wondering.” I sigh. Spike wondering means that he is going to ask something about all this stuff. I brace myself for some question involving giant spoons or dog houses or the like.
“When you said you would never wear a dress, or that you never wore dresses where you were from, what did you mean by that?” he asks, as if it were a casual conversation piece. Among the rustling of papers, it feels weird and rather awkward of a thing to bring up as a conversation starter.
“I meant what I said Spike. I didn’t wear dresses. What’s so weird about that?” I ask him.
“Well, every mare here has worn a dress, or at least isn’t so avid about not wearing a dress,” he tells me.
I roll my eyes. Damn you gender stereotypes. “Spike, that’s not true. Not every mare here has worn a dress. I am sure that there are mares here that haven’t worn clothing in their lives. Ponies don’t normally wear clothing.” I place some more papers in the stack of papers on the table.
“Yeah, but you seemed really against wearing a dress,” Spike says. He’s trying to needle out more information from me. Learn more about me.
“I just don’t like dresses, Spike. It’s just that simple. It’s nothing more or less than preference,” I reply.
“But you also said that you never wore dresses on the world you’re from,” Spike counters.
I am getting really tired of this conversion about dresses. Next he is sure to start talking about why I don’t like the titles of miss, ma’am, little, or anything remotely feminine sounding. “That would be correct, Spike. My mother never forced me to wear them. Nor did she feel it necessary to put me in them. So I never really thought about wearing them. Now, can we talk about something else? Please? Like what our favorite fruit is?”
“How about our favorite flowers?” he asks me.
I think about that. Favorite flower. There are two that actually stick out in my mind. Right now, that is. Sure, it’s always seen that the guy is meant to give the flowers to the girl, but really, flowers can be a rather gender neutral thing. They smell pretty and are nice to look at. Least to the human eye, to any other species, there are an assortment of uses for them. The most common use for them is a food source by their pollinators. And I have seen on more than one occasion, a pony munch on a flower in the show.
“Favorite flower... I would have to go with lilacs, maybe violets.” I place more papers in a pile on the table. I barely have a small section of the library cleaned. Mostly due to the fact that I am organizing while I am cleaning. I rub my temples. All of this exercise, combined with caffeine withdrawal is giving me a bit of a headache.
“Lilacs and violets? Really, ‘cause I would have pegged you for a-” he pauses. “Are you alright there, H.B.?”
“I’m fine, but I could do with a glass of water,” I look up at him. “Could you be kind enough to get me one, Spike?”
Spike sets the papers down and nods. “Sure thing there H.B.,” he replies, walking to the kitchen.
I walk over to the spot where Spike was cleaning up. Walking has been getting a bit better, but it is still a chore in of itself. I am going to have to watch Twilight more and if I can get over myself, ask her how she does it. Left hoof, right hoof, left hoof, right hoof. One step at a time, H.B.
I look over the papers that Spike is attempting to organize, only to find why he was talking about flowers. I find myself in a veritable garden of attempts to draw a myriad of different flowers. Each one is pretty much a failure in some regard. But there are a good number of different flowers here. Daisies, daffodils, lilies, violets and snapdragons to name a few. They all look like they were done up in scribble art, little wavy curly lines coming off everything. Then my eye spies something. One flower in particular, one flower that reminds me of Her. It is practically one of the few good drawings out of this bunch. I look around, Spike is still in the kitchen getting me a glass of water. I move as quickly as I can to the table with the ‘unsafe’ papers.
Then I pause. “What are you doing, H.B.? It’s just a drawing. It isn’t going to cause the universe to break, it isn’t going to cause Spike to lose his mind. Maybe, just maybe if you didn’t make just a big deal about these little things. And I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. Or Yu? Whatever, hear yourself out on this. If you didn’t make such a big deal about these little things, maybe the others wouldn’t get suspicious about things and wouldn’t poke and prod you about them!” I look at the paper in my mouth. It’s been there so long, that it’s slightly damp. Ugh.
“Whoa! That’s a pretty good drawing, H.B.!” I jump and make a whickering noise as I realize that Spike is standing right in front of me with a glass of water in hand.
I try to calm myself. It’s just a drawing. Then again, if that is the case, then why do I have a ‘safe pile’ and an ‘unsafe pile’ to begin with? I shake my head nervously. “It’s not that great, Spike,” I reply.
“Hey, from what I have seen in this mess?” he says after I have shuffled the paper into a nondescript pile. “It’s pretty good.” I see the glass of water being presented to me.
I eye him. “Really, Spike? How am I s’posta hold this?” I ask him.
He sighs. “By wrapping your hoof around it?”
“Right, how silly of me, ask a blindingly obvious question...” I grimace and reach my right hoof forward. He holds the glass by the brim. I try to think about how I am going to do this. I fumble and twitch around the glass. Spike keeps giving me weird looks like this shouldn’t be that hard and that it should be just second nature to me. But it’s not. Every time I think I am getting it, my hoof slips up and it feels like the glass is going to drop. With every try, it just gets more and more frustrating. Finally, I can’t help but shout. “UGH!” I pull my hoof away. “I can’t do it, Spike! It doesn’t feel right!”
“Oh for Pete’s...” he face palms. “What’s the problem?”
“It feels like it’s slipping! Every time I try to grasp it, it just feels like I’m going to drop it or something! And the last thing I need is broken glass and wet papers everywhere!” I exclaim.
Spike sighs. “Alright, let’s try it a different way. Let’s try it with both ankles.”
I sit on the floor. “Alright,” I sigh. “But I can’t promise that it will get any better.” I straighten myself up and hold my hooves up in front of me. If I were a dog, I would swear that this would look like the ‘sitting pretty’ stance. I dare not think about how ‘cute’ I remember this looking in pictures. That would throw off my concentration.
Spike puts the glass between what should be my wrists, carefully I squeeze them together to see if I can grip the glass. It works, sorta. “This would be far easier the glass were textured.”
“Textured?” Spike asks me.
“Yeah, like it was blasted with sand or something. It’s really smooth, and furry things don’t grip smooth glass all that well,” I reply. Last time I did this, it was on the train to Canterlot. It wasn’t easy, but the glass didn’t feel this difficult to handle. And the liquid going up my nose? That was just icing on the proverbial cake.
“Just squeeze a little harder, H.B.” Spike says.
I bite the inside of my lip. Not because I am trying to focus, but because what Spike said, if taken out of context, could be so incredibly wrong. Focus H.B., glass in ..wrists.. I squeeze a little harder. The glass wobbles about between my ankles, but then steadies. Next step, bring glass to mouth. Carefully, I proceed to do this. I remembering not to tilt it up too far. And before I know it, I can feel the wonderful tingle of cool water going down my throat.
“Great job there, H.B.!” Spike says encouragingly.
His sudden words of praise startle me, and some water goes down the wrong pipe. I choke a little and then pull the glass away from my mouth, with a still tight grip. “Gah!”
“Whoa! Don’t choke!” he shouts.
Again. That sounds so wrong. I shouldn’t be thinking these things. I attempt to set the glass on the table, the remaining bit of liquid swishes about. “I’m fine,” I reply between a cough. “It’s just that you-” I misjudge where my hoof is going to be as I turn. It hits the glass and toppled it over, sending the remaining water spilling on some of the drawings. And of course, on the one drawing in this whole shit storm of drawings that matters. “Ah! Fet-Locks!” I slam my hoof to the ground in frustration. Something that I most likely shouldn’t have done. After all, it seems that the glass wants to further my panic by rolling itself off the edge of the table.
“Eee!” I attempt to rush over to stop it from falling, however I am too late. I brace myself for the sound of breaking glass. Much to my surprise, it never comes.
Looking over, I see Spike with glass in hand. “You know, you should be more careful.” He says, setting the glass on the table. He’s right, but I can’t help feel sparks of anger and jealousy twinge though my being. I’m sure he can see it on my face. “Hey, I’m just saying.”
I take a deep breath. Calm yourself, H.B. “I know, Spike. But it doesn’t make it any easier, Okay?” I look at my hooves. Despite there being a hole in my right hoof, despite the ability to draw, write, and express myself being reclaimed, these things are still clumsy. It’s like wearing heavy boxing gloves all the time. Only the boxing gloves are actually a part of you. Damn it. Other ponies can practically use these things like normal hands. But I can’t. It’s frustrating, confusing and just makes me want to scream. “Come on, H.B., they’ve had their whole lives to practice with them. You’ve been a pony only for nine days. More or less.”
“Remember, one step at a time, H.B.,” he tells me, plucking a towel from the laundry bin to clean up the water mess.
“Right,” I say, bitterly looking at my precious soaked flower drawing. “One step at a time.”