//------------------------------//
// 31 - Diplomacy 
// Story: The GATE 
// by scifipony 
//------------------------------//

Antoinette gasped. "The purple one.  She's the one, the mare that took Brother to the hospital..."

I heard a shout, "And the monster's a thief, too!", followed by a chorus of shushing.  I didn't need to look back to know which old baby boomer had said that. 

I stared at the little winged unicorn.  Time had dilated and it seemed we'd been watching one another for a minute or more.  In that time, she seemed oblivious to the "heat" she packed, but I understood full well that not only could she use all of it, and all of it simultaneously like the princess levitated the keys, but that she didn't need any of if she chose to be fierce.  Nor did she seem to want to be.  Her obliviousness telegraphed that much.  Slowly, the word ingénue came to mind.  I wasn't positive the word ingénue entirely applied, but intuition insisted it did. 

The exuberant newcomer stared hard-eyed for a few moments at the source of the last outburst, then looked back into my eyes as she trotted, smiling, the short distance up to me.  With horse-like body language, ears forward, she sniffed, her nostrils in what appeared to be a soft small muzzle pulsing, before she spoke.

"..."

I shrugged. 

She shrugged and smiled even more widely in a totally un-horse-like manner, pointing at her gesture and mine, glancing back.  She then tilted her head inquiringly, looking me in the eye. 

I said, "What has happened looks bad.  My father is a sheriff, kind of like those armored guys over there but with a smaller brass shield pinned to his chest—"  I pointed. "—and I'm sure this shouldn't have been allowed, and I feel sorry it happened.  Can you even understand anything I'm saying?"

The pony blinked her big purple eyes, then shrugged.  I'd noticed that she had a stars tattoo and the Arabian had a sun tattoo, which fit oddly with what Antoinette had sad about that one controlling the sun.  To keep things straight in my head, since I'd never be able to speak horse, I decided to call the purple pony Duchess Stars, the blue one Princess Moon, and the white one Queen Sun.  In my mind, a duke, or in her case a duchess, seemed like someone who'd be formidable or militant.  I thought of Downton Abbey. 

I coughed. 

I decided the shrug was coincidental.  I added, "I would like to help to fix whatever happened and to help humans and equines live together peacefully." 

My words stunned me because they came out in a rush without much thought. Then I realized that I had been looking for some way to make a difference with my life.  Had my subconscious picked a role for me?  I blinked away a tear.  

I could make a difference. 

I briefly bowed, then pointed at my chest and said, "Judith Brown."  I pointed at the duchess.  

Her mouth dropped and she chuffed two words and pointed at herself, then made horse sounds that faintly imitated my name.  While I named her companions, then Antoinette and Daniel who had come to sit behind me, a golden brown pony trotted up with a basket of very red apples on her back.

Apples!  How very stereotypically horsey.

"That's the one!" Antoinette said just short of shouting behind me. "She kicked Pauli."

I glanced back to see her pointing, then forward.  Of all the ponies, this one looked the most earth-like.  Though she greatly resembled a Shetland pony, she wore a work-stained cowboy hat and had wrangled together the voluminous blonde hair in her mane and tail with red yarn ties.  In a feat of hard to follow motions, she brought the basket over her head and hat, caught its fall, and landed it with a faint bang before us.  

She picked out a very red apple from the basket and offered it on an upturned hoof with a word I'm sure meant apple.  I flashed on a scene in the animated Snow White where the witch gives Snow White the apple.

Kicked Pauli, huh?  While wearing a cowboy hat?

When I paused like a deer in the headlights, the pony bit into the apple and offered it again. 

Not poisoned. 

But also, well, horse spit.  

I took it nevertheless and bit off a mouthful from the other side.  It wasn't overly sweet, but the taste of apple was so intense my mouth hurt as my salvia flowed freely.  I nodded and smiled, realizing this was obviously her orchard and all it implied.  

I hoped what she said next was If she likes apples, she can't be half rotten.

I bent and used a finger to scrawl Apple in the dirt.  Suddenly the equines and I were pointing between the fruit and the word. 

A small yellow pony had been hiding behind the apple purveyor's legs. This one was the size of a border collie but with legs that were more the length of a corgi's.  She was jumping and speaking, until the older one shushed her and possibly scolded her.  The little one turned stern in an obviously kid way, pointed at the other humans accusingly, at her apparent elder, then at her own purple and red flank tattoo as if it made a point.  She then rushed off into the farmhouse faster than any earth quadruped her size had a physical right to. 

I decided to call her Bows because she had a big red ribbon bow tied into her mane.  

When she shot back from the house, she skidded to a stop between the duchess, Apple, and me.  Bows dumped her saddlebags, which, besides a few hardbound books, included pencils (painted yellow with a pink eraser), a protractor, a triangle, a notebook, and index cards on a ring.  

She opened the notebook and with a stubby pencil in her mouth, wrote letters, a single line glyph of an apple, and copied a-p-p-l-e.

I reached for another pencil, then presented an open hand as if to a regular horse.  Bows nodded.  I took the index cards and printed APPLE.

Bows started bouncing again, then remembered herself as the gathering herd of equines, including the princess and queen nodded and chuffed happily.  She wrote on the back of the card, and hoofed it back to me.  As I took it, I noticed an oddly clean (for a quadruped) frog that was fuzzy pink and looked like it formed to flattened thumbs.  

It explained much.  

I flashed the horse writing side at my audience and pointed at the apples.  Every equine nodded.

Taking an empty card, I pointed to myself and printed in block letters, JUDITH BROWN.