I have been living here for a few months already. This is a curious place inhabited by relatively small equines coming in a variety of colors, some of them have wings, other have cute little horns, like miniature unicorns, and other are quite plain without any other feature. There are many other creatures, but they are rare to see around here, so I assume they are not locals.
It took me about four months to start speaking (or more accurately singing) their language. It’s the most curious of things, despite having radically different biology and emitting completely different sounds, a fair number of creatures from this place understand each other. The key is that they use pitch variation, intonation and rhythm to express words, phrases and all kind of information. One of the most fascinating side effects of this is that improvised spontaneous music numbers involving several ponies, even completely strangers, are common. You see, you only have to know about what they are singing about, join in and only speak your own mind in the issue, adding a little bit of extra flourishes here and there and playing along, and boom… you are part of an improvised musical number.
Four months may look like a small amount of time to learn a completely foreign and alien language, but truth be told, it is an easy language, how easy you may ask? Well… it’s the student’s dream. Verbs are extremely predictable and easy to form, no irregulars, always the base verb plus a specific prefix or suffix. Prepositions are straightforward, grammar is almost nonexistent and easy to learn. Overall, it looks like an artificial language specifically designed to be easy. It reminds me of Esperanto, but made out of rhythms and pitch variations. To the untrained ear, it sounds as if the creatures are singing in their own voices and calls. For example, ponies neigh, snort and whinny, but following those musical patterns. The little I have investigated about the subject tells me that it is actually a successfully designed and implemented artificial language they call “Common Harmonic”, a feat that only an immortal and dedicated leader may be able to achieve trough generations of influence and teaching. I’m not totally sure, but I believe their leaders, Sky Princess and Moon Princess are incredibly old, so this theory is quite plausible, I have to investigate more.
The only difficulty I have encountered learning their language is to get used to the music, it’s extremely difficult at the beginning to even realize that the pieces of information are in the song and not the articulation of sounds like humans do. Then, you have to be good at singing, and I was not, but a whole cultural immersion in this place did wonders over the months. I ended up sometimes literally singing the words, saying them in plain English but adding the tune and rhythm to it when I’m able to match them, and as a mnemonic rule it’s been working nicely. Some ponies find my “voice” extremely rare and fascinating.
These little equines are as tall as my waist on all fours and should weight a little bit more than half the weight of a regular person, the males maybe a little bit more. Of course, there are exceptions. There is a family of farmers and one of them is gigantic… and also red, so it…HE stands out a lot.
To the point, I have been in this place for a relatively long time now. I can, more or less speak their language fluently, give or take a few rare words and some cultural misunderstandings of the context and second meanings… I hate those… some have been really awkward and embarrassing.
One of the local leaders took me to her plastic… I mean… exotic gem-crystal castle and let me stay in a room for a while, Sunset Glint I believe it’s her official name in Harmonic, but I gave her the nickname of “Purplesmart” because she is kind of purple and seems like she is a scholar. She has both a horn and wings, so, that makes her some kind of leader.
Purplesmart took me to a school teacher mare named… some weird variation of “Cheerleader” in Harmonic. I gave her the nickname “Cheery” in my head, and ended up calling her just “Cheer-cheer”.
But don’t worry, I got a taste of my own medicine, because they can’t pronounce my human name and somepony thought it would be hilarious to call me “Smartypants” because I am kind of smart and I always wear pants and before I could stop her, the damage was already done.
I hate you, little Gay-Pride-Float…
Okay… back to the point…
I have been living in that castle for a while, but I eventually decided that I should get a real job, a place to live and just stop being a dead weight in the hooves of Purplesmart… I was mildly successful looking for a source of income, but nothing stable or reliable. Most ponies hired me because they were curious or thought I was suitable for some weird activity…
Talking about weird activities… the first weeks in this place I made the mistake of thinking of these creatures as relatively intelligent animals, so I gave them a few pets and ear scratches. Somehow they enjoyed it and now, one of my most reliable jobs is at the local spa… petting ponies…
It’s relaxing… and they pay, so I try not to think too much about it.
I can’t afford rent or buying a house for myself, saving up the pieces of gold (yes, gold pieces, or gold fragments, or gold little bits, as they call them in Harmonic, literal translations are difficult sometimes…) to buy an actual house would take me years. So I ended up in the only place I could crash to get away from the experiments and investigations from the curious purple menac… I mean, to become independent and a productive member of this society…
Cheer-cheer’s house.
It all began when Purplesmart took me to Cheer’s house to learn the language. It was awkward at the beginning, but we ended up becoming good friends. She tells me about her stuff and I tell her about mine and we have a laugh… If Purplesmart comes back, we just tell her that we are doing “cultural exchange” and that seems to please her, so she leaves us to our own devices.
Once, I stayed at Cheer’s house overnight because Purplesmart had some business to do and didn’t trust me enough to leave me alone. Girls here (mares, I suppose, since they are horses…) are kind of… how to describe… well, maybe with an example.
When I was staying at Cheer’s house, I of course took the sofa to leave her the bed, and she immediately tried to make ME take the bed. First I thought she was being polite, but after some polite argument she started to be more aggressive with the negotiation, saying things like “no boy is going to take the sofa while I’m comfortably sleeping in a bed.” So, you get the idea…
How aggressive the argument became may you ask?
Well, we ended up wrestling over who would take the sofa. I was completely confident that such a cute little thing wouldn’t be able to drag me away… how wrong I was… Under that colorful, soft, fluffy fur lies a layer of muscles made out of steel, I swear… Don’t get fooled by their appearance, those ponies, especially the ones without horn or wings are STRONG… for their size.
The thing is that, despite her strength… ponies are not very big, hooves are not very good at grabbing and they tend to slip on smooth surfaces like the wooden tiled floor. Using my wits, superior limb reach and grabby hands I was able to remain on top of the sofa, but at the same time I was unable to remove her from it, so we ended up in a tangled mess waiting for the other to get uncomfortable, and surrender.
The sun dawned on us…
We both ended up with a poor night of sleep the backache of the century and a perfectly fine and empty bed nearby.
Cheer-cheer was mortified and chastised herself saying that she was an idiot who couldn’t even treat a boy properly, but I cheered her up telling that the whole situation was kind of stupid. So, you get the idea, girls here treat me like a lady while boys are kind of girlish, with exceptions of course, and in a sense of a very wide, generalized and stereotyped vision. I’m only using those terms to make the reference, of course I believe in equality, but the fun part is that this society has (or used to have) kind of the same sexist problem as human society, but reversed. They work hard to hide it, but from time to time, it shows.
Well, back to the story at hand…
I ended up renting a room in Cheery’s house. I was kind of amazed at how welcoming she was. The moment I told her, she literally scrambled to get everything ready.
I made sure I had the money to buy a basic bed before… just in case.
It was a shot in the dark, more like asking for information; I wanted to know if she knew anyone who was renting. I knew she was not because she doesn’t have a lot of space due to the biggest room in the building being the classroom, and the rest of the place is a little thing hidden behind the schoolhouse.
She offered me to stay in her own room, but I refused. I also refused to make of the living room my quarters, it was the biggest living space in the house and it felt wrong. I ended up taking a little storage room where she used to store some of the school material she wasn’t using at the moment. It is a small place, I can barely fit the bed and it has the tiniest of spaces to access it, it’s more like a big closet than an actual room, like a capsule hotel from Japan or something like that. I can sleep there and the only belongings I have are my hiking backpack with an assortment of human stuff and a bag of clothes, so I don’t need anything more at the moment.
She said that I could stay there for free, because it was not even a real room, but I haggled, and ended up negotiating a rent of forty pieces a month. It’s something symbolic and a practical joke, because their numbers are in base four and mine are in base ten, so it is as many as four tens… and that’s terrible.
So, that’s how we get to the present moment. I live here with her, that puts a little distance from Purplesmart, who still comes to check if everything is going according to her plan in a daily basis, but at least she can’t bring all her scientific equipment for some random test, or drag half the hospital staff for a biological experiment… Well, she actually can, but it is much more awkward and inconvenient for her, so she doesn’t do it as often as when I was living in her castle.
My day goes something like this: I wake up, have breakfast with Cheery, she goes to the school and I go around the town looking for something to do. If I’m lucky I find a little job for someone who needs something and I get some gold pieces as a tip, then I have lunch with the money and go to work part time at the spa, petting ponies… I get a reliable ten bits every day from the spa plus a few more if I’m lucky and find something else. I practice my Harmonic with the locals and grab a book from the school in order to learn some random thing and go back to my room to read a little until Cheer-cheer comes back from the school. We talk a little about our days, have dinner, Purplesmart visits exactly at the same time every evening, we tell her everything is fine, and go back to bed, rinse and repeat.
Princess Sky, Princes Moon and Purplesmart are investigating my origins, they are my last hope of returning home, but it may take years for them to discover something. I may end up stranded here for the rest of my life.
I got my own share of depression, loss and drama back then, but I think I’m getting better and over the months I have decided that I should try to learn about this world and adapt to it as best as I can. It’s a fascinating place, I might end up writing a book or something about it… my own adventure, for someone in the far future to discover…
Yeah, again I got derailed by my thoughts of home and need of feeling like I can make a difference after everything. But that is for another time, right now, I’m just having dinner in the empty living room, waiting for Cheery, who is late. Purplesmart already left after checking everything was alright.
Scrambled eggs with diced vegetables and some spices… I need to keep up my protein intake with the available produce, since ponies are vegetarian. The first pony I met, the one that rescued me from the forest brings me fresh fish from time to time, but it’s kind of a rare treat. Timid Wingbeat, or as I call her, Yellowings (she is kind of yellow, has wings and when I first encountered her I was in really bad condition, so I wasn’t very keen with her nickname.)
I had a bowl set up for Cheery, just in case. It’s been a few hours since her classes ended, but there is no trace of her. She might have gone shopping, to the bar to see her cousins or whatever.
…Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop… squeeeeeak… clip-clop-clip… squeeeaaa-bump…
There she is…
She comes into view, trotting with a little skip, wearing her trademark easy happy smile… and bags under her eyes… She inhales deeply and suddenly seems to literally deflate with a groan, her perky ears going floppy to the sides of her head and her whole body slumping down.
“One of those days?” I simply ask.
“…Like… you have no idea, Smarts…” Oh yeah… the nickname out of the nickname ponies gave me because they can’t pronounce my human name.
“Been a rough day with the foals?”
“Nah, they are adorable and deserve the best Cheerilee I can give them. It’s…” She starts, but pauses.
“Where have you been this evening?” I continue.
“To Berry’s place…”
“You have been to Berry Punch’s bar and didn’t tell me?”
“I can go wherever I want, I’m a grown mare and I don’t need to ask anypony’s permission…” She grumbles.
“Oh, boy… it’s worse than I thought… I just wanted to go with you, that’s all. Have you been drinking again?”
“None of your HIC… business…” There is an awkward pause after her hiccup.
“Okay… dinner’s ready.”
“Yeah… good stallion…” She mumbles while taking a good sniff at her bowl.
“Oh, my… and you are supposed to teach gender equality to the next genera…”
“I’m off duty and the foals aren’t here, so I can vent my life frustrations on you, okay?!” She cuts me off. “Um… sorry for that…”
“Don’t worry, I’m happy to help.” I reply with a smirk and for a moment I’m tempted to continue messing up with her, but something is clearly bugging her, so I stop myself.
Probably exhaustion, but by the way she is acting… Something must have happened. We eat our dinner in a relative awkward silence.
“So… how was your day?” I ask.
“Fine…” Sarcasm and not-fine-ness leaking from her stare. “And you?”
“The usual… Mayor Mare wants some help, so I got extra gold pieces for… decorating with more pink and hearts than usual, I suppose… I’m adapting so I don’t know why she would want that. And nobody is telling me.”
“Hearts and Hooves day is the day after tomorrow.” She informs me.
“What and what? What does that even mean?”
“No… not you too…” She groans and hits the table with her forehead.
“It’s something bad for you?” I innocently ask.
“No but… yes…”
“Care to explain?”
“Yes, I do care… I’m not in the mood…”
“You are supposed to be the one to explain me this kind of stuff, Cheer… Now I’m getting particularly curious about this horseshoe and… whatever.”
“Okay…” She lets her head rest on the table and looks miserably at me. “It’s a traditional celebration.” She informs me in an apathetic way. How she achieves that in the sing-songy Harmonic language is beyond me.
“What do you celebrate?”
“Love.” She simply states.
“Love?”
“Love…”
I stare at her a little puzzled. This ponies are always celebrating love, harmony, friendship… it’s part of their nature, so this festivity feels a little bit redundant.
“When two ponies love each other…” She gestures putting both hooves on the table and dragging them together.
“Oh… Ah! Now I get it! We have a similar celebration in my world. The day of the couples and love and… like love, love.” Well, in my defense I will say that the regular day feels a little bit like a Valentine’s day with all the pink and hearts. The fact that on top of that, these ponies STILL have the equivalent of a Valentine’s Day is kind of unexpected. Also, there is no direct translation for ‘Valentine’s’, so I will also go with that Hearts and Hooves stuff.
“Well, that’s fantastic, isn’t it? Do you have any plans for…”
“I’m single.” She abruptly interrupts me.
“… You seem angry about that…” I say after an awkward pause, trying to discover what got her in such a bad mood.
“I tend to become the butt of the joke… Everypony tries to find me a match.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” I try to see the bright side.
“It gets old pretty quickly… Even my students conspire to get me a partner.”
“Oh, well, that’s adorable.”
“Until they find a potion that controls your mind and forces you to fall in love with another unsuspecting pony that they have decided is your perfect match… It happened a couple of years ago. We required Twilight Sparkle’s help and a couple of weeks in the infirmary to detoxify any adverse residual magic…” She explains.
“Sunset… Gle… Oh, Purplesmart you say. Wow…”
“Indeed… And this year is no exception. Today I went to the bar to get some fresh air, and there I found out that Big Mac has found a marefriend.”
“Well, that’s fantastic news, aren’t they? Who is that… Big… what?”
“The red big farm pony. Actually, he is the one who those fillies tried to match me with and was the other victim of the potion.” She explains.
“Wait, wait, wait… And that bothers you? Is there any residual effect that makes you feel something for him?” I ask, concerned.
“No… Actually, I should feel happy for him, but…” She rests her chin on the table again.
“Are you jealous?”
“No…” She sighs.
“Then what’s going on?”
“Well, you see. He was one of those shy and weird stallions. Mares would gossip about him. He is actually pretty attractive, but he lacks the social abilities to find a mare. I found him nice and enjoyed the dates that the fillies set up us with, but I wasn’t interested in him either, we remained friends. The thing is that… well he found a partner before me… What does that say about me!?” She rants.
“Wow… that’s kind of…” I stop myself before saying something I might regret to my landlord… land… mare?
“Stupid, childish, selfish…” She ends the phrase for me.
“Okay, listen… you need to calm down. You are better than that, stop beating yourself.”
“We went to my cousin’s bar to relax, but she would pester me about having weird tastes about stallions, about… you living with me, like that meant something.” She continues.
“Yeah, I have been there too with you and had my own share of her shenanigans. We are good friends, that’s all, that’s why I want to live here, I’m an alien from another world after all, and you are the teacher who is helping me to adapt.”
“I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I decided to go there alone to avoid her jokes, but then she started to joke about Big Mac, and the fact that even him was able to find a marefriend and I wasn’t, and… and… Well, I kept myself under control, at least in public, but I wanted to go home, get drunk, crawl under my blankets and die…”
“As you told me… Objectively, the mare to stallion proportion is overwhelming, so Big Mac was bound to find a mare, whereas mares have it more difficult. It doesn’t say anything about you, Cheer-cheer.”
“I suppose you are right… but I still feel down.”
“The thing is that I don’t see any serious problems there, I don’t know why you are so affected by that.”
“It’s not anything in particular, it’s just this time of the year, I hate it, and it is always the same. A never ending stream of tiny things that day after day, in school, in the bar, my family, friends, outdoors, indoors, everywhere and all day long… It ends up getting into my nerves and…” She explains.
“Okay, I understand. It happened to me too from time to time back in my world.” I admitted to her. Then we just sat there in silence.
“And Hearts and Hooves day marks the start of the season…” She adds.
“The… what season?”
“The season…” She just mumbles, blushes slightly and looks away.
“Uh?”
“Nothing!” She smiles awkwardly.
Usually we get on well with each other; we joke around and learn stuff about our respective worlds. We drink together, in a responsible and moderate way; I do my part of the chores around the house so she won’t have to do everything… Sometimes I help her with her job. You see, I sometimes correct math exams for her; it is useful for me in order to practice some math in base four.
We clean up after dinner and she is ready to go sleep, but I stay on the couch and pat the seat near me in an inviting manner. She looks at me a little confused.
“Come here, I’ll give you a scratch behind the ears.” I offer.
“Whaa…? Really?” She tilts her head to one side in puzzlement.
“I don’t know, it seems to be relaxing, my clients at the spa love it, so I suppose that it would be nice for you.”
She has been my teacher for a few months, so, apart from the occasional wrestling match after drinking because of some stupid argument, we kept our distances. I don’t know, but petting my teacher felt kind of wrong, but right now, I was inclined to give it a try. After a little hesitation, she climbed the sofa and sat next to me.
“Oh…kay… Now what?” She asked.
“Oh… wait a minute, I’ll be right back.”
I made a beeline to the bathroom, washed my hands, went to her bedroom and grabbed a pillow, and then I brushed the pillow to get rid of any residual hairs and came back to the living room. Sitting back on the sofa, I put the pillow on my lap and patted its top to signal that I was ready. She watched the whole operation with mild curiosity and amusement. Finally she looked back at me and giggled.
“One must stay professional; I’ll let you know that I’m making a living out of this.” I said in an exaggerated professional tone.
“Okay, whatever you say…” She smiled. I accommodated her, guiding her hooves, letting her belly rest against the pillow, so I had access to her whole back, nape and head.
I started to run my fingers through her mane, really one of my most basic moves to see how she reacted and continue from there. She tensed a little bit, but stroke after stroke she relaxed.
Her coat had just this down-to-earth kind of average feeling. It was nothing too silky nor too coarse, just regular and clean, more like a dog's, not as nice as a cat's. Her mane was slightly more coarse than regular human hair, but still nice. Normal ponies without wings or horns tended to be like that.
Unicorns usually had nicer coats and manes, silkier and more velvety, more similar to a cat or a very luxurious coat made out of fox fur or something similar, and very, very well maintained. The winged ones had just this side of weird coats and manes, extremely soft and nice, resembling very thin and long feathers sometimes in particular places near the wings, but they tended to be more careless about it, except for the actual wings, which needed to be in perfect condition to fly. Those loved the attention, but they didn’t usually like their wings to be touched, or any place near them. Winged little horses are weird.
Cheery lowered her head a little bit and her ears pointed backwards, one of them directly at me and the other one slightly floppy. That meant that she was comfortable and relaxed but still paying attention to me. I took that as my cue to start scratching her neck and head, eliciting a harmonic-less little content horse sound.
“I see you are enjoying that…”
“Uhh… hmmm… yuh… I can kind of understand why some… hmmm littletotheright… yeah… might like this treatment.” She mumbled.
“If you become light headed from relaxation, feel free to pass out.” I told her in a slightly robotic voice.
She snorted at that. “... flippin… stallionish… uh… wits… hmmmm… little up…”
I complied, and after that I attacked with both hands the spots behind both her ears at the same time. She neighed and closed her eyes, wagging her tail from side to side. After a little while, I switched to her back, massaging her relatively strong muscles. She is a teacher, her job is not really physical, and she is kind of petite, but she is still one of the horn-less and wing-less type, so they are naturally stronger. That woke her up from her bliss just enough to be able to talk again.
“Uh… yeh… you… err… You were telling me how your day was.” She said, obviously trying to regain her composure.
“Well, after what I told you, I went to the spa a few hours to take care of the line of clients that were waiting for my services.” I informed her.
“Anything funny to tell?” She asked, clearly trying to get into a little small talk to hide her previous embarrassing reaction.
“Nah… not much, just the usual. Just that green and white unicorn that keeps coming. It’s the third time this week, and it’s only Thursday.”
“Uh… that much?” She asked.
“Yeah, she comes almost every day and asks me all kind of questions about myself and my species… I think we have become pretty okay acquaintances. Today she even gave me the scrunchies…”
At the word ‘scrunchies’, Cheery seemed to tense up slightly for some reason. I gave that nickname to a particular pony expression. It was a weird thing, the best way I could describe it is a dignified Flehmen Response. It was similar to that weird face horses from Earth do sometimes but more controlled, showing just a little bit of teeth, scrunching their muzzles and combining it with a smirk. In human terms, it would look halfway between a smirk and someone who just had licked a lemon. It was adorable, but also a little creepy because it gave the impression that the pony was plotting something.
It was remarkable enough, so I have asked Cheery a couple of times about it and she just laughed a little, did the scrunchy herself to demonstrate and just dismissed it as ‘something we ponies do’ in quite an enigmatic way, making me even more curious about it.
“Uh… that was… today?” She hesitantly asked.
“Yes, it was after I gave her a long massage and some scratches.”
“I see…” She said dryly. “Well, I’m kind of sleepy now, and I think that massage or whatever you did relaxed me enough. Thank you for that. Um… see you tomorrow.” And with that she got up and headed to her bedroom.
“Okay, see you.”
She got into her room and closed the door. Well, that was weird. Anyways, if she was feeling down today, I might as well give her some space.