//------------------------------// // Foreign // Story: Daily Equestria Life With Monster Girl // by Estee //------------------------------// In some ways, 'Guard' was just another means of saying 'knight'. The girl hadn't truly assigned herself either status -- but she also didn't feel the entire Lunar shift qualified for the second role. To her, the true knights were the ones who had the auras to match the title. Nightwatch had that aura, as did a number of the others: it just wasn't everypony. Cerea could sense auras: most centaurs had that capacity, and the exceptions were typically those stallions who automatically ignored every other aspect of reality. But she wasn't always entirely sure about what went into creating one. Rank never factored in and despite what so many humans seemed to subconsciously believe, you couldn't invoke an aura with an excess of self-awarded medals. Force of personality was always an aspect -- but in this world, did strength of magic also play a part? The power of certain emotions could boost an aura, or even flicker one into temporary existence for those who usually didn't possess that radiance. Anyone who was doing what they truly loved most, uniting skill and instinct within an internal song... it was possible for an aura to come about under those circumstances, but it would only last as long as the activity did, and just about any centaur would be able to tell what had generated it in the first place. A constant aura, of the type which Cerea believed designated a true knight -- those were rare. Among the Lunar Guards, it worked out to a little less than one in five ponies. It didn't mean that the others weren't capable of serving in their role, or wouldn't manifest the invisible radiance under the right circumstances. The fire was there: she was sure of that, or they wouldn't have become Guards in the first place. It just didn't burn quite as bright. And then there was the other aura. Something she'd made sure to look for, in the hopes of never finding it. A sapient could potentially generate an aura through focus: emotional, spiritual, intellectual. But there was a difference between a mind which could focus and one which had chosen to regard the world through a pinhole. If every sense, every thought had been forced to operate using the same tiny lens, then anything passing through would be... concentrated. If you could only see things in one way... if every portion of what should have been your psyche was channeled through a lone, permanent belief... Nightwatch had eventually talked to Cerea about what the ponies called falling: a discussion which had only come after multiple sessions in the smithy. The mark wasn't just a sign of skill, it also provided a magical boost to the linked abilities. (It was another reason why the girl considered herself to fall well short of true knighthood: in this case, it was simply a strictly local one.) There was pleasure to be found in exercising one's talents and with anything which brought pleasure, there would be those who took it too far. Do that which you were best at until you were effectively doing nothing else, and everything outside of that narrow range might start to feel as if it didn't make very much sense any more. You were so much better off sticking with what you knew... Barding was supposed to be one of the fallen. You could communicate with him in the language of metal, and very little else. And Barding had an aura -- when he was at the forge, during those times when he was caught up in the heart of talent and rapture. The same as any other artist who touched the flame which burned in the core of their soul. And when he stepped away from the forge, it faded, leaving a normal pony who was missing most of his fur. Cerea had been taught about falling. But that level of focus wasn't enough to generate the other aura. There was an aura which arose from the strength of one's soul. Cerea felt there might be another for magic. (She wasn't quite sure. The potential for overlap seemed to exist.) The most common, strictly temporary one flickered into the world through passion and devotion to one's cause, whatever that might happen to be. And you could speak to Barding through metal -- but with the smith, metal occasionally led to softer topics, if only for a while. And he came out of the forge, now and again. He knew where the barracks were, and buying celebratory drinks (although he never spoke about exactly what was being celebrated) had required him to locate at least one bar. He was fallen, at least to some degree. But he didn't have the other aura. The other aura arose from the toxic fumes of a soul which had turned into bubbling magma, angry heat radiating through the cracks in the blackened shell of normalcy. Something which never held together for long, because anything could cause an eruption. Anything at all. The other aura was something like a laser in that you took everything which might have existed in gentle warmth and narrowed it down to the point where the world began to burn. It wasn't simply ignoring those things which were no longer comfortable. The other aura scorched its way through the pinhole while demanding that the world could match its limited vision and if anything about that resisted, then the only solution was to take everything which didn't fit and sear. The other aura came from fanaticism. Monomania. Madness. Most of the girl's exposures to such auras had come in the human world. (The first true incident had seen her encounter them in bulk.) There might have been flickers among the protestors outside the palace, brief moments of self-loss as herd instinct threatened to take over, but -- she had to be within a certain range to pick up on an aura, and any such positioning would have allowed those screaming against her presence to see her. It was something no one wanted to risk. Flickers: those were always possible. They could appear in humans, because herd instinct and mob mentality weren't all that far apart. But the full horror of the other aura... She'd checked the Lunar Guards, because just about any cause could call out to fanatics. The other aura hadn't been there. The girl had been relieved. No matter what happened, no matter how badly she might fail and how much the others would inevitably hate her for it... at least she wasn't dealing with that. There were true auras, and those were the knights. But for the opposing aspect -- even those who had been described as fallen didn't generate it. She was starting to wonder if ponies were even capable of creating one. They were. She would know the madness was in the palace, shortly before it wrapped itself around her throat. The life of a true knight was adventure, daring, repeatedly almost dying, and (in so many of the best stories) making the final sacrifice for one's liege, who might not even know it had ever happened. The life of a rookie Lunar Guard mostly seemed to involve trotting around a lot. Cerea eventually found herself saying a few things to Nightwatch on the subject, because 'trotting around a lot' began to grate after a while. The little pegasus had countered with a simple fact: knights might go out in search of adventure, but the Guard ideal was a career where nothing happened. 'Nothing' wasn't going to get a Princess hurt and no matter what anypony might claim regarding the topic, nopony had ever died of boredom. If any given night passed in relative silence under scrutinizing stars, with the worst which happened to a Princess coming from having to review a particularly odious piece of legislation just before sentencing it to death... then that meant the Guards had done their jobs, and the ones who worked in the closest proximity to the dark mare's office eventually got used to the sound of frozen papers shattering upon marble. (Not that the centaur had heard it yet, because the closest she'd been to 'her' Princess during a work shift was when the first assignment had been passed over.) So Cerea trotted around a lot, just about always with company. There were exceptions, because the first nights of her Guard duty represented a form of extended training. Nightwatch didn't just want Cerea to learn her way around the palace: she wanted a centaur who couldn't fly or teleport (or, when carrying the sword, couldn't be teleported with it) to master the fastest means of reaching just about any location within it. The most empty portion of each night had been reserved for time trials: Cerea would be taken to a given location, provided the name of another, and then she would have to get there. This usually wound up involving at least one of the secret passages (which also tested her ability to get into them), judgment calls about going around spell-secured areas, not that much in the way of full-speed gallops because she seldom had enough time to reach her top speed, and Nightwatch waiting with a stopwatch on the other end because wings and experience both had their advantages. Plus when you considered that the pegasus could move over most of the traffic and Cerea had to gallop past it, move around any living obstacles, there were ponies who tried to shortcut through the passages and avoiding a collision without losing speed occasionally meant going into a leap... The time trials gave Cerea something to do other than trot, and one of the extra activities came from slowly backtracking along the trail so she could apologize to everypony she'd startled along the way. She didn't like the trials, and continued to not like them no matter how many times Nightwatch told her that every rookie Guard had to run them, with veterans undergoing a yearly review. She knew they were meant to help her learn the layout and there might come a time when that knowledge was crucial, but what they were mostly producing at the present was shivering curls of pony life in dark passages, trying to reconcile themselves to the fact that a centaur's barrel had just passed one meter over their heads. (At one point, Nightwatch had tried to argue (insofar as the sheer number of 'Um's' would allow it) that going back to apologize was at least giving Cerea the opportunity to introduce herself to much of the Lunar staff. The girl's counter was that the full mechanism probably wasn't endearing her to anypony.) The time trials were also a way to wake her up in the middle of a shift, because she was still dealing with some amount of temporal jet lag. She had been made into a Lunar 'the hard way' and while her assigned working hours respected that, her body was still experiencing a certain amount of doubt. The first few nights of work passed in a partial stumble of frequent fogginess, where the obscuring fumes were only temporarily burned off by the steam which arose from mugs of espresso -- at least, for what little was available. The mares often came into a palace kitchen to find chefs tinkering with tubes, springs, and burning off some precious amount of the limited supply by running through it through whatever the experiment was this time. Cerea was convinced that the palace was going to run out of coffee, and had certain suspicions regarding any replacement costs potentially being taken out of her salary -- which would at least mean the money was being spent on something. Nightwatch noticed the stumbles, asked her how she was feeling just a little too often: even for those who could use the potion, the abruptness of the schedule flip could cause upset. Cerea insisted that she was capable of adjusting, and the little knight's response for that was to get the two of them out into the gardens shortly after every sunrise. Like humans, centaurs needed a certain amount of sun exposure to stay fully healthy: Nightwatch suggested the same was true for ponies, accompanied by a need to avoid awkward fungal infections. They trotted throughout the night, greeted the world in the morning. And then Cerea would stay in the gardens for a while, because she'd already told her friend that centaurs needed some sun exposure now and again, she hadn't said how much, the tours never never started before a given hour and... ...eventually, Nightwatch would go in. Doing so ahead of Cerea, because somepony had to go inside in time to start running the bath. It left the girl alone for a while, as much as that was possible when a now-softer rumble was still sounding from the front gates. She would stand in the cold, occasionally pressing her cheek against a shoulder pad: testing to see how chill the metal had become. Scenting the crisp air, staring out across nothing in particular, until... ...she was still trying to work out exactly much time she had to consume during those solitary vigils. What was required before the locker room would be completely cleared, because every trip back to it still found a few Lunars present, talking and showering and changing out of their armor and just... there. She tried to be the first one to arrive, when shifts started. But there was always somepony who'd seen the need to punch (or kick) the clock somewhat ahead of schedule, and they had to be leaving their homes at a truly ridiculous hour because they were beating Cerea to the lockers and the centaur lived in the palace. She was doing everything she could to make sure nopony was present when she drew the privacy curtain, that she could just get in and out of her armor without causing offense or feeling the weight of eyes passing through fabric, but there was always somepony there and... ...she hated the locker room. She hated having Blitzschritt's helmet directly behind her. Something which made it feel like she was always being watched. She hated hearing laughter coming from the showers when she knew that trotting within would make all of it stop. The girl moved through the palace and even when she wasn't running time trials, ponies moved away from her. The life of a knight was adventure. The rookie life of the first centaur Guard mostly centered around holding back the tears until after Nightwatch had fallen asleep. She had to do that five nights per week, and not the whole of those nights, especially with winter approaching: nopony expected Guards to pull fourteen-hour shifts. A portion of each cycle was allotted for personal activities: language classes hosted by Nightwatch, stories read aloud, time in the smithy. (She was seeing less of Barding now, because the smith had to sleep sometime.) But it was all being done in the palace, or on the grounds... Cerea was now permitted to go just about anywhere in the structure (although entering the Solar wing could lead to a few awkward questions). She had the gallop of the place, and it had never felt so much like a prison. Like a gap in the world. Perhaps that was why her dreams kept going back to the same point in her life. Over and over. Five nights. And on the sixth, the palace gave her no choice but to leave. Bad things happened when she went out of bounds... She had no choice but to leave the palace. However, she was freely permitted to obsess over picking out clothing for her first day of school. Nightwatch had already left the barracks, flying out on the current produced by the backwash of a hasty sentence: something about the theater district. It gave Cerea privacy, along with one extra bunk for hosting rejected items. I have to make a good impression. She was a centaur in a world which reacted to her particular configuration of torsos and limbs with terror. Making a good impression was effectively impossible, and so the blue sweater draped itself across a vacant mattress. I need to look as non-threatening as possible. Princess Luna had ordered her to carry the sword whenever she left the palace. Just in case. ...how did I pick out clothing in Japan? Well, that had been easy, because the airline had lost most of her luggage. Few things were simpler than choosing her daily wardrobe from an options list which had been brought down to four. ...for the first gallops through the streets. When I was looking for a suitable host. For someone I could devote myself to... There was a white blouse among the choices. Not the one she'd been wearing when the terrain had begun to change: all of that clothing still needed significant repairs before it could ever be used again and with Ms. Garter's replacements, there had been no need. But there was enough of a resemblance, save for two facts: a full lack of strained buttons passing down the center line, and a total presence of sleeves. I was trying to... show off my arms. They aren't bad arms. Not in Japan. The muscles only show when I exert myself or flex. Slim arms, proper arms, just like all the magazines said. Maybe they would have seen them as my best feature... Ponies had very little reason to care about anyone's arms. A sleeveless blouse, and a tie. Because she'd come to Japan as an exchange student, and so she'd wanted to have her clothing look at least a little like that of a high school student: the tie had made it feel as if she'd been wearing something from a uniform. Additionally, ties were formal. As part of the preparation for making centaur clothing, Ms. Garter had taken Cerea's measurements. (The girl wasn't exactly looking forward to having that happen again.) But somepony had to have shown the designer what the original pieces had looked like, because Cerea's current options included a new tie. Still red, somewhat thicker than the original: about halfway to becoming an ascot, and somewhat longer than what she'd had before -- but it was a tie. She knew ponies wore ties: she'd seen a few on the Lunar staff, and Fancypants used a bow style. The dangle on the classic model was somewhat awkward when applied to pony bodies, but the mere existence of the accessory meant ties were accepted. All she needed to do was... The white sweater, because it was too cold for a normal blouse. A brown-black skirt. But the sweater had a fairly high neck, so if she folded it over, then ran the red under that and -- -- it was longer than what she'd had before. It was mostly lying flat. Or flattish, because the portion of anatomy it was very partially draping decidedly wasn't. It looked stupid. She sighed. Removed the tie, gathered up the new, mostly-empty backpack (because getting one had mostly been a matter of finding the strength to ask), slipped her arms through so that the visible straps were resting over the hidden ones, and left the barracks. Nightwatch had explained air carriages to her. The Princesses mostly used them as a means of formal travel: using a carriage saved a little royal wing strength during the journey and made it easy to bring Guards along. The average pony treated them as a semi-luxury method for mid-range travel: they were more direct than a train, and could travel somewhat faster over a smaller distance. Earth ponies didn't always care to take the gallop, a number of pegasi were no good at endurance flight, and the percentage of unicorns who could teleport was a rather small one: an option which also required the caster to have a clear space on the other end and know exactly where they were going. It wasn't a form of transportation which allowed stopping to ask for directions. A taxi, then: one which could get in the air. (She hadn't really used taxis in Japan: trains could offer enough room for centaurs who wanted to travel, but car transport required a minimum of a very large, extremely empty van -- or worse, a horse trailer. Which offered plenty of space, but always wound up stinking of horse.) But as she shivered in the wind which blew across the level portion of the tower's roof, she thought about helicopter landing pads. It made sense for the designs to be somewhat similar: something was touching down atop a vital structure, and space had to be arranged for that. The only real differences were the lack of centering lines painted onto the roof, added to a small amount of approach space. There was even a little hut-like structure off to one side, allowing future passengers to shelter while they waited. She just hadn't wanted to ask anypony to open it for her, she could already see the carriage approaching, and... A landing pad. A necessity for certain kinds of government buildings. Quick exits, potentially fast entry. She wondered how strongly it was watched. The carriage came in, towed by -- she tried not to wince -- six pegasi. Skipped twice as it touched marble, quickly slowed as hooves found purchase and a shift of wings bled off speed. It was covered, of course. A dome of rigid fabric curved out from a raised metal base: the door switched materials in the center and seemed to be held together by static. She still resolved to be careful about not touching the sides during entry. Keeping the sword in the scabbard seemed to provide some protection from the consequences of accidental contact, but the hilt was always exposed. If the pieces were enchanted to stay together... There were windows built into the dome. She didn't know what they were made from, and it didn't matter because every last one of them had been draped over from the interior. There was no point to letting any night flyers see who was traveling, after all. "Thank you," she carefully offered to the waiting pegasi. For the ride. For putting up with the inconvenience, and for being willing to deal with her weight. Three of them nodded. Two waited. The lead stallion spoke. "There's going to be four of us posted there," he told her. "We'll rotate until it's over. Shouldn't be any trouble. But we've got a flare ready to go. If you see a burst of green through the curtains, that's your signal to get everyone out of there. And get ready to defend yourself." She forced a nod. And then, hoof by hoof, feeling the backpack vibrating against her neck, she forced herself to board. There was a jolt, and a sensation of gaining speed. And then they were up and over the walls, with wind and the constant rumble of pony anger shaking the dome. It was a fairly short flight: just a few minutes, and it struck her as being unusually smooth, especially when the pegasi were connected to the carriage by nothing more than what had appeared to be a fairly standard harness arrangement. More magic in play. There was nothing to look at during the trip, and she kept right on looking at it because there was a faint glow within the fabric dome, coming from a small glass bead at the apex. It allowed her to scrutinize the colors, which ranged from indigo all the way through indigo. And then there was a little bump and a jolt, just before the whole thing came to a stop. "You're clear," the lead pegasus called out. "Nopony in viewing range. Door's just about in front of you. Get in fast." She disembarked -- -- there was barely any time for looking around, and the one glance she managed to the right found her all of three meters from the edge of the new roof. It also gave her an angle for looking down, and so she saw a flag which was gold and brown with a few liquid highlights of red, shifting slightly in the chill breeze. There was light in that ornate building, faint voices coming up from the street somewhere below, a hint of squawk -- "-- get in!" Her fingers fumbled, and it took an awkward foreknee bend before her searching hands located the lever: something which was much lower than she'd been expecting -- -- the girl, not quite looking at where she was going, stumbled through the opening door, and her arms went in before her head. She had spent just about every day since her arrival in the same building. One that not only offered her whatever degree of shielding the palace could provide, but which had been built around a core design philosophy: Everything Here Must Be Capable Of Accommodating Princess Celestia At All Times. "OW!" She wasn't there any more. Cerea awkwardly rubbed at her forehead. Wondered if there would be any visible bruising, and then ducked. The hallways are dimly lit, because there's no need for anything more than that: Nightwatch has told her that devices are often designed to conserve their charges at night. Anyone who's here at this hour knows where they're going. The centaur has directions, knows which ramps will take her to the right floor and where to turn. Even in tightly-clustered shadows, if she was moving at her normal speed, she would reach her destination in less than three minutes. But she slows in her trot. Stares at what's around her, does everything she can to resolve images within the darkness. And what she sees is... ...almost -- normal. Here: a bulletin board. Images on the pinned papers suggest different kinds of activities. Racing. Flight. Art, and that poster is naturally the best-drawn of the lot. There's no tearaway fringe at the bottom, not in a world which exists without phones -- but the degree of literacy she's acquired lets her make out room numbers. Meeting times. There are always clubs, and they're forever recruiting. This image has the silhouettes of two ponies facing each other. Their legs have been raised into unusual positions, almost like... they're dancing. There's a date on that one, about five weeks off. The characters denoting the time seem to have been rendered with some urgency. There's a trophy case or rather, she imagines that the ribbons are meant to represent trophies. Some of them have accompanying pictures of youthful ponies on the shelves. Older specimens come with sketches. Photography is a recent invention. Classroom doors. She can smell ink. Old wood, somewhat porous: the sort of thing where sweat soaks in on the first day of use and never ever completely comes out. There are lockers along this hallway: they're just a bit lower than the ones in the room she's been trying to avoid, not quite as wide because armor doesn't have to go inside, and right in front of this one is a lingering patch of scent which speaks of hormones and flustered words and desperation. All with a stallion's signature, which overlays the impression of mare breath arising from the locker's lever. If she had to guess, it probably has something to do with the dance. She can't tell if the stallion succeeded or failed. Desperation can also reflect having to make an unexpected 'Yes' work. Pony scents. But that's just the start of it. She has some familiarity with yaks, griffons, donkeys, minotaurs, and so many of those musks are drifting through the halls. A few lockers are taller than others. Every so often, levers swap out for knobs. A few of the posters feature different outlines. Restrooms emit a miasma of confusion, which is actually one of the better options. The girl knows very little about this school. She was told that it's just off Embassy Row: something which has apparently led to it being the single most species-mixed assembly of students in the capital. It's why the building hosts citizenship classes at night: because there's already different styles of desks, a few seats replacing benches, and if there's anywhere available to wash up after school sporting events, it's probably really complicated. ...she's never been to school. Not like this. She was supposed to go. That was part of the intent with the program: she was an exchange student, they were all exchange students, and students went to school. But some of the school managers fought. They didn't want to refit their buildings, they didn't want to host extra classes, they had power and influence and graduates in high-ranking positions who had vested interests in keeping things exactly the way they had been. There was prestige, parents proclaiming that they would pull their children out if a single non-human limb crossed a threshold and where there was none of that, there was bribe money. The program was already in place. The students were coming: there was no way to stop that. But the schools said they weren't coming here, and rather than continue to fight, those in charge of the integration had decided to wait. Let people get used to liminal adolescents in the streets (always accompanied by their hosts, or there would be trouble), in businesses, and once that happened, the schools could be tested again in the following year. For now, classes pushed through hosting websites, attending via webcam, sending in homework through email... that would be good enough. She only found out about that part after the plane touched down. She had been ready -- she thought she'd been ready to try. To trot (very awkwardly -- she could never picture it as anything but awkward) through hallways which were teeming with humans. All the media she'd consumed suggested that even if she was completely isolated by the cliques, someone would have eventually assigned her a lab partner. Working alongside someone on an experiment was apparently a very good way to find love. Rivals were also an option, although it was possible to have a case where that was just love which had been postponed, usually through being pushed back by the force of denial-based shouting. Either way, the explosions and embarrassed-looking blackened faces tended to be the same. Themes repeated across the books she'd read, the manga she'd managed to find, and all of the shows she'd crammed before departure. Repetition made something true and if that was what the stories said schools were, then... that was what they had to be. She didn't know them any other way. But she'd never reached a school. Her books had been assigned, but the carrying distance had been limited to the range from her room to the front of the house. It was a good day when the household's internet connection allowed six girls to stream multiple classes without losing more than a tenth of the frames, and she usually wound up having to go back and check for dropped audio. And that was assuming some prankster among the human students hadn't pointed the camera at the floor. If the intent had even been to prank... Lockers. Clubs. Ink. Books. Dances. She's moving through the ghost of her own dead future. Finally, she sees the lit door -- or rather, a door with light streaming out around the edges. There's a window panel in the center, at pony view height, and it has been blocked by fabric. She knows that any glass within outer walls will have been equally covered, because no pegasus (or, in this part of the city, griffon) can be allowed to glimpse the interior. All it takes is a single sighting, followed by one word in the wrong place, and the protests will begin to gather here. The palace is offering security to the assembly, and at least half of that protection needs to come from no one knowing she's here at all. There are a lot of scents coming from that room. All of them took a different approach route, coming up a ramp. One of the drifting signatures seems -- familiar. It takes a moment before she can open the door. The time required to adjust her grip height, along with forcing her hand to stop shaking. And then she ducks before going in. There are nine sapients in the room. Every last one turns to look at her. They stare at her face. What's visible of her flanks. One goes to her breasts and eventually, they all wind up at the sword. She can only connect scents to the emotions which create them through witnessing associated actions. There are too many new scents, a variety of species creating them, and multiple forms of body language. Shudders, however, seem to be more or less universal. The one at the blackboard (the oldest, a cream-toned earth pony stallion with a thickly-curled black mane) has a sort of metal extension gripped between his teeth, and there's a thin white stick at the end of it -- chalk. A species which has to carry so much by mouth is still going to do their collective best to avoid biting down on chalk. Something which just got easier, because the pony's mouth has fallen open and the extension is heading for the floor. She sees a zebra: a male. He's squinting at her, and his scent is unusual. It's as if he spent the day rolling around in a cross between a greenhouse and a chemist's shop, with portions of his fur discolored to match. There are two griffons: one male, one female. They're sitting on opposite sides of the classroom and will look at her, but not each other. The female is larger, and has more gloss to her feathers. The male seems to shrink into himself at the moment he realizes that the centaur is looking back. One minotaur. A -- oh, it figures: a male. Much shorter than the ambassador, considerably younger. His sweater is almost a match for hers, and she briefly wonders just how insulative the blue-gray fur is. A single yak: female, strongly built across the shoulders. (She wonders how the hair ribbons were placed.) One donkey jack. And... ...this is the first cattle specimen she's seen. A bull (if they share the term with the minotaurs): black, smaller than she would have expected (although larger than the earth pony), with short horns that don't seem to be pointing in the right direction. His fur is somewhat shaggy, hangs low from the belly, and he mostly gives off the impression of having recently wandered through a car wash: the escape only came after losing the battle with the blow drier. She can see fear in the wide green eyes, because that's so much of the basic cattle reaction -- but there's also something else, that which stops the tremble in his legs and puts him to facing forward again. A certain basic fierceness, determination... ...but there's one more student. And the canid is looking directly at her. It's only for a moment. A few seconds at most before the brown eyes (smaller than that of a pony, but liquid and round) quickly dip, shift right and forward. But this is the only familiar scent in the room: it's just one which the girl has never been able to connect with an appearance. She knew there was a canid working in the palace, and this is the... ...'bitch' is probably the right term. She just doesn't want to find out what the disc would do with it. The centaur doesn't have a lot of experience with dogs. Her gap wasn't exactly much for pets, and once she came to Japan... well, for once, the sensory problem was going the other way. Centaurs have their own scent: something which is a little like that of a horse, somewhat resembles a human and for a dog, represents a lot of confusion. Dogs usually needed a minute to work out how they were going to approach her, and the smallest breeds were the most likely to snap. But those were just about all Japanese dogs, which meant she was largely dealing with Akitas, Shiba Inus, and something in her just feels pity whenever she thinks about a Chin. It's easy to focus pity on a Chin, because the dog won't be focusing on anything. Ever. She doesn't really know dogs, and the majority of her limited experience comes from pictures. Now she has to apply it to a dog which exists in a bipedal form, a dog with hands... ...no. Not quite. Start with the paws. The canid's natural posture is that of the biped, and she can see that the hind paws are considerably broader than would be expected from a normal dog, can bear quite a bit of weight. Not that they need to: the dog is slim, perhaps a hundred and fifty-four centimeters tall, and both of those are guesses because she has to work out where the actual body is within the fur. The head is sort of -- fluffy -- -- back to the paws. The hind ones are broad, but they don't quite rest flat upon the floor. The canid has a seat, one of only two seats in a room full of benches, a seat at a desk with open sides and it's enough to let the girl see the natural position of the legs. Digitigrade. When standing, the canid would take most of their weight on the front of the paws and large toes. The centaur isn't sure it's possible for flat-footed standing to happen at all, and any effort in that direction might result in pain. The forepaws are not hands. Imagine a computer graphics program which is given a picture of a paw, another of a hand, told to change one into the other, and freezes when it's seventy-five percent of the way to completion. Stretch the front phalanges, bring one around to the side and allow it to turn inward -- but don't let any of that finish. The results are too broad to be normal fingers, with joints which seem too thick to be truly supple. The canid can use her forepaws as hands: the centaur just isn't sure if it can be kept up for long. The left forepaw is currently holding a quill, and it's pressed tightly between two phalanges: the pseudothumb isn't involved. Examine the fur. It's going to take a while, because there's a lot of it. The canid is a sort of off-white, and it's the kind of off-white which results when you've washed the world's dirtiest piece of clothing one, two, a few hundred times in an attempt to discover what the original color was: by the time you finish, the detergent has pretty much eradicated whatever that hue might have been. From the elbows up, the fur is thick, with a touch of curl to it. It's especially heavy on the cheeks, to the point where it's hard to tell just how wide the jaw might be. An initial estimate says a fourth of the head might be fluff and when the girl finally sees the canid in a soaked state, the truth is closer to a third. It's a narrow face under all that fur -- or rather, hair, because the canid needs to have herself shaved down every couple of moons. The slightness of the jaw, added to soaked hair making the head into more of a pointed shape, eventually winds up suggesting there's some poodle in the cosmic mix. That's from the elbows up. Work down, and you see why all that washing was necessary in the first place. The hair has been shaved to a near-minimum, and it would be possible to see pink skin underneath if it wasn't for the other colors. Every day of the canid's working palace life involves working with dry pigment powders. Some of them are going to drift, and it means the canid is only off-white from the elbows up. You could make a full rainbow from some of the little stains in the shaved areas, extend the extra hues onto a palette, and then you're probably going to need an empty frame to host the rest. The portions near the short claws are currently suitable for landscapes. The canid is wearing clothing. There's a blue skirt (and if the girl knew a little more about human fashion, 'poodle skirt' would have been irresistible), but the main focus is the soft yellow vest. It doesn't quite close in the front, although loose-hanging ties suggest the option exists. There are little cradles of threads where a right breast pocket would be (not that the canid has visible mammaries), and they hold chips of colored stone. A vest, and a skirt. The centaur is almost expecting a collar, and none is present. But to go up from there is to find those liquid brown eyes, now staring at the blackboard as if it's the only thing they can do. The nose is small, black, and has the fold between nostrils which suggest the nares can wriggle independently. The ears are long, floppy, and fringed. And it's hard to tell just how large the head is, as opposed to how much of the bulk is thickly-clustered hair -- but move just above the eyes, to where the forehead is and -- -- the hair bends. Warps, with strands parting just enough to see the thick line of scar tissue underneath. Something which has been discolored by more than injury and keloid tissue. It's as if dirt had been rubbed into the wound... The girl can see all of that: her height allows extra angles of regard, at least once some frequently-awkward shifting is accomplished. But there's only a few seconds, and then the teacher's voice requests her attention. His name is Mr. Trotter. (She immediately memorizes the scent of his fear.) And she is somewhat late. But it's only a little way into the lesson. They can start over. She's waiting for what all of her reading (and viewing, and mistakes) suggest must happen next. That she'll be called to the front of the classroom, made to introduce herself, and she doesn't even know how she's going to find enough room to turn and face forward -- -- but he doesn't ask for that. The stallion just nods towards the only empty desk, and she realizes there's no need for introductions. It's something children do. Everyone here is an adult... (She isn't the youngest in the room.) ...and no one ever has to introduce her. There's only one centaur. The desk is a high, flat surface. The legs appear to be adjustable: metal tubes which slide into each other. She's just not sure how to go about adjusting it. Whoever set this up seemed to believe she would stay on her hooves for the entire class and there's barely enough room for that. Her upper torso can turn more than that of a human, but it sort of leaves her standing sidesaddle to herself and if she does that, the lower torso is going to hit a cabinet. Face the room straight-on and her buttocks will be pushing into the wall... She tries that first. It's just barely possible to move her tail enough to keep the base from being jammed, and the wedging lets her discover that the raised desktop was raised to exactly the wrong level. The other students are watching her again. After a few eternities, she manages a partial shift: enough to get the back of her skirt clear. Her breasts are still resting on the unintended shelf. The sword's hilt is clattering against the wood. Her arms awkwardly bend (and they're watching that too), fetch an empty notebook from the backpack. She places it off to the side, pins an edge down with one of the textbooks which were left on the desk for her. Gets quill and inkwell ready, curls an arm, awkwardly looks down and to the far right. She needs to see what she's writing, and having an excuse to look anywhere which isn't the other students can only help. The teacher says a few words, and she automatically jots them down. In order to keep immigrants from having to wait too long for a particular subject to open, the material is designed to be taught in a cycle: you come in at a given point on the circle, and the end is at the same place you began. So she doesn't have to worry about catching up. She can just read on her own time. (She can barely read.) Tonight's class is going to be about the division of powers between government branches. The stallion retrieves the chalk: something which is mostly used for drawing diagrams. The lesson begins anew. She writes her notes in French. (Part of her insists that she should be working in Equestrian, but she doesn't have the vocabulary yet.) The subject matter has to be learned. She works for the government: she needs to be capable of understanding it. And she has to pass the class. The first in a series, something which will stretch out across -- -- five years. The quill falters. (They're staring at her.) (All of them. Whenever they can get away with it.) (She can feel it.) It's a citizenship class. It teaches things which adults need to know. It doesn't cover anything which only foals would learn. If you're not a foal, then the world assumes you know it already. There are things she will need to learn elsewhere. The secret which isn't a secret, and the impossibility which lies at its core. She'll almost lose the smaller shock in that. Right up until it leads to the greatest betrayal.