“So, um… can you tell me where you’re from?” Holiday asked me kindly.
“Well, um, it’s like I was telling Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. It’s a place called Earth that’s basically like this place except it’s… kind of different? As far as I can tell it’s mostly the same though, kind of.”
“What kinds of creatures live there?” she asked me. “Earth ponies I bet?”
“Uh, I’m not exactly sure what you mean when you say an ‘earth pony’, but I’m going to assume you’re not talking about regular horses, so no. There’s… we’ll, there’s a lot of different animals, but I guess the main thing is that there are people, unlike here.”
“What do they look like, if I can ask?”
“They’re tall, and lanky looking I guess?” I explained. “So, well…” trying to think of how to describe it as best I could, “it’d be like… if you stood on just your hind legs all the time and walked like that, you’d resemble a human more, and I think you'd be about as tall as one if you did that? Except you’d also need feet and hands, and ears more on the side of your head, and no fur… also, we don’t, um- we don’t go around naked…” I couldn’t help but blush once I finished that thought.
“Okay, so if you’re a colt… err, a boy, since you’re not a human… did you want me to… call you a boy as well?”
“Yes! Yes please!” I answered quickly. “I would like to be called a boy because that’s what I am. That would make me feel, like, twelve times better if you did that.”
“Well, I can… certainly see what I can do about that. I can’t speak for what we’ll do in public, but I can say, at least right now, that I know a very handsome boy, and his name is Asher.”
“Oh my gosh!” I laughed for what I thought was the first time as a pony, taking in the feeling of genuine happiness, almost euphoria if felt like. “Oh my gosh! Oh, that makes me- achoo!- that makes me really happy!”
Holiday couldn’t help but smile at her smile. She was almost certain that it was the first time she saw the filly smile since she met her… or him? She wasn’t entirely convinced about her being a boy, but if it made her smile, she would go along with calling her one for now.
“Well, I think you’re a very nice boy,” she told her, watching her grin widely at that. “But other than creatures, what else is different about it?”
“Well, there are cars and computers and skyscrapers and things like that… like, honestly, if there were humans here, I’d say this was someplace on Earth, either very remote or sometime in the past… maybe the sixteen hundreds? What with the thatched roofing and all…”
“What exactly is a skyscraper?”
“It’s a building that’s really tall, thousands of feet, and it looks like it ‘touches the sky’. Most buildings on Earth aren’t that tall, but you can tell you’re in a really big city when you see them.”
“Oh, I see,” she answered, realizing what she was talking about. “We have a few buildings like that in Manehattan and Canterlot. I’ve never heard them called ‘skyscrapers’ though… have you ever been to those places?”
“Um… I’ve been to Manhattan quite a few times, but not Canterlot…”
“That’s certainly interesting. Miss Cheerilee says you write in the same language they use in those places.”
“Wait, I’m confused,” Asher started. “They don’t speak a different language in those places do they?” When Holiday shook her head, the filly continued, “Then how do you come up with two entirely different ways of writing for the same language?”
“Well, Canterlot and Manehattan have more unicorns than most other places, and a lot of them...don’t look very fondly upon other ponies. So because of that, and since they have magic, they can write fancier-looking letters than most ponies can, who have to use their mouths and hooves, to try and separate themselves from other ponies more. At least, that’s how it was explained to me.”
“That… doesn’t make sense to me, and sounds kind of racist, but I’ll accept that explanation.”
“But can you tell me what those other things are, too?” she asked. “Cars and computers?”
“Well, a computer… is going to be difficult to describe, but basically, it’s a box that holds information about everything you could possibly imagine and more. Well, not exactly that, but that’s the simplest way to describe it without getting all complicated.” Holiday opened her mouth to ask about that, but before she could, Asher continued, “As for a car, that’s just a machine you use to get places faster than walking.”
“Like a train?”
“Not exactly a train, but in essence- wait, you ponies have trains here? Like, with engines and everything?”
“Well, yes... it’s how we’re able to travel hundreds of miles without walking.”
Asher stared blankly at that answer before responding, “I’m not- I’m not going to question it. That doesn’t make any sense, but whatever… achoo! Achoo!”
“Are you feeling sick at all, sweetie?” the mare asked as she put a hoof to her forehead. “I feel like you’re sneezing quite a bit…”
“I don’t know…” she answered. “I thought I was just allergic to something at school, but I think I might be… I don’t feel sick though.”
“Your forehead feels really warm to me… Why don’t we see if those two are done in the bathroom yet so we can eat dinner and have you take a bath and then lie down?”
Just like I promised her earlier, I was in the bathtub after dinner, laying on my back in the water and staring at the ceiling. I really didn’t feel that bad, although I was starting to think that little by little I didn’t feel that well. However, laying in the warm water certainly helped how I felt.
I spent most of the few minutes I was in there trying to decide if I was doing the right thing, letting her call me a boy. I mean, I was a boy, but that was the keyword. Was. If I was still considered one now, I didn’t know, but I did know I certainly didn’t look like one; all of these ponies regarded me as a girl, and if God brought me here and made me a girl, then I couldn’t just go around trying to subvert that, could I? Or was it bad to be letting them refer to me as a girl so often and not trying to correct them? Did it matter at all to Him? I didn’t know, but really wished I did. However, I decided that, for now, I would keep asserting myself as a boy when I could.
“Lord,” I prayed, “please, whatever your will is, please let that be your will, and I ask you to help me follow what your will is to the best of my ability.”
With that, I dried myself off and headed to Scootaloo’s room, starting to sniffle a bit as I laid down in her bed. It was a quiet few minutes I had alone before she and Sweetie Belle returned.
“So what do you wanna do, Asher?” the orange pegasus asked immediately as the two entered, jumping into the bed. “We can stay up late and tell stories and play games and read books-”
“Yeah! We have all weekend! We don’t have to go back to school until Tuesday!” Sweetie Belle added.
“I don’t know…” I responded, realizing that the two had been mostly asking me what I wanted to do. “What do you guys want to do? Because I was thinking about just going to sleep for the night…”
“You should tell us a story!” they said together, Sweetie Belle continuing, “You said you’re not a pony, so you should have a bunch of cool stories!”
“I mean, I don’t know…” I trailed off. “I’m kind of… boring honestly…”
“You’re saying you're an alien from another world, and you’re boring?”
“Well, I mean… I’m sorry… I could tell you stories about my job I guess?”
“You have a job?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m a manager in a restaurant… I guess there’s- achoo!- stories there? Like, one time, this lady got so mad at us that we messed up her order, that she asked to speak to me just so she could throw her sandwich in my face.”
“Wait, she threw food in your face because you messed it up?” Scootaloo asked, seeming surprised.
“Yeah,” I responded, smiling a little bit. “We didn't do it on purpose or anything, but customers where I work are like that. We had a guy who threatened to beat up one of my employees because his order was wrong even though the police were standing right behind him in line.” I chuckled, continuing, “He couldn’t believe it when he was being arrested because the guy pressed charges on him. Or there was the lady who honestly thought we were a bank and pulled up to the window trying to cash a check.”
The two of them laughed a little bit at that, Sweetie Belle saying, “Tell us more stories!”
"Well, there was the time..."
“Do you hear that, Lofty?” Holiday asked, looking up from her book for a moment, listening to the fillies giggle in the room across from them. “It sounds like they’re laughing in there, and I think I can hear Asher laughing with them.”
“That’s good,” Lofty responded, yawning as she did so. “It seems like she’s getting settled in. Oh, did you talk to her yet?”
“I did, and from it, there were… a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Well… first, I think she’s getting sick. She said she doesn’t feel sick, but she was sneezing a lot, and I think she might have a slight fever, so if we can, I think we should buy her some medication tomorrow.”
“I can try and pick up something for her. What are the other things?”
“Well, the main other thing is that… she really seems convinced that she’s from another world and that she’s a boy, so… I told her I would call her a boy in private.” She watched Lofty scrunch up her face at that, and quickly continued, “Now, before you tell me it’s a bad idea-”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“-it was the first time I actually saw her smile and laugh since we met her. It looked like it made her genuinely happy, and I really think it brightened her mood overall.”
“I understand…”
“But?”
“But nothing,” Lofty answered. “I just think that… well… I mean, I don’t know… I still think she needs an actual therapist or something. She’s kind of… not right. Like, she's always... I don't know. She's just a little bit... off. Do you actually think she thinks she’s a boy?”
“I can’t say for sure, but she definitely seems insecure about something… I did steer the conversation in the ‘who does she like’ direction, and she was kind of aggressive in saying she didn’t like fillies, which is why I was kind of thinking that…”
“I know where you’re going with that, and it makes sense,” Lofty commented. “We did say she was probably from Canterlot, right? Or Manehattan? They are more… uptight and traditional in those places, so she could’ve been told it’s not okay…”
“But anyway, I just don’t like seeing her so… I don’t know. She sometimes looks like she’s feeling hopeless to me, and I really don’t like seeing that, so I told her I would call her a boy in private, when it’s just me and her, at least for a little while.”
“Well, those fillies didn’t clean up after themselves,” Twilight muttered as she entered, rolling her eyes at the state of the library. It wasn’t really that big of a mess, only a few books that weren’t put away, but it still frustrated her to see.
“Spike!” she called before making her way over to the tables to see what it was they were looking over. She squinted at the books that still lay open, quickly reading the titles of the pages they were looking at and noticing they were all about the upcoming Summer Sun Celebration. Her instinct was to just write it off as curious school foals interested in the upcoming holiday, but she did notice that the grey filly she saw yesterday was here with them. She frowned, thinking to herself for a minute before deciding that it probably wasn’t a coincidence. She only saw her for a few seconds, but in those few seconds, Twilight automatically thought she was very strange. She was certain that this was just the kind of ‘interesting’ pony Princess Celestia would want to know about.
“Spiiiiike!” she called again, before turning around to see the dragon standing behind her. “Take a letter,” she instructed.