If the last couple of weeks have taught me anything about Equestrians, it’s that they seem to have a habit of just showing up in the most unlikely of places whenever you don’t expect it. This wasn’t just something that applied to only my neighbors, but pretty much to all Equestrians. No matter who they were or what their species was, they always seemed to pop out of nowhere when you least expect it. Kind of like Beetlejuice, except you don’t have to say his name at all for him to randomly show up and mess around with his shenanigans.
Of course, when it came to me trying to learn more about my neighbors and where they’re from, it felt a bit daunting. Because not only were you learning more about them as a person, but also learning more about their culture and their livelihood. Of course, the same could also be said about Equestrians learning more about human culture. We would do things that Equestrians wouldn’t quite understand and they would do things that we would not understand either. Not exactly what I would call a fair tradeoff, but there are times where you just have to work with what you got.
Such was the case with both Gizmo and Brisk. While it was true that nothing crazy had happened since Brisk was finally with his marefriend, that didn’t mean they weren’t going to need me for anything else. Given how they lacked any sort of transportation to get them anywhere and that teleportation magic only seemed to work if somepony knew exactly where they were going, they had to rely on me to show them around and help them get them from place to place, unless one of them learns how to drive.
At one point, a thought came to mind that they would try and possibly ask me if I could teach them how to drive. Though, the thought of trying to explain to my insurance company how a unicorn that didn’t have a license crashed my car was not a conversation I wanted to have anytime soon.
Anyways, today was one of the days where I was helping both Brisk and Gizmo with a bit of shopping. Not just with the day to day essentials like food and water, but also clothes. Which was a bit weird since, from my understanding, Equestrians didn’t really seem to wear clothing on a day to day basis like we did. The only exceptions seem to be when an Equestrian was working at a specific job that requires a uniform to wear, like with the Equestrians that worked at the gate crossing, clothes weren’t exactly mandatory.
Just, try to not think too much about that. It’s for your own good.
As Gizmo was looking at the various jackets and hoodies in the clothes department, I happened to notice that Brisk was counting something. The earth pony had what looked to be a small pouch and inside it were, I kid you not, gold coins. The coins themselves had an emblem of two ponies on both sides, with one representing the sun and the other representing the moon and Brisk had quite a few of these coins on him.
“Hey, Brisk?” I spoke up to catch his attention as he looked towards me, “What are you counting there?”
“Oh, just the bits I have,” the earth pony replied back, “Not that much of a big deal really.”
I-I’m sorry… what? You’re counting gold coins and that’s not a big deal? Gold by itself is very hard to come by and a rather expensive metal. Yet, he’s carrying everything around like it’s pocket change! If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought that he had stolen them off of somebody.
Furthermore, I had one other question. “What exactly is a bit?”
That had Brisk look back at me with a raised eyebrow. “Really? You haven’t heard of bits before?”
“Well, technically, what you would see and what I would see as bits would probably be two separate things,” I replied honestly. Heck, the only ‘bits’ I knew were used as an expression or the bits in computer programming. Though, explaining that would be another conversation in itself.
“That’s a fair point,” the stallion replied, “Well, for us, Bits is our world’s form of currency and it’s used pretty much everywhere. We use it for pretty much anything regarding commerce or trade and coins like these are rather common. Some places here even allow us to use them.”
“Wait a minute, some do?” I ask.
“Yup. It’s how Gizmo was able to buy the house we have,” the earth pony replied, “Though, how is currency here in this world? Is it similar to ours?”
“Oh, far from it,” I replied, “If anything, it’s-”
Before I could continue, I looked back towards where Gizmo was and just stared at her. The unicorn was now having trouble trying to take off a hoodie she put on and got herself tangled up in it. Not only that, but she accidentally tightened the hood to where the only thing that we could see that was sticking out was her horn.
“Uh, somepony help! It’s so dark here! I can’t see a thing-!”
“Gizmo, don’t-!”
Unfortunately, the earth pony wasn’t able to stop Gizmo from frantically moving or casting her magic as the spell hit the bearing in the floor that locked a nearby clothing rack in place and knocked the entire thing over. Which not only caused the display to fall over onto the unicorn like a giant Jenga tower, but the clothes that were on the rack were knocked off the hangars and began to pile up on top of the unicorn like a stack of blankets. Not only that, but the sound of the clothing rack being knocked over was enough to alert anybody that just so happened to be walking by.
Just brilliant.
“What’s going on over here? Is everyone alright-?”
As soon as I heard that voice, I had a feeling this was going to go from bad to worse. One of the employees that was nearby just happened to be the first person to come by and help. Though, in my mind, I was unsure how exactly to explain to them what had just transpired.
“I-i’m sorry about this,” Brisk quickly spoke up, “My marefriend Gizmo was trying on some clothes and when she was trying to get it off her, she ended up knocking over the clothes rack.”
Okay, that helps but… why is that employee looking towards me-? Oh no.
“Are you okay, miss-”
“Uh, I’m sorry but I’m not the one he’s referring to. I’m just a friend,” I said before he could even finish that sentence. Yet, before they could even ask, we heard what sounded like a pop and a few seconds later, Gizmo soon popped out of the giant mess that was in front of her. Now that she had freed herself from the hoodie that she was trying to wear, her fur and mane were standing up on end and almost looked like a ball of floof.
“Holy moly, what the hay happened here?”
I just stared at her, before looking to Brisk as both of us let out a long drawn out sigh. At this point, I honestly did not know what to say to her and was thinking ahead to having to clean up the mess she accidentally made.
Note to self, never let Gizmo wear anything with hoods again. That’s just a disaster waiting to happen.
By the time that we finally got back to Gizmo’s house, I was honestly surprised that the manager of the store did not ban us from ever coming back. We were lucky that security camera footage was able to back up our story and that we were able to buy everything that we came for without any problems. That and the employee that helped us out was able to explain everything to his supervisor better than the three of us could. Otherwise, it would be rather hard to try and explain to my parents why exactly I couldn’t go shopping at our local Walmart again.
Though, as we were unloading the car and I was helping them bring everything inside… something strange happened. “Hey, Sam? Did you want to stay over for dinner later?”
I slowly looked back to Brisk, a bit surprised by the earth pony’s question. “D-Dinner? Uh, I don’t mean to sound rude but… why?”
“Well, Gizmo told me about how you cooked dinner for her when she first came here, so I thought that I could repay you for your hospitality,” the earth pony told me, “That is, if you don’t have other plans with your family.”
“I’m… going to have to check-”
“We’d love to.”
Immediately, I turned back around to find both of my parents standing by our mailbox. Something that I definitely did not see when I pulled into the driveway earlier. I couldn’t even say anything before Brisk spoke. “Why hello. You must be Sam’s parents.”
“And you must be Brisk,” my mom replied, “We’ve heard so much about you and Gizmo. We’d love to come over for dinner.”
… Okay, there are a few things that I can handle at any particular time, including any shenanigans that Gizmo gets herself into. Yet, my parents pulling off something like this? That was not one of them.