Sunset Shimmer, unicorn prodigy in exile, leaned against a wall for support. The strange local apes confidently strode through the bustling hall around her, blissfully ignorant of the inherent instability of a limb configuration their sense of balance had long ago adapted to. She felt a pang of envy, and her eyes narrowed.
What minor challenge was this, compared to mastering magic, ascending to greatness, taking her rightful place? Mere proprioception was no match for her talent. If anything, she needed a few novel puzzles like this to keep her skills sharp while her magic was – restricted.
(It wasn’t, couldn’t be - gone. Just … temporarily inaccessible.)
She studied one of the school’s students, observing the movements of his legs and composing her plan of attack. Once prepared, she strode on in aggressive imitation - moving as he moved - pushing this new body to do what it was clearly designed to.
It felt like she was constantly falling forward, flat feet - rolling? - over themselves like careening chariot wheels. None of the smoothness she witnessed manifested; instead unsteady, shaky, uncontrollable movement propelled her forward.
And yet, she did move forward.
While the portal’s magic had given her ears for the local tongue, she could barely stand the bustle of unfamiliar chatter. She knew very little of this place yet - closer observation would be needed to make it anything other than meaningless. Once she’d finally made it to what seemed to be the cafeteria, she leaned into a quiet corner to observe the interactions between these people, and how they related to each other.
The manipulators at the end of their forelimbs played a major part in it, as well as the forelimbs themselves. Freed from the necessity of using them for locomotion, they used them for most all their endeavors in some fashion, leveraging the unique appendages for actions she’d need magic or both hoof and mouth for as well as their social rituals. One of these appeared to be forceful contact between said appendages, in a playful roughhousing fashion. Another involved wrapping forelimbs about each other.
She tried them both out on some of the students she passed - to rather confused reactions. Would need to look into the specifics further.
(In hindsight - a high five and slapping someone’s hand were rather different things, and the second endeavor, as well as being out of place for a stranger, came across as accidentally falling on someone and trying to use them to keep from falling further.)
Regardless of her mangled attempts at emulating the apes’ social rituals, she needed sustenance, and ideally she’d acquire it without further interaction with trying to relate to anyone. The cafeteria had a machine for dispensing food that seemed promising. Principal Celestia (that woman was familiar enough Sunset had an idea how to win favor from her, at least - and the other Celestia was proving very useful in settling into this world) had given her some cash she could use, and she’d seen other students trading money to the machine to grab their snacks.
In practice, it proved a bit more complex than initially anticipated. The machine’s intelligence was limited, spitting out the bits unless it was told precisely how much they were and what she wanted to buy with them (and apparently not in that order). The mechanisms were - unreliable; when she finally got it to spin - the snack stubbornly clung to not falling. Arguing with it didn’t exactly seem to work. What fool made a device powered by mechanisms as idiotic and unreliable as whatever crude magic animated this -
She felt the pressure of the line forming behind her, a hot flush creeping up the back of her neck and ears as she struggled with the vending machine. Finally, for twice the price of her prize she managed to acquire the meagre bag of carrots she’d been after. She heard the snickers and felt the stares following her as she stalked off, anticipation of the sweet vegetable’s crunch turned sour.
In one sense, the computer she was expected to do her classwork on was a much smarter machine. In practice, ‘much smarter’ was very much relative. She had no training in the odd ways that her digits were supposed to impact the bewildering array of key options; instead of the intuitive sorting and narrowing of options between two hooves the Equestrian equivalent performed, she had to immediately hit one tiny set of a hundred options, or worse - a combination. The ‘mouse’ device to point at her screen moved somewhere entirely separate from her focus, splitting attention she didn’t have to spare.
All so natural for her classmates. She was slow, behind, inadequate to a quite embarrassing degree for a prodigy. Some made surprised or teasing comments on noticing her confusion over the device - and she pulled back. Most backed away at a curt comment, and she worked in isolation, doing her best to hide her struggles.
The end of the day couldn’t come soon enough, social challenges giving way to the simpler challenges of shelter and survival. Balancing on wheels was no harder than legs, and the swiftness the bike lent her gave her a sense of freedom that more than made up for the constant sense of falling.
(Flight would be like falling. Always forward, always fast, the wind in your mane. Nothing solid under your feet - soaring purely by your power and the winds of greatness.)
(She could taste it. Feel an echo of it, on the bicycle. At times it tasted like gravel - but she always got up from the crash.)
Her job would give her some bits, some experience observing people. The library to do her homework in. And sleep …
She had no home here. She doubted she ever would.