Richie’s log. Pony Watch, hour two.
Okay. Calling it this very second: Weirdest. Christmas. Ever.
It’s been two hours since I left Summer’s house. Two hours since I found the filly Diamond Tiara—
Stop. ‘Filly’? What are you thinking? This couldn’t possibly be the real Diamond Tiara. She’s a cartoon character. Some little girl somewhere probably just chucked her stuffed toy in the trash.
…Then again, something had to have left those footprints. They sure weren’t left by sneakers or boots, or cat or dog paws. I saw her chest slowly expand and contract.
…Sweet Celestia, it’s breathing. S-She’s…breathing.
The sleeping filly had nothing to keep her warm but a tattered red and purple scarf and tiny rose-pink boots. Her light magenta coat was bristly and flecked with mud. The same went for her lavender white-streaked mane and tail, which were not only caked in dirt but also tangled messes. She looked an utter wreck.
‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer filly,’ was my follow-up thought. Didn’t think I’d be blamed for thinking so, but I mentally kicked myself a little for the thought all the same.
Naturally, my next thought was ‘How did she get here?’ For that matter, where did she come from? I thought she was made-up. I thought they were all made-up! Did her being here mean that Equestria was real? That would be a topic of intense forum debate all by itself!
Was she even really lying there? Quickly answered my own question actually, as a sharp pinch to the arm revealed, no, I was most certainly not dreaming.
Before I could stop myself, I was reaching out to her and lightly touching one of her forehooves. A soft (yet at the same time coarse) sensation met my fingertips.
She was real.
And she was freezing!
A few more hours spent out here in the cold, and she’d have likely been hypothermic!
…Should I help her? Pick her up out of the bitter cold and bring her somewhere warm?
I almost told myself to leave her there. Or not so cruelly, bring her to an animal shelter and let her be someone else’s problem. I think I’ve made my opinions on Diamond Tiara pretty clear. I could’ve just walked away. I was precariously close to doing that too.
…But I didn’t. I…couldn’t.
Seeing her there, cold and vulnerable, with no other people (or ponies) around to help her, something inside me…switched on. Like it suddenly went against my very nature to abandon her. Which was weird since I typically took care to avoid strays. Why was Diamond Tiara any different? Because she was what she was? Because she was a pony?
“…Ohhhhhhh…crap.”
Forget it. She was here now. Character opinions be damned. I removed my winter jacket and set it on the ground. Then, taking great care not to wake the sleeping filly, I tenderly picked her up out of the box and set her down on top of the jacket before wrapping her up in it. Hopefully, the jacket’s absorbed enough of my body heat to stop her shivering.
As the cold air hit me, I shivered a little myself. Good thing I decided to dress in layers.
I sensed that she felt the rush of air too, because as soon as it hit us, she squirmed a bit, tucking her legs in more tightly and nestling herself deeper in my jacket. She must’ve been chilled to the bone.
With both Diamond Tiara and my leftovers in tow, I quickly but delicately resumed the trek to my house, all the while thinking,
Guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t out driving tonight.
Hour two and a half. It was nearing midnight.
I’d laid the sleeping Diamond Tiara in my bed and pulled the covers on top of her, up to her shoulders. Since bringing her in from the cold outside, her breathing had eased to that of a soft rhythm. As she slept, I went to the kitchen and prepared some tomato soup for her to have when she woke up, believing at the time she’d be waking up soon. I’d soon realize, however, she was out like a light, probably due to her relocation to a warmer and more comfortable environment.
I situated myself into a chair at her bedside, somehow compelled to stay with her as she dozed. My ‘holy-crap-I-have-a-pony-sleeping-in-my-bed’ mentality came and went pretty quickly. I leaned over and brushed a strand of muddy platinum hair from her face when I noticed faint streaks leading from her eyes and down her cheeks. They were dry, and appeared to blend with her coat tone with a slight discoloration.
…She’d been crying.
Intuitively, I wiped her tear stains away with my thumb and straightened her mane a little more. As I did this, her mouth opened just a bit, and she muttered drowsily,
“D… Daddy…”
My heart sank. In that moment, I forgot I was looking down at a stuck-up brat of a filly and could only see a scared, helpless, little pony that was far from home and missed her family. How long had she been wandering around my town before I found her, I wondered. Several hours? A day? Even longer than that? I reached out and started to pet her gently, stroking her head and mane, as I gave a soft “Shhh… It’s okay. I’m here.” She reacted to this by smiling and exhaling a content sigh through her nostrils. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the times I’d looked after my little sister when we were younger.
I pulled my hand away after a couple minutes of this and leaned back in my chair, taking one last look at Diamond Tiara, before drifting off to sleep myself.
I’m stirred from slumber when a sliver of sunlight shines in through the blinds of my bedroom window and worms its way across my face. With a grumpy moan, I turn away from the glaring light and lift my head up. My eyes slowly adjust to the morning light, and I look over to see Diamond Tiara still sound asleep. I had a crick in my neck and my joints cried in agony.
“Chairs. Go figure,” I groan under my breath as I stretch.
As the sunlight peering through the blinds makes its way onto the bed, it illuminates the filly’s face and she stirs as well. She lets out a soft moan and partly opens her eyes. As soon as the vision of me sitting next to her comes into focus, her eyes shoot fully open. She gasps and starts to fidget wildly under the covers as her eyes dart about the room. Clearly, she’d expected to wake up at home in Ponyville or in the alley I found her in last night.
“Hey, hey, take it easy,” I say to her, failing miserably at calming her down. “It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you. You’re safe here.”
Her panicked breathing tickles her throat and she coughs. Finally, she speaks. “W-Where am I?! Who are you?! What are you?!”
An expected reaction. I slowly lower my hands and rest them in my lap. “M-My name’s Richie,” I tell her, briefly stuttering. “You’re in my home. Like I said, you’re safe here.”
She turns toward the window and bolts over to it, shoving the blinds aside with a forehoof. She takes one look outside and is almost immediately discouraged by what she sees. If I were to wager a guess at what she was thinking, I’d say she was hoping she were still in Equestria. “Great,” she angrily mumbles, “so it wasn’t just a dumb dream. …Argh! This is all that stupid Trixie’s fault!”
“What?” I was about to inquire about why she’d mentioned the Great and Powerful Trixie before she continued in a higher volume.
“And now I’m stuck in this filthy house—”
My expression sours. There was the Diamond Tiara I knew and didn’t love.
“—with nothing but my…!” She trails off, frantically pawing at her mane and finding something was missing. “My tiara! W-Where’s my tiara?!”
“Calm down, calm down!” I jump from the chair and to my feet, walking over to a nearby dresser. I pick up the damaged tiara and present it to her. “It’s right here, okay? But it kinda…broke.”
Diamond Tiara gasps in horror to see her precious crown dented and in pieces. She cranes her head up to glare at me.
“…What?”
“You stepped on it, didn’t you?!”
Was I that easy to read? The little filly was more perceptive than I realized. “I-It was an accident!” I squeak. “I’ll get it fixed for you, I promise!”
“Ugh! Don’t bother!” She steps around me and moves toward the door. “I’ll just get Daddy to buy me a new one.”
“Diamo–!” I quickly catch myself, realizing that Diamond Tiara hadn’t yet told me her name. I didn’t know how she’d react to me already knowing it. “Little filly, wait!”
“My name isn’t ‘little filly’!” she calls back, now moving for the front door. “It’s Diamond Tiara!”
Well, that’s one barrier brought down, but she wasn’t making it any easier for me. She stops at the front door and I sigh, relieved that the doorknob was too high for her to reach. Maybe now we could—
A little window near the base of the door swings open, and Diamond Tiara squeezes through (it was a bit of a tight fit) to the outside.
Crap! The cat door the last tenants installed! Why haven’t I nailed that shut?!
In a panic, I throw my jacket on before going after her. By the time I’m out the door, Diamond Tiara’s halfway down the street. “Diamond Tiara, hold on!” I call out to her. She ignores me. I don’t even bother locking up and I jog briskly after her. She wasn’t trotting away at full speed, so -it didn’t take long for me to catch up. Even now, she refused to break her gait. “Diamond Tiara, would you slow down? Where are you going?”
“Ponyville, where else?!” she snaps at me. “Besides, anywhere is better than that dump you call a house!”
My eye twitches. That was strike two. “You don’t even know where Ponyville is.” Especially since it was nowhere on this planet.
“Oh, please. How hard could it be to find?” During her bout of boasting, Diamond Tiara had wandered into the street. The light was red. “Maybe you’re bad with directions, who-or-whatever-you-are, but I’m—”
The startling honk of a Honda jerks Diamond Tiara’s face to the right. She stops dead in her tracks and focuses solely on the red of the oncoming vehicle.
“DIAMOND TIARA!”
My body was on autopilot. My feet shoot me forward and my arms reach out as far as they could manage.
Diamond Tiara froze. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
The driver just kept on honking his horn.
Time seemed to slow down…
“…Watch your dog better, you idiot!” the driver howls at me as he speeds past.
I’d shout something back at him, but I stop myself out of fear of burning Diamond Tiara’s ears with my sailor talk. Besides, I was more concerned about the filly trembling in my arms. I glance down at her and spare not a drop of my anger. “Are you ‘loco in the coco’?! What are you thinking, walking into open traffic like that?!”
Still visibly shaken by her near-death experience, the small pony looks up at me with her big powder-blue eyes. Eyes filled with fear. Fear of nearly being run over. Fear of the terrifying, unfamiliar world that surrounded her. Her lower lip quivers as she struggles to find her voice. “…What is this place…?” she whimpers, fresh tears starting to form where old ones had long since dried.
My own voice fails me. Diamond Tiara clutches my shirt as tightly as she could and buries her muzzle in my chest before the tears could fully take shape. She was beyond terrified; she felt utterly stranded. I turn around and start walking back toward my house. All I could do for the trembling filly was hold her close and rub her back.
Character opinions be doubly damned. Diamond Tiara needed someone, anyone, to help her through this. And as against my better judgment as it seemed…I was okay with being that ‘someone’.
I set Diamond Tiara down on my living room floor and remove my jacket, promptly tossing it onto the couch. Looking down at her, I see her move toward where I’d set aside her scarf and boots. She takes the unraveling scarf into her hooves and seems to mourn its loss. “Oh! Just look at my scarf!” she whines. “It’s ruined! First my tiara, and now this?! What’d I do to deserve this kind of bad luck?!”
I could think of three things, I mentally joke. Before I could laugh at my own inner quip though, I hear the little pony sneeze. “You okay?” I ask out of reflex.
She sniffles. “I’m fine.” She turns to face me and lowers her petite haunches to the floor. “So,” she starts again, “what are you supposed to be anyway? You’ve got to be the weirdest-looking pony I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m not a pony,” I explain. “I’m a human.”
“Is ‘human’ another word for ‘freak-a-zoid’? ‘Cause that’s what you look like – a freak-a-zoid. Is everyone else around here a freak-a-zoid like you?”
What is that, her new favorite word or something? “I have a name, you know. It’s Richie.”
“I like ‘freak-a-zoid’ better.”
I heave an exasperated sigh. I never thought I’d regret saving a pony’s life so quickly. I open my eyes again to see that Diamond Tiara has vanished. Before I could call out to her, I feel something suddenly tug at my rear. “Aah!” Looking back, I see the small pony has caught the seat of my pants in her teeth, trying to…pull my pants down? Flustered, I shout at her, “What are you doing?!”
Through her clenched teeth, she states simply, “Looking…to see if you have a…cutie mark.”
Yanking my pants out of her teeth with a hip thrust away, I back off and scowl at her with flushed cheeks. “I don’t have a cutie mark! You could’ve just asked me if I had one before trying to rip my jeans!”
She stomps a hoof on the floorboards. She was obviously more concerned with the fact that I didn’t have a cutie mark than the fact I even knew what a cutie mark was. “Let me get this straight! So the guy who saved me is not only a weirdo and lives in a dump, but he’s also a BLANK FLANK?!? I’ve hit the bad luck jackpot!”
The twitch in my eye was back. Hello, Equestrian customer service? I’d like a refund on this pony. It has an overclocked ‘spoiled brat’ chip.
“Could this day get any wor…?! Wah… Ahh… A-CHOOOO! …Ugh…”
I swiftly fetch a tissue from a jacket pocket, kneel down, and hold it to Diamond Tiara’s nose. “Blow.”
She does as I tell her and blows hard into the tissue, letting out a relieved sigh afterward.
As I pocket the dampened tissue, I finally ask, “Diamond Tiara, how long were you out there before I found you?”
She wipes a forehoof across her nose before answering. “Why do you care?”
“Just tell me.”
She sniffles again. “Um… A little over a day maybe? I’m not sure.”
“No wonder you were so cold when I found you. You might be coming down with something. I’ll heat up some soup for you; you must be starving.” Diamond Tiara was about to say something, likely in protest, when her growling stomach cuts her off and tells me all I needed to hear. I laugh playfully at her blush while flicking dried mud out of her mane. “And after that, how does a warm bath sound?”
The filly puffs up her cheeks – a rather uncharacteristically cute look for her – and faces away. “Hmph! Whatever!”
…One use of the microwave later, I serve Diamond Tiara the tomato soup I’d made for her the previous night, as well as some lightly toasted bread on the side and some juice. I seat myself across from her as she helps herself to the meal. Watching her enjoy the food, I feel a strange yet warm satisfaction that brings a smile to my face. In spite of how we got to this point in time, it felt good doing something nice for someone like Diamond Tiara. And while she didn’t let it show, she had to feel just the tiniest bit of gratitude for my hospitality. Virtue truly was its own reward.
Glancing upward, Diamond Tiara catches me staring at her. “…What?”
“S-Sorry.” I quickly look away and rub the back of my head in embarrassment.
I hear her scoff. “Weirdo.”
A sigh escapes my lips yet again. This was gonna be harder than I thought. “So…Tiara—”
“Diamond Tiara,” she corrects me.
“I can’t call you ‘Tiara’ for short?”
“Only my friends, my mom, and my daddy get to call me ‘Tiara’. So no.”
“…Anyway…any idea how you ended up here in the first place?”
“Yup.”
…I wait a moment for her to continue, but once I realize she had no intention of doing so, I press further. “Are you gonna tell me?”
“Nope.”
Oh, come on. I’m making an honest effort here. Throw me a bone, would you? She’d mentioned Trixie before; I was rather curious as to how she was involved in all of this. But she stonewalled me at every turn. How was I supposed to help if I had no idea what was going on? As I muse over this, Diamond Tiara rubs the crown of her head, wincing a little as she does so. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Leave me alone already!”
Ignoring her this time, I walk around to her backside and comb through her mane with my fingers to examine her head. She’s resistant at first, but I make firm my intent to help. Sure enough, there was a small bump on her head that made her wince in pain when I touched it. “Ooh, yeah, that looks like it hurts,” I comment before moving away. I head over to some kitchen drawers in search of something. “Come on… Where is it, where is it? …Ah, here we go!” Having found what I was looking for, I walk over to the freezer. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Diamond Tiara’s eyes fixated on me, honestly curious as to what I was doing. I walk back over to her with an ice pack in hand. “Here.”
Before I could press the pack against her bump, however, she reaches up and slaps it out of my hand. “Knock it off!” she cries as the ice pack hits the floor. “What’s your deal?! Why are you being so nice to someone you barely know?!”
“I’m trying to help you. You were hungry and cold, so I gave you soup. You have a bump on your head, so I’m putting an ice pack on it. I just want you to feel better while you’re here.”
“I didn’t ask for your help!”
“You didn’t need to!”
Diamond Tiara’s expression was one of…genuine surprise. She probably wasn’t used to people (or ponies) outside her immediate family showing her kindness, reaching out to her in friendship.
“I’m not taking care of you expecting something in return. I’m doing it ‘cause you’re in trouble, and I want to help you through it. That’s just how I was raised to treat others.” I’d imagine Diamond Tiara’s silence was due to my values, morals, and overall world views being in such direct opposition to her own. Kneeling down, I pick up the dropped ice pack and gently press it to the bump on her head. Then I walk around and sit down across from her again so she can look me in the eye. “Listen, Diamond Tiara. It’s clear you don’t like me very much – matter of fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find anything you do like – but I’m not gonna just leave you alone to fend for yourself. So until I can figure out where your home is or someone comes for you, you can…stay here with me if you want.”
She twists her face in revulsion at my generous offer. “You kidding?! I’m not shacking up with a loser like you! I’d rather take my chances out there!”
I let a little of my snarkiness bleed through to the surface. “Right, ‘cause you looked like you were faring so well before I found you, shivering and almost frostbitten.”
Diamond Tiara instantly clams up. No doubt we were both thinking the same thing then: if I hadn’t found her, who knows what would’ve happened to her? She probably wouldn’t even be alive. Or someone else would’ve found her before I did. Someone not as generous as I was currently being.
“…You finished eating?”
She gives a short but firm nod.
“Was it good?”
“…Mm-hmm.”
“What do you say?”
She growls. I know it was kinda mean, but I just couldn’t resist. “…Thrrnk yrm.”
I place a dramatic palm just behind my ear and lean toward her. “Sorry? Didn’t catch that.”
“Uggghhh. Thank you.”
I smile warmly at her, having had my fun. “You’re welcome. Now come on. Bathroom’s this way.”
I’d spent perhaps a good two hours cleaning and grooming Diamond Tiara; turned out a lot more dirt and gravel had collected within her coat, mane, and tail than just what was on the surface. A little more than half of that time was spent washing the dirt out, shampooing, rinsing, and drying her off, and the rest was spent brushing her coat and untangling her rat’s nest of a mane. She’d twitched a little here and there, but all in all, she was surprisingly cooperative. (I noticed the longer it had taken to clean her, the more relaxed she became. She loved being groomed, it seemed.)
Once again, I found myself hearkening back to my junior high days, when I brushed and styled my little sister’s hair for her when she was in elementary school. It was an activity I griped about at first, but (after some helpful tips from Mom) gradually came to enjoy. It’s part of why my sister and I were so close to begin with…and why she cried the most over my decision to leave home.
…I made a mental note to call Paige later that day.
Anyway, the more I combed out Diamond Tiara’s smoothed mane and tail, the more they took on their distinctive curl, like that was their natural shape. Her bright pink coat had taken on a soft luster that reflected off the wall and floor tiles. She was looking (and feeling) like her old self again, even if she felt a little naked without her prized tiara. Speaking of tiaras… As I smoothed down the fine hairs of her coat, my eyes at last land upon her cutie mark: a seven-pointed tiara, with a diamond perched atop each of five of those seven points.
I would’ve liked to hear the true story of how she got it.
We leave the steamy bathroom at around quarter to eleven and welcome the cool air permeating the rest of the house. I lead her to a familiar door on the opposite end of the hallway and open the way for her into my bedroom. She enters first. “I figured you must still be tired,” I say to her, “so if you want, you can go ahead and take a nap while I wash up.”
I see Diamond Tiara look around my room, appraising it with her eyes. Admittedly, I didn’t have much in the way of personal effects; just a few posters and bookshelves (which, incidentally, held up very few books for the time being). In the far corner of the room are two stacked boxes of various things I had yet to unpack. My desktop computer is set up next to them. A closet near the bed yields all my clothes and shoes. She sneers, disappointed by the utter plainness of it all. “I guess it’ll have to do until I go back home.” She turns to me then. “You are gonna help me get home, right?”
I pocket my hands, unsure how to answer. I certainly didn’t want to keep her here any longer than she had to be. But I also didn’t want to give her cause for anxiety. I throw on a half-smile and tell her, “Depends. You gonna tell me how you got here? And who this ‘Trixie’ is?”
She tenses up at my ultimatum, but settles down before long. “…I wanna take a nap first.” Saying nothing else, she yawns as she makes her way over to my bed.
…Ah! An idea comes to me. As she climbs onto the bedspread, I approach the boxes in the corner, open one up, and rifle through its contents. She was a filly; maybe she’d like it. Upon finding the item I was searching for, I make my way over to Diamond Tiara and present her with an old teddy bear that my dad convinced me to hold onto. When I was packing up my stuff for the move, I almost threw it out, but he refused to let me and made me promise to hang onto it. Wouldn’t tell me why, but there was ultimately always a method to my dad’s madness.
Diamond Tiara takes one look at the stuffed toy, grabs it in her teeth, and flings it at the wall. “A teddy bear?! Seriously?! Teddy bears are for babies!”
With a shrug, I pick the toy back up, dust it off, and sit it upright on the shelf; didn’t have the heart to put it back in storage. “Well, have a nice nap anyways,” I say to her finally, moving out the door and closing it shut behind me.
I linger at the door a few moments longer, leaning back against it.
Okay. Let’s recap. Pony from another world appears in mine – check. I find her lying in a gutter and take her home with me – check. Clean her, feed her, the whole nine yards – check. Sing random song out of nowhere – inadvisable but under consideration. I suppose this is the part where I try and figure out how she got here (if she decides she’s gonna keep me in the dark about it) and/or how I’m gonna get her back home to Equestria. Because, you know, that’s just the easiest freakin’ thing in the world to do.
“RICHIE!!! I WANT A GLASS OF WATER!!!”
…Oh, look. She remembers my name. This ought to be fun.