//------------------------------//
// I'm Derpy, Derpy Hooves 
// Story: Forrest Derp 
// by Woodspony 
//------------------------------//

A young blue gray Pegasus mare named Derpy was sitting on a park bench, watching the world go by. Actually to be totally honest, she was waiting for a carriage to come take her to a part of town that was in a northernly direction (which she always got confused with south).

She had on a pair of mud covered horseshoes, and her blond mane was tied up in an askew ponytail. There was a small suitcase on the bench next to her, and a box with the Sugar Cube Corner logo on it. She stared out at the sky and ground simultaneously, and marveled at their beauty.

Suddenly, a bird's feather came floating down from the sky, and landed next to Derpy's front hooves. She leaned down and picked it up, gently in her mouth. She tried to focus all her attention on the feather, but she just couldn't.

Oh well.

She opened the small suitcase. Inside was an assortment of things that a young mare might need. There were also a few things that no one wouldn't really need, but they made sense to Derpy. She pulled a yellow book from within one of the inner pockets. The book was Curious George (which Lyra had given her once, when she came back from a vacation to the human world, where she was almost enslaved by a traveling circus for her amazing ability to walk on two legs). She opened the book to the page that showed George walking on a telephone wire, and placed the feather next to him. She regarded her masterpiece for a few seconds, then closed the book and suitcase.

She then went back to watching the world, and waiting for the carriage.

Suddenly a carriage came by, but it wasn't the one Derpy was waiting for. It stopped for a moment, then drove off. Derpy went back to waiting. Then an earth mare with a brown coat and a pink mane came and sat down on the other side of the bench. Derpy regarded the earth mare with interest as she dug through a sack and pulled out a magazine to read to read (Equine to be exact, which was the Equestrian equivalent of People).

Derpy thought it would be only proper to introduce herself.

"Hello. My name's Derpy. Derpy Hooves."

The pink maned mare nodded politely, but didn't say anything. Derpy opened the box from Sugar Cube Corner, and sniffed at it, then turned back to her new bench companion.

"You want a muffin?" asked Derpy, holding the box up.

The earth pony looked at the muffins a second, then politely shook her head no. Derpy smiled to herself, because this meant more for her.

"I could eat about a million and a half of these" chuckled the walled eyed mare. She fished around for a muffin. They were special muffins, which all looked sort of the same on the outside, but were each full of their own little surprise.

"My mama always said, 'Life, was like a box of chocolates.'" Derpy selected her muffin from the group, and bit into it. She smiled to herself. "'You never know what you're gonna get.'"

The earth mare nodded again, although she was starting to feel just a wee bit annoyed with the talkative Pegasus. Derpy finished her muffin in silence. After she was done licking her lips, she noticed that the earth mare had on a pair of lovely horseshoes. Derpy pointed a hoof in their direction.

"Those must be comfortable shoes. I'll bet you could walk all day in shoes like that and not feel a thing." The friendly Pegasus smiled. "I wish I had shoes like that."

The pink maned earth mare finally spoke to Derpy. "My hooves hurt" she said in way of contradicting Derpy's assumption that the shoes must be comfy.

Derpy nodded and thought for a second.

"My mama always said 'There's a lot you can tell about a pony from their shoes... Where they're going. Where they've been.'"

The earth mare finally seemed a bit interested, and turned to Derpy, who seemed to be thinking.

"I've worn lots of shoes." She was silent for a few seconds. "I'll bet if I think real hard I can remember my first pair of shoes." Derpy scrunched her snout and closed her eyes in concentration.

Then she remembered.

"Mama said they would take me anywhere."


- To be continued