//------------------------------// // Arc 1: 7 - Healthy Again // Story: I'm Getting Underpaid For This // by Warmaisach //------------------------------// You know what sucks? Waking up. You know what sucks even more? Waking up in a foreign bed. You know what sucks even more than that? Waking up in a foreign bed without knowing how you got there. You know what sucks the most? Waking up in a foreign bed without knowing how you got there and with your last memory being a fall to your imminent death. Guess what happened. The last one? No, the gods would never do that. They would have to hate me a great deal if that would ever happen to me. How could you even remotely think about this possibility? Sarcasm aside, I hate whoever is up there that obviously wants to get me into these awkward situations as many times as possible. I was just having the sleep of my life, or maybe unlife since I did not know if I was still alive, when my body decided that I should probably wake up. My consciousness slowly returned to the world of the living. Slowly, my senses returned. The first sense that returned was my taste. Why my taste should be the first one to respond and why it should matter you ask? It matters because I had the strongest and most disgusting taste possible in it. Seriously, if you would take a pound of smelling salt, put it in a hollowed out onion, and bury it in the earth for a decade, it wouldn’t taste half as dreadful as this. The next thing that I felt returning was my hearing, or that’s at least what I thought. I either was sleeping in a vacuum that was surrounded by a barrier of Styrofoam or this room was just very very quiet. Maybe it wasn’t even a room. With the lack of input by sound, I couldn’t actually determine in what environment I slept for the last Celestia-knows-how-long time. Slowly, I opened my eyes. I needed to know where the heck I was. With my eyes being half opened, I could deduce two things. Judging by the colors I saw, I was in a room, and judging by the same thing again, I was not in a vacuum. Silly me, of course I wasn’t in a vacuum. How would I still be alive then? I frowned when I realized that those big pranksters in the sky would find a way to let me live through that just to see my reaction when I wake up. Suddenly, the middle of my vision changed from a warm brown color to a cold black. I swear to whatever it is that I own and that I value, that I will burn every last piece of literature about any kinds of astral beings if there was now a vacuum being created in front of me, just for the heck of it. I blinked some time in order to get my eyes to focus. After some time, I managed it, and I could at least see some of the black wall In front of me. Wait, are those eyes? “Good evening.” My heart decided to twist its upper half 360° while the lower half stayed stationary on the “ground”, or at least that is what it felt like. To simplify this, it felt like my heart stopped, and my vision instantly focused on the head that was before me. I saw a pony with black and white stripes. Judging by the voice I could determine that he was male. His mane was also black and white and ran down on both sides of his head, reaching down to his knees. He also wore a silver necklace. After a while, my gaze drifted away from him and took in the rest of his body. On top of the silver necklace, he also wore some silver hoof rings on his right fore-leg. His cutie mark seemed a little like some kind of ancient tribal mask. After a while where I did not really react, he changed his expression to a thinking one. “Took you long enough to wake up,” he stated with a bored voice and turned around. With a slow pace, he walked over to a fire where a kettle was being heated. Speaking of the room, I just noticed that I was in some kind of shack. The size of it was not especially grand, and the word sanitary wouldn’t even dare to take a foot inside. Some tribal masks and weird other decorations hung at the walls. I looked back at him with a calmer demeanor than before. Judging by the black and white stripes, I thought that he was a zebra. I read something about them in one of the books in the Canterlot Library. If I recall correctly, they live to the south of the continent and only rarely visit or live in Equestria. I actually never thought I would see one. “Did you bite your tongue when you saw me, or why don’t you talk?” He calmly asked me, and I realized that I actually haven’t talked much. Let’s change that. “I’m sorry if I haven’t said enough, but the fact that I woke up in a foreign bed inside of a zebra’s shed, kinda robbed me of the ability to perform simple small-talk.” The zebra turned around and eyed me with a measuring gaze. He then hummed for a short while until he answered. “At least you seem to be able to think clearly enough to form normal sentences. Not something I had expected after finding your unconscious body near some river a week ago,” he stated with a voice that was clearly hinting at something in this sentence, and it did not take me long to figure out what he was hinting at. “One week?” I asked rather loudly. Did I sleep for a full week? The zebra let out a chuckle. “Yes, you slept for a full week. Rather loudly if I might add.” I sighed once. “Yeah, you’re not the first one to tell me that.” I slowly sat up, but instantly felt dizzy upon doing that. After a while where I tried to steady my head with my right arm, I continued speaking. “So, what exactly happened?” The zebra turned around and stirred in the cattle once more. After he was finished stirring, he placed the wooden spoon back on the side and took ahold of some strange contraption. He bit down on it, and two wooden planks bent around the hoofle (handle) of the kettle. With a mighty act of strength, he lifted the kettle with all the water in it up and placed it on a round stony platform with a hole in the middle. The bottom of the kettle went through the stony platform until it was too thick to fit through. The kettle now stood straight and secure in the middle of the room. He spat the contraption out of his mouth and sighed once. Then he turned around, took one bowl, and filled it with some kind of stew or soup, I wasn’t sure which one of both since I sat too far away. Carrying the bowl to a table, he sat down before it. After another sigh, he lowered his head towards the soup and blew over it to cool it down. Putting his lips inside of it, he slurped some of it up. Then another time, and another time “Eh, hello? I asked something,” I told him with an irritated voice. He still didn’t react at all. “Zebra, I am talking to you.” Now, he seemed to react. He turned his head to me and had a questioning gaze in his eyes. “Are you talking to me?” After hearing such a stupid question, I instantly began to smile overly. “No, I am talking to your soup, which I just named Zebra. I thought it was quite obvious.” He then eyed me with an expression that showed me that he thought I was crazy. After a while, he simply shrugged and continued slurping his soup. One of my eyes began to twitch. “Of course I am talking to you. Who else is in here that could give me an answer?” “Well you should know who. I am not the one talking to soups,” he remarked with a small smirk. Oh it is on. “And I am not the one thinking that the only other intelligent being in the room is talking to food.” “How should I know that you know that soups don’t answer? If you had a healthy mind, I probably wouldn’t have found you beside a river in the Everfree Forest,” he stated with a hint of annoyance, which quickly gave way to another smirk. “I think you should calm down, my little pink princess.” That little (You don’t want to hear that)! “I am no girl!” I shouted with a deep voice. Wait, what? For the first time today, I looked down at my body. I saw the slender and athletic form of a purple penguin again, my voice was, somewhat, deep, and my claws and fins had their old color again. “I am male again,” I stated in wonder and looked up at the smirking zebra. “How?” He chuckled a little and slurped another time off his soup. “That story is actually quite funny. You see, when I was strolling around my forest I-“ “My forest?” I interrupted him. His right eye squeezed shut for a moment, and I couldn’t control a smirk. So there is a way to get him angry. “Yes my forest! Nonetheless, I was walking through MY forest, when I remembered that I needed some water. You see, we shamans have-“ “Shamans?” I interrupted again with a smirk. He took a deep breath. “Shamans are the zebras in our tribe that commune with the spirits and nature itself. We are exceptionally well educated in terms of natural medicine and rare disease. Well as I wa-“ “We are, as in there are more of you?” “Yes. On every exit of the Everfree Forest resides one of our shamans. I am a normal shaman, like the rest. Our high shaman, Zecora, lives near the entrance to Ponyville for example,” he explained with an annoyed voice. Ponyville huh? Didn’t know Ponyville had its own shaman. I think I should pay her a visit the next time ancient spirits of hate try to possess a house plant of mine. “Well as I was saying. We shaman keep our water in water tanks and I ran out of water some time ago. So I took the tank and went to the local river. Just when I wanted to dip the tank into the water, I saw a pink female dragon unconscious beside it. It was probably the cutest thing I have ever seen.” A smirk accompanied the last part. He knew that I hated being called cute. He only did this to provoke me. I told myself the whole time to stay calm. After a while where I didn’t answer, he continued. “I thought about letting the cute little pink female baby dragon-“ keep calm Spike. “Stay in the forest, but she was just that adorable that I had to take her home.” He made a short pause, probably to look if I was annoyed or not. The fact that he smirked could only mean that he saw through my false expression. “Now about how I found out that you were actually a male and how I cured you.” “Wait, you cured me? How?” His left eye twitched. “I would tell you,” he stated slowly and dangerously, but his expression changed to anger quickly. “If you wouldn’t interrupt me constantly.” Wow did he say that through gritted teeth? I didn’t answer at all, and he seemed to accept this as an answer. Man that sounded strange. “I made a check up on you and I found a strange thing.” He then lifted a hoof and pointed at my face. “Your fire wasn’t working.” I lifted an eyebrow. “My fire wasn’t working?” The zebra simply nodded. “Yes. I examined that oddity further and found out that your organ that ignited the burnable fluid coming out of your mouth, was missing. Now, there are not many ways this could happen. This could have been a defect since you came out of your egg. This could have been of magical nature. But I suspected something different.” He made a pause there, and I didn’t want to interrupt him. I seriously wanted to know what made me wake up as a female. “Little dragon, did you have any contact with a blue flower recently?” He asked me, and I thought back to the time where I slept the whole night in such a field. My claw instantly met my face. “Yes…” I stated with a voice that told something like ‘I can’t believe I was that stupid’. The shaman let out a slight chuckle. “Well, judging by the fact that I found you in the Everfree Forest, I suspected that the Poison Joke poisoned you. Before you ask, Poison Joke is that blue flower. It essentially plays a joke on you.” He chuckled slightly. “And seeing as you reacted pretty strongly to my claims that you were cute, I think that it got quite some entertainment out of that.” I crossed my arms and looked to the side. After a while where I did not answer, he continued. “So I simply made a remedy for a poisoning, caused by the Poison Joke and, who would have thought, I suddenly had a male dragon. I thought the plant would have only made one joke on you, but it seemed like I was mistaken. Yet, it was not impossible. It was proven that prolonged exposure to Poison Joke could have additional effects. Am I correct in the assumption that you slept in a field of them?” He asked with a stern gaze, and I couldn’t do anything but smile nervously and nod. He just shook his head multiple times at my stupidity and turned back to his soup. “Try your fire. It should work again,” the shaman stated while taking another slurp. Like he suggested, I tried to produce a small flame and succeeded. Huh, I didn’t know that my fire wasn’t working while I was female. The more you know… I looked back to the shaman when I saw him standing up with his bowl and getting another portion of soup. My stomach instantly told me that it also wanted something to eat. “Hey, could I have some of that soup, please?” I asked nicely. “You wanna have a talk with it again?” He shot back with an annoyed voice, and I cringed a little. Somehow, he was able to annoy me like nopony ever before. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “No, I actually wanted to eat it,” I told him, and he turned to me with an annoyed expression. “Sorry, princess Free Load. You gotta find your own food,” he stated, and I grinded my teeth. My stomach growled again. It wanted to eat, and it practically told me to get something as quickly as possible, lest I wanted to have one spleen less in my body. Seriously, sometimes I think my stomach is some kind of transformed escaped criminal. There was one last way, to obtain something of that soup. I sighed deeply. “Look, I am sorry that I acted that informal earlier. I was just a little perplexed by the new area I woke up and… well everything else,” I apologized with a regretful voice. The zebra averted his gaze from his soup and looked if my apology was sincere. After a while, he smiled. “Apology accepted.” I smiled at this. “By the way. My name is Spike. What’s yours?” I asked in a happy voice. I bet in some kind of parallel universe, there was a Spike that talked just like this every day. The shaman smirked. “My name’s Abdarul Kanbradir Husbaralki Anbudara Harma.” I looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and he chuckled a little. “Abdarul is fine.” I chuckled a little at this, and an uncomfortable silence quickly came between us. After a short while, I asked again. “Can I now have some of that soup?” He let out a hearty laugh and turned to me with a smile. “No!” While saying this his expression changed to a frown, and the dark and absolute tone did not give any chance for further discussion. I simply sighed and looked back at my legs, while he slurped on his soup. And not a single soup was given that day.