Jake and the kid

by peter

Ch16 Snipe Hunt, part two [edited]

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon knelt on the grass beside a tall thick hedge with a rather new-looking hole in the normally neatly pruned shrub. A pair of pruning shears and some discarded hedge cuttings provided evidence as to the origin of the small hole in the greenery they were currently staring at so intently. Scattered around the two little ponies were the remains of a monumental candy binge, wrappers, and boxes scattered everywhere. The slight bulge in each of their bellies indicated where all that candy had gone as if any proof had really been needed.

Every now and then one of the fillies would, while looking more than a bit self-conscious, stick her muzzle into the hole and let out a long low cry, ‟Snnniiipppppe.”

After one such vocalization, Silver Spoon turned to her friend, and said, “This is taking too long. Why don’t we go and do something fun?”

Diamond Tiara had been feeling quite satisfied with her own cleverness and good luck. Who would have dreamed that when her father dragged her out of her comfortable bed at such a Tartarus darned early hour things would turn out so well? And to think, she had given serious thought to ignoring his order to go and play with those stupid blank flanks. If she’d done that, she'd have missed overhearing about the wonderful opportunity that they had almost stolen from her. She was therefore not exactly sympathetic to her friend’s suggestion. Not when the thought of quitting brought up the memory of being taunted by that abominable blank flank, Apple Bloom, with not having the patience to successfully complete this hunt.

‟We are staying,” Diamond Tiara said firmly. Then, to make things even clearer, she stuck a half-melted cube of chocolate covered toffee into her mouth and stuck her head up to the neck in the hole in the hedge. ‟Swwwnnooppeeett,” she gargled, focused more on trying to blow the candy scent as far as possible in order to help lure their elusive prey, then in trying to articulate the sounds correctly. She would be the one to catch the legendary Snipe, Diamond Tiara told herself with total self-confidence. It would be her picture on the front page of all the papers in Equestria as she posed with Princess Celestia and accepted her well-deserved reward. The newspapers would clamor to interview her, and when the time came for her to run for the title of Miss Equestria, she would not suffer her mother’s fate, cheated out of her rightful title and crown by some little snip of a commoner who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Really, as Diamond Tiara’s mother had frequently pointed out, if that dowdy pony hadn’t been there, some other pony would have run into the fire and saved that colt, it wasn’t like she’d done anything particularly special. And what did any of that have to do with being the most beautiful and graceful pony in Equestria, anyway?

Drawing her head out of the hole in the hedge, the stuck-up filly sent a speaking look toward her friend. With a sigh, Silver Spoon took her turn calling the Snipe, letting out a long loud yawn half-way through. It had been a long morning, the sun was warm, and her belly was stuffed to bulging with high-quality, high-calorie candy. Keeping her eyes open was becoming more and more of a challenge.

‟Stop that,” Diamond Tiara ordered Silver Spoon, fighting to repress her own cavernous yawn. She only held out for a moment before letting out her own jaw-cracker. She blinked watering eyes and gave herself a good hard shake in an effort to fight off a sudden feeling of sunny afternoon lethargy.

The Rich Family estate was a broad swath of property that had been landscaped to within an inch of its life. Lush green grass, carefully pruned trees, topiary bushes carved into a close resemblance of ponies in various heroic poses, with numerous water features scattered throughout. Koi ponds were linked with winding streams of water, linked to fountains with cast-cement figures gushing water from various orifices. Mixed among the greenery were ceramic statues of various fairy tale creatures lurking among the bushes and flowers.

In short, it looked more like the back-lot of a garden supply business than the home of the richest pony in Ponyville.

The natural, for a given value of natural, landscape surrounding the estate was, in contrast, a bit brown this late in the season, and the border of the grounds could clearly be determined by the change from short cropped, lush green grass to tall brown hay and brush. The exception was the well trimmed, tall, thick hedge that followed the lane-way that ran alongside the property and led to Ponyville in one direction, and to Rich’s numerous warehouses and other outbuildings in the other.

A rustling in the natural undergrowth was the only thing that gave warning a second before a bipedal creature stepped out of it, seemingly materializing in place. Even standing in plain sight it seemed to fade into the mottled background colors of the autumn fields and only became really visible when viewed against the verdant green grass of the estate.

Curry stared in bemusement at the small water feature just in front of her and the decorative sculptures surrounding it. A ceramic monkey? She thought it was a monkey anyway, it looked strange, but that might be the mismatched clothing it was dressed in. The figurine was sitting by the pond, a fishing pole held between its two front paws. A straw hat was pulled down over its eyes while a wisp of straw hung from its mouth. Clearly, it represented a dozing fisherman or fisher-monkey-thing in this case. Behind the slumbering monkey-thing, a small ceramic raccoon was frozen in the act of creeping away, a small ceramic fish in its mouth.

Curry was hardly tired at all, despite having walked at least five miles. Mrs. Lynx had been in no real hurry, and Curry had accompanied the feline until they had worked their way around the pony village and parted ways. That had been a couple of hours ago. The young girl likely should have headed back to Fluttershy’s home after that, but she was still fresh and was curious as could be about this new world.

Curry was well used to rambling through the mountains that had towered over her old home. The gently rolling landscape she had walked through today offered little impediment to someone used to the steep slopes and crags of her former residence. The sun was warm, but the air a bit crisp, making for just about perfect rambling weather. Without the need to keep up with the much faster pace that her new pony friends set, she’d been free to go at her own speed. Add to that a huge curiosity bump, and any urge to abandon her walk was quickly quashed. She had given into temptation and decided to wander over yonder for a bit.

The outfit that Miss Rarity had created for her proved to be much more comfortable than she would have guessed and surprisingly well suited for the sort of undercover exploration she was currently engaged in. If she’d been dressed in her old familiar clothing of jeans and flannel shirt she’d likely have been covered in burdock burrs by now and would have more than likely collected numerous scratches. Her new outfit shed seed burrs and forest litter like water off a duck’s back and was warm and cozy in the chill of the shadows. Just what you would expect from a magical garment created by a magical unicorn.

Her determination to continue exploring had paid off, leading her to discover this interesting place. The over-groomed park she was currently standing in reminded her a bit of a miniature golf course she’d gone to once with Old Ben, minus the putting lanes. She stood as still as she could be and listened hard, but heard nothing beyond the twitter of birds in the bushes and the gentle sound of wind rustling in the tall grass. Despite the overly landscaped appearance of the area there didn’t seem to be any ponies around.

Earlier, Curry had found it quite easy to avoid the town limits by simply listening for the sounds of hooves on the ground and the near-constant chatter as numerous brightly colored ponies passed the time of day with each other. She hadn’t dared get close enough to hear what they were talking about, but the near constant murmuring had made it fairly easy to keep out of sight. Confident that the area she was now in offered lots of cover, and that she’d be able to hear any ponies long before they could see her, Curry decided to explore this rather interesting looking area. In truth, she hardly gave it that much thought. There were no ponies around, and her curiosity about the inhabitants of her new home was more than enough justification in her mind to explore a bit.

The small girl first went uphill. She could see what looked like a large house up on top of the hill. As she got closer it got larger and larger. By the time she peeked out from behind a topiary bush carved into the shape of a rearing earth pony, she was awed. It was big as a hotel back home. Gleaming stone pillars marched across the front of the large dwelling which was at least three stories tall. While not a castle, it was obvious that only a very important person, or pony, would call this home.

The appearance of a pair of mares dressed in frilly maid outfits caused Curry to draw further back in the bush she was hiding inside, even as she stifled a giggle at their appearance. Much as she would have liked to take a closer look at this country palace, she knew that there would be no way she could be sure of not being spotted. With reluctance, she pulled back and with the same amount of caution as before made her way downhill from the mansion, peeking back over her shoulder every now and then as moved away. She wondered if the Princesses her new friends had talked about lived here. She supposed she’d find out soon enough if they decided they were interested in seeing her.

After about fifteen minutes of ninja-like darting from cover to cover. Curry found herself at the top of a long grass-covered slope. There was a long tall hedge at the bottom of the hill that she guessed marked the boundary of the property she was on. With no hope of being able to hide from view, and seeming at the limit of this interesting place, Curry was just about to turn back to her original starting point and make her way back to Fluttershy’s home. But, as she turned to leave, she spotted two painted ceramic sculptures nestled up beside the hedge about a hundred feet to the left of her current position. Unlike the previous ones, which followed a fantasy theme, these seemed to be simply two little fillies, legs tucked up under their bodies as they slumbered in the sun. They appeared to be brand new if the amount of packing material scattered around them were any indication. From this distance, Curry could not make out very many details, but the sun was glittering off of something attached to one figure’s head. It looked a lot like a crown of some sort. Maybe these figures were statues of the two Princesses that her new friends had told her about. If so, it would be nice to see what they looked like before she actually met them.

Except for the two maid ponies earlier, Curry hadn’t seen any other ponies all the while she’d been here. That had made her a touch overconfident. Deciding it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look she started down the hill.

Truthfully, wanting a closer look at the pony art was only an excuse. The real attraction was the lush green slope in front of her. The hill was covered in plush unmarred grass, and what kid could resist such a pristine slope. Repressing the urge to yell out as she did so, Curry tossed herself down the hill, rolling over and over. The small girl was delighted to find that Rarity’s costume was more than slick enough to slip easily over the grass. She alternated between somersaulting head over heels and outright sliding. The only negative was having to stop herself from whooping in delight.

Thirty seconds later Curry came to a stop a bare ten feet from her targets, but not before she slid into one of the shallow boxes that were scattered around the two pieces of lawn art. Putting out a hand to stop herself, she felt something warm and gooey squish under her palm. With a decided feeling of disgust, she held up her hand, half afraid of what she might have just touched. Her worst fears seemed to be realized when she looked at the squashed brown lump sticking to her hand, but a moment later her expression changed from utter distaste to curiosity. Carefully lifting her hand toward her mouth, she gave a little sniff. Instead of the rank odor of dog poo, she sniffed the delightful aroma of sun-warmed chocolate.

Raising her head, the small girl looked more carefully at the scattered litter around her. Her eyes widened as she realized she was surrounded by large candy boxes, most of them empty, but some, like the one she had placed her hand on, still containing a few squares of over-sized, by her standards, treats.

The chunk of chocolate goodness stuck to her seemed fairly clean if she discounted the dirt smeared on her own hand. Since it had been in the box and not laying on the ground, she had no problem giving in to temptation and lifting her hand to her mouth and taking a lick. She closed her eyes in bliss as the rich sweet taste flooded her taste buds

A sudden snort caused Curry’s eyes to fly open and she watched in horror as one of the supposed painted ceramic art pieces, the one of a pony princess wearing a crown, lifted its head and looked at her through bleary eyes.

Curry froze in place, not even breathing. ‟I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here. This is a dream, this is only a dream,” she chanted in her head, willing with all her might for the pony in front of her to go back to sleep. Just past the princess, Curry noticed the hole that the two fillies had cut in the hedge. It looked like it might be big enough for her to slip through, but to get at it she’d have to all but crawl over the two ponies in front of her. Not an option. Curry just had to hope that some miracle would rescue her from her own foolishness.

For a moment the small ragamuffin thought she’d lucked out as the pony’s eyes drooped slightly, but that hope was dashed when the pony princess’ eyes flew open and she stared in utter shock at Curry.

Curry experienced a sudden bout of stomach-churning guilt as her foolish behavior over the last few hours suddenly came home to roost. With a typical kid’s attitude, the thought that she might actually get caught had never really registered. She had been far too busy focusing on this new and wonderful world to worry about anything as mundane as that. Now that she had been seen, she was suddenly confronted with the fact that she was in really big trouble. When the Princess, not this one, the one in the big castle, found out she’d intruded on her kinfolk, maybe even her daughter, she was going to be angry as all heck. She might banish Curry, or throw her in a deep dark dungeon where she’d never see Jake again. Worse, she might blame Fluttershy for not keeping a tight rein on Curry.

Unable to form any reasoned response to her situation, Curry settled on running like heck. It had certainly served her well the day she’d found herself alone in a field with an angry bull, and she didn’t see why it wouldn’t work here. Letting out a loud, ‟ahhhhhh!” she turned and scrambled back up the hill with all her might. To her dismay, the slope she had tumbled down in a few seconds proved much more challenging when she was trying to go the other way at speed. Her feet slipped out from under her and she only barely caught herself on her hands. Staying on all fours she awkwardly aimed for the closest garden feature, and cover.

Diamond Tiara had been scared out of her wits when she’d opened her eyes to find a bizarre creature staring at her from only a few hooves away. She’d have screamed if her vocal cords hadn’t been frozen along with the rest of her body. The spoiled pony had been on the verge of whimpering for mercy when the strange looking creature’s ears had folded back against its head while it let out a yell of panic and bolted away from her up the hill.

The small filly’s panic subsided, while at the same time a sudden realization filled her mind, pushing out the last remains of her own fear. ‟Sn, Sn, Snipe!” she stuttered, excitement making her trip over her own tongue.

Next to Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, who had been roused from a warm Buffalo summer day induced afternoon nap, stared blearily at her boon companion, who suddenly grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and gave her a good shake.

‟It’s the Snipe! It came. Get up! Get UP! We have to catch it before it gets away!” Diamond Tiara yelled in her friend’s face, before shoving her away and looking around frantically for the rope they had planned to use to tie up the Snipe once they caught it.

Silver Spoon was still trying to come to grips with the situation when her friend found the rope she was looking for. Grabbing the coil in her mouth Diamond Tiara raced after the escaping Snipe. Silver Spoon looked up the hill and goggled as she spotted the strange creature fleeing in front of her friend, who was rapidly gaining on the thing.

If truth were told, Silver Spoon had never expected they would manage to lure the Snipe into their clutches, if such a creature even existed. After being burned in the Nocturne egg scam she was wary of anything that originated with the CMC. To find out there really was a Snipe was so shocking that she stood in place, not sure what to do.

‟Come on, Silver Spoon!” Diamond Tiara cried over her shoulder. “We can’t let the Snipe get away. Fame and fortune wait!”

With her friend’s mouth full of rope, all Silver Spoon really heard was, “W, cnt, ipe, way. Fm, m ortun, ait,” A clear comprehension wasn’t really needed, seeing as how Diamond Tiara was suiting actions to her muffled words. Silver Spoon shoved her glasses up her muzzle and firmly into place and charged after her friend without fear, possibly because the creature was running away from them, instead of at them.

Curry let out a muffled curse as the princess pony thundered past her. She was used to being the fastest kid in her school, and it sucked to suddenly find that even a pampered princess pony could run circles around her, even if the pony in question was wheezing like a bellows.

Curry stopped her mad scramble for cover and stood up, or at least partially up with one leg awkwardly extended down the steep grassy slope to prevent an unwanted tumble. She looked uphill at the princess, and then downhill at her companion before letting out an involuntary giggle at the sight of the enormous pair of glasses the other pony was wearing. Truthfully, it was really hard to take either one of the small fillies as a serious threat.

The pony wearing glasses slowed and looked uphill at her with a certain wariness in her eyes. “What do we do now, DT? How do you catch a Snipe?” the pony asked, clearly addressing the princess.

The ears on top of Curry’s outfit pricked up, something she was unaware of. “Snipe?” She asked herself softly in a questioning tone.

“Sissss,” the princess replied, twisting her neck so the rope in her mouth spun in a circle above her head.

Curry looked warily at the little princess. She’d seen Applejack toss a lasso with as great a skill as she’d ever seen in a rodeo, so she did not discount the threat that rope represented. She readied herself to dart away once the pony was committed to her throw, all the while thinking about what the other little pony had said. They thought she was a Snipe? A faint smile quirked up the corners of her lips. While she had never participated in a Snipe hunt herself, from either side of the old tradition, she did know about them. If they thought she was a Snipe, then maybe everything wasn’t lost. No one would believe that the two ponies had actually seen a Snipe. If she could get away, and get back to Fluttershy’s home, all she had to do was pretend she had never been anywhere near this place and she’d be in the clear.

To cement the impression the two ponies had, Curry said, “Snipe?” in a querying tone, and then repeated herself, adding a bit of heat to her tone. “Snipe, snipe!” she said while backing up in an attempt to get out from between the two ponies.

The pony with the glasses moved with Curry. Her expression had turned from one of doubt to one of delight when she heard the vocal inquiry. Curry could tell that she was determined to not let the Snipe escape.

Curry hadn’t taken her eye off of the princess either. Her attempt to move backward had been not so much an escape attempt but a move to let her keep both ponies in her field of vision.

Both ponies moved at once. The glasses wearing pony charged uphill at her, and the princess tossed her rope, which probably would have worked better if she had held onto one end. Curry watched incredulously as the entire coil of rope went flying over her head, opening up slightly as it did so, and impacted perfectly against the legs of the other pony. Curry winced as the small filly took a nose dive, letting out a cry of distress as she did so. Her glasses went flying through the air before falling and skittering across the soft grass.

Up the slope, the princess pony was staring in shock at the havoc her attempt at roping Curry had caused. The small girl was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or the rope, as it were. Giving a mocking laugh, she dashed downhill, and dove directly over the fallen pony, giving in to temptation and running a hand over the pony’s smooth silky hide as she did so. The pony let out a shocked cry and struggled, tangling herself even further in the rope while her head thrashed around trying to see what had touched her, her eyes wide and staring. There was nothing to see, as Curry was tumbling down the slope as fast as she could roll and jump.

Going downhill was a lot easier than going up, especially if you were not concerned about staying on your feet, or looking dignified. Curry scrambled as fast as she could, and in quick order, she had returned to the base of the hill next to the hedge where she had encountered the princess and her friend. Right in front of her was the small hole in the long hedge she had noticed before.

Behind her she heard a panicked cry, “Diamond, I can’t see,” from the tangled pony.

Curry hazarded a look back up the hill. The princess was a few yards down the hill past her companion, an expression of incredible frustration on her face. She let out a cry of exasperation and cried out, “You are so, clumsy, Silver!” She glared at Curry for a moment and then turned away with a flip of her tail and trotting regally back up the hill to the fallen pony. Even from where she was, Curry could hear her castigating her friend for ruining her chances at fame and fortune. Despite her harsh words and tone of voice, Curry noticed that she nuzzled her friend in a gentle and reassuring way as she fumbled with the glasses laying in the grass. Picking them up she placed them carefully on the other filly’s muzzle. She then loosened the rope tangled around her friend’s legs.

Only when that was all done did she leave the fallen pony and come pounding down the hill toward Curry with a look in her eyes that reminded Curry rather uncomfortably of the bull that had chased her out of a field once.

After watching the princess’ careful care of her friend, Curry was tempted to remain where she was and see if she could maybe make friends with the abrasive pony. Only the thought of the disappointed look on Fluttershy’s face if she were caught so far from home when she had been warned to stay close stopped that thought. Well that, and the simply murderous glare in the little princess’ eyes as she bore down on Curry.

The small girl turned and wiggled into the hole in the hedge. The freshly cut branches pressed hard against her side as she forced her way through, but Rarity’s magical cloth, just as Curry had known it would, protected her from splinters and abrasions. Dragging herself along with her elbows and digging her toes into the ground, she pushed ahead and popped loose of the hedge. Rolling to the middle of the road on the other side of the hedge, Curry took a deep breath in relief even while the princess, from the sound of her thundering hooves, was still only halfway down the hill.

“I’ll get you, Snipe. See if I don’t,” came a blustery threat from the other side of the wide herbivorous barrier. Curry sat up in the middle of the dusty road and grinned at the furious pony who was glaring through the hole at her. She pulled down the bottom lip of her right eye and gave the princess a red-eye, accompanied by a loud Bronx cheer, and then reached over and took hold of a nearby post to help herself to her feet.

The small girl froze in place as she looked to her right, and at the rather hairy and warm ‘post’ she was grasping. Bending her head backward, she looked up into the whiskered face of a bemused, and more than slightly glassy-eyed, chestnut unicorn wearing an incredibly ugly battered old hat.

Curry experienced a momentary mental disconnect in which the grizzled face of Old Ben was superimposed over that of the Unicorn looming above her, even though the two looked nothing alike. After all, Old Ben didn't have hooves or a horn on his head. The look of incipient nausea that was filling the pony's face at the moment was not unfamiliar, she had to concede. She’d seen that expression on more than one Saturday morning.

The small girl was jolted back to the here and now when the Unicorn snorted in her face. A fog of alcohol fumes caused Curry’s eyes to water and her hand to come up and cover her nose while she tried to wave away the stench with her free hand.

“And just what are you supposed to be?” the unicorn asked in a slurred voice. He swayed right when he turned his head to the left and left when he turned his head to the right, giving each of his eyes a chance to examine her as closely as they could, given their current bloodshot state.

“Ah. . . Snipe?” Curry suggested.

Whatever the pony said in return was drowned out by a triumphant, "Ah-HA!" and one grasping pink hoof stretched out of the hole, missing grabbing onto Curry's leg by several feet. "Come here you blasted Snipe!"

"Whosh a Snipe?" asked the older unicorn, bending down to look in the crude tunnel hacked into the hedge. The sudden change in attitude seemed to be upsetting to the drunken unicorn, as with a sudden, "Urp!" he spewed all over the hedge, the ground, the hole, and of course, the contents of the hole.

From the other side of the hedge came a scream, “Oh my, Celestia! What is it? It reeks! It burns! Get it off, GET IT OFF!” the sound of small hooves pounding on the ground sounded, retreating quickly into the distance.

“Wow,” Curry said in a delightfully grossed out tone of voice, “I didn’t know ponies could do that?”

The rather ragged looking brown unicorn sagged down onto his knees. Without really thinking about what she was doing, Curry pulled a couple of handfuls of grass out of the roadside and moved to his side, wiping the sick off his muzzle while resting a hand on the back of his neck. “Suu, suu, suu, there’s a good boy,” she murmured gently while stroking his mane. As she tended to him she noticed that he had a pair of saddlebags slung over his back that were every bit as battered as the hat on his head.

She felt him relax slightly, even lean into her touch a bit, but then his body went stiff and he pulled away. The big blocky head swung around and the unicorn glared at her from bloodshot eyes. “What the hay do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, his voice gravelly under the slurring effect of the alcohol that scented his breath. “I don’t need anypony’s help!”

Curry once again experienced a slight dislocation as Old Ben’s voice, roughened by age and lifestyle echoed in her head. He was just as tetchy as this pony when Ben’s arthritis was acting up and she tried to be nice by picking stuff up off the ground for him. Without being aware of it, a small smile of fond remembrance spread across her face.

“What are you smirking at?” the chestnut unicorn demanded. “Get that ugly thing you call a face away from me!” He rocked to his hooves with some difficulty and then stood swaying from side to side, stumbling to the right and the left and making Curry dance a bit to avoid having her toes stepped on, even as she placed both hands against his warm side to help hold him steady.

“What part of ‘I don’t need any help’ don’t you understand?” the inebriated pony said with some heat, even as his left foreleg buckled slightly and he barely kept himself from dropping back down to the ground.

“Pretty much all of it!” Curry retorted in answer to his question. Despite her raised voice, Curry was not bothered by his apparent anger. Not much, anyway.

Before meeting Fluttershy and her friends, Curry had believed that a nasty temperament was the default state for ponies in general. You just had to deal with it. She knew better now. Or at least she knew the ponies in this place were not like that. Besides, she was not getting a mean vibe from the ragged unicorn, just a cranky one. She’d encountered both types, and she’d take cranky over mean any day of the week. Still, that did not mean she was about to let him walk all over her. The first rule when dealing with a pony was to show them who was the boss. She saw no reason to change that attitude in this case, just because this pony talked, was magic and had a horn stuck in the middle of his head.

Curry met the unicorn’s bloodshot glare with one of her own while saying in a firm voice, “ain’t seen a pony so much in need of help since I got to this place!”

“There ain’t nothing wrong with me that a little of the feather-of-the-griffin-that-bit me, won’t cure!” he retorted in turn. His head twisted rather loosely from side to side as he checked out first one saddlebag, and then the other. A sloppy smile appeared on his face. “Aha, mother’s milk,” he slurred and a second later a large bottle of some amber fluid floated up out of one of his saddlebags. The cork sealing the opening of the bottle popped off and flew out of sight. Pretty much implying the pony had no intention of putting it down till it was empty.

The pony thundering down the hill on the other side of the hedge bore little resemblance to the usually pristine Diamond Tiara. Her lower body was covered in sticky mud right up to her belly. Her carefully groomed mane was a matted and soggy mess, lily pads and other pondweeds decorated her hide. Only the trademark bit of bling on her head identified her with any sort of confidence, that, and the familiar form of Silver Spoon who was following after her at a slightly more cautious pace.

“No, one. No One! Does that to me and gets away with it!” Diamond Tiara ranted. Buck, cutting a hole through the hedge, she’d make a hole with her own body. That Snipe would rue the day she messed with her. Rue it!

Curry had never taken away Old Ben’s liquor, but she had snatched more than a few cigars from him, some right out of his mouth. She hadn’t hesitated then, and she didn’t now. Her hand reached out and snatched the bottle out of the rather cloudy white magical aura containing it. She turned and tossed it as hard as she could over the hedge. Due to the height of the bush barrier, and her own small size, she didn’t get much distance and she heard it thunk down on the ground just on the other side of the hole in the hedge. A gurgling noise followed the impact.

Diamond Tiara stood rigidly, staring in disbelief at the heavy glass bottle laying on the grass in front of her. she ignored the strong smelling liquid that had sprayed out of the bottle as it flew through the air, and was now soaking into her mane and coat The monster had tried to kill her! What sort of thing was it? She took a cautious step back from the hedge, her eyes looking up, fearing further bombardment. She backed up the hill, until she judged herself far enough away, and then turned tail and ran. She’d show that vicious little monster. She’d rouse the household. They’d hunt her down, and stick her into a cage where she belonged.

Poor Silver Spoon had just made it to the bottom of the hill, huffing and puffing all the way, when her friend dashed past her going in the opposite direction. With a weary sigh, she turned and started making her own way up the hill after Diamond.

Curry turned and glared at the Unicorn. “You’ve had more than enough of that awful stuff,” she said in a prim and proper voice, with more than a touch of self-righteous smug satisfaction.

“You little brat!” That was twenty-year-old Shetland corn whiskey you just tossed away!" The chestnut pony sniffed, tears welling up in his soft brown eyes. "Snatched away in its prime before it could even enjoy life. Probably the last bottle in this disgustingly healthy town. Lonely. Needing a friend. A loss that may never be overcome. Just who in the buck do you think you are?”

The unicorn punctuated his maudlin diatribe with a loud belch.

“Ewww, stinky,” Curry repeated in a nasal tone as she pinched her nose shut while waving the funk away with her free hand. “And I thought Jake was the champion pony when it came to stinking up the place.”

Having cleared the air, Curry showed incredible bravery by sticking her face right in front of Sneaky's nose to look him right in the eyes and saying, “Already told you. I’m a Snipe.”

“Right, a Snipe. And I’m a bucking Pink Princess of Cavillia. I know exactly what you are. As far as I’m concerned, you can go back to Canterlot and back to kissing Luna’s royal rump. Like all your kind have been doing since she returned.”

Curry stared at the swaying unicorn in puzzlement. She’d been insulted, she got that much. She just wasn’t sure about how.

“Oh, you needn’t give me that look. You lot aren’t nearly as smart as I think I am.” The pony paused for a moment, his expression befuddled. “Wait, that’s not right. . .” His eyes crossed slightly as he made a visible effort to gather his thoughts.

Curry frowned, impatient with the unicorn’s mental withdrawal. “If I ain't-a Snipe, what am I then?” she said with a bit of heat.

The chestnut gave his head a shake and instantly looked like he regretted it as he turned slightly green. He took several deep breaths, even as Curry stepped out of the possible line of fire, just in case.

Fortunately for the nearby environment, the unicorn regained control before displaying his supper from the night before. He raised a hoof and rubbed his forehead just in front of his horn. “Fine, play innocent,” he said.

Taking a deep breath, the unicorn very carefully shifted his head, drawing a short line in the air with the tip of his horn. “First, that idiot back at the candy shop. He has Celestia’s hoof-prints all over him,” he said.

Once again he paused for a moment, though this time his expression put Curry in mind of those worn by older boys when they were telling each other dirty jokes while waiting for the school bus. She had a sudden urge to kick him in the knee, and if she hadn’t been sure it would hurt her worse than him, she might have given in to the impulse.

Before Curry could go hunting for a good stout switch, or a heavy club, the unicorn came back from whatever fantasy he had visited, and drew another line in the air next to the first one. “He’s obviously a guard she’s had dyed, and stuck a fake horn on. Very low key, very deniable, very effective at doing what its suppose to do, and henceforth it must be Celestia's move in this little game.”

“Now you, on the other hand,” the unicorn said, waving a hoof in Curry’s direction, but forgetting to draw a third line in the air as he fought to maintain his balance, “are overkill. Doing a full body transformation on some dumb pony, simply to pull attention away from her illegitimate son, that screams Luna. She’s notorious for transformation magic, and her casual use of it. Plus, she has a ready supply of idiots who’d fight for the chance to do her bidding. Clearly, you’re a Nocturne she's transformed into something vaguely humananany. Many. Yeah." The unicorn’s voice adopted an accusing tone as he said this and he poked his hoof hard in Curry’s direction, maybe in the hope of goading a reaction out of her. The move might have come off better if he hadn’t slowly started to topple over in the direction of his extended leg. He had to hastily plant his hoof back on the ground to keep from falling on his face.

Curry’s stomach gave a little lurch as the pony mentioned she looked like a human, but just as quickly she felt a certain smugness rise up as she realized the mistake the unicorn had made.

The unicorn, despite his current state, clearly had no difficulty in reading Curry’s expression. Quite a feat really given the differences in their respective physiognomy. “You don’t think I can prove it, do you?” he said to Curry. “Nothing could be easier.”

The pony used his horn to draw a fourth line in the air and then made his next point. “Clearly, Celestia pointed Luna at Moondancer’s journals. It’s the only way she’d have gotten your appearance so right. But, anypony who’s actually gone to the time and effort to search them out in the depths of the Forbidden section of the Canterlot Archives, and let me tell you that was a week I never want to relive. Librarians. Brr. Colder than Wendigos. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. While Ponies can travel to the world of the humans, the reverse is not true. Humans can’t come to Equestria. Therefore, there is no possible way you can be a human,” the unicorn finished triumphantly, standing up straight and throwing his sunken chest out as far as it would go.

Curry blinked, staring slightly upward at the unicorn. His slurred pronunciation had made him a bit hard to understand, but what she had made out sounded really interesting. For one thing, he seemed to know an awful lot more about humans than Fluttershy and her friends. Even if he was way out in the left field stands, one kernel of corn short of a box of cracker jacks, catching foul balls without a mitt.

The small girl considered her options. Her gut reaction was to quarrel with him. She was human, she was here, he was obviously wrong. Normally that would be all it took for her to dig in her heels and stick to her guns. But, this was way too good to waste. If she let him continue to think he was right, it let her off the hook, she’d honestly be able to tell Fluttershy that no pony thought she was a human. “Wow, you sure are clever, mister. You got me. I’m a whatchacallit, knock-turn, and the wicked princess of the night turned me into a fake human.”

Curry waited for a response and waited some more. Frowning up at the Unicorn, she realized his eyes were shut, and he was swaying in an alarming way. “Hey, Mister. Are you alright?” she asked. She got no answer. Stepping closer she lay a hand against the pony’s shoulder. He leaned slightly in the other direction, but showed no other sign he was aware of her, or anything at all, for that matter. He gave a snort, and then a loud snore, and she realized he was out on his feet.

This was even better, she realized. If he even remembered meeting her, he’d likely think it was all a dream. She eased around the slumbering pony and started down the lane-way.

As Curry moved away, she kept an eye on the hedge, looking for some sign it was ending so she could duck off the lane and make her way back into the wild. She had hardly gone a dozen steps, however, when her pace slowed, and she came to a stop. She looked back over her shoulder at the slumbering pony. Every instinct cried out against the thought of just leaving him there, sleeping in the middle of the road. She clenched her fists at her side and told herself that she was being silly. He wasn’t some helplessly lost pony, not in this place. It didn’t do any good. She heaved a long-suffering sigh and retraced her path to the unicorn.

Curry reached the pony and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, wake up. You can’t go to sleep here,” she said in a firm tone. Getting no response from the unicorn, she drew back her hand and slapped his flank, right on top of his peeping eye cutie mark. The unicorn jerked awake, his head tossing as he stumbled away from the sting.

“Wha, where?” he slurred, looking around with wide bloodshot eyes.

“I said you can’t go to sleep here. Don’t you got someplace to go?” Curry said.

“Who, what?” the unicorn said in befuddlement, gazing at Curry. The surprise retreated from his gaze, and his face regained its slightly sour expression. “Oh, it’s you. The Snipe."

Curry grinned cheerfully at him, knowing that it would likely annoy the heck out of the pony. “That’s right. The Snipe. My name is Curry, by the way.”

“Well, Curry, By The Way, I’m Sneak Peek . . . wait, no, it’s Private Eye.”

“Wow, that’s a long name. How about I just call you Sneaky?”

The pony gave an alcohol-laced sigh, clearly surrendering a losing battle in this case. “Might as well, everypony else does, unless you’re planning on coming clean with the whole cover-up, I don’t have time for you. Leave me alone.”

“Sure thing, just as soon as I get you to the town limits, Sneaky. Shouldn’t be too far from here.”

Sneaky looked startled, and then directed a knowing look at Curry. “Ah, planning on causing a little misdirection, are you. Well, that should be entertaining at least. Let's go,” he said. Sneaky started to wobble down the pathway. He had made it about twenty trots when he noticed he was alone. Carefully turning in place he looked down the lane-way to see Curry standing there with a smirk on her face. She pointed over her shoulder while saying. “Ain’t the town this way?”

Grumbling under his breath, Sneaky reversed course, taking care not to fall over as he turned around. As soon as he passed Curry, she fell into step beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Given the difference in their respective masses, it shouldn’t really have been much of a help, but his pace did become a bit steadier afterward.

As they walked along, Sneaky would now and then shoot out a question at Curry. “How long have you been in the Guard? Were you adopted, or born into the Nocturne? Are you as much a shrimp when you’re a pony?”

All except the last Curry greeted with a smirk. “I ain’t a shrimp,” she snarled out of reflex.

Sneaky paused or rather stumbled slightly as he tried to come to a stop. He turned a smirk in her direction. “So, you’re a runt as a pony. That should help narrow things down a bit. The guard tends to go for big and bulky. Don’t imagine there are many runts in the litter.” Without waiting for Curry’s reply, he started walking again.

Curry fumed, and once again considered if she could get away with giving Sneaky a good swift kick someplace painful. Before she could come up with a suitable retaliation, the sun set.

Not like it did back home, slowly sinking over the horizon after spending the whole day crossing the sky. No, it went from well above the horizon to fully set in just a few minutes. Curry only became aware of the rapid descent when she was suddenly forced to shade her eyes against the brightness shining directly at her. Her eyes watered, and before her blurry vision cleared it was night. She paused, shrouded in deep blackness.

The sky was a featureless void over Curry’s head, and for just a moment she wondered if the evil princess of the night had made her move, maybe because she was afraid Curry would soon discover her special Evil Princess beating talent.

Then, like the curtain-raising on a school play, the moon, along with the stars, rose up into the night sky, unfolding across it in sparkling glory. The moon paused when it had ascended to a prominent altitude and seemed to rest there while the stars scurried to their places under its silvery gaze, for all the world like a mother hen watching over her chicks.

Curry stood in the middle of the road, her head tilted back as she slowly spun in a circle, absorbing the glory of the night sky. She felt like yelling and dancing, the display exceeded any fireworks she’d ever seen. Closing her eyes she imagined she could still feel the radiance from the softly glowing orb of the moon shining on her face.

“Yeah, you’re a Nocturne pony alright. Moon worshipers, the lot of them,” Sneaky said in a sour voice, that nonetheless carried an undertone that was anything but.

Curry opened her eyes to find the old unicorn standing only a few feet away, staring at her intently with an almost wistful look in his eyes.

“I’m a Snipe,” Curry said, more out of habit than any need to argue. “I’ve always liked the Moon. My Mom even...” Curry broke off as she realized she’d come within a sentence of revealing her deepest, darkest, most shameful, secret after being rattled by the quick sunset and moonrise. Sneaky didn’t seem to find anything unusual about it the whole instant night thing. That meant it was likely normal. Curry took a deep breath out of relief. A second later, her relief turned to panic as a whole new shattering revelation occurred to her.

“It’s nighttime!” she yelled at Sneaky, who took a few stumbling steps back from the force of her cry.

“I may be drunk, but I had noticed,” he said in a reproachful tone.

“You don’t understand. I thought it was still around noon. I have to get home. Miss Fluttershy is going to be so mad at me. Maybe she won’t want to look after me anymore,” Curry said. She started running down the lane, only to stumble as she tripped over a rut she hadn’t seen in the darkness.

“Didn’t even get to keep your night vision. That must really suck,” Sneaky’s voice said out of the dark. Curry could just barely make out his shape against the darkness, his chestnut coat blending into the night and making him nearly invisible until he lit his horn with a soft flickering glow that highlighted the look of concern on his face.

“No, no, I got to get home,” Curry moaned. Her eyes turned down the lane-way toward the village. There was a glow in that direction. There would be light there. Maybe she could work her way around the outskirts of the town. But she’d still have to find her way from the other side of the town to Fluttershy’s place. This wasn’t her familiar woods of back home. She would be passing through an area she had never been before, in the dark. She had really messed up. Fluttershy was going to be furious. Curry felt a sick dread in her belly at that thought.

Sneak Peek was still feeling more than a bit under the influence, but he had worked stories through alcoholic hazes before, and the behavior of the transformed pony in front of him was starting to trigger his reporter’s instincts. Paying attention to other pony’s emotions and figuring out their triggers was his bread and butter as a reporter, and he was really good at it. This pony wasn’t behaving in any way consistent with what he had assumed was the situation.

He could barely make out the pony’s bizarre shape in the darkness, but what he could see did not make any sense. Sneaky couldn’t imagine any Nocturne, even one who had temporarily lost his night vision, being afraid of the dark. But this pony clearly was drawing back from the darkness outside his flickering wan hornlight, and shuffling ever so closer to him. And why the frantic need to get back to Fluttershy’s place? There seemed to be a strong emotional attachment there. Had he been wrong?

“Hey, Snipe,” he called out.

The figure in front of him started slightly, and he could just barely make out the strange round head turning toward him, his eyes looking almost white in the darkness. “Yes,” came a tremulous voice.

“You’re not a pony, are you?”

“Never said I was,” came the reply, flavored with a hint of defiance that reminded Sneaky of a young reporter he had once known, now old and over the hill, reporting on fictional monsters in some tiny backwater of a town. Or maybe he was just projecting again.

Sneaky squinted his eyes shut out of a combination of frustration and annoyance at himself. Even dead drunk he should know better than to let his own bias fill in the facts. In his defense, he had reacted to the impossibility that Curry represented. It was flat out impossible that he was really what he looked like, so Sneaky had filled in the blanks and proposed a hypothesis. The fault lay in then trying to twist the facts to fit the theory even when it took a little stretching. Time to try and be a proper reporter, and find out what the buck was going on here. “True enough,” he said in answer to Curry’s statement. “Look. I know the way to Fluttershy’s place. Been there a few times at night. Would you like me to walk you home?”

There was a moment of hesitation, and then Curry said, “If you think you can make it, I’d like that.”

“So, a Snipe?” Sneak Peek asked as he started to carefully walk down the lane. Curry fell in beside him, once again placing a warm paw on his shoulder. Sneaky was not an animal lover by any means and would have normally shied away from the contact, as he had done previously, but he knew he had to gain Curry’s trust and refrained. After a few moments, his hide stopped twitching at the contact, and he found it was actually rather nice. Not as nice as when Berry Punch or Cloud Kicker lay their head across his back, but still, nice.

“Yep, I’m a Snipe,” Curry said, while his fingers kneaded at Sneaky’s hide in a rather pleasant way.

Sneaky, who had been preoccupied with the sensation of being touched by somepony that was not a good looking mare, and not hating it, took a minute to realize Curry was answering his earlier inquiry.

“And you work for Celestia?”

“Who? Oh. You mean the Princess. Never met her. Fluttershy and her friends say Jake and I will soon.”

There was a sound in the undergrowth just then and the small Snipe crowded in closer to him. Sneaky felt an unwelcome surge of protectiveness. He snarled inwardly. He was seriously losing his edge in this bucking town. First, it was feeling protective toward the mares he was trying to do an expose on, deflecting would-be fortune hunters and status seekers out to take advantage of them. Then he’d started to humor the small fillies that tagged after him from time to time, in their forlorn hope of earning cutie marks in being private eyes. Mind you, he had to admit it had been hilarious to kick two trees with one buck by siccing the overly enthusiastic little fillies on the various status-seeking bastards that came sniffing around the Elements.

Cutie Mark Crusader Romance Consultants' was just one step short of kicking the poor sots off a cliff and normally wound up with them making a trip to the train station by way of a brief hospital visit.

But, this was the limit. Now he was feeling it toward this weird creature he had only just met. He had to get out of this place before he threw out his hat and set up a business running a bucking homeless shelter for kittens or something equally disgusting.

Despite his self-recriminations, Sneaky made no attempt to stagger away from the little Snipe. Rather, he carefully paced himself so she was able to keep close to him as they made their way toward what passed as the bright lights of Ponyville.

As they made their way, he reopened his interrogation. “Never met Celestia? How about Luna? No? Then who sent you here.”

“Can’t rightly say,” Curry said.

Sneaky could feel her shifting nervously as she tried to look in every direction at once outside the weak circle of light the kept the inky darkness at bay. “Well, I can respect that. Pony has to respect his sources,” he said in a reassuring manner, although it was slightly spoiled by the belch he let out as punctuation.

“If you start doing that from the other end, I’m out of here,” Curry warned him as she gagged slightly. “How can you drink that awful stuff, anyway?”

“Practice. Lots, and lots of practice,” Sneaky said in a light cheerful tone, which was rather belied by the subtle effort he made to sniff the cloud of fumes in front of him. He winced, thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to visit the guy side of the spa and get himself deodorized before he ran into Berry or Cloud.

They walked into the warm lamplight that surrounded the village, and Sneaky felt Curry hesitate, even as he relaxed slightly now that they were out of the darkness. He looked down at the small Snipe and saw her staring wide-eyed at the brightly colored homes and businesses of Ponyville, and the equally brilliantly hued ponies that were out enjoying an evening stroll as they took it easy after a hard days work.

“Just keep close to me,” Sneaky whispered to Curry. “I’ll try to stay between you and everypony. We’ll keep to the outskirts and avoid the center of the streets. There are lots of shadows if you know where to look. We’ll have you through town in no time at all.” Sneaky was still drunk enough that the idea of sneaking Curry through the middle of town seemed like great fun, but he wasn’t so drunk that he felt the same way about the Snipe’s next action.

“Jake!” Curry cried out and bolted out from beside Sneaky and straight down the middle of the road, in front of what suddenly seemed like every pony in Ponyville. Sneaky let out a slurred curse as he lurched after her, almost tripping over his own hooves in the process. He looked ahead and saw her targeting a cluster of mares in front of the Carousel Boutique surrounding a very large, jet-black, Alicorn. It was hard to see from this distance, but the decoy he had seen in the paper had sported a ridiculous floppy facsimile of a horn. This pony sported a long proud horn that jutted out straight and true from the middle of his broad forehead.

“Oh, stars! It’s the monster from the farm,” he muttered to himself in panic. In the next moment, his mind filled with a terrifying vision of what might happen when the little Snipe rushed up to that monster, under the mistaken impression that it was his partner in deception. “Curry, get back here, right now!” he bellowed in his best, “Smile For the Camera, Prince Blueblood,” voice. And then, cursing himself as an idiot with every lurching step, he rushed after the tiny Snipe.