“By all that is good with the world, why am I still not doing anything?” I asked while holding my arms straight into the air.
I wasn’t kidding. I was still laying down on the couch two and a half hours later. I still hadn’t eaten anything. No one had come by since Pinkie Pie left. Discord still hadn’t returned. I was busy being so lazy that I just didn’t want to get up. It was a perfect storm of apathy.
As such, I was immensely grateful that the monotony was broken up by a knock on the door. I turned my gaze quickly to the door. I was glad I did as I was rewarded by seeing a swirling visage appear on the door. It quickly formed into the face of Twilight Sparkle.
“If you want to come in, the door is open Twilight,” I yelled.
The door was enveloped in a purple hue and swung open to reveal the ‘sparkle princess’.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked as she slowly came inside.
“Discord left an enchantment on it to make a picture of the face of whoever knocked on it appear,” I responded in a manner that I hoped she understood since I almost didn’t.
She closed the door behind her and we both watched as the face slowly faded away.
“Interesting,” she said.
“So," I started, knowing that she was seconds away from that door becoming the only thing she cared about, “what brings you here today? Just here to keep an eye on me?”
“Well, that too,” she said blushing slightly. “I also wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course. Well, at least it’s something to do,” I said as I moved to a sitting position. “Have a seat.”
She walked over to one of the chairs across from the couch and hopped up into the seat.
“So, what did you want to ask me?”
“Well, I wanted to start with what happened with Pinkie Pie? She postponed a party. She’s never done that since I’ve known her.”
“I told her that the food she’d be serving would slowly kill me.”
Twilight looked understandably shocked.
“For the record,” I started before she had a chance to respond, “she was talking about desserts and baked goods and the like. While kind of true, it’s more of the fact that I can’t handle large amounts of carbohydrates in my system. It can cause swelling, loss of sensation in my extremities, loss of eyesight, decrease the effectiveness of my immune system and a few other things I can’t quite remember.”
“It sounds like you’re just not taking care of yourself.”
“Yeah, I don’t deny that really. Still, she said she’s going to try to make something that I can actually eat before she throws me the party.”
“That’s very considerate of her.”
“Agreed.”
“The other questions I have for you are from what you were talking about last night.”
“You mean about the memory thing,” I finished for her.
“Exactly. I spoke to the others and they don’t remember ever seeing anything like you before. Well, I didn’t get much time to ask Pinkie since she was rushing all over town to tell everypony that the party was postponed.”
I chuckled at hearing that.
“Did any of them start yelling ‘It’s the end of the world’ because that would have been funny.”
“No, but they are starting to get very curious about you if you could make that happen.”
Eeeehck. That sounds like they’re going to be giving me an even more measuring eye than before. Maybe sticking around the house is the right thing to do after all.
Which is right when my stomach growls loud enough for things in the Everfree Forest to hear.
I kid you not. It may have sounded like the normal sound of a stomach rumble. However, the decibel level that it put off was intense. It was enough that I saw one of the lamps move a bit. I thought it was really cliche, but this was a cartoon world. Physics can sometimes be a laughing stock around these parts.
“Wow, you must be pretty hungry,” stated Twilight.
Oh wow that was even more cliche.
“Yeah, I haven’t exactly eaten today.”
“But it’s already past noon. Didn’t you eat any breakfast?”
“There’s no food anywhere in the house. Discord was nice enough to make something last night, but he wasn’t here this morning. He had to go see the princess. Why’d you tell on him anyway? I said he was just trying to get you riled up.”
“All I did was tell the Princess about what had happened. I haven’t had the chance to get to know you, but I still don’t trust Discord yet. Even if he was trying to get me riled up, that doesn’t change anything.”
I suppressed my urge to groan right there. She hadn’t learned a thing from that. She let Discord get to her even after I told her about it. That ended up snowballing into him getting summoned and me not getting breakfast. Probably I won’t get lunch either.
“Still, it’s indirectly my fault that you didn’t have anything to eat today. Why don’t we head into town and we can both get something there?”
My desire to stay away from the terrible stares of ponies flared up quite fiercely at that point. They were quickly beaten senseless by my hunger-addled brain.
“That sounds fine, but I don’t have any money right now.”
“No problem. I can take care of it.”
I really wanted to say something, but I had no dog in that fight. Instead, I did what I always did. I nodded and went with it. The two of us got up and slowly headed out.
“Normally I’d take you to Sugarcube Corner since Pinkie likes helping out ponies who are hungry, but I think I’ll try someplace else instead.”
I nodded as I stepped out into the brightly lit afternoon. I closed the door and adjusted my hat while following Twilight into town. It did bring up a point I had wondered about.
“Before you were a princess, what exactly did you do for money?”
“As Princess Celestia’s personal student, I was given a research fund that I could live off of.”
“I suppose that does make sense.”
I briefly thought of the fact that Twilight was getting student loans and chuckled a bit.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I said evasively. “Anyway, do you have a place where I could get something to eat in mind?’
“Not yet I don’t. What does your species eat anyway? I never can see your teeth so I can’t make any assumptions about it.”
“It’s okay. Humans are omnivorous in nature. We can eat some things that are vegetables, but we also need to support that with proteins from meat as well.”
Yeah, I didn’t mention that we could get that from beans or peanuts or things, but the carnivore in me didn’t really feel like saying it at the time. Sure, I’ll probably end up having to get that as my primary intake of proteins at some point if I stayed here, but whatever. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to sacrifice Pepsi as well and I’m addicted to the stuff like crack.
“So if you’re omnivorous could you eat a daffodil and daisy sandwich because I know this place that makes a really good one!”
“Well, there are some flowers that are toxic to humans. Unfortunately, I’m not a botanist so I don’t which ones those are.”
“I see,” she said contemplatively. “Well, I’m not entirely sure where we can go. Can you eat hay?”
“No,” I stated bluntly.
“Hmm, maybe I can have Applejack get you some apples to eat?”
“I guess I can do that.”
I looked around and noticed that we had made it to the outskirts of Ponyville.
“I wish we would have thought of that earlier. We already passed by her place.”
“We can just head over to her stall in the market,” she said calmly. “Come on.”
As we began to walk through Ponyville, I noticed something quite odd. The place was a ghost town. I had a feeling that I was getting the Zecora treatment, but I had no idea why. There were plenty of ponies who saw me yesterday and I’m being escorted by Twilight Sparkle for crying out loud!
“You know, they’re not normally like this,” said Twilight sheepishly.
“I know that, but what I don’t get is the reaction this time being so different than last time.”
“It is rather odd considering that I’m out here too,” she said while looking from place to place.
Several minutes of silent walking later, we both made it to the marketplace area. It too was nearly deserted. I say nearly because we still spotted Applejack manning her cart like normal. As she spotted us she waved us over to her. Seeing someone being friendly, finally, we walked over to her cart with great relief.
“Howdy there partner!” she said quite cheerfully. “Ah don’t suppose I could interest you two into buyin some apples. Nopony else seems to ah showed up to buy anything at all. In fact,” she looked around before continuing, “nopony seemed to show up at all.”
“That’s very odd,” Twilight pondered out loud. “Why wouldn’t anypony show up?”
“Ah don’t rightly know. Other than you the only pony I’ve seen today is Pinkie Pie. She showed up on my farm and gave me an invitation for a party, and then she showed up just before I was headed to town sayin’ that the party she was goin’ tah have was postponed. It was real surprisin’ since ah don’t think I’ve ever heard of Pinkie postponing a party before.”
“I don’t even think she’s cancelled one either,” I added while cupping my chin in thought. “Even that party she was going to throw for Gummy for the day after his birthday was still held if I recall, even if it was a bit weird.”
As I remembered that little spot of weirdness, I noticed the two of them looking at me. Well, staring at me with odd looks is more like it.
“What?”
“Do you think that might be it?” asked Twilight to Applejack.
“I reckon it might be. It’d make sense.”
“I think I’ll just wait until this sense of enlightenment trickles down to me,” I added.
Twilight looked back to me and smiled a warm smile.
“We think that the townsponies are scared of you because you somehow made Pinkie postpone her party.”
You know, you never really get some things until some says it out loud for you. Then, well, then you feel like an idiot for not seeing it before. Makes me think of what would happen if Akane ever saw Ryouga turn into P-Chan. She gets hints on a regular basis and can never put two and two together. I wonder what else I may have missed?
“Seth!” yelled Twilight.
I jumped slightly and returned my attention to her.
“Sorry, I got lost in thought. Still, yes that does make sense that they would be on edge about me. I kinda like it though. I’m not really keen on being the center of attention.”
“But how will you get to know the ponies of Ponyville if you don’t talk with them?”
“I wasn’t told I had to. I’m kind of a loner back where I’m from anyway. I barely have any friends at all. That being said, I guess this overreaction is actually kind of a good thing.”
Although, I thought as I closed my eyes and cupped my chin again, now that I think about it, something else is bugging me now. Why hasn’t Lyra shown up? The last time I was here she did all that she could to find me. Despite that, she hasn’t shown up at my house or anywhere I am yet. I guess I could chalk it up to her not knowing where I live, but it did have my name on the invitation. Wait, did it have that I was a human on there? Great, now I can’t remember if it did or not. I suppose that Pinkie may not have given her an invitation before she gave me mine. Wait, if that was the case then there would be at least some ponies out and about. Well, I suppose it doesn’t take much for ponies to panic around here anyways. She could have not heard about me or gotten an invitation yet and just had been swept in the widespread panic. It must have been early too since that all happened before Applejack got to town. It must also have been quick since all the ponies had disappeared before she made it into town.
I opened my eyes and looked back down to them.
“Hey, do you know-”
“We don’t know where Lyra is,” said both of them in unison; interrupting me.
“Wha… how did you-”
“You were thinking out loud the whole time,” Twilight said; interrupting me once again.
“I see.”
“You seem awfully hung up ‘bout Lyra there.”
“It’s a weird story that I’d rather not talk about.”
“Anyway, Applejack, could you go around town and convince everypony to come out of their homes? I’m going to take Seth to the library so that nopony gets scared of him in the meantime.”
“Sure thing sugarcube. I ain’t exactly gonna get any customers with this going on anyway.”
With that, she put a closed sign on her cart and trotted off towards one of the houses. The two of us started off towards a different part of town. After a minute of walking, I stopped in my tracks with a dumb realization.
“Twilight, we didn’t get any apples from Applejack.”
I saw her stop as well. Then, I watched as she facehooved. It was kind of a strange thing to see, but a little funny all things considered.
“I suppose we’ll just see if there is anything you can eat back at the library,” she said as we continued our walk.
“I guess so,” I added.
“Oh delightful!” I heard a voice exclaim. “Just the stallion I was on my way to see!”
I turned to look and noticed Rarity coming towards us.
“Hello Rarity,” said Twilight warmly. “Is there something you need Seth for?”
“Indeed there is. I finished all the design work for the garments I intend to make and I wanted to get his opinion on them before I got started.”
“Well, that sounds great,” I replied, “but I was hoping to get something to eat today and I was headed with Twilight to do so.”
“We can do that while at my place. I have so many different designs for you to look at!”
Eegh, that kind of thing is really not my cup of tea. Still, if I can get something to eat I guess it’ll be the price I have to pay. I suppose I’ll just tough it out. How bad could it be?
I mentally facepalmed. Hell, even I knew I was going to regret thinking that.