FOUR YEARS in Elizabeth, New Jersey, three of them in the same building, and I never made an effort to meet my neighbors, except a few people on my floor, and only then because we saw each other in the hall. Sometimes I feel guilty. Lots of Latinos, at least three black families, a guy from Poland... I could have gone and introduced myself to any of them, and who knows what I would have learned? Sometimes I'd wonder if I was bigoted, but usually I'd tell myself, no. I'm just shy.
Yet when she moved in—surprise! I went out of my way to meet her. What does that say about me? That I'll seek out and appreciate diversity, but only if it's a kind that appeals to my senses? Only if it's beautiful? I felt guilty about it, but there was no question—I just had to meet the pony who lived upstairs.
Do people ever really make cakes and cookies for their new neighbors, like you see on TV? All I know is, no one's ever done it for me. We got a flan once in the week before Christmas back when I was engaged in Hoboken, but we'd been there almost a year and the neighbor who brought it already knew us. So I figured, well, maybe it's one of those things people don't really do, but I've got to do it. I went online, found a recipe for pineapple upside-down cake, and tried my best. The cake came out too thick, so I ate it myself, went back to the store and made another. It ate up pretty much my whole Sunday, but really, you can't complain when you're learning.
I wrapped it in foil, went up to room 412, and clapped the knocker. Clop, clo-clop, clop!
I heard a not too different sound from inside. There was a pause before the voice, tempered and full, but anxious: "Who's there?"
Though I'd expected to be talking face to face, I did my best through the door. "Hi! I'm your neighbor down in 308. I thought you might like this cake, so..."
"Ah—one moment," said the voice. There was more clopping near the door, and it wasn't a knocker. A lock turned, and the door opened to reveal... more or less what I'd expected. I mean, I hadn't known what color she'd be. Not that it really mattered, but I guess I'd subconsciously imagined her as light green, like Lyra. The one the fans liked saying was into humans. I'd known she was a unicorn, so I guess I'd just filled in the blanks. But she was peach-colored, with a medium brown mane, and less exuberant than I'd imagined. I couldn't see her cutie mark clearly, but it looked like a spark between two poles. And there I was... in front of a pony. A generation four, Friendship is Magic pony. And what I'd planned to say went out of my head.
"You brought me a cake?" she asked, her eyes cautious.
"I mean, it's upside-down," I downplayed. "But yes. I brought you a cake." When I displayed it, her nostrils flared.
"Pineapple?" She seemed delighted by the idea.
"Yep, pineapple upside-down cake. I figured, as a new neighbor, you could use a pick-me-up." That was something I'd prepared, slipping out now.
"I didn't know you guys had pineapple cake here. I thought it was all vanillas and chocolates!"
Not knowing quite what to say to that, I shrugged. "I guess you're not from around here, then?"
She snorted and lifted a front hoof to her chest. "What do you think?"
I smiled. "New to Earth?"
"Yeah. Just been a week." I felt something tugging at my hands and inhaled sharply, but it was just her magic, blue and electric, lifting the cake and its foil wrapper away from me. I watched as she set it on the counter in her ordinary-looking apartment.
"So how're you settling in?" It could easily have been the wrong question. But it seemed more innocuous than asking why she'd come to town, and I didn't want to just walk away and trust to seeing her in the halls. I wanted to forge something.
Uneasily, the unicorn sat down on her floor. "It's been slow. And tough." She must have been thinking along the same lines as me, because she smiled and asked, "So what's your name?"
"Ronald Pfeffer," I answered.
"Peach Spark," she said, tapping her chest.
I smiled back. "What's a Peach Spark?"
Her smile turned uncertain. "That's my name."
"I know. Still! What's a Peach Spark?"
Her skeptical eyes met my mirthful ones for a moment. "Beats me," she admitted. "It's just a couple of nice words that go together."
"So, a typical pony name."
She was eying me warily. "You could say that. What does Ronald Pfeffer mean?"
"Um. Well, Ronald means, like, counselor, and 'pfeffer' is German for 'pepper'. But I mean, it's not all one..."
"So you're Counselor Pepper."
"Uhh..."
"Only in code, so no one can understand it."
I stood there dumbly. "All right, all right," I laughed. "So my name's no better." I fell silent, wanting to ask whether she at least had some sense of what her name might mean, but not knowing whether it would be out of line. This was about where I had to either keep the conversation going or just welcome her to the building and excuse myself. She knew it too, but she didn't say anything either for a while. It was like she didn't want to turn me away.
"You know, it's not that easy making friends here," she said.
I frowned, sticking my thumbs in my pockets. "You don't say."
"Is there some trick I've been missing?"
I shook my head. "Probably," I eventually admitted. "But I don't know it either."
She laughed a little. "You can dress it up, but back home, it's pretty much as simple as walking up to somep—someone and saying, 'Hi, my name's whatever—would you like to be friends?' And nine times out of ten, you've got a new friend."
"Reminds me of grade school," I told her.
She looked miffed at that. "Hmph. Well, we are for five-to-ten-year-olds, right?"
I didn't even grasp what she was saying at first.
“The show? That we're from? It's for grade schoolers, isn't it?”
“Oh. Um... yeah, I guess.”
There was a lot of talk, even then, about whether we'd created the world of Friendship is Magic or just tapped into it somehow. Or whether there was even a difference. Really, the debate never stopped, but it had sort of become polite to talk about it in the latter way: We didn't create you, we just found you. And how lucky we are! Complicating the issue is that it was Equestrian magic, not Earth technology, that opened the paths between our worlds. So why our world, and not some other? Maybe because we're the ones who created them in the first place?
The metaphysics was beyond me—I just didn't want to tread on anyone's toes. This pony, though, Peach Spark, had a different attitude. “So, why is it a surprise if our society reminds you of your schools, then? You wrote us that way.”
I stood there with my hand at my chest and my mouth open as if to say, I didn't write you.
“Sorry. Sorry.” The pony shook her head. “I guess what I'm trying to say is, I could use a friend pretty bad. You in?”
There was nothing to think about. I'd spent the day baking a cake for her, hadn't I? “Yeah—absolutely I'll be your friend.”
Her smile was tempered. “Some of the humans I've met said we'd be friends, but I haven't heard from them. I feel like they weren't being honest.”
I smiled nervously. “Yeah. That happens.”
She scowled. “I know it happens. It happens in Equestria, too. But not this much.”
“Sorry. All I can say is, yeah. I'm in.”
Finally, the pony's smile turned genuine, if weary. “You wanna come in?” I was still standing in the doorway.
“Sure.” As I slipped in, I tried to think of the last time I'd been in a girl's apartment. Had it happened since Cindy? I didn't think so, but then again, did this really count?
It was a studio. There was a big futon mattress strewn with sheets, and cushions sitting here and there. A white padded chair that'd probably been part of a loveseat set. A rack of shelves filled with tools and a few books, and a little table covered in papers. Not much else that wasn't built in. I sat on the half-loveseat and she sat on a cushion facing me. And sighed.
“Sounds like it hasn't been easy, huh?” I asked.
“I didn't think it'd be easy,” she said.
I had to ask. “So, why'd you leave? And why New Jersey?”
She'd just sat down, but she got up again. “There's work here. What do you say we cut that cake you brought?”
“I guess I wouldn't mind trying it.”
She produced an actual cake knife from a kitchen drawer. I noticed that she used magic to open the drawer and unwrap the foil, but when it came to cutting the cake, she held the knife in her mouth, making it difficult for her to talk. On purpose?
“That's actually my second one,” I remarked. “The first one was okay, but I think I overdid the baking powder or something.”
She made a noise like “Really?” Soon enough, the cake was in pieces and we each had a slice before us, which she garnished with sprigs of fresh mint.
“It's not bad,” she said, digging in.
“Thanks. So how do you like human food, so far?”
She looked up, crumbs on her muzzle. “Is there such a thing? Isn't it different depending what country you're in?”
I shrugged. “Well, sure, but still.”
She finished a mouthful. “You guys eat about the same we do. Not really surprising. I guess you don't eat grass, though, huh?”
“Not really.”
“Or flowers?”
I shook my head. “I mean, some of the grains we eat are technically grass, I think. And I know some people eat flowers...”
“But not usually?”
“Nope.”
She dug in again. “Not looking forward to winter, then.”
I watched her eat—she didn't seem to mind. Even though she had magic, she didn't bother with a fork—she just used her teeth, keeping her head over the plate.
“You said there was work here?”
“Yep.” She licked her lips clean. “Good work for a unicorn who can solder. I'm with ThuneTec—they've got me rewiring circuit board prototypes. Easier than reprinting.”
“How'd you learn to do that?”
“Crash vocational training in Long Hedge. Honestly? It just took a couple weeks to learn. I'm not especially skilled or educated. Just—” She tapped her horn a couple times with a hoof.
“So there's a call for unicorn magic on Earth.”
“They say it has applications,” she chimed, getting up for another slice of upside-down cake.
“So you answered the call?”
She switched her tail. “It's a living.”
I waited until she was sitting down again. “Where's Long Hedge? Is that on my side or yours?”
“Mine. It's pretty close to Witherton, which is where I grew up.”
“I don't remember Witherton from the show. Then again, I'm not a superfan.”
“You just watched the show because?”
“Yeah.” Everyone had watched it by then, pretty much. If a world of pastel horses pulls up beside yours, you're gonna want to learn what they're all about. Six seasons in, Celestia had opened a portal to Earth in order to ask our world's leaders for help overcoming a crisis she couldn't face any other way. There'd been chaos—even though it'd been classified, there were crazy rumors everywhere, and the media hadn't yet sorted out all the conspiracies. But our leaders, somehow, had gotten their act together enough to answer the call, and saved Equestria from being torn apart. Now, Equestria controlled all access to and from its world, and very few humans were allowed in. Immigration the other way wasn't so restrictive, but there wasn't much demand for it. Not too many ponies chose to leave their idyllic homeland when Earth was the alternative.
As for the show itself, it had wrapped up, but it had been replaced by a reality show starring Princess Twilight Sparkle. Spike was her cameradragon, except for aerial shots, which were mostly handled by Rainbow Dash. Color film was new to Equestria, as were various technical improvements to the filming process that Earth had provided. The show, which centered on life in Ponyville and occasionally on Twilight's royal duties, was edited by a royally appointed Canterlot crew, with Twilight as a producer. It was shown regularly in theaters throughout Equestria and on Earth television.
“Witherton isn't in the show. The closest place that was in the show is Winsome Falls. We're about thirty miles northwest. Long Hedge is a little closer, along the plateau.”
“Okay.”
“Work is fine, anyway. I mean, it's not like I understand the architecture of the boards I work on. But that just puts me on par with the whole software division.”
“Uh huh.”
She took a hefty bite of her second piece, this time using magic to lift it to her mouth. “So what do you do?”
“Nothing so impressive. I work in a big garden store.”
Her eyes were hungry. “How big?”
I gestured. “The lot's about as big as this building.”
She laughed, showing more mirth than I'd seen so far. “You think that's less impressive than mucking around with tiny transistors?”
“Aheh. Uh, yeah! It's uniform work. You know, restocking, building displays, helping customers carry things...”
“Do you know about gardens?”
“I've picked up a fair bit. My ex-fiance and I had a little garden of our own back in Hoboken, but mostly I'm a vicarious gardener.”
“Then your job is more impressive than mine.”
I hadn't expected anybody to ever tell me that. I leaned back in the chair and stretched my legs. “Do you get a salary?”
“I will, once they get my paperwork through!”
“I'm a wage worker. So.”
“So?”
“So you win.”
She laughed. “I win?”
“Yep. Your job is better.”
She finished her second piece of cake and wrinkled her nose at me, a few crumbs clinging. “Because of the way we get paid? You're just trying to make me feel better, aren't you?”
A few possible answers flashed through my head before I came up with: “Isn't that what friends are for?”
She was caught off guard by that one. Slowly, she started nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, it is!”
I stood up, having finished my slice of cake a while ago. “Well, in that case, I think I'll leave on a high note.”
“You're going already? I didn't hurt your feelings, did I?”
“Nah.” I spread my hands. “I mean, I could stay. It's just... I'm a little shy, that's all.”
“Really? Shy? You're the one who knocked on my door and introduced yourself.”
“I know. And... well, that's about all I've got in me for one day! But don't worry... I'll be back.”
She stood up. “You'd better.”
Well, the truth was, I wasn't quite as shy as all that. It was more that I'd never talked to a pony before, and the experience had given me a lot to absorb. But I didn't want to make my new friend feel any more unusual than she already did.
I smiled shyly. “I'm just down in 308. Stop by if you need anything.”
“308, got it. Will do.”
“It was nice meeting you, Peach Spark.”
“Nice meeting you, Counselor Pepper.”
I stopped on my way to the door and looked back at her in dismay.
“Sorry, I forgot your real name,” she said sheepishly.
“It's Ron. Or Ronald. No—you know what? Counselor Pepper is fine.”
She chuckled. “You sure?”
I stepped into the hallway and held the door. “You can call me Pepper for short.”
“Only if you call me Peach!”
I found this unexpectedly flattering. “I'll think about it,” I replied, stifling a grin. “See you around, Sparky.”
She snorted with indignant laughter and shut the door on me. “Sparky, indeed!” I heard her say.
It was half a minute before I stepped away from the door and headed downstairs.
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