//------------------------------//
// Muffins 
// Story: Foreigner 
// by Salnax 
//------------------------------//

	“Terra, it’s time to wake up.”
Lyra looked down at Terra, who was sleeping in her new bed. She and Bon Bon had finally gotten around to getting a new, filly-sized bed just a couple of days earlier, and put it in the small room they were previously using for storage.
Said room was starting to get a bit of personality. A box of soft and squishy toys lay in the corner, and some of Terra’s pictures decorated the light blue walls. Notably absent was the one portraying Terra with a monster and a dead pony. A window let some light in.
Terra grumbled from under the covers, pushing them up to cover her whole body. Lyra smiled to herself, remembering how welcome a bed’s covers can be early in the morning, before pulling down the top with her magic. Terra’s head was visible, her eyes seemingly forced shut by her desire to not start the day.
“Terra, you’re going to have to get out sooner or later. And by ‘sooner or later,’ I mean now. It’s time to get up.”
Terra’s eyes were, if anything, more tightly shut than ever.
Lyra sighed. The nerve of fillies these days.
Lyra softly rubbed Terra’s side, letting her know that she was there and not going to leave anytime soon. Reluctantly, Terra opened her eyes and hopped onto the floor.
Terra went into the bathroom for a few minutes while Lyra waited outside. Lyra listened as a toilet flushed and a faucet poured out water. She was disappointed though when Terra came back out immediately afterwards.
“Still having trouble brushing your teeth, huh?”
Terra gave Lyra a look, as if to say “Let’s take care of business.”
Lyra entered the bathroom with Terra and pulled out two toothbrushes, hers and Terra’s.
“It’s not that hard to brush your teeth,” she said, preparing to give a demonstration. “All you have to do is grab your toothbrush with your magic, put it in your mouth, ahn muv ih awound lahk thith.”
If a picture is truly worth a certain number of words, a portrait of Terra’s face would have been a short essay on the sheer number of ways Lyra was being stupid.
Lyra sighed again. “I don’t know why you were able to do magic back at Pinkie’s place but not anywhere else. Ah well. Here, let me help you with that.”
Terra opened her mouth while Lyra carefully brushed her teeth. For a foal, she stood remarkably still, not even reacting when Lyra slipped for a moment towards the back of Terra’s mouth.
Bon Bon was working that morning and through the afternoon, so the duo had the day to themselves. Lyra was planning on bringing Terra to the park to the east of town, hoping that there would be something to interest her. Perhaps there would be other fillies for her to play with. For breakfast, the two shared a bowl of miniature corn muffins. They were yesterday’s leftovers, and were just starting to go a bit stale, but the two ate heartily.
Terra followed Lyra as she set off towards the park. By now, nopony looked twice at them. The locals here may have a habit of staring at strangers, but once they got used to newcomers, they became just another part of the scenery. A few ponies waved hi to Lyra, though they mostly ignored Terra. 
The park was mostly deserted when they arrived. It was Terra’s first time there, so she focused on the surrounding greenery. It was nothing special as far as parks went. There were trees, fields of grass, paths lined with benches, and decorative flowers. As it was a school day, the foals that normally hung around were absent, though one or two youths were following around their parents and guardians. There were also a few older ponies here for the pleasant atmosphere, as well as a couple of well dressed stallions standing by the river, discussing some sort of business proposition.
Terra, strangely enough, seemed fascinated by the path they were walking on. She kept on looking up and down its length, and was positively captured by the bridge leading across the stream. Things like trees and flowers, if anything, seemed to bore her, as if they were simple geography, rather than the living things the park was built around.
This puzzled Lyra. Many things about Terra puzzled her, but this one was particularly pressing at the moment. What was so interesting about dirt pathways? They were just parts of the ground that ponies decided to keep clear. Why wouldn’t Terra be interested in flowers and grass? At very least, she could have tried eating it, much like she tried to do with other new things. Heck, based on Nurse Redheart’s initial report, Terra had lived off of grass for a while.
Was that it? Had Terra spent so much time in the wild that she could no longer appreciate it? Now that Lyra was thinking about the topic, it was hard to deny that grass was not at the top of anypony’s list of favorite foods. And for somepony who was as obsessed with putting things in her mouth as Terra…
zooooooooooooooooooooo…
What was that?
Terra looked at the path behind Lyra. Her mouth dropped, and she jumped off the path into a bush.
…OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…
Lyra was confused. What did Terra see that scared her? And what was that noise coming fro-
“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER TRUANTS COMING THROUGH!!!”
CRASH!!!
******
Terra peeked out of the bushes in horror. Her guardian had been hit by a speeding… thing?
It was the three fillies that had found her with Aqua Mare! Yellow, Orange, and White. They had been zooming along on some contraption and had slammed it into Aqua Mare. Probably because they could not steer it.
After seeing that Aqua Mare was alright, Terra looked at the vehicle. It appeared to be made out of two parts: a two-wheeled front attached to a four-wheeled box. One of them probably powered the front while the other two sat in the back.
After speaking with the trio briefly, Aqua Mare looked around. Assuming that she was wondering where she had gone, Terra popped out of her bush to let her know she was alright. The trio saw this as an invitation to mob her, bouncing up and down while chatting excitably. Aqua Mare tried to shout over the trio, but the fillies wouldn’t hear her. Finally, Aqua Mare shouted something about “Skoo,” instantly silencing the trio.
Terra watched in interest as the fillies were obviously reprimanded by Aqua Mare. Whenever one of them began to speak up, they were quickly silenced. Terra didn’t know whether Aqua Mare was angry they crashed into her or because they mobbed her again, but either way, she felt little remorse for them.
After her lecture was over, Aqua Mare gestured to Terra to follow. Joined by the three fillies, the party left the park, heading back west. Eventually, they ended up at the building where Terra has eaten that icky paste. 
Hey, it came in a container and was easily squishable. How was she supposed to know not to eat it?
Inside the building, the purple mare from the other day was talking to a group of fillies and colts, who were sitting at the smaller desks. The purple mare must be a teacher of some sort! And if these three weren’t here when they were supposed to be… oh dear. They were going to suffer the consequences.
While Purple Teacher berated the trio, Terra looked at the other students. Particularly, she noticed that two students, earth pony fillies, were grinning broadly at the trio’s troubles. One of them was gray with a spoon on her behind, while the other was pink with some sort of ornament.
Terra had studied these markings for the past few weeks, and was still confused by them. Most ponies had them, the chief exceptions being the youngest members of the population. They were usually connected to their careers, like in the cases of Aqua Mare and Cream Mare, but there were obvious exceptions. For example, Purple Teacher had a few flowers on her behind. However, teaching had nothing to do with flowers. Were these marks given by elders to designate the youth to certain careers? If so, did Purple Teacher mean that the careers weren’t set in stone?  Then why did the markings remain the same? Maybe the mark was what parents hoped their children would do. Did that mean Aqua and Cream Mares would brand her? Would that hurt a lot?
Terra shrugged. She’d suffered worse than mutilation of unnecessary body parts in the past. A tribal ritual was tolerable.
When Aqua Mare led Terra outside, she surprised Terra by staying in the miniature park near the school. There were pieces of furniture and equipment. Were they for the foals’ physical education? Whatever they were, Aqua Mare must have gotten permission to use them, because they spent the rest of the morning playing there.
******
After playing with Terra in the playground for a while, Lyra had learned a few more fun facts about her adopted child.
First, she was terrified by heights. After being nudged up the slide, she was paralyzed on the spot until Lyra went to the bottom to catch her. As for the swings, Terra’s midair panic-attack brought school-foals to the windows, peeking out to see what was happening.
Second, Terra was amazing at hide and seek. Explaining the concept had taken surprisingly little effort. Just a few funny faces and gestures with her hooves did wonders at explaining the basics. Lyra let Terra hunt for her first, hiding in the sandbox, making sure that she was easily visible. Terra found her almost instantly. Next, it was Terra’s turn to hide. Lyra covered her eyes and counted to twenty, looked around, and was shocked not to see so much as a bluish-gray hair lying around. After ten minutes of frantic searching, Terra emerged from the sandbox. She had somehow found a discarded straw, leaped into the sandbox, and mostly buried herself, using the straw to breath, in a space of about half a minute. And the only reason she emerged was because she seemed to have trouble breathing through the straw.
That was the last round of hide and seek they played.
Third, Terra did not like running. Like most Equestrian playgrounds, this one was surrounded by a small dirt track, designed for foals to run and race on. Lyra tried egging Terra into a race, but she refused to go above a comfortable trot. It wasn’t that she was having too much trouble; Terra never had to stop to catch her breath, or exhibited any of the regular signs of exhaustion. It was just as if she didn’t consider running around to be worth the effort.
In fact, the same idea applied to the entire session. Terra went through the proper motions, but there was never any sign that she was having fun. Even when she hid, breathing through a straw could not have been enjoyable. And she had to know in advance that going on the swings would be disturbing, especially after the slide.
It was as if she was training for something. 
What could a foal barely of school age be training for?
******
School ended for the day, and a rush of students went running out the door. A few minutes later, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle left the building, each with a note to their families in their bags.
“I told you being Cutie Mark Crusader Truants was a bad idea,” Sweetie Belle told Scootaloo. 
“Alright then, you pick the next idea,” said Scootaloo.
“Maybe we could be Cutie Mark Crusader Veterinarians?”
“We did that already with Fluttershy”.
“No, that was Animal Rescue Workers. That’s completely different.”
“Is not”
“Is too”
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
“Is not! Right Apple Bloom?”
At this point, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo looked at Apple Bloom. She had not been paying any attention to their argument. Instead, she had been looking into the playground, where Lyra and Terra had been joined by several playing foals. 
“Apple Bloom, what’s wrong?”
“You think we’ve been bad friends?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Along with Miss Lyra, we were the ponies that found Terra there. But these past few weeks, what have we done? Nothing except scare her I reckon.”
“We tried being nice to her. We said his whenever we saw her,” said Scootaloo.
“True. But Terra seems kinda like Fluttershy. Maybe we ought to be quieter and more gentle-like. It just seems like she doesn’t have any friends, and I don’t know about you, but I think everypony needs a friend.”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle looked at each other’s faces. Apple Bloom was not going to let this go. And maybe she was right. However…
“Even if we wanted to be friends with her, do you think Miss Lyra would let us?” asked Sweetie Belle. “She and Bon Bon are always babying Terra, and I don’t think we made a very good impression today.”
“Besides,” said Scootaloo, “She doesn’t seem to really like us. She hid in the bushes when she saw us earlier, remember?”
Apple Bloom frowned. She hated to admit it, but her friends had a point.
The problem was, if they wouldn’t be friends with Terra, who would?
******
As Terra walked to the place Bon Bon worked with Aqua Mare, she thought about the two of them. She adored Cream Mare, but there was something about Aqua Mare that she felt particularly close to. Maybe it was just because she was one of the ponies that found her. No, that couldn’t be right. She couldn’t stand the Terrible Trio.
No, if she had to guess, it would be that Aqua Mare understood her somehow. She probably had no idea about what she was, of course, but somehow, she didn’t seem surprised by somepony being completely alien to the world. Maybe it was because of those biped creatures she rambled on about.
Strange. Aqua Mare’s obsession over some probably fictional alien species prepared her for taking care of a real one.
Should she tell them? She depended upon Aqua and Cream Mare in this world. Would sharing herself drive them away?
Terra stopped for a moment, looking down at two hooves that weren’t hers. What was she thinking? As if any pony would accept her for what she was. If she was lucky, they’d run away and she’d be able to hide somewhere. At worst… she’d have to kill them,
Even in the worst case scenario, Terra refused to die.
She was, after all, on a mission.
“Tra?” asked Aqua Mare. 
Terra looked up and saw a smiling unicorn that cared for her.
She still smelled like muffins.
Alright, so maybe she wouldn’t run. It probably depended on how she presented herself. And besides, sooner or later they would try to drag more information out of her. She might as well try to explain some things. Drawing that picture was a good start. Maybe she could sort of work her way up to sharing herself.
Terra smiled back at Aqua Mare, and nuzzled her front legs. The two then proceeded. 
******
Pinkie Pie was minding the counter when Lyra walked in with Terra in tow.
Pinkie’s permanent smile faded.
Lyra’s perennial smile soon followed.
Terra quickly looked between the two.
There was a moment of silence.
“I didn’t know you were back to work already.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Cake said it might be better if I were extra busy.”
“Really?”
…
“I wanted to say something” muttered Pinkie.
…
“I… I… I’M REALLY SORRY AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHY I DID WHAT I DID BUT THAT WAS TERRIBLE OF ME AND I KNOW YOU HATE ME NOW AND I DESERVE IT BUT I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT I DON’T WANT TO BE A PONY THAT DOES THAT OH CELESTIA I’M SORRY I’M SORRY!!”
By this time, Pinkie was in tears, and had fallen down behind the counter.Lyra stood shocked, while Terra looked on in fascination. After a few moments, Terra took the lead, leaping onto the counter and looking down at Pinkie.
******
Aqua Mare said something, but Terra couldn’t make it out. All she knew was that she had made this pony miserable, and that she could fix it. Sure, the Pink One had attacked her, but not without a good reason. And seeing as she now seemed harmless, it seemed fitting to put an old adage to practice.
Happiness is loving your enemies.
Terra jumped down to the floor next to Pinkie. What was that thing Aqua Mare had done earlier? Oh yes. She rubbed the Pink One’s side with her hoof. Not too long afterwards, the Pink One looked up at her. She seemed shocked at first, but then her features softened, and then, for the first time since they met, the two shared a smile.
Aqua Mare probably wouldn’t forgive the Pink One. But in Terra’s mind, that was irrelevant. She had created strife, it was her duty to end it. And if this pony was happy now, then the two could live in peace.
And to think that she was worried about what Aqua Mare and Cream Mare would think of her! No, as soon as she was able, she would share her secrets. If ponies were capable of smiling at something that wore their beloved, they were capable of accepting what she was.
A foreigner of the truest kind.