Not another Pony on Earth
Lyra Cosplays Herself
Admiral Biscuit
Lyra pranced giddily around her hotel room. It wasn't a very big room—it was smaller than the bedroom she and Bon Bon shared—but it was human. Distinctively, unmistakably human, from the too-tall chair at the desk, to the miniscule button-matrix on the telephone, which was like a telegraph but faster.
Even the wastebasket was foreign. She had been slightly disturbed to learn that they were made of plastic, which came from a dinosaur, but she didn't personally know any dinosaurs, so it was hard to judge how they felt about it. Certainly the cows in town were willing to sell their milk, so maybe dinosaurs sold their plastic to humans.
Her prancing took her to the window of her hotel room again. Lyra pressed her muzzle up against the floor-to-ceiling glass and gazed downwards at the tiny human figures moving around on the sidewalk, even though it was well after dark. This was the highest building she'd ever been in, and the view was simply magnificent. Even long after sunset, the humans were out on the sidewalks and in the streets, doing human things like driving cars or clustering together and passing around a smoking stick or selling ice-cream from boxy wheeled stalls.
She yawned and jerked her head, forcing her eyes back open. She was unbelievably tired—world-hopping would do that to a mare—yet she didn't want to miss a single moment of the spectacle. A look at the clock over on the bedside table told her that it was one a.m., and while she still hadn't completely wrapped her mind around the human concept of time, she ought to be in bed, especially if she wanted to be at the convention center bright and early in the morning.
Lyra staggered into the bathroom, blinking in surprise at the drawn look on the mare in the mirror. Her mane hung limply down her neck, and there were big bags under her golden eyes.
She levitated the small tube of toothpaste the hotel had provided onto her toothbrush and mechanically brushed her teeth, her tongue tingling from the spicy-cool paste. A quick rinse of her mouth later, and she was ready for bed.
Unfortunately, the bed was too high for her. She could imagine how a human might stand at the edge of the bed and let herself fall forward into the pure white softness of the mattress, but her legs were shorter and the bed practically came up to her chin. Even on her hind legs, it was just above her midpoint, and she couldn't quite get enough traction to pull herself up. She finally took a running leap at it, nearly bouncing completely off again.
The sheets were tucked in maddeningly tight, but she finally managed to pull them loose—a process not aided by her body on top of them—and pulled them over herself. She spent a moment arranging the pillows to her liking: two under her head and a third between her forelegs. Once she was situated, she let out a blissful sigh and closed her eyes, waiting for the sandmare to take her to Luna's realm.
Lyra blinked awake, panicking as the inevitable disorientation hit her. It wasn't her bed, it wasn't her pillows, there was no Bon Bon, and everything she saw in the room was foreign to her. The feeling passed, replaced by an eagerness to get going.
She lay on her back for a minute, planning out her morning routine. Humans were addicted to coffee—she'd learned that on another trip—and her hotel room had a machine which made it. After a few false starts, she managed to make the machine work for her without filling a cup of coffee grounds or covering the entire desk with liquid, and left it alone as she went into the bathroom and prepared for her new day.
The shower was enclosed by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, a feature beyond the skill of any craftsmare in Ponyville. Lyra spent a frustrating minute figuring out how to make the water the temperature she liked and how to aim the head properly before finally stepping inside, letting the pulsing beat of the warm slippery water wash over her.
She quickly ran out of the shampoo the hotel had provided, but the hot water seemed inexhaustible. The hot water heater they had at home could—at best—provide a lukewarm flow for five minutes; this one kept going with water hot enough to scald a mare, and as far as she'd seen, there was no firebox which needed to be filled. She'd heard of luxury hotels in Manehattan which provided a similar amenity, but had never experienced it for herself. By the time the whole bathroom was filled with fog, she felt decadent, and still the hot water came.
Refreshed, she shut off the flow and got out of the shower, placing her hooves carefully on the the bathmat. The slippery floors and horseshoes were not a good combination.
Two minutes later, Lyra left the bathroom, leaving a pile of sodden towels in her wake. She wasn't completely dry yet, but her coat would dry the rest of the way on its own. She could hardly groom herself while the bathroom mirror was fogged up, so she settled on drinking a cup of coffee which the machine had made while she was in the bathroom.
Below her, the streets were as lively as ever. A flood of humans was streaming into and out of the convention center, many of them dressed in costumes. Soon she would be among them, in her own body for the very first time.
It had been magnificent to spend time among the humans, but being stuck in one of their bodies to blend in meant that she'd spent much of her time trying to accomplish simple tasks, like walking upright. For once, she could be herself, and nopony—nohuman—would remark upon it.
After final grooming and three checks to make sure she had the badges for her hotel room and the convention, Lyra closed the hotel door behind her and made her way to the elevator. It was like a coach, but it went up and down instead of forward, and it had two large windows that were open to the outside. As she descended from the fourteenth floor to the ground, she watched the activity in the harbor, where tiny boats zoomed to and fro without needing any sails at all. Like the cars the humans loved so much, spells were hidden in them that made them go.
The convention center was a pressing mass of humanity, and Lyra drank it all in like a dehydrated camel in an oasis. Her ears were flicking back and forth, picking up snatches of conversation here and there, most of them addressed at somepony else. Still, she got her fair share of demands for photographs, and it wasn't too long before her face hurt from the nearly constant grin she maintained. The crowd began to become a featureless pink blur, and despite her love of all things human, she'd had enough for a while, and flopped onto one of the chairs, leaning back human-style. Her hind legs were aching from hours walking bipedal, and her brain was filled with snatches of conversation gleaned from the endless babel of the crowd. Just the same, she wouldn't have traded the burning in her thighs for the world. She'd never seen this many ponies in one place at one time, and it was nearly incomprehensible how so many humans could gather together. The traffic outside had actually increased while she was here, which lead her to the inescapable conclusion that there must be a lot of humans on Earth. Millions of them, most likely.
“Hey, are you entering a cosplay contest? Because if you aren't, you totally should. You look just like a pony from that show.”
Lyra glanced up at the stallion who'd spoken. He was wearing a brown robe and carrying a plastic sword, and speaking with a funny accent.
“That's what I'm going to do,” Lyra replied. Humans liked it when she agreed with them, even if she wasn't sure what they were saying. “I just . . . the names of the places are kind of weird,” she temporized, “Could you show me where to go?”
“I'm headed that way myself,” he informed her. “We've got to hurry; the contest starts in a few minutes. Do you like my Aragron costume?”
“It's great!” Lyra said.
“Not as good as yours,” he mumbled. “How did you get the fur to look so natural?”
“I, ah, just spend a lot of time with it, you know?”
“It looks great.” He reached out a hand for her hoof, and Lyra let him take hold and pull her to her hind hooves. “Best I've seen, although there is a Flufflepuff that could give you a run for your money.”
“Lead me on,” she told him. What in Equestria is a Flufflepuff? She staggered to her hind hooves. As he walked, a mare fell in step beside them. Lyra knew it was a mare, because she smelled nicer than a stallion and had a curvier body.
“It's right this way,” he told her. “Seriously, you've got about the best costume I've seen.”
Lyra blushed. “It's nothing, really. I just, um, worked really hard.”
• • •
Ten minutes later, Lyra was in a room full of people, all of them in what she presumed were costumes. The officials had sorted them into groups, and she found herself standing next to a tall pink character of a pony who only said “Pbbth” when spoken to. Lyra gave it a death stare and shifted around on her hooves as the judges examined her in an overly personal manner, even going as far as running their fingers through her fur—a move which both excited and offended her.
After an indomitable amount of time, and a few friendly nuzzles and licks from the Flufflepuff, the judges finally reached their verdict.
Lyra returned home with a strange twisting, inside-out feeling, and promptly staggered to the nearest point of respite, which happened to be the living room couch. Bon Bon rushed over to her, the candies in the kitchen briefly forgotten, and kissed her on the cheek. “How was it?”
“Fantastic,” Lyra said. “I couldn't have asked for a better weekend.” She kissed Bon Bon on the lips, an image of the earth pony in the hotel shower while she watched crossing her mind. “Everypony was very polite, and some stallion even asked me if I wanted to enter a contest!”
“How did that go?” Bon Bon ran a hoof through Lyra's mane.
“Well . . . “ Lyra flattened her ears. “I got a red ribbon.”
“Is that good?”
“No.” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “The judges said that my costume smelled funny, and didn't feel right.” She absently touched a hoof to her barrel. “One of them took away points for damage to my coat, can you imagine? And the colors 'weren't quite right.' A judge even said that I was 'overdone.' I don’t even know what that means!”
“But you got to see a hoofful of humans in their natural environment,” Bon Bon reminded her. “Surely that's worth something.”
“You're right.” Lyra perked her ears. “So what if I didn't win a prize, and a Flufflepuff did?” She looked into Bon Bon's eyes. “And I got all sorts of cool human stuff.” She glanced back at her saddlebags. “You're not using all of the curio cabinet, right?”