The human crashed to the floor. It didn't let out a sound of pain, only struggled out of the stilts and rubbed its bruises.
“Are you sure you don't want to take a break? You don't have to wear a windigo costume for the party, because I've got tons of cool costumes and plenty of them fit humans so you don't have to worry about them not fitting, and even if you do want to wear a windigo costume you can wear one without the stilts. I still have my chicken costume!”
Reiko braced herself against the hedge, strapped the stilts back on, and rose to her feet, or rather rose to her stilts, even though the hedge was dogwood rather than rosewood. It's funny that they call them dogwood shrubs even though they don't bark or pee on themselves.
“This is the ultimate costume for the ultimate party,” Reiko said in firm, grim voice. “Plus nobody will guess that I'm a human until the unmasking.”
She toddled over on the towering stilts. That hollow-eyed mask swept slowly, as if drawn by some attraction other than light. The silver-blue hooves waved slowly, as if treading the air. The figure let out a keening, lonely moan, like the last living soul in a frozen desert.
Pinkie Pie shivered. If she didn't know that was just her newest friend Reiko in a costume, she would have been really spooked out. Reiko was certainly one human who understood the meaning of “scary but fun”.
The effect was spoiled when the chilling apparition struggled to regain its footing. Reiko caught herself against a statue of Victory this time.
Pinkie Pie remembered how Rarity had lost her self-control with the cake on the Friendship Express. Tasty treats could be tempting, (especially corn cakes) even for the best of friends and the most well-intentioned of ponies. She knew that from painful experience.
“Are you totally absolutely one hundred percent sure you want to show up here, with all the unicorns around? I mean, all of my friends are super awesome people and I trust them and care about them, but everypony makes mistakes, and there's only one of you here. Maybe you could ride in the balloon and explain the whole I'm-a-thinking-person-creature-and-even-though-I-have-two-legs-and-have-some-predator-traits-I-don't-pose-a-threat-to-you situation with a loudspeaker?” Pinkie Pie suggested. She wanted to keep everybody on friendly terms, and she wasn't totally sure it could stay that Reiko would be willing to make friends with somebody who bit off her leg.
“Positive,” Reiko said. “I really have nothing to lose.” The words echoed with an icy certainty. The windigo loomed over Pinkie Pie. She could almost hear cold winds howling in the distance.
#
Jamal had been brought up to be polite. Jamal's Muslim aunt, who he remembered more not because he was orphaned but because both of his parents had a lot of part time jobs to work, had always impressed upon him the cardinal virtue of Hospitality. Jamal had grown up in an area where you were polite to people, especially police, as a matter of survival.
That said, everyone had their limit, and another thing that Jamal had learned was how to make a graceful exit. The time when fluttershy had pulled out a thermometer half as thick as his arm and started talking to her friends about taking care of her new ailing pet was when Jamal decided he would prefer to exercise the better part of valor than the politeness of princes.
He plunged into the bushes when he heard the beat of hooves. He remembered sitting down to the first episode of My Little Pony on their old beat-up futon, while his wife was away at work, with his little girl silent and riveted on the screen in front of her. Twilight Sparkle had said “all the ponies here are crazy!”
Along the path came a couple of foals he didn't recognize from the show.
“I'm a timber wolf! Arrooo! Fear my gnashing branches!” one of them said.
The other one stopped to look at a poster. It mentioned a party hosted by Pinkie Pie, to welcome a “stranger from another world”.
Jamal's heart skipped a beat. Stranger from another world? That sounded like another human being. Somebody who wouldn't try to eat him or put a diaper on him or do experiments on him.
If another human got here...somehow, maybe they could compare notes. Maybe they could work together. Maybe the other human even knew the way back!
There was lots of dead wood in this hedge. Jamal gave a prayer of thanks to the wicker-work instructor at the community center. He thought it was a complete bust when he found out how little he could make repairing furniture in his neighborhood, but maybe it had been a blessing in disguise.
He really wanted to meet this mysterious stranger. Maybe they'd already learned the real personalities of the colorful tiny horse characters that his daughter laughed and squealed over. Maybe they could lead him to a magic horse that could get him home safe and sound.
He took a few branches and started bending the greenwood around them.