//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Culture Shock and Awe // Story: Desert Spice // by Bugsydor //------------------------------// Chapter V: Culture Shock and Awe Horizon “Rise and shine, Rize! You’ve got an interesting day ahead of you.” It’s a good thing I’m a bit of a morning pony, or Sweep would have had an unfortunate training accident a long time ago. “What, in the name of Terra, do you mean by ‘interesting’?” I growl as I pull my muzzle out of my cloud. I’m not a perfect morning pony, especially not before dawn is even threatening to happen. “I wanted to be sure to run into you before you got going. As for what’s interesting, there’s been a change in your schedule~,” he replies, sliding into a sing-song voice at the end. “Is this about foalsitting Amber Spice?” “Who?” Sweep replies, wrinkling his brow. “Our new guest that I scooped up out of the desert. That’s her name, apparently.” “Yeah, it’s about her.” “Why are you telling me now? Didn’t I already agree to volunteer to ‘guard’ her last night before I crashed out?” I ask, tweaking my wingtips for emphasis. “Yeah, but when I floated the idea to the commander last night, he kinda expanded upon what your duties would be,” he says, scratching behind an ear with a hoof. “He doesn’t just want you to keep trouble and her separate, he also wants you to show her around the caravan. Y’know, to familiarize her with her new home and so that you might impress her with our mighty caravan’s mighty might,” he says, flexing as he slips into a ridiculous attempt at basso. I flop the rest of the way out of my cloud and let my wings bite sky. It’s a lot easier to deal with shenanigans when I’m airborne, since at least then I know we’re getting somewhere. “So let me get this straight: Last night you flew over to Commander Cloud Buster, told him about our new guest and suggested my name for foalsitting duty, and then he spontaneously decides that I need to give her the grand tour so she’s too busy making starry eyes to make any real trouble. Does that sound about right?” “Yep! That is almost definitely how that went down.” I have my doubts, but I know better than to dig too deep. “Well, Sweep, I’m glad we got that sorted out.” Sweep does a half loop to end up upside-down above me. “Regardless of how this may or may not have come to happen, Rize, you can’t ignore the opportunity. She’s a new face, she seems to trust you at least a little, she doesn’t know a thing about us, and we know next to nothing about her. It doesn’t hurt that she’s kinda cute, either, in a fluffy sort of way.” “Says the pony who thought she might have been a succubus—” “That was one time!” he says with an accompanying aileron roll. “And besides, I was nervous from being on patrol.” He rights himself and flutters back down to my level. “What I’m trying to say is, you should take this chance to relax and have some fun. You and I both know she’s the only new, interesting thing this caravan has seen in ages, so you should really get a kick out of learning more about this mare of mystery, whatever the hay she is. “Besides, how much harder could being a tour guide be than giving a class of nuggets the orientation?” I give him an eye and aileron roll, and he counters with a raspberry. “Okay, Sweep, you win for now. People keep telling me to take a day off, anyway, so maybe this’ll get them off my back. I’ll even try to have a little of this ‘fun’ you speak of.” “Sounds good to me. You have fun foalsitting Amber Spice while I pluck my own wings over foalsitting some nugget. Clear skies!” “And favorable winds,” I reply, and he flies off into the sun as it creeps over the horizon. —_(\\_/\_//)_— Amber Spice I don’t generally remember my dreams, aside from a vague sense of how weird they were. I’m kinda thankful for that, really, as the idea of thinking with all filters removed is a little bit terrifying. Sure, I’ve sometimes awoken filled with inspiration for a daring new dish, but I’d just as soon not know what, um, interesting circumstances led to said inspiration. That said, I’d rank last night’s dream as about a seven out of ten on the weirdness scale. Growing bat wings and flying around, sucking ponies’ brains out through their ears is definitely above the average level of strangeness, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to whatever led me to put together that cake that was a scale model of Terra’s horn, complete with individual houses. What I’m waking up to probably qualifies as a six. “C’mon, Amber, it’s time for you to wake up. Not even Carlyle managed to sleep in this late.” My eyes creak open, and I swear half the grit and sand in this Terra-forsaken desert found its way into them while I slept. I’m pretty sure morning ponies don’t actually exist. Anypony who claims to be a morning pony is lying for the sole purpose of garnering more hatred for themselves, probably so they can use said hatred to fuel their evil dark magics. Anyhow, strangeness. On opening my eyes, I see an undulating sea of coarse hair in various shades of brown and beige, rustling this way and that. If I had to guess, I’d say that they were all camels. I’d also guess that camels have no concept of personal space. Or of personal hygiene. “Augh. Why do all the camels here smell like they’ve been trying to ferment dung into brandy? I’m a little surprised that didn’t wake me up on its own,” I say to Meddy Vac, who’s struggling to hold back a case of the giggles. Hay, it’d still beat the past few times I’ve woken up recently. Today’s already a big improvement over yesterday. “Snrk. That’d be because they’re camels, and because we don’t allow perfumes in the healing tents. If a camel needs to come in here, they’re doomed to smell as Terra intended. Not that that stops Carlyle from flirting with the healers, somehow,” Meddy says, her eyes rolling a little in amusement. “You kinda get used to it, though. Eventually.” I don’t think I’m about to “get used to it” in the next few seconds, but I might find a way to hurl on an empty stomach if I don’t scram in the next minute. I grab my bag in my mouth and make a break for the exit and the fresh air outside, only stumbling a little over the occasional camel. “Air!” I shout with a gasp. “Sweet merciful Terra, air! I haven’t appreciated air like this since the time Stocky pranked me into sniffing a vial of concentrated ammonia.” A passing camel child blows a raspberry at me. What do you call them? “Foals” doesn’t quite sound right… Whatever, I can figure that out later. As for right now, I’m hungry and I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. Might as well start with some kind of food. As I’m rummaging around inside my saddlebag of holding for an oatcake (or maybe two, as I am pretty hungry), Meddy joins me outside the tent and addresses me. “Well, Amber, it looks like you’ve got a full day ahead of you. One of the people in charge decided that you need to be shown around the caravan. Your tour guide should be showing up soon, but I have to split.” One of the more sane ponies I’ve met recently and the closest thing I have to an ally right now starts to walk away. I let out a sigh. “Well, I guess I can’t go keeping you from doing healer-y things. That is where you’re headed, right? I mean, what other reason could you have for leaving me alone in a strange place like this?” “Nah, today’s my off-day,” she says with a wink. “Not quite sure what I’ll do, but some R&R does sound nice after the week I’ve had.” She spreads her wings, preparing to take off. “All the same, if you have some kind of emergency, just holler. I’m sure someone will hear you, with the pair of lungs you’ve got.” And with a parting smirk, she blasts off into the mostly clear blue sky. —_(\\_/\_//)_— Horizon Have some fun. Have fun foalsitting, more like. Sweep, you are just so hilarious. Granted, I’m babysitting the most bizarre xenos any of us have ever seen, so it’s bound to be more entertaining than a typical vanguard patrol, but this post also has a social aspect to it. I just know that I’m going to have to interact with a lot of people I normally wouldn’t be able to stand, all in the interest of playing tour guide for our new guest. I suppose it could be worse. They could have assigned Blue Aegis to this post. Flying above the cracked, sandy earth, the shaggy, brown bodies of camels, our dwindling cloudcover, and the occasional bleached-white tent, I finally spot my target standing impatiently outside the camel infirmary tent, fidgeting and bouncing antsily from side to side. She’s really not that hard to spot,  what with her being bright orange with red hair. Time to swoop down and get this cloudburst started. Have some fun. In fact, let’s mix things up a bit. Go for a nice forward, friendly greeting. I swoop down towards her and land a couple of feet from her face to say, “Hello, Amber Spice. I’ll be your glorified warden and tour guide for today!” “Gackh!” says Amber Spice as she rears back and falls over. Not quite the reaction I was going for, but it wasn’t boring. “Would you like some help up? You can’t see very much of the caravan from down there.” I offer her a hoof. She accepts it, and I catch a pungent whiff as I pull her to her hooves that hints that I must have really startled her with my little stunt. It’s not exactly easy to lift her to her hooves, either. What’s she been eating?! I know I’ve met lighter camels. Actually, what has she been eating? She’s stopped the antsy bouncing, but now she’s looking an entirely different sort of uncomfortable. “Well, I guess I don’t urgently need to know where the little filly’s room is anymore, heh heh…” she lets out in a shaky voice. “Uh, the what?” And with that, her face jolts from dying of embarrassment to straight-up perplexed. It’s like we’re twins. “You know, the powder room.” “No, I really don’t know,” I say, and I see a little bit of her perplexity morph into frustration. “The lavatory? The bathroom? The water closet?” I give her a blank, uncomprehending stare, while her frustration grows on her face with every mysterious item she checks off of her list. “The privy? The outhouse? The toilet?” I just keep standing there staring, communicating my bafflement to her with my eyes. “WHERE’S A MARE GOT TO GO TO FIND A PLACE TO PEE AROUND HERE?!” Every camel within a hundred or so yards starts staring at her, and she crumples slightly under their gaze. “Oh, is that all?!” I burst out laughing. I can’t help it. It’s just so out-of-the-blue… It takes about half a minute before I can talk again. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. “You can just – *snrk* – go anywhere, so long as you don’t get it on anything. If you’re feeling particularly civic-minded, I guess you could try bottling your urine for lant, but that tends to be a lot easier for stallions.” “Well, I’ll, uh… just try not to get it on anything then.” She stamps a hoof almost effectually on the rough, gritty ground after a couple seconds and continues. “So! I think you said something about being my tour guide, and I’ve been standing out here, alone, waiting for my tour guide for the past several minutes. I’ve already had breakfast, so why don’t we get started?” I see little reason why not. “Do you have any other burning questions that need answering before we get going?” I ask, my face having fallen back to an almost neutral cast. She scuffs her hoof in the grit and fidgets indecisively for a moment before she replies. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but morbid curiosity demands it: What is lant, and what sorts of things do you people do with it?” “Lant? It’s just aged urine, but it has a lot of uses. Cleaning, bleaching, fulling,” I say, counting applications off on my primaries, “fertilizer—It’s useful stuff, even if the smell is a bit strong.” And then I see her coat go from amber to some really light orange I don’t know the name of, and I crack up again. Have some fun. I think I’ve just found myself a hobby. —_(\\_/\_//)_— Amber Spice This day has not gotten off on the right hoof. Waking up in the stink house wasn’t great, but my morning just wasn’t going to be complete until I peed myself and shouted what could only sound like a string of nonsense words for half the caravan to hear. And best of all, Captain Chuckles my “tour guide” is having the time of his life feeding off of my embarrassment. If he hadn’t just saved my life yesterday, I’d have already tried to beat him within an inch of his. I know I’m asking questions that every foal here probably knows the answer to, but is it really so difficult for him to do his sunscorched job without snickering? At least I managed to eat breakfast without incident. Well, I did manage to find out from Horizon that ponies tended to make their ways to the back edges of the caravan when they wanted to defecate, so that’s another function of daily life here that I’ve managed to figure out. Go, me. Woo. “And if you look to your left,” Rize supplies, “you’ll see a herd of sheep and their shepherds.” I take a look to my left, and I see a herd of those creatures I’d mistaken for ground-bound clouds on my way into the caravan. I have officially found creatures that are fluffier than I am. Now that I’m closer to them and not flying above them at breakneck speeds, I can see that they’re not really all that cloudlike at all. They’re the wrong color, for one thing. Their fluff is more of a warm, sandy off-white than the cool gray of a cloud. I’d say they’re shaped like fuzzy eggs with legs. Interestingly enough, some of them have horns. As in horns, multiple. Curved, black horns spiraling out from their skulls above dull, black eyes. “Sheep are useful for a number of things. They provide materials for everything from tents, to waterskins, to pillows. They occasionally even make it to the chow tent.” “Uh huh,” I say, affirming that I’d at least heard him. We continue to walk in a lazy, quiet spiral through the caravan until we come up on another point of interest. “And on your right, you’ll see Terra’s Tabernacle, where her priests tend to her eternal flame, et cetera. Some people go in there to pay homage to Terra a little more directly or personally. It’s also one of the only places in the caravan where fire is easy to come by, so cooks and the like need to get their fire from there daily.” I look, and I see a very square tent that’s a little bit larger than the infirmary tent I spent the night in. It’s the same bleached-white color that seems to be the theme around here, and it has a collection of vents in its domed roof leaking narrow wisps of gray smoke into the sky. As I look, a pegasus exits the tent with a firebrand in his mouth. I hadn’t really been that into the formal worship of Terra before my banishment, but it might be nice to have some kind of touchstone of traditions from home. Besides, in case she’s keeping one eye on us as she dreams like some ponies say she does, I’m not about to turn away any sort of help I can get. “Excuse me, Horizon,” I say, “can we take a look around inside? I’d just love to see how you people worship the Dreaming Goddess.” “I, uh, don’t see why not,” he says, stumbling a bit as he suddenly corrects our course. We enter the tent, and the first thing I notice is how… plain it all is. I’m not quite sure what I’d been expecting of their place of worship. Maybe some gold inlays, perhaps some tapestries, or a statue or two of Terra at least. What I see instead is the same bleached-white tent walls, a pulpit at the head of the room next to a dormant brazier, and a tall, folding wall of wooden dividers blocking off a portion of the tent into what looks like a separate room. Well, that and the ridiculously tall poles supporting the oversized tent. The whole place has a faint spicy, woody smell to it, and I can see smoke rising from behind the dividers. “Over here,” Horizon proclaims with the air of one reciting from a fact sheet, “we have the outer tabernacle. This is where we hold weekly services honoring Terra and binding Chaos so that Terra may have a more restful slumber. We also hold a number of festivals in here throughout the year.” We walk on over through a gap between the dividers and the outer wall. It turns out there are actually two walls of dividers a few feet apart adjoining to opposite walls, forming a hallway with a doorway on each end. As we reach the far end of the hallway, Horizon grabs a small stick from a nearby bin in his mouth and holds it out to me. I quirk an eyebrow. “You want the full experience, don’t you?” he somehow says with perfect clarity around the twig he’s brandishing at me. Well, when in the Pegasopian Desert… I take the proffered twig with my mouth, since that’s apparently how one does such things here, and my nostrils are assailed by a much stronger version of that slightly spicy, woody smell that permeates this whole tent. It’s not an unpleasant scent, but boy is it strong. It’s giving me a bit of a tickle in my nose, actually. “And here,” he says in that same, almost enthusiastic voice from before as we walk through the next doorway, “we have the Sanctuary: The home of Terra’s Eternal Flame. Brother Cyrus! Brother Caspar! I have brought with me one who wishes to make an offering to the Dreaming Goddess.” On entering, I see two camels dressed in white bedsheets and funny little round white caps standing a short distance away from a brass brazier. Said brazier is burning with a healthy, golden flame, providing most of the light in the room. The camels almost manage to hide their shock at seeing odd little me. “Hello foreign, fluffy, horned pony,” the taller of the two camels says. “I am Brother Cyrus, senior priest of our Lady Terra. I and my junior priest, Brother Caspar, tend to the eternal flame and make sure it never goes out. I understand that you are here to pay homage to Terra of the Water and Flame, and this is good. Now, what might your name be?” I try to say “Amber Spice,” but it doesn’t quite come out right with this extremely aromatic twig in my mouth. “An auspicious name!” the shorter camel, apparently called Brother Caspar, exclaims. “Come now, please, and place your cypress sprig in the brazier.” I attempt a solemn walk up to the Eternal Flame to place this stupidly fragrant cypress twig, but the tickle in my nose grows until I’m right about to place the twig in the fire and— “Ahhh-CHOOOfff!” *BONNGKRSHHFFF* Have you ever slammed your snout into hot metal? No matter what your friends may tell you, it is not a fun experience. That said, on taking a quick look around the room, I am clearly not the one having the worst day here. The priests have gone completely pale, their mouths hanging open in shock. Even Horizon appears to be somewhat aghast. And on the sandy ground in front of me is an overturned brazier along with a mess of flaming coals spewed across the floor, some of them dangerously close to the wooden dividers forming this room’s walls. “AAAAAAAHH!” I scream as I spring into action, kicking sand over the flaming coals to douse them. I stand over the scene of destruction for a few seconds, panting, until Brother Caspar speaks up. “You… You destroyed it. You snuffed out the eternal flame,” he says, weakly. Oh horse apples baked into a pie. I better fix this, fast. “The flame that brings us light and life… that does work for us in the day and warms us in the night…” I work to uncover the doused fuel with my hooves and sweep it into a pile, careful not to burn myself. “The symbol of Terra’s own life-giving love that she left for us, to aid us as she slumbers… snuffed out in a cruel twist of fate.” *snrffl* It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, trying to find the scattered, sand-covered fuel in the near darkness left by the extinguished flame, but I think I’ve found enough. I right the brazier with my hooves and scoop up the fuel in my still weak telekinetic grip, one piece at a time, until all of the wood I’ve located is back in the brazier. “Do not worry overmuch, Brother Caspar,” the other camel says. “This won’t be the first time we’ve had to start a fire with naught but the sacred flint and steel.” I find the sprig of cypress and toss it in, too. It’s thin, spindly, and dry as Outta Stock’s sense of humor. It should do for kindling. “While I will admit that it is rather… inconvenient,” he continues, “it is far from the end of the world. Why, I hear that this one pegasus is working on a way to—” I concentrate on that stupid stick, willing a part of it to heat rapidly, and I push. *Foooosh* Back to its old, golden glow. That worked a little better than expected. And it turns out it’s a lot easier for me to deal with the smell of cypress when it’s on fire. Who knew? “Okay. I am so sorry for upsetting your eternal flame there. It’s mostly back to the way it was, now, so hopefully you can all forgive me and forget this ever happened.” And then I open my eyes and actually take a look at the people I’m speaking to. The camels’ eyes are wide and sparkling with… awe?! Brother Caspar breaks the silence first, speaking rapidly to Brother Cyrus. “Did you see what has come to pass, Brother Cyrus? How her horn glowed azure, and the fuel in the brazier burst into flames? It’s a miracle!” “Indeed, Brother Caspar. You were right to note her name as auspicious!” He turns his head to me and exclaims, “Ember Spires, truly you were sent to our caravan by Terra herself to share with us her loving warmth!” What. “Yes. Praise be to Terra, for sending one so infused with her holy light into our midst!” Brother Caspar chimes in. Whaaaaat. I turn to face Horizon, hoping for some answers or at least something less uncomfortable and out-weirding. I find him on the ground in the hallway, writhing in a fit of silent laughter. Well, at least his reaction is less bizarre. —_(\\_/\_//)_— Horizon We’ve been going around for a couple hours now. And I’m running out of easily accessible things to show her. I get the feeling that she’s not out of things to show me, though, even if she hasn’t really been trying to. For example, casually lighting things on fire. With her horn. I’ll admit, the idea that she could conceivably ignite my flesh from a distance is slightly terrifying. Then again, I don’t know that she can do that exactly. Maybe she can only light up tiny, flammable things, and can only use her powers to lift a few pounds of material at once. Yeah, and maybe the mess tent will have something interesting to eat, rather than the same-old pita bar. Actually, lunch sounds pretty good right now. “You know what, Miss Spice? We’ve been moving around long enough, I’d say it’s about time I introduce you to the local eats.” For the first time since I’ve met her, she actually looks a little bit excited. *Greeeombrll* “And from the sound of your stomach, you’d say so too.” And then it was gone. Not quite sure where else I would take her for food, I guide her over to the mess tent. —_(\\_/\_//)_— You never really appreciate how much you just know until you find someone who just doesn’t. I would like to thank you, Amber Spice, for giving me something to measure myself favorably against. “So,” she says, poking at her pita as if to awaken it so that it might tell her its secrets, “what is this flat, bread-type thing? More importantly, what am I supposed to do with it?” “That, Miss Spice, would be a pita. It is food, and you’re supposed to eat it. It’s not quite a full, balanced meal on its own, though, so we usually pile on other foods we call ’toppings,’” I say, gesturing with a wing at the toppings I’d laid out in bowls around her pita. “I wasn’t sure what you would like on yours, so I’ve given you some options.” “Oh, so that’s what these are all for!” Everything is so new to her. It’s almost adorable. “It just occurred to me that your not having wings might make applying your toppings difficult. Would you like me to help, or—” “No, no, I’ve got it.” And then her horn lights up with a shimmering, sky-blue aura and the various toppings float up off of the table, each bowl engulfed in a similar sky-blue aura. Because that’s something she can do. Right. One of those things that could make life more interesting. As she’s making her toppings hover around in a circular formation, passing different ones under her snout one at a time to sniff them, I take a look around to see only a couple of gawkers attempting to scrape their jaws off the ground. It’s a little bit of an off hour for lunch, so the mess tent is emptier than usual. “So,” I ask, “how are you doing that?” “Doing what?” she says as she continues to make her food blatantly ignore Terra’s grasp. “You know, that thing with the floating toppings moving every which way. Some ponies might find it a little spooky,” I say, pointing out a gaping pegasus. “Well, I’m not about to stop. I don’t see how anything halfway civilized would get done without it.” I guess that’s how she’ll be able to deal with high dexterity tasks without the help of wings. “I wasn’t really asking you to stop. I just mean that people tend to get uncomfortable about things  that they don’t understand, so it might help you to fit in here if you helped us understand what you’re doing.” Or at least help me keep Blue Aegis from flattening her whenever her horn starts to glow. “Oh it’s not much. Just basic pony telekinesis. Er, unicorn telekinesis. It’s one of the simplest things a unicorn can do with magic. You just channel…” Her constellation of condiments stops swirling and drifts back down towards the mat as she trails off. “Huh,” she continues, her face scrunching in perplexity. “I’d never thought of how I’d explain magic to somepony without a horn. How do you people get anything done out here without it?” “Oh, we seem to muddle through somehow,” I say, flexing my wing that’s closest to my side of the mat. “Right, I… I suppose you do,” she says with a frown, which slowly morphs into a mad grin. “Anyhow, there’s food to experiment with!” And with that, several bowls of toppings leap back into the air in groups. Pairs, trios, and eventually quartets of ingredients dance under her snout as she sniffs at each combination and makes a face that says yea or neigh to each one. I glance past her fascinating if a little unsettling display to see that the one other person in the chow area, our little pegasus gawker, had buzzed off at some point. She finally hits upon an… interesting combination of toppings and piles them on her pita. Dates, feta, and olives? Well, I’m not about to stop her. A couple of hopeful, probing bites and a… significant chomp later, she clearly regrets her decision. “Blegh. That smelled a lot better than it tasted. Still, it’s hardly the worst meal I’ve ever concocted. I’m about ready to try again,” she says as she makes the remaining offending toppings float off of her pita and settle into one of the now empty bowls, “but first I need something to wash the remains of this last iteration down.” She focuses her eyes back on me and asks, “Is there anything to drink around here?” I pour a cup of milk from a pitcher and offer it to her, and then set to work building my own pita. It’s kinda weird that I’ve built up more of an appetite walking around today than I normally would have after a full day of pulling guard duty in the caravan’s forward skies, but here we are. She takes a sip from her cup, quirks her mouth, and then slugs back the rest of her milk, finishing with a gasp. “So, what is this beverage? It’s so smooth. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it before.” I swallow my bite of pita, and I look at her like she’s from another world (which, for all I know, she might be). “It’s milk. Camel milk. I guess they wouldn’t have that where you’re from, but you can’t tell me you’ve never had anything like it.” At that, her face turns thoughtful. “Milk, milk, milk… That actually does sound—” And then her expression twists into dawning horror. Ooh. This should be fun. “Are you meaning to say,” she says, drawing herself up to a sitting position, “that I just drank… lactation meant for some camel’s child? What kind of barbaric place is this?!” “Oh, that’s nothing compared to what you just ate before that. That crumbly white stuff you were piling onto your pita was a cheese we call feta…” She locks gazes with me, and her eyes widen as my lips curl into a smirk. “It’s what happens when someone takes milk from sheep and leaves it out to rot for a couple months.” As she pales and starts to sputter like a kettle that’s about to boil, I lose it again. I laugh uproariously. “Oh,” I wheeze, “you should see the look on your face…” And then I see the look on her face, and it’s not the same one she was wearing the last time I looked. Her face had gone from yellow-green to red-orange, and her eyes had narrowed to slits. And her horn’s glowing, and there’s a brigade of bowls floating menacingly at her sides. Oh, flying pegasus plops. I think I may have pushed her a little bit too far. Bowl after bowl of pita toppings fly at me as I stare numbly at my doom. Huh. That ended up hurting less than I’d expected, but more than I’d hoped. It’s not going to be fun getting the agave syrup out of my coat, either. Such a terrible, terrible waste of perfectly good olives. —_(\\_/\_//)_— Amber Spice “Arghle… Fffygdjs… GRAAAH!” In my deep and broad experience with anger, I’ve found that it does some paradoxical things to your vocabulary. When you’re in a bloody-minded rage, your vocabulary practically sublimates into a garbled haze of conceptual gas. Once your rage has crystallized into a proper seethe, though, it all comes back and then some. You find that you know words and phrases that you have no memory of having heard before, or at least that you’d swear up and down to your mother’s face that you’d never heard before and had absolutely no intention of ever saying to another pony so long as you should live. That said, I’m sorry, Mom, but this is just that important to me. “WORDS! I don’t have enough of them to properly describe this situation, your behavior, or your probable parentage and ancestry, but may Terra rot my horn from the inside if I don’t try anyway!” He’s just staring slack-jawed straight ahead at me, the various toppings I’d just pelted him with slowly dripping and sliding down his coat. It’s definitely a better look on him than uproarious schadenpferdic laughter ever was. “Horizon, I am having a bad day, and I have you to thank for it. You said you were supposed to be my tour guide. Well congratu-pony-lations, you’re the worst soap horned tour guide I’ve ever had! Ever! And I know terrible tour guides. I used to live in a gouging palace! At least the ones back home had the decency not to mock their charges to their faces. “Yeah. Today’s just been a fizzling barrel of laughs for you, hasn’t it? I’ll admit it might have been a little funny that I didn’t know how people eliminated waste out here in the desert. I never would have guessed that it involved giving the waste a suit of armor and sending it out to harass innocent mares. “And then there was the thing with the fire and the incense and the sneezing, and now apparently I’m the spark spewing harbinger of Terra’s return to wakefulness or something, which is not how I want to be introduced to anyone. You weren’t helpful there, either. “That stuff, I’m fairly sure I could have gotten over soon enough. If the day had ended there, I probably would have only held a grudge against you for a couple of days at most. But no, you son of a horse, you had to cross the line. You had to go and ruin food for me. And for what? A cheap laugh?! When I say you are the most pointless stallion I have ever come across, I am not talking about your sad lack of a horn!” I take a few deep breaths to rein myself in slightly before I continue. “After all of this, there’s something I don’t get. Why did you even bother to save my life in the first place?” I say, squeezing all of my bitterness into my voice. “Was it so that I could be your personal jester? Your private fool? I know it wasn’t out of decency, a sense of hospitality, or the kindness of your cold, shriveled heart. “I just have to ask: Am I surrounded by barbarians, or is it just you?” Having unloaded on him, I’m feeling… marginally better. I turn away from Horizon abruptly, only to freeze when I see what’s behind me. It appears I’ve attracted an audience. A cloud of pegasi is clumped at the entrance to the mess tent. Some of them are even hovering to get a better view. “Oh come on, Sky!” a voice from the crowd shouts. “I thought you said she was glowing and making stuff fly around like a dust devil.” “Well it’s not like she’d be doing that all the time. Maybe she’s busy freezing him in place with her dark magics?” “No, that’s vampires. She’d have burned to a crisp by now if that were the case. My salt says she’s a siren. Did you hear the set of lungs on that girl?” “This far from water? Camel feathers!” “Aww, I thought she was going to turn Horizon into a newt.” “A newt?” I reply, baffled. I have no idea what that is, but transforming him into anything but a slightly more pummeled pegasus is more advanced than anypony but the highest level unicorns could handle. “So that’s why you’re all here?” I say, still smoldering from my rant. “For a show? Maybe you’re looking for a good laugh like Chuckles the Wonder Colt over here. Go on ahead, laugh it up! You lot aren’t the first to laugh at Amber Spice, and you probably won’t be the last, either!” Amid the sudden silence of the horse flies, there’s a jostling moving through the crowd. A noisy jostling. “Move it! Stand aside, I’ve got a patient in there I need to deal with. Unless you want an express trip to the infirmary, get out of the way.” It is weird to see a crowd ripple in three dimensions. “About flipping time,” a familiar voice says as its owner emerges from the cloud of pegasi clogging the doorway. Meddy? Now there’s a friendly face! Or, at least, one that isn’t jeering. Whatever. Any roof will do in a storm. “Meddy! You came back! Wait a minute, what are you doing here? Isn’t this your day off?” “It is,” she replies, “which is why I’m here at all. I heard a disturbance while I was taking a leisurely flight around the clouds and dove in to investigate. I think I’ve heard enough of what’s going on to tell that you’re having a bad time. “Please,” she says, sweeping her wings out and away as she bows, “allow me to apologize on behalf of this caravan for hosting you so poorly. Please accompany me through the rest of today, so that I might make amends.” Wow. I really wasn’t expecting anyone to care how I felt, at this point. “Sure! Anything to get away from this creep,” I say, gesturing at Horizon with my horn. “Let’s go then, Ms. Spice. Somepony has to show you proper pegasus hospitality, and somepony seems like they’ve forgotten what that is.” And so we leave him, his expression still frozen in the same shocked look from before, as toppings and condiments continue to drip and slide down his coat. —_(\\_/\_//)_— Horizon As I’m brooding on a cloud at the end of the day, Aerial Sweep finally drops in. “Hoo boy, Rize. They do not make nuggets like they used to, let me tell ya.” “Mmph. They pair you with Spot again?” “Well,” he says, deflating a little, “it looks like you’re back to your gloomy old self again. I’m going to take a flying leap of deduction and say today’s tour didn’t go so well. What happened?” “I happened, Sweep. Heh. I tried to take your advice and have a little fun with it.” I give him the blow-by-blow of today’s events. “Hold that hover for a sec,” he interrupts as I’m telling him about our adventures in the fire temple. “She can move things with her mind? That… Well, I guess that narrows down what she could possibly be, a little.” “She’s no succubus, I’ll tell you that. She said something about teleki-whatsit being basic to unique orns, whatever that means.” As the recap continues, Sweep seems less and less happy about what he’s hearing. He waits until I’m done before he’s ready to buck me with both legs. “So let me get this straight,” he says. “You have this incredibly skittish mare who can at the very least move objects with her mind and considers that to be a basic flippin’ skill and can perform only Terra knows what other feats of magic, and you make it your life’s mission to cheese her off?! That’s not what I had in mind when I said you should have a little fun with your assignment today.” Great. Even Sweep’s outraged. And he has every right to be: He could punch me right in the muzzle, and I wouldn’t have the right to stop him. It’d be no worse than I deserve. “Do you even have a sense of self-preservation anymore?” Is that… a tear in his eye? “I’d hoped we were past this, Rize…” And suddenly, I find myself wrapped in his arms and wings. END OF PART I