He wandered through empty morning streets for about ten minutes. Smiling faces flooded from every door and he wandered through mostly full streets after that. He saw many things and understood few of them. Fewer still really interested him. He noted that, when pony architecture wasn’t completely standard, it was extremely non-standard.
“The fair is here”, read the poster. It had a picture of a clown with a ferris wheel behind him. The poster was stapled to a thick, wooden pole. The pole had black wires running to its top from the top of another such pole. In the distance, the series of connected poles continued on, though none of them seemed to be connected to any houses. The wires on the top of the pole with the poster, however, led into the roof of a metallic trailer home. This was the first time he had seen any of these things here.
This held his attention, but it didn’t really answer any of his questions. He trotted off.
The two easiest places to find were the town hall, which was in the center of a seven road plaza and roundabout and was taller than most other buildings, and the market.
It was outdoors. Single ponies sat in small wooden stalls. One sold only cherries. One sold only apples. One sold only screws. Over each stall, there was a sign with a picture of the product sold. He had already been here once this morning. There had been nothing.
Everything was worth one, two, or three coins. It couldn’t be said which value each thing had, because every sale was accompanied by a two or fifteen minute bartering match. One pony would say words and then slide some number of coins toward themselves and then the other pony would say words and slide a number of coins toward themselves. Eventually, the exchange would either happen or not happen.
He approached a baseball stand. “Hey.” The mare at the stand looked toward him. “What does it cost to set up a stand here?”
“Oh, well, my cousin already owned a hammer and a saw and the screws cost a bit each”, he made a face like he had broken a cracker in half and it had squirted juice at him and blinked rapidly, “and the sheet of wood-”
“How much were the screws?”
“Oh, my aunt is a really good bargainer, so she managed to get it down to a bit a piece.”
“How much?”
“A single bit. Or, well, there were, like, thirty screws, so it was thirty bits.”
“...” he figured it out. “So, how much to set up a stand?”
“Right! The wood was two bits and the paint and paper were each three bits, so, about thirty something.”
“Okay… but how much to set up a stand?”
“...Thirty something?”
“Besides that?”
She looked away for a moment or two. “... Nothing?”
“What does it cost to be able to take your already created stand out and put it here?”
“Time? Effort?”
He decided that no permit was necessary.
“Alright. Hypothetically, if I showed up here with a bunch of baseballs, would you want to buy them?”
“I already have baseballs. I’m selling them! Would you like one?”
“But, if you bought -”
“Three bits!”
“-bought them for one bit and sold them for tw-three bits, you would be making money.”
“You’re a weird barterer.”
“But, would you?”
“Well, I do like baseballs… and bits.”
“Alright... It’s been a… something, talking to you.” He trotted away.
She watched him go. She looked at her counter and then under her stand and then at her baseball barrel. She muttered to herself, wondering how she had managed to lose a sale.