Prances with Ponies

by Typewrittensoul

Chapter 6 (side A): For Love of the Game

Entry 75

I've managed to gain a bit of mobility since getting my casts off, but it's still been pretty difficult for me nonetheless. Still stuck at the cottage.

Just walking down the stairs has felt like the most arduous exercise I've ever taken. And before that, taking a few steps around the room was like an olympic event and before that just standing up left me panting for breath. Boy, I'm out of shape.

Apparently Futtershee had somewhere she wanted to go, some sort of last minute errand but it conflicted her some previous promise to look after the three kids, Applabloom, Sweepy Bot and Boogaloo.

Seeing as how I really didn't have anywhere to go, I volunteered to take care of them. I was pretty decent taking care of my cousins and neighbor's kids back in high school, and I figured it couldn't be too different if it involved sentient ponies instead of human kids. Plus I wanted to practise speaking with ponies on my current speaking level. Not to mention be able to study what sorts of differences there are in pony socialization of pre-adolescents from humans.

And so just moments after they showed up at the front door of the cottage, I realized that kids are the same no matter where you go. They instantly rushed in, not even waiting for me to let them in, squealing and speaking faster than I could understand. Pushing and prodding at my leg and arm in excitement. I didn't know what I was thinking when I told Futtershee that I could handle them. What I thought was them being rambunctious before when I was stuck in bed was actually them restraining themselves.

And the questions? Oh, they just kept asking me question after question!

Stuff about my family, about what it's like from where I'm from, why I was so tall or only had two legs and a whole bunch of stuff like what I normally ate and what human girls looked like.

And because of the differences in technology and well, diet, I had to be careful about some of my answers as well as the followup explanations for my answers. Like what a computer was, what a cell phone was (I showed them mine and they wanted to take it apart and it took some negotiating to get them away from the idea), what horses and ponies were like back on Earth. I did a pretty bad job drawing a girl, but the kids ended up just imagining me with long hair and wearing a dress and started to giggle.

I decided to turn the questioning around on them and asked the kids about their lives here in Equestria. Well, Ponyville. Apparently they've never traveled much of Equestria beyond the town I've yet to visit myself.

Instead of going in-depth into history like I had done (or at least, how they forced me to) they talked about school, about the things they learn like writing and numbers. Interestingly enough while their writing is completely different from human examples, their system of numbers is based on Arabic numerals. I took the chance while they talked about their adventures around town to look through the books to find that indeed, ponies did use 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. They talked about their teacher, Ms. Chichi and their classmates.

The kids were very enthusiastic about telling me the things they've done in their effort to get their cutie marks. From the stories I heard from the other ponies, it was hard to discern what was exagerration and what was fantastic reality.

I never realized how important those markings were to the ponies. There's obviously a reverence close to a sort of rite of passage that centers around these markings.

I'm unsure if it's related at all to maturity or puberty, given how they tried to explain cutie marks.

The other ponies of course, like Futtershee and Ranbow and Applajark already had their respective markings and the kids tried their best to tell me the stories they were told about how those marks were attained. I'm astounded about the concept of a "Ranbow Boom". Must have something to Ranbow Dish, considering she's performed it not once but twice apparently.

Just before it was time to serve snacks, I figured I would try to get them to do some busywork. I often used the tactic when I babysat for my neighbors' kids, not so much my cousins. There obviously never had any sort of Mark Twain or Huckleberry Finn equivalent here in Equestria since the girls jumped at the chance to help out with the household chores without much prodding on my part. I was especially lucky for that since, again, I've been having trouble moving around. "Trouble" being an understatement, of course.

The results of their "help" however, ended up being less than stellar. And by that, I mean it was an absolute disaster.

While there are loads of animals hanging around Futtershee's cottage, it's not like they all live there. Mostly the chickens and a few other smaller animals. Everything else simply comes by from their respective nests or hives and caves or whatnot, or simply from the nearby forest.

Usually the animals would help Futtershee when she cleaned up, but obviously my lack of talent with them had me rely entirely on the kids. Angel was absolutely no help. The darn vermin...

After cleaning up a bit, lunch was served. Lunch that was pre-made by Futtershee before she left so I didn't have to worry about making any taboos with feeding the kids. The household chores also involved feeding the animals, and so with that done the kids were more or less geared to play around and mess up everything that was just cleaned. I now understand the sort of hell that Liam and I put Mrs. Zupan through whenever she would babysit the two of us.

The girls were pretty ingenious in some respects.

For example their curiosity let them manipulate my kerosene lamp without being told what to do. They were mostly used to either magical illumination or using fireflies or other types of insects during the night. After letting the lamp cool, the girls went at it figuing out exactly how it worked, poking and prodding through the mechanisms after pulling it apart and nearly breaking the glass covering. They then went through the rest of my bag, of which I had to seperate what I cared about and didn't. The pile that I didn't had the honor of being sacrifices to the girl's curiosity.

That included things like my worn out pair of jeans, hiking boots, flashlight, water bottles and extra rope. There was no way I was going to give them free, unsupervised reign on my cell phone, clothes made by Raraty or my swiss knife.

As they played around without me I eventually made it to the couch downstairs and claimed it in order to catch my breath and stretch my stiffened mucles. I was too tired to be worried about whether the girls would draw on my face and closed my eyes to rest for a bit.

The dream I had...It was the most vivid one yet. Come to think of it, when was the last time I had a dream about Liam? About growing up and messing around, causing trouble? It's definitely been a while, probably not since when I first came to Futtershee's cottage. Maybe that's why she kept insisting to sleep next to me on the couch...because in some way or another, she knew...

When I woke up, the three little ponies had all fallen asleep around me. Applabloom and Sweepy on either side while Boogaloo was on my lap. Did they all sense it too?

Comments

[Chill Mists(Chilly)]

I still love Boogaloo.

[Eviltomby]

mental image of them sleeping around him "AWWWWW"

[nonameguy0010]

Lol love this chapter. One thing that I don't agree with is his assumption that RD's name is Ranbow Dish or something like that. First off, the name is got is super close to Rainbow so I feel like he woulda put that together with her rainbow colored mane and tale and called her Rainbow Dish. He obv wouldn't know about 'Dash' so that would stay as 'Dish'. Oh well... I still loved this chapter

"Good morning class."
Class groaning: "Good morning miss Chi-chi."
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[Clockwise Gear]

645017
I laughed more than I should have at that picture.

[Sean Retro]

Chi Chi as a teacher.

[Dan50]

Electric Boogaloo is BEST Boogaloo. XD

[Petrified_Discord]

645630

I wonder...
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[Xuncu]

*snerk* Sweepy Bot; Cross and Arrow AND Witchcraft refrence? Well done.

[Azreon]

300th like rawr

[Eonflare]

Taking care of the Cutie Mark Crusaders? I'm surprised he didn't have more trouble.