20: Cat on a Hot Tin Derp
Karyn thanked her mother as she grabbed the car keys from the rack by the door. If she took additional time to start the car, to the tune of an invisible pony getting in the passenger side, no one noticed.
“It’s hard to believe that the summer’s more than half over already,” she said.
“Yeah. So what are we doing this fine day anyway?” asked Derpy.
“I figured we could relax a bit and have a picnic.”
Although she couldn’t be seen, the movement of the seat belt gave away Derpy’s reaction. “Really? Just a picnic?”
“Well, for the most part,” said Karyn. “You see, there’s a park we can have it in, and there should be a nice spot where just about no one goes. So we can chill out and chat like we used to do in my dorm.”
They drove along what was nominally a highway, but stores were all along the road and cars constantly turned in and out. There were even stoplights. Karyn pulled into one of the parking lots in front of a convenience store.
“Do you trust me to pick up the food and such for the picnic?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” said Derpy.
“Is there anything in particular that you’d like to have?”
“Maybe some alfalfa?”
Karyn unbuckled and got out of the car. “I think that could be a tall order, but I’ll see what they have.”
Derpy busied herself by playing with the climate control and radio knobs, then fiddling with her seat. Karyn’s parents had some fancy features in their car, and Derpy found endless enjoyment moving the seat up and down. When another car pulled up, and the person getting out did a double take at the seat moving on its own, she stopped.
Karyn finally returned, bags in hand.
“Well, there was no alfalfa, but they did have this. It’s probably left over from Easter, so I don’t know how good it is.”
She handed Derpy a small plastic bag labeled “Edible Grass.” Derpy was confused for a moment, then saw that it was some kind of candy.
“Strawberry flavor?” she said.
“Yeah. It’s probably just spun sugar. You should brush your teeth when you get home.
Derpy stared at the bags. Something was off, but she couldn’t quite place it. There was a finger-snap, and she said, “Hey, what gives?”
“Wait, how did you make that sound?” asked Karyn. “You don’t have any fingers to snap.”
“Never mind that now, this is important. Maybe a crisis!”
“What’s the matter?” Karyn slowed the car.
“We don’t have a basket. How can we have a picnic without a basket?”
Karyn resumed speed. “Well, in the first place, I have picnics so infrequently that I didn’t think it was worth it to buy one. In the second, while it is tradition, I felt that the camaraderie was more important than the carrying equipment. And in the third. . . “
“Yes?”
“I didn’t want to have it stolen by a bear.”
Derpy took a pregnant pause. “Is that really a problem around here.”
“No. Inside joke. Never mind.”
They arrived at the park and headed up the pathway. Ahead of them was an imposing structure.
“What’s that thing?” said Derpy.
“A slide. . . sort of. There are an awful lot of playgrounds around here. You see, the town management of this park changes a lot, but they never bother to get rid of the old stuff. This thing, for example. You climb up there like a regular slide, but then it has rollers to carry you down. You’ve got to be a little careful, and not stick your fingers in the rollers or get your hair caught.”
“I want to try it!”
“OK, just once though.” Karyn watched nervously as the rollers spun by themselves, hoping that Derpy would follow her advice and not get her tail caught. Soon enough, she heard Derpy’s voice next to her again.
“That was fun.”
“In many ways you’re still a foal at heart, aren’t you?”
“Sure. You’ve got to be,” said Derpy.
They moved on down the path. To the right of the slide was a large pond, and the walkway curved around it. Every few yards would be another playground ride or a bench. A few people sat on the benches and threw bread to the ducks and geese on the pond.
At the far end of the lake, the path forked in two. Karyn indicated the right-hand way. “Down there is a true picnic area with tables and barbecues and such. But we’re heading this way.” And they continued to skirt the water.
Opposite from the roller slide was another tall piece of metal in the shape of a rocket ship. “A lot of these things probably wouldn’t get built today,” said Karyn. “All playground equipment has to be made of plastic and rest on ground-up rubber tires so that kids don’t fall and hurt themselves. And this one must be twenty-five feet tall! No way you could have that now. Someone could fall all that distance.”
She pointed out the three level floors that separated the rocket into four sections. An ordinary, straight slide extended from the third one up.
“I remember the first time my folks took me here, I was too scared to climb higher than the second level. I really wanted to go on the tall slide, but I couldn’t make it. Then once I was brave enough for that, the top section frightened me even more.”
“I don’t think I’d be afraid,” said Derpy.
“Um, with good reason.”
“Exactly. I’m tough.”
Karyn decided not to belabor the obvious, and they moved on.
At the far end of the path was a tall tree with spreading leaves, and beyond that was a meadow. When they left the path, they could just see the entrance to the park across the pond.
“Now, if we stay here, no one should come bother us. There’s nothing beyond this, and no reason for people to come down here. In fact, if we want to hide behind that tree, you can probably even go visible.”
Karyn set up a picnic blanket while Derpy fiddled with her spell. Soon they were sitting and looking at the trees and birds. Off in the distance, they heard a few children playing, but other than that, there were no indications of civilization at all.
Karyn opened the bags she got from the store. She passed Derpy a plastic container of potato salad. Derpy eyed it a little oddly, but dug in.
“Mm! This is really good!” she said. “What’s in it?”
“Well, potatoes, obviously. And mayonnaise and vinegar. It’s probably the vinegar you’re tasting.”
“Vinegar, huh? I don’t use that much in cooking. What is it, exactly?”
“Well, it’s. . .” Karyn stopped. “It’s just vinegar, you know. It’s an ingredient.”
“Yeah, but what’s it made out of?”
“I honestly don’t know. I just go to the grocery store and buy it. Or my mom does. Or, like now, it’s in something that I’m eating. It’s probably something made from grain. Wheat? Probably, we use a lot of wheat in this country. I mean, they have fancy ones, even some from apple cider.”
“Ooh, I’d like that.” Derpy licked her lips in remembrance of the last time she had cider and tried to picture what the combined taste would be.
“But the regular white vinegar that’s in this, I don’t know what is. Sorry,” Karyn said.
Derpy had eaten most of the potato salad by herself, so Karyn compensated by monopolizing the macaroni salad. They shared cheese sandwiches, though, and relaxed.
“Hey, Derpy?”
“Yeah?”
“How long have we known each other now?”
Derpy looked up. “I don’t know. Four, five months maybe? Why?”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen you, on Earth, for an extended period of time, since I came home from school. And I still can’t get over it. You being real. Ponies being real. Equestria and everything. I just never thought that I would really get to see magic or meet you or any of that.”
“It’s a little bit like that for me too. Don’t forget that, before Lyra started experimenting, nopony believed in humans. We should go give her a gift or something for introducing us.”
“Maybe we should,” said Karyn.
Derpy started to clean up some of the trash. “So what made you think of that just now?” she said.
“Oh, nothing really. You know what they say, sometimes you just have to stop and smell the flowers.”
“You do?” Derpy stood up and walked off the blanket. The field they were in was mostly buttercups and dandelions, and Karyn thought that there wasn’t much to smell. Derpy seemed to enjoy it, though, and she bit off one of the dandelion flowers. “Tasting them isn’t a bad idea either,” she said.
“It would be for me. Although I think dandelions are edible. In any case, I like them more when they turn into puffballs. I think that they’re designed to make you want to blow them away and spread their seeds. They’re like evolutionary bubble wrap.”
“Bubbles?”
Karyn perked up, afraid she had insulted her friend, but Derpy was just confused as usual. “OK, let me try to explain,” said Karyn. “I learned this in high school, so I might not remember it perfectly. See, most trees and flowers, and of course animals, need two of whatever it is to reproduce. And that way they mix their genes and improve over time. But dandelions reproduce the same flower every time. They’re hardy enough that they don’t have to improve. Now, when they turn into that puffball, probably the wind would be enough to let it populate a field, but they also have people around who just think it’s fun to blow them all over. So we help with their evolutionary niche.”
“I get all that, but what does it have to do with bubbles?”
“Oh, well, I’ll have to show you that later. Bubble wrap started as a way to keep stuff from breaking, but then people found it was just fun to pop.”
Their idle conversation was interrupted by a rustling in the bushes. Both of them panicked, and Derpy dove for her invisibility spell. Their worry was assuaged when they saw that the disturbance was too small to be a person. From out of the foliage a tiny ginger cat walked. It stopped and looked at the two of them.
“Aww, it’s a kitty cat,” said Karyn. “Come on, little puss.” She motioned at it to come over to them. The cat just stared, as if it knew that the gray pony was out of place there.
Eventually it sniffed the air and cautiously advanced. Karyn wondered if it might be hungry. “Aww, you want something to eat? We don’t have any cat food, but maybe you like salads?” She put some of the salad they still had onto a plate and pushed it a few feet away. The cat walked over and started nibbling. Karyn could see that, while it wasn’t particularly enjoying the food, it was undernourished and thin.
Derpy had not said anything, and backed off a few feet when the cat began eating.
“You don’t like cats?” said Karyn.
“It’s not that. I don’t particularly care about them either way.”
“Oh, and you’re probably worried about touching a stray. Yeah, we really shouldn’t. It could be diseased, the poor thing.”
“Huh? It’s sick?” said Derpy, backing off even farther.
“Can’t say for sure, but it does look like one eye is swollen shut.”
“I have a spell for that!” said Derpy. “After you came to Equestria that one time and were sick, Zecora talked to Twilight and we got concerned about Earth diseases, so they worked up a curative spell.”
“Really? That could be incredibly useful.”
“Actually, she said it doesn’t so much cure as ‘expel foreign bodies,’ whatever that means. Twilight always talks in more words than she needs to.”
“It probably means that it wouldn’t work on allergies or broken limbs or such,” said Karyn. “But try it on the kitty and see what happens.”
Derpy pulled out the spell. She was about to put her hoof into the slot, when Karyn said, “Actually, can I do this one? You’re around magic all the time, but I still get a little thrill out of working it myself.”
“Sure! I can understand that. Even a pegasus like me understands that.”
“Do you think the unicorns will get jealous that you can fly and cast spells now?”
“There’s no reason for them to,” said Derpy. “If it really comes down to it, there are spells to let everypony fly. But go on, use it. If the cat’s hurting, there’s no reason to wait.”
“Oh, right.” Karyn found the contacts of the spell. It was still difficult for her to use her hands for an object designed for hooves, but she turned them and a green light came out of the front. She pointed it at the cat like a flashlight. It was skittish, but its eye cleared and opened, and it seemed to understand.
Once the spell was finished, the cat mewed and advanced. “I guess it’s all right to pet you now,” said Karyn. She stuck her finger out and the cat sniffed it cautiously. It moved its head to let her scratch its mouth. But quickly it moved on and hopped toward Derpy.
“Hey, don’t cuddle up to me!” she said. “Karyn’s the one who fixed you.” But the cat could not be deterred. It walked around Derpy’s hooves, rubbing itself against them and purring.
“I think he likes you,” said Karyn.
“Shoo! Go back home!” Derpy cut herself off. “I guess you can’t, huh? You don’t have a home to go back to. Can’t you take him, Karyn? Adopt him as a pet?”
“No way. My folks would have a fit if I brought a stray cat home. That’s the kind of thing that I might have done ten years ago and gotten away with it, but I’m supposed to be a responsible adult.” She took a deep breath. “I guess we could take him to a shelter.”
“They’ll take care of him there? The same way Fluttershy does?”
“They will. . . for a little while. Maybe even find him a good home. But if there’s no one who wants him, well, there are an awful lot of homeless cats in the world. Sometimes they have to put them down.”
Karyn was always wary about Derpy misinterpreting idioms and euphemisms. But from the look on her face, Karyn knew that she had been understood.
“No, we can’t let that happen!”
“I know how it feels. It’s awful. We can’t save every cat.”
“No, but don’t you see?” said Derpy. “We’ve made it worse. Maybe this cat would never have had a chance, but now we cured it. It might not be sick, but it’s still hungry, and it’s going to be tired and cold and get hungry again. He’s not happy, and now he’s got to live even longer unhappy.”
“That’s if we let him go. At the shelter, well, he’ll be kept comfortable. And there’s always a chance.”
Derpy stared at the little ball of fluff. It was hunting through the bag for anything else it could gnaw on. Carefully, she reached for it with her hooves. As she picked it up, it jerked a little, but didn’t fight. She held it out away from her and looked it in the eye.
“There’s only one thing for it,” Derpy said. “I’ve got to take him back to Equestria.”
“What?!”
“There must be somepony there who’s willing to take care of him and not put him down. He’s just too cute to die.”
“Are you sure that’s all right?” said Karyn. “I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“He’s not so different from an Equestrian cat. Probably nopony will even notice the difference. He’ll find some nice girl cat and settle down.”
Karyn took him from Derpy and set him down on the sheet. She took Derpy aside and whispered to her, even though no one was around. “Are you really sure about this? Like I said, no matter what you do, you can’t save every cat on Earth.”
“I know. But I really am sure. I know it sounds cruel when I say it, but I care more about this cat than every other cat on Earth, because he’s right here in sight, you know?”
They both turned back around to look at the cat. He had curled up on the sheet and closed his eyes.
“All right, Derpy. I’ll trust you. I just hope everything works out for the best.”
Derpy reached into her bag and pulled out the usual return spell. She cradled the cat in her hooves, trying not to wake him. With as little movement as possible, she hopped into the air. There was a flash of light and the cat was gone. Derpy was still there, and Karyn tilted her head in confusion. “What happened?”
“Oh, hey. Good to see you again,” said Derpy.
“Again? Is this another time concept? How long were you back home?”
“A couple of days. Why?”
Karyn shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Every time you go home without me, time keeps passing here. Why didn’t that happen this time?”
“But whenever you go, you come back at the same time. It doesn’t matter where you go, only where you start from.”
“I’m not sure that works, but never mind. What happened to the cat?”
Derpy immediately perked up. “Little Muffinhead? He’s resting comfortably at home.”
Karyn slapped her forehead, then wiped her hand slowly down her face. “You kept him? And named him Muffinhead?”
“Yeah. I did shop him around to a few ponies, but none of them were really interested. I thought of Fluttershy, but she was on a long weekend trip. When she finally got home, I brought him around to see her. Well, of course she agreed to take him at once. I passed him to her and washed my hooves of the whole thing. I was getting ready to come back when I heard a scratching at the door. So I went all the way back to Fluttershy’s cottage and dropped him off. She said that she didn’t know what had happened, that he’d seemed fine just running around with all her other animals. So again I got ready to come back here, but then I was tired, so I laid down for a nap. When I woke up, there he was, curled up and nestled under my wing. So I stopped fighting the obvious.”
“But you didn’t even like him.”
“I know, but he does so many funny things! Like, OK, he was walking across the room, right? And out of nowhere, for no reason, he does a roll. Like this.” Derpy put her right foreleg under her body, and kept moving in an odd three-quarter somersault. “Only a lot more graceful. And then he just kept on walking like nothing had happened.
“Oh, but I’m not sure that we fixed the problem with his eye. I don’t think he has any depth perception. See, he climbed up on the windowsill, you know? You remember the sill, it’s big enough for a cat to sit. But then birds flew by and he runs to the edge like he thinks they’re going to be trapped by the border. Then once they’re gone, he waits until more birds fly the other way and does the same thing backwards.
“And one more thing. I’ve got blankets all over the house, yeah? And whenever I’m in the room, he’s content to hop up on the blankets and stare at me. But once I leave, he’ll go under. I’ll come back in the room and there’ll be a big lump in the middle of the blanket. So I just pet him through there. I think he likes to be petted.”
“Looks like you’ve got a new friend,” said Karyn.
“I do? I have a new pet and a new friend? Who is it?”
“No, I meant that Muffinhead would be the friend. You’re probably going to have to stop coming to see me so often since he’ll be at home needing you to take care of him.”
Derpy flew toward Karyn. “No! He’s a survivor. If he can make it out here in the fields, he’ll be fine in my house. I’ll leave the food where he can get to it and by the next time I’m here, I’ll have installed a cat flap in the door.”
Karyn walked over to the remnants of the picnic. “I guess he got to you. Like I said, a cat’s designed to steal your heart and make you love him. Come on, let’s go home.”
“Why? Is it going to rain? Are ants going to come? Is something going to ruin the picnic?”
“No,” said Karyn. “I’m just afraid that there’ll be a stray dog hanging out in the bushes.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.037 seconds
Total duration
986 users online
413,535 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Brilliant as always!
here is a point, why have both of the humans not met each other.
i would have thought that particular meeting would have happened by now
Ya!
Yogi Bear reference for the win! I really like how basic this story is. No action, no romance, nobody is dying, nobody is physically harmed. Just a basic story about a girl and a pony who can fly and talk and do normal regular things. I can't wait for next week's installment
For what it's worth, I've got the next 9 or so chapters planned out, after which I'm going to take a one-week break and run a "clip show." And for the most part, they're also all very slice-of-life-ish, but at the same time I'm going to try to work some more wild stories in there on occasion. But definitely no darkening of the mood.
I bet it's the cat. The cat's from Earth, so it's 'anchoring' the timestreams the same way Karyn does.
1226177 good to know
WHAAAAT?! even a MENTION of lyra's human has me giddy for the next chapter update im seriously hyped up woooot! :3 im excited for the update, way back from the first story im still excited with this sequel definitly one of my fave fics ^w^ so i thank you for making this 1226458 sounds very plausible :D but im not so sure if the cat can do that then the first human (who lives with lyra) woulda anchored both already unless it needed abit more so the cat filled the gap right?
Wow, I just realised how much i love this story... And I love this story A LOT! This chapter was amazing btw!
1226144
Now I'm waiting for a Pony and Yogi Bear cross-over where the bear getting beat up is yogi after he falls down a hill while trying to get away with a picnic basket!
Now Derpy wont be lonely when Karyn isnt around her house
Non-action is best action! (In the correct context…)
Aha the funny part when you realise that derpy left for a few days without telling karyn . So if the timeline didn't glitch karyn would have been worried sick
2/16/14 4:45pm
The feels damnit the feels. I alresdy feels for animals and now you you make them come back worse! Its cold at but I dont have to bring them inside.
It's that time again! Yes, that's right, it's time to consider the ethical ramifications of the situation!
Karyn now has access to healing magic. Healing. Magic. While not a panacea, naturally, it could clearly save lives, human lives, as is. Every day that she does nothing, more people die who could have been saved. Keeping quiet about it is actually an incredibly selfish thing to do. She should at least be trying to persuade the Equestrians to help.
I can just imagine that moment...
"Um, hi, miss?"
"What is it?"
"I, I do believe your car is getting bored."