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In Which Frederick Discovers A Box With A Pony In It1,248 words
In Which Frederick and Amethyst Get Accustomed To Living Together And Frederick Says Too Much At A Bar1,237 words
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In Which Frederick Discovers A Box With A Pony In It

My Little Amethyst
Admiral Biscuit

Flint is a crappy, dying city. Actually, scratch that. Flint died decades ago, when General Motors closed the Buick factory. The city just hasn't realized it yet and keeps lumbering on like some mortally-wounded monster.

You can't even drink the water in Flint, for Christ's sake.

I lived in Flint through no fault of my own. Well, technically it was my fault; there were other colleges in Michigan than Mott College.

On the plus side, tuition and rent were cheap. I lived in a converted house on Crapo Street. Rent was so cheap, I had the whole place to myself, and that was nice. I didn't have to put pants on unless guests were coming over or I decided to go to class.

Today, I was wearing pants. It was time for the monthly expedition to the grocery store to stock up on beer, peanut butter and jelly, mac and cheese, beer, ramen, and beer.

I hadn't expected there to be a cardboard box sitting on my front porch. As cardboard boxes went, it was pretty solid, solid enough that it sent me sprawling.

“Oof,” I said.

“What the fuck?” the box said.

I might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed (I was going to school in Flint, after all), but I did know that boxes generally didn't curse.

Before I could do more than roll over, a beam of light—like a space laser in Star Trek but more purple—lanced out of the box. Proof that I wasn't imagining it was the distinct smell of burning cardboard.

I stayed well clear of the box until the laser stopped. It was all too easy to imagine what that box-laser could do to my flesh.

The laser winked out, and the smoldering, sundered lid of the box slipped off. Out popped a head.

A pony head. Not a baby horse, but a pony pony like on that TV show.

She—I assumed; her 'What the fuck' had sounded feminine—had purple hair and purple eyes and lighter purple fur. She also had a horn, which made her a unicorn, I guess.

She got out of the box much like a kitten would have and gracelessly tumbled to the porch floor. I wasn't sure if that was innate clumsiness, or if she was just disoriented by her trip from wherever to my front porch, followed by me accidentally kicking her box.

“This isn't Equestria,” she said, looking around. “It's . . . a nightmarish Hellscape. Why do you live here? Is this world filled with your kind?”

I took a moment to answer. I was still processing this turn of events, which I have to admit was odd, even for Flint.

“Uh, yeah. All of the above.”

“Goddammit.” She let out a deep sigh and looked back at the box. “It happened again.”

I probably could have asked her what had happened again, although by context it was somewhat evident.

“I told Derpy it was time to get rid of that portal gun before she accidentally it again. Or at least take it off the top shelf where it could get knocked over and cause . . . this. Right in the middle of getting out the aprilvis, too.” She glanced back at the box for a moment.

“April fish?”

“Yeah, you know.” She turned her attention to the box for a moment and lit her horn. The box glowed, smoked, and then vanished completely with a strange chiming noise. A little drift of sparkles settled to the porch where it had been. “Well, plan one didn't work. Guess I've got to wait for the portal gun to be recalibrated. Unless . . . is there an enrichment center near here?”

“Uh, no.” I was getting mental whiplash trying to follow her train of thought.

“Well, then. I guess I'm stuck with you for the next little bit.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“Yeah, well. Let's just say up front that no one is going to be happy with how this ultimately turns out.”

“Are you going to leave hoofprints on my floors?” Said floors hadn't been swept or vacuumed since I'd moved in, and probably wouldn't be until I was ready to move out, assuming that I had time and thought there was a non-zero chance of the landlord refunding my damage deposit.

“Probably.” She glanced down at her forehoof for a moment. “Maybe somewhere else, too, 'cause that's how these things always turn out.”

“Woah, there—I don't swing that way.” I considered my words for a second. “Uh, sorry about woah. I didn't mean to imply—”

She chuckled. “You're an idiot.”

“I am. It's just that we don't get many unicorns around here.”

“Wish it had stayed that way. You have no idea how many brownies we get in Equestria.”

“Brownies?”

“Yeah. Well, no matter. What is it that you do here, anyway? I never bothered to do much anthropology research.”

“Go to school. I was going to go shopping, and then you showed up.” My host instincts kicked in, belatedly. “Uh, what do you eat, anyway? The lawn's not great, and the grass is probably poison, anyhow. Everything else here is.”

“You eat grass?”

“Not me, you.” I had a weird sense that this conversation wasn't going where I'd planned. Not that I'd planned it to begin with. “What do you eat?”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Well, genoise, baumkuchen, dacquoise, tiramisu, babka, lamington, sachertorte, spekkoek, pavlova, buccellato, kransekake, kladdkaka, prinzregententorte, punschkrapfen, croquembouche, parkin, ruske kape, bienenstich. . . .” Her voice trailed off. “You don't know what any of those things are, do you?”

“No,” I admitted. “It all sounds foreign to me.”

“It's a good thing I know how to cook,” she muttered. “Is there a market around here?”

“Market? You mean a store?”

“A place to purchase food.”

“Yes. In fact, that's where I was going.”

“Do you mind if I come along?”

“Are you sure that's a good idea? If people see you, they might—”

“Believe me, I know a thing or two about people and blending in.”

“Well, if you insist.”

“Excellent. One more question.”

“Shoot.”

Her eyes darted around for a moment, and I saw her horn light up. “What? Where?”

For a moment I thought she was about to draw a revolver from a holster—she had that kind of look to her face. But she didn't have a holster or a revolver, not that I could see anyway.

“I didn't mean that literally. That's a saying, and now that I think about it a really stupid one. Especially in Flint, formerly the murder capital of the US.”

“Formerly?”

“A lot of people moved out of town. What was your question?”

“Do they take gold?”

“Um, no, but you can give your gold to me, and I can exchange it later.”

I hadn't expected her to suddenly produce a sack full of gold. Maybe just because I'd been thinking about cowboys a moment earlier, but I suddenly saw her with a bandana over her face, holding up a bank at hornpoint. And I have no idea where the sack came from; one moment there was nothing on the porch but a few leftover sparkles from the box, and the next moment there was a sack of gold on the porch.

I didn't open it, but I knew.

It was easily enough to buy the house and pay for the rest of my college tuition. I could tell that without even picking up the sack.

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