The Little Curiosities

by Comma Typer

Keep Talking and Nobody Gets on Fire

Rays of the setting sun shoot past the hills. Finally, the sun crosses the horizon, plunging the sky into a starry and beautiful moon-graced darkness.

“Behold!” yells the Earth pony tour guide. “The Applelachian Mountains at night!”

The wow!’s come from her travelers who follow her outstretched hoof to see: mountains, an endless range of mountains gilded in moon-given outlines of silver.

“Now would be a good time to set up camp… and good place too!” she says. “We’ve got a nice view which will be great to wake up to in the morning, enough trees to give us shade from the sun if you want to hole up here, bushes with natural berries galore… oh, it’s beautiful! I can’t wait for campfire time!”

“Uh, but what about the firewood for the campfire?” quips the only griffon in a group mostly composed of ponies. “I thought we were going to have flashlights.”

“Well, Gilda, that’s why I brought my assistant over here for a woodless campfire!”

The tour guide turns to a pony-like creature in the group. “Hey, Autumn Blaze! Now’s the time!”

---

Days later, at a lodge where staff for Applelachian tours and camping trips reside, Autumn Blaze could be found chatting with her co-workers by the water cooler.

“So how was your first time being a live campfire?” asks her stallion co-worker.

Autumn Blaze’s eyes light up at that. “Oh, it was great! I get to hear everyone’s ghost stories, I smell like sugar and spice thanks to all the marshmallows my body heat’s roasted, and… did you know that sleeping while you’re on fire feels like a cozy nap in a warm blanket with the most snug pajamas in the whole wide world?”

“Uh, I’m a pony so I don’t think I’d like a blanket of fire on my bed, thank you very much. Anyway... which one do you call yourself again?”

“It’s all modal, so it depends, though updating my tour guide license got a little confusing since they asked for both of my species—okay, so, right now, since I’m not on fire, I’m currently a kirin. Anyway, the only downside to the whole campfire thing was staying in place the whole time, which is boring after an hour! You saw me come out of the boss’s office, right? That’s because I requested her to have me in as a dynamic campfire! As in… you know! Why do campfires always have to sit there and do nothing all day anyway?”

“Uh, because they’re logs?”

But the kirin goes on. “I was already telling my own tales to the others and they were laughing at my jokes! You don’t hear of a comedian campfire out in the woods, right? Maybe if the comedian’s speaking through fireproof speakers in the fire, but that’s beside the point, because if we can have comedian campfires….”

---

As for Gilda, she takes the train ride home. No flying today; she is more used to trains. Trains may be slower than flying, but sitting down with dozens of wheels carrying her across the land sounds better than flapping her wings for hours on end.

“So how was it?” asks Gabby beside her. “Was it fun?”

Gilda rolls her eyes. “It was fun until our campfire couldn’t shut up.”

“But you could refund, right?”

Gilda glares at her. “That’s not how refunds work. ‘Sides, I booked this no-refunds tour a year in advance.”

“But, you know… the both of us turning into griffons… didn’t that make you stop and think that maybe your plans have changed a lot and that you might not have wanted to go camping?“

“I don’t care if I turned into a stupid breezie and got burned alive by some loudmouth campfire. I paid for it and I was way past the refund period. I was not going to let my money go to waste."

Comments

[redandready45]

Oh, Autumn Blaze: can't live with ya, can't live without ya.

[FanOfMostEverything]

It’s all modal, so it depends, though updating my tour guide license got a little confusing since they asked for both of my species—okay, so, right now, since I’m not on fire, I’m currently a kirin.

"Well, I mean, it's not modal modal, it's just a question of which way you read it."

Also, not exactly appropriate for the content, but the title still made me think of this:

[Eroraf86]

Nirik is best campfire.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I love kirin/niriks. Need more of them.