Matin
She awoke, but did not open her eyes, because that would mean waking up. This meant that the first thing she noticed was the sheets. Very soft and smooth and luxurious. Silk? In any case, she felt very held, tucked in underneath them. Certainly, a new experience.
Her first thought was nice hotel, because stranger’s bed was hardly a very common place for her to wake up in. Then again, neither was nice hotel. But stranger’s bed usually meant waking up sprawled atop cotton sheets and sad pillows, feeling a draft coming in through a door that didn’t quite fit right in a house shared between way too many people. Not tucked into silk sheets, head resting on what felt like a cloud.
For a second after that first thought, maybe two, she was back. Waking up from that weird dream where she was in a land of colorful, magical horses who were her friends? What was the deal with that? But no, then she realized it. Her memories did not dissolve away into nothingness like a dream would. They were solid. They held when pressed. An autobiographical record of months of life here. Conversations and experiences and learning. Then there were the names and voices and faces. Well, she had to admit it, the faces would be pretty difficult for her to distinguish if it weren’t for the coat color and manestyle. But the names and voices were people to her. Wait, no, ponies. Wait, people?
Whatever. The point is that they were her friends and acquaintances, and despite their world being so much more innocent, still were fully-rounded and complex individuals that she cared about her relationships with. Hardly the stuff of dreams.
When was the last time she even thought about a human?
She skipped over that thought, as she always did whenever it came up. Sitting with it….
No. Focus on the now, as she always did. The Buddhist in her would be proud. She was a being with no past and no future. No attachments. Open to the world, in a way that she never was back in her old life of work routines and tablet screens. Floating from one experience to the next. That is how she ended up here, wasn’t it? Crossing a line she had been wary of ever since she started noticing how charmed she was by something clever or funny one of these horse ladies said or did, or how, if she closed her eyes, they really did not sound any different from human ladies with pretty voices. Each time, suppressing those feelings and chastising herself for even noticing said things. Crossing a line that she didn’t even think was possible to cross, because for all she knew before last night, sex did not even exist in this magical princess fairy castle world.
But, no. Sex definitely existed here, if those memories of last night were anything to go by. Boy howdy, it did.
She turned to her right, into the slight gravity well that she felt on the mattress surface, and opened her eyes to look at her.
A slight, content smile, so coy. Eyes that were just as pretty closed as open. Two perfect ovals of light-blue bordered boldly at the bottom by an arc of eyeliner and thick, lush lashes, contrasting so beautifully with that bright, white coat and brilliant, purple mane. And that distinctly non-human muzzle, with its curves so soft and elegant. It was difficult to believe that something so pristine had ever been pressed up against something so worldly as Ellie’s own lips, much less against the other things it had been pressed up against last night…
Ellie smiled. Those were good memories. To be filed alongside the drunk makeout session with that queer-famous touring indie musician who was at a friend of a friend’s party in their self-renovated Victorian/anarchist zine library, and the one night with that exotic dancer/chainsaw artist/disowned airport heiress at her rented farmhouse in the sticks.
Only those times, she was so very cognizant that she was in a world where she did not belong. A temporary visitor, to be yanked back down to the mundane at any second once her time was deemed to be up.
Okay, so that wasn’t too different from her situation here. But the difference was that she was in the moment this time. Maybe it was because she was so far removed from her own context and from the task of fitting in this experience into her otherwise very ordinary, boring life. Maybe it was because she was older and wiser now.
Maybe it was because the other party was literally a magical, talking horse.
Said magical, talking horse woke up, with hardly a yawn or an adjustment. She simply woke, opening those big, beautiful eyelids to reveal a sparkling pair of blue irises underneath, forming a warm, intimate smile.
“Mor-ning!” Rarity sang, with a bright energy that seemed impossible to Ellie for a thirtysomething before coffee in the morning. (Wait, how old was Rarity?) “How did you sleep, darling?”
“Oh, uh…” Ellie croaked, distinctly unable to match said energy, though she hoped her irrepressible grin would communicate the same thing. “I slept great! Your sheets are so comfortable, and amazing!” Just like you, Ellie stopped herself from saying, mindful of not overselling it. “How did you sleep?” Darling, Ellie also stopped herself from mirroring.
“I slept fabulously, of course!” Rarity flipped her mane with a hoof and smiled, fluttering her eyelashes. She continued without letting the moment linger awkwardly. “Particularly since you had no disagreements to sleeping with a properly made bed.”
“Oh, of course!” Ellie blinked, realizing what she meant. “I mean, it’s not what I’m used to, but that’s because I’m too lazy to tuck those things in properly and keep them tucked. But it was cozy. I appreciated it.“
Rarity’s smile widened at that, and from the look in her eyes Ellie could sense that there was more to the story here than just her appreciating a made bed.
A few moments passed in silence as Ellie realized that she knew what she wanted to do, but not what to do. It was always an odd liminal space, that first morning after. That’s what the scripts were for. Cliched lines about cooking eggs. (Did ponies even eat eggs?) Gooey lines about being cute or adorable. Trying to gauge the right level of engagement to be at, to not make the other too uncomfortable. Calculating, because she didn’t know how to do anything else. Because she always believed her first instinct was wrong.
Rarity seemed to have no such beliefs as she moved over underneath the sheets to wrap her foreleg around Ellie’s neck and kiss her warmly. Ellie moved into the kiss, hooking underneath Rarity’s foreleg to place her forearm on her withers. They held each other close, lightly making out for a minute before Rarity turned around and backed herself up, pressing her flowing mane into an impromptu blanket between Ellie’s body and hers. Ellie settled into being the big spoon, which was fitting as she was the bigger one, and held her cheek against the mane at the back of Rarity’s head.
There was no script. There was no calculation. Just Rarity doing what she wanted to do in the moment. Ellie could appreciate that. Maybe that is how these little ponies did things.
But did they? She knew from her readings that the ponies’ storybook romances looked oddly similar to the storybook romances of Ellie’s world. That they had dates and their version of Valentine's Day and engagements and weddings. But sex was never really mentioned. Certainly nothing like Tinder. So what did all this mean?
Was this the worst possible time to talk about this, with Rarity's body nestled so comfortably against hers? Or was it the best? To figure things out before they went any further than, well, they already had? Surely, the earlier she knew what was going on, the better, right?
"So…" Ellie began, possibly the worst way to do so. "I realized that since this stuff all seems to be unspoken of here, I really have no idea what something like last night means."
"Means?" Rarity puzzled. She turned her head so that one eye was able to look into Ellie's.
"Yeah! You know!" Ellie laughed nervously. "I mean, it must mean something, considering how you knew to build up to it with all that flirting. You sensed my hesitation and helped me overcome that, too, so it must be a status change that is meaningful here. A social threshold to be crossed. Oof." Ellie winced. "Sorry. I'm talking like that again."
Rarity blinked in confusion before her eye brightened in realization. "Oh, you mean our lovemaking!"
Ellie's eyes widened at that. That was a very strong word to use out of the gate, at least for her.
"Yeah, that!" Ellie tried to hide her trepidation. "The thing we did. What does that, uh, make us?"
"Oh, it makes us lovers, of course!" Rarity pish-poshed, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. But then she softened. "Ah. I do apologize. You felt so familiar in ways that I never quite thought how things might be different for you, coming from a world with only one species. You would not take certain commonalities for granted."
Yes. Of course. There was an entire cultural context that she was unfamiliar with here, but it was worse than that. There would be things that Rarity would assume she already knew because they were so basic to her, and maybe even worse than that. That even the questions Ellie could ask, if she really wanted to know the shape of that cultural context in all its detail, could offend her.
No. Back to the basics. What was important was the core of the expectation.
"I mean, I just want to make sure. We're not, uh, courting to be married right now, or anything like that?"
Rarity's eyes widened in horror as she frowned. She took a moment before she responded.
"Darling. I do not want to insult you by excluding such a thing out-right, but it is uncomfortable to think of such things after knowing each other for less than a moon, and well, you see, well—"
Ellie interrupted. "Let me take a guess! Lifetime commitments are only made when both parties know reasonably enough about each other, themselves, and their futures for it to make sense to do. They are not made because they are expected due to or being implied by anything outside of themselves."
"Oh, splendid!" Rarity sounded relieved. "So our species do see things the same way!"
"Yeah, let's go with that!" Ellie smoothed over. She was relieved, too. One end of the expectation scale eliminated, and by far the most difficult one. But she couldn’t just leave it at that.
"And, uh, I was just curious. I mean, it's totally cool if not, of course, but would you, uh, want to do all this again sometime?"
Ellie cringed at the memory of those artificially chipper and positive, friend-vetted and lab-crafted after-the-morning-after texts that were left on read. Of the left-on-reads that she had done. But most cringily, of the lesson she had learned early on in her terrible dating career to definitely not ask this question during the actual morning after unless the answer was clearly yes, in which case the question did not need to be asked, and if so, definitely not in that terrible hedging way she just did.
"Darling!" Rarity huffed, and Ellie cringed again. "I am not a Diamond Dog! I—" Rarity stopped herself, and Ellie could sense a whiff of insultedness about her. "I really should not even have to say this, but after everything we shared last night it should be abundantly clear that we like each other. And I do not know how your species does things, but when I like somecreature, I do hope to see them more than once."
"Oh, good!" Ellie agreed, relieved that the question itself did not seem to have ruined things. "I was never really one for one-night stands."
Rarity blinked in confusion again. "Night… stands? Darling, what could furniture possibly have to do with this conversation?"
Ellie laughed at that. Of course. "Never mind! Just a human thing, apparently." Unless it was a word boundary issue again, of course. But that hardly mattered.
The laugh seemed to have broken the tension, and Ellie could see Rarity smile a bit and crucially relax. It seemed as if their expectations for each other were, at the very least, somewhere on the same page.
Ellie, at last, listened to the part of herself that wanted things, and reached over to begin stroking Rarity's muzzle and cheeks. Rarity closed her eyes and leaned into it in response. Ellie kept stroking, enjoying the feel of Rarity's face on her fingers. She let this go on for a bit before asking her next question.
"So, are we 'dating', then?"
"'Dating', 'in a relationship', 'lovers'…" Rarity opened her eyes back up as she considered. "My, we do have a lot of synonyms for this, don't we?"
"It's an important thing! It makes sense." Ellie shrugged. She mused for a few seconds. "And we'll be like this until when, exactly?"
"Well, relationships usually end when one or both parties decide it is time." Rarity was again using that tone of voice she used when explaining the most obvious thing in the world. Which, to be fair, she was. Then she smiled wickedly, speaking in the same tone. "Or, you know. When one of them dies."
"Yeah!" Ellie chuckled. "Or one of them gets sucked back to the world that they originally came from, leaving this one behind forever as if it were just a dream."
"That one might be a smidge too specific to you, darling!" Rarity sang and laughed prettily. Her laughs were all pretty, weren't they? Rarity gave Ellie one last warm smile before she closed her eyes and turned her head back away, snuggling herself into her embrace. Ellie held her tighter, sinking her face this time into the back of her head, knowing that the conversation would be over for a while.
It felt really nice, being in the moment. It felt really nice, too, having moments in the future to look forward to.
She smiled as she pressed her body against that of the unicorn cuddled up against it, imagining in her head all of the things she was looking forward to in all their wonderful detail. Things she would never have imagined would be things she looked forward to even, well to be honest, yesterday morning. How quickly things change. For the better.
But then a thought came to her. A fly in the ointment. A horrifying realization of the implications. Oh no.
This didn't mean that she was a furry, did it?
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So I've refrained from commenting on this and the other Ellie stories thus far (At least, uh, I think I have...) because I feel like they deserve a better comment than I've had time to give thus far. I enjoy the idea of HiE stories and anything in that particular micro-genre--a clash of two wildly different, but oddly familiar, species and cultures clash, and find ways to work out their differences, and even thrive.
Unfortunately, many of them are utterly, utterly terrible.
So, like, what a breath of fresh air this is? Ellie is an actual person, with opinions and foibles and a personality! How wonderful, how lovely, how sadly uncommon!
But really, it would be a crime not to say something about this masterfully-crafted piece of character writing:
It made me snort aloud, anyway =D
Ponies are people, by the Gardez Principle.
Wearing eyeliner and falsies to bed? At the risk of killing the romance, that just seems like a recipe for ruined pillowcases.
And at Sweet Apple Acres, where Applejack had already been up and working for an hour, she felt an odd pang of blended offense, relief, and heartache.
Ah yes, cultural standards and expectations for xenophilia. I wouldn't be surprised if Ellie were unknowingly echoing a cliche "newly discovered species being introduced to wider romantic possibilities by an experienced lover" character. That sort of literature probably flourished when Equestria restored contact with the hippo(campi|griffs), to say nothing of the kirin.
And that last horrified realization.
Just one more mental barrier for Ellie to work through. I think this really is the beginning of something beautiful. Now it's just a question of whether Ponyville's resident human will get snapped back to her own world like this has been the world's longest bungee jump. I doubt Twilight will have the heart to break up a loving couple.
"and from the task of fitting in this experience into her otherwise very"
"and from the task of fitting this experience into her otherwise very"?
"left on read" "left-on-reads"
Just checking, but were those indeed supposed to be what they are? The phrasing wasn't familiar to me, and though I did work out a likely-seeming meaning, I thought I'd ask.
Heh. :)
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...Huh. Okay, sorry, but FIMFiction seems to have completely failed to notify me of this reply, and I don't know why. I only saw it now because I happened to be looking back at older comments. So, uh, sorry if my reply to your reply isn't as good as it might be, as it's been about a month, my memory of what I was thinking isn't that clear, and I don't currently have the time to do some sort of deep reconstruction attempt.
(Hypothesis: Did you add the comment-link in an edit? I remember someone saying somewhere that that at least sometimes caused them to not send notifications, or something like that. Still, if it was that, I'm not sure what the best solution would have been, so [shrugs].)
"I appreciate your high opinion of the prequel. I like my worldbuilding as well but my main goal with this series is to build a better Human-Goes-To-Equestria-And-Makes-Out-With-The-Horse-Ladies story, not the worldbuilding (though it is an essential part of it)."
Well, I think it's working at that too. :)
(Though, admittedly, I've not seen much at all of the bad ones, because, well, see said adjective.)
"So it makes more sense for the architecture to be explained by the other idea you brought up."
Which idea was that? I'm not seeing another one there. Unless you mean the other-species thing, and are thinking about that happening under Celestia too?
"This direct idea was planned to come up like 10 stories from now!"
Oh, interesting. :)
"If you saw Ellie the human in real life with her blonde hair, while you may be generous and not assume it's bleached from raven black, it'd be a pretty good guess."
Ah, so the joke, to another human, would be that it almost certainly wouldn't shock them? Whereas we the readers don't have the information to get that and they the ponies wouldn't necessarily see anything odd about the coloring and/or patterning?
"Entirely consequentialist. I need the mathematical ability waterline to be higher than human world (e.g. Pinkie learning Graph Theory in order to plan parties better) so that I can make terrible references. Also it's another fun way to differentiate the two worlds."
Ah. :D
"That is the second-favorite line I've ever written so far."
Heh. :)
(Though I'm now curious (and sorry if I'm just forgetting): What's your favorite?)
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I really appreciated this comment and do hope you leave more! Comments like this really keep me going even if they are done in haste, because I don't really expect that large of an audience for this very strange series of stories.
And it's interesting that you comment on Ellie being well-rounded, because she is basically an amalgam of my friends and I: close enough to me in worldview and socio that I can insert anecdotes and bits from my own life for verisimilitude. That is, she is as much a shameless self-insert author avatar as the protagonist of any other HiE fic.
As to the last line, I have been sitting on that for months at this point, so I am glad it finally got out. It is very near and dear to my heart.
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I mean, sure, her status is a self-insert is pretty clear. But she's also like, clearly a person in addition to a being vehicle for naked (hah!) wish fulfillment.
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I actually wanted to depict Rarity without her makeup when going to sleep, but could not be that untrue to the actual canon, where both she and Maud canonically sleep and wake with fully made eyes. I intended for this to be commented on in this story, but it didn't quite fit with the rest of the conversation. It did find a good place in the upcoming 21-chapter arc, though!
I thought I fixed the slightly weird grammar in the quoted line, but I guess I copied in the draft wrong! I'll fix it along with Reese's comment later, but yes. That is, in fact, exactly what Applejack was up to at that moment in time.
The interesting thing is that ponies keep coming across species that not only lack any cultural clashes that cannot be solved in a 22-minute friendship lesson, but often even speak their language! I mean, even for the isolated Kirin, Autumn Blaze was able to sing to Applejack and Fluttershy in idiomatic Ponish with no problems, and her motivations and attitude were instantly recognizable. Sandbar’s interest in Yona was only a problem insofar as Yona’s anxiety about expectations, and not xenophilic relationships being considered inherently wrong, even though yaks seem to be depicted as fairly isolationist.
So everypony is able to pattern-match this to humans, and Ellie is very self-aware as to not give them any reason to think otherwise.
Let’s not jump the gun here!
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It’s a fairly new concept, only possible since the rise of texting as default communication in the dating scene.
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Yep. Considering Stephen Magnet going for a spa day, griffons going to flying camps with pegasi, et cetera, all happened under Celestia’s reign, I imagine efforts to accommodate other species have been around a long time.
One I will not repeat in a T-rated fic.
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Interesting. This is an intersection of subjects I know even less about, I think, than I do the intersecting subjects individually. I also hadn't realized that's where the expression had come from.
To confirm or correct my hypothesis, to leave a message "on read" is to read it but not reply to it?
Hm. Not sure how much extra accommodation griffons would need, since they're not all that different in size and shape than ponies, but good point; even they still serve as an example that other species are there, and no one, that I recall, reacted with surprise just at Gilda having been to the same flight camp as Rainbow dash.
Ah. :D
If anything more curious now, but understandable, from the sound of it, you'd not want to mention it here, yes. :)
(And some interesting and/or amusing things elsewhere in the commentary here, too, but I'm afraid I am, as you said, doing this in haste currently. I've only a little bit more to get done to finish what I wanted to have done during my Saturday waking period, and it's not that far after dawn on calendar Monday yet! :D)
Ahhh, the tension of the morning-after. Always a fun time. (I usually chase away those anxieties by sneaking out of bed and making breakfast. "How do you like your eggs in the morning?" always at least got me a laugh.) Silly Ellie, too wrapped up in the pains of the past to truly enjoy the afterglow... at least, at first.
Maybe that's the way we should do things more often.
I remember you telling me about this line, but it still got me.
You just had to get me with another side-stitcher, didn't ya?
(And you know my answer on this, though it differs from yours... In any case, just embrace it, Ellie. You got a hot magical horse girlfriend outta the deal, so what's a silly label in comparison to that?)
I do like the addition of the second chapter. Gives a nice conclusion, as well as working through a few of those pesky human/pony cultural differences you're fond of expounding on. Now to read the spicy middle that was glossed over...
10660756
I've been thinking about that line ever since your Tempest in a Teacup, and the mental image of ponies cooking each other eggs still makes me laugh, which is why I had a reference to that here!
I certainly hope I'll take my own advice once I'm back out there, post-pandemic.
The fact that I see your point is probably the strongest evidence that you are right in this argument, but I still refuse to concede. Ellie is not a furry! Not a furry!
Thanks! I originally intended for this chapter to be the last part of the "spicy middle" but I figured it made more sense to put it here to let people just read through the romantic arc without having to look at my Sin Words.
I really, really like your writing and characterization. Now to go read the Starlight fics.
Thank you so much for the wonderful pleasure of reading your creation. I am a Boomer Brony, a straight white male who grew up in Southern California in the 1950s. I came of age and attended UC San Diego in the days of Flower Power and Woodstock. So I've been enjoying the societal changes since then, from Gay Pride to LGBT to LGBTQ and gender equality.
I know nothing of Ellie's traumas, decisions, and confusions, so it's interesting to gradually learn about her world on Earth, and then her ongoing learning and development in a new world that is both similar and different. It's great that she has the intelligent and open-minded Rarity to guide her.
I hope I'll soon discover more of your enlightening stories.