Reaction
Rose and Sam
Chapter 3: Reaction
Admiral Biscuit
Neither of us talked until we were a couple blocks away—we were still thinking about her. I’d been scared of Spike when he’d first arrived, he was a dragon, after all. Then I’d gotten to know him and he wasn’t so scary after all.
Not knowing, hearing whispered rumors and seeing blurry pictures in the newspaper that Lily got, that was enough to make a mare worry. Seeing her, talking to her . . . she had an accent, but her scent wasn’t alarming and she looked like a hard worker. Ginger trusted her, Berry Black must have trusted her. It had been weird to have her looming over me as she loaded the firewood on my back, and the feel of her paws on my coat, but she’d done a good job loading the firewood. The two bundles were balanced and the twine across my back was comfortable enough. As comfortable as it ever was. We didn’t usually impulse-buy firewood but we didn’t always remember our wagon when we needed it, either.
I must have shifted unconsciously, because I felt a faint tug of magic on the firewood. “Is it okay?” Daisy asked. “Did she load it right? There isn’t bark rubbing against your coat, is there? You could lose hair that way.”
“It’s fine. She did a good job.”
“How would she know how to load it?”
“Berry must have taught her.”
“He’s got a wagon.”
“Surely he doesn’t take the wagon into the forest.” I could picture the close-packed trunks in my mind. “He’d get it stuck, he must go in the woods without it and pack it out, and when he’s got enough, then he loads his wagon and brings it into town.”
“That makes sense.” Daisy fell silent again, her ears roving around before they flicked back and then forward again. “Oh, or maybe they pull whole trees out, that’s how they did it in the foothills of Mount Fairweather.”
“Whole trees?”
“He’s just a single jack, and I don’t see how she’d wear a harness, unless she can go on all fours, so maybe not, but they’d chop one down and lop off all the branches and then cut it into house-sized lengths, and pull them like that.”
“Berry mostly does deadfall.”
Daisy nodded. “Might be easier, a lot of the branches would have already broken off, and the wood’s lighter after the water goes out of it. I suppose with those paws of hers it would be easier to hook up the chain, and maybe she carries some out, too. We saw her carrying it..”
“Do you think . . .” that she harnesses him, too?
“Hmm?”
“Nothing. I wonder how clever she is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she can help with gathering wood and splitting it, which she either knew before or else she learned how.”
Daisy nodded. “Maybe . . . we have no idea what she is, maybe she comes from a forest or something and is naturally good with wood. She didn’t have a tail, did you notice that?”
“Not a proper tail, it could have been tucked in her pants.”
“Don’t some monkeys not have tails? They climb in trees.”
“I thought they did, I thought they wrapped them around branches and hung from them, and used them for balance like squirrels and cats do.”
“I would think a tail would get in the way. Goats climb stuff and they’ve got really short tails.”
“Sheep don’t climb and they’ve got short tails, too. Even if she already knew how to split wood, she would have had to learn to read and write, so she must be clever enough to do that. And why do you think she was talking to the miller?”
“She wants to buy flour?”
I shook my head. “She’d go to the miller for that, we’ve got to. I bet she’s going to work in the mill.”
“Firewood’s one thing, but she could curse the flour or something, couldn’t she?”
“Couldn’t she curse firewood, too? Make it burn wrong?”
Daisy scrunched up her muzzle in thought and finally nodded.
“Do you think she could weed? Help out in the beds?”
Daisy considered it. “She’s at least smart enough to talk and chop wood. . . .”
“And find the tally book and write in it, too.”
“If somepony gave her directions, maybe. You’re not thinking of taking her on as an apprentice?”
“No, of course not.” We’d had our fair share, fillies and a few colts with flower cutie marks who were enthusiastic and wanted to learn. Mostly earth ponies; Lily wouldn’t dream of letting a unicorn touch our flowers, although she begrudgingly accepted a pegasus once. She’d never trust an unknown creature anywhere near our flowerbeds. I wouldn’t, either. Who knew what she might do to flowers? Firewood, at least, was hard to mess up. “Just thinking out loud.”
“You’re sure the firewood is on good? Because I can adjust it.”
“It’s fine. Why doesn’t she have a muzzle? And her ears weren’t at the top of her head where they should be.”
“I don’t know.” Daisy frowned. “Maybe it wasn’t a diamond dog and a minotaur, maybe a bird? They don’t have muzzles.”
“They’ve got beaks, and she didn’t have a beak.”
“We can go back and ask Sam what she is.”
“Isn’t that kind of rude? You get flustered when—”
“Okay, but she’s not a pony, it’s different. She’s gotta tell us. Why do you think she’s got ugly clothes?”
I’d been wondering the same thing, although I had other concerns than her complete lack of fashion. I’d thought they might be to protect her from wood chips, but then if they were, why wasn’t she wearing her shirt? Why didn’t they cover more of her? Then I’d thought they were to keep her warm, since she hardly had any fur, and maybe she’d taken her shirt off when she got hot. “To keep her warm, I bet. Since she’s only got a mane and a little fur under her arms.”
“And then she got too hot chopping wood?”
I nodded. “She’s working for Berry and either sleeping outside or sharing his house, so she can’t have very many bits.”
“I wouldn’t let her inside if I was him. It’s not safe. It’s one thing to have a tame creature helping you, but to invite it inside?”
“Fluttershy lets Harry into her house.”
“Fluttershy is weird.”
“She’s nice, I like her.”
“And she’s really pretty, and I like her too. She’s still weird. Do you think she’d know what the creature is?”
•••
I glanced over as we walked by the Hayburgers. Even if I wasn’t hungry, the smells always enticed me, even if I knew it’d go straight to my rump and crest. Their hay fries were so delicious.
Daisy saw where I was looking. “We could get some food. Or—”
I waited, and then prompted her. If she didn’t say it outright, it was a bad idea.
“Or we could get some catsup and I could splatter it all over my coat and claim that the creature had gobbled you up.”
“Lily’d smell that it was just catsup.”
“She’d faint or gallop to the basement before she had a chance to.”
“You’re probably right.” I snickered. “Maybe we should, it would serve her right for panicking over nothing.”
“She’s probably already got the door locked, just in case. And taken in all her flowers in pots.”
•••
She had the door locked, and from what I could see, she’d taken in all her flowers in pots. Daisy tapped on the door until she finally deigned to open the top half, apparently unaware that the creature could have easily stepped over it. Just as well that she hadn’t seen how tall and leggy it was. And maybe good at climbing things, like a monkey.
“I was so worried when you didn’t come back right away,” she started as we stepped into the house. “I thought that it might have gobbled you up or burned you with its fire breath or—”
“She’s not a monster,” Daisy said. “We watched her work and she’s a hard worker. She can speak, she can read the tally book, she’s not a monster.”
“She?” Lily narrowed her eyes. “Now the monster is a she? What’s next, you’re going to give it a name, too?”
“She has a name,” I said. “It’s Sam.”
“What does that even mean?”
Daisy and I exchanged a look, then shrugged. Maybe that was the kind of name those creatures gave each other.
“She’s got teats,” Daisy explained. “We both saw them, that’s how we know. And I asked her what her name was, and she told me.”
“And she’s not dangerous; Ginger wouldn’t have given Sam an axe if she was,” I added.
That was the wrong thing to say. “It had an axe?” Lily rushed past us and slammed the top door shut again, bolting it securely.
“Of course she had an axe, she’s splitting wood.” Daisy lifted the bundle off my back and set it on the floor, then started pulling the wood out piece-by-piece and stacking it in our already-full crib. “If she’d been tearing it apart with her bare paws or slashing it with claws, or if she’d been using horn magic, that might have been a reason to worry.” Her faint green aura lit around each piece as she put it in place. “But it was a normal axe, same one Ginger uses all the time.”
“When she loaded the wood on my back, if she’d wanted to hurt me, she was taller and had her paws on me. She could have done practically anything. I don’t know if I would have had time to turn and kick.” I hadn’t been thinking that clearly in the moment, but I could have kept my rump to her, just in case.
Lily shook her head. “She’s a monster, the newspaper says so and everypony does too and she lives in the Everfree and works for a donkey, what more proof do you need? Just because she hid her magic from you to lure you in doesn’t mean that she isn’t. She’s just pretending.”
Daisy twirled the twine around in her aura and finally slid it under the log bunk. “She’ll still be at Ginger’s woodlot.”
“So?”
“So?” Daisy’s voice got quiet. “So get your scaredy butt out of the house and come and see her for yourself.”
•••
“I could have handled that better,” Daisy admitted.
“Yeah.” I covered a yawn with a hoof. “We both could have. Hopefully in the morning she’ll realize she’s being silly and move the wardrobe off the upstairs landing.”
“She’s gonna regret it’s there if she’s gotta pee,” Daisy said. “Whatever, that’s her problem. You care enough to try and move it?”
I shook my head. “If anypony needs to learn a friendship lesson from this, it’s her. You wanna share the couch?”
“Might as well.”
The couch wasn’t really meant to have two ponies sleeping on it, but it was workable. One of us could have taken the floor, but I felt safer sleeping with Daisy anyway. Just in case Sam really was a monster.
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Fear makes for a silly pony.
Um, what is Daisy doing at the end? It feels like she is using Unicorn magic but she is an Earth Pony.
Silly Lily. Sam would just patiently wait until he'd got you alone before he went for that delicious pony tummy with a raspberry assault. The monster!
11052515
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/10/13/121462.gif
11052515
Shhh, it's a secret.
thank you for another ch
If ponies pull trees out by-the-root, that could cause erosion, especially on slopes.
Rose is definitely the least neuronic of the FlowerMares.
11052515
When a mare and stallion love each other, the stork can give to them a foal, even if they are from different tribes, whether Earthen, Unicorn, or Pegasi. Stallions loving stallions and mares loving mares* try to figure out how make the stork give to them foals.
* 1 solution to the excess of mares on the show is that homosexual mares can magically reproduce with each other. Since they have only X-Chromosomes, their foals can only be fillies.
Let us step back to a stupid argument in support of homo/trans-sexuality (homosexuality and transsexuality are different things, but one hears the same bad argument). Sometimes a supporter homosexuals claims that it is homosexuality genetic. The bigot points out that if ihomosexuality would be genetic, it would dies out in a generation. Then the bigot pulls the false dichotomy that if homosexuality is not genetic, then it must be a choice.
The bigot has a point. The correct argument to use is that homosexuallity is congenital:
Something happens to the developing brain in utero, making the person either an homosexual.
Mares being able to reproduce magically with other mares would explain the overabundance of mares on the show. Indeed, under the right circumstances, it could lead to nations of Amazonian Ponies.
Let us suppose that a mutation would occur causing homosexuality. Because of magical reproduction of mares with mares, it need not go extinct. Because Mare/Mare-Reproduction outpaces Stallion/Mare-Reproduction (double the mares in a couple, double the foals the couple produces), It could drive stallions to extinction in the populations and lead to the fixation of the trait (fixation is when an entire population becomes homozygous for an allele of a gene).
11052664
woah there buddy, stop and rethink.
They're asking about her doing magic while being an earth pony, not... I have no clue why you're giving a biology lesson.
11052792
It started off as a funny joke about how Daisy might have some Unicorn-Magic. Then I espoused an hypothesis about why the show might have more mares than stallions. Then I brought up a debunked hypothesis which is on the list of top 10 arguments not to use in arguments against bigots opposing civil rights for the LGBTQIA-Community, but instead argue that homosexuality is congenital. Then I mused about how if mares could reproduce with mares by fusing ova, and a mutation would arise causing homosexuality, it could lead to 100% populations.
¿Is it too stream-of-consciousness?
11052816
more that it's a bit long and off topic for a reply.
11052825
Ike I wrote, the 1st part was a jocular response (in S01E08, Look before you sleep, we have an animation-error of Daisy using telekinesis, so maybe she is part Unicorn). Then I got carried away with hypothesis about all of the mares and the possible logical implications.
Believe it or not, I stopped myself there. I thought about writing about hypotheses about why we have 2 sexes anyway (believe it or not, I just stopped myself from elaborating).
11052834
To be fair if you had said the part about the animation error from the beginning I think everyone would have understood. It is something that I can see happening in universe. I had simply forgotten about this happy little error until now.
11052534
Thank you!
We don’t talk about Daisy’s microhorn. She’s sensitive about it.
But yeah, given the wide spectrum of sapience in Equestria, it makes sense that ponies wouldn’t be sure about how smart a given creature is. To say nothing of the blurry line between critter, person, and monster, especially when Fluttershy lives there. Still, good to see some ponies advocating for Sam.
the three sisters are the wrong ones to be talking about monsters.
to them a shadow is a monster.
11052981
¡Something good might have just come from this thread!:
In G3, all of the ponies are female. Let us suppose that G3And G4 take place in the same universe. In the land of G3, ponies reproduce by magically fusing ovæ. ¡Imagine the interactions between the 2 PonyLands!
I give this idea to anypony wanting to write about it.
11052446
It does. And sometimes uncertainty causes more fear . . . Lily should have gotten her scaredy-butt down to the woodlot and seen Sam for herself and maybe then she wouldn’t be as scared. Or maybe she would be. . . .
11052528
Heh, that would be a twist that Lily wouldn’t expect.
11052580
It’s not that secret.
11052637
You’re welcome! I’ll see if I can get the next one out on schedule
11052664
Not like that, just that instead of chopping the tree into smaller pieces in the forest, hooking onto the whole trunk (after it’s cut down) and pull it out that way. Or large deadfall.
Yes.
I’m not sure how this relates to anything in the chapter.
11052792
Yeah, I don’t know either.
11052982
You’re welcome!
11052987
Funnily enough, that kind of comes up later (in a different story [which is already published]).
I figure that there’s going to be some cross-tribe traits in some ponies. I’ve always believed that Rarity tends to go for physical violence first is because Magnum was an Earth pony, although unfortunately the animators wound up eventually revealing he was a unicorn. And changed his name.
Yeah, there’s no way that they could have as clear dividing lines as say, Earth. On the other hand, seems like everything we’ve defined so far as uniquely human has been discovered in at least on other species, so it’s hardly a clear line here either.
Being a good worker always impresses ponies in a small town. Do what you say you’re going to, be honest and polite, and they’ll vouch for you. Might take them a bit to warm up to you, but once they do, they’ll stay loyal.
11053002
That’s true, they’re not the most level-headed ponies, especially when all three of them are together.
Yeah . . .
Although to be fair to them, Ponyville does have a high number of monster attacks, so it’s not like it’s completely unjustified to think anything you can’t identify right away could be a monster.
11053615
One Bad Apple, I think - Babs arrival scene.
11053703
Yup, you’re right
Does Lily truly trust anyone? Besides herself that is?
(It must be simply awful that those Princesses have wings and horns? Why couldn't they be nice earth ponies instead?-goes into a fantasy where everyone looks and thinks exactly like her, no non-Lilies anywhere)
11056009
Not really. Well, and whoever writes the conspiracy paper, because they can’t print it if it isn’t true.
Heh, she probably trusts Princess Celestia as long as she stays in Canterlot where she belongs and keeps the sun going like it should. Probably far less trusting of the new blue Princess.
(and jumping ahead in the timeline, probably had a complete meltdown when Twilight suddenly got alicornified)