Across the Universe

by JewishKamikaze

A Momentous Breakfast

What was instantly striking about the community mess hall was the vaulted ceiling in the latest annex, something unexpected from a civilization of such relatively miniscule humanoids. The entire space sat chiseled out of the bedrock in the lower reaches of the spiral. It was apparent that the space had grown to fit the needs of a growing village. It began closest to the spiral as a narrow, rough-hewn arch with a few tables and chairs into a larger, vaguely more rectangular space, and finally it opened into an efficient, smooth space that stretched on for quite a long ways and was itself a rectangular prism.

The walls were more or less uniform in the striated rock. What were not uniform about them were their unique professional etchings. These depicted tales of old. Some had great hunts, some great events, and some of animals. The nonconformity came from the disparity in style. The beginnings were baroque, then rococo, then realist, and at the far back, a large, romantic mural. Each period of art was beautiful, even if the designs became faded as they neared the entrance.

The floor in the first section, the oldest one, was well-worn and rough-hewn, but by the back of the last section, it was smooth and cut with precise masonry. Here and there, geologic formations depicting the land’s own history could be seen, and was rife with artificial blemishes that had been superficially scratched over the years into the sandstone and limestone layers. Mostly, these were near the floor and far less prominent than the grand etchings, but a few legendary examples had made their way towards the ceiling or had literally carved an indelible mark into the local geologic history. The most prominent of these was a long, capped, horizontal cylinder neighboring two crude ellipses floating at the flat end of the cylinder. In spite of a few similarly juvenile examples, the atmosphere was wondrous. What filled it to the brim was the din of the crowd consuming their meals.

Tharur introduced his cronies across the table, “…and this is Naruk, this is Lebb, this is Zem, and here’s Dentrassis.” Fluttershy felt the emboldened façade of her paradigm eroding with pairs of protruding, crocodile-like teeth gracing each grin. Their eyes were of unnaturally fiery or steely colors. She noticed that each time they blinked, a number of eyelids converged. She cowered, unable to stifle her nervous reaction.

“Don’t be shy.” Tharur reassured, putting his open bundle of claws on her side and grinning at her encouragingly, bared fangs eminent.

Don’t be shy. You’re being ridiculous. The voice in her mind that admonished and implored her sounded like her own. However, it lacked the hesitation or the warmth it had when it addressed others.

Not noticing the hand retreat, she sat up straighter, filled with an iron will, and she summoned up the greatest extent of compassion and oratory excellence she could offer.

“Uh, hi. I’m Fluttersh—,” her voice decrescendoed into a squeak. Refusing to tolerate this weakness, she picked it back up, “I’m Fluttershy.” The forcefulness in her voice astounded her. To her audience, however, it was of the auditory proportions her ‘yays’ offered Rainbow Dash in Dash’s practice runs before the fatefully explosive competition in Cloudsdale.

As the reptilians reclined back into their chairs after having craned themselves forward to catch a word or two, their understanding demeanor put Fluttershy more at ease. In fact, now that all were sitting at their regular posture in their chairs, it was Fluttershy looking down on them, not vice versa. She derived further confidence from the way their faces were more exemplified by their large, almost cute eyes and noses rather than their prominent, interlocking teeth. It’s not all bad, really.

“So, er—what do you all do?” Fluttershy forayed into uncharted territory as a lukewarm plate of crusty, amorphous rolls was placed in front of each member of the lukewarm conversation. She recognized this as her deus ex machina in that she hoped that it would relieve pressure off her and sap attention that could be used analyzing her every word and mannerism. Being held under uncompromising scrutiny had long-since been a long-held fear of hers.

Over the course of many minutes and a number of floury bites of what barely qualified as cake, Fluttershy learned and forgot most of the names and occupations of these new acquaintances. She began to realize that she had become something of a celebrity in the village just by being different and new. On the sides of her head, perceptible pressure could be felt where imagined eyes were analyzing the superficial and were attempting to probe deeper. Whenever she glanced in the direction from which the eyes seemed to bore into her, it seemed as if nobody cared to engage in so much as a head scratch in her general direction.

The last time she was a celebrity, people were nosy and in her face. Here, so far at least, they did not ask questions and respected privacy. Moreover, they were more open about less serious topics and merely sought companionship from their peers, as opposed to socially strategic information.

People were different from the ones in Ponyville. It seemed that to get their kindness, you just had to be a fellow occupier of space and a custodian of sentience. Already, it seemed as if she had made an impression in the right direction because the reptilians sitting with her were still talking. This one was a field hand, this one was a smith’s apprentice, this one was an administrator, and this one was a trade liaison, and so on.

“…but ugh the usual breakfast, am I right?” one interrupted her thoughts, which vanished in a puff of logic. She looked up. The complainer was Dentrassis, who was a lunch chef. “Of all the meals in Butzbik, this one is by far the worst.” Fluttershy had eaten enough of the brown cake to be polite, but not enough to get sick. Tasting it once more, she was greeted by a dry, bland taste that offered hints of cardboard that stuck starchily to the palate.

“Er—so why don’t they just add something like fruit to it and change its shape to something easier to cook?”

“Why would you add fruit to a cake made in a pan?” Tharur asked. Everyone’s attention was fixated upon her. The world was crashing in; there was nothing that existed neither in space nor in time than the small capsule of matter that comprised the dining hall. In that moment, she had to answer this seemingly innocuous, abstract question on the rationale behind mixing dough and fruit.

Why not?

“Where I come from, it’s normal. It’s really good—I’ll show you,” she challenged cordially. Her boldness frightened her. Am I really doing this? What have I gotten myself into?

Not hesitating and with a quick, “well I’m done,” Dentrassis pushed away from the planet with his feet and forced his chair to whine across the well-worn stone floor. The rest followed. What have I done? Oh dear. Oh dear! With a flick of the wrist from Lebb, and her disappearance from the doorway at the far end of the hall, Fluttershy was beyond the point of no return.

Sitting as a normal pony would, it took her much effort to wedge her way into a position so as to escape the confines of the chair. Once this was done, it was clear the whole room was watching. The sturdy ancient chairs were high-backed and had relativelyhigh seats. She felt pummeled under scores of eyes transfixed upon her as if in a single fiery gaze. In the heat, she crouched below the seats’ angle of vision and trudged, feeling ashamed and helpless. Her wings were locked in position at her flanks, the muscles in them tensing as the door approached. She gritted her teeth with frustration at her uncharacteristic rashness as tears welled up.

“Come on, Fluttersh—y!” Naruk poked his head back into the expanse and pronounced her name to the best of his ability in his language of jarbles and slurps. His voice did not have a single hint of scorn or begrudging, much to Fluttershy’s amazement. “Let’s get going!”

Fluttershy snapped out of her suppressed daze and galloped out. By the time she flew through the portal to the foot of the central spiral, she was flying. Already were her new companions up the staircase enough that only a single flicker of a tail was visible before it slid out of sight.

Filled with excitement and runaway abandon, Fluttershy roared up past them with blistering speed. She stopped at a large green door and stared down the flights. She covered many flights before realizing that she had not the slightest inkling as to the whereabouts of the kitchen. So embarrassed was she at this realization that it deflated her.

Fluttershy loped down the staircase to catch back down with the others. As the sound of clawsteps drew closer, it was all she could do not to cry at her discourtesy. The walls seemed to be closing in on her, her mistake surely signaling some bad consequence. The coldness and blandness of the scenery sucked out warmth and left her feeling deprived of heat, although she had worked up a sweat going up and then down without much pause. She continued down, feeling ashamed. A flight or two down, she nearly collided with Lebb, who dodged just in time.

“Overeager to prove us incorrect, hm?” Tharurr chuckled.

“I’m—I’m—I’m just so—so sorry—,” Fluttershy’s voice cracked.

“No worries, Flutt—Fluttershy-y,” Lebb remarked, carefree, “Let’s see those cakes-from-a-pan.”

“Uh—sure… Let’s go,” trying to mask her surprise at the lack of anger and frustration emanating from someone she had nearly tackled. Subsequently, they surmounted a couple flights of stairs. Fluttershy, in the truest sense of the word, felt awkward. Although she felt physically stable, the fabric of her situation felt delicate and warped. People did not react to her messing up; it was like they did not even care. They did not offer help or console her or baby her or anything like she had expected. In fact, they just accepted her as she was at any given moment. At this moment, she realized how tiring those phenomena, being helped, consoled, and babied, had become. They just seemed to accept her and her social abnormalities while ostensibly maintaining perfect social parity with each other. She skipped up a few steps.

“It’s just here,” Naruk explained, pointing at a large green door, “The grand kitchen.” For the second time, Fluttershy had reached and passed the entranceway. Now she was half a flight above it. By the time she turned around, all that remained in visual range was an open green door. In such a location as was hers, where any and all noise ricochets about constantly, it was peacefully noiseless. She took a deep breath and sighed.

Fluttershy was left speechless not only at her luck but at the nonchalance of these people. She looked up, scanning the reaches of her vision. A torch idly blazed nearby. I should enter soon. I thought they’d be mad. Why would I even cry about going too far ahead? Don’t other people do that all the time? Maybe I’m not overstepping or being rash; maybe I’m being normal.

The next sound forced an ‘eep’ and a flinch out of her. A metallic object clanged, the sound splintering the silence and Fluttershy’s internal reflection. She hurried through the entranceway. Inside, time had not stopped. A storm of bangs, clangs, and pangs instantly alerted her to a flurry of activity. In its midst, there was cheerfulness in the scaled beings, jesting and giggling, retrieving the items not for the goal, but for the process. Didn’t they want to prove me wrong or crazy?

“Alrighty then. Let’s see some cakes-in-a-pan-with-fruit,” Dentrassis smiled as the activity slowed and the supplies were in order.

“Um—okay. Here goes,” Fluttershy mumbled as her hooves carried her steadily towards her challenge. The pile of flour, pots, pans, and other ingredients daunted her. She imagined that her every move was being analyzed. She looked back at the fanged fiends and expected them to be watching her, but she saw them giggling and dancing about one another as friends do. But—aren’t they watching me to see me mess up?

The kitchen was large, clearly large enough to sustain the entire village of Butzbik, but as any good kitchen would allow, it was decentralized enough that she could fulfill all her objectives while staying within a comfortable area. This layout made the kitchen similar to the dining hall. The different styles of cutting and engraving on the walls told a wordless tale of many generations’ expanding. Central islands lined with drawers dissected the room and created narrow pathways with the help of wood ovens and stoves lining the walls.

The stretches of the ceiling closest to its perpendicular intersection with the walls were punctured by pipes for exhausting soot to faraway patches of air. The rest of the ceiling was clear, although a couple of Doric pillars restricted the view towards the back, protruding up through respective islands. The back lay in twilight, its ovens cold, dark, and mysterious. It was uncertain whether or not anybody or any dragons or scary monsters lurked in those confines.

Towards the main entrance and the green door, there remained fair light. A few embers gently wasting away reddened the interiors of nearby ovens. There were a few lanterns about, too, painting angry shadows using a canvas of stone and a palate of red and gray. Fluttershy, not the biggest proponent of contemporary art, shuddered when she first glanced at the web of varying darkness.

She grabbed a pan with her teeth and set it down on the cold countertop. Then, she picked up a sack of flour propped up lazily against the island and set it down with a thump. The sack clearly contained flour because its contents felt fluid but dense, as well as altogether deserving of their own weight. Lifting it exerted an eurgh and a short pant, but she was undaunted. For all the trouble she was having to cope socially, none was to be had dealing with inanimate objects. The second sack was full of sugar and perceivably heavier than the last. This one seemed to be coarse sugar for its smell and the uneasy packing of the crystals that shifted about. Squinting and tensing all of her muscles to lift the sugar, Fluttershy was locked in a titanic struggle with the sack and her clenched teeth, whom she was afraid would be the first to succumb to the strain.

Fluttershy gave up, allowing a brief, half-second’s respite to rally. From under her, the sugar was lifted up. Shattered was the stark and noble image of straining against this challenge alone. Her pride deflated, she looked with dismay as her friends were taking all the heavy things. They don’t have to be so nice. I was fine doing it on my own.

“You guys don’t have to be so nice—I—I would have gotten it by myself,” she remarked, stuttering and then regaining poise with a pervading tone of gratitude. She spotted a small measuring cup and bent to grab it, but it had vacated its location and rested atop the island before she could get it. “Really… oh…”

“Don’t mention it, uh, Flu—buddy. We’re your friends!” Naruk chimed.

Friends. They’re my friends. I used to wonder what this kind of friendship could be.

“Alrighty then. We’ve got everything in place. Let’s see you make those special cakes-in-a-pan, which I hope haven’t been too overhyped by all this here commotion,” the words rolled away from Lebb‘s mouth as easily as the heavy utensils had been translated onto the counter.

“Uh… Okay… Here goes.”

In a flurry of fire, Old Janx Spirit, and measuring cups, a single sheet of golden pastry was procured from a pan. It was tickled out of the pan in two swiftly slashing strokes by a scrupulous spatula and deposited onto an adjacent plate. The intermediate light and the plainness of the plate emphasized the irregularity the speckled creation wrought. It was so perfectly alien to the herpetological beings that they stood in awe around the masterwork, momentarily moved beyond elementary eloquence.

“There you go! One dragonfruit pancake.” Fluttershy beamed as she literally hovered around their heads in anticipation. It was an unusual position of power she had acquired in that stretch of time; she had astounded them and impressed them, even reached a mythic status, albeit temporarily, as a baker. This accomplishment put her in a state partially unlike her usual self in that she did not falter or feel uneasy when she spoke. It injected confidence into her manner. This sensation of confidence instantly felt natural to her, and she accepted it in the spur of the moment.

“I like it,” Naruk breathed.

“Indubitably,” Tharur returned, acknowledging the shapeliness of the new culinary manifestation more than his companions.

“So, who wants to try some?” Fluttershy smelling-salted them out of their trance, relinquishing her state of authority but not forgetting the sense of personal certitude she then knew was attainable.

“I—I’ll try a bite,” Dentrassis withdrew from the hypnosis, his mind having thawed enough for coherent utterances.

Fluttershy divvied up the saucer into equal parts with the knife previously used for cutting the dragon fruit and scrounged through the cabinets for forks. In little more than a flash, nothing remained of the creation but some burnt bits stuck to an empty plate left somewhat greasy, cold, and crispy in the absence of a pancake. Fluttershy’s patrons left the entirety of what was once on the plate up to peristalsis, even after each had enjoyed a good portion of breakfast several minutes prior.

In this frozen snippet of time, Fluttershy’s mind wandered back to the grand conundrum of why these people were nothing but nice. They did not actively instill fear, contrary to their appearance. Behind their beady eyes, sharp grins, and protruding snouts, there emanated only kind thoughts, or so every snippet of evidence would harmlessly suggest. If they had any ulterior motives dealing with her, they would have already carried them out.

In its own way, this exercise, that of mid-morning baking, granted Fluttershy something as well. Despite only effectively existing for a short time, her sense of belonging emerged from the murky depths of her soul, exhumed from its untimely grave by the kindness and hospitality extended by the friends in front of her. However, all was not clear to her; this reality, real as it was, did not match up with the reality she was accustomed to.

The notion with which she grappled came from a state of culture shock. For many, there is a fine line between friend, acquaintance, and stranger. This concept was the one Fluttershy not only adhered to, but depended on. Without it, everyone would be recognized as hostile. In her past existence, everypony save a few lucky souls were to be feared until proven innocent by someone already proved friendly, protecting her from harm and overly-engaging social stimulus. Moreover, the only social stimulus she achieved was with those with whom everything was shared. In this new reality, she found herself with friends who did not have to share everything. They were just nice. They’re friendly because they can. They don’t have to have a few best friends and a bunch of strangers. Everyone can be a friend. I could be friends with anybody. I could have loads of them! It would be really nice. I’d be just like them: outgoing, caring, spontaneous.

In a gleeful humor, Fluttershy probed, “So—did you like it?” She squeed hopefully and smiled nervously.

“You should be the head breakfast chef.” Dentrassis suggested.

“But—but—wouldn’t that kick whoever that is out of their job anyway and hurt their feelings? I—I—I mean who is the...er main… breakfast chef anyway?” Flutershy’s face looked nervous and distraught once again, and she started shifted back into submission. You’re doing it again. The thought chimed like a bell. She stood up a hair straighter, no longer headed towards prostration.

Dentrassis chuckled. “I am the head breakfast chef,” he said.

At this, Fluttershy noticed that the remnants of the funny feeling of directionlessness in her heart were replaced by the plain euphoria of belonging. When that sensation subsided into the background of general emotion, she found that the antecedent feeling of melancholy did not take its place.