Marathon
Marathon
Admiral Biscuit
Humans are dumb. Butterscotch resisted the urge to bang his head against his desk. Yet again, he'd managed to make an ass of himself all because it was utterly impossible to read humans no matter how hard he tried to get it right. Having to look up at them always gave him a crick in his neck, and even then cues were hardly forthcoming. Their eyes were small and he was almost certain that they couldn't move their ears at all.
Even plants were more expressive. Of course, humans had all sorts of dumb ways of explaining the health of plants but that was easy enough to translate.
He took a deep breath and let it out. Then another, this time moving his forehoof away from his chest just like Princesses Cadence and Twilight did to relax. Tyler, his roommate, swore by Bud Light to relax, but he didn't like that at all. It tasted mostly like piss and gave him a headache.
Over on the windowsill was Horace. He also called it a fearful ink plant—it vaguely resembled an Equestrian ink plant, and the leaves had a weird tremble to them when the wind caught them just right. Tyler told him that he should call it Planty McPlantface, even though that was a really dumb name, almost as dumb as Gaylussacia Baccata which was what his professor called it.
Horace didn't like it when he was angry, even if it was justified. And while plants had moods, they weren't too good at understanding the complexity of pony moods. Plants were clever and resourceful, but not smart. That's why they needed a pony to help them.
He went five full cycles with long, deep breaths, and then another five more just to make sure. There was no sense in distressing his plant.
Horace wasn't as good at giving love back as a proper Equestrian plant, but it was certainly better than nothing. Butterscotch lost himself for nearly a quarter of an hour examining every single leaf and stem on the plant, as well as the nascent berries. Horace would have liked a bit more sun, but there was only a window on one side of the dorm room and there wasn't much that he could do about that. At least it was east-facing, so Horace got a half-day's worth of sun. Sometimes when it was windy, Butterscotch cracked the window open so that Horace could feel the wind in his stems. He'd even left the window open in a rainstorm once, but Tyler hadn't liked that very much.
Horace had.
It wasn't like anything could get into the room anyway. There was a screen that kept birds and bees and bugs and even most of the rain out.
•••
Butterscotch wasn't in much of a mood to do his homework, and it was too early to go to dinner. If he hadn't just come from the turfgrass fields, he would have gone back there.
He grabbed his botany textbook out of his saddlebags and opened it but the words just weren’t working in his mind. English had too many letters, and too many of them looked confusingly similar. It wasn’t a problem at all when he was focused, but when he was still slightly upset about another friendship failure, that was yet another reminder that he didn’t deserve to be here.
Francine always can cheer me up. It wasn’t nice to think bad thoughts about Tyler, but he wished that he’d been Francine’s roommate instead.
She lived close by, just a few rooms down. He stood on his hind hooves at the door and looked through the peephole to see if anyone unfamiliar was in the hallway; seeing no one, he opened the door.
For just a moment, he held it with his hoof, making sure that he had his key. It hung on a necklace along with a little plastic card that identified him and that he needed in order to get food and to get in to some of the buildings on campus.
It wasn’t far down the hallway and then he was at her door. He tapped his hoof lightly. Sometimes she left it propped open a little bit, and when she did he could just go right inside.
He had mixed feelings about the two people—or one person and one pony—arrangement to the rooms. It was nice when he didn’t feel like socializing, but it was also kind of anti-social. It was hard to bond with other people properly when the only person he shared his room with was Tyler.
The door clicked and swung open, nearly causing him to tumble. That was okay; it was Francine, the one human who really understood him.
“Humans are so dumb.” It felt better to say it out loud. Breathing exercises were good to help get some of the stress out, but not as good as saying it out loud or going for a gallop.
“What happened?”
“I just—augh.” Words weren’t coming to him. Explaining something to people who didn’t know the things he knew wasn’t easy. “You—I—there were a couple of people and I thought that they were being friendly but then they said some things and I don’t know if they were or not. They asked me if I knew Wun Hung Lo, and I said that I didn’t, and they started laughing.” Francine was nice; he didn’t have to ask her permission any more to hop up on her bed and stretch out and she usually sat down next to him and then he could rest up against her or put his head down on her lap which had seemed really weird at first but actually was rather calming.
“Don’t sweat it.” She’d had to explain what that meant, but now he understood. “Do you know them?”
“Not really.” He sighed. “One of them lives in our dorm. I think his name is Brandon.”
“Kind of stupid-looking?”
“I guess?”
“Yeah.” She sat down on the bed and ran her hand on his neck. “I know him. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. He’s not mean, at least not as far as I know. Not really. Just an idiot with a bad sense of humor, mostly. And it’s a fair bet that his friend is an idiot, too.”
“That’s good. I couldn’t—he just seemed blank.”
“You’ll figure it out.” She brushed her hand against his mane and ran up against the grain of his coat almost all the way to his cheek. “It took me a long time to figure out horses. It would have been quicker if they could talk.”
“It’s just frustrating.”
“I know.” She gently grabbed his ears and lifted them up. “Don’t be moody.”
“I’m not moody.”
“Yes you are.”
“No, I’m not.” He slumped against her leg. “Okay, maybe a little bit. I wish you’d been my roommate.”
“So do I.”
“We could change. I could ask Tyler if he’d rather share a room with Amber. And you could—”
“Yeah, no. Not gonna happen.”
His ears drooped back down. “It’s against the rules, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Tell you what: let’s read through our botany homework together, okay? That’ll get your mind off Brandon and his friend, and you can explain to me how nitrogen gets fixed in the soil. And then we’ll go to dinner.”
His ears perked up. “Nitrogen, yeah. It’s pretty basic. Plants need nitrogen and some of it gets put in the ground by the lightning that pegasi bring, but most of it has to be converted by animalcules, which are like tiny little fish.”
“Bacteria?”
He frowned. “Yeah, that’s what humans call them. They’re really, really small. You can’t see them with just your eyes, but you can feel them in the soil and you can tell when they’re hungry or when they’re doing well.
“Anyway, they eat nitrogen, and they, um, poop ammonia and stuff. Which sounds kind of disgusting, but it’s really important for plants!”
Tyler didn’t like to get up early, but Butterscotch did. There wasn’t much point to being up at night except for socialization; night was when the plants slept and ponies should, too.
He had morning classes, which didn’t bother him at all. Tyler told him he should be upset about that and should change his schedule for next semester, but he didn’t see why.
Weekends weren’t as much fun, though. Nobody got up early, and he had to choose if he wanted to go to the fields and look at the plants or sit inside and study. Lately, ‘study’ had been his default choice—he wasn’t allowed to help out most of the plants on campus, and there were only so many times that he could look at a sad Wisteria in a pot and do nothing to make it flourish.
Besides, he was having trouble translating the concepts that he knew to words that his biology professors would accept on tests and essays. That was a constant source of frustration, not just on Earth, but in college in general. He knew what he knew, but it wasn’t so easy to tell somepony else what it was. Not if they couldn’t feel the life-force coursing through the plants or the mood of the animalcules in the ground. They couldn’t even properly feel the mood of the sky—which, he had to admit, he wasn’t that great at; any pegasus could feel it far better than he.
There was a soft knock at the door and he perked his ears. One of Tyler’s friends. But Tyler was sound asleep. He’d gotten in late last night.
How late, Butterscotch didn’t know. He’d been fast asleep when Tyler had finally staggered home. Even in the morning, he could still smell the reek of alcohol on Tyler.
He was half tempted to just wake him up and let him deal with whoever was at the door. He stood at the bottom of the bunk bed that they shared, contemplating if it would be more effective to pull the blankets off or to rap at the wooden supports when the quiet but urgent knocking came again.
Tyler probably wouldn’t wake me up until he knew who was at the door. Butterscotch stood on his hooves for a moment, looking through the peephole, and then he was fumbling with the doorknob.
“Hey.”
“Hi!” He focused on not wagging his tail too much. “Francine. Got to be quiet.” He lowered his own voice. “Tyler is asleep.”
“Sorry for coming around so early.”
“Yeah.”
“I just—if you weren’t doing anything—”
“I wasn’t.” His eyes flicked back at his desk, and the open botany book.
“You seemed like the kind of per—pony who’s up early even on the weekend.”
He nodded before thinking, since that was true. And then he tried to figure out what she was implying. Was he boring because he didn’t stay up late drinking? Was she being accusing? He couldn’t tell.
“I—” Was studying a good excuse? Or admitting that he wasn’t all that good at English, that he was totally overwhelmed on campus and they’d made a mistake picking him. That he’d gotten what he wanted but he wasn’t sure if it had really been what he’d wanted. “I was, I just got up, I got in late last night, you know.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “I thought . . . if I’m bothering you—”
“No, no, no. It’s fine. I hadn’t—we could sh—” Humans don’t do that “—go to breakfast together. If you wanted.”
“Only on one condition.” She poked him lightly in the muzzle with a finger. “There’s a trail, it’s called the River Trail, and it runs along the Red Cedar and Grand River. Through the woods.”
“Yeah?”
“And . . . well, it’s a nice day, and I thought that maybe you’d want to explore some.”
“Explore, yeah.” He nodded eagerly. “That sounds like fun.”
“I think you’ll like it. Do you need to get ready?”
“Get ready?” His ears dropped. “Is it . . . a trail, and—”
Francine snickered. “I don’t know, I—what was I thinking. Damn, you’re lucky. Even ‘put your shoes on,’ I guess that doesn’t apply.”
“Shoes?” He lifted up a forehoof. “I have them. I don’t get it. Are they wrong?”
“No, they—” She leaned against the doorframe. “It’s, it’s a human expression about getting ready to go somewhere, ‘cause shoes are the last thing to put on, you know?”
“Sure.” He didn’t know.
“But you don’t have to do that.”
“No. I mean, I have to go to the farrier every couple of months.”
“It’s weird,” she said, as the two of them were in the hallway. He reached down for his lanyard and locked the door behind him. Tyler got mad if the door wasn’t locked even though it was stupid to lock it in the first place. Half the time it was propped open anyways so that Tyler’s friends could come by and visit. “I used to always talk to the horses at the stable and they’d listen but of course they didn’t know what I was saying. I’d tell them that I was going to saddle them up so we could go for a ride, and I thought that they knew what was coming. Maybe they did, but I don’t think it was my words, you know?”
He nodded. There were pastures full of horses not far from the dorm and they were big and dumb and didn’t know anything and at first he’d felt smug about how much smarter he was but now he pitied them more than anything.
“It’s because your stupid ears don’t work.” He flicked his tail. “I mean—”
“Yeah.” She smiled and reached down to touch him lightly on the crown of his head. “Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I think that we’ve lost something. Monkeys pick bugs out of each other’s fur, and we try to pretend that we’re better than that.”
“Bugs?” He turned his head to examine his back. “I don’t have bugs.” Then, since he trusted her: “Do I?”
“No. I’d pick them off if you did. Promise.”
He wasn’t sure how to reply to that, so he said nothing as the two of them waited for the elevator to arrive.
•••
He’d imagined the trail would be more trail-y. Instead, it was just like a road but without stripes. A strip of asphalt leading off into the woods, proof that humans weren’t satisfied unless they’d put their mark on everything.
It was unnecessarily wide; even when the two of them walked side-by-side, there was plenty of pavement spreading off to the sides.
A yellow stripe ran down the middle, just like on the roads, to remind people and ponies which side they were supposed to be one so that nobody would crash into each other.
At first, he was disappointed. It ran across campus, and aside from the stripe it looked exactly like every other sidewalk. But then it got into the woods, and that was a nice change. It wasn’t much, not at first. A highway ran right alongside and he kept shying away at the cars rushing down the road. There was a fence, but it didn’t look very strong, not strong enough to keep a car away.
Despite the stripe, he found himself on the opposite side of the path. That was a little better, even if there was a river there.
Then the path curved away, into the woods proper. The noise of the cars began to fade as the trees blocked them, and before too long he couldn’t see the road at all.
An arched bridge took them over a river, and Francine stopped at the top and peered over the edge, so he nosed up to the bridge and did the same—the supports were wide enough that he could easily see between the slats.
On the other side, it went back down to bottomland, a place that likely flooded every spring. Fertile ground, but soft and wet and not a good place for some trees. They had to be lucky when they were saplings, avoiding debris that the floodwaters brought, and they had to put out wide roots to stay upright in the mucky soil, even if they didn’t think they should because of the surplus of water available to them.
His tail was constantly flicking, chasing away the mosquitos. They loved swampy, wet areas.
The two of them got to an embankment with a bridge crossing above them, and Butterscotch tried to figure out what it might be for. And then the ground was moving, subtly at first but the vibrations picked up.
Part of him was aware that this was just a train, like the ones he’d seen before from a distance, and maybe they were safe at a distance but not here, not where there was nowhere to escape.
He shifted on his hooves, his head turning and his eyes darting around. On one side was the embankment, and that was no good. It led up to the tracks.
The river pinned him in on the other side. He could probably get over the railing if he tried, but what then? He knew how to swim, but he wasn’t very fast, and the current could only carry him so far. Plus, if he committed that way, there would be no other options open to him.
Ahead, he’d have to cross under its path. Only a flimsy bridge kept it away from him, but then it might not be expecting that. It might already be planning to chase him down the way he’d come, to follow him home.
He wasn’t sure that he could outrun it, but what other choice did he have?
Francine. She was alert, but maybe not enough, and could she run faster than him? Her legs were longer.
He couldn’t fight, that was obvious. He’d lose in a heartbeat.
Butterscotch didn’t see Francine reaching under her shirt; his perception had shrunk down to the train and an escape route.
Up until she slipped her bra over his eyes, completely blinding him.
That should have been more alarming, since now there was not only a monster approaching, but he couldn’t see an escape either. He still knew that it was there, of course. Even if he couldn’t see it, he could hear it.
But he could also hear her comforting voice telling him that it was all right, that it would stay on the tracks where it belonged, that it wouldn’t chase after him. Her hand rubbed up against his neck and he focused on that because that was comforting.
Francine told him where to put his hooves, and she pressed close to him, her hip lightly touching his shoulder so he’d know where she was even if he couldn’t see right now.
Moving his hooves made him feel better, too. He was avoiding the danger, maybe not as quickly as he would have been on his own, but he could trust her. She wouldn’t run off and leave him alone to face it. She’d stay with him, and together the two of them would be safe. They’d get back to campus.
It’s really close. He could feel it throbbing in the ground and he turned an ear to listen but then she bumped up against him and he had to focus on her directions again. There were lots of trees and a river he could fall into if he didn’t pay attention to her.
He still kept turning his left ear to listen for the train, even though it was really hard to concentrate on two things at once.
•••
Butterscotch had lost all track of time when she finally pulled the bra off his face. He blinked at the sudden brightness as he was unblinded.
“Sorry about that.” She ruffled his mane. “You were kinda panicking there and I—I’d heard that that worked on horses but I’d never tried it before. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“It’s . . . thanks.” He nuzzled her side, just above the waistband of her jeans. “I didn’t—I feel like such a foal.”
“Trains can be scary. I should have—”
“I’ve never seen one that close.” He looked back at the tracks. Now that they were further away, it seemed like such a silly thing to be afraid of. He’d ridden on trains in Equestria. Granted, they were smaller, but the principle was the same.
Heck, there were trains going by campus all the time, although those he’d mostly seen from a nice, safe distance.
“—and you weren’t paying any attention, I thought you might run out onto the tracks and get crushed.” She glanced down at the bra in her hand. “Um, you mind turning around for a second so I can put this thing back on? Maybe keep an eye out on the path, just in case anyone’s coming around the corner?”
His trip with Francine on the River Trail had changed things for the better for Butterscotch. Now, whenever the stress of college got to be a little bit too much for him, he had a good escape. A path into the fairly untamed wilderness, one that was much more people-free.
There weren’t any people telling him what he couldn’t touch there. Signs said that he wasn’t supposed to bother bald eagles, but he had no intention of doing that. Otherwise, he could help out a plant if he felt like it, and he could also get rid of some of the pesky vines that were taking advantage of trees.
He’d never liked vines. They were lazy plants. They couldn’t be bothered to grow stems strong enough to support themselves, and instead climbed up trees and stole the sunshine that the tree had worked hard to get. It wasn’t so bothersome when it was a tree that was already dead—the vine might as well get some use out of the trunk while it still stood—but when it was a tree that should have been healthy, burdened down by the weight of a vine and starved for sunshine, that was something he could fix.
He probably wasn’t supposed to go too far off the path, but since he was helping the forest stay healthy he thought it would be okay.
One time, he got chased off a grassy field by a Canada Goose, but otherwise, nobody said anything about his excursions into the forest.
The trail continued into town, passing through by a zoo. He had mixed feelings about the zoo—the predators were kept in enclosures that he was sure were supposed to be escape-proof, but he never really trusted large cats. They were a lot more clever than ponies gave them credit for, even if they couldn’t talk.
To the north, it tapered off near Old Town. He wasn’t sure why it was called that; it looked about the same as the rest of Lansing.
There was a dam there, and a fish ladder by the dam. It wasn’t what he’d imagined, although of course fish couldn’t climb actual ladders, even if they were placed underwater. That was usually pretty well populated with spectators, so after he’d seen it a couple of times he turned around before he got there.
Maybe that was anti-social, but he wanted to walk on the trail to escape, not to meet a bunch of people who wanted to talk to him or pet him or in one case curse him out.
He still regretted not bucking that guy. Even if it was mean, it was an effective way to get his opinion across.
Trains were endemic, and after a while he got accustomed to them. The trail and the tracks followed similar paths, crossing several times and parallelling each other for some distance. That made sense; trains took a lot of water, he knew, so of course they’d put the tracks next to the water. He still didn’t like them at all, not up close.
•••
The field of alfalfa was practically outside the classroom. Having to pay attention right before lunch when there was an entire field of tasty alfalfa that he wasn’t supposed to eat was practically torture.
Every day, he hoped that there would be alfalfa at the cafeteria, and every day he was disappointed.
Francine would know where he could get some alfalfa. Surely she would. She knew all sorts of things. There had to be a field near here where he could graze on some fresh alfalfa.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to stop smelling the delectable grass outside the window and to pay attention to the professor, who was droning on about chlorophyll and how scientists thought that prehistoric plants had got it.
The end of class couldn’t come soon enough. Even in the hallway, he could still smell the alfalfa, despite the press of human bodies and all their varying smells.
After he’d dropped off his saddlebags, he’d go get some of the sad vegetables that they had at the dining hall and maybe they’d at least have some of the seven-grain bread. Then, he could spend a little time on the trail and check on the plants he’d been helping and maybe nibble at a few fresh leaves here and there.
Later on, he had Organismal Biology and then he could check to see if Francine was in her room. They had a semi-formal studying session which revolved more around her schedule than his own.
•••
The trail was always there, and as long as there weren’t any of the hateful trains passing by, always easy to get to. Sometimes when there weren’t any people watching, he liked to roll around in the grassy spots. Humans didn’t seem to understand, but rolling around in the dirt was a good way to stretch out his back and help keep his coat clean.
He’d tried to ask Francine if she wanted to try it sometime but she’d laughed and said that she’d just get her clothes dirty and he didn’t think it would be the right thing to suggest that she take them off first. Even if that was the obvious solution. He wouldn’t roll around in the grass if he was wearing clothes.
Sometimes he liked to explore, just a bit. To go beyond the familiar, to push the boundaries of what he knew, of what he was comfortable with. There were lots of sidewalks around town and they mostly ran in easy-to-remember compass directions.
Some places weren’t worth seeing; there were lots of industrial buildings that he was sure were pleasing to someone’s eye, but not his. He’d rather see a meadow. The houses, too, ranged from really nice to absolutely decrepit. Paradoxically, it was the neighborhoods with shabby houses that were the most inviting. He’d rolled around in a luscious lawn one time and gotten yelled at by some angry man in a pinstripe suit for ruining the grass and trespassing on his lawn.
Which was fine. The grass tasted awful anyway. He could keep it all.
There were some low spots by the river that were inviting, and sometimes he waded in, usually only getting his hooves wet but occasionally dipping in all the way to his knees. Any deeper, and there was the risk of some denizen of the deep trying to drag him under or biting off a leg.
During the week, there weren’t as many people on the trail, especially earlier in the day. In the evenings and on the weekends, it was sometimes pretty crowded. Then again, Francine only had time to walk with him on the evenings and weekends, which did tip the scale in that direction.
One thing that he regretted not paying more attention to in his acclimatization classes was birds. There were lots of them, and he didn’t recognize most. In general, they were much duller than Equestrian birds, and most of them weren’t very friendly. Especially the geese—that was one bird that he had learned, after being chased by one.
There were blackbirds that had bright red and yellow stripes at the base of their wings, and he liked them. They had the right amount of attitude and friendliness.
People also had names for all sorts of fish, even though they mostly looked the same, from what he’d seen. Sometimes he’d see people fishing for them and he wasn’t sure if they wanted to eat them or keep them as pets. He’d learned that people ate some animals but not others and there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for which it was. At least he wasn’t in Turkey; he’d heard that they ate ponies there.
There were also turkeys in America, which meant that he always had to be on his guard. Especially around Thanksgiving, although he wasn’t sure exactly what that was.
•••
“Gah, this is so complicated,” Francine groused.
“It’s not,” Butterscotch said. “Plants need light from the sun and they turn that into energy. There’s a simple equation: ψ D*A = D *A (ψ DA* = DA* ).”
“You and your plants.” She brushed her hair back and then lifted her hand. “Bet you can’t do this.” Intertwining her fingers, she bent them backwards, and then worked her way down her knuckles, producing a cracking noise at each one.
He smiled. He knew how this game was played. “Even if I could crack a hoof—which is a really bad idea, by the way. Months of wearing special shoes and limping around everywhere. You’re lucky that you don’t really need your hands. But you haven’t even got a tail, so if we’re going to play the game of who can do what with their body I’m gonna win.”
“Amber can wiggle her ears.”
“So?” He swiveled his around. “One forward and one back, and then I’ll admit defeat.”
“Eh, you had me at the fur.” Francine illustrated her point by rubbing her hand across his back, her fingers putting just the right amount of pressure on his spine. “Okay, so can you explain chlorophyll so an idiot can understand it?”
“You’re not an idiot.”
“Pretend that I am.”
He considered that. Chlorophyll got excited by the sun hitting it and that set off an electrochemical reaction that produced energy for the plant in much the same way that eating some alfalfa would trigger a biochemical reaction in his own body to convert the food to sugars and proteins that his body used for energy.
•••
Even if Butterscotch was timid, he was also curious. He wouldn’t have been on Earth if he hadn’t been, after all.
There were always things going on around campus, so many things it was nearly impossible to keep track of them all. He occasionally looked at the newspaper to see what he might be interested in, but he mostly relied on Francine to tell him. They spent a lot of time together, studying for Biology or just hanging out. Sometimes he felt a bit guilty for leaving Tyler out of the picture, but Tyler didn’t really mind.
He and Francine were walking on the trail. They’d cut across from the dorms, picking it up from an unintentional path.
“Supposedly, at MIT, they didn’t put in any sidewalks when they built the school,” Francine said. “They waited a year, and then put the sidewalks over the paths people had worn in the lawn.”
“That doesn’t seem very orderly,” he said. “What if I wanted to plant a garden but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to grow, so I just let whatever plants wanted to grow wherever they wanted? It would be chaos!”
“It’s not really the same thing. You have to grow food to eat—you don’t eat sidewalks. How do you guys do it? Do you even have sidewalks?”
“In big cities, yeah.”
“But nowhere else?”
“What’s the point of them?”
“It keeps your feet dry. Prevents erosion. Easier to shovel.”
“But then you have to all go the same way. As long as ponies take care of the grass and nopony tries to haul a wagon when the ground’s too soggy, it’s better to have grass. Plus, it feels better on hooves—especially bare hooves.”
“I guess.” Francine glanced down the trail. “Huh, I wonder what’s going on there?”
“Where?”
“Behind us.”
At first he didn’t see, and then he did. There was a large group of humans coming towards them at a trot.
He locked his ears in that direction, trying to pick up a clue. He’d heard something unknown a couple of minutes ago, but he’d just dismissed it. Maybe he shouldn’t have.
He couldn’t see anything new and dangerous. Or hear it, or smell it, but there were a lot of people, and they were all running. He started shifting around on his hooves nervously.
“I don’t . . . they’re getting closer,” he muttered.
“We ought to get out of their way.”
He didn’t respond. He was fixated on the cluster of runners, his tail flicking sharply.
“Come on.” Francine pushed him lightly, and he side-stepped off the path, barely paying attention to where she was moving him.
His pupils shrank to pinpricks. “We should run.”
“Run?”
They were starting to come around the corner, their footfalls lightly vibrating the ground. He could hear some heavy breaths coming from them and his nostrils flared wide. “Run!”
He didn’t look back to see if she was following, because he was confident that she was. Francine was smart, so of course she’d be running too, trying to get away from the monster or whatever was coming to gobble them up.
She’d really been thinking about him. On the pavement, his shoes didn’t get as much traction, but he could dig his hooves into the dirt and get up to speed so much more quickly without having to worry about slipping.
He lept over a downed tree and then angled onto the path, careful of the little ridge at the edge of the pavement—that was a tripping hazard. And then he was on the trail proper, dozens of people hot on his hooves.
Butterscotch galloped down the center of the path for nearly a mile before he risked a look back. There wasn’t anybody too close to him, so he slowed to a trot and considered for a moment. He couldn’t see Francine, and he hoped she’d managed to escape.
I ought to go back and make sure. He reluctantly slowed to a fast walk and made a wide turn, his ears and eyes alert. Whatever it is might still be out there, might still be—
The crowd, slightly more ragged than it had been before, was still running. He couldn’t see Francine, not between the trees, but she must be there, running with them. He refused to consider any other possibility.
It took time to turn around, and the leaders were only a few hundred yards behind him before he got up to speed again.
Another mile, and they were parallel to the zoo. The ground was flat and open but the zoo was dangerous; he could smell the lions and tigers and there was no safety there, so he galloped past and across the bridge over Pennsylvania Avenue, his hooves booming on the boards.
The trail went back down and now there was no escape to the sides; there was a steep soil slope to his right and the river to his left. The only way was forward.
Butterscotch had to make a decision when he got to the side bridge over the river. The path branched off to the west, he knew, and that might be a safe place to go. It was an option.
When he got close, however, he rejected that option. There were people fishing on the bridge, taking up space, and even worse at a full gallop the turn would be nearly impossible with asphalt underhoof and a steep bank on his right. He’d have to slow down, maybe too much.
Going under the Michigan Avenue bridge was scary. The paved trail stopped briefly, giving way to a long, wide boardwalk that hung over the river. His shoes dug into the planks, and his hooffalls echoed among the steel beams of the bridge, making it sound for a moment like there were dozens of ponies galloping with him.
His beat was off—he was getting tired. His flanks were streaming with sweat and he had no choice but to slow down his pace and hope he’d gotten far enough ahead of his pursuer.
There was a ramp down into the water, and it was tempting. It would cool him down, he could drink it and wash the sweat off, but if he was still being pursued, that would be a fatal mistake. River bottoms were always slippery and hard to see, and it wouldn’t be very long before he stumbled and then it would be all over.
He started to look around more, watching for danger. Maybe whatever it was had gone over the side bridge; maybe it was gone. Maybe he was safe now but he still wasn’t sure. If he’d known what was chasing all those people, he would be better able to judge how far it was likely to go in pursuit.
He slowed still further. Surely it was safe now. When he glanced back, he could see hundreds of yards behind him and there was nobody running back there. Of course, the bridge did block a lot of his view, and—
There. That was one of them, wasn’t it? And then a second, and a third . . . it was still coming, whatever it was.
He was too tired to gallop any more but he could still trot, so he did. They were closing in on him, he could hear more of them now. They were breathing hard, too, and their feet were slapping into the pavement unevenly, so he might still have a chance.
Butterscotch’s focus locked back on the path in front of him in the hopes that it would eventually lead to safety. Maybe at the fish ladder, maybe it would be safe there. The path came up and into a shopping district and surely they wouldn't have built it there if there were monsters.
One human passed him, then another. He was falling back and he hated it but he could save what little energy he had left for one final burst. The end of the trail was getting close. It was closed off by a rope or ribbon of some kind, he couldn’t really tell. His attention was drawn to the people there. There were lots of them and they weren’t running, which meant it was safe.
He dug his hooves into the hateful asphalt as well as he could and changed gaits back to a full gallop, quickly gaining on the leaders, and then he was running alongside the one and then he passed him and there was only the leader between him and safety and he drew into his final reserves to rocket under the ribbon full-tilt.
As soon as he’d stopped, he collapsed, completely spent. People were rushing over to him, and most importantly, Francine was there. She dropped to her knees next to his head and dumped a bottle of water on his mane. He wanted to thank her but he couldn’t find the breath to do so.
•••
“You’re such an idiot.”
“Yes.” He was willing to agree with her on that. “I didn’t know that humans have races.”
“You’ve seen people jogging on the trail.”
“Not in clusters. I didn’t know what to do.” He leaned over and nuzzled her. “I shouldn’t have run away from you like that.”
“I should have realized quicker that you were going to.” She sighed and ran a hand down his muzzle. “God, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You’re going to be internet famous, you know. They got your finish on film. By the time we get back to the dorm, somebody will have already clipped it off the news and put it on YouTube.”
“Is that good?”
She waved her free hand in a see-saw motion. “Eh, it is what it is. I still can’t believe that they gave you a prize. You weren’t even entered in the race.”