A class presentation and a new day job gave me plenty of time to think about how I might fit into Ponyville society.
Spurred on by a class presentation and an unexpected—but not entirely unwelcome—new day job, I began to more seriously consider how I might fit myself into pony society.
Manual labor provides plenty of time to think, and strips away facades.
I wasn’t sure that I was ready for that, but I couldn’t put it off forever, either.
Gardening with Rose Class Presentation Admiral Biscuit
I’d put it off as long as I could, in order to give me time to come up with a suitable topic, and then to reconsider my choice. Time to stress out about presenting anything to a class of schoolchildren, before remembering that when I was in school, any presentation was a welcome break from the normal educational process, regardless of the actual topic.
Once I’d started making flash cards and outlines, I felt like I was back in school again. I didn’t really want to do it, but Rose had helped, even if she hadn’t realized. Sometimes when she came over, I’d try out a few topics and see how she reacted, and then I’d revise it to answer some of the questions she’d had.
I probably wouldn’t really need my notes, but I put them in the pocket in my shorts anyway.
•••
As I walked to the school, I kept doubting myself, kept thinking of ways that I would mess this up even though I was sure I wouldn’t. Heck, even if I made a mistake, it wasn’t like anyone could call me out on it. None of them knew anything about Canada. I could have said that we all rode mooses everywhere and they would have believed it. Not that I wanted to make things up. Lying to kids was bad.
And in truth, most of the foals that I knew liked me—they didn’t shy away or shun me. Sure, there would probably be one stuck-up parent who’d complain to the PTA or superintendant or whatever it was that the ponies had, claim that it was inappropriate for me to give a presentation, and such a complaint would be ignored.
The more I thought about it, the more I believed that Cheerilee was the entirety of the Ponyville School District, and given her no-nonsense attitude towards me, she would also be unlikely to be moved by a whining parent.
Just the same, I hesitated with my hand on the door. How long does it take teachers to remember that they're working at a school? How long before it doesn't feel weird?
Maybe it was less weird in a more modern public school, where there was a private entrance for the teachers.
I pushed open the doors and every head in the room turned to see who it was. I should have expected that.
“Class, this is Sam,” Cheerilee said. “I’m sure you’ve all seen her around town. I invited her here today to tell us about her homeland.
“But before she starts,” Cheerilee continued, no doubt for my benefit as well, “we need to finish our math problems.”
•••
“And that's the history of Canada,” I said. I'd glossed over a lot, either because I couldn't remember it or because I didn't think that it was something that foals ought to know about. Maybe ponies in general shouldn't know about it. There was plenty to be said about revisionist history, but I thought that literally worlds apart, small omissions wouldn’t matter.
Actually, it might be smart to have my next discussion with Tenderheart cover some of the basics about pony taboos. She wouldn't like it, but I think she'd do it. I really should have done that quite some time ago. Maybe ponies made hats out of beaver pelts, too, and I could have said more about the hunter-trapper days. That was the part of Canadian history everybody back home knew.
“Does anypony have any questions for Sam?”
I don't know why I didn't see this coming. Of course there would be a Q & A session; every guest presentation we'd ever had when I was in school ended with it. Maybe they're a bunch of slackers and don't want to ask any questions.
Nearly every hoof in the room shot up.
I looked over at Cheerliee. I didn't know most of their names well enough to call on them, and I wasn't sure if calling them things like “the orange one,” or “you with the braids” might be unintentionally insulting. Plus, she probably knew who the troublemakers in the class were and wouldn't call on them.
She was sharp enough that she picked up on my hesitation right away, and pointed a hoof towards a filly. “Boysenberry?”
“Are you related to minotaurs?”
“I don't think so,” I said. “Human ancestors were monkeys.”
“Is it true that you hunt from trees?” Liza Doolots asked.
“Not anymore,” I said. “That was back when we weren't—when we hadn't made a civilization and learned things yet. Back when we lived in caves.” I had a sudden image of caveponies all sitting around a fire in front of a cage and suppressed the urge to snicker.
“Are you a traitor? Like minotaurs?”
“A traitor?”
“Trader,” Cheerilee said helpfully. “A trader is somepony who sells goods like Filthy Rich; a traitor is somepony who betrays other ponies.”
“A lot of humans are traders,” I said. “Like for food, we have a system where a farmer grows it and then they sell it to somebody else who sorts it out and delivers it to distant stores. Sometimes not even in the same country—we export lots of grains.”
“What's export?” This was from a unicorn named Snails.
“It's where you send something to a different country.” Do ponies have different countries? I wasn't sure.
“When we send things to the Crystal Empire, that would be an export,” Miss Cheerilee said. “And if we buy things from them, that's an import.”
“How come humans don't have cutie marks?”
“It's just the way that we are,” I said. “Some humans want to have something like a cutie mark, though, so they get what's called a tattoo. You can put them wherever you want, and some people have lots of them.”
“Can ponies get tattoos?”
I hesitated a minute before answering. I knew that some animals got ear tattoos to identify them, and it seemed likely that the same could be done to a pony; however, I wasn't sure if that was something that ponies did, or that I should suggest to them. “I don't know. Nobody would be able to see it under your coat anyway. They don’t glow or anything.”
“How come you don't have a coat?”
That question had been bound to come up sooner or later. “Humans just don't have coats,” I said. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was the best I had. I could have explained that some scientists thought we’d lost them to avoid parasites, but I wasn’t sure how the class would react to that idea.
“How can you balance on your hind legs without a tail?”
“I guess just a lot of practice.” There were probably scientists who could give me a good answer on that, but it would have amounted to the same thing. I'd seen a few home videos of me when I was a toddler, and I certainly couldn't walk on two legs very well back then. “Human babies start out walking on all fours like ponies and then we practice being on our legs—our hind legs—until we get good at it. Sometimes we have little wheeled doughnuts that we can stand inside and hold on to and get practice that way.”
Diamond Tiara held up her hoof. “Wouldn't it be easier to just stay on all fours?”
“Well, there are a lot of things that you have to learn as a kid, you know. Maybe things that it would be easier not to learn, but if you want to be a grown-up, you have to learn them. For us, being able to walk on our hind legs is one of those things.”
“It’s smart to know. Sam can go deeper in the river,” Apple Flora said. “She can keep walking on the bottom where my hooves can't touch at all. I bet she could walk all the way across it if she wanted to.”
She was right—I could, at least in the spot where I usually bathed.
“Does anypony have any more questions?” Cheerilee looked around the room. “Thank you, Sam, for coming in to speak with us. Class?”
“Thank you, Sam,” they all said, mostly in unison.
•••
On the way back to my house, I stopped by the job board. Since I was coming by late, I hoped that I'd see an offer that I never had before. There wasn’t much chance of that; I was sure that the ponies who were more familiar with the system knew what times the best jobs were posted.
There were some jobs that I simply wasn't capable of doing, which was a pity, since those were often available. Things like hauling a wagon. Although I suppose there might be a way that a harness-maker could build me some sort of harness. I didn’t think I’d be very good at it, and I didn’t think that any potential pony employer would believe that I was going to be, either.
I found a job offer pretty quickly, put up by a pony named Honey Dipper. I'd seen a few notes on the board from her before and ignored them since I figured it was some kind of beekeeping job, and I had little desire to be stung. Thinking back about how good Fluttershy was with bees, I decided that any pony who was keeping them would also be good with them, and she'd be able to prevent them from stinging me.
Plus, Honey Dipper was paying really well, which was a bonus.
I didn't know her or where she lived. I assumed that it was on one of the farms outside town, and I should have found out right away, but I was emotionally tired from talking to Cheerilee's class, and as soon as I remembered that I could get directions from Pinkie Pie whenever I wanted to, I decided that the best thing would be to rest up tonight. I could get up early tomorrow and stop by Sugarcube Corner for a morning cup of coffee. I'd get directions then.
Rose, Daisy, and Lily were all busy with a flower harvest. I hadn't appreciated how much work farming was before I got to Equestria, but it was. The crops came when they were ready, and the farmers had to work until they were all in.
Maybe that was why Honey Dipper was paying so well. Maybe she didn't have any help; maybe other ponies were busy with their harvests and couldn't help her.
There was probably a lot more farm work I could do if I got more of the farmers to trust me. Besides Apple Flora and Apple Bloom, Apple Crumble and Apple Mint were also in Cheerilee's class, and now they all knew that I could climb trees. Maybe they'd tell their parents and come apple harvesting time, I could work on an apple orchard. A lot of them I could pick right from the ground.
That was something to think about. It would be more fun than chopping wood or hauling sacks of flour, that was for sure. I'd always liked going to the U-Pick apple orchards when I was a kid.
Of course, apple harvest time wasn't going to be for a while yet.
•••
I stopped at home just long enough to change into different shorts—one of my older pairs—and then went over to Rose's house. Since I wasn't doing anything else, it would be churlish to not offer my assistance if she wanted it.
Rather than knock at the front door, I went around behind the house to their gardens. The three of them were all busy at work in their beds, clipping blossoms off the plants. “Hey, Rose, want some help?”
She didn't answer right away, although to be fair, I'd kind of caught her by surprise, and she did have a pair of shears in her mouth. Lily and Daisy both looked at me and I swear Lily's ears pinned down briefly, then the two of them looked at Rose.
“You could . . . carry the pails,” she said, tilting her head towards a bucket of blossoms. “They go just towards the back of the house, where it's shady, you'll see. There's a couple of crates there where we're putting the flowers.”
“Okay.” I almost climbed over the fence before realizing that that might not be neighborly of me, and instead went around to the gate.
As I picked up the first bucket, I could feel Lily's eyes on my back. I should have asked Rose before I came over. I didn't know that much about flowers, after all—it wasn't an insult that I was on carrying duty. They wouldn't trust me to know which flowers to clip off or where they should be cut or anything like that. I wouldn't trust me to know that. All the flowers looked pretty much the same to me, but they weren't cutting all of them from each plant, so I guess that the ones they were leaving behind weren't ready yet.
I could hear them whispering behind me as I carefully emptied the pail out into the box. I didn't think that you could bruise flowers, but I wasn't sure, and they'd hate me if I somehow damaged their crop.
It took a little bit before the other two began warming up to me. It wasn't until Rose asked me about how my class presentation had gone; that got Daisy's interest. She kept working while I told Rose about it, but her left ear was cocked over in my direction.
Lily had moved to the other end of the beds, as far away from me as she could get, but now she was reconsidering. She'd started to move across the rows to get back closer.
“It went pretty well,” I said. “I thought . . . I told them about Canada, and then they asked a bunch of questions. There was—can ponies get tattoos?”
“Tattoos?” Daisy dropped the flower she'd been holding into her pail and set her scissors down. “What are tattoos? Are they like fleas? You don't have tattoos, do you? That’s not why your fur’s gone, is it? Rose said—”
“It's like a fake cutie mark,” Rose said. “You mentioned that once.”
“Is it Cutie Pox?” Lily had moved closer, but kept two rows of flowers between us.
“No! Tattoos aren’t a disease or infection—they aren’t a bad thing.” Although there were plenty of people who would disagree with that opinion. “It's like paint that you wear forever.” I pointed to my arm. “You can go to an artist who puts them on. They have a little electric needle thing and it injects ink under your skin.”
“That doesn't sound like a good idea.” Daisy lifted up her leg and studied it. “How would you even see it?”
“That's why I was wondering. I—” In for a penny, in for a pound. “Sometimes on Earth, we put them on animals, inside the ear.”
Lily flinched. “Inside your ear? Why would you do that? Wouldn't that hurt?”
“I guess it must. I don't know. Humans don't get them inside their ears, we get them somewhere else so that everybody can see them. Something that's meaningful to us.”
“Were you thinking of getting one? You could ask at the hospital; they have needles there. If anypony would know how it’s done, it would be the nurses.”
“I wasn't,” I said. Although not for the first time, I thought about how having a fake cutie mark might make things a little bit easier for me. I could have it put just about wherever, and claim that was where humans got them. Of course, it was too late now; enough ponies in town had already seen that I didn’t have one anywhere.
“It doesn't seem right.” Lily picked her scissors back up. “Pretending to have something that you don’t.”
If any pony were to make it to Earth, Pinkie Pie would be my top pick. She could open a restaurant that would give Tim Horton's a run for their money. Sugarcube Corner's coffee was good, their sweets were better, and I was almost one hundred percent certain that Pinkie Pie never had off days. She was always bright and chipper, and she remembered how I liked my coffee even though I hardly ever ordered it.
“Good morning, Sam!”
“Morning, Pinkie.” I held the door open a moment longer to let a pair of ponies exit. I couldn't remember their names—they were both pegasus mares. One of them had a barbell cutie mark, and the other had three suns. As soon as they were clear of the building, they crouched down and then flew off.
“Just coffee for me.”
“Are you sure?” She leaned over the counter. “We made some crullers this morning that are so light they practically float.”
“If I'd known, I wouldn't have had breakfast already,” I said.
“Hmm.” Pinkie turned around and poured me my coffee. “What about half a cruller? I Pinkie Promise it'll put an extra spring in your step this morning.”
I couldn't really turn her down. “Sure. Hey, Pinkie, do you know where Honey Dipper lives?”
“Yuppers.” She set the coffee on the counter and took my money, sliding a bit of change back my way. “She's at the very end of Cantle Street. That's over on the southeast side of town.”
“Thanks. I’m working with her today.”
“Oh,” Pinkie said. “She's really nice.”
That was an odd endorsement.
•••
I sat in the corner and sipped my coffee, watching the morning tradesponies. Individual ponies and pairs usually didn’t sit for breakfast—they were probably eager to get started with their day’s work. Larger groups of ponies did tend to take a booth or a table: nearby, a cluster of carpenter ponies was discussing the upcoming job, while across the room a group of mares was gossiping over breakfast.
Out of habit, I sort of listened to their conversations. The first time I’d set foot in Sugarcube Corner, desperate for my first coffee in months, conversations had immediately died down. I’d huddled in a booth, just waiting for a police pony to drag me out and toss me back into the street. Every eye in the place had been on me, and I think if Pinkie Pie hadn’t been so welcoming towards me, even though she didn’t really know me, that would have happened. If Ponyville had police ponies—I’d never seen one. If they didn’t, it might have been an angry mob dragging me out.
Now, though, none of the ponies really cared if I came in and minded my own business. Thus far, none of them besides Pinkie Pie had gone out of their way to greet me or offer me a place at their table, or ask to sit at mine, but I was sure that would come in time.
I didn’t want to be overly late—even though there wasn’t a specific start time—so I didn’t dally. I brought my cup back up to the counter when I’d finished and headed out the door.
•••
Honey Dipper's house was right at the end of Cantle Street, just like Pinkie Pie said it was. It had that familiar slightly worn-down look that a lot of farmhouses on Earth did, and was surrounded with several outbuildings and a privacy fence. I couldn't help but wonder if that was to keep the bees in the backyard.
There was also a more pronounced horse smell. It was something I rarely noticed in town; most of the ponies bathed frequently and used perfumes and scented soaps, and for just a moment I looked around, expecting to see a pasture with horses in it.
I didn't hear anybody working out back, and I was a little bit early. She'd probably be up: most farmers were. Just the same, I kept my knocks quiet and polite in deference to the early hour.
It took her a minute to answer, long enough that I was wondering if maybe she hadn't heard me. Since lots of ponies wore horseshoes, knocks were presumably louder, a fact which her front door bore witness to: I could see scratches and gouges in the wood from pony knocks.
Honey Dipper was a golden, honey-color mare with a dark brown mane and tail. More distinctively, she had three off-white socks, which was something that I’d never seen on a pony before.
It was obvious what I’d interrupted: she had a harness half-on, several straps trailing behind her.
“Hello,” I said, crouching down to get to her level. “I'm Sam—I'm here for the job you had posted?” I hadn't been able to get a clear look at her cutie mark, and thought it would be rude to just lean over and check it out.
“Oh.” She flicked her ears and studied me thoughtfully. “I . . . I've seen you in town. Helping Ginger Gold cut firewood.” She shifted around on her hooves, either nervous or else she was trying to get her half-on harness to sit right.
“I don't scare bees.”
She blinked. “Bees?”
Now it was my turn to be confused. “I thought—I guess the poster didn't say, but I assumed, you know, that we'd be doing something with bees.”
“There might be wasps,” she finally said. “I, um, empty pail closets and outhouses and turn it into compost for the farmers.”
I hadn’t expected that. “That sounds like a shitty job.” I put my hand up to my mouth but she started laughing.
“I'd—I won't be mad if you say you don't want to. I didn't put that on the flier, 'cause I thought that everypony in town knows what I do, but I guess you didn't. It’s not fair to ask you do something when you didn’t know what it actually was.”
It wasn't something that I wanted to do. But if I left, there wasn't much chance of finding work today, and she did pay well. Plus, she seemed like a really nice mare—Pinkie had been telling the truth about that.
“I'll do it.” Then a thought struck me. “I should probably go back to my house and get my shoes.” The last thing I needed was tetanus.
“Okay. There's a shed behind my house where I keep my wagon. When you come back just go out there and then we can get to work.”
•••
My shoes were old and nasty and barely holding together any more. As I walked down Cantle Street a second time, I decided that if I got through today and decided that this was something that I was willing to do more often, I was going to order a new set. I had enough money saved up to buy them, but I'd been putting it off until it got closer to winter, when I’d really need them.
I'd also changed from my shorts into my painting pants. They were already ruined enough that a little bit of manure wouldn't make them any worse.
I wondered how much Rarity would charge me for a simple shirt. Something durable but not very nice. If things went well with Honey Dipper, that might be something to consider in the future. Still, if I was reasonably careful, I didn't think that I'd manage to get my chest dirty.
My mind flashed back to old black-and-white photographs of farmers working shirtless. If they could do it, so could I.
•••
By the time I returned, Honey Dipper had gotten her harness the rest of the way on and had hitched herself up to her wagon. She had her eyes closed and one hind leg cocked until I got close, then her ears turned my way and she opened her eyes.
“Were you dozing?”
“Some ponies don't like me working during the day,” she said. “It's even worse in Canterlot. My cousin works there. You can't carry wagons of manure through the streets until after dark, it’s the law. So I work at night whenever I’m working in town. That way, I don’t bother anypony.”
“Switching shifts like that isn't fun.” It was something I’d never had to deal with, but I had friends who did, and they always acted kind of like zombies. “Well, I'm ready if you are.”
“I didn't know how soon you'd be back,” she said. “So I didn't go to the barn and put in the barrels. You can load them, right?”
“Yeah.” I knew a thing or two about barrels from all the times I'd worked at the miller's.
There were four of them, and I put them in the front of the wagon. They were empty, so I didn't even need to bother with setting up a ramp on the back of the wagon. “They haven't got the sewer system running through the whole town, yet,” Honey Dipper explained. “And some of the swampier areas aren't good for digging a pit outhouse, so they use barrels. We'll change those first, and then come back here with them and then go out to Mint Swirl's farm and empty her outhouse.
“It's hard to get help during the summers, 'cause everypony can get farm work.”
•••
The barrels weren't too bad to change. Each of the pailhouses had a little door in the back, and Honey Dipper had left the lid for those barrels right next to them. It took some careful wiggling to get them out, and then I used her mallet to pound the lid back on, put the new barrel inside, and then roll the full barrel up into the back of her cart.
It did feel a little bit unfair that she wasn't doing any of that work, but it would have been inconvenient to have to unhitch from the wagon each time. And I guess I got my break when we moved to the next house, since I couldn't help her pull the wagon.
“It's always important to make sure that there's nopony in there,” she told me as we were walking to the next outhouse. “Or else you might get an unpleasant surprise. Usually when I'm doing it by myself, I like to knock on the door to make sure nopony’s in there and then leave the wagon in front until I've got the barrels changed.”
“That seems like a lot of work. You'd have to unhitch and hitch back up several times.”
She nodded. “But it's better than being under there and nopony knowing.”
•••
I couldn’t make sense of her route. Garbage trucks stopped at every house in order on the prescribed day, but she didn’t. She skipped over a couple of blocks to the next house.
Depending on local laws, there might have been a sewer line laid on the street without all the houses connected to it, but that seemed unlikely to me, especially since I noticed outhouses in several backyards.
I pondered over that while I was changing out the next barrel—anything to keep my mind off what I was doing—and came to the conclusion that either her customers notified her when they needed service, or she made her plan based on how fast a particular household might fill up a barrel. It wouldn’t be efficient to be constantly taking half-empty barrels from homes; she’d fill up her wagon and have to make more trips.
Hopefully, she hadn’t decided to do a partial route in deference to me, but I wondered if she had. She wouldn’t know how much help I might be, how much she might have to explain, and she might have wanted to keep things simple.
Maybe she’d base any future hiring of me on how well I did today. On my attitude—if I constantly complained about the work. Or my competence—could I do the job without accidentally tipping a barrel over?
That was a problem with their job board system. A pony never knew who might show up, although I thought that in a small town, they’d learn quickly who the incompetent workers were and just send them away.
And in all honesty, the ponies seemed to be more industrious than humans.
•••
Back at her house, she stopped the wagon on the downwind side of her house. There were lots of piles of compost in varying degrees of freshness, and it looked like we were going to start a new one.
The piles were arranged in an odd zig-zag pattern, which I asked her about. “Oh, you've got to turn the piles every now and then for them to decompose,” she explained. “It's easiest for me to do it this way, 'cause as soon as I finish one, I go to the next and then shovel the other way.”
“So we need to uncap them and empty them out?”
“We can, but I was hoping to do that after lunch. After we empty Mint Swirl’s pit.” She tilted her head towards her wagon shed. “There’s shovels in there, put a couple of them in the wagon. One for you and one for me. And a lift bucket, we’ll want that for when we get deeper, and I’ve also got a collapsible winding tower and some rope. They’ll all fit in the front compartment of the wagon.”
•••
Pony outhouses—really, outhouses in general—weren't the biggest places. I was a bit crowded in mine, at least from a headroom standpoint, and as Honey Dipper pulled her wagon up alongside our destination, I started to have second thoughts. Not just about what I was about to be doing, but also about how I was going to fit in there well enough to do any work. My back wasn't going to be too happy about this.
“I should have asked sooner,” Honey said. “You don't have a harness do you?”
“No. I can grab ropes with my hands and pull them, though. What do we need to do?”
“Move the outhouse off the pit.” She reached around and unhooked her singletree from the wagon, letting it trail behind her. “Okay, it's really awkward to back up like this; can you pick up the chains and clip them to the ringbolts on the bottom of the outhouse?”
“Ringbolts?”
“They're probably hidden by the grass. There should be a set on both ends. I'd rather pull it from the door side, 'cause that way if we get anything on the ground, nopony will be stepping on it when they go to use the outhouse.” She turned her head back. “The traces on my harness unhook from the singletree, too; if you want to unsnap them and hold up the traces, I can back into position.”
I held the traces out of the way while she backed into position, then fished around in the grass until I found the ringbolts. I wonder if my outhouse has these? I bet it did, and I'd just never looked.
There were spring hooks on the ends of her chains, essentially really simple carabiners. Interestingly, the latch could open either way, which was probably better for ponies.
“Do you want me to help push?”
She shook her head. “Unless you get low, pushing will make it want to tip forward, and dig the front of the skids into the ground. If you can pull the front up, that would help.”
I had some trouble finding a good method, one where I wouldn't be in her way. There wasn't enough room for me to crowd between her and the outhouse, and I finally resorted to reaching alongside and rocking it.
Once she got it moving, it slid smoothly on the grass, revealing the pit, which was much larger than I'd anticipated. With the outhouse off it, we had plenty of room to work.
She unclipped herself from the front and hung her traces on her wagon. "Alright, I guess we can get started.”
I nodded and picked up the shovel. The handle was the wrong size for a person, of course, but that couldn't be helped. Another thing to consider if I wanted to make a career of this, but for odd jobs it was hardly worth investing in my own equipment. “Are—” I bit my lip, considering. It seemed to me that she'd be uncomfortable working in her harness, but then maybe she thought I was going to be uncomfortable working in my clothes.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I tilted my head towards the pit. “Anything special I need to know?”
“Everything goes in the wagon, and try not to spill it on the ground.”
“Got it.”
“Sometimes when I'm working at a really fancy pony's house, I'll put down a tarp, just to make sure.”
“I'll be careful,” I promised. I was already going to do my best to make sure it stayed off me, so I could also be careful to keep it off the lawn.
“If you start digging, I can set up the winding tower over the pit and rig it, for when we get deeper.”
One thing that I really missed from Earth was bottled water. I knew that it was wasteful and usually tried to use public drinking fountains or bring my own water from home, but sometimes that just wasn't an option, and it was really convenient to be able to get a bottle of water practically anywhere.
Ponies didn't have bottled water, and I was thirsty by the time we'd finished loading the wagon. Honey Dipper and I were both soaked with sweat, and I was starting to have fantasies of cooling off in the river, but that was unfortunately going to have to wait.
“You've got water back at your house, right?”
“Yeah. Green beer or water, whichever you prefer. We'll take a break before we unload the wagon.”
“That's good.” Now I had more motivation, so I helped Honey Dipper with her harness so we could put the outhouse back where it belonged. Once it was back in place, I hitched her back to her wagon.
“Do you need a bit of a push to get started?” I wasn't sure how heavy the wagon was now. It felt like we'd moved several tons of manure, but it probably wasn't actually all that much.
She rolled her eyes. “I can get this.” She shifted on her hooves and dug in, and the wagon obediently followed along.
•••
For once, I wasn't insulted that the few ponies we encountered got well out of our way. I couldn't blame them; no doubt they were constantly wondering if the wagon might somehow dump its contents all over the road and they didn't want to be anywhere near it if that happened. I could understand that; I’d always kept a little extra room between my car and trucks that looked like they were carrying particularly unpleasant or dangerous cargos.
Did ponies ever get into accidents with their wagons? Were there pony traffic cops that wrote tickets for speeding with a wagon? I'd never seen one, but maybe I didn't know what to look for. Did Honey Dipper need some kind of special permit? Did some wagons have warning placards? The hardware store sold jugs of kerosene for lanterns, which I assumed were shipped in on trains. Maybe when they carried them from the station, they had to put a placard on the back of the wagon saying it was flammable.
Then again, ponies didn't seem to go much for warning signs of any nature. In a small town, everyone might know what was in any given wagon. Hopefully none of the ponies ever got the bright idea of lawsuits.
I was so lost in thought that I almost walked right past her house, and if she hadn’t turned into her yard, I might have.
She went right back around to her row of compost piles and backed the wagon up, then twisted around and kicked the front of the wagon with a hind hoof. I heard a latch click open, and the entire load bed tipped back. That's really clever. Unfortunately, despite the dumping bed, not everything slid out.
Honey Dipper turned for her harness, and I held up a hand to stop her. “I can get it. It'll only take a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I probably shouldn't have volunteered to go solo, but it was too late to turn back now.
I drove myself on with the thought of finally getting a tall glass of cold water, and I did get the wagon emptied out fairly quickly. Long tasks get easier when the end is in sight.
•••
After it was all into a pile, she tugged the wagon forward and then told me how to work the latch to fasten the bed back down. It wasn't actually very complicated and I probably could have figured it out on my own if I’d had to.
“I'm going to go put the wagon away,” she said. “And get out of my harness. Then we'll have something to drink. If you want to work a full day, we’ll empty out the barrels we took from the pail houses and then turn the compost piles.”
Since the option had been offered, I could have said that I'd had enough work for one day, take my half-day's pay, and then . . . and then probably never work for her again. Nobody wanted an employee who quit when the day’s work was only half-done.
“I'll stick around,” I told her. “No sense in leaving things unfinished. Especially if you’ve got trouble finding help.”
“I appreciate that. Everypony says that you’re a hard worker, you know.”
I didn’t really know what to say to that without sounding full of myself, so I just nodded.
Even though I didn’t have to, I followed her around to her shed, and when she’d backed in front of the doors, I unhitched the wagon and pushed it back into place for her, and then the two of us walked up towards her house.
“Do you want any help getting out of your harness?”
She flicked her tail and for a second I wondered if that was a bad pony pickup line at the bar. Who would wear a harness to the bar, though?
“It's complicated,” she said. “How it comes off. You don’t have a harness, you won’t know how.”
“Berry Black let me put his on and take it off,” I said.
“That's not the same.”
“I don’t really see how it would be different. His looked pretty much the same as yours, and—“ I paused for a second, mindful that I was potentially getting into dangerous territory. “Well, your bodies are similar.”
She wrinkled her muzzle, and I wondered if that was an unintentional insult, despite my attempt to avoid one. “He’s a jack.”
“Yeah, but.” I didn’t know what that was. “Okay, you’d know better than I do, but to my eye your harnesses look about the same.”
She shook her head and then blew her forelock up. “Fine.”
“I don't have to. It just seems like it would be easier.”
“I suppose,” she admitted. “Plus your hands are really clever.” She chuckled. “And you're stronger than you look.”
I ignored the barb; it surely wasn’t intentional. “How do you usually take it off? Slide it off the front, or the back?” If I’d known more about harnesses, I could have figured it out from seeing her half-dressed in the morning.
“Um, off the back's easier for me. When you unclip it from the yoke, it'll all come off my rump in one piece, and then I can just slide the yoke up over my head.”
“Huh. Berry Black preferred it the other way, because it was easier for him to put on the next day. If you’re doing it for yourself, I guess it would be different.”
She flicked her tail again. “Yeah, but there’s—you’d. . . .” Her ears drooped. “I guess it is easier that way.”
“Do you want me to unfasten the straps on the left side or the right?” I knew from helping Berry Black that there were lots of buckles that could stay fastened when the harness was loose enough to take off, and I imagined that each pony had a personal preference. Some of it might have come down to harness design, and some of it might have been if they were right-handed or left-handed. Or hooved, or mouthed—I didn’t really know for sure how that worked with ponies.
“The left.”
“Got it.”
I reached under her belly and unfastened her breeching strap first, which made the whole harness loose. Next was the ring around her dock, which was probably the reason that she had first said that she wanted it to come off the other way. That was something I should have thought of sooner, especially since I already knew how Rose had initially reacted to me working with her tail.
I really couldn’t blame Honey Dipper for being nervous about that. If our positions had been reversed . . . I tried to imagine her offering to help me take off my shorts. I’d have refused, even if I knew she didn’t have any kind of ulterior motive.
Maybe it wasn’t the thought of me reaching under her tail; maybe it was the fact that she was soaked with sweat. Even the harness was damp, and while that didn’t bother me from the limited horse experience I had, I wondered if it was embarrassing for a mare to be sweaty.
Just in case she had kicky feet, I kept off to her side and put my hand gently on the back strap. “Go ahead and lift your tail up.”
It took a moment before she did, and I'm sure her eyes were on me the whole time. I focused instead on her back as I slid the ring past the end of her dock and then tugged her tail hair through it as well. Berry had been nervous about that the first time, too.
After we’d worked together a little bit, it had become routine.
“Let me slide it forward,” I said. “I can get the whole thing off at once, and you won't have to sit down and pull it over your head.”
I made sure that nothing tangled as I got all the straps up to her collar, and from there it was pretty easy to gather the entire harness and pull it off. That was easier on her than it had been on Berry Black; ponies had smaller ears.
“Where does it go?”
“There's a hook,” she pointed to the wall. “I usually hang it up by the tiedown ring on the back of the yoke.”
•••
I hadn’t been sure what she'd meant by green beer. I'd assumed that it was beer dyed green, or maybe made out of grass. Instead, it turned out to be a cross between actual beer and a soft drink. Fermented long enough that it got a little bit bubbly, but still with a really low alcohol content.
Just the same, I only drank one, along with a few glasses of water. I didn’t know how alcohol worked for ponies, but I figured that beer would ultimately dehydrate me, and I really didn't want to get heat exhaustion and collapse on one of her compost piles.
Unfortunately, she didn't have very much to offer for lunch that was edible human food, so I wound up with just two thick slices of bread and an apple. It tasted like there was hay in the bread. I should have bought a whole cruller from Pinkie Pie.
Neither of us was in a real hurry to get back outside. I assumed that was because with my help, she was ahead of her normal schedule, and could afford to relax a bit, or else she was just decompressing from the discomfort of having my hands well into her personal space.
There wasn't much to emptying the pails. I just used a mallet and pry bar to get the lids back off and dumped them on top of the pile. The first one, I made the mistake of having my head over it when I opened it and the smell was intense. I should have expected it: the barrels had been cooking in the sun all morning.
After that, I leaned away and held my breath when I took the lids off and it wasn't so bad.
The barrels didn't have to be scraped out—Honey Dipper filled them with water and let them sit for a couple of days to wash out the insides, and then used that water on the compost piles.
We spent the rest of the day shoveling the piles, and she was right that her staggered arrangement was nicer for that. It gave me a chance to work more muscle groups and not always be twisting the same way.
By the end of it, I was drenched with sweat once again, and so was she. At least that had kept anything from sticking to us.
I'd decided that I was going to go to the river and get in with my clothes on; once I'd cooled off, I'd walk home with wet clothes, get something clean, and then go back to the river to wash off properly. Honey Dipper had a different idea.
“Do you want to clean up at the spa? I've got an account there, I'd pay. Since you worked so hard.”
“They . . . they'd let us in? Like this?”
“They've got showers in back, for tradesponies.”
“They do?”
“You didn't know?”
I shrugged. “It never came up.” I should have asked if Ponyville had showers for rent, but it wasn’t something I’d thought of. I’d discovered that ponies didn’t have YMCAs with locker rooms—that had been an option I’d considered. There was a hotel, but that cost more than I was willing to spend just for the use of a shower.
“If you don’t use the spa, how do you get clean?” Her ears flicked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I wash up in the river. That's not a problem, is it?”
She shook her head. “I've got a pond that I use sometimes, and I've also got a shower that I can rinse myself off with, but it's not as nice as having hot water. Especially in the winter time.”
“Okay, yeah.” I was suddenly very interested. “You’ve convinced me.”
I'd imagined that come the wintertime, my personal hygiene was going to be washing off as best I could in the washtub, using water that I heated on the stove, and I wasn't looking forward to that. If the spa had public showers that anybody could use, that was pretty tempting. “I'll have to stop off at home to get some clean clothes and a towel.” As hard as I’d tried, I hadn't entirely avoided getting manure on my pants or shoes.
“They're got towels that you can use,” she said. “And—”
“My house is sort of on the way. I can duck in real quick, leave my shoes and get the shorts I was wearing this morning and a clean pair of panties.” I paused for a minute, considering. “Speaking of that, do you want me to pick your hooves or anything? Just in case you missed something?”
“I cleaned them already. I've got a brush on the back porch. Do you want to use it?”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but I figured that the grass had wiped off my shoes reasonably well, and I’d be going to the spa barefoot anyway.
I had to resist the urge to pretty myself up as much as I could in the house. It would only take a few minutes to run a brush through my hair, and I could wipe off some of the sweat with a washcloth and some cold water, but Honey Dipper was waiting. Besides, if all the ponies using the showers were tradesponies, they weren’t going to be clean, either.
There was a pair of shorts in my laundry hamper, and I picked those up. No sense in wearing clean clothes to the showers.
I thought about changing my panties, too, but then decided that I could just slip a clean pair into my pocket and put them on after the shower. That made more sense.
When I stepped back outside, I didn’t see her right away and wondered if she’d gone in the backyard to check out my outhouse; instead she was further along the front of the house, sniffing at the flowers.
“Rose planted them,” I said. Then, after a moment of consideration, “If you’re hungry, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you ate one.”
Honey shook her head. “Roses are too perfumy, but thanks for offering.”
“I’ve got other food, if you want something. I could cut up some vegetables, or—”
“I’m fine. I don’t like to eat dinner before showering anyway. The food smells better and tastes better after I’ve gotten the scent of manure out of my nose.”
I wasn’t sure she ever would, given the piles around the back of her house, but I wasn’t going to argue with her.
•••
Back on Earth, truck stops had showers, and while I'd never used one, I was fairly certain that they were individual rooms. Naturally, I’d foolishly assumed that the showers at the spa would be the same, and of course they weren't. If I'd spent any time at all thinking about it, I would have realized that obviously they wouldn't be. They had a group hot tub, so why wouldn’t they also have group showers?
Since it was the end of the workday, the showers were quite popular. Easily a dozen ponies were already in the drying-off room, and the showers were nearly full.
All of them looked in our direction when we came in, and I suddenly felt very intimidated. In concept, it wasn’t unlike the showers at the YMCA, but I was the odd one out. The foreigner.
Top that off with it being my first time, and no one knew what to expect from me. They were naturally both curious and wary, something I couldn’t blame them for at all. If I’d been showering at the Y and a horse had walked in, I would have been paying attention to it.
And if I’d been that horse, I would have been nervous as all get out.
You can't do this. What was a good excuse? What could I tell Honey Dipper to explain why I suddenly wanted to be anywhere else? Why I’d prefer the river to a crowded shower room?
Any realistic explanation would have confused her. She was surely already a social pariah, given her job, but she was welcome. And while I could have explained to a friend that some ponies just didn’t like me because I wasn’t a pony, surely the rules changed when I was her guest. She’d vouched for me by bringing me here.
She wouldn’t understand any hesitation due to nudity. Why would she? That was something that would never cross her mind. Maybe my missing cutie mark would be a logical reason for embarrassment; ponies put a lot of stock into those.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was not unlike a locker room, really, and that was something I was familiar with. The persistent humidity, just a touch of mildew—that would never go away no matter how much it was cleaned—almost completely covered by the scent of the soap. With my eyes closed, imagining it as the girl’s locker room, it was something I’d done dozens or hundreds of times, so there was no reason why it should be intimidating with my eyes open. My audience, such as it was, might have already seen me when I went to Sugarcube Corner naked, might have already known that I didn’t have a cutie mark, might have had their children describe Cheerilee’s drawings of me.
On top of that, it had been a long time since I’d had a proper shower. How long, I didn’t know, but it had been a long time.
I opened my eyes again and reached down for the button on my shorts as I looked into the shower room for an empty spot. There was no sense in getting undressed before there was a spot available.
Honey Dipper saw my hesitation and her ears turned uncertainly. She can't be the most popular pony in town. Maybe I was assigning human values to them that didn't apply—just because people thought that garbagemen were uneducated and filthy, maybe ponies didn’t; maybe they had a more healthy view of their society.
Ultimately, it boiled down to two choices—either dive right in, or wimp out and remain an outsider.
Harnesses are complicated and as far as I know there isn't a fast way out of them. My clothes, less so. I did manage to get my shorts and panties tangled up on my leg and had to do an awkward little hop to keep myself from tripping, but then I was naked before I really had time to completely process what I was doing.
In hindsight, I should have also expected the showers to be mixed gender, but that hadn’t crossed my mind at all, even though I knew the spa proper was. I’d just assumed that taking a shower was more intimate than sitting in a hot tub but to the ponies I suppose it wasn’t.
There was a blue stallion who had his ears pinned back and when he saw I was looking his way, he backed closer to his friends.
It was easiest to ignore him. To just focus on a showerhead and have that be my goal. Distill things to the simplest tasks. Turn on the water. Do that awkward little dance while waiting for the water to settle on the right temperature and then move forward. Ignore the other stallions in here; ignore the fact that every pony in the showers surely still had their eyes on me.
I could focus on Honey Dipper. I had no doubt when I was distracted by the ponies in the shower, she’d checked me out, but she wasn’t staring. She’d satisfied her curiosity and moved on.
And I thought that after spending the day with her shoveling shit, we’d bonded. There was always solidarity among those who did the least desirable jobs. I hadn’t wimped out and I hadn’t screwed up, and that was important. More and more I understood that manual laborers don’t deal in drama, they live in a binary world where you can do the task or you can’t, and if you can, you’re automatically accepted into the group.
In her case, it was surely a small group. I could see her finding ponies who were willing to pull the wagon or roll barrels with lids or even shovel some of the less odorous piles, but her generous pay told me that she wasn’t exactly awash in assistance.
Honey Dipper had more experience with the knobs, and got it right on the first try. She let out a happy little sigh as she moved under the spray while I was still standing around feeling really awkward and of course every eye in the place was still on me, but it was a different feel than them mentally undressing me. It was simple curiosity, nothing more.
I stuck a hand in the water and it was good enough, so I moved forward and grabbed a bar of soap off the shelf. “Back on Earth, they have these individually wrapped,” I said.
“Why?”
“So you don't get germs from other people.” I shouldn't have said that; now she was going to think that humans were filthy animals.
“Soap cleans you off,” she said. “How could you get germs from it?”
“Uh. . . .” That was a good question. Could you get germs from soap, or was that just some kind of weird human paranoia? “I don't know. It doesn't make sense.” Maybe ponies were wrong about that. But thus far there hadn't been any wide-scale illnesses that I knew of that had affected the ponies.
“Is that how you lost your coat?” Now she was putting some space between us.
“I never had one,” I said. “Humans don't.” There was some speculation that our ancestors had mostly lost it to prevent things like lice, and we'd kept the hair on our heads to protect us from the sun. Pubic hair was to hold in scent and cut down on friction, and presumably armpit hair did the same.
“I don't know why,” I said, trying to get my thoughts back to safer ground. “It's just the way it is, it’s the way it’s been for a very long time.”
“So do you have to wear clothes to stay warm?”
“Yeah.” That was a much easier answer, even if it wasn't entirely true. It was warm enough to go without.
She grabbed her own bar of soap with her mouth and began scrubbing herself.
I considered for a moment that the bar of soap I was holding had been in a pony’s mouth, and then I considered how the ponies would actually care about how soap tasted—both new and after use—and then I started washing myself human-style.
I couldn’t help but watch her as she bathed, and I kept reminding myself not to stare. When she ran out of places she could get with a bar of soap held in her mouth, she sat down on her rump and held it in her forelegs. When I turned around to rinse off my back, I observed that several other ponies were doing the same, if they didn’t have a friend to help them at least. Unicorns had it easy; they just floated the soap wherever they needed.
By the time Honey Dipper was shampooing her tail, I’d finally tuned out my surroundings and gotten lost in the pleasure of taking my first shower in a very, very long time.
•••
We dried off in the little common room, and I almost offered to help Honey Dipper because it felt like the polite thing to do. Other ponies were drying each other off, and I'd seen some of them washing each other, too, but I thought maybe it was something like tail-braiding. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by asking, although I certainly would have helped if she'd asked.
I could have spent longer in the showers, but that was something I'd do when I went on my own time. It would have been rude to delay her while I was enjoying my shower. Some time in the future, I'd come and spend however long I wanted, maybe earlier in the day when there were fewer ponies jockeying for space.
For now I was clean, and that was what mattered.
I hesitated as I pulled on my panties. Now would be an opportunity to be adventuresome, to break down the final barriers . . . but it would be safer with Rose. I suppose I could have asked Honey Dipper to walk with me, but maybe she was planning to go right to dinner or the bar or meet up with her friends and it would be really rude to impose like that.
Some day when Rose was free, that would be better. We were a lot more comfortable around each other, after all.
And then I thought back to working in their flowerbeds. They were behind the house, and you couldn’t really see them from the street. I’d never really considered it, but that would be a nice, safe place to get accustomed to being au naturel. Rose surely wouldn’t mind—in fact, she’d probably be happy I was doing it, even if she didn’t say so—and Lily and Daisy could deal with it.
If I was going to do that, then it might be nice to be more girly. My options were limited in that regard, but I did have some beeswax candles at home and maybe I could use the wax from them, since razors were off the table.
I could experiment with that tonight. Maybe try a bit on my leg or my arm and see what happened.
Before we went our separate ways, I asked Honey Dipper if she wanted help again tomorrow. Her ears perked up, and she nodded. “Most ponies don't want to work with me if they can help it,” she said.
That was something I could understand, but it really wasn't bad work, all things considered. Being outdoors had been nice, too.
At the end of the second day, I was completely exhausted. Honey Dipper had been so pleased with the help I’d been giving her that she increased her schedule. We emptied two outhouses in the morning, and after lunch we filled her wagon completely with pails.
I could imagine how difficult and time-consuming that must have been for her. Without an assistant, she’d have had to unhitch each time, do her work, shuffle the barrels around in the wagon, and then hitch back up before going to her next jobsite.
Not only did she not have to unhook from the wagon, but I could just lift empty barrels over the side, which saved time as I added full ones to the collection.
“I’ve never really had to use the brakes for pailhouses,” she remarked. “Usually isn’t enough weight in the wagon to need them.”
“Just don’t go expecting that I’m going to be much help if you get stuck at the bottom of a hill.” How would that work? Did ponies have CAA? If so, did they send out another pony in harness to help tow? I did occasionally see larger wagons being pulled by two or four ponies, but I wasn’t sure exactly how that arrangement worked. Were the extra ponies attached to the wagon, or to each other?
•••
We had time to empty out the barrels—she would need them if we kept up our fast schedule—but not enough time to mix it in with the other compost.
At the end of the workday, we went right to the spa, only stopping by my house long enough for me to change into clean clothes. I didn’t really like doing that, but I was sure that nobody wanted me to walk into the spa with manure-spotted clothes.
We’d worked late and missed the bulk of the tradesponies, which made it feel more comfortable. Of course, that meant that there was a different set of curious eyes watching as I got undressed and walked into the showers, but that was less weird than it had been yesterday.
Plus, I’d earned this shower. Moreso than the last one.
I still didn’t dally too much, even though I wanted to. The hot water helped to relax my aching back.
“Do you still need help tomorrow?”
Honey Dipper nodded. “There are still plenty of houses. And the fresh manure needs to be mixed in, we’ll have to do that. Maybe I’ll do it tonight.”
I had a sudden vision of her working the piles by lantern. “How far behind are you?”
“A lot less than I was. You’ve been really helpful, Sam.”
I blushed slightly at the compliment, and she noticed. “No, really. I don’t get a lot of help.”
“I don’t see why not,” I said, not entirely in jest. She paid quite well.
“Ponies just don’t want to shovel manure. Well, a lot of Earth Ponies don’t mind, but the ones that have farms of their own never have time to help out. Sometimes when I’m really behind I give a discount to ponies who will help turn compost piles.”
“Back on Earth—where I come from—there are always people worried about their jobs going overseas. I guess that’s something you’ll never have to worry about.”
“I would like to travel,” she said brightly. “I’ve heard in Neighpon they have bespelled toilets—I’d like to see one of those.”
I thought about saying that she’d missed the point, but if ponies hadn’t started offshoring jobs yet, I wasn’t going to be the one to put the idea in their heads.
•••
I hadn’t slept as well as I thought I would, due to entire new muscle groups aching. Once again, I thought of Mike Rowe, and how he’d get along in Equestria. Would he be waiting in line at Sugarcube Corner, his body aching and his mind fuzzy?
And thinking about television got me to thinking about Gordon Ramsay—what would he make of pony cooking? I had yet to see any of them wearing any kind of hoof glove or mane-net.
“Sam?”
“Sorry.” I turned my attention back to Pinkie PIe. “I was lost in the clouds.”
“Really? Your feet are still on the ground.” She leaned over the counter to verify.
“It’s a human expression. It should be a pegasus expression, too. What do pegasi say when they’re distracted thinking?”
“I’ve heard Dashie say one of her weatherponies was off gathering mist.”
“Hmm. I like that.” I glanced back down at the display case. “Do you know if Honey Dipper has a particular favorite breakfast snack?”
“Ooh, she loves the raspberry oat bread.”
I nodded, and Pinkie Pie cut off a thick slice and wrapped it in paper for me. It was heavier than I’d expected; it felt more like fruitcake than bread.
Hopefully she hadn’t eaten a big breakfast. Although if she had, she could save the bread for lunch.
•••
Honey Dipper ate the bread while I was loading up her wagon. It felt a little strange to not have her hitched to it while I worked. Still, it would be a nice break for her, and I’d gotten accustomed to my new job and didn’t need as much instruction any more.
The same held true when we got to our worksites. That was strange to think about, how a couple of days ago I hadn’t had the slightest idea how to empty outhouses and now I was practically a pro at it.
We filled the time which had formerly been occupied with instructions with conversation, although I stayed away from one topic which interested me, but which I thought it might be rude to ask about: how did Honey Dipper get her cutie mark? How did she get an interest in composting poop? Some ponies were more than willing to talk about how they got their cutie marks, while others seemed more reluctant. Her job didn’t seem like the kind of thing a pony should aspire to, even if it was necessary.
Back on Earth, were there people who aspired to be ditch-diggers or garbage men or septic tank pumpers? Or did they just take the job because it was available? For most people it had to be the latter. Didn’t it?
Then again, a hands-on job like this was nearly recession-proof, and it couldn’t be offshored. Even back on Earth, job security and higher wages covered some unpleasant careers.
“Do ponies import things from other places?” I frowned—I knew the answer to that; Cherilee had implied that they did.
“Yeah.” Honey Dipper nodded. “I got my wagon from an outfit in Manehattan, Bittmeyer and Small. ‘Cause it’s got a patented dump mechanism, which is really convenient. Before that, I just had a plain wagon and had to shovel it out myself.”
“We have self-propelled wagons and carriages,” I told her. “And they all get sold on big lots, sort of like the market.”
“I found mine in a catalog. I took some of the boards off the side, ‘cause I didn’t need them to be that high. I kept the original sideboards, though, so if I want to sell it I can put them back on. I’d probably have to have the wainwright replace the floorboards, though. I don’t think that anypony would want to use it like it is right now.”
“Probably not.” I bent back to my task, imagining that there were wagon detail shops. “Do ponies like to show off their wagons?”
“Sometimes.” She grinned. “Especially if somepony’s got a new one; that’s the talk of Ponyville for a while. I didn’t use mine for work until after the Plowpony Parade. Decked it out with flower garlands and that was a lot of fun. I’d never been in a parade before.
“It wasn’t as fun as watching the parade, though, ‘cause I could only really get a look at the tailboard of the wagon in front of me. Do humans have parades?”
“Yeah, for holidays like Canada Day and sometimes just for fun. If the Canucks ever win the Stanley Cup, there’ll probably be a big parade for them. I’ve never been in one, though. There’s a really famous one in New York City for Thanksgiving, that’s on the TV, and I’ve watched that a couple of times. They even have giant balloons that they tow along.”
“Giant balloons? That sounds fun—is that for the pegasi?”
“We don’t have those,” I said. “Humans are all just like me. Well, except for Courtney, the Vancouver mermaid.”
“Mermaid? Is that like a merpony?”
“Arms and a fishy tail?”
“Yeah.”
“You have merponies in Equestria? Real merponies?”
“You just said—”
“Courtney’s fake. She has a fake tail.”
“Oh.”
I scooped the last big shovelful of manure into the bucket and climbed out of the pit. There was a little residue left on the walls, but that would be covered again soon enough.
“I’ve never seen a real merpony,” Honey Dipper said. “Or a mermare as some ponies call them. But they’re real! I heard that there was a travelling show that came to Ponyville once that had merponies who swam in the lake and did all sorts of tricks. And you could swim with them after the show.”
“We do have seahorses. They’re really small, though, and don’t look too much like actual horses.”
•••
The showers felt as good as always.
I hadn’t even bothered with panties this time—it wasn’t like the ponies would care. Besides, the ones I’d worn for work were sweaty, and it wasn’t worth dirtying another pair.
What if I wore my bathrobe to the spa? I considered it, but that wasn’t really something to wear around town, was it?
This time, I’d almost invited Honey Dipper in, but changed my mind at the last minute, my old human instincts of playing good host nagging at me again. It felt less rude to have her wait outside than to stand awkwardly in the living room while I was upstairs in my bedroom changing.
Of course, I could have changed right in front of her and it wasn’t like she’d have seen anything she hadn’t already.
I didn’t feel as comfortable nude around any other pony except Rose. What did that mean? Was it the bond of two people who had to do a dirty job together? There was certainly a bit more camaraderie with my fellow painters than I’d ever felt with classmates, so that might have been it. Or maybe it was just the vibe I got from her that she trusted me and believed in me since I could and would do what most other ponies wouldn’t. How many applicants had she gotten who were gone by lunchtime, never to return?
Would this wind up being my place in Ponyville? The pay was good, I couldn’t deny that. Ponies might not trust me to work in the spa, but they could trust me to empty their pailhouses without getting manure all over the grass.
What if that was the life I was destined for? Was that the punchline of a cosmic joke?
I let the hot water beat down on my back and looked around. There were ponies clustered around showerheads, some of them washing each other, and now that I really looked, now that I’d gotten over my initial apprehension, I wondered if Honey Dipper would have had a friend wash her normally. If I hadn’t been there.
Or would she have been on her own, regardless?
What would she say to a stallion if she was on a date? Assuming that the stallion in question didn’t already know what she did for a living, that is. I wanted to ask, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
Was the right thing to offer to wash her mane for her? Or to keep my hands off, to maintain a proper employer/employee relationship?
“Sam?”
I snapped back to the present. “Sorry. Just had my head in—just gathering mist.”
She snorted. “Not from down here you won’t.”
“I suppose not. Although there is plenty available.” I crouched down to get at her level. “Do you need me again tomorrow?”
“If you’re willing.”
•••
I wound up working two more days with Honey Dipper, which got her completely caught up on her schedule, and I went home at the end of it with more bits in my pocket than I'd ever had before.
There were a bunch of little things I could have spent them on, but I wanted to save as many as possible for the wintertime. I knew that historically winters were tough, and I was a bit worried about running out of food. That probably wouldn't happen, but there certainly could be an increase in food prices, and having more money saved up would really help out.
That was something I could ask Tenderheart about. If the ponies had it handled, if they brought in fresh food by train during the winter, it might just come off as a silly human worry to her, and if not, I’d know.
After Honey Dipper and I finished our evening shower, I stopped by Rose’s house. Lily eyed me suspiciously, but relaxed a bit once Rose and I sat on the couch and went back to her flower catalog.
I don’t think she meant for me to notice, but I saw when she sniffed at me, no doubt to make sure that I’d completely washed off the day’s labor.
“Do you need help in the garden tomorrow? Honey Dipper’s all caught up.” Lily twitched at the mention of her name. “I could still look at the job board, I guess, but I don’t really feel like it.”
Rose nodded, then glanced over at Lily. “We—I’d appreciate that.”
A thought was forming at the back of my mind. “What’s the weather supposed to be like tomorrow? Is it going to be cold or rain?”
“No, it’s going to be sunny and warm.”
“I could, maybe, since your garden is kind of private, I might—” I thought about Honey Dipper and I showering alone. I could push myself a little bit more; I’d be somewhere safe, with a friend close.
What was the best way to phrase it?
Lily, I noticed, had one ear focused on us even though she was pretending to read a seed catalog.
“Well, I could not . . . I could go—” Why beat around the bush? “—nude.”
That got Lily’s other ear to pay attention.
“Really?”
“Sure,” I said with more confidence than I was feeling. “It’s no big deal, right? All of you are—” as naked as the day you were born— “you know, so why not?”
“You don’t have to,” Rose said. “If that will make you feel uncomfortable.”
“It won’t.” That wasn’t likely to be true, and I was already regretting what I’d said, but it was too late to take it back. I couldn’t back down. Even if I wasn’t sure I was actually ready for it.
It would have been smarter to just offer to help and then see what kind of mood I was in come tomorrow, but procrastination didn’t make progress. And she was my friend; it was a silly thing to get worked up about. If I could take a shower with Honey Dipper, surrounded by a bunch of strangers, what did it say about me if I couldn’t do this?
When I got home, I got undressed out of habit and went into the kitchen to make something for dinner, even though I didn’t feel particularly hungry. I’d spent the whole walk home getting more and more worked up about the idea of gardening with Rose in the nude.
I wasn’t sure why.
Being nude was normal here. There was nothing remarkable about the idea, but this felt different than taking a shower or bathing in the river or relaxing at home. It felt—not exactly wrong, but weird.
If Nurse Tenderheart did house calls, I could ask her what she thought, although she probably wouldn’t be happy to have me interrupt her dinner, and by the end of it, she’d most likely tell me I was being silly. Still, it would have been nice to talk it through with her.
I cut off a slice of bread and leaned against the kitchen counter, imagining myself sitting on the couch in her office. ‘What bothers you the most?’ she might ask. I thought about that as I nibbled on the bread. What did bother me the most? I didn’t have an answer for that.
Maybe it was because humans put so much stock into clothing, to where what I wore was a reflection of my personality. Would removing the final few pieces of my clothing be giving up what humanity I had left? Would that be the final step in me becoming a pony, although bipedal and without a cutie mark?
Or was it something else? I wasn’t so shallow to believe that it required clothes to make me me.
And even without clothes, I could still wear makeup if I wanted to. The ponies had some, and I’d bought a little bit for when I wanted to feel pretty. Hoof polish worked like nail polish, and interestingly enough rather than coming in standard colors, it got mixed to specification, much like paint.
Mascara and eyeshadow and lipstick were also things ponies had.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that makeup was an idiotic idea. I’d be working outdoors all day, and most of the makeup would sweat off by lunchtime. There’d been a girl who had started working on our paint crew that got all prettied up before her first day of work and she’d looked the worst of us at the end of the day. That wasn’t an impression I wanted to give. What would Rose think if I showed up to work in the flowerbeds all tarted up?
Then I had another idea.
•••
Maybe the kitchen wasn't the best place for personal hygiene, but it was either that or the living room, and I was going to want to have the stove nearby.
There was some kind of special wax that beauticians used for hair removal and that was something that surely wasn't available in Ponyville. Wax was wax, though, so I figured any kind ought to work.
I was going to try it on my arm first, just to be safe. I’d rather wind up with a burn on my arm than someplace sensitive.
I used my kitchen knife to shave a bit off a beeswax candle, and put it in my frying pan. I'd thought about burning the candle and letting it melt the wax that way, but then I decided that the wax might be flame temperature. On the stove, I could stop as soon as it liquefied, which would be safer.
It didn't take very long to melt, and then I was standing there with a frying pan containing a puddle of liquid wax and realized that I didn't have a good way to pour it on myself.
This was everything that my mother had warned me about when I was a kid.
It was hotter than I’d anticipated. Too late, I realized that I could have stuck my finger in to make sure of the temperature before I’d committed myself.
Even worse, it was more runny than I’d expected. The stuff that they used in salons must have had something added to make it more syrupy: I wound up with a trail of wax down my arm, some of which dripped on the floor.
The wax contracted as it dried, which felt really odd on my skin.
When I thought it was dry enough, I hooked a fingernail under the edge of the wax until I'd pulled up enough to grasp it between my fingers. Just like pulling off a bandage.
Much to my surprise, it actually worked, and I now had a mostly bare patch about the size of a Toonie on my arm, with a little bit of a tail. More importantly, it didn’t seem to have burned my skin. Maybe if I let it cool off a little bit more before pulling it loose.
I leaned back against the counter and thought. I'd want to find a better way to apply the wax, but I could use a spoon or spatula for that. I’d need some way to keep it where I wanted it as I poured, unless I let it thicken up some.
No matter what, it was going to be a long project, but it was doable. I could open a bottle of wine, and it would even be sort of pleasant in a getting-ready-for-Prom way.
But was it worth it? What would ponies think?
“Nopony would trust you because you haven't got a coat.” “Is a tattoo like fleas?” “Did you lose your coat by using soap?” Those were all dumb questions, but made sense for the ponies to ask. They'd probably assume that I had mange or something if I was hanging out with Rose tomorrow and all my body hair was gone.
It works for hippies. That wasn't really a satisfactory answer, but I poured the leftover wax into a glass jar and decided that I'd spend some more time thinking about how the ponies would react to Sam-without-body-hair before I did anything stupid. I didn’t want to give up my humanity, but I also didn’t want to alienate the ponies.
I did use scissors to neaten up as well as I could. That, at least, was reasonably safe. Ponies groomed and brushed their coats, after all.
•••
Normally, the idea of working at Rose’s house wouldn’t have given me insomnia. It was simple work—just do what she said. We were friends, I could trust her, she had my back.
But the idea that I’d committed myself to doing it naked—that still scared me when I got up, and as I made breakfast I kept thinking of excuses I could give for not doing it.
I shouldn’t have. I tried to turn my mind to the positive. I’d been worried about giving a presentation at the school, and that had gone well. I’d been worried about the drawing that Cheerilee had, and that was just fine. Going to the hot tub at the spa? Nothing had come of that, nor had there been an issue with the group showers. Even going to Sugarcube Corner drunk and naked, that hadn’t been a problem at all.
My mind was still conditioned from human experience, and I couldn’t entirely eliminate that from my thoughts. Even though I knew that the rules were different here.
Knowing and knowing, those were two different things.
Berry Black hadn’t liked me taking off his harness at first, he hadn’t trusted me. He hadn’t trusted strange hands getting intimate, and of course I’d not considered that when I’d offered to help. In hindsight, I’d probably never twigged to the reason for his hesitation at all.
Other offers had been rebuffed, from my initial attempts to braid Rose’s tail, to the more recent offer to help Honey Dipper with her harness.
I just went around barreling through pony taboos like a crazed pinball. No wonder they didn’t know what to make of me. And in response, when Rose suggested I do something that every other pony did every single day, I’d worked it in my mind into a gigantic unclimbable mountain and I was done with doing that. Tenderheart had been pushing me in this direction, and so had Rose, and they had my best interests in mind.
I was going to go over there, I was going to get naked, and I was going to embrace my inner hippie.
After all, I had the body hair for it.
That got a giggle fit started.
•••
I was never sure how early ponies were up and about, so I hesitated at Rose’s door before knocking. It was so much more convenient to text somebody and make sure they were ready rather than just knock on their door.
I’d never liked looking into windows to see if anybody was home; it made me feel like a creeper. So I went around back and looked in the flower garden, but it was empty. So much for that idea.
There weren’t any other options, so I knocked lightly on the door.
Daisy answered. “Rose is in the bathroom,” she said.
“Can I come in?”
She considered that, then nodded, moved back from the door and turned her head towards the kitchen. “Lily, Sam is here.”
“I—uh, I’ll be in the garden.” I heard the clatter of hooves on the floor and then the back door open and shut.
Daisy got an apologetic look on her face. “I ought to go back there and make sure she doesn’t panic. Go ahead and sit in the kitchen I guess.”
“I can wait out front, if you’d rather.”
“No, you can come in. Lily needs to learn some better manners.”
•••
Both of their breakfasts were half-eaten. I felt bad about that. Next time, I’d have Rose come over to my house when she was ready, and that way everybody would get to finish their meal before I threw a wrench in the works.
When she came into the kitchen, she didn’t ask me where Daisy and Lily had gone. It was obvious anyway.
“I thought you wanted to . . . to not dress up,” Rose said.
I nodded. “I did—I do—I just didn’t want to walk over here without wearing anything.”
She scrunched up her muzzle. “Well, you’re here now.” Her eyes went to the small bald patch on my arm. “What happened?”
“I was experimenting.” I wasn’t sure this was a conversation I wanted to have, not right now—although it did at least serve as a delay in getting undressed. “It’s complicated.”
“Will it grow back?”
“Couple of weeks.”
She stuck her nose in close and sniffed.
“It was wax.”
“Were you trying to make candles? You could have put it under cold water right away and when it was cool combed it out carefully, and most of your fur would have stayed. And besides, there’s a chandler in town, you didn’t have to—” Her voice trailed off and her eyes got big. “I didn’t know how hard it’s been for you. I should have thought, Berry Black, Honey Dipper . . . If you need a place to stay, or food, you can just ask. You don’t have to go and try and save bits by making your own candles, that’s dangerous.”
“It’s not like that. I wasn’t trying to save money by making my own candles, I was trying—look, Daisy and Lily are going to ask the same thing, aren’t they? Especially if they notice that I—”
“Notice what?”
“Never mind.” They’d probably notice, but surely ponies trimmed their coats sometimes. Real horses, not even show horses, had to have their coats trimmed if they were working, and a lot of ponies in Ponyville worked harder than Earth ponies usually did. Of course, they might have been better at pacing themselves.
In a story, this would have been a heroic moment, but it didn’t feel heroic. I reached down and twisted the button loose on my shorts and then there was no going back.
I took my shorts off and folded them and set them on the kitchen counter. It took me a bit longer to remove my panties, but I motivated myself along by thinking about how the showers at the spa had gotten less weird each day, and how Honey Dipper had only hesitated having me take off her harness the first time. Once you realized that it was just a molehill after all, it got easier.
She must have noticed; even as focused as I was on the moment, I saw her eyes following the movement of my hands and I saw her ears move as I slid my panties down, but she didn’t say a word. Maybe she was embarrassed for me, and didn’t want to say anything.
The kitchen counter really wasn’t the best place for my clothes. I could have gone up to her bedroom and gotten undressed there—why hadn’t I thought of that? “You don’t mind, do you?”
Rose shook her head.
This was out of my experience. I had places I put things in my own house and I had my own rules for what should go where, and I was her guest. “Are you sure?” I picked them up and looked around. Back in the living room, I could set them on the coffee table or even the couch. It would be easier to know where clothes ought to go if ponies weren’t habitual nudists; I could have set them in their mudroom or coat closet or wherever.
It wasn’t my first time being nude in Rose’s kitchen, which helped. But the door that led to the backyard, to their flower gardens, was as formidable an obstacle as a bunker door. I sucked in a breath and walked across the kitchen.
“Will I scare them if I go into the backyard first?”
Rose snorted. “Probably. Especially if you run out there.”
“I could.”
“It would serve them right,” she muttered. “I’ll go first, and you can work with me and carry flower buckets and when they want help they’ll ask for it.”
I’d thought that their backyard was the perfect place to practice going clothesless, but as I stood in the doorway I started to have second thoughts. It wasn’t as secluded as I’d originally thought; across the back fence I could see a stallion in the street pulling a wagon, and he hadn’t turned to look at me yet but it was only a matter of time. And of course there would be pegasi flying overhead, although that didn’t matter. Surely some of them had seen me before in my backyard or when I was bathing in the river and it hadn’t really bothered me then. I was just trying to rationalize.
Lily and Daisy were also staring. It was probably just curiosity. They didn’t faint on the spot or gallop off in terror.
I followed Rose over to a row, and we started working. Once I’d crouched down a bit to help her, the other two sort of lost interest in me and went back to their blooms.
We worked in silence at first, with Lily and Daisy occasionally studying me whenever I walked by with a loaded bucket. Lily was still tense; she kept flicking her tail and one ear was always pointed at me, no matter what she was doing. Daisy focused more on her tasks with only occasional glances in my direction.
I’d never noticed before, but while Rose and Lily exclusively used their tools with mouth and hoof, Daisy occasionally wrapped things in a green aura of magic even though she didn’t have a horn. That was something I’d never seen another earth pony do; that was something that just unicorns could do, or so I’d thought.
Obviously, Rose and Lily knew about it—how would they not? And even if it was rude to ask, I still wanted to know. “Rose? How come Daisy’s using magic?”
“She’s half unicorn,” Rose whispered back. “That’s why she’s kind of scrawny, too.”
“Technically, I’m three-quarters,” Daisy said. I hadn’t realized that she was close enough to overhear us.
I set my bucket down. This was interesting. “How does that work?”
“Well, when two ponies love each other very much—“
“Not that. I know how sex works.”
“Um.” She glanced over at Rose, who was blushing at the mention of sex. “Well, I don’t know exactly, other than it’s genetics and chromosomes. Dominant and recessive, just like plants.
“I had some magic surges when I was a filly, and most of the time it was making plants grow and stuff, but sometimes I did horn magic, so my Mom sort of helped teach me and encourage me to use telekinesis. Since almost everypony else in my family could, I didn’t think it was that odd, even though I didn’t have a horn. I do sort of have a little knot on my forehead, though.” Her ears drooped. “A lot of ponies don’t like it, and I guess it takes a while to get used to seeing. I don’t do it much in town.”
“Ponies don’t like the idea of unicorns growing plants,” Rose added. “When we’re all alone though, nopony knows.”
“The pony caste system at work,” I muttered.
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
Daisy’s ears perked back up. “Since we’re asking personal questions, how come your flanks and belly are kinda pale and the rest of you is more dun colored? Are humans piebald? Is that why you wear pants all the time, to hide it?”
“It’s a suntan,” I said. “My skin turns darker when it’s exposed to the sun, but if it’s under clothes that doesn’t happen.”
“Is that like a sunburn?”
“Not exactly, but I can get those, too.” In fact, there was a chance that that would happen, but I was going to take that chance. “This doesn’t hurt like a sunburn does. People that live in really sunny places on Earth have naturally darker skin; those of us that don’t have dark skin get a suntan, and only if we stay out too long, a sunburn.”
•••
By lunchtime, Daisy had warmed up to me at least, and I’d mostly forgotten that I was naked. With each passing minute, it felt more natural, and I didn’t worry any more about ponies going by on the street looking over and seeing me. Maybe if there had been a crowd gathered at the fence, I would have sung a different tune, but there wasn’t.
In fact, it was feeling right, like I was some kind of forest nymph returning to my natural state. Or maybe that was just the onset of heatstroke.
In the back of my mind I knew that there was still going to be a mental fight when it came time to leave the relative safety and seclusion of the backyard, but that was a problem for later. For now, I’d get used to this, and that would make the next steps that much easier.
A shadow crossed over the garden—a low-flying pegasus. I looked up just in time to see her circle back around and swoop past in the other direction, back towards town. Was that coincidence, or had she wanted to get a second look at me?
I guess I’d find out if a bunch of her friends suddenly showed up to gawk.
“Sam?”
“Sorry.” I turned my attention back to Rose. “Just saw a pegasus fly overhead and I was trying to remember if I knew her.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was a reasonable excuse. “Kind of a medium blue with a lighter blue mane and tail.”
“That’s a lot of ponies,” Rose said. “Did you see her cutie mark?”
“Not all that well. I’m sure I’ve seen her around town, though.”
•••
It was a market day, so after we’d eaten, Daisy hitched herself up to their market wagon and the rest of us loaded it for her, and then she and Lily left for the market.
Rose and I should have gone back to work. Even though neither of us wanted to say it, I was sure I’d slowed them down just by being there and being a distraction.
“I never knew that about Daisy,” I said. “You never told me.”
“She’s kind of shy about it,” Rose told me. “I’m surprised she said anything; usually she just puts her head down and ignores the conversation.
“It must have been hard for her growing up to be a half-breed. Unicorns wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her, ‘cause she didn’t have a horn, and earth ponies would think she was too skinny and weak and wouldn’t like her casting magic.”
I thought I knew exactly why Daisy had warmed up to me, but I kept my mouth shut. Rose might have made the connection in her mind, too, but she didn’t say anything.
Before we could brood, I changed the subject. “Since they’re at market today, you’re supposed to cook dinner, right?”
Rose nodded. “But there’s still plenty of time to work in the flowerbeds.”
“I’ve got an idea I think that they’ll like. Remember that stir-fry I made for you? What if I make that? Have you got enough vegetables?”
“We don’t have bright peppers, only the green ones,” she said. “Does it matter what kind of vegetables you put in?”
“Not really.” In a stir-fry, the vegetables all tended to get along with each other. “When it’s time to start making it, show me where all the food is. You’ve got cooking oil and a big pan and a knife, right?”
“Of course. What kind of kitchen doesn’t?”
“There are people on Earth who only have a pot and a bowl and a spoon in their kitchen,” I said. “You’d be surprised how many boxed meals you can make with just that.” I got up and walked toward the backyard, with Rose following, and we settled into place along the flowerbeds.
“How are you feeling?” Rose asked. “If—you can put your shorts back on if you’re uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine.” And that was the truth. “This is really nice, honestly. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. And it’s lots better than cleaning outhouses with Honey Dipper.”
Rose stuck out her tongue. “Anything would be. She sells really good fertilizer, though.”
I hadn’t thought about that, even though she’d told me that was what she did with it. I reflected back on the stinking pits and barrels, and the less smelly rows of composting waste, and then the rich loam that made up the flowerbeds. Maybe one day, some of the fruits of my labor would be added to the soil.
“She said that ponies in Canterlot and Manehattan don’t want to see manure wagons during the day, and some ponies in Ponyville don’t want to, either.”
“‘Cause they don’t want to think about where their food comes from,” Rose said. “All of us farmers know, though.”
“Do any farmers make their own compost?”
“Sure, especially if they’ve got animals.” She leaned down to a blood-red rose and snipped the stem off. “Not in town, though; nopony wants that.”
•••
Squash and radishes and carrots provided plenty of color for the stir-fry. Since it had been so popular with Rose, I made plenty, alternating between cutting and frying. There wasn’t really a big enough pan to cook them all at once, so I put the cooked veggies in a casserole dish in the oven to keep them warm.
I sliced the vegetables as thin as I could manage, which took a little bit of extra time but was totally worth it.
Being out of the sun was nice, although the kitchen got hot, even with the windows open. The stove had very little insulation on its outside, which I suppose was typical of wood stoves.
Aside from the heat, I had to be careful of the hot oil. Rose offered me an apron, which was more of a bib on me, so I turned it down. Still, I had plenty of practice from cooking at home, and only got hit with a few drops of hot oil.
When the four of us sat down to dinner, Daisy and Lily looked at the vegetables admiringly. “You didn’t have to have somepony come and cut them,” Lily said. “Thicker vegetables would have been fine.”
“Sam cut them,” Rose said.
I half expected Lily to push her plate away, but she didn’t. “Really?”
I nodded.
“That must have taken forever.”
“It didn’t take all that long.” I was no expert chef, but even so I could chop up a vegetable in under a minute.
“It’s good.” Daisy was admiring her dinner the proper way, by eating it. “It’s really good. Rose, did you have Sam cook dinner for us?”
“We were behind on cutting flowers, and I can do it better than Sam can.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have a knife cutie mark.”
“Humans don’t get cutie marks,” I reminded her.
“No coat, no tail, no cutie mark, big udders . . . I’m glad I’m a pony.”
Daisy frowned. “That was rude, Lily. Sam can’t help being born a human. Maybe if she got to choose, she’d be something else, but she’s not and so she has to make the best of what she is.”
“I don’t want to argue at the dinner table.”
“You shouldn’t have brought it up, then.” Daisy pounded her hoof on the table, rattling the dishes. “Why not appreciate how many buckets of flowers she can carry at once or how she can cut the vegetables really thin instead of saying mean things about Rose’s—about our friend.”
“I wasn’t trying to be rude, you’re the one who’s got burrs in her tail.” Lily stuck her nose in her bowl and took a mouthful of stir fry. Once she’d finished chewing, she looked in my direction. “We get along fine, don’t we?”
“Yeah, of course we do.” That wasn’t true, but if it stopped the argument, it was worth saying.
I turned to Daisy. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know if I’d want to be a pony. I like having hands, and I don’t know how I’d feel about having a tail or a coat. Seems like it would be hot all the time and take forever to dry.”
“I’m sorry.” Daisy hung her head. “I was being rude. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Your heart was in the right place. And that’s what matters. There’s plenty more stir-fry, so you can have seconds if you want.”
I didn’t have to wash the dishes. For starters, I was a guest. More importantly, I’d made dinner while Lily and Daisy were at the market, and they had a rule that whoever was at the market was supposed to clean up after dinner.
That was an interesting insight into their idea of which was more of a task. I could have seen the argument that it was harder to work the stall than to simply make dinner, but their priorities were different. Maybe it had to do with the difficulty of cooking and cleaning with hooves.
Why was Lily so bitchy? Could it be PMS? I didn’t know if that was a thing that ponies got; I’d never really asked.
Was she scared of me? That idea had possibilities. I couldn’t think of any particular reason why she might be, but I knew that ponies sometimes shied away from me when I was out and about.
Lily’d been friendly enough when I’d run into her at market, so I didn’t think it was racism, or whatever having a fear of a different species was. I hoped it wasn’t—if it was deep-seated, it would be nearly impossible to overcome.
Maybe she was just uncomfortable with me being in her house, with me being in her flower gardens. I could understand that. But what to do about it?
I could only come over to help when she was at market. I could invite Rose over to my house more often, I could not spend the night here. I didn’t like that; it didn’t seem fair to me.
Pony counters were too short for me, so after I set the plate I’d been washing into the drying rack, I arched out my back and rolled my head around to work some of the kinks loose. As I did, I happened to glance over at my shorts and panties, still sitting on the end of the kitchen counter. I’d almost forgotten I wasn’t wearing anything, but of course that brought it back.
I distracted myself by looking out the window. Rose was back in the garden, cleaning off all the tools—she hadn’t done that before dinner.
What if Lily was just afraid? Not of me, specifically, but of what I might represent? I might change her relationship with Rose, and that could be something that scared her. As ridiculous an idea as it was, she might think I was trying to usurp her place in the house. Taking Daisy’s side in our dinner conversation wouldn’t have changed her mind, either.
I couldn’t just tell her that things weren’t going to change, either. Neither of us would believe that. Certainly back on Earth, friendships ebbed and waned as people entered and left the mix or as jobs or hobbies changed, and I couldn’t imagine that things would be different here.
I didn’t want to give this up. Lily was just going to have to learn to deal with it. I could hope that once she got more used to me, she’d get more comfortable around me.
•••
“Were you planning to spend the night?”
“I might.”
Rose and I were in the living room. As soon as I’d entered, Lily had said she had a headache and was going to go to bed early, and Daisy had followed her upstairs. Neither of them had fallen asleep; I could occasionally hear them talking. Rose had an ear on the conversation as well.
“Might?”
“It’s up to you. I don’t want to create friction.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Lily will get over it.”
“Can you be sure of that? Sometimes people are really set in their ways and don’t change even when they should.”
“Sometimes they fight about Daisy using her magic. It’s silly. Sometimes I wonder if Lily’s only happy if she’s mad or scared about something.”
I’d known people like that back on Earth. “So maybe if she’s constantly annoyed by me, she’ll get along with Daisy better.”
“That’s not a solution.”
“I know. Maybe she should see Tenderheart, too. We could have back-to-back sessions. She could help me learn how to be a better pony, and teach Lily how to not be a bitch.” I sighed. “Most of the ponies I work for, they’re skeptical at first, but once I do a good job they decide that I’m okay after all. I’ve never had a pony slam the door in my face.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough to the truth. “That might just be an earth pony thing, though. I haven’t worked for that many unicorns. Or pegasi.”
“She’ll come around,” Rose promised. “I’m not gonna lie, it might be a while and she might never be completely happy around you, but she’s nice most of the time.”
“I could cook more dinners, spend some more time over here. Get her used to me, that would help. Do nice things for her whenever I have the chance.” I shifted around on the couch. Occasionally, when I thought about it, it felt weird to have couch fabric on a bare bottom. And that got me to wondering if the cushion covers were washable, and if they were, how often was it done?
If Lily was really racist, she’d drag the couch out back and burn it.
The easiest thing to do would be to go home for the night. I could tell Rose that if she wanted to come with me, she could. But that would be the coward’s choice. That would be forcing Rose to choose.
I was making progress. If she wanted to, Lily could, too. If she didn’t, I couldn’t let that be my problem. “It’s not too late for dessert at Sugarcube Corner, is it? My treat.”
“No, they should still be open.” Rose giggled. “Remember that time we drank all that wine, and then—”
“All too well.” If I could do it drunk, I could do it sober. “We should invite them, too.”
“Lily won’t want to go.”
“And if she doesn’t, she’ll miss out on some delicious dessert, and she’ll have nobody to blame for it but herself. That’s something I can’t do anything about. Or—you know what she likes, right?”
Rose nodded. “If she doesn’t want to go, I can bring it back.”
That was a simple thing. I was flush with bits, and spending a few on sugary treats wouldn’t really hurt me all that much. As long as she didn’t get offended by the idea of eating a dessert I’d bought, which admittedly was a possibility. “They’ll probably—if you tell them instead of me—”
•••
Much to my surprise, Lily did decide to go. I hadn’t actually expected that; I‘d envisioned to just being three of us. The promise of sugary treats won out over her feelings towards me, or else I was being overly critical of her.
Stepping through the front door was a major challenge. Doing it drunk and doing it sober turned out to be more different than I’d thought, and my fears came crashing back once again. The door was open, the street wasn’t all that far away, and any pony who happened to be passing by could just look over and see me.
It would only take a minute to put my shorts back on. We’d hardly be delayed. Plus, it was more logical—I could put my bits in my pocket and not have to carry them.
Rose would be disappointed, Lily would be triumphant, and Daisy would understand.
I’d spent several days shoveling shit, and this was hardly a higher demand than that. It was nothing. Nobody had cared when I’d done it drunk; nobody would care when I did it sober. The four of us—all naked—would walk to Sugarcube Corner, and we’d get something chocolatey and sugary and sweet and there might be a few ponies who would glance over and maybe stare just a little bit because they’d never seen me without pants and they were curious. That was natural, that was understandable. There wouldn’t be a mass panic, the cops wouldn’t arrest me for indecent exposure, or for visiting a food establishment without a shirt or shoes. None of my latent fears, conditioned on Earth, would come to pass. If there was anything unpleasant, it would come from Lily having a stick shoved up her butt, and that was something I could deal with as long as I got ice cream out of the deal.
“You know,” I said to Daisy as I stepped out the door, “I kind of do wish that I had a tail. I’d feel a little bit less exposed if I did.”
“I can walk behind you, if that’ll help,” she offered.
I shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” It wasn’t going to be the best arrangement for conversation, but there wasn’t likely to be much of that anyway.
•••
One thing I hadn’t really noticed the last time I’d done this was the breeze. It was normal enough to feel against most of my skin, but not everywhere. That was something that would take some getting used to.
A few ponies that we passed on the street paused briefly, looking me over, before continuing on their way. It wasn’t much, but then I was no Lady Godiva.
By the time we’d gotten to the main street—such as it was in Ponyville—I’d let my guard down and began to just enjoy the moment. It was a pleasant evening; the last reds and oranges of sunset were fading, and I could see a few bright stars in the darkening sky to the east.
It was crowded inside, but we found a table. Lily went over to claim it, and the other three of us waited in line to order.
When Pinkie brought our desserts up, I went to pick them up, and felt a bit of a wave of magic wash across my hands. For just a moment, the plates lightened, before settling back down.
“Sorry, I—”
“If you want to carry them—” Daisy and I both looked at each other.
“One of you do it,” Rose said.
“How about both of us? I’ll get Lily’s dessert and mine.”
“That’s fair.” I picked up two plates and carefully made my way back to our table. Daisy had it easier; her plates just followed along.
In all honesty, as amazing as that was to watch, it was more interesting to see how other ponies carried their food. Balancing plates on their backs was common, and I’d never seen one slip off so far.
We took our seats. I sat against the wall, since ponies were already used to seeing my upper half and new arrivals wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t wearing pants today either.
Lily was seated directly across from me, presumably since it was the furthest distance she could be while still at the same table, or maybe she wanted to keep a close eye on me.
“Do you put a fresh flower in your mane every day?”
“Sometimes it’s fake,” Rose whispered.
“Only when we’re short on real flowers,” Lily countered. “I like the scent.” She leaned down and took another bite of her brownie.
“Lilies do smell nice. And they look pretty,” I said.
“Do you have them on Earth?”
“Yeah. Besides the ones in gardens and pots, there are lots of orange spotted lilies that grow wild. Tiger lilies. They’re one of the first to flower in the spring, right after the daffodils. Some people have them in their gardens, but I guess they get away and grow other places, too—where I used to live, there was a railroad embankment that was covered with them, and they always looked so pretty.”
“They do.” She leaned across the table, slightly bridging the gap. “Did you grow them?”
I could confess that I didn’t have a green thumb, something that Rose knew full well. I could play that off to the difference between worlds if I had to. So long as I didn’t claim too many skills I didn’t have.
But I knew a lie would come back to bite me later, and once she figured out that I was lying, she’d like me even less.
“Not back on Earth, no. I wanted to, but I never really had the time or the skills.”
“You haven’t got wings or a horn,” Lily said. “And—”
“People are different. None of them have wings or horns.”
“Who brings your weather?”
“It just happens.”
“Like in the Everfree Forest?” Daisy asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Lily frowned. “What if you get bad weather? Weather that doesn’t make the plants happy? Rain at the wrong time, or—do you wrap up winter?”
“No?” I got the snow tires taken off my car, but I didn’t think that was what she was talking about. “In America, they have a groundhog who says if winter is going to last six more weeks or if it’s going to be an early spring. He’s right about half the time.”
“I don’t like that. Weather should be on schedule.”
“You’re not alone, Lily. Lots of people don’t like it either.”
“You should fix it.”
“If I ever get back, I’ll write a letter to Parliament.”
•••
We wound up staying for almost an hour. Daisy had a lot of questions about living on Earth, and Lily paid attention. Maybe the dessert had softened her up a little bit, or maybe her curiosity was getting the better of her.
Maybe I’d been too judgemental about her when I was washing dishes. I still wasn’t an expert at reading pony emotion.
It was fully dark by the time we left. I was already yawning, and Daisy had covered a few herself.
As I walked back through town, I thought about how nervous I’d been in the morning, and now it felt like it was no big deal to walk through town nude. Skyclad—that was how the witches in Terry Pratchett’s book had called it. It felt fitting, especially since there was nothing between my skin and the emptiness of space except for the thin veil of the sky.
By the time we got back to Rose’s house, I was getting a little bit chilly. It was surely psychological; my shorts hadn’t covered enough to make a major difference.
The four of us took our turns in the bathroom and then went upstairs. I thought that I might have a difficult time falling asleep, but I didn’t.
For a moment, I struggled to remember where I was. It was her bed, in her house. A familiar location, a familiar bed.
This time I knew where my clothes were: downstairs, right where I’d left them yesterday.
The old, familiar warning signals came up in my mind and I pushed them away. They didn’t matter any more; I wasn’t on Earth, and Earth rules didn’t apply.
I put my hand on her mane, traced along the edge of her hair, down to where her neck touched her back, and rested it there. I could have gone back up, scratched her ears, but that might wake her, and it was still early.
Surely something had awoken me, but I didn’t know what it had been, not until I heard the distinctive sound of a toilet flushing and the clatter of hooves on the wooden floors.
That was Lily. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.
Would she go back to bed, or was she the first up in the morning?
I didn’t want to abandon Rose, even though I was awake and not likely to fall asleep again.
Of the three of them, was Lily the early riser? What would she do if I followed her? Panic and flee into the flowerbeds or onto the street? Or would it be a moment of sisterly solidarity, the early risers versus the lazy?
I could get up. Go downstairs. Pee. Make coffee.
Or I could stay right where I was, my hand rested lightly on Rose’s back, just teasing her neck.
That was easier, and that wouldn’t mess up Lily’s morning routine. Maybe she liked the solitude, the moment to herself before her housemates joined her. A bit of time to herself, a chance to find the perfect flower for her hair.
It was something I shouldn’t interrupt, but it was something I felt like I had to. One more barrier to break, one step closer to fitting in, to being accepted. So I reluctantly pushed the covers off and disentangled myself from Rose.
I really did have to pee, anyway.
•••
Going downstairs without a robe felt wrong, but also freeing.
I didn’t see Lily on my way to the bathroom, and I briefly considered the advantages of going back upstairs and back to sleep, but I didn’t. I went into the kitchen. Lily had a hoof up on the counter, and she snapped her head around as she heard me enter.
Ponies couldn’t fluff themselves up like cats, but if they could, Lily would have. I knew that for a fact.
I couldn’t help but feel a bit of sympathy for her. I was the interloper, I was the one who was messing up her routine. It was early in the morning, and not what she was expecting or desiring. Maybe it was Rose who normally came down next, or Daisy, bleary-eyed from sleep. It wasn’t me.
She hadn’t combed her mane, and she didn’t have a flower behind her ear yet. Not that I was fully groomed, either; I probably had bedhead, but I didn’t really care about that.
“Good morning, Lily.”
“You scared me,” she said. Quietly, so she wouldn’t wake up the rest of the house. “Your—you walk too quietly.”
“Should I get a bell? Like a cat? So you can hear me coming?”
“Maybe.” She frowned. “I’ve started coffee. I—if you want some, there’s enough. You could have a cup.”
“Thank you.” I sat down at the table, and that seemed to comfort her. Now I wasn’t towering over her any more. “Is there something I can do to help?”
“No.” She picked up a heavy frying pan and set it on the counter with a clatter.
“Your hooves are plenty strong,” I advised her. “You don’t need the pan.”
She had the courtesy to lower her ears slightly before perking them back up. “I was going to make breakfast, that’s why I got out the pan. Pancakes, that’s a good breakfast.”
“I can fry them up, as long as you mix the batter. I’m not really good at that. They wind up with too much flour or not enough.”
“Fine.” She got out a mixing bowl and set it on the counter. “But stay at the table until I’ve got the batter mixed, okay?”
•••
She went off to groom herself while I started making pancakes. It didn’t take too long before I’d lost myself in the process, and I’d expected to be all done before she came back, but I wasn’t. I turned, and she was standing alone in the kitchen doorway, watching me.
Lily had combed her mane and tail and I assume her coat as well, but she still didn’t have her flower in. I guess she hadn’t wanted to go outside and pick one yet. Maybe she liked to wait until she knew what kind of day it was going to be before she made her selection.
When she saw that I’d noticed her, she scurried off and I heard the back door shut. It wasn’t very long before I saw her in the backyard, wandering down her row of lilies, and looking through the window at me. I don’t know if she knew I could see her.
I thought about sticking my tongue out at her, but I didn’t. I focused back on the pancakes.
•••
I had to finish the coffee, too—Lily had completely forgotten about it.
I expected that she was going to stay outside until either Rose or Daisy came downstairs, but she didn’t. She came back in, now with a lily tucked in her mane, and glanced over at the kitchen table where I’d set two cups of coffee, well apart. Their mugs didn’t have their names on them, at least not as far as I could tell, so I’d just picked two at random.
“I could have made the coffee,” she said. “I was going to.”
“You’re welcome.”
She started flicking her tail back and forth. “I’m not scared of you.”
“Of course you aren’t. Why would you be?”
That confused her. It wasn’t what she was expecting me to say, although I wasn’t sure what she was expecting me to say. “I’m just a boring girl trying to get along in a town full of ponies. Do you want a pancake?”
“Yes. Please.”
I knew where the plates were, and I knew where the butter was. “Do you have any maple syrup?”
Lily nodded. “It’s in that cupboard.”
“Back in Canada, our money smells like maple syrup.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, back before we knew how to make coins, we traded maple syrup for stuff instead.” I reached up into the cupboard and grabbed the bottle. “Something this size, it’d be worth a couple bushels of wheat, maybe a peck of apples. Of course, the value varied. Some years weren’t good for syrup, and some years weren’t good for apples.”
“And you can’t keep it forever,” Lily said. “It keeps for a long time but not forever.”
“Exactly. But for most people, that wasn’t a problem. Because while you had some you kept aside for bartering, you’d eat the rest. On pancakes and stuff.” At the duty-free store, they sold bottles of maple-flavored whiskey in a maple-leaf shaped bottle. One of my friends from Seattle had brought a bottle when he visited. “You can even make whiskey out of it.” It was terrible whiskey and an ugly bottle, and I was certain that it was an American who had come up with the idea.
“Eww. I don’t like whiskey. It burns and makes me silly.” Lily stuck out her tongue. “Some ponies say that before unification, all our coins had different grains printed on them. They were copper, 'cause the unicorns hoarded all the gold. We didn’t mind because there wasn’t much you could do with gold. You couldn’t eat it and you couldn’t build things out of it.”
Upstairs, I could hear hoofsteps, and I knew it was Rose.
Lily and I still had lots that we should discuss, and very little time, at least if we wanted to do it all right away. I kind of did, I wanted to get it over and done with, so that we could move our relationship forward. So it would cut down on awkward times together or her attempting to avoid me.
Or we could just eat pancakes. That was easier. She might be resentful if I broached the subject, anyway. “Do you think I should set plates for Rose and Daisy?”
She nodded. “They’ll be down before too long. Rose will want two, and Daisy will want three.”
“Even though she’s so skinny?”
Lily flicked her ears up, and then nodded. “Cause she hasn’t got as much endurance for physical work.”
As I got the plates, I didn’t tell her that cutting flowers wasn’t exactly an endurance job, at least not by my book. Not like chopping wood or shoveling manure or working in the mill moving around sacks of flour. Maybe they’d thrive at it if they tried, but I’d never seen Lily break a sweat.
Or maybe their marks put a limit on what they could do, too. Forever trapped them into a career. Could it be that she was jealous I had a freedom she did not?
Rose had taken time to brush herself before coming to the breakfast table. Daisy, who appeared a few minutes later, hadn’t. Her mane and tail were normally a bit messy, but that was nothing compared to how she looked after just waking up.
“Sam made the pancakes,” Lily announced. “Um, and the coffee.”
“You helped,” I said. “I can’t make proper pancake batter. And you got the stove going and the coffee started.” I glanced around at the three of them. “Do you take turns with breakfast, too?”
“Sometimes, it depends. I—it’s not important.” Lily dropped her head slightly. “I should have been more of a help, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” I didn’t know what she was getting worked up about. Lily had issues. “Do you need my help in the garden again today?”
“If you want to,” Rose said. “It’s not a market day, so we don’t have to pick anything.”
“Usually we work in the morning in the flowerbeds, and then do errands,” Daisy said. “Shop at Barnyard Bargains if there’s anything that we need, go to the spa even though it’s crowded sometimes. Or just relax if it’s a rainy day.”
“Is it going to rain today?”
“No, that’s scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
“Are you good at weeding?”
“Not really.” It was better to get the truth out. “I’m not all that good at figuring out plants, honestly. I could—I’ll wash the breakfast dishes and when I’m done I guess I can help out however you want.”
•••
It was almost easy to go outside this time. Aside from Lily’s bipolar bitchiness, there was nothing in the backyard to fear, no reason to hesitate. Back to the familiar sight of the rows of flowers stretching out, and intermingled smell of them.
We started out on opposite ends of the garden. I assumed that Lily was still trying to keep away from me, although that might have been how they usually worked. I didn’t want to bring it up—Lily and I had had our moment in the kitchen, and now wasn’t the time to spoil it.
I worked with Rose, and I could tell that we weren’t working as fast as Lily and Daisy. I was probably slowing Rose down, honestly, so I decided to go back to doing something I knew well: I started to gather up the weeds she’d been uprooting, dumping them into an empty flower bucket.
Once I got caught up with that, I started filling the watering cans. A simple task, but one that would be hard to mess up.
Lily and Daisy noticed, and I saw the two of them whispering to each other. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but judging by ear movement, it could have been an argument. Maybe I wasn’t pulling my weight in the garden, but then I’d never promised to. Besides, I was working for free—that ought to count for something.
And maybe it did. After the third time I’d filled Rose’s watering can, I noticed that Daisy had set hers at the end of her row, so I carried it to the faucet and then back over to her.
“Do you need yours filled, too?”
Lily flicked her ears back and then forwards again, and she nodded.
The rows weren’t really wide enough to pass, and I didn’t want to reach over her, so I waited until she’d side-stepped away and picked it up.
When I returned it, I went the long way around, and I brought a fresh bucket in my other hand, since they’d filled the one they had almost to the top. It wasn’t only weeds that they were taking off the plants, but occasional sick leaves and buds as well.
I kept cycling back and forth, emptying buckets on their compost pile and filling their watering cans. Once when I was emptying out a bucket I saw Apple Cider towing a wagon and waved at her. She waved back and it was only after she’d passed that I remembered I was still nude. In fact, it had been more than a full day since I’d last worn clothes.
For a moment, I stepped back, away from the fence, back to the safety of the garden, and then realized I was being silly. The ponies didn’t care, and neither should I, so I went back to the fence and looked up and down the street. Amusingly, being closer to it actually covered me more, since it was about belly-high.
•••
We finished up with the weeding and watering and feeding and pruning by lunchtime. Rose and I put away all the gardening implements, and I considered asking her about Lily’s tail lash, but decided not to. That could be a moment that was just between us, for better or worse; something I could just let ride until I got a better idea if my relationship with Lily was improving or not. Maybe I could ask Tenderheart about it later.
Daisy made a simple lunch: flower sandwiches for them, and just bread and butter for me. And then we were gathering around the front door. It was time for their shopping, and for their trip to the spa, and at least two of them would be happy to have me along.
I looked back in the kitchen, where I could just see my shorts and panties at the edge of the counter, right where I’d left them yesterday.
It wasn’t the same as going out at night.
But it wasn’t not the same, either, so after one last look at my clothes, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really need them, and followed Rose out the front door.
