> Pony Dexterity
>  by gloamish
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Pinker and Sweeter Than a Strawberry Daiquiri
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

This bar is just fine. Not great, mind, but good. Better is better, but good is good too, as your dad says. You're sat at the bar, nursing a Tequila Sunrise like a particularly overworked RN, checking in on it every now and then but not making a particular effort at it. If a drink could flatline, you'd probably unplug it to stop the noise.

None of the other girls were free tonight, and you're kind of regretting the decision to practice independence and head out alone. This bar's safe enough, at least — besides the general safety enforced by the butches that own it, you also know the guy on shift at the moment, Roger. So it's not that you want to go home, you're just kind of... bored.

About five minutes from now, you're going to discover that boredom is a delicacy to be savored.

"Hi there!" You jolt at the unexpectedly cheery voice and turn to its source.

Where you expected a person is instead the color pink. Your brain skips a beat as you try to recognize the thing as some hideous outfit — it's getting close to Mardi Gras, so it wouldn't be out of the question. But no, the pink isn't even human-shaped. It's that realization that clicks things into place: you're looking at a pony. A pony who's looking expectantly at you with cartoonishly large and poetically blue eyes.

"Uh," you say. "Hello." You weren't really prepared for this — a big part of this place's appeal is that people come with friends and keep to themselves for the most part. But you find yourself not begrudging the company, yet.

"I'm Pinkie Pie! What's your name?" Her bright voice is drawing eyes from all around the bar, and the expressions make you think they're probably glad they weren't targeted.

"Ellie," you say, instinctually holding a hand out for her to shake. She looks at it curiously, then sniffs it.

Apparently satisfied, she draws back and smiles. "Neat! Nice to meetcha, Ellie!" Then, she turns to the counter. "Barkeep!"

Somehow looking even more bemused than usual, Roger wanders over, taking his time. "Who's your new friend, Ellie?" he asks, as if he hadn't heard her introduction along with the rest of the room.

"I'm Pinkie Pie!" she chirps. You look pleadingly at Roger, and he raises his 'is this guy bothering you' eyebrow. You shake your head minutely, because she's not bad, she's just... a lot. Mostly you just want acknowledgement that what's happening is ridiculous, but he isn't that easy to faze. Comes with the job, you guess.

"What can I do you for, Pinkie?" he asks, leaning on the bartop.

The pony has retrieved a purse from the bags slung over her back and is staring intently at the little pile of change she's poured out of it. She looks up and smiles. "Something pink and fruity, please!"

"Fruity's our specialty, m'am," Roger deadpans, and you snort. "That'll be twelve bucks."

She wilts. "Oh, I'm not sure I have any bucks... They only gave me ten dollarses, and five dollarses, and dollars, and dimes, and quarters. No bucks."

You reach across and, with a finger, slide some bills and coins over to Roger's side. He nods and slides the money into his hand, heading over to the register. You shrug and explain. "Bucks is just another name for dollars. So's smackers, cash, clams... I think they call them loonies up north?"

Pinkie's perkiness has returned, and her eyes follow Roger curiously as he retrieves a bottle of rum from the shelves. "Human money is so funny..." she mumbles as the bartender retrieves a glass. "There are so many kinds... And the circles are so little I almost choked on them once!"

You shrug. "At least the paper's spit-proof, right?"

Roger deposits a Strawberry Daiquiri in front of her with a flourish, and she looks at it in wonderment. For your part, you just kind of think the drink looks ashamed to be so thoroughly outpinked. As an afterthought, he adds a silly straw.

"Thanks!" she says, then places both hooves on the bar and mouths the straw. She goes cross-eyed as the liquid travels through the loops of the straw, then closes her eyes and makes a pleased hum as it hits her palate. Releasing the straw, she lets out a satisfied sigh that you would've called exaggerated a minute ago. She turns to you. "Straws are amazing!"

"They don't have 'em where you're from?" you ask. You never really took a lot of interest in reports of the other world when the pony portal opened, but learning about it from a real person — pony? person? — is more enticing.

"Nope, cups are built a lot sturdier... Human stuff is so fragile, Ellie! I came over here to experience new stuff, but glass in my gums definitely wasn't on my list..."

You wince sympathetically. "Money isn't really a great experience either... Do ponies have it?" Mentally, you chastise yourself. Does that imply you think they're uncivilized? Or maybe they're so advanced they've moved past it?

Pinkie doesn't seem to pick up on it. "Yup! Just one kind though. Bits. They're big and chunky, so you can really bite down on 'em!" She makes a chomping notion with an audible clack.

"Do they accept them at the money changers yet?"

"Oh, definitely not. They won't let me take any through. Something about 'crashing the economy'? Which is a silly thing to blame on me, because I can't drive! They won't even let me get a license." She huffs.

You blink blankly at the wall of booze, trying to imagine Pinkie in a car with ridiculous platform shoes to reach the pedals. While you're lost imagining the kind of bouncy response she'd give the EMTs, she slurps her drink greedily, then pulls back and makes another somehow-not-exaggerated noise of enjoyment. "This is so yummy!" she sing-songs, rocking back and forth on her stool like the understanding between her body and its small footprint is precarious at best.

Something about her unguarded enthusiasm makes you want more, so you slide your half-finished, half-forgotten Tequila Sunrise over to her. "Wanna try mine?"

"Definitely!" She pulls it over with her hooves, examining it critically. "Ooh, yours has cherries on top!" She looks back at her own drink, a little bit of the light gone from her eyes. "Why doesn't mine have cherries?"

You shrug. "Guess Roger likes me more."

"I prefer Pinkie, actually!" he refutes, appearing out of nowhere. You groan and slump against the bartop. "You want some cherries?"

"Yes please!" she says, and though you can't see past your folded arms, you know she's got that goofy grin plastered on her face.

You spend a few more moments in the blissful darkness of your personal grump-hole before Pinkie addresses you again. "Hey Ellie, what would your cutie mark be?"

The question's so odd you look up at her, eyebrow quirked. The glass your Tequila Sunrise came in is conspicuously empty, and the murder weapon (a silly straw) is poking out of it. "Huh?"

"If you had a cutie mark, what do you think it'd be?" she repeats, like it's the most mundane question in the world.

You blink at her, then turn to flag down Roger. "Can I get a whiskey, neat?"

"What happened to your cocktail?" he asks, knowing you're a slow drinker.

You wave your card at him impatiently. "A pony drank it."

"Sure sure," he says, smirking. "Comin' up."

You roll your eyes and turn back to said pony. She doesn't look even a little repentant over her theft, and her straw's returned to her own drink, which you notice now has three cherries on a skewer sticking out of it. With the cherryless stem resting at the bottom of what was your glass, you get the feeling she won't be sharing.

"My cutie mark." Your flat delivery doesn't seem to slow Pinkie's roll, failing to buy you any time to think.

"Yup! Mine's balloons, see?" she says, gesturing with a foreleg down at her flank.

"I... What's a cutie mark mean, again?" you fumble.

"It's a symbol of your own very special talent! Mine is parties. Planning, throwing, enjoying..."

"Oh," you say. "Not like, balloon animals or something?"

"Well, I'm good at those too!"

You look down at her hooves, then her mouth, trying to figure out how on earth she can manipulate a balloon into anything more complex than a popped balloon.

"So, what are you good at?" she asks, and you wish the question felt less affronting.

"Um." Roger places your drink in front of you, apparently unwilling to save you from the philosophical morass in which you've been stranded. "I... I guess we have something similar. 'Finding your purpose.' I don't think I've found mine yet. Do you ponies all have that figured out?"

She hums. "Well, my pal Twi said cutie marks are a pony's map to their own 'happily ever after'... And I guess we're great at knowing what makes us happy! I'm sure you have something like that too, right?" You swallow an instinctive rebuke and grimace. "But I don't think you really need a cutie mark to get there. When mine showed up, I already knew I wanted to throw parties for the rest of my life, and it just kinda confirmed it."

You swirl your whisky absently. It feels like a much more appropriate drink than your last, all of a sudden. "Honestly, I could use some confirmation. Like, if I woke up one morning with a tramp stamp that told me what'd make me happy, I'd be doing a lot better."

"Aw, Ellie..." she murmurs, and she looks so pathetic you have to look away a moment. It's not just that, but also the way you bristle at the pity in her voice. You bite back the aggression. She's just being nice, Ellie. And not like the surface-level niceness you get so often. You breathe, and let it go.

"I like talking to you, Pinkie." You smirk a bit as a thought occurs. "Maybe my cutie mark is meant to be in pony ambassadorship."

"Heehee!" she giggles, and when you turn back all the life has returned to her. "Could be!" Her expression sours a little. "You'd do a much better job than the stallions that met me at the border..."

You wince. "Uh, yeah, sorry about that. 'National security' is a whole thing here. It's pretty terrible."

"Hell yes it is!" she says, puffing her chest out. She pauses, then looks thoughtful. "Am I using that right? 'Hell'?"

You blink, a little shocked at hearing any kind of profanity coming from something so cute. "Kinda. Typically you'd use 'hell yes' when something's good, not when it's bad."

"Oh." Unfortunately, the thoughtful look hasn't left her face. You've started to become wary of that expression on her. "Ellie, what's hell?"

You swallow the mouthful of whisky you took in that moment very intentfully. "I, uh, I'm not sure I'm qualified to explain religion to a pony."

Pinkie Pie giggles. "I'm just messing with you, Ellie. I read the pamphlets."

You wonder who had the unenviable job of writing pamphlets explaining human concepts to ponies and the other species through the portal. "Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Do ponies have religion?.."

She shakes her head. "The concept doesn't really make sense? I mean, there are some things we can't see, like I can't see pegasus or unicorn ley, or where a pony's soul goes when they die..."

"I mean... Aren't you ruled by literal goddesses? All-powerful and all that?" Celestia and her sister Luna are two of the few things you know about the pony's world — it's hard not to, with how most news outlets painted them as a threat at the start of things.

You sigh internally and wish, not for the first time, that the portal hadn't opened in America of all places. Then again, if it had opened in another country, pony diplomacy would likely be moot and it'd just be a matter of "yeah France got a nuclear bomb in the shape of a magical white horse, time for World War Three."

You realize Pinkie is tilting her head, curious. "They're Princesses, not 'goddesses'. I've met both of them! Super real."

"Well, okay, that's her title, but none of our princesses have been able to move the sun. Kind of seems like a big deal."

Pinkie shrugs, a both-forehooves-out gesture that looks silly on her. "Well, of course she does! Who would do it if she didn't?"

You blink, then look down at your whiskey. "I guess our sun's pretty different anyway," you concede.

"Oh, I read about that! Don't you ever get scared knowing there's a big ball of flame millions of times hotter than anything, and it's just waiting out there, and one day it'll swallow you all up?" she asks, earnest.

You pause, then drain your whisky, letting it fall back to the bartop with a decisive clink. "I guess that's part of why humans made bars," you say with a grimace.

"I think you messed up," she responds with a frown. That's... the second frown you've seen on her tonight? How many have you made? "They seem worse than taverns. Nopony wants to talk to anypony else, and the drinks are really spensy, I think? Twelve's a lot of clammybucks. And you can't even get a good meal!" She spares the bar nuts a derisive glance.

"Yeah, some nights it feels like I go out to get some semblance of connection and end up just feeling more lonely..." you admit, rubbing at your arm. Guess you should be thankful tonight isn't one of those nights, though you're not sure some of the things you've been feeling are any better.

"You should come over!" she chirps, oblivious to your inner turmoil.

"Over?.."

"To Equestria! I'll throw you a party, and you can eat all kinds of yummy stuff!"

"Uh, no thanks..." you say, and wince as she deflates at your blithe rejection of an invitation you'd thought a casual, insincere thing. "I mean, one pony has been enough weirdness to last me a week," you wonder if there's a foot-in-mouth competition you can enter, "I'm not sure I could manage a whole world full of them." You search around for a real reason to salvage your refusal. "Plus, I'd have to use my mouth for everything, right? I'm not sure I could handle that." Forget the foot-in-mouth competition, you could probably take gold in the Dipshit Olympics as a country in your own right.

"You wouldn't have to, silly! Hands are really neat."

She takes a moment to finish her Daiquiri, the slurping noise echoing through the bar as she gets all she can out of the drink. Pinkie Pie is definitely the sort to... How's your dad always put it? 'Suck the marrow from the bone of life'? As if to prove your point, she spits the straw out, letting it clatter to the bartop, and then sticks her muzzle into the glass, licking all around the rim, then deep down, even managing to absorb the little puddle that sits at the bottom of the martini glass.

Pinkie looks back at you, and it's only then you realize you've been staring unblinking as she cleans a glass out like an uncomfortably erotic wetvac. Glancing away with hot cheeks, you have the misfortune of making direct eye contact with Roger, who wiggles his eyebrows at you. You tamp down the urge to flip him off, because then you'd have to explain the gesture to a pony, and you think you've been enough of a corrupting influence for one night.

As if just remembering it, Pinkie turns back to the bartop and takes the silly straw in her mouth, then cranes her neck around to deposit it in her bag. Mid-act, her eyes dart up to you, gaze questioning.

"They're like five cents each, Pinkie. You can keep it."

She spits the straw out into her bag, then looks up again. "I've got bucks, smackers, cash, clams, dimes, quarters, and dollars, but I don't think I have any cents."

You manage to cover your snorted giggle behind a hand, deciding the punchline to that would be too mean. Instead, you call Roger over and get another whisky, with ice this time because it's summer and frankly it's too hot to drink anything room temperature. You get one for Pinkie, too, mostly so she can get a second silly straw.

The silence is nice, if temporary — not that you don't like talking to Pinkie Pie, but it's interesting seeing her just exist as an object at rest. She's never really still, though: she fidgets, rocks back and forth a little, swivels her head as she looks around and takes in the rest of the bar. Finally, her gaze lands back on you and the dynamo kicks back into motion. "You think ponies are weird?" she asks.

It takes a moment for you to find the thread of the conversation, and you grimace as you realize she's picked up exactly the misstep you hoped she'd forget. You get the feeling this pony's selective attention only works in her own favor. "No, I... I mean, don't you think humans are weird?" Silently, Roger places your drinks in front of you. Your hands go to your glass, relishing the coolness.

"Not really! I mean, you're definitely interesting..." she trails off, and her eyes are absolutely focusing on where your fingers wrap around your glass, aren't they? Self-conscious, you take a sip.

She mimics the action with her straw, then makes a face. "Wowie, that's super awful!"

You laugh. "Right? Literally, one of the main descriptors for it is 'peaty'. Even the aficionados admit it tastes like dirt."

"Why do you drink it, then?"

"Because she thinks it makes her cool!" Roger sings from the other end of the bar, and you shoot him a poisonous glare. He shouldn't even be able to hear you down there.

Pinkie takes another sip and doesn't make a face this time. "Maybe you don't seem weird because we've got all sorts of critters back home. Minotaurs, griffins, dragons... Even just ponies have tribes. Friends come in all sorts of shapes!"

"Yeah, I guess ponies are the first time any human's had to reckon with a person not looking human-shaped," you muse. And, with it, the first time you've had to reckon with being attracted to someone who isn't human-shaped, you admit privately.

"I bet that's causing all kinds of problems," Pinkie sighs. Then, she brightens up. "But I bet everypony's learning all sorts of interesting lessons because of them!"

"I bet," you agree, fingers folding around your glass protectively, like it's your fluttering heart. What are you thinking? This is weird, and even if it wasn't, there's no way somebody — somepony — like her would be interested in... "There's a lot I don't understand about your world, too. Or, about ponies, even. Especially here. Like, how do you even..."

You gesture vaguely behind you, at the entrance (a pull door) and the street beyond bustling with comparatively tall humans. It feels like when you first met Susan — that disorienting week when you glimpsed how wheelchair users see the world, every obstacle outlined, before the shock faded and the outlook had to be maintained with conscious effort.

"Oh, there's definitely a lot of toughies. I got this, though!" She sticks her snout into her bag again and this time pulls out... one of those toy robot arm grabbers. She clacks it twice in your face as if to demonstrate, and you blink. Her point apparently yet unproven, she turns to her glass.

You'd totally stop her, if Roger hadn't been a dick all night.

With another deft manipulation of... her tongue? She grips the whiskey glass in front of her. Fortunately, it's empty apart from a melting ice cube. Probably the emptiness is contributing to her course of action at the moment. She continues lifting, confusion growing on her face as she realizes the arm isn't getting any shorter, so the glass isn't getting any closer to her mouth.

It reaches a climax as the angle of the arm reaches its apex. The melty ice cube slides out and bonks her on the muzzle, making her yelp. This, of course, release her grip on her bionic arm, and, in turn, its grip on the glass. The assemblage falls, and you nearly join the collapse as you overextend to grab the glass with your right hand, your left arm snaking around to save Pinkie as she totters backwards on the barstool.

Your two highschool hobbies voted most-hated-by-your-dad: baseball and picking up girls, together in perfect unison.

The only casualties are the ice cube and the arm, both of which clatter to the floor harmlessly. Pinkie Pie grins at you, not sheepish in the least, but it flickers a little as you realize your arm's still around her and withdraw it. "It's a work in progress!" she says by way of excuse.

"Well," you say, leaning down to grab the toy, "maybe practice with less perishable stuff, huh?" With a flick, you send the ice cube under the bar, knowing who's closing.

"But then how will I ever get better?" she jokes, and you both laugh, her giggle cut off by her teeth around the arm as you hand it back to her. She stows it in her bag, thankfully.

"That was a good demo, but I was wondering what it's like back home. Easier, I bet."

"Oh for sure! Way easier, but it's not like things are impossible here. I can manage a lot of it, and usually someone can help. Or try, anyway... First time I tried crossing the street I asked for help, and some stallion just grabbed me around the barrel and hauled me over the crossing like a sack of potatoes! And then he got mad at me for yelling at him!"

Your jaw slacks in abject horror. "Oh god, that's so shitty, I'm sorry. Some people are just... shitty. Sorry."

"You didn't do anything wrong, silly. But the real tricky ones are cultural. All sorts of things are different, and sometimes it's thing where it's like, how do I even know if this means the same thing in both worlds without asking? Like, when I say 'I wanna fly', it means I want balloons, but here it means I want 'plane tickets'! There's all sorts of little gaps that I keep tripping over."

Her gaze slides past you like gears are ticking in her brain. "Actually, Ellie, can you help me hop over one of them?"

"Sure. I mean, maybe. I'm not very cultural."

"What's flirting mean?"

You blink.

"Because to me, it means laughing a little harder at someone's jokes, and finding little excuses to touch them, and wandering eyes," with this, you swear she puffs her chest out a little to show off the tufts of thicker fur that, yes, your eyes have been orbiting all evening, "and liking them a lot but not wanting to say it in case they don't like you back!" Her eyelashes flutter. "Does it mean something different here?"

"Well— Th- that is..." you stutter, gaze darting everywhere but those blue eyes. Finally, they dart back to your whisky, and you slam back the rest of it for something to do. You very deliberately do not look down the length of the bar. After a moment to get your breathing under control, you admit it. "... Yeah. It's the same here." Here lies Ellie, lesbian ambassador, called out by a pony. And rejected by a pony too, probably.

"Well good," she chirps, grinning as she leans forward, further into my personal space than she's dared yet, as if you've just given her permission to— "because I really like you." Oh.

"I... I li—" you stutter, not quite able to get it out. It's been a while since a girl left you this tongue-tied. "Thanks," you say instead, stupidly.

She doesn't seem to mind, just giving you a happy smile in return.

"So, you were asking about how we do things in Equestria..." she begins, turning back to her empty martini glass and the four cherry stems within. "Well, besides unicorns, who can kinda just do whatever with their floaty thing," — telekinesis, you guess — "ponies use hooves for a lot of stuff. Well, mostly forehooves — most machines have pedals, and some of the more complicated ones like my friend Rarity's sewing machine have hind pedals. Then, mouths are for finer stuff. Pegasi can tuck stuff under their wings, but they're mostly for flying."

She licks the stems out of the glass, and they disappear past her lips. "I do a lot of baking, and that's a pretty even mix of hooves and mouth." She slurs some syllables a bit as she works her tongue, and you realize she must be tying a knot — you warm up a bit at the thought. Definitely flirting. Is she tying all four in sequence or something? They're pushed back into her cheek as she continues. "Mixing, frosting, that sort of stuff is mouth work. Moving the ingredients and bowls around is hooves."

"I've never really thought about what having four legs would be like. Humans fall over a lot, and we have to put guardrails everywhere. You're probably really, uh... steady?"

"Yup!" she says brightly. "Can't knock us over easy. 'Specially earth ponies like me." She goes quiet again, squinting one eye shut as she puts the finishing touches on her work. Then, she smiles. "Now put your hand out."

You hesitate. She's definitely going to spit in your hand. That's dirty, right? But, well... You flush as you acknowledge it's not the dirtiest thing you want to do with her. And besides, dog mouths are cleaner than human mouths, right? Pony mouths are probably hygienic. Before you can second guess that bit of logic, you thrust your hand forward.

She spits, and it's not gross, just warm — it's not like there's a bunch of saliva, just what coats the stems. Her hot breath ghosts over your hand for a moment before you pull it back to inspect her work.

It's not a single knotted stem, nor is it four knotted in series. It's a miniature sculpture of the Eiffel Tower, somehow recreated in cherry stem form, right down to the struts connecting the legs. You gawp. You wouldn't even be able to do this with your hands without fifteen minutes and a guide, and she did it with her mouth? Suffice to say, you are no longer worried about its cleanliness.

"You like it?" she asks, and you realize the percussive noise in the background is her tail whapping against the stool. It's not quite a happy dog-wag, but it's definitely a venting of excess energy.

"It's unbelievable, Pinkie," you say.

She wilts visibly. "I didn't cheat, I swear!" she pleads.

You wave your hands in front of you like you can dispel the misunderstanding. "No no no, I just mean that it's incredible!"

"Oh! Thanks!" She grins at you. "Now it's your turn!"

"I'll try, but it's not gonna be anywhere near as cool..." you mumble, fishing around in your abandoned highball for the stems. Finding one, you pop it into your mouth, and immediately freeze as Pinkie snorts and giggles.

"Not with your mouth, silly!" she says brightly. Then, her voice drops an octave, gone low and a bit smoky, a tone you didn't expect from her. "With your hands."

"Oh, right." You clench the stem in your teeth and raise your hand. Seeing her eyes dart to it, you make a show of plucking the stem using your thumb and middle finger, leaving your other fingers raised, emphasizing the slenderness of your hands. Your grandma always said you had pianist fingers, and your dad agrees whenever he needs help unclogging a drain.

You swear Pinkie's pupils dilate as she watches. "Well, it's no Eiffel Tower, but..." You tie a simple half-hitch, pulling it tight with both hands. "There!" Enjoying how enraptured the pony is, you place the tied stem on her nose, and her wide eyes cross to watch it.

As you watch, her tongue darts out to lick the tip of her nose and pulls the stem in. Then she swallows. You blink at her. "Can you do that again but... slower?" she asks, voice still low.

You can do her one better. "How about this, instead?" you reply, pulling one foot up and scootching back to fit one boot on the stool. You grab the laces and pull, undoing the knot.

"Wowwww," Pinkie breathes, entirely sincerely.

You laugh. "Not that." Grabbing the loose laces, you go for the standard bunny ears, pausing at each stage. By the time you've pulled them tight, Pinkie's nose is practically touching the toe, and you wiggle it a little.

She shoots up to meet your eyes. "That's so hot," she breathes, still with that inescapable sincerity.

You flush, and can't help but laugh as well. Next time you see Laura you'll have to tell her at least one person thinks your Docs are still cool. "Really? How?" you ask, slipping your shoe back off the stool.

"The range!" she says, popping her front hooves up for emphasis. "If I wanna get really fine control, I gotta get my face in there, but you can do it from anywhere! Like, your arm is a length long! A pony length, I mean." It's like something's been unchained inside her. She keeps pushing forward into your personal space, like she'd rather be sitting on your barstool than her own. You think you might want the same thing.

"Guess we've each got our own strengths."

She nods, and then casts her gaze about the room. You let the silence linger, feeling the surrounding chatter ebb back into your consciousness. This isn't weird. You're just another girl picking up a girl, like so many others in this bar. Even if this girl is a pony.

You glance over, and find the girl in question watching you very intently. "You know the worst part about being here?" she asks.

The mood killer throws you off-kilter easily. "Uh, I can think of a few things, but it's probably different for ponies."

"The loneliness." Maybe not. With that direct a question, you'd expect her to break her gaze away, to try and defuse the seriousness with a sip of her drink. Instead, she continues gazing at you.

You break eye contact instead and focus on your own drink. Roger would make a killing if you were playing 'drink every time Pinkie throws you off'. Since you're not, you just stare into the dark liquid and the half-melted ice. "Yeah, I guess there aren't many ponies here. You must be excited to get home and see a familiar face."

"Not that, silly! I am excited to go home, but I like being here, too, and I like humans lots! Ellies especially!" You can't help but glance over, and your heart does a little somersault from how she's smiling at you. "It's not me that's lonely. It's you, and all the other humans. And that makes me sad."

You find yourself frozen, flatfooted, wordless. You just stare at her, which she takes as a prompt to continue.

"Well, everyhuman I've met, at least. Y'know, if you were a pony, I would've nuzzled you six times already! And hugged you twice! I have to keep count because it's all building up inside me like owed favors!"

Her bluntness makes you shiver a little. You think about how much you'd like to cash in those favors. Do ponies even know what 'touch starved' means?

"I mean, the human at the border nearly tased me when I tried to nuzzle him! Who does that?" Hopefully she'll tangent herself off away from yet another sensitive subject.

But no, she's like a bomb sniffing dog: precise, unerring, and you want to touch her so bad, damn the consequences. She tilts her head at you, springy curls hanging. "Why don't you like being touched, Ellie?"

You pull into yourself, one arm snaking across your chest to grasp the other. "I... I do, Pinkie," you say, idly rubbing your hand against your arm. "I do like... being touched. I think we all do."

Another few degrees compound the tilt. "Then why?.."

You run your hand back down your arm. For lack of anything else, you play with the cherry-stem sculpture, entwining your fingers and folding your hands together around it. Your own personal touch. "We're scared, I guess. Of each other. And ourselves."

Her voice has dropped to a whisper, and you'd have to lean in if you weren't already so close. "Do I scare you, Ellie?"

You lick your dry lips. "A little, yeah." You knew it was the wrong answer before it even left your mouth, and her frown confirms it. You just can't bring yourself to lie to her. "But... I don't mind," you amend, stringing the thoughts together as quickly as they come to you. "Sometimes it's nice, being a little scared."

"Oh!" Pinkie says, lighting up with recognition. "I get that! Sometimes when I get a little scared but I know I'm safe, I like how my heart gets all fluttery and my knees all wibbly!"

You smile. "Yeah, like that. You do make my..." Your voice gets even quieter, and you feel like a schoolgirl with a crush. "You do make my heart fluttery."

Slowly, slowly, like you might run away, she leans forward. You think she might kiss you, but then she turns a little, and nuzzles her cheek against yours. She's so soft. Your eyes go a bit misty. "Do you... want to do something scary?" she whispers, her nuzzle having placed her mouth right against your ear. You shiver at her breath blowing across it.

You don't ask what, or why, you just nod, feeling her fur brush against you.

"My hotel room's not far from here." You jolt upright, and she pulls back, looking into your wide eyes for some sign. "Sound good?" she asks, voice bright again, but with a new edge of pleading hope in it.

You nod again, maybe too many times, hand curled into a fist around her cherry-stem sculpture.

"Great!" Her eyes crinkle shut with glee. "I'll see you outside, okay?" she asks, hopping down from her stool with surprising grace. She walks to the door, and her tail swishes back and forth as she does, which you notice because your eyes follow her all the way there.

Like the angel of death, Roger is there. He's cleaning your highball glass, watching you with expectant eyes.

You don't bother with pretense. "Roger, is it weird if I go with her?"

He looks up and gives you a measured look, choosing not to laugh at you. Smart. "Do you want a stock 'you go girl', or an actual answer?"

You stare at him. He's a tough guy, so he can usually go about three seconds under the heat of your most impatient gaze before caving.

You must be extra anxious, because it only takes two. "Jeez, you don't have to give me the death-eyes. She's a person, Ellie, no two ways about it. You'd feel bad calling her anything but." He puts the highball down and picks up the martini glass. "If you mean 'is it weird finding a kind-of-animal hot', well, we both know too many furries for that question. She's more like a cartoon than a real animal. I know you're gonna be on the front lines when people start marching for pony-human marriage, anyway."

You nod. "Thanks Roger." You turn to the door, then back to him. "You're absolutely going to tell everyone, aren't you."

"Oh absolutely. I'm bound by the slut's code," he says, like he hasn't been in a closed relationship for the past year and a half. Dick.

You glance toward the door, then back at him with a smirk. "Worth it. Seeya." With that, you slide off your stool, saunter over to the door, and embrace the cold night air on the other side. Pinkie Pie's waiting there, shuffling her hooves, but she looks up when you stop next to her.

"Good?" she asks, gazing up at you.

"Good," you reply, smiling back at her. She makes smiling really easy.

You walk next to her up the street in silence. After a block and a quick, idle exchange about the difference in the night sky here (apparently they don't have light pollution in Equestria), you decide to broach one last difficult subject. "... You seem like you understand my hesitation."

"Well, y'know how I said I read those brochures? There's another set on our side, 'assembled by the nation's top equinologists'," she says, carefully enunciating it in a way that indicates she's used a more casual term and been corrected. "And Twilight. They're kind of sad, really, a lot of stuff about the icky things some humans in the past have done to each other that they don't really want to talk about with us.

"There was some cultural stuff about human norms, how they're less comfortable with touching than us. A big one was what you mentioned earlier — you're not used to other shapes being as smart as you are. So there's lots of warnings about how a human might think you're stupid or lesser than them, and to be patient..."

"I don't think you're stupid," you say, feeling stupid for saying it.

"I know, silly! I just did a little extrapolation. It's not in any official brochure, but it extends to physical attraction, too, doesn't it?"

Your hand finds its way to your other arm again, rubbing against it for comfort. "Yeah. I mean, it's like you said, silly, but..."

"You think it's weird that you want to fuck me." You stop in place. Her tail's gone from twitching to outright lashing back and forth, and you don't know whether it's a sign of irritation or something else.

"... I don't want to think it, though."

She stops and turns to look back at you, and it only makes it weirder, the way she barely comes up to your navel. For a moment you wonder whether you should crouch to meet her eyes, but you don't think she'd appreciate it. "It's okay if it's weird, Ellie. Everything's a little weird. Everything interesting, anyway!" she says, and you think you believe her. "Just as long as it's not bad."

You reach your hand down and do something you've been resisting all evening. You boop her on the nose, and she giggles with unguarded delight. "It's definitely not bad." She gifts you another of her goofy grins, and you can't help but smile back as you draw your hand up to the top of her head, fingers carding through the hair of her mane. Then, she sticks her tongue out playfully, and you're reminded of her cherry-stem sculpture. You shoot a finger-gun back at her in a pathetic attempt at flirting, and she giggles again, face flushing even pinker. The last bit of awkwardness banished, you both continue on the way back to her hotel, through the sticky-hot summer night.