The Ordeal

With some negotiations with the concierge, there are now two rooms waiting for us. One for me, Rarity and Scootaloo, and the other for Apple Bloom and her sister. On occasion, Rainbow Dash moonlights between the two rooms, but she has a long term residence over wherever Twilight was. The room I’m in is slightly larger than the other one, with two beds, though one was more of a cot than a bed, really. That means the odd filly gets to stay in my room, and that means that, while Apple Bloom and her sister cleaned off in the other room, me and Scootaloo both have to take a bath... together.

Thankfully Scootaloo seems to have gotten over her avoidance of me, though she is still suspicious about the bathtub. Suspicious is the best way I could describe it. Not outright refusing, but eyeing it like a potential enemy and not as much expressing exuberant delight as I am, every time I fail to contain my enthusiasm. The bathtub itself is... not very nice actually. It stands up on four sturdy legs, a little dingy and discolored, but the inside is smooth and sparkling clean. I watch with utter fascination as Rarity turns the taps with her magic, adjusting the ratio of hot and cold from the spigot. No, really. Utter. Fascination.

Magic is reeeeeeeeal.

I should explain that I am not just witnessing a pretty light show. It is... well, when the knobs wreathed in Rarity’s magic twist and turn, there are little ripples in some kind of fluid alongside the air, like overlapping it but not. Some kind of pervasive energy field magic ...thing? What’s utterly fascinating is I can’t see it with my eyes. Closing my eyes doesn’t affect my perception of the ripple things at all. Even with my eyes closed I can still fully ...feel the distance?... to the slight changes in strength and pressure as they interact with my... wow.

“Uh, Sweetie...” Scootaloo says next to me in a concerned tone.

“Hmm?” I say not looking away from the indecisive unicorn’s fiddling with the faucetry.

“She’s just... drawing a bath. You remember that, right?”

“Oh! Um.”

I’m blushing again. I turn to look at Scootaloo, surprised for a moment when I can’t see her, then blinking my eyes open. In demonstration, I reach up with a hoof to my forehead, exploratively. Tap. Yeah, that’s my horn alright. Tap tap. Heh that’s feels weird. Oh right, don’t forget: worried friend.

“It’s weird,” I say to her ardently, “I think I can feel what Rarity is doing, with the spigots, from all the way over here... with my horn!”

“Huh,” Scootaloo says, her face flatly noncommital. “That’s definitely a unicorn thing, so I dunno.”

“I don’t really... remember how good I was at ...unicorn things,” I say, fishing for information, “I think not very good though, right?”

Scootaloo frowns, looking aside. “They were saying the big magic thing you got stuck in might have made your magic a lot better,” she says cheerlessly. Really she’s the very picture of self doubt and loathing. I can’t help but wonder why, or what I could say to make her feel better.

“That would be nice,” are the words I eventually settle on, looking unconcernedly at the underside of my candy white hoof. I add nonchalantly, “I’m tired of being the only one of us left who couldn’t do something special.”

I have to hold back a smirk at how it actually leaves Scootaloo sputtering to answer, so much so that she doesn’t even flinch when Rarity flings her into the tub. Man, ponies have scruffs! I don’t feel any pain, even when Rarity lowers me more slowly to make sure I don’t fall over, by my scruff into the bath water. The bath is... I I can’t even. But ponies have scruffs. Ponies are awesome. Horses suck!

I feel tension I didn’t even know I had melting away as I descend into the steamy bath water. My eyes go distant with the embracing heat seeping deeply into my skin, sloughing away the dust and detrius and loosing the clumped hairs on my hide to wave freely in the water. “God I love baths,” I murmur dreamily. It’s waist deep water, and by waist deep I mean that standing on four legs brings it up almost to my whithers. If I crouched down I would be up to my nose in warm bath water.

“What about cod?” Scootaloo says in my ear. Uh oh.

So I answer, “It’s a big... silly... fish,” taking out my shoulders to shrug at her. Scootaloo responds by splashing me in the face. I deserved that, even if she doesn’t know why. What I don’t deserve is the parade of body products that descend magically from above, as Rarity prepares to do her best to ensure that I look like I’ve never been anywhere outside of a beauty parlor for the duration of my young life. Okay fine, it isn’t honestly that bad, but it is frustrating not to be able to bathe myself. In fact I really shouldn’t be complaining, because with how good my luck has been since awakening, it’ll probably turn out that soap is a lot healthier for ponies than it is for naturally oily human beings. Or something ridiculously convenient like that.

Rarity uses two kinds of soap for my body. The first one is just soap, but the second one smells much nicer, sort of like sarsaparilla. Honestly my coat seems very good at repelling dirt naturally, ala Sisterhooves Social scene, but I know how much attention Rarity pays to form above function, and really it isn’t that bad, just redundant. Certainly not itchy, dry and sneezy like my old reaction to soap. Plus the bubbles are kind of fun.

What’s really fascinating is how Rarity uses her magic to float the sponge around, a natural sea sponge it looks like, not a softer plastic one, but it doesn’t hurt to scrub against my skin, real nice actually. I wonder if I’m supposed to call it skin or hide? But... the way the magic pulls the sponge back and forth in the air is just... well, I already described it but it’s really cool. It tingles whenever the field brushes against me too. Rarity gets all over my back, and scrubs up underneath my chest and chin, whatever isn’t in the water pretty much, and then moves onto my hair.

I don’t catch the kind of shampoo Rarity uses, though I remain skeptical if there is a lot of variation in soap besides soap and “hair soap.” Her icy blue aura fluffs up the soap into a light foam that lifts my hair up. I wonder how she’s going to get my tail? I take a look at my tail under the woah nelly that water is filthy. Were we really that dirty? I can’t even see my tail below the water’s surface!

It occurs to me that in order for me to have been thrust into Sweetie Belle’s position, the Crusaders would have had to make it all the way out here in the first place, with cramped dirty spaces most likely, and not a single chance to bathe. A hoof comes over my forehead, and I look up just as a jug of bath water pours over my head. I guess we really were that dirty. My coat looks a lot whiter after the water washes away all the soap. Having shielded my eyes from soap suds, Rarity continues to lift her hoof up above my horn to push my dripping bangs up away from my face. She certainly knows how to bathe a filly. I can’t help but feel cared for, if she’s going to treat me like this!

“Your turn, Scootaloo,” Rarity says melodically. “Whatever,” Scootaloo says in a defeated tone, “Just–” and then Rarity is squirting soap on her and rubbing it in with magic. Scootaloo doesn’t protest that much, but when Rarity gets to her back, Scootaloo rears back, saying irritably, “Hey, watch the wings!”

“Oh don’t be that way, Scootaloo,” Rarity says admonishingly, “Your wings are filthy! Let me just... hey, stop... stop wiggling so much!” Wait, no she’s–!

“Hey!” I verbally step in, “Rarity.”

Rarity pauses in accosting Scootaloo with a sponge and looks at me querulously. “I’ve forgotten...” I say timidly and a bit slyly, “Do pegasus feathers need to be oiled?” I haven’t forgotten anything of course, but this sleight of word technique should be old hat to you by now.

“Well of course they–” Rarity starts to say, then looks at the soapy sponge held hovering in her magic. Her gaze darts to Scootaloo and she says, “Oh, oh dear. I’m... I’ll have to... good catch Sweetie Belle! I’m sorry dear I’ll just go fetch your um, I’ll go find somepony.”

With a ploonk the bathtub drain comes out, the chain lifted up in Rarity’s magic, and this immediately causes Scootaloo to startle away from it. All that soapy dirty water starts to drain away noisily. “I’ll be back before that empties,” Rarity assures the both of us. Then she turns and trots away. I can’t see where she’s going, as I’d have to drag myself up to see over the edge of the bathtub. Easier to just slump against the floor of the bathtub bonelessly.

In the meantime, Scootaloo’s kind of manuvered herself onto the other side of me, eyeing at the drain with mildly concealed alarm. I look at her curiously, then a light dawns in my eyes too. I remember doing that when I was a kid! And I also remember what helped too.

“Hey Scootaloo, look at this!” I announce, and then I splash my hoof into the water, waving it over the drain as the suction pulls it downward. Scootaloo is looking at me now with a shocked expression, not the drain. I manage to flop my body over entirely onto the drain as she blurts,

“No, no don’t–!”

And with a slosh I’m on my side, completely blocking off the drain. The suction pulls a thin current of water through the fur underneath me. “Hehe, oops,” I lie bashfully. “Can you help me up?” I ask her, holding out a frail, needy hoof. Scootaloo grabs my hoof right away, and pulls me up, the suction tugging at me a bit before the drain resumes emptying. It doesn’t get noisy until I’m entirely off of it though, where the whirlpool can form.

“Be careful Sweetie! You could get hurt!” Scootaloo chides me, and I just shake my head saying,

“No you can’t. It’s not strong enough, see?” I stick my hoof into the whirlpool again, disrupting it and the noise, while the water goes down around me. Scootaloo watches with fascination, and her own hoof sneaks out slowly to bump against mine too, jostling for position over the sucking drain. The look of relief on Scootaloo’s face makes me feel so good I just have to laugh, and she laughs too in her raspy tones, and soon we’re both laughing and splashing water at the drain to try to make it go down faster.

“I didn’t know bathtubs sucked so little,” Scootaloo tells me after the water has finished draining and we’re sitting dripping in an empty tub.

“They suck at sucking,” I agree. That makes her laugh again.

“How did you know though?” Scootaloo says incredulously. “You just stuck your hoof in it!”

“The water wasn’t very high...” I say with a note of hesitation in my voice. “It can’t have sucked any harder than all that water weighed.”

“Rainbow Dash told me to stay away from drains in pools and stuff. She says they’re dangerous!” Scootaloo told me in an accusatory tone.

Well duh. “Well duh,” I tell her. “Rainbow Dash could probably lift this entire bathtub, but could she lift a whole pool full of water? Plus even if the suction in a pool doesn’t hurt you, you could get stuck all the way under water.”

“So, if there’s a lot of water,” Scootaloo speculates, “Then drains are dangerous. But if it’s just a bathtub then they’re safe?”

“I don’t think there should be any drains in pools ever,” I add quietly, “I wouldn’t swim if there was one.”

“You wouldn’t swim, period, Sweetie,” Scootaloo says jokingly. Wait, what?

“Hello dears, sorry for the wait,” Rarity interrupts, coming back into the bathroom with an accompaniment. It’s... not Rainbow Dash it’s a pink pegasus with a curly cornflower blue mane who I don’t recognize. The new mare smiles down at Scootaloo saying in a very Canadian accent,

“Don’t worry dearie we gotcha covered here, now hold still while I,” and the mare noses under one of her own wings, pulling out some sort of scrunchy cloth in her mouth. “Juf lif’ em,” she says, getting on the edge of the tub and craning down to slip the cloth over Scootaloo’s outstretched wings. Oh I get it. It’s like a... shower cap. It’s elastic at the bottom closing around the base of Scootaloo’s wings. The filly doesn’t seem very familiar with it, looking at it curiously and wiggling her wings inside.

It looks like the mare is on staff, if the red vest she’s wearing is any indication. “That should do it,” she says to Rarity, “Just return it at the front desk when you’re done, and don’t forget to make sure the filly gets a good dust bath!”

Rarity visibly cringes at that saying, “Dust... bath. Yes. I’m sure we’ll get right on that.”

The ...maid? The maid leaves, and Rarity recovers her composure quickly, saying to Scootaloo as she resumes scrubbing the filly, “I simply cannot believe I completely neglected such an important aspect of beauty, and health! My experience with attending to pegasi has been... limited due to extreme reluctance to participate, you have to understand.”

“I thought her giant hat looked good,” I call from down here in the peanut gallery.

“Oh Sweetie, you remember something??” Rarity says, joyfully turning to me with some measure of excitement. It breaks my heart how I’m going to have to ration out what I know, but I know so little that I just can’t tell her everything I remember.

“I only remember one time with Rainbow Dash,” I say slowly, “With the big uhm... fancy wig. It had a lot of curls on each side.”

“Oh, you... saw that did you?” Rarity mutters self consciously. “Just a bit of experimentation you know, nothing I intended to commit myself to. It rather failed to appear as a cloud bank as I had intended. You must have seen what was left of it in my work room once you returned from the field trip to the zoo.”

Wow Rarity... thanks for the save. I have got to remember not to make show references where I didn’t know Sweetie Belle was actually there. If she realized Sweetie saw something she couldn’t have been around to see, then it’s all over for me!

“Yeah...” I agree noncomittally.

Rarity puts down the sponge, hangs the plug chain up on a little holder for it, then turns on the faucet lightly. She adjusts the temperatures again but not to fill up the tub this time, just levitating over a golden metal jug she has grasped in her magic to leave it underneath the faucet on top of the drain, slowly filling up with water. Her magic moves the jug to pour over the soapy pegasus, rinsing her clean with, once again, a hoof pressed protectively underneath Scootaloo’s bangs to ensure no soap gets in her eyes. Scootaloo also looks a lot more brightly colored beneath the accumulated dust and grime sloughing off her back.

Finishing rinsing off Scootaloo, “Here we go, get on your backs dears!” Rarity says cheerfully, levitating out her sponge once more. “Time to wash your bottoms!” Scootaloo flips easily to her back, but I’m too busy being once again astonished at Rarity’s orders. Rarity wouldn’t really... is she going to clean us down there? Is that normal in pony society? I barely even touched myself down there, and I’m going to get to get it soapy and scrubbed and–??

“Do you need any help, dear?” Rarity asks me with a sad look in her eyes. Blinking like a lost cow, I shake my head. I can flop on my side at least, and then I just squirm around so that my belly is in the air.

“Nope, doing fine!” I say entirely too chipperly. I’m calm though. Perfectly calm!

Filling up her jug once more, Rarity drops the sponge in it with a good amount of soap, and turns off the faucet, acquiring herself (you guessed it) a soapy sponge!

As for myself, I’m torn whether to look excitedly at my own belly, or to look excitedly at the pumpkin orange one right over there. Scootaloo even has her legs sticking in my direction, which you’d think would give me a front row seat to the Hanson Express. But, either way I can’t really see anything, because my belly is too big, and her leg is in the way. I crane my neck just ever so slightly, just out of platonic curiosity, trying to find out what Scootaloo has—wet sponge lands on my chest with a plop.

Rarity’s magic lights up around the sponge on my belly, and my candy white chest fur gets thoroughly lathered and scrubbed. It’s pure torture the way she moves slowly from my chest down my belly, never quite getting low enough to find out what it feels like down there, humming a pleasant tune all the while doing so. Rarity finally pauses critically and then gives one single swift swipe between my legs, too fast for me to even register what I’m feeling down there. Skin and scratchy sponge and soap and... did I feel anything else? And then she’s busily working shampoo into my tail.

I bite my lip, beginning to consider that if I’m dead, and this is the afterlife, then I may not have made it to Heaven after all. I lay there all soapy and unsatisfied, while she scrubs Scootaloo to a lather. I can’t help but notice Scootaloo takes the sponge in her own hooves to do the ...lower scrubbing. I wonder how much I should be able to take care of myself, that I can’t due to being new at pony? And of course the one time Scootaloo’s leg sweeps aside during the scrubbing, there’s a big lathery foam all over her lower area. It’s okay though, I shouldn’t be looking anyway. I’m not that fucked up! ...am I?

Once we’re both as scrubbed clean as we can be without accruing minor abrasions, Rarity turns the faucet on again. Not to fill up the bath this time as she leaves the drain out, but Scootaloo knows what to do and jumps up, sticking her bottom under the faucet and washing all the soap off her body. The pegasus filly pulls off the shower cap with her teeth and just goes to town. It’s actually really cool seeing Scootaloo shaking her wings and splashing under there. You can think of her as just another pony until she spreads those wings and shows how birdlike she can be.

I don’t have nearly as easy a time of course, but I lunge underneath the faucet as enthusiastically as I can. I’m very eager to get the soap off, and I want to do as much as I can to help and not be a bother. Still, Rarity does have to pick me up more than once, and I probably shouldn’t have risked a concussion on the slippery bathtub in my initial awkward lunge. But all goes well, and in the afterbath Scootaloo and I are both wrapped up in ridiculously fluffy towels.

I’m starting to feel really bad now though. Like, everything is just too nice for me. It’s this towel. I’ve never had a towel like this before. Even if I did have a towel like this, I could never be small enough to fit under it and clutch it around me like a eskimo hut. I didn’t do anything to deserve this, there’s no reason it should even exist! Things aren’t supposed to be nice! They’re only supposed to be sad and hopeless, nothing but decay until you finally fall into total oblivion.

Why do I have nice things now? This can’t even be real. I must be just some kind of fake thing that someone wishes they had but can’t ever have. But everything is so amazingly vivid, the colors, the architecture, the motions of the ponies in front of me, the fluff of the towel rubbing against my damp fur, pressing down my curly locks. I just can’t deny what I’m feeling. It has to be real! You just can’t make this shit up! I can feel the burning of my eyes from the tears falling from them. I can feel every inch of my... of Sweetie Belle’s adorable pony body as if it were my own. This towel feels so good to wrap myself in that it hurts.

Rarity nestles down and wraps her warm body around me and my towel, asking me what’s wrong, and telling me that she’s there for me, and that I’ll be running around like my old self in no time at all, and I can barely even pay attention to her words. I’m just so cold inside, I don’t feel like anything could warm me up. I’m Sweetie Belle, surrounded by her loving, surrogate mother, in the safety of a warm wooden well lit building, wrapped in the fluffiest towel I’ve ever seen in my life, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lost, or alone.

I don’t recall when I went from frantic sobbing, which made me sob more from the guilt I felt for being able to sob, from that, to succumbing to exhaustion. My memory is foggy beyond that point, though I recall being carried, a feeling of relieving tension, and the sweet taste of water on my throat. When I do stir awake groggily, the grey light of early morning is peeking in through the shutters. As soon as I realize I’m awake, I let my head fall back down disconsolately to the bed. What even was that last night? It was me screwing up bad, that’s what.

I don’t care how much you try to call it amnesia, there was no rational excuse I could have for breaking down like that. I’m even trembling now as I think of it. My emotions are a lot more raw than I’m used to, no doubt a consequence of becoming the little girl. But that doesn’t excuse crying over a towelling! I don’t even think they’d understand even if I told them everything. What I came from is just too alien for a resident of such an amazing world like this one to even comprehend. Maybe a crystal pony could come close, depending on how terrible it was what they went through with King Sombra, but with Twilight still a unicorn I couldn’t be sure the Crystal Empire even exists yet.

To find out, I could ask for a snow globe, maybe...

But that gets to the heart of my problem. Next to me on the bed, the huge smooth form of Rarity sleeps quietly on her side. On my other side, Scootaloo is knocked out on her back a teeny bit less gracefully. It looks like Scootaloo decided not to use the second bed in the room after all, not that I blame her. There’s plenty of room on this bed, and if Rainbow Dash wasn’t here that’d mean Scootaloo would have to sleep alone on that cot. Waking up in the early morning between the two of them gives me some time to think, and that gets me worrying.

With the quiet clarity of the morning light, I start to really think things through, and really, I don’t think these ponies would try to destroy me just because I’ve stolen some filly’s body, living a quasi life vicariously through her. I didn’t mean to, after all, and it’s not like I have anywhere else to go. They wouldn’t kill it kill it with fire, especially not with their dear Sweetie’s face pleading for me. No, what they’d do is worse. They’d try to send me home.

They’d probably think I was here to learn a lesson, like I needed to learn how everyone has their own special place and though I feel insecure, I know deep down that I’m needed back home where I belong. Even back home, people found it inconceivable that your home could be a fucking hole. Maybe they’d think that I need to learn the value of family and country and go home with medals and honors. Maybe they’d think that I’d just be too wracked with homesick grief to enjoy myself here. And then like a well meaning foster care system sends the itinerant child back to their abusive parents, they’d try to send me back. I’m fairly sure I... yes I’m sure I would rather die. At least here I’d have a chance at an afterlife.

And what if I did convince them that I hold no loyalty for my home or family? What could they see that as, other than a heartless monster who can be destroyed without regret? They don’t know what it’s like. My home is a dead world. Just a bunch of soulless idiots running around doing pointless shit and fighting over petty things. There’s nothing there waiting for me besides a failed life full of menial labor, a life that only ponies ever brought any light or meaning into. Nothing for me to do besides squatting around on that rock we call a planet, waiting for oblivion and wishing for things that can never be.

But how could they understand that, in this land where magic is real?

Maybe, just maybe, Applejack could understand. I identified with her story the most from the show, because it was a lot like mine. Get raised, have big ideas, get crushed by an uncaring society, sit there staring out the window waiting for a rainbow to come save you. Except she got her rainbow at like age 8, not age 37.

And let’s say this hypothetical pony did understand, and somehow decided to save me, and somehow did save me. What would I do then? I don’t have anyone who cares about me here any more than I had back home. I mean, ponies are awesome but, that’s not a universal solution to everything. Could I take care of myself here? Could I get a job, build a house and live out a simple life? Or would I just keep failing like I always do?

I just... I don’t want to have to stand by myself again. I want to be Sweetie Belle dammit, not background pony #7365 dragging around a cart of garbage. That’s all I’d ever be able to do, of course, since I have no skills and no talent. I don’t want to be that, and I don’t want to return home. I want to be Sweetie Belle, or like... Sweetie Belle’s twin sister who’s grown up together with her and hasn’t got any emotional baggage from being a living example of fail. So basically Sweetie Belle. I thought I could use that baggage, to be wiser and more grateful this time around, but now I’m not sure anymore. It’s just too hard to deal with what I am and, what I have been. I just want to be Sweetie Belle. I don’t want to be me anymore.

They’re going to ask why I’ve been crying, and I want to tell them but... but... I’m laying against a sleeping Rarity. Honest to gosh real pearly white unicorn Rarity. And she’s so warm. And Scootaloo is practically cuddled up against me, breathing softly in the morning light. And they love me they... they love Sweetie Belle, at least. I just can’t stand to lose them. I don’t want them to look at me like a stranger. Not them. Rarity and Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash and Apple Bloom and... and all the ponies who ever made my life a brighter place to live, however transiently. I don’t think I could bear to see them look at me like a stranger... like an intruder... or like a spy.

But what do I tell them, then?

I would think on it more, but that’s as far as I get before drifting off again, and next thing I know I’m waking up again. Rarity is nudging me with a hoof saying, “Good morning, Sweetie Belle.”

I rub at my bleary eyes, obediently mumbling, “G’morning, Rarity.” I can’t help but notice Scootaloo’s absence from the bed, as I open my eyes, looking up at Rarity standing by the bed, and looking around the room. How late is it?

“How would you like some breakfast, dear?” Rarity suggests to me, “And then perhaps you can go play with your little friends. That would be fun, won’t it?”

I look into Rarity’s eyes seekingly, and she looks back with a surprisingly unconcerned expression. Why isn’t she interrogating me? Sweetie Belle, why were you crying? Sweetie Belle, why was a fluffy towel bringing you to tears? Sweetie Belle what is going on with you that amnesia is not sufficient to explain? Sweetie Belle can you indicate on the doll where that brony touched you?

We stare blankly at each other until my stomach groans loudly. That makes me blush and smile guiltily and I say, “Thank you, that would be ...nice.” And actually I’m starting to feel excited at the prospect. Besides somehow dodging the bullet just now, I am totally hungry. I can’t help but wonder what they’ll serve. Am I going to be able to eat hay? How is that going to taste? Does cellulose taste better when you’re capable of digesting it? What about flowers?

Rarity helps me out of bed by standing beside it, and allowing me to stretch my arms around her neck, pulling myself onto her back again. She’s being so nice to me since I’ve awoken. The degree of effort to which she goes through for her sister’s sake is a lot more profound than the show ever made it out to be. She’s certainly not doing a good job of being worst pony right now. Perhaps it’s just Sweetie Belle, giving her such a scare like that, and Rarity will return to being more neglectful and egotistical later. I really don’t know if I would mind Rarity acting like that, as long as I can walk on my own when she does. But how she’s acting now is just heart wrenchingly giving.

The rooms-to-let take up the second story, so I get the odd experience of my ass going above my head, as I hold on tightly so as not to fall off, while Rarity confidently walks head first down the stairs. The smells hit me before we get to the bottom, and it’s glorious. It’s not actually any better than any breakfast I’ve smelled before, and may even smell a bit stale, but I sure am hungry enough to eat it all. What I smell is fruit, sweet glaze and ...coffee, oddly enough. I hope horseworld doesn’t have enslaved coffee bean farmers, like my old one did. And maybe yes it’s probably Sweetie Belle’s pony nose, and not the salad being especially fresh, but I can smell the salad!

It’s a genuine continental breakfast down there. Which makes sense, since this is basically a hotel and all, but I still haven’t seen one of these continental breakfasts in forever. Mostly because I haven’t stayed at a hotel in forever. Makes sense to have breakfasts like this at a hotel, because you can make a bunch of cheap food at once, that everyone eats. Not exactly the most luxurious thing, but it’s a surprisingly nice gesture that makes a vacation stay so much easier.

“Oh dear, it looks like Scootaloo has already...” Rarity murmurs, leading me to crane my head around to try to find the other ponies I might recognize. There’s Apple Bloom sitting with Applejack, eating food as fast as Applejack shovels it into her mouth, not just pastries but also a hearty salad and a big glass of juice. If she’s a tenth as hungry as I am... yeah she probably is. “We” were stowing away out here for who knows how long, and I don’t get the impression that little fillies had a lot of disposable income. Did these three really go all the way out there? I was barely getting a grasp of the distance involved, and this is already way beyond the level of just catching a train ride to the Crystal Empire.

But while Applejack is there, keeping Apple Bloom from gorging herself on pastries, Rainbow Dash isn’t anywhere near Scootaloo. Again. Rarity’s remark about Scootaloo comes because the little filly has balanced on her hindquarters a plate of pastries stacked taller than herself. Literally taller than herself. Just pastries. Scootaloo has a big cheesy self indulgent grin on her face as she wobbles obliviously forward, but I doubt she’ll keep that grin when she tries to finish eating that monstrosity. It’s actually making me less hungry, thinking of trying to eat all that.

“Well let’s just...” Rarity remarks to herself, her magic lighting up and a trio of plates levitating out of a plate dispenser tray. She snags a few big cantelope slices (don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream) a big helping of what looks like a bean salad with either no dressing or else vinagrette, and a few glasses of juice that was... completely transparent and bright pink. And not a single pastry. Then she lifts all the plates in the air and... looks at me draped along her hindquarters wistfully. Then she continues to levitate them along with the glasses of juice, walking daintily towards where Scootaloo has set her plate down on the table.

“Oh,” I murmur up there in realization, “Are you going to ask Scootaloo to share with us?”

Rarity chuckles underneath me, saying “My dear, I don’t think poor Scootaloo is going to have a choice.”

“Hello Scootaloo,” Rarity then says to the pegasus filly, who is already onto her third pastry, scarfing them down noisily with little fanfare. I can’t help but drool at the sight of the filly eating pastries, something I really really need to eat right now as soon as possible and–oh shoot, I almost drooled on Rarity! Rarity settles to the floor as I wipe my muzzle with my hoof, and I sit there for an awkward moment, before she clears her throat.

“You can get off now, Sweetie,” she says to me quietly. Oh. God I’m dumb.

I carefully slide off of her sideways. It goes a little better than when Apple Bloom “helped” and I just land on my side harmlessly with a squeak. By the time I drag myself up to the table level, and these tables are very low I should add. They’re nothing you’d need to sit in a chair to see over the edge of. As a filly, I have to pull myself up, but a grown pony could just sit , in front of it, belly down, legs folded, and be right at the level of her food. By the time I drag myself up to a standing position, there is already in front of me a plate brimming with bountiful greens and...ugh... cantelope. Rarity is looking pensively at Scootaloo, still eating, but my sister isn’t saying a word.

I look at my own plate and... those pastries Scootaloo has smell really good, but I’m too hungry to be very choosy at this point, so I just sort of stretch my neck forward and surround a leaf of some sort in my teeth, taking a little bite and chewing thoughtfully. I wake up to a scene of carnage: bloody salad parts everywhere, slain celery, eviscerated broccoli, baby carrots crying over the remains of their lifeless mother. Or something like that. I frantically shove my face into the greenery and eat everything.

How dare fiddleheads taste this good?!

Yeah I’m pretty damn hungry... about the only thing that draws me up short is the cantelope. I take an experimental nibble and oh god it still tastes like cantelope. I wash out the taste with a... noooo I can’t drink the juice, stupid hooves! I have to settle for getting the taste of cantelope out of my mouth by licking my foreleg until all I’m tasting is unicorn fur. (It doesn’t taste any different than any other horse’s fur. (Don’t ask how I know so much about the taste of horse fur.))

“Oh heaven’s no!” Rarity suddenly exclaims loudly, making me look up guiltily, but thankfully she’s exclaiming at Scootaloo, not me. “I seem to have forgotten to get a danish!” she says to Scootaloo urgently, “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a little of yours, Scootaloo, just a piece?”

Scootaloo, who now has a queasy look on her face and a half eaten (how???) plate of pastries, shoves it away with a hoof saying, “Go ahead, take ‘em all.”

“Thank you dear,” Rarity says quickly, levitating the remaining six pastries and passing half of them to me. She then slides the third salad plate up to Scootaloo, and walks off quickly munching on a pastry hovering in front of her face. Scootaloo looks at the plate Rarity slid before her, then shoots Rarity an angry look as if she’s going to protest it. Then, without moving her glare at the retreating Rarity, Scootaloo lowers her head and takes some thick green leaf like a hosta in her mouth and starts chewing on it resignedly.

You wouldn’t believe how thick and fluffy these pastries are. And they crackle when you bite into them. You know how hard it is to cook a pastry that crackles? Really hard, that’s how! I pick one that looks kind of like a danish, with a thick cooked solid dollop of jelly in the middle of a puffy pastry ring, all covered with a white sugar glaze. Biting into it, the tingling sweetness floods my sinuses, and the warm buttery fluff surrounding the grain which seems to be composed of–

“Hay!” I exclaim.

“Whath?” Scootaloo says around a mouthful of chard, looking up at me.

“Theshs arh— ho’ on,” I say, chewing my mouthful as quickly as I can. When my mouth is clear I say, “These are made out of hay!”

Scootaloo gives me an odd look.

“Uh, oh I mean of course they are silly me, ha ha!” I utter frantically, bending down to take another sweet rich mouthful of... dry grass fibers. “’s gool!” I say exaggeratingly cheerful, though very honestly. It’s the best god damn dead grass I’ve ever put in my mouth. Scootaloo just takes my word for it.

So that explains where ponies are getting all their hay, and why they’re eating all those sweets! Well I certainly can’t complain. Luckily, I’ve got an advantage over most lost interdimensional aliens: my philosophy on trying new food. It’s something I’ve cultivated from very early in my childhood in case of being stranded on an alien planet. Far as I’m concerned, if it’s not making me throw up, then it’s not going to be a problem for me to eat. I am... admittedly kind of glad that I was a fan of my little pony though, not my little worm and beetle eating robin.

When I’m not too starving to pay attention, eating is still something of a surreal experience. You don’t really think about your mouth and insides when you aren’t eating. I can’t get the thought out of my head that, inside my soft marshmallowy exterior, I have genuine organs, a complex anatomy that I really know very little about. There’s something validating about eating, something that really lets you know this isn’t a dream, or some kind of virtual reality. It really makes sense, the old Greek legends of being trapped in Hades because you ate the food there, because of the stablizing influence that the act of eating seems to have on reality. As a wise man once told me long ago, it’s almost impossible to have an existential crisis during dinner. How does a desperate love for something that doesn’t exist, turn into living in something that does exist? I still haven’t got a clue. But chewing on this sweetened hay pastry certainly makes the reality of it undeniable.

The answers probably lie in that chamber I awoke in. But you know what? I honestly couldn’t give a fuck what the answers are! In fact, the farther away I am from those answers, the less involved I want to be in them. I feel sort of like a mouse who narrowly escaped a snap trap, and even if my mouse tail is a little shorter than it used to be, I’m going to be running very earnestly in the opposite direction of that trap. The mouse doesn’t need to know how the trap works to escape it, and likewise I don’t really care by what means I’ve been saved, because I have been and that’s what’s important. I’m going to do my best to make full advantage of that!

These pastries are making me really thirsty.

I look longingly toward my glass of juice, and throwing caution to the wind I hook my hoof around it, and bump it towards me as carefully as I can. With it in front of my nose I am able to stick my face down into it. I guess it’s a muzzle, not a face? But, I manage to submerge my nose...muzzle...thing in it, and gulp down a nice refreshing swallow of juice. I have no idea what kind of juice this is, but it’s delicious. It’s sort of citrusy, but more like a strawberry than an orange. It tastes kind of like strawberry lemonade, if strawberry lemonade came from a single fruit and wasn’t sweetened, but with a much lighter, milder taste to it, and maybe a hint of mango?

I can’t get very far past the first gulp, as the fluid level is below my nose at this point. Why don’t ponies have straws in this crazy universe? Oh wait, there’s a container of straws right over there. God I’m dumb. Scootaloo is accurately looking at me like I’m either an idiot or a lunatic. Blushing, I repeat my bumping action to get the straws over to me, then pinch one in my lips and pull it out, sticking it in my drink. Thirst quenched, I stick my face into the napkin on the table and rub it until the juice is cleaned off of it. Any lingering sweetness I can lick off my own lips. Suave as fuck.

The big crackling fireplace in the center of the common room isn’t the only source of light in the lodge this morning, with some sort of light fixtures in the ceiling casting a gentle glow around the room. The windows are still only weakly providing morning light. I look around for a clock, and there’s an analog one mounted up above the fireplace, with no numbers on it. ...great. I squint at the darn thing. Let’s see if the bottom is six, then seven eight nine, right so, wait that’s the long hand... did I mention I hate analog clocks without numbers? Okay so if they’re both the same way then that means it’s... 11am?! Oh no! That... no wait, 10am. It’s only 10am.

Still, considering how early I went to sleep last night, that’s... pretty late in the morning. I wonder why the light isn’t very bright outside. I wonder why I slept that long. I guess I didn’t get very much sleep on the cart? I don’t know. Brain warping takes a lot out of you?

“How did you learn about pegasus wings?” Scootaloo asks me, after I’m done with the first pastry.

“Hmm?” I ask, trying to remember if I’m supposed to remember something about that.

“In the bath,” she clarifies, “Rarity was gonna get them all soapy. I tried to tell her, but then you knew and she didn’t.”

“Oh, I was just guessing actually,” I tell her in all honesty. “I did learn about um...” how to put this... “Quills,” I realize. “They get all tangly and broken as the oil leaves them, so I thought maybe it was that way for all wings.”

Scootaloo’s voice drops in disappointment. “Oh I thought you knew pegasi oiled their, uhm” her sentence then drags to a screeching halt, as her eyes widen looking at me nervously, “Oh! I-I mean, not that I do it or anything but you know it’s just a thing that you know–”

“Oh my gosh!” I exclaim excitedly, my hooves going up onto the table as I lean forward, “You have wing glands?!”

Scootaloo looks like she’s trying to find some way to deny it, but she looks away and stammers out “I uh... yeah...”

“Sorry, I–” I give a short frustrated sigh, “Sorry that was very rude of me,” I say, settling back down to a half seated position. “I was just excited. I didn’t mean to make it weird.”

“It’s okay,” says Scootaloo, joking a bit forlornly, “Just means my flight feathers are coming in, after all.”

“Oh...” I say in an honestly disappointed tone. “Right... that.” Honestly, I’ve always been a fan of Scootachicken, even if it’s a hardship for her. Learning she was going to fly is therefore disappointing to me, because as much as it was a good thing for her, it brought to mind the reasons I felt that way, principle among them how far away the sky is from the other Cutie Mark Crusaders.

“Guess you’ll be spending a lot of time away from us then,” I mumble. I never wanted Sweetie Belle’s friends to move away and evaporate, like mine did. Apple Bloom won’t be moving any time soon but, she’ll be taking over the farm eventually. And if Scootaloo is going to flight camp, and flight school, and well... flying... Sweetie could end up alone. If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than living a lonely life myself, it’s the thought of a wonderful pony like Sweetie Belle suffering it.

Scootaloo blinks at me several times, then leans sideways on her elbow a bit and says, “Uh... no?”

My mental gears lock up and shift slowly, as I reconsider what it meant that she was saying. I’m fairly sure if I were a GPS trip planner I would be announcing “recalculating.” I didn’t want to pretend knowledge, but I don’t want to seem uncaring or clueless. What do I say then? “Well, it’s just,” I gesture helplessly, “You said flight feathers...”

Scootaloo looks at me worryingly, then answers with, “You haven’t forgotten that have you?”

I look at her blankly.

Scootaloo adds, “I don’t want to tell you again...” shrinking back and looking aside. I guess she really can’t fly. I wonder why? No, I don’t “wonder” why. I’m burning with the need to understand why and how, but... she just looks so sad. I can’t just start interrogating her over it on the spot.

“It’s fine,” I say smiling as kindly as I can. “I’ll probably remember it later anyway. I’m just... sorry for being greedy.”

“Sweetie, I gave you those pastries,” Scootaloo says with a disapproving look. “I took way too many.”

“Not the pastries!” I protest, “The um,” dammit I’m not going to harp on her for being a freaking chicken; it’s got to be embarassing as all hell! “You know...” I vacillate, “The, um... I’m just glad you won’t be going away or anything. It’s really good to have you as a friend! Even though that means...”

“Reeeally not following you, Sweetie,” Scootaloo says swirling her hoof pointed at her temple.

I look back at her a bit resentfully, blurting out, “So, where’s Rainbow Dash?”

God that was horrible. Why did I say that?!

“I dunno,” Scootaloo says tentatively, “Flying around somewhere I... guess?”

“S-sorry I... nothing,” I stutter out weakly.

“HO!” the door to the lodge bursts open, and in walks the stoutest mare I’ve ever seen shouting, “Is there any breakfast still?!”

“The lumbermares have returned!” a stallion announces from the kitchen. Oh no.

“We have need of your goodwill!” the lumber mare continues. Two other equally sturdy looking ponies are coming in behind her. Oh no. I wonder if they punch the trees down. “Our coin is good!”

“Your trust is earned!” comes the eager reply.

A lumber town. Dodge Terminal is a lumber town. That means lumber. That means lumberjacks.

“Come on, mates!” the lumberpony says enthusiastically to the others, seven in total. The lead logger is most fearsome, like a brick wall of pony: an earth pony (of course) mare with a cherry blossom red mane and matching eyes that clash with her forest green coat, a short cut tail by her cutie mark of sturdy trees.

“Come on in and break some bread!” she hollers to her companions, “We have travelled long today, but still a long trip ahead. So let us drink our cares away!” Four of the others are mares in varying but all exceedingly high degrees of fitness, including a rather wirey looking unicorn, with a scuffed and dirty coat the same color as the leader’s hair, but a bright purple mane. The other two are...

One defies description. You could only describe as him as a brute of a stallion, but the laid back demeanor in which he ambles in and the warm glow in his deep blue eyes prevents any description in that regard. His purple hair would look girly on any other stallion, but not this one. It’s tightly curly, clipped short and neat, with little distinction between where his mane ends and his beard begins. He’s thrillingly fit, with a thick strength in his movements that give you the impression he could walk off with the entire lodge on his back, and not break a sweat.

“What news of the hinterwood?” says a waitress earth pony to him, coming out with a tray of foaming drinks balanced on her head. Certainly nothing I’d ever be allowed to drink.

“Its appetite is truly sated!” the stallion guffaws, “We collected what bounty we could, thus on to Baltimare so fated.” I find myself bobbing my head to the tune, despite myself. It’s really catchy!

The other stallion, also an earth pony, has strikingly piercing orange eyes that seem to pick up on everything. His bicolored pale green and yellow mane sticks above his head in thick rows of spikes. He has a serious expression, combined with a bountiful moustache skillfully twisted and tweaked away from his face, the kind of pony you don’t ask the same question twice. The mares are singing something, but I’m not really paying attention, because his naked muscles are flexing as he walks to his table and sits down and spears me with a sharp glance–oh fuck he sees me!

I blush and turn away... heck I’ve been blushing since they walked in. I–wait. Nononono...

Even with my eyes averted I can hear his voice, as penetrating as his gaze. “And barley, ale and cheese for me,” he sings in response to something I didn’t catch. “Let me tell you quite a tale. You’re lucky to hear it for free!”

With difficulty I tear my ears away. No, really. I have to reach up and pull them away from pointing in his direction, and wrap my hooves over my head, panic rising in my chest. OK OK I knew this was going to happen I know it’s cliche they’re just lumberjacks so of course they’re going to be fit as hell with rippling pectoral oh jeez I am not okay with this.

I wonder if anyone would notice if I surreptitiously slip a napkin under the table.