Cultural Differences

Fluttershy wanted to be sleeping right now. She had been sleeping about a minute ago. She wanted to go back to sleeping. It was nighttime. Nighttime is for sleeping.

Not dealing with a smashed henhouse and a lump of feathers that definitely didn't belong to a hen.

Spike somehow managed to sleep through the noise of the crash (he was spending the night at Fluttershy's place). Fluttershy hadn't been so lucky. She'd grabbed her first aid kit once she noticed what had happened and rushed to the henhouse. Her hens were scattered everywhere but (hopefully) alright. The lump of feathers (which, upon closer inspection, belonged to a griffin) looked as if it was flying only moments before, but it stood still now. Fluttershy began to check for vital signs. Fortunately, the hapless griffin was still breathing and had a pulse, but her wings could barely still be called wings at this point. They were burnt almost beyond recognition. It was a small wonder they even still had feathers on... but why were only the wings burnt? If dragons got to her, wouldn't everything be burnt?

Fluttershy bandaged the griffin's wings carefully and tried to move her to a bed. The griffin proved too heavy for her to move, though, so eventually she gave up and brought a couple pillows to put under the griffin's head. That would have to do. Next, round up the hens. She didn't have a henhouse to herd them back into, so she made an impromptu fence to hold them until morning, when she'd be able to enlist help and get the griffin to a proper hospital.

Fluttershy went back to bed. Every time she closed her eyes, though, she thought about the griffin and went back out to check on her. Eventually, she just gave up and sat outside for the rest of the night, watching.

Applebuck Season this year was a bit unusual. Applejack was in top form, and Big Macintosh was perfectly able to help this year. The apples were ready for bucking. And there was an unusual creature standing in the middle of an apple grove, with a normal pony body... but where a pony's head would normally be, it had what appeared to be the upper half of an entirely different creature, one nopony (with the possible exception of Zecora) had ever seen before.

"Big Mac, whaddya reckon that thing is? It's no critter I've ever seen before... even in the Everfree Forest!" Applejack was uncharacteristically afraid.

"Don't know." Big Mac wasn't about to be the first to approach. Luckily, he didn't have to, as the mutant... pony... thing walked toward them. And spoke.

"Excuse me, but I'm lost. I'm headed toward a land called Equestria, but I seem to have been separated from my friends. Could you help a fellow... centaur... you're not centaurs." So the creature is called a centaur. She seemed to be just as confused as Applejack and Big Mac were. "What are you bizarre creatures?!"

"Uhhhh... we're ponies. And you're the bizarre one." Applejack regained her confidence upon realizing the centaur meant no harm. "Also, this is Equestria. And you're on Sweet Apple Acres. And we're about to harvest some apples. While we'd like to help you find your friends, we're kinda busy. And quite frankly we don't even know what they look like. You're welcome to wait around if you're lost, though."

"I can help you with your harvest, if you'd like. If this is part of Equestria, then my friends are certainly nearby." The centaur didn't want to be idle.

"Well alright. I suppose we could use the extra hoof around here. Name's Applejack, by the way." Last Applebuck season had been a disaster for Applejack because she kept refusing help. She learned her lesson.

"My name's Vera. I come here from Attica, a fortnight's journey from here. The others will call it a distant land, but it's not that far away." Vera chuckled slightly as she said that.

"Attica, huh? I've never heard of a place like that. Then again, there's a lot of things I don't know about. We can talk while we're buckin' the apples down." Applejack took a couple of baskets over to a nearby tree, reared her hind legs for a powerful kick, and slammed into the tree, neatly knocking all the apples loose and into the baskets she had placed.

Big Mac followed suit. He moved a couple baskets to a tree, reared back, and slammed his hind legs into the tree. Again, the apples came loose and dropped into the baskets.

Vera was impressed. "You two are quite strong! Not quite as strong as Hercules, but impressive nevertheless!" She copied what she saw the two ponies do: she moved several baskets under a tree, readied herself, and kicked her rear legs against the tree trunk as hard as she could. About half of the apples fell neatly; the rest merely shuddered. "Hmmm. Am I doing something wrong? You two kicked once and all the apples fell."

"Don't worry about it. You caught on quick. We've been doing this for quite some time, so we've had practice. Just kick it again and you'll be alright. Now... who's this Hercules you mentioned?" Applejack cocked her head in curiosity.

Vera kicked again and the rest of the apples fell off. She could do this. "Hercules is the strongest human in all the known lands. He--"

"Hew-man?" Applejack missed the next tree. "What's that?"

"You see my top half? It's the top half of a human. Actual humans only have two legs underneath, though." Vera kicked twice at her next tree and was successful in her bucking. "Anyway. Hercules was capable of many amazing feats that no living thing could possibly do. But he did them with seeming ease. He single-handedly defended cities from all sorts of frightening beasts without breaking a sweat. He hurled pillars off of pinned citizens like they were hollow tubes. He even was able to divert two rivers to cleanse stables that had not been cleaned in over 30 years."

"He MOVED RIVERS?!" Applejack managed to buck a basket right into Big Mac. This was too much. Rivers can't be moved. That's silly.

"Yes, he was that strong. I'll stop now, though - it seems you're having trouble concentrating on your harvesting." Vera motioned to the baskets of apples she had collected thus far. Big Mac's haul was comparable, but Applejack's hadn't progressed beyond her first tree's worth of apples.

"What in tarnation-- I swear you made that story up just to mess me up." Another basket felt the wrath of Applejack's hind hooves. This one landed in a tree.

"I swear by its truth." Vera knocked the basket loose and put the stray apples that came down into the basket.

Applejack snapped out of her astonishment and focused on the task at hand.

Twilight Sparkle woke up to a crashing of books. Spike happened to be sleeping over at Fluttershy's place for the night, so he couldn't have knocked anything over, and there was normally nopony else in the library at night. Twilight looked downstairs to see what was going on. There, covered in books she'd painstakingly reshelved just hours before, lay a satyr (she recognized it from her books) dazed and confused. Twilight was about to demand what this satyr was doing in her house when it spoke.

"I apologize profusely! I was unaware that someone resided here. With all the books I assumed this was your town's public library."

"It is." Twilight answered matter-of-factly.

"You sleep in the town library?! Don't you have a house to sleep in?" The satyr was dumbstruck. Surely she had indruded on a homeless pony...

"This is my house." Twilight thought this was obvious. Apparently not.

"Your house is a library. Such dedication to one's studies... but such generosity of knowledge gained. I am impressed. The name is Saher." The satyr bowed in what must have been admiration.

"It's...what...it's not like that. I just really like books is all. The name's Twilight Sparkle, by the way. Where are you from? I've read a bit about satyrs, but I really don't know much about you."

Saher seemed delighted at Twilight's inquiry. "Ah, ever curious! And you know what I am. That's rare in my travels. I'm from a land called Attica. Back home I am known for being quite studious, but I certainly did not keep every single book I read in my own home!"

"Then where did you go?" For some reason Twilight didn't realize that her situation was the unusual one.

"I went to the central library in Alexandria, of course! It is not very far for most folks to walk. For those who do live too far from Alexandria, there is the Oracle at Delphi, but I for one distrust her. Her methods are... unreliable."

"Unreliable? How? Wait, what's an oracle?" Twilight was getting one big lesson on a foreign land she until now knew little about. This would be good.

Saher didn't mind explaining. "An oracle foresees the future using divination. Many are frauds, preying on the fact that divination methods are easily made up and read however the reader wishes. Nobody is really able to check to see if an oracle is being honest. Strangely, the oracle at Delphi is treated like a savant! To be fair, she has predicted many favorable and disastrous events with peculiar accuracy, but she still uses techniques that scholars dare never touch. I have been to the Oracle at Delphi but once. I learned then that she hardly ever looked at the world around her. That is no way to gain knowledge."

"But why does anybody even go to the oracles if they're wrong? Why not study something reliable?" Twilight still wasn't quite ready to believe that Pinkie Pie's twitchy tail actually predicted anything, even though it was always right. Something that proves to be wrong? Pointless.

Saher shook her head. "The citizens of Delphi and Alexandria and the surrounding cities do not know better. The oracles make vague guesses, and later mold their indecisiveness onto whatever events occur to 'prove' their talents. Occasionally they will be bold enough to state specifics, which are nearly always incorrect. Delphi's oracle is the only one who does not make noncommittal predictions. She is also, I am loath to admit, correct a majority of the time. Still, I distrust her methods."

Wait. This sounds a lot like how Pinkie's tail works. "Now I'm curious. I want to visit this Oracle! She sounds interesting!" This was Twilight's chance to figure out how Pinkie Pie's twitches work.

"....you confound me." Saher really didn't know what to make of this pony. She doesn't understand why anyone visits the Oracle, she wants to visit the Oracle, she sleeps and lives in a public library... none of this made sense.

Saher said her goodbyes to Twilight and went off in search of a soft bed.