Cultural Differences

by Nightmare_Shadow

Rating: everyone
Tags: Adventure, Main 6, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character, Comedy
Length: 3854

A group of creatures from another land comes to visit Equestria.

Unusual creatures have arrived in Equestria! Hailing from a far away land called Attica, these centaurs, satyrs, and griffins want to know what life is like in a pastel-colored land without the gods and goddesses that permeate each and every aspect of Greek life.

Published 2012-04-04 07:04:02 UTC
Last updated 2012-04-16 22:17:42 UTC

First Contact (part 1)

Pinkie Pie eyed the strange creature with suspicion. It looked like a pony, except in place of a head it had what looked like the top half of a creature she'd never seen before. Probably from the Everfree Forest. In any case, it wasn't dangerous; it just stood there letting Pinkie investigate. And it seemed amused.

"Is your curiosity sated, pink one?" the creature asked, in a feminine voice.

"Oh! You can talk! Oh boy oh boy I've got lots of questions for you! Where are you from? What are you? Do you like parties? Do you like cake? Huh huh huh?"

"Haha. One question at a time, curious one. I am what is called a centaur, from Attica. My name is Risata. Festive, eh?"

"My name's Pinkie Pie! What's Attica like? Are there any more strange critters like--"

"Slow down. Please." Risata had a bit of a headache from the interrogation. She usually liked enthusiastic others, but this was a bit much. "A lot of the residents of Attica have the same upper half as me, but with only two legs on their bottom half and no hair. I know them as 'humans'. Oftentimes they would throw a party for someone called Dionysus. This particular human was very fond of parties, and went to every one he was invited to. Things didn't always turn out well though; Dionysus often got unruly. But for some reason everyone loves him..."

"I know! I'll throw a party to celebrate your arrival! And you can tell me all sorts of stories about your parties in Attica and tell us allllll about this Dionysus critter!"

"Haha." Risata seemed genuinely amused by Pinkie Pie's energy - even if it was rather over the top. "Very well. I'll finish my story later, then. I have a few other friends that I would like in attendance, if you don't mind."

"The more the merrier! I'll invite everypony in Equestria to welcome you and your friends!"

Risata was overwhelmed. "You... you can do that?! We would be most honored! I shall inform them at once!" Risata left before Pinkie Pie could spit out that she does this sort of thing every day.

Rainbow Dash was training to join the Wonderbolts, as usual. She practiced her loop-de-loops and inverted barrel rolls for the upcoming Cloudsdale Stunt Flyer Competition in hopes of winning a meeting with Spitfire. Midway through her next corkscrew, however, she was knocked away by a freak something blazing past her.

"What the hell was that? Who's trying to sabotage me?" Rainbow Dash only became more annoyed when she saw the griffin coming back to make another pass. "Oh no. Not another one. Did Gilda put you up to this?"

"Who's Gilda?" The griffin was a bit confused. "I am not from these lands. My apologies. My name is Pietas. I'm from Attica, a land far away from here. I do not mean to offend you."

"Well you messed up my stunts." Rainbow Dash was not about to trust a griffin, not after Gilda, an old friend, turned out to be a big jerk. "So please go away and bother someone else."

"May I watch you? I promise I'll be out of the way." Pietas wasn't about to let her first encounter with an Equestrian go sour.

"Fiiiiiiiiine. But mess me up again and you're outta here. Got it?"

"Got it."

Rainbow Dash resumed her stunt practice. Pietas watched quietly, as promised, and was mezmerized by how quickly and seamlessly Dash moved from trick to trick. Perhaps she'd be up for a race...

After some time, Dash finally stopped. She flew up to Pietas. "Betcha can't do that, birdbrain!"

Ugh. This one was trouble. Pietas considered reprimanding Dash's insult, but thought better of it. There was a better way. "Indeed, you are as fast as Hermes! I would very much like to race you!"

"Heheh, sure thing! Wait, who's Hermes?" Rainbow Dash didn't know if she'd been complimented or insulted.

"Hermes is the fastest Attican ever to exist. He has run across mountains with such speed that the leaves on the trees cannot withstand the wind. He has delivered messages from generals to their troops in wartime so quickly you'd swear he teleported. Nobody could ever hope to match his speed. Truth be told, you aren't as fast as him. But it is high praise in Attica to be compared to Hermes. So, shall we race?"

"Whoa. Hermes is so... cool!" Rainbow Dash wasn't really paying attention to the race offer anymore. "Is he a pegasus? Is he cool-looking? Oh man, I wanna meet this Hermes!"

"Alas, he cannot fly. That is his one limitation. He is also human, a type of creature you... don't seem to be familiar with." Pietas noted Dash's confused look upon hearing the word 'human'.

"Oh, nevermind that. Sounds confusing. Sorry about calling you a 'birdbrain' earlier. You're alright." Rainbow Dash was finally warming up to this new griffin, who nodded to accept her apology. "You wanted to race, right? First one to that cloud wins!" With that, the two tested their speed against each other in what promised to be an interesting friendship.

A most unusual creature was standing in the middle of Rarity's design room. It stood on two legs and looked similar to one of the Diamond Dogs, except not nearly as mangy. It also had goat horns and hooves on its hind legs, and its front legs looked similar to Spike's, but bigger. More importantly, though, how did it get in, and what did it want?

The creature spoke in a feminine voice. "Oh hello there! My name's Caritas. What a lovely boutique you have here!" Ah. A fashionista. "I'm sorry. I let myself in, the door was unlocked. I just HAD to see your wonderful designs! I hope you'll forgive me."

Rarity was taken aback, but as Caritas hadn't broken anything (yet), she wasn't mad. Besides, Caritas was interested in her designs. "Well... um... my name is Rarity. Nice to meet you! But... what are you? I haven't seen anything like you!"

"I'm a satyr. From a land called Attica." Caritas noted the puzzled look on Rarity's face. "It's very far away."

"Oh! That explains why I've never heard of it." Rarity seemed to understand. "I... let's see what I have. I don't often get to make designs for non-ponies."

Rarity rummaged through her fabrics for anything she could use for a dress while Caritas waited. "Anything in particular you'd like?" Rarity needed a starting point before she made anything.

"Hmm. Are you at all familiar with the toga?" Caritas had worn one occasionally in Attica, as a jab at the humans who wore them almost exclusively.

"Not at all, actually. Sounds fashionable, though. Wanna help me?" Rarity could perhaps expand her designs if this 'toga' was different enough...

"Of course! Aphrodite won't like me very much, but it'll be worth it! I'll look fantastic!"

"Wait. Aphrodite?"

"You've never heard of her? She's only THE goddess of beauty and fashion! If there's anyone who's in style, it's her. Whevener she's around, everybody turns to look in awe."

Rarity was confused. "Wait, if this Aphrodite is The Fashionista... as it were, why would you want to make something she _doesn't_ approve of?!"

"Hipster style. I'm curious." Caritas was met with a stern look. "Wh-what, is hipster not your thing?"

"Not really. But I've never even heard of a toga before, so I'll at least make one..." Rarity fully expected to regret this decision. Hipsters, to her, were everything fashion is not.

First Contact (part 2)

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.

Reunion

Risata was excited. Her first day in Equestria and a party would be thrown in her and her friends' favor! The only problem was that she had no idea where her friends were right now... they'd been separated on the way in. A volcanic eruption knocked the two griffins off-course, and a forest with bizarre inhabitants scattered the others. The likelihood that all of them had made it to Equestria like Risata did, she now realized, was slim. Still, if she were to find them at all, she must search!

Finding Pietas didn't take long though. Two zooming blurs in the sky, one belonging to Pietas (yes, she'd seen Pietas race before) and the other a weird blue color followed by a rainbow, caught Risata's attention. She made an attempt to follow the two blurs, but quickly ran out of breath trying. Stupid bird keeps trying to be like Hermes, Risata thought to herself. At least she knew Pietas wasn't injured by the eruption... now if only she'd stop racing everything she came across! Before Risata could pursue Pietas further, though, she overheard the excited yelling of Caritas talking about fashion. This would be an easy round-up. Pietas would return soon enough.

Risata trotted over to the building the yelling was coming from. Before she got to the front door, however, it flung open to spew several articles of clothing. They were almost certainly togas, but with... gems? What? Caritas never used jewels in her designs. Risata peered inside the door to see a white, incredibly small unicorn with a well-groomed purple mane arguing with Caritas.

"Look, you said the toga was _traditional_ attire in your home land!" The unicorn must have just become upset. Risata hadn't heard her just moments before. "I was making it different! Unique! 'Not mainstream'! Isn't that what hipsters wear?"

"Please. Gemstones are _so_ mainstream. They're all over royal garb and they absolutely _infest_ jewelry." Caritas would soon regret that comment.

"INFEST!? You take that back!" The unicorn at this point started forcing Caritas out of what must have been her work studio. "Gems are my trademark! You insult gemstones, you insult me. Now. Get. OUT!"

Risata sensed an urgent need to defuse the situation. "Um, allow me, unicorn." She turned to Caritas. "Caritas. Only royalty wears jewels. No one else. Unless something changed on our way here, you're not royalty. Why not wear them ironically? You usually just do that."

"Not with sparkly things, Risata. Though that _would_ be ironic, now that you think of it..." Caritas considered the jewel-encrusted toga carefully. She turned to the unicorn. "My apologies, Rarity. I still have a lot to learn about fashions... and counter-fashions."

Rarity calmed down. "Hmm. I'm not fond of this 'counter-fashion' thing, but I accept your apology. Just don't insult my fashions again. Without them, you wouldn't have anything to avoid wearing!"

"You are not the first to say that. You have much to learn about hipsterism, though for one who dislikes it you seem ready to accept it." Caritas was interrupted by a Risata who just remembered why she stopped by.

"Hey! Carrie! A pink pony said she'd host a party on our behalf! Isn't that wonderful! We've been here less than a day and we have a PARTY!" Risata's excitement didn't last long; Caritas turned furious.

"WHERE ARE YOUR FORMALITIES?! I know we only have one, but is it too much to ask to actually STICK TO IT!? What business do you have calling me pet names in front of foreigners? Have you no shame!?"

"H-hey now Carrie, um, Caritas... what's all this about? All she did was shorten your name." Rarity stood aghast at what she was witnessing. This made twice the satyr had burst out in anger. That could prove to be problematic, especially in a peaceful land such as Equestria.

"I shall forgive your mistake, Rarity. You are unfamiliar with Attican etiquette." Caritas shot a quick glare at Risata before she could let out any sort of amused expression. "Atticans only use shortened names among each other, and only in our homeland, and only when no foreigners are visiting. To shorten one's name in front of a foreigner is forbidden. And before you ask, the rule is so sacred that not even a hipster would dare challenge it."

"But I was just excited..." Risata's cheerfulness gave way to dread. Caritas's tone and the look on her face told Risata that this would not end well.