"Mama, will you tell me a story?"
It was bedtime for Dinky Doo, and that meant one of two things. One, Dinky was fast asleep, dreaming beautiful filly dreams; or two, Dinky was doing everything she could to stall bedtime. Tonight, as was most nights, she was stalling.
“Mama, will you tell me a story? I’m not tired at all!” Dinky Doo chirped, jumping up and down on her bed.
“Alright, my darling. If you settle down, I’ll tell you a story my mama told me when I was just a filly.” Ditzy Doo yawned, halfway sitting on the edge of the bed. Then she began her story.
Once upon a time, Ditzylocks was skipping through the forest. Ditzylocks was an adorable little pegasus with a gorgeous golden mane and a long tail. Her coat was grayish lilac and her eyes yellow. Her cutie mark was a charming array of bubbles...
“Hey, she’s just like you!”
“Yes, sweetheart. What a coincidence!”
Her mama had warned her not to wander far, so she was being very careful to not go out of sight of the house. However, in a forest, things don’t always go according to our plans. Ditzylocks of the long flowing golden hair had become hopelessly lost in the woods. She knew her mama would be cross with her for being out so far and began to cry. She was also starting to get hungry. Suddenly she smelled something that smelled incredibly appetizing. She followed the scent to a big old cottage that looked nice and inviting. At the time, she didn’t notice the proportions of the place seemed to be made for giants. Now, her mama had warned her never to go into a house she didn’t recognize, but Ditzylocks was too hungry to remember her mama’s very good advice...
“She didn’t go into the strange house did she?” Dinky asked, looking a bit worried.
“Well she had to. Otherwise there’d be no story!”
Ditzy cleared her throat and then continued.
Ditzylocks opened the door carefully. If she was going to disobey her mother she was at least going to be wise about it. Ditzylocks, with her cross-eyed smile, didn’t really look like a very wise pony. But that’s because wisdom comes with age, and she was very young still. As she stepped into the house the smell grew stronger. Directly inside was a kitchen with a gigantic table set for three with each place sporting an enormous bowl of porridge. So that’s what Ditzylocks had been smelling! Quickly she flew to the first bowl and sniffed it greedily. Its scent was heavenly, just like her mama used to make--”
“Mama, what’s porridge?”
“It’s oatmeal, dear.”
“Eww!”
“You’ve never had Grandma’s oatmeal have you?”
“No?”
“We’ll fix that in the morning. Now where was I...”
The first bowl of porridge was the biggest, so Ditzylocks figured if any porridge was to be had, it was least likely to be missed if she took it from the largest bowl. She was logical like that, but most ponies didn’t give her credit for her sound mind.
Ditzy looked straight ahead for a moment, one of her eyes twitching slightly, before going back to the story like nothing happened.
The spoon sitting to the side of the biggest bowl of porridge was far too big for Dizylocks to hold, so even though her mama always stressed good table manners she ate out of the bowl with her mouth like a dog. She quickly regretted it however, not because it looked silly but because the porridge in the bowl was piping hot and burned her tongue and her lips and even the tips of her hooves. She skyrocketed away from the dish and flew in circles, lamenting loudly over her burned mouth. As she was doing this she noticed a sink and changed course to go to it. She tried to turn on the faucet and rinse her hurting mouth, but she was too small to have any effect on the knobs of the sink. Giving up, she sat down on a sponge and waited for the feeling to go away.
After about five minutes, Ditzylocks remembered her hunger and fluttered clumsily over to the second, medium-sized, bowl. She had learned her lesson the first time and carefully used her wings to cool off the second bowl of porridge. After a minute or so, she carefully hovered close to the lip of the bowl and stuck her head in. Quickly she withdrew, not from the heat, but from the cold. How was that even possible? she thought. Back home her wingpower wasn’t even enough to blow away a fluffy cumulus cloud on a good day. Confused, Ditzylocks turned to the third bowl.
It was the smallest of the three and by far smelled the most tempting now that she noticed it. Though it was still gigantic to her, Ditzylocks found this bowl a little bit easier to eat from. When she tasted it this time, the temperature was just right. Before she knew it she had eaten half the bowl, which was incredible when one considered how massive the bowl was. She felt understandably full and sleepy now.
Ditzylocks flew down from the table and walked into the next room. This room appeared to be the family room. In it were three different chairs. There was a chair shaped like a cuddly stuffed kitty that was the size of a mountain. Beside it was a wooden rocking chair that was the size of a small mountain range.
“You’re exaggerating, Mama! No chair is as big as a mountain range!”
“But that’s half the fun!”
And beside that there was a huge recliner that Ditzylocks couldn’t even see the end of from her place in the room. She could have flown all around it to check it out, but she was too lazy and instead just flew to the seat of the largest chair and slumped into it. She found very quickly, however, that it was much too hard, despite its soft appearance. In fact, it was a little bit disturbing how uncomfortable the otherwise innocent-looking armchair was.
Ditzylocks hastened to the second chair in the line. It had a crocheted pink pillow on it that Ditzylocks literally almost smothered in as she landed on it. She wasn’t a heavy pony, but she sank like a stone into the sea on that pillow and had to fight to free herself. Aside from the near death experience, she could agree that it was a rather comfy chair.
At last the poor pegasus glided gently down to the third chair. To her expectation, it was just right. She was beginning to sense a pattern.
Now Ditzylocks was a bright young pony, but when she got sleepy she was completely oblivious to everything. Had she been aware, she would have probably looked around the room and noticed the pictures on the walls. They were family portraits, and they would have explained why everything in the house was far from pony-sized.”
“Was it because Ditzylocks was in a giant’s house?”
“I can’t tell you that, it’d ruin the story!”
“Oh.”
“Ahem. Where was I?”
“Ditzylocks was falling asleep. Ooh! Is the next part a dream sequence and then she wakes up and it was all in her mind?”
“Now now, Dinky, what did I just say?”
“Okay, you can finish the story, Mama.”
“Thank you.”
Suddenly our sleepy little heroine heard a pop and felt herself being flung out of the chair with great force. She caught herself in the air, luckily, and hovered back over the third chair. It seemed that a spring in it had sprung loose in exactly the same spot she had been sitting in. Taking this as a sign tht she was not wanted in the living room, Ditzylocks took her cue to leave. She was getting really sleepy now so she decided that she was going to fly upstairs to the bedrooms and catch a few Zs. She hoped nopony would mind. Flying up the stairs in her half-awake state was probably a little dangerous, had she been thinking straight, but at least she didn’t bump into any of the pictures in the stairwell. She still did not look at any of the pictures too closely. There were only two rooms upstairs; a bedroom and a bathroom--
“Oooh! In the bathroom there were three different toilets--”
“Sweetie, please, let’s not go there. I’m telling the story and there will be none of that foalish potty humor. Alright?”
“Heh, potty humor,” Dinky giggled. Ditzy gave her daughter a tired smile and focused her attention back on the story.
Ditzylocks flew into the bedroom and looked at the three beds. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t expected as much. The beds were even more massive than the chairs downstairs. Ditzylocks sighed wearily then noticed a small house in the corner by the smallest bed. She zoomed over there despite her increasing fatigue and flew around it a few times to check it out. It was a pony-sized house with pony-sized chairs and kitchen tables and plastic food and even beds.
It was just right.
While Ditzylocks was snuggled up in the pony-sized house, the family who lived in that house came back home. It turns out they had all gone for a walk before breakfast so their porridge would have ample time to cool. There were three members of the family; a papa, a mama, and a baby. They each had the same spectral fur laden with white pinpricks of stars with a bigger eight-pointed star on their foreheads. The bear-like figures also had menacing-looking long claws and teeth. The mama and the papa bear were a sort of purple, the papa being a shade darker and a fair bit larger than the mama. The baby was about the size of the massive creatures’ heads and was a beautiful blue. To a pony, even the baby would have appeared as a ferocious giant monster. But for now, the family appeared docile. That is, until--
“Hey!” yelled the papa bear in a loud voice, noticing his porridge for the first time upon entering the cottage. “Somebear’s been eatin’ mah porridge!” How he could tell was anyone’s guess, since Ditzylocks had barely even touched the bowl. Perhaps it was the fact that the spoon wasn’t exactly parallel to the bowl. Papa Ursa was a perfectionist, and he also had an impeccable sense of smell. He whiffed the air noisily while Mama Ursa inspected her porridge.
“Somebear’s been eatin’ mah porridge too!” she exclaimed in a quiet voice. Ditzylocks hadn’t touched the spoon this time so it was really a mystery how Mama Ursa knew someone had been at her porridge.
“They’ve done made it ice cold, too,” Mama Ursa added under her breath.
Baby Ursa, who needed a little help getting to her chair from her mama, now looked at her porridge. It was the most obviously affected by an outside force. The littlest ursa pulled on her mama’s arm, pointing at the bowl. She spoke in a voice that was--surprise surprise--just right.
“Mama! Papa! Somebear’s been eatin’ mah porridge, and they done et it all up!”
“Sugar, there’s still half left. Don’t exaggerate,” Mama Ursa said consolingly, though she pulled her baby against her protectively at the thought of an intruder in the house. Through this, Papa Ursa kept sniffing the air suspiciously, like a bloodhound on the scent of a crime.
“Somethin’ smells fishy here and it ain’t last night’s dinner,” Papa Ursa growled. He ambled into the next room, still sniffing the air loudly. There came a great, “Aha!” from the next room, and the rest of his family followed him to the living room. Not a thing was out of place, but each ursa carefully examined their chairs.
“Somebear’s been settin’ in mah chair!” Papa Ursa roared, slamming an angry fist on the arm of his chair. It creaked, but it was used to the abuse and did not complain further.
“Why I do declare! Somebear’s been settin’ in mah chair too!” Mama Ursa clutched her chest as she imagined a backside less delicate than hers crushing her handiwork. Despite her long claws, she was fairly talented with a crochet hook and quite proud of it as well.
Baby Ursa had to jump up and down to be noticed by her much bigger parents. She had noticed the spring sticking out of her favorite chair--her only comfy chair for that matter--and didn’t so much point at it as wave her paws about wildly. To put it mildly, she was a little upset.
“Somebear’s been settin’ in mah chair, and they done broked it!” Baby Ursa’s parents immediately both went to her to hug her and pat her. They were a very loving family, and ponies just don’t give Ursa Majors credit for that. It’s not their fault they’re a thousand times bigger than ponies.
“I smell somethin’,” Papa Ursa said, looking out of the living room where the stairs were. Papa Ursa shuffled over to the stairs and began to climb them. Mama and Baby Ursa followed behind once more.
“Mama, I’m scared,” Baby Ursa cried, clinging to her mama.
“Don’t fret now, sugar star. Papa’s fixin’ to git whatever done broke yer chair.”
When the ursa family reached the bedroom, they noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Even Papa Ursa couldn’t detect the scent of anything on his bed.
“Nobear’s been sleepin’ in mah bed,” he offered dumbly, looking around and sniffing in confusion.
“Nobear’s been sleepin’ in mah bed,” Mama Ursa echoed, fluffing her pillow nervously.
It was Baby Ursa who first noticed Ditzylocks. She had run to her dollhouse first thing to make sure everything was okay. When she saw the little pony snuggled up in her dolls’ master bedroom, she let out a shriek of terror. And in that moment, her voice was almost as loud as her papa’s.
“Mama! Papa! Somebear’s been sleepin’ in mah doll’s bed and she’s still there!” After this pronouncement Baby Ursa ran under her bed, shaking in fear. Her last experience with ponies had not been pleasant and she was not inclined to forget it that easily.
Ditzylocks, normally a very sound sleeper, finally awoke to the sound of a horrible growling noise. She opened her eyes to see two very confused-looking transparent purple bears. She of course did the logical thing.
She flew right out the window, screaming her head off. To the ursa family it sounded like the wailing of a very pathetic gnat. Ditzylocks was home in an instant and to this day she never goes wandering too far into the forest and she always listens to her mama. The end.
Dinky Doo yawned widely.
“So did you like my story?” Ditzy asked as she tucked Dinky in. The little filly nodded as she reached for her teddy bear, eyes closing. Ditzy leaned over to nuzzle her daughter.
“Goodnight, my little sugar star.”
“Goodnight, Mama.”
Just as Ditzy had turned off the light and was about to close the door, she heard a faint rustle behind her.
“Mama, how did the story end?” Dinky asked softly, big eyes catching the light from the doorway.
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“Did Ditzylocks and the ursas live happily ever after?”
Ditzy looked at her foal for a long moment, an involuntary smile spreading her features. She knew exactly how her story had ended.
“Yes, yes they did. Everypony--and everybear--lived happily ever after.”
