A Crack in the Glass

Chapter Two: Petulance's Essence

“Ya’ll come back soon, now! Wouldn’t want to miss the barn raisin’ next week!” Applejack yelled after her and her sister’s cousin, waving from the entrance of the barn.

“Boy, I wouldn’t miss it!” Babs Seed managed to project her voice over the rain from her taxi carriage. “I can’t wait! Goodbye, Apple Bloom! Bye, Applejack!”

“Bye Babs!” Apple Bloom shouted from her sister’s side.

With a final wave of her hoof from the window of her taxi, Babs Seed and her family were headed back to Manehattan in the still pouring rain. The two stallions pulling the carriage splashed their way to the path leading off of Sweet Apple Acres, slowly making their way down the road and back to Ponyville’s train station.

“Some party, huh?” Applejack asked, nudging the filly next to her.

“You bet! I almost forgot about the rain,” Apple Bloom said. She turned to the rest of the barn. “Where’s Pinkie Pie? She didn’t leave yet, did she?”

Applejack turned around along with her sister, biting her lip at the sight of the rest of the barn. Despite Apple Bloom’s birthday party going quite well even with the rain continuing to wreak havoc on Ponyville, it didn’t end without a mess. Confetti dropped from the ceiling beams, deflated and popped balloons scattered themselves across the floor, numerous hay stacks were toppled over and some of them were even untied, and to top it off, a pink pony stood in the middle of it all, a damp party hat still on top of her head, grinning at the two sisters in the barn’s entrance.

The rain had never stopped ever since it started. The lightning that had been constantly blaring from the sky earlier in the evening died down eventually after the first thirty minutes of the storm, though the rain was persistent as ever. The storm had extended on into the later hours of the evening, lasting on to the night that was now settling in as daylight retreated. A few lightning strikes rumbled in the distance, some of the strikes closer than the other ones, but the storm, aside from the rain, was calming. The wind, almost at the speed of a tornado near the beginning of Apple Bloom’s party, was now just a subtle breeze blowing through the droplets falling from the cloudy, nocturnal, autumn sky.

“Nopey dopey lopey!” the pink pony exclaimed, bouncing up and down in place. “I think that party went even better than it would have outside! What do you think!? Wasn’t it just great!?”

Applejack exchanged a look of relief with her sister. Pinkie had seemed a little off somewhere else during the party, and her bubbly attitude coming back was music, though a bit squeaky, to Apple Bloom and Applejack’s ears. “I must say that you’re quite the party thrower, sugar cube,” Applejack acknowledged her friend. “I think all the other fillies think the same, too. I can’t thank you any more than I already have for helpin’ us put together my sister’s birthday party.” She brought Apple Bloom closer to her. “We all thank you.”

“Don’t mention it!” Pinkie said, hopping over to Applejack and Apple Bloom and wrapping her hooves around them tightly. “It’s what friends are for!”

The orange mare, starting to feel her circulation cut off, patted Pinkie on her back. Barely able to out of the pink pony’s death grip on her, Applejack tried her best to look back out the barn. The sky had grown darker outside, Ponyville barely in sight in the distance from Sweet Apple Acres through the rain. The lightning, beginning to pick up again, provided small flashes of visibility of the trees within the farm’s orchards, though they were barely discernible through the heavy rainfall.

“Speakin’ of what friends are for,” Applejack began as Pinkie let go of her and Apple Bloom, the yellow filly taking in a gasp of air as her face lifted off of Pinkie’s coat. “you can always spend the night here on Sweet Apple Acres, if need be. The storm out there is lookin’ a mite feisty.”

Pinkie glanced outside past Applejack. A few claps of thunder rumbled from off in the distance. “It is fairly bad outside,” she muttered. However, she had forgotten one thing: Gummy. After sitting in Sugar Cube Corner waiting for the Cakes to return home for about an hour, Pinkie had completely slipped her mind of her pet alligator. Despite Gummy having been just above her the entire day before evening, the thoughts of Apple Bloom’s party, and Apple Bloom’s party itself, had occupied Pinkies over everything else. She had only seen the little green reptile for about half an hour when she woke up before she had to go hang out with Rainbow Dash, and even when she had returned home to watch the shop while the Cakes were gone, Gummy had never crossed her mind.

“Are you alright, Pinkie? You’ve just been standing there for a few minutes staring outside,” Applejack said, moving her face into Pinkie Pie’s vision.

The pink pony jumped slightly at the sudden freckles and brown hat staring at her, along with the top of a red bow just barely standing up at the bottom of her eyes. “Oh, I’d love to stay, Applejack, but I gotta get home! Gummy’s gonna starve!” Pinkie announced, looking anxiously out the barn.

Applejack traded a glance with Apple Bloom. “Pinkie, I’m sure Gummy will be fine,” said the orange mare. “We’ll just send a letter to the Cakes and tell ‘em to feed Gummy. It’s a bit too dangerous to be walking around right now in this weather.”

Pinkie had gone into some sort of strange panic, holding her face. “But what if the letter doesn’t make it!? What if the mailmare gets lost in the storm and the letter falls in the rain and it never gets to Gummy!?”

“Pinkie, you don’t need to-”

“What if the Cakes don’t give him his favorite meal!? He’ll be sad for the rest of the night!” She had begun hyperventilating, her hooves still plastered onto her cheeks.

“Then just tell them in the let-”

“I haven’t given him a bath yet today!”

“Pink-”

“Bath!”

Applejack and Apple Bloom stared at the pink mare standing on her back hooves, who was glaring up at the ceiling while she stretched her bottom eyelids outwards. Pinkie’s hyperventilating had stopped, and she slowly let herself down onto her forelegs, turning her head to the two sisters glaring at her in silence.

Applejack sighed. “Are you-?”

“Bath,” Pinkie stated casually.

“Are ya done?”

“Yeah! I feel better.”

“Do you at least want an umbrella?”

“Nope! I’m good! See ya later, alligator!” Her own words getting her to start worrying again, Pinkie subtly gave Applejack and Apple Bloom a smile and trotted past them out into the rain.

Applejack stepped out of the barn slightly after her friend. “Pinkie, are ya sure you don’t want to stay!?” she yelled over the rain.

However, Pinkie Pie was already out of earshot, heading back to her home in the storm pelting down on Ponyville. Over the splashes of rain drops and lightning further off into the storm, Applejack listened to Pinkie Pie’s hooves run through the puddles formed on the ground. It would be useless to try and stop her.

“Is she gonna be alright?” Apple Bloom asked as she walked to her sister’s side, staring out at the stormy night.

“I hope so,” answered Applejack.

______________________________________________________________________

The trail back to Ponyville had been a bit colder than expected, and the darkness gave no aid to the pink pony walking through the puddles scattered along the muddy path. Regret was one thing that Pinkie felt constantly pounding at her head as she sloshed her hooves forward, though she knew that she had to get home. She had considered Applejack’s offer the more she trudged through the muck and mud, but finding her way back to Sweet Apple Acres seemed like a hopeless effort. The lights from Ponyville were barely visible from the constant rainfall seeming to put the town and its outskirts into a minor flood, so Pinkie considered that trying to spot Applejack’s farm through the trees and rain would be useless. The small flashes of lightning in the distance only reached over the tops of the mountains, giving Pinkie slight glimpses of the snow capped behemoths every once and a while. The cold autumn winds that gently nudged the rain one way and another every second chilled the pink pony’s body, Pinkie Pie beginning to shiver and think to herself that she at least should have taken an umbrella with her. She wondered to herself why she hadn’t grabbed some sort of clothing before she left for Sweet Apple Acres, but she remembered that she wasn’t planning on walking home in a minor monsoon.

A peculiar thought crossed her mind. The wings that she had seen in the mountains. Pinkie had almost forgotten about them during the entire party at Applejack’s, but now that she was back out in the pouring rain and frigid autumnal winds, the sight of the large, shadow-like pairs of wings crossed her mind again. A clap of thunder, which sounded closer and a lot more violent than the other ones, almost made Pinkie jump out of her soaked and muddy coat. The rumble of thunder afterwards seemed to moan with the wind, and Pinkie could hear a small ringing in her ears. She wasn’t sure if the ringing was due to the volume of the crack of thunder or she was just hearing things, and for a second she thought she heard a voice over the noise of the rain, but she carried on along the path. She had no idea where the wings had gone to now, and there was a haunting feeling clutching onto her head that the wings belonged to some sort of beast that had the ability to change the weather to the horrible conditions they were in now. Ponyville hadn’t been scheduled for the storm, Pinkie reminded herself. She could almost see the pair of wings as clear as day in her mind.

Another flash of lightning burst into the air, this one over the tops of the mountains. The light spread across the entire area that Pinkie walked through, lighting up every single rock, tree, and blade of grass in the field between the mountain ranges. Even a large, shadowy, limp pair of wings. The sight almost made Pinkie Pie scream at the top of her lungs, knowing that she had seen something, though as before, she couldn’t be sure. The lightning flash had gone and went before Pinkie could even react to the brief image of two wings laying, partially bent upwards, in the grass off to the right of the path. The ringing in Pinkie’s ears had returned, louder than before, though subtle and barely recognizable over the rumble of the previous thunder clap. The pink pony stood still in the middle of the swampy dirt road, holding her front hooves up to her mouth to keep from screaming. She tried her best to remember the song she had sung in the Everfree Forest when she and her friends had come across the sinister looking trees, but something about the wings blocked every thought about a happy jingle out of Pinkie’s head. She didn’t know if the wings belonged to a ghost, a griffon, a pegasus, an alicorn, a bird, or a dragon. She only knew that they were laying in the field, spread out across some sort of vessel that they were attached to.

Pinkie set her front hooves back on the ground, wiping her mouth of the mud she had unconsciously spread across her face when she smothered her scream. She tried her best to see through the darkness and the rain that blurred her vision, but nothing came out of her attempts to see past the obscurities. Visions of what the wings could have been attached to scratched and itched at Pinkie’s mind, though she tried as hard as she could to suppress them. A sudden realization ran across Pinkie’s eyes. She had only ever seen the wings unclearly, never gotten a clear image of what they looked like. Their size that they had appeared to be over on the mountains could have just been an illusion due to the rain, and maybe they were smaller than they actually were. Then again, Pinkie was sure that they seemed just as large when she saw them in the flash of light. She continued to stand still, running through the possibilities of what could be laying in the field. Maybe it was an injured pegasus, trying to get up but too exhausted to do anything. But the shape of the wing’s owner back on the mountain didn’t seem like a pegasus, rather, anything ever seen be Pinkie’s eyes. Pinkie, after finding her rationality that had somehow been lost in her head, made up her mind. Whatever the thing that the wings were attached to was, Pinkie knew that its laying on the ground wasn’t good. She had to do something, and she almost fainted accepting it.

The pink pony slowly moved her hooves through the mud, making her way to the grass along the side of the path. She tried her best to keep the constant worries out of her head, telling herself that it was only a pegasus that needed help. However, there was more to the pair of wings that made her want to run away and never look back. She drew closer, and with the closing proximity between her and the wings, she begun to hear something. A low humming noise, resonating with a few higher notes that seemed to slide up and down in pitch every once and a while. The noise had replaced the ringing in Pinkie’s ears, the pink pony starting to think that whatever the wings were sprouting out of was actually responsible for the weather. She continued forward. She had made it off of the muddy path, surprisingly to herself, her hooves now scrapping on the soft, wet grass off of the trail. The low humming persisted along with its higher pitch counter parts, and now that she was drawing closer, Pinkie could start to hear lower pitches, moaning as if they were in pain. They sent shivers down Pinkie’s spine, urging Pinkie to go back to Ponyville and never come back.

And all at once, everything stopped. Pinkie came to a stand still, staring at her surroundings, wondering if she had been struck by lightning or if she had slipped unconscious due to fright. The rain had gone, the humming had ceased, and the lightning had faded, and now Pinkie stood in a field of sunlight, pure white fluffy clouds soaring above. She had no idea what happened, but her surroundings looked familiar. Yes, it was the same path she had been walking along, but everything was normal. No storm, no darkness, no lightning, only an early evening autumn-tinted valley between two mountain ranges with a clear sky, flowing with a cool, gentle breeze. The sun was setting behind the mountains, its brilliant light shining over the tops of the snow caps on the stone giants. The mountains’ shadows stood tall over Pinkie Pie as she gawked at her surroundings, who began to convince herself more that she had been struck by lightning. But there was something else in the valley that told her that she was still alive. The pair of wings, laying on the ground a few steps in front of her.

Pinkie felt her heart skip a beat. She hadn’t noticed the large, black, feathered wings laying on the ground in front of her, despite the ebony appendages just about taking up a third of her eyesight. They laid atop a strange figure on the ground, covering the upper half of the figure’s body. Two long legs, outlined loosely with some sort of soft black cloth, sprouted out from the body that the wings were attached to. On the creature’s feet were a pair of simple shoes, black like the pants that rested on the legs of the, what looked like, some sort of bipedal life form. The figure didn’t move from its position on the ground, laying on its side with its back to the pink pony. The clothing on its upper body, which appeared to be some sort of dark green sweatshirt made out of a material a bit rougher than the cloth of the unusual avian’s pants, peeked out from under the large feathers of the jet black wings. Pinkie, growing uneasy as the figure refused to make even a single movement, stared at the peculiar being laying on the grass. It was no kind of animal she had ever seen before, no doubt, and she didn’t even know if it knew she was there. However, as the creature rolled onto, what Pinkie assumed to be, its stomach, it soon became apparent that the winged beast wasn’t just neglecting her appearance. It was sleeping.

An elongated sigh escaped the lungs through the creature’s nose, the rest of the beast’s body coming into view as its wings flattened out across the ground, their wingspan almost reaching to Pinkie’s hooves. Pinkie, if its stature hadn’t have been much of an indicator before, knew that, whatever the creature was, it had never crossed her eyes in the past as its upper body showed itself. The dark green cloth, now out in the open, was surely some sort of sweatshirt, the hood resting flat on the back of the winged beast’s neck. Atop of the creature’s head hung a scruffy silver puff of hair that spread across its scalp, parting a bit to the left of the center of its forehead to reveal its closed eyes, and just barely stretched past its ears, which were oddly shaped and hugged the sides of its head. Its eyebrows were a slightly darker shade of the silver its hair was. Its face retained similar characteristics of every other thing Pinkie had ever talked to: eyes, eyelids, eyelashes, a nose, a mouth, lips, cheeks, eyebrows, forehead, hair line, everything, though all of it was aligned on a surface relatively flat, rising up and sinking down in some areas symmetrically. Its facial features, along with the rest of its body, didn’t fit the criteria of qualifying for female physique, its face shaped masculinely while retaining a slightly angry implication, despite sleeping. The creature didn’t seem to have a coat of fur or layers of feathers on his face or body as the sleeves of his sweatshirt curled up slightly, exposing his hands and wrist to show his light tan, bare skin. His arms crossed under his head, the side of his face resting on his forearms, facing towards Pinkie Pie with closed eyes. He continued to breath calmly as he slumbered in the strange area of serenity around him, sleeping peacefully without even realizing that he wasn’t the only one in his dreamscape.

Thoughts conflicted, frozen with shock, and a little uneasy about the creature sleeping in front of her, Pinkie didn’t know what to do. Whether run, wait for the creature to wake up, wake it up, try and talk to it, ask it about the weather, Pinkie couldn’t decide. She had no idea if it could even talk, let alone understand her. The large wings spread out across the grass in front of Pinkie twitched gently, the pink pony jumping backwards a bit. Unexpectedly, she felt her tail become wet, and a dreadful, embarrassing feeling swooped over her. Pinkie clenched her teeth and stood still; however, as she backed up further, she sighed in relief that she hadn’t wet herself, though she still found the sudden dampness spreading across her flank strange. She backed up further and soon realized that the, rather peculiar, change of weather near the creature laying in the grass was some sort of magical sphere that replaced the stormy environment with a calm one. Pinkie, after finding the invisible edge of the sphere and facing away from the sleeping creature, moved her head in and out of the peaceful orb. The low humming from outside of the sphere came and went as Pinkie peeked her muzzle to and fro, beginning to get a little disoriented at the quick switching of darkness to light and storm to serenity. Giggling quietly, Pinkie stepped back into the sphere entirely and looked back at the creature laying on the ground. An unwelcoming aura seemed to radiate off of the winged beast as Pinkie Pie turned back to it, the pink pony slightly worried about what would happen if she woke it up. Would it greet her kindly? Would it try and get away from her as quickly as possible? Would it try to hurt her? Would it see her as some sort of annoyance and ignore her? The questions raced through Pinkie’s mind, but she slowly whittled them down to one single thought: She would only know the answer to her questions if she woke the creature up. And that was what she intended to do.

Standing at the edge of the sphere of tranquility, Pinkie swallowed a small clump in her throat as she uneasily looked over the sleeping creature. She stood not only five steps away from the tip of its left wing, the nearest feather to her twitching again. Its eyes remained gently closed, a subtle trembling underneath its eyelids causing them to shake. Slowly, Pinkie approached the closest wing of the beast, steadying her breathing and keeping her eyes on the creature’s face. It showed no signs of waking up, and it looked more as if it were going to start snoring rather than open its eyes. Pinkie continued forward. Her heart had started to beat faster than when she had been standing at the edge of the sphere, though she managed to keep it at a steady pace. Her hooves rustling the grass beneath them with every step set the pink pony on edge, Pinkie trying her best not to wake the sleeping creature up before she got the chance to even touch it.

The tip of the wing closest to Pinkie came within reaching distance of the pink pony. She came to a halt as she stood over the tip of the creature’s wing, switching her eyes back to the sleeping face. Sure enough, it was still in slumber. Pinkie looked back down at the wing near her front hooves. It seem to be even bigger than it had been from back near the edge of the calm sphere, the wing almost two times as big, if not bigger than Pinkie Pie herself. Out of what seemed like a natural instinct, Pinkie slowly creeped one of her hooves forward, and with only a small moment of hesitation, poked at the wing. She quickly shifted her eyes back to the creature’s face. Still sleeping. She looked back down at the wing and poked it again. Shifted her eyes back to the creature’s face. Sleeping. Pinkie Pie’s mouth shaped itself into a grin as she poked the wing one more time, her temporarily idle sense of judgement allowing her to continue poking at the black-feathered pinion without bringing a worry into her mind. She soon found her upper body underneath the creature’s wing, pushing it up and down as if it were a foal giggling with happiness. Her enjoyment did not last for long.

Her eyes closed, Pinkie washed over with a feeling of apprehension as, after she gave it a final push, the wing didn’t come back down at her. Smile fading and heart beating like a humming birds’ wings, the pink pony laying on the grass slowly opened her eyes. As she had feared, the black, feathery appendage was suspended in the air, stable, and surely being held up by something other than the pink pony laying under it. The quiet breaths of sleep had come to a halt in the air, replaced with the silence of regulated breathing and someone clearing their throat. Pinkie, almost scared to do so, gradually tilted her head toward the creature’s face, and to her worries, it had awoken, and was staring right at her. Its mouth was covered by its shoulder, though the rest of the winged beast’s face glared directly at the pink pony under its wing. Its eyes were different from any eyes that Pinkie had seen before. Its pupils were vertically oval and sharp, the upper tips of the thin slits of black invisible under the creature’s flattened and disgruntled eyelids. Its circular irises were red, seeming to glow with the intensity of their stare, and they were immensely bright against the dark green cloth of the sweatshirt beside them. The whites of its eyes, ironically, were black, deep voids of starless night skies that seemed to absorb any light around them.

Words were nonexistent in Pinkie’s head. Looking back, she realized that playing with a sleeping lifeform’s wing, in which she didn’t even know what species the creature was, without any sort of consent might have been the wrong thing to do, considering her current situation. Yet, despite Pinkie’s worries about the creature being hostile, it remained still, keeping its eyes on the pink pony laying on her back at its side. Anger or confusion, either didn’t matter as to which expression was being displayed by the eyes of the winged beast; all Pinkie knew was that it wasn’t quite happy to see her. A slow wave of heat built up in Pinkie Pie’s face as the stare between her and the creature beside her lasted for quite a while, both of them in complete silence, listening to the autumn wind blow the grass around them and rustle the leaves in the distance along the ground.

“Lex nel... porim foh,” the creature spoke calmly, his voice muffled in the shoulder of his sweatshirt. Relatively deep and smooth, his voice sent a small shiver down Pinkie’s spine as it reached her ears. The tone of the words, which Pinkie had no idea if they were actually words, didn’t sound friendly, and they sounded more like they were declaring war rather than making a friendly greeting.

Pinkie Pie quickly flipped onto her stomach and stood up as fast as she could, backing away slightly with a hoof raised limply in the air. “I- I’m sorry,” she spoke with an uneasy smile on her face, trying to sound calm, though her voice staggered. She briefly took a glance up at the wing above her, which steadily retracted to the creature’s back. The other wing stayed sprawled out across the grass.

The creature remained silent, following Pinkie with his eyes.

The pink pony tried her best to keep the smile on her face steady. The creature’s eyes felt as if they were peering straight through Pinkie’s skull and into her mind, judging her every single thought and movement. “Are you... new to Ponyville?” Pinkie asked unsurely, quickly thinking to herself afterwards how foolish the question sounded.

Casually, the winged beast yawned and looked straight ahead of him, stretching his arms and wings out. Pinkie stared up at the humongous instruments of flight as they extended into the air above the creature, casting a shadow large enough to cover at least three or four Pinkie Pies bunched together. The creature brought his limbs back to his body and pushed himself onto his feet, brushing off the front of his sweatshirt of the grass that had stuck to it. He was even taller than Pinkie had expected from his size on the ground, just about three or four feet taller than her. He turned towards Pinkie and fell backwards onto his behind, bending his legs up in front of him with his feet planted on the grass and his arms resting on his knees. Eyes fixed on the pink pony, he continued to stare at the small equine specimen standing in front of him. Silence, for the moment.

“Uh...” Pinkie Pie muttered, growing even more wary of the creature as it refused to move its tired eyes away from her. “What’s your-?”

Surprisingly, the creature’s lexicon switched to a more recognizable one, though the abruptness of his voice startled the pink pony. “I wouldn’t suggest that you were trying to kill me. Were you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at his company.

Pinkie opened her eyes wide. “N- no?”

The wings of the beast opened partially. “Were you?” His voice was much more stern than his previous statement.

Feeling her legs begging her to run away, Pinkie Pie locked them tight and stood up straight, but she could still feel a small tremble in them. “No!” She smiled. “Of course not! I don’t have a reason to!”

The creature’s wings slowly retracted to his back again, the lowest feathers of the appendages poking outwards to contour to the ground. “Good. Now get out.” He pointed behind Pinkie, and a small hole in the sphere creating an altered reality around him and the pink pony opened, showing the actuality of the valley, stormy and dark.

Pinkie’s smile disappeared and she glanced back at the hole, staring out into the pitch-black and rainy valley. She returned her eyes to the winged creature, who had his hand hanging from his wrist again. “But-” Pinkie started.

“Now,” pressed the creature, who’s voice was getting more and more irritated with every word that it pronounced.

However, before the winged beast could do anything more to force Pinkie out of his area of peace, something stopped him.

“Varkrai! Poxnu voh kimnor!” a woman’s voice seemed to speak out of now where. It sounded as if it were in the same language that the creature had spoken earlier, the hard consonants and sharp pronunciation of the words similar to the red-eyed avian’s earlier speech.

The visible creature turned his head away from Pinkie and stared at the air angrily. The pink pony off to the side, completely baffled by the two voices talking to each other, only watched in confusion. “Veta?”

“Vis’im giran vell balsto!” the woman’s voice replied. Her voice was high-pitched and slightly whiny and had somewhat of a harsh and pleading undertone.

“Lata?”

“Vah deraxni vos allet!”

“Veta heraxni fah oren?”

Pinkie only sat back and listened, watching the winged beast in front of her talk with a voice that didn’t even have a visible owner. By the tones of the two voices, Pinkie could tell that they were arguing about something, and with a few blatant assumptions, it was obvious that they were discussing the matter of the pink pony watching the visible contestant in the verbal battle. Another strange group of syllables after the previous one, Pinkie Pie had no other option than to let her ears soak in the, what seemed like to her, incoherent lashes of words back at each other.

“Nurin?” the female voice spoke. Her tone had calmed down along with the creature sitting in front of Pinkie Pie, and she sounded as if she were trying to reason through begging rather than force.

Letting a sigh out through his nose, the black winged side in the argument focused his eyes on Pinkie Pie, who instantly perked up and locked eyes with him. The creature ran his eyes across Pinkie’s form, seeming to analyze her every detail as if he were determining something about her. He looked back at the space to his side, shaking his head in defeat and closing his eyes

“Nera,” he said.

The female voice let out a small, excited squeak. “Ralin kah!” She giggled. “Fah yuna kah!”

The creature sitting in the grass smiled and opened his eyes. “Fah yuna kah, len.” He took a deep breath in as he turned his head back to Pinkie Pie, his smile fading. His language of choice switched back to a one that Pinkie could understand. “Two conditions if I let you stay,” he stated, bringing his legs closer to himself and crossing them. “One. Don’t touch me without my permission. Two. Don’t ask any questions. Am I clear on those?”

A grin keeping her from separating her teeth and saying anything, Pinkie could only nod.

“Then we have an agreement.” The creature leaned forward and stretched his hand out to Pinkie. “My name’s Varkrai.” He smirked. “Try not to stare.”