The amnesiac stranger who knows too much

Me being in high spirits seemed to have improved Shy’s mood too. We had a breakfast, and she was preparing to go somewhere, to do some shopping in the town I presumed. I wanted to tag along, and maybe explore the town on my own later.

As I finally gathered my thoughts, I approached her and pointed at her bags that she just finished packing.

“What that called?”

“It’s called bags.”

“You have more bags?”

“Um... Yes.”

“Give me please,” I finally got to the point.

She went upstairs and to the left. While she was away, I wrote the new word down, and realized that I didn’t have much more clean paper. Also, the pencil was getting quite blunt.

“More paper and pencil, please?” said I when Shy returned with a pair of bags. She sighed, and went back upstairs.

“Hmm. These bags seem identical to the other pair, except they don’t have Shy’s mark on them. They also look a bit worn, which means I won’t have to worry too much about keeping them in their original condition. Good.”

When Shy returned with more paper and two pencils, I put everything into one of the bags, threw them over my back... And they just flopped onto the floor on the other side. Shy chuckled at that, and I snorted in amusement. “Guess what, those straps weren’t just for decoration, after all!” I could not exactly handle them with my hooves, though, so I had to rebalance the bags instead. I lifted them over my head, dropped them onto my back, and I was ready to go.

Before we departed, I took one last glance at the clock. It was just a little past six in the morning. I was slightly surprised that it was that early, but that just meant we had all day ahead of us!

We left the house and crossed the small bridge. It was quite wet outside after after the thunderstorm, but the packed dirt road wasn’t affected all that much. It certainly wasn’t a mud bath that one could expect it to become. As we walked away from the cottage, I noticed something that, somehow, failed to catch my attention the day before.

“Why!? Why would anyone in their right mind build a clock tower here, almost at the edge of the forest? Probably as far from the town center as possible!” I decided that I didn’t need a headache, so I just looked away and towards where we were heading.

As we crossed the bridge to the town square, some interesting architecture caught my attention.

“Nice design, huh! It feels weird to me, but those purple flowing tent-shaped rooftops really make that building look grand. And the building to the left of it... Is it supposed to look like a pony? The ponies who designed it sure were creative! And that other building... Yeah, they definitely love unconventional architecture here. I wonder how I missed all those buildings the last time? Maybe they were behind my back when I entered the square?”

We turned left and started walking along a street that led to some tents, probably the local market. As we got closer, one of the buildings grabbed my attention.

“Weird, it looks almost like it’s... Wait, is that a giant cupcake at the top?” As we passed the building and entered the market square, I was looking at the marvel of architecture with my mouth agape and slightly watering. “An actual gingerbread house! With frosting and a cupcake tower! It’s just... Wow! It simply has to be inedible, though, otherwise I’d bet it would be missing quite a few bites.”

While I was still staring, the door to the gingerbread house opened, and Pinkie stepped out and enthusiastically inhaled the fresh morning air. As she noticed me, she became all shocked-surprised and jumped up, gasped, turned in mid-air and shot back inside without even landing.

“Gah! The pink one is freaking me out! I think I almost heard the appropriate sound effect as she darted away, and I don’t have a faintest idea where I heard it before, or even why I think that it’s appropriate!” My head was starting to hurt already, after seeing Pinkie for just a few seconds.

“Are you all right?” asked Shy, who definitely noticed I was not.

“I’m good,” answered I, trying hard not to think about how Pinkie broke the physics, again. I pointed my hoof across the square and added, “I look what there.” Then I quickly started moving, eager to put some distance between myself and the threat to my sanity. When I looked back, I saw Shy talking to an orange yellow-maned mare who was selling apples. “Good. She’ll finish her shopping while I do a little exploring here, away from Pinkie.”

I walked slowly across the emptier end of the square and looked at the buildings surrounding it. “Looks like quite a few ponies are selling stuff right from their homes. I wonder what that confectioner is all grumpy about... Hmm, the sign on this shop is kinda weird. A quill and a sofa? I wonder what they sell...”

I decided to take a look inside. Thankfully, the door handle was not of the round kind, it was long instead and was facing down. I just pushed it to the right and pulled with my hoof, and the door opened. “Maybe doors won’t be my arch-nemesis after all. Now let’s see... They sell sofas, beds, pillows, et cetera... And over there are quills, inkwells and parchment. Those ponies really are weird. I get it that quills and parchment are more fancy than practical, compared to pencils and plain white paper, but no amount of fanciness will justify selling them alongside sofas, I think.”

“Good day! How can I help?” The salespony startled me a bit when he approached me from behind and said that. I quickly turned to face him, and suddenly felt kinda shy at the prospect of talking to him.

“The heck? Is Shy rubbing off on me?” I quickly composed myself and answered him, “I new here. Only looking.”

The salespony looked at me weird, said “Okay” slowly, and went to another customer.

“Or maybe I just knew that I could not speak properly yet.” You see, those translations from pony language I use here, they are just approximations. I’m not even sure I got all of them right. Worse still, I’m writing them from memory, and of course I cannot remember things that I didn’t understand well enough, even if novelty of everything kept my memories of the first weeks quite sharp. Anyway, at that point in time I still had serious trouble understanding what ponies said, and my speech was... It probably sounded much worse than the worst sounding translations I used to represent it here, and my vocabulary was very limited. The salespony probably thought that I hardly knew the language, which, incidentally, was true.

I left the shop and continued my exploration. I didn’t get far before I realized that the tree on the far end of the square was...

“It has windows? And a balcony?” I trotted closer to have a better look. “They carved a house inside a tree! Forget the gingerbread house, THIS is amazing! I wonder if trees naturally grow that large here, or maybe they used magic to make this one do so?” I walked around the house, marveling at the seamless blend of nature and architecture. “The tree is even alive still! This is so awesome! I have to ask the owner how they did that!”

I trotted to the door and knocked excitedly. And then...

“Oh sh... Dammit, I can hardly speak, and even if I ask I won’t understand half the answer! It would be so awkward! And embarrassing! What do I do!? Maybe I should run? Or...”

As I was panicking, I suddenly realized that I did not hear any hoofsteps from the inside. No pony was going to get the door. I plopped onto my rump and breathed deeply, calming myself down.

“Huh, I’m really afraid of making a fool of myself, it seems. I guess Shy’s... shyness overrode that before. Anyway, this building... Does no one really live here?” I looked around and noticed a sign nearby. I stood up to look at what was on it.

It had two words written on it, “Pony??? book???,” and an image of a book beneath them.

“So it’s either a book store, or a library. But I saw a tent that was selling books before, and hardly anyone seems to come close to here, so it probably is a library. And I loudly knocked on the door just now, how considerate of me.” I was ashamed. “Still, a library! It would be of great help to my studies. I certainly won’t get far in short time if I learn new words and facts from Shy alone.”

I gathered my wits and opened the door. It had two long down-facing handles, and pushing one to the center indeed unlatched the door, but I thought it was pretty weird that it opened as a whole, despite looking like it consisted of three parts, one for the top and two adjacent for the bottom.

As I entered, I found the library deserted. “No one seems to be here. A little messy, and there’s dust everywhere. Not much dust, though. It does not look abandoned to me, just poorly taken care of. They don’t even seem to have a librarian, so likely anyone is allowed to just come in and help themselves. I hope so, at least, won’t be good for me to trespass somewhere on my first day out in town.”

In the center there was a round table with a life-sized wooden pony bust in its middle. I dropped my bags off beside that table, and took a better look around the room.

“Fascinating! It seems that everything here was carved from the tree itself. The ladder, the bookshelves, the tables, that pony head...” I snickered. “Would not that be funny if the books were made of the insides if this tree, too!” I took a look at the adjacent room, which turned out to be a small kitchen of sorts, and then went to check what was upstairs.

As I climbed the last few steps, I found myself in a smaller room. There were some more bookshelves, a desk with a bookshelf on top, stairs up lined with more bookshelves, a cupboard, drawers...

“Huh, there’s a bed up there. I guess the librarian was supposed to live here? This book-filled bedroom feels kinda cozy. But there’s much more dust here than downstairs, I can even clearly see my hoofprints on the floor! No one came here in a really long time, it seems.” There was a door, which led to the balcony, as it turned out, and another, smaller door, that led to a small bathroom. The place was nice, yet somehow unoccupied.

I went back downstairs and started looking through the numerous bookshelves. I was looking for thinner and more colorful books, expecting them to be the ones intended for foals. They should be easier to read, after all. I soon found a smaller bookshelf that was filled almost exclusively with books of that kind, the rest probably being in the same place on account of there being no librarian to keep the books organized.

I picked a few of the foals’ books that caught my fancy. I had to grab them with my mouth, but so long as I didn’t salivate on them, nothing bad should have happened, the hardbacks seemed to be sturdy enough. One of those books was a real treat, an illustrated encyclopedia! As I leafed through it with my hoof, I saw numerous colorful illustrations alongside moderate amounts of text. Just what I needed! There also was a frighteningly fat dictionary on the same shelf, which I took too. I could hardly imagine what could make a foal read the dictionary, but here it was, on the bottommost shelf, right next to the encyclopedia and some short stories.

“Would be funny to hear some long and fancy exotic words from a cute little filly, huh?” I chuckled at the thought.

Just when I was about to dive into the books, I realized that I only told Shy that I will be exploring this side of the square, not that I’ll stay in the library. Knowing her, she might just get worried enough to start searching for me all over the town. I trotted out of the door, and guess what? She was talking to the salespony from the quill and sofa shop, with whom she hardly had any business that day. Unless she was going to purchase a bed for me, which I’d prefer her not to do by the way, but then she’d probably be looking at the beds inside and not standing at the door. The salespony noticed me, and pointed for Shy to have a look. She immediately brightened, probably thanked him, and cantered over to me.

“You made me ???! Please don’t ??? like that.”

“Sorry. I stay here. Read books.”

“Oh. Good! I’ll go and ??? my ???. Please don’t ???.” She smiled and went towards the tents at the other end of the square. I smiled too and went back inside.

I sat at the round table that had the bust on it, opened one of the books and started reading. It was a story about three fillies, who each used their special abilities to overcome the obstacles they faced in their little adventure. The unicorn used her magic, really just some levitation and the light spell, the pegasus could fly, and the earth pony was quite strong physically. I kinda liked the story, for it was simple and sweet. Not sure I’d admit that to anyone face to face, though.

And oh, was that a tough book to read!

First of all, I didn’t know most of the words. Second, it turned out that ponies used ideograms in their writing. There weren’t too many in that foals’ book, thankfully, and the dictionary had an index for them in the end. I spent much more time leafing through the dictionary and the encyclopedia and writing stuff down than actually reading the book, especially since I had to at least partially translate many encyclopedia entries. I had to read the book for the second time to get the whole story, and even then the pictures were of great help.

When I was done with that first book, after around three to four hours I think, I realized that my back got a bit stiff. An idea came to me.

“Well, It’s not like anyone lives here, or even comes upstairs really. I suppose there’d be no one to mind if I occupied the bed...” I hesitated a little, and decided to go for it. I put all my stuff into the bags, crawled under them to get them onto my back, and went upstairs.

The air was a bit stale, so I opened the window next to the bed. It wasn’t latched, so I could just slide it open with my hoof. I carefully folded the covers of the bed with my mouth and slowly carried them onto the balcony. I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and finally let the covers unfold and shook them hard. I felt some dust settle on my coat, but that was nothing. After waiting for a few more moments, I exhaled, inhaled some fresh air, and sneezed loudly.

“Oh no.” That was the moment I realized that I was on the balcony that was clearly visible from the market square. “Oh no, they heard me!” Quite a few ponies were looking my way. “Now I’ve done and messed up. A complete stranger, rummaging through the private area of the library. What would they think?” One by one, the ponies lost interest and continued about their day. “Huh. Nothing, apparently. Or that I simply decided to tidy it a little up here. Works for me in any case, I guess.” Still dumbfounded a little, I picked up the covers that I dropped upon sneezing, and brought them back inside. I put the covers on the bed and carefully pulled by each corner to cover it whole.

I wasn’t going to clean the whole room, I had better things to do. I pulled a new book out of my bags, together with the dictionary, the encyclopedia, my papers and a pencil. Then I crawled onto the bed, found a comfortable position, and started reading. The second book felt easier. There were less words that I needed to look up, even if I had to find quite a few in my notes to make sure that I didn’t mix them up. Then there was another book, and another.

The next book was not quite a story, more like a textbook I think. Among its pages it had the alphabet, the numbers, a little bit of primitive math, colors...

“Hmm. That word for color white seems familiar...” I started rummaging through my stack of notes, searching for the word. I didn’t find it at first, but on the second pass I noticed the word next to ‘Me!’. “Huh. It seems that the name that Shy gave me starts with ‘white’. I wonder if the second part is meaningful.” A little searching later, I found it in the encyclopedia. I didn’t understand half the description, but it certainly was about clothing, and there was a picture of a pony looking like a mad scientist.

“So that second part would be... a lab coat. They called me ‘White Coat’. What in the world... What does that even mean? Those ponies are weird. I think I had that thought one too many times today.” I looked at the paper again, and added a proper translation under ‘Me!’. Then I switched my attention to Shy’s name. “I wonder if it means something too...”

It took me quite a bit longer to decipher Shy’s name. There were a few possible variants of where the first part ended, just a couple possibilities where the second part was an actual word, and in the end it turned out that only one made some sense. The first part wasn’t in the illustrated encyclopedia, so I had to translate the description from the dictionary, same as with one other possible variant. The second part was in the encyclopedia, and even the image sort of hinted that I was on the right path.

By ‘made some sense’ above, I meant in general. It was so much more logical in the context of being Shy’s name. If you took into account that she was a weird magical pony, at least.

“So her name means... ‘Flutter Shy’, if I pick the closest association I have for the first word’s description. Fluttershy does sound nice. But heavens above, those ponies are weird! They show off what they do right on their flanks, they have the names that tell what they are like. Bad enough if it’s their mass obsession with tattoos and pseudonyms, but what if it naturally happens here? Like, the mark appearing when you discover what you are good at, or the name given by parents foreshadowing your future...” I laid there on the bed, now simply looking at the ceiling. “Yeah, I know what then. Pinkie’s antics would be kinda tame by comparison, that’s what.” I was tired of thinking. “Maybe it’s not the ponies that are weird. It’s the world they live in...”

I can’t really remember anything past that point, I probably dozed off around then. The bed was so much more comfortable than the sofa back at Shy’s. When I woke up, the sky was already pretty dim.

“Oh my, I’ve slept through the whole afternoon! Or maybe not whole... How many hours did I spend on the books, again? Anyway, I better hurry back home, no need to worry Shy. Plus I’m hungry, I ate nothing since morning.” As if on cue, my belly produced a deep rumble. “Seriously?” As I said that, I remembered about my earlier musings on the weird nature of magical ponies.

Still, I needed to get going, and the sooner the better. I packed everything back into my saddlebags and crawled under them to get them onto my back. By the way, that weird word, ‘saddlebags’, is the only way I could translate what those bags are literally called by ponies. ‘Bag’ is actually just the first part, and the second is an article of clothing that I could not really describe any other way than ‘saddle’. So it is more like ‘bag saddle’, but ‘saddlebags’ sounds so much nicer. The very word ‘saddle’ is weird, though. The name would imply that someone was supposed to be riding a pony, yet I could not imagine that. Nor could I imagine any kind of saddle being used for what the name implied, yet I knew the word somehow? My memories from before the incident were pretty messed up, I guess.

Anyway, being done with the bags, I smoothed the bed covers the best I could without too much effort, and went downstairs.

“Huh, where’s the light? I thought there were windows here, and it’s not nearly that dark outside yet...” I carefully descended the stairs and started heading towards where I thought the exit was.

“SURPRISE!!!”

“Gah!”

“Surprise!” Pinkie was right in my face, confetti were still falling from the earlier boom, and a crowd of ponies that filled the whole room was cheering. “Hi, I’m Pink?~ie? ?Pie?, and I threw this ?party? just for you! Were you surprised? Were ya? Were ya? Huh huh huh?”

“Very. Library supposed to be quiet!”

“That’s not your line, silly!”

I was flabbergasted. “Did she just... What was that even supposed to mean? And I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in pony language!” I looked around. Not a single pony seemed to notice anything. I took a deep breath to calm down.

“... saw you ?around? before! And if you weren’t ?around? before, that meant you haven’t met anypony yet, and if you haven’t... Are you all right?”

“You said, ‘That’s not your line, silly!’ earlier?”

“Of course not, silly! What was that even supposed to mean? Are you really ?feeling? all right? Nurse Red ?Heart? is here if you need help.” Pinkie was looking at me with a worried face and a slightly raised eyebrow.

“I’m fine. Only going a little crazy.” I didn’t say the last part out loud, of course. I was pretty sure of that, at least.

“Okie-dokie-lokie! All Pinkie ?parties? are crazy! There is ?punch?, ?cup cakes?, games, ???, did I mention ?cup cakes?? More fun games, and of course you can make lots. Of. FRIENDS!” She jumped with her forelegs up, and another burst of confetti shot into the air at the last word. She hung like that in mid-air for a bit more, and then abruptly landed on all four.

I sighed. “All right. Why not have fun,” said I. Then I remembered something. “I need tell Fluttershy, she will worry.”

“I’m here,” said Shy from somewhere on my right. I turned and saw her smiling face.

“Let’s ?PAR-TAY?!!!” shouted Pinkie. Shy cowered a little at another burst of confetti. Music started, and everyone began having fun. I went towards a table with refreshments, choose a random cup, and mused some while drinking from it through a straw.

“So, the day is coming to a close. I found out that ponies have names as weird as their butt marks, that they build things in weird places, weird shapes, and by weird means like carving a living tree. They also do weird things like ignoring complete strangers doing who knows what, selling quills and sofas in the same shop, or being Pinkie. I also found out that either Pinkie is psychic, or I am going insane, not sure which is more likely. Oh, and there’s probably a cute little walking dictionary somewhere around here. Did I mention that ponies were weird?

“At least I learned a bit more about my situation and how I got into it, and made considerable progress towards learning the language. And I get to have some good fun in the end, too!”

“You like hot ?sauce? too!?” asked Pinkie excitedly from my left. She didn’t even startle me that time, I was done with being surprised or startled for the day. And with really thinking, too. Pinkie took one of the bottles and drank right from it. “Mm! Yummy!”

I looked at the bottle that Pinkie just emptied. “They call this ‘hot sauce’? Yes, it is a little spicy... Okay, more than a little spicy. Maybe I drank too much, better wash it down with something else before it gets worse. Still, it’s tolerable as a drink, which it isn’t supposed to be...”

“Lightweights,” muttered I under my breath.

Pinkie just started humming and bounced away like a very springy ball.

“Physics don’t care, so why should I?” I sipped some from another cup, ate a cupcake and some kind of sandwich from an adjacent table, and went towards the dance floor.