The Little Wooden God

by Apophis797

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 20146

You wake up in an unfamiliar place. It is a warm and cheerful place. It is a place filled with friends. Something feels empty. Something feels wrong.

You wake up in an unfamiliar place. It is a warm and cheerful place. It is a place filled with friends. Something feels empty. Something feels wrong. You seclude and distract yourself. You master new skills. Perform great works. Earn the fear and adoration of those around you. Something still feels empty. Something still feels wrong. Maybe it's the new world. Maybe it's the loss of your old one. Maybe it's something inside you. Maybe it's something you can unlearn. Maybe it's something so fundamental you can never get rid of it. Maybe it's just a feeling, passing along on a breeze, that stuck to you as you walked by.

I have had this thing inside me for two years now just sorta fermenting and now I'm evacuating it onto paper with my two human arms that I own. It tells the tale of a man named Johnathan Siegsmith who finds himself in an unfamiliar world, uses his knowledge to further himself, and comes to know despair.

The biggest and most recent inspirations for this story, respectively, are Steel Sanctuary by writefag_is_kill and Isolation by Rimmy.

Published 2020-10-20 23:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-09-10 21:12:41 UTC

1. I Am Alive

Author's Note

Note: This story includes at least three different languages but, as most users of this site only speak one, this will be represented as shown below.

"This is speech the perspective character understands."

I debated using a specific symbol for each language but I think this fits the story better. If it becomes a problem I'll go through and change it.

1. I Am Alive

As I slowly pulled myself to wakefulness I was greeted with the sounds of a language I couldn't recognize. A smooth, almost melodic tongue where each word seemed to flow into the next. Like speaking in cursive. If anything it was a welcome distraction from how none of my bones seemed to fit together right. It wasn't painful per say but anyone who's slept weird and woke up with their whole arm stiff knows what I mean. Just extend the feeling to every last joint in your body. To be honest I didn't even know I could feel some of them. Regardless of the feeling, however, it wouldn't do much good to lie in bed doing nothing so I managed to open my eyes and look at the two creatures before me. Two creatures which were brightly colored, biologically nonsensical, and utterly alien. Given what was either a strange prank or first contact with a new species I felt it prudent to begin communication.

"The fuck are you?", I mumbled through the fog of half-sleep. I know, not exactly the image of diplomatic grace, but I had just woken up to what looked like a pair of living, breathing toy mascots.

The larger of the two, a small purple unicorn with terrifyingly large eyes, cleared its throat, looked into my eyes, and said "Thee fuck are youuu" in a forced, overly emphasized tone. For whatever reason it felt far more surreal than any of the actually impossible things that had been happening to me up until that point but at least it seemed like it was trying to establish communication. Thinking back to years of science fiction I slowly worked my way into a sitting position and decided to see if we could at least work out some names. First I gestured to myself and said my name, "Johnathan Siegsmith", and then gestured at it to do the same. In response the horse excitedly muttered something to its reptilian companion before gesturing to itself and saying . It wasn't a name I was familiar with but it rolled off the tongue easily enough and, more importantly, it established pointing at random objects as a method of communication. Now I just had to see if I could get some sort of drawing implement and we'd be a solid most of the way to crossing the language barrier.

At first I tried holding my hand out like I was gripping a pen and, while it seemed like it confused the horse more than anything, the lizard's eyes immediately lit up.

The small lizard, beaming with pride, placed its clawlike hands on its hips.

The lizard muttered, visibly deflating. As alien as they were they at least seemed to use the same basic emotional cues so I guess that's score one for panspermia.

As soon as it left the horse turned to me and waved its arm, slowly saying in a voice one might use when speaking to a small child or animal. Sighing as I resigned myself to the tedium of learning a new language, I waved back and said "Hello". This sort of thing continued for several more minutes, with my learning the local words for "me", "table", and even "bed" before the lizard came back and I set to drawing. First up was to see if they at least recognized earth. Given their level of technology, they gave me a feathered quill of all things to write with, my theorizing was shifting away from alien abduction and towards ancient curse. Slowly sketching out a circle with rough approximations of the various continents on it, I then tried my hands at one of those big flat maps they have in school. I know they're not supposed to be very accurate, like at all, but I figured it would be close enough.

Neither of them recognized it. I didn't know what they were saying but the confusion on their faces was obvious. If this wasn't a dream than I wasn't on earth. I wasn't somewhere that knew of earth. I'm not sure why but that was what finally tipped me over the edge. What made me stop seeing this as a problem to solve and start seeing it as the possibility that I might never see my home again. That if I didn't wake up in my bed the same way I woke up here than I might never get home again. I might never see the person I loved again.

They left me alone after that. Well, not immediately, the horse did try and hug me at first, but I wasn't having it and I think I managed to get the message across despite the language barrier. I'm still not sure if that was a mistake, to be honest it felt a bit like shoving away a puppy, but I needed some time to be alone. I needed some time to think. Crying would get me nowhere, at least if the first half hour alone was any indication, and while I couldn't quite reach happy I could still aim for clinical detachment. I just had to analyze my surroundings, figure out a plan of action, and keep all my feelings shoved down deep inside where they couldn't hurt me anymore. I won't say it was a perfect plan but I did only cry three or four more times while exploring the room.

Before I had been focused on the aliens, who wouldn't be, but now I could really take things in. They were more normal than I expected. The ceiling was uncomfortably low and most things seemed smaller than they should have been but it was still a normal bedroom. There was a nice bed with a wooden frame, a nightstand, a dresser, and a window with the curtains drawn over it. Neither the nightstand nor the dresser had anything in them, although both were exceedingly well crafted, so next I started trying all the doors and windows. The one they came through was locked, presumably they didn't want a possible unstable alien wrecking their house, and another door just led to a dresser with some spare sheets in it but the window just had a heavy curtain drawn over it and outside was... mostly branches. It seemed I was in some kind of giant treehouse. Beyond the branches, though, were a town. A town with crowds and information and possibly even a map. Given how long it had been since I woke up there would hopefully also be food. With things awkward between me and the horse and it apparently wanting to keep me contained, however reasonably so, I knew what I had to do. Donning a spare sheet as a cloak, I was an alien after all and I thought it might at least reduce the risk of a panic, I opened the window and set about the arduous task of climbing down the frankly excessively large tree.

2. I Am Awake

You know I normally consider myself an alright tree climber but dear god, what the hell are they fertilizing these things with in horse world? Apparently describing it as a "tree house" last time was a bit more literal than I thought because the whole giant house was hollowed out of an oak tree the size of a redwood. I know I just met a pair of talking purple animals but does everything I see have to be out a goddamn fantasy cartoon? If I sound a bit upset than good job mister observant, that tends to happen when you fall 15 feet through tree branches as thick as your wrist. Fortunately nothing was broken but still. It's a bit of an inconvenience.

Thankfully it seemed like, while there was more of the town farther away, the tree was basically right next to the main part of it. I think they just put the window there for a more scenic view. Having promptly completed my arduous journey to find alien civilization beyond my previous hosts, who I'd already made things awkward enough with, I set about my secondary task of finding some food. Remembering my survival experience from a childhood of camping and scouting I scanned the horizon and managed to spot the giant market like two or three blocks away. It seemed the fates were once again in my favor. With provisions in sight I pulled my sheet cloak tight and set out to see if I could at least get something to eat by pointing.

The first few of the horses I passed, although I think pony would be a more fitting title given their small stature and resemblance to certain 80s toy lines, seemed... weirded out at best. Not terrified thankfully, I guess there were weirder things than me around, but at the very least they'd never seen a human before. As I neared the market, however, they became denser and their stares and reactions became more frequent and fearful. It all eventually came to a head when I reached one of the outlying stalls, a flower shop by the look of it, and the three ponies manning it screamed something and started a small stampede, although it seemed like one of them fainted about 20 feet down the road so maybe anemia causes panic in ponies. I wouldn't be one to know. This too, however, had a silver lining that would fuel my master plan. A lot of the stalls were empty and one of them was selling vegetables. I was about to grab a cucumber the size of the forearm, presumably it uses the same fertilizer as that monster of a tree from earlier, when I was interrupted by a sudden voice.

The source was a small orange horse who spoke with who seemed strangely fearless. They also had, and I cannot stress this enough, cutest little hat I have ever seen. They were dressed like a tiny cowboy. It was incredible. I had sorta lost hope at this point and was mostly doing what I felt like and I still felt like that but cute animals were always my favorite way to escape back home and I was starting to think they'd work just fine here.

"Well that's just fucking adorable"

"Oh yeah, you can't understand a word I'm saying. Sorry about that. What did the purple one say last time? 'Hello'?"

they said, holding up a delicious looking apple. Seriously, it was twice the size of my fist and deep and bright as a ruby. I almost had to stop myself from drooling. I took it in my hand and gave a big nod that I hoped would show how thankful I was. With that I'd solved the problem of food for now and, waving goodbye to the very friendly pony as she waved and called As cute as she was I just didn't feel right staying with these ponies. I excused it as feeling awkward but to be honest with myself something about it felt wrong. Maybe it was something in me but it was too much. I needed some time alone. I joked about it earlier but I do know a little about survival. Enough that I could probably survive on my own if I stole things from towns periodically. I just needed some time to think things through.I just needed some time to be alone.

First thing I set my mind to was the basic survival checklist. I had food, or at least a place that I could beg or steal for it. That left water and shelter. They say you can last three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without air, and three years without...

They say you can last three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Not sure how true it is but water takes priority. The best way I could think of was figuring out where the town got its water which I didn't expect to take too long. Shelter, though, would be difficult. Fortunately, barring an accident or me waking up back home in which case mission accomplished, I had plenty of time.

Author's Note

It turns out this was actually a MLH:TiM story the whole time.

3. I Am Surviving

I've been out here for a solid week now and to be honest it hasn't been without complication. Things haven't been all bad. Water wasn't a problem once I found one of the town wells. I've still got my swiss army knife and lighter and I even managed to make a sheet tent. Unfortunately, though, my relationship with the locals hasn't exactly been the best. I'm pretty sure they think I'm a monster now. I'll admit that we started off on the wrong foot with me getting a bit worked up, escaping containment, causing a stampede, and trying to steal a cucumber and my last few days of hiding in the woods and sneaking around haven't done myself any favors. Last night they even sent a few ponies into the woods with magic flashlights to see where I was hiding so making more campfires will be harder. At first I thought I would need some time alone to think things through and maybe even study the ponies. Now I don't know if I can go back to the town, well, ever. That's why, if all goes well, I'm not going to.

The town is almost all ponies but I know other things exist. There's that lizard from the day before and I think I even saw a minotaur once so if this is anything like most fantasy worlds there's probably a good deal of variation and the place to see the most of that variation is the big city. From the right angle I can see a giant shining city on a mountain so that seems like the best place for me to figure things out and, if I learn the language, maybe even blend in. Unfortunately it's far enough away to be at least a few day's journey. Possibly a lot more with how small some of those buildings look. That means I need to be properly prepared if I want to make it and to get properly prepared I'll need proper tools. That leads us to our first big plan. Operation Hardware Store.

The pony hardware store itself is pretty easy to find. It's not too far from the edge of town and has a large wordless sign that's either meant to look traditional or a sign of illiteracy. The problem is getting in, getting what I need, and getting out without being noticed. If they see their local monster literally breaking into a shop they'll likely want to get rid of me a lot quicker and the stampede on my first day shows a pretty strong herd mentality. I'd be pretty much screwed. So far my best plan is to try and pick the lock then grab anything with a large enough inventory size for them to not notice immediately. For that, though, I need a lockpick and for that I need metal.

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This stage of the process may be more difficult than I thought. You might think it's easy to find a decent pick or at least something to shape into one, especially when you already have a torque wrench in the form of your swiss army knife's screwdriver. This is because you live in a modern human house and can show your face outside. I, however, do not have that luxury. My first thought was a paperclip but when's the last time you saw a paperclip just lying around? For that to be a good option I'd need to find a pony office and I don't want to plan another robbery just to support this one. I'll leave the schemes within schemes for more important things. My next thought was that maybe some kind of hairclip or pin would have a wire I could use but after about two long and painful hours spent watching the ponies walk by from under a bush I started realizing that because they, by their very nature, stick to ponies pretty well I'd have to run up and take one and while I could totally do that it's, again, another spike in infamy I'm not willing to take. While I was watching I also realized a more feasible option and it's not one I'm looking forwards to. In my observations, both this one and over the previous week I kept seeing a bright pink horse who seemed worried about something, always popping up and asking random ponies something like , and she seems to work at a literal gingerbread bakery. A gingerbread bakery run by a family. A family with a baby who's diapers use safety pins and are usually thrown out whole. This isn't going to be fun.

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Alright. I got the safety pin. I... don't want to think about it beyond that. At least there's a river near town to wash my hands off in. You'd think the worst part would be the diaper itself but a bakery on this scale has a decent amount of waste and there were at least a few inches of rotting pastry to dig through before I got to it which is just... ugh. At least the patrol looked for me in the woods instead of in the dumpster behind the bakery itself and it wasn't too hard to bend the tip with my swiss army knife and the rock. From there it was just a matter of opening the lock. It only had four cylinders and had some very low tolerances so the lock wasn't an obstacle, even for someone like me who wasn't much of an experienced picker, so now I've got supplies for my escape and future survival. I couldn't take too much without making much of a racket but I've now got a small hatchet, a hand drill, a bow saw, a hammer, and various fasteners. I don't think they noticed either so worst comes to worst I can always come back and take more. For my escape itself I'd like something to help me carry the tools and supplies. Maybe a backpack or even small sled depending on how hard they look for me. Something to think about going forward.

Author's Note

I gave the protagonist my Swiss Army knife that I actually carry with me which, having written the chapter, I am now realizing is very large. So, just so nobody thinks I'm using it as a magic bag of tricks, it has:
- a knife
- a file/awl thing?
- scissors
- a little saw
- a proper file
- a squiggly metal thing?
- a magnifying glass
- a bottle opener/flathead screwdriver
- a can opener
- a phillips screwdriver
- a toothpick
- tweezers
and that's it.

4. I Am Leaving

Alright, so, it turns out the wagon idea may have been a bit ambitious for my current set of tools and skills. The good news is that my failed wagon can easily become a sled. The bad news is that, thanks to my focus on the project and in an effort to avoid attracting attention, I spent four days chopping wood, nailing rough boards together, and eating nothing but berries and wild garlic mustard. I really need to figure out how to trap some kind of animal. Even just a squirrel trap or something, if not for now than for my trip when I won't even have the option of stealing food. I guess I'll bring some spare wood and hope I can figure it out along the way.

In other news my attempts to lay low have entirely failed. There are now a whopping two patrols at night and everyone just seems a lot more on-edge. I don't know if the hardware store just has good inventory control or they've found something else to blame me for but I don't want to find out. I'm leaving tomorrow. I could set up projects for myself and timelines and things it would be nice to have but then I'd never make it out. I need a hard deadline or I won't end up doing anything productive. I already wasted more time than I had to on a terrible sled. Until then I need something to hold water, especially if it ends up being more than three days to the city.

I've got nothing to skin for a water skin, I don't think there was any leather or plastic in the town, and I don't know how to make a barrel. The way I see it I've only got two good options outside of spending way too long trying to hollow a block of wood out. Either I can steal something like a bucket or I can.... Huh. Normally I'd try and think of a more complicated plan but no. I'm about to go steal some buckets. I can't make something like that in a day. I can't do much in that direction in a week. Lets see how this turns out.

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As I run through the woods, a triumphant but quiet cry of "oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" on my lips, I almost can't help but wonder if this is some sort of punishment. A form of karmic justice for my hubris in attempting a quick and easy solution where I, as an engineer in training, could have used a more complex one. It seems that while my brilliant plan to grab the bucket and run was successful it didn't have nearly enough failsafes and backups to allow me to carry it out without bumping a rake and knocking over everything else in that barn. Nor was it planned well enough to avoid targeting the home of a very angry old pony with what looked like a proper army helmet. I assumed being far from town in the middle of a big orchard would make it less likely to get a big response but shows what I know. Fortunately I think I have the endurance advantage on account of not being a horse so I should be able to lose her eventually. I'll just have to think of all the little scratches the branches are making on my arms and cheeks as souvenirs of my time in this weird little town.

I left the sled packed with my stuff since I was planning on leaving anyway. Lets just hope it stands up to being pulled this fast. Once I'm out of town there's a small river coming out of the haunted forest where I can fill my stomach and bucket for the journey ahead. I know you're not supposed to drink from rivers since you never know what's upstream but it seems clear enough as of the last time I looked.

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Well it turns out the branches were a mistake. Dragging a sled through the woods is difficult. Running through the woods with a sled weighed down with heavy, high-friction branches that get caught on everything is hell. At this point I don't know how long I'll be able to walk tomorrow without my calves trying to rip themselves apart. The river seems fine though. The water was cool, refreshing, and slightly tingly. That last one is maybe a problem but all the common poisonous plants I can think of right now either don't have a taste or have an absolutely horrendous one. At least I've gotten far enough out of town to cut the branches. I must be what, about a mile or two down the road? The city still seems problematically far away but it can't be more than what, about 50 miles? That's doable. I hope.

That just leaves planning what to do along the way. I can't walk 24/7, especially now, I don't have any big projects I'd like to make along the way, and boredom is a fate worse than death. Currently my first priority during my suddenly extensive downtime, beyond just setting up a simple deadfall trap, is getting some way to defend myself. A pocketknife and a hatchet are both fine but their range is abysmal and if I get attacked it could easily be a monster or something with a proper weapon. My plan for the first night is to try and make a spear but that's easy and again, I have a lot of time. That's why my next project is going to be some kind of projectile weapon. Ideally a bow but I'll need to figure out rope making so maybe a spearthrower in the shorter-term? Oh, and some kind of wheel. It's not a huge priority but damn would it be convenient. Pulling this is harder than I thought. I kinda feel bad for those reindeer now. You'd think the rode would make it easier but it turns out that all the leaves are way easier on the wooden rails than the dust and rocks of a proper road surface. I'd switch from the road to the grass next to it if it didn't have so many bumps and ditches. That's convenience, though. Arming myself is survival.

Author's Note

I'm gonna be honest. I don't know how far it is from Ponyville to Canterlot and it changes wildly from episode to episode. In this case it's about 80 miles which he has underestimated. This comes from the fact you can see it from Ponyville but, depending on the shot, not super well. Other depictions put the distance anywhere between 14 miles (a sign in the comics) and 400+ miles (the overnight train ride).

5. I Am Learning.

"Ugh, damnit." I let out another sigh as the knife sinks too deep and my third attempt at a spearthrower loses it's most important part, that being the notch that throws the spear. I was expecting the design and improvement of the spearthrower to be the hardest part, a chance to hone my engineering skills and create a powerful new tool, but it turns out whittling is really hard and my skills have only gotten rustier since doing the Boy Scouts Klondike Derby when I was 12. I think if anything spending the time to make a sled made me worse off. Got me all confident. Any idiot with a bit of camping experience can make some rough boards and nail them together but it seemed like a pretty big deal at the time. Fortunately it looks like it'll still be a day or two before I can walk most of the day without my legs getting too sore so I've got plenty of time to try. I take the time to stretch my arms before grabbing another tree branch from the pile next to me and setting back to work. Looks like it'll be a long afternoon.

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"Okay, testing project cool spearthrower version one in three... two... one... Go!" As the carved wooden rod in my hand swings smoothly forwards, the sharpened stick within it stays almost perfectly horizontal, getting pushed forward by the large notched bump on its outer end. For a fraction of a second it seems perfect but then, as it continues along its path, the angle is off. The notch is too deep. The back of the makeshift spear goes down as the body goes wildly tumbling through the air, landing a significant distance away but in entirely the wrong direction and to little effect, harmlessly bouncing side-on off of a pony... Specifically one standing in the road rubbing its head and glaring confusedly at me. One who most certainly was not there when I started the test. This could be an issue going forwards.

For a second we both just sorta stare at each other, them unsure of what's going on or what I am and I unsure of how they'll react, before I take the initiative and run to grab my sled, still packed in case of emergencies like this one. It's here that I, acting on instinct and emboldened by my bucket crime experience, forgot some important information. Humans may be far better at running long distances continuously than horses and are generally better at dealing with leg injuries, which likely helped me outrun an elderly war veteran pony, but they are far slower than horses under most circumstances. It seemed, as the pony also ran forward with a yell of , that this also applied to small ponies. Okay, so blindly running has failed me for the first time. Lets try social interaction.

Taking a really good look at her, it seemed to be a her as many ponies I saw did, she seemed like she'd been traveling a while. Her messy pastel pink hair looked messier than it was supposed to be and a little greasy while her bright eyes had small bags under them and her denim overalls, because I guess this was one of the only ponies with a sense of modesty, seemed like it had been on for a while. Hopefully she had somewhere to be and didn't want to be in this situation any more than I did. Lets start with what I hope is a pretty normal greeting.

"Still not getting any better at equestrian but I can't blame you for trying."

She then began wildly gesturing to try and get her point across and, while as rude as you'd expect from someone who just got hit in the head after a multi-day road trip, it did kinda work.

She violently shook her head and waved a leg horizontally in front oh her

She mimed a throwing motion over her head

She pointed at the small pile of ~~hastily sharpened sticks~~ spears next to the sled

She swung her hoof out to point along the road, drawing my attention to both it and the large wagon pulled by two other ponies with a spot for a third. Maybe I'm not as observant as I gave myself credit for. I suppose that's what happens when you're really focused on a task but at least I was learning the local language.

The words were hard to miss the meaning of so as long as the grammar was the same I had my first full sentence. Lets see how she responds.

And so, just like that, she joined up with her two companions and they went on their way. A success. Sufficiently spooked I decided that maybe, just maybe, I should be doing this somewhere other than right next to a road. Just as an idea. With a slow, heavy sigh and a stretch of my well-worn calves I tentatively prepared to start and end my days of travel dragging my sled into and out of the woods.

6. I Am Armed.

"Alright, project cool spearthrower version eleven test five in three... two... one... Go!" Sweat dripped from my face as, after an afternoon of failed prototypes and shaky throws, my sore and dirt stained arm arced forward, the spear once again staying horizontal with its tip resting against the bump on the back of my makeshift spearthrower. A few days of frequent practice had let me settle into something more of a form, my arm swinging with my body behind it as the stick in my hand went nearly vertical and the motion became more like pushing than swinging as not to angle the spear.

As the spear left its notch there was no last little twist to send it tumbling. No overconfident swing or error in carving. Instead it flew nearly horizontally through the air, the shaft flexing back and forth but never tilting too far overall until finally its point sunk into the dirt between the roots of a tree. It wasn't the longest ranged weapon but the spear still flew a damn sight farther than I could throw it on my own with weak arms and no training. I had proven myself as competent as neolithic man.

Nearly as competent, as a gurgle in my stomach oh so helpfully reminded my. I still had to check on my other project for the day. I couldn't identify much besides pine trees, garlic mustard, and blackberries so to call my diet unbalanced would be an understatement. It had kept me well alive for a couple days but my stomach already wasn't feeling too great and, while noticeable closer, the city in the distance was still pretty far away. I needed something with fat or protein to keep me going and in my current situation that meant meat. Now, my first plan was to carefully balance a rock so it's leaning on a stick and then put some berries next to the stick. Unfortunately, though, I forgot that unlike my homeland most places don't just have giant rocks lying around everywhere so I had to do some digging but I did manage to find a hunk of what looked like slate the day before and kept it on the sled. I set it up before starting carving for the day and, after a great deal of balancing work, made a deadfall trap. Now I just have to see if I've caught anything.

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It was a rabbit. Well, emphasis on was. I really think I should have anticipated this part but when you're hunting your own dinner you do have to look it in the face. Half of a face in this case. At least once I had it skinned I could just see it as a piece of meat but I hope getting to that point will get better with time. That or that I find some kind of job in the city once I learn a little more of the language and can start buying food.

Moving past that little obstacle I unfortunately had no experience working with rabbit and few other ingredients. What I ended up doing was cutting off strips, putting them on sticks, and holding them over the fire until I was damn sure nothing survived. They were dry, lean, overcooked, useasoned, and all around some of the worst pieces of meat I'd ever had. In that moment though, having had nothing but a handful of raw plants for days, having not even seen a piece of meat in over a week, they felt like the best thing I'd ever tasted.

One time as a kid my family took me hiking up Little Devils Stairs near Luray. It was a long and difficult hike, as the name suggests it was more like climbing stone steps than hiking in places, and as it was the winter and the hike crossed back and forth across a river there was an awful lot of ice. We meant it to be a bit of a challenge but by the time we got back to our car it was dark and I had bent my foot back and hurt my tendon for the next few months. When we got back though, I think the return hike ended up going down some old fire road, and we got to that car I finally had myself my reward for the ordeal. A bottle of ginger ale. My parents had originally gotten a pack for making dark and stormies so it was far more gingery than I would have liked at the time and the cold weather meant it's coldness was both unavoidable and a negative but as soon as that sweetness hit my tongue none of that mattered. It was like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds of the day. Eating that rabbit felt the same way but made only more intense by the days of hunger and constant work. I think I almost cried.

On the subject of hiking the way the city is looking on the horizon it'll only be another couple days but those days are likely going to be hell. It must have been at least a 7 or 8 degree incline. The road, on the other hand, was much shallower, presumably to accommodate carts, but snaked wildly to allow for that shallow an incline, greatly increasing the distance. The way things looked I was in for either a short stretch of hell or another day or two spent out in the woods and, as I remembered how hungry I had been after just a few days of pure survival, I was unfortunately leaning towards the latter.

7. I Am Rising.

"Nobody knows everything, we know this to be true! Everything is ugh difficult, except what's in front of you." Far from the road and no longer focused on concealing my presence, they'd see me when I got to the city entrance either way, I let myself sing to distract myself from the pain of hiking uphill as my calves cried out in pain. Just ten or 15 more miles, I weakly reassured myself. Well, that plus two of elevation and all the added suffering of dragging this fucking sled. I swear to god, by the end of this thing I'll be either dead or the world's best human sled dog. It's a miracle I haven't torn something yet.

I lost track of time for a while, just focusing on the movement and on not collapsing, and before long I reached the main road again, having zigged and zagged across my more direct route another time. I almost followed it this time too but nope. I'd rather two days of hell than another week of hunger. As I was halfway across it, though, I saw a pony pulling a cart. Stopping my hoarse rendition of the insulting relyricization of Mrs. Robinson that made up the song's ending, I gave them a closer look and saw that it was just the one pony, without wings or a horn and with a cart loaded down with large heavy cloth bags. I most associated them with things like grain but with how bumpy some of them were there was a decent chance they were filled with something like potatoes. My hand twitched towards the spearthrower hooked through my beltloop as a thought crossed my mind but I quickly clamped my other hand around it. I wasn't that sort of pony. I wasn't that hungry or tired yet. As they got closer and I saw how large and strong the old looking pony looked, perhaps even befitting of the title of horse, I weakly told myself that my strong moral compass was the only reason I held back and continued off into the forest, giving the old pony a wave.

It wasn't like me. That wasn't a serious thought. It was just a little spur of the moment impulse. Like how when you're sitting at the edge of a cliff you can't help but think of falling or pushing the person next to you. As I walked these thoughts echoed through my mind but they still sat like bile in the back of my throat. They were excuses. The mild justifications of a weak man. If I was going to make it in this world, if I was going to become a part of instead of a horror monster, I would have to do better.

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By the time I was too sore to continue I was pretty clearly within a day's travel of the extremely tall, opulent spire I had been using to keep my bearings. I still set my trap up before turning in for the day but, although my stomach grumbled and my muscles ached, I might at least be able to steal something the next day. I might even be able to sell my clothes and buy some new ones with some left over if the synthetic fibers of my sweatpants, possibly unknown to a world so poorly industrialized, were seen as valuable. Not sure how you'd get them on a pony though. Something to think about.

A more pressing, and related, issue is communication. It had been an obstacle from the start but with plenty of time to think I could really focus on it. So far I knew a handful of nouns, a simple greeting, and how to say "don't". That was an okay basis but I'd need to do better to actually live as part of society so that gave me my first concrete language goals. I made a mental list of phrases to learn as soon as possible, either through observation or, once I get to that point, asking.

"What is that?"

"How much does that cost?"

Numbers

And a half dozen other less important things. If I had these than not only would I be more able to survive, I'd also be able to learn the language a lot faster. Especially with the first one. I also needed to focus on pronunciation since, in a lot of people's minds, that's the difference between a soft-spoken or possibly brain-damaged native speaker and a foreigner. My look would admittedly skew me towards the latter but they've got three kinds of ponies and some gryphons. They've probably got minotaurs or talking apes or something to compare me to. Being seen as, on some level, native or nativized it a bit of a double-edged word though. Yeah you've got a better shot at respect but I'm willing to bet there'll be a lot more assumptions that I know how things work. That seems like it'll be an easier problem to manage though.

That second one brought me to a much more important issue though. I can only sell my clothes once and they might not want them. That means I need some way to make money more consistently. So far I think I have one main advantage over the ponies I can use towards that end. Fingers. I don't know how ponies hold things but they can't fit everywhere, being bigger than my wrists, and they're not especially flexible. That means I need some kind of work that takes full advantage of my dexterity. Some kind of craft would work best as a start. As I looked over at my sled and saw my knife and spearthrower I realized that, thankfully, I already had a craft in mind. I'd gotten pretty good at functional whittling through my earlier project so now I just had to hone my skills in a more decorative direction.

Author's Note

Song is People II: The Reckoning by AJJ.

8. I Am Taken.

When I first got out of the forest and to that gate I almost felt like I was stepping into a dream. After days of struggling in the forest the sight of an overwhelmingly opulent fairy tale castle, and the similarly styled if somewhat more functional gate in front of it, was so unlike anything I'd seen so far. Yeah I'd seen it in the distance or through the trees but the experience is totally different up close. As I would later learn there was a proper city behind it, especially on the other side of the palace, but on this side regulations kept the houses and shops that existed from spoiling the view almost entirely to create that experience. To guarantee an unbelievable first impression. As I walked across the drawbridge and knocked on the gate I felt almost like a character in a book, entering some otherworldly fantastical realm.

This illusion was, however, almost immediately broken as the gate opened slightly and I was greeted with a strong looking unicorn stallion wearing the customer service face. You know the one. The face you make when you're not allowed to look sad or upset but you can't quite bring yourself to smile. Also shining golden roman armor but the face was what struck me first. It was also immediately backed up by his gruff voice.

His voice was stiff and devoid of emotion, the words flowing from his mouth less as a statement and more as a memorized series of sounds.

Letting out a sigh as I realized I would once again be unable to navigate even this presumably routine conversation, I decided to make a strong first impression and responded with "Hey, I'm a weird alien from another dimension. Cool to meet you."

Either he also didn't understand me or this was a routine occurrence. He turned to someone unseen and called out Then, without waiting for a response, he turned and gestured for me to follow him. Noting the sharpness of the spear on his back I grabbed my sled and immediately complied.

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You'd think it's pretty impossible to question someone without knowing their language and, well, you'd be right. To be honest, though, I wish you weren't because then they wouldn't have had to bring out that thing. At first it seemed like they were just bringing me in for some normal questions and needed a translator. Then, as the first few translators failed, the mood started to sour and the ponies they brought in seemed more... academic. They were generally older and the marks on their flanks started to resemble ancient tomes and scrolls or even, in one case, stone carvings. I couldn't understand the questions but as the day wore on they got more intense and seemed less like "can I see your visa?" and more like "where the fuck are you from?"

Then, their reasonable options presumably exhausted and their theories likely drifting towards me being an alien or extradimensional invader, they brought her in. She seemed a relatively young unicorn, her cream colored coat smooth and well-groomed and her pale blue mane was neatly combed and tied back into a ponytail, but her featured were stern and hardened and her eyes seemed far older than her face betrayed. The mark on her flank, which I had come to understand as a sort of job identifier, was a leather-bound book wrapped in chains held with a heart-shaped lock. She pulled in a cart alongside her and, with it's entrance, all but one of the guards in the room muttered an excuse and fled. On the cart was a roughly fist-sized stone sphere, appearing at first unremarkable. As it I looked closer, though, I noted an almost opalescent sheen to the gray surface. The guard acted like it was radioactive and, as the unicorn lifted it into the air with her magic and floated it between us, I quickly learned why. It wasn't painful, exactly, but I could feel it looking into me. Looking into all my thoughts and experiences and biases like it was reading an index. Looking into all the things, I realized, that gave my words meaning.

"I'm sorry that we had to do this but it seems like the university has gotten interested in you and we do need something to put in our records." The guard's voice was low and apologetic but, for the first time in weeks, I could understand him. "Now, could you please tell us what your business in the city is and, uh..." He looked to the unicorn mare who gave him a short nod. "What exactly you are?"

"Uh, hello there. My name is Johnathan. I can get to your questions in a second but what are you... doing to me?" I was more than a little stunned as I struggled to fit words together.

The guard winced and seemed about to explain something before being rather rudely cut off by the mare. "I'm sure you wouldn't understand any of the technical details so I'll make it simple. The ball lets you hear us and us hear you. Now, could you please answer this colt's questions? I was just attending to some very important studies when you got me called in here." I don't know why her accent was translated as Received Pronunciation but I won't say it didn't fit.

"Right, right. Well, uh, my name is Johnathan and I'm looking to move in." I managed to force what I hoped was a normal smile.

"And in regards to the stallion's inquiry as to what you might be?" Her words were fast and precise, and at this point it seemed more like she was conducting the questioning than the guard.

"Oh, right, right. I'm a human. You probably don't have those here but we're normally pretty cool." Not my best introduction to the species but at least the conversation was moving.

At this point the guard, apparently annoyed at his complete loss of control, stepped forwards. "And what about the various spears we found in your sled? Planning to make much use of them in the city?"

"Woods are scary." Nailed it.

"I suppose they are but it's still not something a normal citizen is supposed to be carrying around, especially with those new monster reports that came in from Ponyville a few weeks ago." Okay, maybe not nailed it. I'll have to try a different strategy.

"Well how exactly was I supposed to know that? It's not like I could ask anyone what I was supposed to be carrying."

"Well, that is true, but I'll still need to confiscate them." It's not a win but it's as close as I think I could get. Now I just have to get them to finish this up. Looking over at the unicorn mare she was visibly sweating and somehow seemed pale despite being covered in fur. Whatever magic she needed to do to keep this up was clearly tiring her out.

"If that's everything than I'm sure you both have very important places to be. I'll just take the rest of my stuff and get going."

"Now hold on, I still had a couple more questions to-" Before he could finish the sentence the unicorn mare cut him off.

"Now hold on, there's no need to waste this creature's time any longer. You've got what you need for a routine report, yes?" The words were so palpably venomous that one wonders how much earlier a less strong-willed pony would have simply snapped at the guard to fuck off.

"With all due respect ma'am this isn't exactly a routine situation." He, though, seems to have walked past the warning signs to poke the tiger.

"With all due respect? With all due respect? I'm not sure what they're teaching you in that guard academy but do you really think the respect due to one of my position consists of dragging me away from my work to question some unwashed ape, using me as a magical battery, and forgoing any mention of proper titles or decorum? Does that sound like the respect I am due?" And so the tiger leaps from it's perch in the jungle's branches, revealing it's predatory nature.

"I'm sorry, professor, but I have a very important job to do here so if you'll just allow me to ask it a few more questions" Too late he turns to flee from the beast's den, it's jaws already around his throat.

"Oh, so now you'd like a proper job done, is that it? Tell me, since you seem to have a pretty good grasp on the situation, why filling out the dozenth entry form today is so much more important than revolutionary thaumaturgical research? The crown is almost certainly putting quite a bit more funding towards my work than the dingy little hovel you call a guard house so I suppose you must consider yourself to have some special insight the princesses lack. Until, however, you can convince them of that fact I have things to attend to besides annoying every ape that wanders by the gate." With that she turned with a huff, taking the cart and orb with her. I had gotten used to it being there but with it's piercing gaze present I almost breathed a sigh of relief as the feeling of being exposed dissipated.

The translation magic may have been gone but I didn't think I needed it to understand the look on his face as he stared at the closed door.

He gave an exasperated sigh and turned back to me. He stood up, opened the door, and motioned to follow him with one of his hooves.

We came out a different way than we came but eventually arrived at my sled, minus the spears but thankfully still including the spearthrower I had worked so hard to make, sitting outside what I assumed was the rear exit to the guard building. With my escort walking back into the building I grabbed the sled and began making my way into the city itself.

Author's Note

Hey y'all. Two things to talk about.

First off updates might slow down from here on out, the operative word being might. I'll still write something every day, as I've been doing since the story started, but recently I've been writing less due to external reasons and as dialogue starts happening more chapters will likely get longer as this one has. Fewer words per day and more words per chapter means fewer chapters. I'm not disappearing or anything, just expect more 4-6 day gaps and less 0-2 day gaps.

Second, the translation magic. I really don't like how translation magic is usually handled but I still wanted it to exist so I've chosen to take the show approach to any unreasonably powerful magic and shoved it in a weird and dangerous artifact so I can keep the language barrier. Expect it to keep existing but don't expect to see very much of it.

9. I Am Home.

Every city has a nice side and a less nice side. The ratios might vary, as does the local definition of nice, but it's a pretty natural consequence of how cities tend to work. Never before, however, have I seen a difference so severe. It's not that the less wealthy side of the city was bad in any sense of the word, it was nicer than a lot of New York, but anything looks dark next to the sun.

First, and nearest to the entrance, were the houses and businesses ahead of the castle. Well, house is a strong word. Most looked closer to miniature castles themselves than anything, their shining white stone walls matching those of the palace itself and their entrances and windows adorn with gold and brightly colored silks. The ponies that walked the streets, most of whom were dressed for once and many of which literally walked with their noses in the air, scoffed at my presence but I get the sense it was because of the state of my clothes and hygiene, not my species. It was a place where I imagined only nobles and the wealthiest of businessmen could afford to live and, being the only part visible from outside the city, made my worry that it was more of a palace complex than a proper city.

Next, coming into view as I began to move away from the palace and round the sheer cliff around which the city was built, the buildings remained rather opulent but seemed more functional. Palatial residences gave way to two story buildings, their windows blocked by shutters and their walls a light tan rather than a brilliant white. Many still featured gold in their signs or entrances but it was at most an accent. The ponies also seemed to have returned to being naked, so I guess the city isn't especially more modest than the rest of pony culture. The air also seemed just a bit less unsullied, not bad per say but the various soaps and perfumes which dominated the odor of the richest parts of the city gave way to the smells of ponies and food and the occasional dumpster. The smell of a living city, if a well cared-for one. I'd still rather try my luck in a proper slum, if I could find one, but at least I knew there was a place here for those other than the richest of the rich.

Then, as I neared the back of the city, I got to what I'm calling the dock district. I personally wasn't expecting docks on a mountain but it seems airships did a lot better here than in my world. The area around the docks was again, not bad, but extremely utilitarian by necessity. Nobody wants to pay for all the added costs of keeping places like that sparkling and fancy, especially when the curvature of the cliff means they don't have to look at them, and so the buildings were all either warehouses or built like them, presumably so they only needed the one building plan, made of brick or dark grey local stone. The streets between them, constantly filling and emptying the structures as crates moved from ship to building to city, were filled with the hustle and bustled of ponies loading and unloading crates, presumably to support the opulence of the last two areas I'd seen.

Farther from the edge, where I assumed the dock workers and the ponies who sold them things lived and worked, the warehouses gave way to red brick apartments, many of which had small shops under them. I also saw, for the first time since arriving here, tents on street corners with ponies selling various little trinkets to anyone who passed by. It was somewhere out of place compared to what I'd seen of this world's communities so far but so much more familiar to me. A normal city full of normal working ponies, apart from the docks of course. I'd also seen a handful of griffons working the docks and even a couple stranger creatures amongst the crowds. More than just somewhere familiar, it was somewhere I could stay. Somewhere I could hide, survive, learn, and eventually hopefully prosper.

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Well, prospering is a long ways off but I think I've got surviving down. It didn't take much exploring to find a warehouse that seemed abandoned, although I guess it could have also been for incredibly longterm storage, and the little office in it even had a blanket. It's probably a pretty big necessity sitting in one of these things in the winter. It's not big enough for me to wrap myself up in, being pony-sized, but fully laid out it makes a better mattress than the leaves in the forest did. Add in my old sheet tent, now returned to it's old role as a sheet, and it was downright cozy. Well, cozy by woods standards. Right now that leaves money as my biggest issue.

Spending a day in the city has, at least, taught me a few things about the local currency system. I still don't have a name, I can't quite pick words out of conversation yet and my current method of asking about things (pointing) looks a bit too much like begging when applied to money. I do, however, know that ponies trade with literal gold coins. They're about as wide as a quarter but quite a bit thicker and the while surface is real gold the coin is too light to be solid. I also managed to get my hands on one that got dropped and fell in the gutter so they can't be that valuable. Probably about a dollar or two from how many I saw ponies handing over for some things. I know it's not worth much but holding it in my hand, both as a literal gold coin and my first piece of alien money, felt like a big step forwards. After my experience in the woods I finally had a chance at buying food instead of making it. If I managed to get more I could even get some of my tools and supplies instead of building or making them.

This just leaves my future plans. I don't just need money. I need a way to make it consistently. If I can get my hands on some wood I could probably sell little wooden trinkets on the street, although any I do so will be more out of pity than anything if I don't get better at whittling, so I think that's where I'll start. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find anyone selling wood to hopefully snag a small piece for the coin. A short 2x4 is only what, a couple bucks? If not than worst comes to worst I'll swipe an old crate lid to start and practice with. For now though, while it may not be much, I can enjoy the best bed I've had since coming here.

Author's Note

I usually put on a song when I write so I'm just gonna start posting them. This one's Providence by Poor Man's Poison.

https://youtu.be/n9Z98wrRnmw

10. I Am Working.

No luck on a lumber merchant so far but I've managed to get okay at making little trinkets from crate lids. They don't *look* any good yet but I think I'm making pretty good progress. Currently I'm mostly making little people and, while I think they'll work as good as anything in the short term, getting good at them is key to my mid-term strategy. If rich assholes are the same in this world as in mine, and based on what I've seen they basically are, they'll go absolutely apeshit for charms and other "cultural artifacts" from weird places. A whole different dimension is a pretty weird place. Once I learn a little of the language (although I'll want to keep whatever a human accent is for this part) and make a little money I can make some stupid outfit, carve some people in other weird outfits, and make up a story of their power or importance to sell them for way too much. At this point I'm debating just taking characters from movies and tv shows but I think that might be a bit cruel.

In the meantime I've managed to make a whole three additional coins by selling my current little wooden men. I think all of my customers were pity-based, like a homeless man selling little bracelets instead of begging, but it's better than no customers at all. More importantly I think they're called so as soon as I figure out how to write that I can make a proper price sign. My current one is just a piece of scrap wood with a single coin shape on it and a loose outline of a person. I don't have paint yet but I made the outlines with a lot of little holes thanks to my hammer and a crate nail. I should get paint at some point. I need a lot of things now that I think about it. Running a business is hard, even when that business is you selling bits of wood on a blanket.

At least I managed to get some proper food for once. Some nice carrots from a stall selling little bunches for one coin each and a couple other vegetables. Still no word on where to buy meat though. It might be a bit of a specialty product in a world populated primarily by horses. I'm not desperate enough to go after the rats yet but I have considered it.

Moving forwards something I've been considering is opening some of the crates in the possibly abandoned warehouse I'm staying in. I can't read any of the labels but there are enough cobwebs that I know nobody's checked them in a while and they probably won't be missed. It'll take a while to get them open, most are pretty big and I'd be either hacking them open with my hatchet or pulling nails with my hammer, but there's a decent chance whatever's inside is at least usable for raw materials. If I go ahead with it, though, it'll probably be a much bigger crime than anything I've done so far. Certainly more severe than swiping a couple tools and some food. I'll have to think it over before I go ahead.

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Well, I ended up doing the crime. Not sure if it was worth it though. I spent some time looking around and there's a pretty wide variety of different crates and labels in here. Some look just like the normal shipping crates being moved outside but some are way bigger or smaller and I think I saw at least one or two scripts beyond the normal pony one. I decided to go with one of the more recent looking ones and, after quite a bit of work, found a statue. It's a very nice statue, carved from white marble and depicting what looked like a pony crossed with a bird, but it was just a statue. The body plan was almost identical to the pegasus ponies outside but it was covered in beautifully carved feathers and had claws and a beak, as well as an extremely ornate headdress filled with feathers totally unlike the ones which covered it. Not sure what use I'll have for it though. Maybe the warehouse is some rich pony's secret art collection or something. I'll have to crack another one open later to see. At least it was wrapped in cloth so I've got a whole bunch of white fabric available to use as material.

I'll put opening more of them off until I'm in a slightly better situation, every hour spent hacking open crates is an hour not spent whittling or exploring, so for now that just leaves the problem of supplies. The food situation is workable and most other things I want I would need to buy so I think my next priority is going to be heat. Winter's going to come eventually and, in the shorter term, a lot of the cheapest food sources like grains and potatoes need heat to prepare. Unfortunately my current options regarding where to set a fire up are in the middle of a bunch of dry wooden crates, in a cramped office with no ventilation, or outside where I'll definitely be caught and probably be arrested. Of those the first honestly seems the most promising. I just need to work out some way to contain the fire and keep the smoke from filling up the room. Maybe some kind of primitive oven? It's a simple concept and there are only really two parts I need. A box to keep the fire in while letting me use heat from it and some kind of tubing going outside that the smoke rises towards, known in the industry as a stove and a chimney. The stove is easy enough, I just need a decent quantity of any fireproof material, but finding or making the piping for a chimney is going to be annoying.

Author's Note

Forgot the song but hopefully y'all didn't read the story yet. Here's One Foot On The Gas, One Foot In The Grave by Streetlight Manifesto.

https://youtu.be/NsGaY-Wv5Sc

12. I Am Doing Carpentry.

Public libraries are great. I was pretty used to having all of humanity's collective knowledge at my fingertips 24/7, as I imagine most people are nowadays, but when your phone is a fancy paperweight and the internet won't be invented for a while being able to just go look at books is a godsend. I found a bunch of children's books and one had names for numbers which I knew. From there the writing system was remarkably phonetic and, as I went through the large characters on cardboard pages, I started seeing words I had heard but never managed to place meaning to. I'd say I'm still at or below the level of the average preschooler but it's good progress. I'll try to come by once every couple days until I know how to ask for a library card.

A lot of people did give me strange looks, although it's probably justified considering that I'm a poorly washed hairless ape in the children's section of a local library, but they were surprisingly polite about it. That's something I've been noticing more and more lately. At first a lot of people acted tense or at least weirded out when I walked by but I think word's started getting around. I'm becoming less of a side show and more of a feature of the town. Hopefully I don't graduate to urban legend in the places I rarely stop by. I'd hate to have teenagers start bothering me in the middle of the night.

In terms of my day to day life I think I can start devoting more time to things besides sitting on the street. More people are buying my figures and as I keep improving I can currently manage to work about 8 hours a day and not starve with some left over. I don't have access to much in the way of leisure, although exploring currently fills that particular void, so that gives me more time to work on other projects. The stove project can't progress until I find the right pipe, although my roof hole idea has cut the required length down to about 8 feet or so, so I think I'll turn to expanding my woodworking projects. I've put off making a table and chair before and, based on what my legs are telling me, that's been a pretty big mistake so I'll start there. The chair can even serve double duty by as something to stand on when I cut the hole in the roof. That brings me to the second part of my plan. Breaking open another crate. I've got the time now and I need the wood so lets see what's in another one of these things.

This time I decided to go be wood quality. Most were just the cheap pine planks used for most shipping crates but the boxes in here are nothing if not varied and, after a bit of searching, I managed to find an older crate made of some pretty nice wood. I was no woodworker before I got here so I can't say what type of wood it is but it's smooth and hard and reddish brown, all things to look for in an aesthetically pleasing piece of furniture. God knows why someone would pay to have something shipped in it though. It's like the thing is just asking for someone to steal it. The crate itself is about 2 feet by 3 feet by 5 feet long so I should have a decent amount of material and I'm excited to see what it is.

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Well it looks like I managed to snag another weird one. It's not another statue but it does still lend another bit of evidence to the idea that this is all some rich pony's art collection, being a bunch of old rolled up tapestries. They're all about 5 feet tall and bundled together which explains the dimensions but I didn't play too close attention. They're not any use to me besides as cloth and I'd rather not destroy them for no reason. What's more important is that I managed to pry the nails out without hacking apart the wood. I'd say I've got more than enough for a table and a chair, plus some left over for nicer figures. The inside of the crate does smell a bit odd though. A bit like burnt rubber mixed with something I didn't recognize. Can't say I've smelled many old tapestries though so maybe that's normal.

My next obstacle is designing the things. Ideally I'd want something strong but easily repairable so I think I'll have the tops and frames be separate. The frame usually has a rectangular hole in the top and the top surface needs a pair of support pieces running perpendicular to it's boards and forming their own rectangle. If I have the second rectangle be smaller than the first one than the top should hypothetically just slot right in and out of the bottom. There are downsides to this method, normally those support pieces are an integral part of the frame so doing it my way takes some extra pieces of wood, but I think the simpler frame and ability to repair or replace just half of the piece makes up for it. It also future-proofs it in case I get to the point of needing a metal working surface or somehow manage to make a proper cushion. God, I miss cushioned seating.

I think for the details of the design I'm just gonna keep things as simply as possible. The table and base of the chair will both be 8 straight beams cut to size and nailed together at the joints. The tops will just be two beams with however many it takes stuck on top and the back of the chair, if I have enough wood left, should just be a row of beams stuck on the back. Ergonomically it won't be much better than the floor, although sticking my blanket on top should help, but it'll be better than a concrete sidewalk and it's not like anything can go wrong.

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I think my last comment may have been tempting fate. There are, as it turns out, at least a few things that can go wrong in this sort of table. I've got some fixes in place but the whole thing is becoming a lot more time consuming than I had planned and I might want to wait a bit on the chair.

The first issue I ran into is the damn wood. Not sure if it's magic or just tough but sawing through it is slow and painful business. I'd have to stop every few minutes even if my arm wasn't hurting just from the heat it kicks up. The edge of the wood starts giving off little wisps of smoke full of that same smell from earlier, plus a sharp pain in the nose for the authentic burning rubber experience. I tried using a piece of cloth as a face mask but it didn't really work so I've taken to working near the door with it cracked open. It's not perfect, I'd rather not do this all day, but the breeze keeps the smoke out of my face most of the time and the improved ventilation means nothing built up.

You'd think it'd be fine once I had the pieces cut but then I ran into my second problem. I am not a woodworker and I have, within a margin of error, no measuring tools. This means instead of assembling the table in a reasonable order I need to measure every piece against the pieces I already had cut. The first ones were just guesses. This might not seem like too big an issue, and it wasn't for my (admittedly oddly proportioned) frame besides having it be not quite level, but when it came to the top I needed the edges of the support pieces to sit flush with the edges of the frame and have just the right spacing. Otherwise it either wouldn't work at all or would slide around, making for a pretty poor table. This meant I had to spend god knows how long getting the boards marked and cut just right, taking care not to let the cut curve at all or I'd have to redo it at a shit angle, and nail the first (inconveniently long) top plank in place while holding it and the two support pieces firmly in place. As someone with only two hands this was something of an inconvenience.

I still did it though. It took most of a day, a day I could have spent working in a far more productive way than anything I've accomplished in making this shitty table, but I fucking did it. I met the obstacle that was carpentry head-on and I emerged intact. Well, not counting my arm muscles. Or probably my sinuses. The rest of me seems more or less fine though and now, at long last, I have a table to put things on, I guess. I realize that without a chair this means I'll have to stand all day but I put in the work for this thing and I'll be damned if I'm not going to use it. It even makes me look like a proper market stall so we'll see if that added legitimacy translates to sales.

Author's Note

I remembered the song this time
https://youtu.be/rr1FBtYo6ng

13. I Am Warmed.

Author's Note

Sorry for the longer than average delay. Part of it is just real life getting in the way of things but I also accidentally lost the first version of it about 900 words in.

Song: https://youtu.be/ZaocZdvXQlE

13. I Am Warmed.

It probably helped but not as much as I'd thought. Certainly not enough that I can't chalk it up to random fluctuations and me getting better at whittling. I think I know why though. The way I see it having a proper market stall greatly improves my access to the normal trinket market but it comes at the cost of seeming like an actual business. That may sound like a good thing, and it is in the long-term, but it means ponies will be a lot less likely to see me as a glorified beggar and get one out of pity. With how much kinder ponies seem that likely made up a decent portion of my business which is now gone with the improved normal business just barely picking up the slack. I didn't think this would be too likely since my clothes still look horrible but most ponies don't wear any clothes at all so I'm guessing it's not the first thing they pay attention to. The table is also, despite the hell that was made for it, very nice. I think the change was still a positive one though. I can get a lot more improvement in whittling and painting than I can in begging for change.

On the language front things have been going. I can speak in broken sentences and get food from shops without painting but I can't exactly hold a conversation. Still, a few day's practice at the library and the constant conversation around my table means I'm making good progress. I'm farther ahead with this than any language I had to learn in school. I have been helped along by a few... coincidences, though. The sounds in the language are all easy for me to make but that alone isn't too surprising, English has an almost comically large sound set and I'm pretty good at pronouncing foreign words, but when you get down to the structure of the language it's practically English too. From word order to what verbs are conjugated if someone had made this language and presented it to me I would tell them it was a lazy relex, not a language in it's own right. I know there's all sorts of weird space magic involved but it still seems kinda convenient.

Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth though. I've got plenty to worry about that actually matters. First on the list is my chimney since I've actually started making progress. Finding a pipe of the right length that's light enough to easily carry is a lost cause, such are the tragedies of a world without lightweight corrugated tubing, but that doesn't mean the whole project is scrapped until I find a purpose-built stovepipe. Instead since the main problem is transportation I can just find a lot of small pipes which are meant to be fitted together and today, in my usual time spent exploring, I found some pipes that are about a foot long and about 6 inches across. Taking 9 or 10 of them in 4 or 5 trips should let me do the same job with less effort and I can always fasten them together back at the warehouse. I've still got some time until I need to do that, by my guesstimate it's about mid-september, but it would still be really helpful for cooking. That just leaves getting a hole in the ceiling and I'll have everything in place to start getting the furnace set up.

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I think maybe standing under the thing I'm cutting off may have been a bad idea. I kept my hand up under the patch of ceiling and I wasn't cutting through any of the frame or somewhere with pipes and things, I'm not that stupid, but all the bits falling in my face and eyes are really annoying and I can't look away or I won't know where I'm cutting. You never really appreciate safety goggled until you don't have them when you need them. It's not like it's the worst thing I've had to get through though and I don't think there's any permanent damage. It's just annoying. Got the hole cut though. After that all that was left was the unenviable task of getting all these pipes in place on top of my makeshift cinder block oven and connecting them so they're slightly more secure than just sitting precariously on top of eachother.

The holes on each end aren't threaded so to fasted them properly I'd need a lot of compatible nuts and bolts and I don't currently have any so my current plan is a good bit simpler, if less secure. I've got quite a few large crate nails and a hammer to pry them out and hit them so I can get a connection by putting one through the hole, the head preventing it from slipping through all the way, and then bending the smaller end sideways so it can't slip out. It's tedious as all hell but it's better than nothing. From there it was just a matter of doing it over and over with every pair of holes on every pipe, starting crouched down and ending standing on my table. If I keep doing things like this my arms had better look amazing. Still, it was over faster than the chair.

With the makeshift chimney in place on top of the furnace body, a box made of cinder blocks with a hole in the front and a metal plate for the top, now all that's left is to get a fire started in it and see how it holds up.

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A lighter isn't exactly ideal for this sort of thing, I'd much rather have my pocket torch from back home, but it looks like my camping experience held through. I split some of the boards into kindling and used some scraps of cloth from the sculpture for tinder and it wasn't long before I had a nice little fire going. Ideally I'd want a mesh or grating to cover the front but the air seems to mostly be flowing in the front and through the chimney and the top got, for lack of a more accurate measuring technique, damn hot. I'll need some actual cookware before I can make most things but I think my random piece of sheet metal will work fine for searing. I just have to hope whatever alloy it is isn't toxic.

The real advantage for now, though, is the heat. A thin blanket is fine this early in the year but after a hard day's work there's just nothing quite like sitting in front of a nice wood fire. Even a contained one. The warm orange light sets a night atmosphere while the heat hits my chest and face and the smell of burning pine fills me nose, along with all the memories it carries. For the first time in a long time I can properly relax.

14. I Am Cooking.

I found one. It took a lot of searching and the place isn't all that nice but I finally found a butcher's shop. I thought there would be something like this with how many non-ponies there are in a city this big, even if they're not super common, but to actually see it brings a tear to my eye. I don't know the names of different cuts of meat in this world, I can barely order at most stores even if I know what I'm getting, but I could still read the price tags and managed to buy a piece of some kind of bird meat from the elderly gryphon behind the counter. It cost me 5 bits so I could afford to do this once or twice a week and barely notice the expense. From there all that was left was the preparation.

It's true I still don't have proper cookware but at this point I really don't care. I've got a hot piece of metal and some meat. I don't need anything else. Well, I need a bit of neutral oil and salt, but few things are cheaper or easier to find. Pouring a little bit of oil on the metal plate that formed the top of my stove, I waited until a drop of spit on it immediately and vigorously boiled before preparing. Cutting off thin strips of the meat with my pocket knife, I rubbed a bit of salt into each side and laid it out on the surface, making sure to drop it away from me to avoid burning myself. As soon as the bottom looked done I skewered one end with the knife and flipped it over, letting the same side get just as done. I didn't have anything good to use for a plate besides the wooden table but it barely mattered. To have my first taste of something other than raw vegetables in weeks, to have my first taste of properly seasoned meat since coming to this world, the damn things slid down my throat as soon as I knew they wouldn't burn me.

Like all good things, though, it eventually came to an end. The strips did get progressively more burnt as the uncontrolled fire kept heating the metal, something I noticed but didn't care about enough to stop eating, but in just a few minutes I was scraping the bone. It took me a couple minutes to realize how full I was, I had eaten what felt like at least half a pound of bird meat, but my mind was already turning to what I could do once I had proper cookware. It would probably also be good to figure out what that meat was, it was closest to turkey but with some nutty and oily undertones, but I could worry about that later. Besides, the flavors started giving me some great ideas moving forwards.

In the short term my main needs are seasonings and some kind of basic saucepan or shallow pot. Once I've got those I can make some pretty nice meals with just meat, vegetables, and water. I'd also like some forks and spoons so I can eat things and move food without using my pocket knife. After that comes a deep, heavy-bottomed pot with a lid and a good wooden spoon. In terms of ease-to-deliciousness ratio few things can beat a good stew. Moving beyond that, though, will start requiring multiple pots and utensils and better ingredients and things, which brings me back to making money. You've gotta spend money to make money and I think it's about time I start painting my figures beyond just a couple accents. I think I'll only start doing it with a few of them, I was never too much of a painter, but once I get some practice in I think it'll help me move towards selling faster and to richer ponies.

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Paint is still expensive but at least brushes aren't. Still, spending a decent chunk of what I had saved up on a few bottles of pigment was a pretty big setback. They'll at least last a while if I'm careful though. I did three to start with and the first was real bad. I mean just horrible. Then, remembering the advice of the only person I knew who actually painted miniatures, I tried thinning my paints out. The result was... still really bad. I cannot paint patterns or new details for the life of me with basically no experience. With the third, though, I think I managed to cheat my lack of skill. I've gotten better at whittling and the model itself looked good so I just followed the wooden figure to a t. Colors only changed along creases and lines I had carved. Texture came from spreading a layer of paint and wiping it off the rough wood surface, a trick I had learned from making latex Halloween masks. I didn't try and make a new painting on the figurine. I just focused purely on making what I had made a bit better and it worked.

The one downside to this approach, and the reason I started with something else, is that it'll make doing specific characters a lot harder. I can get a line a lot nicer with a knife, especially since having it pressed in place means I don't need to worry about my hands shaking, but that line carries with it a lot more risk. I can't take a notch out or make a line I can't paint over with a paintbrush. With a generic person this doesn't matter, it can often be worked around or turned into something, but for character-specific details I'll have a lot more to worry about. Still, at least I have a lot of wood to work with. I just might need to up the price a bit on any more detailed characters I do since I'll likely need to either take my time or do more than attempt. Now that I think about it I could probably stand to up my prices in general if I moved to a market in a nicer part of the city. I won't charge a lot but maybe two bits a figure or two for three?

Author's Note

Song https://youtu.be/WWcvxmq7i1g

15. I Am Talking

A new market means worse competition but, with just a mile or so's walk, it also meant more richer people walking by. I'm able to manage only somewhat broken now, as I've learned it to be called, and now that I'm able to actually sell things I think I've managed to seem strange and exotic enough for richer ponies to see that as a selling point while being sorta approachable. I'm not exactly a major attraction yet but as far as the small single tables sitting near the edges of the market go I'm one of the less unpopular. It still wasn't much more interesting than before though, at least until I saw a familiar face coming through the crowd.

If the clear, sweet voice and contrastingly harsh tone weren't enough to peak my ears it wasn't long before I caught a glimpse of her pastel pink mane and darker coat. It was the young mare that I had hit with a spear after arriving. We didn't exactly get off on the right foot but she still gave me my first few words. It almost seemed wrong not to wave hello.

Her companion had a similarly pink color scheme but with much more saturated hair and a pastel, almost off-white coat. On her flank was a harmonica overlaid on a music note which, given what they had said about a show, told me that they were probably traveling musicians.

Alright, never mind. I'd take a totally boring day over one that's interesting if the price is it being this awkward.

Hopefully I was speaking naturally enough to speak the conversation flowing.

Looking where she gestured I noticed that the other mare had, in fact, wandered about 10 feet away and was trying to appear interested in anything else.

She glanced over her shoulder at her increasingly distant friend.

It was the longest conversation I'd had outside of a transaction and I think I saw where my main issues were. Most of what I said was technically right, at least as far as I'd remembered, but it was too accurate. Like using textbook perfect English grammar. It probably came across as overly stiff and didn't leave enough room to keep things moving. Memorizing alternative words and slang for everything would be annoying and it probably wouldn't come across any more naturally so I'd just have to pick things up over time. Hopefully I'd have more non-retail conversations since in this world, as in my old one, it's impossible to actually remember all but the most interesting people while selling things from behind a counter.

I turned with a start as another customer came up to my table. I'd have plenty of time to plan things out in a few hours. For now I had a business to run.

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I smiled as I walked back to my makeshift home, brand new stewpot in hand. At first business had been relatively slow but it seemed that once word got around that I wasn't a scammer and my statues were decent I had accidentally undercut the rest of the local tchotchke salesmen in that area. Tourists were not only far more likely to walk through the nicer parts of the city, they were a lot more likely to buy the two bit statue than the five bit paperweight for whoever they had waiting back home. Near the end of the day I even had a nice young mare come by and buy the last six. Apparently her friends had been worried about finding some monster or another and she thought it would cheer them up. All that meant I would be making a nice soup, and a lot sooner than expected.

I wasn't comfortable eating the bone of the mystery bird since it had already been more than a day of it sitting at room temperature so I decided to use a mushroom stock. Mushrooms were pretty cheap so I simmered a bunch of them, sliced as thinly as I could quickly manage, in about 2 or 3 cups of water until it reached what felt like a nice color and then started adding the various seasonings and other ingredients. Getting a couple heads of garlic and some dried spices had cut into my savings a bit but they'd all last long enough that I wasn't worried.

There weren't too many other ingredients, I was honestly a bit sick of vegetables and mostly just wanted to eat something hot, but it's amazing how comforting even a less than ideal soup can be. Maybe it's a cultural thing, most people get brought up knowing a soup as a nice winter meal had inside with their family, or maybe it's just the comfort of a hot drink amplified by being so much more filling, but even with just a few ingredients, even drinking it from a ladle for lack of a bowl, it still tasted as good as the meat had, although in a different way. It still tasted like things were going to be okay. It's a feeling I hadn't had a lot lately, distracting myself with the tension of constantly building and working towards things, with the energy of constant business and planning, but I realized that today was the first real conversation I'd had since coming here. Part of me wondered how things would have been if I hadn't panicked. If I had stuck around that first day instead of escaping. Maybe they would have been nicer. No point in worrying about that now though. I still had more figures to make for tomorrow.

Author's Note

Hey so my life was kinda on fire for a bit. I had to take a break for a couple days because I was too stressed out about other things. Things are better now but there's still a lot going on that I have to deal with outside of writing. Hopefully the semester finishing will leave me with enough free time to cancel it out but the increase in productivity I mentioned last time might not happen and I think the delay for this chapter was even longer.

16. I Am Unknowingly Pursued.

The first few days after the move have gone surprisingly smoothly. Obviously I'm not running the nicest place in the world but the stuff I sell is cheap and the nicer side of the city is absolutely full of tourists. They also seem to be gearing up for a small festival of some kind, although I couldn't say which one. My home town used to have a few every summer as a way to draw in extra tourists and with how well they work it's not hard to imagine the city doing the same, although I couldn't say what it was for. Still, if it means more people in the city buying little tchotchkes and souvenirs than it's a good thing in my book. I'm still selling the figures almost as fast as I can make them, even with the increased price, and for once I'm actually able to eat a proper meal every night instead of as a special occasion. Most of my favorite recipes are a bit much for my current situation but one that's surprisingly workable at the moment is teriyaki chicken. Well, honey-soy mystery bird but it's the spirit that counts.

There are a lot of ways to go about something like this but my favorite, and one of the easiest, started out with cutting the birdmeats into more or less thumb-sized pieces. Then I made a batter by mixing some starch into some eggs with a fork and seasoning it with salt and pepper. I then mixed the cut up birdmeat into it and moved on to the sauce, the heart of any such dish. In this case it only had four ingredients, soy sauce, honey, vinegar, and a bit more starch, but you don't really need more than that. That's part of why it's so great for a situation like this where you don't have a properly stocked pantry yet. With them all mixed together it came to the main part of the preparation. Actually cooking it.

Normally cooking a dish like this would be extremely simple but not having good heat control complicates things and I didn't think re-inventing the gas stove would be a feasible short-term project. I'd made the fire smaller than normal but my main form of temperature control would still be taking the heavy-bottomed pan, the most expensive part of this endeavor, on and off the heat. The first part, though, was easier to handle. I let the pan heat up until a drop of water immediately sizzled and poured the birdmeat-batter mixture in so the batter formed a coating. Once every few minutes I broke it up and mixed it a bit until most pieces had formed a coating on most sides. For this sort of thing it didn't really matter if it was complete.

Once I felt it was ready I added the sauce and covered the top of the pan with a piece of sheet metal. That's when the real heat management fun began. I needed to keep it at a simmer long enough that all the pieces were completely cooked through but my makeshift stove didn't have a simmer setting so instead I had to pay close attention as I left it on the heat until I heard it begin to bubble, take it off the heat, and then wait long enough to let it cool a few degrees below boiling but not enough to actually cool. Realistically it was a couple minutes. From my very hungry perspective it felt like forever. Finally, though, my meal was done.

I've never been big on nostalgia but I'm honestly not sure how else to describe the flavor. It was a standard meal in my arsenal for a while, alongside various other asian forms of meat in sauce, and even with some holes in the ingredients it still hit all the major notes. Soup may be a more common comfort food but this was always my go-too, after mac and cheese of course, so having it, along with the knowledge that before long I'd be able to eat like this all the time, made it feel like everything would be okay.

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Twilight's eye twitched as she looked at the small wooden statue floating in front of her. It was a nice little statue, somewhat rough but well-made and carved from good pine with small amounts of paint used as accents. It would make a fine addition to any cluttered desk. It was, however, decidedly not a pony. It wasn't even from Equestria, the bipedal figure's thin limbs and elongated feet resembling a monkey more than any known sapient species. The only thing she had seen that looked the same as it, though, was the monster she had been pulling her hair out over for the last several weeks.

"Lyra... Where exactly did you get this?" Her voice was calm, measured, and far more unsettling than when she allowed herself to be audibly worried. A tone perfectly matched by her strained smile.

"Oh, it was just some little stand in the Canterlot markets. I could mark it on a map if you want." Lyra's tone, in contrast, was one of helpful confusion, unsure at what exactly she had done wrong but eager to solve this new problem.

"And the one that ran this little stand in the Canterlot markets. Did they, perhaps, happen to look something like this?"
A scroll levitated next to the figure, surrounded by the same diffuse purple glow. On it was a different figure of the same species, although much more proportionate thanks to measurements she had taken before her guest had woken up.

"More or less. I think they had a beard though." She slowly backed away as her less than stable friend drew closer. "Oh, the clothes were the same! I remember because what sort of pony wears clothes in the summer? Especially since they were pretty torn up. Like, yeah, I'd get it if it were a fashion thing but they looked like they had been wearing them for weeks and I was getting hot just looking at them. Of course, I couldn't say it to their face since it might be something important but- Oh. Sorry. I was rambling again, wasn't I."

Twilight let out a slow sigh, her focus on the problem at hand momentarily broken. "That's alright Lyra. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a trip to plan."

Author's Note

Hey y'all. Holidays and finals are both a bitch. That way of making chicken is good though. Go try it out.

17. I Am Confronted By My Pursuer [Incomplete, read editor's note]

Author's Note

The following note has been archived here to explain the situation until this chapter is finished. The second option has been chosen and writing has resumed.

Hello everyone. It probably seems like I either died or abandoned this and, while I do have less than ideal news, it's thankfully not that bad. I do have future writing plans that involve this story. There are, however, major problems that prevent me from continuing this story as it was originally written:

1) Lack of planning - I was essentially writing this story by the seat of my pants. I had a beginning, a rough idea of where it would end, and nothing else. This meant that while I could keep pumping out chapters at first I could only work on the current chapter in progress. This wouldn't be too big an issue as long as I kept momentum up and could write from where the story was but that brings us to the next couple problems.

2) Emotional/Mental State - I am currently in a better, or at least not worse, position than when I started this story and that's sort of the problem. I started writing this story while in a very specific mental and emotional place and the fact I am, in many ways, a different person than when I started means I cannot get into the headspace where writing this story, as I originally wrote it, comes quickly and naturally. This was a problem before the last update before this one but what eventually put the nail in the coffin was...

3) Lack of Free Time - I went from a college student with a ton of free time to someone with constant crisis, of various forms, and a full time job that, while I enjoyed it, left me completely exhausted. I have since returned to being a college student with a ton of free time but my momentum was broken and I was unable to get back into it. I tried and failed many times but all that amounted to was the draft below.

That leaves us with one major question, namely what will happen to the story going forward. I currently have a planned, written, diagrammed story that I should be able to stick to through a lot more happening. I've also kept writing for various other projects and will hopefully be able to do a bit better job. It is, however, very different from this story in tone, scope, and subject matter and I have 3 options for fitting them together. A task I would like your feedback on.

The first option is what I like to call reconstructive surgery. I keep writing this story, albeit with an abrupt transition, and will slowly work on rewriting and readjusting what I've already written to hopefully have a smooth continuous story at some point down the line.

The second is to put this story on the backburner and get straight into the bulk of what I've been planning. It would get extended but much more care would be taken to maintain something approaching the original style and you'd get to see a lot more of what I have planned at the cost of this specific story updating much slower.

The third, and most extreme, is declaring this story an unfinished draft and placing it on longterm hiatus while I focus fulltime on other stories.

On Monday night, by which there will hopefully be at least a few new comments, I'll make my decision and edit this note to say what I've chosen. Thank you for understanding, regardless of what I end up choosing.

17. I Am Confronted By My Pursuer [Incomplete, read editor's note]

Twilight frowned at the map hovering in front of her. She was used to working with relatively incomplete information, not everyone could be as attentive to minor details, but Lyra had practically circled the entire lower markets.That alone would be annoying enough but with the crowds for the upcoming equinox cutting visibility it had made for a long and tiring day. She was just about to call the on-hoof search off for the day and try a more statistical method, it was always comforting to get back to basics anyway, when she noticed a head poking out of a nearby pony’s bag. A suspiciously alien head.

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“I can’t believe he called me creepy. Me! Creepy! I mean sure I might have been a little forceful with my questions... And I haven’t really taken care of my mane lately... But it’s not like I’m creepy. Not properly creepy anyway.” She muttered to herself as she walked down the street. “You don’t think I’m creepy, do you?” She asked the pony next to her who had been slowly moving away but he tried to appear as if he hadn’t noticed before slipping into the crowd.

Letting out a tired sigh, the mare turned back to her task. Apparently the alien had been hanging around the markets for a few months by that point but always ran off towards the lower city in the afternoon. It made enough sense, she supposed. Even that thing needed a place to sleep, not to mention a base of operations for whatever schemes it had been getting up to since committing a robbery and fleeing into the woods.

11. I Am Doing Business.

Well, it took a lot of work but I'm officially up to 10 , even after the couple I spent on food. It's not a lot of money but I think I've improved over the last few days of work to the point where at least one of those sales was to someone who liked the little figure. They're still not good, mind you, but I could see someone putting one on their desk. I'm also getting a handle on numbers by pointing at things so the shopkeeper tells me the price and then reading the sign and watching how much people pay for them. I still don't know where to buy most things but there's a reason I always set aside a couple hours for exploration.

On the subject of exploration I've managed to find some more old, abandoned buildings. They're all a decent ways from my current base of operations and most are pretty out of the way but it looks like, at some point in the relatively recent past, the city started making less and importing more. Makes sense considering how all the really big businesses I've seen looked like either offices or real high end places. It's just not profitable to make things like building materials here anymore. A side effect of this, however, is an abundance of old industrial equipment and material. Nearly all of it isn't actually in working order anymore and I'd likely kill myself if it was but I found an old brick company with quite a few old bricks still in storage. More than enough for, say, a small oven. The hard part is going to be moving them all back to my warehouse. My knees still aren't in the best shape and I can't say I've been eating all that well so I'll leave that for fall when I start needing the heat.

There hasn't been much progress on the chimney, even if I found the right size and shape of piping there'd be no way to drag it across the city, but I have been putting some thought into it and I think I can cut down on the length requirement by a lot without too much work. It seems like a lot of these buildings, presumably those meant to have people in them in the winter, have a small chimney sticking out of the back corner. The roof slopes at an angle and if I poked a hole in it near the edge, then piped the smoke up through that, it would be in about the same position. It wouldn't look good, exactly, but I think it'd be okay from the ground.

On the less long term front I think a good step up would be to get some paint. I'm no artist so I'll leave painting the figures themselves for now but I think I can get some cheap paint for a couple bits. With that and a rag I'll be able to make a marginally more proper looking sign. I'd also like to make a table at some point, I have all the necessary woodworking tools, but I'd also need to build a sufficiently sturdy chair since there's no way I'm spending the whole day on my feet. A blanket and a sign is fine for now.

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Why is paint this expensive? I can't say I've ever bought it before but it took nearly half my bits just for a little tin of black that fits in my pocket. It was more than enough for a proper sign though. If I'm not mistaken it should say "1 bit" in the local language and the lines aren't great but it seems decent. Not sure what it'll do for sales but at least the price will be obvious. It'll take me a pretty long while to make it back though so I should probably find something to do with the rest of the paint, just so my efforts aren't entirely wasted.

I may not have any proper brushes or all that much painting talent but thinking about it I could probably still use the paint and one of the thinner nails for shading and accents. Point-on for pupils and side-on to add things like creases or fill in little gaps or shadows. Actually bring some added value to go along with the sign. I'll try it on a few of the ones I haven't sold yet and see if they sell any better.

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Well hot damn, it turns out people are way more into buying things when they look decent and they know how much they cost. I'm still not doing amazing but at this pace I could probably manage as many as ten bits per day on a good day. We'll see if it keeps up. I decided to treat myself a little and get a donut for a few bits, and can I say it was the best damn donut I've ever had, but I'd like to save the rest. I don't think it'll keep up once the weather gets colder and there are fewer people on the streets. Hopefully I'll be selling to rich ponies by that point but it's best not to get my hopes up.

Towards that end I haven't looked around the wealthier areas too much but I have picked up a bit of the language. I can't hold a conversation yet but total immersion works surprisingly quickly, even for someone like me who only interacts with ponies for a few hours a day. My short list of things to get started with is done and I've got a decent number of nouns down outside that, to the point where I can almost get that slow basic language that condescending people use when they don't think you speak their language. That, plus the few basic sentence structures I have down, means I can probably communicate with a pony if I have to, albeit slowly and basically.

One possible path to learning more moving forwards is the local university, that unicorn mare from my interrogation was a professor so it's likely they have one, since if they've got something like an anthropology department it'd likely be pretty interested in something like me. I'm just a bit worried some of them might be inclined to view me as a test subject, especially if it comes out that I'm an alien. On the one hand I'd like to at least wait until I know the language a bit more and I've got a proper business going so I seem more like a citizen and less like an outsider. On the other hand it's probably my best bet at learning the language as quickly as possible. If anything they're at least liable to have experts and books on the subject, although they might skew a little advanced for...

I just remembered libraries existed. God knows how I've managed to survive this long with a memory like that. Any city as large and wealthy as the middle district is likely to have a library of some kind and any library is likely to have kids books just for learning the language. It might be a bit more expensive here but at my local library a membership only cost what, like $20 per year? I could make that in a few days if it's not too far off and that was only for checking books out. Reading them was normally free. I have got to figure out where the library is because once I do I'll have the whole kindergarten-level literacy thing in the bag.