And Makes A Giant Kerfuffle Of It
Kerfuffle awoke to a mire of regrets and exhaustion, and it was all downhill from there. There was a ringing in her skull like a thimble was rattling around in there, and her instinctual response when her eyes opened was to mash them shut again, because sunlight hacked at them like an axe. She squirmed atop the bed she lay upon, the sheets all tangled and askew and not covering her quite the right way.
Her squirming made her rather acutely aware of a problem. Which was also a frustration, because while she hadn’t a clue what proper time it was, she had a pretty damn keen sense that it was a good hour or two before problems were supposed to be a thing she thought about. As it was, she could barely think at all and already at least two were coming to mind.
Firstly: the fabric of the sheets draped haphazardly over her was, quite frankly, utterly ghastly. It had this heavy, scratchy sort of feel to it, like somepony had thought to themselves “Goodness, yes, what pony doesn’t love the feeling of sandpaper on their fur?” Horrid, simply wretched, even as far as cheap polyester blends went.
Secondly—or sort of first-and-a-half-ly: something had gone very wrong the night before to get her into such a dire predicament.
Secondly: her leg was missing.
In hindsight, it was a bit strange she hadn’t noticed that earlier. But her squirming revealed it plain as day; she felt not the familiar scrape of wood catching on fabric every two inches, but the smooth rubbing of a hoofless stump.
That, she decided a few moments later, was probably a bad thing.
Specifically the flavor of bad thing that meant she really ought to get up and do something about it. Less like, say, a sudden rainstorm outside and more like her leg was on fire. Which it might have been, for all she knew. Information was a rare resource in her haven of blankets and halfway-softness.
Another few moments later, just after she’d gotten nice and cozy and squashed her face into a pillow—which wasn’t much better than the sheets, and she’d have kicked herself for getting her hopes up if she wasn’t down her good kicky bit—she bumped that “probably” up to a “definitely.”
And so with a grumble and a mumble and a rumble, capturing grim determination as eloquently as could be done with a mouth that tasted strongly of slightly-damp carpet, she lifted her head, peeled her eyelids open and resolutely insisted they remain that way.
She was in a room. A hotel room, by the look of things—as in she had never seen it before in her life. Probably. There was a window with a blindingly bright view of… oh, right, Ponyville, that explained a few things. The snow outside was so white it was bright as a sea of little lights.
She’d come there for Hearth’s Warming, she recalled… She must have tried to decompress from a long train ride and… well, she could put the rest of those puzzle pieces together when she was awake instead of just mobile.
Maybe the snoring, sweater-clad mare slumped over a desk in the corner could help shed some light on that. Kerfuffle pulled herself up, yawned, and started to head over. Oh, but would it be rude to wake her up? Probably a bit, but hmm, maybe if she was nice and gentle about it, it wouldn’t be so—
While she was finishing that thought, her hind leg got caught in the sheets, she flailed and yelped and plummeted to the floor, and then she heard a rackety crash and then the other mare was screaming and oh goodness she was so horribly sorry she couldn’t even begin to think how to—
“Oh no, are you—” As the other mare spoke, Kerfuffle felt her barrel being gripped gently by magic, carefully pulling her to her hooves “—alright?”
“Oh, yes, of course, don’tchu worry about—” Kerfuffle almost toppled over when she tried to plant her hoofless leg down a bit too hard, but she flared her wings out for balance and slapped on her well-practiced “I’ve totally got this under control” smile.
Which must have suffered a bit from the clatter, because the sweater-clad mare looked as far from convinced as a needle from… something very unneedle-like. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I just, I closed my eyes for a second, and then next thing I know I’m falling and—” She shook her head, then jerked it to the side and blinked owlishly at the window. “It’s morning,” she said flatly, moments before holding her face in her hooves. “Of course it’s morning.”
“Just a little bit,” Kerfuffle said. She pulled her wings in and found a shaky balance. “So, um… would it be rude to ask where I am? Because I sorta don’t know where I am and it’s maybe freaking me out a little.”
“Oh, right. It’s, er—” The sweater-mare—
Now, just as an aside, it really could not be understated how deprived of fashion that mare’s look was. Her mane, while a lovely two-tone stripe pattern, looked like a squiggle of nettles perched atop her head, the big square glasses she wore looked even more taped-together than they actually were, and her sweater looked rather like a sack with holes cut in it for her legs.
“—How much do you…” The sweater-mare blinked. “Would it be obnoxiously rude for me to ask how much of last night you remember?”
Kerfuffle frowned. “Oooh, um. That. That is a good question. I… do not know.”
“Oh, good, that’s a relief.” The sweater-mare cleared her throat. “How much do you remember of last night?”
“Okay, now you actually say it, I’m maaaybe a little bit offended.” Kerfuffle blinked. “That’s not helping, is it?”
The sweater-mare lifted her hoof in what looked like a forehead-bound direction, but set it back down with a sigh. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just, it looked like you had… quite a lot of cider last night, so I wasn’t sure if you… you know.”
Kerfuffle did not, in fact, know, but the cider bit rang true to her, now that she thought about it. “Oooh, right. That. Right.” She took a moment to wonder whether she should be horribly embarrassed or not—she didn’t feel that way, but it was the sort of thing where the default answer was probably a blunt “yes.”
“Well, in that case… don’t ‘spose you happen to see where my leg went? Not asking because I don’t remember what happened to it. That’d be a real dumb thing to lose track of, y’know?”
“Ah. Yes, your leg.” The sweater-clad mare fidgeted where she stood, her eyes flitting about nervously, like a fly about to be swatted. “Let’s maybe start at the beginning? My name’s Moondancer. I live in Canterlot, but I’d come to visit Ponyville for Hearth’s Warming. I have a friend who lives here. But she’s really busy, so I’ve ended up just doing some sightseeing, and then I was getting thirsty and somepony pointed me to this bar and that’s where I met you…”
Kerfuffle nodded along dimly. Memories crawled from the burrows in her foggy head, ever-so-slightly stablizing.
“Hi!” a strange pony with distinctly hideodious attire said as she came up to Kerfuffle’s table. “Would it be unreasonably rude to make a comment about your leg?”
That was about all Kerfuffle could remember, except from a sensation of dizziness, falling forwards, a taste of sweet cider in her throat, and a stinging ouch as her forehead smacked against the table.
In the present day, Moondancer was still talking.
“… and by that point you were looking pretty out of it and couldn’t say where you were staying, so I thought I’d take you back to where I was staying, but then you—er, a candle was knocked over, and it almost set the bed on fire but didn’t and I was casting a little spell I learned the other day to put it out but then I stumbled a bit and my aim must have been off and also apparently casting spells while tipsy isn’t such a great idea and this is all to say that your leg miiight have gotten just a tiny bit singed.” Moondancer’s face had gone slightly pale by then, her smile stretched tightly across her face.
Kerfuffle cocked her head, then let out a chuckle. “Oh, is that all? Why didn’t you say so? Not like it’s the first time anything like that’s happened. How bad is it?”
“Well, um.” Moondancer looked at the table. Upon said table, there was a withered, blackened hunk of wood. It looked like a foal’s first attempt at a sculpture, only it’d been struck by lightning, thrown into a fireplace for a few hours, and then whacked repeatedly against the wall, so that it was falling apart and on fire.
“… Oh.”
“I think you can still recognize it as a leg.”
“Of course, of course. Just need to… squint a little, that’s all.”
“And extrapolate a bit.”
“I don’t know what that means, but that. A whole lotta that.”
“Lots of that.”
Kerfuffle nodded quietly, slowly hobbling over to the table and peering at the ruined leg. “Wow. You’re pretty strong, though, if you did this kinda thing by accident. While trying for something completely different, even!”
“Oh, well, um… see, actually, it wasn’t that bad at first, I might’ve… maybe burned it again, a bit.”
Kerfuffle blinked. “You—beg your pardon?”
“Well, at first it wasn’t so bad, so I thought I’d fix it myself while you were sleeping—I’d actually read this really fascinating book on limb replacements a few days ago, written by… you don’t care about any of that, do you?”
Quite politely, Kerfuffle lied through her teeth. “Oh, no, no, it’s fascinating. But maybe you could get to the bit where you…?”
“Right. So I was trying to fix it—most limbs like that that I’d read about have a little magical treatment to, you know, keep them shiny, protect them from minor scratches, that sort of thing. So I thought that yours must’ve had that taken off, or maybe it’d been worn down or something, or—”
“Well there’s your problem,” Kerfuffle said with a giggle. “I made that thing myself. It’s not got a bit of magic in it anywhere.”
“Really?” Moondancer cocked her head, glancing again at the mass of black wood. “That’s interesting; every other design I’d read about had that, so I guess I just…” She cut herself off, and there was that owlish blink again. “... I should definitely have inspected it more carefully before trying anything with it. Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Kerfuffle said with a laugh she desperately hoped didn’t sound forced. She limped over to the table to look her leg over. “You were just trying to help, right? I’ll whip up a new one, it’ll be fine.”
Moondancer let out a relieved sigh. “Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help? I have a few books I could recommend?” She scrunched up her muzzle. “Not that I’m saying you need them. That one you had was pretty good, so obviously you don’t—let me know if you want me to stop talking.”
“Oh, you can keep going on,” Kerfuffle said, waving her hoof. Then she peeked out the window. “Actually, you know what? I’m probably gonna be hungry soon. You wanna go get a bite to eat? I’d love to hear what your deal is.”
Moondancer tilted her head. “What my… ‘deal’... is? Sure, I guess we could...” She looked to the table, lifting a hoof hesitantly. “But your…”
Kerfuffle shook her head, loping to the door and giving her wings a flutter. “I can get around, don’t worry about it.”
A little while later, Kerfuffle was sinking her teeth into a delicious daffodil sandwich, while across from her, Moondancer nibbled on a hay fry.
“So,” Moondancer said, “what was that about ‘my deal’?” Her voice took on a slightly stilted tone.
Kerfuffle felt her cheeks warming. “Was that a bad word? It might’ve been a bad word.” Another bite; she paused to chew and swallow, which meant the next time she opened her mouth she talked instead of babbled. “What I meant is that you know an awful lot about this kind of stuff, and for the life of me I can’t think of why.”
Moondancer’s face remained impassive. “I don’t follow.”
“Oh, well.” Kerfuffle made a gesture in the vague direction of Moondancer’s haunches. “You’ve got all your bits. I’d sorta guess you haven’t met anypony who doesn’t. So… why read so much about that sorta thing?”
“Because there’s no reason not to? I just—I like learning new things.”
“Huh. What do you do with the things you learn, though?”
“... Use them as a foundation so that I can learn more things?” Moondancer shrugged her shoulders. “I can think of several topics off the top of my head that’re so cumulative it’ll take me years to get a deep understanding of them. Gotta start somewhere.”
“Oh, okay. That makes sense.” Kerfuffle took another bite, again using chewing time for thinking time. “It actually doesn’t, but I thought it’d be polite if I—never mind. You ever think about, I dunno… writing a book or anything?”
“I guess that’s… something I could do. Maybe.”
“Up to you. I guess I just… well, I make things, you know? Clothes, mostly, but some other things here and there, so… I guess that’s the point of learning stuff, for me. To make something you can share with someone else.”
“Hmm.” Moondancer lifted a few more fries towards her mouth, staring idly into the distance. “I could see myself doing something like that. I’d have to develop a few new things of my own first—although there probably would be some value in a sort of aggregated encyclopedia, especially if it was aimed at low-expertise readers.” She made a thoughtful quirk of her lips. “Thanks for the idea. I’ll… I’ll think about that.”
Kerfuffle beamed. “And just think,” she added, “ten years from now, you’ll be able to say your whole life changed because you set somepony’s leg on fire.”
That got a little chuckle out of Moondancer. “Maybe,” she said. “But that’s a long ways off.” She looked away. “My friend said I should take a break from studying while I’m here, but she didn’t say anything about writing…”
“Ooo, clever!” Kerfuffle stuffed the last of her sandwich into her mouth. “But,” she said when she’d gobbled it all down, “there’s a lot of Ponyville I’ve not seen yet, and I bet most of the sights are better with company.”
Moondancer remained silent briefly, as if lost in thought, but then nodded, smiling. “I’d like that.”
