Stage #1: Fresh Off the Train
You and your parents were the first kirin to move to Ponyville.
You were still a child when your family moved out of the kirin lands. Your parents had found a job in Ponyville, as researchers in Doctor Hooves’ laboratory. They took you along with them, registering you at the School of Friendship in Ponyville.
You were one of those kirin who didn’t talk for weeks after the vow of silence ended. You were an only child—this was common among kirin families. Before you went to the School of Friendship, your best friends were your books, your bamboo recorder, and the shadow on the ceiling of your bedroom: Mr. Shady.
You played the traditional bamboo recorder—it was the only musical instrument the kirin were allowed to have during the vow of silence.
The bamboo recorder held a special role in kirin culture. You could recite the legend off the top of your head: many millennia ago, birds used to sing horribly. Music had not been created yet, and so the birds made horrible screeching noises that terrorized the kirin and prevented them from working in the fields.
Then, a few clever kirin created the bamboo recorder that played a pure, chirping noise to drown out the cacophony. And thus “music” was born. Soon, the birds, finally having realized what beautiful sound is, copied the sound of the bamboo recorder. And that is why birds sing beautifully today.
You remember entering the Ponyville School of Friendship for student registration and orientation. You stood obediently in the long queue for one hour, waiting to receive your textbooks and registration booklet. You did not understand why everycreature else in the queue moved about so much. They were stepping out of the line to wave at each other, talking at a high volume, and just generally being rowdy.
Such disobedience was not tolerated back home in the kirin land. Disobedience led to rebellion. And rebellion led to fire. And destruction.
Finally, it was your turn. A yellow pony with wings and a pink mane greeted you. “Welcome to the School of Friendship! We’re so excited to have you! I’m Fluttershy, one of the teachers here. May I have your name?”
“Nice to meet you, Teacher Fluttershy. My name is Rose Lizhi.”
“It's lovely to meet you, Rose. And you don’t have to call me ‘Teacher.’” Teacher Fluttershy giggled. “Just ‘Fluttershy’ will do.”
She looked for your name in her list. “Rose…Rose…ah, here. How you do pronounce your last name again?” she asked, reading the name off the paper.
“Lizhi. It’s a fruit that we grow back home in the kirin lands, Teacher.”
“Lee…zzzih?”
“No, Lee…jih, Teacher.”
The pony scrutinized the movement of your mouth and tongue. “Lee…zhuh?”
“Erm…it’s okay, Teacher.” Mom and Dad told you not to criticize the ponies’ bad pronunciation.
“I see. And you are a day student?”
“Yes, Teacher. My parents work in Ponyville.”
The pony was curious about your parents’ new job in Ponyville. You answered her questions with what you knew. “I see,” Teacher Fluttershy said. “Do you have the parental form for the orientation field trip this Saturday?”
Your kirin horn glowed, and you levitated the paper out of your traditional metal latch box that the kirin used to carry objects. Metal was used because it was fireproof.
Teacher Fluttershy read the field for your parents’ names with confusion. She turned the paper upside down. “I…I’m sorry…I can’t read your parents’ writing.”
You bowed deeply. “I’m sorry, I apologize sincerely, Teacher. I can translate, Teacher.” You took out a pen and, very slowly, rewrote the words in the Standard Ponish phonetic alphabet. You had to learn it, in order to gain admission into the School of Friendship. This was perhaps why the kirin were slower to move into Equestria than dragons and changelings, for example.
The kirin and the ponies spoke the same language (with only minor differences in vocabulary), but they had a very different way of writing it. Instead of phonetic letters, which were adapted by ponies, dragons, changelings, and most other creatures, the kirin still retained the ancient logographs from Old Ponish.
A circle with four orthogonal lines coming out of it meant “sun.” A horizontal line with a zigzag below it meant “river.” The symbols for “kirin” and “nirik” were mirror images of each other.
Even though you were living with your parents and not in the school dorms, Ponyville was still very different from back home. Mr. Shady was gone from the ceiling. And you didn’t hear as many songbirds as back in the kirin land.
Your first night in Ponyville, after all the activities of orientation day, you played your bamboo recorder in your new room for hours.
And it made you feel a little bit better.
Stage #2: The Ambassador
The ponies stopped staring at you in class after one or two weeks.
Now, they were asking you questions. Your classmates kept asking you to write things in Old Ponish symbols on the blackboard.
“Ooh, how do you write, ‘Professor Rarity just farted?’” Giggles spread through the crowd that had gathered round your desk.
“I don’t think we should write that,” you said. “That would be disrespectful to our Teachers.” Teachers were masters of knowledge—that was your parents taught you. Obey them, revere their words, and do not question them. That’s what your parents’ school was like.
You’d always get into lengthy interrogations by your classmates about life back home. Do you get offended by the name “firepony”? Was the vow of silence really that bad? How many times have you turned into a nirik? Do kirins shed more than ponies? Can you tell me one of those cool kirin legends?
There was a policy at the School of Friendship that all creatures’ cultures should be equally represented in the curriculum. Last week’s music lesson was on the yovidaphone, the week before was the drums. Teacher Pinkamena let you, the student, teach the lesson about the bamboo recorder.
And it was just as well—you heard Teacher Pinkamena try to blow one note on the recorder, and it made this horrible, high-pitched screeching noise that almost made the tips of your ears start to combust.
Your parents would give you special food from back home to give to your classmates. Things like deep fried tofu or egg tarts. During one potlach, your mom actually came to school to prepare the traditional kirin hotpot for everycreature. A large metal pot filled with fragrant broth was warmed by a burner lit by nirik fire. Then, various small bite-sized foods were dipped inside the broth, cooking it.
During those food days, you were the most famous creature in the whole school. The Teachers would come out of the faculty lounge to try some food. Teacher Rainbow Dash would play pranks on Teacher Applejack with the flaming hotpot (you secretly disapproved of their foolish behavior, but they were Teachers, so you did not question).
You’d meet creatures that you’d never met before during food day. That griffon that sat in the back of the class shooting spitballs at Teacher Rainbow Dash. That snobby unicorn who had never even been out of Canterlot her whole life and considered Ponyville as “foreign.” Even that gang of pegasi with the matching buckball championship rings came and talked to you.
Not “talked.” More like “interviewed.” They asked you questions about kirins and kirin food. The same questions that every other creature asked.
And that’s all they ever wanted to talk to you about.
And then after all the food was gone…they’d leave you alone. Until the next “food day” came along.
Stage #3: Call me “Rose”
After two years in Ponyville, you finally got invited to one of your classmate’s parties. Hibiscus Twist was also a day student at the School of Friendship. She invited you to her birthday party at her house in Ponyville.
You were the only kirin at the School of Friendship, and so it was only natural that you had to make friends with other creatures. You weren’t brash and sporty, like the clique of dragons. Neither did you enjoy swimming, like the clique of hippogriffs. You could never stomp as loudly as the yaks. And you weren’t as touchy-feely with your emotions as the clique of changelings.
You seemed to blend in best with the clique of old-money Canterlot unicorns—Hibiscus Twist was one of them. You could levitate objects like they could, you were smart enough to outwit them in a game of bridge, and they seemed to mistake your reserved behavior for privileged upbringing.
Even though you all spoke the same language, the Canterlot unicorns always seemed to have their “in-jokes” that you never really understood. You stayed with them, though. You figured that if you put up with them for a year or two, you’d eventually become privy to their in-jokes and be able to laugh along with them.
The Canterlot unicorns couldn’t really pronounce your name, so they just called you “firepony.” Your mom got mad when you mentioned it to her, and the unicorns ended up getting a stern lecture from Teacher Fluttershy about using slurs. But they still hung out with you, thank heavens. You weren’t really that mad at them for calling you the F-word, and if they had ditched you, you wouldn’t have anycreature else to hang out with.
Sometimes you had to “vent.” A kirin had to occasionally turn into nirik form, or “vent,” as part of their natural biological cycle. Being able to control one’s nirik form was an important rite of passage for young kirin. A kirin’s transition into adulthood was marked by a sacred ceremony that culminated in the lighting of the family’s fireplace. Your mother still had the necklace from her first lighting of the hearth, when she was twenty.
But occasionally, there were some kirin that got their venting out of control due to stress or anger, and that’s when entire villages got turned to ashes. The vow of silence had suppressed the natural cycle of venting for this reason.
The School of Friendship had a “venting” room that you and the dragon students could use. It was two flights of stairs up from the classrooms, windowless, with a concrete floor and corrugated metal walls, and a ventilation fan that made a horrible grating noise every time you stepped and caused the floor to shift.
You did what you had to do, and you got out of there. It was like going to the bathroom. It wasn’t a “religious experience” or anything like that.
In the middle of the birthday party, after listening to yet another in-joke while sitting on the sofa with your unicorn friends, you suddenly had the urge to vent. As you silently excused yourself to the stone patio outside, you felt memories of the kirin lands rushing back into your head. The weeping willows. The orange hue in the sky during spring, when the dust storms came.
And you could hear the sound of you, playing your recorder as a child.
Or were those just songbirds that you were hearing?
You combusted on the patio for about three seconds, until you didn’t feel the flame anymore. You cooled yourself off with the hose—the water sizzled as it touched your fur—and you shook yourself dry.
“Hello, firepony.” Hibiscus Twist joined you on the patio.
“Hi, Hibiscus,” you said.
“What are you doing sitting out here?”
“I’m okay. I was just…venting.” The last word was barely audible.
“Oh. I think your…suitcase is very...unique.”
You felt shame in explaining it to her. “It’s not a suitcase, it's a metal carrying case. The kirin use it instead of a saddlebag.”
“Oh. Right. Yes, yes I recall you telling me. Mmm-hmm.”
Silence. You wanted to get one of those nice cotton saddlebags that your unicorn friends always carried. One that wouldn’t make that annoying clattering noise as you walked. One that wouldn’t…blind you with its reflection.
Your friend spoke again. “Well, erm…I wanted to ask you, Li-zh…zzz…shhh…” she had trouble pronouncing your name.
“Just call me ‘Rose’,” you insisted. “Call me ‘Rose’.”
The pony smirked at you, almost like a satisfied look on her face. “All right then, Rose it is. It's a lovely name. Would you like to come inside and play cards with us, Rose?”
Stage #4: Loss
You got a letter from your grandparents back in the kirin lands, written in the Old Ponish symbols, and you could barely read any of it. You had to ask your parents what the different symbols meant.
You had already thrown away those old books you read as a young foal back in the kirin lands. Not because you grew out of them, but because you couldn’t read most of the pages.
What you could read, though, you did not understand. The ancient kirin fairy tales seemed foreign to you. You still remembered the ceremony of the lighting of the hearth. And the legend of the bamboo recorder.
But they were no more than stories to you. Like a Daring Do book, or a Power Ponies action comic. Something you’d read in a few minutes, reflect on for a few more minutes, get bored of, and then never read again for a long long time.
You were no longer the only kirin at the School of Friendship. Another kirin had joined this year. Your parents asked you to welcome her to the school. And you were shocked by how different she was. Her neck mane was thick and bushy. She had her traditional kirin metal carrying box, the latch making a clattering sound as she walked. She kept addressing you as "Senior Rose Lizhi" in heavily-accented Ponish, even when you insisted that just "Rose" was fine.
As you gave her a tour of the School, she followed you from behind quietly, never straying more than ten feet away from you, and only speaking when spoken to. You made a joke about Prof. Pinkie acting more childish than her students, and she gave you a silent look of disapproval.
You thought it all to be very strange.
You had thrown away your old metal carrying case months ago, claiming that it had rusted, and bought a nice floral-print cotton saddlebag that your unicorn friends helped you pick out at the market.
You hadn’t played the bamboo recorder for two years. It sat in a dark corner of your bedroom, gathering dust. You stopped listening to the songbirds, and you were instead interested in the fusion dance hall music that all your classmates had been listening to.
For your 16th birthday, you originally planned to go out with your unicorn friends for hayburgers and milkshakes. Mother suggested they come over to your place, and she could prepare a big hotpot for all of them.
“Erm…maybe not.”
“Why not? Your friends can come here and listen to your music. I don’t mind.”
“No, well…I’m a little embarrassed,” you admitted.
“Why are you embarrassed, honey? You think they won’t like our home?”
“No, no, it’s not that at all, it’s just…do you have to make hotpot?”
“What do you mean, do I have to…?”
“Do you have to make…you know…” you looked down at your cloven hooves. “…like…kirin food.”
“What is wrong with hotpot? I know your friends love it, they ate everything up the last—”
“No. It’s not that. It’s just…well…I don’t really want kirin food.”
“You don’t? But you love my cooking, dear—”
“I do, I do!” You nodded furiously. You had always loved your mom’s cooking. “But, Mom…”
Problem was, it didn’t taste like “home” anymore.
You finally blurted it out. “…I’m not a kirin anymore, Mom! All my friends are ponies! I live in a town of ponies! I eat hayburgers and sandwiches every day! I like wearing pony things! I don’t even remember living in the kirin lands! I can’t…I can’t even read the…”
You started to cry. Mom hugged you. That still felt like “home.” Mom would always feel like “home.”
Mom tilted your chin up with her hoof. “Lizhi. Listen to me. You will always have your mane. You will always have your Flame. You will always be a kirin. And they will always be ponies. And unless you can accept that, and be proud of who you are, you will never be happy.”
You cried in your room for an hour. You were trying to find a clear space to sit and curl up on the floor, and you accidentally sat on your old bamboo recorder—snapping it in half.
Stage #5: Rejection
Years had passed since you graduated from the School of Friendship. You left Ponyville and took a job in the Equestrian capital of Canterlot, as a librarian. You were surprised you got the job, considering your constant proximity to flammable documents. But, you wore your cotton saddlebag and trimmed your neck mane very short for the job interview, and the ponies seemed to be convinced that you had your nirik form under control.
You decorated your new apartment based on the Equestrian interior design magazines. You bought a plush divan for your living room that matched the one in the esteemed Carousel Boutique. You placed potted palms in the corner next to the sofa. You hung posters from the Sapphire Shores concert in your living room, and souvenirs from the Daring Do convention.
The only thing that set your place apart from the rest was a few extra fire sprinklers (as was required for dragon or kirin occupied dwelling units).
You had accidentally packed that broken bamboo recorder from your childhood. The two pieces sat in the bottom of one of your moving boxes, a sharp point formed at the place where it snapped.
You tried to blow a note through the mouthpiece. It made a high, screeching noise.
You didn’t ask your parents—you just threw it away.
Work was going well. You got along well with the unicorns that worked there. You’d go out with them during lunch break, and you’d laugh at about half of their jokes.
Some of your colleagues were going to Donut Joe for a snack after work. You agreed to join them. You packed your stuff into your cotton saddlebag, when you noticed your reflection in the large metal clasp.
Your twisted horn. Your bushy, overgrown mane.
Your obvious look of disgust.
A small flame trickled out of one of your hooves. You quickly extinguished it on a paperweight.
“Hey Rose, you coming or not?” One of your coworkers called.
You will always be a kirin. And they will always be ponies.
You will never be happy.
You shook it off. “Yeah,” you said to your colleague. “Lemme grab my saddlebag and I’ll be right with you.”
The corner of the security flap of your saddlebag was accidentally singed by your flame. You ignored the charred smell that reminded you of home.
Author's Note
END. Thank you for reading. 
Important note: While this story is somewhat inspired by my experiences as an ABC growing up in Alabama, this story is by no means intended to be an accurate representation of any real life culture or real life experience.
Click here to listen to some authentic kirin bamboo recorder music that I discovered on YouTube!!!
